‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘It was … it was kind of hard to do it,’ I said. ‘It felt like a huge violation of her privacy.’ I looked at him, gauging him.
He nodded, while my fingers clenched the stem of my wine glass. Nearby, a quartet of young men in skinny jeans and elaborate facial hair were urgently discussing a planned trip to Machu Picchu for a photoshoot. Other than that, we were alone. The lunch rush was long over.
‘It must have been a phenomenally difficult thing to read.’ His face was kind.
A long moment went by. I couldn’t speak. The memory of it was still raw; seeing her like that. She’d promised I’d be battered and bruised by the end. This part was already coming true.
‘What can I do for you, Sophia?’ he asked eventually.
I bit my lip and tried to compose myself. ‘I need to know what’s in that third notebook. I mean, I don’t want to know, I’m pretty sure about that, but I need to. The second notebook implies that somebody … that there was an incident at Morningstar, and that somebody died.’ I took a deep breath. ‘I think it’s got something to do with what happened to my mum.’
‘How so?’ he asked carefully.
I took a deep breath, marshalled my thoughts. ‘I … I’ve never believed that my mum would kill herself. I know what the police think. But I can’t’ – Just come out and say what you think – ‘I think my mum was murdered and my dad nearly murdered, and that somehow this … this Order of Ascendants was involved. I just … I don’t understand why.’
‘That,’ he said after a long moment, ‘is quite a claim.’
I offered him a helpless shrug. ‘It’s the only thing that makes sense to me. Firstly,’ I said, ‘my parents are not easy to handle, by any stretch of the imagination. My mum is needy and my dad – well, my dad isn’t good with people. But neither of them has ever been suicidal. And with this book,’ I clasped my hands around my head. ‘I just think my mum was looking forward to life more than ever. There’s … there’s like this, I don’t know, this passion for life, for justice, that comes out of the notebooks. When she’s talking to me in them, she doesn’t sound depressed, she sounds … she sounds feisty. Like she’s ready to move on with her life. Ready to do all the things she never did.’
I folded my hands in front of me and tried to compose myself. ‘I know everyone says it’s my grief talking, but looking back, there was something about my final phone call with Mum. I can’t help feeling that she made it under duress. There was something … off about it.’
He listened intently, but said nothing. I was grateful, I realized, to speak to someone who didn’t try to leap in all the time, telling me what to feel or trying to give me permission to feel it.
‘And the other thing is, I’ve realized something.’ Now I’d started talking, I couldn’t stop. I felt uncorked, like shaken champagne, and everything was bubbling out. ‘The police say that my parents were being continuously burgled, but that never made any sense to me either. My parents didn’t own much. They’d never been targeted before. Who would burgle them? Continuously?
‘The burglaries started about six months ago, and when you said on the phone that my mum and you had been discussing the book for that long, something twigged in my head.’ I laced my anxious hands together on the wooden table again. ‘Why would all this harassment begin just as she started talking to someone outside the house about her past?’
His gaze settled on me and grew thoughtful. ‘You think Nina and Jared were being harassed? In the sense of a campaign?’
‘Well, maybe.’ I shrugged helplessly. ‘I don’t know. Did you have any problems? I mean, at Paracelsus? Did anyone from this order threaten you over this?’
He laughed, a short bitter sound. ‘Other than the usual legal letters?’ His smile faltered as I didn’t join in. ‘Well, I have to be honest here, Sophia. At Paracelsus we publish occult and New Age books, and we deal with difficult people sometimes. Last year we published a book on Mary Magdalene that got some fundamentalist Christians in the States very angry. But, as far as I’m aware, none of our detractors have ever done anything violent or criminal.’ He shrugged. ‘What makes you believe that Aaron Kessler’s group was targeting your parents? Other than the burglaries? Were there other clues?’
‘I don’t think so,’ I said, shaking my head, though I couldn’t shake the thought that Rowan could be concealing more revelations from me, even now. ‘But they were so alarmed that they bought a gun. Why would they do that unless they thought they were in danger?’
