Now Felicity wandered around the library shelves, as if she was having difficulty choosing a good read. She couldn’t see Samuel, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t working here. He was a manager, would have an office somewhere behind the door which said STAFF ONLY. He would be there, or in a meeting with his staff, or out of the region altogether on a trip to one of the big library suppliers to select books. She encouraged him to talk about his work in the little house in Morpeth when they drank tea together before they separated. She was always fascinated by other people’s working lives, and when she lay in her afternoon baths she imagined him sitting at his big desk, or chairing a meeting in his precise and authoritative way. It excited her that none of his staff could possibly guess what he did on his days off.
She was preparing to ask at the desk if he was in the building when he appeared through the STAFF ONLY door. He was carrying a briefcase and seemed to be on his way out. He was wearing an open-necked shirt and a pale linen jacket, a concession, she supposed, to the weather. Usually when they met up, if he’d come straight from work, he wore a tie. He dressed very well and cared what he looked like. At first he didn’t see her. He was smiling at the young girl behind the counter. Felicity felt a stab of physical discomfort which she realized was jealousy. She wondered if he took other women to his house on his free afternoons.
Then he turned and saw her. He gave no indication that they knew each other. He said to the young woman, ‘I’ll be in Berwick for the rest of the afternoon. But if anyone phones, tell them to call back tomorrow. This is an important meeting. I don’t want interruptions.’
Felicity caught up with him outside. He was walking down the pavement towards his car. If she hadn’t hurried after him, perhaps he would have driven off without giving her the chance to talk to him.
‘I’m sorry, Samuel. I had to speak to you.’
He must have heard her footsteps following, but he affected surprise.
‘I really do have a meeting in Berwick.’ He frowned, seemed more nervous than displeased.
‘Just ten minutes.’ Now that she was here, she wasn’t sure what she wanted from him. Reassurance, she supposed, that everything would continue as normal.
He agreed to meet her in the Little Chef on the A1 and was already there when she arrived, apparently engrossed in the menu. Even walking towards him she sensed he was frightened, that he needed reassuring more than she did. The place was almost empty. The windows were all open and the traffic noise came in from outside. They ordered tea from a sweaty youth, stared at each other.
‘You know something,’ she said suddenly. ‘Something about the girl. Lily. Had you met her?’
‘No. Nothing like that.’ But he was blustering, not at all his usual controlled self. This wasn’t like one of his stories. He couldn’t make the plot work out.
‘The boy, then. Luke Armstrong. You’d heard about him?’
‘I think Gary was going out with his mother. That woman he was talking about. She was called Armstrong. I’m sure she had a son. It’s a link.’
‘I told that detective Gary was seeing someone called Julie. He wouldn’t kill anyone!’
‘Of course not. But they don’t believe in coincidences.’
It seemed a tenuous connection to her. A woman called Armstrong who had a son. How many Armstrongs were there in the phone book? Samuel must know more than he was letting on.
The waiter came back with their tea. As he lowered it to the table, liquid slopped onto the tray. He paused, expecting a reaction from them, anger, complaint, but they sat in silence until he left them again.
‘I was worried that detective would find out about us,’ Felicity said.
‘How could she?’ But she saw that the idea had occurred to him too. Perhaps that was why he seemed so uneasy, so unlike his usual urbane and confident self.
‘I wondered if perhaps we should tell her, in confidence,’ she said. ‘That way she would know it could have no bearing on the girl’s murder.’
‘Of course it has no bearing!’ His voice was impatient. She imagined he might speak in the same tone to a foolish library assistant. She felt tears come to her eyes.
‘We know that.’ She tried to sound reasonable. ‘But Lily Marsh came to Fox Mill the day before she was murdered. You can imagine the police jumping to conclusions, building up a scenario. What if we were together that afternoon and she saw us? That might give us a motive for killing her.’
She waited, expecting another angry response, but he smiled. ‘You should write fiction,’ he said. ‘A creative imagination like that. We weren’t together, were we? Not in the afternoon. I was at work all day on Wednesday. Book selection, then Library Management Team. I’d be able to prove it. We only met up in the evening to go to the theatre. Besides, James was there with you when the girl was at your house.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He was.’
Samuel looked around the room. There were no other customers now. The staff were at the counter, engrossed in conversation. He reached across the table and took her hand. ‘How can anyone know?’ he said. ‘We’ve been so careful. I’d hate it to come out. It would seem so squalid. How could people understand?’ He pulled away from her and leaned back in his chair. His voice was still very low and she had a struggle to make out the words. ‘I couldn’t bear it if Peter found out. I’d die.’
Chapter Twenty-Three
When they’d finished with Clive Stringer, Vera took Joe home. She could tell he was fretting about his pregnant wife and his daughter. But she couldn’t settle. She called into the police headquarters at Kimmerston and raged around the building, demanding action and answers. Holly was out, but Charlie was there, hunched over his desk, staring at the computer screen. His waste bin was overflowing – empty Coke cans, burger cartons, greasy chip paper. She remembered hearing that his wife had recently left him for a younger man. Like Vera, he probably didn’t have much to go home to.
‘Nothing unusual about Lily Marsh’s bank account,’ he said. ‘She had a bit more money this year because they get a grant for doing the post-graduate teaching course, but she still spent pretty much up to her student overdraft limit. No mysterious payments to suggest a rich boyfriend. She was paid direct into her account by the dress shop, but it wasn’t a fortune. Better than the minimum wage, but not by much.’ He paused. ‘Something a bit odd, though. I can’t tell how she paid her rent. Not by cheque and it wasn’t covered by standing order. No regular withdrawals of cash either.’
‘Maybe she had a different account,’ Vera said. ‘Building society. Internet account. Perhaps there’s a statement in that material we recovered from her flat. Get onto it, Charlie. She was living beyond her means. She should have been massively in debt. But she wasn’t. Something doesn’t add up.’ And she stamped away without giving him the chance to complain.
She set off for home then, but she knew she’d only start drinking as soon as she got in. She was in that sort of mood. A large whisky before she scratched together a meal and downhill from there. Passing the Morpeth turn-off she decided to call on Samuel Parr. She’d have seen them all, then. The whole group. The four birdwatchers who claimed they had nothing to do with the murders except being present when the body was found, but who seemed tangled up with the case all the same. Gary, who had fallen for Luke Armstrong’s mother. Clive, who, as a kid, had known Luke Armstrong’s best friend. And Peter Calvert, who worked at the university where Lily Marsh had been a student. In the north east there were a lot of small communities, all interlinked. There were always going to be connections. Perhaps it was of no significance, but she couldn’t ignore it. And where did Samuel Parr fit in?