‘I know. I’ve come to see you.’
I could tell she didn’t like it.
‘I’ve got the kids here.’
‘That’s fine,’ I said. ‘Can I come in?’
‘What for?’ she said, standing her ground in the doorway.
Just because DCI Eastwood hadn’t felt the need to push her too hard didn’t preclude me from doing so.
‘I want to talk to you about the film you saw on the night of the fire.’
She blushed, her neck and face swept by a crimson tide rising from below.
‘What about it?’ she asked, the nervousness clear in her voice.
‘Good, was it?’
‘Excellent.’
‘Remind me of the title,’ I said. ‘I’ve already looked up to see what was playing that night.’
She stared at me in silence. She knew she was in trouble. She should have done the same research I had. She’d have made a poor spy.
‘You’d better come in,’ she said.
She led the way down the hall into the kitchen. Her two children were having their breakfast, the two-year-old boy in a high chair with a plate of toast in front of him, and the five-year-old girl sitting cross-legged on the floor watching the TV in the far corner, a bowl of cereal balanced on her knees.
‘I’ll have to take Faith to school soon,’ Susan said.
‘What time?’
‘She has to be there by eight-fifty, at the latest.’
I looked at my watch. It was eight o’clock. As I’d planned, it was right in the middle of second lot at the training yard. Ryan, I hoped, would again be on Warren Hill, watching his horses canter up the polytrack.
‘Which school?’
‘St Louis Primary. It’s just down the road. We walk.’
‘So we have time,’ I said.
‘For what?’ she asked with trepidation.
‘For you to tell me where you really were when the fire broke out.’
‘I was at my mother’s house,’ she said with conviction. ‘I stayed there that night.’
‘But you weren’t there all evening, were you?’
‘I told that policeman I went to the cinema.’
‘But you didn’t, did you?’
‘No,’ she said sheepishly. ‘I spent the evening with a friend.’
‘Which friend?’
She blushed again, slightly darker this time but there were also tears of distress in her eyes.
‘It doesn’t matter which friend,’ she said in annoyance. ‘It has nothing to do with the fire.’
‘So why did you lie to the police about the cinema?’
‘Because that’s what I’d told my mother. I was afraid they would check with her.’
‘Didn’t your mother ask which film you’d seen?’
She laughed. ‘My mother wouldn’t even know where the cinema is in Ely let alone what’s on. She was only too happy for me to go out as she then had her grandchildren all to herself. That’s what she lives for.’
‘Why didn’t you tell her the truth?’
‘Don’t be stupid.’
‘Does Ryan know?’
She glanced down at her daughter but the little girl was deeply engrossed in an episode of Peppa Pig.
‘No, of course he doesn’t,’ Susan said quietly. ‘So don’t you go and bloody tell him.’
‘Then answer some more of my questions.’
She had no choice and I wondered if I, too, was being guilty of a little blackmail. But, before I had a chance to ask another question, she unburdened some of her anger.
‘Do you have the slightest idea what it’s like to live in the Chadwick family? Talk about controlling. Ha! The Kennedys have nothing on us. Oliver decides everything. All their lives, he’s set the boys at each other’s throats so that they won’t gang up against him. He likes people to think that he’s doing his best to make them all get along but, underneath, he’s stirring things up as fast as he can.’
‘But they do all stick together,’ I said. ‘They keep the family secrets.’
‘Only because that’s what they have been taught to do. Drilled into them from the cradle that the Chadwicks are the best, and no one should be allowed to do anything to damage the family. Family first, second and third.’
‘But somebody has damaged the family,’ I said. ‘One of your number has been murdered and another has killed herself.’
‘Don’t be bloody daft,’ she said, throwing her hands up in frustration. ‘We women don’t matter. It’s only the Chadwick boys that count.’
‘Are you saying that Oliver is behind the fire?’
