A Greater Evil (16 page)

Much later, when the Australian party had gone back to their hotel, David was getting ready for bed and George was desultorily chatting to his mother on the sofa, Meg asked to have another look at the latest painting Trish had hung in her bedroom. Together they climbed the spiral staircase. At the top, Meg ignored the new canvas, plumping down instead in the spoon-backed chair in the corner.

Trish recognized the signs and obediently stretched herself out on the big bed, piling George’s pillows on top of her own so that she was still semi-upright.

‘What?’ she asked, watching the serious expression on Meg’s lined face.

‘You obviously like Sam,’ she said slowly, ‘and I can see why. He’s very appealing.’

‘But?’

‘I think there’s more to him than he shows.’ Meg brushed her thin cheek with one hand in a troubled gesture long familiar to Trish. ‘He was telling me how guilty he feels.’

‘About what?’ Trish felt cold in spite of the efficient radiator coils in the corners of the room. She tried not to recognize her own fear.

Meg looked as though she knew exactly what was going on in Trish’s head. ‘His actual words were, “about so much to do with my wife”.’

‘Did he tell you he’d killed her?’ Prayer didn’t form part of Trish’s life, but if it had, now would have been the time to give it her all.

‘Not in so many words. The guilt he was actually admitting was about not being in the studio to protect her when she was attacked.’

Trish felt her neck muscles let go and she lay more comfortably against the pillows. But Meg hadn’t finished.

‘What’s worse, he said, is knowing how his jealousy of her past lovers stopped her talking about any of the other men she had to deal with at work. He’s afraid that’s why she never said anything to him about the bloke her colleagues say was harassing her.’

‘I can see how a man who’d been abandoned as a baby would hate the idea of other men. Can’t you? At some level, he must always have been afraid one of them would pop up again and make her abandon him all over again.’

‘He thinks if he’d been able to listen to her stories of old boyfriends,’ Meg said, paying no attention to Trish’s speculations, ‘she might have told him something the police could use to identify the harasser. Sam’s convinced himself the same man killed her.’

‘Why are you sounding so doubtful? Isn’t it the likeliest possibility?’

‘I don’t think so.’

There was so much pity in Meg’s voice that Trish shivered again and pulled George’s half of the duvet over herself so that she felt like a silkworm in its cocoon.

‘We had a man in the surgery once who told us his wife had been beating him up,’ Meg said, still in the kind, regretful voice. ‘He came again and again, always with injuries. We were all worried, I mean the receptionists as much as the doctors, and we persuaded him to go to the police to report his wife. Eventually they set up video surveillance and what that showed shocked us all.’

‘How did you come to see police videos?’

Meg’s face crumpled a little. ‘It was the only way they could persuade us to believe what they’d seen. Every time the man was injured, the fight had started with him hitting his wife. She was just hitting back, Trish, trying to defend herself. The reason he’d convinced us he was her victim is that he’d convinced himself first. He wasn’t consciously lying. He genuinely believed it was her aggression not his own that led to the injuries.’

Trish nodded without speaking. This wasn’t an alien concept, but she didn’t want to get into a conversation about spousal abuse with her mother. She’d only witnessed one occasion on which her father had hit Meg, but she was sure there had been others. Even now, more than thirty years later, Trish found it impossible to deal with the mixture of rage, pity, helplessness, and guilt for not having stopped it.

‘There’s no need to look so tragic,’ Meg said. ‘Just remember that things are very rarely as simple as you’d like them to be. What does your mate Caro think about this Sam?’

‘She’s the senior officer in charge of the investigation and she’s sure he’s guilty. We’re not speaking at the moment.’

‘She’s got good judgement. And unlike either of us she’ll have seen all the evidence.’ Meg looked kinder than ever as she added:

‘Don’t let him break your heart, Trish.’

*

At the end of Boxing Day Caro drove into the car park at the Heathrow Hilton with fifteen minutes to spare. She took her portable tape recorder from the glove box and slipped it into her bag, adjusted the driving mirror so she could check her appearance, and tucked a few stray hairs behind her ear.

It shouldn’t be too hard, she thought as she walked across the car park, taking care not to slip in the icy puddles. Just a matter of establishing his movements on the day his daughter died and making sure I have contact details in case we need more from him.

