The Glass Room (Vera Stanhope 5) (32 page)

When Joe arrived, Jack was digging over part of the vegetable plot. The soil was wet and it must have been heavy going. A row of black sprout stalks had been flattened by the wind of the previous day. For a while Jack pretended that he hadn’t noticed the detective’s car on the track, though he must have seen it coming for miles. Then he looked up. Despite the raw weather he’d worked up a sweat.

‘Your boss is out,’ he said.

‘It’s you I’ve come to see. You and your Joanna.’

Jack weighed the spade in his hands, held it like a weapon. Then made an effort to keep his temper.

‘You’d better come in then. She’s writing.’ He spoke the last word as if it were a strange and unnatural activity. At the house he sat on the doorstep and began to pull off mud-caked boots. Joe saw that the man would insist on being present at any interview and thought this might be the only chance to talk to him alone.

‘This must be a quiet time on the farm.’

Jack looked up at him, suspicious. ‘It’s not really a farm, like. More a smallholding. And there’s always stuff to do.’

‘You don’t manage to get the odd day away then?’

‘Look, I’ve been dealing with pigs like you since I were a scally lad in Liverpool.’ He sounded tired. ‘And I’m old. As old as the hills. Why don’t you just ask what you want to know?’

‘Someone broke into Nina Backworth’s flat and then into the chapel at the Writers’ House,’ Joe said. ‘The night before last, in Backworth’s place in Jesmond, and late yesterday afternoon at the Writers’ House. Where were you and Joanna?’

Jack looked up at him. He was still sitting with one boot on. ‘Nina Backworth is helping Joanna get a publisher. They’re putting together a book. A kind of collection of Writers’ House work. Why would we do anything to get in the way of that?’

Joe wished he weren’t towering above the man. He felt like a bully. ‘I’m not accusing you,’ he said. ‘I just want to know where you were.’

‘I was out yesterday afternoon,’ Jack said. ‘I went to the agricultural suppliers in Kimmerston. Layers’ mash for the hens. I’m a regular and they’ll remember me. The night before, Joanna and I were both at home.’ He pulled off his second boot and led Joe inside. ‘Come in and talk to Joanna. She’s been at that computer since she woke up this morning. Maybe at least if she’s talking to you, it’ll be a break for her. I’m worried. She seems lost in it. Driven.’

And Joe realized that Jack must be worried, because he almost seemed glad to let the policeman into the house.

Joanna was sitting at the kitchen table working on a laptop. She was wearing big, round glasses that had slid down her nose. There were two mugs half full of coffee next to her; both were obviously long cold.

‘Sergeant Ashworth has come to speak to us,’ Jack Devanney said.

She glanced up, but Joe could tell she was miles away, caught up in her story.

‘I’ll make him some coffee, shall I?’ Jack persisted.

‘Yes.’ But she frowned, looked at Joe. ‘Will you be long?’

‘Just a couple of questions.’ He sat at the table beside her.

‘I’ve got a deadline,’ she said. Her voice was excited. He thought she sounded unwell. Had she stopped taking her pills again? ‘Chrissie Kerr is bringing out a pamphlet of our work. A kind of sampler. To raise publicity for the Writers’ House and its work. Only a thousand words each, but it has to be good. It’s an opportunity to prove I can write. A showcase. I’m writing something new. A crime short story.’

‘Alex Barton is in hospital,’ Joe said.

At last she did drag her attention away from the screen. ‘What’s the matter with him?’

Joe made sure Jack was listening too. ‘Someone stuck a knife in his mother’s cat and laid it out like a sacrifice in the chapel, along with a dead robin. It freaked him out. I suppose it would.’

‘And you think we would do something like that?’ Jack was round the table squaring up to Joe.

‘You wouldn’t be squeamish about killing animals,’ Joe said. ‘It’s something you do all the time.’

‘That isn’t like wringing the neck of a hen that’s stopped laying.’ Jack’s face was so close to Joe’s that he could see the hairs in Jack’s nostrils, the gold cap on one tooth. ‘That’s sick!’

‘Is Alex okay?’ Joanna asked. Both men looked at her, distracted for a moment from their hostility. ‘He’s young and he’s been through so much.’

‘Sergeant Ashworth wants to know where we were late yesterday afternoon,’ Jack said.

