Telling Tales by Ann Cleeves Read Free Book Online Page A

their actions. I’ve tried to persuade her.”
    “I wouldn’t think she’d be much good at remorse.”
    “I’m new to the case, Mr. Long.” Winter had leaned forward, so Michael had been able to smell his breath, peppermint masking something spicy from the night before. Not booze, of course. Winter wouldn’t be a drinker. There wasn’t the life in him for that. “But there’s no record of you having visited your daughter’
    “Peg went, before she got too poorly.” The words had come out before Michael could stop them, though he’d sworn to himself that he’d tell Winter nothing. He’d driven his wife on visiting days, dropped her right outside the prison gate, because there always seemed to be a wind when they went and rain blown almost horizontal. Then he’d taken the car to the visitors’ car park and sat with his paper lying unread on the steering wheel until all the people streamed out. He’d been surprised by how ordinary they’d looked, the parents and the husbands of the women locked up. From a distance he’d not been able to pick Peg out from the rest.
    “But not you?” Winter had kept the patient voice but his eyes had been full of judgement and distaste.
    “Nor Mantel,” Michael had said. “He never visited her either.”
    “Hardly the same thing, Mr. Long. He believed she’d killed his only daughter.”
    And Michael had turned away at that, acknowledging the justice of the words, but hating the contempt in them.
    “And he told Jeanie that he loved her,” he’d said quietly. A futile attempt at defiance. Then, on firmer ground, “Have you got a daughter, Winter?”
    “That’s hardly relevant.”
    “Aye, you do have a daughter.” He’d been able to tell by something in Winter’s face. “Imagine how you’d feel if your lass did something like that. Strangling a child
    II
    just because she’d come between her and her lover. You’d feel able to support her, would you? You’d not mind visiting her in that place?”
    Winter had hesitated for a moment and Michael had felt a stab of triumph. Then the probation officer had resumed in the saintly voice which made Michael want to slap him, “I might hate the crime, Mr. Long, but I’d not hate the girl who’d committed it.” He’d set down his cup and continued briskly, “Now about the parole.”
    “What about it?”
    “The parole board would need to know she had somewhere to come back to. Support.”
    “You’re asking if she can move in with me?”
    “I know you’ve found it difficult, but it need only be for a short time until she sorted out somewhere more suitable.”
    “Have you been listening to a word I’ve said, man?” Michael had discovered that he was screaming. “She killed that lass and that killed my wife. How can I have her under the same roof as me?”
    Only now it seemed she hadn’t killed Abigail Mantel. Sitting here on a wet Sunday after church, with nothing to cling on to but the remains of the whisky, he kept coming up against the fact and sliding away from it. It was too much for him to accept all at once. If Jeanie hadn’t been a murderer, what sort of monster was he? He’d turned her away. Outside the sky darkened but he still didn’t move. Only when the taped bells in the church tower started up again, scratchy and raucous, for the evening service, so that he knew people would be walking past, did he get up and draw the curtains and switch on the light.
    Chapter Seven
    The next morning Michael was awake before six as usual. It was a habit he’d never get out of now. Activity was an addiction. He’d worked twelve-hour shifts as coxswain of the pilot launch, and even after being on call all night, he’d not been able to sleep during the day. The enforced idleness of retirement made him panic. Jeanie had been lazy. Some days she’d spent hours in her room, and when he’d asked her what she was doing, she’d say she was working. It hadn’t seemed much like work to him. Occasionally she’d