Текст книги "White Nights"

Автор книги: Ann Cleeves

Соавторы: Ann Cleeves
сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

Chapter Twenty-nine

Roy Taylor went with Stella Jebson to visit Jeremy Booth’s wife. The woman lived on the Wirral, way out of Jebson’s patch, but for some reason the DC had seemed keen to go with him. Perhaps like the rest of them she’d become intrigued by the man who’d died, without explanation, so far from home. She wanted to see how the mystery worked out.

‘I heard back from the Inland Revenue,’ Jebson said. ‘Booth’s business was on the verge of going under, if his tax returns were anything like accurate.’

Taylor thought that would need looking into. There’d be nothing new in someone self-employed declaring a fraction of what he earned, but if Booth had been short of cash, why disappear to Shetland, leaving the business in the care of some sort of student? Had he thought he had a chance of making money there?

Taylor had visited the Wirral when he was a kid. A very young kid, when his mother was still at home, before she’d run away with her fancy man to north Wales. There’d been trips out to the seaside in Hoy-lake and West Kirby; he remembered them as happy times. Picnics and ice cream, fishing in the rock pools with little nets on bamboo sticks. His dad had never been with them. He didn’t mention any of that to Jebson on the drive across. There was nothing as boring as other people’s reminiscences.

Booth’s wife was called Amanda. She’d remarried, a man called Stapleton, a teacher. Taylor wasn’t sure if the trip would be worth the effort. Booth had run away years ago. Why would his ex-wife be involved in his murder after such a long time? Surely she had too much to lose. Yet Booth had left home quite suddenly. He’d completely changed the direction of his life and had relinquished any contact with the child. Taylor knew that families could haunt you, resentments grow with time. And why had the relationship fractured in such a dramatic way?

The family lived on a pleasant estate of 1950s houses near Arrowe Park Hospital. It was anonymous, a straight tree-lined road of semi-detached homes. A place you could lose yourself, Taylor thought. Yet when they parked he thought the elderly woman working in her garden opposite had taken note of them. So it wouldn’t be that easy to hide.

It was early evening but Amanda Stapleton was on her own in the house. She seemed to belong to the time it had been built. A comfortable blonde in a sleeveless summer dress and sandals, she made Taylor think of women with big skirts and permed hair. His mother had been a great one for the pictures and for watching old films on the telly in the afternoons. This woman could have been a minor film star.

‘Thank you for your time,’ he said. ‘I hope it’s not inconvenient.’

‘I’m a stay-at-home mum,’ she said. ‘Sometimes I think I should look for work now the children are older, but I love being here for them when they get back from school. John got promoted to deputy head last year, so we can afford it.’

She’d been told about Booth’s death, but seemed unaffected. Taylor wondered if she would get round to mentioning it. She took them into a living room at the back of the house. The door was open into the garden.

‘I’ll make tea, shall I?’

She returned with a tray, home-made biscuits on a plate, a teapot, milk jug, sugar bowl.

‘The boys have cricket practice tonight,’ she said. ‘John will pick them up after work. It’s not usually this peaceful.’

‘What about your daughter?’

‘Oh, Ruthie makes her own way home. She’s in her last year at school. A grown-up really, or so she thinks. She’ll be here soon. She doesn’t know yet that her father’s dead. I’m not sure how she’ll take it.’

She settled herself on a straight-backed chair, a cup and saucer balanced on her knee, her legs neatly crossed at the ankle. ‘I haven’t seen Jeremy since he left in the middle of the night more than sixteen years ago. He took one suitcase. Left me with a daughter. And a note which said he was very sorry, but this wasn’t the life he wanted.’ She looked up at them. ‘You can’t expect me to be grieving about his death.’

‘He’d given you no warning that he was leaving?’

‘None.’

‘Was there another woman?’

‘He didn’t mention one in the letter. But there could have been. He was an attractive man. I fell for him, after all.’ She paused. ‘He was the love of my life.’

