The Wolf in Winter (2014) Read online

  But in the still, dark corners of his mind, Morland was starting to feel that it might be for the best if Hayley Conyer made way for another. It would take her death to do it, for she would never relinquish control while there was still breath in her body, but it was time that the Conyer reign came to a close. There was a lot to be said for the discipline of married life. It forced one to learn the art of compromise, and to remedy the faws in one's nature. Morland himself was still a work in progress after two decades of marriage, but he liked to think that his wife might be as well. Hayley Conyer, on the other hand, simply grew more resolute in her self-belief, more intransigent in her views and more ready to embrace the use of dictats to get her way. She was helped by the rules of the board, which gave the chief selectman the equivalent of two votes. It meant that even if the board was evenly divided on an issue, Hayley's side would triumph, and she could force a stalemate with only one other selectman on her side. It was also a simple fact that the rest of the board combined had less testosterone than she had. It was increasingly left to Morland to try to deal with Hayley, and to encourage her to moderate her behavior, but he had been having less and less success in recent months. A body left hanging in a Portland basement was testament to that.

  'I was just admiring your car,' said Morland.

  'You going to tell me that I need to replace it too?' she said.

  'Not unless pieces of it start coming off on the highway and injuring folk, although that's starting to seem increasingly likely.'

  She folded her arms over her chest, the way she did at meetings when she wanted to let people know that she had given up listening to their arguments, and her decision was made. She wasn't wearing a brassiere, and her breasts hung low beneath her shirt. With her fowered skirt and her sandaled feet and her long gray hair held back by a scarf, she came across as the typical earth mother, all bean sprouts and wheatgrass and organic milk. It wasn't entirely inapt, even if it didn't even hint at the hardness beneath.

  'It's mine,' she said, 'and I like it.'

  'You're only holding on to it because the Thomas Soulebys of this world keep telling you to get rid of it,' he said. 'If they started stroking it and admiring it, you'd sell it for scrap in a heartbeat.'

  Her scowl softened. Morland still had a way of disarming her that so many others did not. His father had enjoyed the same gift. Daniel Morland's relationship with Hayley Conyer had been almost firtatious, at least when his wife wasn't around. Whether Hayley chose to embrace sexual activity or not, she was still an attractive woman, and Alina Morland wasn't about to stand by and let her husband play patty-cake with her just to ensure the smooth running of the town. Neither had Alina been concerned at the power Hayley wielded as chief selectman, because that was all politics, and this was about a wife and her husband. The town could have decided to make Hayley Conyer its offcial queen, and Alina would still have knocked her crown off for stirring even the slightest of sexual feelings in her husband.

  This demonstrated one of the curious truths about Prosperous: in most things it ran pretty much like any other town of similar size. It had its rivalries, its intrigues. Men cheated on their wives, and wives cheated on their husbands. Hugo Reed didn't talk to Elder Collingwood, and never would, all over an incident with a tractor and a garden gate some forty years earlier. Ramett Huntley and Milisent Rawlin, although superfcially polite to each other, were obsessed with their bloodlines, and both had made regular pilgrimages back to the northeast of England over the years in an effort to trace their lineages back to royalty. So far neither had been successful, but the search went on. In Prosperous, business as usual was the order of the day. The town differed only in one crucial way from the rest, and even that had become a version of normal over the centuries. It was surprising what folk could accustom themselves to, as long as they were rewarded for it in the end.

  'You want some tea, Lucas?' said Hayley.

  'Tea would be good,' said Morland.

  In Prosperous, you were more likely to be offered tea than coffee. It was a hangover from the old country. Ben Pearson was probably the only storeowner for ffty miles who regularly ran out of loose leaf Earl Grey and English Breakfast, and Yorkshire Tea teabags. And, damn, was there trouble when he did.

  Inside, Hayley's home resembled a Victorian house museum: dark wood antique furniture, Persian rugs, lace tablecloths, overstuffed chairs and wall upon wall of books. The chandeliers were late nineteenth-century reproductions by Osler & Faraday of Birmingham, based on a classic eighteenth-century Georgian design. Morland thought them excessively ornate, and ill suited to the house, but he kept that opinion to himself. Still, sitting at Hayley's dining table always made him feel like he was preparing for a séance.

  Hayley boiled some water and set the tea to brew. The teapot was sterling silver, but the tea would be served in mismatched mugs. China would have been an affectation too far. She poured milk into each of the mugs, not bothering to ask Morland how much he wanted, or whether he might prefer to do it himself. By now she knew his habits and preferences almost as well as his own wife. She added the tea, then found some shortbread biscuits and emptied four on a plate. Biscuits, not cookies: it said so on the packaging, which was also decorated with Highland cattle, tartans and ancient ruins.

  They sipped their tea, nibbled the shortbread, and spoke of the weather and the repairs that would have to be made to the town offce once winter was gone, before moving on to the real business of the afternoon.

