White Nights - Ann Cleeves [132]
‘Willy said an Englishman had been asking him questions,’ Perez said. ‘At first I thought he meant Wilding. When I realized it was Booth, I wondered why Edith hadn’t mentioned him visiting. What happened next?’
‘Booth said he was going to come out to Biddista for the opening night of the exhibition. He’d put on a bit of a show, have some fun, kill two birds with one stone. Bella had always been a snooty cow. She’d invited him into her home then treated him like dirt. It wouldn’t hurt her to know what rejection felt like. He just enjoyed making mischief, I think. The mask, the dressing up, he’d have loved all that. Edith didn’t ask what he intended to do. She just wanted him to go away without a fuss. He said he’d pick up the money from her at the same time. He’d meet her in the hut on the jetty.’ Kenny got to his feet and poured more whisky into Perez’s glass and then into his own.
‘Why didn’t Edith just pay him?’ Perez asked gently.
Kenny gave a little shrug. ‘She said she didn’t trust him. He might come back for more. And she resented it. We’ve always worked hard for what we have. That’s what she said, but I could tell her nerves were shot. All those sleepless nights. She wasn’t thinking straight.’ He held on to his glass with both hands, but still they were shaking. It was taking an effort to keep his voice even. ‘She told me how she waited for him in the hut in the dark. He’d picked up his bag from the beach and had put that stupid mask over his head. Playing the fool again. Wanting to startle her, maybe. Perhaps she wouldn’t have strangled him if she’d been able to see his face – he didn’t look human with that thing on – but I’m not so sure. Edith was always determined once she’d made up her mind. She surprised him in the dark, strangled him from behind. She made it look like suicide and was back in the garden by the time I came down from the hill.’ He paused and looked sadly at Perez. ‘I didn’t have any idea what had happened. We’d been married all that time and I didn’t guess a thing.’
‘Where did Roddy come into it? He was only a boy when Lawrence died.’
‘He saw Edith walking back from the jetty the night Booth died. He was watching from the Herring House window.’
‘Of course he was. I remember seeing him.’
‘Sounds like Roddy didn’t think anything of it until she put it about that she’d never left Skoles. It must have been troubling him. He came to the care centre to visit Willy and passed a comment that got her scared. “What were you doing out on the shore, Edith? Who did you meet that night?” She told him some story, but she could tell he wasn’t taken in.’
Perhaps, Perez thought, a memory had come back to him, of something he’d seen when he was a boy, like it did to Bella. ‘So she killed him too.’
‘Yes,’ Kenny said. ‘She killed him too. Poor lad. Whatever I thought about him, he didn’t deserve that. Edith always said he reminded him of Lawrence. She persuaded him to meet her up by the Pit and she killed him in just the same way. She told the care centre she was out doing home visits.’
‘I know,’ Perez said. ‘I checked.’
Kenny set down the whisky, put his head in his hands as he had on the hill, and began to weep again.
Chapter Forty-five
This time they talked in Perez’s place, which always felt more like a boat than a house to Taylor, with the water lapping against the outside wall and the gulls on the roof. Perez was making coffee and Taylor was shouting through to him from the living room, where he was lying on the floor. It was his back, he said. He had recurring problems with his back. An old sports injury. Sometimes this was the only way he could get comfortable.
‘I should have worked it out,’ Taylor yelled. He sounded furious with himself. ‘There was a photograph of Edith and Lawrence in Booth’s house. West Yorkshire emailed it through to me. The pair of them looked very cosy. If I’d realized they were having an affair I’d have got there before you did. I left the search of Booth’s house to the local boys. Of course the picture didn’t mean anything