The Wrong Mother Read online

  ‘Keith’s wrong.’

  Harbard turned on Sam. ‘What’s going on? Aren’t I good enough any more? You send me on my way and call in my close friend and colleague without even telling me?’

  ‘Keith, I had no idea you hadn’t been told,’ said Hey, looking as uncomfortable as a schoolboy about to be caned by the headmaster. ‘Look, I really feel awkward about this.’ He looked at Simon, clearly hoping to be let off the hook. ‘As Keith says, we’re friends, and-’

  Sam had recovered. ‘This way, Professor Hey,’ he said, leading Jonathan Hey out of reception, steering him by the shoulders so that he couldn’t decide to leave with Harbard as a gesture of solidarity. The doors banged shut behind them.

  ‘Six-six-three-eight-seven-zero,’ Simon told Harbard. ‘That’s the taxi number. If it doesn’t turn up in the next five minutes, give them a ring. Tell them to put it on our account.’

  He turned his back on the irate professor and hurried after Sam and Jonathan Hey. He caught up with them halfway to meeting room one. ‘What did you say to him?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Oh, just smoothed his ruffled feathers and poured oil on troubled waters.’

  ‘Yeah, I bet.’

  ‘I hope you did, Simon.’ Hey sounded alarmed. ‘Poor Keith. I’d like to phone him as soon as possible, if that’s okay. I’m not happy about… the way this has happened. Couldn’t you have warned me, or…?’

  ‘Jonathan.’ Simon put a steadying hand on his arm. ‘I know Keith’s your mate and you don’t want to offend him, but this is more important. Four people are dead.’

  Hey nodded. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘You know I’m happy to help if I can.’

  ‘You’ve been a big help to me already,’ Simon told him. ‘That’s why our DI’s looking forward to meeting you. Sergeant Kombothekra’ll tell you that Proust rarely looks forward to meeting anyone. Right, Sam?’

  ‘Well… um…’ Sam coughed to avoid having to reply. Bad form to take the piss out of your inspector in front of an outsider. Jonathan Hey looked back at Simon for reassurance. So did Sam. Simon considered how rare it was that people looked to him for comfort. Usually he unsettled those around him with an inner turbulence he found impossible to hide. Now, for once, there was no churning in his head. He hadn’t had a chance to tell Sam, hadn’t stuck around long enough to tell Norman Grace, but the last piece of the puzzle had fallen into place in Norman’s office a few minutes ago. Now he knew everything. Charlie would have to marry him. If I really want her to…

  They arrived at meeting room one where Proust was waiting for them. The inspector sounded unnaturally courteous as he shook Jonathan Hey’s hand and said how pleased he was to meet him. He looked incongruous, standing beside a tray laden with tea, coffee, sugar, milk, cups and saucers and an impressive range of biscuits-probably an entire selection box. The tray was lined with one of those lacy-doily things that Simon had never known the proper name for. Had Proust asked for that? Had Sam? Simon had told them both that Hey was well-spoken, used to the luxuries provided by Whewell College, Cambridge.

  ‘Tea, Professor?’ said Proust. ‘Coffee?’

  ‘I don’t normally… oh, what the hell. I’ll have a coffee. Thanks. White, one sugar.’ Hey blushed. ‘Sorry to sound like a wuss. If I drink too much caffeine I have stomach problems, but one cup won’t hurt. Endless peppermint tea depresses you after a while.’

  ‘I’m a green tea man myself,’ said Proust. ‘But since there’s none here, I might risk a cup of builders’ finest. Sergeant? Waterhouse?’

  Both nodded. Was Proust actually going to pour drinks for all four of them? Incredibly, it seemed he was. Simon watched as he put the milk in the cups first, then tea in three of them, sugar in one, coffee and sugar in the fourth. He knows Sam doesn’t take sugar and I do-he must have noticed, stored the information away. Simon felt a pang of affection for the Snowman.

  Having made the drinks, Proust left them sitting in a row on the tray and stood back to admire them, pleased with his little line-up. Hey was talking to Sam about his drive to Spilling, how long it had taken from Cambridge. Had Sam asked him? Simon hadn’t heard if he had.

  ‘It’s the A14 that can be a real killer,’ Hey was saying. ‘Bumper to bumper, crawling forward. There’s always an accident.’

