Birth Marks

by Sarah Dunant

  ‘…understand there was nothing you could have done.’

  She was probably right. The river police had been called out on Monday morning just after 10.00 a.m. when a man walking his dog had seen something caught up in the weeds. That meant, at the very earliest, that Carolyn Hamilton must have entered the river some time on Sunday night. Even Charlie Chan would have been hard pushed to follow a trail from Cherubim to the river in two days. But honourable failure didn’t make me feel any better. Sunday night. I kept putting pictures to the words: a split screen with me scouring grease from the kitchen sink while she floated with the current downstream. Maybe I should have spent Sunday at her place instead of Kate’s. Who knows, she might have gone home to pick up her ballet pumps, just to end it gracefully. Either way she must have been carrying some sort of ID for them to track her down so quickly. And the reason Miss Patrick hadn’t been answering the phone was because by then she had been in a hotel room in London, recovering from a short car ride to the morgue.

  I offered her my condolences. It sounded tawdry even though I meant it. I didn’t mention the word ‘suicide’ and she didn’t offer it. She said nothing to explain the death; no talk of motive or even where her surrogate daughter might have been for the last seven months. For all she knew I might even have found out. Though with precious little help from her. Still, this was not the time to bitch about the things I hadn’t been told. If it hadn’t been for the fact that I owed her, I would have left any talk of money until another day, but I didn’t want her to think of me slyly rejoicing in three hundred pounds unearned. As it was she didn’t seem to care.

  ‘As far as I’m concerned it’s irrelevant, Miss Wolfe. I employed you for the week and we had a business arrangement. I insist you keep the money. You were doing a job. Neither of us were to know you would be too late.’

  For a woman who had just lost the thing she loved most in the world she was handling it very well. I could see her, sitting by the telephone, her backbone straight as a die, allowing no curves or hollows for the sorrow to dwell in. If it was a veneer I wasn’t going to be the one to crack it. In certain respects private detectives are just like policemen, they’re supposed to be tough, but in fact they’re just frightened of emotion. It’s a form of inadequacy really, though there is method in it. After all, when you get down to it, it’s just a job. Employed by someone you didn’t know to find someone you’d never met. What’s he to her or her to Hecuba, that I should cry for any of them. I’d do better to save my tears for friends and relatives. Since there was nothing more to say I didn’t prolong the agony. She sounded relieved when I said goodbye.

  But, of course, it wasn’t that easy. Inside my head the mouse was already on the treadmill and the faster he went the worse it got. When I had started the case she had been alive. And what had I done? Seen a couple of people, snooped around an empty flat, written a lousy report and watched an even lousier movie. While those who weren’t busy being born were busy dying. Bob Dylan should have been a private eye. The mouse began to hyperventilate and fell off the wheel. Let it rest, Hannah, this doesn’t help anyone. Carolyn Hamilton went AWOL from life and when it all got too much for her she threw herself off a bridge into black water. I had been chasing a shadow and someone else had found the body. Case closed. If I still felt guilty at the end of the week I could always send the money back in the form of memorial flowers.

  I used the morning for loose ends. I would, I had promised Miss Patrick, send back her file with the postcards and photographs, but when it came to putting them into their registered package I found myself taking copies of all of them, just in case. And since it seemed rather callous, just shoving the photos away in a drawer somewhere, I put them back on the mantelpiece, alongside the watercolour view of Venice and sandstone cat from India.

  The envelope I had filched from her flat was more troublesome. Technically it now belonged to her next of kin, although more technically it ought at this moment to have been in the possession of the police who were, presumably, busy working out past movements and motives. What if the electricity, gas and telephone had been the only debts she could afford to pay and it was the credit cards that had hounded her to a watery grave? That left Hannah Wolfe guilty of suppression of evidence. On the other hand if I gave it back to them I risked an additional charge of breaking and entering. I decided not to decide yet. It wouldn’t take them long to find me anyway, even if Miss Patrick had chosen to keep her own counsel.

