Ann Cleeves - The Crow Trap

But Grace seemed not to hear.

“Well, at least I can give you a lift back.” “No,” Grace said. “That’s all right. I’ve not finished yet.”

So Anne left her there, still staring at the house, her eyes squinting slightly as if she were looking through a camera view finder.

Well, Anne thought. It’s her funeral.

“Bloody hell!”

The woman coming into the crematorium chapel of rest might have tried to close the door quietly but a gust of wind caught it and blew it shut with a bang. Anne had been daydreaming, letting the pious words wash over her, and she started as if woken suddenly from sleep. Though she had muttered the expletive under her breath she could sense Rachael’s disapproval. With the rest of the congregation she turned to see the middle-aged woman appear in the aisle, apparently blown in like the door. Anne followed her progress to a pew with admiration. She seemed untroubled by the stares, the curious whispers. This woman certainly knew how to make an entrance.

Afterwards, waiting outside for Rachael, Anne saw the woman again. She evaded the other mourners, slipped past them with remarkably little effort although she had appeared so big and clumsy in the chapel. Then she let herself into a top of the Range Rover which had been parked close to the main gate for an early getaway. Not a tenant farmer then, Anne thought. Despite the poorly fitting clothes and the supermarket carrier bags this was a woman of substance. A relative of Bella’s perhaps. They would have been of a similar age, could have been sisters. There was a similarity too, not of looks but expression, off-putting, secretive, rather dour.

“Was that Bella’s sister?” she asked Rachael. “The show-stopper with the bags?”

“I didn’t know she had a sister.” Rachael sounded peeved as if she was the only person in the world with any right to know if Bella Furness had relatives.

“Nor do I. I was guessing. Asking.” She paused. “Look, I’m going. I can’t face a jamboree at the White Hart and it’s not even as if I knew her that well. Besides, it was her choice, wasn’t it? What she wanted.”

“If you wait a few minutes I’ll give you a lift.”

“That’ll be all right.” The crem was giving her the creeps and already she could feel one of Rachael’s lectures coming on.

She had started walking along the wide pavement towards the town centre when Godfrey’s car pulled up behind her. She presumed he’d got rid of his wife -perhaps she’d come in her own car and was about to climb into the front passenger seat when she saw that Barbara Waugh was already there. It gave her the fright of her life.

“Mrs. Preece, hello,” Barbara said through the open window. “Can we give you a lift into town?” Then

“Barbara Waugh, perhaps you don’t remember. We met at the opening of the Wildlife Trust Reserve.”

“Oh yes,” Anne said. “Of course.”

Godfrey stared straight ahead over the steering wheel. It had obviously been Barbara’s idea to stop. She hadn’t told her husband about the cosy lunch at Alderwhinney and wanted to make sure that Anne didn’t mention it either if they bumped into each other at the White Hart. That suited Anne very well. The impulsive gesture to phone Barbara already seemed childish and vindictive. She preferred Godfrey not to know about it.

“Are you going to the hotel, Mrs. Preece?” Barbara asked as Anne climbed into the rear of the car. “I gather Mr. Furness has invited everyone.”

“No, I didn’t know Bella very well. I only came to the funeral to give Rachael support. She’s been so upset.”

“Can I take you to Langholme then? I’ve got my own car in town and it’s not far out of my way. I’m going straight back.” “I thought I’d spend some time in Kimmerston. Since the project started I’ve not had much chance… “

Barbara seemed disappointed and Anne was worried for a moment that she might suggest a girls’ lunch out, a trip round the shops. Instead she said quickly, “Of course, I quite understand.”

Godfrey dropped Barbara off first at the car park next to the Sports Centre.

“I’ll get out here,” Anne said. “It’s not far.”

But Barbara wouldn’t have it and insisted that Godfrey should take her to where she wanted to go. So she went with him to the car park in the courtyard behind the White Hart. When he went into the hotel to make, as he put it, ‘ least an appearance’, she sauntered across the road and down an alley to a coffee shop. She drank a cappuccino and read an old copy of Cosmo until he came to pick her up.

He took her for lunch to a town in the south of the county, where once there were shipyards and coal mines. This was a place where they could be sure of avoiding people who might know them. It was also a place where Godfrey seemed at home. For Anne it was like straying into a foreign country. The boarded-up shops, the litter in the street, the bare-legged women pushing mucky babies in prams, all this seemed a million miles from Lily Fulwell and Holme Park and gave her a peculiar thrill.

Yet even here, Godfrey had found somewhere special to eat. There was a gem of a restaurant, very small and discreet, in a terrace between an old-fashioned park and the jetty where a ferry docked. The ferry carried shoppers back to a small community on the other side of the estuary. Once the terrace had housed the harbour master’s offices and the small dining room, simply furnished, the walls decorated with photographs of submarines and master mariners, had the feel of the officers’ mess. Now, at two o’clock, it was empty.

The owner recognized them at once and took them to their favourite table.

“A drink?” he asked. “The usual? Are you in a hurry today?”

Sometimes they were in a hurry. It was an hour from Kimmerston and Godfrey had meetings.

“No,” Godfrey said. “We’ve got all afternoon.”

So he brought them drinks, a menu and went back to his seat behind the bar and his book. He was reading The Brothers Karamazov. He only looked up to call over, “The chefs on good form today. You’re safe with any of the specials.”

The chef could be moody. He was an alcoholic, usually reformed, given to sudden rages. They smiled.

“I’m sorry about earlier,” Godfrey said. “Barbara insisted.”

“That’s all right.”

“She’d have been suspicious if I’d refused to stop.”

“She doesn’t suspect anything, does she?” It was one explanation Anne thought for Barbara’s original invitation at the Wildlife Trust Reserve. Perhaps she’d wanted a closer look at the opposition.

“No, of course not.”

“What was it like there, the… ” She wasn’t quite sure what to call it. Reception sounded like a wedding and wake was far too jolly for a finger buffet at the White Hart. “The do.”

“All right, I suppose. I didn’t stay long.”

“How was Neville bearing up?” Some of Barbara’s hostility must have rubbed off because what she had intended as a simple question came out with an undercurrent of sarcasm. He seemed not to notice.

“Bella Furness was his stepmother not his mother. I don’t think they were particularly close. You wouldn’t expect him to be upset.” “No,” she said. “I’m not surprised. He always seemed a cold fish.”

“I didn’t mean he didn’t care. He put on a decent enough show for her.”

“Will it make any difference to your plans for the quarry? Neville being in charge of the Black Law land?”

“Why should it?”

“It’d make access a heck of a lot easier if he gives you permission to use the track.”

He studied the menu intently, frowning. For a moment she thought he wouldn’t respond at all. “I’m not sure it’s altogether ethical, our discussing the quarry.” He adopted a joking tone but he was warning her off. She could understand why Barbara had felt excluded.