  ‘But you managed to avoid the A14 tonight,’ Simon chipped in. Hey looked confused. ‘No, I…’ When he saw Proust walking towards him, he put out his hands and smiled, ready to take his cup of coffee. Then he saw what the inspector was holding and took a step back.

  It was a pair of handcuffs.

  ‘Jonathan Hey, I’m arresting you for the murders of Geraldine and Lucy Bretherick,’ said Proust, ‘and for the murders of Encarnación and Amy Oliva-your wife and daughter.’

  19

  Friday, 10 August 2007

  I walk and walk, head down, looking at none of the people I pass, speaking to nobody. An endless network of suburban streets. It’s only when I get to the main road and see the Picture House and the Centre for Alternative Medicine in the distance that I realise I’m in Spilling.

  In front of the Picture House, there’s a lamppost with a dustbin attached to it. It’s almost full, a lager can and the remains of a kebab at the top of the pile. I place the plastic bag on top of these and press the whole lot down. The syringe, the blood-soaked lilac dressing gown-I will never see them again.

  I’m walking away when I remember the third item in the bag: the book with the black cover. Spanish. I stop. I ought to leave it where it is, I know I ought to, but I can’t. Looking round to check no one’s watching me, I go back to the bin. Someone is watching me: an old man sitting on a bench across the street. Staring. He isn’t going to move, or look away. I hesitate for a few seconds, then decide it doesn’t matter. Each small decision is a struggle. I pull the carrier bag out and rescue the book. Open it. There’s a letter inside that’s been written on a small lined sheet of paper, but it’s nothing interesting, only a note somebody has written to Encarnación Oliva, giving lots of details about when they plan to go away and when they’re getting back, dates and times, followed by something about Amy’s school that is too complicated for my brain at the moment. It’s addressed to ‘Dear Encarna’, but I don’t know who it’s from because it hasn’t been signed. Odd.

  I tuck the letter inside the book, put the plastic bag back in the dustbin and start to walk home. It will take me half an hour. Longer, unless I walk faster. It’s hard-the soles of my feet are stinging so badly from standing on broken glass. I’ve got money in my purse, I could get a taxi. Why aren’t I desperate to get home as soon as I can? What’s wrong with me?

  I stop walking. For a moment, I’m convinced I can’t do it. Nick. Home. I will have to say something. I cannot envisage speaking to anybody ever again. All I want is to disappear.

  Zoe and Jake. I start moving again. I want my children. I walk faster and soon I don’t notice any more that my feet hurt. It will be okay. Everything will be like it used to be.

  My street looks the same. Everything is the same, except me. Esther’s car is parked outside my house. All I have to do is take my keys out of my bag and let myself in.

  My head starts to tilt and twist when I see Jake’s pink football in the hall. My breath catches in my throat. The ball is in the wrong place. I need everything to be where it belongs. Jake’s football should be in the cupboard in his bedroom. I pick it up, dropping the Spanish book at the same time. Now there are definitely too many things on the floor: a pink plastic doll’s dummy, a rolled-up copy of Private Eye. I can’t pick them up. Neither can I walk past them.

  ‘Sally? Sally, is that you?’ A woman’s voice. I look up, expecting to see Esther, but this woman is tall and thin with short brown hair. I’ve never seen her before. ‘It’s okay, Sally,’ she says. ‘You’re okay. I’m Sergeant Zailer. I’m a police officer.’

  The word ‘police’ startles me. I take a step back. Everybody knows. Everybody knows what happened to me.

 
I open my mouth to tell the policewoman to leave. ‘I’m going to fall,’ I say. The wrong words. My legs buckle. The last thing I’m aware of seeing is the black cartoon animal face on Jake’s pink ball, right next to my eyes, enormous and terrifying.

  20

  Saturday, 11 August 2007

  I open my eyes. This time I think I might be willing to keep them open for a while, see what happens. Everything appears to be in order. I’m still in my own bed. My favourite picture is still on the chimney breast in front of me. It’s a Thai folk painting, a present from a company I did a scoping study for in Bangkok. It’s painted on tree bark, and shows a chubby baby sitting cross-legged against an iridescent yellow background, holding a fish in its lap. Nick’s not keen on it-he says it’s too sickly-but I love it. The baby’s skin is plump and pink. The picture reminds me of my children as newborns.

