‘Aye.’ He looked at her. ‘You were there. What did you make of it?’
The question obviously threw her. ‘It was very good,’ she said at last. ‘Very moving.’
Lenny grinned widely at them both. Joe was reminded of his youngest child, coming home from nursery with a gold star on a painting.
‘What did you do later in the evening?’ Holly asked. Joe sensed her, tense and impatient. Under the table her foot was tapping on the floor.
‘After Jack Devanney came in, shouting his mouth off, I moved out of the dining room with the others and listened to their readings in the drawing room.’
‘And after that?’
‘They all went off to bed, but I didn’t. It was my last night there and I wanted to make the most of it. To make it last. Do you understand?’ He directed the question to Joe. He’d think Holly was too young and too confident to understand.
Joe nodded.
‘What did you do, Mr Thomas?’ Holly broke in immediately. ‘Did you sit all night in the drawing room?’
‘I sat there for a while. Then I thought I’d take a walk, clear my head before going to bed. Outside it was dead still. And there were all those stars. In the town, with the street lights, you never see the stars. And the moon making a road over the sea. I wanted to remember it. One day I might write about it.’
‘Where did you walk, Mr Thomas?’ Holly managed to sound bored and hostile at the same time.
‘Onto the terrace. But there was nobody there. No body, either.’
‘Are you sure?’ Joe asked. ‘It was dark.’
‘Aye, but like I said, there was a moon.’
‘And it was cold,’ Joe said. He was aware of Holly firing furious glances in his direction, but he took no notice. ‘Did you go upstairs to get a coat before you went out?’
‘No, there was a jacket in the cloakroom downstairs for folk to borrow. I took that.’ Lenny looked at Joe as if he were daft.
‘What did you do with it when you came back inside?’
‘I put it back!’
‘And then?’ Holly asked, determined now to have the last word. ‘What did you do then?’
‘I went to bed,’ Lenny said. ‘I couldn’t make the night last any longer. It was going to end, wasn’t it? I had to get ready to go back to the real world.’
‘What time was that?’ Joe wondered if the week at the Writers’ House had been a good thing for Lenny. Had it set up expectations that would never be realized?
‘Twelve-thirty. I looked at my watch when I got into my room.’
‘Did you listen to any music when you were sitting in the drawing room?’ Joe asked.
‘No. Why?’ Now he just looked confused.
Joe looked at Holly. She shook her head to show that there were no further questions.
Joe ended up giving Lenny a lift back to his flat in Red Row. Lenny said he didn’t have a car any more. His ex-wife had offered him her old one, but he couldn’t afford to run it. They dropped Mark Winterton at the Writers’ House to pick up his Volvo. The lane was blocked with vehicles. A reporter from BBC Look North was doing a piece to camera with the house in the background. They watched him straighten his tie, then nod to the cameraman. At last the media all moved aside to let the car past. Joe thought Lenny might be interested in the activity, but he sat in the passenger seat, listless and unengaged.
Red Row had once been a mining community just inland from the big sweep of Druridge Bay. Recently there’d been a new private development, big houses all looking out to the sea, but the village itself still looked sad. As if there were no longer any point to it. A main street with red-bricked terraced houses and a small council estate. A boarded-up shop.
‘Do you want to come in?’ Lenny sounded eager, but he expected refusal.
‘Aye, why not? I could use a cup of tea.’
And before the words were out of Joe’s mouth, Lenny was knocking at his neighbour’s door to scrounge some milk. The old lady who lived there seemed pleased to see him: ‘Eh, Lenny lad, it’s good to have you home.’
Sitting in the small, cold room, Joe wondered what he was doing there. Was this about pity for a lonely man? ‘We talked to your wife,’ he said. The words were out of his mouth too quickly. He hadn’t thought them through. This sounded like interference.
But Lenny didn’t seem offended.
‘She’s a grand woman,’ he said. ‘A great mother.’
‘You don’t think you could still make a go of it, the two of you?’ Joe wondered what Vera would make of this. You’ve turned counsellor now, have you, Joey boy? Well, maybe you could always get a job with Relate.
Lenny looked up at him and grinned sadly. ‘Likely too much water under the bridge,’ he said. ‘And I can’t fancy being a kept man any more. It might have been different if I’d got the contract with the publisher. That would’ve put us on an equal footing. You know what I mean?’
Joe nodded.
‘Not that I don’t dream about it,’ Lenny went on. ‘Late at night. Not that I wouldn’t do anything to make it right.’
Driving back to Police Headquarters, Joe Ashworth thought Lenny was a romantic, the sort of dangerous romantic who might kill for the notion of the perfect relationship. But Joe couldn’t see how the deaths of Tony Ferdinand or Miranda Barton could help him achieve his aim of a perfect marriage.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Vera had agreed to meet Paul Rutherford at the Lit & Phil Library in Newcastle. She’d suggested the venue. He’d said he’d only have an hour spare before he took the train south, and the library was just round the corner from the Central Station. The Lit & Phil was a Newcastle institution, a private subscription library. Hector had been a member, had dragged her there for lectures and meetings until she’d been old enough to leave alone in the house in the hills. Usually Vera despised the things and places Hector loved, on principle, but the library still held a place in her affections. Each year she renewed her membership. If she was struggling to make sense of a case, occasionally she’d go down the stairs to the Silence Room in the basement, and ponder the details of the investigation away from interruption. She recognized some of the regulars – the tall, skinny man who was never without a hat, the glamorous art historian, the famous poet – and nodded to them whenever they met, as if they were friends.
Upstairs in the magnificent main Georgian library, with its domed roofs and balconies, silence wasn’t expected. Today two elderly men sat at the big table and talked about shipbuilding, re-creating the life of the Tyne with books and memories. Vera bought herself a cup of coffee and a sticky bun from the woman behind the tea counter and waited. She found a quiet table with a view of the door. She’d googled Paul Rutherford. He had a slick website and there was a photo of him beaming out of the home page. When he arrived she probably would have picked him out anyway, a stranger, hesitating very briefly at the top of the grand stone stairs, before preparing to make an entrance.
He was wearing black. Informal black, so that she found it hard to believe the meeting that he’d used as an excuse for being in the North-East. Didn’t politicians always wear suits? Rutherford wore black jeans, a black T-shirt under a black jacket. She thought he’d find it cold outside without a proper coat, and then wondered if he’d dressed deliberately to create an air of menace. Was he out to intimidate her?
But it seemed he intended to try charm first. She stood up to greet him and he approached her as a long-lost friend. ‘Inspector Stanhope. Thank you for taking the time to meet me. I know how busy you must be.’ The voice clipped. Posh south, but without the drawly vowels. He gave a thin smile that had no warmth or humour in it. His eyes never quite met hers. The elderly men walked past them and out. The library was empty apart from the tea lady and a librarian at the front desk.