Hidden Depths--A Vera Stanhope Mystery Page 3

  Occasionally, when she talked to other mothers, who rushed in and out of her house to drop off their sons, or to pick up hers, she wondered if she was missing out by not having paid employment. They seemed astounded when they found out she was at home all day. But what could she have done? She hadn’t had much of a life before her marriage. She had no qualifications, few practical skills. Besides, Peter depended on her being there, calm and rested, to look after him when he came back from the disappointments at work. Certainly he needed her to be no competition. Imagine if she had become a successful lawyer or businesswoman, if she had started to win awards in her own right! The idea made her smile.

  The farm shop was cool, the door into the yard open, letting in the smell of cows and grass. She was the first customer. Neil was still filling the fridge. The huge wooden board, the cleaver, the long pointed knives were still clean. He weighed the chickens and packed them into her bag.

  ‘They’re not free-range.’ He knew Felicity would be interested. ‘But barn-reared, not battery. You’ll taste the difference.’

  ‘That was a wonderful piece of pork I had from you last week.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘It’s all in the cooking, Mrs Calvert. And in the growing. I only cut it up.’

  Another ritual. Like Peter taking his letters to work every day and the same three friends being invited for his birthday. This exchange passed between them every week. He carried the veg box out to the car for her and winked as he had added a few extra links of sausage for free into her bag.

  ‘I hear it’s a special birthday for Dr Calvert.’

  She wondered, as she always did, how the butcher could possibly know all her business.

  * * *

  When she unlocked the door the phone was ringing and she ran inside, leaving everything on the drive. It was Samuel Parr.

  ‘I wondered if there was anything you’d like me to bring tonight. A pud?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Really. Nothing.’

  She found herself smiling. Samuel always put her in a good humour. He, too, was always at the back of her mind.

  Later, when the chicken was cooking and the house was full of the smell of lemon and olive oil and garlic, the phone rang again. Felicity was sitting outside with the paper and another cafetiere of coffee, enjoying the last hour of silence before she had to drive into Hepworth. James had chess club after school and she’d arranged to collect him. A heat haze covered the fields towards the sea and in the distance the lighthouse seemed to shimmer, insubstantial. When she heard the phone she hurried inside. Her feet were bare. The flagstones on the terrace were so hot that they almost burned and the tiles in the kitchen were cool. The contrasting physical sensations on her feet excited her, made her suddenly catch her breath.

  She had been certain it would be one of the children calling, but when she answered the line went dead. She dialled 1471 and was told that the caller had withheld his number. That had happened several times recently. She wondered if she should mention it to Peter. There had been a couple of thefts in the area. Perhaps the phone calls were to check if the house was empty. But she knew she would not tell Peter. Her life’s work was to protect him from unpleasantness and worry.

  She finished her coffee, looking out towards the sea. A bath, she thought, using some of that expensive oil she’d bought in Fenwick’s on her last trip to town, to relax her before the guests descended.

  Chapter Five

  ‘Do you fancy a bit of a walk?’ the fat detective said. She stood up and Julie thought how strong the muscles in her legs must be to get all that weight off the seat in one go. Looking at her, you’d think it would take a crane to shift her, one of those huge cranes that towered over the river down at Wallsend. And it wasn’t only her body that was like that, Julie thought. The detective was a strong woman. Once she was decided on something nothing would shift her. She found the idea somehow comforting.

  ‘I thought you might like a bit of fresh air,’ the woman said.

  Julie must have looked at her bewildered, the way Luke would look at you sometimes, when he didn’t quite get what you were talking about.

  ‘They’ll be coming to remove Luke’s body in a bit,’ said the detective gently. Her name was Vera. She’d told Julie that when they’d first started talking, but Julie hadn’t remembered it until now. ‘No doubt the neighbours will be gawping. I thought you might want to be out of the way. Or perhaps you’d rather see him off. It’s up to you.’

  Julie thought of the body submerged by water and felt sick. She didn’t want to think of that.

  ‘Where would we go?’

  ‘Wherever you like. Nice day for a walk on the beach. You can bring Laura.’

