On arriving at reception, she was greeted by the familiar aromas of old age and disinfectant. When she gave her name to the spotty teenager at the desk, the Polish girl she’d met on her last visit was summoned.
Kasia’s manner was subdued, verging on grumpy. Without looking directly at Hannah, she said, ‘You have heard about Mrs Friend?’
Hannah felt her throat constrict. Easy to guess what was coming.
‘What about her?’
‘She died last night.’ Kasia was pale, and Hannah suspected she minded suffering too much to work in a place like this, where death often came to visit. But she hoped the young woman would not change. ‘Very peaceful, she…slipped away.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘This weather.’ Kasia’s voice hardened, as if she’d found something to blame for her melancholy. ‘It is not good for the residents. Not merely cold, but damp as well. Unhealthy.’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know.’
‘I liked her,’ Kasia said. ‘You should not have favourites, it is not good. But I cannot help it.’
‘Don’t be hard on yourself, it’s human nature.’ Hannah considered. ‘What happens to her things?’
‘There is a niece in Shropshire. She saw Daphne once or twice. It was a duty, I think. She said she was too busy with her family, and her job.’
‘Did Daphne keep any papers, anything about her daughter?’
‘The girl who died?’ Kasia was sombre. ‘Nothing much. Only a few books.’
Books, there was no escaping them.
‘May I have a quick look?’
A tired flap of the hand. ‘You are the police, you can do whatever you wish.’
‘If only.’ Hannah smiled. ‘I’m grateful for your help, I won’t keep you long.’
Kasia led her to a storeroom. Daphne’s worldly goods had been bundled into a handful of brown-paper parcels loosely tied with red string, and a large, battle-scarred suitcase. Not much to show for seventy-one years, but it would make no difference if the old lady had left a house as full of rare treasures as Crag Gill. Stuart Wagg was no less dead than Daphne Friend.
‘Her clothes are in the suitcase.’ Kasia started to open the parcels. ‘The books and her reading glasses are in here.’
There were a couple of dozen books. Three Catherine Cooksons, and a handful of well-read Liverpool sagas. Most of the remaining novels were different, not least because their spines weren’t cracking with wear. The Shipping News, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Midnight’s Children, The Ghost Road, and among the shiny paperbacks, a pristine, dust-jacketed copy of Possession.
Call herself a detective? After all these years of sleeping with a bookseller, she had glanced at the titles in Daphne’s bookcase, and still failed to appreciate the wild variation in tastes. Of course, the same reader could love both Catherine Cookson and Pat Barker. It wasn’t breaking any rules. But really, was Daphne Friend a likely fan of Salman Rushdie? Hannah picked up Possession. It was the only book by AS Byatt she’d ever read, mainly because she’d watched the film on TV with Marc, a sort of detective story that wasn’t about professional detectives.
She began to flick through it, but didn’t get past the title page. Under Byatt’s name a gift inscription was scrawled in a round, extravagant hand that she recognised from the Christmas card the same woman had sent to Marc.
To my darling Bethany, who knows that Possession is nine points of the law.
With all my love, Cassie.
Cassie was a born teller of tales. She had it alclass="underline" soft, husky voice, and a gift for keeping him on tenterhooks for the next chapter of her story. And God, she was good to look at, as she talked with her long lids half-closing her eyes. The T-shirt had ridden up, showing a flat stomach. Her skin was smooth and without a blemish, the rise and fall of her breasts hypnotic. Forget the booze, a man could get drunk on the sight of her.
‘More champagne?’ she asked.
‘Don’t stop talking. Please.’
She’d never known her father; she’d been conceived after an alcohol-fuelled kids’ party. Her mum was a week past her fifteenth birthday when she was born; and her grandparents threw her out the moment they learnt she was pregnant. Mum did her best to look after her; she drank and did drugs, and was a lousy judge of men, but she was intelligent, and she loved to read to her little girl at bedtime — Cassie owed her passion for stories to those precious times together. But at school, the other kids taunted her because of the rumours that her mum screwed old blokes for money.
‘I never believed the gossip, until the day the police came to school and told me that Mum was dead. One of the dirty old men had buried a kitchen knife in her throat.’
‘Jesus,’ Marc breathed.
‘I refused to believe what had happened, screamed myself sick until they let me see her body. They’d done their best to hide the wounds, but…’
‘It must have…’
‘Every night after that,’ she interrupted, ‘my dreams were haunted by the sight of her. Visions of blood gushing from her jugular vein.’
‘It’s…’
‘The man who murdered her was a neighbour, and a client, too. He stank of cigarettes and sweat. Mum wanted me to call him Uncle Bob, but I never did. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter, reckoned that Mum waved the knife at him when she was high on heroin, after he told her he was going back to his wife. He said he’d grabbed the knife from her, but somehow it finished up in her neck. He wept in the dock and said he’d loved the woman he’d killed. Lying bastard. They gave him nine years, but he died of a coronary within six months. He really didn’t suffer enough for what he did.’
‘I understand how you must feel,’ Marc said.
‘Do you? Do you really, Marc?’ She shook her head. ‘Love and pain, where does one end, and the other begin? I was so mixed up that every relationship I ever had, I destroyed. I wanted to give my love, and ended up hurting people.’
‘Don’t be so hard on yourself,’ he muttered.
A demure smile. ‘Marc, you’re not drinking.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Give me your glass.’ She reached out towards the table. Her gentle persistence reminded him of a nurse administering medicine to a recalcitrant patient. ‘Let me go to the kitchen and fix you a refill.’
Hannah’s phone sang as she climbed into the Lexus. On the screen, Daniel’s number flashed.
‘Sorry, I don’t want you to think I’m stalking you.’
I wish.
Hey, police officers were supposed to be unshockable, though sometimes she shocked herself with the stuff swirling around in her subconscious. A shrink would have a field day.
‘No problem, Daniel.’
‘Are you all right? You sound far away.’
‘We are in the endgame.’
‘You know about the car, then?’
‘What car?’
‘I heard the radio news soon after Louise and I arrived home. The reporter said the police are looking for a small purple car in connection with Stuart Wagg’s death.’
‘For elimination purposes, at least. A farm worker noticed the vehicle hidden away near Crag Gill at about the time someone was stuffing Wagg down the well.’
‘Chances are, it’s a coincidence, but guess who drove a small purple car this week?’
‘Tell me.’
He couldn’t resist a ham actor’s pause. Building the suspense.
‘Arlo Denstone. He parked it in the Fold when he visited Tarn Cottage, chasing after the text of my talk.’
Hannah’s fingers tapped against the steering wheel as this sank in.
‘On the morning that Louise walked out on Stuart Wagg?’
‘Correct.’
‘Why did he need your talk if he hadn’t even paid the printers for their last job?’
‘Good question. What answer would you give?’
‘Perhaps he had another reason for calling on you.’
‘Excellent.’ She might have been one of his students, back at Oxford. Those lucky kids, she envied them. ‘Such as?’
‘Did Arlo say where he was going after he left Brackdale?’