The Wrong Mother (7 page)

‘Are you sure this is the best place for you to be? Alone?’ asked Kombothekra. He never gave up. Bretherick didn’t answer. He’d been adamant that he wanted to return home as soon as the forensic team had finished at Corn Mill House, and he’d refused the police’s repeated attempts to assign him a family liaison officer.

‘My parents will be here later, and Geraldine’s mum,’ said Bretherick. ‘Go through to the lounge. Can I get you a drink? I’ve managed to work out where the kitchen is. That’s what happens when you spend more time in your own home than half an hour at the beginning of the day and an hour at the end of it. Pity I was never here while my wife and daughter were still alive.’

Simon decided he’d leave that one for Kombothekra to respond to, and the sergeant was already saying all the right things: ‘What happened wasn’t your fault, Mark. Nobody is responsible for another person’s suicide.’

‘I’m responsible for believing your stories instead of thinking for myself.’ Mark Bretherick laughed bitterly. He remained standing as Simon and Kombothekra sat down at either end of a long sofa that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a French palace. ‘Suicide. That’s it then, is it? You’ve decided.’

‘The inquest won’t be heard until all the relevant evidence has been collated,’ said Kombothekra, ‘but, yes, at the moment we’re treating your wife’s death as suicide.’

On one wall of the lounge, twenty-odd framed drawings and paintings hung from the wood panelling. Lucy Bretherick’s art-works. Simon looked again at the smiling faces, the suns, the houses. Often the figures were holding hands, sometimes in rows of three. In some the words ‘mummy’, ‘daddy’ and ‘me’ were floating nearby, in mid-air. If these pictures were anything to go by, Lucy had been a normal, happy child from a normal, happy family. How had Cordy O’Hara put it?
Geraldine wasn’t just content, she was radiantly happy. And I don’t mean in a stupid, naïve way. She was realistic and down-to-earth about her life—she took the piss out of herself all the time. And Mark—God, she could be hilarious about him! But she loved her life—even silly little everyday things made her excited: new shoes, new bubble bath, anything. She was like a kid in that respect. She was one of those rare people who enjoyed every minute of every day.

Witnesses, especially ones close to the victim, could be unreliable, but still . . . Kombothekra needed to hear what Simon had heard. Cordy O’Hara’s words felt more real to him than the words in Geraldine Bretherick’s suicide note.

The Brethericks had celebrated their ten-year wedding anniversary three weeks before Geraldine and Lucy had died. Simon noticed that the anniversary cards were still on the mantelpiece. Or back on the mantelpiece, rather, since the scene-of-crime and forensic teams had presumably moved them at some stage. If Simon had still been working with Charlie, he’d have talked to her about the anniversary cards, about what was written in them. Pointless to talk to Kombothekra about it.

‘One of my suits is missing,’ Bretherick said, folding his arms, waiting for a response. He sounded defiant, as if he expected to be contradicted. ‘It’s an Ozwald Boateng one, brown, double-breasted. It’s disappeared.’

‘When did you last see it? When did you notice it was gone?’ Simon asked.

‘This morning. I don’t know what made me look, but . . . I don’t wear it very often. Hardly ever. So I don’t know how long it’s not been there.’

‘Mark, I don’t understand,’ said Kombothekra. ‘Are you implying that this missing suit has some bearing on what happened to Geraldine and Lucy?’

‘I’m more than implying it. What if someone killed them, got blood on his clothes and needed something to wear to leave the house?’

Simon had been thinking the same thing. Kombothekra disagreed; his oh-so-sensitive tone made that apparent, to Simon at least. ‘Mark, I understand that the idea of Geraldine committing suicide is extremely distressing for you—’

‘Not just suicide—murder. The murder of our daughter. Don’t bother trying to be tactful, Sergeant. It’s not as if I’m going to forget that Lucy’s dead if you don’t say it out loud.’ Bretherick’s body sagged. He put his arms around his head, as if to protect it from blows, and began to cry silently, rocking back and forth. ‘Lucy . . .’ he said.

Kombothekra walked over to him and patted him on the back. ‘Mark, why don’t you sit down?’

‘No! How do you explain it, Sergeant? Why would my suit have disappeared, apart from the reason I’ve given you? It’s gone. I’ve searched the whole house.’ Bretherick swivelled round to face Simon. ‘What do you think?’

‘Where did the suit normally live? In the wardrobe in your bedroom?’

Bretherick nodded.