Taylor didn’t know where to look. He felt himself flush with embarrassment. He hated people who spilled out their feelings, and this woman had seemed so controlled that it was unexpected.

Jebson leaned forward towards the woman. ‘Tell us about Jeremy,’ she said. ‘We haven’t met anyone yet who really knew him.’

‘I’m not sure I can help you with that either. I’m not sure Jeremy knew himself. It was all dreams and stories with him. He featured in his own dramas. In his head of course. None of it was real.’ She stared out into the immaculate garden. ‘He’d have quite enjoyed this. Being the object of so much attention.’

‘Where did you meet him?’

‘At work. We were both teachers. He taught English and I worked in the technology department, doing craft and cooking. That summed us up really. I was the practical one; he was into fiction, words. He swept me away with his words. In his spare time he ran the school’s youth theatre. That was his real passion. He’d done a lot of acting when he was a student, got into the Central School, but couldn’t get funding to do the course. He was very bitter about that.’

‘We haven’t been able to trace any other family. Is there anyone else we should inform about his death?’

She shook her head. ‘He was an only child. The classic only child: spoiled rotten and left to play too much on his own. His parents were quite elderly when we married. They’re probably dead now.’

Taylor felt he was losing control of the interview. He’d brought Jebson along to observe, not to take over.

‘You say you hadn’t seen Mr Booth since he left sixteen years ago,’ he said. ‘Have you communicated with him at all?’

‘He’s paid maintenance for Ruth since he left. Not a lot. He’s never had steady work. Since he set up the drama-in-education company things have been a bit better. I never wanted to make a fuss about the money and we had no direct contact over that. It was as if he preferred not to think about us.’

‘Did you try to find him when he left?’

‘Of course I did! I worshipped him. But he’d left his job at the school too. Just walked out. Gave no notice, asked for no reference. I thought he must be going through some sort of breakdown, tried psychiatric hospitals, the police, the Salvation Army. I imagined him sleeping on the streets, in some horrible hostel.’

‘Did you ever find out where he went after he left you?’

‘To his mummy and daddy.’ She sounded very bitter. ‘Hardly the great romantic gesture, was it? Running home like a scared child. Of course I contacted them but they told me they hadn’t heard from him. He got them to lie for him.’

‘And there was nothing, really, that precipitated his going?’

‘It was when Ruth was born,’ she said. ‘That was when things started changing.’

She paused, and Taylor wished she’d get to the point.

Perhaps Jebson sensed his impatience, because she cut in with a question. For such a big, ungainly lass, she had a gentle voice.

‘In what way did things change, Mrs Stapleton?’

‘I don’t know what he’d been expecting. He was so excited when I found out I was pregnant. Maybe some ideal of family life. A child who would adore him. Certainly not nappies and crying, coming home to an exhausted wife who suddenly made demands on him. And then Ruth wasn’t the perfect baby he’d visualized for himself.’

‘In what way wasn’t she perfect?’

‘She was born with a cleft palate. You wouldn’t know now. She’s a beautiful young woman. But there have been lots of spells in hospital. And when we first brought her home she was an ugly little thing. I think he was repulsed by her. And disgusted with himself for feeling that way. Perhaps that’s what brought matters to a head. He couldn’t face the reality, couldn’t lose himself in theatre any more. So he just ran away. He pretended she’d never been born.’

‘Can you think why anyone would have wanted to kill him?’

‘I’d probably have killed him,’ she said. ‘If I’d tracked him down to his parents’ house. If I’d caught him there, being waited on by them while I was struggling to keep things going at home.’

‘Did he have any family and friends in Shetland?’

‘No family. If he made friends there it was after my time.’

She offered them more tea, handed them biscuits, smiled to show she really didn’t care any more. There was the sound of the key in the door.

‘Hi, Mum.’

‘Shall we leave,’ Taylor said, ‘so you can talk to Ruth on her own?’

‘No. She’ll probably have questions. You’ll be able to answer them better than me.’

