Telling Tales

  Telling Tales

  Vera Stanhope [2]

  Ann Cleeves

  Pan (2004)

  * * *

  Rating: ****

  Tags: Mystery & Detective, General, Fiction

  It has been ten years since Jeanie Long was charged with the murder of fifteen-year-old Abigail Mantel. Now residents of the East Yorkshire village of Elvet are disturbed to hear of new evidence proving Jeanie's innocence. Abigail's killer is still at large._x000D_ _x000D_ For one young woman, Emma Bennett, the revelation brings back haunting memories of her vibrant best friend - and of that fearful winter's day when she discovered the body lying cold in a ditch. As Inspector Vera Stanhope makes fresh enquiries, tensions begin to mount. But are people afraid of the killer, or of their own guilty pasts?

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Sitting at the bedroom window, Emma looks out at the night-time square. The wind rattles a roof tile and hisses out from the churchyard, spitting a Coke can onto the street. There was a gale the afternoon Abigail Mantel died and it seems to Emma that it’s been windy ever since, that there have been ten years of storms, of hailstones like bullets blown against her windows and trees ripped from the earth by their roots. It must be true at least since the baby was born. Since then, whenever she wakes at night to feed the baby or when James comes in late from work the noise of the wind is there, rolling round her head like the sound of a seashell when you hold it to your ear.

  James, her husband, isn’t home yet, but she’s not waiting up for him. Her gaze is fixed on the Old Forge where Dan Greenwood makes pots. There’s a light at the window and occasionally she fancies she sees a shadow. She imagines that Dan is still working there, dressed in his blue canvas smock, his eyes narrowed as he shapes the clay with his strong, brown hands. Then she imagines leaving the baby, who is fast asleep, tucked up in his carry cot She sees herself slipping out into the square and keeping to the shadows, walking across to the forge. She pushes open one of the big doors which form an arch, like the door of a church, and stands inside. The roof is high and she can see through the curved rafters to the tiles. In her mind she feels the heat of the kiln and sees the dusty shelves holding unglazed pots.

  Dan Greenwood looks up. His face is flushed and there is red dust in the furrows of his forehead. He isn’t surprised to see her. He moves away from the bench where he’s working and stands in front of her. She feels her breath quicken. He kisses her forehead and then begins to unbutton her shirt. He touches her breasts, stroking them, so he leaves lines of red clay like warpaint. She feels the clay drying on her skin and her breasts become tight, slightly itchy.

  Then the image fades and she’s back in the bedroom she shares with her husband. She knows her breasts are heavy with milk, not tight with drying clay. At the same time the baby begins to grizzle and to claw blindly in the air with both hands. Emma lifts him out of the cot and begins to feed him. Dan Greenwood has never touched her and probably never will, no matter how often she dreams of it. The church clock strikes midnight. By now, James should have his ship safely into port.

  That was the story Emma told herself as she sat by her window in the village of Elvet. A running commentary on her feelings, as if she was an outsider looking in. It was how it had always been her life as a series of fairy tales. Before Matthew had been born she’d wondered if his birth would make her more engaged. There was nothing more real, was there, than labour? But now, running her little finger between his mouth and her nipple to break the suction, she thought that wasn’t true. She was no more emotionally involved with him than she was with James. Had she been different before she found Abigail Mantel’s body? Probably not. She lifted her son onto her shoulder and rubbed his back. He reached out and grasped a strand of her hair.

  The room was at the top of a neat Georgian house, built of red brick and red tile. It was double-fronted and symmetrical with rectangular windows and a door in the middle. It had been built by a seafarer who’d traded with Holland, and James had liked that. “We’re carrying on a tradition,” he’d said when he showed her round. “It’s like keeping it in the family.” Emma had thought it was too close to home, to the memories of Abigail Mantel and Jeanie Long, and had suggested that Hull might be more convenient for his work. Or Beverley. Beverley was a pleasant town. But he’d said Elvet was just as good for him.

