The Wrong Mother

6

8/7/07

DC Colin Sellers sniffed the arm of his jacket when he was sure no one was looking. Inconclusive. He sniffed again, but couldn’t tell if it was his clothes or his surroundings that stank. What was it about charity shops? He resolved never again to tell Stacey she ought to buy her clothes at Oxfam instead of Next. He hadn’t been inside a charity shop for years, hadn’t realised they all smelled like a stale stew of the past, layers of rancid odours piled one on top of the other like the decades of a life that has disappointed its owner.

Sellers wasn’t normally prone to maudlin reflections, but the shops were bringing it out in him. He’d done all the dry-cleaners first-and the chemical stench of those had been bad enough-but now he wished he’d done it the other way round, saved the best for last. Anything was better than the charity shops.

At the moment he was in the Hildred Street branch of Age Concern in Spilling, which was, thank God, the last of them. Tonight he’d make sure to tell Stace to wash his clothes at an extra high temperature. Or maybe he’d just throw them away. One thing he wouldn’t do: donate them to a manky shop for some other poor sod to buy. From now on, Sellers was against second-hand clothes. People ought to give money to these dogooder organisations, and that’s it, he thought. A nice, clean cheque that doesn’t smell of grease or death or failure.

It occurred to Sellers that he had never in his life given any money to charity. Because he couldn’t afford to, because he had Stacey and the kids to pay for as well as making sure Suki, his girlfriend, always had a good time and didn’t get bored of him. And then there were Stacey’s French lessons, which irked him more than he was able to express. S’il vous plaît. If he heard her say that one more time, he might actually ram her fag-packet-sized French dictionary down her throat.

Eventually, an old woman wearing a purple nylon polo-neck and a string of large, fake pearls emerged from behind the beaded curtain, holding the two colour print-outs Sellers had given her much younger and considerably more attractive assistant a few minutes earlier. One was of Geraldine Bretherick, the other of a brown Ozwald Boateng suit like the one Mark Bretherick had reported missing from his house.

‘You’re a policeman?’ The old woman did her best to look down at Sellers, even though she was several inches shorter than he was. She looked about seventy, had fluffy white hair, several prominent moles like lumps of brown putty stuck to her face, a beak of a nose, and about ten times more skin on her eyelids than a person could ever need; each one was like a small, fleshy concertina. ‘You want to know if anyone’s brought in a suit like this?’

‘That’s right.’

‘No. I’d have remembered. It’s got funny lapels.’ She glared at Sellers, daring him to disagree. ‘I don’t think our customers would like it at all.’

‘What about this woman? Do you remember seeing her in the last few weeks?’

‘Yes.’

‘Really?’ Sellers perked up. So far, the response had been a resounding ‘no’. He’d been to every dry-cleaner and charity shop in the Culver Valley and he might as well not have bothered. ‘Did she bring something in?’

‘No.’ The old lady leaned her beak towards him. ‘You asked if I remembered seeing her. I do. She often went into the picture-framer’s opposite. I saw her all the time, getting out of her car right outside the shop-she’d park on the double yellow line, plain as the nose on your face.’ Sellers tried very hard not to look at the nose on her face as she spoke, fearing he might laugh uncontrollably. ‘Usually she’d be carrying some dreadful picture-nothing more than splodges and scrawls, really, obviously by a child. Many a time I said to Mandy, “That woman ought to have her head examined.” I mean, Blu-Tacking them to the fridge door is one thing, but framing them… And why didn’t she wait and bring them in all at once? Didn’t she have anything better to do?’

‘Mandy? Is that your assistant?’ Sellers glanced in the direction of the beaded curtain, but there was no sign of the pretty young girl who’d served him. I’ve already got a pretty young girl, he reminded himself: Suki’s my pretty young girl.

‘If she had the time to take each squiggle of crayon to the framer’s individually then she had time to park her car properly,’ said the old woman. ‘No doubt she thought she’d only be nipping in and out, but all the same, there’s no excuse for parking on a double yellow line. We’ve all got to obey the rules, haven’t we? We can’t go making exceptions for ourselves whenever we feel like it.’

‘Right,’ said Sellers, because he could hardly say otherwise. And he agreed, by and large. Apart from where matters of the heart were concerned. The heart and other equally important organs.

‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’ Folds of skin rearranged themselves around the old woman’s eyes as she looked up at Sellers. ‘I saw it on the news.’

‘Right.’ And you’re still worried about her illegal parking habits? Get a life, you old bat.

‘What time is it?’

‘Nearly seven.’

‘You’d better make yourself scarce. Our evening event’s about to start.’

‘I’ve finished, anyway.’ Sellers eyed the three neat semicircular rows of grey plastic chairs in the middle of the shop. A wild time would be had by all, he didn’t think.

‘You should have come in the afternoon.’

‘I did. You were closed.’

‘Mandy was here all afternoon,’ the old woman contradicted him. ‘We’re open every weekday from nine thirty until five thirty. And, in addition, we have our evening events.’

Sellers nodded. So Mandy had snuck an afternoon off, had she? He was liking her more all the time. He wondered if she would be taking part in tonight’s event, and was about to ask what, precisely, Age Concern in Spilling had to offer him this evening. He came to his senses just in time, thanked the old woman for her help and left.

