Into the Water

  I left her at the river. My plan was to get to Sean early; I thought if I showed up at his place, picked him up and drove him to the station, I’d have him captive for at least fifteen minutes. He wouldn’t be able to get away from me or throw me out of the car. It was better than confronting him at the station, where there would be other people around.

  • • •

  IT’S NOT FAR from the cottage to the Townsends’ place. Along the river it’s probably about three miles, but there’s no direct road, you have to drive all the way into the town and then back out again, so it was after eight a.m. by the time I got there. I was too late. There were no cars in the courtyard—he’d already left. The sensible thing, I knew, would be to turn the car around and head for the office, but I had Nickie’s voice in my head and Louise’s, too, and I thought I’d just see, on the off chance, whether Helen was around.

  She wasn’t. I knocked on the door a few times and there was no reply. I was heading back to my car when I thought I might as well try Patrick Townsend’s place next door. No answer there either. I peered through the front window but couldn’t see much, just a dark and seemingly empty room. I went back to the front door and knocked again. Nothing. But when I tried the handle, the door swung open, and that seemed as good as an invitation.

  “Hello?” I called out. “Mr. Townsend? Hello?” There was no answer. I walked into the living room, a spartan space with dark wooden floors and bare walls; the only concession to decoration was a selection of framed photographs on the mantelpiece. Patrick Townsend in uniform—first army, then police—and a number of pictures of Sean as a child and then a teenager, smiling stiffly at the camera, the same pose and the same expression in each one. There was a photograph of Sean and Helen on their wedding day, too, standing in front of the church in Beckford. Sean looked young, handsome and unhappy. Helen looked much the same as she does today—a bit thinner, perhaps. She looked happier, though, smiling shyly at the camera in spite of her ugly dress.

  Over on a wooden sideboard in front of the window was another set of frames, these ones containing certificates, commendations, qualifications, a monument to the achievements of father and son. There were no pictures, as far as I could see, of Sean’s mother.

  I left the living room and called out again. “Mr. Townsend?” My voice echoed back to me in the hallway. The whole place felt abandoned, and yet it was spotlessly clean, not a speck of dust on the skirting boards or the bannister. I walked up the stairs and onto the landing. There were two bedrooms there, side by side, as sparsely furnished as the living room downstairs, but lived in. Both of them, by the looks of things. In the main bedroom, with its large window looking down the valley to the river, were Patrick’s things: polished black shoes by the wall, his suits hanging in the wardrobe. Next door, beside a neatly made single bed, was a chair with a suit jacket hanging over it, which I recognized as the one Helen wore when I interviewed her at the school. And in the wardrobe were more of her clothes, black and grey and navy and shapeless.

  My phone beeped, deafeningly loud in the funeral-parlour silence of that house. I had a voice mail, a missed call. It was Jules. “DS Morgan,” she was saying, her voice solemn, “I need to talk to you. It’s quite urgent. I’m coming in to see you. I . . . er . . . I need to talk to you alone. I’ll see you at the station.”

  I slipped the phone back into my pocket. I went back into Patrick’s room and took another quick look around, at the books on the shelves, in the drawer next to the bed. There were photographs in there, too, old ones, of Sean and Helen together, fishing at the river near the cottage, Sean and Helen leaning proudly against a new car, Helen standing in front of the school, looking at once happy and embarrassed, Helen out in the courtyard, cradling a cat in her arms, Helen, Helen, Helen.

  I heard a noise, a click, the sound of a latch lifting and then a creak of floorboards. I put the photographs back hastily and shut the drawer, then moved as quietly as I could out onto the landing. Then I froze. Helen was standing at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at me. She had a paring knife in her left hand and was gripping its blade so tightly that blood was dripping onto the floor.

  HELEN

  Helen had no idea why Erin Morgan was wandering about Patrick’s house as though she owned it, but for the moment she was more concerned with the blood on the floor. Patrick liked a clean house. She fetched a cloth from the kitchen and began to wipe it up, only for more to spill from the deep cut across her palm.

