‘Mark, I’m sorry. I have to ask these questions.’
Bretherick twisted in his chair. ‘A man who pretends to be me has an affair with a woman who looks exactly like my wife-a woman who comes here this afternoon, refuses to answer my questions or tell me her name, and steals photographs of Geraldine and Lucy. I want to hear you say that this changes everything. Say it.’
This man has an interview technique, thought Sam. Not many people did, not unless they’d been trained. Sam knew his own interview technique wasn’t one of his strengths as a detective. He hated to put people on the spot, hated it even more when they did it to him.
‘You don’t know for certain that this woman was having an affair with-’
‘Irrelevant.’ Bretherick cut him off, began to tap his fingers on the table one by one, as if playing the piano slowly, one-handed.
Sam felt hot and flustered. This was a show of strength; Bretherick was trying to prove he was cleverer, as if that made him more likely to be right. Perhaps it did. Talking to him was like talking to Simon Waterhouse. Whose analysis, Sam was certain, would be identical to Bretherick’s.
‘How many suicides have you dealt with, Sergeant?’
Sam took a deep breath. ‘Some. Maybe four or five.’ None since he’d become a detective. One, he corrected himself: Geraldine.
‘Did any of those four or five have this many question marks surrounding them, this many strange, unexplained details?’
‘No,’ Sam admitted. You don’t know the half of it. He hadn’t told Bretherick that the diary file on Geraldine’s laptop was opened more than a year after the date of the last entry. He was still trying to work out what he thought of this man who had already been back to the office, already bagged up his wife and child’s possessions.
One detail had bothered Sam from the start, though he’d assumed he was wrong to be concerned about it since Simon Waterhouse seemed not to have registered it: when Mark Bretherick had first rung the police, he’d said, ‘Someone’s killed my wife and daughter. They’re both dead.’ The words had been clearly audible even through his hysteria. Interviewed later, Bretherick had claimed that he hadn’t read or even seen Geraldine’s suicide note in the lounge. He’d let himself into his house after returning from a long and tiring trip abroad, gone straight upstairs to his bedroom and found Geraldine’s body in the en-suite bathroom. His wife’s body, in a bath full of blood. The razor blade lying on her stomach; Bretherick didn’t touch it, left it in place for the scene-of-crime officers to find. Why hadn’t he called the police immediately from the telephone beside his bed? Instead he said he’d gone straight to Lucy’s room to check she was all right and then, when he failed to find her in there, he looked in all the other rooms upstairs and found her dead body in the family bathroom.
Maybe it makes sense, thought Sam. If you discover that the person you assume is looking after your child can’t be, because she’s lying in the bath with her wrists slashed, maybe the first thing you do is panic and search the house for your daughter. Sam tried for about the two hundredth time to imagine himself in Bretherick’s terrible position. He doubted he’d be capable of moving at all if he’d just found Kate dead. Would he even be able to pick up a phone? Would he think about where his sons were?
There was no point speculating. Mark Bretherick couldn’t have killed Geraldine and Lucy. He was in New Mexico when they died.
‘She said she’d come and see me again, but I don’t think she will,’ Bretherick was saying. ‘I was stupid to let her go. I need to know who she is.’
It was a few seconds before Sam realised he was talking about his visitor from this afternoon, not his dead wife.
‘We’ll do our best,’ said Sam.
‘It’ll be easy for you to find out. You can appeal on television. She could be Geraldine’s twin, she looks so much like her. She’s married… Oh, and she’s got one of those mobile phones that shuts like a… sort of like a clam shell. Silver, with a jewel on the front, looks like a little diamond. You need to find her and bring her back here.’
Sam let out a long, slow sigh, hoping Bretherick wouldn’t notice his sinking shoulders. A television appeal? That would be Proust’s call, and Sam could guess what the inspector would say, could almost hear him saying it: Mark Bretherick had appeared on the news many times in the past few days. His was the sort of tragedy that attracted attention, and possibly visits from local nutters. This woman, whoever she was, could easily have been lying. Should Sam suggest a TV appeal all the same? Lobby for one as Simon Waterhouse might? Perhaps if he’d been there longer…
Sam still felt like a stranger in a strange land at work. Every molecule in his body yearned to go back to West Yorkshire, to the lock-keeper’s cottage by the side of the Leeds-Liverpool canal that he and Kate had loved, with the wisteria climbing its walls. Sam hadn’t known what the plant was called but Kate had gone on about it so much when they’d first seen the house, he could hardly have avoided learning the name. But Kate’s parents lived near Spilling and she’d finally admitted she needed help looking after the boys so there was no way they’d be going back to Bingley. In the end, Sam thought with a mixture of pride and shame, it turns out I’m more sentimental than my wife.
‘If Geraldine didn’t do it-if you can prove that-I’ll be able to carry on,’ said Bretherick. ‘For her sake and Lucy’s. I expect that sounds odd to you, Sergeant.’ He smiled. ‘I must be the first man in the history of the world to feel relieved when he realises his family has been murdered.’
7
Wednesday, 8 August 2007
St Swithun’s Montessori School is a Victorian building with a clock-tower on its roof and green-painted iron railings separating its playground from the enormous landscaped garden of the old people’s home next door. I can hear children through the open windows as I approach the front door-singing, chanting, laughing, calling out to one another. It sounds as if a party is being thrown in every room.
I stop, confused. It’s the summer holidays. I was expecting to find the place empty apart from the odd secretary. There’s a sign on the door that says ‘Action Week One-Monday 6 to Friday 10 August’. I wonder if it’s some kind of holiday childcare scheme, and have the automatic thought: what are parents supposed to do for the rest of the holidays?
I walk in and find myself in a small square entrance hall with a flagstone floor. Class photographs line all four walls: rows and rows of children wearing green. This startles me; I feel as if I’ve been ambushed by tiny faces. Beneath each picture is a typed list of names and a date. One, to my left, is dated 1989. I see Lucy Bretherick’s green dress, over and over again.
The sight of all these children makes me ache for mine. I found it harder than ever to drop them off at nursery this morning. I didn’t want to let them out of my sight. I kept asking for one last kiss, until Jake eventually said, ‘Go to work, Mummy. I want to play with Finlay, not you.’ This made me laugh; clearly he’s inherited his father’s diplomacy.
I didn’t go to work. I rang HS Silsford, lied to the disgusting Owen Mellish and came here instead. I’ve never phoned in sick before, legitimately or otherwise.
‘Can I help you at all?’ A soft Scottish accent. I turn and find a tall, thin woman behind me. She looks my age but better preserved. Her skin is like a porcelain doll’s and her short, sleek black hair hugs her scalp like a swimming cap. She’s wearing a fitted jacket, the thinnest pencil skirt I’ve ever seen and sandals with stiletto heels. On her ring finger there’s a pile-up of gold and diamond bands reaching almost to her knuckle.