by Nicci French
My car didn’t start at first. The morning was cold and the engine wheezed and died several times before coughing into life. I wound down the window. My sons were there, looking bleak. Robert was coming with me.
‘Bye, Jerome, bye, Hana. Ring me when you get back to London. Drive carefully.’
Hana came up and kissed me through the window. I blew a kiss at Rosie, who pointed a finger at me which she then inserted into one nostril. Paul was loading an improbable amount of luggage into their car. I called to him. He waved. Alan and Martha stood side by side to see me off. I leant out and took Alan’s hand and squeezed it.
‘Alan,’ I said, ‘shall we meet next time you’re in London?’
I felt awkward, as if I were asking if we could keep in touch. He ruffled my head as if I were still a teenager.
‘Jane,’ he said, ‘you’ll always be our daughter-in-law. Isn’t that right, Martha?’
‘Of course,’ she said, hugging me.
She smelt so familiar: powder and yeast and wood-smoke. Martha had always managed to be gloriously sexy and reassuringly homely all at once. There were tears in her eyes as she kissed me, and for a moment I wanted nothing so much as to undo everything I had started: the separation from her son, the wretched plans for the cottage which had uncovered the remains of her daughter. Then she squeezed my hand.
‘Actually, Jane, you’re more a daughter than a daughter-in-law.’ She hesitated, then added: ‘Don’t let me down, my dear.’
What did she mean? How could I let her down?
Claud came out of the house carrying a neat suitcase. He started to walk towards us, then stopped. He would be dignified about all this. He’ll not give up, though, I thought as I looked at him: such a familiar figure. I knew where he’d bought his jeans, and in what order he’d packed his suitcase. I knew the music he’d put on in the car, and how he’d keep the needle just under seventy, and I guessed that when he got back to his small new flat in Primrose Hill, he would first of all phone me to make sure I’d arrived safely, and then pour a whisky and cook himself an omelette. Beside me, Robert sat quiet and tense. His pale, smooth face was quite blank. I put a hand on his for a moment, then lifted it to wave at Claud. He nodded.
‘Goodbye Jane,’ he called, and climbed into his compact car.
We left the Stead together, and for miles, as I drove through the Shropshire countryside, I could see Claud’s small blue car and his dark head in my mirror. When we got to the motorway Robert put some loud music on, I put my foot on the accelerator, and we left Claud far behind.
Cigarettes are wonderful. Every morning I showered and went downstairs in a dressing-gown, where I ground some coffee beans, poured fresh orange into a glass, and lit up. I’d study my plans for my new project with a cigarette. I’d smoke whenever I lifted the phone. I’d smoke in the car – God, how Claud would have hated that. I often smoked in the dark, at the end of a day, watching the glowing tip making lines in the air. I measured out my days in little tubes of nicotine. I smoked each morning when I thumbed through newspapers to see if there were any more references to the discovery of Natalie’s body now that she had been identified, solely through her dental record. ‘Tragic daughter of Angry Young Man,’ said the Guardian. ‘Martello Tragedy,’ the Mail. Alan gave interviews, and they were usually accompanied by library pictures of him as a younger and more successful man.
I returned to London on the Sunday and at the end of that week I was phoned by an officer from Kirklow CID. They wanted to interview me purely as a matter of routine. No, I wouldn’t have to come up to Kirklow, a couple of officers would be in London next week. I arranged a time and the following Tuesday morning at 11.30 sharp there were two detectives sitting in my front room. They were Detective Sergeant Helen Auster, who did all the talking, and Detective Constable Turnbull, a large man with red hair combed flat on his scalp, who sat with an open notebook not taking notes. I made us coffee and Turnbull and I smoked as well.
Auster was dressed in a businesslike grey flannel jacket and skirt. Her hair was light brown and she had startling yellow eyes, which seemed to be focused on something behind my head. She wore a wedding ring and she was young, almost ten years younger than me, I guessed. As we sipped our coffee, we exchanged trivial observations about how big London was. They didn’t seem in a hurry to get down to business and I was the first to raise it.
