Leave the Grave Green

hands. “I’ll see you get your things back, Sharon. She would want you—” Bloody hell, now he was doing it. “Mrs. Swann would like you to have them,” he corrected himself.

Her response, when it came, surprised him. “Those things I said, the other night… well, I’ve been thinking.” In the fading light he caught a quick flash of her eyes before she looked away from him again. “It wasn’t right, what I said. You know. About her…”

“About Julia having killed Connor, is that what you mean?”

She nodded, picking idly at a spot on the front of her sweatshirt. “I don’t know why I said it. I wanted to hit at someone, I guess.” After a moment she continued in a tone of discovery, “I think I wanted to believe she was as awful as Con said. It made me feel better. Safer.”

“And now?” Kincaid asked, and when she didn’t answer he continued, “You had no reason for making those accusations? Con never said anything that made you think Julia might have threatened him?”

Shaking her head, she said so softly that he had to lean close to catch it, “No.” She smelled of Pears soap, and the good, clean ordinariness of it suddenly squeezed at his throat.

The twilight deepened, and from some of the cottage windows came the blue flicker of televisions. Kincaid imagined the pensioners, all women that he had seen, having their evening meals early so that they could settle down in front of the box, uninterrupted, isolated from themselves as well as one another. He gave a tiny shudder, shaking off the wave of melancholy that threatened him, like a dog coming out of water. Why should he begrudge them their comfort, after all?

Beside him, Sharon stirred and pulled the cardigan a little closer about her. Rubbing his hands together to warm them, he turned to her, saying briskly, “One more thing, Sharon, and then you’d better go in before you catch a chill. We have a witness who’s certain he saw Connor at the Red Lion in Wargrave after he left you that night. Con met a man who fits the description of Tommy Godwin, an old friend of the Ashertons. Do you know him, or did you ever hear Con mention him?”

He could almost hear her thinking as she sat beside him in the dark, and he thought that if he looked closely enough he would see her brow furrowed in concentration. “No,” she said eventually, “I never did.” She turned to him, pulling her knee up on the bench so that she could face him directly. “Did they… were they having a row?”

“According to the witness, it was not a particularly friendly meeting. Why?”

She put her hand to her mouth, nibbling at the nail of her index finger. Nail-biting was a form of self-mutilation that had never tempted Kincaid, and it always made him wince for the damaged flesh. He waited, lacing his own fingers together to stop himself from pulling her hand away from her mouth.

“I thought it was me made him angry,” she said in a rush. “He came back that night. He wasn’t pleased to see me—he wanted to know why hadn’t I gone back to Gran’s, like I said.” She touched Kincaid’s sleeve. “That’s why I didn’t say anything before. I felt such a bloody fool.”

Kincaid patted her hand. “Why hadn’t you gone home?”

“Oh, I did. But Gran’s bridge finished early—one of the old ladies felt a bit ill—so I came back. I was sorry I’d left in a huff before. I thought he’d be glad to see me and we could—” She gulped, unable to go on, but what she had hoped was painfully clear to Kincaid without any further elaboration.

“Was he drunk?”

“He’d had a few, but he wasn’t proper pissed, not really.”

“And he didn’t tell you where he’d been or who he’d seen?”

Sharon shook her head. “’E said, ‘What are you doing here?’ and walked past me like I was a piece of bloody furniture or something.”

“Then what? Tell me bit by bit, everything you can remember.”

Closing her eyes, she thought for a moment, then began obediently, “He went into the kitchen and fixed himself a drink—”

“Not to the drinks trolley?” asked Kincaid, remembering the plethora of bottles.

“Oh, that was just for show. Company. Con drank whiskey and he always kept a bottle on the kitchen counter,” she said, then continued more slowly. “He came back into the sitting room and I noticed he kept rubbing at his throat. ‘Are you all right?’ I asked him. ‘You’re not feeling ill, love?’ But he didn’t answer. He went upstairs into the study and closed the door.”

“Did you follow him?” Kincaid asked when she lapsed into silence.

“I didn’t know what to do. I’d started up the stairs when I heard him talking—he must have rung someone.” She looked at Kincaid and even in the dim reflected light he could see her distress. “He was laughing. That’s what I couldn’t understand. Why would he laugh when he’d hardly said boo to me?

“When he came downstairs again, he said, ‘I’m going out, Shar. Lock up when you leave.’ Well, I’d had enough by that time, I can tell you. I told him to lock his own bloody door—I wasn’t hanging about to be treated like a bloody tart, was I? I told him if he wanted to see me he could pick up the sodding phone and ring me, and I’d think about it if I hadn’t anything better to do.”

“What did Connor say to that?”

“’E just stood there, his face all blank, like he hadn’t heard a word I said.”

Kincaid had heard Sharon in full fury, and he thought Connor must have been very preoccupied indeed. “And did you? Leave, I mean?”

“Well, I had to, hadn’t I? What else was I to do?”

“The scene definitely called for a grand exit,” said Kincaid, smiling.

Sharon smiled back a little reluctantly. “I slammed the bloody door so hard I ripped my nail right off. Hurt like hell, too.”

“So you didn’t actually see him leave the flat?”