‘You’re sure? I’m very happy to be present during the interview, if you’d like me to.’
‘No. Really. I’ll be fine.’
‘I’ll wait here, then, in case you want to see me afterwards.’
‘That’s not necessary, really.’
‘If you’re sure, Damon,’ said Thanet. Secretly he was relieved. Questioning a witness with Joan present as the probation officer was not a prospect he relished. Then, to Joan, ‘I think it would be a good idea if you went home. You’re looking tired.’
‘I am, a bit. All right, then, if you’re sure, Damon.’
‘I’ll be fine,’ Damon insisted.
Thanet and Damon set off towards the glass doors, then Thanet turned back with a murmured word of apology. He had to speak to Joan privately. Damon nodded and stood waiting, listlessly. Thanet cast a worried glance back over his shoulder as he said to Joan, ‘Are you sure he’s fit to be questioned?’
Joan shrugged. ‘You saw for yourself. He’s adamant that he wants to get it over with. I think he’ll feel a lot better, if he does.’
‘Did he know his mother was dead?’
‘No. No radio, television or newspapers. He’ll explain.’
‘Did he tell you why he ran away?’
Joan pulled a face. ‘Yes. He’s going to tell you that himself.’
‘Legitimate reason?’
She nodded sadly. ‘Oh yes, only too legitimate.’
Thanet took her arm and gave it a quick squeeze. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be gentle with him.’
‘I know.’
‘Bye then, darling, and thanks.’
Thanet arranged for some tea to be brought up to his office. It arrived almost immediately and Damon cupped his hands around the mug as if to warm himself.
Where to begin?
‘We’ve been very worried about you, you know.’
Damon attempted a cynical smile. ‘Nice to know someone is.’
‘Everyone is. You must know that, surely. Your father, your …’
‘My father.’ It was a sneer.
Thanet knew why the boy was taking this attitude, but he wasn’t going to say so, at this point.
‘Yes. He’s very fond of you.’
Damon said nothing, merely jerked his head sideways in a gesture of repudiation.
It was time to tackle the first hurdle. ‘My wife tells me you didn’t know of your mother’s death until this afternoon.’
‘No.’ For a moment Damon’s self-control hovered in precarious balance, then he put the mug clumsily down on the edge of Thanet’s desk and covered his face with his hands. ‘Oh, God …’
Thanet and Lineham exchanged glances.
‘Look, Damon – if I may call you that – I’m really not sure that this is the best time for us to talk to you. You’ve had a pretty severe shock. Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer to wait until tomorrow?’
‘No!’ Damon rubbed his hands over his face, as if to clear his mind, pressing thumb and forefinger into his closed eyelids. Then he raised his head and met Thanet’s eye. ‘Sorry. I’m all right, really. Go ahead.’
Thanet waited a moment, then said, ‘As you wish. Well, we couldn’t understand, you see, how you could have avoided hearing the news. It’s been in all the papers, on the radio and television …’
‘We didn’t have any of those, where I was.’ Damon gave a reminiscent sigh and shook his head, as if in disbelief that such a place existed. ‘It was great. So peaceful, so cut off from everything …’
‘Where was this?’
‘It’s a commune, down on the Surrey/Hampshire border. One of my friends went off to live there, last year. They’re into self-sufficiency, that sort of thing.’
‘A religious community?’
‘No. Unless you call believing in peace and sharing everything in common a religion … It was the only place I could think of, to run to, where no questions would be asked and I’d have time to …’
‘To what?’ said Thanet gently.
Damon shrugged. ‘To sort myself out.’
Thanet waited, but the boy was silent.
‘What was it that needed sorting out, Damon?’
No reply.
Thanet decided to try a different tack. ‘From our point of view, the problem was that we couldn’t think why you had taken off like that. We guessed you might not have known about your mother’s death, of course. We assumed that if you had, you would have called for an ambulance. Unless …’
Damon glanced up sharply. ‘Unless what?’