  Two days to be exact: one to track down the Pink Cherubim, and the other to read the words on my card. When I opened the door there were two of them, but then there always are. Frank used to say that one was the eyes while the other was the ears. And I used to say that left a problem with the brain which explained a lot. In this case all the eyes picked up was a load of dirty washing and a living-room that hadn’t been cleaned in an age, while the ears heard everything I had to tell them, except for the bits that broke the law. As far as I remember I didn’t actually lie, it was just when it came down to it their condescension and more-knowledgeable-than-thou attitude got right up my nose. If they were as good at their job as they claimed, let them find out about the bank statements and the court orders. Frankly they didn’t seem interested. No doubt to them Carolyn Hamilton was just another girl from the north who’d discovered that the London streets weren’t paved with gold. All they really seemed to want to know was about boyfriends. Or maybe that was all they thought female private detectives were good for. Anyway I gave them Eyelashes and wished them luck. In return they told me the body had been in water since early on Saturday night. That made me feel better about how I’d spent my Sunday. I tried them with a few other queries but they got shy and said I’d have to wait until the inquest. They promised to phone me with the date. In the end they didn’t. Untrustworthy buggers. But then, I suppose, they thought the same about me.

  But if I didn’t go to the inquest somebody did. And somebody told someone else. I would have heard it from the papers anyway, but it was better to hear it from Frank. Ears to the ground, these ex-coppers. Bless his Mr Plod boots.

  ‘Just thought you’d like to know. The missing pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, eh?’

  ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘Come on, Hannah, even given your warped vision of the police they could hardly fabricate that kind of evidence.’

  ‘So why didn’t they say so when they found the body.’

  ‘Maybe they were waiting for the PM.’

  ‘Frank, you don’t need a post mortem to tell a woman is eight months pregnant.’

  ‘Well, you know these guys on the river. It’s dark and they want to get home for the mug of cocoa. She’s just another floater. They probably thought she was fat.’

  Frank tells Irish jokes too, usually when there are Irishmen in the room. But credit where credit is due. He notices, eventually.

  ‘Don’t give yourself a hard time. Some things you can’t do anything about. Obviously the kid got herself knocked up and didn’t know how to tell her fairy godmother. It happens all the time. The person who needs to feel bad is the old lady. Maybe if she’d brought you in a week earlier you might have stood a chance. As it is no one likes to hear the truth from a suicide note.’

  And such a pathetic one at that, although having read the postcards I of all people should not have expected poetry. Even so…I got him to recite it twice so I could write it down. ‘By the time you read this you will know the truth. I am sorry for all the deceit and the trouble I have caused. Also for all the money which I cannot repay. It seems the only thing I can do is to go. Please, if you can, forgive me.’

  So I was right. It had been at least partly to do with money. Somehow she must have scraped together enough to pay off the most pressing bills, then dodged the debt collectors for the rest. But with a baby and therefore no job…As sad stories go this was one of the saddest. Frank was right. If I were Miss Patrick I would prefer not to have received it. No doubt that was why she hadn’t told m
e about it on the phone. Or maybe it was even worse. Maybe she hadn’t got it then. Maybe it was waiting for her when she returned home to take the photos down off the piano. The last postcard.

  ‘Uh uh. According to the police they found it in her flat. No envelope, no nothing. It wasn’t even addressed to anyone. Just tucked under the vase on the table, waiting for someone to find it.’

