Authors: Minette Walters
‘Why didn’t you watch
Coronation Street
?’
‘It wasn’t on.’
‘Are you sure about that?’
‘Positive,’ she said. ‘I went through the
Radio Times
and picked out the soaps deliberately. If it
had
been on, I’d have watched it.’
He stroked his beard thoughtfully. ‘I’m not much of an expert, admittedly, but I’m sure
Coronation Street
goes out on a Friday, and you say you remember this
as being Friday the third of June.’ He eased gingerly out of his chair, his shoulder protesting at the movement, and went to the desk. ‘Hilda,’ he said into the intercom,
‘can you rustle up a
Radio Times
from somewhere and bring it in? I need to know which days of the week
don’t
have
Coronation Street
, but
do
have
EastEnders
,
The Bill
and
Brookside
.’
Her giggle rattled tinnily down the wire. ‘There now, and I always thought you preferred the intellectual stuff.’
‘Very funny. This is important, Hilda.’
‘Sorry, well, I can tell you without the
Radio Times
.
Coronation Street
is Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
EastEnders
is Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays.
The Bill
is Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, and
Brookside
is Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays. So, if you don’t want
Coronation Street
but you do want the others, then
that means Tuesday.’
‘Good lord!’ said Alan in amazement. ‘Do you watch them
all
?’
‘Most days,’ she agreed cheerfully. ‘Anything else I can help you with?’
‘No, that’s fine, thank you.’ He returned to his seat. ‘Did you hear that?’ he asked Jinx. ‘You appear to be remembering a Tuesday and not a
Friday, and it does seem a little unlikely that Leo would have returned for breakfast immediately after he had packed his bags and gone.’
She stared unhappily at her hands.
‘I wonder if you’re quite as clear about Saturday the fourth as you think you are. You remember saying goodbye to Leo and you’re very specific about the day and the
date, but do you know why? What happened to fix Saturday the fourth in your mind?’
‘It was in my diary for ages,’ she said. ‘Week at the Hall, beginning June the fourth.’
‘And you were definitely leaving for the Hall when you said goodbye to Leo?’
‘Yes.’
‘So how many suitcases were you carrying?’
She stared at him in confusion.
‘Did you have
any
suitcases?’ he asked.
‘I know I was going to see my father,’ she said slowly.
He waited. ‘And?’ he prompted at last.
‘My bag was hanging on the back of the chair.’ She stared into the past. ‘It’s a small leather pouch on a long strap. I slung it over my shoulder and said,
I’m off now.’ She frowned. ‘I think I must have put the suitcases in the car the night before.’
‘Is that what you usually did?’
‘It’s the only thing that makes sense.’
‘I wonder if it is.’ He took a diary out of his jacket pocket. ‘Let’s work forwards,’ he suggested, ‘beginning with what you know to be true. Tell
me about the first time you met Leo.’
The Vicarage, Littleton Mary, Wiltshire – 12.15 p.m.
Simon Harris answered the door and looked in some dismay at Frank Cheever. ‘We – that is, my father and I—’ He broke off as the sound of shouting erupted
from the window to the right. ‘My mother’s not very well, I’m afraid. She can’t really come to terms with what’s happened. We’d like her to see the doctor but
she won’t have him near her. The problem is she’s making some very wild accusations, and we’re worried – well, frankly, she’s accusing Dad of some terrible things and
we – that is I—’ He fell silent as Mrs Harris’s voice rose to a scream, her words carrying clearly through the open window.
‘How dare you deny it? Did you think I didn’t know how you lusted after her? Did you think she wouldn’t tell me what you did to her? She couldn’t wait to get
out of this house, couldn’t wait to get away from you. You made her what she was and you dare to accuse her now of weakness. You disgust me. You’ve always disgusted me.’
Charles Harris said something in a murmur which wasn’t audible.
‘Of course I’ll tell the police. Why should I protect you when you never protected her? You disgusting man.’ Her voice rose to a scream again. ‘
CHILD
ABUSER
!’ There was the sound of a door slamming, followed by silence.
Frank looked at Simon’s shocked face. ‘None of that would be admissible in court, sir. I couldn’t possibly swear that it was your mother I was listening to and not
a radio programme, so please don’t worry unnecessarily. As you say, she’s overwrought and we all say things we don’t mean when we’re angry.’
