‘No.’
Charlie gave him a look. ‘Tell me you’re not crazy enough to try to get near Stephen Elton.’ She pulled her phone out of her bag and switched it on, now that she was as sure as she could be that she and Simon had stopped fighting. ‘Olivia,’ she told him, listening to her sister’s message. ‘She wants us to go round. I asked her to find out as much as she could about Martha Wyers.’
‘A name you didn’t mention to our metropolitan friends,’ said Simon.
‘Because there’s probably no link.’
‘So we’re not going to Olivia’s?’
‘We’re going. She said she’s got something I’ll want to see. Though admittedly, based on past experience, that might turn out to be a picture of Angelina Jolie’s new baby in
‘After what we’ve just seen, I’m not in the mood for jokes like that.’ Simon had finished his pizza and moved on to Charlie’s.
Her phone vibrated, knocking against her plate. She picked it up. ‘Liv?’
‘It isn’t,’ said Sam Kombothekra, whose peculiar way of answering questions with ‘It is’ or ‘I did’ instead of a simple ‘Yes’ always made Charlie smile. ‘It’s Sam,’ he said.
‘I’d never have guessed.’
‘Is Simon with you?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Strange things are happening here, Charlie. I thought you’d both want to know. But listen, if the Snowman finds out I’ve discussed any of it with you…’
‘Relax, Sam. He’s not tapping your phone. What strange things?’
‘Have you met a DS Coral Milward?’
‘This morning.’
‘Seems she’s Proust’s new soulmate. He’s just told me my team’s at DC Dunning’s disposal for the foreseeable future. No explanation, no details as yet.’
‘So they’re not as stupid as they look,’ said Charlie. ‘They’ll want you to work the Spilling angle-Bussey, Seed and Trelease. It’s good.’ She looked at Simon. ‘Means they’re taking us seriously.’
‘I told Proust it was crazy not to have Simon with us on this. Do you know what he said? “The extent of Waterhouse’s involvement in Gemma Crowther’s murder has yet to be determined.” Can you believe that?’
Charlie repeated the quote to Simon, who shook his head in disgust. ‘Ask Kombothekra what he said in response.’
Charlie tried to pass him the phone but he backed away from it. Was he angry with Sam? ‘Wrap it up,’ he muttered, glaring at Charlie.
‘Sam, I’m going to have to-’
‘He only said it for effect. He knows exactly why Simon was outside Gemma Crowther’s place on Monday: he’d followed Aidan Seed, who, as we now know, was not only at the scene but had a motive the size of a… a…’ Sam stopped, unable to think of anything big enough.
‘Motive?’ Charlie prodded Simon to make sure he was paying attention.
‘No one’s told you?’ Sam sighed. ‘I don’t know why I’m surprised. Who’d want to break a case when they can score a point instead, right?’
‘Sam, for fuck’s sake! What’s the motive?’
‘Crowther and her partner Stephen Elton both served time for false imprisonment and GBH.’
‘
‘Elton got parole in March 2005, Crowther in October 2006. Somebody’s idea of justice.’
Charlie frowned. This didn’t sound like Sam. Normally he was determined to find potential and promise in every scrote that crossed his path. ‘Devout Quakers and GBH don’t often go together.’
‘However devout they went on to become, in April 2000 they tied a defenceless woman to a pillar in their back garden so that Gemma Crowther could spend
‘Yeah,’ he said, exhaling slowly. ‘Makes it a bit harder to mourn Crowther’s passing, doesn’t it?’
‘The defenceless woman was Ruth Bussey,’ said Charlie, looking at Simon. ‘She was their victim.’
13
When I wake, my head is clear. I know where I am straight away. All the details of this room are familiar, though I saw them for the first time only last night: blue and white checked bedspread and pillowcases, beige loop carpet, the loop so coarse it makes me think of a bathmat. Small, square pine cabinets on either side of the bed, a pine dressing table with a three-sectioned mirror at one end of the room, a wooden blanket chest at the other. Yellow curtains with red and gold tasselled tie-backs. I can hear banging coming from downstairs that sounds like crockery, and a radio.
I’m in Garstead Cottage, in the grounds of Villiers school-the cottage Martha Wyers’ parents rent, and allow Mary to use.
I pull back the bedclothes. I’m wearing the pyjamas Mary threw at me last night, too tired by that point even to speak: they’re pink, with ‘Minxxx’ printed across the top. The soft moans of animals from outside draw me over to the window. I open the curtains and look at the view in daylight: fields full of cows, a wall separating the farmland from the school’s land, the square-towered stone bulk of the main school building at the top of the steeply rising path. It’s the building Mary painted, the picture I saw in her house.
Garstead Cottage nestles in a dip beside the path, a few metres beyond Villiers’ main gates. It’s down a level from the land around it and has an air of being hidden. Last night, Mary told me I didn’t need to bother closing the curtains. ‘No one ever looks in,’ she said. ‘Not girls and not teachers. It’s like being in the middle of nowhere.’
The door opens and she walks in. ‘Late breakfast,’ she says. ‘Actually, it can double as late lunch.’ She’s wearing a grey T-shirt with blue paisley pyjama bottoms and carrying a large blue cloth-bound hardback book. Horizontally, in both hands. Balanced on top is a teapot trailing a green label on a piece of string, a cup, and a sandwich overhanging the edges of a saucer that’s too small for it. ‘I’m hoping it’s not every day someone brings you peppermint tea and a Marmite sandwich on a tray. Well, a book,’ she corrects herself. In the pocket of her pyjama bottoms I can see the outline of her cigarette packet.
Something has changed. I’m not scared of her any more.
Pieces of last night start to come back to me: Mary’s insistence that she couldn’t tell me; she had to show me. She didn’t want to talk while she drove, so we listened to the radio for a while. Then she put a CD on; the ‘Survivor’ song started to play. ‘Martha was playing this when she hanged herself,’ Mary said matter-of-factly. ‘Odd choice, don’t you think? If you’re going to commit suicide, why play a song that’s all about coping without somebody, growing wiser and smarter and stronger?’
‘Maybe…’ That was as much as I could say. I didn’t feel comfortable speculating.
‘Irony, do you think? I don’t think so. Arrogance: that’s what I think it was.’
I asked her what she meant, but she frowned and shook her head. ‘Not tonight,’ she said. ‘Not if you want me to get us there intact.’ Then she took her mobile phone out of the glove compartment, saying she had to ring Villiers. She asked for someone called Claire. I listened as she ordered her to contact the local police, to meet us and them at Garstead Cottage in two hours’ time.
‘Why the police?’ I asked.
‘It’s my routine,’ said Mary, turning up the volume on the stereo so that I couldn’t say anything else.
