Max had no answers, only questions, and he walked into the master bedroom where again there wasn’t a speck of dust to be seen or a single item out of place. It was a vicarage, where perhaps a simpler existence was led, but surely there ought to be some signs of life. There should be opened books, a radio, or shoes lying on the floor.
The Truemans employed a cleaner, Molly Turnbull, but she’d been on holiday for the last four days, visiting her sister in the Lake District. Understandably, she’d been too shocked to help. She said she hardly ever saw Michael, or the vicar, but had been fond of Mrs Trueman.
‘A saint, she was,’ she’d sobbed.
One would need to be a saint, Max decided, to live in this mausoleum.
He moved on to Michael’s bedroom and was struck by the sadness of the room. At the same age, Max’s bedroom had been festooned with posters of semi-naked women.
Old sporting trophies, busy gathering dust for years, had sat on shelves. Loose records, the sleeves lost long ago, had vied for space with half-empty bags of crisps, Mars bar wrappers and rotting apple cores. Admittedly, Max’s mother hadn’t employed a cleaner and, even if she had, she would never have lived with the shame of allowing her into her sons’ bedrooms. All the same, Michael’s room looked sad. Apart from a few books, all stored neatly in order of size on the bookcase, a brush, a comb and a can of deodorant on a set of drawers, there was nothing to say anyone used the room. There was no hi-fi, no CDs, no posters, and no mirror, either. Nothing. How did an eighteenyear-old practise his air guitar without a mirror?
Michael Trueman didn’t come across as a fun sort of character.
But it wasn’t a fun sort of home. It was all furniture polish and crucifixes. Cleanliness and godliness.
No clues leapt out at him so he went downstairs.
In the sitting room, a couple of professionally taken framed photographs sat on the mantelpiece. There were no informal snaps; this wasn’t an informal home. The long curtains were of velvet, presumably to keep out the cold, and were a little threadbare. The furniture, too, had a shabbiness to it. The carpet was dull and well worn. There was an upright piano that to Max’s untrained ear seemed to be working well, and a fairly new television and VCR.
It was a dreary room, though.
It was the same in the kitchen. Everything was drab and cold. Even the food in the cupboards, all stored neatly, was dull and unappetizing. There was a massive old freezer, a fridge, a washing machine and an old Rayburn. Crockery was functional.
The vicar’s study was lined with books and the only bright spot in the room was a state-of-the-art laptop computer that sat on his heavy, mahogany desk. That hadn’t come cheap. The books, Max noted, were mostly concerned with theology. Others were on local history.
Max reckoned that if he’d lived there, he would have had to kill someone, too. It was a house that sucked the life from you.
It was a depressing pastel green colour. Other than the bathroom, every wall in the house was painted in the same pale green. Kitchen, study, sitting room, bedrooms, hallway - all green. Who had said green was a relaxing colour?
It was as depressing as hell.
He wandered over to the window and gazed at gardens that, even in November, boasted lots of colour in the foliage. He’d hoped that someone in the house had had a passion for colour and warmth but no. They employed a gardener, which wasn’t surprising given the size of the garden. Jim Brody’s statement had told them nothing.
When Alice Trueman had been murdered, Brody had been at the accident and emergency department having a gash in his arm stitched. Understandably, perhaps, he’d been more concerned with his own problems than giving them a character study of Alice Trueman.
As Max walked back to his car, his mind chattered away to itself.
The vicar appeared to be a dull man wrapped up in his religion, a man who was too busy thinking of God to think of anything else. Did he have time for anything else? Was there time in his life for his wife and son? Did this family know the meaning of laughter and fun?
what about his late wife, Alice? If she was as warm and kind-hearted as everyone thought, a woman who enjoyed the simple pleasures in life, perhaps the vicarage had suited her.
Had Michael brought his young friends back to this house? Max couldn’t imagine wild parties here, or young people listening to music at an ear-splitting volume.
He stood for a few moments, watching officers search the garden. Given that a car boot sale had been held in the adjoining car park on Saturday and that refreshments had been available in the vicarage garden, most of Kelton Bridge’s residents would have tramped across those lawns …
As he drove away, none the wiser, Max mentally went over the details he would feed to the media.
