Guilty Consciences - [A CWA Anthology] Read online

  ‘No reason why you shouldn’t. Corny and you were both of age by then.’

  ‘Then Harry disappeared. I think he got the message that he was trapped in a relationship that was going nowhere. I got the message too. I was being used by you, to get at Harry.’

  Claudia nodded vigorously. ‘There was real feeling, though - that too. We went together so well, so totally. Your body responded to mine, just as mine responded to you.’

  ‘It didn’t.’

  ‘Oh, but it did. Do you think I didn’t know about those things? I knew everything about sex, and you were a wonderful learner.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yes. You were a joy to be with. I was proud to be with you, and proud of things that other people could only guess about.’

  ‘I was just an instrument of revenge. It was payback time. All those times - all those nights. Then I felt I was learning about love. I wasn’t. I was being used, and what I was learning about was the art of settling accounts.’

  ‘You should be grateful I taught you so well.’

  ‘Grateful! I feel like I’ve been smeared from head to foot with shit - the colour of your mind, your monstrous ego.’

  ‘I’ll say something for the new you: your vocabulary has improved.’

  He looked at her with his mouth open. ‘Is that all you can say? Was I your one-man Scrabble kit?’

  ‘Not much else. It’s not often a sixteen-year-old kid can teach a thirty-two-year-old divorcee much about life and habits, is it?’

  He still looked shaken, stunned.

  ‘So you’re a divorcee, are you? Luckily I don’t need even to go through that tomfoolery. I can just say “it’s over” and there’s nothing left of you and me.’ He ran to the door to the street. ‘Goodbye, for good this time. I hope I never see you again - not even to pass you in the street.’

  He dashed through it, and slammed it after him.

  ‘Remember my little room, Graham?’ said Claudia, pulling the door open again. ‘The naughty room? It’s still there.’

  In the gloom of the hallway she could see the young man’s face turned back to her, full of terror.

  ‘I tried to make that as comfortable as could be, you know me - I would, wouldn’t I? They had to be punished if they disobeyed the rules, but I made it as easy as I could. None of you really liked it though, did you? I remember you when I finally let you out. It was why you ran away, wasn’t it? I have friends, you know, people I can trust. Be careful, Graham. If you’re not very careful you might find yourself back there. Big boy, little room. Not really a room, is it? More like a cage.’

  As he turned and made a dash through the door and out into the open street, Claudia’s laugh almost become a cackle, following him as his footsteps faded into nothing.

  Claudia went into the kitchen. She boiled the kettle and made a pot of tea all to herself. She poured a cup, then helped herself to a biscuit, eating it thoughtfully, with a little smile playing around her lips. Then she put cups and plates under the tap. Then, as an afterthought, she put one of the cups back on the draining board and poured herself yet one more cup of tea. She went out into the hall, then began up the stairs, holding her cup carefully. At the landing she opened a creaky door and began up to the second floor, switching on a dim light as she went. The walls around her sloped alarmingly as the stairs came to another door, and she opened it. She put the cup on an old wooden stool, and looked about her in the light from the doubly-dim twenty-five-watt environmentally friendly bulb.

  The cage, which she had tried to make so cosy, was about four feet high, and about the same length square. The only furniture was an old wooden chair which probably went with the table outside - nursery furniture. The man inside, moaning plaintive whines, was dressed only in a heavy overcoat. His face could hardly be seen behind the barrier of moustache and beard - the latter roughly cut away around the chest area. He was making little plaintive sounds, like a distressed puppy or kitten and he cupped his hands towards Claudia, who knew from long habit what the feeble attempts at words were trying to say.

  ‘Mew. Mew.’ He tried to put consonants in. ‘Mew, Claudia please. Mew.’

  ‘Stop that mewing. It sounds like begging. And you know I never respond.’

  The mewing sound got louder.

  ‘Oh no, Harry. You know better than that. You don’t get tea till your will has been broken.’

  ‘It is! Mew. It is!’

  ‘Oh, but that’s not something you can decide. I do that. You always insisted upon that with the children. Never let out until their wills had been utterly broken. You decided that as I decide it now. Never let out until their wills were utterly smashed. I’d come back from work and find them released, crying, sullen, but totally obedient. It was only slowly that I realized what had gone on. You were betraying me, Harry.’

  ‘Tea, Claudia. Mew. Mew. Tea. Tea.’

  ‘Oh no, Harry. Water. Bread and water. Until you die or I die. Race you there! If I go first you will go very slowly and unpleasantly. You must hope and pray you go first. I would.’

  The attempts at words reverted to being little more than whines and mews, even more desperate, and the man - the once man - clung to the bars of his cage, and Claudia saw on his right hand the shape of an engagement ring. It always annoyed her.

  ‘Why Harry, you’re more bent than ever! Almost bent double. What a shame! The young girls never fancy a man who’s bent crooked. I know I don’t. I don’t think you’d be successful in breaking their wills now.

  ‘Now, I think I must be going. Lots of things to do - you’ve no idea. But first . . .’

