The Wrong Mother Read online

  Charlie did, and that was all that mattered. Stacey and two of her friends had peered into a bedroom with an open door, a room in which Charlie, stark naked, had been abandoned by Simon five seconds earlier. They’d been on the verge of getting into bed together for the first time when he’d fled without explanation, and they’d never properly discussed it since. Charlie had been too shocked and upset to run and close the door, or to grab a sheet to cover herself with. Simon’s departure had knocked her to the ground, too, so she was sprawled on the carpet when Stacey and her tipsy mates had decided to have a good gawp at her. The two friends had been embarrassed and retreated instantly, but Stacey, who knew Charlie, knew she was Sellers’ skipper, had giggled and said, ‘Oops!’ before disappearing. For that, Charlie would never forgive her.

  Charlie had stayed at the party until Sellers threw everyone out, determined to prove she was able to enjoy herself in Simon’s absence. Later, in the early hours of the morning, she’d overheard Stacey gossiping about what she’d seen. Stacey hadn’t spotted Charlie sitting on the sofa she was leaning against, and was busy telling her friends that Charlie had been pursuing Simon for ages, asking them to imagine how awful it must be to bag the man of your dreams finally, only to have him scarper the minute you take your clothes off. Charlie couldn’t have put it better herself.

  She realised Stacey was asking her something. Wanting to know if she spoke French. French? What did this have to do with Sellers screwing Suki Kitson?

  ‘I did an A level in it, but I wouldn’t say I’m fluent.’

  ‘I thought you used to be a language teacher at Cambridge uni.’

  ‘Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic. And it was more literature and history than language. Why?’

  Stacey pulled a piece of paper out of the pocket of her raincoat and pushed it across the table. Charlie stayed where she was, too far away to read it. She could see that there were two chunks of text. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s my French homework, to do over the summer holidays.’

  You’ve come here at night, in your pyjamas, to talk about homework? Get a life, you silly cow.

  ‘You know I’m learning French?’

  Like it had been announced on the ten o’clock news. ‘I do now.’

  ‘Our teacher gave it to us.’ Stacey paused to tip some vodka into her mouth. It dripped down her chin. ‘It’s a verse from a song, the same verse in French and in English. We have to work out if the song was written by a Frenchman or by an Englishman. It’s impossible!’ Stacey wept. ‘I mean, I’m as clever as the next person, and I’ve been doing really well with learning my vocab and my verbs, but… I just don’t see how you can tell. It could have been written by a… Outer Mongolian for all I know. And Colin-I hate him! He won’t help me! I’ve asked some of my friends, but no one’s got a clue. I thought of you and… well, I thought you must be able to help me.’

  Charlie felt a stirring of interest. She picked up the piece of paper, read the English text first:

  My Friend François

  My friend François is rather a giggle.

  My friend François burst into song.

  We asked him politely to put a sock in it.

  ‘Keep your shirt on,’ he said,

  And then there was a right hook

  And that really upset the apple cart.

  That’s my friend François for you!

  The French version was headed ‘Mon Ami François’ and, apart from being in a different language, was exactly the same. Charlie wanted to laugh. Good on you, Mr French Teacher. Anyone could learn lists of vocab, but not everyone had a flair for the logic of languages. ‘I’m sure you won’t be the only one who’s stumped,’ she told Stacey. ‘Tell your tutor it was too hard.’

  ‘Colin knows the answer and he won’t tell me! He says if I can’t work it out I’m as thick as pig-shit and I’m wasting my time trying to improve myself. He can be so hateful sometimes!’

  ‘I used to think of him as the cuddly one, when we worked together,’ said Charlie. ‘But then, he was often standing next to Chris Gibbs.’

  ‘Did he ever used to… mention me? Say he loved me, or how he felt about me? I thought he might have… because you’re a woman…’

  ‘No,’ said Charlie flatly, sensing they were moving closer to the real reason for Stacey’s visit.

  ‘Can I stay here tonight?’ Stacey asked.

  ‘Sorry. There are no beds. Just a mattress on the floor, and that’s mine.’

  ‘I’ll sleep on the floor, I don’t care.’

  ‘No, you won’t.’ Absolutely not.