This seemed to make an impression on Max, whose thick brows drew together.
‘I see,’ he said after a long moment. ‘So what can I do for you?’
Now that I was here, a reluctance stole over me. I didn’t want to be battered or bruised any more.
Courage, Sophia.
I took a deep gulp of wine first.
‘I have a question for you. Actually, two questions,’ I went on. ‘And the first one is, who died at Morningstar in 1989 and why? You’ve read the third notebook – what happened next?’
I sensed that this conversation made him very uncomfortable. His mouth opened and closed once, twice, and he flushed a deep pink.
‘Well, you see, in terms of the third notebook, things between Nina and I had reached a difficult …’
Suddenly, in a lightning bolt of clarity, I understood.
‘You haven’t actually read it, have you?’
‘No, I haven’t,’ he said with a little sigh. ‘When I wrote that letter to Nina, I was expecting her to call me, to arrange a meeting where I could read it. That’s what had happened with the first two notebooks as she wouldn’t make copies.’
A vast disappointment welled inside me. ‘You don’t know what’s in it?’
‘Oh, no, it wasn’t like that.’ He sat upright. ‘I may not have read it, but I know what happened next. You see, Nina was describing a, well, a historical event. It’s just that she’s the only person that was present who’s ever gone public.’
A historical event? I’d seen nothing of the sort in my internet searches. ‘What do you mean? Who died?’
‘Peter Clay.’
Peter died?
For some reason, I had been sure it would be Tristan. I’d spent the night imagining all the things I would do, say and throw at the despicable Peter if I ever met him. And now I learned that he’d been dead since before I was born.
I felt cheated.
‘How?’
‘It was a shotgun blast to the face.’ Max winced. ‘Quite messy.’
‘I … I, well, what … sorry?’
Max sighed. ‘Naturally, the police got involved. They ruled it an accident – drunk man trips with a loaded shotgun. There were plenty of guns in the house. But Nina told me something different. At the time, the central ritual was in full swing and everyone had taken a lot of drugs, and in the middle of this, someone shot Peter.’
‘Who?’
‘I don’t know. Nina claims she heard the commotion and came running. She had no memory of what happened in the hours leading up to this. She was … out of it. They all were.’
‘How was she so sure Peter’s death wasn’t an accident?’
‘I don’t know and she wouldn’t elaborate. She did grow more guarded as things progressed.’
I tried to parse this for a long moment. To imagine my gentle, nervous, needy mother complicit in such a hideously violent crime.
Everything is lies, and nobody is who they seem.
‘That’s all she said?’ I asked. ‘That it was a murder? She didn’t tell you anything else?’
He shook his head.
‘So,’ I said, aware that I was trembling, ‘why didn’t she tell the police?’
‘Nina and I discussed talking to the police, but you have to remember that, even so many years later, Nina was still traumatized by her time at Morningstar and her memories of Aaron. She just wanted to get it written down.’ He met my gaze. ‘Or perhaps she was protecting somebody. Some of
these people she considered her friends.’
Of course – even if there was no third notebook yet, there were still the people that were there at the time, who had known my mum.
‘This was the other thing I meant to ask,’ I said. ‘I want to track down the other ex-members. Do you know where I can start looking for them? In the notebooks, Mum only uses first names. I don’t even know if they’re real.’
‘The other members that were at Morningstar with her? Yes, I know who they are.’
‘You do?’
‘Of course. Well, I can certainly tell you who their lawyers are. Remember, we were thinking of publishing the book, so we had to cover ourselves. Kessler, for the record, is very litigious.’
I sat astounded on the splintery pub seat as the implications of this became clear.
‘I’d like that,’ I said. ‘The old members. I’d just … I’d like to talk to someone who knew my mum then. She didn’t have many friends and her parents … you know.’ I bit my lip. My phone call with Estella that morning still rankled. ‘I’m not expecting much assistance from that quarter.’