Ruth was, as her mother had said, a beautiful young woman. Dark-haired, full-breasted, with a wide smile. She stood in the door and looked at them. She was wearing jeans and a loose white top, easy with her body. She was curious about who they were, but too polite to ask.

‘These people are detectives,’ Amanda Stapleton said. ‘They have some news about your father.’

The girl looked at them, horrified. ‘What about him? What has he done?’

Stella Jebson got up and stood next to the girl. ‘Why don’t you sit down?’ she said. ‘We’ve got some bad news.’

The girl perched on the arm of the nearest chair. ‘What’s happened?’

‘He’s dead,’ Jebson said. Perhaps she’d realized that Amanda would find it hard to say the words. ‘I’m really sorry, love.’

‘How did he die? Was he ill?’

‘He was murdered. We’re here because we’re trying to find out who killed him.’

The girl started to sob, taking in great gulps of air. It was hard to tell if it was grief or shock. Taylor thought it was a dramatic way to carry on when she hadn’t seen her father since she was born, but that was teenage girls for you. They were all drama queens. Her mother got to her feet, awkwardly put her arms around her daughter, held the girl to her, stroked her hair.

‘I’ve told them you wouldn’t be able to help them,’ Amanda said. ‘But I wanted them to be here if there was anything you wanted to know.’

Again, Taylor found himself disturbed by the show of emotion. ‘We’ll leave you,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you my number; call me if you think of anything.’

They were standing at the car when Ruth ran out of the door to join them. Amanda was at the front window watching them.

‘I want to talk to you,’ Ruth said. Her eyes were very red. ‘But not here. Not with my mother around.’

‘Where then?’

‘There’s a coffee shop in the main street in Heswall. It’s open until seven. I’ll see you there in an hour. I’ll tell her I’m meeting my boyfriend.’

The last thing Taylor wanted was to kick his heels in the Wirral for an hour, but there was something so fierce about the demand to meet that he couldn’t refuse.

The girl turned up ten minutes late, looking harassed and drawn. The coffee shop was one of a chain, all brown leather sofas, piped bland music and hissing machines. Taylor stood up to buy her a coffee and when he got back from the counter with her cappuccino she was already deep in conversation with Jebson.

‘Ruth’s been in contact with her father recently,’ Jebson said. ‘That was what she wanted to talk to us about.’

‘Why did he get in touch with you?’ Taylor asked.

‘He didn’t. I found him.’

‘How?’

‘Interact, his theatre company, came to do a gig at school. Drug awareness. You know the sort of thing. He wasn’t there but his name was all over the publicity and there was a phone number. I knew he’d gone into acting, thought it was probably a coincidence, but I gave him a ring anyway. Plucked up courage when I had an afternoon’s study leave and no one was about. I didn’t tell my mother. I knew she’d go ape. She’d just be worried about him pissing me about . . . And I didn’t want to hurt John, my stepdad. I love him to bits.’

‘What did you say when you phoned?’ Jebson seemed genuinely interested.

‘“I think you might be my father.” Something like that. I thought, Why not go for the direct approach?’

‘Was he pleased to hear from you?’

‘I think it was a shock, but yeah, he said he was pleased. We were on the phone for ages talking. It cost me a fortune – it was my mobile and he never thought to call me back. Classic Dad.’

‘What did you talk about?’

‘Oh, you know, it was just catching up. What he’d been doing. Where I was at in school. Plans for the future, that sort of thing.’

‘What were his plans for the future?’ Taylor asked.

‘He said he was going away. To Shetland. He asked if I’d ever been there and I said I hadn’t. To be honest, I wasn’t even sure where it was. I went on to the computer later and looked the islands up. He said they were beautiful. Very bleak but beautiful. He couldn’t wait to go back.’

‘Did he say why he was going?’

‘Basically business, he said. He was going to do some work there. Not really the sort of gig he usually took on, but it would give him a chance to catch up with old friends.’

‘Did he mention the names of the friends?’