‘That’ll learn me,’ Jill muttered to herself.
Meredith, walking by her side, looked up. ‘Sorry?’
‘Nothing.’
He’d phoned early that morning, offering to buy her lunch. Deciding that forewarned was forearmed, Jill had accepted. Bad decision. How many times had her dad told her there was no such thing as a free lunch?
Before lunch, when she’d walked into his office, he’d asked, very casually, how she felt about coming back to work on Valentine’s case. Jill had soon put him straight on that.
“I never had you down as a coward,’ he’d murmured, shrugging it off.
Jill wasn’t falling for that old ploy!
So they’d had a pleasant lunch, and then he’d brought her back here. ‘You may as well say hello to everyone/
he’d told her.
And here she was, in the thick of it.
It was as if she’d been away a lifetime. She had forgotten how many people were packed into such a small building, and how they still managed to work, and she’d forgotten how hectic everything seemed. The reality was that everyone knew exactly what they were doing, but to an outsider, and Jill considered herself an outsider now, it looked chaotic.
She had soon lost count of the number of people to greet her with a ‘Great to have you back.’ In the end, she’d given up trying to explain that she wasn’t back.
‘The new interview room/ Meredith announced, pushing open a door. ‘State-of-the-art stuff/ he added proudly.
‘Very nice/ Jill murmured. And it was but On
the other side of the glass, two officers were interviewing young Michael Trueman.
‘You know Grace, of course,’ Meredith said, ‘and the other chap’s Fletch.’
Jill didn’t know Fletch, but she knew Max thought highly of him and was glad to have him on the team. He was a short, plump man who, judging by the way that he constantly pulled his trousers back up to his waistline, had lost a little weight recently.
Grace, on the other hand, was tall and reed-thin, and possessed a sartorial elegance to which Fletch could never aspire. Her voice was gentle as she spoke to Michael, but Jill had worked with her enough to know that her strong Geordie accent and no-nonsense approach to life could put the fear of God into the most hardened of criminals.
‘We have trained counsellors who can help you, Michael/ she was saying. ‘You’re in a lot of trouble at the moment, but if you’ll only talk to us, tell us your side of the story, I’m sure we can help you. That’s what we’re here for.’
Michael looked exhausted, which wasn’t surprising.
He’d been here almost twenty-four hours and the Lord only knew what was going through his head.
Another officer entered the interview room and announced the arrival of Michael’s father. Jill caught the look of - what? fear? - on Michael’s face. Why was he more frightened of his father than he was of the officers questioning him? If she were awaiting retribution, Jill would take her chances with Jonathan Trueman rather than Grace or Fletch.
Jonathan Trueman sat opposite his son, and Grace left the room. Seconds later, she was standing alongside Jill and Meredith.
‘Hello, stranger!’ she greeted Jill. “I heard you were coming back.’
‘I’m not,’ Jill told her, scowling at Meredith.
Grace looked confused, but didn’t comment. She was more interested in Michael.
‘He’s terrified of his father/ Jill murmured.
‘Then let’s hope he can get the little bastard to talk.
Trentham’s in a bitch of a mood as it is.’
‘Oh? What’s wrong with him?’
‘The usual unexplained male stuff.’
Jill had to smile. At twenty-seven, Grace was the youngest of seven. She had six brothers, and often unwound with a session of male-bashing.
‘Bullying is the last thing Michael needs right now,’
Jill said.
Grace made no comment on that; she was of the opinion that police officers should be allowed to extract the truth by force if necessary.
They stood to watch the proceedings, breath suspended as they waited for a word from Michael Trueman.
“I don’t know what to say to you, I really don’t,’ his father was saying. ‘When the police told me you were refusing to cooperate, I couldn’t believe it. Your mother and I have brought you up better than this, surely? These people are only doing their jobs, you know.’
No response from Michael.
“I can say this,’ Jonathan Trueman went on. “I forgive you.’
No reaction whatsoever. Not a flicker.
‘You’re my son, and I love you. No matter why you did this terrible thing, I can forgive you. More importantly, God will forgive you.’
Jonathan Trueman took a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose.
‘You have to tell us why you did this, Michael. Above all, honesty is the thing.’