  The doorbell rang. Stacey howled at Charlie not to tell Sellers she was there. ‘Your car’s parked outside, you stupid arse,’ Charlie muttered as she went to open the door. The possibility that her second late-night visitor might be anyone other than Colin Sellers did not occur to her, so she was startled into silence when she found, instead, Simon Waterhouse on her doorstep wearing his slightly puzzled grin, as if he was surprised to find himself there.

  Charlie grabbed him with both hands and pulled him into the kitchen. ‘You’ll have to go now,’ she told Stacey. ‘Simon and I need to talk. Don’t we, Simon?’

  He had rammed his hands deep into his trouser pockets and was looking embarrassed.

  ‘But you haven’t told me the answer!’ said Stacey. Her mouth hung open. The lower part of her face was covered in a shiny layer of mucus.

  ‘It defeats the object if I tell you,’ said Charlie. ‘What your teacher wants to know is whether you can figure it out, and you can’t.’

  She watched as Stacey stumbled down the hall and out into the rain, hobbling past her second slipper without stopping to pick it up. Never before had closing the front door given Charlie so much satisfaction.

  ‘What was that all about?’ asked Simon.

  As she explained, he picked up the sheet of paper that Stacey, in her distress, had left behind. He walked up and down as he read it. ‘An Englishman wrote it. Right?’

  ‘Obviously.’

  ‘The name François’s meant to make you think it’s by a Frenchman, so it can’t be or it’d be too easy.’

  ‘What? You’re kidding, right?’

  Simon wasn’t.

  ‘Come on, it’s obvious.’

  ‘Not to me,’ he said.

  ‘Then you’re as thick as Stacey Sellers,’ said Charlie. ‘What do you want, anyway?’ She tried to sound off-hand.

  ‘You heard what we found at Corn Mill House?’

  ‘You want to talk about work? Your work? Go and wake up Sam Kombothekra. I’m off to bed.’

  ‘I also wondered… if you’d thought any more about the other business.’

  ‘The other business? The other business?’ She flew at him, slamming the palms of her hands into his chest, sending him staggering across the room. ‘You can’t even say it, can you? Because you don’t mean it! You don’t love me-at least, you’ve never said you do. Well?’ She was aware that she needed to create some silence if she wanted him to respond.

  ‘You make it impossible for me to say any of the things I want to say,’ he managed eventually.

  ‘Tough,’ Charlie snapped. ‘You used to treat me like a leper and now you want to marry me, when we’ve never even slept together, never been out on a date? What changed?’

  ‘You did.’

  Charlie waited.

  ‘You need me now. You didn’t before. Even then, I cared more about you than I did anyone else, though I might not have shown it.’

  Charlie dropped her cigarette end into what was left of Stacey’s vodka. ‘Maybe I should push the boat out and slit my wrists,’ she said. ‘Make myself utterly irresistible to you.’

  Simon shook his head. ‘There’s no point, is there? I might as well go.’

  ‘No. Stay. Tell me about the case.’ Charlie needed time to think about what he’d said.

  ‘What if I don’t feel like it?’

  ‘I’m not asking for a declaration of love.’ Charl
ie smirked. ‘The mood doesn’t have to be right.’

  He sighed. ‘We think the writer of the anonymous letters is called Esther Taylor, although we’ve yet to find an Esther Taylor who looks anything like Geraldine Bretherick. There are a couple we’ve not managed to track down yet, so hopefully she’s one of them. Anyway, the photographs that were hidden in the frames she took from Corn Mill House are of Amy Oliva and her mother, Encarna. That’s been confirmed by the school.’

  ‘Encarna?’

  ‘Encarnación. They’re Spanish. She was a banker at Leyland Carver in London, and Amy’s father, Angel Oliva, was a heart surgeon at Culver Valley General. They’re supposed to have moved to Spain, except the contact details they left with Harry Martineau, the guy who bought their house, don’t check out. I could have been in Spain by now, but the Snowman wants to dig up every inch of Mark Bretherick’s garden before he’ll fork out for a plane fare, tight-arse that he is. He reckons we’re going to find Angel Oliva’s body. So does Kombothekra.’

  ‘And you disagree?’

  Simon looked away. ‘The name Harry Martineau ring any bells?’ he asked.