  ‘Jake,’ I say. ‘Zoe?’ I haven’t seen them yet, haven’t heard them shouting and singing and demanding things. Then I remember the police were here. Did they send my children away?

  I am about to call out again when I hear voices, a man’s and a woman’s. Not Nick. Not Esther. I blink several times as their conversation gets nearer, to check this is real. Their words make no sense to me.

  ‘He’s not with his family, not at home or at work, not at his mother-in-law’s…’

  ‘Simon, you’re not his babysitter. He’s a free, innocent man.’

  Simon? Who is Simon?

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’

  ‘You don’t… there’s nothing you’re not telling me, is there? He is innocent?’

  I think the woman is the cop from… when was it that I arrived home? How long ago?

  ‘There’s a lot I’ve not told you,’ says the man called Simon. ‘There’s been no time.’

  ‘What’s wrong with now?’

  She sounds tired. As if she can’t be bothered any more.

  ‘The French/English song. Stacey’s homework-’

  ‘Simon, for fuck’s sake! I want to know why four people have died, not-’

  ‘An Englishman wrote it. All the phrases in it-“rather a giggle”, “burst into song”, “put a sock in it”, “keep your shirt on”-they’re all English sayings. The French versions of them, translated literally, wouldn’t mean the same thing. They wouldn’t mean anything, they’d be gibberish. So the French version can’t be the original. I doubt “put a sock in it” in French means give it a rest, like it does here.’

  ‘I doubt “give it a rest” means give it a rest.’

  I have no idea what they are talking about. My home has been invaded by people who make no sense.

  ‘Exactly,’ Simon agrees. ‘ “Give it a rest” would mean-’

  ‘Let it have a nice long sleep?’ The woman laughs. I hear clapping. ‘Full marks, Detective.’

  So Simon is also a police officer.

  ‘Remember the promise you made?’

  More sniggering from the woman. ‘Are you quoting Cock Robin?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘“The Promise You Made” by Cock Robin. It was in the charts in the eighties.’ She begins to sing. A policewoman is singing outside my bedroom door.

  I burst into tears. I remember the song. I loved it. ‘I want my children!’ I yell.

  The door to Nick’s and my bedroom is flung open and the woman walks in. Sergeant… I’ve forgotten what she said her name was.

  ‘Sally, you’re awake. How are you feeling?’

  The man who follows her into the room-Simon-is tall and muscly, with a prominent jaw that reminds me of the cartoon character Desperate Dan and a nose that looks as if it’s been smashed to pieces more than once. He looks wary, as if he thinks I might leap out of bed and lunge at him.

  ‘Where are my kids? Where’s Nick?’ I ask. My voice sounds rusty.

  ‘Zoe and Jake are fine, Sally,’ says the woman. ‘They’re at Nick’s mum’s, and Nick’s at the shops. He’ll be back in a minute. Do you feel able to talk to us? Would you like a glass of water first?’

  It comes from nowhere: a wave of panic that forces me upright. ‘Who is an innocent man?’ I gasp.

  ‘What? Calm down, Sally.’

  ‘You were talking about him before. Who isn’t with his family, or at work or home? Tell me!’

  The police officers exchange a look. Then the woman says, ‘Mark Bretherick.’

  ‘He’s killed him! Or he will! He’s got him, I know he has…’

  Simon has gone before I can explain. I hear him thudding down the stairs, swearing.

  Sergeant Whatever looks at me, then at the door, then back at me. She wants to go with him. ‘Why would Jonathan Hey want to kill Mark Bretherick?’ she asks.

  ‘Jonathan Hey? Who’s he?’

  She stands up and shouts the name Sam.

  21

  8/11/07

  Charlie gripped the bottom of her seat as Simon overtook a Ford Focus and a Land Rover by swerving to their left and speeding ahead of them in the narrow gap between their sides and the kerb, to a chorus of angry beeps. Charlie could imagine what the drivers of the other cars were saying to their passengers: ‘Probably being chased by cops.’

  ‘I don’t get it,’ she said. ‘Hey’s in custody-ask him.’

  ‘And if he won’t tell me, or denies it? I’d have wasted time I can’t spare, not if I want to have a chance of finding Mark Bretherick alive. Hey locked Sally Thorning in a room and left her to die. What if he’s done the same to Bretherick?’

