The Trophy Child

by Paula Daly

  ‘Advice?’ Jeremy Gleeson sat up taller in his seat. ‘I’ll certainly try my best.’

  ‘Well, because Karen’s not my mum, I’m kind of having difficulty, showing…’ Verity paused. ‘I’m finding it hard to—’

  ‘Know how to act?’

  ‘Exactly. Karen was Brontë’s mother, so of course Brontë is properly heartbroken. And even though Karen could be a bitch, she’s totally devastated. And I keep trying to comfort Brontë, but I’m just not sure if I’m doing enough. I’m trying, but it doesn’t seem to be helping. I can’t seem to make her feel any better.’

  ‘Is that your job, Verity? To heal Brontë of her grief?’

  Verity took a moment to consider the question. Eventually, she said, ‘I think it is. I’m the only person in the house who wasn’t related to Karen. I’m not feeling upset by her death the way everyone else is, so, naturally, I should try to help Brontë get through it. I thought you might be able to give me some lines or something. Something I could say that might make her feel a bit better.’

  ‘I’m not sure grief works like that.’

  ‘Oh,’ Verity said, disappointed.

  Jeremy Gleeson smiled a compassionate smile and tilted his head. ‘How about you tell me a bit more about what’s going on at home. Who else is there?’

  ‘My dad, obviously.’

  ‘And how is he?’

  ‘Seems okay. He’s holding it together for the sake of everyone else, I think. Karen’s parents are pretty cut up about the whole deal. And my dad’s been doing his best to talk to Ewan – that’s Karen’s son – but Ewan’s gone kind of quiet. He stays in his flat, gaming all the time, which is not unusual, but he hardly speaks at all, which is not like him. I think my dad’s getting worried. He asked me to spend some time up there with Ewan, but I get the impression he’d rather be on his own, or else with his friend Dale.’

  ‘Has he talked about the murder?’

  ‘Ewan? No. I asked if he wanted to talk about his mum, but he said he didn’t. Do you think I should ask if he wants to come and see you?’

  ‘You could suggest it. If you feel it might help.’

  ‘I’ll put it to my dad.’

  Verity peered out the window as Jeremy Gleeson excused himself to blow his nose. There was a loud, honking noise, like a goose or a baby elephant. ‘Had a mild cold,’ he said. ‘Apologies.’

  Venetian blinds covered the large bay window, the slats angled upwards so you couldn’t really see much, just make out the general shape of the odd passer-by.

  Verity turned her head back to face Gleeson. ‘Do you know what Brontë said to me yesterday? She said, “Nothing like this has ever happened to me before,” and I didn’t know what to say. She seemed…lost. What would you have said?’

  ‘I don’t think there is a good response to that, Verity.’

  ‘But I feel so sad for her.’

  ‘Try to think that being with your sister is enough for now. Don’t think that it’s up to you to fix it. It’s not fixable, and each one of your family members will have to work through their grief at their own pace. It’s not something that can be made better with words.’

  ‘But I feel so guilty.’

  At this admission, Jeremy Gleeson regarded Verity with an apprehensive gaze.

  ‘Guilty?’ he said casually. ‘Why guilty?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Do you feel bad about what happened to Karen?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  Jeremy Gleeson swallowed. Examined his fingernails momentarily before saying, ‘Do you feel guilty, Verity, because…because you think it may have had something to do with you?’

  Verity frowned. ‘What? Karen’s death?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. Karen’s death.’

  Verity shook her head. ‘No. I don’t feel guilty about that at all.’

  38

  Monday, 26 October

  Four days of constant rain had brought down a large section of the dry-stone wall at the front of Noel’s house. He’d been charged with the task of removing the debris that had spilled across the pavement and on to the road, stacking it up, ready for repair. Some men just seemed to know how to re-erect a dry-stone wall, in the same way they knew how to fit a new clutch or plait a horse’s tail. Noel was not one of them. And because of this, Bruce was overseeing his work, the death of his only daughter seemingly not deterring him from issuing orders or pointing out Noel’s general incompetence. After four days of mourning Bruce was ready to get active.

