IT WAS CLEAR AND SUNNY, MUCH as it had been when she’d first arrived at the Pilgrims’ House five days before. Dead leaves underfoot. Quiet and still. Because the door was shut, she wasn’t sure whether the man had done as she’d asked and come to meet her. As she approached there was the familiar smell of creosote. All bird hides smelled the same and it was the scent of her childhood, trailing after Hector, being told to sit still, while he recced the sites of nests he could rob. She opened the door and saw that the place was empty, except for one figure, back on. The flap overlooking the lake was open and sunlight flooded in from the east. You’d see practically nothing on the lake with the sun in your eyes, but that wasn’t why he was here in the Rede’s Tower nature reserve. He wasn’t birdwatching today.
‘Daniel,’ she said. ‘Good of you to meet me.’
‘Why here?’ He turned towards her. ‘We could have talked in the house if you needed to see me. It’d be more comfortable there. I’d even make you a coffee.’
‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Neutral territory. I wasn’t sure whether Eliza would be back. We wouldn’t want her earwigging.’ A pause. ‘Or Katherine.’
Because Katherine’s the unknown quantity here. Who knows how she’ll react? And what Watkins will make of it.
Vera squinted into the sun, saw the silhouettes of mallard and tufted duck on the water. ‘We don’t want to involve her unless we have to. Besides, I’m at home in a place like this. My father was a birdwatcher. Of a kind.’
‘How can I help you, Inspector?’
‘I spoke to Annie this morning. I caught her at the deli, just as it was opening.’
‘Oh? How’s she doing?’
‘She’s sad. Maybe a bit lonely. She’s lost a good friend.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m still very fond of her.’
‘But Katherine? She’s the love of your life these days?’
‘You know, I might sound like a soppy git, but really, she’s the best thing that ever happened to me. I adore her.’ He turned towards Vera and gave her an open smile, wide and lovely. She could see how Katherine might have fallen for him.
‘Is that what all this is about? Are you protecting Katherine here?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Then let me explain. Tell you the story that Rick Kelsall was going to tell in his novel. Though I don’t think it was so much a novel as a piece of mischief. I’m not even sure that he’d written much more than a synopsis and a few notes. Planning it was enough, a way of bringing the past back to life. Making the man feel alive and young again. Replacing the attention that he had when he was on the telly every week. Stirring things up.’
‘Aye well,’ Daniel said. ‘He was always good at doing that. Not so good at putting things back together again.’
‘He had a row with Isobel Hall just before she drove off the causeway and died. Everyone blamed him for that. There was always a lingering sense that he’d caused the accident, by treating her badly. He didn’t enjoy being cast as the villain in the piece.’ Vera leaned forward, her elbows on the shelf where the birders rested their telescopes, the smell of stagnant water and rich vegetation seeping into the hide. ‘He wanted to set matters straight and tell his own side of the tale after all this time.’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ Daniel said.
Vera ignored that and continued. ‘It was a terrible time for you, that first reunion on the island. You were only there for Annie. You’d lost your baby a few months earlier and Annie was severely depressed, wrapped up in her grief.’
‘Aye.’ Daniel spoke slowly, reliving the pain. ‘She couldn’t let it go. Every thought was a torment, about what we might have done, what we should have done. The possibilities going round and round in her head like a whirlpool, but knowing that nothing would change the outcome. It was as if she was drowning in the guilt.’
Oh, Vera thought, I know exactly how that feels.
Rede was still talking. ‘It was a kind of madness.’ He looked up at Vera. ‘I think she’s a bit mad now, after all this time, though she hides it very well.’
‘You’re still very fond of her.’
‘Of course.’
‘Still protective?’
He turned his attention back to the pond. ‘I don’t know where you’re going with this.’
‘I’m exploring all the possibilities. I like Annie, but liking someone doesn’t stop me thinking they might have done something criminal.’ A pause. ‘Wicked.’
‘Now you’re being crazy! Annie wouldn’t hurt a fly. She certainly wouldn’t kill Rick Kelsall.’
‘Maybe not, but humour me, will you? Let’s go back to that weekend. The first reunion. The end of a long, hot summer, apparently. Even here in the North. You’d lost your baby. Everyone’s nerves would be frayed. You were all just in your twenties by then, but not quite ready to be adults. Not quite grown up. Except for Annie, who’d had to grow up very quickly.’
