She grinned again, enjoying the shocked silence at the other end of the line, and replaced the receiver.
She was still eating breakfast when she heard Joe’s car outside. Another clear, frosty day. A bit of mist over the lough in the valley, but that would soon burn away. She got up to let him in and saw that Jack’s van wasn’t in the yard. It was market day in Alnwick, so he’d have left early. She hoped Joanna hadn’t gone with him.
She pushed the teapot in Joe’s direction and got up to fetch him a mug.
‘You’ll have had breakfast.’ Not a question. His wife looked after him, however early the start.
‘I wouldn’t mind a bit of toast, if there’s one going.’
‘Tough, there’s no bread.’ Not quite true, but she couldn’t be arsed to make it. Now Joe was here, she wanted to get on.
‘Rutherford claimed Joanna was blackmailing him,’ she said.
He set his mug down slowly. ‘Did you believe him?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s a bugger, but I did.’
‘Does that change anything?’ Joe’s attention was caught by the view from the window and he seemed preoccupied. He lived in a modern semi on a quiet executive estate. Vera knew he regarded the open countryside with awe and something like suspicion. ‘I can’t see what it’s got to do with our investigation,’ he said. ‘All the witnesses will have stuff going on in their private lives.’
‘Of course they will,’ Vera said. ‘But they won’t all be turning the stuff into stories and putting it out for the public to read.’ Then she wondered if that was true. By all accounts, the piece Lenny Thomas had read on the evening of Miranda’s death had been personal too. ‘Anyway,’ she went on, getting to her feet, feeling again the strain in her knees, ‘why don’t we go and ask her?’
They found Joanna hanging out washing.
‘That’ll be frozen stiff in half an hour,’ Vera said by way of a greeting.
Joanna only laughed and said she was fed up with having it all over the kitchen. ‘I like to get the air into it.’
‘Do you fancy a bit of a walk?’
Joanna looked at Joe. ‘What’s this, Vee? Do you need a bodyguard these days? Are you frightened I’ll slash your throat too?’
‘Eh, pet, you know how it is. I can’t talk to you on my own.’
They walked down the track a way, then along the edge of a newly ploughed field. The soil was hard, but Vera could see that Joe was worried about the state of his shoes. She was glad to be outside: this case had made her feel claustrophobic from the start. It was being shut in the Writers’ House for days on end. Like being remanded in custody. A hawthorn hedge marked the field edge and there were redwings and fieldfares feeding on the berries. She followed Joanna and Ashworth in single file until they came to a gate and a wide track through woodland. Then Vera joined Joanna and started her questions.
‘You didn’t tell me you’d been in touch with your ex-husband recently.’ The tone was conversational, but she saw that Joanna had picked up the steel beneath it. ‘In fact you told me you were frightened Rickard might tell him where you were.’
‘You’ve spoken to Paul,’ she said. ‘Of course I should have realized you might.’ She slowed her pace and turned to Vera. ‘We all get taken in by you.’
‘I didn’t make the contact,’ Vera said. ‘That was your ex-husband. I think he came all the way to Newcastle especially to tell me what you’d been up to.’ The ground under the trees was dry and there was a smell of pine. ‘Cocky bastard, isn’t he?’
‘Is he? It’s so long since I’ve seen him that I really can’t remember any more. Perhaps he’s just a creature of my imagination.’ Joanna scuffed her feet through the pine needles. The sun formed a series of spotlights, catching her face as she walked through the trees.
‘Oh no, trust me, he’s real enough,’ Vera said. She was aware of Joe, walking a few paces behind them, making himself unobtrusive as only he could. ‘But those stories you told me. About him hitting you. Locking you up. Were they real? I’m not quite sure any more.’
‘You know what, Vee?’ The words were angry and Vera saw that the woman was close to tears. ‘Neither am I. Perhaps I’m a liar and a fantasist. Perhaps you can’t believe a word I say. All those pills they make me take, it’s hardly any wonder I don’t know what happened all those years ago.’
They came to an area of clear fell, a pile of tree trunks waiting to be hauled away. Vera sat on one and patted the log beside her for Joanna to join her.
‘Why did you need the money?’ Vera asked, her voice gentle, almost maternal. ‘I can get my head round all the rest, but not that. Not the blackmail.’
Joanna shook her head, a gesture to indicate that there was no point trying to explain: Vera wouldn’t understand.
‘Is it gambling? Drugs?’
‘No! What do you think we are? Jack and I have the most tedious existence possible. I’ve become a housewife like my mother. Except I don’t have the staff to do the boring stuff. And I love it. Really, I love it.’
‘So why did you need the money?’ This time the question was firmer.
Joanna shook her head again. ‘It was a mistake, talking to Paul. Crazy. I did it that time when I stopped taking my meds and I wasn’t thinking clearly. And I wasn’t lying about Giles Rickard – I didn’t speak to him, because I was scared Paul might find me. I made sure Paul wouldn’t be able to trace me from my phone call. It didn’t seem like blackmail to me. It was more like asking for what I was owed. When we divorced he gave me nothing. But I shouldn’t have got in touch with him again. I should have realized it would lead to trouble.’
She pushed herself off from the tree trunk and began to run off, back towards the farm, her long plait bouncing behind her. She was too fit for Vera to follow, and Joe stayed were he was too. They saw her flickering figure through the trees, the movement seeming jerky because of their interrupted vision, like an old silent movie playing out before them.
Vera had set back the morning briefing to accommodate her meeting with Joanna, but now she wondered what had been gained by it. Had she achieved anything at all? Suspicion of the woman ate away at her like a worm in her gut and made her feel sick. Had Joanna deceived Jack? Was she a manipulative liar, untrustworthy? Had she made a fool of Vera, as Paul Rutherford had suggested? That would be unforgivable. Deep down, though, Vera still thought of Joanna as a good woman.
Vera tried to set these questions aside as she came before the team. They’d be tired and anxious because so little had been accomplished. This was the point in an investigation when desperation led to mistakes and jumping to conclusions.
‘Well then.’ She beamed at them. An encouraging teacher, showing her students that she knew they wouldn’t let her down. ‘What have you got for me? Holly?’
‘I’ve done as you suggested and phoned round the major literary agents and publishers to find out if they’d been approached recently by Miranda Barton. Or by Tony Ferdinand on her behalf.’ Holly had a sheet of paper in front of her. Vera could see a list of names, a neat tick by each one. Organized and efficient, that was Holly.
‘And?’
‘Nothing. And they say they’d have remembered if Ferdinand had been in touch.’ She paused. ‘But according to the people I spoke to, it’s not unusual for authors who haven’t been published recently to use a pseudonym. Apparently editors are more willing to take a chance on a new writer than someone who’s been knocking around for a while.’
Vera thought that was much the same in most professions. Easier to pin your hopes on the bright young things than cynical has-beens. ‘So?’ she demanded again.