The English Boys

by Julia Thomas

  Peeling back the tape, he reached in and pulled out three pages that had been torn from magazines and tucked behind the poster. He unfolded them, blinking at them for a moment before the shock hit. Then his heart began beating wildly, as if he’d been given a straight shot of adrenaline. Pocketing the papers, he closed the door behind him and took the stairs two at a time. He raced out the back door to find Carey. To his dismay, Emma was sitting there alone.

  “Where’s Carey?” he asked, still uncomfortable speaking to the girl.

  “Over here.” She stood, beckoning him with her hand. He shook his head, not moving, watching as she walked toward a tall hedge behind her.

  “Come on,” she insisted, her voice barely a whisper.

  The sound of her voice spurred him to action, and he followed, curious, every nerve pulsing. As he approached, he watched her slip through a narrow, mazelike opening in the hedge that he hadn’t seen from the house. He pushed his way through, coming to a halt when he saw Carey standing on the far side of the garden with Nick Oliver.

  She couldn’t see him from his hidden vantage point, but she looked up at Emma and gave her a forced smile. “Run in and ask Mum to make coffee, will you, Emma?”

  The girl nodded, slithering back through the passageway and into the house, and Daniel went back into the Burkes’ garden. He had no desire to talk to Nick Oliver. He paced around for a few minutes before walking over to sit on a low stone wall. Extracting the papers from his pocket, he looked at them again. The first was a photo of Noel Ashley-Hunt at his home in Gloucestershire. Noel stood outside, against a fence, wearing riding clothes. In another photo, obviously from the same article, he was dressed for a party and standing between his wife and the Duchess of Kent. But it was the last clipping that stunned Daniel the most: a photo more than a decade old of Noel with his teenage son, Hugh.

  They stood together, laughing, guns in hand, ready to hunt quail. Hugh was already taller than his father, and a handsome young man. His head had been ringed round with black ink.

  Had Tamsyn been in love with Hugh since seeing this picture so many years before? He supposed girls did that sort of thing at the usual age. It would explain her attraction to a man even Daniel himself found an unlikely match for such an unconventional girl.

  Then another, more jarring thought occurred to him: Two English boys on holiday. Could one of those boys have been Hugh? He taxed his brain trying to recall if his old friend had ever mentioned being in Wales. It would explain why she had circled him in the clipping. And if so, it wasn’t a crush at all. But who would the other lad have been? Marc Hayley sprang to mind, the only friend Hugh had known longer than Daniel.

  “Idiot,” he muttered to himself. He felt a traitor for even having such thoughts. Hugh was the best person he knew, closer to him than his own brother. Hugh was incapable of committing a crime like that. One couldn’t spend years in constant company with a psychopath without having suspicions about him. There was certainly another explanation, and he would find it.

  A moment later, Carey slipped through the hedge and came over to sit next to him. “I saw Nick,” she said, tucking her hands in her pockets.

  “How is he?” Daniel asked. His voice sounded strange, even to him, but she didn’t seem to notice.

  “He’s still upset. He thinks we should stop looking into Tamsyn’s murder and that I should come home for the rest of the summer.”

  “Do you know where your parents keep her birth certificate?” Daniel interrupted. He wasn’t quite able to say Tamsyn’s child’s name.

  “Emma’s birth certificate?” Carey asked, looking up. “I’m sure it’s with their important papers, but I can’t ask them to dig it up right now, under the circumstances. Besides, you won’t find anything of use there.”

  “You’ve seen it?”

  “Yes, once. No one is listed as the father. It only lists their names: Tamsyn Alison Burke and her infant daughter, Emma Ashley.”

  For a second, Daniel couldn’t breathe. Surely the name was a coincidence. There was no other way to explain it. At least, none that he could handle at that moment.

