The Crossing Read online

  “Mrs Grummett,” said Tim, giving her a smile that he intended to be reassuring, “it’s good to see you sitting up. How are you feeling?”

  “How do you think?” she countered. “I aren’t well. It’s the shock.”

  “Of course,” said Tim, as sympathetically as he could, “but Dr Butler tells me that you’re a strong woman. She has every hope you’ll make a full recovery.”

  “What does she know? She’s only a slip of a lass.”

  Tim felt Juliet bridle. He smiled inwardly. For once, he sensed he had the upper hand in the dealing-with-awkward-witnesses stakes.

  “Dr Butler’s more experienced than she may appear,” said Tim firmly, “and she’s been taking good care of you. She hasn’t let me disturb you until today.”

  “What do you want?” The black eyes snapped suspiciously. Even Bob Grummett could see that his wife wasn’t handling the situation well.

  “Now, Rube,” he admonished. “They’re only doing their job. You’re going to have to talk to them sooner or later. Might as well be now.”

  She fixed her stare on the wall opposite. Only one of the beds on that side of the ward was occupied, by an old woman in the last stages of dementia. Most of the time she lay prone against her pillows, but at intervals she called out in a harsh, guttural voice, thrashing her arms and legs about under the bedclothes.

  “Nurse! Nurse! Bring me a rag. I need to wipe my nose. Bring me a rag. I fancy some bread and milk, Ma.”

  “The Lord help me if I end up like her,” said Ruby Grummett, with more feeling than Tim had seen her show so far. He was about to reassure her when Juliet cut in, her voice smooth and cool. Silently Tim prayed that he alone would be able to detect her underlying anger; Juliet had disguised it, but none too well. Its intensity surprised him.

  “There’s no reason why you should, Mrs Grummett,” said Juliet. “As DI Yates says, you’re a strong woman. You’ll recover. And you have nothing to fear from us. We just need you to answer a few questions – the sort of questions we’d ask anyone who’d been witness to an accident.”

  “I was more than a witness,” Ruby Grummett muttered, almost to herself.

  “A little more than a witness, I agree,” said Juliet in the same even no-nonsense voice. “But that doesn’t mean we’re pre-judging you in any way.”

  “No, but you might. Accidents cost a lot. The bosses will be wanting their scapegoat.”

  “Allow me to reassure you that we have no interest in the railway company ‘bosses’, except to help the Crown Prosecution Service to gauge how far they are culpable.” Juliet and Tim glanced across simultaneously at Bob Grummett, who had his head cocked on one side, a puzzled expression on his face. “I mean,” Juliet added, “that if anyone is to blame for the accident – and it is far from clear that anyone is – the actions of all those who could possibly be held to blame will be examined without prejudice. That is, without any kind of bias or favouritism,” she concluded, seeing Bob look blank again. She realised that Tim was right about the man. He probably possessed the intelligence of the average eight-year-old, but she saw little evidence of the native cunning that Tim also claimed to detect.

  “They’ll pin it on me, you can be sure of that,” said Ruby grimly.

  “Now, Mam,” said Kayleigh, “Don’t jump to conclusions. It’ll be all right, you’ll see. Did I tell you when I saw Mrs Cushing this morning that she asked to be remembered to you?”

  “Much good that will do me,” said Ruby, muttering once again.

  “She’s been very good to us since the accident. We owe her a lot.” It was Philippa, speaking for the first time.

  “Who asked you what you thought?” said Kayleigh, evidently emboldened by her proximity to Bob. “No-one cares what you think.”

  Philippa did not retaliate. Instead she resumed her inspection of her hands. Tim decided that he and Juliet had listened long enough to this unpleasant family interchange.

  “Mrs Grummett, we really do need to make some progress now. I’m happy to interview you here with your family present, or to ask them to give us a few minutes on our own with you. Which would you prefer?”

  The round black eyes searched his face.

  “Bob can stay,” Ruby said at length. “Send the girls away. This is nothing to do with them.”