‘Of course I’m happy to contact them.’ He drained the remains of his pint. ‘But I don’t think they’re going to want to talk to you. They’re very keen to forget they ever met Aaron Kessler.’
‘Did you tell them that my mum was writing a book?’
‘I didn’t give specifics. I just told them that an ex-member was putting together a memoir and asked them if they’d like to read the manuscript when it was finished.’ He met my gaze. ‘It seems naive of me now. It probably wouldn’t be that hard for them to work out that I meant Nina.’
I was thinking, thinking. ‘If one of these “Ascendants” murdered Peter, they would have known they might be exposed if my mum went ahead with this.’ The implications were inescapable. Not only would the murderer be afraid, the others would, too. They had all helped cover up the crime.
‘Oh my God,’ I said, as the full force of it hit me. ‘She would have exposed them all. That was why they killed her.’
Chapter Twenty-One
I went straight to the police, asking at the front desk for Detective Inspector Rob Howarth.
‘Hello, Sophia.’ He was wearing a white shirt, creased by the heat and sporting slight sweat marks under the arms. He was cordial but distant, as though expecting trouble from me.
I didn’t disappoint him on that score.
He took me to an interview room where I handed over the two notebooks. I told him about my conversation with Max, about the contents, about my mum’s plan to publish.
As I spoke I constantly searched his damp, craggy face for some clue as to how he was receiving this new intelligence, but he gave nothing away.
‘So you’ve no idea where the third notebook is?’ he asked, not looking at me, but at the two books with their slightly faded covers. Very carefully, he pulled one over and opened it, flicking through the pages.
‘No.’
‘That’s a shame.’ He peered over my mum’s handwriting. ‘I’ll get in touch with Kent Constabulary and ask about this accidental death.’ He tapped the notebooks. ‘This is an interesting new line of inquiry. Let me have a read through these, and I’ll be in touch.’
* * *
When I arrived back at the hospital Rowan was in his usual chair; he offered me a wan smile when I came in and kissed my dad’s forehead.
I felt a fathomless guilt. ‘Look, Ro, about the other night …’
He shook his head. ‘No, Soph, it’s fine. I ought to be apologizing, not you. You’ve been under so much stress, and I … sorry. I’m just knackered.’ He grinned and stood up. ‘Pax.’
It was what we always used to say as children, when we made up after a quarrel – usually when my ever-present jealousy of my dad’s favour made me say and do things I would later regret.
‘Pax,’ I agreed, and let myself sink into his arms for a second as he hugged me. ‘So, how is he?’
He nodded towards my dad. ‘The same. I’ve been telling him about planting the autumn stock.’
‘Any reaction?’
‘No, not today. But he might be tired out. They said the consultant came and had a look at him, so there was a lot of poking and prodding and one of those MRI things.’ He hunched forward on his chair.
I gave him a measured look.
‘Rowan, I had a very strange conversation today.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. With a man that was going to publish a book my mum had written.’
His eyes widened, the dark circles under them notwithstanding. ‘Your mum wrote a book?’
‘Yeah.’ I sat down and told him everything I’d learned, ending with the revelation that my mum’s book might have contained information about a murder.
Rowan just stared at me. ‘Fucking hell. That’s hard core, Soph.’ He rubbed his chin. ‘So now you really think it was one of them, this cult? That killed your mum and stabbed Jared?’
‘Yeah,’ I said urgently. ‘I do. I think it was made out to look like a murder–suicide. But here’s the thing – the third notebook, which describes the original murder, has gone missing. Did you ever see a notebook in the house? It was probably an A5 hardback?’
He had a wary, guarded look now.
‘You’re quite sure about this?’ he asked.
I ignored this question. ‘Rowan, this is important—’
‘I know, I know, but I never saw …’ He seemed to be thinking. Then he trailed off.
‘Rowan?’
