Vera went back to the bags still standing on the doorstep and pulled out a couple of bottles of beer. There was a bottle opener on the coffee table next to the mug. So much for her planned evening of domesticity: changing the sheets on her bed, sticking a few towels in the washing machine.
‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Tell me all about it.’
‘I never knew what she saw in me.’ His voice was weedy, the Liverpool accent even more pronounced.
‘Stop fishing for compliments!’ Vera barked. ‘I’ve no time for games.’
He looked up at her, shocked. He’d expected sympathy and an easy ride.
‘Where did you meet her?’ Vera wasn’t sure how relevant this was, but she was curious anyway and thought it would get him talking.
‘Marseilles,’ he said. ‘A cafe by the harbour. I’d been working out of there, just finished the contract with the shipping company, money in my pocket. She was sitting alone, halfway through a bottle of wine. Drinking to get drunk, not because she was enjoying a glass with her fish supper. She heard me talk to the waiter, realized I’d never get myself understood and translated for me. She’s always been a bit of a show-off. We got talking. You know.’
‘What was she doing in Marseilles?’
‘She’d run away from her husband,’ Jack said. ‘Some rich bastard.’ He changed his voice, made it music-hall posh: ‘He was heading up the office in Paris. Some businessman. Or banker. Or wanker. Marseilles was about as far away from him as she could get.’
‘Why didn’t she go back to the UK?’ Vera thought if you left your man, you’d want friends about you. Family even.
‘Nothing for her there. She’s like the black sheep in her family. They threatened to have her sectioned if she left her husband. You know, like locked up in a loony bin.’ He paused. ‘She tried to kill herself. There’s a scar on her wrist. I saw it that first time, sitting in the sun outside the cafe in Marseilles. It’s still there. She calls it her war wound.’
‘I’ve never noticed.’
‘That’s why she always wears all those bangles. Anyway, that was a long time ago. I got her sorted out. Took her to the GP. She’s fine if she takes her pills. They said she had bipolar disorder. I dunno, I’d have gone crazy if I’d lived what she’d been through.’
‘But she’s stopped taking the pills?’
‘Aye. Says she’s okay now and doesn’t need them.’ He paused again and looked up, straight at Vera. ‘I think there’s another man.’ Then: ‘I think she wants the high of being in love. That’s why she stopped taking the lithium.’
‘Where would she meet another man?’ Vera thought he was letting his imagination run wild. ‘Besides Chris in the pub and Arthur the vet, who does she ever meet?’
‘She has her own friends,’ Jack said. ‘Her own interests. That was the deal from the start. I wasn’t going to run her life for her.’ He hesitated. ‘Last week she was on the phone and hung up when I came into the room. She wouldn’t say who it was.’
‘So where do you think she’s gone?’ Vera realized she’d finished the beer. She thought she’d like to get rid of Jack before she opened another. Then she’d be able to enjoy it in peace.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘If I knew, I’d go and find her.’
‘Even though you don’t want to run her life for her?’ Vera looked at him, challenging him to come up with a rational answer. ‘Maybe it’s just as she says in the note, and she needs a few days away.’ She was thinking it would be easy enough for her to find out where Joanna had run away to. There was only one taxi firm within ten miles of the farm and everyone used it. If she had a word with Tommy Wooler, she’d soon know where Jo was hiding out. If Jack hadn’t been so anxious, he’d have thought of that too.
‘She’s stopped taking her pills,’ he said again, bending forward to make sure Vera understood the gravity of his words. ‘She’s been up and down for days: one minute high as a kite, singing and laughing, the next all angry and shouting the odds. She’s not herself. I’m not going to drag her back against her will. Do you think I’d live with her if she didn’t want to be with me? Do you think I’d force her to be unhappy? Look, I know you think I’m a soft git, but I’d die for Joanna Tobin.’ He paused for breath. ‘I’m worried about her, about what she might do to herself.’
‘You think she might attempt suicide again?’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘That’s what I think. If it doesn’t work out for her. If whatever she’s dreaming about doesn’t happen.’
Vera pushed herself to her feet. There was frozen stuff in her bags that would soon be melting. ‘So what do you want me to do?’
He looked at her as if she was mad. ‘Find her, of course. Make sure she’s safe.’
‘And then?’
‘That’s all.’ He’d stood too and they’d moved to the front door. Outside it was freezing and the sky was spattered with stars. ‘Just make sure she’s safe.’
Chapter Two
God, Vera thought, if any of the others considered doing this – going freelance, playing the private eye – I’d give them such a bollocking. She stood in the lean-to putting the contents of her shopping bags into the freezer. It was a chest freezer, too big for her, living on her own. Exactly the same size, she realized for the first time, as the one in which Hector had kept all his dead animals and birds, the core of his illegal taxidermy business. She’d got rid of that when he died. It had been stinking. So why had she bought another, exactly the same? Some shrink could make a big deal out of that. Or decide that she was an idle bugger with no imagination.
And why had she agreed to do as Jack asked and chase around the county looking for Joanna? Because I’m soft as clarts. Because I enjoy happy endings and want to bring the couple together again, like I’m some great fat Cupid in wellies. Because it would be bloody inconvenient living here without them next door.
In the kitchen she opened another beer, put a pork pie and a tomato on a plate, with a quarter of a crusty loaf and butter still in the packet, then carried the lot into the living room on a tray. The fire was low and she threw on another couple of logs. The round 1930s clock that stood on the mantelpiece said it was nine o’clock. She’d better try Tommy Wooler now. He usually caught the last couple of hours before closing in the Percy Arms in Sallyford.
He recognized her mobile number. ‘Where are you then? Pissed and incapable and needing a lift home?’
‘Not a drop has touched my lips, Tommy. Well, not so you’d notice, and I’m home safe and well. I’m after some information.’
‘What sort of information?’ Defensive now. In his younger days he’d been a bit of a tearaway. Not malicious, just a tad wild and daft. He kept up with a couple of the bad lads he’d met in the Young Offenders Institution at Castington. Vera had never asked him about them, but that was the way his mind was working.
‘You picked up Joanna Tobin two days ago.’ A statement not a question.
‘Aye, that’s right.’ There was no suspicion in his voice. He was just relieved she wasn’t asking him about his old unsavoury acquaintances. Vera wondered what they were up to and why he was so jumpy, made a mental note to check on them. Or get Holly to do it.
‘Where was it you took her?’ As if she knew really, but it had just slipped her mind.
Tommy didn’t care any more. He just wanted to get out to the pub.