JOE THOUGHT IT WAS ODD TO drive off the island. It was as if he were shifting from somewhere dreamlike, made up of water and shimmering light, back to the real world, solid and mundane. It wasn’t like him to have such fancies, but he thought he could understand why the friends had returned to the Pilgrims’ House every five years. It wasn’t just about catching up with people they were close to. The place had a certain magic. They’d all grown up to have responsible jobs, and commitments, and things had become a little routine and predictable. The island transported them back to a time when they were young and free, and life was exciting and full of possibilities.
He’d almost arrived home when there was a call from the boss, her voice as loud on the phone as it was in person.
‘I was chatting to Louisa before she left. Her mam’s still alive. She’s ninety and living in her own home. It’s an address in Morpeth. She’s sharp as a tack apparently.’
Joe could tell what was coming next and tried to pre-empt her. ‘Sal needs me back. She’s planning a proper Sunday lunch and I promised I’d be there.’
‘No rush.’ Vera’s voice was easy, relaxed. She knew she’d get what she wanted from him. She always did. ‘You can go later this afternoon. I’d do it myself but you’re so good with old people. A lovely manner. That’s what everyone says.’ A pause. ‘Just talk to her about Isobel. Louisa hasn’t been very forthcoming and she said she was in a rush to get home when I tried to talk to her just now. You can understand that, with a husband like Ken. He was fretting when they were setting off, but he provides a convenient excuse. I can’t help thinking that Isobel’s death is in some way connected to her family. According to Louisa, the lass was her mam’s favourite. The apple of her eye. Let’s see what she says.’
Joe didn’t argue. There was no point. ‘It’ll have to wait until after lunch.’
‘Of course. Whenever suits you best. Give me a shout this evening and tell me what you’ve got.’
Mrs Barbara Hall lived in a detached bungalow on a quiet street on the edge of the town. The garden was immaculate and a handrail led to the front door. She knew that Joe was coming. She was slender, upright, and looked younger than Joe had been expecting. He thought how sad it was that Louisa’s mother was so much more independent than her own husband.
‘You’re absolutely on time.’ There was a hint of a faint Scottish accent in her voice. ‘I do value punctuality. The kettle has just boiled. I’ll make tea.’ She looked at him sharply. ‘You do take tea?’
‘Certainly.’
‘Make yourself at home in the sitting room and I’ll bring it through.’ She returned with a tray, and a plate of small scones, already buttered and covered with jam.
‘The jam is shop bought, I’m afraid. I used to make my own.’ A pause. ‘Would you pour. I have arthritis in my wrists, and sometimes I’m not so steady.’ She looked at him. ‘I understand that you’re here because of the murder on Holy Island. I’ve been watching it on the news. I watch far too much television these days. I used to despise it, but it passes the time.’
‘The victim, Rick Kelsall, was a friend of your daughters.’
‘Of Isobel, my elder daughter. Louisa was younger.’
‘You knew him?’
‘Oh yes! We knew them all.’ Her voice was warm. ‘People talk about their schooldays being the happiest time of their lives, but that wasn’t true in my case, Sergeant. I grew up during the war, and even afterwards it was a drab time of rationing and restriction. Of boredom. My father had been badly affected by his experiences – he’d been in Burma – and he was constantly angry. My mother couldn’t stand up to him and her life was a misery. My happiest time came later, when I was a wife and a mother, watching my girls grow up into strong young women. It was a joy to see them have the happiness at school that I’d missed out on: the friendship, the excitement of new ideas. We had rather a large house then. My husband was an engineer and he had his own business. We were doing very well. We encouraged the girls to bring their friends into our home. I tried not to intrude, but I loved their company.’
‘Can you remember the names of Isobel’s friends?’
‘Oh yes, I can. I remember them all, vividly. There was Annie Laidler. She was the quiet one, shy. It was as if she felt she didn’t really have the right to be there. Philip seemed the complete opposite, a bit edgy, arrogant even, but underneath, you could tell he was a very nice boy.’ She looked up, suddenly amused. ‘He went on to become a priest. In my wildest dreams I would never have predicted that for him. Charlotte Thomas was lovely to look at, but a bit shallow, I always thought. Ken was kind, staid, a bit boring. Daniel had dark, romantic good looks. There was a touch of Heathcliff about him. He wasn’t as academic as the others, and that made him something of an outsider, but look what he’s gone on to become!’
Joe must have looked confused, because she went on to explain. ‘He’s Daniel Rede. You must have heard of him! He runs that big holiday park on the bay, very close to the island. And also half the holiday homes in rural Northumberland, if my gossiping neighbours are to be believed. He’ll be worth more than the rest of them put together. Certainly, more than Rick, for all that he’s become so famous.’
‘Rick was a special friend of Isobel’s?’
‘I think he was. Not a boyfriend, though she had plenty of those too, but the two of them were very close. Rick was an only child and his parents were both doctors, always busy. Rick treated Isobel more like a sister. They confided in each other.’ She looked up at Joe and smiled. ‘And he was like the son I never had.’ There was another pause. ‘We gave them a room in the basement. The teenagers played music there, listened to records, ate the suppers I made for them. They drank, I suspect, too much. It was all candles, posters on the walls. And they talked. They never stopped talking. I suppose I was living vicariously, but I loved the fact that those conversations were going on just beneath my feet.’