  “But . . .”

  “Shut UP, Kayleigh, and just go, will you? Take your sister for a cup of tea or something.” From the awkward position in which he was sitting, Bob craned his neck urgently towards Tim, evidently seeking approval for this instruction. Tim nodded briefly.

  “There’s a café on the second floor,” he said. “If you’d wait there, DC Armstrong and I would like to meet you briefly to ask you a few questions before we leave.”

  “Both of us?” enquired Philippa.

  “No, just your sister,” said Tim, observing with interest her almost imperceptible flinching from the term. “But it would be nice if you’d keep her company until we come.”

  “I don’t need her company,” said Kayleigh rudely.

  Philippa managed a weak smile of embarrassment.

  “I’ll come anyway.”

  “May we sit down?” said Tim to Ruby Grummett, after her daughters had gone.

  “I can’t stop you, can I? Besides, you make me that nervy, standing up,” she added in a more reasonable tone, evidently responding to some pressure from Bob’s hand. Turning back to face Ruby again, Juliet noticed her snatch angrily away from his grasp.

  Tim took the chair that had been vacated by Kayleigh, moving it further from Bob and nearer to the end of the bed. Juliet sat in Philippa’s chair. Seated, they had to look up at Ruby, propped high as she was by her nest of pillows and the elaborate back rest contraption. This change in their relative positions seemed to give her some confidence.

  “What do you want me to do now?”

  “We want to make this as easy as possible for you, Mrs Grummett. Just describe the events leading up to the accident, and what you can remember of the accident itself, as simply and clearly as possible.”

  “Starting from when? When Fred came knocking at the door?”

  “That would be helpf . . .” Tim began.

  “A little bit before that,” Juliet cut in. “I think you should start at the point that you realised the Skegness train was late and tell us what you decided to do about it.”

  Ruby’s little black eyes widened briefly in alarm.

  “Do about it? What could I do about it? It was delayed by the fog. Besides, I don’t do the timetables.”

  “I know that. But you have to check on the timetables, don’t you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean it’s your job to make sure the people who use the crossing and the passengers on the trains are kept safe. So you have to know when the trains are scheduled to come and also if they’re going to be late.”

  “Yes.”

  “So my question is,” Juliet said, making her voice as soft and friendly as possible, “when did you start to think about the Skegness train? Was it before Fred knocked on the door, or at that moment? Did you in fact think about the Skegness train at all?”

  “Of course I did!” Ruby’s indignation sounded genuine. “The fog was that bad I was surprised any trains were running that day. The Skegnesser hadn’t passed by and I thought it must’ve been cancelled, so I was going for my bath. I was getting undressed when Fred came. I didn’t expect to see him, either. He said he’d been working on an emergency.”

  “So you put on your dressing gown and went out to open the gates for him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you take any precautions at that point?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did you take steps to check that the line was clear?”

  “I checked the system in the box. It wasn’t regi
stering anything.”

  “Do you always rely on the system?”

  Ruby didn’t answer. She passed the back of her hand across her forehead.

  “Don’t pick on her!” said Bob Grummett threateningly. Juliet ignored him, continuing to speak directly to his wife.

  “Mrs Grummett, I assure you I’m not trying to bully you, or distress you more than I can help. But we do need to find out the exact circumstances of the accident. Has any maintenance work ever been carried out on the system?”

  Ruby paused for a long minute. Juliet could almost see the woman calculating her get-out story.

  “No, I don’t think so. Do you, Bob?”

  He shrugged, slower on the uptake than she.

  “I’m away from the house more than you are. The folk from HQ usually come to see you, not me.”

  “We can check to see if there are maintenance records,” said Juliet quickly.

  “Has there always been a telephone at the crossing since you became the crossing keeper?”

  “Yes,” said Bob, “they’ve been standard for a long time.”

  “Thank you,” said Juliet. “Could you let Mrs Grummett answer for herself, please? Mrs Grummett, what was the telephone used for?”