‘Are you doing the rounds of the family down here?’
Helen Auster smiled and looked at a notebook. ‘We’ve just come from your father, Mr Crane,’ she said. She spoke in a light Birmingham accent. ‘After lunch we’re meeting Theodore Martello at his office on the Isle of Dogs, then we’re going on to the BBC Television Centre to see your brother, Paul.’
‘You’ll spend most of your day in traffic,’ I said sympathetically. ‘Do you expect people to remember anything after all this time?’
‘There are a few questions we have to ask.’
‘Are you treating Natalie’s death as murder?’
‘It’s a possibility.’
‘Because she was buried, I suppose.’
‘No, there is some evidence that is consistent with strangulation.’
‘How can you possibly know that just from her bones?’
Auster and Turnbull exchanged glances.
‘It’s just a technical detail,’ said Auster. ‘Strangulation almost always fractures a bone called the hyoid bone which is at the base of the tongue. The hyoid bone of the deceased is fractured. But of course it’s been in the ground for a long time.’
‘Somebody must have buried the body,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ said Auster.
‘And that person must have killed her?’
‘Maybe. At the moment we’re just trying to collect information. As you probably know, it was assumed for some considerable time that Natalie Martello had run away from home. The last reported sighting was on the morning of 27 July 1969.’
‘On the day after the big party, yes,’ I interrupted.
‘It was only months later that statements were taken and the inquiry didn’t proceed very far. Natalie Martello remained registered as a missing person.’
There was a pause, which I leapt to fill as usual. ‘I’m afraid the trail must have gone awfully cold by now. How are you going to find out anything?’
‘What we’re trying to say to people is, if you remember anything, however small, let us know.’
‘Yes, of course.’
Auster looked down at her notebook once more. ‘The last sighting of Natalie was by a local man, Gerald Francis Docherty. He saw her by the side of the river that runs along the northern edge of your parents-in-law’s property. Obviously, we would like to hear of any later sightings.’
‘I think we were asked this at the time. I didn’t see her after the party.’
‘Tell me about the party.’
‘You must have heard about it from my dad. It was Alan and Martha’s twentieth wedding anniversary. They’d been away on a cruise somewhere and my dad met them off the boat at Southampton on the day of the party and drove them straight up to Shropshire. The family had arranged a large celebration. There were lots of guests, and dozens of them stayed the night, in the house or in nearby houses. Lots of them slept on the floor, I think, in sleeping bags. I mainly remember the preparations. Claud and I had been running errands, I remember that – collecting various things, food, glasses. Natalie had too, I think. The party itself was on a lovely evening, very warm with that baked feeling you get at the end of a summer’s day. We had a barbecue. Claud did that, with Paul helping him; why do men always do the barbecue, handle all the dead meat? Natalie was wearing a sleeveless black dress, I think. She always wore black that summer; I imitated her; so did Luke. That was her boyfriend, as you must know. They were very trendy; they were kind of skinny and sulky; they made me feel clumsy, rural, even though I was the one who lived in London. I’m rambling. What do you want me to tell you?’
Helen Auster looked a l
ittle blank and embarrassed. I don’t think she really knew what she wanted me to tell her.
‘Do you remember what Natalie was like at the party?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Did she seem depressed? Angry? Exuberant?’
I felt my cheeks flush. When I thought of the party, it wasn’t Natalie I remembered, it was Theo.
‘I don’t really remember seeing much of her. It was a very big party, you know. There were about a hundred people there.’
‘I thought you were her closest friend.’
‘I know, but it’s hard to remember with parties, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ said Helen Auster. ‘What happened on the next day?’
‘The party sort of continued, I think. Lots of the guests hung around, or returned. People went for walks and things, and then everyone started drinking champagne at midday.’
‘Were all the family there for the party?’
