Peter Lovesey - The Secret Hangman

Back in his car, driving out of town, he thought about the effect this scene had had on him. He hadn’t seen a naked woman for a long time, let alone having sex on the floor. Strange that the experience hadn’t turned him on. Was he past all that? He’d gone three years without sex. Hadn’t felt deprived. Hadn’t fancied anyone. The celibate life wasn’t of his choosing. Steph’s murder had put everything into a different perspective. Was his abstinence out of loyalty to Steph? Partly. There was also the thought that no other woman could compare with her.

Steph wouldn’t have insisted he remained a lonely widower. One evening they’d had the conversation most couples have at some stage in their marriage: what if one of us dies suddenly? They’d agreed it would be selfish and unloving to deny the surviving partner another relationship. ‘But only after a decent interval,’ she’d joked. ‘I wouldn’t want you chatting up my sister at the funeral.’ He’d promised her solemnly that he wouldn’t trouble Angela, ever. Then Steph had said she couldn’t make any promises if some gorgeous bobby representing the Police Federation was sent to offer condolences. ‘I often wondered what “condolences” meant,’ he’d said, and they’d laughed and poured another glass of wine, and sudden death had seemed remote.

So there it was. Three years of the monastic life had left him indifferent to a spectacle that would have turned most guys into rampant studs. The blonde had been on the large side, true, but she was pretty, young, firm-bodied and happy to be seen. He faced the depressing prospect that his sex drive had run down like an old battery, not from overuse, but neglect. Did it matter, considering his situation? Yes, it did. He didn’t care to admit he was past it.

The address he’d got for Amanda Williamson turned out to be one of the seventeenth-century weavers’ cottages high up the steep hillside overlooking Bradford, higher even than the spire of the parish church. A woman too young to be Amanda answered his knock and was threatening to send him away until he showed his ID and said he thought Mrs Williamson would be willing to talk to him.

Amanda came out and they shared a bench in the tiny front garden. She was over sixty, dressed informally for someone her age, in a loose top and black jeans. ‘The girls are inside watching National Velvet,’ she said in a voice that could have presented Woman’s Hour in 1950. ‘I brought some DVDs with me. That film is over sixty years old, but they don’t seem to mind.’

‘Liz Taylor at eleven.’

‘You saw it?’

‘Not when it first came out.’

She smiled faintly. ‘What did you want to ask me?’

‘Would you mind if I tape our conversation? I’m supposed to type it up later.’

‘Do I have to wear a mike, or something?’

‘No,’ he said, showing her the small pocket recorder he’d brought. ‘Just ignore this. Would you mind telling me about Daniel Geaves. I’ve heard from Ashley Corcoran, but-’

She cut him off. ‘What does Ashley know? He never met Danny.’

‘That’s why I’d like your impression of him.’

She drew in a sharp breath. ‘That’s going to be difficult when I think of what he did to Delia.’

‘Try, please. I didn’t meet him — in life, that is.’

‘I can find a photo if you want. Give me a moment. I know where to put my hands on it.’ She returned indoors.

He clicked off the recorder.

He was happy to wait. A picture of Geaves would be a real help. He watched car windscreens catching the sunlight as the traffic crossed the town bridge way below.

‘It was taken at some nightclub. Not very good of Delia, bless her,’ she said when she came back and handed him the picture, ‘but that’s him to a T. Hardly ever smiled, even for a photo.’

No question, Danny Geaves had a sour-faced look. He was at a table beside Delia, self-absorbed. She had leaned in towards him for the photo, but he appeared oblivious of her, elbows on the table, his hands tucked under his chin.

‘Can I keep it?’

‘By all means.’

‘This is helpful. We haven’t found anyone else who knew him.’ He pressed record.

‘That I can understand. He wasn’t the sort to have many friends.’ She directed her gaze across the town towards the blurred grey line of Westbury Down. ‘I wouldn’t say he was unfriendly. Just a quiet man, harmless, I thought at the time. Delia liked him well enough at the beginning, and they seemed suited to each other. She was more outgoing and made up for his shyness, or whatever it was. But he had qualities she lacked. He was steady. That’s an old-fashioned virtue in a man, but my headstrong daughter needed someone to be a calming influence. She was excitable, you know, apt to do spur-of-the-moment things. Danny was… methodical.’

She made the word sound menacing. A picture crept into Diamond’s mind of the methodical Danny tying his strangled lover to the swing in the park.

‘To be fair, he did most of the parenting,’ Amanda went on. ‘He made sure those girls were up in time and fed and ready for school. I’ve seen him combing their hair while my daughter, bless her, was sleeping on, or pampering herself in the bathroom.’

‘Was there any resentment?’

‘On Danny’s part? I never noticed any.’

‘Arguments?’

‘No more than normal. She’d have told me if he was unkind to her, or violent.’

‘So what went wrong? Why did they split up?’

In a reflex gesture she pressed two fingers to her lips and then withdrew them and exhaled. An ex-smoker feeling some tension, Diamond decided.

He waited.

When the answer came it was no help.’Who can tell what goes wrong in a relationship except the people involved? I made a point of not interfering.’

‘She didn’t confide in you?’

‘We’d speak, mother and daughter, but not about him. It’s not as if he was hitting her, or something.’

‘You’re certain of that?’

‘She’d have told me.’

‘There’s such a thing as mental cruelty.’

‘She dumped him for another man, didn’t she? That’s what did for her in the end.’

‘Just like that?’

‘She went through a bad patch, needed lifting emotionally, and Danny didn’t see it, or was too busy to notice. He was doing all the caring for the girls, and she’ — Amanda sighed — ‘she had time to look around. She met Ashley, and then the writing was on the wall so far as their relationship was concerned.’

‘Ashley had a more glamorous lifestyle?’

‘The grass is always greener.’

‘Danny took it hard, did he?’

‘Difficult to tell. As I said, he was so much quieter than Delia.

You couldn’t tell what he was thinking. I can see it must have hurt him more than any of us realised.’

‘There was no outburst at the time?’

‘I wasn’t with them, so I don’t know for certain, but from what I knew of Danny he wasn’t capable of an outburst over anything. All his upsets were internalised. Seeing what happened, I can imagine that the hurt went deep. He must have brooded on it until it became an obsession. You can criticise people like Delia for letting their emotions run riot, but the quiet ones are the dangerous ones.’

‘He seems to have cut himself off from the family after the parting.’

‘Yes. I used to ask about him and she never had any news.’

‘Even if he was angry with Delia, you’d think he’d want to stay in touch with his children.’

‘Which is what I said to her more than once. She would just shrug and say he was welcome to spend time with them if he asked.’

‘So this wasn’t a case of a father denied access?’

‘Absolutely not.’

Diamond watched a crow glide in the breeze above the weathercock on the spire of Holy Trinity. ‘Did you ever meet any of Danny’s family?’