by GJ Minett
The final photo was not that dissimilar to the framed one. Julie had been caught in the act of raising a spoon to her mouth and turned, mouth open, towards the camera. Underneath it Eudora had written Birthday girl, ’66. After that, there was nothing, just several blank pages. Ellen and Kate exchanged glances but said nothing.
Having gone through all the loose photos as well, Ellen and Kate spent the next two hours emptying and repacking crate after crate of books, clothing and miscellaneous papers, working their way through their packed lunch as they did so. Their task was made considerably easier by Eudora’s apparent love of order, with every scrap of paper tucked away in a relevant manila folder. The problem was the sheer volume of it – Eudora had clearly been a squirrel, hoarding everything that came her way rather than risk binning something she might need later. There were bank statements and utility bills dating back over twenty years to the time she’d first moved into Primrose Cottage. It took only a few folders before they lost patience.
The business correspondence files seemed a more likely source of information but although they made a modest contribution to their understanding of Eudora’s day-to-day life in Oakham, they provided nothing that went any way towards explaining her decision to leave the cottage to Ellen. In fact, what was more significant was what they did not find. For instance, there were several letters from AWL, usually from Derek Wilmot himself, but not one of these made any reference to an investigation carried out on her behalf by the SJM Agency. Nor, indeed, was there a single sheet of paper from the latter which, given the relative triviality of much that had been retained and filed away, surely had to mean something.
The private correspondence file was disappointingly thin – either it had been similarly pruned or Eudora’s letter writing had tailed off in recent years. The only letters she’d kept were family ones, divided into three separate packs, each secured with an elastic band. One pack contained around twenty letters, all dated between June 1982 and March 2001 and each one signed your loving sister, Emily. They were perfunctory affairs, little more than updates, brief sketches of a spinster’s life in Northampton and of no great interest to anyone – including, Ellen imagined, Eudora herself. It was routine correspondence, seemingly born of a sense of obligation rather than any genuine desire to communicate. Sisters they may have been, but there was little to suggest they’d been particularly close.
The second stack consisted of just three letters from Eudora’s mother. The first was written in 1961 and appeared to be an attempt at some sort of reconciliation, following the death of Eudora’s father. The next contained further entreaties, urging Eudora to reconsider and the final one was a terse acceptance of their irreconcilable differences. It was couched in language that vividly highlighted the rift between the two women. Ellen had no way of knowing for sure but she would have been prepared to wager a tidy sum that Eudora’s mother never got to see her granddaughter.
By mid-afternoon they’d cleared most of the crates and were beginning to doubt that there was anything left which would shed more light on things. Despite the three-bar heater which Kate had brought through from Eudora’s bedroom, it was uncomfortably cold upstairs and any excitement which had carried them through the early stages of the work was rapidly draining away. When the sound of the door knocker clattered through the house once more, they were more than ready for a break.
Ellen pointed to her watch as they made their way carefully down the twisting staircase. O’Halloran was early – as predicted.
March 1974: O’Halloran
The old man’s not here . . . and with that simple statement of fact comes the grudging acknowledgement that he’s known all along. Since that first flash of yellow, to be precise.
He’s been averting his gaze from a reality he doesn’t feel equipped to deal with just now, scuttling from group to group, hoping against hope that Kasprowicz will be there among the onlookers. He’s checked every car, been through both bars twice, including the men’s toilets, and checked outside again, calling the old man by name with an increasingly anxious edge to his voice. And it’s only now, having run out of alternative explanations, that he’s ready to face facts. If it looks like shit and smells like shit . . .
He’s obviously misjudged Kasprowicz. Never thought for one moment he’d be capable of something like this. Phil Bingham, maybe – he’s a loose cannon, which is why he’s had nothing to do with him. But Kasprowicz? No way.
Now’s not the time though for self-recrimination. All that matters at this precise minute is getting back to the boy and getting the hell away from here, the sooner the better. He has no idea what bullshit story he’s going to feed him, but he can worry about that in the car, make it up as he goes along. That’s what he’s always been good at, thinking on his feet.
Next priority will be to establish exactly what happened here. His initial optimism about saving the story has quickly evaporated and he needs to know just how much trouble he might be in. Under different circumstances he might appreciate the irony of it all. If this gets out, there won’t be a person this side of Timbuktu who won’t have heard of Frank O’Halloran, which was pretty much the idea going in. But he knows how these things work – the focus now is not going to be on the unbelievable job he did in tracking down John Michael Adams. Instead his actions are going to be put under the microscope by less talented hacks who would give their right arm for such a story and who resent like hell the fact that he’s beaten them to it. There are going to be questions about his role in all of this – after all, he’s the one who put the whole thing together and made it possible for Kasprowicz to take his revenge on an innocent man. He’s going to come across as some sort of shameless opportunist, prepared to endanger the lives of others for the sake of a few moments of fame for himself. At best he’ll emerge as naive and irresponsible, a stumbling buffoon, out of his depth. No way that’s going to happen.