  Twenty-Eight

  Murray checked his watch as Ennis eased the car into a narrow lane. Traffic in this street wasn’t particularly busy at any time of the day. The main roads were bustling, the Strand and Fetter Lane to the south, but just a few streets north the noise and activity of London trickled down to the residents and businesses going about their daily grind. Straight down the road was the garage where Ciaran Monaghan worked as an auto mechanic; he’d been employed for two years and had maintained a clean record.

  “Do you want me to go inside and get him?” Ennis asked.

  “Yes,” Murray answered. “We don’t want to disrupt the entire place.”

  He watched his sergeant go into the building and walked to the other side of the road. Monaghan had a long and interesting history with Tamsyn Burke, and though the two had lost touch in recent years, Monaghan had somehow found his way back into her life not long before she was murdered. That warranted a few questions, at the least.

  “You want to talk to me?” Monaghan said a couple of minutes later, approaching alongside Ennis.

  Murray nodded. “Let’s step around the corner.”

  They walked to the end of the street and down a small alleyway that led to a road with a bookshop on one end and a Starbucks on the other. Murray stopped in the empty road and watched as Monaghan leaned up against a wall, taking a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. He tapped it against his free hand, shaking a cigarette loose and holding it out to Ennis.

  “No, thanks,” Ennis answered.

  Monaghan extracted a lighter from his pocket. Murray couldn’t help but compare the two men, who were close in age. Ennis was the straight-as-an-arrow young man who had gotten high marks in school and made his parents proud. The Oxbridge education he’d clearly had and the School of Life that Monaghan had likely suffered were worlds apart.

  Monaghan put the cigarette between his lips. “Is this a professional inquiry?”

  Ennis laughed. “You’d be sitting on a hard chair at Scotland Yard if it were. We just want to ask you a few questions. Better yet, maybe you should tell us what you know about Tamsyn Burke. I take it you were friends?”

  “What makes you say that?” Monaghan asked.

  “For one thing, you were invited to her wedding.”

  “Well, you’re right, actually. I’ve known Tamsyn since we were tots at school.”

  “Were you ever … closer than friends?”

  “Not really. We were just friends. Good friends, though.”

  “Good enough that if she thought someone was trying to kill her, she would come to you with the information?”

  “Yeah, I think she would.”

  Murray eyed the man carefully. “And?”

  “And what?”

  “Did she ever come to you saying something like that?”

  “No. I don’t think she ever thought she was in any danger.”

  “That’s a bit of a cryptic remark.”

  “I just mean she didn’t say anything to me that showed she thought something terrible was going to happen.”

  “You’ve known each other since you were tots, eh?” Ennis asked.

  “We met at school. We were a couple of troublemakers, you might say.” Monaghan took a drag of his cigarette and then shook his head. “Later, when she came to London, I followed her.”

  “What do you mean, ‘followed’?”

  “I wanted to get out of Wales, and she seemed to have a good set-up here, so I asked if she could help me find a flat. She’d worked a few jobs and found her way into the theatre set, made some friends through that. I got a job at a garage and we met up from time to time.”

  “Was she seeing anyone?”

  “She didn’t seem to have a boyfriend most of
the time, but that didn’t really surprise me.”

  A line of wrinkles creased Ennis’s forehead. “What do you mean?”

  “You know. She wasn’t after what ordinary girls want. She didn’t give a fuck about dating. She didn’t want a wedding dress and a manor house and a bunch of bleedin’ brats. She wanted to be free and easy, with no ties to anybody or any place.”

  “Then why on earth would she marry Ashley-Hunt?” Ennis asked. “That’s nothing if not tying her down. The huge wedding, the enormous expense. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Tell me about it,” Monaghan said. He dropped the cigarette on the ground and stepped on it, looking annoyed.

  “Why do you suppose she got engaged to Ashley-Hunt?” Murray asked.

  “I think she had it in her head that she had to marry him,” he said, propping his boot against the wall behind him. “It was like a mission to her, all or nothing. She’d decided on it, and she was going to do it. She picked out the bridesmaids, the clothes and everything, but the odd thing about it was that I thought, when all was said and done, her heart wasn’t in it.”