  “It’ll be nice for you to be so close to your parents,” he’d said and she’d smiled and agreed, because that was what she did with James. She liked to please him. In fact she didn’t much care for Robert and Mary’s company. Despite all the help they offered, they made her feel uncomfortable and for some reason guilty.

  Above the rumble of the wind there came another sound a car engine; headlights swept onto the square, briefly lighting up the church gate, where dead leaves were blown into a drift. James parked on the cobbles, got out and shut the door with a solid thud. At the same time Dan Greenwood emerged from the Old Forge. He was dressed as Emma had imagined, in jeans and the blue smock. She expected him to pull together the big double doors and fasten them with a key he kept on a ring clipped to his belt on a chain. Then he would push a heavy brass padlock through the iron rings bolted to each door and shove the hasp in place. She had watched this ritual from the window many times. Instead he crossed the square towards James. He wore heavy work boots which rapped loudly on the paving stones and made James turn round.

  Seeing them together, it occurred to her how different they were. Dan was so dark that he should have been a foreigner. He could play the villain in a gothic melodrama. And James was a pale, polite Englishman. She felt suddenly anxious about the two men meeting, though there was no reason. It wasn’t as if Dan could guess at her fantasies. She had done nothing to give herself away. Carefully, she raised the sash window so she could hear their words. The curtains billowed. There was wind in the room with a taste of salt on it. She felt like a child listening in to an adult conversation, a parent and teacher, perhaps, discussing her academic progress. Neither of the men had seen her.

  “Have you seen the news?” Dan asked.

  James shook his head. “I’ve come off a Latvian container. Hull to sign off, then I drove straight home.”

  “You’ve not heard from Emma, then?”

  “She’s not much one for the news.”

  “Jeanie Long committed suicide. She’d been turned down for parole again. It happened a couple of days ago. They kept it quiet over the weekend.”

  James stood, poised to click the fob of his car key to lock up. He was still wearing his uniform and looked dashing in an old-fashioned way, as if he belonged to the time the house was built. The brass buttons on his jacket gleamed dully in the unnatural light. His head was bare. He carried his cap under his arm. Emma was reminded of when she had once had fantasies about him.

  “I don’t suppose it’ll make much difference to Em. Not after all this time. I mean it’s not as if she knew Jeanie, not so much. She was very young when all that was going on.”

  “They’re going to reopen the Abigail Mantel case,” Dan Greenwood said.

  There was a moment of silence. Emma wondered what Dan could know about all that. Had the two men discussed her on other occasions when she hadn’t been watching?

  “Because of the suicide?” James asked.

  “Because a new witness had just come forward. It seems Jeanie Long couldn’t have murdered that lass.” He paused. Emma watched at him rub his forehead with his broad, stubby fingers. It was as if he was trying to rub away the exhaustion. She wondered why he cared so deeply about a ten-year-old murder case. She could tell that he did care, that he had lain awake worrying about it. But he hadn’t even been living in the village then. He dropped his hands from his face. No traces of clay were l
eft on his skin. He must have washed his hands before leaving the forge. “Shame no one bothered to tell Jeanie, huh?” he said. “Or she might still be alive.”

  A sudden gust of wind seemed to blow the men apart. Dan scurried back to the Old Forge to close the doors. The Volvo locked itself with a click and a flash of side lights and James climbed the steps to the front door. Emma moved away from the window and sat on the chair beside the bed. She cradled the baby in one arm and held him to the other breast.

  She was still sitting there when James walked in. She’d switched on a small lamp beside her; the rest of the big attic room was a pool of shadow. The baby had finished feeding and his eyes were closed, but she still held him, and he sucked occasionally in his sleep. A dribble of milk ran across his cheek. She had heard James moving around carefully downstairs, and the creaking stairs had prepared her for his entrance. She was composed with a smile on her face. Mother and child. Like one of the Dutch paintings he’d dragged her to see. He’d bought a print for the house, put it in a big gilt frame. She could tell the effect wasn’t lost on him, and he smiled too, looked suddenly wonderfully happy. She wondered why she had become more attracted to Dan Greenwood who could be slovenly in his appearance, and rolled thin little cigarettes from strings of tobacco.

