The Wrong Mother (14 page)

‘Slashing your wrists hurts,’ said Sellers. ‘Maybe she wanted to dull her own pain. There was more GHB in Lucy’s urine than in her mother’s, a lot more. It looks as if Geraldine only took a bit, to take the edge off her fear, probably—make everything a bit hazy around the edges. And that’s exactly what happens, that’s what a small dose of GHB does.’

‘We know that but how did she?’ Simon fired back at him. ‘What, did she type “date-rape drugs” into Google and take it from there? I can’t see it. How would she know how much to take?’

‘There’s no point speculating,’ said Proust briskly. ‘The computer chaps will tell us what Geraldine Bretherick did and didn’t do with her laptop.’

‘We also need them to tell us when that diary file was first opened,’ said Simon. ‘If it was created on the day she died, for example. In which case the dates at the top of the entries are fake.’

‘All this we shall find out in due course.’ Proust picked up his empty ‘World’s Greatest Grandad’ mug, dropped his mobile phone into it and glanced towards his office. He’d had enough. ‘What about Mr Bretherick’s missing suit, Sergeant?’

‘That’s my action,’ Sellers told him. ‘Lucky me—all the dry-cleaners within a thirty-mile radius of Corn Mill House.’

‘Charity shops as well,’ Kombothekra reminded him. ‘My wife sometimes takes my clothes and gives them to charity without telling me.’

‘Mine used to, until I made my displeasure known,’ said Proust. ‘Perfectly good jumpers she used to give away.’

‘And if we find out the suit wasn’t given to any dry-cleaner or charity shop? What then?’ asked Simon.

Proust sighed. ‘Then we’ll have an unsolved mystery of a missing suit. I hope you can hear how
Secret Seven
that sounds. The evidence will still point to Geraldine Bretherick being responsible for her own death and her daughter’s. I don’t like it any more than you do, but there’s not a lot I can do. We’re only following up the Oswald Mosley suit angle because it’s important to Mr Bretherick. Sorry if that leaves you feeling let down, Waterhouse.’ Proust took his empty mug and phone and headed for the small cubicle in the corner of the room, three sides of which were glass from waist height upwards. It looked like the lifts you sometimes saw on the outsides of buildings. The inspector went in, slamming the door behind him.

To avoid the sympathy in Kombothekra’s eyes, Simon turned to the whiteboard. He knew the wording of the Brethericks’ ten-year-anniversary cards by heart, but not Geraldine’s suicide note. There was something insubstantial about it, too slippery for his mind to latch on to. He read it again:

Superimposed over Geraldine’s words in Simon’s mind were the words of her friend, Cordy O’Hara:
Geraldine was always planning, arranging, whipping out her diary. I saw her less than a week before she died and she was trying to persuade me and Oonagh to go to EuroDisney with her and Lucy next half-term.

Simon turned his back on Kombothekra, Sellers and Gibbs and headed for the Snowman’s cubicle. He hadn’t finished with him yet.

 

Proust looked up and smiled when Simon appeared in his office, as if he’d invited him. ‘Tell me something, Waterhouse,’ he said. ‘What do you make of DS Kombothekra? How are you finding working with him?’

‘He’s a good colleague. Fine.’

‘He’s replaced Sergeant Zailer and you can hardly bring yourself to look at him.’ Proust trumped Simon’s lie with the truth. ‘Kombothekra’s a good skipper.’

‘I know.’

‘Things change. You have to adjust.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You have to adjust,’ Proust repeated solemnly, examining his fingernails.

‘Have you ever heard of anyone writing their diary straight on to a computer? The file wasn’t even password-protected.’

‘Have you ever heard of anyone putting Tabasco sauce on spaghetti bolognese?’ Proust countered amicably.

‘No.’

‘My son-in-law does it.’

What could Simon say to that? ‘Really?’

‘I’m not trying to encourage you to take an interest in my son-in-law’s eating habits, Waterhouse. I’m making the point that whether you’ve heard of something or not heard of it is irrelevant.’

‘I know, sir, but—’

‘We’re living in the technological age. People do all sorts of things on their computers.’

Simon lowered himself into the only free chair. ‘People who kill themselves leave suicide notes. Or sometimes they don’t,’ he said. ‘They don’t leave suicide notes
and
diary entries to ram the point home. It’s overkill.’

