Ann Cleeves - Hidden Depths

‘Well, talk to him again. Get the names of all the workers in the area that day. They’re the closest we’ve got to witnesses.’

There was a moment of silence, then Vera jumped up, stood in front of them. ‘I want ideas,’ she said. ‘Any ideas. Crazy as you like. Places to look. Places we can keep under surveillance.’

‘The Tyne. That’s where Tom Sharp died. That was flowers and water. The start of it.’ Charlie again. More animated than she’d ever known him.

‘Eh, man, that’ll be some surveillance, the whole of the Tyne.’ Joe looked around at them. Not being cruel, but demanding they be more specific. Joe was always the practical one.

‘He’s right, though,’ Vera said. ‘That’s where it started.’ She wondered if she could justify another trip to Acklington Prison to talk to Davy, wondered if by now he’d have something for her. She decided it would have to wait. She didn’t want to be too far from Julie if the worst should happen.

‘Where, then?’ Charlie was sitting on the edge of her desk, hunched forward. This had become personal for him too. Vera wondered if he had a daughter, realized she’d never asked him about kids. She didn’t like talking about other people’s children. It gave her an empty, jealous sort of feeling. ‘The Fish Quay at North Shields where Tom Sharp had the accident? There’s that sheltered bit of the water where the boats tie up.’

‘That’s busy until the early hours. Bars, restaurants. People living in those smart apartments they’ve put up.’

‘It would be some statement, though, if he could get away with it,’ Vera said.

‘Does it have to be a he?’ It was Holly. She was the most detached of them all. She’s still young enough to feel immortal, Vera thought, and to be self-absorbed, untouched by another person’s tragedy.

‘Physically a woman could have done the strangling. Carrying Lily across the rocks to put her in that pool, that’s another question. Who were you thinking about?’

‘Kath Armstrong is the one person who links all the victims,’ Holly said. ‘She’s a nurse. They’re trained to carry, aren’t they?’

Not the one person. There’s someone else too.

‘What motive could she have?’ In her head Vera was trying to find an answer to her own question. Perhaps it had something to do with perfect families. Lily, Luke and Laura had all intruded on the little family in the neat house in Wallsend. Were the crimes Kath’s warped attempt to protect her own little girl?

She was imagining the Tyne at North Shields late at night. The shadows thrown by the buildings, the harbour master’s office, the deserted fish market, the lights from the south bank. Within the dock the water was calm and oily. She pictured the dark shape of a girl, a silhouette against the reflected light on the water. But a body wouldn’t float. Not at first. Perhaps the murderer would find something for her to rest on. A pallet? A fish tray? A small dinghy? And cover her with flowers. What a picture that would make. She tried to clear her head and leave her mind open to other scenes, other places.

‘So, any other possible scenarios?’

‘What about Seaton Pool?’ Joe said. ‘It’s close to where the girl must have been abducted and isn’t there a hide there? The birdwatchers would know about it.’

‘The locals have looked there already,’ Charlie said. ‘It was one of the first places they tried because it was so near to her home, and they know some of the village kids hang out in the hide when they’ve bunked off school. They found a pile of empty lager cans and some graffiti. Otherwise nothing.’

But Vera thought it could very well provide the sort of setting that the killer would be looking for. Seaton Pool had been formed by the subsidence of mine workings, though there was no indication now of the industrial past. It lay between the footpath where Laura had walked to catch her bus and the sea.

When she was a girl, Vera had once sat in the Seaton Pool hide with Hector. There must have been some reason for him to have made a rare trip to the lowlands and it troubled her for a moment that she couldn’t think what it was. Then she remembered. An American coot. They’d waited for more than an hour for it to appear out of the reed bed. It had been a cold sunny day and the pool had been ringed with ice. She’d been bored and Hector had been characteristically offensive to the other birdwatchers. The bird had occasionally been disturbed by people passing along the footpath which followed the west side of the pool. It was a favourite place for dog walkers. During the day, Vera thought, it would be a risky place to set out the body. But the murderer seemed not to mind risk. He seemed not to care whether or not he was caught. And later in the evening there would be no danger at all.

‘Are they still searching along the footpath?’

‘They’ll be at it all day.’

‘But not this evening. Not once the light goes.’

‘No,’ Charlie said. ‘They’ll call it off then.’

‘I want someone watching all night,’ she said. ‘From the time the search team finishes up there and all the wooden tops go home. Hidden. Unobtrusive.’ It crossed her mind briefly the effect that would have on the overtime budget but really she didn’t care.

‘Is there any chance he’d go back to the lighthouse?’ Holly asked.

‘Or there’s the stream at Fox Mill,’ Joe said. ‘If the cottage is significant. If Lily came back, met someone there, lost the ring Calvert had given her, the place could have a special meaning for him. It’d be risky with people in the house…’

But he doesn’t care, Vera thought again. The risk is all part of the game, part of the performance. He’s come to realize that he likes an audience.

They were waiting for her to make a decision. There was a moment of quiet which sometimes occurs in busy buildings. Outside, a baby was crying in the street and a mother was trying to comfort him.

‘Three teams,’ she said. ‘One at the Fish Quay. Talk to the harbour master. One at Seaton Pool, camped out in the birdwatching hide. And one in the house at Fox Mill. The least the Calverts can do is let you use the house, the runaround they’ve given us. I can’t see him using the lighthouse again. The tide’s such a variable there.

‘But that’s for tonight. Before that I want the detail checked. Go back to the beginning. By this evening it’ll probably be too late. The girl will be dead.’

When Felicity arrived back at the mill from town she saw that there was a car in the drive. A car different from the one belonging to the CSI. She presumed it was someone else to do with the murder enquiry and wondered when it was going to end, this invasion by strangers, the prying into their business. She supposed she should be grateful that the press hadn’t got wind of their involvement and wondered even if the car belonged to some reporter. When she looked at the cottage she saw that the crime-scene tape had been removed.

She’d just had time to take off her shoes and put on the kettle when the doorbell went. From the kitchen window she saw the young detective sergeant who’d come to take Peter away the evening before. She went to answer the door in bare feet and she saw him looking down at her toenails, which were painted a very pale pink. She sensed his disapproval and wanted to say something to him. Doesn’t your model wife, who belongs to the Women’s Institute, paint her toenails? Or don’t you like it because I’m a grandmother? But she said nothing. She stood, waiting for him to speak.

‘We’ve been trying to phone you,’ he said. There was accusation in his voice and something else. Anxiety verging on panic.