Sins of the Fathers (15 page)

‘Is your husband around?’ Laura asked. ‘He seems to have known Christie as well as anyone did.’

Janine Foster looked at Laura and smiled without mirth.

‘Not as well as he knew Linda, though,’ she said. ‘Any road, he’s not here. He got a phone call early on and said he had to go out. Didn’t have the decency to tell me when he’d be back, did he? So I’m here on my own again, trying to run the place solo. We can’t go on like this much longer. One of us’ll have to go.’ She suddenly seemed to notice that several of the customers were listening avidly to what she was saying and lowered her voice slightly.

‘To be perfectly honest, I’d be glad to get away. There’s a lot of unpleasantness going on in Staveley since the shootings. I’ve been getting phone calls, and no one’s at t’other end. Heavy breathing sounds like a joke, doesn’t it, but it can be right scary.’

‘Is this just aimed at you or is your husband getting the calls as well?’ Laura asked, recognising the fear at the back of the woman’s eyes.

‘He says he doesn’t, but he’s been getting summat. He’s worried about summat. I’ve heard him arguing with someone on the phone more than once but he just says it’s a dispute with the brewery and I’m not to worry. But that’s all my eye. It doesn’t make sense. I’m wondering if the calls I’m getting are really for him, and they just hang up because it’s me that answers. I don’t know what to think any more. This used to be a good place to live but since the shootings it’s fallen apart. People are blaming each other, saying someone should have noticed that things were going wrong with the Christies, that social services should have done summat when they thought Scott was getting thumped… They’re even blaming Gerry, as it goes, since it got out about his affair with Linda.’

‘It’s got around, has it? How did that happen?’ Laura asked. ‘It’s not been in the Press.’ Which, she thought, was increasingly surprising with Vince Newsom snooping around the village. It might only be a matter of time before Gerry Foster’s liaison with the dead woman was spread all over the front page of the
Globe
.

Janine glanced away and Laura knew that she herself must have told someone who had passed the gossip on and it had mushroomed, as these things do.

‘These things always get out, don’t they?’ was all Janine would say.

‘Did it get out before the shootings?’ Laura asked quietly. ‘You said last time I was up here that people knew, that you found out from gossip. Is that what tipped Gordon Christie over the edge? Was that the way it happened? You found out, Gordon found out and then it all went so horribly wrong at Moor Edge?’

Janine pursed her lips and shook her head, and Laura knew she would get no further. If Janine had tipped off Gordon Christie about his wife’s infidelity it was something she was not going to admit to a reporter, or, Laura guessed, to the police. But the fact that she must be hoping pretty fervently that Gordon himself was dead, or at least too far away to ever reveal that piece of information, perhaps explained why she took Laura’s empty glass with a hand which was shaking convulsively. Janine turned away abruptly to deal with another customer who had brought an empty pint glass and a look of naked curiosity to the bar, and Laura shrugged and turned away herself, feeling watched as she made her way out into the drizzle again.

She walked slowly up the steep village street, guessing that her progress was also being observed from the blank
windows of the cottages on either side by eyes which would not be friendly if they recognised her as a reporter. At the end of the lane leading up to Moor Edge cottage blue and white police tape lay tangled in the bushes and ragged grass which had grown up against the drystone walls. Picking her way carefully along the muddy track, where traces of fresh snow gleamed in the shadier hollows and wet slush filled the ruts, past the new houses with their postage stamp gardens where Dawn Brough lived, she trudged as far as the Christies’ cottage, wishing she’d put on the boots she kept in the back of her car. Her shoes were sodden.

The police tape was still in place here, across the gate and doorway, but there was no sign of life. Someone had closed the curtains across the front windows, although whether out of respect for the dead or to give the police teams who had worked inside some privacy she could not guess. And outside the gate there was a small heap of bouquets, the flowers wet and wilting now, a brown teddy bear sodden amongst the crumpled cellophane and ribbons.

What a waste, she thought, knowing without having seen the horror that had lain in wait for Michael Thackeray, how devastating it must have been for him to have walked through that cottage door a week before. What a bloody waste.

She was about to turn away when she became aware of someone behind her. Her heart thumped wildly for a second as she spun round and then calmed as she recognised the man she had been hoping to speak to at the Fox and Hounds.

