Irrefutable Evidence: A Crime Thriller (14 page)

“I don’t know, Henry. That was all before I knew you, and Miss Cotton wouldn’t say more.”

Henry was only half listening.

“I thought there was something about her, that day back in Luton,” he enthused. “Never occurred to me that she might be my daughter, though.”

He took a deep breath, his eyes on Keithley’s file on the table.

“When Dirk was killed, I got the blame, as you know. But Antonia’s reaction was ten times, a hundred times worse than everyone else’s. She was like a mad dog, raging. Completely refused to speak to me. Cut me off. The divorce whistled through in double quick time and that was that. I never saw her again. I didn’t really mind; I’d had more than enough of her and I had my own problems. I thought I’d never work again. But I did think it rather strange that she seemed to disappear off the face of the earth.”

He looked up at Keithley.

“Is any of this going to help the trial, Charles? I mean, the police must be extremely embarrassed that my daughter was one of the investigating officers.”

“They’re embarrassed, you can guarantee it, but it seems they’ve covered their tracks well. They’ve more or less fixed it so that they won’t have to call her as a witness. I could get our barrister to, of course, but I doubt in the long run it would help, given that when she was on the case her behaviour was exemplary.”

Henry smiled again at his old friend.

“OK, Charles, if you can arrange it, I’d be delighted to meet DC Jennifer Cotton.”

“Actually, Henry, she’s now just plain Ms Jennifer Cotton. She has resigned from the police.”

C
hapter 18

I
t took ten days for Charles Keithley to work his way through the red tape. He found it frustrating until he was reminded that if Henry had been a convict rather than a remand prisoner, it would have taken far longer. The system didn’t make it easy for anyone.

Unlike the visit with Keithley, Jennifer’s was in the main interview room, a dreary space of twenty small tables and twenty pairs of chairs. There was no privacy, so the norm was a surreal set of hushed conversations, like people talking in a church.

The procedure for visits was that the visitor was escorted in first and told to sit at one of the tables. After that, the prisoner was fetched.

As she saw Henry being led through the door from the main prison, Jennifer stood up, feeling awkward. She was shocked; he looked gaunt, he’d lost weight, but there was a sparkle in his eyes, unlike other prisoners she’d glanced at around the room.

“Hello, Jennifer,” he said as he reached the table. “What should we do? Shake hands? Hug?”

“Let’s just sit and talk,” she said, and sat down.

Henry followed suit and there followed an awkward silence with each of them studying the other’s face.

Finally, Henry broke the ice. “This is a bit of a turn up. I still haven’t quite hauled it on board. I don’t mean to jump straight in, well, I suppose I do really, but may I ask who your mother is?”

Jennifer was immediately defensive. “Why? Are you trying to place me as the possible offspring of one of a long line of conquests?”

Henry smiled, wanting to ease the tension. “Now, now, there’s no need to be hostile. I’m not like that. I know that many actors have quite a reputation for being ladies’ men, but sadly my reputation is altogether different.”

Jennifer was still stern faced.

“I know. I’d read about you in the glossies even before the case.”

“Then you’ll know that I lead … led … a quiet, almost reclusive life trying to make a living in an industry that was forever trying to marginalise me.”

Jennifer suddenly relaxed.

“Yes, sorry, I didn’t mean to sound like some aggressive police officer. I wasn’t that sort of police officer, anyway.”

It was now Henry’s turn to be serious.

“Charles Keithley told me that you’d resigned from the police. To be honest, I was stunned. I can’t imagine why you would do that. Remember, I’ve seen you in action and you were streets ahead of the rest of those clowns who interviewed me, the senior ones included.”

He saw Jennifer’s chin quiver; clearly her decision was still a raw wound.

“When they found out that you were my father, they didn’t, wouldn’t believe that I didn’t know. There was one in particular, — the detective superintendent — who was relentless. She would have had me hung, drawn and quartered. They were rightly embarrassed by it all, so even though I think I persuaded some of the bosses that I was totally innocent, the damage was done. I had to be taken off the case and if I’d stayed, I would have been sent back into uniform. I couldn’t accept that; it’s not the career I wanted. So I chucked it in.”

“That sounds appallingly vindictive. Does this superintendent person think you fiddled the results of the case, tampered with the evidence? You were the one who found the shoe! At the time I wondered if you’d planted it by some clever sleight of hand.”