  'I hear they buried that hobo,' said Hayley.

  Morland wasn't sure that the man named Jude had been a hobo, strictly speaking. As far as he knew, hobos were migratory workers. Technically, Jude had been a bum.

  'Apparently so,' said Morland.

  'Has there been any fuss?'

  'Not that I've heard.'

  'I told you there wouldn't be. I had to listen to all of that bitching and moaning for nothing.'

  Morland didn't dispute the point. He had done all his arguing when the decision of the board had been communic ated to him, but by then it was too late. He'd tried to talk Hayley around, but on that occasion she had proved immune to his charms.

  'It would have been preferable if he'd just disappeared,' said Morland.

  'That would have cost more – a lot more. Books have to be balanced.'

  'It might have been worth it. I don't think anyone would have come looking for a missing homeless man, and it's hard to prove the commission of a crime without a body.'

  'Nobody's trying to prove that a crime was committed. A hobo hanged himself, and that's the end of it.'

  Not quite, thought Morland. Hayley was thinking like a selectman, Morland like a lawman.

  'The problem, as I see it, is that we now have two dead bodies to no good end,' said Morland.

  'Ben told me that he had no choice but to shoot the girl. You agreed.'

  Yet I didn't agree to the killing of her father, Morland was about to say, but he killed the words before they reached his tongue.

  'This town has survived, and fourished, by being careful,' he said.

  'You don't have to tell me that!' said Hayley. A little blood found its way into her pale cheeks. 'What do you think I've been doing all these years? Every decision I've made has been with the best interests of the town at heart.'

  I've made, he noticed, not we've made. He wondered if this was how all despots began. At some point, someone had to speak truth to power. Then again, those who did frequently ended up with their heads on stakes.

  'I'm not questioning your commitment to the town, Hayley. Nobody is. But two dead from the same family could attract attention.'

  'One dead,' she corrected him. 'There's one body, not two. Has the girl even been reported missing yet?'

  'No,' he conceded.

  'And she won't be either, because the only one who might have been concerned about her is now in the ground. By acting as we did, we solved the problem, or we would have if that damn fool Dixon hadn't let the girl go.'


  'That's an interesting choice of words,' said Morland.

  He hadn't raised his suspicions with Hayley before now. He wanted to let them percolate some before he started pouring them out. Hayley nibbled on her shortcake, her tiny white teeth chipping away at it with the action of a hungry rodent.

  'You think he's telling lies about what happened?' she said.

  'I tried using a scrap of material to open the bolt from the inside, like he and Erin claimed the girl did.'

  'And?'

  'It worked.'

  'So?'

  'It took a while, and I had to use a piece of wood to pull the cloth in and form a loop, just as Erin Dixon did when I put her in the basement and asked her to demonstrate how the girl might have escaped. She told me she'd found the wood on the foor, and that the girl must have broken it off the bed. She showed me the bed, and there was a long splinter of wood missing that matched the piece in Erin's hand.'

  'I'm waiting for a "but".'

  'But there was blood on the foor by the bed when I let Erin out, and it was fresh.'

  'Could it have been the girl's? She couldn't have been gone for but an hour by then.'

  'If it was, the blood would have congealed.'

  'If it was Erin's blood, maybe she cut herself when she was examining the wood.'

  'Maybe.'

  Hayley set her shortbread down by her mug. She seemed to have lost her taste for sweetness.

  'Why would they have let her go?'

  'I don't know. There are rumors about Harry's business.'

  'I've heard. I've been concerned since they took that loan.'

  'The paint on his house needs a new coat, and that old truck of his might just be the only vehicle in Prosperous that's in worse shape than yours. I didn't have time to take a good look around his kitchen when I visited, but I saw that some groceries had been unpacked and hadn't yet been put away. They're buying cheap bread, generic pasta, a couple of packs of chicken joints that were about to expire but would be okay if you froze them, that kind of thing.'

  'They could have been for the girl. They weren't going to be feeding her flet mignon.'

  'It just doesn't sit right with me.' He regarded her closely. 'It sounds to me like you're trying to defend them.'

  'I'm not defending anyone,' said Hayley. 'I'm trying to understand. If what you're suggesting is true, we have a major problem on our hands. We'll have to act, and that could cause unrest in the town. We don't turn on our own.'

  'Not unless our own start turning on us.'

  'I still can't fgure out why they'd want to release her.'

  'Pity? Guilt?'

  'It's not like we were asking them to kill her,' said Hayley. 'They just had to take care of her until we were ready. She was too thin. All this might have been avoided if Walter and Beatrix hadn't brought us a junkie.'

  'It's been a long time since we've had to fnd someone,' said Morland. 'It's harder now. The safest way is to take the vulnerable, the lost, the ones that nobody will miss. If that means junkies and whores, then so be it.'

  'Junkies and whores may not be good enough.'

  'It's been many years, Hayley. Some people are wondering if it might not be necessary at all.'