  “I was chopping onions,” she said to the detective by way of an explanation. “You startled me.”

  This wasn’t exactly true, because she’d stopped chopping onions when she’d seen the car pull up. With the knife in her hand she’d stood stock-still while Erin knocked, and then had watched her wander over to Patrick’s place. She knew that he was out, so she’d assumed the detective would just leave. But then she remembered that when she’d left that morning, she hadn’t locked the front door. So, knife still in hand, she walked across the courtyard to check.

  “It’s quite deep,” Erin said. “You need to clean and bandage that properly.” Erin had come downstairs and was standing over Helen, watching her wipe the floor. Standing there in Patrick’s house as though she had every right to be there.

  “He’ll be livid if he sees this,” Helen said. “He likes a clean house. Always has.”

  “And you . . . keep house for him, do you?”

  Helen gave Erin a sharp look. “I help out. He does most things himself, but he’s getting on. And he likes things to be just so. His late wife,” she said, looking up at Erin, “was a slattern. His word. An old-fashioned word. You’re not allowed to say slut any longer, are you? It’s politically incorrect.”

  She stood up, facing Erin, holding the bloody cloth in front of her. The pain in her hand felt hot and bright, like a burn almost, with the same cauterizing effect. She was no longer sure who to be afraid of, or what exactly to feel guilty for, but she felt that she ought to keep Erin here, to find out what she wanted. To detain her for a while, hopefully until Patrick got back, because she was sure that he’d want to talk to her.

  Helen wiped the knife handle with the cloth. “Would you like a cup of tea, Detective?” she asked.

  “Lovely,” Erin replied, her cheery smile fading as she watched Helen lock the front door and slip the key into her pocket before continuing on into the kitchen.

  “Mrs. Townsend—” Erin started.

  “Do you take sugar?” Helen interrupted.

  • • •

  THE WAY TO DEAL with situations like this was to throw the other person off their game. Helen knew this from years of public-sector politics. Don’t do what people expect you to do, it puts them on the back foot right away, and if nothing else, it buys you time. So instead of being angry, outraged that this woman had come into their home without permission, Helen was polite.

  “Have you found him?” she asked Erin as she handed her the mug of tea. “Mark Henderson? Has he turned up yet?”

  “No,” Erin replied, “not yet.”

  “His car left on the cliff and no sign of him anywhere.” She sighed. “A suicide can be an admission of guilt, can’t it? It’s certainly going to look that way. What a mess.” Erin nodded. She was nervous, Helen could tell, she kept glancing back at the door, fiddling around in her pocket. “It’ll be terrible for the school, for our reputation. The reputation of this entire place, tarnished again.”

  “Is that why you disliked Nel Abbott so much?” Erin asked. “Because she tarnished the reputation of Beckford with her work?”

  Helen frowned. “Well, it’s one of the reasons. She was a bad parent, as I told you; she was disrespectful to me and to the traditions and rules of the school.”

  “Was she a slut?” Erin asked.

  Helen laughed in surprise. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I was just wondering if, to use your politically i
ncorrect term, you thought Nel Abbott was a slut? I’ve heard she had affairs with some of the men in town . . .”

  “I don’t know anything about that,” Helen said, but her face was hot and she felt that she had lost the upper hand. She got to her feet, crossed over to the counter and retrieved her paring knife. Standing at the sink, she washed her blood from its blade.

  “I don’t profess to know anything about Nel Abbott’s private life,” she said quietly. She could feel the detective’s eyes on her, watching her face, her hands. She could feel her blush spread to her neck, to her chest, her body betraying her. She tried to keep her voice light. “Though I’d hardly be surprised if she were promiscuous. She was an attention-seeker.”

  She wanted this conversation to end. She wanted the detective to leave their home; she wanted Sean to be there, and Patrick. She had an urge to lay everything on the table, to confess to her own sins and demand they confess to theirs. Mistakes had been made, admittedly, but the Townsends were a good family. They were good people. They had nothing to fear. She turned to face the detective, her chin raised and with as haughty an expression as she could muster, but her hands were trembling so badly she thought she might drop the knife. Surely she had nothing to fear?