  ‘Luke used to like the beach,’ Julie said. ‘One summer he went fishing. My da gave him an old rod. He never caught anything, like. But it kept him out of mischief.’

  ‘There you are, then.’

  They’d put Laura to bed in Sal’s spare room. The detective went upstairs with Julie to ask the girl if she’d like to come out with them. Julie thought Vera was nosy. She’d met people like her before. People who were greedy for other folks’ business. Perhaps that’s what it took to make a good detective. Now, she thought Vera wanted to find out about Laura. If they went out for a walk together, she’d make Laura talk about herself. She’d think the girl had been neglected, that Julie had given all her time to Luke.

  Laura was still asleep. ‘I don’t want to wake her,’ Julie said quickly. ‘We’ll leave her here with Sal.’

  ‘Whatever you think’s best, pet.’ Vera’s voice was comfortable, easy, but Julie could tell she was disappointed.

  She didn’t see anyone staring as she walked out of Sal’s front door to Vera’s car, but she knew fine well everyone was looking. Any drama like this in the street and Julie would have been just the same, in the front bedroom, her nose to the nets. Any drama that she wasn’t playing a central role in.

  Vera parked the car behind the dunes at Deepden. On one side of the track was a small nature reserve. A wooden hide looking over a pool and a couple of walk-ways built from planks. In the distance a bungalow, where birdwatchers stayed, the garden so overgrown you could hardly see the house. On the seaward side a stretch of grass, spattered with small yellow flowers, and then the range of dunes. They’d brought the kids here a few times when Geoff had been in the mood to play happy families, and they’d loved it. Julie had a picture in her mind of Luke, aged about eight, caught in mid-air just after leaping off one of the sand hills. Perhaps there was a photo and that was what she was remembering. She could see it quite clearly. The frayed cut-off denims, the red T-shirt, his mouth wide open, part fear, part delight.

  Despite the sunshine there weren’t many other cars parked there. Thursday morning and the kids still at school, it was only the active retired and their dogs who had the chance to enjoy the weather. Julie had a sudden thought.

  ‘I’m supposed to be at work. The nursing home. Mary’ll be expecting me.’

  ‘Sal phoned her first thing. Mary got someone else to cover your shift. She said she sends her love.’

  That made Julie stop in her tracks, caused a small landslide as the fine dry sand dribbled past her feet. Mary Lee, who owned the home, wasn’t a sentimental woman. It wasn’t like her to talk of love.

  ‘Have you told my mam and da?’

  ‘Last night as soon as I arrived. They wanted to come over. You said you’d rather be on your own for a bit.’

  ‘Did I?’ Julie tried to remember, but last night was all a blur. Like that time they’d gone on Bev’s hen party and she’d ended up in casualty with alcohol poisoning. That same nightmare sense of unreality, jagged images and flashing shadows.

  She walked on and they reached the highest point of the dunes, began to slide down towards the beach. She’d taken off her trainers and had them tied by the laces and slung over her shoulder. Vera was wearing sandals and hadn’t bothered to take them off. In the car she’d put on a huge white floppy
hat and dark glasses. ‘The sun doesn’t agree with me,’ she’d said. She looked a bit mad. If Julie had bumped into her in St George’s on the way to visit Luke, she’d have put her down as one of the patients. No question.

  They were at the southern end of a long sweep of beach, about four miles long. At the northern end it swung into a narrow promontory where the lighthouse stood, almost lost to view in the haze.

  ‘It can’t have been easy, living with Luke,’ Vera said.

  Julie stopped again. There was that salt breeze that you only ever get by the sea. Three tiny figures right in the distance: two old gadges and a dog running after a ball, just silhouettes because the light was so bright.

  ‘You think I killed him,’ she said.

  ‘Did you?’ Because of the hat and the glasses, it was impossible to tell what the detective was thinking.

  ‘No.’ Then the words, all those words that had been spilling out of her since she’d found the body, dried up. She couldn’t explain that she would never ever have done anything to hurt Luke, that she’d spent the last sixteen years protecting him from the world. She opened her mouth, felt as if she were choking on dry sand. ‘No,’ she said again.

