Telling Tales (26 page)

Michael didn’t realize. Mantel saw it though. I could see him watching her. Jeanie didn’t realize herself how she’d changed, until he pointed it out.”

“That’s why she fell for him, then?” Vera said.

“Aye, he was older, a bit of a crook, but he made her feel attractive for the first time…” Veronica paused. “It helped of course that her father couldn’t stand him.”

“What was all that about? Why did Michael take against him?”

“Michael had pretty well run the village before then. His family’s lived here for generations. His father was cox of the lifeboat. He kept a fishing boat down on the shore. And Michael had worked for the pilots since he was a young man. Then Keith Mantel turned up, throwing money around, and folk started taking notice of him instead. Stupid really. Like little boys in a playground. It made you want to bang their heads together.”

“Did Jeanie carry on working here after she moved in with Mantel?”

“No. He wouldn’t have liked that. He likes his women dependent on him. And I know what he said in court, about Jeanie turning up on his doorstep and him not being able to turn her way. As if he didn’t really care about her one way or the other, but I’m not sure that was true. Not at the beginning. At the beginning, she really got under his skin.”

i Vera considered this for a moment. Perhaps she’d been wrong about Mantel. Perhaps he’d been capable of love after all. Perhaps if the couple Tiad been left alone, if Abigail and Michael and everyone else in Elvet had left them alone they could have been happy. No, she thought then. This was never going to be a fairy-tale romance. He’d still been seeing Caroline Fletcher all the time. It would never have worked out.

She emptied her glass and set it on the bar.

“Another?” Veronica asked.

Vera thought about that seriously. “Best not.” She slid from her stool.

“I saw Jeanie,” Veronica said suddenly, and Vera hoisted herself back onto the seat. “The week before Abigail was killed. I never said at the time. If the police had asked me about it, they’d have got the wrong impression.”

“In what way?”

“She turned up here just before opening time and I made her a coffee. She just wanted to let off steam. About the girl Abigail. About what a little madam she was. “I don’t know what to do. If I tell Keith what she’s getting up to, he won’t believe me. But I can’t just let her get away with it.””

“Away with what?” Vera asked.

Veronica shook her head. “I don’t know. If I’d pushed her maybe she’d have told me. But it was nearly opening time and one of the reps came in. She said she could see I was really busy and she’d come back. Ten days later the police had her in custody for murder.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The next day Vera drove to the Point. There was a car park in the dunes. She left her car facing the river and walked down the track towards the jetty. It was nine o’clock, and there was a bright, morning light. Sharp shadows and a glittering reflection from the water. She was pleased to be away from the village, from the suspicious glares of the locals and the persistent probing of the journos who seemed to lurk on every corner. They’d seen her in the bakery and some of them had taken up permanent residence there.

She’d sent Ashworth to check Bennett was who he said he was. Birth register, national insurance number, passport details. It would take time, but he’d do it well. He’d already found out that Nick Lineham had been sobbing his heart out in a crematorium in Sunderland when Abigail had died. She’d suggested that he work from police headquarters. She wanted to know what was happening with the Winter investigation and Holness wasn’t going to volunteer information to her. Not after the way she’d spoken to him when they last met. People liked Ashworth. Wherever he went they trusted him, talked to him. She knew she rubbed people up the wrong way. She hoped Ashworth would come back with a feel for how the Winter enquiry was progressing.

If she asked for specific details the local team would probably tell her, but she wanted more than that. She needed the wild theories, the gossip in the pub at the end of the day. Besides, she had too much pride to ask.

She was glad to be outside to clear her head. Each night she promised herself she’d have a night off the drink but she never quite managed it. She never got drunk, not stupid, student drunk, but some evenings she knew it was the only way she’d sleep. She had to reach just that point when her thoughts got mellow and blurry, and the details of the investigation didn’t matter quite so much. Then in the morning she’d wake up with a distant, heady feeling. And that was how she’d felt this morning. She’d carried on drinking when she’d got back to the hotel.

The smell of frying bacon came out of one of the lifeboat houses, and she walked past quickly, because the way she was feeling she’d rather have salt and seaweed in her nostrils. Beyond the modern lifeboat houses there were two square white cottages, which had once housed the coast guards but where the coxswains now lived. In one of these Jeanie Long had grown up, and Michael had nursed his wife until she died.

