“So any pointers towards – ” Carole recovered herself. “I’m sorry, perhaps I shouldn’t be asking you?”
“Don’t worry. It makes a change to have someone who is prepared to talk about it. Mum just clams up. Remembering that Dad’s dead is enough to send her off into floods of tears, before you even start on the circumstances of his death.”
“It must be terrible.” There was a silence. “On the other hand, Gaby, if there is anything you do want to tell me about what the police are saying?”
“Well…reading between the lines of their questioning, they seem to think that the person who drove Dad away from the hotel may not necessarily be the one who actually killed him.”
“Oh?”
“Apparently the car was stolen locally, just that evening. The police reckon – don’t know how they’ve got to this point, but they seem to think – that the driver was probably acting under orders, that he just had to drive Dad to some place – possibly the bit of Epping Forest where he was found – to meet someone. And the driver left the two of them there. That’s what they seem to be thinking.”
“Hm.”
“They’ve been asking Phil a lot of questions.”
“Oh?”
“At one time he used to hang around with a pretty unsavoury crowd. I’m not certain that he still doesn’t but basically, if you want to find out about a car thief in the Harlow area, you could do worse than ask Phil Martin.”
“You haven’t had a chance to talk to him?”
“Not on his own, no. I doubt if he’d confide in me even if he did know something. We’ve never been that close.”
“How’s he reacting to his father’s death?”
“Never easy to know with Phil. He was drunk the night it happened, and he seems to have been avoiding confronting it since then by keeping his alcohol level topped up. What he’s feeling inside – well, I’ve never really known what Phil’s feeling inside.”
“Right. Oh, incidentally, Gaby, when you’re down in Fethering – you know, if you want company – do join me at the Crown and Anchor for a drink or…” It went against Carole’s nature to make such an unspecific invitation. Normally, she liked to have her social calendar planned out to the minutest detail, but these were exceptional circumstances.
“That’s very kind.”
“If you feel like it, the offer’s there. If you just want to hide away, that’s fine. I won’t feel offended. I’m not the sort of person to be easily offended.” Even Carole herself could recognize that that wasn’t true.
“Well, can we play it by ear? See how Mum feels?”
“Of course. And if there’s anything practical I can do – shopping or whatever – just let me know.”
“Yes, of course we will. Thank you, Carole.”
“Well, I’d better let you get back to your mother.”
“One thing, Gaby…”
“Mm?”
“You know how unhappy you were – and your mother was, come to that – about the idea of an engagement announcement in the paper?”
“Yes?”
“Was it because you were afraid something like this might happen – that it might draw attention to you – stir up old issues for your family?”
“Yes, Carole, that’s exactly what I was afraid of. And,” she added bitterly, “as it turns out, with good reason.”
“Don’t worry, Gaby, I’m sure the police’ll soon find out what happened to Howard.”
“Hrn. Maybe they will.”
Carole could not fail to respond to the optimism in Gaby’s voice. “You mean they’re close to a breakthrough? Have they actually got a suspect?”
“Well, there’s someone they keep talking about. A man who’s just finished a long prison sentence and now apparently vanished off the face of the earth.”
“And he had some connection with your father?”
“I assume so. I assume that’s why the police keep asking about him.”
“What’s he called?”
“Michael Brewer.”
“Have you ever heard of him?”
“No.”
“And have you asked your mother?”
“I’ve tried, but, as I said, Mum is not being very forthcoming at the moment.”
“But how did she react when the police asked her about this man?”
“She fainted.”
“Oh.”
Fifteen
“The good thing about it is,” said Jude, “that our geographical problem is partly eased.”
“What do you mean? The location of the crime scene hasn’t changed. Howard Martin was still murdered in Essex.”
“Yes, but now we’ve got his widow and daughter coming down to Fethering, so at least we have a couple of significant figures in the case close by.”
“Maybe close by, but I don’t know that we’re going to get much information out of Marie. Whenever the questions get nasty, she just seems to faint.”
“Convenient.”
“Do you mean psychosomatic?”
“I didn’t say that. On the other hand, Carole – I know you don’t really like the idea – but a lot of illness is psychosomatic. And these things can be hereditary. Gaby reacts to stress by getting a bad back, her mother faints – it could be a similar reaction.”
“Huh,” said Carole, exactly as Jude had known she would.
They were walking along Fethering Beach. The tide was a long way out, and the sand firm beneaththeir feet. In the warm June sunshine, even the sludge-coloured sea was enriched by the reflected blue of the sky. Down by the water’s edge, Gulliver was doing elaborate commando manoeuvres, stalking the bits of seaweed that shuffled on the scummy edges of the waves. For him, Fethering Beach was a canine heaven, full of ambrosial and intriguing smells. Half a day spent on the beach, the other half snuffling sleepily in front of the Aga at High Tor – for Gulliver life could offer nothing more perfect.
“There was something else about heredity I was thinking of,” Jude mused. “Didn’t you say that Howard Martin had had bowel cancer?”
“Yes, but made a complete recovery, I gather. Apparently the scars from the operation were one of the reasons his body was identified so quickly. So they didn’t have to take a DNA sample from Phil.”
“Hm…I was just thinking…I’m not betraying any important confidentiality here, but Gaby did tell me that she had been worried that she might have bowel cancer at one point.”
“But she didn’t have, did she?” asked Carole, alarmed at the threat to her future daughter-in-law’s health.
“No, no, it turned out she just had a mild form of IBS.”
“IBS?”
“Irritable Bowel Syndrome.”
That got another of Carole’s ‘Huhs’. She didn’t believe in illnesses that were called ‘syndromes’. Irritable Bowel Syndrome. False Memory Syndrome.
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Restless Legs Syndrome. She thought they were all just excuses for neurotics to hide behind.
“Anyway, there was no problem with Gaby, but presumably she worried about bowel cancer because her father had had it. There’s quite a strong hereditary connection.”
“Yes. Oh well, I’m glad to hear that she hasn’t got anything serious.”
“No…” Jude was still distracted, as though a sequence of thought was escaping her.
They both stopped for a moment. The skin around Carole’s pale blue eyes puckered as she gazed through her rimless glasses towards the horizon. “I just get the feeling that the reasons for Howard Martin’s death go back a long way. I may be wrong, but my instinct is that they have some connection with what my son charmingly referred to as ‘a history of murder in my fiancée’s family’.”
“But I thought Gaby said it wasn’t actually in her family.”
“No. A school friend of her mother’s got murdered. This is years ago. Before Gaby was born, I think. And then the police investigating Howard’s death seem very interested in someone who’s recently been released from prison, where he was serving a sentence for murder.”