If there hadn’t been the problem of the influential Mrs Mayford and her secret past, Caro could have sent a couple of junior officers to get the information and saved herself the journey.

A tall, slim man was waiting in one of the few chairs in the reception area. He looked at her over the top of his newspaper, assessed her and then nodded.

‘Chief Inspector Lyalt?’ he said in a quiet American accent.

‘Yes.’

He pulled himself out of the chair and came towards her with a devastating smile on his face.

‘Shall we talk here or would you rather come up to my room?’

‘Here’s fine by me, if you don’t mind.’

‘Not at all. I’ve only just managed to get rid of Gina, who drove me back from my sister’s in Dorset. She showed signs of wanting to stay – presumably to defend me from interrogation – but I told her I could manage.’

‘It may be that or it may be that she was afraid I might … shock you.’

‘You couldn’t, Chief Inspector. And that’s why I wanted to be rid of her. I’ve known for thirty-four years Cecilia was my daughter.’

Talk about shock, Caro thought, angry that Mrs Mayford should have had to fight all the battles of a single mother while this man turned himself into a world expert on international relations. What about personal ones?

‘Now I’ve shocked you,’ he said. ‘But it’s not as simple as it looks. At some level Gina must know I know. I’m no mathematician, but I can count. I was already in the States when I heard about the baby from one of my sisters. I wrote and proposed right away, without mentioning Cecilia because I didn’t want Gina to think I was offering to be the sacrificial victim of a shotgun wedding. She said no. So here we are.’

Why is he telling me this? Caro wondered. Do I need to hear his excuse?

‘Does all this mean you did see your daughter that last morning?’ she said aloud, quickly trying to reorganize her mind to avoid hurting him now she knew he knew who Cecilia was. ‘And do you mind if I record this interview?’

‘Go right ahead. The one thing I have to hold on to is that I did have an hour with her. If I’d known I’d never see her again, I—’ He broke off, looked away, then fiddled about tidying the newspaper.

At last he coughed and looked back at Caro, before saying clearly, almost as though he was dictating to his students: ‘You’ll want to know my movements that day, Chief Inspector. I picked up a cheap pay-as-you-go phone when I arrived at Waterloo, as I always do when I come here – it’s more economical than using my US phone account – and texted her BlackBerry to find out if she could see me in her office before I caught the train to York.’

‘And did she?’

‘She texted right back to suggest we meet by the ice rink at Somerset House. I thought it could be risky with Gina at work on the opposite side of the road, but Cecilia assured me she’d be stuck in court. So I walked over the bridge from Waterloo. Cecilia walked up the Strand from her office. And we had a cup of coffee together.’

‘What did you talk about?’

‘Nothing much. How she was. What sex the baby was. How she felt about becoming a mother. How I thought we should maybe tell Gina we knew each other.’ He closed his eyes momentarily, then opened them to offer the same dazzling smile. Only now could Caro see the sadness behind the glitter. ‘It was something we nearly always did talk about and we always came to the same conclusion. We’d left it too late. And that was my fault.’

‘Hard to pick a moment for something so emotional,’ Caro said, managing to find a little sympathy for him.

‘I know. Think of the hurt of being told by your only child that she’s been lying to you all her adult life. But now …’

‘And yet they were so close.’

‘In everything except this. There are a lot of things I regret, but this …’ Again he hesitated. ‘This situation is one of the worst. And now I can never put it right. When I think of the waste of it all, the time the three of us could have had, I … It’s too much. I can’t deal with it yet.’

‘I’m sorry. And I’m sorry to press you, but I need to know everything that happened that morning. When did you part from Cecilia? Can you remember?’

‘Sure. My train for York left King’s Cross at twelve o’clock. I walked out of Somerset House at 11.15, as I’d planned all along, and took the Tube, the Piccadilly Line, to King’s Cross. You know, I could have told you all this over the phone.’

‘Is there someone in York who could …’

‘Establish my alibi? Sure. I was met at the station by the woman who organized the seminar. Here.’ He pulled a pile of old envelopes out of his jacket pocket, tore the back off one and scribbled a name on it, before consulting his diary and adding a couple of phone numbers. He looked up at Caro. ‘You’d better have my phone numbers in the States too. There may be more questions later.’