The Brown Cow pub, where he was due to meet Gibbs half an hour ago, was a five-minute walk away. As he strode along the High Street, smiling at any female with long legs and large breasts who looked as if she might be up for it, Sellers admitted to himself that he’d been thinking about other women a lot recently. Which had to mean he was a greedy bastard. He had two already; wasn’t that enough? And for how long would he be able to stop at thinking? How long before he gave in to the urge that was building inside him?

Sellers wasn’t good at denying himself things he wanted. He yielded to temptation instantly and gladly, and was proud of it. Much better to live for the moment and live it up than to be a puritan like Simon Waterhouse, avoiding anything that might prove to be pleasurable. Trouble was, Sellers didn’t want to be saddled with a third woman who would then feel as entitled to make demands as Stacey and Suki did. His third woman-not that he’d spent much time building a profile-should be obedient, virtually silent, and want nothing from him but sex. Mandy from Age Concern seemed unlikely to fit the bill. Keen as he was to find himself a new ride, Sellers drew the line at spending his evenings in charity shops, sitting on a grey plastic school-chair listening to some bearded vegan loser give a lecture on Africa.

He bumped into Gibbs in the pub doorway.

‘Thought you’d stood me up.’

‘Sorry. Took longer than I thought.’

‘Get a round in, then.’

Sellers ordered two pints of Timothy Taylor Landlord. At least Gibbs’ taste in beer hadn’t changed since his wedding. Everything else had, though Gibbs himself was either unaware of the changes or chose not to mention them. Sellers got his money ready, then glanced over to the small table in the corner to which Gibbs had retreated, never one to keep a mate company at the bar. He sat with two empty pint glasses in front of him, pushing a pool of spilled beer around the table-top with his index finger, trying to change its shape. Okay, so his behaviour was the same as ever but the way he looked… fucking hell, it was like being in the pub with the Madame Tussauds version of Christopher Gibbs-all bright and immaculate. What did Debbie do, put him in the washing machine?

The pub had changed too. Once it had boasted a no-smoking room; now the whole place was free of smoke. And the landlord had fallen for some wide-boy’s flannel about sandalwood logs and wouldn’t dream of putting ordinary wood on the fire any more, so the whole place was as fragrant as Gibbs’ shiny hair.

‘Nothing on the suit,’ said Sellers, putting the drinks down on the table. Deliberately, he trapped Gibbs’ finger under his pint glass before moving it and apologising.

‘I saw Norman this afternoon.’

‘Norman Bates? How’s his mother?’ Sellers quipped.

‘Norman Computer. Geraldine Bretherick’s laptop.’

‘Oh, aye?’

‘If she ordered GHB over the Internet, she did it from somewhere else.’

‘That’s possible. Maybe she went to an Internet café or used a friend’s computer.’ Though come to think of it there were no Internet cafés in Spilling and only one in Rawndesley. There were always the libraries, though.

Gibbs looked uneasy.

‘What?’ Sellers asked.

‘The diary file was created on Wednesday the eleventh of July this year, Norman said. Waterhouse-the arsehole-pointed out that the eleventh of July was the Brethericks’ ten-year wedding anniversary.’

‘Why’s he an arsehole?’ Sellers was confused.

‘He would be the one to spot it. In front of the Snowman.’

‘I wouldn’t have made the connection,’ said Sellers. ‘Water-house has got a good memory for dates.’

‘He never goes on any, that’s why. The original shagless wonder.’

‘So,’ said Sellers thoughtfully. ‘Geraldine put fake dates on the entries. Either that or she wrote them by hand on those dates, then typed them up over a year later.’

‘Why would she do that? And where’s the hard copy? It wasn’t in the house.’

‘She could have thrown it away, save on storage space.’

Gibbs snorted into his pint. ‘You saw the stately home. Could’ve stored a football team of elephants.’

‘All right, so she wrote the entries for the first time on Wednesday, July the eleventh, and put dates on them that were more than a year old. Why?’ Sellers started to answer his own question. ‘I suppose it could have been a way of saying to her husband, “I’ve felt like this for ages and you haven’t even noticed.” But then why only choose dates from a year ago? The first entry was dated 18 April 2006 and the last one 18 May 2006. Not much of a spread. Why didn’t she make the fake dates span three years instead of a month?’

‘Fuck should I know?’ Gibbs had ripped up a beer-mat and was floating small, ragged chunks of cardboard in the Landlord lake on the table. ‘Maybe someone else wrote the diary.’

‘What, someone who murdered Geraldine and Lucy? Who?’

‘Waterhouse’d say William Markes.’

‘Come on, for-’

‘Stepford’s looking shifty too-reckon he’s having his doubts.’

‘He’s still nervous because he’s new. This thing of the dates being out of kilter-it doesn’t mean the diary’s a fake. Think about it: if you’d murdered two people and wanted to fake a diary for one of them, to put them in the frame, you wouldn’t attract unnecessary attention by choosing a cluster of dates from well over a year ago, would you? You’d make it more recent. Whereas if you’re an unhappily married woman, pissed off with your husband, it’s going to hit you hardest on your ten-year anniversary, isn’t it? Ten long years of this shit, you’d be thinking-time to open a diary file and have a good bitch, let out some of the poison…’ Sellers stopped when he saw Gibbs’ face. He blushed. ‘Looking forward to your and Debbie’s anniversary, are you?’

