Ann Cleeves - Telling Tales

Vera leant back in her chair, her eyes covered with thick, inflexible lids.

“Well, pet, what is it you’d like to know? Just fire away. Dan and me’ll do our best to help.”

“Are you sure Jeanie was innocent?”

“Positive.”

“What makes you so certain?”

Vera slowly sat forward, reached out for a biscuit. “She always claimed she went to London that day. An impulse, she said. She wanted to get away from the area, hide in a big city, be anonymous. Keith had asked her to leave the Old Chapel and she was devastated. She’d thought she was in love.” Vera munched the biscuit, wiped the crumbs from her chin, continued to speak though she’d not finished chewing. “She got the train from Hull. So she said. Wandered round the South Bank and listened to the free lunchtime music, went to the late Gallery, then got the train home. But no one saw her. She told Danny’s colleagues she’d left her car in the long-stay car park, but they couldn’t find the sticker she’d have had to put on her windscreen. The guy who sold her the rail ticket was shown her photograph but didn’t recognize her. No one travelling on the train came forward to identify her. And it was the same in London. You can’t believe anyone can be that invisible. It was a Sunday, not such a busy day for travelling, but nobody had noticed her. Even more strange, she never mentioned her trip to her parents. Not before she went or when she got back. Her car was gone from outside her parents’ house on the Point from eight in the morning until seven in the evening. That was all they could be sure of.”

She eyed the remaining biscuit but left it where it was. “Perhaps they could have done more. Gone national. Appealed for witnesses. But they thought she’d killed the girl. It wasn’t their responsibility to make the case for the defence.” She gave a wide, dolphin’s smile. “That’s right, isn’t it, Danny? You all thought you’d got your murderer. What is it they call it? Noble cause corruption. And who could blame you for being corrupted? The motive was clear from the beginning. Jeanie hated Abigail Mantel because she could persuade her father to do anything, and she’d persuaded him that the two of them were happier on their own.”

Dan didn’t reply, seemed not even to hear. He was looking out of the window so Emma couldn’t tell what he made of Vera’s words, what he’d thought at the time.

“So, it’s precisely ten years on and there’s a small piece in the Guardian about Jeanie Long. Not claiming she’s innocent. Not exactly that. But claiming she was turned down for parole because she refused to admit her guilt. And that she would have been moved to an open prison years before if she hadn’t stuck to her story. The article gave a bit of background to the case and mentioned that she’d never found an alibi to support her story. The next thing that happens is that a witness comes forward. You wouldn’t believe it could happen, would you? Not after ten years. But this is for real…” She paused. “What’s his name, Danny?”

Emma knew that Vera remembered the man’s name quite well. The pause was for dramatic effect.

“Stringer,” Dan said. “Clive Stringer.”

“Clive was at university with Jeanie. It seems he had a bit of a crush on her, even went out with her once or twice during their first year. He saw her at King’s Cross on the day of the murder.”

“How can he remember after all this time?” Emma heard the desperation in her voice. The story which had been constructed ten years earlier, the story which had made some sort of sense, was starting to crumble.

“The date meant a lot to him. He was on his way to Heathrow. He’d been offered a postgraduate research post at a university in the States, and that was the day he flew. Even if there had been an appeal for witnesses, he wouldn’t have been around to hear it. He didn’t even know that Jeanie had been charged with murder until he read the Guardian piece.”

“Couldn’t he have made a mistake? You see someone in a crowd, it’s easy to convince yourself…”

“I’ve spoken to him,” Vera said. “He’s down-to-earth. Not given to flights of the imagination.”

They looked at each other across the table. Emma didn’t know what to say.

“I did think at first he might be an attention seker,” Vera went on gently. “We come across plenty of those in our line of work. But he keeps a diary. Has done since he was a bairn. It’s a bit sad, I think, summing up your life in a few lines scribbled at night. There must be more to it than that. In this case, though, it’s a blessing. I’ve seen the entry for November fifteenth 1994. Do you know what it says? “Saw Jeanie at King’s Cross Station, looking lovely in a bright red sweater. Red always suited her.” We checked. Jeanie was wearing a red jersey when she returned to her parents’ house that night. Forensic took it. Of course they didn’t find any thing to link her with the murder. But it didn’t really matter. She was charged anyway.” For the first time Emma realized that Vera was angry, volcanically, terrifyingly angry.

Vera must have seen that Emma sensed her fury. She shifted in her chair and smiled again to prove she wasn’t dangerous, became confiding and folksy.

“I’m from up country,” she said. “Nothing to do with Yorkshire and Humberside Police. I’m impartial, that’s the theory. It’s my job to look at the Mantel case again, see what went wrong. And the sooner I can get it done and go home the better, as far as I’m concerned. I’m used to the hills. There’s nowhere to hide here, is there? You can see some bugger’s washing on a line in the next county. It gives me the creeps.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Your memories,” Vera said immediately.

“I’m not sure how reliable they are after all this time.”

“Don’t worry. It’s what I’m best at. Working out what’s real and what’s fantasy. Joe Ashworth, my sergeant, thinks I’m a witch.”

Emma looked up sharply but couldn’t tell from Vera’s face whether she was mocking herself or her audience. Because that was what Dan and Emma had become. Vera was playing them as if she was the best stand-up in the business. And already she’d moved on, taking them with her.

“Suppose today, we just start with a few questions. Things that have been troubling me, and no one else has been able to answer. Not even Danny here. Like, why did Keith Mantel ask Jeanie to move out?”

“Because Abigail asked him to.” If she can’t understand that, Emma thought, she might as well piss off back to her hills now.

“But he must have realized there’d be a problem before he moved Jeanie in. I mean he and Abigail had lived in that place on their own since her mam died. Everyone says he treated her like a princess, spoilt her rotten. If they were that close he wouldn’t have brought his lover into the home without mentioning it to the girl. “What would you say if Jeanie came to live with us? They say men aren’t the most sensitive beasts in the universe but he’d have managed that. And if she hated the idea, Abigail would have said, wouldn’t she? She doesn’t strike me as the shy type. No way, Dad. It won’t work. Something like that. And he’d have listened to her and made some excuse to Jeanie, even if only to spare himself the hassle. Sorry, love, but Abigail needs more time.”

Listening to the detective Emma thought she was some sort of witch, because even if those precise words hadn’t been used, it was just what each of them might have said. But Vera was continuing. “So that’s my problem. I don’t see how he got himself into that mess.”

“I don’t think he had a lot of choice.”

“What do you mean?”

Emma hesitated. “This is what Abigail told me. I don’t know if she was telling the truth.” Because Emma knew now better than anyone that Abigail could be the biggest liar in the world.