Proust glared at Kombothekra, rolled up his copy of Professor Harbard’s article and launched it at the bin in the corner of the room. It missed.
‘What about the GHB?’ Simon wondered if he could make some headway as the lesser of two evils now that the Snowman was angry with Kombothekra. ‘Why did Geraldine Bretherick take it herself? Where did she get it?’
‘Internet,’ Gibbs suggested. ‘It’s not hard to get hold of. As for why, GHB’s fast replacing Rohypnol as the most popular date-rape drug in the country.’
‘Would a woman like Geraldine Bretherick, given everything we know about her, buy illegal drugs on the Internet?’ said Simon. ‘This is a woman who runs the Parents and Friends Committee at her daughter’s school, whose kitchen bookcase is full of books called Fish Dishes to Make Your Child’s Brain Grow and shit like that.’ Unwillingly, he looked at Kombothekra. ‘Have we heard back from HTCU yet about the computer?’ The high-tech crime unit was referred to as ‘Hitcoo’ by everyone in CID apart from Proust.
The sergeant shook his head. ‘I’ve been chasing and chasing. No one can tell me why it’s taking so long.’
‘I bet they’ll find no GHB was ordered from Geraldine Bretherick’s laptop. And I didn’t mean why GHB instead of Rohypnol, I meant why any drug? Okay, in Lucy’s case I can understand it-she wanted Lucy to pass out so that all she’d have to do was push her under the water. So that Lucy wouldn’t feel any pain. But why take it herself? Think of how much she had to do and do efficiently: kill her daughter, write a suicide note, turn on her computer and open that diary file, leave it on the screen so that we’d find it when we arrived, kill herself-wouldn’t she want a clear head?’
‘Slashing your wrists hurts,’ said Sellers. ‘Maybe she wanted to dull her own pain. There was more GHB in Lucy’s urine than in her mother’s, a lot more. It looks as if Geraldine only took a bit, to take the edge off her fear, probably-make everything a bit hazy around the edges. And that’s exactly what happens, that’s what a small dose of GHB does.’
‘We know that but how did she?’ Simon fired back at him. ‘What, did she type “date-rape drugs” into Google and take it from there? I can’t see it. How would she know how much to take?’
‘There’s no point speculating,’ said Proust briskly. ‘The computer chaps will tell us what Geraldine Bretherick did and didn’t do with her laptop.’
‘We also need them to tell us when that diary file was first opened,’ said Simon. ‘If it was created on the day she died, for example. In which case the dates at the top of the entries are fake.’
‘All this we shall find out in due course.’ Proust picked up his empty ‘World’s Greatest Grandad’ mug, dropped his mobile phone into it and glanced towards his office. He’d had enough. ‘What about Mr Bretherick’s missing suit, Sergeant?’
‘That’s my action,’ Sellers told him. ‘Lucky me-all the dry-cleaners within a thirty-mile radius of Corn Mill House.’
‘Charity shops as well,’ Kombothekra reminded him. ‘My wife sometimes takes my clothes and gives them to charity without telling me.’
‘Mine used to, until I made my displeasure known,’ said Proust. ‘Perfectly good jumpers she used to give away.’
‘And if we find out the suit wasn’t given to any dry-cleaner or charity shop? What then?’ asked Simon.
Proust sighed. ‘Then we’ll have an unsolved mystery of a missing suit. I hope you can hear how Secret Seven that sounds. The evidence will still point to Geraldine Bretherick being responsible for her own death and her daughter’s. I don’t like it any more than you do, but there’s not a lot I can do. We’re only following up the Oswald Mosley suit angle because it’s important to Mr Bretherick. Sorry if that leaves you feeling let down, Waterhouse.’ Proust took his empty mug and phone and headed for the small cubicle in the corner of the room, three sides of which were glass from waist height upwards. It looked like the lifts you sometimes saw on the outsides of buildings. The inspector went in, slamming the door behind him.
To avoid the sympathy in Kombothekra’s eyes, Simon turned to the whiteboard. He knew the wording of the Brethericks’ ten-year-anniversary cards by heart, but not Geraldine’s suicide note. There was something insubstantial about it, too slippery for his mind to latch on to. He read it again:
I’m so sorry. The last thing I want to do is cause any hurt or upset to anyone. I think it’s better if I don’t go into a long, detailed explanation-I don’t want to lie, and I don’t want to make things any worse. Please forgive me. I know it must seem as if I’m being dreadfully selfish, but I have to think about what’s best for Lucy. I’m really, truly sorry. Geraldine.
Superimposed over Geraldine’s words in Simon’s mind were the words of her friend, Cordy O’Hara: Geraldine was always planning, arranging, whipping out her diary. I saw her less than a week before she died and she was trying to persuade me and Oonagh to go to EuroDisney with her and Lucy next half-term.
Simon turned his back on Kombothekra, Sellers and Gibbs and headed for the Snowman’s cubicle. He hadn’t finished with him yet.
Proust looked up and smiled when Simon appeared in his office, as if he’d invited him. ‘Tell me something, Waterhouse,’ he said. ‘What do you make of DS Kombothekra? How are you finding working with him?’
‘He’s a good colleague. Fine.’
‘He’s replaced Sergeant Zailer and you can hardly bring yourself to look at him.’ Proust trumped Simon’s lie with the truth. ‘Kombothekra’s a good skipper.’
‘I know.’
‘Things change. You have to adjust.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You have to adjust,’ Proust repeated solemnly, examining his fingernails.
‘Have you ever heard of anyone writing their diary straight on to a computer? The file wasn’t even password-protected.’
‘Have you ever heard of anyone putting Tabasco sauce on spaghetti bolognese?’ Proust countered amicably.
‘No.’
‘My son-in-law does it.’
What could Simon say to that? ‘Really?’
‘I’m not trying to encourage you to take an interest in my son-in-law’s eating habits, Waterhouse. I’m making the point that whether you’ve heard of something or not heard of it is irrelevant.’
‘I know, sir, but-’
‘We’re living in the technological age. People do all sorts of things on their computers.’
Simon lowered himself into the only free chair. ‘People who kill themselves leave suicide notes. Or sometimes they don’t,’ he said. ‘They don’t leave suicide notes and diary entries to ram the point home. It’s overkill.’
‘I think you’ve hit upon the perfect word there, Waterhouse, to describe Geraldine Bretherick’s actions: overkill.’
‘The note and the diary are… they’re different voices,’ said Simon, frustrated. ‘The person who wrote the note doesn’t want to hurt anyone, wants to be forgiven. The diary-writer doesn’t care who gets hurt. We know the note’s Geraldine’s handwriting. I say that means she definitely didn’t write the nine diary entries.’
‘If you mention William Markes, Waterhouse…’
‘The voice in the diary is analytical, trying to understand and describe the experience of day-to-day misery as accurately as possible. Whereas the note-it’s just one platitude after another, the feeble voice of a feeble mind.’
Proust stroked his chin for a while. ‘So why didn’t that occur to your man William Markes?’ he asked eventually. ‘He’s faking Geraldine Bretherick’s diary-why didn’t he take the trouble to get the tone right? Is he also feeble-minded?’
‘Tone of voice is a subtle thing,’ said Simon. ‘Some people wouldn’t notice.’ Like Kombothekra. And Sellers and Gibbs. ‘There’s no mention of suicide in the suicide note, sir. Or of killing Lucy. And it’s not addressed to anyone. Wouldn’t she have written, “Dear Mark”?’