Crisis

23

It wasn’t Peter Robertson who opened his front door when I rang the bell at three-thirty on Saturday afternoon. Instead, it was a grey-haired woman I took to be in her late fifties or early sixties.

Kate and I had some difficulty finding 43 Queen Anne Court, South Ealing, but a friendly taxi driver finally pointed us in the right direction.

Queen Anne Court was a 1950s six-storey concrete tenement block with outside walkways, like many that were built after the Second World War to provide emergency social housing after the Blitz. Most have now been demolished in favour of low-rise tidy estates with lots of greenery, but a few of these monstrosities remained, and this was one of them.

Number 43 was on the fourth floor, accessed by graffiti-daubed concrete open stairways at each end of the building.

‘Is Peter Robertson in?’ I asked the woman.

‘He’s gone to the local shop,’ she said. ‘He shouldn’t be long.’ She looked both ways down the walkway but there was no sign of anyone. ‘Are you from the local authority?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m a lawyer.’

It was clearly the wrong thing to say.

‘We don’t want any more lawyers,’ the woman said aggressively. ‘We’ve had nothing but the likes of you around here, pestering us ever since it was first in the papers.’

‘What was in the papers?’ I asked.

‘Zoe’s death, of course,’ she said. ‘All offering to get us compensation, as if money for the children could somehow make up for the loss of their mother.’

‘I’m not offering compensation,’ I said. ‘I represent Declan Chadwick.’

That got her attention, sure enough.

‘Come here to buy us off again, have you?’ she said with even more venom than she’d had for the compensation lawyers.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ve come here to find out the truth.’

‘The Chadwick family wouldn’t recognise the truth if it slapped them in the face.’

‘How would you know that?’ I asked.

‘Because I’m one of them,’ she said. ‘I’m Yvonne Chadwick, Zoe’s mother.’

Yvonne didn’t ask us in, but she agreed we could wait outside for Peter to return from the shop, not that she could have really stopped us.

‘What a depressing place,’ Kate said as we waited. ‘All that graffiti everywhere, and did you notice in the stairwells? Ugh!’

I presumed she meant the piles of rubbish and the overpoweringly sweet smell of rat urine.

‘But better than under a railway arch in Croydon,’ I replied. ‘Which is where they lived before.’

Peter Robertson arrived wearing a New York Yankees baseball cap and carrying a plastic supermarket shopping bag. For a second, I thought he was going to drop the bag and run, but he held his nerve and came slowly along the walkway towards us.

‘What do you want?’ he asked gruffly as a greeting.

‘Hello, Pete,’ I said in a jovial tone. ‘My name is Harry Foster. I’m a lawyer and I represent Declan Chadwick.’

‘And I’m Catherine Logan,’ Kate said, using her maiden name. ‘I was at school with Zoe. We’ve come to help.’

‘Help?’ he said. ‘How?’

‘Shall we go in?’ I asked. ‘It’s easier to talk inside.’

He fetched a key from his pocket and put it in the lock.

We went inside, the front door leading straight into the living room, and Peter was immediately mobbed by his daughters.

‘Daddy, Daddy, what did you buy us?’ they screamed in unison.

Peter delved into the shopping bag, triumphantly producing two iced lollies wrapped up in newspaper to keep them frozen.

‘And don’t drip them down your dresses,’ he said, handing them over. ‘Now, girls, stay in here with Grannie while I talk to this man.’

He nodded his head for me to follow him into the kitchen. Kate stayed with Yvonne and the girls.

‘Lovely daughters,’ I said. ‘What are their names?’

I already knew but I didn’t want it to look like I had been researching his family.

‘Poppy and Joanne,’ he said, unloading the rest of the bag’s contents onto the kitchen table and then putting it away in the fridge and cupboards. ‘Poppy’s nine and Joanne seven. My little angels.’

‘It must be nice having their grandmother here to help you look after them.’