He stared out at the water in silence. A pair of mallard flew off, all noise and splash.
‘You must have felt trapped,’ Vera went on. ‘You didn’t want to be there with the people you didn’t have much in common with. You’d only agreed to come along to support Annie, to stop her doing something silly.’ A pause. ‘She’d talked about suicide? Maybe made a few tentative tries at it.’
Daniel nodded. She could just see his profile. ‘I saw marks on her wrists. She wouldn’t talk to me! I think she’d had a sort of breakdown. But she refused to see a doctor. She kept saying that she was okay. That it was normal to be sad when you’ve lost a baby.’
‘But this was more than sadness, wasn’t it, pet? This was depression. Deep and dangerous. And you were young too. It was a stressful time for you. We didn’t understand mental illness then. Not as we do now. Maybe you saw the weekend as some sort of escape. A way of sharing the burden at least. There’d be other people around to help look after her.’
‘Yes!’ He was grateful that she understood.
‘You were hoping for a breakthrough in her mood, but some time to yourself too. Company. Even a bit of fun.’
‘That makes me sound heartless.’ Daniel shot her a glance. ‘But you’re right. I loved Annie, but she was dragging me down with her. I tried to help her, but it seemed there was nothing I could do.’
‘Eh, pet, I’m not judging. Sometimes we do what we have to, just to survive.’
‘Aye well. That was what it felt like. Like I was swamped by responsibility, that if I didn’t get a break, I’d go mad myself.’
‘And then along swanned Isobel,’ Vera said. ‘Full of light and energy. Just graduated and full of confidence. She’d always fancied you. Her mam told my sergeant, there was someone special in her life, but that he was already taken. I think that was you. So, there she was. Flirting and giving you the sort of attention you’d not had since the baby died. Seeming sympathetic, but really hoping to get her man at last. The man of her dreams. Who could resist that?’ Vera paused. ‘I’m guessing that you two had a bit of a fling that weekend. Sex in the sand dunes? Sneaking off together while Annie was still grieving and guilty.’
He smiled sadly. ‘Something like that. It seems a bit pathetic now, but at the time it felt…’ He struggled to find the words. ‘… just what I needed.’
‘A kind of tonic?’
‘Like you said: an escape. And Isobel made me laugh. We both knew it wasn’t serious.’
‘Well, not serious for you perhaps. Serious enough for Isobel, who’d always needed what she couldn’t have.’ Vera looked across at him again, but he was still staring out of the slit window of the hide. ‘Did Annie work out what you were up to? All the sudden disappearances? Never being there for her?’
‘No!’ he said. ‘She was still lost in that world of her own.’
Vera nodded. ‘You’re saying she was too depressed to notice you carrying on under her nose? Too depressed to see the betrayal, to want some sort of revenge?’
‘Yes!’ His voice was loud now. ‘And we were discreet. Honestly, we didn’t want to hurt her. She couldn’t have known.’
‘Not that discreet,’ Vera shot back. ‘While Annie might just have been too wrapped up in her own memories to realize what you were doing, the others noticed.’
‘No,’ Daniel said. ‘You’ve got this all wrong.’
‘Or perhaps not all the others.’ Vera continued speaking as if there’d been no interruption. ‘Just Rick Kelsall, who was Annie’s special friend. Who loved her like a brother and understood her better than anyone in the world.’
Silence.
‘Rick didn’t blame you,’ Vera went on. ‘He knew what you’d gone through. He blamed Isobel. Arrogant, entitled Isobel, who’d decided to seduce you, to get the man she’d always wanted. That was what the row was about.’ A pause. ‘Did Annie hear them arguing?’
‘I think she must have done,’ Daniel said at last. ‘She’d been to the village and appeared in the middle of it.’
‘So, she did know that you and Isobel had had a fling?’
‘Maybe. At that point she might have guessed from the words flying between Isobel and Kelsall. But she never mentioned it.’
‘It was something else that festered between you for the rest of your marriage. Something else for her to chase round and round in her head when she was lying awake at night.’
