She’d opened a bottle of Merlot and was a couple of glasses into it. She felt happier than she’d been for months.
Recently most of her work had been routine, boring. This was different and a challenge, something to pick over when she spent the evening on her own, something other than a gloomy play on Radio 4 to occupy her mind. God, she thought. I’m a sad old bat. She did feel some guilt in taking such a delight in a bonny lad’s death. She liked Julie, thought she couldn’t have done any better by the boy. But none of that stopped her relishing the case, the unusual details of the crime scene. She had few other pleasures in her life. She sat by the open window until it was dark and the wine bottle was almost empty.
The next day she brought her team together and she talked about Luke as if she’d known him.
‘You’ll have met the sort. A bit slow. You’d speak to him and you’d not be sure he’d understood. Say it again and you’d still wonder if he was any the wiser. Not a nasty lad, though. Soft-hearted. Generous. Good with the old folks in the home where his mother works. On the edge of trouble. Not bright enough to get into bother on his own account, but not bright enough either to stay away when his friends dragged him into it. And then only petty stuff…
‘Luke witnessed a drowning. Joe has the details and will pass them round. It might be a coincidence of course, but it’s the best lead we have at the moment.’ She paused. ‘The only lead.’
On cue Joe Ashworth played paper monitor, dishing out sheets of A4. Vera wondered suddenly if she treated him too much like teacher’s pet. Did he resent it? Trouble was, he was one of the few members in the team she could trust absolutely to get things right. Perhaps that said more about her than about them.
She continued. ‘The lad who drowned after the scrap on North Shields quayside was Thomas Sharp. One of
She paused again. She liked an audience, but preferred it if the listeners were responsive. No one answered. ‘Well?’ she demanded. ‘Has anyone heard anything?’
They shook their heads. They seemed stupefied, too well fed, too hot. The room was airless, but she was surprised by their lack of excitement. Wasn’t this what they’d joined up for? It didn’t occur to her that she scared the pants off most of them, that even the ones who shouted their mouths off in the police canteen were too timid to commit themselves to an opinion which she might consider foolish.
‘The crime scene,’ she said. ‘You’ll have heard by now it was a tad unusual. The boy was strangled, then placed in a bath of water. Flowers had been scattered over his body. Luckily Julie didn’t empty the bath when she saw Luke. The CSIs spent hours scooping out the water and saving it. There might be something. They’re analysing the bath oil. We might even get a hair from the murderer if we’re lucky. But we can’t rely on that. We need to find where the flowers came from. Were they picked from fields and gardens in the village or did the murderer buy them? We need to know exactly what they were, then get someone to go round all the local florists checking that out. They didn’t seem to me the sort you’d get in a standard bouquet. Mostly wild flowers, I’d say. So where were they picked? Is there a local botanist who can help? Joe, can you find out from the university?’
She didn’t wait for him to answer. ‘The more important question is why. Why the gesture? It seems a risk, an unnecessary fuss. It’s almost as if the killer wanted to draw attention to himself, make a grand spectacle. Julie was out for the night in Newcastle, but no one knew exactly what time she’d be back. She must almost have walked in on it. Laura, the sister, was in the house throughout. Fast asleep as it happens. Her mother says she could sleep through a bomb dropping. Is that significant?’
A hand rose tentatively. Vera liked a responsive audience but she could be as cruel to interrupters as a stand-up comedian to unwelcome hecklers. She was gracious to this one.
‘Yes?’
‘Does it mean the murderer knew the family? Knew that Laura was a heavy sleeper and that Julie was out for the night? She didn’t often go out, did she?’
Vera nodded in approval. ‘Maybe. Or that he’d been watching the place for a while, waiting for an opportunity.’
Another hand. ‘Yes?’
‘Could it have been the sister? A row that got out of hand?’
Vera considered for a moment. ‘You could imagine them fighting,’ she said. ‘A lad like that. It must be a nightmare having him as a brother, especially the age she is. That age you want to be the same as everyone else, don’t you? Last thing you need is a loony in the family. She could have drowned him too. If he was in the bath, it wouldn’t take a lot of strength to push him under. But he was strangled and then put in the water. I can’t see a fourteen-year-old girl doing that. She’s a skinny little thing. Nervy. I don’t think she’s hiding anything, though. Where would she get the flowers from? The mother confirms there were none in the house. I think we can forget the girl unless anything else comes up. Everyone agree?’
There were a few half-hearted nods. Vera continued. ‘The father, though, is a different matter. It sounds as if he always found it hard to cope with Luke. He and Julie separated years ago, but he’s kept in touch with the family. Nothing formal. He calls in when he feels like it. The kids go to his house occasionally. If he killed the lad, it would explain why there was no sign of a break-in. Of course Luke would open the door to him. Julie says the boy always wound him up. You could think of a scenario when he was provoked to murder, to strangling.’
‘You’d have the same problem explaining the flowers, though,’ Ashworth said.
‘Maybe. Unless he was clever enough to realize he’d be a suspect and knew that sort of elaborate staging would make us look elsewhere. All the more reason to get some details on the flowers. If they were available in the village, he could have picked them after the murder.’
Ashworth was sceptical. ‘He’d have to be pretty cool. Dream up the theatricals, go out for the flowers, let himself back into the house. Surely someone would have seen him.’
‘You’d have thought so, wouldn’t you? Has there been any joy from the house-to-house? Was anyone seen in the street?’
She thought that later in the day she would go back to the village herself. Not that it was appropriate for her to be knocking on doors. Not according to her boss. Her last appraisal had mentioned an unwillingness to delegate. Her role, he said, was strategic, the management of information. But she liked to get a feel for what was going on in the neighbourhood. Not everyone was very good at that.
She looked at the blank faces, waiting for someone to reply. Is it any wonder, she thought, that I’m not keen on delegating?
At last Ashworth spoke. Teacher’s pet again. Though she guessed they called him a lot worse than that when she wasn’t around. ‘No one saw anything unusual, according to the team who did the house-to-house.’
‘What about the car Julie remembers seeing in the street on Wednesday night?’
He looked at his notes. ‘It definitely wasn’t there at nine o’clock apparently. A woman was bringing her daughter home from Guides. She says she would have remembered.’
No one else spoke. There was a moment of silence. Vera was sitting on the edge of a desk, as fat and round and impassive as a Buddha. She even closed her eyes for a moment, seemed lost in meditation. They could hear distant noise from the rest of the building – a phone ringing, a hoot of laughter. She opened her eyes again.
‘If this wasn’t the father playing silly buggers,’ she said, ‘we have to consider what was going on at that crime scene. It was like a work of theatre. Or one of those art installations. Dead sheep. Piles of elephant crap. The sort of art where the meaning’s more important than what it looks like or the skill that’s gone into making it. We need to know what this artist was
They looked back at her, rather like dead sheep themselves. And this time she couldn’t blame them. She didn’t have any ideas either.
Chapter Seven
It was Friday afternoon and the traffic on the dual carriageway leading from Newcastle to the coast was
