The Unquiet Dead (33 page)

‘Where were her parents?’

‘Where they usually were: away on business.’

‘And Charlotte?’

‘Allowed to watch, as usual. Detective, if I could give any piece of helpful advice, it would be this: keep away from that family. You could go mad watching them behave in a way that is inconceivable to you or I. Those two little girls didn’t have a hope in hell.’

‘I met Charlotte,’ said Jessie. ‘Very attractive, though I gather this was not always the case.’

‘It depends on what you are judging a child by,’ he said sourly. ‘She was a pocket battleship and, as far as I was concerned, just as attractive as her sister. Unfortunately, no one bothered getting to know her. Perhaps if they had, she wouldn’t have resorted to such extreme measures.’

‘Meaning?’

‘She’s had more than a little help from a surgeon, I believe. Uncanny, don’t you think, how much she now resembles Nancy?’

‘So she emulated her sister?’

‘She revered and resented her in equal measures. Who could blame her? She saw Nancy as the reason no one loved her. But it wasn’t her fault that she resented her sister. They all fluttered around Nancy. Perfection can be a curse. Charlotte was very bright – brighter than Nancy, but sadly no one
picked up on that. No one except Nancy, that is. Whatever Charlotte may have thought, Nancy adored her little sister. Adored her. I’m afraid Charlotte didn’t feel the same way. I take it the family couldn’t tell you where she was?’

‘They told me she was skiing.’

‘Most unlikely,’ said the doctor. ‘Nancy was severely overweight by the time she was twelve and clinically obese at eighteen. They wouldn’t listen to me; they thought it was a disorder, binge eating – anorexia in reverse. I think she was bulking up to protect herself. It didn’t work; the larger she got, the smaller she seemed to become and the more terrified.’

‘Do you know where she might be?’

‘I don’t. I wish I did.’

‘Aren’t you still in contact with her? As a doctor.’

‘I am a paediatrician, not a GP,’ he said by way of explanation. ‘I wanted to save her. I wanted to save them both. But I couldn’t. The court case was too much for Nancy, it was disgraceful what they made her do. And all the while Charlotte sat on the sidelines and looked on while the world watched her sister. It didn’t matter that Nancy hated it. It didn’t matter that Nancy hadn’t asked for it. Once again Nancy was the focus of attention. It would have been so much easier if the police had never found Malcolm Hoare. Mr Scott-Somers just wanted Nancy back, he didn’t give a monkey’s about the money. That’s about the only thing I admire him for.’

‘So, not an admirable man?’

‘Maybe an admirable man, but not an admirable parent. He was very distant from the girls, especially after the court case collapsed and Nancy started to put on weight. I can see that any parent would blame themselves, but shying away from the children wasn’t the answer. And I’m not sure why Mrs Scott-Somers had to go with him on
every
business trip. After Clemy disappeared, there was such a high turnover of staff that I rarely saw the same one twice. There was no constant in those girls’ lives.’

‘Clemy?’

‘Sorry, Clementine Colbert – the nanny. She’d been with them for three years or more before the kidnapping, that’s why it was so hard to understand. She would never have left Nancy on the street alone to go looking for Charlotte. With the collapse of the trial went the truth, but I for one always believed Charlotte when she said the nanny lost them and a man took Nancy, despite what her parents thought. For one thing, if Charlotte had run off, how could she have reported the kidnapping?’

Jessie couldn’t answer that question because she had none of the information, none of the facts, none of the witness statements, none of interviews. All of it remained closed to her unless the seal of the kidnapper’s demands could open them, and she wouldn’t know that until Burrows returned from the lab. Until then, everything had to be done on the QT. She thanked the doctor and replaced the
phone. Tomorrow she’d return to the station and work a normal day following up the Romano story. No one must know of her suspicions. She didn’t want to give the Scott-Somers the chance to build up their barricades.

Jessie heard the key in the lock and Bill stomping down the hallway. The telly in the sitting room went on. Jessie put her papers away and went to join him.