  ‘Of course you didn’t,’ Vera said. ‘If there was any chance you’d done it, I’d be talking to you in the police station, tape recorder on and your lawyer sitting in. Otherwise the court wouldn’t accept what you’d told me as evidence. But I had to ask. You could have killed him, you see. He’d not long died when you got home. Physically it was a possibility. And usually the murderer is a family member.’ She paused and then repeated, ‘I had to ask.’

  ‘You believe me, then?’

  ‘I’ve told you I do. You could have killed him. If he’d wound you up and you couldn’t cope any more. But you’d have told us. Besides, you really believed he’d killed himself. When I arrived you thought he’d committed suicide and you were blaming yourself.’

  They were walking on the hard sand that the tide had just left behind. Julie rolled up her jeans a couple of turns and let the water cover her feet. The detective couldn’t follow her without getting her sandals wet. She looked out to sea so Vera couldn’t tell she was crying.

  ‘Someone killed him,’ Vera said. Julie could hardly hear her. Although the sea was too calm for waves there was still the sucking sound when the tide pulled back. ‘Somebody strangled him, then took all his clothes off. Someone ran the bath and lifted him inside and scattered those flowers on the water.’

  Julie wasn’t sure if she was supposed to answer, so she said nothing.

  ‘Did you have the flowers in your house?’ Vera asked.

  Julie turned to face her. ‘I never have flowers in the house. Laura has hay fever. They make her eyes stream.’

  ‘What about the garden?’

  ‘Are you joking? Nothing grows in our garden. My da comes and cuts the grass for us, but we don’t bother with any plants. There’s only room for the washing line out the back.’

  ‘So the murderer brought the flowers with him. We’ll say it’s a him just for convenience. Most murderers are men. But we’ll keep an open mind all the same. Why would he bring flowers? Does it mean anything to you?’

  Julie shook her head, though something was picking away at her brain, some memory.

  ‘They brought flowers to the place where Thomas was killed. They threw them onto the river. The people who lived on the estate where his mam stayed. I mean, even people who didn’t know him or knew him and didn’t like him. To say they were sorry, like. To say they understood what a waste it was. Him losing his life because of a few lads horsing about. Luke went too. I bought some daffs for him from Morrisons.’

  ‘Flowers for remembrance and sorrow,’ Vera said. ‘Universal.’

  Julie wasn’t sure what she meant by that.

  ‘Are you saying whoever murdered Luke was sorry for it?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘But if you were sorry – sorry in advance, like, if that’s what the flowers were for – why kill him? It’s not like anyone forced him to break into my house and kill my son.’

  ‘No one did break in,’ Vera said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘There’s no sign of a forced entry. No broken window. Nothing like that. It looks as if Luke let him in. Or Laura.’

  ‘It will have been Luke,’ Julie said sadly. ‘He’d be taken in by anyone. He’d give to every lad begging on the street if he had the money. Anyone coming to the door with a story, he’d let them in. Laura has more sense.’

  ‘Did Laura and Luke get on?’

  ‘What are you saying?’ She was angrier than she’d been when she thought the detective was accusing her of murder. ‘Laura’s a lassie, just fourteen.’

  ‘There are questions that have to be asked,’ Vera said. ‘You’re not daft. You understand that.’ She paused for a moment. ‘You realize I’ll have to talk to her. She’s not in a fit state yet, but when she’s ready. It’s better that I know how things were between them before I start. Is it possible, for example, that Luke confided in her? If he was worried about anything, would she know?’

  ‘They weren’t that close,’ Julie said. ‘It wasn’t easy for her having a brother like that. He always got all the attention, didn’t he? I tried to make her feel special too, but he was the one I worried about. It must have been embarrassing for her when she got to the high school. Everyone knew he got into bother. Everyone calling him names. That didn’t mean she’d have wished him any harm.’

  ‘No,’ Vera said. ‘Of course not.’

  Two teenage lads ran down the dunes onto the beach. They were scallies, you could tell just by looking at them, kicking sand at each other and swearing. They were about the same age as Luke, probably bunking off school. Julie pressed her lips together hard to stop herself from wailing.