A woman came out of the cottage nearest to the sea. She was dressed in the coxswain’s uniform but her shirt was unbuttoned at the neck and she didn’t make her way to the jetty where the launch was moored. She was carrying a white enamel bowl. She walked round the house to a whitewashed shed in the back garden and returned with the bowl half full of sandy potatoes.

A bit early for your dinner,” Vera said.

The woman stopped. It seemed she didn’t mind chatting. “I’ll be working most of the day. Might as well get them peeled now.” With a bit of a wink. “I’ve got a friend coming for supper.” Then, “My dad’s got an allotment. He keeps me in veg.”

“Nothing like home-grown.”

“So he’s always telling me.”

Vera took out her warrant card. “I’m looking into the Abigail Mantel murder. Have you got time for a word? You can do the spuds while we’re talking.”

“Nah,” she said. “I’ll be glad of an excuse for a coffee. Come in. I’ll stick the kettle on.”

Her name was Wendy Jowell. The first female coxswain on the Humber, she said. It wasn’t like being a proper pilot. All she did was take the launch out to collect the pilot from the ship once he’d got it out of the river. Or take him out.

“The pilots,” Vera asked. “They’re all men, are they?”

“Of course. That’s where the money is, isn’t it?”

They laughed. “One time,” Vera said, ‘you never got female detectives. Not above the rank of sergeant. Things change.”

“I’m not sure I’d want it, anyway. Too much responsibility. Too much pressure. I’m all right where I am.”

“Do you know Michael Long?”

“He took me out a few times when I was training. Not that he liked doing it, miserable sod. He couldn’t understand how they could appoint a woman. Then I tqok over from him when he retired. I’ve not seen him lately. He hid himself away after Peg died.”

“Were you living round here at the time of Abigail’s murder?”

“In Elvet, in one of the council houses. I was still married then. It was just before I saw sense.”

“Did you know Jeanie?”

“A place this size, you know most people. To say hello to at least. She worked in the Anchor sometimes. We might even have been at school together though I don’t remember that. She’d have been younger than me.”

“What did you make of her?”

“I liked her. Some people said she was a bit arsy just because she got all her exams and went off to university. I think she was shy, that’s all. You’d see her in the pub, blokes making smutty jokes, pervy Barry eyeing her up and she hated it. She put on a good front. I admired her for that. But she wasn’t used to it. She’d been away to college yet you’d think she was just a kid. And it can’t have been much fun having Michael Long as your dad.”

“Why not?”

“Not exactly sensitive, our Michael. Typical bluff Yorkshireman and proud of it. Bit of a bully on the quiet too.”

“Violent?”

“Not that I’ve heard, but aggressive. Especially when he’s had a few drinks. The way he talks now, you’d think him and Peg had never had a cross word, but it wasn’t always like that. Before she got ill he didn’t mind having a go at her. In public sometimes. Once in the Anchor, when she was trying to persuade him to go home, he started yelling at her, calling her all sorts. I wouldn’t have put up with it, myself.”

“It’s humiliating,” Vera said, ‘when it happens in public’

“Tbo right.” There was a moment of silence when they both seemed lost in memory.

“What about Emma Bennett?” Vera asked. “Emma Winter she’d have been then. Did you know her around the time of the murder?”

“She’d be the exception that proved the rule. I wouldn’t even have known her if I’d bumped into her in the street. She was a lot younger than me and they’d only just moved into Springhead then. After it had happened people pointed her out. You know how people gossip “See that lass, that’s the one who found the Mantel girl’s body.” But until then I had no idea.”

“And now she’s married to one of the pilots.”

“Aye, to James.” She lingered just long enough over the words to give a sense of appreciation. Vera said nothing, hoped she’d continue. “Now, James Bennett,” Wendy said at last. “There’s a man who’s too good to be true.”

“What do you mean?” Vera kept her voice even, barely interested.

“Well, he’s something else, isn’t he? Good looking, considerate. And a bloody good pilot.”

“So everyone tells me.”

“Some of the pilots hardly acknowledge you. I mean, it’s like they’ve called a minicab on a Friday night to get them home from town. You get a grunt if you’re lucky. James is different. Even when you can tell he’s knackered, he’s polite.”

