I can’t help smiling, thinking about the absurdity of this.
‘What?’ says Esther suspiciously. ‘What was that envelope Sergeant Kombothekra gave you before?’
I remind myself that Esther is my best friend. I used to want to tell her everything. ‘A letter from Mark Bretherick. Thanking me for saving his life.’
Who saved my life? I have become obsessed with this question. Did I do it myself? Was it Esther? My thoughts keep coming back to Pam Senior. It’s odd to think that when she stood in the centre of Rawndesley and screamed abuse at me, she set in motion a chain of events that took her to the police station several days later. It was from Pam that the police first heard my name. If I hadn’t managed to escape from Jonathan Hey’s house, it would have been Pam’s visit to the police that led to my rescue.
‘Mark wants us to meet. Talk,’ I tell Esther.
‘Stay away from him, Sally. He’s just lost his wife, remember.’
‘Charitable.’
‘Stay away,’ she warns me. ‘What good could it possibly do?’
‘It might do him good. He must think it will, or he wouldn’t ask.’
Jonathan Hey smashed his skull with a metal bar, nearly killed him.
Nick’s appearance in the room prevents her from responding. ‘Sam Kombothekra phoned while you were asleep,’ he says. ‘I said you’d ring him back.’
‘What did he want?’
‘Another update, I think.’
‘Bring me the phone.’ I would rather get it over with, whatever it is.
‘Sal? There’s something I want to ask you,’ says Nick. ‘It’s been bugging me.’
Esther gives me a pointed look as she leaves the room.
‘Can you make her go home?’ I ask Nick once we’re alone. ‘It’s like being looked after by Count Dracula.’
‘That black notebook, Encarna Oliva’s diary: why did you bring it back with you?’
‘It was written in a foreign language. I opened it and… couldn’t understand what was in it.’ The truth. No part of what I said was a lie.
‘So you thought it might be something important?’ Nick looks at me expectantly. I nod. I assumed Amy Oliva’s father might be bilingual, since her mother was Spanish. When I found the notebook in his bathroom and saw Spanish handwriting, I thought he might have written something about me-how he felt about me, what he was doing to me or planned to do. I brought the black notebook home with me so that I could destroy it. Instead, I passed out and dropped it on the carpet in front of the police.
I’ve never seen myself as the passing-out sort, but since I’ve come home I keep waking up without having realised I’d fallen asleep. I am still so tired. Sam Kombothekra says it’s the shock.
Nick is impressed. ‘So, you were escaping from the house of a psychopath and you had the presence of mind to bring an important bit of evidence with you. That’s… efficient.’
‘It’s called multi-tasking,’ I say as my eyes close. ‘I’ll tell you about it some time.’
24
8/13/07
Sam braced himself, then walked into the interview room where Simon, Charlie and Jonathan Hey were sitting in silence. He emptied the contents of a labelled evidence bag on to the table: a pile of green clothes-wet, rank-smelling. ‘Amy’s uniform, ’ he said.
Hey recoiled.
‘She was wearing it when she died,’ said Charlie. ‘You stripped her. If I’m wrong, tell me what these clothes mean. Why are they wet and mouldy?’
Nothing. No response.
‘It was Amy,’ said Charlie. ‘Amy killed Encarna.’
Hey shook his head, glassy-eyed. He had refused a lawyer, so there was nobody present to stop Charlie from putting the same suggestion to him nearly forty times. Lawyers-like bankers, Hey claimed-profited by exploiting others.
Sam didn’t know what to think. He trusted Charlie’s judgement, and it counted for a lot that Simon was backing her theory, but he needed to hear Hey say it before he could be sure.
‘Who but Amy would you want to protect so badly that you’d be willing to take the blame for two murders you didn’t commit?’ said Simon. ‘With vultures like Harbard waiting to write their articles and books about the five-year-old girl who killed her mother.’
‘I’d kill him,’ Hey whispered.
‘He wouldn’t care about your pain,’ said Charlie. ‘He’d write whatever suited him, you know he would. He’d say it on television too, on documentaries and discussion programmes. Think of who Harbard is, what he does, and then think how close he is to this, because of you.’ She leaned forward. ‘If you tell us the truth, the whole story, he won’t be able to capitalise on your tragedy. He won’t be able to write a book saying Encarna was a family annihilator.’
Sam watched with interest. A new approach: threatening Hey with the devil he knows. He prayed it would work.
‘She’s right,’ said Simon. ‘Harbard’ll do what he’s so fond of doing: invent his own conclusions, in advance of any evidence. If we don’t charge you with Amy and Encarna’s deaths-which we’re not going to-what’s he going to think? You told me he wanted to write a book about Geraldine Bretherick, but he now knows she didn’t kill herself and Lucy. How long do you think it’ll be before he latches on to Encarna as a replacement? If you tell us the truth, no one will be interested in listening to Harbard, Jonathan, I promise you.’ Simon’s voice cracked. He and Charlie had been questioning Hey for days. ‘You’ve got to speak for your family now. Don’t leave it to someone who didn’t know them or care about them.’
Hey’s head moved. Was it a nod? A small nod?
‘Tell us what you found, the day Encarna and Amy died,’ said Sam calmly, though he felt anything but calm. ‘When you came home. Where had you been?’
Hey fixed his eyes straight ahead and stared, held by an invisible horror, watching it unfold.
‘You called out, but no one answered?’ Sam suggested.
‘I’d been at a colleague’s leaving party. Not even a colleague I liked. I got back late. If I hadn’t gone, Amy and Encarna would still be alive.’ He covered his eyes with his hands. ‘Everybody would still be alive.’
‘What did you find in the bathroom, Jonathan?’
‘They were dead in the bath. Both of them. And there was… a lamp. That was also in the water. Amy’s night light. And the book Encarna had been reading.’
‘They’d been electrocuted,’ said Simon gently.
‘Yes. Amy was… lying on top of Encarna, still in her school uniform. It was soaked. I thought it was an accident,’ Hey sobbed. ‘The lamp fell in, and Amy, seeing Encarna was in trouble, must have grabbed her, tried to pull her out, and because the bath was set into the floor, so damned low… She must have tried to pull her out, she’d grabbed hold of Encarna’s arm. I had to prise her fingers off.’ He shuddered. ‘She was only five! In that split second of panic, seeing her mother dying, she wouldn’t have known that by putting her hands in the water she was risking her own life! She wouldn’t have meant to kill Encarna either, not really-a five-year-old doesn’t know what it means to kill someone.’
Sam tried not to picture the events Hey was describing. It was hard.
‘You wanted to believe it was an accident,’ said Charlie. ‘But you didn’t. Not deep down. You suspected that, however briefly, Amy had meant her mother harm. At the very least, you feared it. You feared she’d pushed the lamp into the water deliberately.’
‘No.’ Hey’s eyes were wild. He ran his hands through his hair repeatedly. ‘No, no.’
‘No? Then why not call an ambulance, if it was a tragic accident? Why bury their bodies in the Brethericks’ garden?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know why I did it.’
‘You don’t have much self-confidence, do you, Jonathan?’ said Simon. ‘In spite of your professional success. You thought the bodies you’d taken such care to hide might be found one day-because it would be just your luck, wouldn’t it? And you had to protect Amy from people knowing what she’d done. You stripped her so that she too would look like a victim, if someone found her and Encarna.’