‘And you definitely haven’t removed it? Left it in a hotel or at a friend’s house?’ Simon suggested.

‘It was in my wardrobe,’ Bretherick insisted angrily. ‘I didn’t lose it, imagine it or donate it to charity.’ He wiped his wet face with his shirt sleeve.

‘Might Geraldine have taken it to the dry-cleaner’s before . . . say, last week?’ Kombothekra asked.

‘No. She only took clothes to the cleaner’s when I asked her to. When I ordered her to, because I’m too busy and important to make sure my own clothes are clean. Sad, isn’t it? Well, they’re not clean any more.’ Bretherick raised his arms to reveal new damp patches on his shirt, superimposed over the dry sweat stains. ‘You might well wonder why I’m so upset.’ He addressed the coving on the ceiling. ‘I hardly ever saw my wife and daughter. Often they were there but I didn’t look at them—I looked at the newspaper or the television, or my BlackBerry. If they hadn’t died, would I ever have spent time with them, enough time? Probably not. So, if I look at it that way, I’m not really going to be missing much, am I? Now that they’re dead.’

‘You spent every Saturday and Sunday with them,’ said Kombothekra patiently.

‘When I wasn’t at a conference. I never dressed Lucy, you know. Not once, in the whole six years of her life. I never bought her a single item of clothing—not one pair of shoes, not one coat. Geraldine did all that . . .’

‘You bought her clothes, Mark,’ said Kombothekra. ‘You worked hard to support your family. Geraldine was able to give up work thanks to you.’

‘I thought she wanted to! She said she did, and I thought she was happy. Staying at home, looking after Lucy and the house, having lunch with the other mums from school . . . Not that I knew any of their names. Cordy O’Hara: I know that name
now
, I know a lot about my wife now that I’ve read that diary.’

‘Which dry-cleaner’s did Geraldine use?’ Simon asked.

A hard, flat laugh from Bretherick. ‘How should I know? Was I ever with her during the day?’

‘Did she tend to shop in Spilling or in Rawndesley?’

‘I don’t know.’ His expression was despondent. He kept failing new tests, ones he hadn’t anticipated. ‘Both, I think.’ He sank into a chair, began to mutter to himself, barely audible. ‘Monsters. Lucy was scared of monsters. I remember Geraldine wittering on about night lights, vaguely—I could hardly be bothered to listen. I thought, You sort it out, don’t bother me with it, I’m too busy thinking about work and making money. You sort it out—that was my answer to everything.’

‘That’s not what the diary says,’ Simon pointed out. ‘According to what Geraldine wrote, you were concerned enough to persuade her to let Lucy sleep with her door open.’

Bretherick sneered. ‘Believe me, I didn’t give my daughter’s fear of monsters a second thought—I thought it was a phase.’

‘Children go through so many, it’s natural to forget about them once they’ve passed.’ Kombothekra had a seven-year-old and a four-year-old, both boys. He carried photos of them in his wallet, in the same compartment as his money. The pictures fell out whenever he pulled out a note; Simon often found himself having to scoop them up off the floor.

‘Geraldine didn’t write that diary, Sergeant. I know that now.’

‘Pardon?’

Simon watched Kombothekra’s eyes widen: a satisfying sight.

‘The man who wrote it knew enough about her life to make it convincing. I’ve got to hand it to him—he knew more about Geraldine and Lucy’s lives than I did.’

‘Mark, you’re letting your—’

‘I let my family down in many ways, Sergeant. Too many to count, too many to bear. There’s not a lot I can do for them now, but I’ll do the one thing that’s within my power. I’ll refuse to accept your feeble theory. There’s a murderer out there. If you don’t think you can find him, tell me and I’ll pay someone else to do it.’

Kombothekra was starting to look uncomfortable. He never issued direct challenges and hated even more to receive them. ‘Mark, I understand how you feel, but it’s a big leap from a suit going missing to opening a full-scale murder enquiry when there are no obvious leads or suspects, and when a suicide note was found at the scene. I’m sorry.’

‘Have you found William Markes yet?’

Simon tensed. That would have been his next question too. He didn’t like the idea of himself and Bretherick as allies and Kombothekra the outsider, didn’t want to identify too closely with this stranger’s thought processes in case they took him closer to his pain. Bretherick, he knew, was picturing William Markes—insofar as one could picture a stranger—leaving Corn Mill House carrying a bundle of bloodstained clothes and wearing a brown Ozwald Boateng suit. As was Simon. Well, a brown suit, anyway. The fancy name meant nothing to Simon, apart from ‘bound to be ludicrously expensive’.

