Ann Cleeves - Telling Tales

i She’d looked at them both in turn. “You do understand what I’m saying? If we arrest your daughter, she’ll be held in custody until we can get her to court. She won’t get bail. No chance of that when the charge is murder. It’s only fair that you understand that’s a possibility.” She’d smiled at them as if she was doing a favour by taking them into her confidence.

“What happens if she refuses to go with you?” Peg had demanded.

“Then we’ll arrest her now.”

Peg had looked as if she’d been punched, but Michael hadn’t taken in the implication of the scene which was being played out in front of him. He’d seen the inspector’s mouth move, but his attention had been held by the man, by Dan Greenwood standing just behind her. Greenwood had stepped forward, had even, Michael thought now, remembering the event for the first time in years, spoken to intervene. “Ma’am A hand upraised. A mouth open. A single word. “Ma’am.” The snow had all melted on his jacket now. Water like dewdrops had clung to the fibres.

Inspector Fletcher had glanced over her shoulder at him.

“Yes, Greenwood?” As glacial as the weather outside. And Michael had thought there must be something personal between these two, something more than professional rivalry. A failed love affair? Perhaps that had been it. There’d been that sort of tension. Michael had been thinking all that, while Peg had been coming to terms with the fact that her only child might be arrested for murder. And what had Jeanie been thinking? At the time he hadn’t considered Jeanie’s feelings at all.

The sergeant hadn’t answered immediately and the inspector had sensed her advantage and demanded more sharply, “Well, Greenwood? What is it?”

And for some reason the sergeant’s courage had suddenly left him. He’d crumbled. “Nothing, ma’am.” And then had hated himself for his cowardice. Michael had recognized how he was feeling. Hadn’t he once sat down for a meal with Keith Mantel? That had been a betrayal too.

At that point Michael had realized that something more was expected of him. The focus had shifted and he’d seen the whole picture instead of the detail: Peg in tears, Jeanie as pale as a corpse. He’d had a part to play as head of the household and he’d played it in the only way he knew, blustering and raging.

“What right do you have to come into my house and accuse my daughter of murder?”

But his heart hadn’t been in it and they’d been able to tell. Jeanie had walked out to the car between the two officers, looking back once with that blank and empty stare which had always shut them out. She’d seemed to wince as a snowflake fell on her cheek.

Now, staring down at Peg’s grave, Michael shivered. From the corner of his eye he caught a movement on the other side of the cemetery. Another mourner. He realized how strange he must look, standing in the half light, bedraggled and tearful. Some lunatic let loose from the madhouse. But the figure who had just come in through the wrought-iron gate seemed equally distraught and it was clear that he hadn’t noticed Michael. They were two of a kind. Though the newcomer was younger, tall and stringy, it seemed that he too was passing through an emotional crisis. He was wearing a long anorak, unfastened. He had his hands thrust deep in the pockets and walked jerkily, moving his arms at the same time, so the front of the coat flapped like wings. He stopped once with his back to Michael and stood with one hand to his ear. He seemed to be muttering to himself. Then he moved on past the line of graves. Any respectable passer-by would conclude,

Michael thought, that there’d been a mass break out from the asylum.

Michael didn’t move. He had no wish to disturb the stranger, who seemed so preoccupied by his own thoughts that he was unaware of anything outside his direct line of vision. The young man found the headstone for which he’d been searching and stopped. Tentatively he reached out and touched it with a gentle stroking motion as if he were stroking hair from a loved one’s forehead. Then he turned abruptly and marched away.

Michael roused himself to follow, but curiosity overcame him. He walked to the grave where the young man had been standing. When he saw the name there was no surprise. It had been inevitable. Abigail Mantel.

By the time Michael reached the lane there was no sign of the disturbed young man. Perhaps he had taken the other direction, towards the river, though there was no shelter there, at this stage of the tide, nothing but an expanse of mud, a couple of stranded boats, marauding herring gulls.

Back in the middle of Elvet, a gaggle of teenagers was waiting by the church gate for the school bus. They were a scruffy and unruly lot. His Jeanie had never behaved like that. You wouldn’t have caught her wearing a skirt which showed her backside and more make-up than a pantomime dame. That was what Michael told himself as he approached. That he disapproved and their parents should know better. He specially disapproved of two girls who were standing apart from the others. One of them was smoking a cigarette and the other was talking into a mobile phone.

The way she stood, holding the phone to her ear triggered a memory and he was back in the cemetery by Peg’s grave, lost again in the past. The girl gave a shrill laugh and he was brought back to the present. He knew then he was deluding himself. He didn’t disapprove of them at all. He admired them. They had the same sort of spirit as Abigail Mantel. And they excited him too with their curly hair scrunched up to the top of their heads, their defiant eyes and their silky legs. He’d have liked to say something to them, nothing important, just a word of greeting to make a connection, but at that moment the bus came along the road, wheezing and grinding. The girls hoisted their bags onto their shoulders. One threw the cigarette end onto the pavement and stamped on it with her clumpy shoe. Just as well, Michael thought. He’d only have made a fool of himself.

As the bus pulled away he saw that he wasn’t the only person watching. Outside the Old Forge, preparing perhaps to open up the pottery, stood the ex-policeman, the one who had come with Fletcher to arrest Jeanie. Caught under the street light, the man had the same wistful expression on his face as Michael realized he probably had. What was he regretting? Sex or age. It had to be one or the other. Michael hurried on to phone Vera Stanhope.

When James arrived home the house was quiet. He had been working, delivering a tanker from the mouth of the river to the docks at Hull. A short shift. No complications. No visions of ghosts. He’d worked with the skipper a few times before and they got on well. As he’d waited on the Point for the launch to take him to the ship, James had looked at Wendy’s house and seen that the curtains had been drawn. There’d been a light behind them and he’d thought he’d noticed movement. Not one shadow. Two. But then Stan, the other coxswain, had called him to the launch and he couldn’t be sure. Not his business anyway.

So everything had been normal until he approached the front door of his house, his keys ready in his hand. Then he found himself shaking. He had to steady himself against the door frame. There was a sudden, irrational fear that something terrifying had happened in the house. Suddenly he was a young man again, returning home to bad news. He fumbled to unlock the door and pushed it open.

“Emma. Emma. Are you there?”

She came out into the hall to greet him.

“Of course. Whatever is the matter?”

He didn’t answer immediately. He could hear a strange woman’s voice, then realized it was coming from the radio. He tried to recover his calm.