Ann Cleeves - Telling Tales

“Bit poky in here,” she said.

He didn’t mind. Not like he minded the probation officer Winter pushing his way in, presuming to know something of what he was feeling. She was the sort of woman who said what she thought as soon as she thought it. There was no putting on a show for the rest of the world.

“I saw you in church yesterday,” she went on, followed you out. But you seemed a bit upset and I thought it would best wait a day.”

“Probably just as well.”

“Have you had breakfast?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Must be coffee time then.”

“I don’t have coffee,” he said. “Will tea do?”

“It will if it’s strong. I can’t bear weak tea.”

She was still standing when he came into the lounge with the tray. He’d made tea in a pot, and covered it with a cosy Peg had knitted using up old scraps of wool. There were mugs. He thought she might sneer at a small cup. She was looking at the photographs on a shelf in the alcove next to the gas fire. One of him standing next to the boat that day they’d given him the award, a big grin on his face which had more to do with the ale he’d supped, than with the medal. And another of him and Peg on their wedding day, him as skinny as those Africans they showed on telly whenever there was a famine, her all soft and round with a circle of silk flowers in her hair and roses in her hand.

“No picture of Jeanie?” the woman asked. “You didn’t sell them to the press?”

“I wouldn’t have done that!” He was horrified she could think him capable of it.

“No,” she said calmly. “Of course you wouldn’t. Why no photos then?”

“I thought she was guilty. All the way through I thought she was guilty.”

“Only natural. All the evidence pointed that way.”

“So you think she was guilty too?” He couldn’t tell if it was hope he felt, or dread.

“Nah.” She paused. “You know she said she’d gone to London, the day Abigail was killed?”

“Aye. No one saw her.”

“A witness has come forward. A student who knew her. He swears she was in King’s Cross that day. I’ve talked to the lad. If he’s lying I could get a job modelling nude for the cover of Vogue!

“It wasn’t just that I thought she killed that schoolgirl.” Michael felt a need to explain. “It was that I blamed her for Peg dying too.”

“Did Peg think she’d committed the murder?”

He shook his head. “Not for a minute. She fought all the way through for Jeanie, talked to the press, the police, the lawyers. The effort wore her out.”

“I don’t suppose your attitude helped, you stubborn bugger.”

He didn’t have any answer to that so he poured out the tea, swirling the pot first to make sure it was strong enough. She sat heavily on an armchair. He put the mug carefully on the small table in front of her, waited anxiously while she tasted it.

“Perfect,” she said. “Just as I like it.”

He took his own place then and waited for her to explain.

“I’m Vera Stanhope. Inspector. Northumbria police. A case like this they send an outsider in. Fresh eyes. You know. Check they did everything right first time round.”

“There was a woman in charge before.” It had been strange to him at first. A woman leading a team of men. But when he’d met her a couple of times he could understand how she managed it.

“So there was.” Vera was noncommittal.

“What was she called?” His memory was a sludge as he grasped for a name. All he could see was a woman in silhouette, sat in the kitchen at the house on the Point. Light from a low winter sun was pouring through the window behind her. She was very smart in a black suit, short skirt, fitted jacket. He’d noticed the legs in sheer, black tights. Even then, when they’d thought Jeanie was a murderer, he’d found himself looking at the legs and wondering what it would be like to stroke them.

“Fletcher,” Vera said. “Caroline Fletcher.”

“She thought Jeanie was guilty. Right from the start. Not that she wasn’t polite with us. Perhaps that was how I could tell. The sympathy, you know. The pity. She knew what we’d have to go through when it came to court.”

“She left the service a while back,” Vera said. “You’ll have to make do with me this time. Not so nice to look at, huh?”

“Easier to talk to though.” He hadn’t found it easy to talk to Inspector Fletcher. She asked a lot of questions but he had the feeling that she wasn’t really listening, that behind the polite smile and the glossy eyes her mind was already racing ahead to form conclusions that had nothing to do with the words he was speaking.

“That’s why I’m here,” Vera said. “I want you to talk to me.”

“I could have got her parole,” he said suddenly. “If I’d said she could come here, that I’d support her when she came out. She’d still be alive if I’d believed her story.”

There was an angry set to her mouth as she put down her mug and faced up to him. He thought she was going to let fly at him, tell him what she thought of his lack of faith in his daughter.

“You didn’t put her there.” She spoke very slowly and deliberately, an emphasis on every syllable as if she was marking the beat in a piece of music. “We did that. Us. The police and the Crown Prosecution Service and the judge and the jury. Not you. You’re not to blame.”

He didn’t believe her but he was grateful to her for saying it.

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything,” she said. “Everything about that time.”

“I’m not sure I’m up to remembering. I might get things wrong. Details.”

“Nah,” she said. “It’s the details we get right. That’s what we remember best.”

Peg had been the only other person Michael could have talked to like this, and when he broke off his story occasionally to look at Vera’s face to check that she was listening or judge her reaction to something he’d said he was shocked because he half expected to see his wife’s features. Vera always was listening.

He started right from the beginning. “I was never bothered about kiddies. I thought we were happy as we were, but it mattered to Peg. She’d have liked a big family, I think she was one of five girls. Her father farmed up Hornsea way. When she found out she was pregnant she was thrilled. She’d pretty well given up hope of it happening. I was pleased for her, like, but not so much for myself. I couldn’t see how things could get any better.

“And then Jeanie was born on the night of a big spring tide. She was long and skinny, even as a baby, with thick, black hair.”

“You were living on the Point then?”

“Aye, it was a part of the job. And we didn’t think it’d be a bad place for a child to grow up. There was space to run around. Good fresh air. It’s not a lonely place. There were other kids in the lifeboat houses and when she was bigger, Peg brought her into Elvet for the play group But she never needed company much, even when she was little. It was always books and music with her. Right from the start.”

He looked up. “Peg always said she took after me, but I could never see it myself. I’m not one for books. “Jeanie’s proud and she’s stubborn,” she’d say. “Who do you think she gets that from?”

“I’ve been trying to trace her friends,” Vera said. “I’d like to talk to other people who knew her. There must have been girls at school…

.”

“There were friends, I suppose. Lasses from school like you said. She’d go to their birthday parties and Peg’d invite them back to the Point for tea.” He remembered those days. The house had seemed full of them pretty little girls in party dresses who giggled and chattered and chased each other around the garden. “But I could tell Jeanie was never close to them. There was something solemn about her. She took life too seriously. I don’t know where she got that from. Peg and I always enjoyed a laugh.”