The Sleeping and the Dead (24 page)

‘Shagging?’ Luke suggested helpfully.

‘Quite.’ Still Stout couldn’t bring himself to say the word: ‘ . . . the young actress who played Lady Macbeth.
They
were together by Cranford Water after an
end-of-performance party. That’s the last record we have of the boy alive. Mrs Morton claims he phoned her the following day but after all this time it’s impossible to check.’

Stout paused. ‘She has a surprisingly clear recollection of all the details. That, in itself, raises suspicion. She didn’t tell us about Theo two-timing her until she knew we’d
find out anyway. She was stage manager for the school play so she’d have access to the dagger which could well have been the murder weapon. She had motive and opportunity. There’s no
one else in the frame.’ He rocked back on his heels. ‘But I don’t see it. I don’t see her as the sort of person who’d stab the boy she was in love with, tie an anchor
round his body and hoy him in the lake. I certainly don’t see her living with herself for thirty years afterwards—’

‘Unless she’d repressed the memory,’ Luke interrupted. He looked round as if he expected congratulation from his colleagues for the contribution. When none came he added
defensively, ‘Well, it happens. I saw this programme on the telly . . . And when the boy’s body was dredged up from the lake perhaps it all came back.’ He looked at Porteous for
help.

‘You’d have to ask a psychiatrist,’ Porteous said. ‘Not my field.’ Recognizing the irony of the words as he spoke.

‘Unless she repressed the memory,’ Stout said impatiently. ‘But then why kill Melanie Gillespie? She had a motive for killing Randle, but none at all for murdering the girl.
Melanie couldn’t have been a witness to the first murder. She couldn’t be any threat.’

‘How did Mrs Morton know Melanie?’ Claire Wright asked.

‘Melanie and Rosalind Morton were best friends. They went to the same school. Hannah met Melanie when Rosalind had friends to the house.’

‘Quite a tenuous connection then.’

Porteous, who’d been leaning against a table at the front of the room, stood up to answer.

‘Quite tenuous,’ he said. ‘And as Eddie’s said, Hannah Morton has no motive for the Gillespie murder. She does, however, have opportunity.’

He picked up the remote control and another slide was projected. It showed a narrow footpath with a stone wall on one side and a hawthorn hedge on the other. The footpath was crossed with blue
and white tape. ‘Melanie’s body was found wrapped in black plastic at the bottom of the hedge.’

He clicked the remote and there was a shot of a lay-by on a main road, the entrance to the footpath. ‘Melanie wasn’t killed where she was found. The murderer must have parked here
and carried the body the fifty yards or so to where it was dumped. We’ve already said she was anorexic so she wasn’t heavy. But not a pleasant job. It would have taken nerve.’

Another click and the footpath was seen from a different angle, so it was possible to see over the stone wall to a row of headstones.

‘Hannah Morton admits to having been in the cemetery the evening before the girl’s body was discovered. She claims to have remembered suddenly that Randle had told her where his
mother was buried. She found the grave and that’s the information Arthur Lee, the Home Office psychologist, used to dig out the boy’s identity. If she’s telling the truth, then
it’s some coincidence.’

The screen went blank. ‘All the same,’ Porteous said, ‘I don’t think we should become too fixed on the Morton connection. Not yet. Certainly there are other avenues to
explore. I haven’t spoken to the Gillespies today. The doctor said they needed time. But before Melanie’s body was found they gave important information to the team looking into her
disappearance. The case was taken seriously from the beginning because it was thought to be a kidnap. Melanie left home some time after ten, and went to a pub, the Promenade. When none of her
friends were there she went to a café on the sea front called the Rainbow’s End. We need to trace everyone who was in either establishment that night. It was the last time she was seen
alive, though Carver thinks it more likely she was killed the next day.’

He paused for long enough for them to catch up with their notes. ‘There’s someone else we need to get hold of too. A middle-aged man went into the Promenade looking for Melanie the
week before she disappeared. Who was he?’

He let the question hang. Luke’s mobile rang. Embarrassed he fished in his pocket and switched it off.

Ignoring the interruption Porteous went on, ‘This afternoon I’m going to see Stella Randle, Theo’s stepmother, his only surviving relative. Perhaps something will come of that.
Some other connection to make more sense of both cases.’