  JULES

  I left Lena tucked up in her mother’s bed in the morning, still sound asleep. I wrote her a note, saying I’d meet her at the police station at eleven for her to give her statement. There were things I needed to do first, conversations best had between adults. I had to think like a parent now, like a mother. I had to protect her, to keep her from any further harm.

  I drove to the station, stopping halfway to ring Erin to warn her I’d be coming in. I wanted to make sure that it was Erin I spoke to, and I had to make sure that we could speak alone.

  “Why isn’t he the one who gets shoved off a fucking cliff?” Lena had been talking about Sean Townsend last night. It had all come out, how Sean had fallen in love with Nel and—Lena thought—Nel a bit in love with Sean. It had ended a while back—Nel had said things had “run their course,” although Lena didn’t quite believe her. In any case, Helen must have found out, she must have taken revenge. Then it was my turn to be outraged: why hadn’t Lena said anything before? He was in charge of the investigation into Nel’s death; it was completely inappropriate.

  “He loved her,” Lena said. “Doesn’t that make him a good person, that he tried to find out what happened to her?”

  “But, Lena, don’t you see . . . ?”

  “He’s a good person, Julia. How could I say anything? It would have got him into trouble, and he doesn’t deserve that. He’s a good man.”

  • • •

  ERIN DIDN’T ANSWER HER PHONE, so I left a message and drove on to the station. I parked outside and called again, but again there was no answer, so I decided to wait for her. Half an hour went by and I decided to go in anyway. If Sean was there, I’d make an excuse. I’d pretend I thought that Lena’s statement had been scheduled for nine, not eleven. I’d think of something.

  As it turned out, he wasn’t there. Neither of them was. The man on the desk told me DI Townsend was in Newcastle for the day, and that he wasn’t entirely sure of the whereabouts of DS Morgan, but he had no doubt she’d be in any minute.

  I went back to my car. I took your bracelet out of my pocket—I’d put it into a plastic bag to protect it. To protect whatever was on it. The chances of there being a fingerprint or some DNA trapped within its links were slim, but slim was something. Slim was a possibility. Slim was a shot at an answer. Nickie said you were dead because you found out something about Patrick Townsend; Lena said you were dead because you fell in love with Sean and he with you, and Helen Townsend, jealous, vengeful Helen, would not stand for that. No matter which way I turned, I saw Townsends.

  Metaphorically. Literally, I saw Nickie Sage, looming large in the rearview mirror. She was shuffling across the car park, achingly slowly, her face pink under a big floppy hat. She reached the back of my car and leaned against it, and I could hear her laboured breathing through the open window.

  “Nickie.” I got out of the car. “Are you all right?” She didn’t respond. “Nickie?” Up close, she looked like she might be on her last legs.

  “I need a lift,” she gasped. “Been on my feet for hours.”

  I helped her into the car. Her clothes were soaked with sweat. “Where on earth have you been, Nickie? What have you been doing?”

  “Walking,” she wheezed. “Up by the Wards’ cottage. Listening to the river.”

  “You do realize that the river runs right past your own front door, don’t you?”

  She shook her head. “Not the same river. You think it’s all the same, but it changes. It has a different spirit up there. Sometimes you need to travel to hear its voice.”

  I turned left just before the bridge towards the square. “Up here, yes?” She nodded, still gulping for air. “Perhaps you should get someone to give you a lift next time you feel like travelling.”

  She leaned back in the seat and closed her eyes. “You volunteering? I didn’t imagine you’d be sticking around.”

  We sat in the car for a bit when we reached her flat. I didn’t have the heart to make her get out and walk upstairs straightaway, so instead I listened while she told me why I should stay in Beckford, why it would be good for Lena to stay by the water, why I’d never hear my sister’s voice if I left.