Thanet hesitated. ‘Did Mrs Thanet tell you that it wasn’t an accident?’
Damon swallowed, nodded.
‘Then you must appreciate that we are trying to find out who was responsible.’ Thanet was picking his words carefully, trying to avoid emotive words like ‘murder’ and ‘killed’. ‘So we did wonder if one possible reason why you disappeared was because you were trying to protect someone.’
Damon stared at him. ‘Trying to … Are you saying that someone in the family might have done it?’
‘We have to take that possibility into consideration.’
Damon was shaking his head slowly, in disbelief. ‘That’s impossible! I assumed it was an outsider. A burglar, a tramp …’
‘I’m afraid it doesn’t look that way, Damon. So you see, we thought that it was just possible you might have witnessed the crime and run away because you couldn’t face being questioned about it. Especially if it had been committed by someone you were fond of.’
Damon was shaking his head again, vigorously this time. ‘You’re saying you really thought I might have seen my mother killed and done nothing about it?’ He gave a disbelieving laugh. ‘That’s crazy. That really is absolutely crazy.’
‘It may seem so now that we’ve met you. But you must remember we didn’t know you, or anything about you …’
‘Mrs Thanet did.’
‘Mrs Thanet knows her job. Without your permission she wouldn’t tell us anything about you which we couldn’t easily learn from someone else.’
‘Even when it’s her husband in charge of the case!’
‘Even then, Damon. I mean it.’
There was a brief silence while Thanet gave the boy time to digest this, then said, ‘Anyway, to get back to the point I was making, it was very difficult at first for us to think of any other reason why you should suddenly just drop out of sight like that.’
Silence.
‘So, why did you?’
‘I don’t have to tell you that.’
‘No.’
Damon was gazing miserably into space.
Thanet waited a moment, then added gently, ‘You don’t have to tell me, Damon, because I already know.’
The boy’s attention snapped back with an almost audible twang. ‘That’s not possible!’
‘Yes, it is. All sorts of things come to light in the type of investigation we’ve been conducting.’
‘In that case, there’s no need to talk about it, is there?’
‘But there is. I have no way of knowing for sure, of course, but I have a feeling that in some way your reason for leaving home on Thursday is very important to our understanding of this crime.’
‘But how can it be? It concerns no one but myself.’
‘Does it? Does it, really? If you think for a moment, I believe you’ll see that that simply isn’t true. There are other people who are bound to be affected by the fact that this information has come to light, several of them.’
Damon was silent for a while, gazing down at the floor. Finally, he shrugged. ‘I suppose you’re right.’
‘In that case, would you tell me the whole story? It really would help. I gather you only found out about this on the afternoon of your mother’s death?’
Damon nodded. ‘Yes.’ He hesitated, shrugged. ‘OK. If you already know … Where d’you want me to begin?’
TWENTY-TWO
From the corner of his eye Thanet saw Lineham give an anticipatory stir.
The sergeant was as eager to hear Damon’s story as he was. Thanet knew the What but he very much wanted to know the Where, the When and the Who. He must be careful not to rush things, now that Damon had at last capitulated.
‘You could start by telling me how you spent the day.’
‘OK.’ He paused, thinking back. ‘I slept late. Some friends of mine had finished their A levels the day before and I went out with them in the evening, to celebrate. I didn’t get up till around eleven, then I had some breakfast and went out to do some work on my car. I was out there for about an hour, then I went back up to my flat, had a beer, and crashed out on my bed. When I woke up it was well after three and I was hungry. I made myself some scrambled eggs, then I, well, just bummed around doing nothing much – played some tapes, looked at some motor magazines, that sort of thing …’
‘Usually, when you were at home during the day, you didn’t go down for lunch with your mother?’
‘No. She doesn’t eat lunch, just has a pot of yoghurt or something. Sometimes I go down to the kitchen and eat with Vicky, but on Thursdays she goes into Sturrenden for the weekly shop, and has lunch with a friend.’
