Ann Cleeves - Hidden Depths

She had been certain it would be one of the children calling, but when she answered the line went dead. She dialled 1471 and was told that the caller had withheld his number. That had happened several times recently. She wondered if she should mention it to Peter. There had been a couple of thefts in the area. Perhaps the phone calls were to check if the house was empty. But she knew she would not tell Peter. Her life’s work was to protect him from unpleasantness and worry.

She finished her coffee, looking out towards the sea. A bath, she thought, using some of that expensive oil she’d bought in Fenwick’s on her last trip to town, to relax her before the guests descended.

‘Do you fancy a bit of a walk?’ the fat detective said. She stood up and Julie thought how strong the muscles in her legs must be to get all that weight off the seat in one go. Looking at her, you’d think it would take a crane to shift her, one of those huge cranes that towered over the river down at Wallsend. And it wasn’t only her body that was like that, Julie thought. The detective was a strong woman. Once she was decided on something nothing would shift her. She found the idea somehow comforting.

‘I thought you might like a bit of fresh air,’ the woman said.

Julie must have looked at her bewildered, the way Luke would look at you sometimes, when he didn’t quite get what you were talking about.

‘They’ll be coming to remove Luke’s body in a bit,’ said the detective gently. Her name was Vera. She’d told Julie that when they’d first started talking, but Julie hadn’t remembered it until now. ‘No doubt the neighbours will be gawping. I thought you might want to be out of the way. Or perhaps you’d rather see him off. It’s up to you.’

Julie thought of the body submerged by water and felt sick. She didn’t want to think of that.

‘Where would we go?’

‘Wherever you like. Nice day for a walk on the beach. You can bring Laura.’

‘Luke used to like the beach,’ Julie said. ‘One summer he went fishing. My da gave him an old rod. He never caught anything, like. But it kept him out of mischief.’

‘There you are, then.’

They’d put Laura to bed in Sal’s spare room. The detective went upstairs with Julie to ask the girl if she’d like to come out with them. Julie thought Vera was nosy. She’d met people like her before. People who were greedy for other folks’ business. Perhaps that’s what it took to make a good detective. Now, she thought Vera wanted to find out about Laura. If they went out for a walk together, she’d make Laura talk about herself. She’d think the girl had been neglected, that Julie had given all her time to Luke.

Laura was still asleep. ‘I don’t want to wake her,’ Julie said quickly. ‘We’ll leave her here with Sal.’

‘Whatever you think’s best, pet.’ Vera’s voice was comfortable, easy, but Julie could tell she was disappointed.

She didn’t see anyone staring as she walked out of Sal’s front door to Vera’s car, but she knew fine well everyone was looking. Any drama like this in the street and Julie would have been just the same, in the front bedroom, her nose to the nets. Any drama that she wasn’t playing a central role in.

Vera parked the car behind the dunes at Deepden. On one side of the track was a small nature reserve. A wooden hide looking over a pool and a couple of walkways built from planks. In the distance a bungalow, where birdwatchers stayed, the garden so overgrown you could hardly see the house. On the seaward side a stretch of grass, spattered with small yellow flowers, and then the range of dunes. They’d brought the kids here a few times when Geoff had been in the mood to play happy families, and they’d loved it. Julie had a picture in her mind of Luke, aged about eight, caught in mid-air just after leaping off one of the sand hills. Perhaps there was a photo and that was what she was remembering. She could see it quite clearly. The frayed cut-off denims, the red T-shirt, his mouth wide open, part fear, part delight.

Despite the sunshine there weren’t many other cars parked there. Thursday morning and the kids still at school, it was only the active retired and their dogs who had the chance to enjoy the weather. Julie had a sudden thought.

‘I’m supposed to be at work. The nursing home. Mary’ll be expecting me.’

‘Sal phoned her first thing. Mary got someone else to cover your shift. She said she sends her love.’

That made Julie stop in her tracks, caused a small landslide as the fine dry sand dribbled past her feet. Mary Lee, who owned the home, wasn’t a sentimental woman. It wasn’t like her to talk of love.

‘Have you told my mam and da?’

‘Last night as soon as I arrived. They wanted to come over. You said you’d rather be on your own for a bit.’

‘Did I?’ Julie tried to remember, but last night was all a blur. Like that time they’d gone on Bev’s hen party and she’d ended up in casualty with alcohol poisoning. That same nightmare sense of unreality, jagged images and flashing shadows.

She walked on and they reached the highest point of the dunes, began to slide down towards the beach. She’d taken off her trainers and had them tied by the laces and slung over her shoulder. Vera was wearing sandals and hadn’t bothered to take them off. In the car she’d put on a huge white floppy hat and dark glasses. ‘The sun doesn’t agree with me,’ she’d said. She looked a bit mad. If Julie had bumped into her in St George’s on the way to visit Luke, she’d have put her down as one of the patients. No question.

They were at the southern end of a long sweep of beach, about four miles long. At the northern end it swung into a narrow promontory where the lighthouse stood, almost lost to view in the haze.

‘It can’t have been easy, living with Luke,’ Vera said.

Julie stopped again. There was that salt breeze that you only ever get by the sea. Three tiny figures right in the distance: two old gadges and a dog running after a ball, just silhouettes because the light was so bright.

‘You think I killed him,’ she said.

‘Did you?’ Because of the hat and the glasses, it was impossible to tell what the detective was thinking.

‘No.’ Then the words, all those words that had been spilling out of her since she’d found the body, dried up. She couldn’t explain that she would never ever have done anything to hurt Luke, that she’d spent the last sixteen years protecting him from the world. She opened her mouth, felt as if she were choking on dry sand. ‘No,’ she said again.

‘Of course you didn’t,’ Vera said. ‘If there was any chance you’d done it, I’d be talking to you in the police station, tape recorder on and your lawyer sitting in. Otherwise the court wouldn’t accept what you’d told me as evidence. But I had to ask. You could have killed him, you see. He’d not long died when you got home. Physically it was a possibility. And usually the murderer is a family member’ She paused and then repeated, ‘I had to ask.’

‘You believe me, then?’

‘I’ve told you I do. You could have killed him. If he’d wound you up and you couldn’t cope any more. But you’d have told us. Besides, you really believed he’d killed himself. When I arrived you thought he’d committed suicide and you were blaming yourself.’

They were walking on the hard sand that the tide had just left behind. Julie rolled up her jeans a couple of turns and let the water cover her feet. The detective couldn’t follow her without getting her sandals wet. She looked out to sea so Vera couldn’t tell she was crying.

‘Someone killed him,’ Vera said. Julie could hardly hear her. Although the sea was too calm for waves there was still the sucking sound when the tide pulled back. ‘Somebody strangled him, then took all his clothes off. Someone ran the bath and lifted him inside and scattered those flowers on the water.’