‘I want to know who he is,’ said Bretherick. ‘If Geraldine was . . . seeing him . . .’

‘We’ve found nothing to suggest Geraldine was involved with another man.’ Kombothekra smiled, making the most of this opportunity to say something that was both true and encouraging. ‘So far the name William Markes has drawn a blank but . . . we’re doing our best, Mark.’

Doing, or have done? Simon wondered. Originally there were three teams working on the case. Now, with Mark Bretherick ruled out as a suspect, nothing to indicate Geraldine wasn’t responsible for both deaths and a suicide note to suggest that she was, the investigation had been scaled down to Simon, Sellers, Gibbs and Kombothekra. With Proust waiting in the wings to shower them with his icy disapproval when they least deserved it—his idea of team leadership. Simon doubted any further attempts would be made to track down the William Markes mentioned in the diary.

He needed a piss, and was about to excuse himself when he remembered: there was no toilet in Corn Mill House apart from those that were in the two bathrooms upstairs. Simon had asked Bretherick during an earlier visit and been told that converting the large pantry beside the utility room into a downstairs shower room had been next on the list of home improvements. ‘Won’t happen now,’ Bretherick had said.

Geraldine’s body had been found in the large, sunken en-suite bathroom, a small flight of steps down from the master bedroom, and Lucy’s in the second, smaller—though still large—bathroom on the landing next to her bedroom. Simon thought about the contrast: the bathtub full of bloodstained water in the en-suite, so red it might have been pure, undiluted blood, and the pristine white marble of the house bathroom, the clear water, Lucy’s unmarked body, her submerged face. The floating strands of hair, like black seaweed in the water.
Polished limestone steps leading down to one bath, the other in the middle of the floor . . .
Both focal points. Almost as if the rooms were stage sets, had been designed to present these two monstrous deaths as dramatically as possible.

Simon decided to wait. He wouldn’t go into either of those rooms again unless he was compelled to.

‘My mother-in-law, Geraldine’s mum . . . she’s asking to read the diary,’ said Bretherick. ‘I don’t want her to. I haven’t told her how bad it is. It’ll destroy her. Unlike me, she’d believe Geraldine wrote those things because the police believe it.’ His voice was full of scorn. ‘What should I say? What normally happens in cases like this?’

There are no other cases like this, thought Simon. He hadn’t seen any, at any rate. He’d seen a lot of stabbings outside night-clubs, but not mothers and daughters dead in matching white bathtubs with funny curled-over tops and gold claw feet . . .
as if the bath might suddenly run towards him, disgorge its contents over him . . .

‘That’s a tough decision to make.’ Kombothekra was patting Bretherick again. ‘There’s no right answer. You have to do whatever you think is best for you, and for Geraldine’s mother.’

‘In that case I won’t show it to her,’ said Bretherick. ‘I won’t upset her unnecessarily because I know Geraldine didn’t write it. William Markes wrote it. Whoever he is.’

 

‘I knew it was trouble,’ said Phyllis Kent. ‘At that first meeting, I told the superintendent. I turned round and said to him, “This’ll be nothing but trouble.” Not for him, not for you lot, so you won’t care. Trouble for me. And I was right, wasn’t I?’

Charlie Zailer allowed the manager of Spilling Post Office to finish her tirade. They stood side by side looking at a photograph of a grinning PC Robbie Meakin. The picture was attached to a small red postbox on the wall, to the right of the post office counter area, and advertised Meakin as one of Spilling’s community policing team. ‘Culver Valley Police—working to build safer communities.’ The slogan, in large bold capitals, looked slightly threatening, Charlie thought. There was a phone number for Meakin beneath the photograph, and an appeal for members of the public to contact him about any topic that might concern them.

‘I turned round and said to the superintendent, “Why does it have to be red? Our postbox outside is red, for proper letters. People’ll confuse it.” And they have. They turn round and say to me all the time, “I think I posted my letter in the wrong box.” Course, it’s too late by then. Your lot have been in and taken everything, and their correspondence has gone missing.’

‘If anything comes to us by mistake, I’m sure we do our best to send it on,’ said Charlie. What sort of idiot would fail to notice the large police logo on the box, the obvious differences between this and a normal postbox? ‘I’ll speak to PC Meakin and the rest of the team and check that—’