Creeping Ivy (10 page)

‘The police will find out the truth, whatever it is. But I honestly don’t think Nicky can be guilty of anything except sloppiness. She seems to care much too much for Charlotte and be too … too kind altogether.’

‘That’s what I used to think. Now I’m not sure. In any case, mustn’t all child abusers be able to make themselves seem likeable? I mean, they’ve got to be able to charm the children into trusting them, haven’t they?

‘Yes, they have – but even so Nicky doesn’t fit the profile of any child abuser I’ve ever met – or heard of. Look, Antonia, is there anyone else who might have wanted to snatch Charlotte? Not for any of the things we both dread so much, but for something comparatively trivial?’

‘Like what? Like who, for God’s sake? And how could anything to do with this be trivial?’

‘Well, maybe Ben, for instance. I wondered if he might have had some kind of brainstorm and decided he wanted her to live with him for a bit. I mean, he is her father, after all. Isn’t he?’

‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous. Of course he’s her father. You’re as bad as he is. And anyway, you’re just making complications for their own sake. I wish you wouldn’t. He’s never shown the slightest sign of wanting to take on any of the responsibility for Charlotte. Which is typical. And even if he did, this isn’t his style at all.’

‘I wondered if maybe you’d like me to go and see him.’

‘There’s nothing you can do that the police can’t.’ Antonia shook her head, struggling for self-control. After a tense moment she added: ‘I know I asked you to come today, but it wasn’t so you could play amateur detective. I just wanted someone with me. I didn’t know you were going to start grilling me and criticising me and threatening to cause all sorts of trouble.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Trish, fighting to feel the necessary sympathy. ‘Perhaps I’d better get out of your way. When will Robert be back?’

‘God knows. Now that the police have been wading in and taking up his time, I probably won’t see him till midnight. Why? I suppose you want to start tormenting
him
, now.’

‘I’m just concerned that you shouldn’t have to bear this on your own and hoped he’d be back soon,’ Trish said steadily, trying not to react to Antonia’s heavily sarcastic emphasis.

‘To hold my hand, you mean? That’d be, a first. Look, get out, will you, before we start quarrelling?’

Trish got to her feet without another word. Almost at once she felt Antonia’s damp hand on her wrist.

‘I’m sorry, Trish. I can’t be ordinary or polite, not with Charlotte in …’ Antonia’s voice broke. She stared straight ahead, digging her teeth into her lower lip. After a moment she let go of Trish’s wrist and covered her ears with her hands, as though she were hearing some terrifying sound she had to block out. Shuddering, she let her arms fall to her sides and opened her eyes again and eventually sounded almost normal as she said, ‘Not with Charlotte in such danger.’

‘I know,’ said Trish at once, thinking how odd it was that even the sharpest terror a woman could feel seemed theatrical when it was put into words. ‘I’ll get out of your way now, but will you ring me if you hear anything – or if you want me back here? I’ll come straight away and do anything you want – just sit and watch whatever’s happening in silence if that would help. Whatever.’

‘All right. Thanks. I’ll ring.’

Trish left the house, doing her best to block out the journalists’ questions and not glare too furiously at the cameras that flashed all around her.

She tried to remember which of the bridges across the Thames was likely to be emptiest on a Sunday and plumped for Chelsea. Driving through streets that seemed almost more crowded with shoppers than they were during the week, she thought about Ben, and about the light he might be able to shed on what had happened.

Chapter Seven

‘Sir?’ John Blake looked up from his desk to see Kath Lacie standing by the door of his office.

‘Yes, Kath?’

‘Jenny Derring said you wanted to see me.’

‘So I do. What did you make of Benedict Weblock?’

‘Haven’t you got the report? I put it on your desk myself.’

‘Did you? I must have missed it.’ Blake privately acknowledged yet another of the stratagems his subconscious kept devising to bring her into his office. He shuffled through the heaps of paper on his desk. ‘Yup. Here it is, all tidy and official. Still, you might as well give me the flavour of the man while you’re here. Come on in and sit down.’

‘I thought he was honest,’ she said, smoothing the black linen skirt around her knees and giving no sign that she knew what Blake’s subconscious had been up to.