  “I don’t believe in all that stuff, Nickie,” I said.

  “Of course you do,” she said crossly.

  “OK.” I wasn’t going to argue. “So. You were up by the Wards’ cottage? That’s the place where Erin Morgan is staying, right? You didn’t see her, did you?”

  “I did. She’d been out running around somewhere. Then she was running off somewhere else, probably to bark up the wrong tree. Banging on about Helen Townsend, when I told her it wasn’t Helen she should be bothering with. No one listens to me. Lauren, I said, not Helen. But no one ever listens.”

  She gave me the Townsends’ address. The address and a warning: “If the old man thinks you know something, he’ll hurt you. You’ve got to be smart.” I didn’t tell her about the bracelet, or that it was she, not Erin, who was barking up the wrong tree.

  ERIN

  Helen kept looking up at the window, as though she was expecting someone to appear.

  “You’re expecting Sean back, are you?” I asked her.

  She shook her head. “No. Why would he be coming back? He’s in Newcastle, talking to the brass about the Henderson mess. Surely you knew that?”

  “He didn’t tell me,” I said. “It must have slipped his mind.” She raised her eyebrows in an expression of disbelief. “He can be absent-minded, can’t he?” I went on. Her eyebrows rose farther still. “I mean, not that it affects his work or anything, but sometimes—”

  “Do stop talking,” she snapped.

  She was impossible to read, veering from polite to exasperated, timid to aggressive; angry one minute and frightened the next. It was making me very nervous. This small, mousey, unimpressive woman sitting opposite me was frightening me because I had no idea what she was going to do next—offer me another cuppa or come at me with the knife.

  She pushed her chair back suddenly, its feet screeching against the tiles, got to her feet and went to the window. “He’s been gone ages,” she said quietly.

  “Who has? Patrick?”

  She ignored me. “He walks in the mornings, but not usually for so long. He’s not well. I . . .”

  “Do you want to go and look for him?” I asked. “I could come with you if you like.”

  “He goes up to that cottage almost every day,” she said, talking as though I wasn’t there, as though she couldn’t hear me. “I don’t know why. That’s where Sean used to take her. That’s where they . . . Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know what to do. I’m not even sure what
the right thing is anymore.” She’d balled her right hand into a fist, a red bloom blossoming on her pristine white bandage.

  “I was so happy when Nel Abbott died,” she said. “We all were. It was such a relief. But short-lived. Short-lived. Because now I can’t help wondering if it’s caused us even more trouble.” She turned, finally, to look at me. “Why are you here? And please don’t lie, because I’m not in the mood today.” She raised her hand to her face, and as she wiped her mouth, bright blood smeared over her lips.

  I reached into my pocket for my phone and pulled it out. “I think maybe it’s time I left,” I said, getting slowly to my feet. “I came here to talk to Sean, but since he’s not here . . .”

  “He isn’t absentminded, you know,” she said, taking a step to her left so that she stood between me and the passage to the front door. “He has absences, but that’s a different thing. No, if he didn’t tell you he was going to Newcastle, that’s because he doesn’t trust you, and if he doesn’t trust you, I’m not sure that I should. I’m only going to ask once more,” she said, “why you are here.”

  I nodded, making a conscious effort to drop my shoulders, to stay relaxed. “As I said, I wanted to speak to Sean.”

  “About?”

  “About an allegation of improper conduct,” I said. “About his relationship with Nel Abbott.”

  Helen stepped towards me and I felt a sickeningly sharp kick of adrenaline to my gut. “There will be consequences, won’t there?” she said, a sad smile on her face. “How could we have imagined that there wouldn’t be?”

  “Helen,” I said, “I just need to know—”

  I heard the front door slam and stepped back quickly, putting some space between us, as Patrick entered the room.

  • • •

  FOR A MOMENT, none of us said anything. He stared at me, eyes on mine, jaw working, while he took off his jacket and slung it over the back of a chair. Then he turned his attention to Helen. He noticed her bloody hand and was immediately animated.