“What about your family? Are they really all dead?”
“Not all of them.”
“So you lied to me from the beginning.”
“No. By the time I met you, this is who I was.”
“Did you kill my brother?”
“No,” he cried. “Why would I?”
“Why would you lie to me?”
She couldn’t face it. She needed the comfort of a familiar story. She turned suddenly and ran back across the street towards the forge.
Emma runs across the square and, keeping to the shadows in case the drinkers in the Anchor are still watching, she reaches the forge. She pushes open one of the big doors which form an arch, like the door of a church, and she stands inside. The roof is high and she can see through the curved rafters to the tiles. She feels the heat of the kiln and sees the dusty shelves holding unglazed pots.
At first, it seems that the pottery is empty. Everything is quiet. She shuts the big door behind her, still making no noise. It stands a little ajar, but a person walking past on the square outside would see nothing but a strip of light. She walks slowly forward. She knows that Dan is here. She can sense it. Soon he will come out. He will take her into his arms. He will come with her to Springhead so she can be with her baby. She can’t face all this alone.
“Dan.” The word is strained, like a whimper, but still it echoes around the high space. “Are you there, Dan?”
From the little storeroom there comes a scrabbling. Hardly human. It makes Emma think of rats nosing through rubbish.
“Dan,” she says again, and then he does appear, as she has always imagined, crumpled and untidy and eager to see her. She stands very close to him and can smell the clay on his hands. She waits for him to touch her. As she looks up, she sees someone else framed in the storeroom door. Not the inspector this time. Someone altogether unexpected.
Chapter Forty-Two
After seeing Ashworth off on his fishing trip, Vera went to the pottery. The doors were closed and padlocked. It was still early so she drove to the little house on the Crescent where Dan lived, but when she knocked on the door, no one answered. A young woman, with a toddler in a buggy, came out of the house next door. Just as well she’d been out the day before, Vera thought.
“Mr. Greenwood won’t be in at all today,” the woman said. A trade fair. Harrogate. He left very early and he’s not back until this evening, then he’ll have to go to the pottery to unload.”
“Oh,” Vera said. “Right.” She was surprised that Dan had given away so much. She’d always thought of him as being very private. The woman was attractive in a pale, washed-out way. Perhaps they were more than neighbours. Perhaps she wore black sequinned pants, though Vera couldn’t really picture it.
“Is it business?” the young woman said. “I can always take a message.”
“No, no message. I’m an old friend. I’ll call again.”
She spent the rest of the day at headquarters in Crill. She breezed into Holness’s office. “Can I borrow one of your people for an hour or two. A bit of research.”
He looked up from a desk piled with paper. Worse than hers, she saw with satisfaction. “Is it urgent?” He was probing for information on the Mantel enquiry. Well, he’d get nothing from her.
“It’ll not take long. A few phone calls, a bit of sniffing around.”
“I’ll need more than that before I release someone,” he said.
“Bugger off then, I’ll do it myself.” She flashed him a grin and he didn’t know how to react.
She walked into the incident room, responding to the stare of the officer at the nearest computer with a wave. “Don’t mind me, pet. You’ll not know I’m here.”
She found herself a spare desk and a phone and began a lot of fruitless conversations with the manufacturers of ladies’ underwear. At the same time she was eavesdropping on the Winter enquiry. The way she saw things, they hadn’t much to go on. They were still trying to trace the details of Christopher’s mobile, but he hadn’t bothered registering it, and they hadn’t found anyone in Aberdeen who had the number. He’d never given the number to Emma, or to his parents, which Vera thought was odd. After an hour she got bored and went back to pester Holness. She leaned on his door frame and looked into his office.
“Did anything come of the search of that farm by the cemetery?”
“The lad was there,” Holness said. “There was a fingerprint on the door of the stable.”
“Did you find anything to suggest he met someone?”
“A couple of other prints both left by one other person. No one known to us. Might be useful if we ever get as far as pulling in a suspect.”
“And he wasn’t seen all day?”
“We think he must have hidden out in the farm until it got dark. Otherwise he’d have been noticed. Elvet’s that sort of place. Nosy.”
Halfway through the afternoon she cracked and phoned Ashworth. She’d been thinking about him since he’d left in the morning. It was clear he couldn’t talk without being overheard. He sounded pleased with himself, though, and she wished she’d taken on the job. Delegation was supposed to be about shipping out the crap, but she’d never seemed to have got the hang of it. Usually she was left with that stuff herself. She went back to the hotel, had a long bath and tried to contain her impatience.
Her phone rang at about eight thirty and she snatched it from the bedside cupboard, thinking it would be Joe Ashworth at last with some news. It was Paul Holness and disappointment made her lose concentration for a moment. She missed what he was saying because she was wondering what could have happened to Joe.
“Sorry,” she said, ‘it’s a terrible line. Would you mind repeating that?”
IWe’ve just had a phone call from Veronica Lee, the landlady at the Anchor. It seems Michael Long’s made some sort of scene there. He’s in a bit of a state, she says. Wants to speak to you. We could send one of our lads if you like, but I thought you might want to go. Jeanie’s dad, isn’t he? Nothing really to do with us.”
“Yes,” she said. “Probably best if I do it. He knows me! She thought she was a sad old bat, because a phone call like that could suddenly make her come alive.
She parked in the square and noticed that there was a light on in the Old Forge. She hesitated briefly, tempted to go there first to talk to Dan. But that could wait, she thought. He wouldn’t be leaving the village again tonight. She’d best see what had rattled Michael’s cage first. There was no sign of drama in the Anchor when she went in. Half a dozen kids were gathered round the pool table, a few middle-aged couples sat at the tables in the window, two large-bellied men were playing darts. They stared at her, then looked away. By now everyone in the village knew who she was.
“Veronica about?”
The barman was thin and spotty and scarcely looked more than a boy himself.
“She’s out the back. She said to go on in.” The short side of the bar was hinged. He lifted it for her to go through. She felt a sudden thrill to be there, standing behind the bar between the taps and the optics. It was like going backstage at a theatre. She imagined herself retired, running a small pub in a village in the hills, but knew it would never happen. She’d offend the customers and drink all the profits.
She’d thought the door behind the bar would lead through to the landlady’s living quarters, but she emerged into a kitchen where, earlier in the evening, bar meals had been cooked. The sink was full of dirty pans. Michael sat at the table looking dazed. A half-drunk cup of tea, with a film already forming on the top, stood in front of him. Veronica was looking at him anxiously. A man with pebbly eyes stood leaning against the counter looking down at them. He was eating a cheese roll and his mouth was half full.
“You’d best go back, Barry,” Veronica said. “Someone needs to keep an eye on the bar.”