‘Hey, Jess! Come and watch – Amanda’s got the lead story!’

‘Who?’

‘Amanda! We’ve met up a couple of times.’

‘You’re a dark horse, Bill Driver. And a weird one at that.’

‘Quick, she’s on.’

‘Let me get a glass of wine first,’ said Jessie, retreating to the kitchen.

Jessie’s home phone started to ring.

‘Leave it!’ shouted Bill.

Jessie poured out the wine as the pager in her jacket pocket beeped to life. She ignored that as well.

‘Quick, you’re missing it! Jesus, she looks great.’

‘Hang on, I just want to turn my mobile off,’ she replied, fearing the persistent caller, whoever it was. She scooped it out of her bag, walked back into the sitting room and saw what Bill was riveted to. Amanda Hornby, all leggy and blonde, standing outside an elegant townhouse. Jessie cocked her head to one side.

‘… That’s right, the family are refusing to comment and as yet no one has been able to track down the missing heiress.’

Jessie’s phone twitched in her hand. Her brain was operating a few seconds behind Greenwich Meantime. She glanced down.

‘… So now the big question is: was the body found in Marshall Street Baths that of Malcolm Hoare? And, if so, has he been doing some haunting …?’

DCI Moore. Private line.

‘Isn’t that your case?’ said Bill, leaning back over the sofa.

‘Oh my God,’ said Jessie, staring back at the TV screen. ‘What the hell have you done?’

‘… Leading the case is DI Jessie Driver, pictured here a few days ago leaving a London hotel in the early hours of the morning with the musician P. J. Dean. No stranger to the spotlight, Driver first made the headlines when …’

‘I’m going to fucking kill you,’ said Jessie, seething.

‘… I am reliably informed by someone close to this very individual detective that she is using a retired exorcist to help her determine who the remains in the Marshall Street Baths belong to …’

Bill looked pleadingly at Jessie. ‘She’s just doing her job.’

‘I mean you, you fucking idiot! Someone close!
Close
, Bill! Who the fuck do you think that is!’
Her landline started to ring again. So did her mobile. ‘Have you got a mobile yet?’

‘… strange goings on have beset development plans for this historic building …’

Bill scrambled in his pocket and threw her a small blue Nokia phone. Jessie dialled a number from memory.

‘You brought her back here, didn’t you?’

Bill ran his hands through his hair.

‘Didn’t you!’

Eventually the call went through.

‘Are you watching this?’ Jessie continued to stare at Amanda Hornby’s pert mouth spouting shit about her life. ‘I’m finished if you can’t pull something miraculous out of the bag.’

‘How much time have you got?’

Jessie’s doorbell rang.

‘None.’

‘I didn’t leak the story,’ said Jessie as soon as the lift doors opened. Well, not intentionally, anyhow.

‘Then what was it doing splashed all over Channel Five news?’ asked Moore in an arch voice.

‘I dread to think,’ said Jessie, which was at least an honest response. ‘It wasn’t in my interest for the story to go public because I didn’t know all the facts.’

‘I ordered you not to go looking for the facts.’

‘We’re talking about a murder.’

‘You
think
we are.’

Jessie pulled a face. ‘You should have more faith in me.’

‘That works both ways, Detective. When I said this came from the top, I meant from the top. The Deputy Commissioner is in there. He had a taxiing plane return to the gate in order to get here this evening. This is serious. Mr Scott-Somers gave a lot of money to the government during his lifetime and his friends are still prepared to go to the aid of his very wealthy widow.’

‘And that buys the Scott-Somers their get-out-of-jail card?’

‘No. But it should buy them the guarantee of not being dragged through the press again.’

‘They weren’t dragged through the first time; I’ve looked. It was sat on then, it’s being sat on now.’

‘They are very private people.’

‘Private or afraid?’

‘I am hoping you can tell me. In fact, I would say your career depends on it.’

