‘Why? What’s happened?’ His voice sounded strange, a little blurred. She wondered if he’d been drinking.
‘I can’t really discuss it now. Peter’s just come home, if you’d like to talk to him.’ She kept her voice light and easy as she always did when there was a possibility of being overheard.
‘No. It’s you I wanted.’
‘Are you all right?’ she asked. ‘Where have you been all day?’
He didn’t answer immediately. She heard Peter calling her from the kitchen, put her hand over the receiver and shouted back, ‘I’m just on the phone. Won’t be a minute. Stick the kettle on, will you?’
Still there was no response from Samuel.
‘Where have you been?’ she asked again.
‘I thought you might have worked it out.’ It was the sort of thing he might have said when they were alone together. Teasing. Implying a shared understanding. But now he just sounded bitter.
‘Are you all right?’ she said. ‘Is something wrong?’
‘I need to see you.’
‘I don’t think that’ll be possible,’ she said. ‘Not this evening.’ She’d forgotten all about her plans to accuse him of keeping the secret about Peter’s affair with Lily Marsh. Forgotten the bubbles of lust which had sustained her since they’d got together, made her smile to herself when nobody was looking. Now she wanted to extricate herself from the relationship as soon as possible and with as much dignity as she could manage. With this phone call, she was starting to consider Samuel as a liability.
‘It’s the twentieth anniversary of Claire’s death,’ he said.
Of course, she thought, that had been mid-summer too. She remembered the funeral. A still, humid day. Swarms of insects under the trees as they waited outside the church. The awkwardness, because suicide was such an embarrassing form of bereavement. She’d felt almost that they should be commiserating with Samuel for being dumped. Later they’d brought him home with them and he’d described finding his wife. ‘She looked more peaceful than I’d seen her for months. Her hair floating around her face.’
She had a sudden shock, as she realized he could be talking about the recent victims, then she pushed away the picture of Samuel as a murderer. Samuel was a gentle man. He wouldn’t hurt a fly. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I should have remembered.’ She knew he was waiting for her to agree to meet him, and for a moment she hesitated. Perhaps she should go to him. Just as a concerned friend. James had switched on the television in the living room. She heard the signature tune of an early evening soap. Peter yelled from the kitchen that tea was ready. This was the important stuff, she thought. The everyday trivia of family life. This was worth fighting for. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘I’m really sorry but I can’t. Things are difficult here. The police took Peter in for questioning last night. Are you sure you don’t want to talk to him?’
Samuel didn’t answer.
‘Everything’s such a mess,’ he said at last.
‘Where are you?’ she asked.
‘Forget it.’ More bitter than she’d ever heard him. He switched off his phone.
Peter had made her Earl Grey, with a splash of milk, just as she liked it. ‘Who was that?’
She hesitated for only a moment. ‘Samuel. He sounded a bit upset. It’s the anniversary of Claire’s death. I tried to get him to speak to you.’
‘I’ll talk to him later.’
‘That young detective was here this afternoon. Another young woman has gone missing.’
Peter carefully set down his cup, but she could tell the news had upset him. Perhaps it reminded him of Lily.
‘Do they think that has anything to do with the murders?’
‘That was what Ashworth suggested. He wanted to know where I’d been this morning.’
‘They’ve been trying to track me down all day.’ Peter leaned back in his chair, stretched, implying that he’d been so busy that he was exhausted.
‘Where were you?’
‘A meeting. Extremely tedious and abysmally chaired, which is why it went on so long.’
‘Really?’
‘You can’t think I had anything to do with this abduction?’
‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘Of course not. Not that. I went into Morpeth this morning. I tried to phone you. But I couldn’t get hold of you either.’
‘You suspected I was with another woman?’
‘I’m sorry. It did cross my mind.’
‘Never again,’ he said. ‘I promise I’ll never do that again.’ He moved his head to take in the house, James in the next room, the view of the garden. ‘This is all too important.’ She realized he was echoing the thought she’d had earlier, when she was talking to Samuel.
After dinner, she and Peter watched television with James. Later, they went together to put the boy to bed, then they took their drinks onto the veranda and watched the huge orange sun floating low over the hills to the west. Peter seemed anxious, preoccupied. He returned several times to the subject of the abducted young woman. What else had Ashworth told her?
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Really. But if they find her and catch the person who took her, you’ll be in the clear, won’t you? It’ll all be over.’
But that thought seemed to give him no comfort. He couldn’t settle. At one point he went into the house to make a phone call. She assumed it was to Samuel.
‘How was he?’ she asked when he returned.
‘I don’t know.’ Peter was frowning. ‘He wasn’t answering.’
The police officers arrived just as it was getting dark. She’d never met them before. She’d locked the front door and they walked round the side of the house, a man and a woman. They seemed impossibly young to her, gauche, inarticulate, though they made every effort to be polite.
‘Sergeant Ashworth said we could watch the mill race from here. You told him it would be OK?’
‘Did I?’ She couldn’t really remember what she’d agreed to.
‘Perhaps there’s a front room upstairs? We could watch from there.’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Anything we can do to help.’
They were still in the spare bedroom when Peter and Felicity went to bed. She saw them sitting in the dark, peering out over the meadow towards the cottage. There was a moon now. It didn’t give enough light to see detail, but would be enough to make out somebody moving as a shadow. But what will they do, if someone does turn up? Felicity wondered. They’re hardly more than children.
She made them a flask of coffee and some sandwiches. They thanked her, keeping their eyes on the window.
She must have fallen asleep before Peter. She was aware of him lying next to her, very still, trying not to disturb her.
Chapter Forty
It was mid-afternoon when the search team found Laura’s shoe. It was in a ditch by the side of the road, not very far from the bus stop. They’d started close to Julie’s house in Seaton and followed the line of the footpath, spreading out across the field which was all stubble now. The residents of Laurel Avenue watched them from the upstairs windows, saw them as black figures against the bright sunlight and the gold of the cut field. The officers moved in sequence like dancers in a slow, elaborate ballet, their shadows shifting as the day wore on.
It must have occurred to some of the team, after being at it for so long, that they’d find nothing. Vera thought that in this situation she might find it hard to keep up her concentration; she’d start thinking of home and a shower, a cold beer. But when they hit the road the team didn’t stop. They moved along the hawthorn hedge and down the ditch, which was almost dry now. They were still focused. They just stood up occasionally to stretch or rub an aching back. They worked almost in complete silence. Even after the discovery of the shoe they continued all the way along the verge to the big roundabout on the outskirts of Whitley Bay.