  She delicately took the cup in her hand and tipped its contents on to the bare floorboards. A pathetic mew had risen from the cage.

  ‘What a pity, Harry! If you weren’t locked in you could come out and lap up the tea. Like a dog, Harry. Well, I must be going. I’ll switch off your light. You must get your beauty sleep, mustn’t you?’

  And she turned and locked the door to the attic, then began down the rickety stairs. She was unusually happy and began singing. Then she realized her song sounded like Harry’s whining and the only word identifiable was ‘mew’. She quickly shifted to an early Beatles number.

  When she reached the ground floor she looked at the door Graham had come through. ‘Tut-tut,’ she said, and went and pulled the two bolts over. ‘Not much use your keys now, Graham,’ she said. She began singing again. The song was very like a repetitive mew again, but she was unaware of that. In the middle of the hall she stopped, looked around her, and slowly a smile spread over her face. ‘A prison,’ she said. ‘I’ve made a prison, and a damned good one. And she went along the hall to the kitchen, continuing to sing her prison song.

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  ~ * ~

  HECTOR’S OTHER WOMAN

  Ann Cleeves

  Ann Cleeves has created no fewer than four series of mysteries. Her early books featuring the birdwatching couple George and Molly Palmer-Jones were followed by novels about Inspector Stephen Ramsay, and then by the creation of Vera Stanhope, who has now been brought to the small screen in a series starring Brenda Blethyn. The first book of her Shetland Quartet, Raven Black, won the CWA Gold Dagger, and introduced Jimmy Perez.

  ~ * ~

  O

  n impulse Vera took herself off to Holy Island. She had a sudden craving for crab sandwiches and a blast of sea air. Of course she hadn’t stopped to check tide times, but arrived at Beal just in time. Hector’s Land Rover made it across the causeway as the water was blowing in and the last tourist cars splashed back to the mainland. It was a big tide of the autumn equinox and a blustery north-easterly wind carried sharp showers of rain. Arriving at the Snook there was a rainbow, and Lindisfarne castle in the distance like an illustration from a child’s picture book.

  The hotel looking over the harbour had rooms free and again on impulse Vera chose the grandest. It was a little shabby but large with windows on two sides, one facing the priory and the other the Herri
ng Houses and the castle beyond. The receptionist made no comment. The island was used to visitors of all sorts: trippers and romantics and pilgrims. Perhaps she thought Vera was a nun in mufti, a nun with expensive tastes.

  Vera left her bag in her room and walked out. She hated the island when it was full of visitors, but midweek in November once the tide came in, there were only locals and the occasional mad tourist. Walking through the village she saw there was a house for sale right next to the pub. Perhaps she should retire here once they forced her out of the police service. But she knew she’d never leave the house in the hills, the house where she’d grown up, where she’d lived with Hector. Her father, deceased. The man who most haunted her dreams.

  She strode briskly down the straight lonnen, north towards the sea. In the distance there was a lone birdwatcher at the end of the track. He must have disappeared into the dunes because when she looked up again he’d gone. She was heading for the triangular stone that marked Emmanuel Head, for no reason other than that it gave her somewhere to aim for. She wasn’t in the mood for wandering without purpose. She lost sight of it occasionally as she followed random paths through the sandy land, but then she emerged at the top of a dune and she was almost on it and there was a view along the beaches on either side of it. Gannets were diving not far from shore and a group of scoter bounced in the choppy water. There was nothing to break the wind here and she found it hard to breathe.

  She leaned against the marker stone, sheltering as best she could. Looking back at the island the light was beginning to fade. It wouldn’t be dark for a couple of hours, but the colour was seeping out of the grass and the stone.

  Then, suddenly, she was pitched back more than thirty years. Another autumn afternoon. Another wild dash to Holy Island just before the tide. Then Hector had been driving and she’d been an unwilling passenger, bullied to accompany him. She’d been in the middle of her A-level year and had been reluctant to leave her books.

  ‘Come on, Vee,’ he’d said. All work and no play . . .’ And she’d done as he’d wanted. Then she always did.

  He’d bought her lunch in the Lindisfarne Hotel and drunk too much. Red wine with his steak and whisky after. He talked a lot, became excitable, almost manic. If it had been the spring, Vera would have suspected he was planning a raid on birds’ eggs. Hector had been an egg collector all his life; it wasn’t a passing childhood phase, but an obsession, a strange passion. It was also a business because he traded the eggs, and collected rare ones on commission. That and a small inheritance from his family was all the family had to live on. The business was illegal of course, and that was why Hector enjoyed it so much: he loved the risk, the possibility that he might be caught.

  But that time thirty years ago, it had been autumn too and long past the breeding season. There would be no eggs on the shore or along the edges of the pools. Nothing to steal.

  When the time came to pay the bill, Hector pulled his wallet from his jacket pocket. He held it under the table to take out the money, but Vera saw him. She’d always been curious, a child who pried into other people’s business. It was stuffed with notes, more cash than she could count. Presumably he’d recently made a good sale. Once he’d sold a young peregrine to an Arab prince and they’d lived well for months.