  “Instructions from HQ, mostly. For emergencies or delays: anything unusual, really. Owt they couldn’t deal with through the mail.”

  “Would severe fog, causing major delays and some trains being cancelled, be regarded as an emergency?”

  “Of course it would.”

  “Did you receive a call from HQ advising you that the Skegness train had been delayed?”

  “No.” The reply came quickly, full of relief and indignation.

  “You’re quite sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure!”

  “But you yourself were aware of how dense the fog was and the likelihood it would cause delays?”

  “Yes, but I’ve told you: I assumed the train had been cancelled.”

  “Did you try to contact HQ yourself, to find out if this was the case?”

  “I . . . No. I don’t, normally. I wait for them to contact me.”

  “But as the fog was so bad, wouldn’t it have made sense to call HQ on this occasion? Did the idea not even cross your mind?”

  “Yes. It did. But Fred was in a hurry. He had to get back home.”

  “He hasn’t got there yet, has he?” It was Tim’s intervention that broke the spell of calm concentration that Juliet had managed to weave around Ruby Grummett. The woman’s face crumpled. Juliet shot Tim a look of exasperation.

  “I think we’d better leave it there for now,” she said.

  “Yes,” said Bob Grummett truculently. “I think you better had.”

  “I’m sorry Mrs Grummett is upset,” said Tim, “Perhaps we can come back after we’ve talked to Kayleigh. Are you coming with us?”

  “I’ll catch you up later,” said Bob gruffly.

  “OK if we start without you?”

  “Yes, you carry on – the sooner we get all this over the better.” Bob’s voice was filled with fatigue.

  He seemed to have forgotten his insistence that he should be present when they spoke to his daughter.

  They found Kayleigh and Philippa sitting in the café, which was otherwise almost deserted. The only other occupants were an old man who was hunched, dozing, on one of a row of chairs ranged along the back of the room and a young woman nursing a baby near the door. She looked up expectantly when Juliet and Tim entered, her bright smile turning to a frown of disappointment. Neither she nor the old man, assuming he was conscious, was within earshot of the two girls.

  Kayleigh was in the act of polishing off a cream-filled doughnut. Licking her fingers, she sucked enthusiastically at the straw of the tall plastic cup in front of her, plumbing the depths of the drink. An untouched cup of tea stood before Philippa. When she saw the two detectives approaching, she picked up a spoon and began to stir it nervously.

  “Hi,” Tim grinned. “Can we join you? Anyone want a top-up?”

  Kayleigh held out the plastic cup.

  “I’ll have another one of those.”

  “Sure. What was it?”

  “A frappuccino.”

  “I’d like a cup of tea,” said Juliet. She turned to Philippa. “Would you like us to get you one? Yours looks as if it’s gone cold.”

  Philippa shook her head.

  “I didn’t really want it.”

  Tim went to buy the drinks. Kayleigh took a mobile phone from her handbag and started playing with it.

  “How is Mam?” said Philippa. “Did she manage to answer your questions?”

  “Some of them,” Juliet replied. “We’re taking it gently with her. We’ll go back and finish the interview later.”

  Philippa nodded.

  “She’s bound to feel guilty about the accident. That doesn’t mean it was her fault, does it?”

  “No,” said Juliet. “Her feelings have nothing to do with who’s to blame. But I shouldn’t really be talking to you about it.”

  Tim returned with three cups of tea, a frappuccino and two small packets of biscuits, which he opened and tipped out on to a plate. He offered it around. Juliet and Kayleigh each took one.

  “I understand you’ve got the day off work,” he said to Kayleigh conversationally.

  “Yeah, I’m off sick. It’s all been a bit much.” She didn’t take her eyes off her mobile. She was playing a game of some kind.

  “I understand,” said Tim. Juliet noted approvingly that there wasn’t even a trace of irony in his voice. “What about you, Philippa? Did your Dad decide to keep you off school today?”

