Ann Cleeves: Murder in My Backyard

Peter Laidlaw divided his year by the times spent at Brinkbonnie. When friends at school boasted about package tours to the Greek islands or Disneyland, he considered them with scorn. No place in the world had the magic of his visits to the Tower.

His father, Max, was a general practitioner in Otterbridge, and the family lived in a big Victorian terrace with tricycles in the hall and gerbils in the kitchen. Nine-year-old Peter was happy enough at home, but his parents were always busy and the house was often crowded with people he did not know. His parents promised him their attention, then found excuses for not fulfilling the promise. His latest campaign was for a tree house in the ash at the bottom of the garden. The excuse for not building it was a rusting tandem that had stood outside since the twins were born.

“There’s enough rubbish in the garden already,” his mother would say, “without making any more. When your father takes that thing to the tip, we’ll think about it.”

Max had bought the tandem when he and Judy were students and he was reluctant to get rid of it. It represented a time of great happiness: evenings in folk clubs, friendships, shared bottles of cheap wine. He had loved to ride with her around the Northumberland countryside. She had looked so striking-a frail Pre-Raphaelite beauty with red hair-and people in the streets had stared at them as if they were celebrities. He had been proud to be seen with her. When Peter was born, Max had fitted a small seat on the back and they had still ridden out together on family outings. Then the twins had arrived and the tandem had been useless, pushed outside to make room for the rocking horse Alice had given them and all the other toys. Now Judy swore at it whenever she went into the garden to hang out the washing and nagged at Max to do something about it. The days of romantic bike rides seemed long past.

It seemed to Max that Judy could not be happy now unless she was part of a group of women. Whenever he came home from work, the house seemed full of them or of other people’s children. But he never complained to Judy. That would be an uncharitable, unliberated thing to do. He had encouraged her to take part in the community activity and presumed she enjoyed it. She had been a nurse and she taught relaxation for the National Childbirth Trust. Sometimes he came home from running an antenatal clinic in the Health Centre to find rows of pregnant women lying on the living-room floor. She volunteered to run a crèche for the women writers’ workshop and every Wednesday afternoon she was exhausted with the effort of entertaining a dozen precocious children, who ground Play-Doh into the carpet and tipped sand down the lavatory. She was a committee member of Amnesty International and Greenpeace and the groups met in their home. It occurred to him occasionally that he would not recognise her if she were not surrounded by a group of women, a coffee mug in one hand, leaning forward earnestly to listen or to make some point. He could hardly remember what she looked like when she was on her own. Even in bed she usually had one or the other of the twins beside her. She was always tired.

“Dad,” Peter said, from the back of the car as they drove out of Otterbridge towards Brinkbonnie, “ what do you get if you cross a sheep with a boiler?”

“I don’t know,” Max said automatically.

“Central Bleating.”

Max groaned.

“That’s very funny, Peter,” Judy said. She looked at Max crossly.

Humour was an essential phase in a child’s development.

“Will I be able to stay up for dinner tonight?”

“Perhaps. If Aunt Alice agrees.”

“Will Sam and Tim? I expect they’re still too small.”

Sensing Max’s irritation, Judy passed a copy of the Beano into the back seat, and for the rest of the trip to Brinkbonnie Peter was quiet.

From Otterbridge they drove east along narrow lanes through farmland. To the south, on the horizon, was the winding wheel of a long-extinct pit and the chimneys of a newly built aluminium plant, but they seemed a long way off. It was late afternoon and the clouds were building for a storm. They drove straight into the wind, and in exposed places the car rocked and buffeted. In the valleys, where rows of trees lined the road, it was almost dark, and when they drove through the villages there were lights in cottage windows. When they drove into Brinkbonnie, it started to rain with slow, heavy drops and the clouds over the sea were so thick that they could not see beyond the first range of dunes. As Max turned into the Tower drive through the high walls covered with ivy, he had to switch on his leadlights to see, and it began to pour. As the car stopped behind the Tower, sheltered a little from the east wind, Alice came out of the kitchen door to meet them, under a huge golfing umbrella, followed by one of her cats. She wore a blue-and-white-striped apron over her clothes and there was flour in her hair.

“My dears,” she said. “How nice to see you.”

Peter was trying to open the car door to get out and kicked Sam in his eagerness to climb out. Sam began to cry. Max shouted at Peter for his clumsiness and it seemed there would be a horrible family scene until Alice scooped the baby from the back of the car and made him laugh, sent Peter into the house to wait for his cousin, and greeted the adults with a calm, slightly bemused smile.

“Come in,” she said. “There should be some tea.”

When he met his wife, James Laidlaw was thirty, already editor of the Otterbridge Express with ambitions of better things. He had interviewed Stella Rutherford in a small workshop in a converted barn on the outskirts of Otterbridge. He was preparing an article on local businesses and she was fresh from art school with plans to set up in knitwear design. He knew of her because her father was one of the biggest landowners in the district and he had expected someone loud and horsy. In fact, Stella was pale, fine-featured, and nervous. She chain-smoked and laughed at herself for being so anxious. It was her background, she said. Everyone expected so much of her. Her father had told her she would be a failure and she thought he was probably right.

James had left the interview feeling like a sixteen-year-old in love for the first time, and even now, thirteen years later, he was obsessed with her fragile beauty. She was right, the knitwear design idea had been a failure, and as soon as she had married she had given it up. She seemed not to have the strength to see anything through. Even motherhood, it seemed, was too much for her, and after the birth of Carolyn she had been so severely depressed that she had spent six months in hospital. Her father, an insensitive and self-centred man, had found her illness embarrassing and cowardly. He had never visited her in hospital and since then the family had had little to do with him. Stella claimed to hate him. James had seen her through the bad times, almost glad, it seemed, of an excuse to spoil and cherish her. Even now he considered her before anything. He had been offered a job in Fleet Street but turned it down without discussing it with Stella. He knew she would never survive the move.

He had been working and was home later than Stella had expected. He saw her waiting at the window and felt guilty for making her anxious.

“Do we have to go?” she asked as soon as he came into the house. “I’m not sure I can face it.”

“Nonsense,” he said gently. “You know you’ll enjoy it once you’re there.”

“I won’t,” she said. “ I don’t know why we go. You don’t even get on with Max particularly.”

“Oh, well,” he said easily. “ It’s always relaxing to be with Aunt Alice.”

“She doesn’t sound very relaxed at the moment.” Stella was defensive. “ She phoned not long ago and asked to speak to you. She’s worried about the development on the land at the edge of the village. She wants your advice.”