Sam wandered back from inspecting cast-iron pans to ask who’d called.
‘The police again. Nothing important. I said we’d be in later.’
They had lunch in a French restaurant near the Quayside. The chef had worked for them in Kimmerston for a while and seemed pleased to see them. The food was simple and well prepared. Annie found she was hungry and drank more than her share of a bottle of wine. Sam kept topping up her glass. ‘I’ll drive, and I can go into Kimmerston later if Lizzie needs a lift.’ When they came out into the city afternoon there was a grey drizzle, so they could hardly see the far bank of the Tyne. The Baltic art gallery was a block of shadow and the reflective glass of the Sage Gateshead was a faint shimmer in the gloom.
‘Perhaps that’s it,’ Sam said. ‘We’ve had our summer.’
In the car he asked Annie to phone Lizzie. ‘We might as well pick her up on our way through.’
‘Oh, I’m not sure. Perhaps I should just text.’
‘Don’t be daft. All this texting. Why don’t folk just talk any more?’
So she dialled Lizzie’s number, but it went straight through to voicemail. She didn’t leave a message.
‘Not answering? Halfway to getting pissed, maybe.’ Sam stared at the road. He put most of Lizzie’s troubles down to booze. Annie remembered Lizzie’s tempers when she was still a child, the yelling and the swearing. She hadn’t been drinking then. Annie thought her daughter’s problems were more complicated than either of them had realized. She sent a text: On our way back if you want a lift as we go through. This time there was no answer.
When they arrived back at Valley Farm, Vera Stanhope’s Land Rover was parked in the courtyard. ‘Blasted woman!’ Sam was mumbling under his breath. ‘I thought we might have escaped her.’ There was no light in their house, and Annie had worked out that Lizzie should be back in Gilswick and they should have passed her as they drove up the lane, if she’d got the bus.
She opened the door and shouted up, just in case she’d got a lift from a mate or a taxi, ‘Lizzie, we’re back!’
No response.
‘I told you,’ Sam said. ‘She’ll be pissed. Or worse.’ His belief in the miracle of prison seemed to be fading already. ‘Ring her again.’
Annie pressed redial on her mobile, but there was still no reply. Sam switched the kettle on. There was a tap on the back door. ‘Come in!’ they shouted together, but when they turned it wasn’t Lizzie, who would have come straight in anyway, but the huge bulk of Vera Stanhope.
Chapter Forty
Monday morning and they were back in the valley. On her first visit Vera had seen it as idyllic. Now the steep hills rising on either side of the burn and the fact that the lane disappeared into a dead-end made her feel trapped, so claustrophobic that she felt like screaming. The drizzle had closed in behind her as she left the village and now she could see no way out. She hoped the case would soon be over and that she’d never have to come here again. She waited outside Gilswick Hall for Joe and Holly. The Carswells had been in touch saying that their first grandchild – a little girl – had been born and they’d be home the following week. She imagined that they’d slide back into their routines and responsibilities. The garden and the dogs. The magistrates’ bench and the WRVS. They’d remain aloof from their neighbours in the farm conversion. Still lords of the manor in spirit, if not in name. As distant as if they were still in Australia.
Joe and Holly arrived in the same car. Vera thought Holly looked pale, frozen. They stood for a moment on the gravel outside the big house. ‘Let’s go into the kitchen.’ Vera started for the door. She had no real plan and a reluctance to venture further up the valley to face the retired hedonists. ‘The CSIs have finished downstairs, and it’s daft to get wet before we start.’
Inside there was the background warmth of the Aga. Vera stood with her back to it, toasting her bum. There was still fingerprint powder around the back door and the window ledges. ‘They didn’t find any sign of a break-in.’
She nodded to the chairs by the table. ‘You might as well take the weight off your feet.’ Now, in the warm room, she’d lost any sense of urgency. The cosiness of the place made her think of tea, hot crumpets dripping with butter.
‘What’s all this about?’ Joe was scratchy after a whole evening at home. He pretended to love his time with the bairns, but he could only take so much. Vera knew he used work as an excuse when Sal started making demands.
‘We decided last night our killer must be someone who knows the valley well.’ She paused. ‘Hol did some digging for me, while you were off playing Happy Families. She made some interesting connections.’ She moved away from the Aga and joined them at the table. ‘Show him, Hol.’
‘A connection’s not a motive, though, is it?’ Joe was at his most churlish. He’d looked at the records and seen this was a breakthrough, but was too childish to congratulate Holly on her work. ‘What’s the plan?’
Vera didn’t like to admit that she had no plan. ‘It’s too early to make an arrest. I want to speak to our respectable friends in Valley Farm again. Let’s make it a bit more formal this time. We don’t have the grounds to take them to the station, and anyway the press would have a field day if we interviewed them there. But let’s bring them down here. One at a time. Get them out of their comfort zone.’ Making up a strategy as she went along. Lazy policing. She turned to Joe. ‘Nip back to the village, would you? Get some essential supplies. Tea, coffee and milk.’ She could tell he was starting to sulk because she’d asked him and not Holly. It served him right and she shouted after him, ‘And biscuits. But not Rich Teas. I can’t stand Rich Teas.’
They called Nigel Lucas in first. Vera phoned him. It was hard to tell when he answered what he made of the summons. He had a veneer of good humour, slick and shiny, that he never seemed to lose. ‘Of course, Inspector, if you think it would help.’
He knocked at the kitchen door and looked around him as he came in. Vera could tell he’d never been in the house before and that he was disappointed. He’d been expecting something grander, more in keeping with the squire’s residence. They’d set out the big kitchen table as if they were conducting an interview: the three of them on one side and Lucas on the other. There were glasses and a jug of water. Vera had already said they wouldn’t be wasting the chocolate biscuits on the witnesses. Holly was furthest away from Lucas and she was taking notes. Vera had decided on Lucas first because she’d thought this would be the most difficult conversation. There was a confidence she couldn’t break unless she had to – and she still couldn’t see that Lorraine’s illness was relevant – so it would all be about choosing the right words.
He sat, waiting for her to break the silence. The room must have seemed warm to him, coming in from the cold, and he’d taken off his jacket and was sitting in shirt sleeves. There was a sheen of sweat on his forehead.
‘We’re confused about the latest killing.’ Vera gave a little shake of her head. ‘Shirley Hewarth. She wasn’t stabbed where she was found. So why bring her to the valley? I’m wondering if the murderer was trying to tell us something.’
‘To implicate us, you mean?’
‘Aye, maybe. Any reason they’d want to do that?’ Vera leaned forward, her elbows on the table. She could feel the grain of the wood on her skin.
‘None at all. We get on very well with other people in the village.’
‘Had you met Shirley Hewarth? Had you seen her in court? She used to go sometimes with her clients. I understand you sit on the bench.’
‘I’ve not long completed my training,’ Lucas said. ‘I’ve been in a few times to observe. It’s fascinating, I must say, Inspector. I certainly don’t remember meeting Mrs Hewarth.’