Forgive Me (39 page)

The policeman gave him a sharp look, as if
his visit was far more important. ‘I’ll come back and tell you when
I’ve finished.’

After the policeman had gone, Phil went to
see if he could get a cup of coffee. He was irritated by the policeman’s lack of
urgency in this case. Would he have pulled his finger out if Eva had died in the
fire?

The following evening, while Phil was
visiting Eva, the policeman he had spoken to on the previous day came in with another
officer.

It was Saturday, so there were more visitors
than usual around the other patients’ beds. ‘Couldn’t they have called
when there aren’t any other visitors to gawp?’ Eva
whispered to him. ‘It makes me feel like I’ve done something
wrong.’

She was much better today. Her face was a
yellowy grey, her voice was still very hoarse and her eyes sore, and she also had a
headache and the awful cough to deal with. But she had managed to eat some lunch and she
was no longer disorientated.

The curly-haired policeman introduced
himself as Detective Inspector Turner. He came straight to the point, saying that he had
proof Myles was in Cornwall on holiday. It seemed the local police had interviewed him;
he had a cast-iron alibi, because he’d been in a restaurant in St Ives on the
night of the fire with a group of friends until almost one thirty. Aside from the fact
he’d left there very drunk, it was impossible for anyone to reach London by car in
just over an hour.

‘Maybe he paid someone else to do
it?’ Phil suggested.

Turner ignored him and just looked at Eva.
‘A young woman in Portland Road did see something she thought was
suspicious,’ he said. ‘She was dropped home by taxi about fifteen minutes
before the logged call to the emergency services. As the taxi drew up outside her house
she saw a man getting out of his car. But when he saw the taxi was stopping, the man
ducked down behind his car. It made her nervous, because she thought it was an old
boyfriend who has been making a nuisance of himself. However, when she got in she looked
out of the window and saw the car was a BMW, and therefore not her old
boyfriend’s. The man who had hidden was gone. And a little later she heard the car
drive off, so she assumed he’d just been calling on one of her neighbours. But she
still thought the man’s behaviour was suspicious enough to tell us about it.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t tell us what colour the car was. Do you know anyone
with a BMW?’

‘Only my stepfather,’ Eva said.
‘I’m not very good at recognizing cars, unless they’re a Mini or a
Beetle.’

‘My wife is the same,’ Turner
said. ‘But your boyfriend did mention that you weren’t on friendly terms
with your stepfather. Is this a recent falling out? Could you tell me a little more
about your relationship with him?’

Eva began coughing violently. Phil poured
her a glass of water and held it for her to sip.

‘He was unpleasant to her after her
mother died,’ Phil said. ‘He was angry because she’d been left the
house in Pottery Lane.’

‘I see,’ Turner said.
‘When did Miss Patterson last have contact with him?’

‘Less than two weeks ago – we called
on him on our way back from a holiday in Scotland,’ Phil said. ‘Eva had
things she wanted to ask him about.’

Even through her coughing Phil could see
Eva’s eyes were imploring him not to say anything further, but he knew he
must.

‘Eva doesn’t want me to tell you
this,’ he said. ‘I understand why, because it’s personal, complicated
and we could very well be barking up the wrong tree. But whether we are or not,
Patterson was rattled by some questions we asked him.’

She caught hold of his hand as if to stop
him. Her coughing subsided and she looked scared.

He turned to her and smoothed down her hair.
‘I’ve got to speak out, Eva. You could’ve died in that fire, and the
police need to know all the facts if they are to find the person who started
it.’

‘We certainly do, Miss
Patterson,’ Turner said.

Phil was aware that some of the other
patients in the ward were watching keenly. He looked back at Turner. ‘I’d
rather
tell you about this down at the police station, not here in a
ward full of people with their ears pinned back.’

Turner nodded in agreement.

‘Then will you leave first? I’ll
come down in my van in a few minutes, so no one gets the idea I’m being
arrested,’ Phil said.

As the two policemen left the ward, Eva
clutched his hand even tighter. ‘It can’t be Andrew,’ she said, her
eyes welling up. ‘He wouldn’t do that to me.’