Peter gave me a look that every husband has made about his mother-in-law at one time or another. I almost laughed.

‘She came yesterday,’ he said. ‘But I’ve told her I don’t want her here and she must go home tomorrow. I can look after the girls perfectly well on my own. I’ve done it most of their lives anyway. Zoe was hopeless. When she wasn’t actually in hospital, she’d often go off on her own. Sometimes for just one night, occasionally for two. But, even when she was here, she couldn’t really cope.’

He removed the baseball cap and hung it on a peg by the door. I’d forgotten that Janie had said he was bald, and he was too, with just a ring of dark hair running round the back of his head from temple to temple.

‘Now what exactly do you want?’ he asked. ‘The police told me they’d arrested Declan Chadwick for murdering my wife, so why aren’t you in Newmarket making him confess, instead of worrying me and my kids?’

‘Because he didn’t do it,’ I replied.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Perfectly sure.’

‘Then why haven’t the police let him go?’

‘They have,’ I said.

‘But not completely. He’s still under investigation.’

‘If the police really thought he’d done it, they would have charged him by now.’

‘So who did kill her?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know. That’s why I’m here. Was it you?’

‘The police asked me that.’

‘I thought they would have. What did you tell them?’

‘The truth,’ he said. ‘I was here looking after the girls last Sunday. My neighbour, Jerry, brought his girl over to play with mine while he and I watched the final day of the football season together on the TV. We’re both Palace supporters. He took his girl home about seven-thirty. After that I was here alone with mine.’

‘What time did Zoe leave?’

‘The police asked me that too.’

‘And?’

‘I told them she wasn’t here at all on Sunday morning. Nor Saturday. She left sometime during Friday evening. I’d dozed off in front of the telly and, when I woke up, she’d gone.’

‘Weren’t you worried?’ I asked.

‘Not unduly. She did it all the time.’

‘Where did she go?’

‘All sorts of places. The police brought her home a few times. Once they found her asleep in a bus shelter. Another time she was spotted in A&E at Ealing Hospital. She wasn’t ill or injured or anything, she’d just gone in and sat in the waiting room to sleep. She did that quite a lot until they worked out what she was doing and stopped it.’

He was far more talkative than I had expected. Relaxed too.

‘But she always came home in the end?’ I said.

‘Yeah. It would be as if her being away somehow cleaned the demons from her system, at least for a while. She always came home happy. They were the best times.’

There were tears in his eyes.

‘Was she taking drugs?’ I asked.

‘All the time,’ he said. ‘Antidepressants and anti-anxiety pills by the bloody handful. Not that they did her much good.’

‘I meant did she take any other drugs when she disappeared? You know, illegal drugs?’

‘I reckon she must have,’ he said. ‘But she always denied it and I wanted to believe her. We used to do stuff a lot, coke mostly, so she’d know where to get some.’

‘Used to?’ I said.

‘Yeah. Used to,’ he said vehemently. ‘I’m clean now and I hoped that Zoe was too. I haven’t had a snort of coke in more than five years.’ He laughed. ‘Mind you, I’ve felt like having a bit this past week, I can tell you.’

‘But Zoe didn’t come home as usual this time?’

‘No.’ He swallowed hard, clearly trying not to cry. ‘I got a bit anxious when she hadn’t turned up by Monday. She liked to see the girls off to school at the start of the week. By Tuesday morning I was proper worried. She’d never been gone for four nights at once before.’

‘Did you call the police and report her missing?’ I asked.

‘No,’ he said bluntly. ‘The police and I haven’t always seen eye to eye. Anyway, I thought she’d come back. Always had done before.’

‘But you did call Arabella Chadwick,’ I said. ‘I was there.’

He looked at me. ‘I hear that she’s dead now as well.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘She is. But why did you call her?’