  The rain was lashing down hard but Bruce was in shorts and cross-terrain shoes, a fluorescent cycling jacket covering his upper half and a wide-brimmed hat on his head. He’d told Noel that he, too, should wear shorts when out in the rain (saves having to dry out the wet clothes) but Noel thanked him for the advice, saying no, he would not be doing that.

  This was what Bruce did in a crisis – took charge. Noel knew it was his way of handling things and not for one second would he try to talk him out of it, but even he was surprised when Bruce told him to ‘Get dressed. There’s a hazard outside that needs our attention,’ thinking that, surely, for once, general household maintenance could take a breather.

  ‘Best you keep yourself busy, Noel,’ Bruce said, as Noel wrestled with an irregularly shaped rock, the tip of which had become lodged in the grid. He should have worn gloves. He had work gloves in the garage and, when he told Bruce he needed a minute to find them, Bruce looked at him like he was a giant sissy. Now his hands were red raw from the cold and he’d torn the skin from three of his knuckles.

  ‘Busyness is probably key,’ Noel muttered in agreement.

  ‘Those kids are going to need to be kept in line,’ Bruce said.

  Noel nodded without looking up.

  ‘Because they’ve lost their rock,’ Bruce said.

  Which Noel thought was an odd turn of phrase, considering he was actually pulling on a rock. But then he remembered Princess Diana saying the same thing about that creepy butler of hers, Paul Burrell. ‘He’s my rock,’ she would say. Perhaps Bruce had heard it there.

  ‘She was the glue that kept this family together,’ Bruce said.

  Noel booted the rock twice with his foot until it finally came loose. ‘She was,’ he said.

  ‘She ran a tight ship. You’ll need to do the same. Teenagers need a strict set of rules to live by. You can’t give them free rein. They’ll run amok.’

  ‘I’ll be sure to do that, Bruce.’

  ‘And you’ll need a housekeeper. To keep this place in some sort of order.’

  Noel was thinking about what Karen had actually done around the house and, besides loading the washing machine, he was hard pressed to come up with anything. ‘The kids can help out with the chores,’ Noel said. ‘And we have Rosa.’

  Bruce looked unconvinced. ‘Maybe I’ll draw up a schedule.’

  ‘Schedule?’ asked Noel.

  ‘For the chores,’ Bruce explained.

  ‘If you like,’ Noel said, thinking he could bin it later.

  Bruce had formally identified his daughter’s body on Saturday. Noel had told him there was no need, that it was his place to do it and, not that it would be an easy task by any means, but he did have experience of the mortuary.

  But Bruce had flared at him: ‘You don’t think I’ve seen death, man? You don’t think I’ve witnessed death on a large scale during my army career?’

  And it took Noel a full five minutes to pacify him, saying that no, he didn’t mean to be insensitive, that’s not what he meant at all. He was just trying to make things easier and—

  ‘Easier? How the hell can you make this easier?’

  Noel stacked the last of the stones and followed Bruce inside. Mary was handing out bacon sandwiches to the three children and Dale. Her expression was one of nervous bewilderment, the type of expression worn by people when they didn’t know which way to head in airports and were frightened of being told off by Security.

  Bruce began drying his legs with
a piece of kitchen towel before lifting his head and fixing Dale with an unhappy stare. ‘You’re here,’ he said. A statement.

  ‘I am,’ replied Dale, quite proudly, unsure if this was a trick question.

  ‘You’re here, again?’ Bruce said.

  ‘I’m here again.’

  Bruce turned to Noel. ‘I’m not sure this is really appropriate. What did Karen make of this boy practically living here all the time? I can’t see her liking it one bit. It’s not normal.’ And he gave Noel a look as if to say, He’s not normal.

  But before Noel had a chance to answer, Verity spoke up. ‘Karen liked having Dale around. Didn’t she, Dad?’

  ‘Hmm. Yes, I suppose,’ agreed Noel hesitantly. What was she up to?

  ‘She was very good like that,’ Verity went on. ‘You see, Dale’s mum is not at home a lot, and she didn’t like him to be on his own. So she would often ask him to stay…Plus, he keeps Ewan out of trouble. Doesn’t he, Ewan?’

  ‘He’s a very stabilizing force in my life,’ Ewan said, without any trace of irony.

