Martin Edwards - The Cipher Garden

‘This concerns you as well, Peter,’ Kirsty said.

‘Me?’ He blinked behind his glasses. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand.’

Peter Flint’s expression suggested an amiable, absent-minded owl. Lately, Kirsty had begun to suspect that his good-natured vagueness about anything unconnected with his work was a facade. For all his bumbling demeanour, he had a priceless knack of getting whatever he wanted. He must possess hidden reserves of determination.

She turned to her mother. ‘Have you told him about the letters?’

Tina gave a long and theatrical sigh. ‘So that’s what this performance is all about?’

‘Have you told him?’ Kirsty said again through gritted teeth. Her mother had a flair for moving the goalposts. She’d had a lot of practice when Dad was alive; it was her technique for bringing their quarrels to an end. Sometimes it hadn’t worked, sometimes plates had been thrown.

‘If you mean the anonymous letters flying around,’ Peter Flint said, ‘Tina didn’t need to tell me about them. I told her as soon as one came to me.’

‘What did it say?’

‘It was offensive rubbish which deserved to be put through the shredder and that’s precisely what I did with it.’

‘Because it accused you of having it off with Mum while my father was still alive?’

He blinked again. ‘You don’t…’

Arms folded, she leaned back. ‘All I want you to tell me is whether it’s true.’

Tina took a couple of paces forward and seized hold of her wrist. ‘Do you want to know, Kirsty? Do you really want to know?’

Her grip hurt, almost as much as Sam’s drunken grasp had hurt. All of a sudden, Kirsty wasn’t sure any more what she did want to know. Yet could the truth be any more painful than the anguish of guesswork?

‘I can imagine,’ she said furiously and tugged herself free.

‘Kirsty,’ Peter said. ‘Please listen to me. This is upsetting your mother. You don’t understand.’

‘You know what, Peter? I’m beginning to understand a great deal about your…relationship.’

Tina folded her arms. ‘All right, then. I’ll satisfy your curiosity if you want. You’ve got it all wrong. So has whoever keeps sending these bloody letters. Peter and I never slept together before your father died.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Believe what you want, you stupid little cow. It’s the truth.’

‘You know my sergeant, I gather,’ Hannah said. ‘Nick Lowther?’

Chris Gleave nodded. ‘We were at school together. A good man.’

‘Yes.’

‘Bright, too. I’d expected him to have made chief superintendent by now. If not chief constable. But perhaps that’s not what he became a policeman for.’

‘Perhaps not.’

Chris put his hands behind his head, as if in aid to thought. A slender fair-haired man in a white open-neck shirt and beige chinos, he looked younger than his years. Hannah didn’t often encounter men as handsome as Marc, but Chris might be a contender. Not that she fancied him. Despite Nick’s glowing testimonial, beneath the agreeable exterior, she sensed something cool and distant.

‘He had this weird idea that your job is to serve justice, as I remember. I suppose you can do that as easily as a sergeant as a superintendent. Especially if the police service is like most hierarchical organisations. The higher you climb the greasy pole, the more careful you have to be not to upset the people at the top.’

‘I couldn’t possibly comment,’ she said, allowing him a faint smile.

‘Nick could be too sardonic for his own good. I remember that one of our rugby teachers really had it in for him and-’

‘More tea, Chief Inspector?’

Roz bustled through the door, bearing a crowded tray. From the moment Chris had arrived home, she hadn’t left them alone for longer than it took to boil a kettle. She fussed around her husband like an overprotective mother with an only child. Was their marriage like this all the time, Hannah wondered, or was she afraid of what he might say to a detective asking about Warren Howe?

‘No, thank you. I don’t expect to keep your husband long.’

Roz put the tray down on an occasional table. The furniture in Keepsake Cottage was old and made of pine, the china Crown Derby. Hannah’s chair faced a huge oval mirror, which revealed that she had a ladder in her tights.

After pouring a cup for Chris and herself, Roz sat on the sofa beside him. Their thighs were touching, and she looped an arm around his thin shoulder. Some men would have betrayed embarrassment, but not Chris Gleave. Legs negligently crossed, he gave the impression of a man at ease with himself, unaware of his wife’s attentions. Possibly he expected nothing less.

‘So what’s caused you to investigate what happened?’ he asked.

What happened . Hannah remembered the pictures of Warren Howe’s from the autopsy. She banished the image. Better not throw up all over such a lovely old Persian rug.

‘My team has a brief to review unsolved murders. It’s one of a number of cases we’re reconsidering.’

‘Pure routine, then? No new leads?’

‘I’m afraid the details of our inquiry are confidential.’

‘I wish you luck. Warren wasn’t a nice man, but nobody deserves to die like that. So how can I help?’

‘Can we talk about the statement that you gave to the police when you…returned home after the murder?’

‘There’s nothing to add.’

‘I was saying to your wife earlier, it’s surprising how often, after a lapse of time, something else springs to mind. Something you might have overlooked previously, or thought too unimportant to mention.’

Chris shook his head. ‘Not me. I’m afraid I didn’t have anything to contribute to your colleagues’ investigation all those years ago and nothing’s changed.’

‘So you can’t cast any light on the case? Even though the murder was committed in your back garden? And the victim was a man you’d known for years?’

‘Roz knew him better and longer than me.’

‘You were aware that she was Warren Howe’s girlfriend in her teens? Until — sorry, Mrs Gleave — he chucked her?’

‘All that was history,’ Chris said quickly. ‘They had a fleeting teenage romance. No lasting significance for either party. Far less me. Water under the bridge.’

Roz’s cheeks were rose-pink. ‘You’re surely not suggesting Chris was jealous? Jealous of Warren?’

‘I’m not suggesting anything. You told my colleagues that you had no idea that Warren Howe’s body had been found in your garden while you were away, Mr Gleave.’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Must have been quite a shock.’

Chris exhaled. ‘To be honest with you, Chief Inspector, I’d been through a great deal in a short time. I hate to sound cold-blooded, but hearing about the death of a man who was scarcely a friend was the least of my problems. What horrified me was to learn that I’d left my wife to cope on her own with all the sound and fury of a murder investigation. It was a long, long time before I forgave myself for that.’

‘But you managed to forgive yourself in the end?’

The barb didn’t even graze him. ‘Life is short, isn’t it? We beat ourselves up all the time, and so often it’s for no purpose whatsoever. I’ve often made the mistake of feeling guilty over something trivial that wasn’t even my fault. Perhaps you have yourself, once or twice?’

Hannah prayed she wasn’t blushing. ‘I’m sorry to pry, but can you tell me about the circumstances of your disappearance?’

Roz made as if to protest, but he silenced her with a sideways glance. ‘If you’ve read the old files, you’ll know as much as me.’