Ann Cleeves - The Healers

“What do you mean Laverock Farm goes to the Alternative Therapy Centre?” Hunter asked belligerently. He saw the chance of a ruck. “You mean you sell it and split the profit between you? I don’t know how many of you work in this place but it’d be a tidy windfall. I’d call that a personal gain.”

“No,” Abbot said, interrupting forcefully. “It wasn’t like that. The terms of Cissie’s will were very exact. Occasionally we run weekend retreats like the one Val McDougal attended last autumn. It provides a chance for our patients to get away from the stress of everyday life which often lies at the root of their problems; charge, if you like, their spiritual batteries… We have discussion groups, teach relaxation techniques, yoga, meditations. Look, as you said yourself, at the whole person.”

“This is most instructive but I don’t understand what it has to do with Laverock Farm.”

“In the past we’ve always gone to a place in Cumbria for the retreat. Juniper Hall. It’s pleasant enough but expensive and inconvenient for people to get to. Cissie had a vision of Laverock Farm being turned into a centre where we could run retreats ourselves, weekend workshops, experiment with all kinds of different therapies in a residential setting. A place like that would attract visitors from all over the country.”

“I bet the locals will love that,” Hunter muttered.

“I’m sure they’ll get used to it, Sergeant,” Abbot said piously. “Besides, Cissie was hardly one for worrying about what her neighbours thought.”

“Are you sure?” Ramsay asked. “Isn’t that what this is really about? We know there was ill feeling between her and the Richardsons at Long Edge Farm. I suspect the will was her way of paying back her neighbours for what she saw as their spite. It was her final piece of mischief. Her revenge. Leaving them with what they’d consider a commune in their midst.”

“Her motives hardly matter now, Inspector. You can be sure we’ll put the place to good use.”

“You seem to have given the venture a lot of thought,” Ramsay said.

“I suppose I have. It was a dream, you know, that’s all. An exciting dream. I never thought anything would come of it. Ernie Bowles was fifty-five. He could have lived for thirty years.”

He could have lived for thirty years, Ramsay thought. But he didn’t, did he?

After the interview with Abbot, Ramsay and Hunter separated. Hunter was sent to Long Edge Farm to talk to the Richardsons.

“See if you can find out if Richardson knew about Cissie Bowles’s will,” Ramsay said. “If he did I think we’ve lost a motive for murder. He’d surely rather have a festival of New Age travellers once a year, than have the hippies on his doorstep permanently. And see if any of the family knew Val McDougal. The wife, Sue, might have done. They’d be of a similar age. It’s even possible that Peter, the lad, went to Otterbridge FE College before starting at agricultural college.” At this point they were still looking for connections, hoping for luck.

Ramsay picked up Sally Wedderburn from the incident room and took her to interview Win Abbot. He had already established that she would be at home.

“Win?” Abbot had said, dismissively. “Oh yes, she’ll be there. Since the boys were born she’s only worked part-time.”

He must have warned her that the police were on their way because when they rang the doorbell she let them in immediately, without asking what they wanted. Win was a tall, thin woman with wispy hair fixed in a pile on the back of her head with a tortoiseshell comb. The hairstyle and her clothes a long skirt reaching almost to her ankles and a long shapeless cardigan made her seem old-fashioned. Like a character from one of the adaptations of D. H. Lawrence that Prue made him watch, Ramsay thought. Somehow haunted and intense. Certainly she looked very tired. She came to the door carrying a toddler on her hip.

“Come in,” she said, pushing a strand of hair away from her face. “I’m just giving them lunch. We’re in the kitchen.”

The house was one of a stone terrace built into the side of the hill with a long steep garden behind it and a bay window at the front. The kitchen was an extension on the back. Another little boy sat at the table there. Win lifted the toddler from her hip into a high chair. She began to feed him slices of apple and whole meal toast covered with an unappetizing but obviously healthy spread.

“Sit down,” she said. “I’m sorry about the mess.”

She looked around the kitchen as if overwhelmed by the disorder, though Ramsay thought he had seen much worse. Often, for example, in Prue’s home. There was a basket of laundry on the table, a pile of toys on the floor, some nappies steeping in a bucket by the sink. Nothing to explain Win Abbot’s exhaustion.

“It must be a lot of work with two little ones,”

Sally Wedderburn was saying. “And your job at the Alternative Therapy Centre. Do you have any help?”

“No.” The hand twitched nervously back to the escaping hair. “Not now. I had a girl in to look after the boys last summer, but now I try to manage on my own. I only go to the Centre two evenings a week. Daniel has the boys then.” She handed the toddler another finger of toast and watched while he squeezed it back out through toothless gums on to his plastic bib. “Can I get you something?” she asked. “Tea? Coffee?”

Ramsay shook his head.

“The main trouble is that they don’t sleep very well,” she went on. “I always seem to be tired.”

So that was the explanation, Ramsay thought, for her drawn and grey appearance. Not guilt, the torment he’d imagined, but kids who wouldn’t sleep. He should know by now not to jump to conclusions.

“Perhaps you could explain how the Centre is organized,” he said. “You and your husband are partners?”

“With my mother,” she said. “She and Daniel work at the Centre practically full-time. There are three treatment rooms. I use the third for my evenings. When I’m not there we let the room to other practitioners: Sam Lacey’s an osteopath and Billy Brown’s a chiropractor. They have two and a half days each.”

“But they’re not partners? They won’t benefit under the terms of Cissie Bowles’s will?”

“None of us will benefit personally,” she said sharply. “And I’m sure we’ll find a place for them at Laverock Farm.”

“But you will benefit,” he persisted gently. “Surely you’ll have an increased income because of the new patients the centre at Laverock Farm will attract.”

That seemed genuinely not to have occurred to her.

“I suppose it might,” she said. “In the long term.”

“And you’ll split any profit three ways?”

“Oh no,” she said. “I shouldn’t think so. Magda put most money in when we started. It would be fair, I suppose, that she should take most out.”

She leaned forward over the table. “But none of us has been motivated by money, you know. That’s not what it’s all about.” She had the passion of a fanatic.

“What does motivate you?” he asked lightly.

“Healing,” she said. “We want to show people that they can be well. That’s why Laverock Farm’s important. We can reach more people.”

The boys had finished eating. She wiped their faces perfunctorily with a dish cloth and helped them down from the table, then opened the door to let them into the garden. Outside there were tricycles, a scooter. She shut the door on them gratefully.

“Peace,” she said. “For ten minutes at least.

Until they start fighting.”

“You’ve heard from your husband that Mrs. McDougal’s dead?” Ramsay asked.

She nodded.