The unanswered questions were whirling around his head, including the most obvious one of all which he had forgotten to ask the station sergeant and which had not been volunteered.
He called back.
‘What caused the explosion?’ he asked.
‘Gas,’ replied the desk sergeant. ‘Apparently it was one of those great gas explosions, like Ronan Point, and like that one that flattened God knows how many apartment blocks in America last year. Some fault which had caused a dangerous build-up for weeks...’
Todd interrupted. ‘Are they sure?’
‘I suppose so, sir.’
Todd replaced the receiver. Gas. And yes, if his suspicions were right they would be sure, like they had been sure all those years ago of Johnny Cooke’s guilt and Mark Piddle’s innocence.
Mrs Stone’s face turned grey when she opened the door to Todd and a uniformed woman police sergeant.
She had been in a trance since hearing, a few minutes earlier on the radio news, about the explosion on Richmond Hill. She had immediately called Jennifer’s phone number. It had been unobtainable. She had been just about to call the police, but something kept holding her back. She could not quite bring herself to make the call. Now they were with her.
Todd did not need to say anything.
‘Jennifer?’
And the word was more than a sentence. It was the final chapter of a life story.
He nodded. He felt so inadequate.
He should have been prepared for the next words, but he wasn’t.
‘Could you drink a cup of tea?’ asked the old lady.
On an impulse he reached out and took her in his arms. She clung to him, her whole body shaking, and he realised he was weeping.
Marcus also heard the news on the radio. He listened to the six a.m. bulletin as usual. The victims were not named and neither was the street in that first report. Richmond Hill was quite enough. He knew at once, and he cried out in anguish and despair, self-disgust and frustration, and of course, self-pity.
He phoned his contact number at once. The line had been disconnected. He was still in his bedroom. He climbed back into bed, pulled the covers over his head, and lay there whimpering. He just wanted to hide away from the whole world for ever.
When the doorbell rang, his first instinct was to stay there under the covers in the warm darkness. But the ringing was insistent, and then he thought, perhaps it’s them.
Half hysterical, his eyes wild and red-rimmed, he ran to the door. It was the police, a uniformed inspector and constable, let in by a surprised porter — he wasn’t used to police calls in his smart Chelsea building. The police were there simply because Marcus was, after all, Jennifer’s ex-husband, and he was a government minister. They had come to tell him but it was apparent that he already knew.
They expressed condolences and shock. Marcus could not communicate. He was incoherent. Eventually the two men said they would call back later.
‘He was in a right state, wasn’t he?’ said the new-to-the-job young constable on the way down in the lift from Marcus’s apartment.
‘He must still have loved her, even if they were divorced.’
‘Hmph,’ snorted the inspector, who didn’t like politicians very much. ‘His sort only love themselves.’
Jennifer Stone’s funeral in Durraton Parish Church was a grim affair.
Todd Mallett sat in the back of the church. He was convinced her death was not an accident, but in spite of his requests that the cause of the explosion be checked and double checked, the same answers always came up. The blast had been caused by a massive build-up of gas over a period of time. A leak which had gone unnoticed. It had happened before. It was just a tragic accident.
Todd watched Mrs Stone walk into the church. She looked broken, suddenly a very very old lady, grief etched in her face. She was being comforted by her son. The funeral had been delayed a week to allow him time to return from Australia and help with the arrangements.
They both looked to be in total shock. Todd Mallett was still in shock.
Just along the aisle he noticed a man of an acutely intelligent appearance who could not stop crying. He was every bit as distraught as Mrs Stone. Such was the degree of his distress that Todd made inquiries about him. The man was Dominic McDonald, the husband of Jennifer Stone’s friend who had died with her. No wonder he was in such distress. He had lost wife and daughter in one foul instant. Todd did not really know why, but after the service he felt moved to approach the man.
‘It was good of you to come,’ he said.
Dominic did not even focus on the policeman. ‘She was my wife’s best friend,’ he said simply.
On an impulse Todd asked him if he knew if Jennifer was working on anything before she died, if she had confided in her best friend. The other man looked at him — just for an instant — as if he was mad. It had not occurred to Dominic McDonald to put anything together, to consider a link between Jennifer’s extraordinary computer disc and her disturbing behaviour and her death. Dominic did not have that sort of brain. His entire family had been wiped out in a freak accident — and that was that. He shook his head in anguish and walked away. Nothing could get through to him.
Marcus Piddell sat at the front of the church. There was no way that he was going to destroy all he had ever gained, no way he was going to make a sacrifice of himself with one emotional outburst. He was on autopilot, he was a nervous wreck, but he continued to operate, to do what he had to do.
His statement about his ex-wife’s death, expressing his shock and distress, had been properly prepared and issued to the press. Now he was at her funeral. He was immaculately dressed in a black three-piece suit. He looked grief-stricken, his face the perfect mixture of pain and sorrow. After the service he had gone to Mrs Stone and bent over her so that his immense height seemed to form a protective comforting shield. His whole body language screamed out how much he cared. The photographers waiting in the churchyard leapt into action. They were mostly there because Jennifer Stone was Marcus Piddell’s ex. In the end she was better known for that than for anything, and how she would have hated it, Todd thought. The cameras flashed. High-profile tycoon and government minister comforts the mother of his tragic former wife. That would be tomorrow’s newspaper picture.
‘Nice performance, Mark,’ said Todd to himself cynically.
Outside the church, a figure stood apart from the rest of the mourners, alone and very still over by the lychgate, half concealed by rhododendron bushes. Was it? Todd was almost sure; yes, it was Johnny Cooke.
A touch uncertainly, the detective inspector walked over to him. Johnny looked as if he was about to turn away, but he didn’t. It was Todd who had kept him informed about everything concerning Bill Turpin, Todd who had so far been able to say so little to Johnny, but whose whole being had expressed concern and maybe even regret. Todd whose father had been the only one who seemed to care even a jot about the real truth all those years ago.
The two men nodded a somewhat awkward greeting.
‘I didn’t even know you knew her,’ said the policeman.
‘She came to see me.’
Had she indeed? Todd studied Johnny carefully.
‘And?’ he said.
‘And nothing much. She said she wanted to discover the truth... there’s not a lot of it about.’
Todd looked down at his feet. Johnny continued, unwittingly using almost the same words as his mother at the funeral of Jennifer’s father.
‘I just wanted to pay my respects...’
Todd met the other man’s steady gaze. ‘Look, I’m sure she did discover something, something important. If you know anything that could help, I mean, do you have any idea what she was after?’