Ann Cleeves - The Sleeping and the Dead

‘Any relation to Crispin Randle?’

‘His son.’

‘Crispin never told me his son had been killed.’

‘He didn’t know. We retrieved the body from Cranford Water a couple of weeks ago.’

‘ That body?’

Porteous nodded. ‘Did you know Crispin well?’

‘Through business really. We had a couple of boozy nights together, but everyone who worked with Crispin ended up drinking with him.’

‘Was Mr Randle involved in the computer business?’ It was hard to picture.

‘Hardly. No. And I was never a computer scientist or engineer. Still don’t really understand the technology. I trained as a lawyer and worked my way up through the company’s legal department before becoming MD. When I first qualified I worked briefly for a firm of solicitors in town. We sold some property for Crispin.’

‘Snowberry?’

‘No, he’d already sold that. This was a house in Gosforth. We got a good price for it considering it was nearly falling down round his ears.’

‘Tell me about your daughter,’ Porteous said.

Gillespie shifted in his seat. For the first time the suppressed anger gave way to uneasiness.

‘It must seem like prying but we’ll need all the information you can give us.’

Eddie sat with his pencil poised over his notebook, waiting.

‘She wasn’t my daughter.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I mean, not biologically. Legally of course. I adopted her when I married Eleanor.’

Porteous wondered if that explained the anger. His position was compromised, ambiguous. Eleanor’s grief would be more straightforward. Had she made him feel he couldn’t possibly understand what she was going through?

‘Does Melanie’s natural father know that she’s dead?’

‘I shouldn’t think so. We’ve no way of tracing him. He’s a musician. That, at least, is what he calls himself. I think there was a card at Christmas. From North Africa, Marrakesh, somewhere like that. He travels a lot. I don’t know how he supports himself. Not now.’

‘What do you mean? “Not now”?’

There was a pause. Eventually Gillespie said, ‘I gave him money. Enough to last for a while.’

‘Why did you do that, Mr Gillespie?’ Eddie Stout spoke for the first time, shocking them both. Both, too, sensed the disapproval in his voice. Not now, Eddie, Porteous thought. Now’s not the time for a moral crusade.

But though the question seemed to make Gillespie defensive, he wanted to explain. ‘It was when Eleanor and I married. I didn’t want Ray around, dropping in every afternoon with his unsuitable friends, confusing Mel. I wanted to be her dad.’

‘So you paid him to go away?’

‘And to agree to the adoption, yes.’

‘How old was Melanie then?’

‘Five. Six by the time we went through the whole process.’

‘And he just disappeared from her life?’

‘Yes. Look, I thought it was the best thing at the time, all right? Ray Scully was mixed up in all sorts. He’d been convicted of fraud. He’d even been to prison. What could someone like him give Melanie?’

‘Did Mrs Gillespie know about the financial arrangement?’

‘Look, it was no big deal. A one-off payment. I wasn’t stopping him keeping in touch for ever. Like I said, he wrote to her, sent her cards.’

‘So Mrs Gillespie knew?’

‘No. She just thought it was Ray being irresponsible again. He’d been disappearing on and off since Mel was born.’ He stood up and stared blankly out of the window. The tennis game was over. ‘I shouldn’t have told you.’

‘No,’ Porteous said. ‘I’m very pleased that you did.’

‘You won’t tell Eleanor?’

‘I really don’t think that’s any of my business. Though we’ll want to trace the father. Is there any possibility that he’s been in touch with Melanie recently?’

‘She didn’t say anything. But I don’t suppose she would have done. Communication had pretty well broken down here.’

‘You know a middle-aged man went into the Promenade looking for her. It didn’t occur to you that it might have been her father?’

‘No. He knows where we live. He could have come to the house.’

‘That wasn’t part of the deal, was it? You’d paid him to stay away.’

Gillespie shrugged. The fight seemed to have gone out of him. ‘Eleanor thought that was the start of all Mel’s problems. Ray going away.’

‘What problems?’

‘She was never an easy child. Bright of course, but attention seeking, hyperactive. Then in the last few years there’s been the anorexia.’

‘Was she being treated for that?’

‘Oh, she’s been treated for everything.’ He must have realized that sounded callous. ‘We wanted her to be happy. I don’t think she ever has been, really. When we moved here and she started making friends I thought things were looking up. But in the couple of weeks before she died she was more disturbed than I remember.’

‘Who was her psychiatrist?’

‘Dr Collier at the General. He seemed a decent enough bloke, but I don’t know how effective he was.’

Oh, he’s effective, Porteous thought. Trust me. I know.

‘He wanted to treat Mel as an inpatient. She hated the idea. He was talking about sectioning her. Not on the food issue. She was eating enough, just, to keep her alive. But because she seemed to be depressed.’

‘How did that manifest itself?’ Porteous thought he sounded a bit like a doctor himself.

‘Listlessness, insomnia, withdrawal.’ He paused. ‘Sometimes I thought she’d lost all touch with reality.’

‘In what way?’

‘She seemed to hate her mother and me. She couldn’t believe we were trying to help her. There was some fantasy about us trying to control her.’

Just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you, Porteous thought and stopped the facetious words slipping out just in time. It was true. In hospital he’d met a man who was convinced he was about to be blown up by the IRA. The staff thought he was psychotic. A week after leaving the place he’d been killed by a car bomb. He dragged his attention back to the present, was aware of Eddie staring at him. He nodded at Eddie to take over the questions.

‘Had Melanie complained of any unwanted attention? Unusual phone calls, perhaps, strangers trying to engage her in conversation.’

‘I told you. In the last few days before she was killed she didn’t go out.’

‘She hadn’t had a problem with her boyfriend?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘They hadn’t had a row, for example?’

Clever Eddie, Porteous thought. On the look out for another connection. But Gillespie shook his head.

‘I don’t know how Joe put up with her but he was always remarkably patient. Eleanor and I like him a lot. He’s respectable, despite the hair and the clothes. Comes from a good family. He was devoted to Mel. It was a relief when they started going out together. It was someone else to keep an eye on her. You know?’

Porteous nodded. ‘Would it be possible to speak to Mrs Gillespie now? We could talk in her room if that would be easier.’

‘No. She won’t want that. But you’ll have to wait while she gets ready.’

‘Perhaps in the meantime we could look in Melanie’s room. Is it as she left it?’

‘Yes. The police said not to touch anything. I’ll show you.’

The room was on the next floor, long and narrow, with two bay windows, each with a padded seat. The furniture was expensive, much of it custom built to fit the space, but the posters and cards on the walls, the candles and joss-sticks, the piles of clothes and papers turned it into any other student pit. On the desk there was a CD player and a rack of tapes. A door in the opposite wall led to a small bathroom.