‘But you heard it.’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s completely untrue. My father has never abused anyone in his life, and certainly not Meg. It’s my mother who has the problem.’ Anguish pinched his
already drawn face. ‘This is so awful. I keep asking myself, why? What have we done to deserve it?’
Frank was spared an answer by the door opening behind Simon’s back and his father putting an arm round the young man’s shoulder and drawing him inside. ‘Come in,
Superintendent. You find us in turmoil, I’m afraid. Grief is often the most selfish of emotions.’
Nightingale Clinic, Salisbury – 12.30 p.m.
Alan smiled encouragingly as Jinx showed her first signs of faltering. ‘You’re doing very well. We can check all this with Dean later, but you’ve taken me up to
Friday, the twenty-seventh of May without any hesitation at all.’ He consulted his diary. ‘The following Monday, May the thirtieth, was a bank holiday. Does that help at all?
You’re unlikely to have gone to work so maybe you took the opportunity for a long weekend away.’
‘Friday was the last day of the
Cosmopolitan
fashion shoot,’ she recapitulated slowly. ‘Dean had tickets to a rock concert at Wembley and he had to meet his
lover at five o’clock at the tube station, so he left me to develop the films. I wanted to get it done because . . .’ She paused at the same place she’d paused before. ‘I
know it was urgent,’ she said, ‘but I can’t remember why.’
‘There were only four working days the following week because of the Bank Holiday Monday,’ he pointed out, ‘and you were spending the week after that at Hellingdon
Hall. Perhaps you realized you were running out of time.’
She stared into the middle distance. ‘Miles and Fergus came,’ she said suddenly. ‘It was after Angelica had left and they kept hammering on the studio door until I
let them in. There was a cab-driver with them, demanding money. They were both pissed. They said they’d lost all their cash gambling, couldn’t go home and needed beds for the night. I
said why hadn’t they gone to Richmond and waited for me there, and they said they had, but Leo had refused to pay the taxi fare and told them to come to the studio instead and make me pay for
it. Which I did.’ She took out a cigarette and lit it, watching the blue smoke spiral from its tip for a second or two before going on.
‘I can remember now,’ she said in a strange voice. ‘I made them some coffee and told them to wait in the reception area till I’d finished what I was doing,
but Miles was so drunk that he barged in on me in the dark room and let the light in.’
‘What happened then?’
‘The film I was working on was completely buggered, so I did what my father does and beat the shit out of him.’ She gave a hollow laugh. ‘I chased him into the
studio and started hitting him with a plastic chair. I was
so
angry. And then Fergus came lurching in to find out what was going on, so I hit him as well. But the person I really wanted to
have a go at was Leo. It was the last straw, sending them on to me when he knew I was up to my eyes in work.’
‘How did he know?’
‘Because when Dean left I phoned to tell him. We were going to his parents’ for the weekend and he wanted to leave on the Friday evening. So I rang to suggest that he go
on his own and leave me to follow on the Saturday, but he said he had things to do himself so it didn’t matter.’
‘And it was after the phone call that he sent Miles and Fergus on to you?’
She nodded.
‘What happened then?’
‘I made up my mind to call off the wedding. It was the money more than anything, the fact that he wouldn’t pay their taxi fare.’ Her lips thinned angrily.
‘He’d been scrounging off me for so bloody long, and he wouldn’t even pay one miserable taxi fare, and I thought, I’m mad. What the hell am I doing tying myself to this
selfish bastard who doesn’t give a toss for anyone except himself?’ She looked at Alan. ‘So I packed it in for the evening, got the boys into the car and went back to have it out
with him. And he wasn’t there.’ She shrugged. ‘So I ordered a pizza, made the boys eat some, and sent them to bed to sleep it off.’
There was a short silence.
‘Weren’t Miles and Fergus angry when you hit them?’
‘I think they were too shocked.’ She thought back. ‘The funny thing is I lost my temper with Fergus the other day and I thought it was the first time I’d ever
done it but it was nothing to the anger I felt that night. I remember screaming at them so much that I had a sore throat the next morning.’ She smiled slightly. ‘I didn’t hit them
very hard. It was the fact that I did it at all that shocked them. Miles burst into tears and said I was just like Adam, and I thought: For the first time I understand why Adam does it.’
‘And why is that, Jinx?’
