Kind of Cruel (35 page)

Having said goodbye to Ursula Shearer and pushed a sandwich down his throat that he’d barely tasted, Sam’s next task was to drive to Rawndesley and interview Ritchie Baker, brother of Amber Hewerdine’s sister-in-law, Jo. Sam didn’t know why this loosely related man should be of particular interest, but Simon had asked him to speak to Baker, ask him about last night, get a sense of what he was like as a person. Oh, and assess the state of his health insofar as that was possible, given Sam’s lack of medical qualifications. That part, the least achievable of the stated aims, had been thrown in at the end, almost as an afterthought. ‘I’ll tackle the rest of the clan myself,’ Simon had said grimly, and Sam hadn’t been able to help picturing Simon, with a snarl on his face similar to the one that often resided there, knocking one family member after another to the ground.

Ought he to worry about following orders from Simon when, as skipper, he was the one who was supposed to manage workloads and assign tasks? If Simon thought Ritchie Baker ought to be interviewed, he was likely to be right. Sam was determined not to let Proust’s continual undermining of him do any more damage to his confidence than it had already. Part of being a good team leader was recognising your team members’ strengths and giving them the opportunity to excel. That was what Sam’s wife Kate thought, anyway; she’d been horrified to hear that Sam had been on the point of resigning when he’d believed Simon and Gibbs would be going. ‘You know, in an emergency, you could live without Simon Waterhouse,’ she’d said.

Sam heard a female voice call out his name as he approached his car in the car park. He turned and saw Olivia Zailer, Charlie’s sister. Sam hadn’t recognised her at first. She’d lost weight. The coat she was wearing had the most sticky-out cuffs and collar Sam had ever seen. Her shiny pink lipstick was almost fluorescent; her hair, piled in a sort of tower on her head, was more shades of blonde than Sam would have believed possible. Not a lot of people who turned up at the nick looked like this, as if they might be expecting the arrival of a film crew at any moment. ‘Have you got time for a quick chat?’ Olivia asked.

‘I haven’t really. Sorry.’

‘Less than a minute, less than thirty seconds. Promise, promise!’ She beamed encouragement at him. What was she doing sleeping with Chris Gibbs? Sam decided now wasn’t the time for him to be wondering about the unlikeliness of them as a couple; it might show on his face.

‘Quickly, then,’ he said.

‘Whoever set fire to Sharon Lendrim’s house . . .’

‘Whoa, hang on a second. I can’t talk to you about that, Olivia. Neither should Gibbs be talking—’

‘He hasn’t said a word to Debbie. She knows nothing.’

Was Sam supposed to find this reassuring?

‘Oh, come on, Sam! Are you going to stand there should-and-shouldn’ting me, or do you want to hear what I’ve got to say?’

It was clear what Sam needed to do in order to fulfil his professional obligations: end this conversation and tell Proust that Gibbs had breached confidentiality. What was the point? Proust already knew that Simon had shared privileged information with Charlie; he knew that Gibbs had acted without authorisation when he’d brought Amber Hewerdine in on Simon’s say-so alone. If Sam told him about yet another of Gibbs’ transgressions, would it make any difference to anything? Would Gibbs be punished? The longer Sam worked for the police, the more convinced he became that punishment did nobody any good, neither the authority that meted it out nor its recipient.

‘I’d prefer to hear it from Gibbs, whatever it is,’ he told Olivia. ‘And if he hasn’t got the sense not to talk to you about work, you should have the sense to stop him when he starts. I don’t talk to Kate about cases I’m working on. Ever.’

‘I haven’t told Gibbs yet.’ Olivia grinned as if she was describing an endearing feature of their courtship. ‘I wanted to try it out on someone else first. I tried to talk to Charlie about it . . .’

‘Another person whose case it isn’t,’ Sam pointed out.

‘. . . but she didn’t want to know, so I thought, “Who’s
reasonable
? Who can see beyond the rules and the oughts and . . .” ’

‘All right, let’s hear it.’ He was going to cave in eventually; might as well save himself some time.

‘Whoever led Sharon Lendrim’s two children out of the house before they set fire to it was wearing a fireman’s uniform, right?’