Gibbs laughed. ‘There’s no danger Debbie’ll feel that way after ten years with me. She’s like a different woman since we’ve been married. She can’t get enough of me.’

Sellers didn’t want to hear about Gibbs being in demand. ‘Anything more on the laptop?’ he asked.

‘ Norman ’s still on it.’

The pub door opened and two young girls came in wearing strappy tops and miniskirts. One of them had a purple jewel in her navel. Sellers felt Gibbs’ elbow in his side. ‘Young enough for you?’

‘Sod off.’

‘Go on, go and drool over them. Colin Sellers the Chat-up King, with the stylish retro sideburns. “All right, love, wipe yourself, your taxi’s here. It’s four in the morning, pay for yourself if you don’t mind, love.” ’ His attempt at a Doncaster accent was appalling; it sounded more Welsh than anything else. All of a sudden Gibbs fancied himself as a comedian?

‘Cocksucker,’ said Sellers. He thought about Mandy and the Age Concern shop’s evening event, and realised he’d made the wrong choice. The way he was feeling at the moment, he’d happily sit in a grey plastic chair in a smelly shop for the rest of his life as long as Gibbs wasn’t sitting beside him.

When Charlie opened her front door and saw Simon, her heart dropped and landed with a thump on the floor of her stomach. Then, with equal speed and as little warning, it began to ascend, as if someone had filled it with helium. Simon was here; he’d made the effort to come and see her. About time.

‘Hi,’ she said. He was holding something behind his back. Flowers? Unlikely, unless he’d hired a private tutor in the social graces since Charlie last spoke to him.

‘What’s happened here?’ he asked, looking at the bare hall behind her.

‘I’m redecorating.’

‘Oh, right. Sorry, I…’ He craned his neck, looking for paint and dust-sheets that Charlie hadn’t bought yet.

‘Not now, at this precise second. I was just about to grab a spoon and have some cold, ready-made chilli from a jar for my dinner. Fancy some?’

‘Why don’t you heat it up?’ Simon looked puzzled. ‘You’ve got a microwave.’

‘I suppose you’d rather it was home-made as well. With organic beef.’ You’re going to drive him away before he’s even through the door.

‘Why didn’t you give that letter to me?’ Simon produced a hostility to match Charlie’s. ‘About Mark Bretherick not being who he says he is? Why did you take it to Proust?’ They glared at one another; it was like old times. Strange how quickly they could switch back.

‘You know the answer to that.’

‘No, I don’t. I don’t know the answer to anything. I don’t know why you stopped talking to me, or jacked in CID. Do you blame me for what happened last year, is that it?’

‘I don’t want to talk about that. I mean it.’ Charlie gripped the door, ready to close it. It was too late, of course-the shame was already in the house. It was there even before Simon had said the words ‘last year’; she knew he knew, and that was enough.

Simon stared at his shoes. ‘All right, so you’re punishing me,’ he said quietly. ‘And I’m supposed to guess why.’

How could Charlie tell him that her respect for him had grown since she’d removed herself from his life? From the start Simon had had the good sense to stay away from her; he’d known there was a taint about her, waiting to happen.

‘So, you’d fuck up your career just to spite me,’ he said viciously. ‘I’m flattered.’

Charlie laughed. ‘The world doesn’t begin and end with CID, you know. What about your career? Don’t you think it’s time you took your sergeant’s exams?’

‘One day someone’s going to realise how ridiculous it is that I’m still a DC, and they’ll do something about it. I’m not applying for anything.’

‘Oh, what shit is that?’ Charlie couldn’t keep the words back. How did Simon do it? How did he manage to hit her bang in the middle of her temper reflex every time? ‘You can’t be made a sergeant unless you put in for the exams and you bloody well know it.’

‘I know how many people are aching for a chance to kick me in the teeth. No way am I going begging for a promotion. I’d rather be a DC for ever and embarrass everybody by being better than them. I’ve got as much money as I need.’

Charlie knew no one but Simon who would adopt this attitude and stick to it. Who would really mean it. She wanted to weep. ‘Look, we can’t talk on the doorstep. Come in, if you can bear my shell of a house. But I meant what I said: certain subjects are closed.’ She turned and headed down the long narrow hall towards the kitchen. ‘What are you hiding, anyway? If it’s wine, hand it over.’ She took the jar of chilli out of the cupboard. There was nothing to go with it apart from some egg fried rice in a foil carton in the fridge, left over from a takeaway two days ago. It would have to do.

There was a rustle of plastic, the sound of something being taken out of a bag. Charlie looked round and saw two ugly greeting cards standing on her kitchen table. Both were creased and looked as if they’d travelled here in Simon’s trouser pocket. She took in the pastel-coloured flowers and swirly gold letters. ‘What are they?’ she asked, moving closer. ‘Wedding anniversary cards.’ Strange but true. She laughed. ‘Darling, don’t tell me I forgot our anniversary.’

‘Read them,’ said Simon gruffly.

Charlie opened them both at the same time, looked from one to the other. She frowned.

‘Don’t worry, I’ve not stolen them from evidence,’ said Simon. ‘The originals are back at the Brethericks’ house. But that’s what was written in them, word for word.’

‘Sam made you buy two more cards and copy out the messages? Why not just photocopy them?’

Simon’s cheeks reddened. ‘I didn’t want to bring photocopies. I wanted you to see them as cards. As I saw them, on the mantelpiece at Corn Mill House.’

