I knocked on Hazel’s door. ‘Come in,’ she said.
‘How’s the radio show?’ She shrugged. ‘Well, I hope it’s nice. I have to ask you something. Do you remember your parents ever having this car?’ I said, showing the photograph. She had been crying and I wanted to comfort her, but I had to keep on with what I was doing. Time could be short.
‘No. Why?’
‘It’s nothing. Do you recognize this woman, maybe?’
Hazel looked at me with curiosity and took the photograph. ‘I don’t know. I’ve seen her at our house, I think. But I don’t know who she is.’
‘Do you remember anything about her?’
‘No, it was a few years ago.’ She looked bemused that I would ask about such trivial matters at a time like this. ‘Jane, what’s going to happen about my mum? The funeral.’ She stuttered over the final word. It was heart-breaking.
I sat on her bed. She had a scrapbook open, displaying articles cut from the Morning Star. Each was a story or photograph about Lorelei in the years after Victory 1945. There was even a grainy picture of her meeting the First Secretary outside the gala premiere for one of her films – the art historian Anthony Blunt loved the highest forms of art, but he also understood the reach of the lower ones. The power of giving people a narrative to live through.
‘I don’t know. I think we can arrange that in a few days’ time. Your dad will do it later.’ I tried to make it sound like I had no doubt he would be back soon.
‘OK.’
I leafed through the scrapbook. ‘These are about your mum, aren’t they?’ I noticed that the stories about Lorelei stopped abruptly in 1948, even though there was still space left in the book. That must have been when she disappeared from view.
‘Yeah.’
I had to ask her again about the photograph from her father’s desk, though. ‘So this woman was at your house.’
‘I think so.’
‘Do you–’
The sound of knocking on the front door, rapid and demanding, made me stop. Cautiously, I went downstairs to answer it. I didn’t know who it would be. I just hoped to God it wasn’t the Secs.
The second I turned the latch, however, Detective Sergeant Tibbot entered without a word. He waited until the door had closed behind him and indicated I should lock it firmly. Then he spoke.
‘There are some things you don’t talk about on the phone.’
12
The look on Tibbot’s face as he entered the house was serious. He came close. ‘Do you know all your neighbours by sight?’
‘All the immediate ones, yes.’
‘Seen anyone new?’
‘No.’
We went into the parlour. ‘Your husband is still in Great Queen Street,’ he said. ‘They’re accusing him of killing his ex-wife.’ I felt the air rush out of me. I wanted to cry out that it wasn’t possible, but he wasn’t finished. ‘I’m sorry to say that’s worse than you think.’
My voice caught in my throat. ‘How?’ I stammered.
‘Do you remember when I saw you at the location of the incident, your husband told me he had been on a call at a patient’s house when the death occurred?’
‘Yes.’ I could tell what was coming. Nick had lied. He had been at Lorelei’s after all. Somehow I hadn’t seen him.
‘Well, you see–’
I heard Hazel’s door open. Tibbot halted abruptly.
‘Hazel?’ I called up the stairs.
‘Yes?’
I went to the foot of the staircase. She was on the landing above. ‘Someone has come to see me, to help make sure your dad is OK,’ I told her. ‘It’s very important that I speak to him. Could you do something for me?’
‘What?’
‘Could you stay in your room while he’s here? It won’t be for too long.’
‘All right,’ she said, although she looked unhappy as she went back to her room.
‘Is that his daughter?’ Tibbot asked when I returned.
‘Yes,’ I said.
He paused in thought for a moment, then shook himself out of it. ‘Well, as I was saying, I checked with the man concerned, Comrade Taggan, this morning just after I called you. NatSec hadn’t spoken to him. He claimed that Dr Cawson came for over an hour, conducted his consultation and left. No one else was there.’
I couldn’t understand what he was saying. Nick’s story was true – he hadn’t been with Lorelei and he had had nothing to do with her death. And yet Tibbot looked severe. ‘But that’s good,’ I insisted. ‘It proves it, doesn’t it?’
He hesitated. ‘No, I’m afraid that’s the problem. Because your husband told NatSec exactly the same thing. And they haven’t bothered to check.’ It slowly dawned on me what he was saying. ‘It means that they want him to be found guilty whether or not he actually did it.’
I gasped. Despite the fire, the room was freezing. ‘But why?’
He cleared his throat, uncomfortable with having to bear such news. ‘There could be ten different reasons: they think somehow he did it; or they’re under pressure to find someone – anyone – to blame for it and he’ll do; or just incompetence. But I don’t think it’s any of those. I think it’s because they want him for something else they seem to think he has done. Mrs Cawson, NatSec investigates crimes against the state.’ His voice dropped and his eyes found mine. ‘You know what that means.’
I did. It meant a military court and the rope. I groped for the chair and felt Tibbot’s hand under my shoulder, holding me and leading me to it. I fell on to the seat and wiped the sweat from my brow. ‘I’m sorry,’ I mumbled.
‘You’ll be all right. Do you have anybody you want to contact?’
I thought of my parents, long gone. ‘No.’
I couldn’t understand what was happening. I had hoped, when I rang the station earlier, that he would tell me that Nick was coming home in an hour or that the Secs were dragging their heels and it might even be a day or two before he was back, but that he would come. The idea that Nick might actually be charged, and that NatSec were after him because they believed he and Lorelei were involved in crimes of subversion, was devastating. ‘Maybe he’s innocent,’ I insisted. ‘They must be wrong.’ But there was what I had found at Lorelei’s house.
He sat down and looked at me closely. ‘Mrs Cawson, are you political?’
I knew what he meant. It was a very dangerous question to be asked by any officiaclass="underline" did we harbour ideas that the state deemed troublesome? ‘No. We’re not.’ There was a pause.
‘All right.’
Without wanting to, I pictured life without Nick – sitting alone in the house, Hazel in one of the awful communal schools for the children of dissidents. And I thought of the family I would never have with him. Such a sterile and bleak existence, devoid of the brightness and excitement and the hard-to-explain sense of things to come that he had brought to my life just half a year ago.
‘What can we do?’ I asked. Maybe there was a way to show that Nick had had nothing to do with Lorelei’s death; and that, even if she had been subversive, he hadn’t. Tibbot looked uncomfortable. I realized I had said ‘we’ as if he were going to help me. There was no reason that he would. ‘Thank you for coming. You’re putting yourself at risk just being here,’ I said. ‘If they found out you had been talking to me like this, it wouldn’t be good for you, would it?’