He sighed. ‘I don’t know. I was that worried, I had to call someone. Arabella, she came here. Just before Christmas. Turned up one Sunday. She loved the girls and said that she wanted to get to know us better. Some guff about the family having to stick together. But it wasn’t a good day. Zoe was very agitated and she told her a few home truths about being a member of the Chadwick family.’

‘What sort of home truths?’ I asked.

Peter suddenly became very defensive. Was he going to keep the big secret as well?

‘Nothing much,’ he said. ‘Mostly things about her growing up in Newmarket.’

I decided that the time for niceties was over.

‘Was it the same things you’re blackmailing Oliver Chadwick over?’

He stared at me.

‘Come on, Peter,’ I said. ‘Look at this place. Nice furnishings, big-screen TV with satellite sports channels, no debts, girls in nice clothes. Where’s the money coming from, Peter? Not from your job, that’s for sure. How many houses have you sold recently?’

‘I think it’s time you went now,’ he said.

‘I’m not the police, you know. I don’t like the Chadwicks any more than you do. Talk to me. Was that why Zoe died? Did she go and ask for more blackmail money and got herself killed for her trouble?’

‘I said it was time for you to go.’

‘What is it, Peter?’ I asked him forcefully. ‘What is so awful that a family, who individually hate each other so much, will still stand shoulder to shoulder to keep secret?’

‘Get out,’ he shouted at me.

Both his girls came running into the kitchen with troubled faces.

‘Daddy, don’t shout,’ Poppy said. ‘It frightens us.’

‘Will you please leave,’ Peter said to me quietly but firmly. ‘Now.’

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘I’m going.’ I took one of my business cards from my pocket and placed it on the kitchen worktop. ‘Call me if you want to talk again.’

I went back into the living room. Kate was sitting on the sofa next to Yvonne. ‘Come on, Catherine,’ I said. ‘We’re leaving.’

She stood up.

‘It’s been so lovely to see you again,’ Kate said.

‘And you too, Catherine, my dear,’ replied Yvonne. ‘Such a shame it’s in these dreadfully sad circumstances. Please do give my best wishes to your sister.’

‘Thank you. I will.’

Kate and I went out onto the open walkway and Peter Robertson shut the door firmly behind us.

‘What was all that about?’ I asked as we walked away.

‘Yvonne reminded me that she once came to our house to collect Zoe. I was there and met her. She remembers Janie well and seems so grateful that Zoe had at least one friend in her life. Sad, really.’

‘Did she say anything else?’ I asked.

‘She said that being in hospital had done no good for Zoe, in spite of the Chadwicks’ best endeavours to keep her there. According to Yvonne, it was Oliver who arranged to have Zoe sectioned the first time, and she also claims that he did it without telling her. Seems Oliver found a psychiatrist friend of his prepared to diagnose Zoe with schizophrenia simply based on her behaviour. He didn’t even see her or speak to her.’

‘That’s dreadful,’ I said.

‘It’s worse,’ Kate replied. ‘The shrink also claimed Zoe was a danger to herself and had to be restrained in a psychiatric hospital.’

‘When was this?’

‘Just after she was found in Croydon.’

Perhaps Oliver had been doing what he thought best for his daughter. Being in hospital at least kept her away from the cocaine.

‘Yvonne said she only found out about it years later, after her divorce.’

‘How did she find out?’ I asked.

‘Zoe accused her of being party to it. Apparently Zoe found out from her medical records and confronted her mother.’

‘Did Yvonne tell you who she thought had killed her daughter?’

‘No, but she did say one thing that I thought was odd. She told me that she believed that the Chadwick men had killed Zoe a long time ago. What did she mean by that?’

‘Maybe she thought that one of them had killed her when she went missing and there was that police search.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Kate said slowly. ‘It wasn’t quite right for that. More brutal.’

‘Can you remember her exact words?’

She thought for a moment.

‘Yes. She said the Chadwick men had killed Zoe from a very young age. It was only a matter of time before her lifeless corpse turned up.’