‘No, I don’t think so. He’s been losing his grip recently. Poor Ryan is struggling with the training and Oliver is finding that difficult to cope with. And, the more Oliver interferes, the worse the situation gets.’
She glanced at the kitchen clock.
‘Come on, Faith,’ she said. ‘Go upstairs, darling, and clean your teeth. It’s almost time to go.’
Faith didn’t move an inch from in front of the TV.
‘Why didn’t Faith go to school last Monday?’
‘Because of the fire,’ Susan said.
‘But you didn’t know about the fire when you decided to stay Sunday night at your mother’s.’
‘I was planning to leave Ely early enough to get back in time but, in the end, after Ryan phoned me with the news, I left both of the children with Mummy. It seemed easier.’ She looked at the clock again. ‘Come on, Faith.’
Again, Faith didn’t move, but went on watching her programme.
‘So why did Arabella kill herself?’ I asked.
‘She was always so bitter, mostly because she couldn’t have any kids. I know she hated me just for that. Perhaps it all got too much for her.’
It will all come out. I can’t stand the shame.
‘I don’t think it was that,’ I said. ‘There’s something else. What is the big family secret that no one talks about?’
‘Faith,’ Susan shouted, ignoring me. ‘Now.’
This time, reluctantly, the little girl dragged herself to her feet and, still watching the TV screen, she moved slowly towards the kitchen door. Susan, meanwhile, picked up the remote from the worktop and turned off the set. She was rewarded with a very surly look from her daughter as she departed up the stairs.
‘So, what is the big family secret?’ I asked again.
‘There isn’t one,’ Susan said jokily, but I wasn’t sure she believed it, even if she didn’t know what it was.
‘Was it to do with Zoe?’ I asked.
‘I didn’t know Zoe at all. Never even met her. Helped search for her, mind, when she went walkabout all those years ago.’
‘Why was that?’ I said.
‘Why was what?’
‘Why did Zoe go missing so dramatically as soon as she was eighteen?’
‘Because she was crazy,’ Susan said with a smile.
Thunderflash time.
‘Was it not because she was trying to get away from the ongoing sexual abuse perpetrated by her father and brothers?’
The smile on Susan’s face disappeared faster than a magician’s rabbit.
‘Don’t talk nonsense,’ she said.
‘Nonsense, is it?’ I asked sarcastically. ‘Then why don’t you ask Ryan why he’s been paying blackmail money to Zoe and her husband?’
Susan stared at me. ‘You’re making it up.’
‘Am I?’
Faith came back into the kitchen and stood next to us. ‘Another innocent little Chadwick girl,’ I said, glancing down at her. Then I looked up at her mother. ‘Don’t let it happen again.’
29
My phone rang as I was walking back to the hotel.
‘It seems your boy may be off the hook,’ DCI Eastwood said when I answered. ‘At least for now.’
‘How come?’
‘The CCTV cameras at Newmarket Station weren’t operational on that day so we have no pictures from them, but we have now receive
d some footage from an on-train camera. It shows Zoe Robertson boarding a train at Newmarket bound for Cambridge on the day she died.’
‘But . . .’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t make sense. How come she turns up dead in Newmarket when she’d already taken the train home?’
‘Well, she obviously didn’t get home,’ I said. ‘Did any cameras spot her at Cambridge?’
‘The ones outside definitely didn’t, but we’re still searching through the tapes from those inside the station and we’ve extended the search to later in the day because it seems she caught the train after the one that Declan Chadwick said she did. We’re also checking the CCTV from the London-bound trains, although I can’t think why she would go all the way down there and then come back again.’
‘Zoe Robertson did a lot stranger things than that in her life.’
‘She certainly seemed to vanish. The on-board camera had quite a narrow field of view. It only showed her getting on the train, not where she sat in the carriage, or her getting off. But we’ll keep looking.’
‘Thanks for letting me know,’ I said. ‘I’ll pass on the good news to Declan.’