For the first time, a smile flickered at the corners of Jennifer’s mouth, softening her whole face. Henry felt his heart melting.

“No, it wasn’t the evidence,” she said. “They were worried about the fallout, especially the senior types. It all gets absurdly political in the elevated ranks — the chief super, assistant chief constable and above are all paranoid about the press. I think their idea of hell would be a never-ending phone call from a tabloid editor with dirt to dig and a direct link to Whitehall.”

Henry’s eyes creased; he liked his daughter more each second. He took a deep breath.

“Anyway, Jennifer, your mother? And, of course, your father. Who were you told was your father?”

“My mother’s name is Antonella Cotton, She is, or rather was, a fashion designer, not a particularly special one, but as it turned out, that didn’t matter. She worked in Milan, which is where she still is, and where I was born and brought up.”

“Why didn’t it matter?”

“She married Pietro Fabrelli, the boss of the fashion house she worked for. You’ve probably heard of him, most people have. He’s my stepfather, and a generous one too.”

“Pietro Fabrelli! Wow! I’m impressed. Have you always known he was your stepfather, rather than your father, I mean?”

“Yes, I have. My mother never tried to hide it from me that my real father was a newly qualified doctor, a brilliant man with a stellar future ahead of him, she said, who was killed in a car crash in Europe along with two friends.”

“Did she say where?”

“Somewhere in the former Yugoslavia. His name was Simon Jefford.”

Henry shook his head. “That name doesn’t mean anything to me, I’m afraid. Have you checked, about him and the crash, I mean. You were a police officer, it should have been easy enough.”

“No, I had no reason to, and anyway there are strict procedural protocols these days for searching the police databases. You can’t just dive in and check up on someone or something if it’s not part of an ongoing investigation. All access is logged and it’s taken very seriously if someone takes a wander around the files.”

“Interesting. So it’s not like they show it in films or on TV?”

“You must be joking. In movies they get information so quickly that it’s there almost before the crime has been committed.”

“You have to take short cuts if you want to squeeze all the action in to an hour or so,” said Henry, smiling.

He paused, his eyes roaming over Jennifer’s face, taking in her features, her hair, the set of her jaw.

“Could you tell me more about your mother? What’s she like? Have you told her about me?”

Jennifer frowned briefly, making a decision. She reached into her pocket, brought out a photo and catching the eye of the nearest guard, raised her eyebrows in question. The guard sauntered over, taking his time.

“May I show this to him, please?” asked Jennifer.

“Who is it?” said the guard.

“My mother.”

“OK, this once, but you shouldn’t bring anything in with you, and Silk, you can only look; you’re not to touch it.”

“Yes, sir,” said Henry automatically, his jaw clenching.

Jennifer dropped her eyes, realising it had been a difficult moment for him.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

She held up the photo for Henry to study.

“Antonia,” he said, nodding. “It had to be, really.”

“Antonia?”

“Antonia Caldmore. At one time, Mrs Antonia Silk, although she always preferred to use her maiden name.”

“She was your wife? When?”

Henry looked back at the photo that was now lying on the table.

“Mid to late eighties. Ours was not a marriage made in heaven. It only lasted three years and even then there were dalliances on both sides. We were too young and both in crazy industries. Antonia was twenty and I was twenty-two. She was very impressionable, thought she was going to make it big in the fashion world, especially once she had made connections in the acting profession. To be honest, I’m not actually sure why we got married; I suppose we thought we loved each other.

“I was doing OK, beginning to get known, but, as for many, the parties and the liberal life were huge distractions. My best mate was Dirk Sanderley, who was really going places. Some people thought I was following in his wake, but that wasn’t actually the case. He was a good actor, but without wishing to brag, I think I was every bit as good. What he did have was the charm and the extra special good looks. Looks are like fashion, you know, they have their time, and Dirk’s were perfect for that time.”

“I’ve seen photos of him,” said Jennifer, “and a couple of the things he was in. He was a bit too moody for my taste.”

Henry was amused. “Prefer them softer, do you, Jennifer? But you’re right, if he were starting out today, he might not cut it quite as easily.”

He sat back, relaxing a little, realising that he was enjoying her company.

“Anyway, I knew Antonia was attracted to him, but he was my best mate and he respected the fact that she was my wife. Or I thought he did.

