The Watcher (34 page)

‘He seems pretty emotionless to me. And very focused on his career and appearance. Of course, we don’t know how much he might have tried to help her in the past. Partners can fail with their depressed other halves. They can exhaust their energies and in the end accept the situation, just hoping that things turn out more or less all right.’

Now, while driving, Christy suddenly had another thought. The receptionist at the surgery had rejected the idea that Liza Stanford suffered from depression. And it was clear that the family was swimming in money.

A lawyer’s wife, thought Christy. Stacks of money. Expensive jewellery, designer clothes. The Bentley. Such a woman might disappear for other reasons for weeks on end. To give herself a makeover, maybe. Brazil, for example. Maybe she was sitting in a São Paulo clinic, getting liposuction, tighter eyelids, smoother skin and Botoxed lips. No one liked to talk about that. Her husband could have banned her from discussing this extravagant hobby and the only thing that he could come up with was that she suffered from depression. The harmless possibilities should not be ignored.

At the same time, Christy understood Fielder’s line of thinking. ‘We have two murdered women, and the woman who links them has disappeared without trace. Something fishy there, Christy! I know that crazy coincidences can happen, but then I want proof that it’s just a coincidence. Don’t forget: the Stanfords’ marriage is not a happy one. If a married woman joins a group of
single women
, in order to build up courage to make a decisive step in that direction herself, then their marriage was in serious trouble. We’re in the dark! What if Carla Roberts urged her friend to finally leave the ice-cold lawyer and that really got Stanford’s goat. A divorce could have cost him a lot of money. Money that he might not have. The family lives in a showy house, drives showy cars and likes to show off in general. Isn’t it often the case that such homes are built on wobbly foundations? Maybe they’ve got an enormous mortgage on the house. Maybe the cars were bought on tick and they’re just barely keeping up with payments. A divorce would be the last straw. Stanford might have hated that group his wife went to – especially Carla Roberts.’

‘And what about Anne Westley? And Thomas Ward? Or Gillian Ward?’

Fielder had not had any answers there. Neither had Christy.

Nancy Cox greeted Christy at the door of her small terraced house in Fulham and led her into her living room, where a large pot of aromatic coffee awaited them. She was a delicate woman with friendly eyes and short grey hair, who came over as very warmhearted. Two sleeping cats lay on her sofa. A snowman stood in the garden.

‘My grandchildren were here at the weekend,’ she explained, seeing where Christy’s gaze had landed.

What Nancy had to say about Liza matched what Ellen Curran had already said, while not completely matching the picture the receptionist had drawn of her.

‘Arrogant? I never thought so. Yes, she was always in the latest designer clobber, and the jewellery she wore on one hand was probably worth more than my pension for five years. But that’s not what makes people happy, is it? She seemed sad to me. Worn down.’

‘What did she say about her marriage? She wanted to leave her husband, didn’t she?’

‘You know what? I always thought to myself: she’ll never leave him. She just wants to make sure she could. Hard to say what exactly she had against him. She barely said anything. She and Carla Roberts were both very quiet, while the rest of us never stopped babbling on.’

‘Carla Roberts . . .’

Nancy looked concerned. ‘Do you know now how she was killed? I couldn’t believe it when I read it in the papers. You never think something like that could happen to someone you know. I was gobsmacked!’

‘Although Carla and Liza were quiet, they must have said something now and then?’

Nancy thought for a moment. ‘Yes, sometimes Liza said she was unhappy in her marriage. Her husband only thought about money, prestige, keeping up appearances. He’s often in the papers because of all those charity events. But that doesn’t mean he cares properly for his wife, now does it? I think she felt utterly alone, even when he was home.’

‘Do you know if he accepted the fact that she took part in the group?’

‘I don’t think he knew about it. She had told him vaguely about a self-help group. He probably thought it was pretty silly but harmless.’

‘Did Carla tell her to leave her husband?’

‘I don’t know. Sometimes the two of them talked quietly to each other, but who knows what about.’ Nancy looked guilty. ‘Honestly, I found them both rather boring. The rest of us were having a fun time while those two wet blankets . . . At some point I stopped paying much attention to them. Liza was often absent anyway.’