‘You said that Isobel had boyfriends. Did she go out with any of the boys in the group?’
‘If she did, Sergeant, she never confided in me.’ A pause. ‘I did have the sense that she had a serious crush on one of them, but that it was never reciprocated.’ There was another moment of silence. ‘Or perhaps that the boy was already taken, and she was dreaming of the unattainable. That was probably more likely. Isobel usually told me everything, but she knew I’d disapprove if she tried to break up an established romantic relationship.’ Barbara didn’t sound disapproving. Joe thought she would have forgiven her elder daughter anything.
Joe considered the information. At the time that the group had first gone to Holy Island, hadn’t all the lads been taken? They all had girlfriends. Except Philip. Ken had been going out with Louisa, Rick with Charlotte, and Annie with Daniel. Who was most likely to have caught Isobel’s fancy? If there’d been sibling rivalry, perhaps Ken had been the object of the young woman’s desire. She certainly wouldn’t have admitted to her mother that she lusted after her younger sister’s boyfriend! But the argument outside the house before Isobel’s accident would suggest it had probably been Rick who’d floated through the lass’s dreams at night. Joe decided to move on, or rather to go back to the beginning.
‘They went to Holy Island, on some sort of team-building course run by the school.’
‘Yes,’ Barbara said. ‘Only Connect. That was the start of it, the trigger for those intense, very close friendships. Isobel came back changed. Lit-up. It seemed almost as if she’d had an evangelical experience. All that mattered, she said, was honesty. You could forgive anything if you had a true understanding of the other person, if there was a real connection. My husband disapproved. He thought it had been wrong for people with no training in the field to mess with the young people’s minds. He still believed that emotions should be tightly restrained.’
‘And you? What did you think?’
‘I thought it was glorious. It felt as if they were properly alive, vivid, in a way that I never was as a young person.’ She paused. ‘I envied them. I wished that I’d been there.’
‘Was Louisa a part of the group? Was she invited to the gatherings in the basement?’
Barbara Hall frowned. ‘Not at first, though she very much wanted to be. She was three years younger, and I suppose she felt left out. She was always competitive, always saw Isobel as some sort of rival, though really there was no need. Louisa was stunning in her own right: bright, beautiful. But perhaps a younger sibling can sometimes feel daunted when the older sister is so successful.’
‘She must have joined in when she started going out with Ken?’
‘Yes.’ The old woman paused. ‘I did wonder if that was the only reason that she went out with him. To infiltrate the gang.’
Joe thought infiltrate was a strange word to use. It sounded aggressive, almost as if Louisa was a sort of terrorist. ‘She and Ken married, though, so there must have been more to the relationship than that!’
‘Yes.’ Barbara sighed. ‘I suppose there must. I never thought that the marriage would last. I’d have found the man far too boring. And yet here they are. Forty years on. Poor Ken. They’ve been happy enough, I suppose. Until the illness took hold of him, at least.’
It didn’t seem to Joe like much of an endorsement, but he wasn’t here to talk about Louisa’s relationship with her husband. ‘It must have been dreadful when Isobel died.’
She stared at him, clear-eyed now. ‘Do you have children, Sergeant?’
‘I do.’
‘Then perhaps you’ll understand. It’s the guilt that’s so hard. We gave Isobel the car to celebrate her graduation. She’d got a first-class degree and we were very proud of her. Otherwise, she’d have taken a lift home with Louisa and Ken, and she’d have been safe. That haunted my husband until he died.’
‘Did you ever find out what caused the accident?’
A silence. ‘I suspect Isobel caused it, Sergeant. She was always reckless, a little wild. It was what made her so intriguing. Of course, I could blame Louisa and Ken for disappearing onto the island, so that Isobel hung around at the Pilgrims’ House until just before the tide. I could blame her other friends for not persuading her to wait until the causeway was clear again.’ A pause. ‘But long ago, I decided that way lay madness. It was easier to accept the guilt myself.’
‘I think perhaps her friends did try to persuade her,’ Joe said.
When Annie Laidler had seen Rick and Isobel arguing just before the accident, Joe thought it was likely that the man had just been telling Isobel to wait on the island for the tide to go out again. There was possibly nothing sinister in the encounter at all.
‘Why are you here, Sergeant?’ For the first time since he’d arrived the woman sounded tired. ‘All that happened so long ago and I can’t believe that my daughter’s death can be relevant to your present investigation.’
It seemed to Joe that she was right, and that they were clutching at straws. ‘My boss is always keen on the detail,’ he said. ‘On the background. And we thought it might be upsetting. Another Holy Island death. Even though so many years have passed, it must bring back distressing memories.’
Barbara Hall sat so long in silence, that Joe wondered if she was ill, if she’d had some kind of mini-stroke perhaps. ‘Mrs Hall?’
‘Then it was very kind of you to visit,’ she said at last. ‘I’ve enjoyed telling you about Isobel. She comes alive for me when I talk about her. As she was then of course, not as she would be now. She’d be an old woman too now and I suspect she’d have hated that. I have more lovely memories than bad.’ There was another pause, and when she spoke again her voice was bitter. ‘I wish my younger daughter had been as thoughtful. She didn’t phone to tell me about Rick’s murder. She didn’t realize that all those memories would come back. She let me find out about his death on the television news. I find that hard to understand.’