Ann Cleeves - A Lesson in Dying

‘No,’ she said. ‘ I don’t think I understand him at all any more.’

‘He’s no fool,’ Jim said. ‘Not Jack. He can look after himself.’

‘I’ll talk to the taxi driver who picked him up yesterday evening,’ Ramsay said, ‘ We’ll see if we can find out where he’s been.’ He found it a relief to have something concrete to do. He touched Patty on the shoulder. ‘Don’t worry!’ he said. ‘We’ll find him and get him back.’

Jack had arrived later than he had expected. There had been traffic jams on the A1, and the town was further south than he had realized. It was midnight when he climbed out of the coach, stiff and bleary-eyed. He had slept on and off. The place was strange to him and he felt he did not have sufficient courage to leave the bus station and go out into the town to find somewhere to stay. It was surely too late for that and bus stations were the same everywhere, so he felt safe where he was. The waiting room had not been locked. He found a chair there and, surrounded by overflowing rubbish bins and clutching the handle of his suitcase, he slept.

Early in the morning he was woken by cleaners and the noise of the first buses. He washed and shaved in the public lavatory and went out into the town. In a cobbled market square, stalls were being erected. He felt light-hearted and brave like a soldier in his first action. He might have been in a foreign country with the strange accents all around him, the different beer advertised on the hoardings, the unfamiliar people. He had never seen so many Asian people and the glittering saris and the exotic fruit and vegetables on the market stalls fascinated him. There were students carrying books and files and men in suits on their way to the office. He felt he had led a completely sheltered life. There had been the grime of the pit and the grey houses of Heppleburn, and he had missed out on all this colour. He understood why his elder daughter never came home.

He found an Italian café in a side street where a group of workmen were eating breakfast. They were speaking in Italian, very loudly, shouting jokes to the proprietors over the sound of the espresso machine and the jukebox. He was hungry and ate a fried breakfast and a pile of toast. He could have stayed there all morning, watching the customers, enjoying the warmth and the noise.

At nine o’clock he went into an estate agent’s office and asked if they had a map of the town. He was afraid they would not give him one unless they thought he was a serious purchaser, so he came out with an armful of property details too. He put the glossy brochures of alarmingly expensive houses into a bin and sat on a bench in a covered precinct to read the map.

Ashton Road was a pleasant, red-brick terrace opposite the park. There were trees in the gardens, with russet-coloured leaves, and the sun caught the latticed window panes. They were unpretentious houses, ordinary, but in his mood of discovery and new experience he thought they were beautiful. The warm brick and the tall chimneys enchanted him. He walked down the pavement, his head turned towards them like a tourist walking through London for the first time.

The house he wanted was at the end of the terrace, on a corner. There were black wrought-iron gates into a small garden, where one late rose was still in bloom. What must I look like, he thought, standing here? Like those chaps on the dole who go round selling dusters at the door. What will she think?

He rang the bell and a dog barked. A woman opened the door to him. She was tall and slender, with a nervous, worried face. He knew immediately that he had come to the right place.

‘Mrs Carpenter?’ he said. ‘ I wonder if I could speak to you. It’s about your son.’ She stood aside to let him in.

On the way home the bus stopped at York and he phoned Ramsay. He was tired by then and the noise all around him prevented him from thinking or speaking clearly. It took a long time to get put through to him. He realized he must sound confused and elated to the policeman, but no longer cared. Soon he would share the responsibility of knowledge and it would all be over. When he returned to the bus it was full and noisy and he had no chance to sleep. It was late afternoon when they arrived at Newcastle. He was relieved to be almost home. He thought he would catch a bus to Heppleburn – he had spent too much already on this escapade and a taxi would be an extravagance – but when he got out at the Haymarket Miss Hunt was there in her red Metro.

‘Mr Robson,’ she said. ‘What a coincidence! Come in and I’ll give you a lift.’

He hesitated for a moment, but he was tired and not thinking clearly. Besides, it was one way of finding out if he were right. In his mood of exhilaration he thought he was invincible. It was only when he had lifted his suitcase on to the back seat and had sat comfortably on the passenger seat that he realized a shotgun was resting on her knee, the barrel pointing towards him. It was partly hidden by her long black cape.

‘I knew when to meet you,’ she said. ‘I received a telephone call at the school this morning. It was from my daughter.’ The mask of politeness slipped and her voice changed. ‘ The policeman was in the office when I took the phone call. I found that rather amusing.’ She began to laugh.

She drove out of the city and took the road north, so he knew she was taking him to her bungalow, not to Heppleburn. In his absence the fog had thickened and the police had lit burning braziers to mark the roundabouts. The cars crawled from one cat’s eye to the next and he had no idea where he was.

‘Where did you get the gun?’ he asked. The question had been troubling him during the drive through Newcastle. Her silence was unnerving him too and he wanted to get her to speak to him.

‘From my elderly neighbour,’ Irene Hunt said. ‘She keeps it to protect herself from imagined intruders. She’s so confused that she won’t notice that it’s gone. I took the Heminevrin from her too.

The doctor prescribed it for her months ago, but she’d forgotten all about it and there was nearly a bottle left.’

He realized that they must be in Nellington. The illuminated sign of the pub lurched crazily out of the fog above them. She turned off the main road towards the sea, though he did not see the junction or the signpost. It was so black that he did not know how she kept to the road.

‘When did you find out that Matthew was your grandson?’ he asked.

She smiled fondly but her voice was firm. ‘No more questions,’ she said. ‘Not until we get home. I don’t want to put the car in the ditch. You might run away. But don’t be anxious. I’ll satisfy your curiosity before I kill you.’

She had left the light on in the bungalow porch, so he knew they had arrived. There was no light in the farmhouse, though somewhere in the darkness he could hear the dogs howling as if they had been chained for the night.

‘It’s no good shouting,’ Irene Hunt said. ‘The old lady’s deaf and even if she were to hear you she’d take no notice.’ She got out of the car and locked the door meticulously behind her. ‘Come on,’ she said, suddenly irritated like a child denied a treat. ‘Come inside. I want to tell you all about it.’

Jack followed her. He left his suitcase inside the car and thought it unlikely that he would need it now. Inside, she drew all the curtains and put a light to the fire. It caught immediately and the flames were reflected on the walls of the room and her eager face.

‘Sit down,’ she said, as if he were some friend who had called in without invitation. ‘You must be tired.’

‘It never occurred to me,’ he said, ‘that Mrs Carpenter might phone you.’

‘We’re very close,’ she said proudly.