‘Jack was out.’ She smiled. ‘His weekly trip to Kimmerston. The one day he gets an escape from me. Shopping for the farm and then supper in the Red Lion. Quiz night with his mates. The highlight of the week, eh, Jack? What exciting lives we lead!’

‘And you?’ Joe wasn’t sure how he should address her. Ms Tobin? Joanna? In the end he left the question as it was and thought it sounded blunt, almost rude. ‘Where were you yesterday?’

‘I was here,’ she said. ‘Where else would I be? We only have one vehicle, Sergeant. Without that I’m stranded.’

Joe thought she’d escaped by taxi once before, but said nothing.

Before leaving the house he glanced over Joanna’s shoulder at the computer screen and read the first paragraph. It was a description of a dead man lying on a beach. His face was covered in scratch marks. ‘As if he had been attacked by a wolf.’ Joanna’s idea of an entertaining read.

Chrissie wouldn’t hear of Nina going back to the flat in Jesmond.

‘Really, you can’t! Not with some nutter about. I wouldn’t forgive myself if anything happened to you.’

So Nina allowed herself to be persuaded. And after a few days she found she was really enjoying her stay in the big house in the country. There was no cooking or shopping to do, and the Kerrs employed a cleaner, so there were none of the chores that distracted her from her writing at home. It was like staying in a friendly hotel. She was given a guest room on the second floor, had her own bathroom and even a little study in which to work. Chrissie’s mother was a good cook; she studied recipes with the assiduous concentration of an academic. Her father was pleasant and mild-mannered. Nina felt almost that she was recreating the working atmosphere of her grandparents’ house and imagined herself back during that summer when she’d produced her first book. The crime story was growing. She could see how it might become a novel. Different from anything she’d written before, but perhaps even better. The form of the mystery gave her the structure that had been lacking in earlier work.

At mealtimes the talk was about the collection of short pieces Chrissie aimed to put together to celebrate Miranda’s work and establish her own claim on the Writers’ House. From the beginning Nina saw that this was the prime motive for the book. Chrissie wanted to spread her empire, and for some reason the Writers’ House was at the centre of her plans. She could talk of little else. It had become an obsession.

‘That detective phoned,’ Chrissie said.

They were eating dinner. Nina had been at the university all day. She’d been given a glass of wine as soon as she got through the door and now there was a lasagne on the table as good as any she’d tasted. Bread from an artisan bakery in Morpeth. Salad in a big glass bowl.

‘That fat one, Inspector Stanhope. She wants us to fix a date for Miranda Barton’s memorial celebration. It was her idea in the first place – a party to launch the book and remember all the good work Miranda did to encourage new writers. She said that Alex is okay with the idea. He’s back at home, much better. I suggested a week on Friday and said I’d go to see poor Alex to discuss the details. What do you think?’

‘Can you get the book out by then?’ Nina had other objections, but thought Chrissie would only care about the practicalities. The work had by now turned from a modest pamphlet to a substantial anthology; Chrissie had approached former tutors and students for contributions, had been up for nights in a row proofreading. They’d chosen the jacket together. It was a black-and-white photo of the Writers’ House in winter, the trees bare, the sea flat and grey.

‘It went to the printer’s today.’ Chrissie poured red wine into her glass and lifted it in mock celebration. ‘So what do you think? Friday week for the party?’

‘Where will you hold it?’ Nina thought it would be one of the usual places: the Sage, the cafe in the Baltic or the Lit & Phil.

‘The Writers’ House, of course. Chrissie looked at her as if she were mad. ‘Where else? I thought you’d understood that was my plan from the start.’

Until now Nina had been swept along by her friend’s enthusiasm. She’d listened to Chrissie’s ideas about the important people in the literary establishment and the media who should be invited, how the evening should be run. But now she set down her glass. ‘You can’t! It’s a dreadful idea. Besides, the inspector would never allow it.’

‘She already has.’ Chrissie looked at Nina with amusement. ‘Of course I asked her permission first. It has to be at the Writers’ House. All this press coverage, we’ll fill the place as soon as I send out the invitations. I’ve even had interest from
The Culture Show
. They’re doing a special memorial programme on Tony Ferdinand.’ Then: ‘But we won’t have readings. There’s nothing more tedious than listening to new writers reading from their work. A couple of very short speeches will be quite enough. You’ll speak, won’t you, Nina? You’ll tell them how important the Writers’ House is to literature in the North-East?’