‘I don’t think so. If he did I don’t remember.’ She’d been speaking very quickly, answering Taylor’s questions as soon as they were asked, but now she paused. ‘We’d arranged to meet. He was going to come here when he got back. He said he wanted to be a proper father again, to help me follow my dreams.’ She looked up and smiled at them. ‘That was how he spoke, the sort of thing he said. I’d emailed a photo of myself, so he’d know me. And there’s a picture of him on his website. It was weird to see him after all these years of imagining what he’d look like. There’s a resemblance, don’t you think? You’d know I was his daughter.’

She paused. ‘I phoned him at home a few days ago. I thought he should be back by then. Some woman answered.’

They were on their way back to Yorkshire when Taylor took the call from Sandy Wilson, saying there’d been another death. He dropped Jebson in Huddersfield and began the drive north. Excited to be on the move again, but sick that he wasn’t there to take control.

Chapter Thirty

Perez went straight from Fran’s house to collect Taylor from the airport at Sumburgh. It was a gusty, showery day, with brief flashes of sunshine, then the shadows of clouds blown across the flat land around the runways. The water at Grutness was choppy, blown into thousands of little waves which scattered the light, but the wind wasn’t strong enough to cause a delay. He arrived a little early and sat in the terminal building drinking coffee. A group of Japanese tourists waited for the plane.

Perez had stayed in Biddista until Roddy’s body had been lifted out of the Pit on a stretcher. He felt the boy deserved that, and, opening the body bag to look at him, he had the strange sense that for the first time he was seeing Roddy Sinclair in the flesh. Before, it had all been image, glossy and unreal as a magazine advert. By the time he had got to Ravenswick it was four in the morning and as bright as midday. Fran was asleep, must have been disturbed by dreams, because she’d thrown off the covers and lay, naked, on top of the twisted sheet. There was a white blind at the bedroom window and she looked somehow smudged, like one of her own paintings, in the filtered light.

He straightened the sheet and pulled it on top of her, then slid in beside her. It seemed like an unforgivable intrusion, but he didn’t want to wake her and he was exhausted. Her skin was cool and smooth. She stirred and smiled at him, wrapped herself around him. They both slept very deeply and were lying in exactly the same position when the television in the next room woke them. Cassie was singing along to a Saturday-morning children’s programme.

‘You do realize,’ Fran said, ‘that this will be all round Ravenswick School on Monday morning?’

‘I’m sorry, I should have thought.’ He wasn’t sure now what he should have thought. She’d invited him, after all. Did she not want it known that they were seeing each other?

‘Don’t worry. They think I’m a scarlet woman anyway.’ And she pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt and went to make tea.

Later they had pancakes for breakfast, with syrup and chocolate sauce. Cassie, still in her pyjamas, was getting silly and excited because of the novelty of the treat. But all the time he was wishing that he knew exactly what Fran was thinking and that he had some rules to follow. This relationship was so important to him and he didn’t want to get things wrong. Maybe I should ask her to marry me, he thought suddenly. Then at least I’d know where I was. The idea was at once tantalizing and ludicrous, so he found himself grinning. Fran asked him what he was laughing about.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘I’m happy. That’s all.’

When Taylor walked into the terminal he seemed surprisingly alive and energetic. He said he’d had a few hours’ sleep in the hotel at Dyce and now what he really wanted was caffeine and carbs and he’d be fit for anything. Perez took him into the Sumburgh Hotel. The bar was quiet; the barman, a gaunt Englishman who’d lived in Shetland for so long that he spoke like a native, was chatting in a low voice to an old man sitting on a tall stool. Taylor ordered a burger and a Coke and when that was finished he couldn’t stop talking. Perez was reminded of Cassie, bouncing around the kitchen in Ravenswick, full of sugar and E numbers.

‘I found Booth’s wife and daughter. Nice lass. She hadn’t seen him since he left, but recently they’d got in touch. The mother didn’t know.’