‘I see. Go on.’ Thanet was filled with compassion for the strange, isolated life this boy had led, but he was careful not to show it. Damon might have had every material luxury but he had been sadly lacking in the warmth and support that only a close family can give.
‘By late afternoon I was getting a bit fed up with hanging around, so I thought I’d go along and see a friend of mine who lives in the village, get something fixed up for the evening.’
‘That would be Tim Speed?’
‘That’s right, yes.’
‘And this would have been at what time?’
‘Around a quarter past five, I should think.’
‘Right. Go on. No. Just a minute. Didn’t you have an appointment with my wife, on Thursday afternoon?’
Damon looked sheepish. ‘Yes, I did. I forgot it, I’m afraid. Normally, of course, I’d have rung her as soon as I realised, but in the circumstances it went clean out of my mind.’
So it was as simple as that. He had forgotten.
‘Anyway, when I went out of the back door I saw my aunt’s car outside the coach house. I was a bit surprised, because she doesn’t usually get home until around a quarter to six. Anyway, I’d promised to fix a new aerial on for her – her old one was snapped off by vandals last week – so I thought I’d pop in and arrange a time to do it. The front door was open, so I went in. The sitting room door was ajar and she and Mrs Haywood were talking. I was about to walk in when I heard my name.
“I still can’t believe that Damon is my grandson.”
“Even though you’re holding the proof in your hand? I can. Oh yes, I can believe it all right. I ought to have known that, with me out of the way, my dear sister wouldn’t have been able to resist the opportunity of seducing my fiancé.”
“D’you think Roland knows, Daphne?”
“If anyone does, he should! I bet he was so besotted with her he just turned a blind eye to the fact that Damon arrived well ahead of schedule.”
“But why didn’t you guess? You knew Roland had been away in Australia for a couple of months before they got engaged. You could have worked it out for yourself.”
“I agree, I could. I was a fool, that’s why. At the time I couldn’t think of anything but the fact that Jocelyn was dead. It never even entered my head to think that he might have been having it off with Nerine while I was safely tucked up in hospital. God, what an innocent I was.”
“Do stop pacing about like that, Daphne. You’re giving me a headache.”
“Oh, shut up, Bea, for God’s sake. I’m trying to think. I’ve got to work out what to do now.”
‘I didn’t wait to hear any more,’ Damon said, miserably. ‘I just backed out, as quietly as I could, and went back up to my flat.’
A wounded animal seeking sanctuary, thought Thanet.
‘But when I got there, I felt I was going to suffocate. It was as if the walls were … sort of closing in on me.’ He looked at Thanet with mild surprise. ‘Funny really. It’s a big room with lots of light … I don’t know what I did next. Paced about a bit, I think, trying to take it in … that I was a …’ He shook his head, unable to say the word. ‘I wasn’t really thinking straight. I kept hearing their voices – my aunt’s and Mrs Haywood’s in my head. Suddenly I couldn’t stand it any longer. I felt I had to get out, right away from there. But where could I go? I threw a few things in a bag, and all the time I was trying to think of somewhere. Then I remembered the commune. So I just … took off.’
‘You didn’t leave a note, or try to tell anyone where you were going?’
‘Why should I? I didn’t owe them anything, I reckoned, not after what they’d done to me.’
‘What had they done to you, Damon?’
‘Lied to me!’ the boy shouted. He put his head in his hands. ‘The lot of them,’ he mumbled.
It was obvious that, much as Damon might have enjoyed his stay in Surrey, it had done nothing to restore his peace of mind. Thanet was now regretting having persuaded Joan to go home. She and Damon had driven back in separate cars, and she would have had no opportunity to talk to him at length, try to enable him to come to terms with what had happened.
