The Italian Girl

by Patricia Hall

  “Michael,” she said suddenly and he thought for one terrible moment that she had read his thoughts. “Michael left a message on my answerphone,” she said.

  “We tried to contact you at work and at home as soon as your grandmother turned up at the nick,” Mower said.

  “I left the office early and went shopping and then for a swim,” Laura said.

  “He’s interviewing Spencer-Smith,” Kevin said. “He couldn’t get away.”

  “Right.” Laura did not need to put her disappointment into words and Mower stared resolutely into his tea as he fought off a treacherous desire to put his arm round her again. But he knew it would not be interpreted as a brotherly gesture a second time. He sighed at the unfairness of life and glanced at his watch.

  “I need to get back,” he said. “If Alice doesn’t recover we may be looking at a manslaughter charge for buxom Betty and I’ve no doubt Spencer-Smith is going to have lots to tell us about the Italian girl.”

  “Poor Mariella,” Laura said angrily. “Those boys bullied her and used her, didn’t they?”

  “I suppose they did,” Mower said, startled by the passion in her voice. “Can I run you home?”

  “No, I’ll be OK now,” Laura said getting to her feet. “There’s something I want to check out before I go home. Tell Michael I’ll see him later, will you.”

  “Of course,” Mower said. He stayed at the table watching as she dodged her way through the crowds to the exit.

  “Jammy bastard”, he said under his breath. And there was more than a little venom in the phrase.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  DCI Michael Thackeray faced Keith Spencer-Smith across an interview room table and the frost in the air between them made WDC Val Ridley shiver. The atmosphere was so chilly she almost imagined she could see her breath in front of her face. She had seen Thackeray’s cold anger before, an emotion as controlled as the man himself but still offering an almost tangible threat to anyone who came within its range.

  She could not imagine why the tall middle aged man, impeccably dressed in a silver gray business suit and blue and gold tie, who sat across the table from them, had incurred this degree of dislike. But there was no doubt that he too, arriving accompanied by his solicitor who sat watching the proceedings uneasily, was taking the interview very seriously indeed.

  “Did you ask Betty Johns to use the means she did to keep your mother quiet after she had spoken to me on Wednesday?” Thackeray asked, almost before the formalities had been completed.

  “Of course not,” Spencer-Smith came back quickly. “Why on earth would I do that?”

  “That’s the question I’ve been asking myself ever since I heard what had happened to Alice,” Thackeray said. “And I can think of several reasons. So let’s start at the beginning shall we? Tell me first of all why you changed your name?” Spencer-Smith shrugged easily.

  “I didn’t,” he said. “Spencer was my mother’s maiden name. There are too many plain Smiths around so I decided to use both names, that’s all. It’s not illegal. In fact in some countries it’s standard practice. It was a marketing ploy, if you must. No more than that.”

  “Do you know why your mother never mentioned that you were her son when I spoke to her about the Bonnetti girl’s disappearance?” Thackeray thought of Alice Smith’s sad eyed confession about her husband and wondered why he had been so obtuse about the fact that she had barely mentioned what had happened to her son, then or later. Had he really been led up the garden path by the frail old woman now fighting for her life in intensive care?

  “I’ve no idea,” Spencer-Smith said. “Was there any particular reason why she should have mentioned me?”

  “I really don’t see that you can hold my client responsible for what his mother did or did not say, chief inspector,” the solicitor intervened.

  “Just so long as I can be sure that he hadn’t asked her not to mention this rather salient fact,” Thackeray said. “And of course we’re not going to be able to ask her about that, are we? Someone has made sure of that.”

  “When she recovers….” Spencer-Smith began but Thackeray did not let him finish.

  “If she recovers,” he said sharply. “And let me remind you both that if she doesn’t recover, we will be discussing very serious charges with Betty Johns, and perhaps others as well.”

  “I think my client should reserve his position on that,” the solicitor said. “I’d be surprised if you had any evidence to adduce that what has happened was anything other than an unfortunate accident.” Thackeray looked at the lawyer coldly.