  Gently she lifted the baby into his cot. He puckered his mouth as if still looking for the nipple, sighed deeply in disappointment but didn’t wake. Emma fastened the flap in the unflattering maternity bra and pulled her dressing gown around her. The heating was on but in this house there were always draughts. James bent to kiss her, feeling for her mouth with the tip of his tongue, as insistent as the baby wanting food. He Would have liked sex but she knew he wouldn’t push for it. Nothing was so important to him that it warranted a scene, and she’d been unpredictable lately. He wouldn’t risk her ending up in tears. She pushed him gently away. He had poured himself a small glass of whisky downstairs and still had it with him. He took a sip from it before setting the glass on the bedside table.

  “Was everything all right this evening?” she asked to soften the rejection. “It’s been so windy. I imagine you out there in the dark, the waves so high.”

  She had imagined nothing of the sort. Not tonight. When she had first met him she had dreamed of him out on the dark sea. Somehow now, the romance had gone out of it.

  “It was easterly,” he said. “On shore. Helping us in.” He smiled fondly at her and she was pleased that she had said the right thing.

  He began to undress slowly, easing the tension from his stiff muscles. He was a pilot. He joined ships at the mouth of the Humber and brought them safely into the dock at Hull, Goole or Immingham, or he guided them out of the river. He took his work seriously, felt the responsibility. He was one of the youngest, fully qualified pilots working the Humber. She was very proud of him.

  That was what she told herself, but the words ran meaninglessly through her head. She was trying to fend off the panic which had been building since she had heard the men talking on the square, growing like a huge wave which rises from nothing out at sea.

  “I heard you talking to Dan Greenwood outside. What was so important at this time of night?”

  He sat on the bed. He was bare chested, his body coated with fine blond hair. Although he was fifteen years older than her, you’d never have guessed, he was so fit.

  “Jeanie Long committed suicide last week. You know, Jeanie Long. Her father used to be coxswain on the launch at the point. The woman who was convicted of strangling Abigail.”

  She wanted to shout at him, Of course I know. I know more about this case than you ever could. But she just looked at him.

  “It was unfortunate, a terrible coincidence. Dan says a new witness has come forward. The case has been reopened. Jeanie might have been released.”

  “How does Dan Greenwood know all that?”

  He didn’t answer. She decided he was thinking already of other things, a tricky tide perhaps, an overloaded ship, a hostile skipper. He unbuckled his belt and stood to step out of his trousers. He folded them precisely and hung them over a hanger in the wardrobe.

  “Come to bed,” he said. “Get some sleep while you can.” She thought he had already put Abigail Mantel and Jeanie Long out of his mind.

  Chapter Two

  For ten years Emma had tried to forget the day she’d discovered Abigail’s body. Now she forced herself to remember it, to tell it as a story.

  It was November and Emma was fifteen. The landscape was shadowed by storm clouds. It was the colour of mud and wind-blackened bean stalks Emma had made one friend in Elvet. Her name was Abigail Mantel. She had flame-red hair. Her mother had died of breast cancer when Abigail was six. Emma, who had secret dreams of her father dying, was shocked to find herself a little envious of the sympathy this generated. Abigail didn’t live in a damp and draughty house and she wasn’t dragged to church every Sunday. Abigail’s father was as rich as it was possible to be.

  Emma wondered if this was the story she had told herself at the time, but couldn’t remember. What did she remember of that autumn? The big, black sky and the wind laden with sand which scoured her face as she waited for the bus to school. Her anger at her father for bringing them there.

  And Abigail Mantel, exotic as a television star, with her wild hair and her expensive clothes, her poses and her pouting. Abigail, who sat next to her in class and copied her work and tossed her hair in disdain at all the lads who fancied her. So two contrasting memories: a cold, monochrome landscape and a fifteen-year-old girl, so intensely coloured that it would warm you just to look at her. When she was alive, of course. When she was dead she’d looked as cold as the frozen ditch where Emma had found her.

