Grave Stones (19 page)

When she called the briefing for six p.m. sharp, and he watched her striding to and fro in front of the whiteboard, fingers pointing to names, times, places, he could feel the entire team whipped into energy. Her old dynamism had returned, which left Korpanski with a worry. Who would inspire them if she vanished for months into maternity leave?

Joanna awoke with the feeling that something unpleasant was going to happen today. Matthew lay still beside her but she knew he was awake. It’s hard to fake sleep successfully. There is something about the breathing that gives the masquerader away; it is a little less laboured, slightly faster and less regular than the respirations of someone who is truly, deeply asleep. She worried for a couple of minutes over the emotion of impending trouble.

Then she remembered. Of course. Today Eloise would be arriving. When she returned from work, Matthew would be wearing the fixed, strained smile of a man who is only too well aware of the problem between his daughter and his partner. No. She almost sat up to protest. Fiancée. Next to the half-finished book, the pearl ring gazed back at her from her bedside cabinet, a faultless, beautiful witness to her altered state.

Matthew decided to stir. He reached out for her and found her, pulled her to him, and she thought how very lucky she was, how much she loved him and how glad she was that in a couple of short months they would be man and wife. She snuggled in close to whisper in his ear. ‘Want a coffee?’

He opened his eyes. ‘Mmm.’ Surely, surely, she thought, Eloise could not wreck this happiness, this contentment?

Oh yes she could and frequently did, deliberately. Joanna slipped out of bed, wrestled her way into her thick white towelling dressing gown and padded downstairs, returning minutes later with a cafetiére steaming with a rich, beautiful aroma, a jug of milk and two large mugs. Carefully she poured out their coffee and they sat up in bed, awakening to the day with the help of caffeine.

She broached the subject first. ‘What time is Eloise coming?’

She could never quite get rid of the frostiness in her voice the second she spoke the name. And Matthew noticed it too. He frowned over the cup of coffee.

‘Her interview’s at two so she’ll drive straight there,’ he said stiffly. ‘Then she has a written paper. She should be finished by five-ish. We’ll be back here by six-ish, depending on the traffic.’

He arched his eyebrows at her. ‘I suppose you’ll be late home?’

If she struggled to keep hostile tones out of her voice, Matthew struggled to keep irony out of his.

Perhaps now that she was to be his wife, things would improve? Briefly, she had thought they had while Matthew had been in the States and she had suffered a miscarriage; Eloise had sent her some flowers. But later, when she had been healthy enough to think about it more rationally, she had realised that the thought behind the flowers had been Matthew’s. Not Eloise’s. How could she ever have thought otherwise?

But she must try and build bridges. ‘I will try and finish early, Matt,’ she promised before springing out of bed and making her way to the shower. She put on her cycling shorts and top and folded work clothes into her rucksack before going downstairs for some Special K and a large tumblerful of apple juice. She heard Matthew upstairs, showering briskly, humming. He was happy to be seeing his daughter, she reflected. She shouldn’t spoil it. But it wasn’t just her fault. If she was guarded, Eloise was at least equally so – if not more so. In the beginning, Joanna had excused the child. After all, her perception would be that it had been Joanna who had broken up her mother and father, split apart the family home. But as Eloise had grown up, Joanna had become increasingly impatient with the
sharp-featured
, razor-tongued teenager, seeing in her more than simply a physical resemblance to Jane, Matthew’s ex-wife.

She finished her breakfast and went upstairs to clean her teeth just as Matthew was descending. He gave her a slightly wary look.

‘See you tonight then, Jo.’

She set off to work, glad to escape the coolness that threatened whenever Eloise’s presence was felt.

It did her good to be cycling across the moorland through a warm and misty fog, which blanketed the peaks and gave the area a mystical feel. She descended the hill from Waterfall and joined the Ashbourne road, conscious of the threat of the traffic that raced past.

She arrived at the station thirty-five minutes later, exhilarated and clear-minded. Full of determination. It had been this characteristic that had finally solved so many of their cases. A tenacious and stubborn optimism, a conviction that they would solve the case eventually. Joanna disliked failure. She had been brought up to
despise
failure by a father who thought of her as the son he had never had. As she locked her bike to the railings, her mouth had a firm set to it and her eyes smouldered.

She had a second quick shower before changing into her work clothes – a black skirt and scarlet T-shirt,
low-heeled
shoes. Now she was ready for work.