‘A year ago you wouldn’t have
believed he would turn on you the minute your mum was dead,’ Phil pointed out.
‘While I was away I thought a lot about his reaction when we went to his house. If
he had nothing to hide, why was he so defensive? Especially in front of me! So maybe
that baby in Carlisle isn’t you – I really hope so – but there is something weird
about Andrew’s attitude towards you. And I think telling Turner about it all is
the best way of getting to the bottom of it.’

‘But what about Ben and Sophie?’
she implored him.

Phil shrugged. ‘You can’t brush
this under the carpet just to save them some grief,’ he said. ‘And if Andrew
did try to kill you, then he deserves whatever comes to him.’

She lay back on the pillows as if
defeated.

‘I love you, Eva,’ he said,
leaning over her and kissing her gently. ‘I want us to have a happy and secure
future together. Whatever your mother did, it isn’t your fault, but at the moment
it’s spoiling your life. What sort of man would I be if I didn’t try to make
it better for you?’

‘I’m afraid I’m spoiling
your life,’ she whispered hoarsely. ‘What will your family think if all this
comes out?’

‘They’ll think the same as me,
that it was nothing to do with you. They’ll admire you for being brave enough to
expose it all. And they will all love you as much as I do.’

He had to go then. He gave her one last kiss
and walked away. He didn’t dare look round and see her stricken face.

Whatever came of this, he knew it was the
right thing to do.

Two hours later Phil was still in an
interview room with DI Turner. He had explained everything as well as he could, but as
he talked about the diaries and the second-hand information Eva had gleaned on her trip
to Scotland, the policeman’s incredulous expression made him falter.

‘I know it is only supposition that
Eva could be the baby snatched in Carlisle,’ he said. ‘I can’t even
show you the diary, the picture of the shops or the set of tiny baby clothes – they must
all have gone up in flames. But Gregor Hamilton and his sister, Grace, in Pitlochry will
confirm the contents of the diary, as they read it. And surely a simple blood test will
prove whether the woman in Carlisle is Eva’s mother or not …’ He paused
for a moment, aware that this all must sound like a piece of fiction to a policeman. He
had to make his case a little stronger if he wanted to be taken seriously.

‘Look, I don’t want to believe
Andrew Patterson tried to kill Eva. Would anyone do that to someone they’d looked
after from a small child? But there is something fishy about the man – he couldn’t
tell us where Eva was born, and I feel certain he did have some sort of hold over Flora.
And do you think it’s mere coincidence that Flora killed herself on that other
baby’s twenty-first birthday?’

Turner sighed deeply. ‘I don’t
know what to think. It isn’t unknown for a depressed woman, who has lost a baby,
to steal one. But in such cases the woman is usually caught very quickly because she
isn’t capable of all the guile, nerve and planning it would require to get away
with it. So maybe Flora
was just lucky, and cool-headed enough to
drive down south with a new baby without drawing attention to herself. But tell me, why
would any man, supposing he did actually know of such a crime, collude in it?’

‘The only reason that would make me do
it is if I loved the woman so much I couldn’t bear to shop her,’ Phil said.
‘But from what I’ve seen of Patterson, he isn’t a man to allow his
heart to rule his head. My gut feeling from the one meeting I’ve had with him is
that he is a control freak. And Flora was the one with money when they met …’
He paused, looking hard at Turner. ‘But whether Flora did or didn’t snatch
the baby, and whether Andrew knew or not, he’s still been very nasty to Eva, he
knew where she was living, and a man with a BMW was acting suspiciously near Pottery
Lane. So surely that’s enough to bring him in for questioning?’

‘Oh, we will. And his car will be
checked by forensics.’

‘Will you also open the case about the
missing baby and run some blood tests?’

DI Turner gave him a long, studied look.
‘Go home now. Leave it to us.’

On Tuesday, four days after her admittance
to hospital, as Eva waited for the doctor to do his rounds and discharge her, she
dressed herself in the clothes Phil had brought in for her the night before. He had
bought them himself: underwear, jeans, black T-shirt, a grey zip-up jacket and a pair of
sandals.

