The Cipher Garden (23 page)

‘Seems like you’re no nearer to finding out who did it than on the day he died.’

The horsy face crumpled and Tina Howe started to weep. All of a sudden, her whole body was convulsing. As they watched, she wailed and beat down on the table with her hands. Linz put out a hand to her, but Tina shoved it back. Hannah’s surge of triumph ebbed away as Peter Flint got to his feet. He went over and wrapped his arms around Tina, murmuring words of comfort. But it was no use. She would not be stilled, could not be silenced.

Peter treated Hannah to a glare of reproach. Christ, she thought, I deserve it.

Grief had deadened her own emotions. Burying herself in the cold case worked as a means of coping. But it didn’t give her the right to torment a woman who had watched her own daughter plunge to her death a couple of days ago. Even if that woman had killed the girl’s father by cutting him up with a scythe.

‘You think she’s guilty, ma’am?’ Linz asked as they drove into the car park at Headquarters.

Hannah had spent the journey swathed in gloom as she weighed up that very question. ‘I suppose she’s still my prime suspect.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘What do you think?’

Linz took a breath. ‘How about Peter Flint?’

‘Why him?’

‘Humiliating enough if your wife shags your business partner. How must it feel if she seduces the same bloke’s son for good measure?’

‘Isn’t that a reason for murdering your wife rather than your business partner?’

‘But he wanted her back. Must have done. This was before he and Tina got it together, don’t forget. And what if Warren encouraged Sam to take a turn with Gail? If Peter realised, wouldn’t he want to take revenge?’

Hannah locked the car and led the way inside the main building. At length she said, ‘Of course, it’s possible. But you saw how his jaw hit the floor when I told them about Sam and Gail? I’d say he was even more shocked than Tina. If he knew beforehand, he’s the next Olivier.’

They turned a corner and saw Nick and Les Bryant striding down the corridor towards them. Les grunted at the sight of Hannah and said, ‘Nasty business at that airfield, by all accounts. Messy. I heard you’d been signed off for a week.’

‘I have amazing powers of recovery.’

‘You reckon?’

‘We’ve had a busy morning.’

‘Fresh developments in the Warren Howe case?’

‘Have we got news for you. Come to my office: Linz will debrief you.’

‘Am I included?’ Nick asked.

‘Of course. Didn’t you tell me that Cockermouth is sorted?’

They headed for Hannah’s room via the water cooler. When Linz had summarised their interviews with Gail,
Tina and Peter, Nick asked, ‘Is Gail telling the truth?’

Hannah said, ‘Why should she lie?’

‘To firm up her own alibi?’

‘Not clever if Sam denies her story. Which might yet happen.’

‘Or to hurt Tina?’

‘That’s more like it,’ Hannah admitted. ‘The pair of them hate each other, but I’d say Gail’s the more vindictive. I can see Tina killing Warren in a fit of temper. As for Gail, no doubt she’s capable of murder, but I’d expect subtlety from her. A slow-acting poison would be her weapon of choice. Good old-fashioned arsenic, maybe. Not something as crude as a scythe.’

‘I still fancy Peter,’ Linz said.

‘Rather old for you, isn’t he?’ Les Bryant murmured. ‘For all you know, he may be a lifelong devotee of Abba and Neil Diamond.’

Hannah said, ‘OK, that’ll do for the time being. I need to catch up on my emails. But before I become engrossed, DS Lowther, can you spare me a minute?’

When they were alone, Hannah switched off her mobile and put her phone on divert. ‘Fine, I’m all ears.’

‘Before I start, I don’t mean to be rude, Hannah, but I have to say, you look like death warmed up.’

‘You always did wonders for my confidence.’

‘Sorry, but you need to know. I’m only seeing what everyone else is seeing. You’d be far better recuperating at home for a few days instead of getting up at the crack of dawn to interview sad women like Gail Flint and Tina Howe.’

‘They’d claw your eyes out if they heard you describing them as sad.’

‘True, though, isn’t it?’

‘Show me someone over thirty who isn’t a bit sad.’

He sighed. ‘Not having a good day?’

‘Pretty shitty, since you ask. I finished up with my heart going out to Tina Howe. Which wasn’t in the plan. God, I hate this job sometimes.’

‘Me too.’

‘All right, fire away. The suspense is killing me.’

‘Don’t get too excited.’ He licked his lips. ‘Actually, this is very difficult for me.’