  “I shouldn’t bank on it,” he said. “But let’s move on to the question which your client can certainly answer.” He turned from the lawyer back to Spencer-Smith, his broad shoulders hunched over the papers on the table in front of him.

  “Why, when Mariella Bonnetti’s body was identified, did you not come forward to tell me what you can remember of the time when, by all accounts, you and your friends were in daily touch with the girl – right up to the day she disappeared?” Spencer-Smith shrugged again.

  “I had no idea, chief inspector,” he said. “I’ve been working eighteen hour days getting this museum project off the ground. I had no idea you’d found a body or identified it. Of course, if I’d known….”

  “You don’t read the local papers?” Thackeray broke in sharply. “You work with the local council and you don’t read the papers?”

  “I’ve been too busy.”

  “You don’t even read the local papers when they are covering your own projects?” Thackeray stuck out a hand to Val Ridley who hurriedly passed him a folded copy of the Bradfield Gazette from the file in front of her which he spread out carefully on the table. On the front page, the description of the identification of the body from the building site was accompanied by a blown-up version of the photograph of Mariella which had been rescued from the archives. Right next to it, a single column story carried the news that John Blake had arrived in Bradfield to open the new cinema museum in a few days’ time. Spencer-Smith and his lawyer examined the page briefly.

  “My secretary looks after the Press clippings,” Spencer- Smith said dismissively. “I saw the clipping about the museum, of course, but I’d no idea what else was on that page. I never saw the Gazette that day.”

  “So, you didn’t ask your mother to mislead me, you had no idea that Betty Johns was pumping her dangerously full of tranquillizers, you didn’t know Mariella’s body had been found. So what do you know, Mr. Smith?” Thackeray said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, now we’ve established just who you are and that you knew Mariella all those years ago, what can you tell me about what was going on between her and the lads she used to hang around with?”

  “Mariella, Mariella,” Spencer-Smith said irritably. “No-one paid much attention, you know, when she went missing. She was just the Eye-tie girl who’d run away. They weren’t very popular, you know, so soon after the war. They weren’t the only Italians in Bradfield and they were not welcome. I can’t even remember seeing a policeman at the time, never mind having to answer any questions. How do you know she was murdered anyway?”

  “Girls who just run away don’t end up under six foot of Bradfield muck, Mr. Smith,” Val Ridley said sharply. “Some-one put her there, and the chances are who-ever put her there killed her.”

  “Well it wasn’t me,” Spencer-Smith said flatly.

  “You were out with her that day,” Thackeray said.

  “A whole lot of us were out with her, as you put it,” Spencer-Smith said dismissively. “And we came back with her and we all went home.”

  “Did you see Mariella go home? Her parents say she never arrived.” Spencer-Smith had the grace to hesitate for a moment, as if trying to visualise that damp and miserable summer day.

  “I don’t think I actually saw her go into the house,” he said at last. “We left her with some of the other kids in the factory yard, I think.”

&n
bsp; “We?” Thackeray pounced.

  “Me and John Parkinson,” Spencer-Smith said. “We went off on our own to his place. To finish off the cakes and things, as far as I can remember. It’s all a long time ago.”

  “Do you know that your mother thinks it was your father who killed Mariella?” Thackeray said. “She says she’s always believed he did it? Could that be true, do you think?”

  “My father was half crippled, chief inspector,” Spencer-Smith came back quickly. “He could barely get himself up the stairs to bed at night. He’d have had trouble digging a hole deep enough to plant a pansy let alone a girl’s body.”

  “He could have had help,” Thackeray suggested.

  “Chief inspector, this is verging on the fantastical,” Spencer-Smith’s lawyer objected. Thackeray nodded briefly though Val Ridley could see that his eyes had not lost their chill.

  “So if not you, and not your father, who?” Thackeray went on, but this time Spencer-Smith did not reply. He sat looking at his hands on the table, as if trying to will himself back to the hazy days of his adolescence.

  “Did you have sex with Mariella?” Val Ridley demanded suddenly. Spencer-Smith smiled faintly at that.