She was as tall as he, taller than most of the men in the squad, but she always managed to look feminine in her simple clothes. As well as the black skirt, she was wearing a T-shirt-shaped thing made of thin cream-coloured silk, a string of pearls and a straight black jacket. They probably hadn’t cost all that much; he was sure the shirt came from Tie Rack because when he’d first seen it he’d tried to, get one for his wife. But Kath looked a million dollars in hers. She always did, whatever she wore, even jeans. And it wasn’t as though she flaunted it either. Her smooth hair was bunched tightly at the back in a bit of black velvet and she had hardly any makeup on her slightly moon-like face.

‘Careful of people’s feelings, too, intelligent and self-aware,’ she went on. ‘The last man in the world to hurt a child, sir, I’d have thought. But to be fair, Sam didn’t get the same impression at all.’

‘No, I can imagine not.’ Blake had been skimming her report as she talked. ‘You’ve put here that Weblock claimed he’d never seen the child. D’you believe that? It seems unlikely.’

Kath took a moment to think. It was one of the habits he most valued in her. She never bothered to say anything to fill a gap and she never made things up to please anyone.

‘I did. But I’ve no evidence to back it up. I liked the man and so I was inclined to trust him.’ She looked at Blake, half-smiling, and then added: ‘I don’t trust many people, sir, and so far I haven’t been wrong.’

‘Fair enough,’ he said, trying not to read into that what he shouldn’t even have hoped she felt.

‘Sir?’

‘Yes, Kath.’

‘I heard that you brought a doll’s pram away from the ex-wife’s house.’

‘Yes, I did. I’ll be giving all the details at the next briefing. Why d’you ask?’

‘I just wondered what you’d seen in it to make you bring it away.’

‘Mainly blood and hair. It’s possible there’s an innocent explanation for both, so don’t jump to conclusions.’

‘But you have, haven’t you?’

‘Well, it doesn’t look too good.’

Kath said nothing, just sat controlling the tiny shudder that had made her silk shirt ripple against her skin. The outline of her plain, unembroidered bra was clearly visible for a moment. He told himself savagely to get a grip.

‘Would a four-year-old fit into a toy pram, sir?’

‘Not easily.’ It was odd, he decided, how your brain could split into the professional half that minded like hell about the child and the other half that could not think about anything much beyond Kath Lacie’s skin under her clothes. ‘But Charlotte Weblock was small for her age, and if she was dead when she was shoved in, it’s possible. Some of her joints would’ve had to be smashed to make her fit, but it could’ve been done.’

Kath sat watching him for a moment. Then she said with a pretence of calm, ‘You’re pretty sure that’s what happened, aren’t you?’

‘Yes. There were traces of soil caught in the seams at the sides of the mattress as well as the blood and hair. And signs of wiping all round the inside.’

‘Suggesting,’ said Kath, who always liked to have everything as clear as possible, however unpleasant or difficult it might be, ‘that after she was dead, the killer stuffed her body in the pram, wheeled it out of the house, looking all innocent, dug a grave somewhere and then picked the body out to bury it, spilling soil from his hands as he did so. That it?’

‘Broadly.’

‘Got a suspect?’

‘The obvious one’s the mother’s boyfriend, but there’s the nanny, too, and anyone else who had access to the house.’

‘Except the mother.’

‘Yup. For once the mother’s in the clear, Kath. No way of getting back from New York in time.’

‘I suppose we are sure she was there, are we?’

‘Yes. The fax came through an hour ago.’ Blake knew that however obvious fathers and stepfathers might be as suspects in such cases, there had been an unpleasant number in which mothers had assaulted their own children, even murdered them. It was one of the things he still found hard to accept.

‘Has the boyfriend got an alibi?’

‘He was being shouted at by five of his fellow directors and watched by a secretary taking the Minutes yesterday afternoon. I’d have said none of them liked him anywhere near enough to lie for him. They’ve convinced me he wasn’t in the park then, but that doesn’t mean he’s innocent. He could have involved the nanny, in which case I think we may be able to get him through her. She looks much more likely to break than him. Anyway, so far we’ve only her word for it that Charlotte was ever in that damned playground. But we’re trying to get confirmation.’

‘You mean you think the boyfriend could have killed Charlotte and then persuaded the nanny to get the body away in the pram? And then while she set up a scene in the park to establish some kind of alibi for herself, he did the same for himself in his office?’

‘Something like that.’

‘He’d be taking a hell of a risk, wouldn’t he?’

