‘Lily Marsh was his first target. She was threatening to make life difficult for Calvert. We know she was starting to get awkward. That was why she turned up with James to look at the cottage. She assumed Felicity would tell her husband Lily had been there and he’d realize it was a threat.
She imagined Clive in the bungalow in North Shields, Calvert’s words rattling around in his head, planning the murders while his mother watched television game shows in the other room. Obsessing about it, as he obsessed about birds and friendship. ‘He played chess,’ she said. ‘He used to play with the Calvert boy. He worked out the moves in this drama well in advance.’
‘So why Luke Armstrong? And why was he killed first?’
‘He had to be. Stringer didn’t want Calvert implicated in any way with the murders. By making Luke Armstrong the first victim, he thought we’d concentrate on the boy in our search for a motive.’
‘So the first victim could have been anyone? Stringer chose him at random to throw us off the scent?’
‘No. It wasn’t random. Stringer would never have worked himself up to commit murder unless he’d convinced himself that Calvert needed him, but I think he was glad of an excuse to kill Luke. He blamed him for Tom Sharp’s death. Lots of people did. He looked on Tom as a brother. As I said the Sharps were his surrogate family. And he was there when Gary was talking about his plans to go out with Julie, so he knew she wouldn’t be in the house that Wednesday night. Perhaps he saw it as a sign, decided it was time for him to make a move. He didn’t know about Laura, though, didn’t know she was there when Luke let him in. Gary told him later that Luke had a sister and she’d been in the house.’
‘So that’s why he abducted her?’
‘Nah,’ Vera said. ‘He’d started to enjoy it. Being in control for the first time in his life.’
‘And he got the idea for the flowers from Tom Sharp’s memorial on the Tyne?’
‘Maybe. He knew the best way to keep Calvert out of the frame was if the police considered the two murders as one case, the random killings of a madman. They had to be linked. That was the reason for the flowers, the water. I don’t see Stringer as naturally theatrical. The posed bodies and the dressing of the scene was part of the plan.’
‘You wouldn’t think he’d have that much imagination,’ Joe said.
‘Well, he didn’t dream it all up himself, did he, pet?’ Vera poured herself another drink, hoped Joe was too distracted with thoughts of the baby to notice. ‘He got the idea from that bloody story. Parr’s story. The one that almost had us convinced he was the murderer. In that the victim was strangled. How did Parr describe it? “Like an embrace”? And then the corpse was laid out in water. Clive had the book in his room when I visited the house. But it was in paperback. A different edition from the one I’d borrowed from the library. A different jacket. I didn’t take it in at the time. He took his mother’s bath oil to put in the water in the Armstrongs’ house. When I looked round the Stringers’ bungalow there were only male toiletries in the bathroom. I should have noticed.’
She reached out and finished her drink. Her third? Or her fourth? ‘As I said, it was all planned. Very carefully. He knew Calvert had sent Lily a card with a pressed flower. So he sent one to Luke.’
In the distance her neighbour was calling her hens to be locked into the coop for the night, rattling a bowl of mash with a spoon to bring them in. The stupid woman had names for them all, cried when they had to wring their necks. Vera took the carcasses off her to casserole.
‘He stole a car to get there. We checked car-hire firms, but not stolen vehicles. I was taken in by him, never had him down as a thief, but he’d knocked around with the Sharps for long enough to realize how it was done. He’d been good at it at one time, I heard today. Supplied cars for Davy on and off when he was still at school. Gave up when Calvert got him the job at the museum. After killing Luke, he dropped the vehicle back in Shields. If he’d stopped there we’d never have tracked him down. But that wasn’t the object, of course. The object was killing Lily Marsh, saving Calvert’s marriage, making himself indispensable.’
‘Did he kill her in the cottage at Fox Mill?’ Ashworth asked. Interested enough at least to put the question, drawn into the story despite himself.
‘He must have done. How else would he get a woman like that alone? He wrote her a note, perhaps. Forged Calvert’s writing or did it on his computer. We might never know. But I’m sure he was there. I phoned Felicity Calvert this afternoon. When I pressed her she remembered seeing a white Land Rover in the lane when she was bringing James home from school. Given long enough the CSIs would find a trace of him.’
‘The white Land Rover’ Ashworth said. ‘Stolen from Northumbria Water. That was how he got her body into the gully.’
‘He took it from the depot,’ she said angrily. ‘Nobody missed it until I asked them to check. That was what Davy Sharp was phoning up for yesterday. He’d heard that Clive had been stealing again. Couldn’t understand it when he had so much to lose. He’d heard that the girl had been abducted. With the Land Rover he could get all the way to the gully over the grass and rocks. That was why nobody saw him with Lily’s body.’
Now, she was starting to feel properly tired, starting to relax. One more drink and she might sleep tonight. ‘Clive must have gone back to Seaton, watched the house, maybe from the footpath by the pond. Seen Laura. He was a regular there. He’d been birdwatching in the area since he was a lad. If anyone saw him with binoculars it wouldn’t register with them. The birders are a part of the scenery. The day of the abduction he’d have followed her almost to the bus stop, waited until the road was quiet. She was a skinny little thing, easy enough to overpower. He’d never had a girlfriend. Imagine the fantasies, as he lay awake at night reading that book. She’d have fascinated him. Especially as she was so similar to the figure in Parr’s story. He’d have justified it to himself – that she might have seen him the night he was there with Luke, or he needed to throw our attentions back on the Armstrongs because we were getting so close to Calvert. But that wasn’t why he went out early in the morning to take her while she was on her way to school. He kept her alive, because he liked the thought of having her there for him. He locked her in the boot of the car he’d stolen while he went into work and established his alibi. And all the time he was planning the murder, how it would look. How beautiful she would look when she was dead. He took flexi time and left early, took her up the coast to Deepden and locked her in the ringing hut.’
‘But he intended to kill her?’
‘Certainly. He had the flowers with him.’
Ashworth finished his drink, looked at his watch. ‘I’ll get back. Hospital visiting. And Sarah’s mam’s had Katie all afternoon. It’ll be good to have everyone together at home tomorrow.’
Vera watched him walk to his car, the champagne in one hand, the flowers in the other. Thought that if she’d been married to someone like Joe Ashworth, she’d be so bored she’d commit murder herself.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Helen Pepper for all her advice on crime-scene management.
As ever, any mistakes are mine.
Ann Cleeves
Ann Cleeves worked as a probation officer, bird observatory cook and auxiliary coastguard before she started writing. She now promotes reading for Kirklees Libraries and as Harrogate Crime Writing Festival’s reader in residence, and is also a member of ‘Murder Squad’, working with other northern writers to promote crime fiction. In 2006 Ann was awarded the Duncan Lawrie Dagger for Best Crime Novel for