Charlie tried to keep a straight face. Who else would bother? For greater accuracy, Simon had even made sure to cast in his reconstruction cards that had been designed specifically for marriages of ten years-like the Brethericks’, Charlie assumed. Both had embossed number tens on their fronts. ‘Where did you buy them?’

‘Garage down the road.’

‘The romance is killing me.’

‘Don’t laugh at me, all right?’ The warning in his eyes went beyond what he’d said. Something inside Charlie shrivelled and slunk away. Was he reminding her that she was no longer in a position to feel superior to him? To anyone? It didn’t matter if he was or wasn’t; she’d just reminded herself.

She picked up the jar of chilli, twisted open its lid and emptied it into a small orange pan. Welcome to the most miserable dinner party in the world. She didn’t even have any lager.

‘I want to talk to you about it. Geraldine and Lucy Bretherick. ’ Simon’s voice closed in behind her. ‘You’re the only person I want to talk to about it. It’s not the same without you. Work, I mean. It’s shit.’

‘Sam’s been keeping me up to date,’ said Charlie.

‘Sam? Kombothekra?’

‘Yeah. There’s no need to look like that.’

‘You see him? When? Where?’ Simon made no attempt to conceal his displeasure.

‘He and his wife have me round for dinner sometimes.’

‘Why?’

‘Thanks a lot, Simon.’

‘You know what I mean. Why?’

Charlie shrugged. ‘They’re new in town. Well, newish. I don’t think they’ve got many friends.’

‘They’ve never invited me.’

‘Why don’t you get your mum to ring and complain? Pathetic, Simon!’

‘Why d’you go?’

‘Free food, free booze. And they don’t expect to be invited back, ever, because I’m single and pitiable and in need of looking after. Kate Kombothekra thinks all single women over the age of thirty live in brothels without kitchens.’

Simon yanked a chair out from under the table, scraping its legs along Charlie’s new tiled floor. He sat down and hunched forward, his large hands on his knees, looking as if he might pounce. ‘You don’t speak to me for a year, but you go round to Kombothekra’s house for dinner.’

Charlie stopped stirring the chilli. She sighed. ‘You’re the person I was closest to. Before. I found it-I still find it-easier to be with people who-’

‘What?’ Simon’s mouth was set; his next move might be to punch her. He used to hit people all the time. Men. Charlie hoped he remembered she was a woman; you could never tell with Simon.

‘People I don’t know very well,’ she said. ‘People I can relax with, and not worry that they know exactly how I feel.’

The anger drained from his face. Whatever had been eating him up, Charlie’s words seemed to have lanced it. ‘I have no idea how you feel,’ he mumbled after a few seconds, following her with his eyes as she walked up and down the small room.

‘Bollocks! The way you said, “last year”, when you first got here.’

‘Charlie, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I just wish things could be like they used to be, that’s all.’

‘Like they used to be? That’s your ambition? I’ve been miserable ever since I met you, do you know that? You make me feel too much. And this has got nothing to do with last year.’ Charlie shouted the offending words. ‘You make me want to close down and… become a robot!’ She covered her face with her hands, digging her nails into the skin of her forehead. ‘I’m sorry. Please, forget I said all that.’

‘Is that sauce burning?’ Simon shifted in his seat, not looking at her. Probably itching to get away. Back to the Brown Cow, where he could report to Sellers and Gibbs about how mad she’d gone. The old Charlie would never have let out so much truth in one go; she’d had too much to lose.

The ready-made chilli had got what it deserved. Charlie took the pan off the flames and dropped it in the washing-up bowl. Soapy water poured in over the sides. She stood and watched the pan sink, watched the lumpy meat and tomato sauce disappear beneath the suds until it was no longer visible.

‘So Kombothekra’s told you what he thinks, then? About Geraldine and Lucy Bretherick?’

‘Is there any doubt? The mother killed them both, didn’t she?’

‘Proust doesn’t think so. I don’t either.’

‘Why? Because of the letter I picked up at the post office? That’s bound to be some dick’s idea of a joke.’

‘Not only that. Did Kombothekra tell you about William Markes?’

‘No. Oh, yeah. The name in the diary? Simon, that could be anyone. It could be… I don’t know, someone she met one day who annoyed her.’

‘And the cards?’ Simon nodded at the table.

Charlie sat down opposite him, looked at them again. ‘Sam didn’t mention the cards.’

‘Sam is no detective. He hasn’t noticed anything wrong about them, and I haven’t told him what I think. I haven’t told anyone.’

Their eyes met; Charlie understood that Simon had been saving this for her.

She opened the first card again. It was odd to see the message-a message from Geraldine Bretherick to her husband-written out in Simon’s tiny, meticulous handwriting. ‘To my darling Mark, Thank you for ten wonderful years of marriage. I’m sure the next ten will be even better. You are the best husband in the world. Your loving wife, Geraldine.’ And three kisses. The second card-Simon’s writing again-said: ‘To my beloved Geraldine, Happy tenth wedding anniversary. You have made me so happy for the first ten years of our married life. I am looking forward to our future together, which I know will be every bit as amazing as the years we’ve had so far. All my love for ever, Mark.’ Four kisses on this one; Mark Bretherick had out-kissed his wife.

‘Aren’t people odd?’ said Charlie. ‘Course, it doesn’t help that it’s in your handwriting. Imagine you writing something like that.’ She giggled.

