She didn’t wait for him to answer. ‘The more important question is why. Why the gesture? It seems a risk, an unnecessary fuss. It’s almost as if the killer wanted to draw attention to himself, make a grand spectacle. Julie was out for the night in Newcastle, but no one knew exactly what time she’d be back. She must almost have walked in on it. Laura, the sister, was in the house throughout. Fast asleep as it happens. Her mother says she could sleep through a bomb dropping. Is that significant?’
A hand rose tentatively. Vera liked a responsive audience but she could be as cruel to interrupters as a stand-up comedian to unwelcome hecklers. She was gracious to this one.
‘Yes?’
‘Does it mean the murderer knew the family? Knew that Laura was a heavy sleeper and that Julie was out for the night? She didn’t often go out, did she?’
Vera nodded in approval. ‘Maybe. Or that he’d been watching the place for a while, waiting for an opportunity.’
Another hand. ‘Yes?’
‘Could it have been the sister? A row that got out of hand?’
Vera considered for a moment. ‘You could imagine them fighting,’ she said. ‘A lad like that. It must be a nightmare having him as a brother, especially the age she is. That age you want to be the same as everyone else, don’t you? Last thing you need is a loony in the family. She could have drowned him too. If he was in the bath, it wouldn’t take a lot of strength to push him under. But he was strangled and then put in the water. I can’t see a fourteen-year-old girl doing that. She’s a skinny little thing. Nervy. I don’t think she’s hiding anything, though. Where would she get the flowers from? The mother confirms there were none in the house. I think we can forget the girl unless anything else comes up. Everyone agree?’
There were a few half-hearted nods. Vera continued. ‘The father, though, is a different matter. It sounds as if he always found it hard to cope with Luke. He and Julie separated years ago, but he’s kept in touch with the family. Nothing formal. He calls in when he feels like it. The kids go to his house occasionally. If he killed the lad, it would explain why there was no sign of a break-in. Of course Luke would open the door to him. Julie says the boy always wound him up. You could think of a scenario when he was provoked to murder, to strangling.’
‘You’d have the same problem explaining the flowers, though,’ Ashworth said.
‘Maybe. Unless he was clever enough to realize he’d be a suspect and knew that sort of elaborate staging would make us look elsewhere. All the more reason to get some details on the flowers. If they were available in the village, he could have picked them after the murder.’
Ashworth was sceptical. ‘He’d have to be pretty cool. Dream up the theatricals, go out for the flowers, let himself back into the house. Surely someone would have seen him.’
‘You’d have thought so, wouldn’t you? Has there been any joy from the house-to-house? Was anyone seen in the street?’
She thought that later in the day she would go back to the village herself. Not that it was appropriate for her to be knocking on doors. Not according to her boss. Her last appraisal had mentioned an unwillingness to delegate. Her role, he said, was strategic, the management of information. But she liked to get a feel for what was going on in the neighbourhood. Not everyone was very good at that.
She looked at the blank faces, waiting for someone to reply. Is it any wonder, she thought, that I’m not keen on delegating?
At last Ashworth spoke. Teacher’s pet again. Though she guessed they called him a lot worse than that when she wasn’t around. ‘No one saw anything unusual, according to the team who did the house-to-house.’
‘What about the car Julie remembers seeing in the street on Wednesday night?’
He looked at his notes. ‘It definitely wasn’t there at nine o’clock apparently. A woman was bringing her daughter home from Guides. She says she would have remembered.’
No one else spoke. There was a moment of silence. Vera was sitting on the edge of a desk, as fat and round and impassive as a Buddha. She even closed her eyes for a moment, seemed lost in meditation. They could hear distant noise from the rest of the building – a phone ringing, a hoot of laughter. She opened her eyes again.
‘If this wasn’t the father playing silly buggers,’ she said, ‘we have to consider what was going on at that crime scene. It was like a work of theatre. Or one of those art installations. Dead sheep. Piles of elephant crap. The sort of art where the meaning’s more important than what it looks like or the skill that’s gone into making it. We need to know what this artist was saying. Does anyone have any ideas?’
They looked back at her, rather like dead sheep themselves. And this time she couldn’t blame them. She didn’t have any ideas either.
Chapter Seven
It was Friday afternoon and the traffic on the dual carriageway leading from Newcastle to the coast was heavy. People had left work early to enjoy the sun. Windows down, music loud, the weekend had already started. Luke Armstrong’s father lived just off the coast road in one of the sprawling new housing estates on the outskirts of Wallsend. Vera knew it wasn’t her job to talk to him. She should leave the legwork to the rest of the team. How would they learn otherwise? But this was what she was good at. She pictured Julie Armstrong holed up in Seaton with her daughter and her memories, and she thought she wasn’t going to leave this to anyone else.
The house was a red-brick semi. It had a small patch of front garden, separated from the neighbour’s with a lavender hedge, a block-paved drive, integral garage. The developers had squeezed every inch out of this land which had once held three collieries, but the estate was pleasant enough if you didn’t mind communal living. It had been designed around lots of small cul-de-sacs so children could ride their bikes safely. Trees planted in the gardens were starting to mature. There were hanging baskets outside the houses, spotless cars on the drives. Nothing to sneer at, Vera told herself.
She hadn’t been sure Geoff Armstrong would be in. When she’d phoned there’d been an answering machine, but she hadn’t left a message. She’d just as soon catch him unprepared. She drove slowly down the street looking for the right house. It was three o’clock and the younger children were coming out of the primary school on the corner. Mothers waiting in the playground looked pink and dazed after an afternoon in the sun. Vera was standing on the step with her finger on the bell, when Armstrong walked into the drive. He was holding the hand of a little girl only just old enough to be at school. An ad-man’s dream cute kid – blonde curls, freckles, huge brown eyes, dressed in a regulation red gingham frock.
‘Yes?’ he said. Only one word, but spoken with that undertone of aggression which had scared Julie.
Before she could explain, the front door opened. A slight woman was framed in the doorway. She was wearing a dressing gown, blinked out at the sunlight, but wasn’t embarrassed to be caught like that. She knew she still looked good.