‘You made me jump,’ she said.

‘Sorry,’ Gerry Foster said. ‘I come up here a lot.’

‘I suppose you would,’ Laura said dryly. Foster’s face darkened.

‘It wasn’t like you think,’ he said. ‘Linda was a lost soul. She didn’t know what to do, or where to turn. She couldn’t live with Gordon, she said. He was sick. The bloody army does that to some people. They can’t get over it.’

‘So he’d been in the army, had he?’

‘Oh yes,’ Foster said.

‘So you offered Linda the proverbial shoulder to weep on, did you? Didn’t it cross your mind that Gordon Christie might go bananas if he found out? Everyone seems to have known what a moody beggar he was, long before all this.’ She waved at the cottage where she guessed that traces of the massacre would still be visible to anyone who chose to go and look.

‘You don’t think something like that could happen,’ Foster said. ‘You can’t imagine anything like that.’

‘Right,’ Laura said with a sigh. She supposed Foster was right. No one could anticipate such horror.

‘I just went into the Fox,’ she said. ‘Your wife was wondering where you were.’ Foster scowled again.

‘As if she cares.’

‘Well, you can’t spend the rest of your life mooching about up here,’ Laura said briskly. ‘It’s over now.’

Foster glanced away for a second and then held out a hand in Laura’s direction, as if pleading for help.

‘I’ve been trying to get up the courage to go inside,’ he said. ‘I wanted to find something of Linda’s, a keepsake, like. Does that sound daft?’

Laura’s expression softened slightly at the lost look in the big man’s eyes.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Not daft.’ Foster hesitated again.

‘Will you come in with me?’ he asked.

It was Laura who hesitated now, appalled and tempted in equal measure at the idea of seeing the scene of the murders.

‘I loved her, you know,’ Foster said, glancing away. ‘I even got to know the kids a bit, because they were hers. At school things, and that. We’ve only got the one lad and he’s away at college now. I got involved in village things because of Linda’s kids, not mine. It’s not as if we’re locals. It was summat to do to get away from Janine at first. We’ve been rowing for years. Oh, you don’t know what it’s like…’ Laura shook her head impatiently, not wanting to listen to the intimacies of another failed marriage.

‘How can you get into the cottage?’ she asked. ‘The police must have locked it up.’

‘I’ve got a key,’ Foster said. ‘Linda had one cut for me. As a precaution.’

‘A precaution against what, for God’s sake?’ Laura asked, surprised.

‘In case Gordon started hitting her and she needed help. She said she didn’t want to call the police, but she’d call me on her mobile, if she could, and I could come up. It’s only five minutes away from the Fox, after all – if you’re quick.’

‘And did she?’ Laura asked. ‘Call you, I mean? Did you come up here to confront Gordon?’

‘No, I never got a call. Maybe she tried that morning, the mobile signal’s not too good round here, I don’t know. But I never got a call. The first thing I knew about it was when the police cars and the ambulances came rushing through the village. It was too late then.’ Foster wiped the moisture from his face and Laura guessed that it was not just the rain he was wiping away.

‘Come on then,’ she said. ‘I’ll come in with you. But we’d best be quick. If the police found us in there they’d
be furious.’ What they were doing might not be illegal, she thought, but it was certainly unwise.

‘I don’t think they come up now,’ Foster said. ‘I think they’ve finished here.’ He ducked under the police tape and walked up the short pathway to the front door of the cottage. Laura followed him, feeling slightly clammy inside her hooded jacket. She had been close to violent death before, but she knew as well as Michael Thackeray did that the involvement of children made this a crime scene of unrivalled horror. She would not, she thought, set foot in the family kitchen where the deaths had taken place. That was more than even her sharp reporter’s curiosity wanted to explore.

Foster opened the front door and led the way. The hall was dimly lit and airless, all the doors closed, the curtains on the landing window amongst those which had been pulled shut, and there was a fusty and slightly metallic smell in the air which Laura guessed was not only the result of the closed windows and doors. She shuddered slightly.

‘Do you know which room is which?’ she asked, but Foster shook his head.

‘Upstairs is probably best,’ she said firmly, and she followed him up the stairs and watched as he opened one bedroom door after another, glanced inside and closed them again.