‘I think you’ve hit upon the perfect word there, Waterhouse, to describe Geraldine Bretherick’s actions: overkill.’

‘The note and the diary are . . . they’re different voices,’ said Simon, frustrated. ‘The person who wrote the note doesn’t want to hurt anyone, wants to be forgiven. The diary-writer doesn’t care who gets hurt. We know the note’s Geraldine’s handwriting. I say that means she definitely didn’t write the nine diary entries.’

‘If you mention William Markes, Waterhouse . . .’

‘The voice in the diary is analytical, trying to understand and describe the experience of day-to-day misery as accurately as possible. Whereas the note—it’s just one platitude after another, the feeble voice of a feeble mind.’

Proust stroked his chin for a while. ‘So why didn’t that occur to your man William Markes?’ he asked eventually. ‘He’s faking Geraldine Bretherick’s diary—why didn’t he take the trouble to get the tone right? Is he also feeble-minded?’

‘Tone of voice is a subtle thing,’ said Simon. ‘Some people wouldn’t notice.’
Like Kombothekra. And Sellers and Gibbs.
‘There’s no mention of suicide in the suicide note, sir. Or of killing Lucy. And it’s not addressed to anyone. Wouldn’t she have written, “Dear Mark”?’

‘Don’t be dense, Waterhouse. How many times have you been called out to a body swinging from a beam? When I was a PC it used to happen every now and then. Some poor blighter who couldn’t take it any more. I’ve read my fair share of suicide notes and I’ve yet to read one that says, “I’m sorry I’m about to slit my wrists, please forgive me for committing suicide.” People tend to skirt round the gruesome details. They talk metaphorically about what they’re doing. As for “Dear Mark”—come on!’

‘What?’

‘She wrote the note to the world she was leaving behind, not only her husband. Her mother, her friends . . . Writing “Dear Mark” would have made it too hard, too specific—she’d have had to picture him alone, bereft . . .’ Proust frowned, waiting for Simon’s response. ‘Besides, there’s something you haven’t thought of: if William Markes was the killer, why would he allow us to find his name on the computer, plain as day? He wouldn’t.’

‘I don’t understand you, Waterhouse. Why did you change your mind?’

‘Sir, I’ve never believed that Geraldine Bretherick—’

‘One minute Charlie Zailer’s the last person you’re interested in, the next you’re staring after her with your tongue hanging out every time she passes you in the corridor. What changed?’

Simon stared at the grey ribbed carpet, resenting the ambush. ‘Why did Geraldine Bretherick slit her wrists?’ he said stubbornly. ‘She had the GHB she’d bought. On the Internet. She’d given Lucy enough to make her pass out, so that she could drown her in a bath full of water without any fuss. Why not do the same when it came to killing herself?’

‘What if she botched it?’ said the Snowman. ‘Miscalculated, and woke up a few hours later—wet, naked and groggy—to a distraught husband and a dead daughter? I think you’d agree that Geraldine Bretherick’s wrists were slashed by someone whose intention was unambiguous. They cut downwards, not across. What do we say?’

‘But—’

‘No, Waterhouse. What do we
say
? Alliterate for me.’

‘Across for attention, down for death,’ Simon recited, feeling like the biggest idiot in the world. As he spoke, Proust pretended to be a conductor, waving an imaginary stick with one hand.
Twat.

Simon was about to leave when he realised what the Snowman had said: ‘they’, not ‘she’. ‘You agree with me,’ he said, feeling light-headed. ‘You also don’t think she did it, but you don’t want to say so in case you turn out to be wrong. You don’t want things to get sticky between you and your shiny new sergeant. And you don’t need to take that risk’—he leaned on the desk—‘because you’ve got me. I’m a convenient mouthpiece.’

‘Convenient? You?’ Proust laughed, flicking through the papers on his desk. ‘I think you’ve got the wrong man, Waterhouse. ’

Simon thought back over the previous hour: his own sullenness. His swearing, which had gone unremarked upon. He thought about the amount of time he’d been allowed in which to air his allegedly foolish theories, and about Colin Sellers traipsing round every dry-cleaner’s within a thirty-mile radius of Corn Mill House . . .