‘Are we sure the mother hadn’t found out the girl had tracked him down?’ Perez was hesitant. ‘It would be a dramatic way to stop the father having contact with the girl, but I suppose we should consider it.’

Taylor paused for a moment. Thoughts chased each other across his face like the cloud shadows outside.

‘I don’t know,’ he said at last. ‘I hadn’t seen that as a possibility. If the mother was involved she’s a better actor than Booth ever was. She couldn’t have done it personally. She was at home looking after her family.’

‘What else did you learn from the daughter?’

‘That Booth definitely had friends in Shetland. That was what he told the girl. He was mixing business with pleasure, taking the chance to catch up on old friends.’

‘Someone he met when he was here working on the theatre boat, maybe,’ Perez said. ‘I’ve contacted the management of the boat, The Motley Crew. He did a couple of tours of the northern isles in the early nineties. Must have been soon after he ran away from his wife. The company have no record of him working here after that. But he kept in touch with them.’

‘Could he have had a fling with Bella Sinclair?’ Taylor said. It had been on his mind. Perez imagined him in the plane working over the scenario. Now his voice was eager. ‘You could see it. They’re around the same age. Two arty types together. The relationship obviously didn’t work out for some reason, but that could be our link.’

‘And that’s why he tried to sabotage her exhibition?’ Perez kept his voice even. Taylor took offence easily and didn’t like to be contradicted. ‘He’d kept a grudge after all this time?’

‘People do,’ Taylor said. ‘But you’re right, of course. Something must have happened to bring him back. But what?’

‘Had he had any contact from Shetland? Phone calls? Email?’

‘No phone calls to his landline, we know that. I haven’t heard about the emails. We need to get that sorted.’ Taylor leaned back in his chair and punched a number into his phone. Perez watched from the other side of the table, felt mildly embarrassed as he harangued some poor DC in West Yorkshire to fast-track the information. Which would probably mean, Perez thought, that it would go right to the bottom of the pile. Just out of spite. People wouldn’t take to being spoken to like that.

‘So where does Roddy Sinclair fit in?’ Perez asked. Taylor had subsided in his seat, suddenly quiet after the ranting. ‘He’d only have been a child when Booth was last here.’

‘We are sure he was murdered?’

‘I’m sure,’ Perez said, realizing as he spoke how arrogant that might sound. ‘Impossible forensically to tell the difference between murder, suicide and accident. He fell and he smashed his skull. But he knew the cliffs very well. He grew up there. And he was all set to get the plane south. You were with me when he talked about it. His car was loaded up. Something must have taken him out on to the hill.’

‘The murderer arranged to meet him there?’

‘That’s how I read it.’

‘Nobody saw him that afternoon?’

‘They say not. Sandy’s been in Biddista this morning talking to people.’

‘I’d like to give it another go. I still don’t feel I’ve got a handle on the place.’ Taylor leaned forward, his old intense self. ‘Come with me, Jimmy. You’ll get more out of them than I will on my own.’

So Perez found himself back in Biddista, parked again by the Herring House, all his attention focused on three ordinary families and Peter Wilding, to whom he’d taken an irrational dislike.

Saturday was the Herring House’s busiest day. There was a coach outside and a party of elderly Americans was climbing out and trooping into the gallery. Perez supposed there was another cruise ship in Lerwick. Upstairs the café was full. They took one look in and decided it would be impossible to get Martin Williamson’s attention now. Perez had expected the place to be closed as a mark of respect, but he suspected Bella hadn’t given the gallery a thought and Martin had decided there were so many people booked in that it would be easier to stay open.

The post office had just shut and they found Aggie at home. She was in the garden taking washing from the line. Perez held out his arms to help her fold the sheets and they stood for a moment in silence, the sheet stretched between them, while Taylor watched as if they were performing a ritual dance. Inside she moved the kettle on to the hotplate.

‘You’ll have heard about Roddy,’ Perez said. He thought she looked very tired, more timid and mouse-like than ever.

‘That he’s dead. No details. The Whalsay lad that came to talk to me this morning was all questions and no answers.’

