by Emma Jameson
Good people don’t hurt people. Henry wanted to think of himself as a good person. Probably he was, apart from eavesdropping, occasional lies, a few fights at school, and looking up some forbidden stuff on the Internet. But he was being positioned to hurt someone. Maura and Kate couldn’t both be winners. Each wanted him to choose one over the other. And each said a lot about his welfare and his happiness and never word about the ropes and pulleys creaking between them. Maybe they thought he was too thick to hear.
The chicken tikka masala tasted like bug spray. A big clump was still on his plate. He’d ignored it as long as he dared; Kate’s rules on leftovers were ironclad. Take them downstairs, scrape them into a Tupperware, and stick them in the fridge. Waste not, want not.
Why does she pretend we’re not rich? So other people won’t ask her for money?
Maybe she was afraid too much ready cash would turn him into a bloody wanker. Maura had said as much, in those words. She’d thought if Tony became Henry’s adopted father, Henry would one day be Lord Hetheridge, in possession of Wellegrave House and the Devon estate called Briarshaw. “One of them bastards,” as she put it. Apparently, hereditary peerages and the writs governing their succession had never been on Maura’s radar. It was Henry who’d explained that only “sons of the body” (or in the case of a few peerages, daughters) could take up the mantle of the hereditary peer. But after adoption, Henry would receive a courtesy title: the Hon. Henry Hetheridge.
Maura had been transparently relieved to hear it. She’d feared that if she erased his chance to become Baron Wellegrave, he’d hate her forever. With that concern put to bed, she’d gone full steam ahead, oblivious to how important Tony was to him.
From the moment Kate accepted Tony’s ring, Henry had begun thinking of him as Dad. He just hadn’t screwed up the courage to say it yet. Suppose it went wrong? Kids that grew up taking a dad for granted were luckier than they knew.
The chicken tikka masala was transforming itself into paste. Snatching up the plate, he took it into the lavatory, scraped it into the bog, and flushed the whole sorry mess.
Of course, bossy Kate had rules about dirty dishes, too. Henry was meant to promptly take them downstairs, prewash them with a little Fairy soap, and place them in the dishwasher. He was still irritated enough with her to toy with the notion of “accidentally” smashing the plate. But that would be in direct violation of Pax Wakefield. Besides, Tony, Kate, and Paul had probably finished eating by now and settled into talking shop. If Henry played his cards right, he might be able to listen in.
In his stocking feet, he padded into the hall. Spying Kate’s question on his message board, he erased her query with quick, vengeful strokes. Then he wrote,
THIS IS MY PRIVATE BOARD!!!!!
If he was going to try and creep up on the adults downstairs, step one was to silence the lift. Its bell dinged every time the doors open. Not unbearably loud, but unmistakable, at least in a house full of detectives. Luckily, the lift had a touchpad control panel. By tapping in the family’s global code, which Henry had acquired via application of what he called his “methods,” he could access the lift’s preferences menu and shut off the bell.
The lift whisked him down to the living room. The doors opened onto darkness.
Henry had expected that. The room’s stunning view of London was best enjoyed with the lamps switched off. Tony, Kate, and Paul had indeed moved into the living room to talk. As soon as he set foot off the lift, Henry heard Paul, who always spoke at a fair clip and tended to get louder when making a point.
“Of course, I double-checked it. The man is evil,” he said. “Heathrow confirms that he flew out of the UK on his Syberjet Sj30 at approximately two pm on 24 December. No other passengers, just him and the pilot. Brunei confirms Godington flew out of BWN at an unspecified time on or around 8 January.”
“You can always count on Brunei to be vague,” Kate said.
“For a fee,” Tony agreed. “But for Christmas with the orangutans, Godington usually flies directly to Borneo. Instead, he’s seen celebrating the holiday in and around Bandar Seri Begawan….”
“Which is under Sharia law, last I checked,” Paul interjected.
“…and going here and there like a camera-hungry socialite,” Tony said. “I made a few inquiries at the British High Commission and got several hits. I expected nothing. When Godington goes abroad, he typically disappears.”