Jessie could not bring herself to tell Moore that she didn’t have absolute confirmation that the dead man was Malcolm Hoare. But her silence spoke volumes.

Moore shook her head with disappointment. ‘Then I cannot support you. My hands are tied, Jessie,’ she said.

‘Please, unpick the knot. I need to buy a little time.’

‘How long?’

Burrows’ mate at the Forensic Science Service hadn’t been able to say. This procedure usually took months, not days – and certainly not hours, which was all they had.

‘Not long,’ she prayed.

They were all there. Their weapons were loaded, raised and pointing at her. Jessie faced the firing squad alone with only one hope of reprieve and she didn’t know how far away it was.

The Deputy Commissioner’s office was a spacious room with two leather sofas, two armchairs and a low oblong glass coffee table. Refreshments stood neatly in the centre of the table: a flask of coffee and a decanter of whisky. Whisky seemed to be the preferred option that evening. Also in attendance were Mrs Scott-Somers, her daughter Charlotte, their respective lawyers and
their
assistants, and a man in a suit whom she did not recognise. It turned out he was a lawsuit specialist employed by the Metropolitan Police in crises like this. Presently he was here in a mediating role. If that were true, thought Jessie, shouldn’t he have heard her side of the story prior to entering the room?

Christina Scott-Somers was thin like her daughter. Whereas on Charlotte it looked vulnerable, on Christina it looked pinched. The angles on her face were sharp, her eyebrows were plucked into a razor-thin arch and her chin was set a fraction higher than was comfortable. Condescension seethed out of every pore. She wore her ebony hair swept back in a chignon held fast with an ivory pin. Her wardrobe was cool, understated wealth. A black cashmere jersey, dark grey slacks and patent leather pumps. Her only jewels were a large engagement ring and a pearl choker. Mrs Scott-Somers looked every inch the respectable, grieving widow, though Jessie suspected that anything resembling sympathy would be knocked away with a single barbed comment. Jessie tried an apology instead, but that too was
swiftly brushed aside. Mrs Scott-Somers didn’t want an apology, she wanted an explanation. And so the tap dance began.

‘Mrs Scott-Somers, when your daughter was kidnapped –’

‘Not me. I wasn’t kidnapped.’

Pacing the back of the room, looking minuscule in knee-high boots and a floral print dress, was Charlotte. She had one of the Deputy Commissioner’s heavy-base lead-crystal tumblers in her hand. It looked too big for someone so slight. Jessie was reminded of a child again, picking up an adult object and lurching under the weight of it.

‘Just for the record,’ she said, before raising the glass to her lips.

‘Please, Charlotte, for once, let’s not make this about you.’

Jessie remembered Dr Turnball’s words: if Charlotte was guilty of attention seeking, surely it was because this had never been about her. Jessie turned back to Mrs Scott-Somers. ‘Malcolm Hoare was very careful not to leave any fingerprints on the ransom letter, but he didn’t think twice before licking the envelope.’
Someone
had licked the envelope – Burrows’ forensics man had been able to confirm that much. ‘In 1976 the police lacked the technology to extract DNA from the gum on the back of an envelope …’ She paused for effect. ‘We now have that technology.’ Of course, having the technology and finding a technician willing to set aside everything else to rush through a series of
tests that would normally take weeks were two different things. Once again Jessie prayed for the text message to wing its way to her across the ether.

‘Indeed, Detective. I too have watched
CSI
, but what has this breakthrough in forensic science got to do with my family?’

The tap dance continued.

‘A match between that sample of DNA and the body we found in the Marshall Street Baths would prove that the dead man was Malcolm Hoare.’

‘So?’

‘He never paid for his crime.’

‘A matter for the police force to obsess over, Detective. My husband was never interested in catching the man, he only wanted Nancy home.’

Jessie found the sweetness in her voice sickly. She wasn’t the only one. Charlotte reached out for the decanter. ‘His precious little princess,’ she said in a barely audible whisper. Everyone else pretended not to notice.