Authors: Lesley Pearse
‘It’s me who should be
apologizing to you,’ Sophie sobbed, her voice very hoarse and strained.
‘I’ve been so horrible to you. I can’t believe that you would come to
see me after that.’
‘I didn’t stop loving
you,’ Eva said, and she gently moved back from Sophie and dried her eyes with a
tissue. ‘How are you feeling?’
She could see the vivid fingermarks on her
sister’s neck. The amount of pressure Andrew must have used left no doubt that he
really was trying to kill her.
‘It’s hard to swallow.
I’ve only had drinks so far,’ Sophie said, catching hold of Eva’s hand
and holding it as if she wasn’t going to let go. ‘But the worse thing is, I
thought Dad really loved me. How could he do it?’
‘I don’t know,’ Eva
admitted. ‘But people do all kinds of things when they feel threatened – even to
those they love.’
‘I’ve been knocking off college,
hanging around with dodgy people and staying out half the night,’ she croaked out
to Eva. ‘If I hadn’t lied to the police about Dad being home that night, it
wouldn’t have come to this.’
‘But you’ve told the truth
now,’ Eva said. ‘And you haven’t
done anything worse
than I did when I was younger – with far more reason, because you’d lost your
mum.’
‘Everyone will be talking about us.
First Mum and now Dad. I don’t want to be in Cheltenham any longer,’ she
said as tears trickled down her cheeks.
‘You don’t have to stay
here,’ Eva said. ‘You can go anywhere you want. But first you have to
recover from this, and I’ll help you.’
‘Is Dad going to die?’ Sophie
asked.
‘I don’t think so. But
he’s got to have an operation in the next day or two. The doctor told me
he’s got a good chance of recovery, but I doubt he’ll come out of it the way
he was before.’
She didn’t tell Sophie that perhaps it
would be better if he didn’t recover completely, because with two charges of
attempted murder hanging over him, he was likely to face a long prison sentence. But she
knew there was something more. The police were going through the house with a fine-tooth
comb, delving into all his business interests, as if they knew something more about
him.
‘Do you mean he’ll be
paralysed.’ Sophie’s eyes went wide with horror.
‘I doubt that,’ Eva said.
‘But stop worrying about him. You need to think about yourself and what you want
to do now.’
‘I’m so glad you’re here,
Eva,’ Sophie said, and tears filled her eyes again.
‘Ben’s here too. He decided to
wait outside to give us time to talk alone. Shall I go and get him now?’
Sophie just nodded, and tears streamed down
her face.
In the next few days, in between visiting
Sophie in hospital and supporting Ben as he struggled to make sense of
everything, Eva tried to do what Flora would have done. She cleaned the kitchen
properly, tidied Sophie’s bedroom ready for when she came home, made a couple of
cakes and cooked enough food so that, after she and Ben had eaten some, the rest could
go into the freezer for the future.
But however upbeat Eva tried to be, she
could see no easy solution to anything. The Beeches, the on-going police investigation,
Sophie and herself – it was all too much to get her head around. She’d rung Horace
at Serendipity, and he’d been very understanding. But he wouldn’t keep her
job open for her indefinitely.
If she took Sophie back to London, it would
soon become difficult living in Phil’s flat; it wasn’t as if the two of them
had always been close. Eva didn’t want to stay one minute longer in The Beeches
than she had to. But she couldn’t leave Sophie on her own in the house – or
anywhere – until she knew she really was alright.
Ben had made a tentative suggestion that if
The Beeches was sold, he could buy a place in Leeds and Sophie could stay there with
him. But did he mean that? And how long before the house could be sold, if at all?
The police finished searching the house and
took away many files and folders from Andrew’s study. Eva wondered what they were
hoping to find. What had Andrew’s accounts and work files got to do with his
attack on her, or on Sophie? When she asked one of the officers, he just said it was
routine. But she didn’t really believe that.
