“Maybe you took against Jeanie Long.”
“I’d never met her before the murder.”
“That’s not what I meant. Some suspects… It’s hard to stay detached… They get under your skin…”
“Perhaps there was something like that,” Caroline conceded. “She wasn’t easy. Arrogant, I suppose. Superior. As if a degree and a knowledge of posh music made her better than the rest of us.”
“I know the type.”
And she hated Abigail. OK, I accept now that she couldn’t have killed the girl. But she was pleased she was dead.”
“Was there ever anyone else in the frame? Before you pulled in Long, I mean.”
“Not really. Keith Mantel put us onto her very quickly. He said Jeanie had always been jealous of Abigail and then when he asked her to leave it was the girl that she blamed.”
“You checked out the local loonies and sex offenders?”
“Of course, though I never had it down as an attack by a pervert. There’d been no sexual assault. Her clothes hadn’t even been disturbed. And if not that, who else, besides Jeanie Long could have had a motive? Abigail was only fifteen, for Christ’s sake. A schoolgirl. No money to leave. She’d hardly lived long enough to upset people.”
“Was she a virgin?” Though Vera knew, of course. She’d read every report there’d been.
“No, but that isn’t unusual for a fifteen-year-old, even ten years ago.”
“Did you trace any boyfriends?”
“No one who admitted sleeping with her. But they wouldn’t, would they? She was under age.”
“What did her father make of that?”
“He wasn’t shocked that she’d had sex. He told me he never played the heavy-handed father. It wasn’t his style. He just warned her to take precautions.”
“Did she ask his advice? Talk to him about the lads she was going with?”
“He said not, and I believed him. Why would he lie?”
“Emma, the lass who found the body…”
“Yes?”
“You’d have thought she’d have known who Abigail was sleeping with.”
“Perhaps.” Caroline hesitated. “I didn’t ask her. Once we had Long in custody it didn’t seem relevant. I didn’t see the point in raking through a young girl’s past.”
Vera considered this without speaking. Ashworth, too, seemed lost in thought. Outside the window a cat was crying, but despite the rain, no one got up to let it in.
“Why did you leave the job?” Vera asked.
It was a question Caroline hadn’t planned for. A crazy oversight like not interviewing Christopher. Was that all her failure came down to? Vera thought. A lack of thoroughness in her approach to her cases.
“It was personal,” Caroline said in the end. “Nothing to do with the work.”
“You know better than that,” Vera snapped. “Nothing’s personal in my enquiry.”
“I was engaged. I thought that was what I wanted. Marriage, kids, the whole package. I didn’t see how the job would fit in with that.”
“What happened?”
“It didn’t work out. I mean, I couldn’t go through with it. Maybe I’m not the marrying kind.”
“But you didn’t come back?”
“I got used to regular hours, a full night’s sleep, bloody big commissions.”
“You enjoy what you do now?”
“I told you, I’m good at it. Selling. Sometimes I think that was what I was born for.”
What was I born for? Vera wondered. Seeing through people who lie to me? Then why can’t I make out exactly what’s going on here? She knew there were more questions but couldn’t find the right words to ask them. She stood up. Joe Ashworth followed, surprised the interview was over so quickly. Caroline Fletcher didn’t show any relief at their leaving. Vera thought she understood they’d be back.
Chapter Twenty-Two
When they arrived at the Captain’s House, Emma was sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by the remains of breakfast. James was on his way out and dressed for work. Vera looked him up and down admiringly as he let them in. The uniform suited him, though he looked very tired and pale.
“I’m glad you’re here,” he said, keeping his voice low. They were in the high-ceilinged hall but the door to the dining room was open and they could see through into the kitchen beyond. “I don’t really like leaving Emma on her own and she doesn’t want me to call in her parents. She says they’ve got their own grief to cope with.”
“Do you have any family who could keep her company?” asked Ashworth. He came from a close family and so did his wife. He couldn’t imagine an important event in their lives without an audience of relatives. On those occasions his parents’ small terrace would be crammed, people knee to knee on chairs pulled from all over the house, kids running wild upstairs, his mam in the kitchen preparing catering quantities of sandwiches and tea, his dad handing out beer to the men. Looking back, the events which had brought them together bereavements, engagements, christenings -all blurred together.
James, however, seemed to regard the question with suspicion. “No one local,” he said. He shouted goodbye to Emma and left the house.
Emma apologized for the mess but didn’t make any move to clear it. “Who are you?” she asked Ashworth, then immediately she put her hand to her mouth, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude. I suppose I’m used to Dan.”
“This is my sergeant, Joe Ashworth.” Vera ignored the reference to Greenwood. She didn’t know what to make of it. Was there something going on there that she didn’t know about? Dan Greenwood playing silly beggars? She could see him as the sentimental type, falling for someone unattainable like the pilot’s wife. “Joe works with me in Northumberland. He’s here to help. Why don’t you chat to him while I make some coffee.”
Ashworth took a seat opposite Emma. He pushed aside a cereal box so there was nothing between them. Vera put the kettle on and stood by the sink, watching the conversation, keeping her mouth shut even when she was tempted to interrupt with a question of her own.
“Did Christopher have a girlfriend?” Ashworth asked gently. “Someone who should be informed of his death.”
“I don’t think so. No one regular.” Emma looked up sharply. Vera saw that she’d been crying. She’d probably been awake and crying for most of the night. The skin around her eyes was tender and swollen as if she’d been thumped. It looked as if you could rub it off with your thumb, like the skin of an over-cooked beetroot. “Christopher blamed Abigail for that. When we were talking that night he was here, he said he’d been obsessed by her. That summer and ever since. No one else could live up to her. That wasn’t true of course. If he was obsessed with her at all it was only the fantasy his girlfriends couldn’t live up to. How can you compete with make believe?”
“Are you saying he went out with Abigail the summer before she died?”
“No. Of course not. In his dreams.”
Are you sure?”
“She wouldn’t have looked at him twice. Except to mock. He was younger than she was, geeky a bit weird. I thought he’d grown out of that, but maybe not. He seemed weird enough when he was here.”
Abigail did have a boyfriend, though.”
No, Vera screamed in her head. Don’t move on. Not yet. Follow up on the weirdness. Was he different from the other times he visited? Why?
But Emma was already answering Ashworth. “I didn’t know about a boyfriend. It seems unlikely. I mean, we spent a lot of that summer together and she never mentioned it.”
“She wasn’t a virgin. Did you know that?”
“No!” Emma seemed astonished, shocked. There was a pause while she seemed to assimilate the information. “But I was very innocent, very naive. I’d led a sheltered life. When I thought about boys I imagined them kissing me, putting their arms round me. Nothing more than that. I knew about the biology, but it wouldn’t have crossed my mind…”