‘For the party itself, yes. Typically, having organised the whole thing, Claud left before dawn on the Sunday morning and went down to London with his best friend, Alec, to catch a flight to Bombay. He spent two months going round India with about twenty pounds in his pocket. Claud and I always meant to go there together. That seems unlikely now. I should explain that we’re getting divorced.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘That’s all right. Brought it on myself. People were scattering throughout the day. I imagine it would be completely impossible to reconstruct who exactly was where at any one point on that day.’
‘Except for Natalie, by the river, shortly before one o’clock. Was there any particular reason why she should be there?’
‘None that I can think of. I mean, no particular reason, except it doesn’t seem so odd that she should have been. I’m sorry, I don’t think I’m being much help.’
‘That’s all right. Anyway, I gather that you were indirectly responsible for the body being found. Why were you building the cottage just there?’
I explained that I’d originally wanted to build the cottage – only then it wasn’t going to be a cottage, but a structure – further down the hill, but had changed my plan when I’d found that a small tributary of the river flowed just beneath that area. Drainage would have been difficult and very expensive. I told her about the digging, and how we’d unearthed Natalie’s bones.
‘Why did you assume that it was Natalie?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know,’ I replied, slightly taken aback. ‘I suppose it was just that Natalie disappeared, and I always thought she must be dead – though Martha would never believe that-so when there was a body next to the house, well…’ I trailed off, then tried again. ‘I’ve always thought that one day we would find Natalie’s body. So in a way I’ve been waiting for that, and I think that perhaps we all have. But I never thought that, well, that she’d been killed. I assumed she’d had an accident or something. So finding her, it was awful, not just because it was her, but because somebody must have buried her. In fact, that’s what I wanted to ask you about. Don’t you think it’s a peculiar place to bury Natalie – in the garden, just a stone’s throw from where she lived?’
Auster smiled across at her colleague. ‘We were talking about that, weren’t we, Stuart? It could be seen as a very clever place to hide a body. Most murderers aren’t very good at hiding bodies. Remote areas of scrub or moorland might seem like a good idea, but they are places without much activity and it can be easy to see that digging has taken place. A garden is constantly being dug up.’
‘But there are lots of people around in a garden,’ I protested.
‘Yes,’ she said, with an obvious lack of interest. She clearly had no wish to sit debating theories with me. ‘As I said, if you remember anything that might be significant, please get in touch.’
She looked at her watch and asked if there was a pub nearby. I said there was one at the end of the road and she asked if I would like to join them for a bite of lunch. I loathe pubs and I wasn’t hungry but I said I’d have a drink. Turnbull said he wanted to go to Oxford Street on the way to the Isle of Dogs, so Helen Auster and I walked along the road to the Globe Arms, where she ordered a pint of bitter and a lasagne and I toyed with a tomato juice and smoked cigarettes. I began to take to Helen, as I now called her. She talked about being a female officer and the canteen culture, and about her husband who was a delivery coordinator in Shropshire for Sainsbury’s. She asked me about my divorce and I confided a few banalities. When it was almost time to go, I returned to the case:
‘It’s all too late, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘You’re not going to be able to find anything out.’
‘There are one or two possibilities, but it will be difficult.’
‘It looks like you drew the short straw.’
‘I thought so. Now I’m starting to think that the Martellos are an interesting family.’
Helen gave me a card and wrote her direct line on it. As we parted on the pavement on Highgate Road, I told her that she must get in touch the next time she was down in London and she promised to. Is it possible that I could become friends with a policewoman?
‘Don’t you think it’s time you gave up smoking?’
Kim was sitting across the table from me; a candle on the paper tablecloth cast shadows on the pale triangle of her face. She skewered some swordfish with her fork, swilled it back with a gulp of wine.
‘How many are you on now? Thirty a day?’
I had finished my meal – or rather, I had pushed it away, hardly touched, and was now sitting in a state of light-headed contentedness, blowing blue smoke over the debris of the table. I waved over the Italian waiter, and pointed at the empty wine bottle.
‘Another of these please.’
I tapped the chimney of ash into the ashtray.