At the end of the week Sophie was allowed to
come home. Phil drove up on Friday night with more clothes for Eva. Despite all the
problems they had, nothing seemed quite so bad once he was there: the weather suddenly
turned a bit warmer, the bruising on Sophie’s neck was less vivid and she could
eat solid food again. The swelling around Ben’s eye
had gone
down a little, and it had turned from red to black – but with a purple tinge, which Phil
said meant it was beginning to fade. Phil was good at making them all feel more
optimistic and safe. He cut the grass, checked all was well with the swimming pool, and
even changed the locks on the front and back doors as a precaution in case Andrew had
given a key to anyone.
It was Phil’s suggestion that Ben go
back to Leeds on Sunday. He pointed out that Ben shouldn’t miss any more lectures,
and Sophie was fine with Eva. The plan was that both Ben and Phil would come back the
following weekend, and during the week Eva would go to the solicitor to find out the
legal position about the house. Phil hoped that by the time he and Ben returned, the
police would have decided if Ben was going to be charged with anything. And there might
also be news from the hospital about Andrew.
‘Ring an insurance company and get
cover to drive Andrew’s car, so you aren’t cut off,’ he said to Eva as
he was getting ready to leave for London on Sunday night. She had been using taxis and
she couldn’t go on doing that. ‘Sophie will be OK in a week or two. Try not
to agonize over what to do with her, because she’s a bright girl and I bet
she’ll come up with a plan of her own. I’m going to ring Patrick tonight
when I get back, to tell him what’s happened. I wouldn’t be surprised if he
didn’t come up here to hold your hand. Now, will you promise me you’ll stop
worrying about your job and being away from me? The job isn’t really important,
and we’ve got the rest of our lives to be together.’
Eva clung to him. She knew he was right
about everything, but she didn’t want him to go. She was scared to be alone with
Sophie in a house that held so many bad memories.
Several journalists had phoned to ask
questions, and a few of the neighbours had called too. They pretended to be
concerned, offering help, but she knew full well they were just
digging for dirt. She hated being under all this scrutiny, feeling she had to be
responsible for everyone. The awful tiredness and the desire to be alone that
she’d been experiencing in London were coming back again. They had disappeared in
the rush to Cheltenham, and stayed away while she was looking after Ben, but now the
feelings were here again, creeping up on her, and she was afraid she wouldn’t be
able to cope.
But she didn’t say any of that to
Phil. He’d said today that he was proud of the way she’d taken care of Ben
and Sophie, and how she’d instantly forgiven them for doubting her. She
didn’t want him to think she was the kind of person who crumbled under
pressure.
Eva opened the front door of The Beeches on
Tuesday morning to a policewoman accompanied by a tall dark-haired man in plain
clothes.
‘Hello, Eva,’ the woman said.
‘I’m WPC Markham. We’ve met before, but I don’t expect
you’ll remember.’
‘I do,’ Eva replied. ‘You
were here the night I found Mum. You were very kind. Do come in. I expect you want to
talk to Sophie.’
Markham introduced the man with her as
Detective Inspector Fellows. ‘We’d actually like to speak to both of you –
and Ben too, if he’s here. How is Sophie now?’
‘Ben’s gone back to
Leeds,’ Eva said over her shoulder as she led them to the sitting room. ‘We
thought it was best he didn’t miss any more lectures. He’ll be down again at
the weekend. Sophie’s a bit down in the dumps, but no one would expect her to be
anything else after just a week.’
‘And you? It must be difficult for you
to come back here after all that’s happened?’ Markham said as she sat down
on the sofa.
‘I don’t like being here much,
but I’ve got no choice. Sophie needs me right now. But let me call her,
she’s doing something upstairs.’
Eva returned moments later with Sophie and
introduced her sister to both the officers.
Markham hadn’t been on duty the Sunday
night when Patterson attacked his daughter. The last time she’d seen Sophie was
when she interviewed her after the fire in London, when
she had looked
very tarty and was astoundingly belligerent. But now she looked more like the young girl
she’d met a year ago: no make-up, hair in two plaits, wearing a pink tracksuit,
and with a thin scarf hiding the bruises on her neck. But she was very pale and she
looked frightened.
‘Hello, Sophie,’ Markham said.
‘You’ve had an awful time of it. I wish we could tell you and Eva that
it’s almost over, but I’m afraid these things take time.’
‘I made a statement in hospital about
lying when I said my dad was here the night Eva’s house was set alight,’
Sophie blurted out, perching on the edge of the sofa and wringing her hands with nerves.