‘What would I write?’

‘Hey?’

‘If I’d been married for ten years. What would I write?’

‘You’d probably put “To whoever” at the top and “love Simon” at the bottom. Or maybe even just “Simon”.’ Charlie narrowed her eyes. ‘Or you wouldn’t send a card at all-you’d decide it was crass.’

‘What would you write?’

‘Simon, what are you driving at?’

‘Come on, answer.’

Charlie sighed and rolled her eyes. ‘ “To whoever, happy anniversary, I can’t believe I haven’t divorced you yet for your gambling-stroke-laziness-stroke-unsavoury sexual practices. Love you loads, Charlie.” ’ She shuddered. ‘I feel as if I’m taking my drama O level all over again. What point are you making?’

Simon stood up and faced the window. He always got twitchy when she mentioned sex. Always had. ‘Happy anniversary, ’ he repeated. ‘Not happy tenth anniversary?’

‘I might write that, I suppose.’

‘Both Mark and Geraldine seem obsessed with the number ten. It’s printed on the front of both cards and they each mention it twice.’

‘Isn’t ten years meant to be the first significant milestone?’ said Charlie. ‘Maybe they were proud of their score.’

‘Read the words,’ said Simon. ‘What sort of couple would write those things to one another? So formal, so elaborate. It’s like something from Victorian times. It sounds as if they hardly know each other. In your card, your imaginary card, you made a joke about gambling-’

‘Don’t forget the sexual practices.’

‘A joke.’ Simon refused to be sidetracked. ‘When you’re close to someone, you make jokes, little comments other people might not get. These read like the phoney, stilted thank-you letters I was forced to write to my aunties and uncles as a child. Trying to say the right thing, trying to drag it out a bit so that it’s not too short-’

‘You can’t be suspicious because there are no jokes! Maybe the Brethericks were a humourless couple.’

‘It sounds as if they weren’t a couple at all!’ Simon’s shoulders sagged. His posture became looser, as if he’d released some tension by voicing his suspicion. ‘These cards are for display purposes. I’m sure of it. They go on the mantelpiece and everyone who sees them is fooled. Kombothekra’s fooled-’

‘You’re saying their marriage was a sham?’ Charlie was getting hungry. If Simon hadn’t been here, she would have taken the pan out of the sink, decanted the chilli into another pan, heated it up and tried to ignore the burned bits and the taste of Fairy Liquid. ‘I’m going to ring a home-delivery curry place,’ she said. ‘Do you want anything?’

‘Curry and beer. You think I’m wrong?’

She considered it. ‘I would never in a million years write a card like that. You’re right, it’s that polite thank-you-letter tone, and I’d hate to be married to someone who expressed his feelings in that way, but… well, people’s relationships are peculiar. What newspaper do they read?’

Simon frowned. ‘Telegraph.’

‘Delivered every day?’

‘Yeah.’

‘There you go, then. They probably had Lucy christened even though they never go to church, and Mark probably asked Geraldine’s father for her hand in marriage and congratulated himself on his love of tradition. A lot of people are frighteningly keen on stupid formalities, especially the English upper-middle classes.’

‘Your folks are upper-middle class,’ said Simon, who had met Charlie’s parents only once.

Charlie waved her hand dismissively. ‘My mum and dad are Guardian-reading ex-hippies who like nothing better than a good old CND march at the weekend-it’s completely different.’ She opened a drawer, looking for the Indian takeaway menu. ‘As for the number ten… Did you find lots of home-made films at the house? Lucy blowing out the candles on birthday cakes, Lucy doing not very much in a bouncy chair?’

‘Yeah. Stacks. We had to watch them all.’

‘Some families are obsessed with recording everything, keener on filming their lives than they are on living them. The Brethericks probably wrote their wedding anniversary cards with the family keepsake box in mind.’

‘Maybe.’ Simon sounded far from convinced.

‘By the way, I don’t think much of your expert.’

‘Harbard?’

Charlie nodded. ‘He was on telly again tonight.’

‘Kombothekra’s shy,’ said Simon. ‘He can get away with taking a back seat with the media if Harbard’s on telly every day-CID’s pet professor.’

‘He seems cheap and nasty to me,’ said Charlie. ‘You can imagine him turning up on Celebrity Big Brother in a few years, once his career’s hit the rocks. He looks like a fat version of Proust, have you noticed?’

‘He’s the Anti-Proust,’ said Simon. ‘Kombothekra’s no expert, that’s for sure. He needs a few lessons on reading and summarising an academic text.’ Charlie mimed sticking her nose in the air, but he didn’t notice. ‘He’s scraping around for anything that’ll support his theory. He gave us an article today, Harbard’s latest, and made a big deal about one particular paragraph that said family annihilation is a predominantly middle-class crime, because the middle classes care more about appearances and respectability. He was trying to explain away all the interviews with Geraldine’s friends who swear blind she’d never have killed her daughter or herself-who know that she was happy. Kombothekra quoted this one paragraph, and that was supposed to prove that her happiness was just a front, that she was some kind of textbook case: someone whose life seemed perfect on the outside but whose unhappiness was building up in private to the point where she’d murder her own child-’

‘You can’t have it both ways,’ Charlie interrupted him. ‘Geraldine’s happiness wasn’t a sham but the anniversary cards are?’

