I wrote before, saying Mark Bretherick might not be who he says he is. I have just found a dead ginger cat by the wheel of my car with parcel tape over its mouth. Whoever left it also slashed the tyres. I believe I’m in danger-being warned off. Two days ago someone pushed me in front of a bus in the centre of Rawndesley, and yesterday a car followed me-a red Alfa Romeo, with a registration that began with a Y.
Last year, in a hotel, I met a man who told me he was Mark Bretherick. His real name might be William Markes. He might be the driver of the car that followed me.
I found pictures of a girl in a St Swithun’s uniform and a woman hidden behind photos of Geraldine and Lucy in two wooden frames at Corn Mill House. They were in a bin-bag. Mark Bretherick was going to throw them away. All four pictures were taken at the owl sanctuary at Silsford Castle. Jenny Naismith, the head’s secretary at St Swithun’s, has these two photographs. There was a girl in Lucy Bretherick’s class last year called Amy Oliver-the pictures might be of her and her mother.
Speak to the woman who used to be Amy’s nanny: her number is 07968 563881. You need to make sure Amy and her mother are still alive. And her father. Talk to anyone you can about the relationship between the Bretherick and Oliver families. Cordy O’Hara, the mother of Oonagh, who was best friends with Amy and Lucy, might know something. Talk to Sian Toms, a teaching assistant at St Swithun’s. Look for more bodies in and around Corn Mill House-in the garden. When I went to Corn Mill House, Mark Bretherick was in the garden with a trowel in his hand. Why would he be gardening when his wife and daughter had just died? Search his business premises-anywhere he has access to. Ask him why he hid photographs of Mrs Oliver and Amy behind ones of his wife and daughter.
Jean Ormondroyd, Geraldine Bretherick’s mother, was a small woman with a long neck and tiny shoulders. Her iron-grey hair was bobbed, and hung like curtains around her face, curling up at the edges. From her seat by the wall, Charlie could see only hair and from time to time the tip of a nose. Jean was looking at Proust and Sam Kombothekra, speaking only to them. No one had told her who Charlie was and she hadn’t asked.
‘I’d like you to tell the inspector what you told me, Jean,’ said Sam. ‘Don’t worry about repeating yourself. That’s what I want you to do.’
‘Where’s Mark?’
‘He’s with DC Sellers and DC Gibbs. He won’t leave without you.’
Charlie hadn’t needed to ask Sam how seriously the new information was being taken; Proust never sat in on interviews except in emergencies. If someone who wasn’t Geraldine Bretherick had committed two murders at Corn Mill House on the first or second of August, they’d had six or seven days to cover their tracks, six or seven days of the police believing that the only murderer had made things easy for them by killing herself. Emergencies didn’t come much more dire than that.
Jean addressed Proust. ‘Mark showed me Geri’s diary. I’ve been asking to see it since I first heard about it, and he finally showed it to me, thank goodness. That diary wasn’t written by my daughter.’
‘Tell Inspector Proust why you’re so sure,’ said Sam. Was he wondering why Charlie was there, why Proust had been so adamant about needing her? It can’t be easy for Sam, she thought. He’s trying to do my job, and I turn up to watch him do it.
‘Lucy’s night light,’ said Jean. ‘What the diary says-it’s wrong. Lucy had a night light, yes, but it was a plug-in one, Winnie the Pooh. It went in the plug socket in her bedroom, next to her bed. It’s about the size of a normal plug, but round instead of square.’
‘The diary doesn’t specify the sort of night light, does it?’ Proust asked Sam.
‘Let me finish,’ said Geraldine’s mother. Both men turned to face her. ‘It says in the diary that Lucy wanted her door open because she was scared of monsters, the same reason she wanted it to be a bit light. It says that from that night, the first time she talked about being scared of monsters…’ Jean stopped, took a few breaths. ‘Every night after that, it says, Lucy slept with her door open and her night light on, but why would she have needed the door open? The night light was in her room.’
‘We assumed the night light was outside Lucy’s room, and the door was left ajar to let the light in,’ said Sam.
‘But didn’t you see Lucy’s Winnie the Pooh light? Didn’t you find it?’ Jean’s voice was full of contempt.
‘We did. Jean, there was no way we could have known Lucy had the light in her room and not, say, on the landing.’
‘But didn’t you plug it in? Didn’t you see how dim it was? Just a faint gold glow. Night lights like that are designed to go in children’s rooms. That’s the whole point of them. You should have known.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Sam. ‘I didn’t.’
‘Someone should have known! How many detectives saw that light? Don’t you have children? Don’t they have night lights?’
How many detectives does it take to change a light bulb? Charlie mused.
Proust was looking at Sam, waiting for him to answer.
‘My sons sleep with their bedroom doors open, and we leave the bathroom light on.’
‘Mark didn’t know either,’ said Jean. It sounded like a concession. ‘He’d heard Geri mention a night light, but he won’t have known what sort, or where it was. Geri was always the one who put Lucy to bed and got up for her in the night.’
‘Was Mark a good father, would you say?’ asked Proust.
‘Of course he was! He has to work all the time, that’s what I meant. Like a lot of fathers. But it was Lucy’s future he was working for. He adores that child.’ Jean’s head dipped. ‘I still can’t believe she’s gone. My sweet Lucy.’
‘I’m so sorry, Jean. And I’m sorry to have to put you through a second interview.’
‘Don’t be,’ she said. ‘You need to talk to someone who knows even more about Geri and Lucy than Mark does. And that’s me. I can’t believe you didn’t show me the diary straight away. That’s the first thing I’d have done, in your position. I could have helped you a lot sooner.’
‘The decision wasn’t-’
‘I wasn’t a part-time grandmother.’ Jean Ormondroyd cut Sam off angrily. ‘I spoke to Geri and Lucy on the phone every day. I knew every single detail of Lucy’s life: what she ate for every meal, what she wore, who she played with. Geri told me everything. The night light was in Lucy’s room, and the door had to be closed-Lucy insisted. That way the monsters couldn’t get into her room from the dark bits of the house.’ Jean looked at Charlie, dissatisfied with the reaction she was getting from Proust and Sam: solemn silence. Charlie smiled sympathetically.
‘When Geri and Lucy came to stay the night at my house, which they often did if Mark was away on business, the Winnie the Pooh night light came too. And Lucy’s door had to be shut; if we took too long to shut it, five seconds instead of two, she’d get panicky. We’d finish her bedtime story, kiss her goodnight and have to run to the door to close it before any monsters crept in.’
Proust leaned forward, rubbing the knuckle joints of his left hand with the fingers of his right. ‘Are you telling me that Mark never put his daughter to bed? Not once? At weekends, on holiday? He didn’t know she had a light in her room and that the door had to be closed?’
‘He might have had a vague idea, but Geri was always the one who put Lucy to bed. If Mark was around, he’d do the bedtime story session downstairs. He’d always read her as many stories as she wanted. But bathtime and bedtime was Geri’s responsibility. They had their routines, like most families.’
‘Nevertheless,’ said Proust. He pulled a small grey mobile phone out of his shirt pocket, glanced at it, then dropped it back in. ‘I find it odd that he and Geraldine didn’t discuss Lucy’s fear of monsters and her need to have her door either open or shut.’