  I reran the film of Saturday night in my head. I walked into the living-room, switched on the light and saw the bare floor, the three chairs and the old dining-table, all flashing on to my retina before the bulb went. Surely if there’d been something under the vase I would have noticed it? Or would I? I made another tour of the room this time in slow motion with the torch beam. Still nothing. But had I really checked the whole table? Then I went into the kitchen and looked around the surfaces. Empty. And the bathroom, just in case. Same conclusion. Yet according to the pathologist her body had been in the water for between thirty-eight and forty hours. Which meant that she’d gone into the river between 4.30 p.m. and 6.30 p.m. on Saturday evening. And since nobody kills themselves until after they’ve written the suicide note, it must have been there by the time I entered the flat. Shit. I had been so busy with my precious archaeological dig in the cupboards that I’d missed what was right under my nose. For a moment I began to see female private investigators from the police’s point of view. But the table? Were they sure?

  ‘Listen, what’s the big deal? That’s where people usually leave suicide notes. Either there or on the mantelpiece, although I did once come across one in the oven. But that was a demented housewife. Couldn’t cope with her husband’s affairs because they meant he was always late for dinner.’

  I’ve got this theory about Frank. That he was probably a great detective when it came to clues, but he always forgot to stop talking, so he missed the confessions. Like now. Given half a chance I think I would have told him. But as it was, by the time he was ready to listen, I’d thought better of it.

  But it didn’t go away. No sir. It played like a cold shiver up and down the spine. I had been there by 9.45 p.m. She had thrown herself in by 6.30 p.m. at the latest. So while I was waltzing round Covent Garden people-watching she had been waddling down some towpath towards the river, the words of the note already becoming fact. Maybe if I had gone straight from Eyelashes to Kilburn…Yeah, and maybe if the moon was made of green cheese. It wasn’t, I didn’t, and she killed herself. And not just herself either. Images of Amy came into my mind, all fat cheeks and self-importance, important enough for Kate to put up with sleep deprivation and a husband who didn’t have a clue. And images of Kate, eight months pregnant with the fish inside her butting up against the walls of the tank impatiently. A woman’s right to choose. But what could be bad enough to kill two of you? Shame and a stack of credit cards? It just didn’t seem right. Just like it didn’t seem right that I had been in Covent Garden when I should have been in Kilburn. And I had to stop thinking about that one.

  Frank realized it quicker than I did. Just to prove there’s an exception to every rule, when it comes to ex-coppers he isn’t bad on emotion. But he’s a great believer in the healing power of work. I did what I was told—which was four days at the Edgemore shopping mall where their own store detective seemed to have developed a case of myopia. Or chronic boredom, more like. I coped by making it a question of professional pride. After missing the suicide note I needed a little observation practice. On the first day I bust a middle-aged man stealing woman’s underwear and two teenagers out for a lark. The next day I struck lucky and found the pros, a group moving anything they could fit under their coats, from VCRs to wristwatches. None of it made me feel any better. At the end of the week I left with tumultuous praise ringing in my ears. I went home, got drunk and sat and re-read her folder. But the postcards were still monosyllabic emissaries from the dead, and she was still just a young woman with good legs, no character and a great gaping hole where the last eight months of her life should have been. Eight months which had led, apparently inexorably, to a riverside bank at Kew or Hampton Court. But why there? Why so far from home? What was wrong with Waterloo bridge, or Westminster? According to Frank, Westminster was the favourite—a little Wordsworth and the odd intimation of mortality. Why hadn’t she gone there? Too many questions. I was starting not to sleep for the asking of them. Except in a funny way it was probably what I had been waiting for: the need to know more.

  Looking back on it I think I had made up my mind even before Stanhope and Peters, Solicitors, called me. But there is nothing like coincidence to convince one. Not that I realized immediately. At first it just sounded like another job, except that it came direct to me and not through Frank.

  ‘Our client had your name from an earlier assignment.’

  ‘And you don’t want to go into details on the phone?’

  ‘Correct.’

  Just so long as it isn’t Van de Bilt, I thought, as I made my way down the Farringdon Road in the direction of Blackfriars. He said his name was Terence Greville and that he’d be sitting at one of the window tables in a café at the city end of Fleet Street, a place called Chez Roberto. You can never tell with solicitors. Sometimes they like to impress with the padded leather, other times they just want to be one of the boys. In which case he was too old for the job.