“At the time, Antonia and I were well on the way to divorcing. There was yet another party, this time in France at a film festival. I had been drowning my sorrows for a while and people were used to seeing me the worse for wear. Ironically, at that party, I had almost nothing to drink and I smoked only one reefer. Nothing else, although the lies put out in the press at the time told a totally different story. Dirk, on the other hand, was out of it. He was high and plastered. And when he was like that, he became aggressive. I stepped in to prevent him having a punch-up with a weedy and obnoxiously whiney American film director — Dirk would have flattened him and probably spent the rest of his life paying off the damages. As it turned out, the rest of his life amounted to little more than an hour, so perhaps I should have left them to it.

“I decided we should go home. We argued but we ended up in the car with me driving. He was impossible, kept on grabbing the wheel, insisting he should drive. I fended him off a few times, but then on a tight corner, he did it again. I was going a bit fast and we drove straight into a tree. I woke up two days later to find that Dirk was dead and I was a pariah. According to the press, who were all over it, I’d killed Britain’s biggest box office talent since Olivier. They crucified me with lie after lie. I didn’t get any work in the UK or the US for several years.

“I only saw Antonia a couple of times after the crash. Initially, I thought she’d come to support me, but she was foul. I was stupid to think otherwise since the divorce was now through. She blamed me completely, really over the top. Now I think about it, she would have known by then that she was pregnant and maybe she thought someone else was the father. I later heard whispers about an affair with Dirk, but I dismissed them as gossip. Perhaps they weren’t, perhaps they were true and she thought he was the father of her unborn child.

“The last time I saw her, she behaved in the same vitriolic way. She still didn’t look pregnant so I had no notion. She informed me that she never wanted to see me again, that she was going to disappear out of my life forever. I thought she was being typically melodramatic, but she was right. It was like she was lifted up and transported to somewhere I had no knowledge of. From that day to this, there hasn’t been a single word. Not that I’m blaming her; I didn’t try either. I had my own problems and it took all my time getting round them. By the time I started to get a bit of work, I’d pretty much forgotten about her.”

Jennifer sat in silence, staring at him, trying to come to terms with the truth.

Finally she took a deep breath. “If that’s all true, then everything my mother told me about my father was made up. There was no Simon Jefford; she invented him as part of the story to exclude you. I don’t know what to say.”

Henry pursed his lips. “I’m sorry to have broken it like that; I had no idea.”

Jennifer was only half listening. “It never really dawned on me before, I must be stupid, but there’s only one photo that I was shown of the person she called Simon Jefford. Now I realise it could have been anyone, an old boyfriend, anyone. It’s strange though, the person you described doesn’t sound a lot like my mother. She was devoted to Pietro and I don’t think there were others. It’s true that she was a party animal and she liked being the centre of attention, but it never occurred to me that her behaviour was more than mild flirting.” She shrugged. “Who knows? Perhaps I’m being naïve. I’d certainly agree that she has a temper, especially when she can’t get her own way.”

Henry leaned forward, elbows on the desk, chin on his hands.

“From what you say, she’s clearly never mentioned me to you. She’s going to be pretty surprised, angry I should think, if you choose to tell her. I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t.”

Jennifer shook her head, a wistful smile on her lips. “I have — told her, I mean. She was neither surprised nor angry. As I expected, she just smiled and talked about the weather. It’s a coping mechanism.”

Henry frowned. “I don’t understand.”

For the next few minutes, Jennifer explained the details of her mother’s rapid decline into dementia and the stage it had now reached.

“Three weeks ago when I flew over to get a buccal swab for her DNA profile, she thought I was a nurse.”

Henry was genuinely shocked. He reached out his hand to touch Jennifer’s arm, a move that surprised her, but she didn’t pull away.

“How terribly sad, Jennifer. I’m so sorry.”

“Yes,” she said, “it is. She’s so lucky to have Pietro; he’s utterly devoted to her, and as I said, before she started to lose it, I think she was to him. He’s put her in the best possible hands; the home she’s in is top notch and super-expensive.

“He’s always been more than generous to me too. Paid for my university education here in England and supported me when I said I wanted to be a police officer. He even set me up with a lovely apartment in Nottingham when I got my first posting in Newark. I didn’t want to live there and it’s not a bad drive. That’s why I was able to chuck in the job without having anything else. I’ve got no mortgage to pay and I’ve got income from stocks that Pietro bought in my name years ago, so I’m under no pressure to rush into something else.”