Dan didn’t reply, seemed not even to hear. He was looking out of the window so Emma couldn’t tell what he made of Vera’s words, what he’d thought at the time.
“So, it’s precisely ten years on and there’s a small piece in the Guardian about Jeanie Long. Not claiming she’s innocent. Not exactly that. But claiming she was turned down for parole because she refused to admit her guilt. And that she would have been moved to an open prison years before if she hadn’t stuck to her story. The article gave a bit of background to the case and mentioned that she’d never found an alibi to support her story. The next thing that happens is that a witness comes forward. You wouldn’t believe it could happen, would you? Not after ten years. But this is for real…” She paused. “What’s his name, Danny?”
Emma knew that Vera remembered the man’s name quite well. The pause was for dramatic effect.
“Stringer,” Dan said. “Clive Stringer.”
“Clive was at university with Jeanie. It seems he had a bit of a crush on her, even went out with her once or twice during their first year. He saw her at King’s Cross on the day of the murder.”
“How can he remember after all this time?” Emma heard the desperation in her voice. The story which had been constructed ten years earlier, the story which had made some sort of sense, was starting to crumble.
“The date meant a lot to him. He was on his way to Heathrow. He’d been offered a postgraduate research post at a university in the States, and that was the day he flew. Even if there had been an appeal for witnesses, he wouldn’t have been around to hear it. He didn’t even know that Jeanie had been charged with murder until he read the Guardian piece.”
“Couldn’t he have made a mistake? You see someone in a crowd, it’s easy to convince yourself…”
“I’ve spoken to him,” Vera said. “He’s down-to-earth. Not given to flights of the imagination.”
They looked at each other across the table. Emma didn’t know what to say.
“I did think at first he might be an attention seker,” Vera went on gently. “We come across plenty of those in our line of work. But he keeps a diary. Has done since he was a bairn. It’s a bit sad, I think, summing up your life in a few lines scribbled at night. There must be more to it than that. In this case, though, it’s a blessing. I’ve seen the entry for November fifteenth 1994. Do you know what it says? “Saw Jeanie at King’s Cross Station, looking lovely in a bright red sweater. Red always suited her.” We checked. Jeanie was wearing a red jersey when she returned to her parents’ house that night. Forensic took it. Of course they didn’t find any thing to link her with the murder. But it didn’t really matter. She was charged anyway.” For the first time Emma realized that Vera was angry, volcanically, terrifyingly angry.
Vera must have seen that Emma sensed her fury. She shifted in her chair and smiled again to prove she wasn’t dangerous, became confiding and folksy.
“I’m from up country,” she said. “Nothing to do with Yorkshire and Humberside Police. I’m impartial, that’s the theory. It’s my job to look at the Mantel case again, see what went wrong. And the sooner I can get it done and go home the better, as far as I’m concerned. I’m used to the hills. There’s nowhere to hide here, is there? You can see some bugger’s washing on a line in the next county. It gives me the creeps.”
“What do you want from me?”
“Your memories,” Vera said immediately.
“I’m not sure how reliable they are after all this time.”
“Don’t worry. It’s what I’m best at. Working out what’s real and what’s fantasy. Joe Ashworth, my sergeant, thinks I’m a witch.”
Emma looked up sharply but couldn’t tell from Vera’s face whether she was mocking herself or her audience. Because that was what Dan and Emma had become. Vera was playing them as if she was the best stand-up in the business. And already she’d moved on, taking them with her.
“Suppose today, we just start with a few questions. Things that have been troubling me, and no one else has been able to answer. Not even Danny here. Like, why did Keith Mantel ask Jeanie to move out?”
“Because Abigail asked him to.” If she can’t understand that, Emma thought, she might as well piss off back to her hills now.
“But he must have realized there’d be a problem before he moved Jeanie in. I mean he and Abigail had lived in that place on their own since her mam died. Everyone says he treated her like a princess, spoilt her rotten. If they were that close he wouldn’t have brought his lover into the home without mentioning it to the girl. “What would you say if Jeanie came to live with us? They say men aren’t the most sensitive beasts in the universe but he’d have managed that. And if she hated the idea, Abigail would have said, wouldn’t she? She doesn’t strike me as the shy type. No way, Dad. It won’t work. Something like that. And he’d have listened to her and made some excuse to Jeanie, even if only to spare himself the hassle. Sorry, love, but Abigail needs more time.”
Listening to the detective Emma thought she was some sort of witch, because even if those precise words hadn’t been used, it was just what each of them might have said. But Vera was continuing. “So that’s my problem. I don’t see how he got himself into that mess.”
“I don’t think he had a lot of choice.”
“What do you mean?”
Emma hesitated. “This is what Abigail told me. I don’t know if she was telling the truth.” Because Emma knew now better than anyone that Abigail could be the biggest liar in the world.
Vera nodded encouragingly. “Like I said, you can leave that for me to decide.”
“According to Abigail, Keith hadn’t really wanted Jeanie there in the first place. She’d had a row with her parents and just stormed out of her home. She turned up on the doorstep of the Chapel with a rucksack of clothes and her violin. He couldn’t turn her away.”
“Too kind-hearted for his own good, I daresay,” Vera said, and Emma could tell she’d already formed an opinion of the man and disapproved of him.
“The first thing Abigail knew about it was when she found Jeanie in the kitchen cooking supper.”
Abigail had recounted the story the next day. It had been another hot afternoon, sultry, airless. There must have been rain that summer, sea fog, but Emma couldn’t remember it. That day Abigail had agreed to go with her to the beach and they’d walked there together down the path between the sandy fields. Already most of the harvest had been in but in the distance she’d heard the churning of a baler and there’d still been a patch of barley left to cut. The feathery fronds had brushed their legs as they walked. There had been a row of swallows on the wire, and clouds of insects, and Abigail, striding in front along the narrow path, had shouted to Emma, following behind. She hadn’t stopped talking all the way. Her voice had been incredulous and she’d repeated herself often to show that she still couldn’t believe the cheek.
“I mean she was just standing there, rooting through the cupboards. And then she started on the freezer. “I thought I’d do ri sotto Is that OK with you, Abby?” I mean, no one, but no one calls me Abby. You don’t call me Abby and you’re my best mate. And still I didn’t get it. I thought it was a one-off, one night. Then I went up to dad’s room and there were the things she’d already unpacked. Like, she’d been there an hour, and already her clothes were hanging in his wardrobe and her knickers were in his drawer. Well, I know he won’t stand for it. She’ll be out by the end of the week. Dad likes his space. Even I’m not allowed into his room without asking.”