  Bruce surveyed them sceptically.

  ‘Well, I suppose if Karen didn’t have a problem with it…’ and he told them he was off to buy fuel and to check the car’s oil, water and tyres before their trip home later that day.

  Noel couldn’t wait to get rid of them.

  Mary, he could cope with. She wasn’t really with it, and her frequent wanderings from room to room had become kind of comforting. When she wasn’t wandering around she would bake or else sit with Brontë, the two of them watching back-to-back Disney movies, Brontë nestled against Mary’s bosom. Noel kept a watchful eye on his younger daughter. She had been his main worry in all of this. How would she cope without Karen? How does any child cope with the loss of a parent? It wasn’t something you could really prepare for.

  And, of course, he had to watch his own behaviour. He was aiming for sadness, without being completely bleak.

  Had he got it right?

  He wasn’t sure. He’d catch Bruce watching him and he’d know he was moving towards recovery just a shade too fast. Then he’d have to revert to the eye-rubbing, grabbing-on-to-something-solid-while-he-regained-his-composure routine.

  Karen had been stabbed, they said.

  One wound to the neck, two to the chest.

  Bruce had asked, ‘But who on earth would want to hurt my beautiful girl?’

  And Noel had to shake his head, saying, ‘I’m so sorry, Bruce. I’m at a complete loss.’

  39

  THE THING STILL needling at Joanne was what had happened to Karen’s ex? As in, the guy who fathered Ewan. Over the past couple of days, while waiting for news from Forensics, Joanne had spent her time tracing, interviewing and subsequently eliminating other boyfriends from Karen’s past. None had been in a relationship with her in the months preceding Ewan’s birth.

  She had asked Noel Bloom, and he had claimed to know nothing. She had asked Karen’s acquaintances from school, the gym and so forth, and each was adamant that there had never been talk of an ex-boyfriend or a husband from the past. Ewan Rigby had Karen’s maiden name, did not know who his biological father was and, when Joanne had raised the strangeness of the situation with Noel, he’d merely shrugged, saying, ‘Karen didn’t like to talk about the past,’ which was hardly an explanation.

  But Joanne still didn’t have a suspect. And she needed to know everything there was to know about Karen. They’d taken swabs from just about everyone they could think of related to the case, even collecting samples from as far away as South Wales, from a family with which Karen was having a particularly nasty interaction on Facebook. But until the results of the blood smear from the tree came back from the lab, really, she had nothing.

  And, of course, there was always the possibility of the blood not belonging to the suspect. But Joanne tried not to dwell for too long on that.

  Sad fact but true: a woman is more likely to be murdered by her partner, or ex-partner, than by anyone else. Almost half of the women murdered in the UK last year were killed by their partners or their exes. Hence Joanne’s interest in Ewan’s father. Except, no one seemed to know anything about him.

  ‘Well, somebody got Karen Bloom pregnant,’ she said to Oliver Black. ‘And if her husband and her own son don’t know who that person is, then that leaves her parents. They have to know.’

  —

  ‘But we don’t know,’ Bruce Rigby replied. Joanne had found him packing up his car in preparation for the trip home to Macclesfield. ‘She wouldn’t tell us,’ he said. ‘Karen turned up pregnant, saying the father had walked out on her, and that yes, she knew being a single parent would be tough but she was better off without him.’

  They went inside to the Blooms’ kitchen.

  ‘So as far as you know,’ Oliver Black said, ‘Karen has had no contact with the father for the past – what? – eighteen years?’

  ‘I’m certain of it,’ said Bruce.

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘She wouldn’t say.’

  ‘And where was she living before she returned home?’

  ‘Sussex. That’s what she said. She went to Brighton to enjoy the summer and ended up staying. She had a casual job in a hotel. That’s where she met the guy.’

  ‘Do you remember the name of the hotel?’ Oliver asked.

  Bruce tried his best to think. ‘I’m afraid I don’t.’

  ‘Did she ever talk about the people she worked with? Any names you can recall?’

  ‘It was such a long time ago.’

  ‘Nothing at all?’ pressed Oliver.

