Ann Cleeves - The Glass Room

She stood up and saw another corpse on the white table, this time tiny. A robin. No blood. She remembered the bird feeders outside the drawing-room window of the big house, and Alex filling them with nuts and seed. Had he been attracting the birds, just to kill them? Or was stabbing the cat a kind of retribution because it had caught the robin? Mad, either way.

The chapel door banged and she stood up.

‘What are you doing?’ Not her voice. The voice of Alex Barton standing at the back of the nave. He looked wild and windswept. No coat. A thick jersey and baggy jeans. Baseball boots on his feet. He stood, blocking her exit from the building.

‘We’ll go back to the cottage, shall we?’ Vera said. ‘I could murder a cup of tea.’ She thought she could make a phone call from there. Get the mental-health team out. He probably just needed a few nights in a psychiatric unit to sort him out. Unless he turned out to be a murderer. And now, alone with him, she didn’t want to think that way.

‘Didn’t you see the cat?’ he demanded. He almost ran up the aisle towards her. ‘Did you see what happened?’

‘Did you do that?’ She tried to keep the judgement out of her voice. She’d never liked cats much anyway. ‘Tell me about it.’

‘No!’ He almost spat out the word in his frustration, his determination to make her understand. ‘Of course it wasn’t me. Somebody was in here. I heard them outside.’ When she didn’t answer he continued, ‘Look at that bird! That has nothing to do with me. You know how I felt about them. And I hated the cat, but it reminded me of my mother. I needed to have it around. I wouldn’t even have given it away to a good home!’

Vera saw that he was quite overwrought, on the edge of tears. She thought a couple of nights in hospital wouldn’t do him any harm anyway. She’d persuade a sympathetic medic at the Wansbeck Hospital to admit him later. But not until she’d had a few words with him. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ she said. ‘I’ll deal with all this in a little while. Let’s get you home.’

In the cottage he curled up in the rocking chair like a baby. It was hard to remember him as the confident young man in charge of the kitchen in the big house. She found milk in the fridge and heated it up on the Aga, made mugs of hot chocolate for them both. ‘They say you need tea for shock, but chocolate always cheers me up.’ Wittering as usual. Outside it was still windy, but she thought the worst of the storm had passed. She felt awkward in front of his grief. A real woman – a woman who’d had kids – would know how to deal with him.

She sat on a hard kitchen chair and leaned towards him.

‘Are you up to talking me through what happened here tonight?’

He nodded. Big eyes over the rim of the mug. He looked like a boy who’d woken from a nightmare, still confused and unsure what was real.

‘You made yourself something to eat,’ she said.

He nodded again. ‘An omelette. Fried potatoes. Broccoli.’

‘Then you went up to your room to use the computer.’

He didn’t seem surprised or upset that she could guess his movements. ‘I was just going to check my Facebook. I knew I wouldn’t be long. I thought I could do the washing up afterwards.’

‘What happened then?’ She kept her voice gentle. She didn’t want to scare him or stop the flow of the story.

‘I heard a noise outside.’

‘A car?’ How else would an intruder get here? She tried to remember if she’d passed a vehicle in the lane. Certainly there’d been nothing coming the other way up the track.

‘No,’ Alex said. ‘Footsteps.’

‘And you could hear those over the noise of the wind?’

‘They were on the gravel path just under my window. And we don’t have double-glazing in the cottage.’

She nodded to show that she believed him and to encourage him to continue talking.

‘But by the time I got up to look outside, there was nobody there. I thought I’d imagined it. It’s easy to get spooked all by myself in this place.’

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Anybody would be. I shouldn’t have let you stay here on your own.’

They sat for a minute in silence. She wiped the milk from around her mouth with the back of her hand.

‘Where was the cat?’ she asked. ‘Was it in the kitchen while you were eating? Cats seem to know when there’s food about, don’t they?’

‘She wanted to go out,’ he said. ‘I opened the door for her to go into the garden. She hated the bad weather and I thought she’d be scratching to come back in straight away, but she didn’t. I went upstairs and thought I’d shout her in as soon as I came back down.’

‘I’m sorry I interrupted you.’ Vera sat back and waited for the rest of the story.

‘I was still at the window,’ he said. ‘I’d looked out and there was nobody there. Then a light came on in the chapel.’

‘My God! You must have been petrified!’

‘I was going to bolt all the doors and call the police,’ he said. ‘That was the first plan.’ She thought he was beginning to recover from the shock. He uncurled his legs, seemed almost embarrassed by his previous outburst. Sat upright. Set the half-drunk mug of chocolate on the table with something like disdain. Too cool for chocolate too.

‘That would have been a sensible plan.’

‘But I couldn’t do it,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t sit here. Some sitting duck. Helpless, waiting for the killer to come.’

Vera thought he’d seen too many horror movies. Or he could tell a good story.

He looked at her with something of the old competence. This was the man who had greeted her on her first visit to the Writers’ House. ‘I had to do something.’

‘So you went into the chapel?’ she said.

‘Outside the storm was so wild I could hardly think. It was brilliant actually. Liberating. It reminded me of when I was a boy and used to swim in the sea. Nothing but the noise of the surf. For a while I stopped being scared. After all, what did it matter?’

‘So you went into the chapel?’ she asked again. She preferred the quiet, scared Alex to the manic one.

‘Yes.’

She thought she would have to prompt him, but he continued almost immediately. ‘There was nobody there. The light was still on. Then I saw Ophelia.’ He looked up at her and gave a quick smile. ‘That was what we called the cat. Mother’s idea.’ He paused for a beat. ‘I couldn’t take it in. I couldn’t believe anyone would do that. Like it was a sacrifice. And then there was the robin on the table.’

‘What did you do then?’ Vera had finished her drink. It was obvious that Alex didn’t want his. She wondered if he’d notice if she took it.

‘I couldn’t stay there. I went outside. Screaming. Something like: Where are you? Come out! I ran round the house to the terrace, in case he was there.’

‘It was dark,’ Vera said. ‘How could you see?’

‘I’ve lived here since I was nine. I could find my way round with my eyes closed. Literally.’

‘And then?’

‘I stood for a moment on the terrace. Letting the wind blow against me. Listening to the sea. I wondered…’

‘What did you wonder?’ She took his mug and finished the drink. Enjoyed it immensely. More than she had her own. Stolen pleasures.

He looked up at her again. ‘I wondered what it would be like to run down the path to the shore and run into the sea and keep on running until I drowned.’

‘Bloody cold,’ she said. ‘That’s what it would be like.’

‘I didn’t do it.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘You had more sense.’

‘I came back round to the yard and I saw the door of the chapel closing.’

‘That would have been me,’ she said. Her voice comfortable. Ordinary. She thought he could do with more of the ordinary in his life.