‘Did you find anything in the medical records?’ the chief inspector asked.
‘Your sergeant didn’t agree with you letting me see them,’ I said, neatly sidestepping the question. ‘He thinks it’s a mistake to help the defence.’
‘He’s very old-school,’ said the DCI. ‘He doesn’t approve of the police graduate-entry fast-track scheme either. I may be different from most coppers but I prefer to work with people rather than against them. That way, I tend to get more help in return.’
I wondered if he was purposefully making me feel bad.
But I could hardly apprise him of my half-baked theories just yet. I would be no worse than those on social media or in the tabloid press who scatter accusations around at the slightest hint of wrongdoing, without a care in the world for the reputations they are destroying in the process.
I was in the ‘reputation keeping’ business, not the other way round.
Would he even believe me anyway? DS Venables must have seen the letter from the psychotherapist about abuse and he had obviously dismissed it, just as Zoe’s GP had done at the time – fantasist.
Now, that was one reputation it was difficult to lose.
And I certainly wasn’t going to reveal what I knew about any blackmail money because I doubted that the wizards had been acting within the law when they’d obtained copies of Peter’s bank statements from the finance company.
No, the DCI would have to wait for some reaction to my thunderflashes in order to confirm my suspicions before I’d mention anything to him.
The answer to my easy request from the research team was waiting for me in my email inbox when I got back to the hotel. They reported that they were still working on the difficult one.
I called up the driver and his Mercedes, and then went into the hotel dining room to have a quick breakfast while I waited for them to arrive. I even found myself glancing through the hotel’s copy of the Racing Post.
I wanted to check where the racing was today and whether Ryan or Declan had any runners, or Tony any rides.
Ayr, Nottingham and Chepstow were the meetings for racing on the flat, with two additional steeplechase fixtures at Hexham and Huntingdon.
I skimmed through the races looking for the name Chadwick and found it only once. Trainer D. Chadwick had a runner in the three o’clock race at Nottingham. If he were true to form, Declan would have sent Joe, his travelling head lad, with the horse. So all the Chadwicks were likely to be at home.
I was just closing the paper when a headline on the opposite page caught my eye: ‘DERBY WIDE OPEN AFTER LOSS OF PRINCE OF TROY’.
With my forty-pound wager in mind, I read the article beneath from start to finish but Orion’s Glory wasn’t mentioned once as being among the favourites.
Ah well, I thought, perhaps I could sneak the forty pounds through with my expenses – a necessary outlay in order to get acquainted with the system.
Or maybe not.
However, it was the last paragraph of the article that was the real interest.
Ensuring that none of the waiters were watching, I tore the piece out of the paper, folded it up and put it in my trouser pocket.
‘Dullingham, please,’ I said to the driver as he held the door open for me.
‘The village or the station?’ he replied.
‘Aren’t they at the same place?’ I asked.
‘Oh no,’ he said with a smile. ‘That catches lots of people out. The station is almost a mile outside the village. I know it well. My in-laws live there.’
‘Well, I want Eagle Lane, number three.’
‘Right you are,’ he said, and off we went.
Number 3, Eagle Lane, was a small, neat, modern detached house that looked somewhat out of place, sitting as it did alongside a chocolate-box-pretty thatched cottage.
I rang the doorbell, hoping I’d been given the right address.
I had.
Yvonne Chadwick opened the front door in her bedroom slippers, and she instantly recognised me.
‘What do you want?’ she asked gruffly.
‘Is Tony in?’ I asked.
‘No. He’s riding out in town.’
I’d hoped he was. That’s why I’d chosen this time.
‘Good,’ I said. ‘Because it’s you I’ve come to see. I want to ask you some questions about Zoe.’
‘I’m not interested,’ she said, and she started to close the door again.
‘Don’t you want to know why your daughter died?’ I said quickly.
‘She died a long time ago.’
The door was almost shut and, short of putting my foot in it, I was almost out of options.