‘Maybe. We don’t know enough about either of them yet. We’d have a better idea if the Superintendent wasn’t so sold on the idea of a random snatch by a stranger. If we’d had a proper search of the house done and been able to give the lab. boys a chance to look for blood in samples from the drains and so on, we’d be far further on.’

‘But he could be right, sir. You must see that. There’ve been a fair number of stranger-abductions, haven’t there?’ said Kath, her face full of pity.

‘Yes. But it’ll take days to track down all the known paedophiles who might have been in the area. And we haven’t got days. That child’s … Christ! I hate these cases.’

‘How’s the mother bearing up, sir?’

Blake shrugged. ‘Hanging on by her fingernails.’

‘What’s she like?’

‘In normal circumstances I should think she’s a smug bitch,’ he said frankly. ‘Lots of diamonds. Expensive hair. House worth a cool million and a bloody good job. But not now. She’s all over the place and looks like shit warmed up. She cares about that kid all right.’

‘What sort of terms is she on with the boyfriend?’

Blake smiled a little. Talking to Kath always helped to clear his head. She knew the right questions to ask.

‘Hard to say. I wouldn’t have thought they were a natural pair. But then how would I know? I’ve never seen a natural pair in my life.’ He thought of Kath’s husband, who’d seemed like one of the biggest turds he’d ever met. ‘Except at weddings and sometimes not then. But he wasn’t with her at the house; I had to see him in his office.’

Blake nodded as he caught Kath’s expression. ‘Interesting, isn’t it? But there was an explanation of a sort, and a cousin of hers did arrive halfway through our interview as a kind of stopgap.’

‘Any idea who she was, this cousin?’

‘Introduced as Trish Maguire. I don’t know much more than that, except that she hasn’t seen Charlotte for weeks.’

‘What sort of age?’

‘Maguire? Oh, thirties, I should think. Thin, distinctly thin, short spiky dark hair, amazing face – you know, all bones and flashing eyes. Ferocious eyes, come to think of it. Eagle-like, maybe. Clever, too.’

‘You liked her,’ said Kath, beginning to smile at his description.

‘I suppose I did,’ he said, his face creasing in amusement to match hers. ‘More than Antonia, really. They were unlikely-looking cousins. Maguire’s not the diamond type at all. Sensible clothes – jeans – and no makeup.’

Blake saw Kath snatch a glance at her watch. It was a very ordinary quartz watch on a plain black-leather strap. He found himself thinking of Antonia Weblock’s rings again and then realising that for a woman who looked like Kath – was like Kath – flashy gold or jewels would be way over the top. He thought too of the white band there must be around her wrist where the watch-strap had blocked the sun from touching her.

Get hold of yourself, Blake.

The order seemed to work and he suddenly saw her properly, her self as well as her body, and noticed how near the edge she was. She’d been in the nick since dawn and he knew she had trouble at home, too. With a turd like that, who wouldn’t?

‘You’d better pack it in for the day, Kath. You look knackered.’

She nodded. ‘I hate these cases, too,’ she said with uncharacteristic passion. ‘I wish …’

‘I know,’ he said, suddenly remembering – far too late – that she’d had a miscarriage only last year. It had been her first pregnancy, too. No wonder she’d shuddered at the thought of a child’s body being broken to make it fit into the toy pram. Shit, he thought, and for a moment forgot about protecting his own delicate sensibilities and the not so delicate ones, too. ‘What about a drink, Kath? Just a quick one to take away the taste.’

She smiled at him, her calm face regretful and so aware of him that it wasn’t fair. ‘Better not, sir.’

‘No, perhaps you’re right. Pity, though.’

She nodded and stood up in a single easy movement that most dancers would have envied. ‘Sometimes I think I ought to shift to another nick,’ she said. ‘Nearer home. Good idea – or not?’

Blake thought about all the things he ought to say, the sensible comments about her career and about her husband, who was some kind of lawyer, and then he said, ‘I’d hate it.’

Without looking at her, he picked up the file again and heard her walk away. He did not trust himself to watch her go and stared blindly at the file until the door clicked shut behind her.

Chapter Eight

‘Hello, Trish,’ Ben said when he saw her standing outside his house. His voice was as warm as ever, but his face was much less easy to read than it had been in the old days. After a moment he pulled the door open as far as it would go.