‘Roddy was found at the bottom of the Pit o’ Biddista. You’ll have heard that. We don’t know how he got there. We need to find out. You do see, Aggie?’

‘I do,’ she said. ‘Poor Bella. I know what it’s like to live with uncertainty. But there are some things you can never know.’

‘You didn’t see him yesterday?’

‘Not on the hill. He came into the post office in the morning.’

‘What did he want?’

‘To buy some sweeties to take on the plane with him,’ she said. ‘He had a very sweet tooth, you ken, Jimmy. Just like a peerie boy.’

‘Did you have any sort of conversation?’

‘I asked him when he’d be back. I know he offended people. Dawn didn’t like the way he kept dragging Martin into Lerwick to parties; all the young girls threw themselves at Roddy and maybe she thought Martin would get caught up with the same sort of thing. I told her she didn’t need to worry. Martin has more sense and he loves her to bits. It’s good for him to have a pal. He doesn’t get so much company out here. Roddy said he was doing a show in the Town Hall in Lerwick in six weeks’ time and he’d be back for that. He was quiet, thoughtful, but he didn’t seem depressed. I thought maybe he was starting to grow up.’ She paused. ‘Have you seen Bella?’

‘Only last night.’

‘I don’t know how she’ll cope with this,’ Aggie said. ‘That boy was her life.’

They left her sitting in the rocking chair in the kitchen, reading a novel, its cover showing a young woman with a shawl thrown over her head, staring into the distance.

In the adjoining house Dawn was sitting with a pile of marking while Alice played with a doll’s house on the floor. It was a big house and the front came off completely so they could see all the rooms. The child held a tiny doll in one hand and moved her from room to room, talking to herself as she played out an imaginary conversation in her head. Perez and Taylor watched her for a moment through the window from the pavement. Dawn was frowning at something one of the children had written. Suddenly she became aware of their standing there and waved them to come in. She stood up to greet them and Perez thought he could see the first sign of her pregnancy.

‘This’ll be about Roddy,’ she said. ‘Everyone’s talking about it. The phone hasn’t stopped ringing. Come away into the kitchen. I don’t want Alice listening in.’

They followed her into a room the same size and shape as Aggie’s, but about fifty years away in time. There was a microwave on the bench, a juicer and coffee maker. Perez couldn’t imagine that anyone would be baking in this kitchen.

‘Do you think Roddy was murdered too?’ she asked as soon as the door was shut. They could sense her panic. ‘What’s going on here? I’m even thinking of taking Alice away until we know what’s happened. I don’t feel safe. I wish it was already the end of term. I could go and visit my parents.’

‘We can’t know,’ Taylor said. ‘Not for certain.’

‘It’s the uncertainty I hate.’

‘Booth, the guy who was hanged, came from the same part of the country as you,’ Perez said. The thought had come into his head and he spoke without considering how she might take the remark.

‘I didn’t know him! Yorkshire’s a big county.’

‘He ran a small theatre company, worked out of a village called Denby Dale.’

Dawn shrugged but didn’t answer.

‘Did you see Roddy Sinclair yesterday?’

‘Sandy’s already been here and asked that. I was at work till gone five, came back and cooked a meal for Alice and me, put her to bed and watched television until Martin came in from work. He was at the Herring House all night, in case you want to know what he was doing too.’

She seemed niggly and out of sorts. Perhaps she’d been feeling sick and tired. Sarah had been like that in the early stages of pregnancy. Everyone had said it was a good sign, the hormones working properly. Then she’d lost the baby at fourteen weeks. Perez would have liked to tell Dawn that these questions weren’t personal. Everyone would be asked the same. But perhaps at a time like this her feelings weren’t so important.

‘Do you know why anyone would want to kill Roddy?’ he asked. ‘He and Martin were friends. Roddy would tell him, wouldn’t he, if anything was bothering him?’

‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘When he was drunk. But you’d take everything he told you with a pinch of salt. He was just a little boy showing off.’