“So you ran away too.”
“If you like. But it was more than that. I felt like somebody different, that I could start from scratch, be the person I was meant to be.”
“You chose to go to sea. That must have been your father’s influence.”
“All those stories he told me when I was a child? Perhaps.”
“Why did you move to Elvet?”
“Emma came from here.”
“Did you know that Keith Mantel lived in the village?”
“There was all that publicity when his daughter died. Her murder made it easier for me to contemplate living in the village. I don’t think I could have risked running into him otherwise. I mean, I knew then that he’d lost someone close to him too. It was harder to hate him.”
“Revenge?”
“I wasn’t sorry she was dead,” he said sharply. “But I wouldn’t have killed her.”
“No?”
“Besides,” he went on, ignoring her. “By then I had a new life. I could believe I was James Bennett, not Jimmy Shaw. I couldn’t let him get to me. And I didn’t think our paths would cross much.”
“You moved to Elvet because of your father, then? To remember him kindly.”
“No!” he said crossly. “I moved there because I found a house that I liked and to be close to my wife’s family. It had no more significance than that.”
Vera left it. He was a good story-teller. Plausible. It might even have been true. She organized a car to take him home. She showed him out of the building and stood waiting with him for the car to arrive.
“Why didn’t you tell Emma? Didn’t you think she had a right to know?”
“It was James Bennett she fell in love with and married. Why would she need to know about a stranger?”
“You should tell her,” Vera said. “You don’t want to put yourself in a position where Keith Mantel could make mischief.”
James seemed to listen to her words and consider them seriously, but he didn’t respond.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Vera and Joe were back in the gloomy hotel. The bar was empty apart from a couple of businesswomen who were discussing, in bright staccato voices, a training programme for software advisors. After a couple of beats, Vera stopped listening. The language was unintelligible. How could this place make any sort of profit? she thought. Then it came to her that there was an Agatha Christie book about a respectable hotel which didn’t pay. That had turned out to be a front for international crime. She struggled to remember the title, but failed.
On the table in front of her there was a large Scotch. She stared into the liquid and thought it was probably the loveliest colour in the world. She knew she’d had enough to drink already, that she couldn’t allow herself another after this. So this one would have to be taken slowly, every mouthful savoured. She lifted the glass to her mouth, sipped.
“What did you make of Bennett?” Joe Ashworth asked. “Or whatever his name is.”
“Bennett,” she said. “Legally, it’s Bennett now.”
“Living a lie for all these years.”
“Was it a lie?”
“He’s told his wife both his parents are dead. His mother’s shacked up with an insurance salesman and lives just down the road. The poor woman has a grandchild she knows nothing about!”
“It’s not a crime,” Vera said quietly. “And we all tell lies.” But righteous indignation had taken over and he wasn’t listening. With part of her brain she heard him ranting about how he’d feel if his wife had treated him in the same way. Her mind was following a path of its own. If someone asked me how much I’d had to drink tonight, I’d knock off a couple of units. It’d be automatic. I’d not think about it. 1b put myself in a better light. Don’t we all do that? Find excuses, justifications? Even Saint Joe Ashworth. He loves his job. He doesn’t even mind being separated from his wife and kid. Not really. At least he gets a good night’s sleep and a break from the mucky nappies. But what does he tell himself? That it’s a sacrifice. But he’s prepared to do it to serve the community. Like he’s some sort of martyr.
She realized that Joe had stopped talking and was looking at her strangely.
“Well?” he demanded.
“Sorry, I was miles away.”
“Do you think Bennett killed Mantel’s daughter in revenge for his father’s suicide?”
“No,” she said. If she was pushed she could come up with a rational argument for thinking that way, but that would be a sort of lie too. Her reply was about trusting her own judgement. Faith, not reason. “He could have killed the brother, though,” she went on. “If Christopher had found out about his past. To protect his new identity, the happy family, all that. Yeah, I can see Bennett being prepared to kill to keep that.”
“You think there could be two different murderers, then?” Joe was sceptical, but still polite. He always was.
Do I? “We can’t dismiss any possibilities.” And I know that’s a cop-out because just at this moment I haven’t got the concentration to think it through.
“He’d have had the opportunity,” Joe said. “I’ve talked to the witnesses. He could have slipped away from the bonfire. People were coming and going all the time. You were there. Is that how you remember it?”
“Aye,” she said. “There was some light from the fire but that only lit up the people closest to it. The rest were silhouettes.” She sipped the whisky, held it in her mouth, swallowed it slowly. “Bennett would have had to know Christopher would be there. He’d have had to arrange to meet him.”
“Maybe it was Bennett who Christopher was trying to phone.”
“Aye,” she said. “Maybe.” But she’d had too much to drink to focus any longer on the detail. Her imagination was soaring, like one of the goshawks which flew out from Kielder Forest, close to her home in the hills. She felt she should be able to look down on this flat and empty landscape and see the bigger picture.
“What did Abigail Mantel and Christopher Winter have in common?” she asked suddenly, realizing as she spoke that her voice was too loud.
Joe Ashworth looked at her. “Not much. She was a spoilt brat and he was a screwed-up student.”
“Both screwed up, wouldn’t you say?” She shot out the question.
“I suppose.”
“By their parents?” Vera could have quoted Larkin, but Joe would have been shocked.
“Well, the lass didn’t have a mother she could remember. But if what Bennett told us is right, her dad wasn’t much of a role model.”
“And the Winters? What did you make of them?”
“They’re odd,” he said at last. He paused. “I’m not sure I’d want to grow up in that family.”
“I wonder what Caroline Fletcher’s parents are like.” And Michael Long’s. And Dan Greenwood’s. And the grandparents. How far could you go back? The moment of clarity, of seeing the case as a whole, was over. The goshawk had crash-landed. She was left with a headache behind her eye, the knowledge that tomorrow there’d be another hangover and that the glimpse of an answer had probably been an alcoholic illusion.
“I’m off to my room,” Joe said. “I need to phone home…”
“Of course.”
“If there’s nothing else, that is…”
“No,” she said. “You get off. I’ll be up myself in a minute.” But she sat on, looking into the empty glass, unable to face the square overheated room with the television fixed to the wall. The businesswomen paused in their conversation for a moment and looked at her with pity. That made her move. She got up, walked past reception and out into the darkness.
The hotel was on the main road out of the village and there were street lights, but no pavements. When a lorry came towards her she had to climb onto the verge and stand with her back to the hedge. She headed towards Elvet with no real sense of why she was there, but enjoying being outside and alone. Her headache started to clear. In the centre of the village, the streets were quiet. The Anchor was still open and through the small window she had a snapshot of two men standing at the bar, their mouths open in laughter, standing beside the giant whisky bottle where they collected change for the lifeboat. Beyond them a barmaid with a diamond stud in her nose. But she continued walking and the picture disappeared almost immediately.