‘Thank you.’

As he handed over the grubby piece of paper, he said: ‘You won’t tell Gina, will you? You don’t seem malicious.’

‘I’m not,’ Caro said. ‘But I have learned that nothing good ever comes from secrets. If I were you, I’d tell her myself and try to make her see that you and your daughter only wanted to protect her all these years. I must go. Thank you for being so frank.’

‘Selfish bastard,’ she muttered as she reached the chilly car park again. Protecting Mrs Mayford indeed! Protecting his own chance of a big career in the States, more likely.

It was convenient for him that there were no living witnesses to the fact he’d always known he was the victim’s father. Still, there was CCTV at Somerset House and it would be better than the system outside Foundling’s studio. It should have logged his departure and it would tell her precisely when he and Cecilia left the place.

It wasn’t until Caro had bleeped up the locks of her car that she thought of a question she hadn’t asked.

Back in the hotel, she found no sign of him in the foyer. But the receptionist recognized her and directed her to the bar. There she found Professor Suvarov drinking Stella from the bottle.

‘Hi. Thought of something else, Chief Inspector?’

‘Did she talk to you about her marriage?’

‘Not a lot. It was clearly tough, but I’d say she genuinely loved the guy in spite of that, which is what makes this so … so unbearable.’

‘So you think he did it?’

‘It’s the obvious answer, isn’t it?’ He sounded sad. ‘I never met Sam, but I know she was afraid of what happened when he was angry. She once saw him smash the phone to pieces in front of their friends merely because a call-centre salesman phoned and interrupted them at dinner. By all accounts, he’s a violent man, who deals with his feelings by hitting out.’

‘What about the man who was harassing her at work?’ Caro said. ‘Did she say anything about him?’

He shook his head.

‘Then what about Dennis Flack? Did she ever mention him to you?’

‘Nope. Who’s he?’

‘Her immediate boss at work.’

‘Never heard of him. The only thing she said was bothering her, apart from how tough it was dealing with Sam’s problems, was that she’d become spooked by coincidence. But that was only because I told her the name of the woman organizing the York seminar, and it turned out Cecilia had known her at university. Not in the same league as his violence.’

‘Thanks. Sorry to disturb your drink.’

‘Not at all,’ he said, sounding more and more English. ‘Can I buy you one?’

Caro shook her head, thanked him again, and headed back to the car. She tried to make the coincidence mean something but couldn’t. Even Trish would have to admit there was no way a lecturer from York University could have a bearing on Cecilia’s murder, however well they’d known each other as students. All she’d got from Suvarov was more support for her own suspicion of Sam and absolutely none of the evidence she needed to do anything with it.

The newspaper that flopped onto the doormat on Boxing Day was pitifully thin. The lack of weight mattered not at all to Trish, once she’d seen there was nothing in it about Sam. She embarked on her round of treats for David with more zest than she’d dared contemplate.

While George drove his mother back to her Suffolk house on Monday, Trish took David to a dry ski slope she knew to practise for their half-term trip to the French Alps. He was in fine form, unhampered by the immense amounts of food he’d consumed over the last few days and apparently no longer fazed by the thought of meeting some of his distant relations, who had treated his mother so badly. But his confidence leached away over the next twenty-four hours and on Wednesday morning his face had a pallor and tension that took Trish back to his first weeks in her flat.

‘Got your mobile?’ she said with a breeziness she didn’t feel. ‘I’ll have mine switched on wherever I am, so you can always …’

‘I’ll phone if I need to,’ he said, then clamped his lips together. It would have been cruel to make him say any more or probe for exactly which ingredients made up his particular fear. He forced a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. ‘Look after yourself, Trish.’

‘You too.’ She looked over his head and met Susie’s sympathetic blue eyes.

‘We’ll have a great time, Trish.’ She pushed her chunky gold bangles up her smooth, tanned arm. ‘There are so many things I want to see and places to go. We’ve got Stratford and all the Shakespeare stuff first, then Warwick Castle. We’ll have fun, and we’ll see you in a fortnight.’