‘Just in time, Sergeant. I was about to pour.’ Roger Spence wore a white shirt and a red bow-tie. He handed a cup and a plate to Stout, who juggled with them awkwardly, in the end balancing the plate on the arm of his chair. He noticed that Spence’s fingers were very long, the nails beautifully manicured. Spence set down the teapot and rubbed his hands together. ‘Now, how can we help?’
They both turned towards Eddie and smiled in a predatory way. Sally was dressed in a grey silk tunic over trousers. She filled the armchair, a huge grey walrus. He wondered how she would manage to prise herself to her feet. Jack Sprat and his wife, he thought. Throughout the conversation images and words came into his head unbidden as in a dream. Perhaps he should have followed Porteous’s advice and waited until he was less tired. He felt he was no match for these two, especially now.
‘I’ve been hearing rumours,’ Sally said when he didn’t answer immediately. Her tone was confidential, slightly flirtatious. She leaned forward and he could see the top of her bra. ‘People are saying that you’ve linked Michael’s murder – I still think of him as Michael – with that girl on the coast.’
‘We’re ruling out nothing at present.’ The standard line. If she were any sort of a journalist she’d know anyway. And he thought she probably was very good at her job. She had the necessary ruthless streak
‘We didn’t know her,’ Sally went on. ‘The girl on the coast. We’d never met her.’ She seemed very keen to make that point.
Eddie struggled to stamp his authority on the interview. ‘It’s the first murder I’d like to talk about.’
‘Oh?’ She smiled again, took a chocolate éclair from the plate and bit it in half.
Eddie turned to include them both in his question. ‘You were at the final performance of Macbeth? The Friday before Michael disappeared.’
‘That’s right, Sergeant. I was selling programmes and Roger was helping to direct.’
Eddie watched the second half of the éclair disappear into her mouth. He unclipped his briefcase and took out the photograph given to him by Jack Westcott.
‘Do you recognize the gentleman sitting next to Mr and Mrs Brice?’
Roger flicked his eyes towards the picture and immediately away again.
‘I don’t think I do,’ he said casually. ‘Why?’
‘We’re trying to trace as many people as possible who were there that evening. If you could try to remember, Mr Spence.’
‘I know who it is!’ Eddie almost expected her to clap her hands like a little girl who’s just come top in a spelling test. ‘It’s Mr Reeves, isn’t it? You must remember Roger. Alec Reeves, the scout master. There was talk…’
‘Was there?’ Roger licked his fingers with a long, darting tongue and patted his chin with a napkin.
‘Probably all rumour,’ she added quickly. ‘You know what this place is like.’
‘What exactly did the rumours say?’ Stout asked, as if the information was new to him.
‘Oh, you know. That he liked the company of young boys too much. I’d never met him. Not really. He ran the hardware store next to where my father worked, and I went into the shop sometimes on errands. My dad thought he was all right but then my dad said that about everyone. I didn’t think there was anything particularly creepy about him, but then I was only a kid. But I’m sure Mr Reeves had already left the town when Michael disappeared. There was a new bloke in the shop when I was in the sixth form. Younger. Good looking in a dark, moody sort of way…’
‘But Reeves came back for the performance of Macbeth,’ Eddie said.
‘He must have done, I suppose, if the photo was taken that night. But I don’t remember him. I was backstage, helping with the costume changes. Roger was a real dictator. He wouldn’t let us out during the interval.’
She grinned at her husband but he didn’t respond.
‘Do you remember seeing that man, Mr Spence?’
Spence took the photograph, holding it with exaggerated care by the edge of the print.
‘No, I’m afraid not. Quite impossible after all these years.’
‘Of course, he looks a lot older now,’ Sally said.
They both stared at her.
‘You’ve seen him recently?’
‘About ten days ago. Don’t you remember, Roger? He came in here with Paul Lord and his wife. I knew there was something familiar about him. I’m surprised that they stayed friends. Poor Paul, he was tainted by his association with Reeves when he was young. I mean, he was never going to be the most popular boy in the school. Not with that acne. Though I remember one night Hannah coming pretty close to snogging him… And he was a boy scout, wasn’t he? His picture was in the paper when he won some award and he never lived it down. That awful uniform. But then it came out that he was big buddies with Alec Reeves, and when all those rumours started he was teased dreadfully.’
She continued talking but Eddie had stopped listening. Paul Lord was the lad who’d given Alec Reeves an alibi after Carl Jackson had disappeared. Eddie had interviewed the boy himself. He remembered a stuffy sitting-room, a mother, flustered and embarrassed, and Paul, hidden as Sally had said behind a layer of acne, stubbornly refusing to change his story. At last Eddie had given up and soon after Reeves had left the town.
‘Is Mr Lord a regular customer?’
Roger answered. ‘Yes. Mostly at lunchtimes. He’s a businessman. He brings his clients here.’
‘What is his business?’
‘He’s some sort of computer consultant. He and his wife are partners. They work from home. They turned the outhouses of the farmhouse where they live into an office.’
‘The address please?’
But he knew it already. Porteous had phoned there when they were trying to identify the body in the lake. Balk Farm. Home to Balk Farm Computing. Once home to Carl Jackson, the lad with learning disability, and his parents.
In the car Eddie tried to phone Porteous, but his boss’s mobile was turned off. Eddie saw that as an opportunity and didn’t leave a message. He thought he’d be late for his interview with Chris Johnson, but that didn’t seem important. Now he had to speak to Paul Lord, who’d been with Alec Reeves ten days ago, who must know where he was hiding out.
He drove too fast, still in the daze he’d been in since his sleep in the garden, his thoughts woolly, his eyes prickling with exhaustion. He came over the brow of the hill and had a flashback of himself, young and fit, standing in a line with other men and women, searching for Carl, prodding into the heather and bracken with a long pole. They’d improved the entrance to the farm, widened it and he sailed past, seeing out of the corner of his eye a big sign advertising the computer consultancy. It was only as he pulled into a lay-by to turn back that he thought what a fool he was being. Alec Reeves might be hiding out at Balk Farm but what could Eddie do about it, single-handed and without a warrant? Only warn him and drive him away. He drove slowly back to the town, his heart racing with panic at the damage he’d almost done.
He arrived at Chris Johnson’s house without remembering how he’d got there. He was late and the conversation started badly. Johnson had recently moved into a small terraced house on a modern private estate. A woman, very young and very pregnant, opened the door. She wore a sleeveless dress which clung around her stomach and heavy breasts. Her frame looked as if it would snap under the weight.
‘You’re late,’ she said. ‘He’s gone.’
‘But his van’s still here.’ Stout nodded towards a transit pulled on to the pavement.
‘He’s not got time to talk to you. The soundcheck’s in half an hour.’