Ann Cleeves - The Glass Room

He took a clear plastic evidence bag from his pocket and, using it as a glove, he slipped the bottle inside. Then he held it to the light and tilted it so that he could count the tablets.

‘There are four left,’ he said. ‘Is that what you would have expected?’

‘No.’ He couldn’t tell what she was thinking. Her face was white and set. The red lipstick like a splash of fresh blood on her face. ‘My GP gave me a prescription for a month’s supply. I’d used about ten.’

He did the arithmetic in his head and checked it before he spoke. He didn’t want to make a fool of himself in front of this woman. ‘So there are sixteen missing?’

‘I can’t be precise, but certainly about that. At least a dozen.’ She slumped, so that she was sitting on the bed, leaning forward. The straight spine and upright posture were so characteristic of Nina Backworth that it seemed another, more vulnerable woman was there. A stranger. ‘Someone came into my room,’ she said. ‘They went through my things.’

He wanted to sit on the bed beside her and put his arm around her shoulders. ‘It’s a horrible feeling.’ The words seemed inadequate to him.

‘So you believe me? You know I didn’t poison Tony Ferdinand?’ Something of the old spark returned. ‘You know I wouldn’t be so foolish as to use my own sleeping pills!’

Ashworth took a moment to answer. ‘My job’s not about belief,’ he said. ‘It’s about fact. Evidence.’

She looked up at him. ‘Then do your job,’ she said. ‘Find your evidence. Prove that I didn’t kill Ferdinand.’

Downstairs Vera was waiting for him. ‘Charlie’s coming over to pick up the pills,’ she said. ‘He’s bringing some stuff he’s dug up about Ferdinand and Lenny Thomas.’

Ashworth nodded. He knew it was ridiculous, but Nina’s words had given him a new energy, a new determination. ‘We’ve got time to fit in an interview with Rickard, then. And Charlie won’t mind waiting if he can get his hands on coffee and a home-made biscuit.’

Vera looked at him. ‘Did your lass put something in your tea this morning?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You seem like a new man.’ She paused. ‘Do you want to lead on the interview with Rickard? I mean, I know there might be some history with Joanna, so maybe you’re better doing it.’

But Ashworth shook his head. Rickard was a writer, intimidating, and anyway at the moment he wasn’t sure he’d be able to concentrate. ‘Nah, you do it. I’ll sit in.’ And from the beginning of the interview he could tell he’d made a wise decision. Vera was at her sharpest, her most outrageous and clever.

From the moment Rickard came into the chapel, leaning on a stick and struggling to push open the heavy door, Ashworth couldn’t get past the fact that this was an old man. Old men weren’t murderers. It wasn’t just that it seemed physically impossible: Rickard couldn’t have stabbed Ferdinand, and certainly couldn’t have lifted him from the wicker chair in the glass room and out onto the balcony. It was more than that. In Ashworth’s mind, old people weren’t wicked. Vera seemed not to share this inhibition, and Ashworth wondered if that had something to do with her relationship with her father. Horrible Hector , she called him, or my beastly father , though she’d spent most of her life looking after him.

Now Vera was leaning forward across the desk towards Rickard.

‘What I don’t understand,’ she said, ‘is why you’re here at all. You’re a famous writer. Even I’ve heard of you. Seen your books in WH Smith at Central Station in town. So why give up your precious time to spend a week on the Northumberland coast?’ She smiled and stretched back in her chair, waiting for the old man to speak.

Rickard hadn’t expected the question. Ashworth thought he’d anticipated a gentle and routine interview, that he’d be treated with deference because of his age and his celebrity.

‘Perhaps, Inspector, I feel the need to give something back to the writing community. Success is such a matter of luck, and mine certainly has little to do with the quality of my work.’ He gave a little smile, apparently pleased with his answer.

‘Don’t give me that crap.’ Her voice was icy. ‘Did you know Joanna Tobin would be here, before you agreed to be a tutor?’

There was another silence. Through the window Ashworth saw that the sun had come out. From here, the blue sky gave the initial appearance of a summer’s day, but even with this restricted view he saw that the light was different. Colder. And the shadows would be longer. There must be a coffee break; students had spilled out into the courtyard. He couldn’t see them from where he was sitting, but Rickard had left the chapel door open and he could hear the voices outside and smell the cigarette smoke.

‘Miranda showed me the work of the students who had received bursaries,’ Rickard said. ‘An attempt to persuade me to sign up. She should have realized that authors hate seeing good writing by newcomers. It only proves to them how pitiful their own attempts are.’

‘You recognized Joanna’s name?’ Vera had narrowed her eyes.

‘Not immediately. She’s using her maiden name again. I only knew her when she was married.’ He paused. ‘I recognized some of the details of her story.’

‘Rather gothic, I thought,’ Vera said. Ashworth was astounded. You’d have believed she dealt with books for a living. And how could she talk with such authority about a story she’d never read?

‘You’ve read it?’ Rickard too seemed astonished.

‘Don’t you think police officers can read, Mr Rickard? Just because I don’t go much for your kind of fiction, it doesn’t mean I don’t like a good story, especially when it has some basis in truth.’

They stared at each other across the table.

Vera spoke first. ‘I take it Joanna’s story did contain some element of truth? You’d know. After all, you were close to the parties concerned.’

‘I’m a friend of her ex-husband’s,’ Rickard admitted at last. ‘At least I was close to his family.’

‘I’ve heard Joanna’s version of events,’ Vera said. She seemed suddenly more cheerful. ‘Why don’t you give me yours?’

‘I knew Paul’s father very well,’ Rickard said. ‘We met at university. Oxford. Both reading English. We came from different backgrounds. Roy was a grammar-school boy and he had an eye for business even then. He spent the summer vacation working in his father’s print company. My family were landowners. Very little ready cash, but a big pile in the country. You know.’

Ashworth didn’t know at all, but Vera nodded as if she understood exactly.

Rickard continued, ‘What we had in common was a love of the English language. Roy’s passion was Dickens. I focused on the dramatists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Shakespeare and his successors. Though, in personal reading, my taste was less grand.’ He smiled at Vera. ‘I always took pleasure in the gothic, and in detective fiction too. Sherlock Holmes, of course, then I moved on to the Golden Age stories of the Thirties.’

Ashworth was wondering what all this had to do with a murder investigation in Northumberland in the present, but Vera just nodded again as if she had all the time in the world.

‘When we graduated,’ Rickard said, ‘I retreated to the family home to write. There was just enough money that I never had to work for a living. Roy set up a publishing house. Rutherford Press. You might have heard of it. He became one of the most-established independent publishers in the country. In time Paul, his son, joined him. Paul was an ambitious man. He understood business, but he never understood books.’ Rickard paused and rubbed his left shoulder as if it was giving him pain. ‘One of the big multinationals put in a bid for Rutherford. Roy was against it, but Paul persuaded him. I found out later that Paul had been promised a lucrative post with the company, if the deal went ahead.’