‘I’m not talking about that any more,’ said Simon impatiently. And unreasonably, Charlie thought. ‘I’m saying Kombothekra misunderstood the article. Deliberately, because it suited him to do so. I’ll send you a copy, you can read it for yourself.’

‘Simon, I don’t work in-’

‘This thing about affluent middle-class people killing their families because they can no longer maintain the illusion of perfection? Later on-in the same fucking article!-it makes it clear that money’s always a big factor in those cases: men who have made the world believe in their wealth and success, and made their families believe it, who’ve been living way beyond their means and suddenly they can’t pretend any longer; things have slipped too far out of their control and they can’t sustain the fantasy however hard they try. Rather than face the truth, admit to everyone that they’re failures, and bankrupt, they kill themselves and take their wives and kids with them.’

‘Nice,’ Charlie muttered.

‘These men love their families, but they genuinely believe they’re better off dead. The article describes it as “pathological altruism”. They feel ashamed, because they’re unable to support their wives and kids, who they see as extensions of themselves, not as people in their own right. The murders they commit are a sort of suicide-by-proxy.’

‘Wow. Professor Harbard had better look to his laurels.’

‘I got all that from the article,’ said Simon. ‘Kombothekra should have got it too. None of it applies to Geraldine Bretherick. She’s not a man-’

‘Does the article say it’s always men?’

‘It implies it. She didn’t work-she had no financial responsibility for the family whatsoever. Mark Bretherick’s loaded. They had money coming out of their ears.’

‘There must be other cases that don’t fit that pattern,’ said Charlie. ‘People who kill their families for other reasons.’

‘The only other reason mentioned in the article is revenge. Men whose wives are leaving them or have left them, usually for new partners. In those cases it’s murder-by-proxy rather than suicide-by-proxy. The man sees the kids as an extension of the woman, his unfaithful wife, and he kills them because, as revenge, it’s even better than killing her. She has to carry on living knowing that her children have been murdered by their own father. And, of course, he kills himself to avoid punishment, and presumably-and this is me talking, not the article-presumably to align himself symbolically with the victims, because he feels like a victim. He’s saying, “Look, we’re all dead, me and the kids, and it’s your fault.” ’

‘So you’re saying it’s murder-by-proxy but the man doesn’t feel he’s the murderer?’

‘Exactly. The real murder victim is the happy family and the deserting wife is the one who’s killed it-that’s the way he’d see it.’

Charlie shuddered. ‘It’s gross,’ she said. ‘Offhand, I can’t imagine a worse crime.’

‘I just thought of that last part on my own,’ said Simon, looking surprised. ‘Does that make me a sociologist?’ He picked up the two anniversary cards and stuffed them in his trouser pocket, as if suddenly embarrassed by their presence. ‘Mark Bretherick didn’t have another woman on the go,’ he said. ‘If he had, we’d have found her. He wasn’t planning to leave Geraldine. So it doesn’t fit with the revenge model either.’

‘Okay.’ Charlie wasn’t sure what he wanted her to do with all this information. ‘So talk to Sam.’

‘Tried and failed. Tomorrow I’m phoning in sick and going to Cambridge to talk to Professor Jonathan Hey who co-wrote the article with Harbard. I made the appointment this morning. I want to know more.’

‘So why not talk to Harbard? Isn’t that what he’s there for?’

‘He’s too busy having his slap-head powdered by BBC make-up artists to talk to the likes of me. And he’s obsessed with one thing and one thing only: his prediction that more and more women are going to start committing familicide. That’s what gets people writing to the papers complaining about him, or applauding his bravery-that’s what keeps his name in the news and gets him the media appearances he loves.’

‘Why will more and more women kill their children?’ asked Charlie. ‘Can he get away with saying that?’

‘Try stopping him. His argument’s simple: in most areas of life, women are doing things that, at one time, only men used to do. Therefore women will start to kill their families. Therefore Geraldine Bretherick must have killed her daughter and herself. Does he bother trying to reconcile it with his own article, with all this stuff about financial factors and revenge? Does he bollocks. His reasoning’s bullshit. So, I want to know if his sidekick’s full of the same shit or if, as an expert of equal standing, his take on things is slightly different. Fancy coming with me?’

‘What?’

‘To Cambridge.’

‘I’m working tomorrow.’

‘Fuck work. I’m asking you to come with me.’

Charlie laughed in disbelief. ‘Look, why phone in sick? Tell Sam you want to talk to this Jonathan Hey-maybe he’d think it was a good idea. The more expert opinions the better, surely.’

‘Yeah, right. When’s that ever been the philosophy? Harbard’s our designated professor. I’d get the manpower-and-resources lecture if I got greedy and asked for another.’

‘Won’t Hey say exactly what Harbard’s said?’

Simon’s determination was etched on his face. ‘Maybe. Maybe not. Harbard lives alone. Hey’s younger, married, a father…’

‘How do you know all this?’

‘The magic of Google.’

Charlie nodded. There was no point trying to talk Simon out of it. She wasn’t going to tell Sam. She’d have had nothing to tell if Simon hadn’t confided in her about his plans. Now he’d made her complicit. Was it some kind of test?

‘I’m starving,’ she said. ‘I’m going to order this curry before I faint. It’ll take at least half an hour to get here and there’s not a crisp or peanut in the house, I’m afraid. All I’ve got’s eggs, stuff in tins and jars, and a packet of chicken stock cubes.’

