‘What else did you do?’
‘I tried to put it out of my mind.’
‘Nothing at all?’
‘I didn’t get on a train to London, if that’s what you mean.’
‘Did you speak to your father about it?’
‘No.’
‘Or your mother?’
‘No.’
‘Are you close to your mother?’
‘I’m her son.’ He looked down, as if he was embarrassed about meeting Karlsson’s eye.’ She’s always put me and Ben before anything else – even when she had cancer, we were all she thought about. And Dad,’ he added viciously. ‘She put him first, too.’
‘But you didn’t tell her about this letter?’
‘No.’
‘Did you tell your brother?’
‘Ben’s a kid doing his A levels in a few weeks’ time. Why would I tell him?’
‘Did you?’
Josh pulled at a tuft of newly cut hair. ‘No.’ But he sounded stiff and uneasy.
‘Listen to me, Josh. We’re going to talk to your brother, and if his account doesn’t agree with yours, you’re going to be in even more trouble than you are right now. It’s better to tell us the truth at once. Better for Ben, as well.’
‘All right, I told him. I had to tell someone.’
‘Did you tell him over the phone?’
‘Yes.’
‘How did he react?’
‘Like me. Like anyone would. He was shocked, angry.’
‘Is that all?’
‘He thought we should tell Mum. I didn’t.’
‘How did it end?’
‘We agreed we’d wait until I came back for Easter, that we’d talk about it then.’
‘And did you?’
He gave a wide, sarcastic smile. ‘We sort of got overtaken by events.’
‘And you didn’t tell your mother?’
‘Like I said.’
‘And Ben didn’t either?’
‘He wouldn’t without telling me.’
‘And you’re telling me that neither of you confronted your father, however angry you were with him.’
‘I said, no.’
‘Why were you both so quick to believe what the letter said?’
Josh seemed taken aback. ‘I dunno,’ he said. ‘We just did. Why would anyone make up something like that?’
‘And there’s nothing else you want to tell me?’
‘No.’
‘You’re sticking to your story that you didn’t know who the mystery writer was?’
‘Yes.’
Karlsson waited. Josh Kerrigan’s eyes flickered towards him, then away again. There was a knock at the door and Yvette put her head around it. ‘I need a word,’ she said.
‘We’re done here anyway. For now.’ Karlsson stood up. ‘We’ll speak to your brother.’
Josh shrugged. But his eyes were anxious.
‘No,’ said Ben Kerrigan. ‘No, no and no. I did not tell my mother. I wish I had. But we decided to wait till we were together. I had to look at her over the breakfast table and not say anything. And him.’ His face twisted.
‘Yes?’
‘I didn’t say anything to him either. I wanted to. I wanted to punch him in his stupid fat face. I’m glad he’s got beaten up. He’s just a wanker. It’s such a fucking cliché, isn’t it? Except the other woman wasn’t some bimbo. What did he think he was doing? Ten years. He was cheating on Mum for ten years.’
‘But you never confronted him or told your mother about the letter.’
‘Like I said.’
‘And you never got the impression that your father knew about the letter.’
‘He didn’t know anything.’ Ben’s voice rang with scorn. ‘He thought he could get away with it, and no price to pay.’
‘Or your mother?’
‘No. She trusted him. I know Mum. She thinks that once you trust someone, it’s unconditional.’
‘Why did you hide this information from us?’
‘Why do you think? We’re not stupid, you know – we do realize that you’re all thinking this murder is some kind of revenge.’ His voice rose in distress.
‘All right.’ Karlsson tried to hold his eyes. ‘Let’s take it slowly, from the beginning. You were here, living with your parents, when Josh told you.’
‘Yes.’
‘What did you do when you found out?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing at all?’
‘I keep telling you.’
‘You didn’t talk to anyone apart from Josh?’
‘No.’
‘But you believed it was true?’
‘I knew it was true!’
‘How?’
‘I just did.’
‘How did you know, Ben? What made you so sure?’ He waited, then asked: ‘Did you find out anything else?’ He saw Ben flinch involuntarily before he shook his head. ‘Ben, I’m asking you one more time: did you try to find anything out?’ He stopped and let silence fill the space between them. ‘Did you go through your father’s things, looking for evidence? It would only be natural. Ben?’
‘No.’
‘Alone in the house, with this new and horrible suspicion, and you didn’t do anything?’
‘Stop it.’
‘We will find out.’
‘OK. I may have.’
‘You may have?’
‘I poked around a bit.’
‘Where?’
‘You know. Pockets.’
‘Yes.’
‘And his phone. His papers.’
‘His computer?’
‘That too.’
‘And what did you find?’
‘Nothing much.’
‘You do understand how serious this is, Ben?’
The boy turned to him. Karlsson could hear his ragged breathing. ‘All right. I looked fucking everywhere. Of course I did. What would you have done? Me and Josh agreed that I would do a search, and then I went through all his grubby tissues and his receipts and his emails and nicked his mobile phone to look at texts and calls. We – me and Josh – rang a few numbers I didn’t recognize, just to check. There wasn’t anything. But I couldn’t stop. If I hadn’t found something, I could have gone on for the rest of my life, trying to find the evidence that he was cheating on my mum. It’s like that thing they teach in science, you can only prove something is true, not that it isn’t.’
‘But you did find something?’ Karlsson said gently.
‘I went through his history.’
‘On his computer, you mean?’
‘I don’t really know what I was looking for. There was a search he’d done on Google images for Ruth Lennox. And I just knew. It’s the way you look up someone you know, just to see if there’s a picture of them somewhere.’
‘So. You and Josh knew your father was having an affair with someone called Ruth Lennox.’
‘Yes. Then of course I did a search for her name. He thought he was being so clever. He doesn’t understand computers.’
‘What did you find?’
‘An email from her. Hidden in a folder called something boring like “Household Insurance”. Just one email.’ He snorted derisively.
‘What did it say?’
‘It didn’t say, “Darling Paul, I like fucking you”, if that’s what you mean,’ Ben said savagely. ‘It said that yes, she would like to see him again and that he wasn’t to worry, everything was going to be all right.’ He grimaced violently. ‘It was kind of tender and practical. I thought of Mum being so ill and weak and still looking after us, and then this other woman loving Dad as well, and it seemed so fucking unfair.’
‘When was it sent?’
‘The twenty-ninth of April 2001.’
‘And you still insist you didn’t tell your mother?’
‘I didn’t.’
‘But you did push a mutilated doll through the Lennoxes’ letterbox.’
Ben turned a deep red. ‘Yeah. I didn’t plan to. But I saw this stupid doll stuffed in a big basket of toys at a friend’s house – it was his kid sister’s. And I just took it on a whim and cut it up a bit to show her what we thought of her. I had to do something.’