  Emma made herself remember the moment of finding Abigail’s body. She owed Abigail that, at least. In the room in the Dutch captain’s house, the baby snuffled, James breathed slowly and evenly and she retraced her footsteps along the side of a bean field, making every effort to keep the recollection real. No fantasies here, please.

  The wind was so strong that she had to force out each breath in a series of pants, much as she would later be taught to do during labour before it became time to push. There was no shelter. In the distance the horizon was broken by one of the ridiculously grand church spires which were a feature of this part of the county, but the sky seemed enormous and she imagined herself the only person under it.

  “What were you doing there, out on your own in the storm?” the policewoman would ask later, gently, as if she really wanted to know, as if the question wasn’t part of the investigation at all.

  But lying beside her husband, Emma knew that this memory, the memory of her mother and the policewoman, sitting in the kitchen at home discussing the detail of the discovery, was a cop-out. Abigail deserved better than that. She deserved the full story.

  So … it was late afternoon on a Sunday in November. Ten years ago. Emma was fighting against the wind towards the slight dip in the land where the converted chapel which was the Mantel family home lay. She was already upset and angry. Angry enough to storm out of the house on a foul afternoon, although it would soon be dark. As she walked she raged in her mind about her parents, about the injustice of having a father who was unreasonable, tyrannical, or who had seemed to have become so as she grew up. Why couldn’t he be like other girls’ fathers? Like Abigail’s, for example? Why did he talk like a character from a Bible story, so when you questioned him it was like questioning the authority of the Bible itself? Why did he make her feel guilty when she couldn’t see she’d done anything wrong?

  She caught her foot on a sharp piece of flint and stumbled. Tsars and snot covered her face. She remained for a moment where she was, on her hands and knees. She’d grazed the palms of her hands when she’d tried to save herself, but at least here, closer to the ground, it was easier to breathe. Then she’d thought how ridiculous she must look, though there could be no one out on an afternoon like this to see her. The fall had brought her to her sens
es. Eventually she would have to go home and apologize for making a scene. Better sooner than later. A drainage ditch ran along the side of the field. Getting to her feet the wind struck her with full force again and she turned her back to it. That was when she looked into the ditch and saw Abigail. She recognized the jacket first a blue quilted jacket. Emma had wanted one like it but her mother had been horrified when she’d seen the price in the shops. Emma didn’t recognize Abigail, though. She thought it must be someone else, that Abigail had lent the jacket to a cousin or a friend, someone else who had coveted it. Someone Emma hadn’t known. This girl had an ugly face and Abigail had never been ugly. Neither had she been so quiet; Abigail was always talking. This girl had a swollen tongue, blue lips and would never talk again. Never flirt or tease or sneer. The whites of her eyes were spotted red.

  Emma wasn’t been able to move. She looked around her and saw a piece of black polythene, tossed by the wind so it looked like an enormous crow, flapping over the bean field. And then, miraculously, her mother appeared. Emma could believe, looking as far as the horizon, that her mother was the only other person alive in the whole village. She was battling her way along the footpath towards her daughter, her greying hair tucked into the hood of her old anorak, Wellington boots under her Sunday-best skirt. The last thing Robert had said when Emma flounced out of the kitchen was, “Just let her go. She has to learn.” He hadn’t shouted. He’d spoken patiently, kindly even. Mary always did as Robert told her, and the sight of her silhouette against the grey sky, fatter than normal because she was bundled against the cold, was almost as shocking as the sight of Abigail Mantel lying in the ditch. Because after a few seconds Emma had accepted that this was Abigail. No one else had the same colour hair. She waited, with the tears running down her face, for her mother to reach her.

  A few yards from her, her mother opened her arms and stood waiting for Emma to run into them. Emma began to sob, choking so it was impossible for her to speak. Mary held her and began to stroke her hair away from her face, as she had when they’d been living in York, when Emma had still been a child and prone to occasional nightmares.