“Does Emma know how lucky she is?”

“James is besotted, I know that.” And Emma?”

“You can’t tell, can you? She’s a bit like Jeanie Long. All restrained and tongue-tied. Repressed. Another one with an overbearing father.”

“How do you know Robert Winter?” Vera was surprised. She wouldn’t have thought they moved in the same circles. But maybe, as Wendy had said, in a place the size of El vet everyone knew everyone else. Or thought they did.

Wendy paused and for a moment Vera thought she would avoid answering. “I married a loser,” Wendy said in the end. “He was a flash bastard, full of schemes and dreams and promises that we’d be rich, but it was all make believe. All that happened was that he ended up in court charged with fraud and nicking credit cards.”

“He got probation,” Vera said.

“Aye, and he always had something better to do than keep his appointments in the office, so we’d have Robert Winter sniffing about the place looking for him.”

“You didn’t like Mr. Winter?”

“He was so patronizing. Like he was perfect or something and the rest of us were too dumb to organize our own lives. Jed, my bloke, was no angel. He was into all sorts of stuff that I didn’t know about. Didn’t want to know about. And he could get nasty when he’d had a few drinks. Like Michael Long. I could recognize the type. But I didn’t need Robert Winter to tell me that. And I’d have left him a hell of a lot sooner if Winter hadn’t kept telling me to.” She smiled. “I always was a stubborn cow. Never liked being told what to do.”

“No,” Vera said. “Nor do I. That’s why I got myself up the ladder a bit. So I could do the telling. I wouldn’t have thought that’d have been Mr. Winter’s style, though. I’d have thought he’d have been into the sanctity of marriage. He’s religious, isn’t he?”

“He’s a creep.” But Wendy seemed to have lost interest. Anyway, I didn’t have to see him much after that. Jed got nicked again and was sent away. By the time he got out of prison I’d got a job on the ferries. That gave me the bug and I ended up here.”

“How did James end up here?” Vera asked, as if it was the most natural question in the world, as if, really, she couldn’t care less. “I mean what’s his background?”

“I don’t know,” Wendy said. “That’s one of the great things about him. He doesn’t talk much about himself. With most blokes it’s all me, me, me, isn’t it? Not James. He just seems interested in other people.”

Outside in the glaring sunlight, Vera thought that did sound a bit too good to be true. She sat on one of the wooden benches outside the cafe and drank milky coffee, not really sure what she was waiting for. A couple of birdwatchers in ridiculous hats munched their way through sausage sandwiches. They spoke with their mouths full about birds they’d seen and missed. Vera, whose father had been a birdwatcher of a kind, felt a strange nostalgia. Grease from the sandwich dribbled down one of the men’s chin but he wiped it away before it hit the lens of the binoculars which were strung round his neck. Wendy Jowell came out of her cottage and walked along the jetty to the launch. Vera watched it slide from the shelter of the river into open water, then bounce against the incoming waves, until it disappeared round the Point. The birdwatchers wandered away and she was starting to feel cold, but still she couldn’t bring herself to move off.

Her phone rang just as the launch came back into view. It was Ashworth.

“I thought you’d like to know what we’ve got so far.”

We. So he’d already started to work his magic, making allies, building bridges. The local team would feel sorry for him, being managed by a fat cow like her.

“Go on.”

“I’ve checked with the DVLC and the passport office. According to them everything seems OK. James Richard Bennett. Date of birth the sixteenth of June 1966. Place of birth was Crill, East Yorkshire.”

“Local then. And Mantel must have got it wrong when he said Bennett wasn’t his real name. Or be making mischief. According to Michael Long they grew up in the same town. Maybe it was a case of settling old scores.” She was disappointed. She’d felt in her water that James Bennett wasn’t real. He wasn’t a man she could believe in. Like Wendy had said, too good to be true.

“Not necessarily.”

“Oh?”

“His birth wasn’t registered in that name. No national insurance number, no record of his existence until 1987.”

“When he’d have been twenty-one. So if Mantel knew him as someone different he’d have been very young. But they could have met. They both lived in Crill. I wouldn’t have put it past Mantel to involve young people in his dodgy businesses. They come cheap, after all.”