He had seemed embarrassed about them, and
apologized for picking such dull things. But Eva didn’t care what they were like –
she was just impressed that he’d got everything the right size – and was very glad
that she’d be going home with him the next day.

Yet when Phil went home after visiting time,
all at once the enormity of what had happened hit her.

She didn’t think she could ever forget
the terror of being trapped in the bedroom with the fire raging downstairs. If it had
been an electrical fault, she might just have been able to feel grateful that the
firemen had got her out in time. But the thought that someone wanted her dead was going
to haunt her for ever.

Aside from almost dying, she’d lost
everything she owned. Her clothes didn’t matter so much – but photographs,
Flora’s paintings, and the little things she’d had since she was a child,
were all irreplaceable.

Phil had said he thought some things in the
bedrooms might be salvageable, as the flames hadn’t reached there. But even so,
they would be badly smoke-damaged. He found it almost miraculous that the fire
hadn’t got into the garage. If it had reached the car, the whole house would have
gone up – and probably next door too.

All the effort that had gone into making the
house nice was for nothing. She tried to tell herself she didn’t care, that the
place had been full of bad memories: the misery of her first days there, the snootiness
of the neighbours and Myles attacking her.

But there were so many good memories there
too: Phil taking her home after her bag was snatched, seeing the house come together as
Brian and John worked on it, the joy she’d felt at learning to do jobs for
herself, meeting Patrick for the first time and planting up the garden. Phil had been
the rock she leaned on, the man who made her laugh and restored her faith in men. She
had spent so many nights wondering if he would ever make the first move, or whether
she’d have to do it.

She’d planned to take their
relationship slowly, to savour
what they had between them and just
enjoy it. Now she was dependent on Phil, and that wasn’t the way she wanted it to
be.

Phil had said that the insurance would pay
out, that he could get men in to do the house up again and then she could sell it, if
she wanted to. She couldn’t tell him that she felt she’d been robbed of a
period of courtship, that she had intended for them to have separate lives until such
time as they were absolutely sure of one another.

On top of all that, she wasn’t sure
she’d ever feel safe again.

Minutes after the doctor discharged her,
Phil arrived to take her back to his place. The doctor had warned her she must take it
easy for a while and get plenty of rest. ‘No going into smoky pubs or
restaurants,’ he reminded her. ‘Get as much fresh air as you can, and that
cough will soon go.’

She felt pretty good, considering what
she’d been through. Her eyes and throat were still a bit sore, and the cough was
horrible. But when her mind turned to being trapped in the smoke-filled bedroom and the
fire that threatened to overwhelm her, she made herself think about Scotland and the
Lake District.

‘All set then?’ Phil asked as he
came in. ‘If I’m allowed to boast, I think I chose those clothes pretty
well. But you’ll be able to go shopping yourself in a day or two.’

‘You did outstandingly well,’
she said, hugging him. ‘Everything fits perfectly.’

‘We’ll stop at Boots on the way
home and you can get some toiletries and make-up,’ he said. ‘That was
Mum’s input – she turned up at the flat at eight this morning to give it a good
clean, and then reminded me that girls need stuff men don’t think of. She’s
dying to meet you, but I said you need a
few days to get settled. That
was my hint to make sure she left the flat before we got back.’

‘Is your brother OK about me
coming?’

His brother, Lee, was two years younger than
Phil. He had already told her that Lee was messy, played music very loudly and had no
respect for his elder brother’s possessions.

‘He’s gone to stay with Mum for
a while. It was his suggestion too, so don’t feel bad about it.’

Eva’s first impression on pulling up
outside Phil’s home was that it looked very well kept. It was a semi-detached,
two-storey ex-council house, his flat being on the ground floor, with a privet hedge and
grass in front. It was in a crescent which curved around behind a busy road with a rank
of small shops, but there were trees all the way along it. And there was a fenced-off
small children’s playground in a grassy area further along the crescent.

‘The front garden really belongs to
the couple upstairs,’ he said as he led her through the gate. ‘But I cut the
grass and trim the hedge for them, because they don’t bother.’

Eva saw there was a stone staircase at the
side of the house, which presumably was his neighbour’s entrance, and beyond that
was a fence with a gate to the back garden.