White Nights (24 page)

‘What about your daughter?’

‘Oh, Ruthie makes her own way home. She’s in her last year at school. A grown-up really, or so she thinks. She’ll be here soon. She doesn’t know yet that her father’s dead. I’m not sure how she’ll take it.’

She settled herself on a straight-backed chair, a cup and saucer balanced on her knee, her legs neatly crossed at the ankle. ‘I haven’t seen Jeremy since he left in the middle of the night more than sixteen years ago. He took one suitcase. Left me with a daughter. And a note which said he was very sorry, but this wasn’t the life he wanted.’ She looked up at them. ‘You can’t expect me to be grieving about his death.’

‘He’d given you no warning that he was leaving?’

‘None.’

‘Was there another woman?’

‘He didn’t mention one in the letter. But there could have been. He was an attractive man. I fell for him, after all.’ She paused. ‘He was the love of my life.’

Taylor didn’t know where to look. He felt himself
flush with embarrassment. He hated people who spilled out their feelings, and this woman had seemed so controlled that it was unexpected.

Jebson leaned forward towards the woman. ‘Tell us about Jeremy,’ she said. ‘We haven’t met anyone yet who really knew him.’

‘I’m not sure I can help you with that either. I’m not sure Jeremy knew himself. It was all dreams and stories with him. He featured in his own dramas. In his head of course. None of it was real.’ She stared out into the immaculate garden. ‘He’d have quite enjoyed this. Being the object of so much attention.’

‘Where did you meet him?’

‘At work. We were both teachers. He taught English and I worked in the technology department, doing craft and cooking. That summed us up really. I was the practical one; he was into fiction, words. He swept me away with his words. In his spare time he ran the school’s youth theatre. That was his real passion. He’d done a lot of acting when he was a student, got into the Central School, but couldn’t get funding to do the course. He was very bitter about that.’

‘We haven’t been able to trace any other family. Is there anyone else we should inform about his death?’

She shook her head. ‘He was an only child. The classic only child: spoiled rotten and left to play too much on his own. His parents were quite elderly when we married. They’re probably dead now.’

Taylor felt he was losing control of the interview. He’d brought Jebson along to observe, not to take over.

‘You say you hadn’t seen Mr Booth since he left sixteen years ago,’ he said. ‘Have you communicated with him at all?’

‘He’s paid maintenance for Ruth since he left. Not a lot. He’s never had steady work. Since he set up the drama-in-education company things have been a bit better. I never wanted to make a fuss about the money and we had no direct contact over that. It was as if he preferred not to think about us.’

‘Did you try to find him when he left?’

‘Of course I did! I worshipped him. But he’d left his job at the school too. Just walked out. Gave no notice, asked for no reference. I thought he must be going through some sort of breakdown, tried psychiatric hospitals, the police, the Salvation Army. I imagined him sleeping on the streets, in some horrible hostel.’

‘Did you ever find out where he went after he left you?’

‘To his mummy and daddy.’ She sounded very bitter. ‘Hardly the great romantic gesture, was it? Running home like a scared child. Of course I contacted them but they told me they hadn’t heard from him. He got them to lie for him.’

‘And there was nothing, really, that precipitated his going?’

‘It was when Ruth was born,’ she said. ‘That was when things started changing.’

She paused, and Taylor wished she’d get to the point.

Perhaps Jebson sensed his impatience, because she cut in with a question. For such a big, ungainly lass, she had a gentle voice.

‘In what way did things change, Mrs Stapleton?’

‘I don’t know what he’d been expecting. He was so excited when I found out I was pregnant. Maybe some ideal of family life. A child who would adore him. Certainly
not nappies and crying, coming home to an exhausted wife who suddenly made demands on him. And then Ruth wasn’t the perfect baby he’d visualized for himself.’

‘In what way wasn’t she perfect?’

‘She was born with a cleft palate. You wouldn’t know now. She’s a beautiful young woman. But there have been lots of spells in hospital. And when we first brought her home she was an ugly little thing. I think he was repulsed by her. And disgusted with himself for feeling that way. Perhaps that’s what brought matters to a head. He couldn’t face the reality, couldn’t lose himself in theatre any more. So he just ran away. He pretended she’d never been born.’