  ‘Which taxi did you use from town last night?’ The question came out of the blue. Julie knew Vera was trying to distract her and was grateful.

  ‘Foxhunters, Whitley Bay. We booked it in advance. The driver dropped Lisa and Jan off first. I was last stop.’ She paused. ‘He’ll confirm my story. I was only in the house minutes before I was banging on Sal’s door. If he went to the end of the road to turn round, he might even have seen me on the doorstep.’

  ‘I’m more interested in whether he saw someone else in the street. Did you see anyone?’

  Julie shook her head.

  ‘Take a bit of time,’ Vera said. ‘There might be something. See if you can rerun it in your head like a film. Talk me through it. From the taxi pulling up.’

  So there on the wide and empty beach, with the gulls screaming over her head and the tide sucking at her feet, Julie shut her eyes and felt the dizziness that had hit her when she first stepped out of the taxi. ‘I was drunk,’ she said. ‘Not fall-in-the-gutter drunk, but not really with it. Everything spinning. You know how it is?’ Because she was sure that Vera had been drunk in her time. She’d be a good person to get drunk with.

  ‘I know.’ She gave Julie a minute. ‘Did you hear anything unusual?’

  ‘Nothing at all. I noticed how quiet it was. Usually there’s traffic on the main road through the village. It’s always there so you don’t hear it. Last night there was nothing. Not when I was opening the door.’ She frowned.

  ‘But later? When the door was open?’

  ‘A car started up in the street.’

  ‘Could it have been the taxi, turning round?’

  ‘No. This was the ignition being switched on, the engine revving. It’s a different sound, isn’t it, from a car that’s already running?’

  ‘Quite different,’ Vera said.

  ‘It must have been parked down the street, near the junction with the road into town. That’s the direction the sound came from.’

  ‘So you’d have passed it in the taxi on your way in?’

  ‘Must have done.’

  ‘Don’t suppose you noticed it? A strange car? Not belonging to one of the usual residents?’ Her
voice was so studied and casual that Julie knew it was important.

  ‘Nah,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t have done.’ But she shut her eyes again and concentrated. They’d come over the humped-back bridge and she’d leaned forward to tell the driver to slow down because they were nearly there. There’s a nasty right-hand turn just on the corner. And at the same time she was pulling her purse out of her bag, so there wouldn’t be that embarrassing last-minute fumble for payment. Lisa and Jan had already given her more than their share so she knew she had the cash. There’d been nothing coming in the opposite direction and the taxi driver had pulled into her street without having to stop. And there had been a car. Almost on the corner. Parked outside the bungalow where Mr Grey lived. She’d wondered about that because Mr Grey hadn’t driven since he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s and everyone knew his only son lived in Australia. She remembered because she’d wondered if the car might belong to the doctor, if there was some emergency. And she’d looked to see if there were any lights on, thinking of the gossip she could pass on to Sal. But the house had been dark. And anyway it had been a small car. Not the sort a doctor would drive.

  All this she told Vera.

  ‘I don’t know what make it was.’

  ‘Never mind, pet. It gives us something to work on. One of your neighbours might have seen it.’

  The scally boys were throwing a football around, bouncing it hard in the wet sand, so muddy spray flew all over their clothes. Their mothers will kill them, Julie thought.

  ‘Home,’ Vera said. ‘Are you ready?’

  Julie almost said she never wanted to go home.

  ‘Laura will be awake. She’ll be needing you.’ Vera stamped away towards the sand hills, leaving Julie no option but to follow.

  Arriving back in the street, it was as if she was seeing it for the first time. Part of her was still on the beach with the sound of the gulls and all that space. Hard to think of this as home. A cul-de-sac ending in reclaimed farmland. Once there’d been the slag heap from the pit, but now there were fields all the way to the coast. Old folks’ bungalows on one side of the street, each with a ramp to the pavement and a hand rail. A row of semis on the other, council once but all privately owned now. Julie thought: Would this still have happened if we lived somewhere else?