She looked at him. ‘Because you’re so bloody tired, you’re working so bloody hard, you’ve tied yourself to a worthless parasite, and two immature drunks come
along and ruin everything you’ve done because they think it’s funny. I could have killed them all that night, every one of them. I got no sleep because I was so angry, and all I could
think about was what hell the next week was going to be because I’d have to work late to catch up. And I kept worrying that the ruined film was the only film that was any good, and how was I
going to explain to
Cosmopolitan
that we’d have to do the shoot all over again.’
‘Did Leo come back that night?’
‘If he did, I didn’t hear him. I bolted the front and back door on the inside, so he couldn’t get in.’ She brushed imaginary fluff from her sleeve. ‘He
came back at lunchtime on the Saturday.’
‘Were Miles and Fergus still there?’
She nodded. ‘We were all in the kitchen when he came in through the back door. They couldn’t go unless I lent them some money for the tube fare back to Miles’s
Porsche, which was parked outside a casino somewhere, but I was refusing to shell out any more. I said they could walk for all I cared, or phone Adam and explain what they’d been doing.
He’d already told them that if they persisted with the gambling he’d cut them out of his will.’ She closed her eyes and touched her fingertips to her eyelids as if she had a pain
there. ‘So Leo offered to drive them and they all left.’
There was another silence.
‘And what did you do then?’ asked Alan.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I can’t remember anything after they left. I think I must have gone to sleep.’ She lowered her hand and looked at him
with a kind of despair.
The Vicarage, Littleton Mary, Wiltshire – 12.30 p.m.
They sat in the drawing room in deep discomfort. Caroline Harris was crouched on the sofa, misery etched into every line of her face. Charles sat as far away from her as he could,
while Simon perched unhappily on a stool. Frank, overheated and tired, was offered a deep leather armchair which hurt his back.
‘We’ve located Leo’s house in Chelsea,’ he explained, ‘and, according to the information phoned through before I left, there are several boxes and
suitcases on the premises which appear to belong to your daughter. Preliminary searches have uncovered a photograph album which shows several snap-shots of Meg and Leo together, taken in July
1983.’ He addressed his question to Mrs Harris. ‘Were you aware they had known each other for at least eleven years?’
Her lips thinned to a narrow line. ‘No,’ she said.
‘Was she a secretive person, Mrs Harris?’
The woman glanced spitefully at her husband. ‘Not with me. She told me everything. It was her father she kept secrets from.’
‘That’s not true,’ said Simon.
Frank glanced at him. ‘You’d say she
was
secretive.’
‘Very. She didn’t want anyone to know anything about her life, least of all Mum or Dad. Particularly Mum, in fact. She knew how much Mum hated sex so she didn’t
tell her until recently how many men she slept with, and she only did that because she was angry.’ He closed his eyes to avoid looking at his mother’s pain. ‘She loved sex, saw it
as a healthy expression of life, love and beauty, and couldn’t bear to have it treated as something dirty and disgusting.’
‘You wanted her, too, Simon,’ said Caroline in a whisper, ‘just like your father. Never mind she was your sister. You think I didn’t notice? I saw how you
looked at her.’
A dull flush rose in Simon’s face. ‘It was you who made her uncomfortable,’ he said quietly, ‘not Dad. Everything she did was the opposite of what
you’ve done. She got herself a decent education, she rejected God, she loved sex, she stayed single, she dived into London life to get away from the sterility of village rectitude. She
experienced more in her thirty-four years than you will experience in a whole lifetime.’ Tears glittered in his eyes. ‘She didn’t strangle life, she glorified every minute as if
it were her last. I wish to God the rest of us could do the same.’
There was a desperate and terrible silence.
Frank cleared his throat. ‘One of the photographs has a somewhat cryptic caption underneath it. It reads’ – he consulted a notebook – ‘“Happiness
AA”. I’m told Meg is sitting in Leo’s lap on a beach.’ He looked up. ‘Do you know what AA stands for? It seems unlikely that Automobile Association or Alcoholics
Anonymous would fit the bill.’
Simon looked towards his mother but she had retreated into some internal world and was rocking herself tenderly on the sofa. ‘After Abortion,’ he said quietly.
‘Married couples always talk about their lives BC – Before Children. Meg always referred to life after her abortion as double-A time. She said she’d never realized before just how
awful it would be to have children and she thanked God she’d discovered early on that she wasn’t cut out to be a mother.’