Ann Cleeves - Hidden Depths

Peter Calvert was full of it. You’d have thought he’d found the bird himself.

‘Every year we get at least one British Birds rarity. A reserve this small. And when we started they all said we were wasting our time.’ Gary thought with amusement that he was still claiming credit for something that had happened forty years before. It didn’t bother him, but he could see why the man got up some people’s noses.

‘I’ve got to go,’ Peter said. ‘I’m giving a lecture this morning. Can’t disappoint my students. Are you coming, Clive? I can give you a lift into town.’

And though you could tell Clive would have liked a bit longer with the bird, he twisted the legs on his tripod and followed Peter to the car. Peter was still his hero. Gary thought he’d have run into a burning house if Peter had given the order. Outside in the lane cars were still arriving. One of the observatory committee was standing at the gate with a bucket, demanding money before he’d let people in.

Samuel and Gary went into the house. They were still paid-up observatory members, so no one could stop them. Once inside the door, Gary was taken back to the time when they’d been regulars. It still smelled of wood smoke in there, though it must have been months since the fire had been lit. Wood smoke and the waterproofing you rubbed into Barbour jackets and leather boots. They made tea, stole a couple of soft biscuits each from the tin in the cupboard and sat outside on the rusty wrought-iron chairs by the pond.

‘What did you make of that business on Friday night?’ Samuel asked.

It took Gary a moment to realize he was talking about the girl by the lighthouse. ‘That business’ seemed an odd way to describe the discovery of a body.

‘I don’t know. That detective turned up at my flat on Saturday. The big woman who was at Fox Mill. The lad who died in Seaton was Julie’s son. She was with me in town on Wednesday night, then she went home and found him. It must seem a strange coincidence, but she appeared to believe me when I said I didn’t know anything about the girl.’

Samuel took a moment to speak. Gary had read a couple of his stories. It always shocked him that Samuel, so good-humoured, so ordinary, could write stuff like that. Stuff that haunted you, so you’d wake up in the night with the pictures still in your head. It was impressive, but a bit scary.

‘You didn’t know Lily Marsh, did you?’ Samuel said at last.

‘No! I’d never seen her before.’

Samuel seemed pleased by the answer. ‘Perhaps we should start coming back here,’ he said. ‘Show them how it’s done.’

But Gary thought Deepden had too many memories for him, of how he’d nearly lost it when Emily had left him. He’d needed the place then and the three good friends who’d held him together. But now, he thought, it was time to move on. Although he didn’t have to be in the Sage until the afternoon, he told Samuel he had to get off to work. He went back into the house to drop off his mug, then he went to his van. The lane was so jammed with cars that it took him nearly half an hour to turn it round.

It was Monday morning. Vera woke up as she always seemed to these days with a faint hangover, a sense that she hadn’t slept properly. Her window was open and her neighbours’ cockerel was drowning out every other sound, seemed to be living somewhere just behind her eyes. She realized she was an object of curiosity to the couple who owned the smallholding. They’d moved from the city and had made an effort to get on with her, had this ridiculous notion that country people had a wisdom about nature, saw it as almost mystical. Then they found out Vera was police and she could tell they thought they should disapprove. They’d gone on marches, saw the police as the enemy. Vera didn’t bother one way or the other. Except occasionally she dreamed about strangling the cockerel.

She shut the window and went to the kitchen to make tea, ignoring the pile of dirty plates in the sink. The first sip of tea and she was already engrossed in the case, her mind buzzing, the guilt about her drinking forgotten. The cockerel dismissed. This was what she was made for.

Today she was planning a trip to Newcastle, the big city. That was how she’d seen it when she was a girl and still thought of a visit to town as an adventure. She collected Joe Ashworth from home on her way through. She knew she wasn’t fit to be let loose on the academic world on her own. She was too loud and brash and she’d end up offending someone. Joe lived in a small estate on the edge of Kimmerston. He too had grown up in the city and this was all he’d ever dreamed of: a new house, professional neighbours, a family. His wife was pregnant again, nine months and uncomfortable. When Vera turned up she’d just emerged from bed, huge belly and swollen tits wrapped in a cotton dressing gown, bleary-eyed. Joe was giving his daughter breakfast to the background noise of Radio 2. The little girl sat in the high chair beaming, while Joe spooned in Ready Brek on a plastic spoon. More happy families, Vera thought. There was all that talk of family breakdown, but wherever she went there were people making a go of it. Making her feel inadequate and depressed.

She’d phoned Peter Calvert at home on Sunday night and made an appointment to meet him at the university. She wanted to see him away from his ideal home and his ideal wife. She used the flowers as an excuse. ‘It would be useful for us to know where they might have been collected. It will take time for the forensic people to release them. You saw them, at the second crime scene at least. It could give us a head start…’

And he’d been delighted to be asked. She could tell that. ‘I understand you’re an expert,’ she said and had almost heard him purring.

They arrived at the university a little early and he was at the end of a lecture. They stood at the back of the theatre, listening. Vera didn’t take in what he was saying, just watched him perform. She’d been sent on a course once. Body language. She tried to remember what the psychologist had said about it, but nothing of it came back to her. What she could tell now was that Peter Calvert liked the young women. There were a couple of pretty lasses sitting a couple of rows from the front. They wore frilled muslin skirts and lacy tops you could almost see through, and he seemed to be directing his words straight at them. When one of them asked a question he complimented her on making an intelligent point and gave a little frown, to show he was taking her seriously. But maybe all sixty-year-old men would be the same, Vera thought. No harm in looking, even if you did make a fool of yourself. She didn’t mind looking at young men, though she tried to be discreet.

Calvert still seemed to be in a good mood when he took them into his office. He fiddled with a filter coffee machine which stood on the window sill.

‘I can only offer you black, I’m afraid. I don’t take milk myself. Though I could probably borrow some from a colleague. You wanted to ask about the flowers.’

‘Informally,’ Vera said quickly. ‘Not as an expert witness. We’ll deal with that later if we need to. But speed is important at this point in an enquiry.’

‘Of course.’

‘You did see the flowers when your son found the body?’

‘Yes. I mean, my first priority was to move James away. He was upset enough as it was. Bad enough to come across something like that. Even worse when we found out he knew her. So I didn’t have time to study the blooms in detail, but of course I noticed them.’

‘What did you make of them?’

‘There seemed to be a mixture,’ he said. ‘Some wild flowers, the sort you’d find in a hay meadow. Poppies, ox-eye daisies, buttercups. The rest garden flowers. Perennials. I didn’t see anything exotic or unusual.’