  “Chance would have been a fine thing,” he said. “We’d all have liked to have sex with Mariella. She was a pretty girl, and well developed with it. But teaching her to bowl over-arm with an arm round her middle was as close as I got. No-one got a look in but Parky, as far as I can remember. He was the oldest, always letting us know how experienced he was about that sort of thing. A load of bull-shit, I expect, but you know what boys are like.”

  “Parky again? Whatever happened to John Parkinson?” Thackeray asked.

  “I really don’t know,” Spencer-Smith said. “He went off to do his National Service and his mother moved away. I never saw him again.”

  “You see one of my problems with this investigation is how few of you it’s been possible to talk to,” Thackeray said more thoughtfully. He took Joyce Ackroyd’s photograph of the teenagers out of Val Ridley’s file and put it on the table in front of Spencer-Smith. “You are here - unwillingly and very late in the day, it has to be said. But where are the rest of your friends? Jack Ackroyd is in Portugal, John Parkinson has vanished, the O’Meara girl committed suicide years ago, and now her brother is dead in suspicious circumstances.” Spencer-Smith pulled the photograph closer.

  “Bridget O’Meara. God. I’d almost forgotten about Bridie. Another of Parky’s conquests.”

  “Conquests?” Val Ridley said quickly. “She can’t be more than twelve.”

  “Thirteen, I think she was. But age never bothered Parky. Of course, I don’t know how far he went. Only how far he said he went. The same with Mariella. Who knows what to believe? It was a long summer. We were all aching for it. But who got it with whom I can’t tell you. I only know I went back to school in September just as frustrated as I’d been in July.”

  “Have you seen Danny O’Meara since?” Thackeray asked.

  “No, I haven’t. Not since I left school, anyway.”

  “This is all forty years ago, chief inspector,” Spencer-Smith’s solicitor said wearily. “Is this really getting any of us anywhere at all?”

  “If it wasn’t for the remarkable coincidence of Danny O’Meara’s death so soon after Mariella’s body was found, I’d be inclined to share your scepticism,” Thackeray said. “Tell me just two more things, Mr. Spencer-Smith. First, where were you on Monday afternoon.” Spencer-Smith looked startled for a moment, gave the question a moment’s thought and then said firmly.

  “I was at the museum with John Blake and his dreadful PR woman, the stick insect, what’s her name - Lorelei. All afternoon. I’m sure they’ll vouch for me. Lorelei hardly let me out of her sight. And the second question, chief inspector?”

  “Who do you think killed Mariella Bonnetti?” Spencer-Smith thought a little longer about this question but when he spoke again his tone was just as firm.

  “You have to remember that we didn’t know she was dead, so it’s not a question I thought about at the time. But looking back, the most likely person has to be Parky. For most of us that summer was just games of cricket in the factory yard, an occasional snog if we were lucky in the garden of the derelict house at the back of Peter Street. But Parky was like a young goat. Perhaps he got carried away.”

  “It’s too bloody convenient,” Thackeray said angrily. He was sitting in shirt-sleeves in superintendent Jack Longley’s office which faced west and was still filled with early evening sunshine. His boss, forehead shining with sweat, leaned back in his chair, his pale blue eyes acute but not unfriendly.

  “You don’t believe the elusive Keith Smith, then?”

  “There’s no-one left to contradict him is there?” Thackeray said. “Suspects and witnesses who are either dead or disappeared are very useful to those still around, aren’t they? They can’t answer back. Perhaps Jack Ackroyd will be able to throw more light on what was going on. When he eventually turns up.”

  “He’s definitely coming over here, is he? If not, you’d better go to see him.”

  “Laura says he’s trying to get a flight,” Thackeray said shortly. “It’s the worst time of year.”

  “You’re taking this personally, Michael,” Longley said, not unsympathetically. But it was a muted warning as much as a statement of fact and Thackeray glanced away to the window where a gang of starlings squabbled in the cherry trees outside.

  “Yes, well, there’s a personal element in it, isn’t there?” he said quietly. “I feel responsible for the old ladies. I’d put money on Alice Smith’s overdose being a direct result of the talk I had with her a couple of days before. Some-one wanted her to shut up. And I could have handled it better.” What he could not admit to Longley was that Laura had rushed him into that meeting with Alice and her grandmother.