Surprisingly, Korpanski had beaten her to it. He grinned up at her, turning his gaze from the computer screen for no more than an instant before motioning towards two coffee cups already filled. ‘Just going through the statements, Jo,’ he said, ‘ready for the briefing.’

She felt appreciative that he, too, was putting extra energy into the case.

They drank companionably until nine fifteen, peering at the screen, searching for something that might lead
them to a conclusion. But they found nothing they had not seen before, nothing that led them any nearer to Grimshaw’s murderer.

And yet as Joanna and Mike made their way to the briefing room their tread was quick and light.

The assembled officers seemed to have caught their optimism and looked alert and ready for action. Joanna and Mike exchanged glances. If only they could point them in the right direction. The only new information was that the handwriting on the note had been confirmed, surprisingly, by Gabriel Frankwell as being Grimshaw’s.

She directed their energies into analysing the existing statements, checking and rechecking people’s whereabouts for the Sunday evening – early.

They were almost through the briefing when a door opened at the back of the room. The desk sergeant, Alderley, stood in the doorway, hesitating. Korpanski walked the length of the room towards him. Listened to some whispered words. Joanna caught a look of complete consternation on her sergeant’s face. He looked at her, his mouth open, shoulders up in confusion. What on earth, she wondered, was Alderley telling him that had so imprinted on his face?

Then she saw that someone was standing behind Alderley. A smart woman, late fifties, maybe early sixties, dressed in a dark grey trouser suit, looking so like her daughter it was not possible to mistake her identity. Tall, slim, with nondescript features but a tight, hard, determined mouth and sandy coloured hair.
Joanna felt a rushing in her head. This was not possible – surely? A grim voice answered her silent question. In life and death
anything
is possible. But this would turn the entire case on its head, remove every motive, every assumption. She fixed her gaze on the woman, as though worried she would disappear, walked up the room and waited for Alderley to introduce them, yet knowing already.

‘Th-this woman,’ Alderley was stammering, ‘says she’s Mrs Grimshaw.’

Joanna gaped at the woman, absorbing everything about her, from the thin, almost gaunt frame, to the hard stare of the hazel eyes, so like her daughter’s, the thin mouth, the defiant attitude.

‘We-ell.’ It was all she could manage.

She dismissed the briefing. It was pointless trying to proceed with the case until they had assimilated this new information, threaded this hitherto unknown and significant fact into the investigation. It would alter everything. Change the entire balance. At the back of Joanna’s mind, the policewoman in her had already added the new suspect to the list and begun to analyse motives. Grimshaw had died intestate. Avis was still his legal wife, therefore his main beneficiary. Had Grimshaw’s wife hated him? How would Judy respond to the resurrection of her mother? Had she realised that her father’s story was nothing but a cruel trick? Joanna met the woman’s eyes, held her hand out and received a limp shake. ‘Shall we go into an interview room?’

The woman’s gaze slid into hers. Joanna was again
reminded of Avis’s daughter, stroppy, sneaky and unpleasant. There was something equally and overtly hostile about her mother’s stare.

The battle was about to begin.

She and Korpanski sat opposite Mrs Grimshaw, but Joanna found it hard to begin the questioning. Where do you start?

We believed you dead, fed to the pigs?

Where have you been for the last eight years?

Have you kept in touch with your daughter? Is she
in
on this?

What part did your neighbour, Dudson, play in this?

Was he your lover? If not he, whom?

Suddenly helpless, she looked at Korpanski, whose eyes were resting on her, warmed to the colour of toffee with humour. He well knew that for once she was at a loss for words and was enjoying every moment of it. He was laughing at her, hardly bothering to conceal it.

She put her hands on the desk. ‘Mrs Grimshaw,’ she began. ‘You are aware that your husband has been—’

She got no further.

‘Yes, yes,’ the woman replied impatiently. ‘I know Jakob met with a violent end.’

‘You left Prospect Farm.’

‘Years ago.’ The same impatient, irritated, rather rude tone. ‘Being a farmer’s wife didn’t suit me.’

Joanna replaced the words impatient and rude with condescending.

‘Where have you been?’

‘Is it anything to do with the investigation?’ Her voice was razor sharp.