Simon said nothing. Beads of sweat had appeared beneath his hairline.

‘Do you want to look at the menu?’ Charlie tried again.

‘I want you to marry me.’

He sat rigid, watching her, as if he’d just confessed to having a contagious fatal illness and was waiting for her to recoil in horror. ‘So,’ he said. ‘Now you know.’

‘This is the best thing that could have happened,’ Mark Bretherick told Sam Kombothekra. At least Sam knew the man in front of him was Mark Bretherick. He’d followed Proust’s instructions and checked more times than someone with an obsessive-compulsive disorder would check, and in more ways. There was no doubt. Mark Howard Bretherick, born on the twentieth of June 1964, in Sleaford, Lincolnshire. Son of Donald and Anne, older brother of Richard Peter. This afternoon Sam had spoken to a teacher at Bretherick’s primary school, who remembered him clearly and said she was positive that the man whose photograph had been on the news and in the papers was the boy she had taught. ‘I’d know those eyes anywhere,’ she said. ‘Sad eyes, I always thought. Though he was a happy enough lad. Extraordinarily bright, too. I wasn’t surprised when I heard he’d done well for himself.’

Sam knew what she meant about the eyes. Gibbs had managed to unearth a photograph of Bretherick aged eleven. He’d won a school swimming competition and his picture was in the local paper. The man who sat in front of Sam now was that boy plus thirty-two years.

Bretherick’s voice on the phone, when he’d summoned Sam without explanation but insisting it was urgent, had been a little like a schoolboy’s: full of the sort of anarchic, high-pitched energy that puts adults instantly on their guard. Bretherick had insisted ‘something good’ had happened, and Sam had hurried round to Corn Mill House hoping the situation hadn’t deteriorated-though admittedly that was hard to imagine when you looked at things from Bretherick’s point of view-but fearing it had, somehow.

His last comment had got no reaction from Sam, so Bretherick tried again. ‘I allowed doubt to creep in,’ he said. ‘Because you seemed to have no doubts at all. I should have trusted my wife, not some stranger. No offence.’

Sam was gratified to hear that Bretherick had trusted him at all, however fleetingly-when? For an hour this afternoon, perhaps, in his absence?-even though the phase was now over. Bretherick’s skin was grey, the whites of his eyes speckled with red from lack of sleep. He and Sam were in his kitchen, sitting opposite one another across a large pine table. The green carpet on the floor bothered Sam, made him dislike the room as a whole. Who, he wondered, carpets a kitchen? Not Geraldine Bretherick-the carpet was stained and looked at least twenty years old.

He was inclined to believe Bretherick’s story. For a lie it was too elaborate; a man of Bretherick’s intelligence would invent something simpler. So either it had happened or Bretherick had become delusional overnight. Sam favoured the former explanation.

‘Mark, I understand that you’re telling me that a woman who looked like your wife stole two photographs from your house,’ said Sam carefully. ‘What I don’t understand is why you’re happy about it.’

‘I’m not happy!’ Bretherick was insulted.

‘All right, that’s the wrong word. I’m sorry. But you said this was the best thing that could have happened, both on the phone and a few seconds ago. Why?’

‘You told me Geraldine must have killed herself and Lucy because there were no other suspects-’

‘I didn’t quite say that. What I might have-’

‘There is another suspect. A man who pretended to be me. The woman who was here said she’d spent some time with him last year-I don’t know how long, but I got the impression she was talking about a significant amount of time. Reading between the lines, I think she might have been involved with him. Even though she was wearing a wedding ring. She said he went into detail about my life, talked to her at length about Geraldine and Lucy, about my work. Why would she lie? She wouldn’t. She’d have no reason to come here and make all that up.’

‘If she can steal, she can lie,’ said Sam gently. ‘You’re sure she took these two photographs?’

Bretherick nodded. ‘One of Geraldine and one of Lucy. I’d started packing up. I couldn’t bear the idea of throwing things away, but I couldn’t cope with having them in the house. Jean said she’d take it all, everything, until I was ready to have it back.’

‘Geraldine’s mum?’

‘Yes. I put the two photos in one of the bags. They were my favourites, of Geraldine and Lucy at the owl sanctuary at Silsford Castle. I kept them on my desk at work, since I spent more time there than at home.’ Bretherick rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger, perhaps as a cover for wiping his eyes, Sam couldn’t tell. ‘I brought them home yesterday. I couldn’t keep them out where I could see them. Every time I looked at them, I… it was like an electric shock of pain. I can’t describe it. Jean’s the opposite. If anything, she’s put up more pictures since they died. All Lucy’s framed drawings that used to be here, on the wall…’

‘You’ve been into work?’ asked Sam.

‘Yes. Something wrong with that?’

‘No. I didn’t know you had, though.’

‘I have to do something, don’t I? Have to fill my days. I didn’t do any work. I just went to the office, sat in my chair. Opened sympathy cards. Then I came home.’

Sam nodded. ‘Has anyone else been to the house, anyone who might have removed the photographs?’