  After lunch Hector said he was going for a walk. ‘No need for you to come, Vee.’ His tone breezy. ‘You can sit in the Land Rover and do some work.’ Because that time there had been no hotel room. They planned to leave as soon as the tide ebbed. She waited in the car park until he’d disappeared down the straight lonnen towards the coast. Then she went after him. Partly because she was bored and partly because she didn’t trust him. Occasionally he stopped and looked behind him, checking that nobody was following. He hadn’t seen Vera. Even then she was a big young woman, but she could move quickly and she knew how to hide, how to fade into the landscape. Hector had taught her well when he’d taken her on his raids in the hills for eggs and young birds of prey.

  At Emmanuel Head he’d stopped and looked around him again, this time with more purpose, as if he had an appointment. He even looked at his watch. After a few moments, Vera saw the woman walking along the beach, scattering the wading birds that settled again behind her. It was as if she were kicking up large flakes of confetti. She had red hair and wore wellingtons and a long Barbour coat. Rather county, Vera thought, watching from a distance, but as the woman approached she changed her mind. This woman was pretty not middle-aged horsey, and under the waxed coat she wore a long floral dress. It was the time of Laura Ashley, of high waists and frills. The hair was wild. She could have been an art student and that made her exotic to Vera. She was young, older than Vera but not by more than five or six years. What could her father have to do with this woman?

  The couple stood for a moment, looking at each other. Hector rested his elbow on the back of the wooden bench that stood next to the monument, a way of steadying himself against the wind. Perhaps he was still a little drunk. They didn’t touch but they’d met before, Vera was sure of that. Words were exchanged but she was too far away to hear. She tried to read the relationship from the way they were standing, but failed to make sense of it, couldn’t decide if it were affectionate or hostile. Now, she thought, she’d make a better fist of it. Now she was more experienced at picking up a gesture, an expression. Then she was young and naive.

  When Hector held up a hand after several minutes of conversation, Vera couldn’t tell if he were cautioning patience or asking the woman to wait for him. Or perhaps it was just a stilted way of saying goodbye. In any event he turned away from her and began to walk along the path skirting the shore that led back towards the castle. The woman did wait, her coat pulled around her. As she watched him walk away, she seemed suddenly to shrink. Her shoulders dropped and it was as if the life had been sucked out of her. There was a sense of terrible resignation. Then she straightened her back again and returned to the beach, retracing her own footsteps in the sand.

  Vera scrambled up to the triangular marker stone of Emmanuel Head and watched them, far apart on different tracks, making their way down the island. But although they walked separately she had the sense that they were aware of each other’s position. This was like a dance with the whole of Holy Island as the ballroom floor. It seemed inevitable that eventually they would come together once more.

  Vera decided that she would follow Hector. If she dropped down on to the beach the redhead would notice her. It would be impossible to be quiet with the waders calling whenever they were disturbed. She watched until Hector turned into the crooked lonnen and was hidden by the hedge and then she went after him, moving very quickly, light despite her size. She was close enough to see him turn into the small cottage, hardly more than a shack, which stood surrounded by an overgrown garden. It had a corrugated iron roof, covered in rust, and a small wooden veranda. There were no other houses in this part of the island and now that the light was fading nobody else was about. Hector took a key out of his pocket and let himself in.

  The red-headed woman wasn’t as quiet as Vera and it was easy to hear her coming down the lonnen. Vera slipped behind a dry stone wall and waited. The woman walked up to the path to the cottage and tapped lightly on the door. Now there was a light inside. Not electric. It flickered. Perhaps the place was so isolated that it had no electricity. A tilley lamp perhaps or calor gas. Hector opened the door and the woman went inside.

  ‘You’ve decided then?’ Hector’s voice. Triumphant. A tone Vera knew well. She didn’t hear the woman’s answer. Or perhaps his companion knew better than to speak when he was in this mood. But how well did she know him? The door was shut. Vera glimpsed him briefly through the window closing the curtains.

  She climbed from her hiding place and back to the track. It was almost dark and there were no street lights here. She didn’t want Hector to bump into her as she stumbled back to the Land Rover. After all she didn’t know how long he would be. How could she explain that she’d been followi
ng him?

  She didn’t take the direct route to the car park. Instead she made her way towards the village. She could always tell Hector that she’d got bored waiting and wandered out in search of a cafe for tea. Her head was spinning with questions and remembering the woman, standing at Emmanuel Head, the collapse in will and posture as Hector had walked away from her, Vera felt the stirring of anger and defiance. Until then she’d blamed herself for Hector’s attitude to her: if she were prettier, thinner, more compliant, he would be different towards her. But the red-headed woman had been pretty and thin and still, it seemed, he felt the need to bully.

  Vera didn’t want to picture what might be happening in the cottage with the rusting iron roof. Instead she focused on detail. How had Hector got the key? Did the place belong to one of his shady friends: the bizarre and eccentric brotherhood of illicit falconers and taxidermists to which he belonged? Had he stolen it? Blagged it? Hector could lie for Northumberland and he had no shame. And how had he met the bonny redhead? What could she possibly see in him?