  And, all at once, Bruce’s manner changed, and he became borderline hostile. ‘I told you, I can’t remember!’

  Joanne did feel for Bruce Rigby. Trying to cast his mind back to what he’d always thought of as a regrettable episode in his daughter’s life was physically paining him. His voice had become shrill, and his eyes had taken on a wild, terrified look. What if this was the missing link? What if only he could unlock the mystery of his daughter’s killer?

  ‘Mr Rigby,’ Joanne said gently, ‘this is only one line of inquiry we’re pursuing. Try not to get upset. Something may come to you later today, or even next week. Memories tend to resurface at the strangest of times.’

  ‘But I want to remember,’ he said, panting a little, his brow beginning to sweat. ‘I need to remember, for Karen’s sake.’

  During this exchange Mary Rigby stayed mute. Apart from, that is, offering tea, coffee and slices of a particularly good-looking Victoria sponge, which Joanne declined, somewhat reluctantly, on professional grounds. Murder inquiries and cake did not go together in Joanne’s book.

  ‘What was Karen’s job description at the hotel?’ Joanne asked. ‘Was she a chambermaid? On reception? Did she work in the bar?’

  Bruce looked blank.

  He turned to Mary. ‘Do you remember, Mary?’ he asked, and she shook her head. Then she excused herself and began putting cups on the drainer.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Bruce said. ‘If I said she was waitressing or working in the bar, I’d be lying. I don’t think she ever told us. Or, if she did, we can’t remember.’

  Joanne closed her notepad and handed Bruce her card. ‘I know you probably have one of these, but here’s another. Call me any time. Call me any time, with anything at all you remember. Even if you think it’s unrelated.’

  Bruce took the card and held her gaze. He had spittle welling at the corners of his mouth. ‘You really have no idea who is responsible for this, do you?’ he said.

  —

  Back in the car, Oliver Black was deep in thought.

  ‘Penny for them?’ Joanne asked.

  ‘Aside from Karen Bloom’s father, no one else in that family seems to be mourning her loss too deeply.’

  ‘What about the mother?’

  Oliver gave her a dismissive look. ‘I’m not sure that woman knows what day it is at the best of times.’

  ‘So you’re thinking that
it might have been Noel?’

  ‘Or the daughter,’ he said.

  ‘Well, Verity’s not Karen’s daughter, so maybe that explains her behaviour. They don’t exactly have a history of playing happy families.’

  ‘Even so,’ said Oliver, ‘there’s a strange atmosphere. I’ve covered enough murders in my time to know that what’s going on in there is not exactly normal.’

  ‘Not normal in what way?’ she asked.

  Oliver paused. And then, after a moment’s thought, he said, ‘I’m just reading the body language, so I could be way off. But if I had to put my finger on it, then I’d say they look almost…relieved.’

  —

  Oliver went home early. He’d had a call from his wife to say the River Kent was running high and water was rapidly flooding into their kitchen. She couldn’t stave it off on her own any longer. If it got through to the lounge they would lose the carpet. Oliver left armed with six sandbags and an extra mop and bucket from the cleaner’s cupboard, which Joanne supposed wouldn’t be greatly missed.

  Joanne had the Blooms’ phone records up on the screen in front of her. Karen’s mobile had been analysed, and each call over the last few weeks accounted for. So Joanne turned back to the home phone line. A DC had been through the records when Karen’s car was first found, but she was banking on him having missed something. She scanned the area codes, looking for incoming and outgoing calls from Brighton. This didn’t take long, because, as with most families, the home line received very little usage, as people relied more and more on their mobiles. There were no calls from Brighton.

  Of course, Karen’s ex might not be living in the Brighton area any more. Joanne had visited Brighton only once and thought it was the type of place that attracted lost souls, people running away from their real lives – kind of like Marbella, but with shittier weather. It was unlikely that Karen’s ex – being part of the transient hotel-worker population – had put down permanent roots there. Most likely, he’d moved on, further afield. Even so, short of any better ideas, checking the surrounding area was worth a shot. Joanne typed ‘Brighton’ into Google Maps, and when the image appeared she zoomed out. Nearby towns were Worthing, Eastbourne, Bognor, Crawley and Hastings.