Korpanski cut in, frostily. ‘We don’t know yet, Mrs Grimshaw. We’re just collecting facts at the moment. We had heard—’

Without warning, Mrs Grimshaw burst into peals of laughter. ‘Oh, the pig story,’ she said, then leaning in, added, ‘I never thought Jakob had such a vivid imagination.’

‘Can you think of any reason why your husband would confess to such a crime when it obviously isn’t true?’ Korpanski asked.

Mrs Grimshaw smiled. ‘Jakob had a mischievous sense of humour,’ she said. ‘He knew what a nosey little thing young Judy was. He knew she’d go prying, looking for things.’

Sense of humour?
Joanna almost shuddered. She wasn’t exactly close to her own mother, but to plant this cruelly false evidence in the mind of a daughter didn’t seem like humour, exactly.

But an explanation of sorts.

‘Have you had anything to do with your daughter in the years of your absence?’

‘No.’ Said flatly, almost confrontationally. ‘I thought it best.’

‘Where have you been?’

‘Abroad.’ Almost a smirk crossed the woman’s face. ‘I ran a bar in Spain. Then a few years ago I moved to Eastern Europe. Poland, the Czech Republic, and so on. I’ve travelled around.’

‘Did you leave with anyone?’

Mrs Grimshaw shook her head. Her pale eyes met Joanna’s. ‘He travels fastest who travels alone,’ she quoted.

‘Kipling,’ Joanna muttered under her breath.

Mrs Grimshaw continued. ‘Once I’d decided to go,’ she said, ‘I knew I must leave Judy behind.’

‘Why didn’t you just file for divorce?’ Korpanski asked, prosaic as ever.

She looked at him, then at Joanna. ‘I don’t expect either of you to believe this,’ she said haughtily, ‘but Jakob’s farm was his life – and his inheritance. If I had divorced him the farm would have been split up. It was hardly viable, anyway. Half would have been impossible.’

Joanna nodded. This, at least, made sense. Even if none of the rest did.

She decided to proceed on a different tack. ‘When did you return from your travels?’

‘A little over two weeks ago.’ There was a direct challenge in the woman’s statement. She must have known when her husband died.

‘Why?’ Korpanski asked bluntly.

‘I got bored with travelling.’

She hesitated. ‘And,’ her shoulders dropped, ‘to be honest, someone from Leek came into the bar where I was working in Bratislava. He recognised me and told me how things were at the farm. I realised that Jakob was probably about to sell up. He told me about the land deal and I realised I could use the money.’ She
gave a smile that was really a sneer. ‘Bar work doesn’t exactly pay well, you know.’

Joanna nodded in mock sympathy, all the while thinking that this certainly complicated things for Judy Grimshaw. No longer her father’s next of kin, she was about to be supplanted. Interesting.

‘Have you seen your daughter since you’ve been back?’

‘No. Not yet.’ For the first time since the beginning of the interview some doubt crept into the woman’s voice. And this time her smile appeared genuine. ‘To be honest, I didn’t how to approach her. After the story Jakob had spun she might faint if I showed up at her house. She might be angry.’ Her eyes challenged. ‘But a telephone call seems a little cold, don’t you think? After all this time,’ she tacked on almost casually.

Joanna and Mike stared back woodenly.

I would love to be a fly on the wall at the reunion, Joanna thought.

‘How did you learn about the pig story?’

Avis Grimshaw licked her lips. ‘Judy told the friends I was staying with a couple of months ago.’ She smiled. ‘They never believed it and tried to tell Judy it couldn’t be the truth but she swallowed it.’ A wry smile twisted her face. ‘If you see what I mean.’

‘Didn’t that make you want to see her?’

‘Yes and no,’ Avis said. ‘More yes than no.’

Joanna leant across the table. ‘Did you see your husband on your return?’

Avis Grimshaw hesitated, so Joanna pressed on.

‘Do you know anything that might have a bearing on your husband’s death, Mrs Grimshaw?’

She shrugged. ‘Not a thing,’ she answered. ‘I’m well out of touch, Inspector.’

‘And where have you been in the time since you’ve been home?’

Again Mrs Grimshaw’s face changed. She stared at the wall. ‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘I’d had a great idea of walking back into people’s lives.’

‘Anyone in particular?’ Korpanski asked with meaning.

But the spark had left Grimshaw’s widow. ‘I…tried to look up a few old friends.’

‘Where?’