‘Did she say why?’

‘Social obligations. That wasn’t surprising, given her husband’s position. But it still annoyed Ellen a bit.’

‘There’s no chance that her husband stopped her from coming, is there?’

‘No, of course not. But I’m just repeating what she said. We didn’t dig any deeper.’

‘Did Liza ever mention her son’s GP? Dr Anne Westley?’

‘No. Why?’

Christy did not respond to the question. ‘And what did Carla Roberts talk about?’ she asked. ‘When she talked.’

‘Well, Carla had real problems,’ said Nancy. ‘She was a broken woman. Her husband gone off with a younger woman, the company bankrupt. Carla had lost everything overnight. Their house was repossessed . . . Suddenly she was working in a chemist’s, unpacking boxes and packing shelves, to make ends meet. At least until her retirement, when she became completely isolated. She just could not come to terms with it. And her daughter, who was the only person she had left, had an increasingly separate life.’

‘Yes, the daughter didn’t take much care of her mother.’

‘Well . . .’ Nancy shrugged. ‘That’s young people today. They’re all thinking about their lives, their future. When my husband told me he had another woman and wanted a divorce, I fell into a black hole, believe me. And I didn’t see my children much then. They had their studies, their friends . . . weekends with a bawling mum were not top priority.’

Once again Christy thought she had made the right choice in not going down the traditional route of family and children. She often had the impression that children today were completely selfish.

She finished her coffee, took her card out of her pocket and pushed it across the table to Nancy.

‘Here you go. Call me if you remember anything else. Anything that Carla or Liza said or just mentioned in passing. Anything could be important.’

‘I’ll have a think,’ promised Nancy.

The property was unusually large, even for Hampstead. As John was aware of house prices in various areas of London, he had an idea of what the Stanfords must have coughed up for the place. It was set quite far back from the street and wa difficult to see through the tall old trees, which stood close together and, even at this time of year, without their leaves, formed a rather hermetic wall. John checked quickly to see which way was south and realised that in the summer the trees must swallow up all the sunlight. The house must be constantly in shadow. John wondered how someone could pay out a fortune for a mansion with park-sized grounds and then live in the same gloom they could have bought cheaply with any basement flat. Suddenly he was not particularly surprised that Liza Stanford was said to suffer from depression.

He was about to ring the doorbell, which with a CCTV camera was just beside the wrought-iron gate, when he saw a boy approaching through the snowy garden. The boy was not walking on the carefully cleared drive, but was stomping his way through the snow. He was pulling a sled behind him, a kind of red plastic saucer topped by a small moulded seat. John thought of the wooden sled he himself had had as a child. So much had changed since then.

The boy opened the gate and simultaneously noticed the man who was standing and waiting. He jumped.

‘Hi,’ he said uncertainly.

‘Hi,’ said John. ‘I’m John Burton. And you are . . . ?’

‘Finley. Finley Stanford.’

‘Hello, Finley. I wanted to visit your mother. Is she in?’

‘No.’

‘Do you know when she’ll be back?’

‘No.’

‘Where is she?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know?’

‘She disappeared,’ said Finley.

John looked at him with a pretence of surprise. ‘Disappeared? When did she disappear?’

‘On the fifteenth of November. It was a Sunday.’

‘Ah. So she just packed her things, left and didn’t come back? Or what?’

‘No. Mum and I had been watching TV that Sunday afternoon. She drank tea and I drank hot chocolate. And we ate biscuits.’

‘Just you and your mum? Not your dad?’

‘He was in his study. He had work to do.’

‘Got it. And then?’

‘Dad left because he had to meet someone for supper. A client. My dad’s a lawyer.’

‘I know.’

‘Mum and I didn’t have supper, because we were still full. I played a bit on my computer. At nine I had to go to bed.’ Finley suddenly stopped and looked suspiciously at John. ‘Why do you want to know?’

‘I know your mum well. I need to talk to her urgently, so it’s important for me to find out what happened.’