  ‘With me? No.’

  He closed his eyes, folded his hands behind his head and rubbed the top of his neck hard with his thumbs. ‘I’ve seen it before-I know I have. Or heard it.’

  ‘You’ve got a theory, haven’t you?’ said Charlie.

  ‘I’m waiting for Norman to come back to me about something. ’

  ‘HTCU Norman?’

  Simon nodded.

  ‘So it’s something about the computer, Geraldine’s laptop?’

  ‘I’ll tell you when it’s been confirmed.’

  No question that it would be confirmed; Simon was sure he was right. As usual. Charlie couldn’t resist. ‘If I was your wife, would you tell me things before they’d been confirmed?’

  ‘Would you tell me the answer to Stacey Sellers’ French puzzle?’

  She laughed. Reluctantly, Simon grinned.

  ‘Tell you what,’ she said. ‘Work it out all by yourself and I’ll marry you.’

  He looked curious. ‘Seriously? You’d do it, just based on that?’

  Just based on that. He was unbelievable. Charlie didn’t have the energy to be solemn, or worry about it any more. She didn’t have the energy to accept or reject Simon’s offer of marriage in the proper spirit of either, with the earnestness and anguished soul-searching that was required, the meticulous calculation of probabilities, the thousands of tiny equations featuring the words ‘hope’ and ‘fear’. If she took the matter of his proposal and her response to heart, the only outcome could be terrible pain: of that Charlie was certain. So, might as well let it depend on something absurd. Send it up mercilessly. That way, the end result wouldn’t matter.

  ‘Seriously,’ she said. ‘Vraiment. That means “really” in French.’

  Mark Bretherick’s solicitor, Paula Goddard, was waiting for Sam Kombothekra outside the custody suite. ‘There you are,’ she said. ‘I wanted a quick word before we go in.’

  Sam walked and she followed, struggling to keep up. Her legs were short and her shoes looked like instruments of torture. ‘Shouldn’t you be having a last-minute consultation with your client?’ Sam said.

  Goddard stopped walking. ‘I’m not spraining my ankle to keep up with you.’

  Sam considered not stopping; it was past eleven o’clock. He’d missed his boys’ bedtime two nights running. They were too young to understand, old enough to know how to turn their disappointment into a weapon. His four-year-old was bound to be explicit about Sam’s new position in the family hierarchy the next time he saw him. ‘I don’t like you any more, Daddy. I only like Mummy.’ Or words to that effect.

  Sam slowed down. ‘Sorry,’ he said. It wasn’t Paula Goddard’s fault that the way she’d said, ‘There you are,’ as if he’d been hiding from her deliberately, had reminded Sam of his wife Kate, whose there-you-ares tended to mean, ‘Stop skulking in the lounge with the newspaper when there’s Lego to be put away.’

  Goddard folded her arms. ‘Let me say from the outset: I haven’t got time for the pointless battles that cops and lawyers go in for. I’m not your enemy and you’re not mine, right? I know two dead bodies were found in my client’s garden…’

  ‘You forgot the two in his house.’

  ‘… and I know how bad that looks. And you know he was in New Mexico when his wife and daughter died; that’s been established to everyone’s satisfaction, right?’

  Sam leaned against the wall. Nothing about this case was satisfactory, nothing at all.

  ‘I haven’t been Bretherick’s lawyer for long,’ said Goddard. ‘Less than twelve hours. His family asked around and someone recommended me.’

  ‘Should I have heard of you, then?’

  ‘Depends how well-informed you are. The point is… I’ve represented men who are guilty of murder and men who are innocent. I work just as hard for both. And I’ve never seen a more innocent man than Mark Bretherick.’

  ‘He might be a good liar,’ said Sam. ‘However good your judgement is, however experienced you are, you might be wrong about him.’

  ‘I’m not.’ Goddard started walking. Sam had no choice but to follow. ‘He only says he hasn’t killed anyone when I ask him outright. He thinks it’s that obvious, he forgets he needs to say it. Plus, he’s not asking me to get him out. He doesn’t want to go anywhere.’

  ‘I can understand that. I also wouldn’t want to go back to a house where four people at least had been killed.’ Anticipating her next point, Sam added, ‘Even if I was the one who’d killed them. Especially then.’