‘We go back a long way. No need for any secrets between us.’

‘You may change your mind once I’ve had my say.’

‘Don’t worry. By now I ought to be unshockable.’

He bowed his head. ‘I suppose you’ve guessed already.’

Hannah took a breath. The fan was whirring sluggishly, exhausted by its losing battle against the heat. ‘This is about your relationship with Roz Gleave?’

‘Oh, no.’ No mistaking the astonishment on his
clean-cut
features. ‘It’s about my relationship with her husband. You see, Chris and I were lovers.’

The grey heron stood motionless by the edge of the water, head resting between its shoulders. It surveyed the tarn and the tangled grounds at the foot of Tarn Fell, as if contemplating Jacob Quiller’s testament to shattered faith. Daniel and Miranda paused on the winding path, not wishing to disturb its reverie.

‘It’s as mystified as you and me,’ she whispered. ‘Daniel, isn’t it time to give up on trying to make sense of the garden? This place is so lovely, let’s just appreciate what we see.’

‘You’re right.’ He put his arm around her slim shoulders. ‘I’ve been making the historian’s mistake. Conjecturing too much about the past, not making enough of the present.’

‘Life’s short.’ She trembled under his touch. ‘I dreamed of Kirsty again last night. Watching her fall in slow motion, unable to do anything to save her.’

‘There was nothing any of us could do.’

‘What could make her so unhappy? What was so bad that she couldn’t bear to carry on any longer? If only I’d
talked to her more at the restaurant, perhaps I could…’

‘You can’t blame yourself. It’s crazy. We didn’t know her, didn’t have a clue what was going on inside her head.’

‘It was such a lovely evening,’ Miranda said. ‘Louise was good company, I’m sorry I was mean about her. As soon as she said she was leaving, I realised I’d been selfish.’

‘Don’t worry about it.’

She cleared her throat. ‘There’s something I wanted to tell you.’

The air had chilled and at last you could believe that the heatwave might be drawing to an end. He slipped his arm off her.

‘What is it?’

‘Wipe that frown off your face, you ought to be pleased after all your nagging. I’ve decided you were right. We all need to be sure of our roots. I must set about tracing my birth mother.’

‘Seriously?’

His voice rose in surprise. As if alerted to their presence, the heron drew back its long neck and took flight. Within an instant it had disappeared among the trees.

‘Yes. It’s ridiculous, this fear of rejection. If she doesn’t want to know me, fine. I’ll survive. But I’d hate to think she was yearning to hear from me, and I froze her out of my life because she made one mistake a long, long time ago.’

‘Why the sudden change of heart?’

‘There’s a bond between parent and child, it’s unique.’ Her voice was dreamy, her eyes far away. ‘The blood-tie.’

This was precisely how he felt about his own father, and why he needed to learn more about the man’s life, what he was really like. Yet her words didn’t ring true. Whenever
they’d talked about this before, Miranda had been resolute. The words, the sentiment, didn’t seem to belong to her. She’d been talked round. But not by him. And certainly not by Louise.

A phrase of Miranda’s came back into his mind as they set off back to the cottage.
We have things in common.

‘You’ve talked to someone about this?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘I’m interested, that’s all.’

‘As it happens, I have had a conversation…’

‘With Oliver Cox?’

She stared. ‘Right first time. How on earth did you figure that out?’

‘You were chatting with him in the bar at The Heights. He persuaded you, but what I’m wondering is – how did he manage it?’ He closed his eyes, breathing in her perfume. ‘Was it because Oliver was adopted too? He understood the dilemma better than the rest of us.’

‘He didn’t want to talk about it to begin with. I found it so encouraging when he urged me to trace my mum that I asked him outright if he was adopted. Typical, huh, putting my foot right in my mouth?’

‘What did he say?’

‘At first he backed right off. He’s lovely, but he’s easily knocked off balance. He actually denied it, would you believe? Said I’d put two and two together and made five.’

His face was very close to hers, but he’d shut his eyes. He was picturing her at the bar, determined not to let Oliver off the hook. ‘Go on.’

‘Well, I’d had a couple of large glasses of wine and I’d talked him into having one himself, even though he said he never drank on duty because it soon went to his head. I suppose the booze loosened both our tongues. He tried to
brush me off, change the subject, make a joke of the whole thing. But I begged him to be straight with me, told him how much it mattered.’