Bretherick leaned forward, his eyes locking on Sam’s. ‘Stop treating me like a moron,’ he said, and for the first time since he’d reported finding the bodies of his wife and daughter, Sam could imagine him giving orders to his staff of seven at Spilling Magnetic Refrigeration. ‘I’m not treating you like one, although soon I might have to. The woman who looked like Geraldine, who was here this afternoon-she stole the photographs. I’d only put them in the bag an hour or so before she turned up, and no one’s been here since she left apart from my mother-in-law and now you. I might be bereaved but I’m not an idiot. If there was anyone else who might have stolen them, don’t you think I’d mention it?’

‘Mark, I’m sorry. I have to ask these questions.’

Bretherick twisted in his chair. ‘A man who pretends to be me has an affair with a woman who looks exactly like my wife-a woman who comes here this afternoon, refuses to answer my questions or tell me her name, and steals photographs of Geraldine and Lucy. I want to hear you say that this changes everything. Say it.’

This man has an interview technique, thought Sam. Not many people did, not unless they’d been trained. Sam knew his own interview technique wasn’t one of his strengths as a detective. He hated to put people on the spot, hated it even more when they did it to him.

‘You don’t know for certain that this woman was having an affair with-’

‘Irrelevant.’ Bretherick cut him off, began to tap his fingers on the table one by one, as if playing the piano slowly, one-handed.

Sam felt hot and flustered. This was a show of strength; Bretherick was trying to prove he was cleverer, as if that made him more likely to be right. Perhaps it did. Talking to him was like talking to Simon Waterhouse. Whose analysis, Sam was certain, would be identical to Bretherick’s.

‘How many suicides have you dealt with, Sergeant?’

Sam took a deep breath. ‘Some. Maybe four or five.’ None since he’d become a detective. One, he corrected himself: Geraldine.

‘Did any of those four or five have this many question marks surrounding them, this many strange, unexplained details?’

‘No,’ Sam admitted. You don’t know the half of it. He hadn’t told Bretherick that the diary file on Geraldine’s laptop was opened more than a year after the date of the last entry. He was still trying to work out what he thought of this man who had already been back to the office, already bagged up his wife and child’s possessions.

One detail had bothered Sam from the start, though he’d assumed he was wrong to be concerned about it since Simon Waterhouse seemed not to have registered it: when Mark Bretherick had first rung the police, he’d said, ‘Someone’s killed my wife and daughter. They’re both dead.’ The words had been clearly audible even through his hysteria. Interviewed later, Bretherick had claimed that he hadn’t read or even seen Geraldine’s suicide note in the lounge. He’d let himself into his house after returning from a long and tiring trip abroad, gone straight upstairs to his bedroom and found Geraldine’s body in the en-suite bathroom. His wife’s body, in a bath full of blood. The razor blade lying on her stomach; Bretherick didn’t touch it, left it in place for the scene-of-crime officers to find. Why hadn’t he called the police immediately from the telephone beside his bed? Instead he said he’d gone straight to Lucy’s room to check she was all right and then, when he failed to find her in there, he looked in all the other rooms upstairs and found her dead body in the family bathroom.

Maybe it makes sense, thought Sam. If you discover that the person you assume is looking after your child can’t be, because she’s lying in the bath with her wrists slashed, maybe the first thing you do is panic and search the house for your daughter. Sam tried for about the two hundredth time to imagine himself in Bretherick’s terrible position. He doubted he’d be capable of moving at all if he’d just found Kate dead. Would he even be able to pick up a phone? Would he think about where his sons were?

There was no point speculating. Mark Bretherick couldn’t have killed Geraldine and Lucy. He was in New Mexico when they died.

‘She said she’d come and see me again, but I don’t think she will,’ Bretherick was saying. ‘I was stupid to let her go. I need to know who she is.’

It was a few seconds before Sam realised he was talking about his visitor from this afternoon, not his dead wife.

‘We’ll do our best,’ said Sam.

‘It’ll be easy for you to find out. You can appeal on television. She could be Geraldine’s twin, she looks so much like her. She’s married… Oh, and she’s got one of those mobile phones that shuts like a… sort of like a clam shell. Silver, with a jewel on the front, looks like a little diamond. You need to find her and bring her back here.’

Sam let out a long, slow sigh, hoping Bretherick wouldn’t notice his sinking shoulders. A television appeal? That would be Proust’s call, and Sam could guess what the inspector would say, could almost hear him saying it: Mark Bretherick had appeared on the news many times in the past few days. His was the sort of tragedy that attracted attention, and possibly visits from local nutters. This woman, whoever she was, could easily have been lying. Should Sam suggest a TV appeal all the same? Lobby for one as Simon Waterhouse might? Perhaps if he’d been there longer…

Sam still felt like a stranger in a strange land at work. Every molecule in his body yearned to go back to West Yorkshire, to the lock-keeper’s cottage by the side of the Leeds-Liverpool canal that he and Kate had loved, with the wisteria climbing its walls. Sam hadn’t known what the plant was called but Kate had gone on about it so much when they’d first seen the house, he could hardly have avoided learning the name. But Kate’s parents lived near Spilling and she’d finally admitted she needed help looking after the boys so there was no way they’d be going back to Bingley. In the end, Sam thought with a mixture of pride and shame, it turns out I’m more sentimental than my wife.

‘If Geraldine didn’t do it-if you can prove that-I’ll be able to carry on,’ said Bretherick. ‘For her sake and Lucy’s. I expect that sounds odd to you, Sergeant.’ He smiled. ‘I must be the first man in the history of the world to feel relieved when he realises his family has been murdered.’