Ann Cleeves - The Crow Trap

“So why twice today?”

“He phoned me. Here. It was crazy. He said he was desperate for a drink. He even talked about going into the village to the pub. I thought he was making a terrible mistake hiding out from you and all along I was trying to persuade him to give himself up. But the last thing I wanted was for him to come up to the house and make a scene today.”

I bet you didn’t, Vera thought. The child bride would have gone ape.

“So you took him a bottle of whisky.”

“Yes. I don’t know why he was suddenly so agitated. He’d been calm until then. I’d almost talked him round.” “You said he phoned. You’d left the phone connected?”

“Yes.”

“Could he have spoken to someone? Would that explain his changed mood?”

“He wouldn’t have phoned out. At the end he was paranoid. He wouldn’t have told anyone else where he was.”

Lily set the teapot violently on the table.

“Look,” she said. “He was mad. Mentally disturbed. Up and down like a yo-yo. That’s why Robert’s mother couldn’t handle him. That’s why he ended up being shut in St. Nick’s.”

Vera ignored her. “Didn’t he give you any indication why he was suddenly so upset?” she asked Robert.

“He wasn’t terribly coherent and to be honest I didn’t really want to know. I mean, I thought I’d done my bit by giving him a place to stay.

There was lots of talk about betrayal. As I said, it verged on the paranoid.”

“Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.”

Vera bared her teeth. No one else smiled. She watched Lily pour tea into blue cups. “You can leave mine in the pot a bit longer, pet. I like to taste what I’m drinking. Has he been staying here since he left the restaurant?”

“Good God, no.” Robert was horrified. “I wouldn’t have been able to stand the strain.”

“When then?”

“He went to Nancy Deakin’s first. You asked me about her once before.

I don’t know exactly what made him bolt there. Something put the wind up him. When his daughter’s body was first found he seemed content to stay at the restaurant.”

“You were in touch then?”

“Of course.” Robert was gruffly embarrassed. “Ib offer condolences.

That sort of thing. I thought he was bearing up very well.”

“Had you been in regular contact?”

“No, but at a time like that, one has to make an effort.”

“Why did he leave Nancy’s?”

“The two women who’d been working with Grace went round there. They were asking questions. He thought you’d sent them, so he got in touch with me.” “Tut, tut,” Vera said. “Paranoia indeed. How did you get him here?”

“I picked him up in the car late one night. Nobody saw.”

“And you saw it as a short-term measure until you could persuade him to talk to us?”

“Exactly that. Yes.”

“Who knew you were helping him?”

“Nancy Deakin. I didn’t tell anyone else. Not even Lily. I couldn’t have her involved.” Haddaway and shite, Vera thought. You’re scared of her.

“Could anyone have found out he was there by chance?”

“I don’t know how. Everyone on the estate knew the house was empty. He wouldn’t have opened the door to a salesman or visitor.” Robert paused. “Look. There’s something I want to say. I wouldn’t have been prepared to help him if I’d thought he’d killed his daughter. If that’s what you think then you’ve got it all wrong. He was devastated.

He talked about it being his fault, but that didn’t mean he’d strangled her. He said he should have protected her. He’d never been much of a father. And he was frightened. That’s why he was in such a state this morning.”

“But the kitchen door was open. If it turns out he was killed he let his murderer in.”

“I don’t care.” In the face of these two fierce women Robert had become stubborn. “I might not have seen much of him recently but we were brothers. We grew up together and I tell you he was scared.”

It was late by the time Vera got back to Baikie’s but she thought the women would still be up. They’d want to know what had happened. Not that she’d have had much to tell them even if she’d been prepared to pass the information on. The pathologist was an old friend, more willing than most of them to commit himself after a first inspection, but still he’d been tentative.

She’d caught him as he came out of the cottage on his way to his car and they stood sheltering under his large black umbrella.

“There’s nothing obvious,” he said. “He wasn’t stabbed and he wasn’t strangled.”

“Not like the daughter then.”

“No.”

“But you must have some idea.”

“Most likely scenario at the moment? That he’d drunk himself insensible.”

“And that killed him?”

“It made things easier for the murderer.”

“You think it was murder?”

“That’s what I’m working towards.” He paused. “My intuition. If you believe in such things.”

“I believe in yours.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised to find that he’d been suffocated, smothered.

You do realize I’m just thinking aloud at this stage?”

“How?”

“I’m not a clairvoyant.” But despite the words he didn’t sound irritated. He stood, patiently, with the rain drumming on the umbrella. Vera thought, He’s got nothing to go home to either. He asked, “Have you been inside?”

“Not yet.”

“The house was partly furnished. Apparently it was let like that to employees. There’s a three-piece suite with a few scatter cushions.

One of the cushions could have done it. But there’s no sign of struggle. He’d hardly have known what was happening.” “Thanks,” she said. “And the time of death?”

“I never like to commit myself on that.”

“I know.”

“After midday, before five o’clock. I really can’t be more specific.

It’s only a guess.”

“Understood.”

He was a thin man in his sixties, always dark-suited and gently spoken, reassuring, like a family undertaker. He had once told Vera that he was an elder in a small Presbyterian church. So far as she knew that was the nearest he had to family. Would it be enough for him when he retired?

He walked her to her car, holding the umbrella over her, though she was already wet from her walk from the house and the drips must be going down his neck.

“I’ll be in touch as soon as there’s anything definite.”

“I know,” she said. Her hand brushed his as she fumbled in her bag for her keys.

As she had expected there was a light still on in Baikie’s. No one had bothered to draw the curtains and she felt a flash of anger at Joe Ashworth or whoever had replaced him. The women were sitting targets like that for anyone lurking in the garden or on the hill beyond. Then she thought, but that’s what I made them. That’s what my strategy boiled down to in the end.

She had been so convinced that she’d been right. She’d known that the murder had something to do with the development for the quarry. She’d felt it in her bones. She’d grown up with this countryside, with people who were passionate about it and she’d thought she’d understood.

She’d seen the murderer as a nutter with a strange obsession about this landscape or these women, or both. She’d thought that if they’d stayed put eventually he would come back. He wouldn’t be able to resist it. But obviously she’d been wrong. She’d have to start again with an open mind. That meant work. More than she knew if she could handle.

She parked her car in the yard and went in through the kitchen. Her sandals were squelching wet so she took them off at the door and went on, leaving damp footprints on the lino. The sound of rain on the roof and windows must have drowned out the noise of her car because she surprised them. They were sitting at the table playing cards. Joe Ashworth had been replaced by a constable in uniform and he held a hand too. They turned, fixed for a moment, in the soft light of the standard lamp.