Too Good to Be True

10 The Parents

The next morning Perez got up early and was the first person into the dining room for breakfast. The nosy landlady, Elspeth, wasn’t on duty, so he was spared her questions and could eat in peace. Today he was going to visit Anna’s parents at Berwick. He cleaned the ice and snow from the windscreen of his car and then headed off towards the coast. Again he felt a sense of relief and escape as he left the village. He looked out for the dark watcher from the night before but there was no sign of him.

As Perez drove east, the landscape grew greener and less snowy. The sunshine was pale and lemony and shone straight into his eyes. Anna Blackwell’s parents lived in a bungalow on the outskirts of Berwick, and as he approached he caught sight of the view across the red roofs of the town and the river Tweed, then out to the sea.

Perez had phoned the night before to warn them that he’d be coming. When he rang the doorbell, Anna’s father peered through faded lace curtains at the front window before letting him in.

George Blackwell was older than Jimmy had expected and quite frail. He must have been approaching fifty when Anna was born. His wife was sitting in an armchair in the overheated sitting room, staring at daytime television. On the mantelpiece there was a photo of Anna. She looked about ten and she was in shorts and a T-shirt playing on a beach, kicking a ball.

‘We’ll speak in the kitchen,’ George said. ‘Joan will be fine on her own in here. She loves that baking programme.’ He bent and kissed the top of his wife’s head. The woman turned briefly and smiled vaguely. ‘She was a great cook before she got ill.’

The kitchen was small, old-fashioned and very clean. They sat at a table that was so tiny their knees almost touched.

‘It must be very hard,’ Jimmy Perez said, ‘that your wife’s so poorly.’

‘It’s only hard because she’s so much younger than me, and I worry what will happen to her when I die. Anna and I talked about it. She said I wasn’t to fret and she’d look after Joan when I wasn’t able to.’ George looked up at the detective. ‘Anna must have been desperate in order to kill herself. She wasn’t a girl to forget a promise.’

‘I’m not entirely sure that she did kill herself,’ Perez said. ‘That’s why I’m here.’

‘An accident, you think?’

‘No, I don’t see how it could have been an accident.’ Perez found it hard to look at the man. ‘She’d had a bit to drink, but probably not so much that she’d swallow that many pills by mistake.’

‘Someone killed her?’ The man was so shocked that the words came out as a shout. ‘Is that what you’re telling me?’

‘I’m saying it’s a possibility. I need to ask some questions. Personal questions, if that’s all right with you.’

‘You can ask,’ George said. ‘I’m not saying I’ll be able to answer. After Anna left home for university she had her own life.’

‘And a child?’

George nodded. ‘She was in her first year in Edinburgh. She came home one weekend and told us she was pregnant. I couldn’t take it in. We’d just been told that my wife had dementia. Joan had always been so fit and she was only sixty. No age at all. We had our own problems and perhaps we couldn’t give Anna the support she needed.’

‘Did Anna tell you anything about Lucy’s father?’

‘No,’ George said. ‘She told us that she was going to keep the baby and raise it on her own. There was a crèche at the university. She’d manage things. I asked who the father was, but she said he wouldn’t play any part in bringing up the child. It was clear she didn’t want to talk about it.’

‘Did you ever meet any of her friends? Women or men?’

George shook his head. ‘Anna hadn’t brought anyone here recently. It was difficult. Joan finds it hard to cope with anything outside her normal routine. And no one writes letters any more, do they? So we didn’t get news that way. Anna would phone once a week from uni, but that was really to find out what her mother was doing. She was always chatty enough, but we never knew what was going on in her life. Not the important things.’

Perez stared out of the narrow window into a bare, winter garden, and tried to make sense of this. ‘Does the name Tom King mean anything to you? He’s a doctor. I understand that he might have been friendly with you and your wife.’

George looked puzzled. ‘Joan’s seen lots of doctors since she’s been ill, but none of them are called King.’

So why, Perez thought, did Doctor James Given think that King was close to Anna’s parents? None of it made sense.

George was speaking again. ‘Anna was so excited to get the job in Stonebridge. She came here specially to tell us and she brought Lucy with her. She’s always loved kids. We knew she’d be a teacher when she grew up. She always loved the country too – we took her out walking in the hills from when she was very young – so I thought the little village school would suit her. Recently I could tell things weren’t going so well, though. She made an effort to sound bright on the phone but she wasn’t herself.’

‘When did you last hear from her?’

‘Two days before she died.’ He paused. ‘I thought she sounded a bit better. She was talking about the future, about coming home to spend Christmas with her mother and me. I thought perhaps she’d turned a corner.’ He smiled. ‘I wondered if there was a new man in her life.’

‘Did she give you a name?’

George shook his head sadly. ‘She was always one for secrets, our Anna. Maybe this is one she’s taken to her grave.’ He turned to Perez. ‘I’m glad you’re looking into this, Inspector. It’s good that someone cares enough to search for the truth.’

In the living room, Joan Blackwell was still watching the cooking programme. As the old man showed him out of the house, Perez thought that he hadn’t gained anything new from his chat with the dead woman’s father. It felt as if the drive to Berwick had been a waste of time and he was no closer to finding Anna’s killer.

He was nearly at the end of the path when George Blackwell called him back. ‘That new man in Anna’s life…’

Perez stopped sharply and turned back. ‘Yes?’

‘I think he must have been a Stonebridge man. Local, you know. During that last phone call she said she’d decided to stick it out in the village. She’d been thinking of leaving, of finding a new job somewhere else because she wasn’t happy. But she told me she didn’t think she’d be moving after all because now she had something to keep her there.’