  “No,” she said. “We’ve all got the day off. It’s a teachers’ training day. I could’ve stayed with Alice, but Mrs Cushing thought I ought to come and see Mam.”

  “Didn’t you want to see her?”

  Philippa gave a small shrug.

  “I didn’t know whether she’d want to see me.”

  “Probably didn’t, you’re such a misery,” said Kayleigh, suddenly looking up from her game. Tim turned to her.

  “I’m sorry you’re feeling the strain of all this,” he said to her. “It’s not surprising. But I do need to ask you a few questions, too.”

  Kayleigh’s fat face closed tight. She screwed up her eyes so much that they almost disappeared. Philippa, meanwhile, was looking at Kayleigh with some curiosity.

  “What’s Kayleigh done?” she said. “She was at work at the time of the accident, wasn’t she?”

  “I haven’t done anything,” said Kayleigh plaintively. She sounded like a guilty child protesting her innocence in a playground dispute. “I only asked Uncle Ivan to get me pyjama case for me, that’s all.”

  “You mean that pink dog thing?”

  “Just because you don’t like it . . .”

  “Why the pyjama case, Kayleigh?” Juliet asked. “Of all the things that you might have asked your uncle to save from the house, why that? Did it mean something special?”

  Kayleigh’s face was a blank.

  “She always made a great fuss if I tried to go near it,” said Philippa. “I don’t know why. It was an ugly thing.”

  “It was a present from Auntie Elsie.”

  “Kayleigh,” said Juliet. “What was in the pyjama case? Do you remember?”

  “Yes.” The answer came reluctantly. The voice was sullen.

  “Go on. Tell me what was in it.”

  “Some money.”

  “How much money?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t expect them to believe . . .” Philippa began.

  “Please, Philippa, I’m talking to Kayleigh.” Kayleigh flashed her sister a look of triumph.

  “Yes, you shut up, Miss Goody-Two-Shoes.”

>   “Kayleigh, concentrate, please. It was a lot of money, wasn’t it?”

  Kayleigh nodded.

  “Do you have any idea how much?”

  She shook her head. Her lip was wobbling now.

  “I don’t want to get into trouble for it. I was only asked to look after it. They promised me an iPad this time . . .” The tears were coursing down her cheeks now.

  “Haven’t you done enough today without upsetting her as well?”

  Bob Grummett was standing over them, his pink scalp shining under the café striplights, the grey tufts of hair sticking up around his ears.

  “Mr Grummett! Can I get you some tea?” said Tim.

  “I don’t want your tea and neither do they. Have you finished with Kayleigh now?”

  “Not quite,” said Tim firmly. “Kayleigh, who asked you to look after the money? Was it your Dad? Your Uncle Ivan?”

  Kayleigh squinted at her father fearfully through a camouflage of tears.

  “I don’t know,” she said, reverting to her primary school act.

  “OK,” said Juliet. “It’s all right, Kayleigh.” She turned suddenly to Bob Grummett.

  “Mr Grummett, did you give Kayleigh the money to look after?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he blustered. “I want to see Mr Dixon! I want to see my sollicingtor!”

  The woman behind the cafeteria counter was frowning at the commotion.

  “All right, Mr Grummett,” said Tim. “As you wish. We’ll set up a formal interview for you and Kayleigh with your solicitor present. Perhaps you could give DC Armstrong his details. And we would still like to see Mrs Grummett again before we leave, if you think she’s calmer again now.”

  Bob Grummett rolled puzzled eyes at Tim, angry like a cornered bull.

  “You can’t see her without Mr Dixon,” he said. “Or any of my family. We don’t trust you.”

  Taking her cue from her father’s tone, Kayleigh stopped snivelling and thrust her nose in the air. She stood up, her bulk bumping against the table, slopping tea into saucers.

  “Come on, Dad,” she said, taking his arm. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Her father got to his feet more slowly, as if dazed by his own behaviour.

  “Here’s my card,” said Juliet. “I’d be grateful if you’d call me today to tell me how to contact your solicitor.”