Already Dead(31)

‘I’m all right,’ said Mrs Turner. ‘I’ll be all right.’

‘Do you have any family, other than Glen?’

‘He’s my only child. We never had any more kids. And his father died a few years ago. Heart attack, you know. The usual.’ She looked at Hurst brightly, as if she was trying her hardest to be helpful. ‘I do have a sister in Manchester. She’s got children.’

‘Perhaps we should call your sister for you,’ said Hurst. ‘You shouldn’t be on your own.’

‘Or Pat Mercer,’ said Fry.

Mrs Turner began to shake her head, looking thoughtful. ‘No, Glen doesn’t really have any friends,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why, but he’s turned out a bit of a loner. There’s nothing wrong with that though, is there? A lot of people are happy with their own company. It doesn’t mean anything.’

Fry could see that the initial shock was starting to wear off. The impact of what Mrs Turner had been told was about to hit her. She was running their conversation backwards in her mind until she reached the moment when she opened the door to two police officers and was told that her son was dead. But before she reached that point, it seemed that she’d finally heard Fry’s question.

‘He’s single?’ she asked. ‘No girlfriends?’

‘None that I know of. And I’m sure I’d know.’

‘No girlfriends, then. So perhaps a boyfriend…?’

Mrs Turner began to shake her head emphatically.

‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of,’ said Fry. ‘Not these days. It’s all fine.’

‘No, you don’t understand. His father wouldn’t have liked it. Clive was dead set in his views on the subject.’

Fry sat back in frustration. Yes, some fathers still cast that shadow, no matter how absent they were. Even the dead fathers, it seemed. Clive Turner wouldn’t have liked his son to be gay, so he wasn’t. It was as simple as that for Ingrid.

But perhaps it wasn’t at all simple for poor old Glen.

‘Did Glen have any enemies, then? Had he fallen out with anyone recently? Got himself into trouble of some kind?’

But it was too late. Mrs Turner’s mental rewind had reached the critical juncture. Her body sagged, the lines of her face began to crumple and blood suffused her cheeks as her veins swelled with an enormous pressure.

Just like her house, Ingrid Turner seemed about to collapse.

Charlie Dean thought he must be getting paranoid. Everywhere he looked, he seemed to see a hooded figure with staring eyes. He glimpsed it on every street corner in Wirksworth, lurking in every entrance in the area of narrow alleyways people called the Puzzle Gardens. He saw a dark shape at the bottom of the garden when he was showing a young couple round a semi-detached house in Brassington. He felt as though someone was standing waiting in every room of an empty property he’d been asked to value in Cromford.

It was ridiculous, of course. He’d never been the over-imaginative type. Down to earth and reliable, that was Charlie Dean. He left the flights of imagination to the women. Sheena was good at it. And Barbara, too – though the ideas that ran through her mind were always the worst things she could imagine about him. She loved to torment herself like that, creating entire fantasy scenarios in which her husband was always the villain, the cold-hearted monster. She probably pictured herself taking revenge on him for whatever she dreamed he’d done.

Because it had been like that at home since Barbara had convinced herself so firmly of his guilt, Charlie had decided a long time ago that they might as well enjoy some of the things he was considered guilty of. He might as well be hanged for a sheep as a goat. Or something like that.

But that Thursday morning, as he drove back from Cromford to his office at Williamson Hart, the unsettling anxiety that dogged his working day was undermining Charlie Dean’s confidence. He wondered once or twice whether Barbara had hired someone to follow him, some thug who’d been given the job of scaring him. If that was the case, he was doing a really good job.

But it was probably a bit too subtle for Barbara. She was the sort of woman who was more likely to cut up his clothes and pour paint over his BMW. He’d promised her the new kitchen extension she’d been nagging him about, and the builders had started delivering materials this week. But no matter how much money he spent, he knew it would never be enough for Barbara.

Charlie pulled into a side road between Steeple Grange and Wirksworth, recognising three little terraces of stone cottages that had been cleaned up and sandblasted, and separated with wrought iron railings. When he’d parked, he dialled a number on his mobile. But when it was answered he found he didn’t really know what to say.