One step at a time, he thinks. First get the boy back to the hotel. Then, if he can get to Kasprowicz before he’s picked up by the authorities or turns himself in, there are still ways he can salvage something out of this. He just needs the chance to talk with him and make sure they get their stories straight . . . that and maybe a bit of luck thrown in too.
And he’s no more than twenty yards from the car when it dawns on him that the rear door is hanging wide open.
February 2008: Ellen
Apparently O’Halloran didn’t do shamefaced. If Ellen had expected any degree of contrition or imagined that his demeanour might suggest embarrassment over his previous visit, she’d have been disappointed. From the moment she opened the door to him, she was struck by the self-assurance he exuded and the condescending tone of voice he used to address both her and Kate.
This, he seemed determined to establish, was no meek penitent come to seek forgiveness. If she wanted to exchange information in a spirit of co-operation between equals that was fine by him, but she needn’t think she was going to get anywhere with threats or intimidation. He was a professional and wasn’t about to play second fiddle to a couple of amateurs. Kate took an immediate and obvious dislike to him but Ellen herself was mildly reassured to detect this touch of complacency in his attitude. She knew from their previous meeting just how careless he could be when sure of himself.
From the outset he made it clear that any questions about the break-in were strictly off-limits. He knew nothing about it and if strange cars had been seen parked at the end of the road, that was nothing to do with him. Yes, he’d been less than honest with her on Thursday. Yes, he had his reasons for wanting to have a good look through any documents that might be hidden away. But he hadn’t yet given up on the idea of persuading Ellen to let him look for himself – he certainly didn’t need to resort to criminal activity. That was the way things were and they could take it or leave it as far as he was concerned.
Ellen recognised a dead end and let it drop for now. Instead she switched her attention to Eudora. Clearly he seemed to feel there
was a story worth pursuing here. What exactly was he looking for? O’Halloran paused for a moment, steepling his fingers in thought, as if deciding where best to begin.
‘Not sure how far back you want me to go,’ he said. ‘What do you know about her already?’
‘Eudora? Not a lot, to be perfectly honest.’
‘What about her daughter?’
‘Assume we know even less.’
O’Halloran was clearly unimpressed. ‘Bit more specific, maybe?’
‘Well . . . we know her name was Julie.’
‘Is that it?’
‘And we’re assuming she either died or Eudora lost contact with her in some way.’
‘You’re assuming?’ Clearly this was not what O’Halloran had been expecting to hear. Ellen was thrown for a moment, wondering if she and Kate had missed something obvious. She glanced quickly at her in case there was anything she wanted to add.
‘Well, we’ve looked through everything upstairs,’ she continued, ‘and we haven’t come across a single photo of her from her teenage years onwards. There’s no mementoes, no letters . . . nothing.’
O’Halloran gave a deep sigh.
‘I get the feeling this is going to be some pooling of knowledge. Is that really all you know?’
‘Yeah, well – we’re not all globetrotting investigative reporters,’ Kate chipped in, clearly unimpressed by his tone. ‘Some of us have real jobs. How are the garden fetes, by the way?’
‘This has only just landed in our laps, don’t forget,’ Ellen continued. ‘Wednesday was the first time I ever heard the name Eudora Nash.’
‘So what about Eudora Kasprowicz?’
‘Who?’
‘Josef and Dorrie Kasprowicz – ring any bells?’
Ellen’s thoughts turned immediately to the photo she and Kate had found earlier. Josef and Julie ’61.
‘That was her married name?’
‘Yeeess,’ said O’Halloran, drawing out the syllable to make his point. ‘Still no bells?’
Again Ellen checked with Kate before shaking her head.
‘Tell me you’ve at least heard of John Michael Adams.’
‘Of course,’ frowned Ellen. Even though the events dated back to before she was born, everyone knew about the playground killings. ‘Every Parent’s Nightmare’, they called him. It was that sort of news story, one that somehow stuck with you, never went away. All it needed was another sickening act of violence somewhere, another Thompson and Venables to burst onto the scene, and the photo of the pale, sickly boy, glowering at the camera, would be trotted out again. There would be further speculation about the identity under which he was now living his secret life, always assuming he was still alive. False sightings were still commonplace. He was everywhere – a butcher in a village in Andalucia, a realtor in St Louis, a civil servant in Ottawa. Only last year there were convincing reports that a family on an Alaskan cruise had seen him, working at a trading post during a stopover in Ketchikan. Like everyone else, Ellen found herself absorbed by the whole affair, albeit against her better judgement. What she didn’t understand was what any of this had to do with Eudora.
It was Kate who made the connection.
‘Wait a minute,’ she said, intrigued. ‘One of the girls . . . wasn’t she a Julie?’
‘Eureka,’ said O’Halloran, shaking his head in apparent disbelief.
‘She had a foreign-sounding name, didn’t she?’
‘Houston, we have lift-off.’