  ‘That’s not why,’ said Goddard briskly. Either she was exceptionally talented at presenting her beliefs as solid facts or else she knew something Sam didn’t. ‘He thinks you lot aren’t investigating these murders in the right way; he’s convinced Geraldine and Lucy were killed by a third party, incidentally. Not by Geraldine. He wants to stick around and make you listen to him. If he could, he’d glue himself to you twenty-four hours a day, Sergeant.’

  ‘Maybe he’s got a guilty conscience and that’s why he’s happy to be in custody,’ said Sam. ‘Being caught and locked up can be a relief-not having to run any more. Plus, he gets his meals cooked.’

  Goddard squinted at him. ‘How long have you been in the job?’

  ‘Twenty-two years.’

  ‘How many people have you known who want to stay locked up?’

  Sam nodded, conceding the point.

  ‘Most people prefer to have their freedom, even if that means making their own tea, for God’s sake,’ Goddard muttered crossly. ‘Anyway, I’ll let him speak for himself, but… I just wanted to warn you, you’re wasting your time if he’s your chief suspect. Mark Bretherick’s killed no one.’

  Sam didn’t necessarily disagree with her. He was more concerned with what Mark knew, the information he could provide, than with what he might have done. After speaking to Cordy and Oonagh O’Hara, Sam had new questions he wanted to put to Bretherick. He had no intention of sharing these with Paula Goddard. Her little speech about lawyers and police not being enemies had been classic manipulation.

  Goddard was also the second woman today who seemed to expect Sam to roll over and agree unreservedly with her every opinion. Cordy O’Hara had been adamant that neither Geraldine nor Mark Bretherick had killed anybody. ‘You asked about Amy Oliva,’ she’d said. ‘Amy’s mum, Encarna, now there’s someone I can imagine running amok with a machete. I quite enjoyed her company-she was certainly never boring-but not many people did. She could be ferocious.’

  Sam had stored this information in his mind. He’d liked Cordy’s flat with its exposed brick walls, colourful woven rugs and tall, jungle-like plants. He’d liked the way she’d worn her baby in a sling against her chest while they were talking, and the baby’s name: Ianthe. There was a bronze sculpture of a large, crushed tin can in the middle of Cordy’s living room, with a flat bronze circle for a base. The
green silk curtains had threads of pink running across them, and fell all the way to the floor, pooling on the dark floorboards. Nothing matched anything else in the way that his wife Kate decreed things ought to within a home, but somehow the ensemble worked.

  Six-year-old Oonagh O’Hara, with a grave expression on her face, had told Sam a secret, after much encouragement from her mother, a secret Lucy Bretherick had told her. Sam wondered if there was any truth in it. He hoped he was about to find out.

  Mark Bretherick stood up when Sam entered the interview room with Paula Goddard. ‘What’s happened?’ he said.

  ‘You mean other than the discovery of two dead bodies in your garden?’

  ‘I mean what’s happened since? Do you know whose the bodies are?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Sam.

  ‘The detective who interviewed me before, Gibbs, he kept asking about Amy Oliva from Lucy’s class, and her mother. Do you think that’s who they are?’

  ‘We don’t know.’

  ‘I think that’s who they are,’ said Bretherick, turning to his solicitor. ‘DC Waterhouse told me about the photos hidden in the frames, behind the ones of Geraldine and Lucy.’

  Bretherick seemed almost as well-informed as the investigating team. ‘The head of St Swithun’s has seen the pictures and confirmed that they’re of Encarna and Amy Oliva,’ Sam told him. ‘Now, I’ve got some questions I’d like to ask you, Mark.’

  ‘Listen: if those bodies turn out to be Amy and her mother, you’ve got to look again for William Markes. You couldn’t find him before because Geraldine didn’t know him. Maybe he’s an associate of this other woman-Encarna.’

  Sam smiled politely, fighting down his irritation. Colin Sellers had made the same suggestion about half an hour earlier.

  ‘You’ve got to take that school apart. Markes is connected to St Swithun’s somehow, and it looks as if he’s targeting mothers and daughters from Lucy’s class. Have you done anything about warning the other families? I’d want to be warned if I were them.’