The Sleeping and the Dead

The Gillespie house had the dense quiet of an old church. It struck Porteous so strongly because he could tell that usually it wouldn’t have been like that. As they approached the front door he saw through the living-room window an electric guitar and a practice amp, a battered upright piano with music on the stand and scribbled manuscript in a pile on the floor. In the hall the telephone had been unplugged.

Richard Gillespie let them in and took them to a room on the first floor which he called his office. It had a desk and a computer but it was big enough for a leather sofa and a couple of armchairs. He left them there while he went to fetch coffee. The room was at the back of the house and looked over the garden to public tennis courts. Two women were playing a scrappy if energetic game and occasionally shouts of triumph and cries of ‘well done’ floated through the open window, emphasizing the quiet inside.

When Gillespie returned with a tray he was still alone.

‘Mrs Gillespie will be joining us?’ Porteous asked.

‘If you insist that it’s necessary. She’s resting.’

‘It is, I’m afraid.’ Porteous was glad Eddie Stout was with him, solid and unimpressed. He found Gillespie intimidating without being able to work out exactly why. Perhaps it was an impression of anger, only held in check with great self-control. Without Eddie as minder he wasn’t sure he’d be able to stand his ground.

‘While we’re on our own I want to know what’s going on,’ Gillespie said. ‘No one’s told us anything. I’ve a right to know.’

‘Of course. We’re linking your daughter’s murder to that of a boy called Theo Randle, nearly thirty years ago. Does the name mean anything to you?’

‘Any relation to Crispin Randle?’

‘His son.’

‘Crispin never told me his son had been killed.’

‘He didn’t know. We retrieved the body from Cranford Water a couple of weeks ago.’

‘That body?’

Porteous nodded. ‘Did you know Crispin well?’

‘Through business really. We had a couple of boozy nights together, but everyone who worked with Crispin ended up drinking with him.’

‘Was Mr Randle involved in the computer business?’ It was hard to picture.

‘Hardly. No. And I was never a computer scientist or engineer. Still don’t really understand the technology. I trained as a lawyer and worked my way up through the company’s legal department before becoming MD. When I first qualified I worked briefly for a firm of solicitors in town. We sold some property for Crispin.’

‘Snowberry?’

‘No, he’d already sold that. This was a house in Gosforth. We got a good price for it considering it was nearly falling down round his ears.’

‘Tell me about your daughter,’ Porteous said.

Gillespie shifted in his seat. For the first time the suppressed anger gave way to uneasiness.

‘It must seem like prying but we’ll need all the information you can give us.’

Eddie sat with his pencil poised over his notebook, waiting.

‘She wasn’t my daughter.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I mean, not biologically. Legally of course. I adopted her when I married Eleanor.’

Porteous wondered if that explained the anger. His position was compromised, ambiguous. Eleanor’s grief would be more straightforward. Had she made him feel he couldn’t possibly understand what she was going through?

‘Does Melanie’s natural father know that she’s dead?’

‘I shouldn’t think so. We’ve no way of tracing him. He’s a musician. That, at least, is what he calls himself. I think there was a card at Christmas. From North Africa, Marrakesh, somewhere like that. He travels a lot. I don’t know how he supports himself. Not now.’

‘What do you mean? “Not now”?’

There was a pause. Eventually Gillespie said, ‘I gave him money. Enough to last for a while.’

‘Why did you do that, Mr Gillespie?’ Eddie Stout spoke for the first time, shocking them both. Both, too, sensed the disapproval in his voice. Not now, Eddie, Porteous thought. Now’s not the time for a moral crusade.

But though the question seemed to make Gillespie defensive, he wanted to explain. ‘It was when Eleanor and I married. I didn’t want Ray around, dropping in every afternoon with his unsuitable friends, confusing Mel. I wanted to be her dad.’

‘So you paid him to go away?’

‘And to agree to the adoption, yes.’

‘How old was Melanie then?’

‘Five. Six by the time we went through the whole process.’

‘And he just disappeared from her life?’

‘Yes. Look, I thought it was the best thing at the time, all right? Ray Scully was mixed up in all sorts. He’d been convicted of fraud. He’d even been to prison. What could someone like him give Melanie?’

‘Did Mrs Gillespie know about the financial arrangement?’

‘Look, it was no big deal. A one-off payment. I wasn’t stopping him keeping in touch for ever. Like I said, he wrote to her, sent her cards.’

‘So Mrs Gillespie knew?’

‘No. She just thought it was Ray being irresponsible again. He’d been disappearing on and off since Mel was born.’ He stood up and stared blankly out of the window. The tennis game was over. ‘I shouldn’t have told you.’

‘No,’ Porteous said. ‘I’m very pleased that you did.’