Now he did turn to her. ‘I did try to make a go of that marriage, you know. I wasn’t some kind of unfeeling monster. I did my best to mend it. We went to counselling and I was as kind as I could be. I stayed as long as I could. But in the end, the only sane thing was to walk away.’
‘To focus on your work.’ That’s always been my answer.
He nodded again. ‘Yes, until Katherine came along and I fell for her. Head over heels. Then work didn’t seem quite so important.’
‘Was it Annie, who sent Isobel off to her death? Is that what you’ve all been hiding all these years?’
He took a moment to respond. ‘She might have said something. Some recrimination or challenge. But I never saw it as Annie’s fault. It was Isobel’s decision to rush away like that. It was an accident.’
‘Aye,’ Vera said, ‘and it was in Isobel’s nature to make the grand gesture. Maybe she imagined herself stranded on one of the refuge towers waiting to be rescued. By a knight in shining armour. Her knight.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Do you think Annie killed Rick Kelsall? Because he was planning to bring the whole thing out in the open after all these years? To bring back all those dreadful memories.’ Now, Vera thought, they were getting to the heart of the matter.
‘The way he’s always behaved, he had no right to make any kind of fuss.’
This, Vera thought, was no kind of answer.
‘But he was Annie’s friend,’ she said. ‘He thought the world of her. I’m not sure he’d have done anything now to hurt her.’
‘Rick Kelsall was a selfish man.’ Daniel turned towards Vera in his effort to make her understand. ‘He was totally absorbed in his own desires. He’d sacrifice anyone, even Annie, to pull himself back into the limelight.’
‘But he wasn’t planning to sacrifice Annie.’ Vera kept her voice very low. ‘Was he, pet? He had someone very different in mind as villain of his piece.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’ With these words, Daniel seemed to lose the veneer of sophistication he’d developed during his life with Katherine. He turned back into a churlish teenager. The secondary modern kid, who’d scraped a place in the Grammar at the last chance. Still the chippy outsider, who’d never quite fitted in.
‘Oh, I think you do. In his book, Rick never intended to blame Annie for Isobel’s death. It was a much more interesting target. Rich businessman married to the Police and Crime Commissioner, famous for her moral stance on all issues.’ A pause. ‘Annie would never have killed Rick Kelsall.’
‘What are you saying?’ The words came out as a growl.
‘Let me explain, if you don’t quite understand.’ Now Vera could have been Judith Sinclair, a teacher standing in front of her classroom. ‘Though I think you know perfectly well what I’m saying. We’ll go back a few months. Back to the early summer. People were listening to a young Swedish lass and deciding it wasn’t cool to be flying to exotic places. They’d holiday in Britain instead. You’d long divorced from Annie, and taken up with Katherine. You’d built this business up into the success it is now, and people were flocking to the seaside for a change of scene. Everything rosy. Perfect. No longer any reason for you to prove yourself. You could finally believe you were as good as the rest of the world.’
Vera paused for a moment and shot a glance at Daniel. He was staring out at the reserve. Still and silent and as hard as granite.
‘There were obviously no hard feelings between you and Kelsall,’ Vera went on, ‘because he took on your stepdaughter as an intern. Only then Eliza made some foolish allegations, exaggerating his behaviour, and he lost his job. And he felt the need to fight back. To re-establish himself in the eyes of his public. And to get his own back for his misfortune, like some pathetic schoolboy scrapping in the playground, after someone’s called him a rude name. That’s how we come to be here, exploring the past and the reasons for two people’s deaths.’
‘It wasn’t my fault Kelsall lost his job.’ Daniel spat out the words. ‘That was down to him. His responsibility. His inappropriate behaviour. And he had the nerve to preach to me about something that happened forty-five years ago.’
‘Yes,’ Vera said, staying almost calm. ‘I can see that must have rankled. None of us likes a hypocrite.’ She took a breath. ‘When did Kelsall come to see you to let you know what he was planning? To tell you he was writing a fictionalized version of an event that happened all that time ago. Something sufficiently close to the truth that the people involved and their friends and family would understand, and not look at you in quite the same way again. Something that might sour your relationship with the love of your life.’
‘He came here to the house to talk to Katherine about the statement they’d make jointly about Eliza’s allegations. The way she’d been manipulated by the press.’