‘Eudora’s daughter was one of the victims?’ asked Ellen. The first few tingles of alarm were beginning to make themselves known, undefined as yet but palpable none the less. The implications of Eudora’s identity and, more specifically, the unknown history that presumably linked the two of them in some way, were risks for which she thought she’d come prepared. This however . . . this was a long way beyond anything she’d been expecting. It was almost surreal.
O’Halloran seemed pleased at having been able to wrong-foot her so easily. He launched into a detailed account of the interview with the boy’s father which he’d managed to arrange when he was still no more than a junior reporter. For her part, Ellen was barely listening. There were other matters buzzing around her head, far more pressing than his past successes.
‘So are you telling me this is the reason for your interest in Eudora?’ she asked. ‘I mean, all this business with John Michael Adams was . . . what, forty years ago? It’s ancient history now. I don’t understand why you’re still pursuing her after all this time. It doesn’t make sense.’
‘I’m not pursuing her,’ sighed O’Halloran. He sat back, tugging at the neckline of his sweatshirt which looked as if it hadn’t seen an iron in some time.
‘Look,’ he continued, ‘when Eudora moved here she more or less cut herself off from everyone else. That’s why she changed back to her maiden name. Kasprowicz was a bit too obvious, you know? Tended to stick in the mind too easily. She wanted to get away from it all, start afresh. I doubt if anyone here had a clue who she was and that suited her just fine. But she was always happy to see me ’cos I was the only one who’d shown any interest in her as a person, not just as the mother of Julie Kasprowicz. I was there when she buried her daughter, there when she did the same for her husband and she never forgot that. Didn’t matter what I was doing, I always found time to come over and visit her. If she was here right now, she’d tell you – I was a good friend to her.’
Ellen suspected a lot of revisionism was at play here. Rose Woodward had made no mention of these supposedly frequent visits, besides which she hadn’t forgotten his lack of familiarity with the layout of the house. She did her best to keep the scepticism from showing on her face.
‘But what is it about these papers?’ she asked. ‘What is it you’re hoping to find in them?’
O’Halloran sat forward, as if doing so might add more emphasis to what he had to say.
‘Anything, basically . . . anything that will help me with the book.’
‘What book?’
‘On John Michael Adams.’
Ellen laughed. ‘Another one? After all these years? You don’t think the carcass has been picked clean by now?’
‘Oh, I think people will want to read this one,’ he said with a smile.
‘Why? What makes yours so different?’
‘I’m the only one who was on the inside from the very start,’ he said, ticking off the points one by one. ‘How many of the other writers managed to get an interview with Martin Adams? Not one. How many of them can produce transcripts of the tapes from that interview? How many actually bothered to spend time getting to know the families of the victims? The moment the fuss died down, they forgot all about them. How many of them do you suppose took the trouble to come out here and visit Eudora? Or even knew this was where she lived now?’
‘Maybe they had the decency to leave her in peace,’ said Kate. ‘Ever think of that?’
O’Halloran shrugged her off. ‘They didn’t follow up on the story because they didn’t really care about it. Not deep down. They don’t carry it around with them the way I do. And trust me, there are things I can tell that no one else knows the first thing about. No one.’ He paused, as if reining himself back in, calculating exactly how much more he wanted to reveal just now.
‘I think you need to get a life,’ said Kate, yawning ostentatiously.
‘Let’s go back a bit,’ said Ellen, who was picking her way mentally through the threads of the earlier exchanges. ‘You say you and Eudora were so close, right? If that’s the case, where does Liam Sharp fit into this? What’s all that about?’
O’Halloran looked a little sheepish for the first time but there was something about it which struck Ellen as slightly artificial.
‘Yeah, well . . . I suppose I’ve brought that one on myself. Not my finest hour, to be honest with you. But it’s not how it looks, I assure you. Just a bit of impatience on my part.’
‘Impatience?’
Ellen shook her head. ‘That doesn’t explain the report and why it’s such a big deal.’
‘Report?’
‘The letter from the agency Wilmot hired on Eudora’s behalf.’
‘I’m not sure –’
‘I know you’ve seen the letter, OK? I also know you were in a complete panic over it. Why were you so desperate to find out whether you were mentioned anywhere in it by name?’
O’Halloran raised an eyebrow and tried a less than convincing smile.
‘I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong end of the stick. One thing you should know about our friend Liam – he can be very creative and has a strong sense of what the person holding the purse strings might be wanting to hear. I wouldn’t set much store by anything he has to say, if I were you.’
‘So the report, if we come across it, doesn’t hold any interest for you?’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t go that far. I’ll admit I was surprised when I was first told about it. I knew Eudora was having a good sort out – you do when you get to that age. But she hadn’t said a word to me about hiring any private investigator. You can’t blame me for wondering what it was all about and whether it was tied in to John Michael Adams in some way. I mean, who else is she going to be looking for? Even if it was no more than an outside chance, you could understand me jumping at it.’