‘You agree with me,’ he said again with more certainty. ‘And you know me: the more you heap on the mockery, the more you let them all talk shit out there, the harder I’ll try to prove you all wrong. Or rather, to prove
you
right. How’ve I been doing so far?’

‘Waterhouse, you know I never swear, don’t you?’

Simon nodded.

‘Waterhouse, get the fuck out of my office.’

 

 

Corn Mill House has all the grandeur, character and atmosphere that my flat lacks. I can’t decide if it’s beautiful or forbidding. It looks a little like the home of a witch, made of pale grey ginger-bread, the kind one might stumble across in a forest clearing in the early morning mist or evening twilight.

Some of the small panes of glass in the leaded windows have cracks in them. The building is large, arts and crafts style, and looks from the outside as if it hasn’t been touched since the early 1900s. It makes me think of an old jewel that needs dusting. Whoever built it cared enough to position it perfectly, at the top of one steep side of Blantyre Moor. From where I’m standing I can see right across the Culver Valley. The house must once have been opulent. Now it looks as if it’s hiding its face in the greenery that grows all around it and up its walls, remembering better days.

My mind fills with images of winding staircases, secret passages that lead to hidden rooms. What a perfect house for a child to grow up in . . . The thought twists to a halt in my head as I remember that Lucy Bretherick won’t grow up. I can’t think about Lucy being dead without shivering with dread at the thought of something terrible happening to Zoe or Jake, so I push my thoughts back to Geraldine. Did she love this house or hate it?

It sounds like a bad idea. I went over and over it in my mind as I drove here, and I couldn’t think of one reason why it was the right thing to do, but that made no difference. I knew I had to do it. That’s still the way I feel, standing here at the bottom of the uneven lane, staring at Corn Mill House. I have to speak to Mark Bretherick, or the man I saw on the news. I have to do it because it’s the next thing; I don’t care that it isn’t sensible. Esther’s always accusing me of being prim, but I think deep down I’m more of a risk-taker than she is. Sensible is just a costume I wear most of the time because it suits the life I’ve ended up with.

I walk towards the house, crunching pebbles beneath my feet. It rained last night, and there are snail-shells all over the pink and white stones. I keep telling myself that after I’ve done this, after I’ve followed my mad impulse and come out on the other side of whatever’s about to happen to me, things will be clearer—I’ll have less to fear.

I left my car on the top road, safely far away and out of sight. I can lie about my name, but not my number plate. As I press the doorbell, I try to think about what I’m going to say, but my mind keeps switching off. Part of me doesn’t believe this is real. The grimy tiles of Corn Mill House’s porch floor swim in front of my eyes like the bottom of a kaleidoscope, a shifting mosaic of blue, maroon, mustard, black and white.

He might not be in. He might be at work. No, not so soon afterwards.

But he isn’t at home. I press the bell again, harder. If nobody opens the door, I have no idea what I’ll do. Wait for him to come back? He’s bound to be staying with relatives . . .

No.
He will be in. He’s there. He’s coming to the door now. Maybe the man I met at Seddon Hall was right: maybe I am selfish, because at this moment I firmly believe Mark Bretherick is about to open the door purely because I want and need him to.

Nothing happens. I take a few steps back, away from the porch, and look around me at the garden that slopes down and out of sight on all three sides of the house apart from the one that has the road above it. The word ‘garden’ is inadequate as a description; these are grounds.

Something touches my shoulder. I lose my footing as I turn, see a blurred face, hear a horrible crunch beneath my feet. It’s him, the man I saw on television last night. And I’ve trodden on a snail, cracked its shell.

‘Sorry, I’ve . . . I’ve crushed one of your snails,’ I say. ‘Well, not
yours
, but you know what I mean.’ I assumed the right words would come to me when I needed them; more fool me.

I look up at him. He’s wearing gardening gloves that are covered in mud and holding a red-handled trowel in one hand. It looks odd with his blue shirt, which is the stiff-collared sort most men would save for work. There are sweat stains under the arms, and his jeans are brown at the knees, probably from kneeling in earth. He is standing close to me and it’s an effort not to wrinkle my nose; he smells stale, as if he hasn’t washed for days. His hair looks almost wet with grease.