‘Those are the kiddies’ rooms,’ he said. ‘You don’t want to see.’ Laura nodded. There was no way she could write about this clandestine visit to the murder scene without exposing herself to Thackeray’s legitimate fury, and she was already regretting her decision to come inside.

‘This is Linda and Gordon’s room,’ Foster said, opening the final doorway.

‘Find something you want to take and let’s get out of
here,’ Laura said, getting a glimpse of an unmade double bed, the floral duvet still flung on to the floor where the last occupant had left it, a blue nightdress in a crumpled heap beside the pillows. She felt slightly breathless. She watched Foster walk across to the dressing table and pick up and put down one or two items which had been left there. She could see that most things had been dusted with a white powder, no doubt to pick up fingerprints.

‘Don’t let anyone see you’ve been in here,’ she warned. ‘Don’t leave any traces.’ Foster grunted what might have been assent or protest but he kept his hands to himself until he picked up a scarf from a pile of clothes on the dressing table stool and suddenly buried his face in it. Laura watched in silence. There was nothing she could say to this man she believed, and who obviously believed himself, had precipitated this catastrophe. She knew, after living with Michael Thackeray, exactly how guilt might blight the rest of his life.

Downstairs, she thought she heard a door close and she froze, hearing only her own heartbeat.

‘There’s someone here,’ she whispered, ears straining.

‘There can’t be,’ Foster said, spinning round, the scarf in his hand.

‘Maybe just the wind,’ Laura said. Foster pushed past her and went into one of the bedrooms at the back of the house while she waited on the landing.

‘Jesus,’ she heard him say. Reluctantly, almost holding her breath to ward off the pain, she crept silently past the two unmade bunk beds, the stacks of toys and books, and the children’s clothes neatly laid out as if ready to put on, and joined him at the window.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘There’s someone down there,’ Foster muttered. ‘I saw
a movement by the shed and look, there’s footprints in that snowy patch by the back door.’ He pulled his mobile phone from his pocket and flicked it on and off again with an exasperated sigh.

‘There must have been dozens of police people in and out,’ she said.

‘There was a fresh snowfall yesterday,’ Foster said. ‘Look, it’s not melted by the back door. It didn’t snow a lot, but you can see how the older prints are almost covered and there’s just that fresh lot heading across the yard.’

‘Christie, do you think?’ she breathed. ‘No one would think of looking for him back here.’ She glanced back at the main bedroom and wondered wildly if the fugitive had slept there.

‘Let’s get out,’ Foster said. ‘This was a crazy idea. The whole thing’s crazy. I wish to God I’d never got involved.’

They made their way out of the cottage silently and locked the door, and Laura noticed as they hurried back into the lane that Foster was still clutching Linda Christie’s scarf in one hand. She could even smell a faint trace of her perfume.

‘We need to tell the police,’ she said.

‘Don’t be bloody daft,’ Foster snapped as they hurried through the mud and slushy snow to the relative safety of the village. ‘They’ll want to know what the hell we were doing up here.’

‘We have to tell them,’ Laura said, and if Foster had known her well enough to recognise the stubborn set of her jaw, he would have known that she would not be shifted on this. ‘I’ll think of a way,’ she said. ‘If Christie’s there with a gun they have to know.’

‘If Christie’s there with a gun, I don’t think I want to be
here at all,’ Foster said. ‘No one ever told me it would turn out like this.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Never mind,’ Foster said. ‘I’m away from here before I’m the next one with a bullet through the back. I never signed up for that.’ And leaving Laura in his wake, still wondering what he meant, he strode off in the direction of the Fox and Hounds. By the time Laura had picked her way through the slush back to her own car, Foster had passed her, driving a Toyota estate at breakneck speed up the winding road which led to the open moors and eventually to Lancashire.

Reluctantly, Laura drove off in the opposite direction, stopping only at an isolated phone box on the way back into town. She put her hand across the mouthpiece as she told the 999 operator that she had seen suspicious movements at the Christie’s cottage just ten minutes ago, and hung up sharply when she demanded her name. As she dropped down the hill into the centre of Bradfield and joined the main stream of traffic she saw two police cars, blue lights flashing, heading in the opposite direction. That, she thought, with no particular pleasure, was the best she could do.