Henry crept closer, eyes adjusting to the gloom. The hall was pitch dark; he had no fear of being seen. The adults, however, were backlit by London’s glittering skyline. Paul was on the sofa. Tony had his usual spot, the overstuffed armchair brought over from Wellegrave House. Kate stood by the window, wine glass in hand.
“Not to contradict the BHC,” she said. “But Lady Margaret and Lady Vivian feel certain Sir Duncan was in London between 24 December and 8 January. He was invited to all the best parties. Black Tie in Bloomsbury. Christmas Jumpers at the Blue Fin. You get the idea.”
“All for charity, old stick. Widows and orphans,” Paul said.
“More like a yearly excuse to take those Greubel Forsey wristwatches and Chopard necklaces out of the vault and flaunt them in front of people who can price them at a glance,” Kate said. “Buy a car and some of that money goes into the economy. Buy a watch that costs more than a plane and you’re keeping it all in the family.”
“Railing against the one percent doesn’t change the fact you’re one of them now. By choice,” Paul said. “But yeah, it’s a dirty trick.”
“Wearable wealth is the oldest trick in the book,” Tony said. “But we digress. So despite the difference of opinion on Godington’s whereabouts, I think it’s reasonable to assume he was out of the country during the time Mariah Keene jumped to her death.”
Henry, who’d been dismayed by talk of countries he’d never heard of and a detour into wristwatches, of all things, sank to the floor and settled in to listen. If one of the grownups went into the kitchen to refill a drink, he’d be invisible. If they started down the hall for the bog, he’d dash to the lift and pretend he’d just arrived.
“I know the bloody monster’s a magnet for bright young things,” Paul said. “He’s always had young people as accomplices. Sometimes he doesn’t even have to recruit them. They recruit themselves, like what’s-his-name….”
“Jeremy Bentham,” Kate said. “Who topped himself in prison when Sir Duncan froze him out.”
“I know.” Paul sounded slightly peeved. “He stabbed me in the shoulder. I remember his name, I just don’t like to say it. My point is, if Lady Brompton thinks Mariah and Mark were victims rather than willing accomplices, she’s as unhinged as she sounds.”
“I don’t think it’s a clinical issue,” Tony said. “Just grief, resentment, and too much white wine. She’d feel equally vindicated if I turn up proof that either Godington pushed Mariah to her death, or if her husband did it. But I pulled the neighborhood CCTV camera footage. He never left their house that night, and woke up when she did, to the news about Mariah. The housekeeper corroborates what he said—that he took it harder than his wife. She was shocked when Lady Brompton announced that Mariah’s head would look like a smashed watermelon.”
Henry caught his breath. This was why he eavesdropped. Tonight might be the motherlode.
“Maybe I should feel sorry for Lord Brompton, but I don’t,” Kate said. “He sounds like a creep. And creeps with dead daughters usually stuck a finger in the pie, didn’t they? Probably drove her to suicide. That’s why he ditched her stuff and replaced it with paedo fantasy props. I don’t know why else a poshie girl would have broken into a construction site over a holiday.”
“I had friends from good families who did stuff like that.” Paul, who never sat still for long, was up and pacing. “BASE Jumpers. They didn’t want to end it all. Did it just for kicks.”
“BASE jumping?” Tony sounded intrigued. “Is that an acronym?”
“Yeah. About the things they jump off,” Paul
said. “Buildings, obviously. Antennae. Not sure about the S, but the E is probably for edifices.”
Kate made a sound like a quiz show buzzer. Trading wineglass for phone, she’d already found the answer. “Wrong. According to this, S is for span, as in a bridge or catwalk. E is for Earth.”
“Reliance on Google makes you stupid,” Paul said.
“Says who?”
“People on telly. They’re none too keen on being eclipsed.”
“This sounds a bit like the Urbex people,” Tony said. “But assuming Mariah was one of them—do Urbex or BASE jumpers attempt stunts alone?”
“Nope. They have a healthy respect for how dangerous it is,” Kate said. “As do I. Maura and I broke into a no-trespassing site when I was thirteen.”
“That doesn’t sound like you.” There was no censure in Tony’s voice, only interest. Henry was interested, too. Everyone—Maura, Louise, even Kate herself—agreed that Kate had been born a wet blanket who lived to uphold the law.