‘You saw him then? Is that when he threatened to expose you?’
‘He tracked me down after that meeting. I was here on site. He called into reception on his way out, and they pointed him in my direction. It was one of those glorious days that we had last week. We walked on the beach. He talked. Kelsall always very much liked the sound of his own voice. He was playing with me. Mocking the business in that sarky way that some people do. Calling it a holiday camp, as if it was fucking Butlins. He said he wasn’t entirely sure he would agree to the statement about Eliza, and whatever happened things wouldn’t be the same for us. Not once his book came out. People might not be so keen to stay in our holiday camp once they knew the sort of man I was. A man who’d driven one young woman to consider suicide and another to her death. He might have the reputation of being a bastard to women, but he’d never had that effect on them. He’d never driven them to kill themselves.’ Daniel paused for breath. ‘His tone was jokey but it was a very real threat.’
‘You had a lot to lose,’ Vera said. ‘Katherine. This place. Your perfect life.’
‘Everything I’ve worked for!’ It came out as a scream. His control was unravelling at last. Vera could see now that she’d get a confession from him.
‘So, that night you drove onto Holy Island.’
He stared at her, with his mouth clamped shut.
‘And you killed Rick Kelsall.’
Still, he didn’t answer.
‘You can tell me!’ Vera forced herself to smile. ‘We’re on our own here and I’m not recording the conversation. I wouldn’t know how. I just want to understand for my own satisfaction.’ A beat. ‘And besides, I think you want to tell me. You want someone to know the truth. You’re not some kind of monster.’
Daniel was still staring over the water. The sun had shifted a bit, had moved behind a clump of trees, so the view was clearer; he wasn’t looking into the light. ‘I didn’t go there to kill him. I wanted to talk to him, just to sort things out between us. To persuade him.’
‘But you did kill him, didn’t you, Daniel?’
‘I had a key to the Pilgrims’ House,’ Daniel said. ‘I’m planning to buy it. I’ve told you we wanted to expand the business and I already have interests on the island.’
‘The Old Hall Hotel.’ Vera didn’t want to stop his flow, but that was part of the story too. ‘You hold a share in that.’
He nodded.
‘I knew where Kelsall slept.’ His voice was bitter. ‘Always the best room in the place. I went in and he was asleep. Looking so pathetic. His mouth open, stinking of booze. Snoring.’
‘So, you held a cushion on his face and you killed him. Then you strung him up to make it look like suicide.’
‘Lying there. So weak. It was as if he was inviting me to do it.’ Daniel paused. ‘I was home before Katherine woke up. It’s not very far around the bay.’ He turned to face Vera. ‘She knew nothing about this. I did it for her. Think of the embarrassment if the whole thing came out. If Kelsall backed down on his agreement to tell the truth about Eliza’s allegations.’
‘And the fact that you had a sexual romp with a young woman just weeks after your baby had died. In front of your wife.’
‘I didn’t do it for me!’ He sounded as if he almost believed it. ‘It was for Katherine and Eliza. And for everyone who works here.’
‘What about Charlotte?’ Vera asked. ‘How does she fit into all this?’
‘That was bad luck. She’d been on the island that afternoon.’
‘She was there with Judith Sinclair. They had a drink together in the Seahorse.’ Vera looked up at him. ‘Were you there with them?’
‘No!’ He seemed genuinely confused.
So, that had been a stray birder just as Judith had claimed, but he’d played his part in the story all the same. He’d had a walk-on part in the drama.
‘So, tell me, Daniel, why did Charlotte have to die?’
‘She was driving off the island as I was driving on that Friday night. The night Kelsall died. She recognized me. Waved.’
‘And later, she tried her hand at a bit of blackmail.’
We know she was hard-up and she’d been brought up to make the most out of any situation. Her family had been in the business of extortion too.
‘Yes, by then the whole thing was running out of control. I didn’t know how to stop it.’ He was close to tears. Vera could almost feel sorry for him. If it weren’t for two people dead. And Holly lying barely alive in the hospital in Kimmerston.
‘And my officer?’ Her voice sharp now. Icy. ‘What happened there? I know that was no accident. She wasn’t a woman to take risks.’