Michael stared at his feet.
‘This is helping no one, son.’ Jonathan Trueman’s voice was steely now. Was he an impatient man, Jill wondered, a man with a quick temper?
‘If there was an argument, if your mother did something to hurt you - well, you must tell them. You know that, don’t you?’
Michael continued to stare at his feet.
Meredith wandered off, but Jill stayed put. Just a few more minutes, she promised herself, and then she’d head home.
Jonathan Trueman spent over an hour with his son. He talked, he scolded, he coaxed, he offered support, and he shed a few tears, but nothing brought a reaction from Michael. He tried to hug his son, but Michael pulled away.
Eventually, with a shake of his head to the officers present, Jonathan left the room.
Grace returned to question Michael, but Jill sought out Jonathan Trueman. She caught up with him in the corridor looking lost and dazed as he gazed out of the window down at the car park below them.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked gently.
He turned round quickly, and it took him a moment to place her.
‘Oh, Jill. So sorry, for a minute I didn’t recognize you.
I didn’t know you were here.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Yes, I’m all right, thank you.’ His eyes filled. ‘Alice had written you a note, inviting you to the vicarage for lunch.’
‘I’m so sorry.’ He had looked an imposing figure at the party; now he seemed to have shrunk inside himself. He was terribly close to tears too, and Jill wasn’t used to coping with hysterical vicars. ‘Can I get you a coffee?’ she asked. ‘It’ll be out of the machine, I’m afraid, but it should be warm and sweet.’
‘Thank you.’ He looked as if he was glad of the suggestion, and Jill felt an urge to take him by the hand and lead him away from this dismal place.
Jill not only managed to get two reasonable-looking cups of coffee from the machine, a miracle in itself, but she also found an empty office. Judging by the dust on the filing cabinets and the boxes stacked in all corners, it hadn’t been used for a while. Meredith couldn’t complain that she was trespassing. Nor could he fire her.
Oblivious to the dust, Jonathan Trueman perched on the edge of the desk and clutched the hot plastic cup in his hands as if he were clutching at life itself. Jill ran a quick hand over the windowsill and sat on the edge of that.
‘How are you coping?’ she asked, but she knew the answer to that. Badly. And who wouldn’t?
“I have my faith/ he said.
At any other time, she would have involved him in a theological argument but she could see he was struggling with that faith of his.
‘You must have been married a long time/ she remarked curiously. ‘At least eighteen years.’
‘Twenty-four years in August,’ he told her. ‘Alice was even making plans for our silver wedding anniversary’
‘Plans? A party, you mean?’ She couldn’t imagine either of them being party people.
‘A holiday/ he explained.
‘Anywhere special?’
He shook his head. “I never thanked her/ he said suddenly.
“I think that’s what hurts the most.’
‘Thanked her for what?’ Jill asked.
‘For marrying me, for staying with me.’
‘Isn’t that what love is all about?’
‘Alice was a dancer, you know,’ he said as if he hadn’t heard her. ‘She’s forty, nine years younger than me.’ He spoke in the present tense, Jill noticed. ‘When I first met her, she was a talented, fun-loving girl.’ He shrugged and smiled at the memory, but the smile quickly faded. “I loved her passionately and could never quite believe that she could love me, too. But …’
He was silent for so long that Jill had to prompt him.
‘But?’
“I sometimes think I stifled her. I needed a wife who would support my work. I wanted someone who would be described as a pillar of the community, and a credit to the parish. That was wrong of me, I see that now. Alice was a dancer. She loved music and dancing. She loved to have fun.’
Dance to the Music. Jill was sure that was running at Wolverhampton this evening. It might be worth putting a couple of quid on it …
“I always lived with the knowledge that, one day, she’d leave me for someone else/ Jonathan said.
‘But she never did/ Jill pointed out.
‘No.’ He gazed straight at her and Jill saw the moisture of unshed tears in his eyes. ‘No, she never did. She was a wonderful wife to me and a wonderful mother to poor Michael. That’s how I must remember her.’
The picture Jonathan had painted of his wife was fascinating.
The fun-loving dancer bore no resemblance whatsoever to the woman at the party who’d been wearing dull clothes and whose attractive face was devoid of make-up.