“I knew it was wrong,” Kate replied. “But in those days I worshipped Maura. She could have asked me to pop round to Hell with her and I would’ve said ‘Yes, please.’”
“Did you get hurt? One of my BASE jumper mates cut himself on a bit of metal and needed twenty stitches,” Paul said. “Tetanus shot, too. That’s why I wouldn’t go. That, and I was already sort of a mini-plod by my teens.”
“So was I,” Tony said.
“So was I, after Maura took me into a burned-out Council block. Bloody cow tried to kill me.”
Chapter Six
Henry’s breath caught. Heart speeding up, he peeked around the corner as much as he dared, the better to try and see Kate’s expression. Was she exaggerating? She had to be exaggerating.
“Kill you? You’ve never told me about this,” Tony said.
“What happened?” Paul sounded equally taken aback.
“Oh, it was probably an accident. But I’ve never forgiven her for it.” Kate emitted a mirthless laugh. “Thing is, when I was small, Maura took care of me more than Louise. Made toad-in-the-hole for me on Saturday mornings. Walked me to school. Braided my hair. I looked up to her. Thought she painted the sky.”
Henry had never heard Kate talk that way. Not like the family lawgiver. Like someone who didn’t have it all figured out.
“It couldn’t last,” Kate continued. “By the time I was thirteen, she was a grown woman, really. Tired of being followed around by a kiddie. She kept ditching me, and I kept refusing to take the hint. Then one day she says to me, ‘My mates are having a peek inside the Capslow block. Want to tag along?’”
“Was that a tower block?” Paul asked.
“Yes. Burnt down,” Tony said. “Quite the scandal. Fire exits fell off the walls with evacuees on them. Some residents died in their beds because the alarms didn’t sound. Turned out they were only for show. Never wired. The public was appalled.”
“No one I knew was surprised,” Kate said. “Anyhow, as far as Maura’s invitation, I should have known she was taking the piss. Her mates didn’t want a kid around. They reckoned I would grass. But of course, I was so bloody needy, I couldn’t see the scrawl on the wall.
“We met up after sundown and broke into Capslow. It was easy. No security. No floodlights. If anyone on the Council cared about kids getting hurt on the premises, they couldn’t be arsed to do anything to stop it.”
“It was a shooting gallery, if memory serves,” Tony said.
“Yeah. We came in waving torches around,” Kate said. “First thing I saw was a half-naked boy, passed out on the floor. At least, I thought he was passed out. Maura and her bloody awful mates tried to convince me he was dead. That he’d been murdered. That nuisance little wankers like me disappeared into Capslow and were never seen again. I should have pissed off straight away.”
“What? And look like a pious little bint?” Paul flopped onto the sofa, full-length, feet up, like he owned the place. “Even at thirteen you had your pride. You had to stick it out.”
Kate chuckled softly. “Yeah. I thought if I showed I was game, and not a snot-nosed little baby, Maura would like me again. Her mates kept trying to scare me, every step of the way. Most of the stairs were blocked, but we found some that got us up to the seventh floor.
“Our torches had gone dead. Rubbish batteries. But it was light enough because the Capslow was missing a wall. I was working my way to the edge to peer over it when I heard Maura say, ‘Dare me?’ I looked over my shoulder. Her mates were all, ‘Yeah, that’s right, do it.’ Maura came at me. Shoved me right over the edge.”
Henry’s chest felt tight. He realized it was because he’d been holding his breath. He forced himself to inhale.
Paul swore. “Seven floors up? Really?”
“Yeah. Lucky me, there was a construction container just below,” Kate said. “A huge one crammed with carpet rolls, drywall, glass wool and all that. I fell on the pile. Climbed out on my own steam, bruises and soot all over me. I reckon I’d be dead or crippled if I’d hit the side of the container. Much less the pavement.”
Henry closed his eyes and held them shut, thumb and forefingers on his lids. He was too old to cry all the time. He bloody well wouldn’t cry over this. It was an old story, something that happened before he was born. Maybe Maura had been drunk, or high, or both.