  “Her heart wasn’t in the wedding, or the marriage itself?” Ennis had turned ever so slightly toward him, as if his interviewee were a rabbit that might jump away at the merest sound.

  “I don’t know,” Monaghan answered. “But I will tell you one thing. The bridesmaids were a joke. We sat down in a café and made a list together. She said, ‘Who did I hate the most over the last ten years?’ That’s how she picked the girls. She hadn’t been in touch with either of them in years.”

  “Did she say why?”

  “No. I thought she got a kick out of doing something that would irritate the high and mighty in-laws she was about to be stuck with.”

  Murray tightened his jaw. “Was she in love with Ashley-Hunt?”

  “I have no idea. She didn’t talk about things like that with me. She didn’t moon over him or anything, but when she told me she was marrying him, I wasn’t surprised.”

  “People marry for a lot of reasons,” Ennis said slowly. “Sometimes it’s love. Sometimes it’s security or money. Ashley-Hunt was in a position to offer her both.”

  Monaghan shook his head. “That doesn’t sound like her. They weren’t together long, but if she was after his money, I’d have known it. I mean, she was still carrying the same old tatty knapsack. She wore the same clothes. Do you know what I mean?”

  “I suppose it’s a little unusual that she didn’t let him buy her a lot of things or that she hadn’t tried to redecorate his house. Most girls would welcome the opportunity.” Ennis cocked his head to the side. “Did it seem as though anything in particular was troubling her? What was her mood leading up to the wedding? And how often did you see her?”

  “We met a couple of times a week. Her mood was good. She laughed, talked, hung about like usual. She always wanted to know about me and my life. It was a good friendship that way. Best I ever had with a girl, you know, that wasn’t a girlfriend. It wasn’t always just about her.”

  “Did anyone strike you as suspicious the day of the crime?”

  “I thought the lot a bunch of fucking imbeciles. The groom and his family were pompous arses, the bridesmaids a joke. I almost thought she would … ”

  “She would what?” Murray prompted.

  “I almost thought she would laugh in their faces and leave him at the altar. I wouldn’t have put it past her. I can’t explain it. She didn’t say anything like that, but it had the feel of a set-up to me.”

  “Did you ask her about it?”

  “No. I thought if she wanted to tell me, she would. Now I wish I had.”

  “What will you do when the investigation is over?” Ennis asked. “Stay in London?”

  “Does that mean I’m not a suspect?”

  “Everyone who was in that wing of the Abbey is a suspect,” Murray replied.

  “My cousin has a garage in Ireland. I was thinking of going there. London’s getting a bit tiresome.”

  Murray extracted a card from his pocket and handed it over. “If you remember anything else, give me a ring. In the meantime, don’t leave London just yet.”

  Monaghan took the card and tucked it into his wallet before turning on his heel and walking away.

  “What do you think?” Murray asked Ennis, watching Monaghan leave.

  “It’s curious that he implied the wedding was some kind of set-up. And obviously he didn’t like anyone at the wedding. They’re a little out of his league, I suppose.”

  “Let’s get back to the office, then,” Murray said as they walked back to the car. “A set-up is an intriguing idea. But the question is, for whom?”

  Twenty-Nine

  The next day, Carey and Daniel boarded the train to London at Llandudno Station. They found their seats without a word. Telling Daniel about Tamsyn’s past had hurt him, and reliving it had unleashed a wave of pain within Carey herself, the likes of which she hadn’t experienced in years. She remembered, even now, the sleepless nights after the rape, the feeling that they were no longer safe in their own beds. Her mother hadn’t let her out of her sight for years. Their family, which had once been so average, had been torn apart trying to decide what to do about the baby. As much as Carey hated to admit it, it had been a relief for all of them when Tamsyn had left Emma with their parents and gone to London. Yet life was never truly normal again, and the guilt, at times, was unbearable.

