Ann Cleeves - Hidden Depths

‘I don’t know. I’m probably overreacting. She was training to be a teacher, for goodness’ sake. Why would she do something like that? But I made it clear that I didn’t want her coming to the house. I said Geoff wouldn’t like it. Luke wandered out into the garden and was obviously a bit anxious when he saw I was upset. She went without a fuss, said she was sorry she’d turned up when it was obviously not convenient. The next time she waited for me outside work I made an excuse not to spend time with her. I felt mean, but she wasn’t my responsibility. There was nothing I could do. I told her again she needed medical help, said I’d sort it out for her if she wanted. A veiled threat, I suppose. I never saw her again. When I heard she was dead, I suppose my first feeling was relief: Well, at least she won’t come bothering us again. Isn’t that dreadful?’

‘Was she upset when you threatened to arrange a psychiatrist to see her?’

Kath paused. ‘Not so much upset as angry,’ she said. ‘She didn’t say anything but she glared at me, then turned away without a word. It was horrible. I felt she hated me. I was tempted to go after her, just to make things right between us, but I didn’t. I couldn’t face the idea of her turning up at the house again.’

‘You never heard from her after that?’

‘No.’ Kath looked at her watch. ‘Look, I should go. There’s a patient coming up from casualty. I need to admit her.’

‘She didn’t say anything which made you worry for her safety? She didn’t seem afraid of anyone? The man she’d been seeing?’

‘Nothing like that. She said he loved her. I wondered if that was true. Perhaps he’d rejected her and that was why she seemed so upset. If I had any worry at all, it was that she might harm herself.’

‘Suicide?’

‘Perhaps.’ Kath stood up and led the way out of the office. ‘Look, I should probably have been kinder, made more effort to see she was OK. But my family came first.’

Vera drove home, pleased to be leaving the city and the investigation behind. Turning west into the hills she was almost blinded by the setting sun. When she arrived at the old station master’s house, she sat for a moment in the car, too tired even to go in. Then she roused herself, got out of her car, unlocked the door. She stepped over the pile of mail on the floor, took a can of beer from the fridge and carried it outside. Even now, in the dusk, it was still warm. She sat on the white seat, where once passengers had waited for the small local train, and looked out over the valley. Everything was in shadow and drained of colour. Here, she thought, it should be possible to rest.

But her mind couldn’t leave the investigation behind. She felt as feverish and obsessive as Lily had been, turning over details, chasing connections. If I could write it down, she thought, perhaps I could let it go. But she was too exhausted to get up to fetch paper and pen. And there was something creative in this concentration, in being forced to keep all the details clear in her mind at once. It came to her suddenly that this was what it must be like to be a writer of fiction. All the characters and stories and ideas spinning around her head. How could you bring some order to them? Make sense of them, give them shape.

If I was writing a novel, she thought, Lily would be the murderer. It would be one of those psychological thrillers, where part of the action is seen from the murderer’s point of view, written in a different font or the present tense. Vera borrowed books like that from the library sometimes, enjoyed throwing them across the room when they got the details of police procedure wrong. So, Lily’s the central character. She’s been screwed up from childhood. A repressed mother and a depressed father. An illness that’s been covered up by her mother, hidden away, never diagnosed. She’s become a loner. A beautiful, obsessed loner. The reader will see her fall in love with an older man. Lily sees him as her salvation, even becomes happy for a while. Then he rejects her, because she’s becoming too demanding, a nuisance, and she gets ill again. Imagines a pregnancy. And everywhere she goes there are happy families. Kath, Geoff and Rebecca. And Luke. Within the fiction she might kill the boy out of anger. A twisted revenge. Not realizing that he’d had a lot to put up with too.

Without being aware of it, Vera had wandered into the house, thrown the empty beer can into the box for recycling, opened the kitchen window to let in some air. She put the last two pieces of bread under the grill, sliced cheese to go on top, looked at the unopened bottle of white wine in the fridge and resisted the temptation. Took another can of beer instead.

All the time thinking, teasing out the different strands of the plot. Lily hadn’t been a murderer, she’d been a victim. So how did that work out? How did that make sense?

She’d been a nuisance to Peter Calvert. He’d been happy to have a beautiful girlfriend, sex on tap, no strings attached. That would have done his ageing male ego no harm at all. Then she’d started to make demands, intruded into his respectable life of university big cheese and happy family man. No way was their separation mutual. Lily’s conversation with Kath had made that clear. There couldn’t be another older man in Lily’s life.

Had Calvert killed her? Vera couldn’t see it. He was too much of a coward, had too much to lose. His wife had indulged him in everything else in his life, why not in this too? Vera could imagine the conversation in the elegant living room at Fox Mill, the windows open to let in the breeze from the sea, the view to the lighthouse. I’m so sorry, darling. I don’t know what came over me. You will forgive me. And of course she would because she had as much to lose as he had. Anyway, where did Luke Armstrong fit into that scenario?

If Lily had been killed first it might have worked. There was a motive for Lily’s death. Luke could have been an involuntary witness. But this way round it made no sense at all.

Vera sat at the kitchen table and ate her cheese on toast. She switched on the light, so the clutter on the worktops, the stains on the floor near the bin, were all illuminated. Her thoughts turned to the four men who’d been there when Lily’s body had been found. All different. But all screwed up when it came to women. Clive, so dominated by his mother that it made Vera want to weep. It was too close to home. She’d spent all her life in Hector’s shadow, could get maudlin, if she let herself, about the missed opportunities when it came to men. Gary, who’d persuaded himself that Julie was the answer to all his prayers. But still pining for some slender lass with big eyes and no tits. Samuel, whose wife had committed suicide. And Peter, who pretended to have a perfect marriage, but had come under Lily Marsh’s spell. It came to her suddenly that there was one logical suspect. But until she knew why Lily and Luke had been killed, that insight was no more than a guess. It couldn’t influence the way she moved the enquiry on.

She drank more beer, knowing it was a mistake and she’d end up having to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Unsteadily she went upstairs to bed, still no nearer to any sort of conclusion. She took the collection of short stories by Samuel Parr from her bag and started to read.

Gary was having a quiet time at work. The band had finished rehearsing and he’d got the sound as good as it could be. Not that anyone else would notice the difference. The musicians were Swedish. They played experimental jazz, odd discordant noises which made him wince. Now they were in the bar waiting for the gig to start. There’d have been times when Gary would be with them, matching them pint for pint. He’d got into a real mess after Emily left him. It had been such a shock. He still remembered in detail her telling him there would be no marriage. He could recreate the scene in his head – the jeans she had on, the way her hair was tied back, the perfume she was wearing.