‘I agreed to listen,’ said Sam. ‘I didn’t agree to tell you anything.’

Olivia rolled her eyes. ‘I
know
they were dressed as a fireman. I also know that Kat Allen was in a few films when she was a kid. Two questions: does anyone know where the fireman’s uniform came from? And have you found a link between Kat Allen and Sharon Lendrim?’

Sam couldn’t speak. Her audacity had rendered him mute. There was a reason, he thought, why Olivia Zailer wasn’t a detective. Even if Sharon Lendrim and Kat Allen had been killed by the same person, there was no basis for thinking there must be another connection between them. If you’re a killer and two people at different points in your life incite your murderous rage, and you kill them both, you might be the only thing linking one of them to the other; chances are you will be. Sam didn’t say any of this. Nor did he tell Olivia that, no, he didn’t know where the fireman’s uniform had come from and neither did Ursula Shearer. Sam had listened incredulously to Ursula’s description of her team’s attempts to trace the uniform. They had trawled the Culver Valley thoroughly, but had looked no further, focusing nearly all of their investigative time and energy on trying to prove that Terry Bond wasn’t as innocent as he appeared to be. Sam could see no basis for assuming that Sharon Lendrim’s killer must have been local, or that he or she must have sourced the fireman’s accessories locally. He had tried not to feel superior when it had occurred to him that Ursula Shearer had never lived anywhere but Rawndesley.

‘Goodbye, Olivia,’ he said firmly, unlocking his car and opening the door. It was freezing cold, apart from anything else.

‘Hang on, I haven’t finished.’ She leaned forward, grabbed his arm. ‘As an adult, Katharine Allen was a primary school teacher. As a child, she was an actress.’

‘What are you playing at?’ Something had sprung up in Sam that he didn’t stand a chance of pushing down. He didn’t want to, not this time. ‘Who do you think you are? Grabbing hold of me, like I’m some kind of . . . None of this is any of your business, I can’t discuss it with you, and if you can’t see that, if you can’t see or don’t care that you’re putting me in a difficult position . . . I’m supposed to be grateful that
Debbie
doesn’t know? What planet are you on? Has it occurred to you that you might be putting two murder investigations in serious jeopardy by carrying on the way you are?’ What was happening here?
I don’t yell
, Sam thought.
Ever
. What had he said? How could she already be crying? Dread swelled inside him. Who had heard? Someone could easily have been eavesdropping on his outburst. Gibbs, Simon, Proust – they were the ones Sam should be yelling at. Not Charlie Zailer’s sister.

She had already started to walk away. Sam stared after her, rooted to the spot by a gut-curdling heaviness. He recognised it as guilt wound around with the remnants of his rage.

Olivia turned before she reached the road, and again Sam was shocked by the crying. From the state of her eyes, she had done considerably more of it than he’d have thought possible between her storming off a few seconds ago and now. How much worse was it to be yelled at by someone who was known for his politeness?

Sam knew he’d cocked up. It wasn’t fair to lull people into a false sense of security by seeming oh-so-mild-and-approachable, and then lose his temper. ‘Olivia, come back,’ he called out. Hadn’t she nearly died of cancer when she was younger?

‘No, I won’t come back! I’ll
never
come back!’ Olivia shouted at him across the car park. A group of young uniformed PCs, on their way out of the building, did their best to act naturally. Sam wished he was invisible. Did she have to make it sound like a bitter lover’s tiff? This wasn’t an I’ll-never-come-back situation. Only seconds ago, Sam had been certain it was a Stop-accosting-me-outside-the-nick-like-a-nutter situation.

‘I’m telling you nothing. Nothing! You shouldn’t need me to tell you anyway. Katharine Allen was a child actress who became a primary school teacher. You’re the big, important detective. You should be able to work it out for yourself.’ She marched away down the street on her impossibly high heels.

Sam got himself into his car and out of sight as quickly as he could. What were the chances of his being able to concentrate on work now?
Zero
. He hoped Ritchie Baker wouldn’t mind repeating his answers several times.
Katharine Allen was a child actress. Now she’s a primary school teacher
.