He looked up at me. ‘I didn’t see a notebook. But I think I heard Nina. Typing. In the mornings. There were a few times I came through the house and she’d be in the little office downstairs, before the café opened. I never thought anything of it, I just thought she was doing the paperwork. But looking back on it, she was getting up earlier and earlier in the mornings, and the thing with Nina was, she was never an early riser.’
He glanced swiftly at me.
My mind was spinning.
I’d been so sure the third notebook was a handwritten bound book like the first two that it had never once occurred to me that it might be digital.
I had already looked at the ancient desktop computer in the office after her death, looking for some clue that would help me understand this calamity. There had been some pictures on it – nothing personal, simply photos of the gardens and grounds; the business’s email correspondence, and a folder containing some old recipes and menus.
I’d clicked through everything and seen nothing out of the ordinary.
I’d have to take another look when I got in tonight.
‘And what did the police say about all this?’ Rowan asked.
‘They think it’s an “interesting new line of inquiry”.’
He frowned. ‘That’s one way to describe it.’ He shook his head. ‘Bloody hell.’ He looked at my dad. ‘If it’s true, you need to be careful. No way are you sleeping at that house any more, not till this is all sorted out.’ He stood up and shook his finger at me, endearingly bossy. ‘And we have to set up the CCTV cameras.’
‘What CCTV cameras?’
‘We bought CCTV in the end. About a month before … before it happened, Jared caved in and stumped up for it.’
My dad must have been desperate to consider such a thing. He hates CCTV.
‘They’re in boxes at my house. We bought four cameras and mounts and a program to view them on the PC. But we never got around to fitting them.’
I looked at my dad, lying silently on the hospital bed.
‘You know what, Rowan?’
‘Yeah?’
‘If you could put up the CCTV, that would be great.’
* * *
‘I’ve put the office computer in here,’ said Rowan, ‘it’s more out of the way.’
We’d driven back to the house and collected the dusty old PC from the office. I still insisted upon going from room to room, checking that nothing was disturbed, but everything looked exa
ctly as I’d left it.
He’d set it up in his daughter Brigit’s room, on her little lilac Ikea desk. I would be sleeping in here tonight while she decamped to her brother’s bed.
‘Thanks,’ I said, settling on her tiny, wobbly chair. My parents’ PC itself, its white plastic yellowing with age, covered nearly the whole desktop, and its chunky glass monitor rested on top of it. It had been heavy – Rowan’s face was still pink from carrying it up the stairs.
‘I’ll leave you to it,’ he said. ‘It’s my turn to put the kids to bed.’
I nodded. ‘Thanks, Ro.’
He waved and walked out, pulling the door shut behind him. ‘Sleep tight.’
For something that was nearly twenty years old, the PC was still in pretty good nick, though you could have gone downstairs and made a cup of tea and a sandwich, and perhaps watched an episode of Coronation Street, too, in the time it took to boot up.
While I waited I took off my make-up and changed into pyjamas. Eventually, as I was smoothing my moisturiser in, the screen asked me for the password, which I knew was ‘EDENGARDENS1’ in all capitals.
Elite techno-hackers my parents were not.
Within moments I was in, and the screen looked exactly like it had the last time I’d logged on. The business ran on Windows XP, which I’m positive hasn’t been supported by Microsoft for years. If anything happened to this thing, all our financial records would be lost.
I shook my head and muttered to myself. I would have to buy them a new laptop.
Buy him a new laptop, I silently corrected myself, a sharp pain knifing into my chest.
On the screen was a single folder in the corner called ‘NINA’, Outlook Express with its plethora of strictly business emails, and some antediluvian version of Internet Explorer.
I clicked through every single file in all the folders, even the tax documents, even the recipes, while I finally finished off what was left of the Hungarian sour cherry cake Monica had given me that morning. I read everything, right to the very end, just in case something else was hidden inside. Nothing.
On an impulse, I opened Internet Explorer, which had a very short browsing history; no more than a dozen pages. I peered at this for a while, clicking this and that, but could make nothing of it. Some supplier websites, Google and BBC Weather.
Everything Is Lies Page 20