‘Am I in trouble for that?’
‘No, we aren’t here about that.
Detective Inspector Fellows wants to tell you both about some new
developments.’
Sandra Markham liked and looked up to Ian
Fellows. He was in his late forties and dedicated to his job. He had superb insight into
the criminal mind, was sensitive with victims and easy on the eye – six foot tall, with
sparkling blue eyes and a physique a man half his age would envy.
‘Well, Eva and Sophie,’ he said,
looking from one to the other, ‘you’ve both had a rough time of it and I
don’t want to make it any worse for you. But as you are probably aware,
we’ve been checking your father’s financial affairs since he attacked
Sophie. We found some discrepancies, which led to an audit at Portwall Papers, his
employers. I’m sorry to tell you this, but we have found evidence of fraud and
embezzlement.’
Eva gasped, and Sophie looked at her as if
expecting an explanation of what this meant.
‘I won’t go into all the
details, as it’s very complicated, but basically your father has been
supplementing his salary in various fraudulent ways for some years. He’s been very
clever. The system he used might not have been discovered for
years,
if we hadn’t been looking for reasons why a normally calm family man had reacted
so violently towards his daughter.’
‘But fraud, embezzlement?’ Eva
repeated in puzzlement. ‘How can that be connected to what he did to
Sophie?’
‘Let me take you back and make things
a little clearer,’ Fellows said patiently. ‘When our colleagues in London
were investigating the fire there, Andrew appeared to have no motive for an arson
attack. I know that you believed it had to be because of Flora taking you as a baby, but
Andrew had no involvement in that – he hadn’t even met Flora when that took
place.’
‘My boyfriend thought that,’ Eva
nodded. ‘He said it didn’t add up.’
‘Well, Eva, we still have no real
proof that Andrew did start the fire. But thanks to Sophie admitting he wasn’t at
home that night, and his reaction to her telling him that she was going to the police,
we are fairly certain he was responsible. As for his motive – well, we think it was
because of the old diaries you found. This is only supposition, but it is possible that
when you told him about them he was afraid there was something damaging about him in
them.’
‘But there wasn’t. The diaries
ended before Flora even met him,’ Eva said.
‘Did you imply to him there was
something?’
Eva thought about it. ‘Well, yes. He
phoned me when I was up in Scotland and he was nasty, so I hinted I’d read
something about him. I just wanted to wind him up, because he’d been mean to
me.’
‘That clearly touched a nerve,’
Fellows said. ‘You see, the Met made some inquiries about him after the fire. They
found that, a year or so after he met your mother, he came under suspicion of
malpractice with the company of estate
agents he worked for in London.
It was believed, though it couldn’t be proved, that he was taking bribes from
people wishing to buy a property. He ensured the owners of the property never knew that
there were other potential buyers offering a higher sum. It is well nigh impossible to
get evidence of such transactions – the person who offered the bribe isn’t going
to admit it, and it would have been cash, no paper trail. But he acquired a very
expensive car at that time, for which there was no hire-purchase transaction. Nor was
there any other evidence of how he paid for it. And he left the company he worked for,
and London, in something of a hurry.
‘We have no way of knowing whether
your mother knew about this – somehow, I doubt it. But he might have thought she had her
suspicions and had written about it in her diary. When you said you were going to the
police about your birth, he was afraid you’d be showing the diary to
us.’
‘But if it couldn’t be proved
twenty years ago, how could it be proved now?’ Eva asked.
‘Quite so,’ Fellows agreed.
‘But his alarm was caused by realizing that if the suspicions about him back then
came to light, we would be likely to probe into his more current affairs. As we
did.’
‘So it wasn’t ever about me
being snatched then?’
‘We very much doubt it. We think his
plan was just to destroy any evidence that might be in your house.’
‘And me with it!’
Fellows pursed his lips. ‘That appears
likely. Though he may have thought you weren’t in the house.’
‘Was it a lot of money he took?’
Sophie asked in a small voice.
‘Over the years, yes.’
‘But how?’ Eva was puzzled.
‘Portwall is a paper company,
and he was a sales manager. He
didn’t handle cash, as far as I know.’