Ann Cleeves - Too Good to Be True

Then he remembered the car hurtling towards him in the dark forest and he wasn’t so sure.

They arranged for Anderson to join him at the hotel. ‘As soon as you can, Robbie,’ Perez said. ‘Our culprit is desperate now. We don’t want them running away.’

Jimmy didn’t bother looking out of his window when he was waiting for Anderson to arrive. He knew that the watcher would no longer be there.

They drove in Anderson’s car to the Kerrs’ farm. ‘This is my patch, Jimmy,’ Anderson had said when Perez had offered to drive. ‘Besides, look at the state of you, man. You’re in no fit state to be behind a wheel.’

In the farmyard, a blue VW was parked beside Gail’s Land Rover. There were lights on in the house. Perez realised it must be time for the family’s dinner. He wondered if they should have waited until they could be sure Grace would be in bed. He didn’t want to talk to Gail and her brother in front of the little girl.

Gail opened the door to them. ‘Inspector,’ she said. She might have been surprised to see them, but her voice was as cool as it always was. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘Is Sandy in?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He’s not long got back from work.’

‘And Grace?’

‘Oh, she’s in her onesie in the living room watching her favourite DVD. That’s her pre-bedtime routine.’ Gail smiled and stood aside to let them in.

Sandy was in the kitchen with the remains of a meal in front of him. It seemed he hadn’t been very hungry. Perez saw straightaway that he was the strange watcher, the man he’d followed into the woods. Sandy shifted in his seat but gave no other sign that he knew the inspector.

‘We have to talk,’ Perez said.

Gail took her place at the table and Anderson joined them. Perez remained standing.

‘What’s going on?’ Gail said. ‘I don’t understand.’

Perez ignored her and directed his question at Sandy. ‘Were you in love with Anna Blackwell, Mr Kerr?’

‘Don’t be stupid, Inspector,’ Gail said. ‘Sandy’s engaged to Emma Watt, who lives in the village. The wedding’s planned for the spring.’

‘Please answer, Mr Kerr.’ Perez kept his voice quiet.

‘I adored Anna,’ Sandy said. ‘I fell for her the moment I saw her.’

‘How did you meet?’

‘I often help out with Grace.’ Sandy was leaning forward across the table. He was eager to explain now. ‘My hours with the forestry aren’t fixed. I picked her up from school one day. Anna had a message for Gail and we chatted for a while.’

‘Were you helping out with Grace on the night that Anna Blackwell died?’ Perez asked.

Sandy shifted in his seat and didn’t answer.

‘Did you look after Grace and Lucy for Gail on the night that Anna died?’ This time the question was louder, more forceful. When there was still no reply, Perez went on. ‘You’d have known Lucy, after all, if you’d been spending time with her mother. Both girls would have been happy to stay with you.’

When Sandy spoke it was almost in a whisper. ‘Yes, I was babysitting that night. Gail said she needed to go out. There was something she needed to sort out, she said. Something urgent. I wanted to tell you.’ His eyes were pleading.

‘That’s why you were waiting outside the hotel?’

Sandy nodded. ‘But then I thought Gail had been so good to me, and she’d just lost her husband. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. How could I accuse her of murder when she’s been through so much?’

Gail started to whimper. The noise wasn’t loud enough to disturb the child in the next room, but it was piercing. It seemed to cut through Perez’s skin to his bone.

He turned to the woman. ‘You set up a meeting with Anna Blackwell and you killed her. And this afternoon you tried to kill me. You were worried your brother would pluck up the courage to tell me what was going on, and you drove straight at me in your Land Rover. You must have had Grace with you. How could you do that?’

Gail didn’t answer. She was sitting with her head in her hands and tears ran down her cheeks.

Inspectors Anderson and Perez sat in the lounge bar of the Stonebridge Hotel. It was late and there were no other drinkers. It occurred to Perez that if the bar was always this empty, the owners were making very little money from the place. But perhaps it was busier in the summer. Then there would be tourists in the village and the bar would be full of talk and laughter.

‘I don’t understand why the Kerr woman killed Anna Blackwell.’ Anderson was staring into his beer. ‘You can’t blame us for missing that one, Jimmy.’

‘She was worried about losing the farm,’ Perez said. ‘Sandy’s wage was all that was keeping the place going. Gail knew that Anna was full of life and ideas. She must have known that the teacher would want to move on after a while. Gail and Grace wouldn’t have been able to stay at the farm without Sandy’s wage to support them.’

‘It doesn’t seem much of a motive.’ Anderson looked up from his glass. ‘And wasn’t Sandy going to move out anyway? I thought he was engaged.’

‘But to a local girl,’ Perez said. ‘Someone Gail knew and liked. Someone who’d probably be happy to move into the farm in the end, and who’d be able to help Gail carry out all the plans John had for the place. Anna was the sort of girl who would have had plans of her own.’

‘All the same…’Anderson wasn’t convinced.

‘You have to realise that Gail couldn’t see things clearly. She’d married later than most people and thought she’d found her soulmate. She and John and Grace were the family she’d dreamed of. Then John died.’

To Perez this sounded so like the story of him and his wife Fran and their Cassie that he struggled to keep control. He worried that he might break down. As Gail had done when Anderson arrested her.

‘After realising it must have been Gail who drove towards me in the Land Rover today,’ Perez went on, ‘I wondered if she’d killed her husband in the same way. If he’d had an affair and Gail had killed him out of revenge. But I believe that was just a tragic accident. She loved the bones of him.’

I thought Gail was being so strong, he thought, and all the time grief was eating her away inside. The idea that Sandy might leave her too and she might have to sell the farm that held so many happy memories was enough to tip her over the edge.

‘Talk me through it, Jimmy,’ Anderson said. ‘Tell me what really happened to Anna Blackwell.’

‘The whole thing was planned in advance,’ Perez said. ‘Gail asked Lucy to the farm for a sleepover and suggested that the two women might meet up on the same night. Gail said that Sandy could babysit so she’d be happy to go to Anna’s house. The note that I found was Anna’s reply. She probably sent it home in Grace’s schoolbag.’

‘How did Gail know that Sandy and Anna were having a fling?’ Anderson took a long drink of beer.

‘Sandy told her that he planned to break off his engagement. He explained that he’d fallen for Anna.’ Perez paused and went on to describe how Anna had been killed. ‘On the night of the 10th, Gail left the girls with Sandy and drove into Stonebridge. I think she parked round the corner from the teacher’s house because Anna’s neighbour didn’t see or hear a car.’

Perez imagined the scene. Anna had prepared the house. She might not have felt well enough for a full spring clean, but she’d bought flowers to cheer the place up, and she’d put wine in the fridge to chill. She’d have pictured a friendly chat with the woman who might one day become her sister-in-law.

‘Gail would only have had one glass of wine,’ he said. ‘She’d have explained that she couldn’t drink because she was driving. At one point she went upstairs and crushed the pills she found in Anna’s bedroom into a powder. Everyone in the village knew Anna was taking antidepressants.