‘Why did Zoe have an abortion?’ I shouted through the last few inches.
The door stopped closing, and then opened a fraction.
‘Who told you?’ she demanded through the gap.
‘Then it’s true,’ I said. ‘You made your thirteen-year-old daughter have an abortion and yet you never reported the matter to the police. Why was that, Yvonne?’
She opened the door wide and looked nervously past me both sides to check that no one else was listening.
‘You’d better come in.’
I followed her down the hallway into the kitchen. Why was it always the kitchen?
‘I didn’t make Zoe have an abortion,’ Yvonne said. ‘She arranged it on her own.’
‘I find that difficult to believe.’
‘Well, it’s true. She skipped off school and went on her own to a clinic in Cambridge. And, it appears, they were under no obligation to tell either her parents or the police.’
‘But she was only a child herself.’
‘It doesn’t matter. The stupid law says that doctors don’t have to tell if a thirteen-year-old doesn’t want them to. And Zoe didn’t. Some guff or other to do with medical confidentiality.’
‘So how did you find out?’
‘She told me, but not till about a year later. We were having a huge row about something else and she just blurted it out. Of course, I didn’t believe her, but she had some paperwork hidden in her room. She showed me. As you can imagine, I was horrified.’
‘But who paid for it?’ I asked.
‘The taxpayer,’ Yvonne said. ‘Seems it was done on the NHS.’
‘Did you ask her who the father was?’
‘Of course I did, over and over again, but she wouldn’t say. She was furious with herself for revealing anything to me in the first place. She claimed that she never meant to tell anyone, ever. I expect the father was some bloody boy from school taking advantage of her.’
I looked at Yvonne closely and wondered if she really believed that, or she was just saying it for my benefit.
‘Why did you say that she died a long time ago?’ I asked.
‘Might as well have done. I grieved for her when s
he first went missing. Prepared myself over those dreadful weeks for her to be found raped, strangled and dumped naked in a hedge. Then, when they found her alive in London, she refused to see or even speak to me. So I just went on thinking of her as being dead. It was easier somehow.’
‘But you’ve seen her since?’
‘Only once. She came here about five years ago with that damn husband of hers. They brought their children with them too. But I think she only did it to make me feel bad. To goad me. That and to accuse me of having had her sectioned. I told her it wasn’t true but I don’t think she believed me. They didn’t even come in. They just drove off again.’
‘But you knew where to go last week,’ I said. ‘I saw you at their home.’
‘Tony got the address for me. From Oliver. So I went. I don’t know why. It wasn’t a good idea. I had to sleep on the sofa. He didn’t want me there and the children didn’t even know who I was.’
There were tears in her eyes.
‘But why did you tell Catherine Logan that the Chadwick men had killed Zoe from a very young age?’
‘Did I really say that?’ She said it in a most unconvincing manner.
‘You know you did.’
‘Just that it wasn’t easy for Zoe growing up with three highly competitive older brothers, plus a domineering father. Particularly as she didn’t like horses.’
There’s nothing wrong with that, I thought.
I waited for Yvonne to go on.
‘Ryan was eleven when Zoe was born, Declan was nine, and I think they were jealous of their baby sister.’
‘Jealous?’
‘She was the apple of my eye. I’d always wanted a daughter. Perhaps I spoilt her too much. And I wasn’t the older two’s real mother, something they’ve never let me forget. They always called me Yvonne, not Mum. They still do. It’s as if they somehow blame me for their own mother’s death, which is nonsense, of course. She died of cancer before I even met Oliver.’
‘So they transferred their resentment of you onto Zoe?’
‘Yes,’ she said with realisation, as if it was perhaps the first time she’d appreciated it in that way. ‘That is exactly what happened.’
‘How about Tony?’ I said. ‘Didn’t he stick up for his sister?’
‘I think he was influenced by his brothers. It was difficult for him.’
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