‘Can you think why anyone would have wanted to kill him?’

‘I’d probably have killed him,’ she said. ‘If I’d tracked him down to his parents’ house. If I’d caught him there, being waited on by them while I was struggling to keep things going at home.’

‘Did he have any family and friends in Shetland?’

‘No family. If he made friends there it was after my time.’

She offered them more tea, handed them biscuits, smiled to show she really didn’t care any more. There was the sound of the key in the door.

‘Hi, Mum.’

‘Shall we leave,’ Taylor said, ‘so you can talk to Ruth on her own?’

‘No. She’ll probably have questions. You’ll be able to answer them better than me.’

Ruth was, as her mother had said, a beautiful young woman. Dark-haired, full-breasted, with a wide
smile. She stood in the door and looked at them. She was wearing jeans and a loose white top, easy with her body. She was curious about who they were, but too polite to ask.

‘These people are detectives,’ Amanda Stapleton said. ‘They have some news about your father.’

The girl looked at them, horrified. ‘What about him? What has he done?’

Stella Jebson got up and stood next to the girl. ‘Why don’t you sit down?’ she said. ‘We’ve got some bad news.’

The girl perched on the arm of the nearest chair. ‘What’s happened?’

‘He’s dead,’ Jebson said. Perhaps she’d realized that Amanda would find it hard to say the words. ‘I’m really sorry, love.’

‘How did he die? Was he ill?’

‘He was murdered. We’re here because we’re trying to find out who killed him.’

The girl started to sob, taking in great gulps of air. It was hard to tell if it was grief or shock. Taylor thought it was a dramatic way to carry on when she hadn’t seen her father since she was born, but that was teenage girls for you. They were all drama queens. Her mother got to her feet, awkwardly put her arms around her daughter, held the girl to her, stroked her hair.

‘I’ve told them you wouldn’t be able to help them,’ Amanda said. ‘But I wanted them to be here if there was anything you wanted to know.’

Again, Taylor found himself disturbed by the show of emotion. ‘We’ll leave you,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you my number; call me if you think of anything.’

They were standing at the car when Ruth ran out of the door to join them. Amanda was at the front window watching them.

‘I want to talk to you,’ Ruth said. Her eyes were very red. ‘But not here. Not with my mother around.’

‘Where then?’

‘There’s a coffee shop in the main street in Heswall. It’s open until seven. I’ll see you there in an hour. I’ll tell her I’m meeting my boyfriend.’

The last thing Taylor wanted was to kick his heels in the Wirral for an hour, but there was something so fierce about the demand to meet that he couldn’t refuse.

The girl turned up ten minutes late, looking harassed and drawn. The coffee shop was one of a chain, all brown leather sofas, piped bland music and hissing machines. Taylor stood up to buy her a coffee and when he got back from the counter with her cappuccino she was already deep in conversation with Jebson.

‘Ruth’s been in contact with her father recently,’ Jebson said. ‘That was what she wanted to talk to us about.’

‘Why did he get in touch with you?’ Taylor asked.

‘He didn’t. I found him.’

‘How?’

‘Interact, his theatre company, came to do a gig at school. Drug awareness. You know the sort of thing. He wasn’t there but his name was all over the publicity and there was a phone number. I knew he’d gone into acting, thought it was probably a coincidence, but I gave him a ring anyway. Plucked up courage when I had an afternoon’s study leave and no one was about.
I didn’t tell my mother. I knew she’d go ape. She’d just be worried about him pissing me about . . . And I didn’t want to hurt John, my stepdad. I love him to bits.’

‘What did you say when you phoned?’ Jebson seemed genuinely interested.

‘“I think you might be my father.” Something like that. I thought, Why not go for the direct approach?’

‘Was he pleased to hear from you?’

‘I think it was a shock, but yeah, he said he was pleased. We were on the phone for ages talking. It cost me a fortune – it was my mobile and he never thought to call me back. Classic Dad.’

‘What did you talk about?’

‘Oh, you know, it was just catching up. What he’d been doing. Where I was at in school. Plans for the future, that sort of thing.’

‘What were his plans for the future?’ Taylor asked.

