Ann Cleeves - Hidden Depths

Vera interrupted. ‘Did they get the name of the hotel?’

‘No. But one of them could remember what Lily had said about it. “That’s the great thing about going out with someone a bit older. They know how to do things properly.” They asked her how old he was, but she wouldn’t say. “You wouldn’t understand.” One of them asked if he was old enough to be her father. She hadn’t answered but she’d laughed so they guessed he probably was.’

‘They never saw him?’

‘No. Like I said, nothing really useful.’

‘Oh believe me, pet. There’s plenty useful here. Dig out the ring. Charlie, is it in the stuff the search team brought in?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Check again. I don’t remember seeing anything like that in the flat, but it must have been there. Then someone can have a fun day out in York, visiting the antique shops and the jewellers. Unless her mysterious lover paid for it by cash, we’ve a reasonable chance of tracking him down. And let’s have someone on the phone to all the decent hotels.’

‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Joe said.

‘What do you mean?’ Vera turned on him.

‘We heard from Peter Calvert’s students that he was having it off with a younger woman.’

‘We heard there was a rumour going round,’ she said. ‘Nothing definite and no proof. And even if the rumour was true there are a fair few bonny young students in Newcastle for him to choose from. Doesn’t mean it was Lily Marsh.’

Besides, she thought, Peter Calvert isn’t the only older man floating around the edge of this case. There’s Samuel Parr. Lily had a Northumberland Libraries ticket, could have bumped into him too. And if I had to choose between Peter Calvert and Samuel Parr, I know which one I’d go for every time. And the elaborate crime scenes were much more Parr’s style. But she didn’t say anything to the team. She kept her suspicion to herself. A private pleasure. A possibility to surprise them at the end of the case. If she turned out to be right.

She realized they were looking at her, waiting for her to continue. ‘Well?’ she demanded. ‘Anything else?’

Joe leaned across the table towards her. ‘I’ve tracked down Ben Craven.’

She knew the name should mean something to her, but it didn’t. He watched her. She could tell he was pleased with himself. You’re getting a bit smug for my liking.

‘The lad she was passionately in love with when she was in the sixth form. The one she got so obsessed about she messed up her A levels.’

‘Of course,’ she said as if she’d known all along. Fooling no one. ‘What’s he up to now?’

‘He went away to university. Liverpool. Did a social work course. Moved back to the north east last summer. Guess what he’s doing now?’ He looked at them, savouring the moment, before answering his own question. ‘He’s a psychiatric social worker at St George’s. The hospital where Luke Armstrong was treated.’

‘Did he work with Luke?’ Vera wasn’t in the mood for games.

‘I don’t know. I haven’t had a chance to talk to him.’

‘Don’t. Not until I’ve had a chat to Julie. We don’t want to frighten him away.’

Why hadn’t Joe told her this as soon as he’d found out? She felt like demanding an explanation. But this wasn’t the place. Not in front of the others. He’s getting complacent, she thought. Cocky. He thinks he can take me for granted.

Perhaps he sensed her anger, because he became apologetic. ‘I spoke to his mum only just now. Just before the meeting.’

I take him for granted too, she thought. Think of him as family, expect more of him than I should.

‘Samuel Parr’s wife committed suicide,’ she said. ‘I want the background, how she died. Charlie, can you look into that?’

He nodded and scribbled a note on a scrap of paper.

‘Anything from the lighthouse? Anyone remember seeing a murderer with the body of a young woman under their arm?’ She knew it wasn’t funny, but it was getting to her. The nerve of the killer. The cheek of him.

‘Nothing useful yet. Someone said Northumbria Water were working there for an hour. I’ll check if their guys saw anything.’

‘Well,’ she said brightly. ‘We’ve all got a lot to get on with…’

Charlie cleared his throat again. The ball of phlegm seemed constantly stuck in his gullet. ‘There is something else. Probably nothing.’

‘Spit it out, Charlie!’ Thinking, as soon as the words came out: But not literally, pet. No, not that.

‘I found this in the middle of all the papers we got from the search team,’ he said. ‘And I thought, with the flowers, like, it might be important.’

He held it in a clear plastic bag. A piece of cream card, A6 size, and, stuck to it, a pressed flower. Yellow, delicate. Some sort of vetch? Vera thought. There’d been a craze for pressing flowers when she was a kid. One of the teachers had started them off. You stuck the flower between blotting paper and weighed it down with heavy books – there’d been plenty of those in Vera’s house – but she’d never much seen the point. Clearing out the house after Hector had died she’d come across one of her attempts among the pages of one of his field guides. A primrose, picked, pressed, then forgotten for more than thirty years. It had gone onto the bonfire with the rest of the crap.

‘Anything written on the back?’

Charlie turned over the plastic bag. XXX in black ink. A row of kisses. It could have been a card made by a child for a mother. But this was something different, Vera thought. A love token?

‘Was it in an envelope?’

‘No, just like this.’

‘No chance of DNA, then.’

‘It suggests Peter Calvert, doesn’t it?’ Joe Ash-worth said tentatively.

‘Maybe.’ She found it hard to imagine the arrogant lecturer taking the time and effort to make the card. Wouldn’t it be just the sort of thing he’d sneer at? ‘Perhaps Lily did it herself, but never got the time to send it. Or it could have been preparation for something she was planning to do with the kids in her class. Get it to forensics. They might give us something on the glue.’

She was still sitting at the table after the rest of them had gone. She poured the last of the coffee from the Thermos jug, took her time over drinking it. She couldn’t get rid of the feeling that someone was playing with her. She was a piece in an elaborate board game. Real murders weren’t like this. They were brutal and mucky. Unplanned usually, always ugly. She tried to remember Julie Armstrong, staring at the telly in the front room at Seaton, Dennis Marsh hiding in his greenhouse; tried to persuade herself that she wasn’t enjoying every minute.

The doctor had given Julie tablets to help her sleep. Every night she thought they weren’t going to work, then sleep came in an instant. It was like being smashed over the head, a sudden unconsciousness. For the first time, that morning she remembered dreaming. She woke abruptly as she always did with the pills. It was early morning. She could tell by the noise of the birds and because there was no traffic in the street. The curtains were thin and the light came through them; it was sunny again.

Her first waking thought was of Luke, as it had been every morning since he’d died. The picture of him lying in the bath, the heavy scent, the condensation running down the mirror over the sink. But she was immediately aware too that he hadn’t been the subject of her dream. It had been a sexy dream, the sort of daydream she’d conjured up after Geoff had left, when she’d thought she’d never have sex with a man again. In this dream, she and Gary were walking along a beach at night. There was a heavy moon just above the horizon, the sound of waves. The sort of thing you’d read in a cheesy magazine, one of those mags for old ladies which her mam took on coach trips. But then the dream shifted and they were in the dunes, making love. She remembered the weight of him on top of her, the sand rubbing against her back and her shoulders, his tongue in her mouth. Now it was like the memory of a real event, not a dream at all. Lying in bed she put her right hand on her left breast and believed it still felt tender, as if it had been pressed and squeezed. She started to move her hand down over her stomach and between her legs, then stopped herself. There was a shock of guilt. What was she doing? How could she even consider sex at a time like this? What sort of mother had she been? She should have sent Gary away the day before. What had possessed her to let him into the house?