‘More than thirty, I hope. I’m going to stop soon. Honestly. The trouble is, I do enjoy it so much. It doesn’t make me feel ill or anything.’
The waiter came over, uncorked a bottle of amber wine and poured it into my glass to taste.
‘I stopped quite easily before. I’ll stop again.’
‘Yesterday I saw the results of a woman I referred for a chest X-ray. She had a persistent cough and some mild chest pains. She’ll be dead by this time next year. She’s forty-four, with three teenage children.’
‘Don’t.’
‘And how’s your hostel coming on?’
‘Don’t.’
It wasn’t coming on at all. It was a site marked on a piece of paper; a conversation in the office; a matter for meetings at the council offices; a subject for planning permission. At work, I had dozens of large sheets of graph paper on which I had blocked in my proposals : geometric designs, square by square, with sharpened pencils. I was just waiting for someone to tell me I could go ahead. Meanwhile, there was talk about consultation with local people. I didn’t like the sound of that.
‘Okay, let’s not talk about the hostel,’ said Kim. ‘Let’s talk about you. What are you doing with yourself now that you’re alone?’
‘I lit another cigarette, and poured another glass of wine.
‘I’ve become a convenient single woman,’ I said. ‘I’m starting to find myself seated next to the divorced man at dinner parties. Does that happen to you much?’
Kim shrugged. ‘Not any longer.’
‘We don’t usually have much to say to each other,’ I continued. ‘Then there are friends whom I haven’t seen for ages, who suddenly ring me up, and they sound so sorry for me now that Claud and I have separated, and I can’t help feeling some of them are quite pleased to be able to be sorry for me. But actually, I’m quite enjoying living on my own.’ I was surprised by the firmness in my voice. ‘I watch films on TV in the middle of the day, and go to exhibitions, and get in touch with people I’d let slip. I can be untidy. The house feels large, though. For ages, there have been four of us living there, and now there’s just me. There are some rooms I never go into. I suppose I’ll have to sell it one day.’
It wasn’t just that the house felt large; it felt lonely. I spent as little time as possible there now, though in the past I had loved it when Claud and the boys had all gone out and left me alone. For nearly two decades I had gone out to work every weekday, and raced home to a large rackety house which was full of noise and mess and loud boys shouting for my attention. I’d vacuumed and ironed, and done the washing, and cooked, and as they’d grown older I’d ferried the boys back and forth from increasingly alarming social venues. I’d given dinner parties for colleagues – mine or Claud’s. I’d gone to Christmas plays and summer sports days and cobbled together packed lunches from an empty fridge. I’d played Monopoly, which I hate, and chess, at which I always lose, dreaming all the while of a book by the fire. I’d made cakes for the school bring-and-buy. I’d baked late at night to make myself feel a good mother, especially after my own mother had died. I’d suffered loud records from the latest groups that had made me feel middle-aged when I was in my thirties. I’d overseen the acne and the sulks and the homework. I’d stayed in our bedroom when the boys had had parties. I’d sat, evening after evening, sipping a gin and tonic with Claud before supper. I’d woken up night after night with my head full of lists, woken up in the morning with a tired headache, gone to sleep in the evening knowing that my day was so full there was no room left for me.
Now there was no loud music, no sulks, no calls from a phone box at one a.m., ‘Mum, I’ve missed my lift home, can you come and get me?’ They’d all gone, and I could do whatever I chose : my time was my own, which was what I had always missed. But I didn’t know how to deal with time, so I filled it up. I spent long hours in the office, often staying until eight o’clock in the evening. And then, as often as not, I went out. It’s true that I was receiving lots of invitations from people who thought I might be in need of cheering up, or people who needed an extra female for their table. I went to films, sometimes illicitly in the middle of the day.
When I got home, I would drink a glass of wine, smoke a couple of cigarettes, and go to bed with a thriller. The long Victorian novels which I’d promised myself would have to wait. At weekends, I watched film matinéees, and went for walks on the Heath. Were autumns always so damp?