‘He said he was going away. To Shetland. He asked if I’d ever been there and I said I hadn’t. To be honest, I wasn’t even sure where it was. I went on to the computer later and looked the islands up. He said they were beautiful. Very bleak but beautiful. He couldn’t wait to go back.’

‘Did he say why he was going?’

‘Basically business, he said. He was going to do some work there. Not really the sort of gig he usually took on, but it would give him a chance to catch up with old friends.’

‘Did he mention the names of the friends?’

‘I don’t think so. If he did I don’t remember.’ She’d been speaking very quickly, answering Taylor’s questions as soon as they were asked, but now she paused. ‘We’d arranged to meet. He was going to come here
when he got back. He said he wanted to be a proper father again, to help me follow my dreams.’ She looked up and smiled at them. ‘That was how he spoke, the sort of thing he said. I’d emailed a photo of myself, so he’d know me. And there’s a picture of him on his website. It was weird to see him after all these years of imagining what he’d look like. There’s a resemblance, don’t you think? You’d know I was his daughter.’

She paused. ‘I phoned him at home a few days ago. I thought he should be back by then. Some woman answered.’

Perez went straight from Fran’s house to collect Taylor from the airport at Sumburgh. It was a gusty, showery day, with brief flashes of sunshine, then the shadows of clouds blown across the flat land around the runways. The water at Grutness was choppy, blown into thousands of little waves which scattered the light, but the wind wasn’t strong enough to cause a delay. He arrived a little early and sat in the terminal building drinking coffee. A group of Japanese tourists waited for the plane.

Perez had stayed in Biddista until Roddy’s body had been lifted out of the Pit on a stretcher. He felt the boy deserved that, and, opening the body bag to look at him, he had the strange sense that for the first time he was seeing Roddy Sinclair in the flesh. Before, it had all been image, glossy and unreal as a magazine advert. By the time he had got to Ravenswick it was four in the morning and as bright as midday. Fran was asleep, must have been disturbed by dreams, because she’d thrown off the covers and lay, naked, on top of the twisted sheet. There was a white blind at the bedroom window and she looked somehow smudged, like one of her own paintings, in the filtered light.

He straightened the sheet and pulled it on top of
her, then slid in beside her. It seemed like an unforgivable intrusion, but he didn’t want to wake her and he was exhausted. Her skin was cool and smooth. She stirred and smiled at him, wrapped herself around him. They both slept very deeply and were lying in exactly the same position when the television in the next room woke them. Cassie was singing along to a Saturday-morning children’s programme.

‘You do realize,’ Fran said, ‘that this will be all round Ravenswick School on Monday morning?’

‘I’m sorry, I should have thought.’ He wasn’t sure now what he should have thought. She’d invited him, after all. Did she not want it known that they were seeing each other?

‘Don’t worry. They think I’m a scarlet woman anyway.’ And she pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt and went to make tea.

Later they had pancakes for breakfast, with syrup and chocolate sauce. Cassie, still in her pyjamas, was getting silly and excited because of the novelty of the treat. But all the time he was wishing that he knew exactly what Fran was thinking and that he had some rules to follow. This relationship was so important to him and he didn’t want to get things wrong. Maybe I should ask her to marry me, he thought suddenly. Then at least I’d know where I was. The idea was at once tantalizing and ludicrous, so he found himself grinning. Fran asked him what he was laughing about.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘I’m happy. That’s all.’

When Taylor walked into the terminal he seemed surprisingly alive and energetic. He said he’d had a few hours’ sleep in the hotel at Dyce and now what he really wanted was caffeine and carbs and he’d be fit
for anything. Perez took him into the Sumburgh Hotel. The bar was quiet; the barman, a gaunt Englishman who’d lived in Shetland for so long that he spoke like a native, was chatting in a low voice to an old man sitting on a tall stool. Taylor ordered a burger and a Coke and when that was finished he couldn’t stop talking. Perez was reminded of Cassie, bouncing around the kitchen in Ravenswick, full of sugar and E numbers.

‘I found Booth’s wife and daughter. Nice lass. She hadn’t seen him since he left, but recently they’d got in touch. The mother didn’t know.’