What the hell could that mean that Sam didn’t already know?

At last, an accusation! If I sound pleased, it’s because I am. Accusations are always good news from a therapist’s point of view. We take it as a sign that we’ve touched on a psychic nerve; we’re getting too close to a painful source of fear, guilt or shame. Either that or a patient has a legitimate grievance against us. Let’s try to work out which this is.

Amber’s accusation is that I’m proceeding as if Kirsty is of no account, talking as if Jo, Hilary and Ritchie were the only people in that Christmas Eve scene who mattered; Kirsty might as well have been a cushion, from the way I told it. It’s worth bearing in mind that Amber had a similar accusation levelled at her by Jo, when Jo decided that Amber’s failure to ask Kirsty questions she couldn’t possibly answer was remiss and discriminatory. A ridiculous charge, and there was a fair amount of self-conscious absurdity in Amber’s tone when she made her charge against me, as well as quite a lot of anger. She deliberately sent me a confusing signal.

As a joke? A parody of Jo’s unreasonableness? Or does she really believe that my failure to mention Kirsty as one of the four participants in what she calls ‘the Christmas Eve conspiracy’ is proof that I am prejudiced against disabled people?

From everything I’ve been told about her, my guess is that Kirsty has a mental age of no more than two. Perhaps younger, since two-year-olds can usually speak a little. They can express their own emotions and pick up on the emotional states of others. Kirsty cannot speak at all, or respond to what is said to her.

I don’t know. I’m no expert on mental disability, but I’d have thought it was fairly safe to assume that Kirsty didn’t understand anything of the private conversation that took place on Christmas Eve after everyone else had gone to bed, and therefore she cannot really be said to have been party to it, though she was physically present. This doesn’t make her a cushion; it’s simply a realistic assessment of her likely involvement.

However, in one sense, Amber’s right: because Kirsty is mentally handicapped and cannot be in possession of any information that might help us here, I discounted her. I haven’t focused on her in the same way that I’ve focused on all the other characters in the Little Orchard drama. Now that she’s been placed right in front of my nose, so to speak, I’m starting to have all kinds of interesting ideas about her. You’ve talked about her a lot, Amber – constant references to her. I didn’t notice. Prejudiced as I am, I assumed a mentally handicapped woman couldn’t be important.

At Little Orchard, William told you he found Kirsty scary and asked you not to tell Jo. To cheer him up, you suggested a game: hunt the secret key. The study’s locked door annoyed you. I’m guessing that long before you found the key and had the big row about whether to use it or not, you and Jo discussed the locked room, maybe when you all first arrived and were looking round the house for the first time. You made a joke, perhaps, about wanting to get into the study and have a nosey, and Jo reproached you. Yes? Okay, and then on Boxing Day, after the disappearance and reappearance of Jo, Neil and the boys, after Jo had invoked the need to respect privacy once again – hers, this time – you’d had enough. Stuff privacy; you wanted answers. I can completely understand why you were determined to find that key, and how important it must have been to you. Which is why I wonder: why bring William into it? Five-year-old boys aren’t known for their unobtrusiveness, or for their discretion. With William involved, Jo was more likely to find out what you were up to and try to stop you.

You’re not that selfish, though. You knew the hide-and-seek opportunity would be huge fun for William and so you took the risk. Not because you wanted to cheer him up, as you claimed, or not only because of that. You also wanted to reward him for admitting to being scared of Kirsty.

You were very keen to tell me, last time we met, about Dinah’s take on Kirsty: that it’s impossible to tell if she’s nice or horrible. You explained to Dinah that those considerations don’t apply when a person is as severely disabled as Kirsty is, but Dinah wasn’t convinced. She said that, since Kirsty can’t speak, nobody can prove that she isn’t the nicest or nastiest person in the world. Dinah felt justified in being suspicious of Kirsty, and remaining so.

You said twice if not three times that you could have been much firmer with Dinah than you were and pointed out to her that what she was saying was inaccurate, that it would be unfair of her to hold that view about a helpless, harmless woman. Why didn’t you say any of that? Don’t you think it’s important to instil compassionate beliefs in children and correct their misunderstandings?