‘Why did Eddie sell up and leave town?’
‘He was mortified. Thanks to the paper, everybody knew he’d let himself down. And me. He was a laughing stock. The big-shot businessman who couldn’t stand up to a late-night mugger. He couldn’t take the shame. And I’d dumped him by then, so there was nothing to keep him here.’
‘You dumped him? While he was in hospital?’
Vanessa looked unconcerned. ‘Why bother waiting? He wasn’t the man I thought he was. Simple as that.’
Her ruthless egotism was breathtaking, Carol thought. She couldn’t imagine anything denting Vanessa’s self-belief. It was a miracle Tony had survived as well as he had. ‘Nobody was ever arrested,’ Carol said.
‘No, you lot were as useless then as you are now. To be honest, I didn’t think they were that bothered. If he’d tried to rape me, they might have summoned up some interest. But to them, Eddie was just a pathetic rich bugger who didn’t know how to take care of himself and deserved what he got.’
Carol struggled to believe that. Back in the less violent 1960s, the police would have taken such an attack seriously, even given an alleged class divide that didn’t square with Alan Miles’s account of Eddie as a local lad made good. But Vanessa’s version gave Carol a stick to beat her with, which made it irresistible. ‘You didn’t give them much of a description to go on.’
Vanessa raised her eyebrows. ‘It was dark. And he didn’t hang around. He sounded local. You of all people must know how little witnesses actually see when they’re being attacked.’
She had a point. But then smart operators like Vanessa usually did. ‘So why did you never tell Tony the truth? Why let him believe that Eddie leaving was something to do with him?’
‘I’ve no control over what my son chooses to believe,’ Vanessa said dismissively.
‘You could have told him the whole story.’
A cold, malicious smile lifted the corners of her mouth. ‘I was protecting him from the truth. I didn’t want him to know how pathetic his father was. First, because he couldn’t stand up to a lad who was probably as scared as he was. And second, because he cared so much about what people thought of him that he ran away rather than face the music. Do you think it would have helped Tony to know that his father had a yellow streak a mile wide? That he’d been abandoned by a man who made the lion in The Wizard of Oz look like a hero?’
‘I think it would have been more helpful than growing up thinking his father left because he didn’t want anything to do with his child. Did Eddie never show any interest in the fact that he had a son?’
Vanessa breathed heavily through her nose. ‘I didn’t know he knew. I certainly never told him. How he found out, I don’t know.’
Carol couldn’t keep the astonishment from her face. ‘You never told him? He didn’t know you were pregnant?’
‘I was only three months gone when the attack happened. I wasn’t showing. Back then, you didn’t advertise that you were expecting. And as it turned out, it’s just as well. He’d have rushed me to the altar and I’d have been stuck with the pathetic little coward. I’d never have had all this,’ she added with absolute conviction, waving her arm proudly to encompass her offices. ‘Eddie did us a favour when he cleared off.’
This, thought Carol, was where self-belief teetered over into self-delusion. ‘You don’t think he was entitled to know his son?’
‘You get what you take in this world. Entitled’s got bugger all to do with it.’ With that brutal line, Vanessa got to her feet. ‘This time, we’re really done. I’ve nothing more to say to you. You can tell Tony or not. I couldn’t care less.’ She opened the door with a flourish. ‘You really could do better for yourself, you know.’
Carol smiled in her face as she walked out. ‘I almost feel sorry for you. You have no idea what you’re missing.’
CHAPTER 22
Friday was the best day of Pippa Thomas’s week. Since she’d cut her working week at the surgery to four days, she’d found a space in her life for her. One whole day when she didn’t have to poke and prod, drill and fill to improve other people’s smiles. One whole day when Huw was at work and the kids were at school and she was free. And she loved it.
But most of all, she loved the Friday Morning Club. There were five of them. Monica, who worked afternoons and evenings at the Citizens Advice Bureau; Pam who looked after her demented mother and chose to spend her limited respite budget to liberate her for Friday mornings; Denise, who was a Lady Who Lunched except on Fridays; and Aoife, who ran the front of house at the Bradfield Royal Theatre. Rain or shine, they met in the car park of the Shining Hour inn, high up on the moors between Bradfield and Rochdale. And rain or shine, they would run a dozen miles over some of the roughest terrain in the north of England. They’d first met on a Breast Cancer Fun Run one Sunday in Grattan Park. ‘Talk about oxy-moron, ‘ Denise had muttered as the five of them searched in vain for a toilet that was unlocked. ‘Fun and breast cancer. Yeah, right.’ They’d ended up acting as lookouts for each other as they squatted in the rhododendrons to empty their middle-aged bladders before they could run. By the end of the afternoon, the Friday Morning Club had been born.
That Friday it was a bright blue day with an exfoliating edge to the north-east wind that knifed its way across the Pennine moors. Pippa hugged herself inside her lightweight top. Soon she’d feel that delirious sense of her body moving freely through this amazing landscape. As soon as they set off Pippa assumed the lead. Denise took up position on her shoulder and they exchanged a few catch-up sentences. But soon they needed all their breath to feed oxygen to their muscles for the long slow climb up to the summit of Bickerslow.
Head down, Pippa felt her quads stretch and swell as they carried her onwards. No time for the view now. All her focus was on reaching the marker cairn, where they would wheel west and find the shelter of the hill’s shoulder and metalled surface, a brief respite from rough going. They’d barely started up the single-track road that dribbled across the moor top when Pippa stopped in her tracks. Denise cannoned into her, almost sending them both flying. ‘What the hell is it?’ Denise demanded.
Pippa said nothing. She just pointed at the soaking bundle lying in a gully by the road. In spite of the bag that covered one end of the filthy cloth, there was no doubting that it was the remains of a human being.
Friday would never be the same again.
Paula helped herself to a mug of the coffee someone had already brewed and parked herself behind her desk. Although it was only half past nine and the chief had rearranged the morning briefing for ten, the team were already here. At least, she thought Stacey was here. The battery of screens was so effective that she was almost invisible. But the faint tap and click of mouse and keys indicated her presence. As usual. Paula sometimes wondered if Stacey ever went home. Or even if she had a home to go to. Paula had never worked with anyone more secretive than Stacey. One way or another, she’d been in the home of everyone on the squad except for her. It wasn’t that she was unfriendly. Just from another planet. Though lately, Paula thought she’d seen signs of Stacey thawing a little where Sam was concerned. Nothing major. Just making him the occasional brew and actually volunteering information about where he was and what he might be doing. Which she never did about anyone else.
Paula reminded herself there were more important things to think about this morning than her colleagues’ personal lives. Every police station she had ever worked in had been a gossip factory. It was as if they had to make up for the unpleasantness of most of their work with an obsessive curiosity about the possible secrets of everyone else in the place. Overheated imaginations ran riot, perhaps because they were supposed to be bound so tight by fact in their professional lives.