Dark Room

'What he says. To let you recover at your own speed. He didn't want psychiatrists meddling.'

Why not? What was there to fear from psychiatrists this time? What did Adam think she could tell them? What could she tell them? 'Then it must be your invitation to talk about Russell's death,' she said slowly. 'Wild horses wouldn't make him do that, and certainly not with me present.'

'What's he afraid of?'

'Nothing.'

Why did she keep lying to him? he wondered. And why this need to protect her father when it was so very clear she thought he'd murdered her husband? 'There must be something, Jinx, or it wouldn't require wild horses to drag it out of him,' he said reasonably.

'There's nothing,' she insisted. 'It's just that as far as Adam is concerned, Russell didn't exist. His name's never mentioned. The episode is forgotten history.'

Protheroe mulled this over. ' 'You obviously think your father views your tragedy as a 'forgotten episode,' ' he said thoughtfully. 'But is that how you see it too?'

She didn't answer.

'Tell me about your father's background,' he suggested, next. 'Where did he come from?'

She spoke in quick, jerky sentences. 'I only know what Betty's told me. Adam never talks about his past. He was born in the East End of London. He was the third of five children. His father and two older brothers were merchant seamen and all died when their ships were sunk in the North Atlantic. His younger brother and sister were evacuated to Devon while he remained with his mother to face the blitz. His education was minimal. He learned more from the black marketeers working out of the docks than he ever learned in school. By the end of the war he had amassed a list of contacts abroad and enough money to set up as an importer. The first goods he shipped in were silks, cottons, and cosmetics-they arrived on his seventeenth birthday. He doubled his money overnight by flogging the lot on the black market, and he's never looked back. He began life as a crook-knew the Kray twins very well. That's all I know.'

He believed her. If Adam Kingsley was anything like she described him, he was a man who compartmentalized every aspect of his life. Rather like his daughter. It would be interesting to discover whether he, too, closed doors on dark rooms and threw away the keys. The chances were high that he did. 'As far as Adam was concerned, Russell didn't exist,' Jinx had said.

'What happened to his mother?' Protheroe asked now.

'I don't know. He didn't have much to do with her after he married my mother. As far as I can make out, neither family approved of the marriage.'

'And the brother and sister? What happened to them?'

'They went back to London after the war, presumably to live with their mother. The only thing Adam has ever said on the subject is that he's always regarded them as strangers because he and they grew up apart.'

'Does he still feel like that?'

She slipped down into the chair and laid her head against the back of it. 'He hasn't spoken to either of them for over thirty years. Uncle Jo emigrated to Australia and hasn't been heard of since, and Aunt Lucy married a black man. My father severed all his ties with her the day she walked up the aisle.'

'Because her husband was black?'

'Of course. He's a racist. Betty used to know Lucy quite well when they were all younger. She told me once that Adam tried to stop the wedding.'

'How?'

With shaking fingers, she lit a cigarette. 'Betty was very drunk. I'm not sure she was telling the truth.'

'What did she say?''

She took quick pulls on the cigarette, considering her answer. 'That Adam tried to scare Lucy's fiance off with a beating,' she said in a rush, 'but that Lucy went ahead and married him anyway. It might be true. He really does hate black people.'

Alan watched her for a moment. 'How do you feel about that?'

'Ashamed.'

He waited. 'Because your father's a bully?' he suggested.

She could taste hot, sweet bile in her mouth and drew in a lungful of smoke to mask it. 'Yes-no. Mostly because I should have sought Lucy and her family out years ago and made a stand-but I never did.'

Veronica Gordon was right about the eyes, he was thinking. What the hell was going on inside her head, that she could look so frightened and sound so composed. 'Why not?'

She turned her face to the ceiling. 'Because I was afraid the whipping boys would be punished if I did.'

'Meaning your brothers.'

'Not necessarily. Any whipping boy will do,' she said flatly. 'If I'd sought out my aunt, then Betty would have been taken to task because she knew Lucy as a child and would have been accused of being the instigator. But it's more often the boys than not.'

'Are we talking literally or metaphorically? Does your father physically beat your brothers?'

'Yes.'

'So was Russell another whipping boy, do you think?' he asked mildly.

He caught her unawares and she stared at him in shock. 'My father didn't kill him,' she said, her voice rising. 'The police ruled him out very early on.'