Ann Cleeves - Hidden Depths

Vera returned to the story. There was a description of a garden, where the kidnapped young woman was being held. It was an Eden gone to seed, a place of fleshy leaves, enormous flowers and overripe fruit. Vera found it oppressive, longed for a passage set in the hills, somewhere with lots of sky and a bit of a breeze, thought she’d been feeling like that since the beginning of the case. As the plot reached its conclusion, she grew more tense. She told herself it was fiction, wished she could throw the book aside and return to the reality of forensic tests and reason. But with Joe watching she had to continue reading. At last the inevitable ending occurred. The young woman was strangled. Parr had written the killing as if it was an embrace, a gesture of tenderness. The murderer was still anonymous; any relationship with the victim unexplored. In the final paragraph the body was placed in a pool, surrounded by water lilies.

‘Well?’ Ashworth demanded. ‘What do you think? It must have been Parr.’

Vera didn’t answer. ‘I know where the story is set,’ she said. ‘I’ve been there.’

Vera’s father had been part of the committee which had set up the Deepden Observatory. She wasn’t sure who’d been foolish enough to ask him onto it. His brief flirtation with the birdwatching mainstream hadn’t lasted for long. Hector had been too much of a loner to get on with the other committee members and his attention span had been too short for tedious meetings about fundraising events and the observatory constitution. Besides, he got his thrills from the illegal activities which surrounded his passion – the late-night forays into the hills for raptors’ eggs, taxidermy carried out on the kitchen table. He wasn’t really interested in the gentle and scientific study of bird migration. After about six months he sent an acerbic and libellous letter of resignation.

He had, however, been invited back to a party to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the opening of the observatory. Vera thought the invitation had probably been sent by mistake. He was on a list and nobody in authority had checked the names. The committee wouldn’t have wanted him there. By that time, everyone in the Northumberland birding world had become aware of his illicit activities. He’d never been prosecuted, but it was a small world and there’d been rumours for years about his egg collection. When he was drunk he boasted about it. The best amateur collection of raptors’ eggs in the country, he’d say. Probably the best in the world.

Hector, of course, had been delighted to receive the invitation and insisted on going to the party. She’d known better than to try to dissuade him. He’d always been a stubborn old sod and he delighted in making a nuisance of himself. By that point in his life he was drinking heavily and Vera had gone with him as a sort of minder, to stop him making a scene and to drive him home. It had been the same time of the year as now, another dry, still evening in mid-summer Probably some of the people involved in the recent murders had been there.

What did stay with her was an image of the place. By the evening of the party the garden had grown up and everything was lush and green, an oasis in the parched flat land which surrounded it. There had been a conducted tour of the ringing hut, the mist net rides and through the orchard. Later, she’d stood by the pond, keeping a watchful eye out for Hector, ready to move him on quickly if he started to cause offence. But that evening he’d been on good form. A little loud, perhaps, but good-humoured, entertaining. As the night wore on she was able to relax. She even found herself enjoying the occasion.

She didn’t tell Ashworth that story. ‘I can’t be certain, of course,’ she said. ‘But I think it’s Deepden. Not far from the lighthouse where the girl was found and only just up the road from Seaton, where the Armstrongs live.’

‘What are we waiting for, then? And if Parr’s there with the girl, we’ll need back-up, won’t we? Do you want me to get on to it?’ Now his anxiety about his wife was forgotten. He didn’t want to miss out on the glory of an arrest.

‘Let’s keep it quiet for the moment. Low key. Any hint that we’re on to him and he’ll kill her. What’s he got to lose?’ But it was more a matter of pride for her than concern for the safety of the girl. Pride was her great failing. She didn’t want a song and dance about this, in case they’d got the whole thing wrong. She hadn’t got Samuel Parr down for the murders. She had in mind someone else entirely. And Laura could be dead. Vera imagined the gossip there’d be if she cocked this up publicly. The boss got the idea out of a book. Talk about fairy tales. This time she’s really lost it. She would hardly be able to say then that it had all been Joe Ashworth’s idea. She wasn’t sufficiently sure of his theory to pull people away from the locations her team had come up with originally – Seaton Pond, the Tyne at North Shields, Fox Mill. Those places would still be watched.

‘This’ll be just you and me exploring an outside chance,’ she said to Ashworth.

She could tell he believed the girl was at Deepden, he’d been seduced by the story, the flowers, the water.

She took a large-scale Ordnance Survey map from the shelf in her office and laid it across her desk. ‘This is where we need to park,’ she said, jabbing her fat finger onto the paper. ‘If he’s there, we don’t want to be so close to the house that he can hear the engine.’

Before she left the station, she called into the incident room, sat on the edge of Charlie’s desk, gave him her instructions. ‘Then get off your backside. You could do with the fresh air and there’s something I want you to check.’

As she drove towards Deepden she tried to recreate a plan of the place in her mind. The bungalow was side-on to the road, with the orchard behind it. The overgrown garden and the pond lay between the house and the flat fields running to the coast.

She didn’t want anyone to know where they were, but Ashworth insisted on keeping his phone on until they got to the observatory. ‘Sarah has to be able to get in touch.’ She felt like screaming at him. What will you do if your wife does go into labour? Leave me here on my own and drive off to play happy families? Or will you stay with me? Be in on the end of it and let your wife give birth without you? She wasn’t quite sure what he’d answer. Perhaps the same thought had occurred to him, because she could sense he was jumpy, sitting beside her, reading the map with his small Maglite torch, keeping his finger on the road.

‘Nobody’s booked into the observatory tonight,’ he said. ‘I checked with the secretary.’ He’d told her that before. He couldn’t cope with the silence. It wasn’t like him; usually he was restful. Perhaps she should have left him in the incident room, so he could contact his wife every ten minutes. But Vera was used to having him with her at important times. She was glad she wasn’t doing this alone. He cleared his throat. ‘Apparently it was quite busy on Monday. There was some rare bird. But this time of year, people really only come for the weekends.’

She pulled into the verge, switched off the engine. There were no street lights and it was so quiet that they could hear the ticking of the car as it cooled. Outside it was almost dark, impossible to see colour or detail, but she could make out the shape of the hedge running alongside them.

‘I’ll walk up the lane,’ she said. ‘See if there are any lights on in the cottage, if there’s a car there.’

Ashworth didn’t answer.

The heat as she got out of the car made her think of Spain. There should be cicadas, the smell of rosemary. Walking down the lane, keeping close into the hedge in case she heard a car turning off the main road, she was reminded again of her father. Until she was old enough to protest, he’d taken her out on his raids. She’d hidden in ditches and behind patches of scrub and drystone walls, keeping lookout for him in case the police or RSPB wardens should appear. She’d hated every moment. The panic. The fear of being arrested, locked up, of getting it wrong. What would she do if someone did turn up? But it had been exciting too. Perhaps that’s why I became a cop, she thought. I got addicted to the adrenaline rush at an early age.