‘That night, we talked. She’d drunk a couple of bottles of Rioja, but I persuaded her to return to the farmhouse and make her peace with Mike. Not a sensible plan, but I didn’t have much experience of marital discord. To be honest, I didn’t have much experience of women, full stop.’ He hesitated, but Hannah’s sympathetic expression encouraged him to continue. ‘I’d only had one significant relationship, and that ended when my girlfriend decided to become a nun. Niamh went home, but she and Mike started arguing again. In the end, she hit him, and blacked his eye.’
Hannah noticed Greg fighting a losing battle to keep a straight face. He loved that line about the girlfriend who fled to a nunnery, rather than get involved with such an ugly bugger.
‘Did her husband retaliate?’
‘Yes, it’s in his nature. An eye for an eye, that’s his philosophy, that’s why I’ve never had a civil word from him, even though Niamh is long-since cold in her grave. He grabbed hold of her arms, and finished up breaking one of them and having to drive her to A and E.’
Kit paused to let his words sink in, but Hannah motioned for him to continue.
‘The next day, I phoned to see how she was, and she told me what he’d done. I was horrified. She needed a shoulder to cry on, and I offered mine. One thing led to another, and within a week she’d walked out on Hinds and moved in with me.’
‘Together with Orla and Callum?’
‘Yes; my life changed overnight. She swept me off my feet, there’s no other way of describing it. Niamh was a challenge, but I was ecstatic. I did everything I could to make her happy to the very end.’ He swallowed, as if embarrassed. ‘As for the children, their rightful place was with their mother, and staying at Lane End Farm wasn’t an option. I was glad to take in the kids, but it was tough on them. Especially on Callum, who resented me for muscling in on their lives. You have to remember, the boy was young.’
‘The two of you had a difficult relationship?’
‘I can’t pretend otherwise, no sense in rewriting history. I was an ignoramus when it came to children. I don’t mind admitting, I made mistakes.’
‘What sort of mistakes?’ Greg had conquered his laughing fit.
‘Oh, I was naive enough to expect them to be polite and well behaved. Orla was no trouble, but Callum made a nuisance of himself at every opportunity. Unfortunately, Niamh refused to let me discipline him.’
Greg exchanged a glance with Hannah. ‘Discipline him how?’
‘Mike Hinds thrashed Callum whenever he stepped out of line, but the one and only time I tapped him on the backside, he ran off to complain to his father, and Mike made a huge fuss. Talk about double standards.’
‘What had Callum done?’
‘He found some beer — I suspected Mike gave it to him, but he refused to admit it. After knocking back the booze, he went out and broke several caravan windows. A stupid act of vandalism. Not hugely important in the scheme of things, perhaps, but embarrassing for me.’
‘When was this?’
‘The week before he disappeared.’
‘Do you think the incident played any part in his disappearance?’
‘Certainly not. The very idea is ridiculous!’
Hannah and Greg kept their mouths shut. Kit’s lower lip was quivering. Perhaps he feared that he’d protested too much.
‘Listen, Chief Inspector, Callum took it in his stride, I can assure you. Mike beat him countless times. I only gave him a single slap.’
‘I see.’ Greg made it sound as though Kit had coughed to grievous bodily harm. ‘So were you really surprised when Callum went missing?’
As Kit opened his mouth, they heard the door open, and a woman’s voice called out.
‘Seen that husband of mine, sweetie?’
Sally Madsen swept on to the balcony. She reeked of perfume, and her white top and shorts displayed acres of orange flesh; she must spend half her life on a sunbed. ‘Sorry, Chief Inspector, didn’t realise Kit was busy.’
‘If Gareth isn’t in his office, he can’t be far away,’ Kit Payne said. ‘We are getting together with Bryan for a sandwich lunch to review the month’s sales figures.’
‘Thanks, sweetie. I only wanted to see if he needed the Merc this afternoon. My little runabout is in for repair.’ Sally Madsen gave a smile so brilliant that Hannah became convinced she’d invested in cosmetic dentistry. ‘Sorry to interrupt. Have fun!’
She left as quickly as she had arrived, but the dynamics of the interview had been wrecked. Sod’s law. Kit had been rocking on his heels, and Sally Madsen’s fortuitous arrival had given him time to regroup.
‘In your first statement to the police,’ Greg said, ‘you admitted you’d had a disagreement with the boy, but you downplayed it. You certainly didn’t mention that you had hit him.’
‘It was a tap, not a beating.’
On the path below the balcony, two couples and their fresh-faced children in tennis kit were knocking a ball back and forth between them. Happy families, but who knew what tensions festered beneath the smiles and chatter?
‘What made you decide Callum’s uncle killed him?’
‘Philip was the last person to see the boy alive, and he committed suicide after a police interrogation. What else could anyone think?’
Convenient, Hannah thought. If Philip hadn’t been tried and found guilty in the court of public opinion, more questions would have been asked about Callum’s relationship with his stepfather.
‘Mr Hinds told us that, when they were small, Orla and Callum loved playing together in the grain. So they were close?’
‘Orla told me about the grain — it stuck in her memory, poor girl. She looked up to Callum, but most of the time he regarded her as a nuisance. I hate to say it, but he was patronising and sarcastic by nature. As well as rather sly.’
Apart from that, a lovely lad, Hannah reflected. ‘How did Orla react when her brother vanished?’
‘She was a dreamer.’ Kit drained his glass of water in a single gulp. His mouth must have been very dry. ‘A fantasist. She seemed to see it all as something out of a storybook.’
‘She was in denial?’
‘In a matter of days she lost her brother and uncle. She found it hard to take in.’
‘When did she give up on the idea that Callum might still be alive?’
‘With hindsight, I’m not sure she ever did. After a year or two, she stopped talking about him. But recently, I discovered she still clung to the belief that he might turn up, safe and sound.’
The sun was grilling Hannah’s forehead. She blinked in the glare, wishing she’d had the foresight to bring a hat. Greg was sprawled out in his chair, soaking up the heat like a holidaymaker. Kit had pushed his own chair back into the shade.
‘How recently?’
‘Oh, since she came back to Keswick. She phoned me one night, when she’d had a skinful. It was like rewinding the years, and trying to make sense of Niamh in her cups. After a few drinks, it was impossible to reason with either of them.’
‘What did she say?’
‘She insisted Callum wasn’t dead, said she’d never accepted that Philip was capable of harming a hair on his head.’
‘Did she explain herself?’
‘Not at all. She seemed to be on a high, and kept repeating,
‘In what way?’
‘She still maintained Philip was a scapegoat, but when I pressed her on why she’d said Callum was alive, she refused to give a straight answer. It was as if she’d suffered a massive disappointment. She seemed desperate to talk about something else, anything else.’
‘When was this?’