‘She was in the Old Hall, asking questions about me and Katherine.’
‘Not about you. About a single birdwatcher. The man sitting in the pub. Some stranger we thought might be involved.’
‘I thought she was looking for me. I always carry binoculars when I’m out and about. A habit. I don’t feel dressed without them.’
Vera nodded. Hector had been just the same. He was never without them, even on a trip to the shop in Kirkhill, even drinking tea on the bench outside the cottage.
‘And Jason at the hotel phoned you to tell you the police were making enquiries.’
‘He thought I’d want to know. He’s a good lad. I told you I have a stake in the hotel. I’ve been grooming him to be manager.’
‘So, you set a trap for her. The barmaid at the Seahorse was asking people to contact the officer if they were the person she was looking for. You’ll know all the locals if you’ve got interests in the island and you’ll have heard about the request on the grapevine. You sent her a text, asking her to meet you.’
Daniel said nothing, so Vera continued. ‘You followed her from the lough back to her car. You’d lit the candles in the chapel hoping that she’d go in to investigate, and of course she did. She wouldn’t miss something like that. She’s one of my best officers. Then you hit her. So hard that she was unconscious, that she’s still in hospital with possible brain damage. You put her in her own car and drove her off the island. Halfway across the causeway, just as the tide was coming in, you got out and lifted her into the driver’s seat. You left her there. The fog was so thick that nobody saw the car. You waded back to the island. I suspect that you had your grand four-by-four waiting, hidden in the dunes. You must have driven off to the mainland just before the island was cut off by the sea.’
‘I saw your Land Rover arriving,’ Daniel said. ‘Just before I put her car on the causeway.’
So, if we’d been half an hour later, we might have seen Holly’s car. We could have rescued her, saved her the cold wait on the tower before she lapsed back into unconsciousness.’
Vera felt like weeping, but this wasn’t a time for self-pity. ‘Then you went home. Another alibi established. I presume it was Isobel’s death that gave you the idea. It was like rewriting history.’
‘You have no evidence,’ he said. His mood had changed again. Now he was the ruthless businessman, crushing his rivals, fighting for his empire. ‘No proof at all.’
He turned towards her and for the first time in the encounter, Vera felt real fear. After all, Rede had been prepared to throw suspicion on Annie Laidler, a woman he’d once cared for. He’d tried to kill Holly Clarke. What arrogance had led Vera to believe that she could persuade the man to confess, to be led quietly away to the police station? If any of her officers had been so foolish, she’d have thought them unfit for the job.
‘People know where I am,’ she said.
But she could tell that he wasn’t listening. Daniel Rede was beyond reason and logic. He believed he’d achieved the perfect life as he approached old age – a beautiful, intelligent woman, a daughter to replace the one he’d lost, wealth and position to give him the confidence he’d lacked as a teenager – and now he saw it all slipping away from him. She could see now that he would fight to protect it, even if the fight was irrational and pointless.
He moved slowly and deliberately. She supposed she could run, but although he was older, he was fitter than she was. He’d catch her. And even now, as he took the binoculars from his neck, and leaned across to put the strap around hers, she thought there was something undignified in running. There were worse places to die than here, with the smell of warm creosote and vegetation, to the soundtrack of bird calls. He pulled the leather tight. She tried to get her fingers underneath it to pull the strap away, but everything seemed to be in slow motion and she was too late. The breath was being squeezed from her and she was light-headed, dreamy. There was no pain now. Out of the hide window, she saw a buzzard, sailing high over the trees and she was there with it, looking down on the woodland and the lake and the sea beyond. At a landscape that was as close to home as it was possible to be. In the distance, from her vantage point in the sky, she fancied she could glimpse the hills, the wind turbines like dandelion clocks, the crags where she’d seen her first ring ouzel.
There was a sudden noise, which shattered the peace and fractured the dream. It was a human voice, screaming, horrified. It seemed to come from a long way off, but it got closer, more discordant. Vera found herself back on earth, in the hide, in pain, struggling to breathe.
‘Let her go!’ A woman was shouting. The tone was shrill and unpleasant to the ear, but it was effective. The strap loosened. Daniel’s face was still so close to Vera’s that she could smell him. Aftershave, attractive and rather heady. His breath with a hint of coffee. The woman’s voice again, each syllable given equal weight. ‘Let her go!’