‘And in the end he gave in.’ That was what people did with Miranda. It was always easier to surrender than to fight.

‘Yes, he finally admitted he was adopted. Even then he said he didn’t want to make it out to be such a big deal.’

‘Did he tell you about his own experience?’

‘I dragged it out of him. He said he was riven with doubt about tracing his blood-family. Once he’d dropped out of uni, he hadn’t been able to settle to anything. As a last resort, he decided to look for his real mother. He was frightened of how she would react, his dread of rejection was as intense as mine. But when at last he found her, it changed his life. No question, he told me, it was the best thing he’d ever done.’

‘Where did he meet his mother?’

‘No idea. He clammed up after that and I didn’t want to make any more of a nuisance of myself. I was grateful for his honesty.’

They were taking a short cut across the grassy area that he’d cleared. Leaving behind the yew and the monkey puzzles and the weeping willow. He was determined that they shouldn’t become trapped in the maze of the Quillers’ despair. As he walked, he was delving into the undergrowth of useless information in his mind, striving to make out what lay beneath.

He wasn’t sure of the precise chronology, but from what Hannah and Bel Jenner had told him, two things had happened shortly before Warren Howe’s murder. Oliver Cox had turned up in Old Sawrey, and Chris Gleave had disappeared. What if a young man turned up on their
doorstep one fine morning and announced that Roz was his mother? If so, then judging by her age, she could only have been fourteen or fifteen when she gave birth. Chris and Roz didn’t have kids; if Chris was incapable of being a father, how might he react if a stranger blundered into their cosy little marriage and revealed something his wife had never got up the nerve to mention? He was a sensitive soul,
self-consciously
artistic. Perhaps he might run away and hide.

‘What do you think?’ Miranda asked.

‘Sorry?’

‘You’re miles away, aren’t you, darling? Not very flattering. I was saying, if we’re going to ask those garden designers to give this place a makeover, perhaps we should take a few photographs so that we can remember how it used to be. Before and after shots.’

‘I want to keep the basic layout intact. The garden’s odd, but…’

‘You like it as it is?’

He groped for the right words. ‘It deserves…respect.’

‘Darling, it’s a garden, not a shrine.’

‘Even so.’

‘All right, but we need a new theme. And lots more colour. It’s drab and dark here. Except for the foxgloves. They’re starting to die off, but they are so pretty in full bloom.’

Daniel gazed at the purple flowers shaped like bells. The means by which Jacob and Alice Quiller had killed themselves.

‘You know their leaves are poisonous?’

She laughed. ‘Typical. You always have to look on the dark side.’

‘Sorry. You’re right, we need a fresh start. As for a theme – how about celebrating a new life?’

She smiled with almost childlike delight. ‘Wonderful.’

The scent of the roses was heady, butterflies were fluttering to and fro. A picture came into Daniel’s mind. Jacob Quiller bent over the ground, grim in his determination to convey a confession through his work. Back-breaking labour, but an escape from sitting inside by the fire, while his guts churned in despair. No such escape for Alice, as the clock ticked on towards the anniversary of John’s passing, the date they had fixed for ending it all. Both of them were obsessed; Jacob with macabre garden patterns, Alice with the loss of her only son. It was on Alice, of whom he knew so little, that his thoughts lingered. The housemaid who became mistress of the little cottage in the clearing, proud mother of a young man who left his native shores to fight for Queen and country, never to return.

The love between mother and child could break down all restraints and scrape away the coat of varnish that protects from raw emotion, rage, and violence. Bees buzzed in the background, Miranda ducked her head to smell the flowers, and Daniel tossed possibilities around in his mind.

Suppose Oliver had not only found his long-lost mother, but his father as well. Who was a more likely candidate to impregnate a young girl in the village than the late and unlamented Warren Howe? Consider it from Chris Gleave’s perspective. What if he was driven by jealousy, what if he hated the man who had given Roz a son, when he had not?

It might add up to a motive for murder.

‘You don’t have to tell me this,’ Hannah said.

‘You’re wrong, ma’am.’

She bent forward. ‘Ma’am? What happened to Hannah and Nick?’

‘Sorry.’ A threadbare smile. ‘You’re wrong, Hannah. You need to know this. What you do with the information is up to you.’

