‘But there was a tragedy there,’ Ashworth said. ‘A little boy died.’
‘Aye, Patrick Eliot. That would have been twenty years ago, almost to the day. We all turned out for the funeral. The whole village, though we didn’t know the family really then. And after that Veronica refused to speak about the boy.’ She shrugged. ‘People thought it was odd, but everyone has their own way of coping, I suppose.’ She paused again. ‘There’s another funeral for us to go to now. I saw the vicar in next door.’
‘Who was living at the cottage at the time of the accident?’ Ashworth found he was holding his breath as he waited for the answer.
She was standing at the sink, dribbling water from the cold tap into the bowl, mixing it into the pastry with a knife. She turned to speak to him.
‘Nobody,’ she said. ‘The place was empty. There was a For Sale board outside; I remember it. It was in all the newspaper pictures. That’s why Veronica could take the boys into the garden to poke around in the stream. The White House didn’t have much of a garden then. It was more like a builders’ site. The Eliots had only just moved in.’
When Ashworth went back next door and knocked at the Listers’, that house was empty too. Perhaps the vicar had taken the couple to the chapel of rest, or to the rectory to continue the conversation about hymns and eulogies there. Ashworth phoned Vera to bring her up to date, but he could tell she was preoccupied. She gave him a list of instructions without explaining the reason for them.
The rain stopped by mid-afternoon and people meeting each other in the street laughed at the sandbags and said that the Environment Agency had over-reacted this time. But as it got dark it started raining again, this time a soft drizzle that folk still didn’t take seriously.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Vera spent all day in the hotel lounge at the Willows. Most of the guests had left, despite Ryan Taylor’s reassurance that the sandbags would keep out the flood. The place was silent and gloomy; there was little natural light from outside despite the long windows. She’d shouted at him to switch off the background music after ‘Walking Back to Happiness’ had come round for the third time on the taped loop; she felt as if the tune were mocking her for her inability to get the case right.
She’d decided on inaction, at least for today. Waiting was always torture to her and she understood it was a risk. If he knew what was in her mind, Joe Ashworth would be horrified. He’d recommend arrests, dramatic chases through the countryside. And of course she could be wrong. The idea had come to her sitting here, listening to the young waiter describe how Jenny Lister had waited here on the morning of her death for someone who never turned up. It wasn’t much to build a case on. And even if she were right, Vera thought, there’d be no guarantee of a conviction. A guilty plea would be better for everyone. The decision to wait having been made, it was better that she stay here where she would do no harm. If she went out, she might put in her huge, wellie-clad foot and upset the delicate balance that she sensed now existed. There was always a danger of further violence.
So she sat in the big floral armchair by the window and occasionally summoned her team members to her. More often she spoke on the phone, sometimes persuading and sometimes swearing. Once she threw it across the room, and she had to retrieve it from the silk chaise longue where it had landed. Doreen, the elderly waitress, brought her cups of coffee, cheese sandwiches, hard scones and butter. Every hour or so Vera would pull herself to her feet and stamp around the room to bring the feeling back into her limbs. She’d stand in front of the fire, which at last seemed to throw out some warmth, or waddle to the toilet, then return to her seat and continue to scribble notes that charted the progress of the case.
Once she stopped for ten minutes to stare outside at a rainbow that spanned the valley. But the sun, which had come out briefly, was soon covered again by cloud and the rainbow faded and then disappeared.
Holly was her first visitor. She arrived in the early afternoon, starving. Vera fed her crisps and cake and listened to what she had to say about Hannah and Danny. Holly had been to the high school and talked to a couple of teachers, and through them she’d managed to meet up with some of the kids who’d been friends with Danny and Hannah. They’d met in the bar in Hexham, where one of them was working to save up to go travelling. He’d called up another couple of cronies. ‘Not that Danny had many close friends,’ Holly said, her mouth still full of cake. ‘Apparently he was a bright lad, but cocky. A tad arrogant. The teachers wouldn’t say, but you could tell they couldn’t stand him. The kids were a bit more forgiving. He was like leader of the gang. The show-off. But they admired him more than they liked him. I had the impression he was considered very cool, but a bit self-centred. Good for a fun night out, but not for a long-term friendship.’
That word again.
‘What about the relationship with Hannah?’ Vera was still taking notes. She wanted this clear in her head.
‘She wasn’t his first girlfriend, they were all clear about that. But she was the first girl he really cared for. And the first time he’d been dumped, apparently. It came as a shock to the system. Not what he’d been expecting at all.’
‘Did he blame Simon Eliot?’ Vera thought this could be important. She looked at Holly and hoped she was taking the question seriously. ‘It does look as if Hannah dumped him for Simon.’
‘Danny was probably pissed off at the time, but more recently they seem to have got on OK. People have seen them knocking around together in the university holidays. It’s not really a big deal at that age, is it?’
Which was what Hannah had said too.
‘So nobody thought Danny had a grudge against the Eliot boy? He could be one to harbour a grudge.’
‘Nah,’ Holly said. ‘I didn’t get the impression there was anything like that.’
Vera gave a little sigh, which reminded Holly of her nana playing patience. Sometimes, when she played out all the cards, she made a noise that was exactly the same as the one Vera made now.
‘Any of them heard of Michael Morgan?’ Vera asked after a brief pause. ‘Do we know if Danny had contact with him before he started working in the hotel?’
‘They didn’t recognize the name.’ Holly set her plate on the floor beside her. ‘But that doesn’t mean anything. They said that Danny liked to be mysterious about what he got up to. Part of his image. Sometimes he disappeared off the radar for days and nobody knew what he’d been up to.’ She looked at Vera. ‘Sorry, it’s not much, is it? I can carry on asking around if you think it’s important.’
‘Why don’t you get home early?’ Vera said. ‘It’ll be bloody nightmare on the roads with all this standing water, and you’ll have a long day tomorrow.’
She had the satisfaction of seeing Holly lost for words. For once.
Vera hadn’t heard from Charlie all morning and she summoned him in to the Willows after Holly had gone. She saw him walk from his car and up the steps, with that stooped posture he always had, as if he were looking out for dog shit on the pavement before he put down his feet. By now the sunshine and the rainbow had gone and it was almost dark, though it was still only the middle of the afternoon. Doreen had padded round the lounge switching on small table lamps. Charlie stood at the entrance to the room, peering into the gloom, and Vera called him over. She’d always had a bit of a soft spot for him. Perhaps it was something to do with the fact that his private life was even more of a failure than hers. He made her feel good.
‘Tea?’ she said. ‘Or could you use something a bit stronger?’
‘What are you having?’ Charlie had never really mastered the art of being gracious and the words came out as an aggressive grunt.