Chapter 64

Nathan Rose lived in Portinscale, a small but typical Lake District village within walking distance of Keswick. With whitewashed houses and ancient pubs, it had once been picturesque and unspoiled, but when tourists found it they infected the village like a fungal rash. It now had as many B B signs as Keswick. Bradshaw told them Portinscale meant ‘harlot's hut' in Old English. Poe said she'd better not tell the deeply conservative Roses that. ‘I don't imagine they'll have a sense of humour, Tilly,' he'd added.

Poe had made Linus drive so he could finish Bethany's journal. Nothing he read improved his mood. Unless she was a skilled fantasist, Bethany had suffered an appalling childhood.

‘Where am I going?' Linus said.

‘Second left after the Farmers Arms,' Poe said.

‘House number?' Linus said.

‘Park behind that Audi,' Poe said, pointing at a gap in the on-street parking. He checked the Audi's registration with what he had in his notebook. ‘That's their car, so this must be it.'

Linus was a city driver and squeezing into tight parking spaces was second nature. They were soon on the street, arching their backs and rotating their necks. It had been a long day.

Poe stopped at the back of the Roses' Audi. He pointed at the bumper sticker: a cross with the words ‘Unashamed' underneath. For some reason it annoyed him.

‘We'd better go in, Poe,' Bradshaw said. ‘I think Mrs Rose is wondering why you're scowling at her car.'

Poe looked up. Sure enough, a woman was glaring at them through the lace curtains behind a bow-fronted window. Poe smiled. Mrs Rose didn't return it. She moved away and a moment later the front door opened.

Poe held up his ID card. She examined it carefully then said, ‘You had better come in.'

Virginia Rose was thinner than a lolly stick and meaner than skimmed milk. Her words were precise, her vowels trimmed. She spoke as if it was a necessary but unpleasant chore. Poe reckoned that five hundred years earlier she would have been a witchfinder's assistant, gleefully passing them the heretic's fork. Some people just gave off that vibe. She was wearing a pantsuit Hillary Clinton would have been proud of, a dark, funereal number. Poe thought it looked like the death of spirit.

She led them through the hall into a living room that was almost as austere as Cornelius Green's. No television, no radio, not even a turntable, only two uncomfortable-looking chairs and a bare coffee table. An IKEA lamp in the corner and a crucifix on the wall. Some religious paintings. The wallpaper was straight out of the seventies, a trippy, shimmering design that looked chic and retro now, although it was almost certainly the original décor.

She took one of the two seats and Poe, aware that talking to witnesses was best done when one person didn't tower over the other, took the other. It was as uncomfortable as it looked. Bradshaw and Linus stood behind him.

‘What do you want?' Virginia Rose said.

‘We were told your husband would be here, Mrs Rose,' Poe said.

‘He is.'

‘Could I speak with him, please?'

‘Not until I know what this is about,' she said. ‘I assure you we have broken none of His laws or yours.'

‘His?'

She gestured towards the mantelpiece. A tablet leaned against the wall, where other people might have put a mirror. It was white marble with blue veins, like cheese. Poe squinted and read the first line of engraved writing. It said, ‘I am the Lord your God: you shall have no other gods but me.'

‘Yes, we live by the Ten Commandments, Sergeant Poe,' she said.

‘Who doesn't?' Poe replied.

‘You don't, Poe,' Bradshaw said. ‘You're always working on the Sabbath, even after DI Stephanie Flynn told you to take at least one day off a month.'

‘She told us to take at least one day off a month, Tilly. It wasn't just me in that HR meeting.'

‘Yes, but—'

‘We don't work on the Sabbath,' Virginia Rose cut in. ‘Nor do we break the law of the land. So, I'll ask you again, Sergeant Poe, why do you need to speak to my husband?'

‘I'm not suggesting your husband has broken the law, Mrs Rose,' Poe said. ‘I want to speak to him about a course he attended almost twenty years ago. It was run by a man called Cornelius Green.'

Her eyes narrowed and her lips thinned. ‘That was simply a silly phase Nathan was going through.'

‘What was?'

She didn't immediately respond. She seemed to be choosing her next words carefully. ‘We are pro life and anti same-sex marriage in this house, Sergeant Poe,' she said. ‘When my husband was a young man he was confused. Luckily his parents were good Christians, and they were able to get him off the path of destruction and back on the path to heaven.'

‘And Cornelius Green helped with this?'

She nodded. ‘Through a highly personalised regime of therapy and prayer, he was able to show Nathan that living as a sinner was not who he really was.'

Her words sounded second-hand, as if she'd rehearsed them. Nathan Rose was thirty-nine years old and Virginia was at least ten years older. He wondered if theirs was a lavender marriage – a marriage of convenience to conceal the sexual orientation of one or both partners. If Nathan had been gay when he was a young man, he was probably gay now. Virginia had to know conversion therapy didn't work, yet she'd married him anyway. Poe could see what Nathan got out of it. In a deeply religious community, marriage might give everyone the cover they needed to accept that Nathan being gay had been, as Virginia had stated, simply a ‘silly phase'. But, unless she was also gay, Poe couldn't see what she was getting out of it. He put it to the back of his mind. He wasn't interested in Nathan Rose's sexuality, and he certainly hadn't come for a fight about the efficacy of conversion therapy.

‘Are you aware Cornelius Green was recently murdered?'

‘I am. Awful news. All deaths are awful, of course, but that man was a great help to my husband. Is that why you're here?'

‘Can I speak to Nathan now?' Poe said, ignoring her question.

‘I've told you everything I know, Sergeant Poe.'

‘But you haven't told me everything he knows.'

‘I can assure you we have no secrets.'

‘Mrs Rose,' Poe sighed, ‘this is a murder enquiry. It's possible Cornelius Green's death is linked to the Bowman family massacre in 2012. Aaron Bowman also attended one of Cornelius's courses and we need to know what went on.'

‘Fine,' she sighed. ‘Wait here and I'll go and get him. He's in the shed tinkering with something.'