She poured two cups of coffee, marvelling at the steadiness of her hand while her stomach was somersaulting. She dreaded what Nick might confess. A breach of regulations, perhaps even a crime, something that would destroy his career. That he’d had a gay relationship didn’t matter, even though learning of it had floored her. Even as she watched him deliberate, working out how much to say and how much to leave out, she realised how many clues she’d missed. Nick was a good actor, but there were limits to his ability to pretend. She recalled an interview she and Nick had conducted with a man called Allardyce, not long after she’d first met Daniel Kind.

‘You know what women are like. Or maybe you don’t, eh?’

She remembered her sergeant colouring at the gibe. At the time she’d dismissed it, but although Allardyce was a brute, he’d sussed Nick out in a matter of minutes. She’d been fooled for years. Call herself a detective?

If he was a closet gay, no wonder he’d never tried it on with her. It was one of the differences, she understood now, between her relationship with Nick and that with Ben Kind. With Ben, she’d always had this sense that he wanted to touch her, but held back, perhaps because he was afraid of rejection, perhaps because he knew it was wrong to start an affair with a young subordinate. With Nick, the friendship never threatened to become more than platonic. For all her occasional wishful thinking in bed or in the bath as she recalled his smooth features and long lean limbs.

‘It’s not such an unusual story,’ he said at length. ‘A
teenage boy, uncertain about his sexuality. Chris and I were each in the same boat. Conventional upbringing and outlook, desperate to be part of the crowd, but aware of secret longings too dangerous to acknowledge. No wonder we were drawn together. I’m not going to give you all the gory details, OK? Let’s just say we enjoyed each other for several months. But both of us were riddled by guilt. Especially me. Pathetic, really. In my defence, I was only seventeen. Trouble was, that was below the age of consent. Another reason for feeling bad.’

‘Who cares?’ she said. ‘Didn’t we pass a couple of posters for the Gay and Lesbian Police Association as we walked down the corridor?’

‘Do me a favour. I never wanted to be a pink policeman.’

‘All I mean is, times have changed. So have attitudes.’

‘On the surface. But that’s beside the point. I’ve no desire to join a protected species, I’m just an ordinary bloke. Which is why Chris and I split up. The angst was more than I could handle. I’d set my heart on joining the force and I wanted the orthodox life everyone in my family had. A pretty wife and two point four children, a modest mortgage and a decent pension. Boring, boring, boring, as far as Chris was concerned. He wanted to make music. Money didn’t matter to him.’

‘He had the luxury of inheriting it.’

‘Fair comment. We went our separate ways. I joined the force, got married. You know the rest.’

Do I? ‘It was your decision to break up?’

‘Yes, but Chris wasn’t bitter. We kept in touch. I went along to his concerts, every now and then. He told me he’d had a few other boyfriends, but nobody special.’

‘He wanted you to get back together again?’

‘I suppose so, but it was out of the question. I’d made
my choice and so far as I was concerned, he had to respect it. Which he did. Next thing I knew, he was engaged to Roz. I didn’t know what to expect when I met her. When I found out it was a genuine love match, I was thrilled for him.’

‘All’s well that ends well?’

Nick nodded. ‘Until I heard that he’d disappeared from home, and while he was missing, Warren Howe was killed in his back garden.’

While Miranda absorbed herself with the laptop, working on a first draft of her latest article for Ethan Tiatto, Daniel stayed outside. He yearned to talk to Hannah, share his ideas about the murder with her. He took out his mobile and dialled her number. Straight to voicemail. Shit. Better to try later rather than leave a message. How to explain in a couple of crisp sentences the speculation swirling around inside his brain?

He paced up and down the path outside his own front door, striving to reconcile the known facts with his guesswork. When he’d called at Keepsake Cottage, he’d overheard the Gleaves discussing whether a secret could be kept. He’d assumed it was connected with Kirsty’s death, but there might be a link to the murder of Warren Howe.

Would there be harm in a return visit to the Gleaves’ home? Hannah might insist he shouldn’t poke his nose in, but he might have more luck than a police officer in gleaning crucial information.

He went back inside and told Miranda that he’d be out for an hour or two. She nodded, but didn’t look up from her work in progress. On his way out, he tried Hannah again. Still no answer.

Weaving through the country lanes, he stretched his
brain, refining his theory that Chris Gleave had killed Warren Howe. He’d spent such a short time in the man’s company, he found it impossible to do more than guess at what made him tick. By instinct he rebelled against the idea of a likeable musician committing a savage murder, but it made sense as a crime of passion, fuelled by jealousy and loathing.