  ‘Why are you and Sally Thorning so sure Hey would want to harm Bretherick?’

  ‘I believe her. She’s spent time with him. She knows his mind better than I do.’

  ‘But… he killed them all, right? Geraldine and Lucy, and Encarna and Amy?’

  ‘Yeah. All of them,’ said Simon.

  ‘Why? Slow down!’ He had scraped the side of a van, was driving at twice the speed limit.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard.’

  ‘If you don’t know why, Simon, then you don’t know he did it. Not for sure.’

  ‘He had Bretherick’s suit in his wardrobe and a bloodstained shirt and pair of trousers in his bathroom-the clothes he was wearing when he cut Geraldine’s wrists. Oh, and he’s confessed.’

  He was toying with her. Charlie refused to rise to it. She flinched as a red Mercedes had to swerve to avoid them.

  ‘To all four murders. He just won’t tell us why.’

  ‘How did you know it was Hey? Before Sellers saw the suit, before you had evidence?’

  ‘Something Sam said started me thinking. At Corn Mill House, when we found Encarna and Amy Oliva. He said something that stuck in my mind: “Family annihilation mark two.” It’s a funny expression, isn’t it? Not one I’d ever use myself. I’d have said number two, not mark two. For some reason it kept going round and round in my head.’

  His speed was down to fifty-five. Talking was good for him. ‘I had that the first time I heard that mares-eat-oats-and-does-eat-oats rhyme,’ Charlie told him.

  ‘And little lambs eat ivy.’

  ‘Couldn’t get it out of my head for months, years, after I first heard it. Drove me mad!’

  ‘Another thing I couldn’t get out of my head-Geraldine’s diary, ’ said Simon. ‘From the start I was sure there was something wrong about it. I knew Geraldine hadn’t written it.’

  ‘Hey wrote it?’ Charlie guessed.

  ‘No, that’s what was wrong. I only realised much later, but deep down, subconsciously, I didn’t think Geraldine’s killer had written the diary either. It didn’t sound… made up. When I thought about it, I didn’t see how it could have been a fake. It was so detailed, so convincing. The voice was… A whole person, a whole life and world radiated from those printed-out pages whenever I looked at them. It sounds daft, but I felt a… a presence behind the writing, so much that was unsaid, so much more than the words in front of me. Could the killer really have created that illusion? Plus, we
found out that the diary file was opened long before Geraldine and Lucy died.’

  His speed was down to fifty.

  ‘So, whose diary was it?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘Encarna Oliva’s.’ Simon frowned as he saw the tailback in front of them. The centre of Spilling on a Saturday afternoon: always the same.

  ‘Which Hey kept after he’d killed her.’ Charlie worked it out as she spoke. ‘And after he’d killed Geraldine, he typed up Encarna’s diary on to Geraldine’s laptop… but you said the file was opened before Geraldine died?’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘I don’t get it.’ Charlie fumbled in her bag for her cigarettes and lighter. ‘Did Geraldine write the suicide note?’

  ‘Yep.’ Simon tapped the steering wheel impatiently. ‘Freely and willingly. It wasn’t a suicide note, that’s all.’

  ‘Then what was it? And what’s any of this got to do with Sam saying “family annihilation mark two”? Simon!’ Charlie clicked her fingers in front of his face.

  ‘Remember William Markes? “A man called William Markes is very probably going to ruin my life”?’

  She nodded.

  ‘We couldn’t find any William Markes in Geraldine Bretherick’s life-’

  ‘Because the diary wasn’t Geraldine’s,’ said Charlie eagerly. ‘William Markes was someone Encarna Oliva knew.’ Was she catching up at last?

  ‘No. There is no William Markes.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Find and replace. “Family annihilation mark two”-“mark” is a word as well as a name: full marks, mark that essay, a marked man. When we found Encarna and Amy’s bodies, Sam said he hoped Cook would find clear marks on the bones, to show how they’d died.’

  ‘Will it help if I beg?’ Charlie lit a cigarette. The traffic had begun to edge forward.

  ‘You’ve got Encarna Oliva’s diary on Geraldine Bretherick’s computer. You want people to believe it’s Geraldine’s. It’s full of gripes and complaints, exactly the sort of thing, you imagine, that would make Geraldine’s suicide more plausible. But the complaints aren’t about Mark and Lucy Bretherick, are they?’