Ann Cleeves - The Healers

He took the path that followed the wall because he liked the smell of the ivy which grew there. That brought him to the grave he had come to visit. He had never met any other mourner there. That would have been unbearable. He needed to feel that he alone remembered her, though he knew that could not really be true and somewhere her parents would be grieving too.

The grave was simple, the headstone obviously newer than most of the others. The flowers he had left on his last visit were dead and shrivelled. He didn’t mind that. It meant that no one else had been there. He squatted cross-legged beside the grave, carefully took away the old flowers and replaced them with new ones. Then he began to talk to her.

He was sorry, he said, that it had taken so long to Sort things out. But he hadn’t forgotten her. He would pay them back in the end.

Faye Dawn Cooper born 1974, died 1993did not answer.

Lily was working. She saw Hunter loitering outside the health food shop door as inconspicuous, she said to herself, as a penguin in a desert. She was used to men staring at her and turned away, but he came in and hovered at her shoulder as she tipped a sack of potatoes on to the shelf.

“Don’t you usually go to the Abbots for your dinner on a Sunday?” he said.

“Not today,” she replied. “We haven’t been invited. They want to be on their own.”

“I suppose you do get a dinner break?” he said.

“Yes,” she said shortly. “I’m off now.”

“Come on then. I was wanting a chat. I’ll buy you a meal.”

He took her arm and led her through to the Coffee Shop. Short of screaming, there was nothing she could do about it.

“I didn’t think this was your sort of place,” she said.

“Oh, I’m not fussy. I’ll eat anything, me.”

“Well?” she demanded. “What do you want?” Then she looked around to see if any of her friends were there. It wouldn’t do her reputation any good to be seen socializing with a pig.

“To know what went on between you and Val McDougal last Sunday.”

“What do you mean?”

“This Voice Dialogue business. What did she talk about?”

Lily shrugged.

“The usual. That bastard husband of hers.”

“The idea was that she spoke in different voices?”

“You know about that? I suppose Magda explained. I tried to speak to the critic in her, the part of her that believed her husband when he put her down. It was amazing. It hardly sounded like Val at all.”

“Did it do any good?”

“Well, at least it made her see what was going on. Later she talked about leaving Charles. She was starting to make real plans. She said she’d stay until James went away to college in September. She was always worried about James.”

“Why?”

She paused. “He had a girlfriend. He was crazy about her. She was his first love, you know. She dumped him for someone else and then she died, really suddenly in an accident. He couldn’t handle it.”

“Did she talk about that at the Sunday group?”

“Yeah,” Lily said, ‘she did. She wished she could get James to come along.”

“And what did you talk about?”

“My bloody father and mother and how they screwed me up.” The answer was flip and automatic.

“Not Sean?”

“No,” she said. “Why would I want to talk about him?”

“If you were frightened of him.”

“Don’t be daft.” She gave a short, bitter laugh.

“Where was he on Saturday night?”

“Smoking dope with a couple of drop-outs in a Ford Transit. Listening to old records. Remembering old times.”

“You believe him?” Hunter was scathing.

“Yeah,” she said. “Actually I do.”

“We haven’t traced the van yet.”

“No?” she said. “Well perhaps you haven’t been trying very hard.” There was a brief angry silence.

“That’s not true,” he said.

“Well, I’m sorry, but it wouldn’t be the first time a traveller was fitted up for something he didn’t do.”

“What will happen to the two of you when the

Abbots and Pocock take over Laverock Farm?” he asked conversationally.

She looked at him, suspecting a trap. “Sod it,” she said. “You’ll find out anyway. There’ll be a place for us there. And work. And it’ll be a bloody sight more comfortable than the caravan.”

“So you’re pleased Ernie Bowles is dead?”

She paused. “OK,” she said, ‘so I’m pleased that he’s dead. That doesn’t mean that I killed him.”

They ate for a while. The food wasn’t bad, Hunter thought. For vegetarian muck.

“How do you get on with them?” he asked. “The Abbots and Pocock.”

“Magda’s great,” she said enthusiastically. “Really special, you know. There are lots of people in the business of self-enlightenment and personal growth. Most of them are crap. Magda knows what she’s doing.”

“And the Abbots?”

“Win’s OK. A bit heavy sometimes, a bit intense. And too wrapped up with her kids. But she’s kind. She gives us meals. If it wasn’t for Daniel I think she’d have had us to stay…”

“You don’t get on with Mr. Abbot?”

“I don’t not get on with him. We’re just not very close.”

“What about Mrs. Pocock, Magda? Does she get on with him?”

Lily shrugged. “Not ‘specially. But it’s not an easy relationship, is it, being a mother-in-law?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never been one.”

She grinned despite herself.

“There must be more to it than that,” he went on. “If she’s such a special person she wouldn’t have taken against him for no reason.”

“Oh,” Lily said, “I think she had a reason.”

“What reason? Was Daniel playing away?”

Lily nodded.

“And his wife never found out that he was seeing other women?”

“I think she knew. She just didn’t want to admit it’

“Can you give me the names of some of these women?”

But Lily remembered her conversation with Magda the evening before and shook her head. Hunter didn’t push it. He could make his own enquiries and he wanted Lily on his side.

“Do you know Peter Richardson?” he asked.

“I’ve seen him about,” she answered, cautiously.

“I was chatting to him last night,” Hunter said. “He seemed to think that any offer he made on the Laverock land would be accepted. But Mrs. Pocock didn’t know anything about it.”

She looked awkward.

“That might be Sean, she said. “Jumping the gun a bit. I know he was chatting to Mr. Richardson when he came down to see to the animals.”

“Nothing to do with him though, is it?”

“We’d want to be involved,” she said. “I told you, we’ve been promised a place if it goes ahead.”

“What’s the deal then?” Hunter asked. “Richardson slips your laddie a few quid if he can persuade the Abbots to sell him the land without going to auction?”

“No,” she said. “Sean wouldn’t be involved in something like that.” But her voice was uncertain.

If Sean and Richardson were working together now, Hunter thought, perhaps they were working together before. Perhaps they were both behind the murder of Ernie Bowles. It was the closest he’d come to a motive for Sean and he felt quite cheerful.

“Have a pudding,” he said. “Some of that carrot cake.”

She looked at her watch. “No, I’d better go. I only get half an hour for lunch. Thanks anyway.”

“No problem,” he said.

He watched her walk back across the stone flags, her hips swaying, her thin jacket slung over one shoulder like a matador’s cape.

Win wished they had invited guests for lunch as usual. She and Daniel seldom communicated now unless they had an audience. This seemed not to trouble Daniel but Win always felt tense and wretched when they were alone together in the house. She wondered how long she could carry on. Magda hadn’t said anything directly but Win could tell she thought the marriage was a mistake. It was all right for her, Win thought bitterly and irrationally. She’d lost her husband before it had had a chance to go wrong.