Palmer-Jones 01 - A Bird in the Hand by Ann Cleeves Read Free Book Online Page A

there are very few birdwatchers here in mid-summer. I got the impression that she had lived here a while as a child.
    “The only cottage she could afford to rent was cold and damp. She must have been so anxious about the baby. And Barnaby was incredibly demanding when he was very small. He never seemed to sleep, and only stopped screaming when he was picked up and cuddled. She was exhausted. And even then she never took her feelings of frustration and violence out on the baby. Only on herself.
    “But Tom never saw her depression as something natural which anyone else in the same circumstances would have experienced, a sort of safety valve, which at least allowed her to survive it. He saw it as a scar, an innate weakness which she’d carry around for the rest of her life. He was great when she first came out of hospital, very kind and supportive. He did a lot to make the cottage more comfortable. He played with Barnaby for hours, he even washed and changed him, to give Sally a chance to rest. He hated his work at the hotel, but carried on with it. He was trying to save so that they could get somewhere to live together, but I don’t think he would have managed to save very much. He was a terrible worrier and he escaped from worry by drinking. He smoked quite heavily too, and he was very poorly paid.”
    “Did you see him after he had phoned?”
    “Yes, I made an appointment for him to come to the office that afternoon. He was usually free in the afternoons and he sounded very overwrought.”
    “What did he want?”
    “It was the same unspecific anxiety about Sally’s inability to care for Barnaby. He said that she was withdrawing into herself and had refused to see him a couple of times, I tried to explain that Sally is normally a very independent person, and that she’d be feeling the need to break some of her ties with him, but he couldn’t accept that. He needed to be needed. He got very angry with me when I said there was nothing that I could do. He said that Barnaby was in real danger, and should be taken away from Sally. I said that was ridiculous. He threatened to go to the NSPCC and the social services, and to tell them things which would force them to take the baby into care. I said that if he had any real illustrations of Sally’s inability to care for the baby, he should tell me. He stormed out at that. It was quite unusual. He was generally a model client.”
    “And do you think that he would have been able to persuade the social services to remove the child from his mother?”
    She shrugged. “It would depend what he told them, but social workers are frightened now; there’s been so much publicity about battered children. They might be worried enough to take Barnaby into care, even if it were only for a short time. Sally wouldn’t have been able to cope with that.
    “In case there was something he hadn’t told me, I went to see Sally later that afternoon. I call in to see her quite often if I’m working in Fenquay. It’s a good place to get a cup of tea. She was fine and so was Barnaby. For the first time since I’ve known her she was making plans for the future. Tom didn’t have any place in those plans, and I’m afraid it was her new independence, her new freedom from him, that had upset him.”
    Jenny Kenning looked very firmly at George.
    “Sally’s a very strong lady, Mr. Palmer-Jones. If she’d wanted to get rid of Tom she would have moved away or told him to clear off. She would not have needed to kill him.”
    Palmer-Jones slowly drank the last of his coffee.
    “She must have been very strong,” he said, “ very strong or very strange, to have listened to threats that her child would be taken away from her without responding.”
    Jennifer got up abruptly. “There’s nothing strange about Sally,” she said very quietly. “ She may have responded to Tom’s threats but she did not kill him.”
    They were walking out of the hotel, a little strained together, not sure how to say