  He ordered another cappuccino and started right in there, eye-to-eye contact and intimate delivery over the sugar bowl.

  ‘Miss Wolfe, I have been instructed by my client to ask if you would consider taking on a job for them.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The assignment is to look into the circumstances surrounding Carolyn Hamilton’s death.’

  And out of all the things I had not been expecting this was the first. ‘Carolyn Hamilton’s death. You mean above and beyond the verdict of the inquest?’

  ‘I mean the inquest concerned itself only with what took place on that Saturday night. My client would like to know more about the preceding eight months.’

  ‘I see. May I know your client’s name?’

  ‘I’m afraid that is not possible. At this stage they would like to remain anonymous.’

  I shook my head. ‘Sorry. I don’t work like that. There are other private investigators who might oblige you, but it has always been my practice to know who I’m working for.’

  He paused. Then he cleared his throat. ‘I am sure you understand my position, Miss Wolfe. My client is, of course, deeply distressed by the loss. I think it’s fair to say that they feel themselves to be responsible in some way for what has happened. These feelings are enormously painful to admit to or talk about. But there is still the need for her to know. My client has asked me to stress that anything you find out will be kept in the strictest of confidence. You may deliver a closed report to myself and I will pass it on to them. No one else will know anything about it.’

  Solicitors, of course, do not make linguistic blunders. Seven years of study and a lifetime of earning money from the letter of the law sees to that. Which meant the slip had to be intentional. So Miss Patrick still had the need to know, but no longer the bility to ask directly. Maybe I reminded her of happier times, when the only notes received had first-class stamps on them and talked of dance repertoires and the weather. Grief and guilt. They can do weird things to people. No investigation ever brought anyone back to life, and in the end there are always those willing to speak ill of the dead. I ought to have known that.

  But my mind was on other things. Ahead of me stretched the promise of four days picking up carrier bags for a Saudi diplomat’s wife in London to buy up Harrod’s, then a week at a cash and carry where someone was doing just that. Frank would be pissed off, but he’d get over it. Anyway, I owed Miss Patrick four days’ work. I reminded Mr Greville of this when it came to talking money but he, like his employer, wasn’t interested. All in all he made me a very generous offer, more than my going rate, and no limit on expenses. We shook hands on the deal and went our separate ways.

&nb
sp; I started work in the car going home. First things first. We had a pregnant woman who had disappeared for seven and a half months and turned up in the river. Two questions to start with. Where had she been and who was the father? To help us along we had some dates. According to the PM report Carolyn had been between thirty-four and thirty-five weeks pregnant when she died. Working backwards that took us to the end of April. Which meant she had been on intimate terms with the father of her child exactly around the time she left Cherubim. When in doubt, Cherchez I’ homme. Any homme.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I would have gone back to Eyelashes anyway. If, that is, he hadn’t come to me first. Funny what dancers choose to do in their spare time. I hadn’t figured him for the inquest type. But then I hadn’t figured her for the young mother sort either. He rang me in the evening. It sounded like he was calling from the theatre, but it was after eight and I seemed to remember he was in the opening scene. He wanted to know if I fancied a late-night drink. I offered him his place or mine but he didn’t like that idea. In the end we met in one of those Covent Garden hangouts which look more like a visitors’ book than a restaurant. He was sitting at a table under a signed picture of Tab Hunter. It suited him. In front of him were a number of wine glasses and a dead fish. There was a certain similarity to the look in their eyes.

  ‘I phoned you, you know. A couple of days after. But you weren’t in.’

  People who don’t leave message on answering machines. I hate them. ‘You could have tried again. Or left your name. I would have called you back.’

  ‘Well, wasn’t any point, was there? I mean the old lady employed you to find her, not bury her. I didn’t think you’d be working for her any more.’

  ‘So what makes you think I’m working for her now?’

  ‘Are you?’