“I assume your sister was under the influence?” Tony asked in the neutral tone he always used when discussing Maura. Henry loved him for that. It would have been so easy for a man like Tony to look down on his mum, to speak of her as a disposable person, to be binned and replaced without a second thought. But he didn’t, even when he had no idea Henry was listening.
“I don’t know. She was hearing voices by then,” Kate said. “I didn’t find out till later, but she was. Anyhow. All I heard when I climbed out of the rubbish heap was cheering and clapping. Bunch of tossers. I took off running. All Maura did was shout, ‘Tell Mum and you’re dead.’ So I didn’t tell Louise. And I never had anything to do with Maura again. Not till Henry was born.”
“Even the toughest family connections have silver linings,” Paul said.
“Spoken like someone who’s never met my nephew, Roddy.” Tony, still in his overstuffed armchair, reached out to Kate. Catching her by the hand, he pulled her onto his lap. She folded herself against him.
Something tight inside Henry relaxed. Seeing them together like that, outlined by the glow of the city lights, made him feel like everything would come out all right in the end.
“So I accept the possibility that a young woman of Mariah Keene’s age and background might participate in these urban explorations,” Tony said. “Yet her parents knew nothing about it. I interviewed her friends, too. They were all mystified that she died in a construction site.”
“Was she the type who told her parents everything?” Paul asked.
“A good question.” Tony seemed to ponder it. “If she was, I don’t think Peter and Hannah listened. Peter still saw her as a little girl. Hannah was more interested in the twin brother, Mark, and her career. But surely Mariah’s friends would have known.”
“Did the parents supply the friends list?” Kate asked pointedly.
Tony gave a pleased little rumble deep in his throat. “Ah. Yes. I’ll need to dig deeper to uncover the real friends, won’t I? All three of the women suggested by Hannah said they’d long ago stopped hearing from Mariah.”
“What about her computer? Her mobile?” Paul asked.
“Mobile is gone. BT turned on the GPS but there was no response. Possibly smashed to bits in the fall and missed by the coroner’s team,” Tony said. “Her laptop was removed from her bedroom and stored in the attic. Peter brought it down for me to examine. It booted up with no data. Nothing but factory settings. He claimed it must have got a virus. Not very convincingly, I might add.”
“You did say he was hiding something. Maybe that was it,” Paul said. “What about a boyfriend? Ordinarily I’d say, track down her last boyfrie
nd and if he’s an Urbex guy, there you have it. But if Godington is the last boyfriend, all bets are off.”
“Do you think Sir Duncan was dating Mariah? Honestly?” Kate slipped off Tony’s lap. “Wine’s never good the second day. I’m finishing the bottle. You lads?”
“I’m fine,” Tony said.
“I’ll have a Stella, thanks,” Paul said.
Henry scuttled deeper into the hall, all the way back to the bog. If he was caught in there, it wouldn’t look good—he had a lavatory all to himself upstairs—but ducking into the lift wasn’t an option. Light would spill out when the doors opened, and from the kitchen, Kate might see. All he could do was lurk in the bog and pray no one needed it.
He heard Kate’s glass clink against the quartz countertop, then the glug of wine. Footsteps, and then Kate’s voice, safely back in the living room. Creeping back to his place where the hall and living room intersected, Henry saw that Paul, now sitting upright so as to drink his Stella Artois, looked angry. Usually he was good-natured, smiling, up for a laugh, not like a harried grownup at all. His grim adult side only emerged, as far as Henry could tell, when Sir Duncan Godington came up.
“Seriously,” Kate said. “About Sir Duncan and Mariah. It sounds off. He’s meant to be this incorrigible playboy with a supermodel on each arm. Never seen without a woman who isn’t a knockout, and semi-famous to boot. Was Mariah in that league?”
“She wouldn’t have been mistaken for a model,” Tony replied. “Then again, I’ve never quite believed Godington’s haute couture dates were anything other than protective coloration. He’s obsessed with his sister.”
“And Kate,” Paul said.
“And Kate,” Tony agreed, still in that calm, neutral tone.
What Kate? Henry wondered. Is there another Kate?