Perhaps I should ring her, Thanet thought, ask her to come back, so that she can spend some time with Damon after the interview is over. He had a vivid mental image of her in the waiting room, eyes closed, head leaning back against the wall. She had looked so tired … No, he really didn’t want to bring her back if he could help it. On the other hand, he certainly couldn’t allow the boy to leave in this state. Many of his colleagues, Thanet knew, would have had no qualms about doing so, but he knew, too, that he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he did.
Thanet glanced at Lineham and nodded towards the door. The sergeant got up and went out. The sound of the door closing softly behind him made Damon glance over his shoulder and, Thanet hoped, register that they were now alone.
Thanet abandoned his chair and went to perch on the edge of his desk.
‘That isn’t true, you know. Your aunt and Miss Haywood, for instance. They didn’t lie to you. It’s obvious that they’d only just heard the news themselves.’
But how? Thanet wondered. How, after all this time, had they stumbled upon this long-buried secret?
Damon shook his head dismissively. ‘I wasn’t thinking of them.’
‘Your mother, you mean?’
‘For one, yes.’
‘Could you really have expected her to tell you the truth, in the circumstances?’
Damon was silent for a moment. Then he shrugged. ‘Maybe not. Though it does explain one thing.’
‘What?’
‘Why she couldn’t stand the sight of me.’
‘I’m sure that’s not true.’
‘No? In that case, why did she avoid me? Why didn’t she ever spend time with me? Or take me on outings, like other mothers do? Or come to sports days and speechdays and …’ Damon shook his head, hard, as if to suppress the unruly emotions which were threatening to swamp him. ‘Oh, no, don’t try to make me believe she cared about me, because I wouldn’t believe you, not in a million years.’
‘Damon,’ said Thanet quietly.
His tone brought the boy’s head up with a jerk.
‘I’m going to tell you something about your mother, something that I think might help you to understand her better. You see, in the course of an investigation such as this we learn a great deal about the people involved, and especially about the person at the heart of it, the victim. Now I’m not going to try and pretend your mother cared about you, because by all accounts she didn’t. But,’ he went on quickly as the boy flinched, ‘I do want you to understand this. It was nothing to do with you.’
Damon frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that it wasn’t that she found you unlikeable, or unlovable or pe
rsonally repulsive or anything like that, but that she was incapable of caring, really caring for anyone. Even for someone who loved her as deeply as your father.’
The boy was silent, trying to absorb this new and unfamiliar interpretation of a situation he had always understood differently.
‘I know that when people don’t seem to like us much we always take it for granted that it’s because of something we’ve said or done, or not said or not done, or just because of the way we are, but the fact of the matter is that quite often it’s nothing to do with us at all, but with the person himself – or, as in this case, herself. You see, your mother was so badly hurt when she was a little child, that I think she built a wall around herself so that she would never have to suffer in the same way again. I’m not saying that she said to herself consciously, I shall never allow myself to love someone for fear that they will hurt me, because small children just don’t think in those terms. But I’m convinced that, deep down, unconsciously, she decided never to allow herself to become vulnerable again – and that meant not allowing herself to care. The trouble is, of course, that people like that can do a great deal of harm to the people around them, especially to those who are dependent on them, like children … Like, in this case, you. May I make a suggestion?’
Damon nodded dumbly.
‘Have you ever heard of Mrs Glass?’
‘My aunt goes to see her sometimes. Wasn’t she their housekeeper when they were children, she and my mother?’
‘Yes. She knew them both well, virtually brought them up. I think if you heard the way she speaks of your mother, and the things she could tell you about her, you may come to feel very differently about the way she treated you. After all, you know yourself, from your experiences of the last few days, how shattering it can be when your world falls apart … Just think how much worse it is if you’re little more than a toddler, and can’t begin to understand what’s going on … Go and talk to Mrs Glass, Damon. She’d be delighted to see you, I’m sure. She’s a very interesting old lady and loves having visitors …’
Thanet paused for a moment and then said, ‘But I have a feeling that the person you were really talking about, when you mentioned people lying to you, was your father, wasn’t it?’
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