The Wrong Mother (42 page)

Sam Kombothekra realised he was going to have to watch his feet every time he moved in this strange, multi-level flat, or he would break his neck. There was a steep flight of stairs round every corner, and for added inconvenience the hall, landings and each individual step, it seemed, were littered with small, brightly coloured wooden balls. Sam had nearly been felled by a green one a few seconds ago.

He stared at the envelope in his hand, wondered when to say something and to whom. To Esther alone, to Nick alone, or to the two of them together? Maybe it was nothing.

He might not have looked at the Thornings’ mail at all if it hadn’t been scattered across the floor. He’d picked up the post and patted it into a tidy pile before going upstairs as a favour to Nick Thorning, who, if the state of his home was anything to judge by, was not coping well in his wife’s absence. The two children, Zoe and Jake, had been safely deposited with Nick’s mother. That had been Esther Taylor’s idea, one she’d voiced just as Sam had been on the point of suggesting the same thing.

Simon Waterhouse had been right about Esther. Well, almost. Charlie Zailer had picked her up from reception at Rawndesley nick, where she’d been fuming because no one seemed to believe people were trying to kill her best friend. Sam had now heard her long story, which revolved around an allegedly sexually frustrated childminder who thought cosmetic breast surgery was more important than saving the eco-system of Venice’s lagoon.

Esther, despite being addicted to exaggeration, nosey and bossy, had proved helpful in many ways. Nick Thorning hadn’t been aware that his wife had given him a veiled message that she was in trouble. He hadn’t remembered where Owen Mellish worked, only that Sally thought he was a pain in the backside. It was Esther who, when she’d phoned and Nick had told her Sally had gone to Venice with Mellish, had known something was wrong. Mellish had no involvement in the Venice work. He worked with Sally at HS Silsford, a hydraulics consultancy firm. Sam had arranged to meet Mellish at Mellish’s girlfriend’s flat so that he could search it. He hadn’t found Sally Thorning, or any evidence to suggest Mellish had abducted her or killed anybody. All he’d turned up was several large Ziploc bags full of cocaine, which Mellish would do time for if Sam had his way.

He climbed the stairs to the lounge. Nick Thorning was sitting on the sofa with Esther Taylor beside him, holding his hand. Whether he wants it to be held or not, thought Sam. Simon and Charlie sat in armchairs across the room.

‘What’s going on?’ Thorning’s eyes lit up when he saw Sam. ‘Is there any news?’

‘I phoned the credit card company and then the hotel.’ Sam tried to find a patch of carpet to stand on that wasn’t occupied by a newspaper, a crayon, a bib or a nappy. ‘Esther’s right: it was Seddon Hall in York. Sally stayed there between the second and the ninth of June last year.’ Sam nodded at Simon, who had raised an enquiring eyebrow. Yes: the second name he’d given the receptionist had also checked out, same dates. Simon looked relieved, then a little bit stunned. It was the way he always looked when he was proved right. Sam tried not to think about how often Simon turned out to be right. He might be tempted to resign if he allowed himself to dwell on it.

‘Don’t take it personally, Nick.’ Esther stroked his hand with a rhythmic ferocity that looked likely to remove layers of skin. ‘She needed a break, that’s all. When the work thing fell through, she . . . I mean, she did it more for you and the kids than for herself.’ Esther looked round the room, trying to garner support for her claim. ‘She’d reached her limit. She needed a break in order to carry on. Don’t any of your wives work?’ She stared defiantly at Sam and Simon.

Kate, Sam’s wife, didn’t. And she was still more tired than Sam at the end of every day; he wasn’t entirely sure why.

‘DC Waterhouse’s wife works full-time,’ said Charlie. ‘But then, they haven’t got kids.’

Sam couldn’t bring himself to give her the look he knew he ought to give her. He knew she was angry that she’d been sent to collect Esther Taylor from Rawndesley—like a skivvy, she probably thought—and angrier still that there hadn’t been time to bring her up to speed.

‘Is Sally’s life so terrible?’ Nick asked quietly. ‘I thought she was happy with me and the kids.’

‘She is,’ Esther insisted.

‘If she needed a break, why didn’t she say so?’

Simon cleared his throat. ‘Miss Taylor, what exactly did Sally say about meeting this man at Seddon Hall?’

‘I told you. One night in the bar, they got talking. He pretended to be Mark Bretherick, who also lives in Spilling, so they had that in common—or Sally thought they had, rather—so they chatted for a while about . . . you know, local landmarks.’

‘Local landmarks?’ This sounded odd to Sam. ‘Like what?’

‘Um . . . well, I don’t know exactly. I live in Rawndesley, and I’m from Manchester originally, but—’

‘The memorial cross?’ Simon suggested. ‘The old stocks?’

‘I don’t mean landmarks exactly. They just talked about . . . local stuff.’

‘Just the once, did they talk?’

‘No.’ Esther seemed more confident now. ‘He was there all week. Sally kept bumping into him: in the bar, the spa . . . I think they chatted a few times.’

Sam was growing increasingly certain that Sally Thorning had done more than bump into the man they now believed had murdered four people. If some sort of sexual liaison had taken place, chances were Esther knew about it and Nick Thorning didn’t. And Esther was determined to protect her friend’s secret. It doesn’t matter, thought Sam. What mattered was finding Sally, making an arrest before anyone else got hurt. Sellers and Gibbs might already have done both; Sam hoped to God they had.