And Nina said yes because she felt she had no alternative. How could she refuse Chrissie when she was sitting in this house, enjoying her parents’ hospitality; when Chrissie had been the person to save her from joining the ranks of the great unpublished?

But later, sitting in her room, plotting out the chapter she intended to write the next day, her unease about the whole event grew. Two people had died. The killer had not been brought to justice. Chrissie’s excitement, her zest for business and for making sales seemed inappropriate. Besides, Nina thought she never wanted to set foot in the Writers’ House again.

In the days that followed, as the date for the party approached, her anxiety about the event increased. She didn’t want to see the players in the drama. Lenny and Giles Rickard, Joanna and Jack, Mark Winterton and Alex Barton, they belonged elsewhere. Now they lived not in Cumbria or Red Row or Craster, but in her imagination. They provided the cruel fuel that fired her story. She hadn’t created characters exactly like the real people, but the sense of menace that she remembered from her time in the house, the odd friction – all that was feeding into her book.

All writers are parasites
, she thought.

She was anxious that if she met the real people, the magic would die and the heart of her story would disappear.

But that’s crazy. Are all writers mad too?

The next day she had a free morning. She should be writing her students’ assessments, but the weather was beautiful, sunny and clear and she joined Chrissie as she took the family dog for a walk. This was a ritual and Chrissie’s only exercise. She would take the animal on a circular trip along footpaths that crossed former North Farm land. It was hardly a mile, but Chrissie would return red-cheeked and out of breath as if she had run it. In fact it seemed she did walk very quickly, resenting perhaps the time away from her desk, and now Nina struggled to keep up with her.

‘Do you think it’s a good idea to launch the book and the appeal so quickly?’ Nina said. Another attempt to stop the juggernaut that seemed to be rolling towards the inevitable party. ‘Shouldn’t we wait until the killer has been caught? It seems rather tasteless to go ahead now.’

Chrissie stopped in her tracks, bent to release the dog from her lead and watched her gallop away.

‘Of course we must do it now!’ she said. ‘Absolutely.’ She turned to face Nina and her eyes shone with excitement – almost, Nina thought, with a kind of madness. ‘These days there’s no reason why all the major players within publishing should be based in London. I’d have to pay a fortune to get this quality and quantity of publicity. To get noticed. I heard this morning that
The Bookseller
has agreed to do an article about North Farm. They’re heading it “Regional publishing: the saviour of the industry?” It’s in your interest too, you know. You want to see your books in the high-street shops, don’t you? You want to give up work at the university to write full-time?’

Nina had to agree that she did want both those things. As she marched in step with Chrissie along the edge of the newly ploughed field, it occurred to her that she was being manipulated by her editor in much the same way as Tony Ferdinand had tried to manipulate her in the seminar group all those years ago. The difference, she told herself, was that Chrissie had Nina’s best interests at heart.

One day not long afterwards, walking out of her office in the university, she met Joe Ashworth. She’d had a supervision session with a mature student, a middle-aged woman with fixed ideas who should never have been accepted onto the course. Nina was so cross and frustrated that she almost walked past the detective. He was in the corridor, staring at a student notice board. There were old posters about elections for NUS officials and new ones advertising end-of-term parties and performances. Soon the undergraduates would be leaving and the place would be quieter. He turned so that she saw his face, and she stopped in her tracks.

‘Are you here to see me?’ Then could have kicked herself. Why else would he be there? It made her sound ridiculous. ‘Is there news? Do you know who broke into my flat? Have you caught the killer?’

‘No,’ he said. She thought he looked older than she remembered. Certainly more tired. ‘Have you got time for a coffee?’

‘Sure!’ She was in no hurry to get back to North Farm. Chrissie had threatened to drag her to the supermarket to buy wine for the Writers’ House party if she got back in time. And Chrissie, with her restless energy and constant enthusiasm for the project, was irritating her more each day.

Nina took him to a small coffee shop in a back street between the university and the hospital. It was dark, like walking into a Victorian parlour at dusk. The place was run by an elderly man. He baked great cakes and scones and the coffee was very good, but he had no sense of how to treat customers. Perhaps he had Asperger’s syndrome, or some other condition that made him awkward in social situations. ‘What do you want?’ he would ask very brusquely as soon as anyone walked in. He hated waiting to take an order. He loved to read, and it was as if the customer had wandered into his home and disturbed him in the middle of his book. But, once served, the customer would be left alone, unbothered.