This time, Rede did as he was ordered. Vera felt the drag of the binoculars on her neck, as he released the tension on the strap. The skin hurt where the leather had cut into it. She breathed deeply, felt her lungs fill.
The door was pushed open and Daniel was gone. He barrelled past Katherine Willmore and they heard his running footsteps on the boardwalk, disappearing further into the reserve. Katherine came further into the hide. She lifted the binoculars from Vera’s neck and set them on the wooden shelf. Vera raised her head and saw that the PCC was crying. She was dressed for a meeting, and the tears ran through her mascara and made black trails down her face. Vera wanted to warn her of the mess on her face, because surely the press would soon get wind of the story and the woman wouldn’t want to be seen like that. But she could hardly speak. There was just a croak like a raven.
‘I very nearly didn’t come.’ Katherine collapsed onto the bench, her back to the window, her legs facing the door. ‘My secretary passed on your message, but I thought it was ridiculous.’
‘Did you…?’ That was all Vera could manage.
‘I listened,’ Katherine said. ‘Just as you told me to. I heard it all.’ The tears hadn’t stopped. They rolled down her cheeks. Vera found herself fascinated and tried to remember the last time she’d cried. Hector’s funeral? Nah, she hadn’t thought him worth her tears. Unless it was for a sad life, wasted.
‘I’ll contact Superintendent Watkins.’ Katherine took a spotless handkerchief from the pocket of her jacket, wiped her face. ‘Tell him we need Daniel to be found, arrested.’
‘Did you suspect?’ Vera had found her voice at last.
There was no reply.
Vera had wanted to drive straight back to Kimmerston to coordinate the search for Rede, but Katherine wouldn’t hear of it, of her driving alone, so they were sitting together in the perfect house with its view of the sea, drinking perfect coffee. Distant. Civilized. Vera had refused the ambulance, the doctor.
‘Eh, pet, some people would pay for that kind of experience. What do they call it? Auto-erotic.’ Knowing it was the last sort of thing the PCC would want to hear, but feeling sorry for the woman, needing awkwardly to lighten the mood.
Was it shame that had driven Daniel to kill to maintain the illusion of perfection? Or a genuine desire to protect Katherine and her daughter from hurt? Vera could have forgiven him that, could have forgiven him even the deaths of Rick Kelsall and Charlotte Thomas, but not the attack on Holly. Her officer. That was unforgivable.
Katherine got to her feet and walked to her office. She left the door open and Vera could hear her talking on the phone, maintaining the professional voice even while she continued to weep, silently. Vera wondered if that was a genuine reaction to the fact that her man was a killer, or because her own professional standing had been compromised. Certainly, she’d take a huge hit in the press. Any good work she’d done in the past would be ridiculed. She’d be forced to resign. Was that the cause of her tears? Perhaps, Vera thought, she was getting cynical in her old age. It was possible that Katherine would support Daniel through the trial and visit him in prison, bring him back here and look after him when he was released as a very elderly man. But she couldn’t really see it.
She dozed. It was the warmth of the sun shining through the glass and the shock. Hardly sleeping the night before. The satisfaction of a case brought successfully to a conclusion.
She woke when Katherine came back into the room. She was no longer crying but her face was drawn, serious.
‘They’ve found him?’
‘Yes. He was in his car in a lay-by on the A1. He just seemed to be waiting for them to get him. He didn’t put up any sort of fight.’
Vera nodded. It was a bit of an anticlimax maybe. Rick Kelsall would have injected a bit more drama if he’d been telling the story. But it was a satisfactory conclusion.
‘Your team has been trying to get in touch with you.’
‘Oh aye? Wondering why I’ve gone AWOL?’ Why I didn’t take them into my confidence.
‘It’s your DC. Holly Clarke.’
Vera brightened. ‘She’s come round? They’ve started to question her?’
A silence. ‘Her head wound was too severe,’ Katherine said. Her voice was very gentle. ‘Nobody can understand how she had the strength to swim out of the car and drag herself onto the tower.’ A pause. ‘She died in the night.’
That was when everything went silent and the light seemed to leave the room.