‘Why? Your daughter married an older man. If I’m not mistaken, Gerald Adamant was older than you, Mr Mackay.’
‘He was. He wanted to call me Dad. I wasn’t having any of it. It was always Gerald and Frank whenever we met.’
‘Was that often?’
‘Not often. Helen, she was busy with Gerald’s philanthropic pursuits, but she phoned every week. Once we had got over the initial shock of the age difference, we accepted them as a married couple.’
‘Did Helen have a penchant for older men?’
‘Do you mean, was she wiggling her arse to seduce them? Is that what you’re saying?’
‘Frank, she’s our daughter. You can’t say that about her,’ Betty, Helen’s mother, said.
‘It’s what they said in the newspapers. It’s what the two police officers here want to ask, but they’ll be polite. Am I correct, Inspector Cook?’
‘I would have used different wording, but yes.’
‘You know of Helen’s history. It was the same when she was young. Fourteen and then she starts filling out. The local youths can’t handle it, but Helen’s not like that. She was studious, always got good marks at school, and then she goes to university, a good degree, but what happens? The boss is after her, the men in the office fancy their chances, but all Helen wants is to do her job, meet a nice man, and settle down. She tried it once, lived with him for a few months, the date is set for the marriage, and then he takes off. After that, she’s upset, so she appears onstage at a club.’
‘We’re aware of this?’
‘Bare breasts, plenty of flesh. Not that Helen liked it, but she had become tired of using her brain, only for men to see below her neck. Anyway, after a year or so, Gerald walks into her life. We warned her about older men, but she said she was fine with him, and she was. At least, up until that fateful day when he tried to kill her, and she hit him with the hammer.’
Wendy could see the mother sobbing. She relented and went and put her arm around the distraught woman; Isaac understood why she did so. He had once had to tell the parents of a young man of seventeen that he had blown himself up and twenty others in a terrorist attack. The memory of the mother’s reaction still haunted him, even after so many years.
‘Your relationship with the Adamants?’
‘The younger son could be surly, but he was decent enough, the same as his brother and sister.’
‘Surly?’
‘He fancied Helen, more her age than his father was, but she was committed to Gerald, and the younger son, a smart man by all accounts, wasn’t her kind of man. She told us he reminded her of all the men she had met before. She offered them companionship and an intelligent woman. All they saw was a quick lay. Apologies for my speaking about my daughter like that, but with us, Helen was very open. It was the way we liked it with her. She wasn’t only our daughter, she was also our friend.’
‘The Adamants supported her at her trial.’
‘They did, and very commendable of them, but with so much publicity, and Helen looking the way she did, the sentiment of the jury was against her. We used to visit her in prison at every opportunity, and then, there was James Holden.’
‘Did you meet him?’
‘On many occasions. Another decent man, the same as Gerald.’
‘Older?’
‘Helen had enjoyed being married to Gerald. He treated her well, never flaunted her, and he always included her in his conversations, entrusted her to help with his philanthropic work. She told us that James Holden was the same as Gerald and he was going to get her out of prison. We could see she was becoming close to the man, and even though he was married, and we warned her, the heart doesn’t know such boundaries.’
‘After her release?’
‘She went to work for Holden, although the salary wasn’t much. Not that Helen needed it. The Adamants ensured she had an apartment and some money.’
‘I must ask this,’ Isaac said. ‘Helen, as you say, was a good person, so was Holden, yet they ended up in a hotel together.’
‘We’ve tried to understand why,’ Betty Mackay said, temporarily revived by Wendy’s ministrations. ‘As much as she may have loved James, he was still married. She would not have considered it for one moment, not our Helen.’
‘But she did. The facts are clear, and we need to know why. Mr Mackay, do you have any thoughts?’
‘No more than my wife. Helen would have only agreed if it was for James’s well-being, but he was older than me. The passion doesn’t run as strong, the need to rush off to a hotel for a little romance doesn’t seem plausible. That’s more the folly of teenagers in love, not an old man and one of his employees.’
‘Regardless, it did happen,’ Isaac said, ‘and not only that, we know that James Holden had been there with another woman in the past.’
‘Then we are lost as to why Helen was there with him unless it was important. Are you sure they were involved?’
‘We’re sure. There’s proof.’
***
Two men waited in the reception of the hotel in Bayswater. Neither man was comfortable with the other: the concierge because his money-making venture, his time with one of the whores instead of payment, would be curtailed, and the other man, Police Constable Trevor Greenock, because he was fastidious about personal hygiene, and the concierge stank.
‘What time does this woman come in?’ Greenock asked.
‘It depends. Some nights she doesn’t come in at all.’
‘Attractive?’
‘I’d say so,’ the concierge said, although not as attractive as the murdered woman had been, he knew that.
