“We’ll be closing in five minutes,” the woman in the bakery said as soon as they opened the door.
“Eh, lass, what about this wonderful Yorkshire hospitality we hear so much about. A pot of tea and a couple of currant tea cakes and we’ll be no trouble. You can leave us to ourselves and finish up in here.”
The woman shrugged but she nodded them through to the back room before changing the sign on the door to Closed. She’d know who they were by now. It would be something to talk to her friends about. Vera thought again Elvet was that sort of place. You had to find your excitement where you could.
The chairs had all been put upside down on the tables. She chose a place furthest away from the shop and made herself comfortable. “Well?”
Ashworth sat opposite her. “Lineham’s a really nice bloke…”
Vera sighed theatrically. Ashworth thought well of everyone. He made most of the social workers she’d come across seem flint-hearted.
“He is! He was wondering if he should come to speak to us. Then he thought it might not be relevant and that we’d see him as some sort of ghoul wanting to get mixed up in a murder investigation.” Ashworth stopped speaking as the woman from the shop came in with a heavy tea tray and continued once she’d left. “He was older than her, in his last year of the sixth form when she died.”
“Did he sleep with her?”
“Only once, he says. One afternoon. Soon after her fifteenth birthday party. They both bunked off school, drank a couple of bottles of wine that had been left over from the party, and ended up in bed together.”
“Where?”
“Her house.”
“I thought there was some sort of housekeeper who was there to keep an eye on her.”
“There’d been a succession, apparently. None of them stayed long. According to Lineham it was the woman’s day off.”
“So it was planned in advance?”
“By Abigail, at least. It was all her idea.”
“According to him.”
“He sounded genuine to me,” Ashworth said. “His dad was a teacher at the school and it was hard for him to get away with much. The way he tells it, it was a sort of a dare. She taunted him into skipping a class and going back with her. Afterwards he threw up. More nerves than the drink, he said.”
“Was she experienced?”
“More experienced than him, but that’s not saying much.”
Vera tried to picture the scene, get it clear in her head. She wished she’d been there at the interview. She’d like to have known what the weather was like, where they’d sat to drink the wine, what music they’d listened to. “How did they get from the school to her house?”
“The lunchtime bus to the village and then they walked.”
“Was it a regular thing for her, sagging off school?”
“He said he had the impression that it had happened before. But she could have been showing off.”
“How could Emma Bennett not have known about this?” Vera was speaking almost to herself. “She must have realized Abigail was playing truant. Unless Abigail lied to her, came up with a plausible explanation for the absences. Or perhaps Emma has been lying to us’. She shared the last of the tea from the pot between them. “What do you think?”
But Ashworth hadn’t been listening. “There’s more,” he said.
Something in his voice made her look up sharply. “Spit it out, man.”
“Afterwards Lineham got cold feet. Maybe the…” he struggled for an appropriate word ‘… encounter didn’t live up to expectations. Maybe he was so scared of his father that he wasn’t prepared to risk another dirty afternoon with the girl, however good it was. Anyway, he told her that was it. He didn’t want it to happen again. Not until she was sixteen, at least, and he’d finished his A levels.”
“Oh, she wouldn’t like that,” Vera said. “Not a spoilt little girl like Abigail.”
“But Lineham said she did like it in a strange kind of way. She saw it as a challenge, a game.”
So, Vera thought. That was how she got her kicks.
Ashworth was continuing, “If he’d gone along with her she’d probably have lost interest, but it gave her the excuse to play nasty.”
“In what way?”
“She said he had no right to treat her like that. If he didn’t agree to spend more time with her, she’d go to his dad and tell him what had happened. But she’d say it had all been Lineham’s fault. That he’d got her drunk and seduced her.”
“Innocent little darling,” Vera said. “Wasn’t that what one of the headlines called her at the time?”
“You can’t really blame the lass,” Ashworth said. “Only fifteen and no mam to keep her straight. The lad didn’t have to jump into bed with her.”
Vera said nothing. Perhaps Ashworth was right. And perhaps Caroline was misunderstood too and as vulnerable as Greenwood had made out. But she thought the men’s brains had turned to jelly. They couldn’t see straight. Faced with a pretty woman they all seemed to lose their reason. Then she brought herself up with a start. What was she thinking? That the girl had deserved to die horribly at the edge of a windswept field one cold November afternoon? That she’d asked for it? That made her as bad as Jeanie, brooding in her cell, calling the girl evil.
“What happened?” she asked. “Did Lineham call her bluff?”
“He didn’t need to. The following week she was killed.”
“Oh, God,” Vera said. “Another bloody suspect.”
“No. He was in Sunderland all weekend with his family. His grandma’s funeral. I’ll check, of course, but I’m sure he’s telling the truth.”
“Abigail used blackmail to bring a bit of excitement into her life,” Vera said. She saw the woman from the shop standing in the doorway with a mop and bucket and stood up to show they were ready to go. “What else turned her on, do you suppose?”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Vera was having problems seeing Jeanie and Mantel as a couple. Michael Long had described how they’d met, but he’d put his own spin on it. He’d disapproved from the beginning and hadn’t bothered trying to understand. The prison governor thought Jeanie had been a saint and the chaplain hadn’t got on with her. Vera wanted to understand what had brought the two of them together. She thought she owed Jeanie that. Ashworth went off to check Nick Lineham’s alibi for the day that Abigail was strangled, but Vera stood in the street, pondering the matter, not ready yet to go back to the hotel.
The pub had just opened for the evening and was still empty. Vera pushed her way in. She was an expert on pubs and thought she wouldn’t mind this as her local. There was a jukebox, but no background music and none of those machines that beeped and flashed lights. The ashtrays were clean and the tables were polished. She’d guess the beer would be well kept. Not that she was a snob about such things.
She sat at the bar for a moment before a woman came from the back to serve her, apologizing for keeping her waiting. She was in her fifties, smart and if she’d seen her in the street, Vera would have put her down as one of those efficient businesswomen who can hold a company together. Vera ordered beer. Tbo early for whisky, she decided.
“And whatever you’re having…”
The landlady pulled the beer, then took a small bottle of orange juice, opened it expertly, checked the glass was spotless and poured it.