Dark Room

back. If he'd had a word with me, I'd have sorted it out, but, oh no, he had to go running to the old man and make a bloody mountain out of a molehill.'

Something fundamental snapped inside Jinx's head. She would always think of it afterwards as the blood bond which had tied her physically to a family that in any other circumstance she would have avoided like the plague. Suddenly, she found herself free to acknowledge that she didn't like them. More, she had only contempt for them. Ultimately, in fact, she agreed with what everyone knew Adam thought but had never put into words: Miles and Fergus were their mother's sons and, like Betty, saw Adam Kingsley only in terms of their meal ticket. She smiled savagely. 'You know, I'm going to tell you things that I've never told a soul in my life. First, I despise your mother. I always have from the minute she came into our house. She's a fat drunk with an extraordinarily low IQ. Second, she married my father because she wanted to be a lady, and she had enough cunning to persuade him that while she could never fill my mother's shoes, she could at least be a comfortable slipper for him at the end of a long day. He was lonely and he fell for it, but what he actually saddled himself with was a vulgar, money-grubbing tart.' She held up three fingers. 'Third, it might not have been so bad if she hadn't lumbered him with you and Miles. Even your names are an embarrassment. Adam wanted to call you something straightforward like David or Michael, but Elizabeth wanted something befitting the sons of a rich lady.'

Her voice took on the accent of her stepmother. 'It has to be something posh, Daddy, and 'David' and 'Michael' are so common.' She drew an angry breath. 'Fourth, Adam finds himself father to two of the laziest, most unintelligent, most dishonest sons a man could have. Every gene you have has come to you straight from your mother. You are incapable, either of you, of contributing anything worthwhile to your family. Instead, you are only interested in bringing Adam and me down to your own shabby levels. Fifth, how the hell can you begin to justify stealing off a gardener who works day in day out to fund his very modest house and his very modest car while you, you little bastard,' she spat at him, 'swan around in your swank Porsche so that you can pick up any little tart who's stupid enough to think the Kingsley name means something? Will you explain that to me? Can you explain it to me?'

He stared at her. It was a shock to him to see his father mirrored in the set of her chin and the fury in her voice, but he had spent years playing on her conscience and, like Miles, he was a master at it. 'We've always known you were a snobbish bitch, Jinx,' he said idly. 'What the hell do you suppose it was like for Mum moving into a house with the perfect child already in residence and pictures of her perfect mother all over the walls? She says you were so condescending she wanted to slap you. I wish she had, as a matter of fact. If you'd been treated the way Dad's treated us, then maybe things would have been better for us all.'

'He didn't treat you any differently at the beginning from the way he treated me,' she said coldly. 'I can remember the first time he belted you, because it was the first time you and Miles were reported for stealing. You were nine years old and Miles was eleven, and you stole money from the till in the village shop. Adam paid over a hundred pounds to Mrs. Davies to hush the whole thing up, then took a strap to the pair of you to remind you what would happen if you ever did it again.' She shook her head. 'But it didn't work. You just went on doing it and he went on beating you, and it was me who had to try and calm him down, because Betty was always drunk. Do you think I enjoyed any of that?'

He shrugged. 'I couldn't care less whether you did or not, and anyway you're exaggerating. Most of the time you were either at school or bloody Oxford, playing the family genius while Miles and I were being treated like Neanderthals. You should put yourself in our shoes once in a while. You know damn well he's always hated us. We only took that money from the shop because we thought he might notice us instead of mooning over his precious Jane.' His mouth took on a sullen cast. 'You don't know what it was like. When you were home for the holidays, he was only interested in you and what you were doing, and when you were away, he used to shut himself in his office with those bloody photographs of your mother.'

She saw all that for what it was, the manipulative emotional blackmail of a selfish, twisted mind, but the habits of a lifetime die very hard and, as usual, she foundered on the hard certainty of Adam's obsession with her mother and herself. 'But why will you never help yourselves?' she asked him. 'Why do you go on doing what you know he hates? Why do you stay there and give him the opportunity to despise you? I just don't understand that.'

'Because it's my home as much as his and I don't see why he should push me out,' he said. 'It's all right for you. You got Russell's money. You were lucky.'

She experienced the strange sensation of a door slamming shut on a memory. For the briefest second, she had a glimpse of something remembered, but it was as transient as a puff of wind on a summer's day and the memory was lost. Had they had this conversation before? 'You have some very warped ideas, Fergus. How can you regard anything to do with Russell's murder as lucky?' Why did Russell keep intruding into every conversation? She had banned him from her thoughts for so long, but now she was being forced into thinking about him all the time.

'Leave it out, Jinx. You weren't that fond of him and you ended up with all the loot.' But it was said without conviction, because he, like she, had lost the energy to continue an argument that was going nowhere. Where trust had been sacrificed, knowledge was all, and it mattered very little whether thoughts were spoken or unspoken when everyone knew where they stood. Except... 'You're wrong to slag off poor old Mum,' he said with a halfhearted show of belligerence. 'She's gone out and batted for you, which is more than Dad's done since you've been in here. She's given the Walladers and the Harrises a pasting for the way Leo and Meg have treated you. She called Sir Anthony 'a boil on the bum of society' and Caroline Harris 'a tight-arsed bitch.'

Jinx lowered her head abruptly so that he wouldn't see the laughter in her eyes.

'Okay, she was drunk,' said Fergus sulkily, 'but she meant well. Actually, Miles and I thought it was quite funny.'

So did Jinx. She had called Anthony 'a parasite' but how much more astute was Betty's judgment...

ROMSEY ROAD POLICE STATION, WINCHESTER-7:30 P.M.

'You're going to have to let me talk to Miss Kingsley,' said Gareth Maddocks, dropping wearily into a chair. 'Seriously, sir, bar sitting by Miss Harris's phone and waiting for the damn thing to ring, I can't see how we're going to find out where her parents live.'

'Did you try Sir Anthony again?'

Maddocks nodded. 'He just keeps bleating 'Wiltshire' at us. All this guff he gave you about what a relief it was when Leo took up with a nice girl like Meg amounts to sweet fuck all. The only thing she had going for her, as far as I can make out, is that she wasn't Jane Kingsley. The impression I get is that if Leo had turned up with some old slag from the local pub and announced his intention of marrying her, the Walladers would have jumped for joy.'

'Can't say I blame them,' said the Superintendent dryly. 'I wouldn't want Adam Kingsley for an in-law either.'

'Well, for what it's worth, his daughter sounds fairly reasonable. She left a message on the answering machine. Nice voice, sense of humor, says she doesn't bear any grudges and wanted Meg to phone her.'