‘Sally didn’t tell me either,’ Esther was assuring Nick. ‘Not for ages. Only when all this stuff about the Brethericks was on the news.’

‘Yeah, and
then
she told you! She should have told me. I’m her husband.’ Nick Thorning looked around the room as if hoping for confirmation from somebody.

‘She didn’t want to worry you.’

‘She’ll be okay, won’t she?’

‘Have you seen this?’ Sam held the envelope in front of Nick’s face.

‘Yeah, this morning. What about it?’

So it meant nothing to him. Was that a good sign? ‘It’s addressed to Esther,’ said Sam.

‘I know.’

‘Esther doesn’t live here.’

‘What?’ Esther craned her neck to see the writing on the envelope. ‘It’s addressed to me?’

‘I know Esther doesn’t live here,’ said Nick angrily. ‘I’m not stupid. I assumed Sally would know what it was and sort it out when she got back. I just want her to come back. She will, won’t she?’

‘We’re doing everything we can to find her and bring her safely home,’ Sam told him. ‘Esther, would you mind opening this?’

She tore open the envelope and pulled out a small green book, A6 size, and a postcard. ‘I’ve no idea . . .’ She looked up at Sam, frustration all over her face. ‘It’s addressed to me, but I haven’t got a clue what it is or what it means.’

Sam was afraid he’d be equally at a loss, and was pleased to find he understood straight away. He recognised the name Sian Toms—she was a teaching assistant at St Swithun’s. Sally Thorning had called herself Esther Taylor when she’d visited the school, but she must have given Sian Toms her real address.

‘Dear Esther,’ the postcard said. ‘Here is Amy Oliva’s news book, the one I mentioned when we spoke. Please don’t tell anyone I sent it to you—it would go down very badly at work. Also, please can you send it back to me when you’ve read it so that I can put it back? Thanks. Send it to my home address: Flat 33, Syree Court, 27 Lady Road, Spilling. Best wishes, Sian Toms.’

Sam opened the news book. The first entry was dated 15 September 2005, close to the beginning of the school year that was to be Amy’s last at St Swithun’s. The handwriting was Amy’s, or rather, it was clearly a child’s: large and unwieldy. When Sam began to read the words, a shiver rippled through him.

Sam turned to the next entry. The handwriting was the same but it was much longer.

Under this tirade someone had written in red pen: ‘No more in this vein please, Mummy. Amy gets upset when yet again she can’t read her weekend news out in class or enter it in the Busy Book. Please could you allow Amy to write her news book entries herself like all the other children instead of dictating your own words for her to write down? Thank you.’

‘Are you going to tell us what it is?’ asked Nick Thorning.

‘It’s just some child’s school book,’ said Esther.

Sam wanted to hit her. He looked at the next and final entry in the book. Unlike the other two, it contained some spelling mistakes.

Under Amy’s handwriting there was a big, red tick. A teacher had written, ‘Sounds lovely, Amy!’

Whoever that teacher was, Sam wanted to hit her too.

 

You learn something new every day, thought Gibbs as he waited in Cordy O’Hara’s lounge for her to fetch Oonagh. Fine Art Banking. He’d spent half an hour on the phone to Leyland Carver before coming here, and found out that Encarna Oliva had been one of two people at the bank who had specialised in advising clients on which paintings, sculptures, installations and ‘conceptual pieces’ they ought to invest in. Gibbs hoped he’d done a good enough job of concealing his disgust. Couldn’t rich wankers choose their own pictures? What was the point in being alive if you hired someone to make every little decision for you?

Gibbs liked the idea that being rich made a person stupid. He also liked feeling aggrieved. He didn’t understand why—it was simply something he quite enjoyed. When he’d heard the salary Encarna Oliva had been paid to do her entirely unnecessary job, and that was before bonuses . . . Gibbs hoped Lionel Burroway of Leyland Carver wouldn’t ring and complain to anyone at the nick about Gibbs’ response when he’d been told the figure. ‘Ms Oliva worked extremely hard, and often long hours,’ Burroway had said defensively. ‘Most of the private views she had to attend were in the evening, and she often had to go abroad. Her work for us brought in ten, twenty times what we paid her in new business. She was excellent at her job.’

‘Right,’ Gibbs had grunted. That was a new one, the idea that a person’s work might actually bring in money. I’m in the wrong profession, he thought. All his work brought in was deviant scrotes that no one was pleased to see.

He had asked Burroway if Encarna Oliva had had a colleague called Patrick, perhaps a close friend. Burroway said he couldn’t recall there ever having been a Patrick at Leyland Carver. When Gibbs had mentioned that Encarna might have eloped with him to Spain, Burroway’s voice had cooled considerably. ‘The manner in which she left us was very odd,’ he said. ‘I would have preferred to be informed in person rather than by e-mail with no notice, but . . . well, I suppose if she’s . . .’

If she was murdered, you can’t hold a grudge against her for rudeness, Gibbs had thought, grinning. Even knowing Encarna was dead, Burroway had resented having to let her off the hook.

The music Cordy O’Hara had left playing was doing Gibbs’ head in. He got up, walked over to the small silver ghetto-blaster on the floor and turned down the volume ever so slightly. He examined the CD case that was balanced on top of the machine:
The Trials of Van Occupanther
by Midlake. Gibbs had never heard of it.