  “How is she?” Longley asked.

  “Still in intensive care, still unconscious. I don’t think she’s going to make it,” Thackeray said sombrely.

  “And the matron?”

  “We’ve let her go on police bail. We know where to find her when we want her. But even if Alice Smith dies it will be very difficult to prove she actively meant to harm her. She’s been dishing pills out so long, apparently, with such abandon, that she could claim it was an accident. But social services and the health trust are onto her case. One way or another I don’t think she’ll have charge of vulnerable elderly people again.”

  “And old Mrs. Ackroyd?” Longley asked, knowing that her condition would be even closer to Thackeray’s heart.

  “She’s resting, according to Kevin Mower, who’s just got back from the hospital. It’s nothing too serious, apparently. She just knocked herself out getting down here on her blasted crutches. Why the hell she didn’t phone…” Thackeray shrugged, with a mixture of exasperation and admiration.

  “She’s a tough old bird is Joyce Ackroyd,” Longley said. “She’ll not let a mere matron get her down.”

  “If she hadn’t broken her leg and ended up in The Laurels, Betty Johns might have got away with her reign of terror indefinitely, I suppose. But I think on the whole I’d rather have the whistle-blowing done by informants a bit less frail than Joyce.”

  “We’re none of us getting any younger,” Longley said lugubriously. The phone at his elbow shrilled suddenly and he picked it up, listened for a moment and glanced in Thackeray’s direction.

  “Aye, he’s here,” he said. “I’ll send him down.” He hung up thoughtfully.“It’s Kevin Mower,” he said. “Wants to speak to you urgently, he says. Knocked a bit of sense into him, didn’t it, that lucky escape he had wi’ the knife woman?”

  “I hope so, sir,” Thackeray said with feeling. “But I wouldn’t bank on it.”

  Mower took the stairs two at a time, all eager anticipation, ahead of his boss as they entered the reception area where a pale, dark-haired young woman in a crumpled summer dress and cotton jacket was waiting for them.<
br />
  “You wanted to see me in connection with the death of Daniel O’Meara?” Thackeray asked.

  “I’m Bridget, his daughter. Bridget Tate now, my married name,” the young woman said. “My sister Kay said you think my dad’s death wasn’t suicide. That he was killed…”

  “It’s a possibility, Mrs. Tate,” Thackeray said.

  They took her into an interview room and sat her down and Thackeray told her why Daniel O’Meara’s injuries were unlikely to have been self-inflicted but when they pressed her to imagine who could have hated her father enough to leave him unconscious in the path of a train, she shook her head in bewilderment.

  “He was a gentle man, my dad,” she said. “I don’t think he had an enemy in the world. I’ve not seen as much of him or my mam as I should these last few years, with young kids of my own, living on the other side of Leeds, you know how it is? You need three different buses to get up to their place, and with two kids and a push-chair….” She shrugged wearily. “But I can’t imagine anyone wanting to kill him. Surely you must suspect the patients at the hospital. Some of them must be violent…”

  “We’ll be looking at all the possibilities, of course,” Thackeray said quickly. Too quickly, Mower thought, knowing full well that Thackeray had shown little interest in the series of painstaking interviews with O’Meara’s fellow patients that had been dutifully filed by uniformed officers.

  “Kay said that you were asking about my aunt, dad’s sister Bridget, an’all,” Bridget said, evidently puzzled by their interest.

  “It’s a line of inquiry,” Thackeray said. “Did your father tell you how she died?” Bridget Tate took her time to tell them very slowly, and at second hand, why she had been told her aunt had plunged from a balcony almost forty years before and why her father had never recovered from the shock.

  “Dad used to talk to me when I was a kid,” she said, her voice breaking. “I was his favourite. He hardly ever had a job and we used to go for long walks in the park and down by the canal while my mam was at work. He talked a lot about his sister Bridie. Said I wasn’t to tell mam because she didn’t like it. He said Bridie had killed herself years ago and it was his fault. He cried once or twice, sitting on a seat by the bandstand. That really upset me, that did. I’d never seen a grown man cry before.” Bridget Tate hesitated, not far from tears herself.