“Does Emma know how lucky she is?”
“James is besotted, I know that.” And Emma?”
“You can’t tell, can you? She’s a bit like Jeanie Long. All restrained and tongue-tied. Repressed. Another one with an overbearing father.”
“How do you know Robert Winter?” Vera was surprised. She wouldn’t have thought they moved in the same circles. But maybe, as Wendy had said, in a place the size of El vet everyone knew everyone else. Or thought they did.
Wendy paused and for a moment Vera thought she would avoid answering. “I married a loser,” Wendy said in the end. “He was a flash bastard, full of schemes and dreams and promises that we’d be rich, but it was all make believe. All that happened was that he ended up in court charged with fraud and nicking credit cards.”
“He got probation,” Vera said.
“Aye, and he always had something better to do than keep his appointments in the office, so we’d have Robert Winter sniffing about the place looking for him.”
“You didn’t like Mr. Winter?”
“He was so patronizing. Like he was perfect or something and the rest of us were too dumb to organize our own lives. Jed, my bloke, was no angel. He was into all sorts of stuff that I didn’t know about. Didn’t want to know about. And he could get nasty when he’d had a few drinks. Like Michael Long. I could recognize the type. But I didn’t need Robert Winter to tell me that. And I’d have left him a hell of a lot sooner if Winter hadn’t kept telling me to.” She smiled. “I always was a stubborn cow. Never liked being told what to do.”
“No,” Vera said. “Nor do I. That’s why I got myself up the ladder a bit. So I could do the telling. I wouldn’t have thought that’d have been Mr. Winter’s style, though. I’d have thought he’d have been into the sanctity of marriage. He’s religious, isn’t he?”
“He’s a creep.” But Wendy seemed to have lost interest. Anyway, I didn’t have to see him much after that. Jed got nicked again and was sent away. By the time he got out of prison I’d got a job on the ferries. That gave me the bug and I ended up here.”
“How did James end up here?” Vera asked, as if it was the most natural question in the world, as if, really, she couldn’t care less. “I mean what’s his background?”
“I don’t know,” Wendy said. “That’s one of the great things about him. He doesn’t talk much about himself. With most blokes it’s all me, me, me, isn’t it? Not James. He just seems interested in other people.”
Outside in the glaring sunlight, Vera thought that did sound a bit too good to be true. She sat on one of the wooden benches outside the cafe and drank milky coffee, not really sure what she was waiting for. A couple of birdwatchers in ridiculous hats munched their way through sausage sandwiches. They spoke with their mouths full about birds they’d seen and missed. Vera, whose father had been a birdwatcher of a kind, felt a strange nostalgia. Grease from the sandwich dribbled down one of the men’s chin but he wiped it away before it hit the lens of the binoculars which were strung round his neck. Wendy Jowell came out of her cottage and walked along the jetty to the launch. Vera watched it slide from the shelter of the river into open water, then bounce against the incoming waves, until it disappeared round the Point. The birdwatchers wandered away and she was starting to feel cold, but still she couldn’t bring herself to move off.
Her phone rang just as the launch came back into view. It was Ashworth.
“I thought you’d like to know what we’ve got so far.”
We. So he’d already started to work his magic, making allies, building bridges. The local team would feel sorry for him, being managed by a fat cow like her.
“Go on.”
“I’ve checked with the DVLC and the passport office. According to them everything seems OK. James Richard Bennett. Date of birth the sixteenth of June 1966. Place of birth was Crill, East Yorkshire.”
“Local then. And Mantel must have got it wrong when he said Bennett wasn’t his real name. Or be making mischief. According to Michael Long they grew up in the same town. Maybe it was a case of settling old scores.” She was disappointed. She’d felt in her water that James Bennett wasn’t real. He wasn’t a man she could believe in. Like Wendy had said, too good to be true.
“Not necessarily.”
“Oh?”
“His birth wasn’t registered in that name. No national insurance number, no record of his existence until 1987.”
“When he’d have been twenty-one. So if Mantel knew him as someone different he’d have been very young. But they could have met. They both lived in Crill. I wouldn’t have put it past Mantel to involve young people in his dodgy businesses. They come cheap, after all.”
“I checked with the Public Record Office. He changed his name by deed poll in 1987. Did everything right. Got an old teacher to support the application. It has to be someone who’s known you for at least ten years. Advertised in the London Gazette like you’re supposed to. Signed the deed poll in his old and new name.”
“What was his old name?”
“Shaw. James Richard Shaw.”
“Not a name that you could take exception to,” Vera said. “I mean some names, you can see why someone would want to change them. But not Shaw. So why go through all that effort? Who did he want to hide from?”
“Mantel?” Ashworth suggested.
“Maybe. Bennett went away to sea. That suggests running away to me. Then perhaps he came back when he thought he was safe.”
“To a village where Mantel was living? That doesn’t make much sense.”
“Perhaps the situation had changed. Perhaps he was prepared to risk it for Emma to live close to her parents. People can look a lot different after fifteen years. Do you think the wife knows about the name change?”
“She wouldn’t have to. If you’re already married, you have to notify your spouse of a name change, but banns of marriage can be called in the new name.”
“All the same,” Vera said, ‘it’s a big secret to keep. You’d need a good reason not to tell your new wife that you grew up with another name. And wouldn’t she find out when she met all the relatives?”
“Perhaps she hasn’t.”
“I don’t suppose James Richard Shaw has a criminal record. That he was in a Young Offender Institute until
1987 and he changed his name to put that behind him?”
, “I did check,” Ashworth said. “First thing I thought of
Smart-arse, she thought. “Well?”
“Nothing. Hasn’t been in trouble in either name. Not even a speeding ticket.”
She didn’t speak again immediately. The launch was pulling back into the jetty. She saw two dark silhouettes on the deck, sharp against the sparkling water. They began to climb the ladder from the boat.
“What would you like me to do now?” Ashworth asked.
The figures reached the top of the jetty and she could see them more clearly. One was James Bennett.
“Nothing,” she said with regret. “A bit more digging. If there’s something odd about Bennett we don’t want to let him know we’re onto him. Not until we’ve a bit more of an idea what it’s about.”
She was still sitting outside the cafe when the pilot drove past. She didn’t think he noticed her.
Chapter Thirty
When Michael Long opened his door to her, she was surprised by the response a mixture of irritation and relief.
“I’ve been trying to get hold of you,” he said, as if she’d been deliberately trying to avoid him.
“Well, you’ve got me now so you’d best let me in.”
He stood aside and she went ahead of him into the small front room where they’d sat and talked the week before.
“Every time I phoned there’d be someone different to talk to. Sometimes no one at all, just a recorded message. And none of them would put me onto you.”
“They’re busy,” Vera snapped. “A case like this, do you know how many calls they get to the incident room?”