‘Well,’ said Finley. ‘I don’t know that either. The next morning Dad woke me and said that Mum had left in the night, but that she would be coming back. I just went to school like normal. I was really hoping she would be there when I got home from school, but . . .’ He shrugged.

John looked closely at him. The boy was pale and delicately boned. He was obviously worried about his mother, but not mentally unstable. He seemed calm, maybe even a bit too calm. In his time as a coach, John had worked with many children from difficult families and he had noticed sometimes that children from particularly hopeless situations conveyed a strange peacefulness, which was actually an expression of their complete withdrawal from everyone else. Some children from intact families were much more noticeable in their behaviour than some of those where you later heard that the mother drank and the stepfather was violent. John had found that children whose behaviour was conspicuously inconspicuous could well come from a home that was an unmitigated disaster.

He wondered whether he would have characterised Finley as conspicuously inconspicuous if he had been completely unprejudiced.

‘What school do you go to?’ he asked.

‘William Ellis School. In Highgate.’

‘Do you like school? Do you have many friends?’

The boy thought about the question briefly. ‘Yes, it’s OK there. I don’t have many friends. But I like to be on my own.’

‘I understand,’ said John. He carried on from where he had left off. ‘Has that happened before? Your mum just disappearing and no one knowing where she’s gone?’

‘Once. About two years ago. But then she came back ten days later.’

So Mrs Stanford’s disappearance was not as normal as Stanford had represented it to Fielder. She had disappeared a single time and for a limited amount of time. This time she had been gone since 15 November. Without a trace. It was now 11 January. Almost two months had passed.

‘The police asked about her too,’ said Finley. ‘On Friday. An inspector from Scotland Yard was here. But you’re not from the police, are you?’

‘No, Finley. I’m not from the police.’

‘So why all these questions?’ said a sharp voice from behind him. John turned around. Without him noticing, a man had walked over from the house. Jeans, jumper, carefully combed grey hair. Logan Stanford.

‘Mr Stanford?’ asked John.

‘What do you want?’ asked Stanford without introducing himself. ‘What do you have to talk about with my son?’

‘He knows Mum,’ said Finley. ‘He has to talk to her.’

‘Oh, right? What about?’

‘That’s private,’ said John.

‘Who are you?’ asked Stanford. His voice was calm.

‘John Burton.’

Stanford looked at him. John could imagine him in court. He did not look particularly friendly or unfriendly. Very objective. Very much in control of himself. It was impossible to see what was going on inside. He was completely impenetrable.

John decided to be direct with him.

‘Dr Stanford, the police came here on Friday. About your wife. You know why.’

‘Who are you?’ repeated Stanford.

‘Two women have been killed. And a man. The man’s death doesn’t seem to have been planned. The murderer’s target was his wife. A coincidence saved her but it’s possible she’s still in great danger. Do you want to know who I am? I’m a very close friend of that woman. I care for her. I want her to be safe.’

‘I understand. But I can’t help you.’

‘I suppose Detective Inspector Fielder explained the circumstances to you. You will know why the police wanted to see your wife. She’s the only link that has yet been found between the two dead women. It’s really important that I speak to her.’

‘I don’t know where she is.’

‘And you find that normal? Not to know anything about your wife’s whereabouts for two months?’

Stanford shrugged. ‘What I find normal is my business, Mr Burton.’

‘Your wife suffers from deep depression, am I right?’

‘Mr Burton . . .’

‘At least that is what you told the police.’

‘You’ve hit the nail on the head, Mr Burton. I only talk to the police. Not some complete stranger who intercepts my son at the garden gate and interrogates him with the sole excuse that he is a friend of the wife of a murder victim. Our conversation is over.’

The two men looked at each other for a moment in silence. John understood he would not get anywhere with Stanford right now. He was not going to waver, could not be provoked, certainly would not let slip some unguarded comment. He would not get a sliver of a lead from him.

‘Goodbye, Mr Stanford,’ he said.

‘Goodbye,’ replied Stanford. He put his arm around his son’s shoulders.

John turned, crossed the street and got into his car, which he had parked on the other side of the road. He was sure that Stanford would note down his number and immediately check whether John had given his real name. He would probably try to find out more about him.