Ann Cleeves - The Sleeping and the Dead

She helped herself to a Coke and led them to a table in the corner. The skinny boy followed after.

‘This is Joe,’ she said. ‘Mel’s boyfriend.’

‘It was good of you to come.’

‘What do you want?’

‘To talk about Mel, that’s all. To try to get a clearer idea what she was like. Her parents are upset.’

‘We’re upset too.’

Porteous wished Eddie would help him out. He hadn’t expected the girl’s hostility. Didn’t Eddie know about teenagers? But Eddie drank his orange juice and seemed content to let his boss struggle on.

‘It’s not just that. She’ll have told things to you that she’d never let on to her parents. Wouldn’t she?’

‘Yeah. I suppose.’

‘So just talk to us. Describe her. Joe?’

‘She wasn’t like anyone else I’d ever met.’

That hardly helps, Porteous thought.

‘She was delicate, fragile. It wasn’t just the anorexia. I mean, I could never get to the bottom of what that was about. It didn’t seem to be about food. Not image even. I mean, it didn’t seem to be about the supermodel thing. She didn’t want starvation chic. She had more about her than that. It was as if she didn’t feel she deserved to eat. Which was crazy when you knew her, because everyone thought she was brilliant. Not just the teachers but her mates. People liked being around her. I couldn’t believe it when we started going out. I was on a high for months.’

Hadn’t that been how Hannah Meek had described her relationship with Michael Grey? Porteous thought. But perhaps it could be a description of any teenage infatuation.

‘Did she talk to you about her dad?’

‘You know about that?’ Joe seemed surprised. ‘My God, you’d have thought he was a murderer the way Richard Gillespie made her keep it secret. I think that made her dream about him even more. She had this romantic notion that Ray Scully, the great musician, was going to turn up and take her away from all that respectability.’

‘Richard wasn’t Mel’s real dad?’ Porteous could tell Rosie was hurt.

‘No.’

‘You never said. Even when she went missing.’

‘I couldn’t,’ Joe said. ‘She’d made me promise…’ Like a six-year-old in the playground.

‘Had she heard from her dad recently?’ Porteous asked.

‘No, I’m sure she would have said.’

‘How were things between you before she died?’

‘I hadn’t seen her for a few days. Her parents said she was too ill.’

‘You’d spoken on the phone though?’

‘They’d said she wasn’t up to it. I don’t know. Maybe she didn’t want to talk to me.’

‘Why wouldn’t she? Had you had a row?’

‘No!’

‘But?’

‘But something had happened to freak her out. I don’t know what it was. Maybe it was something I’d done or she’d thought I’d done, but she wouldn’t say.’ He paused, drank his beer. Porteous thought that despite his grief part of him was enjoying this – the attention, the drama. At university it would make an unusual chat-up story. The murder of the love of his life would demand sympathy. Women would go for it in droves. ‘We were going on holiday. It was her parents’ idea. They thought she should get away. The stress of waiting for exam results was getting to her. They knew someone with a villa on the Algarve.’

‘Eleanor said you weren’t very keen on the idea.’

Joe seemed shocked by the interruption. Porteous thought he’d already conjured a fantasy in which there’d been no disagreements in their relationship.

‘I just wasn’t sure I wanted the responsibility.’

‘She could be disturbed?’

‘Not mad!’ Joe said. ‘Troubled, depressed maybe. I’m not saying she was insane.’

‘So you were all set for a holiday to the Algarve. What happened?’

‘We were in here. All packed. Our suitcases with us. It was an evening flight and we’d arranged for the taxi to pick us up outside at six. We were having a few drinks, saying goodbye to our friends. Not Rosie. She’d gone away with her mum.’

Porteous turned slowly to Rosie. ‘That was the day of the school reunion?’

She nodded.

‘Was the television on in here?’

‘Yes.’ Joe had finished the beer. He put the empty glass on the table. ‘Why?’

‘An idea. Humour me.’

‘Mel started watching it. Suddenly she shouted for everyone to keep quiet. She was ratty. I mean really ratty. The moment before, she’d been laughing, then suddenly she was screaming at people because she couldn’t hear.’

‘What was on the television?’

‘I’m not sure. Local news, I think.’

That was the day they’d issued the press release naming the boy in the lake as Michael Grey and shown the photograph. Porteous felt a hit of adrenalin, breathed slowly to keep his voice calm.

‘Did she say what had interested her?’

‘Not really. Nothing that made sense. She got up and switched off the telly. Not angry any more, but serious. I asked her what was so important. “Nothing,” she said. “I think I’ve just seen a ghost. That’s all.” Then she said the holiday was off. “You go,” she said. “Take someone else. Take Rosie if you like.” But she didn’t mean it. And anyway I couldn’t just fly off and leave her like that. The taxi turned up then and we got it to take us home. The driver was moaning because he’d been expecting the full fare out to the airport and he’d turned down other work. I said we’d pay him anyway. I sat in the back next to her and she was shaking. She wasn’t causing a scene. She was really upset. She wouldn’t let me go into the house with her. “You’ve paid all that money. You might as well get him to drop you at your doorstep.” That was the last time I saw her.’

‘Rosie, did you ever see her after that, after you came back from Cranford?’

She shook her head.

‘Does the name Alec Reeves mean anything to either of you?’

‘Is he the suspect?’ Joe asked, almost with relish. Again Porteous thought the boy would survive this experience without too many scars. He wasn’t so sure about Rosie.

‘Just someone we’re trying to trace.’

‘Never heard of him.’

‘Rosie?’

Again she shook her head.

‘What about Emma Leese?’

‘Wasn’t she the little girl Mel used to babysit?’

‘Do you know her?’

‘No. It was before Mel moved round here. But she used to talk about her. About how cute she was.’

‘When did Mel move to the coast?’

‘A couple of years ago. At the beginning of the sixth form.’ Rosie gave Joe a brave grin. ‘That’s why all the lads fancied her. Because she was new, exciting. Him and me started infant school together. No secrets at all.’

Another connection with Theo, Porteous thought, almost automatically. But his mind was moving on in wider speculation. Wasn’t the relationship between Mel and the baby girl more intense than that between a young babysitter and her charge? Could Mel be the child’s mother, the photograph her only souvenir of a baby handed over for fostering or adoption? It would explain Richard Gillespie’s hostility and his reluctance to answer questions. Even after her death he wouldn’t want details of a teenage pregnancy made public. It might explain too why the family had moved just before she started her A-level course, why Mel was so mixed up.

‘Did Mel ever talk about having children?’ he asked.

Rosie picked up on what he was on about at once. ‘You must be joking.’

‘Where did she go to school before she started with you?’

‘Don’t know. Some private place inland, I think. Did she ever tell you, Joe?’

Or a special unit, Porteous thought, for pregnant schoolgirls. With very wealthy parents. Then immediately – I wonder if Redwood would take a kid like that. But wouldn’t Carver have picked up the fact that she’d had a child at the post-mortem? Perhaps it was in the final report which still hadn’t arrived.