  She fared up.

  'Who? Tell me!' Her eyes grew sly. 'The same ones who are whispering about my "commitment" to the town?'

  He should have stepped more carefully. She heard everything, turning the details over in her mind and examining them the way a jeweler might consider gemstones before deciding which to keep and which to discard.

  'I know there are some who are starting to doubt me,' she said.

  Hayley stared at Morland, as though willing him to confess that he himself had been guilty of such thoughts, but he did not. She leaned over the table and grasped his hand. Her skin was cold, and its look and feel reminded him of the cheap chicken cuts at the Dixon house.

  'That's why this is so important,' she said. 'If I'm to go, I want to leave knowing the town is secure. I want to be sure that I've done all that I can for it.'

  She released her grip on him. She had left marks on the back on his hand, as if to remind him that she was still strong and should not be underestimated.

  'What do you suggest?' he said.

  'We talk to the Dixons. We tell them to fnd us another girl, fast. And no junkie either: we want someone clean and healthy. If they come through for us, we'll see what more the town can do to help them out if they're in trouble.'

  'And if they don't?'

  Hayley stood and started clearing the table. She was tired of talking with him. The discussion was over.

  'Then they're a threat to the security of the town. There's still money in the discretionary fund, thanks to the decision not to disappear the hobo.

  'And,' she added, 'our friends will be grateful for the work.'

  11

  Iwas sitting at a table in Crema Coffee Company on Commercial when the man who called himself Shaky found me. It was just after nine in the morning, and while a steady stream of people kept the baristas busy, most of the tables remained empty. It was that time of day when folk wanted to order and go, which suited me just fne. I had a nice sun-dappled spot by the window, and copies of the New York Times and the Portland Press Herald. Crema had one of the best spaces in town, all bare boards and exposed brickwork. There were worse places to kill an hour. I had a meeting later in the morning with a prospective client: trouble with an ex-husband who hadn't grasped the difference between keeping a protective eye on his former wife and stalking her. It was, depending upon whom you asked, a thin line. Neither did he appear to understand that, if he really cared about his wife, he should pay her the child support that he owed. On such misunderstandings were hourly rates earned.

  Shaky wore black sneakers, only slightly frayed jeans, and an overcoat so big it was just one step away from being a tent. He looked self-conscious as he entered Crema, and I could see one or two of the staff watching him, but Shaky wasn't about to be dissuaded from whatever purpose he had in mind. He made a beeline for my table.

  It wasn't just Shaky who called himself by that name, apparently everyone on the streets did. He had a palsied left hand that he kept close to his chest. I wondered how he slept with it. Maybe, like most things, you just got used to it if you had to endure it for long enough.

  He hovered before me, the sunlight catching his face. He was clean-shaven, and smelled strongly of soap. I might have been mistaken, but it struck me that he'd tidied himself up and dressed in his best clothing to come here. I remembered him from the funeral. He was the only one present to shed a tear for Jude as he was lowered into the ground.

  'You mind if I sit down?' he asked.

  'Not at all,' I said. 'Would you like a coffee?'

  He licked his lips, and nodded. 'Sure.'

  'Any preference?'

  'Whatever's the biggest, and the warmest. Maybe sweet too.'

  Since I was mainly a straight flter kind of guy, I had to rely on the girl behind the counter to guide me on warm and sweet. I came back with a maple latte and a couple of muffns. I wasn't too hungry, but Shaky probably was. I picked at mine to be polite while Shaky went back to the counter and loaded up his latte with sugar. He tore into the muffn as soon as he resumed his seat, then seemed to realize that he was in respectable company and nobody was likely to try and steal the snack from him, so he slowed down.

  'It's good,' he said. 'The coffee as well.'

  'You sure there's enough sugar in there for you?' The stirrer was pretty much standing up by itself in the coffee.

  He grinned. His teeth weren't great, but the smile somehow was.

  'I always did have a sweet tooth. I guess it's still in there somewhere. I done lost most of the rest.'

  He chewed some more muffn, holding it in his mouth for as long as he could to savor the taste.

  'Saw you at the cemetery,' he said, 'when they put Jude in the ground. You're the detective, right?'

  'That's correct.'

&nb
sp; 'You knew Jude?'

  'A little.'

  'What I heard. Jude told me that he did some detecting for you, couple of times.'

  I smiled. Jude always did get a kick out of being asked to help. I could hear some skepticism in Shaky's voice, just a hint of doubt, but I think he wanted it to be true. He kept his head down as he stared up at me, one eyebrow raised in anticipation.

  'Yes, he did,' I said. 'Jude had a good eye, and he knew how to listen.'

  Shaky almost sagged with relief. Jude hadn't lied to him. This wasn't a wasted errand.

  'Yeah, Jude was smart,' he said. 'Wasn't nothing happened on the streets that Jude didn't know about. He was kind, too. Kind to everyone. Kind to me.'