  She wanted to touch Daniel’s arm, but held back. Since Tamsyn died, he had been the only one who had given her any comfort. She wondered if he felt the same. Sighing, she glanced around at the people chatting. A couple nearing sixty caught her eye. They sat next to one another with a newspaper spread out between them, pointing to something and enjoying a vigorous conversation. It made her realize how much she craved the ordinariness of life. She wanted to sit on Sunday afternoons with someone she loved in a café, having a cappuccino and reading to each other from The Hound of the Baskervilles and Possession, arguing the merits of Conan Doyle and A.S. Byatt; with someone who would spend the afternoon lazily in bed, dreaming of a life together while wide awake in the fugue of lovemaking and shared whispers. She had rarely thought beyond her immediate existence: the classes she took, the next lab or study session, trips home to Llandudno to see Emma and her parents. She didn’t ordinarily wish for love and normalcy, perhaps even thought it beyond her. Instead, she had focused all of her time and energy on the goals before her. It had helped her achieve everything she’d set out to do with a high rate of success, but it hadn’t brought happiness.

  Happiness, which had always seemed rather fleeting, now had been crushed in every sense of the word. It had been denied her sister for whatever reason: fate, sin, the fragility of human nature, her sister’s lack of ability to find contentment. It didn’t matter which, but if happiness had been out of reach for Tamsyn, who had tried so hard to find it, then surely it was out of reach for someone like her, who hadn’t thought about it much until now.

  “I shouldn’t have come home,” she murmured to Daniel. “Mum and Dad are trying to keep things normal for Emma. I didn’t need to make them dredge up everything while they’re dealing with Tamsyn’s death.”

  “It’s my fault,” Daniel replied, staring out of the window. “Sticking my bloody nose in where it didn’t belong.”

  “It’s not your fault.” Carey tensed as the train pulled out of the station and the ground began to rush beneath their feet. “They’ve lost Tamsyn twice, you know. Once when she had the baby and now for good. They’d always held out hope that they could reconcile with her, and now that’s gone. And they’ll never know if they did the right thing by keeping Emma. It only drove Tamsyn farther away.”

  “Will they ever tell her the truth?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. How do you tell someone they were a product of rape and that her real mother couldn�
�t even bear the sight of her? Mum thinks she’ll never forgive them if she finds out.”

  “The older she gets, the harder it will be.”

  Carey looked at him, remembering the stunned expression on his face when she’d told him. It was clear how much he had cared for her sister, leaving her once again to wonder why Tamsyn had decided to marry the aloof Hugh when Daniel had feelings for her. There were so many questions that would never be answered. Some people led messy little lives, and others, like Carey, with their rigid, sanitized sensibilities, tried to make up for those who would or could never be conventional. She realized for perhaps the first time that the structure and sense with which she ran her life was a direct reaction to the disaster Tamsyn had made of hers.

  “I blame her, sometimes,” she admitted. “I actually blame her. She never did anything the way I would have. She gave up her baby and abandoned her parents. What the hell was wrong with her, anyway?”

  “She was too young to be a parent.”

  “I don’t care,” Carey said. All of the forgiveness and affection she had given her sister over the past ten years dried up like a well in a drought.

  “Of course you care. You’re exhausted,” Daniel said.

  Suddenly, all of the anger she’d held onto for so many years rose to the surface. Carey hated her sister for the first time in her life. She hated the murder and dealing with the police and trying to figure out who might have done it. She hated the secret her parents kept and the knowledge that it could destroy them all sometime in the future when they least expected it. She hated the way Nick had tried to bully her into staying, afraid she had encouraged his dependence on her. She hated sitting next to Daniel and knowing that when they disembarked from the train, the one person whom she’d been able to talk with to help her make sense of things would walk straight out of her life. He would go back to his empty flat and she to hers.

  “There’s something I want to talk to you about,” he said, interrupting her thoughts. “I’ve just been trying to decide if I’ve gone mad. I took something from Tamsyn’s room.”