Eddie Stout listened and he thought that his boss had no soul. A fish on a slab had more emotion. Porteous spoke about connections and links as if he were forming a mathematical theory. Not as
if a young girl had been stabbed to death. He thought of his Ruthie, excited and dressed up to go out, and said suddenly, trying to shock Porteous, ‘Wouldn’t there have been a lot of
blood? A stabbing like that.’

‘Certainly.’

‘Not an easy thing to hide then. There’d have been stained clothes, marks on a floor, walls. Someone would have seen. Shouldn’t we put out the usual plea through the press?
Wives and girlfriends who noticed anything odd . . .’

‘Of course, Eddie. It’s already in hand.’

Porteous stayed behind when they all filed out, collecting his papers into an ordered file. On the way to the door he stopped and glanced behind him. Melanie Gillespie, half turned in the photo,
her mouth wide in a grin of recognition, seemed to be looking at him. He had an image of her alone and in pain, heard the screaming. He turned his back on the photo, deliberately distancing himself
from the smile. That way lay madness.

Crispin Randle, father of Theo, former Tory MP, had died. Porteous thought, with some satisfaction, that the fat psychologist hanging round with Hannah Morton had missed that
bit of information.
He’d
dug it out from the registrar. Crispin had died five years before from liver failure. The doctors Porteous tracked down suggested that alcohol consumption had
been a major contributing factor.

Stella Randle, the widow, was living in Millhaven, in a flat close to the sea front, not very far down the coast from the cemetery where Melanie Gillespie’s body had been found. Porteous
had made the appointment to visit by phone and she had been strangely uninterested, rather vague, so he turned up not even sure that she’d be in. The flat was in a crescent built around a
communal garden. It had always been a poor Victorian imitation of Georgian grandeur but now it looked shabby and down at heel. A locked wrought-iron gate prevented him from parking right outside so
he left his car on the promenade and walked. The grass in the garden was long, the borders overgrown.

Stella Randle opened the door to him herself. She had a faded charm, which matched the building. When he introduced himself she seemed not to recollect that they’d spoken earlier in the
day and throughout the interview he was unsure whether her vagueness was genuine or an attempt to deceive. She was in her mid-fifties, dressed in what seemed to Porteous to be a parody of the
character she was playing. She wore a pleated skirt, a little cashmere cardigan and even a string of pearls. In her youth she would have been pretty, a little foolish but aware of her limitations.
Now she still tried to be girlish.

‘Come in. An inspector. What fun! You will stop for tea?’

There was a wide hall, then a huge high-ceilinged room with a bay window looking out to sea. He had been expecting clutter, furniture from a big house crammed into a flat, but the room was
surprisingly empty. There was one sofa – well made but modern – and a couple of coffee tables. On one lay a library book, a romantic novel, face down. The floor had been stripped and
varnished and in front of the marble fireplace there was a Moroccan rug of a startling indigo blue.

She must have sensed his surprise.

‘Crispin drank everything away,’ she said. ‘If he hadn’t died when he did the flat would have gone too.’ She looked round the room, saw it perhaps through his eyes.
‘Why don’t we go into the kitchen? We’ll be more comfortable there.’

The kitchen was shabby too but less austere. There were herbs in pots on the window-sill, a bunch of flowers and a brightly coloured oilskin cloth on the table. A portable television stood on
one of the counters. A plate and a cup were draining next to the sink.

‘Tea then,’ she said and set a kettle on the gas ring. Still she hadn’t asked Porteous what he was doing there.

‘I’m afraid I may have some bad news,’ he said.

‘Oh?’ She seemed untroubled. Perhaps years of living with an alcoholic had inured her to the possibility of bad news.

‘It’s your stepson Theo.’

‘Theo?’ It was as if she barely recognized the name. She seemed to trawl back through her memory before it made sense.

‘Have you seen him recently?’

‘No, no. Not for years.’

‘Had your husband kept in touch with him?’

‘My husband was very ill, Inspector. Long before he died.’

It was hardly an answer but he let it go.

The kettle gave a piercing whistle. She seemed grateful for the distraction. Her attention was taken up then with warming the pot and making the tea. Porteous set the photograph of Theo as
Macbeth on the table. ‘Is that him?’

‘Oh goodness, after all this time, really I couldn’t say.’ She’d only glanced at the picture, was more intent on looking in the cupboard for matching cups among a
jumble-sale assortment.

‘Please look at the photo carefully, Mrs Randle.’

‘I haven’t seen him since he was a young boy.’

‘All the same.’

He spoke firmly and her resistance went. She sat at the table, took a pair of reading glasses from the pocket of her skirt and studied the photograph.

‘It could be him,’ she said at last. ‘That hair. Yes, I rather think it is.’

‘Do you have any photos of him as a young boy?’

He could tell she was about to say no without thinking about it, then she caught his eye and changed her mind.

‘There was one. He was pageboy at our wedding. Even Crispin didn’t have the heart to get rid of those. Not that they were worth anything . . .’ She jumped to her feet. He
thought she was about to fetch the album, but she poured out the tea and arranged chocolate biscuits on a plate.

‘If I could look at it . . .’ he prompted.

‘Yes.’ The forced gaiety disappeared quite suddenly. ‘I don’t see why not.’ She left the kitchen, shutting the door behind her. When she returned some time later
her eyes were red. He wondered what had made her cry. He hadn’t told her yet that Theo was dead. She hadn’t asked.

She had certainly been happy when she married. She beamed from every shot. The photos were in a red leather album, separated by flimsy sheets of tissue paper. They had been taken in a garden.
She hadn’t worn a traditional wedding dress but a short white frock with a lacy white coat over the top. She must have been in her early twenties but had the enthusiastic grin of a school
girl. She held a posy of garden flowers and there was a circlet of ox-eye daisies in her hair. Randle stood beside her, proud, rather paternal. His face looked a little flushed and Porteous thought
he might have been drinking heavily even then.

‘They were taken at Snowberry,’ she said. ‘That was Crispin’s house. It had been in the family for years. It was foolish of course but I thought I’d grow old there.
I imagined it full of grandchildren at Christmas. I was very young. Perhaps I fell in love with Snowberry as much as I did with Crispin.’ She gave a sad little laugh. Her hands had stopped
turning the pages of the album.

‘You said there was a photo of Theo,’ Porteous prompted gently.

‘Theo. I did try very hard with Theo. I’d hoped he might dress up for the wedding. I can’t remember now what plans I had . . .’ She stopped, lost in thought. It seemed to
be very important to her to remember what she had wanted the boy to wear. She looked up smiling triumphantly. ‘A sailor suit,’ she said. ‘I think that was it. I’d seen a
picture in a magazine . . . I didn’t have bridesmaids. It wasn’t a big affair. Crispin didn’t want the fuss. He’d done all that the first time round. Anyway Theo
wasn’t having any of it. I don’t think he resented my taking his mother’s place. I don’t think it was anything like that. Crispin said not at least, and we always seemed to
be good pals. Perhaps it was his age. At the last minute anyway, he refused to wear the costume I’d chosen for him. Had an almighty tantrum.’ She smiled and it seemed to Porteous that
she remembered the boy with genuine fondness. ‘Crispin was furious. I said it didn’t matter. Why should it? So Theo came to the wedding in his school clothes. Short grey trousers and a
cherry-red tie. Very festive and perfectly appropriate. He was very sweet actually. He came up to me later and said he was sorry for making a fuss. I said I supposed the sailor suit
was
a
bit sissy and he gave me a kiss. First time ever.’

‘Where was Theo at school?’ Porteous asked.

‘A place called Linden House. A little prep school. He went as a day boy. Crispin had been sent away as a boarder as a very young child and he didn’t want that for Theo. Not
then.’ There was no hesitation. As she talked, the details of her life at Snowberry seemed to become sharper. She had more confidence in her memory.

‘The photograph . . .’ Porteous prompted her again.

She turned a page and there it was. A boy of about seven or eight standing on his own, looking into the camera, apparently enjoying the attention and the chance to show off. Instead of a
traditional buttonhole he had a daisy pinned to the lapel of his blazer. There was a scab on one of his knees and his socks needed pulling up. He looked as if he’d been eating chocolate
sauce.

‘I did want a photo of him,’ Stella said, ‘but I knew he wouldn’t stand being cleaned up first.’

Porteous was looking at the face, at the shock of white hair, the long straight nose. It would take an expert to check both pictures to confirm the identification but he was prepared to bet a
year’s salary that Theo Randle had turned into Michael Grey.