‘Why was that?’
‘Partly her background – her parents, I mean – and partly her father being killed. You know about that?’
‘In the train crash – yes.’
‘It was a terrible blow to her, and she had to do all the coping because her mother couldn’t. She had to suppress her feelings and get on with things. And then her mother remarried a basically unsympathetic man, so the protective shell just got thicker, until it became such a habit she couldn’t break it. When she first came to the museum I think she was desperate to talk to someone, but simply didn’t know how. Fortunately we struck up a friendship and—’ She shrugged, elegantly. ‘I was glad to be her confidante.’
‘So she didn’t get on with her stepfather?’
‘She wouldn’t have liked anyone who took her father’s place. But I gather – I never met him, you understand – that he was somewhat limited. No imagination. Everything by the book because he couldn’t think further than that. And she might have accepted that – her mother, after all, was no Einstein – except that he gave himself airs and claimed a superiority he didn’t have, and used it as the basis for imposing discipline on her.’
Atherton should be having this conversation, Swilley thought resentfully. Or the boss. I’m a solid facts girl. She didn’t like her stepdad, and he tried to make her toe the line. Why dress it up in all this airy-fairy psychobabble? ‘Did he hit her?’
‘I didn’t mean discipline in that sense,’ Mrs Ridware said, kindly enough to get up Swilley’s nose.
‘But did he hit her?’ she repeated stolidly.
She hesitated. ‘I think he did, on occasion – but not violently. I don’t want you to think he was beating her, or anything like that. Not that Nigel and I believe in corporal punishment – we would never hit Poppy or Oliver – it sends all the wrong signals and teaches the wrong values. But many people believe that the occasional slap is justified, and I suppose Melanie’s stepfather was one of them. Of course, she was too old by then to do other than resent it, especially as he wasn’t her real father. They used to have tremendous arguments, she told me. I think it was a relief all round when she left home.’
‘Did she tell you about the trouble she got into?’
‘You mean—?’
‘Getting pregnant,’ Swilley said brutally. The girl was dead, for heaven’s sake. The time to be holding stuff back was well gone.
‘Yes, she told me about that. How did you know?’
‘Her mum told us.’
‘Oh. Of course. But I don’t think she told another soul about it. Certainly nobody here knew except me. It was a desperately painful incident, and coming so soon after her father dying . . .’
‘Did she resent her stepdad for making her have the abortion?’
‘No, not exactly. She knew it was the only thing to be done, and she knew she wouldn’t have had the same career if she had kept it. I don’t think he forced her – of course, there was pressure put on her, but if she’d really insisted . . .’
Yeah, thought Swilley. That’s all right from someone with nice supportive parents who always discussed things rationally with their kids. And where money had never been an issue. She knew what ‘pressure’ would have meant in Melanie’s case, and how there would have been no alternative for a girl with no money and nowhere else to go.
‘But she regretted it deeply, all the same,’ Mrs Ridware went on. ‘She brooded about the child she didn’t have. She felt guilty because she hadn’t protected it. And she doubted her fitness to be a mother, because she had failed so spectacularly at the first hurdle.’ She sighed. ‘It was something we talked about often, when we went out alone together, after work. She envied me my children, said how lucky I was to have had a normal life, with everything happening as it should, naturally and in the right order.’ She looked at Swilley, her eyes suddenly vulnerable and troubled. ‘I know I’m lucky, I really do. I have everything, and Melanie—’ She bit her lip. ‘Now she’s had even her life taken away from her. Whoever did that—’ She stopped abruptly and looked away.
She really had cared about Melanie, then. Swilley liked her better.
‘What about Scott Hibbert? Did you ever meet him?’
‘Once or twice, when he came to meet Melanie after work, and at the Christmas party. They’d only been going out for just over two years. I can’t say I knew him well, except for what Melanie told me.’
‘And what was that?’
‘She was madly in love with him,’ said Mrs Ridware, with a sorrowful look, ‘but in my view he wasn’t right for her. She had real depths and real intellect, but he was just a – a flashy, self-centred nothing. He was so shallow—’ She paused, and Swilley finished for her without thinking:
‘—it was a wonder he didn’t evaporate?’
But she didn’t take offence. She gave a small, controlled smile. ‘Yes. I must remember that – it’s good.’
‘But they were living together and he wanted to marry her.’
‘Yes, she said he’d proposed more than once. I think he thought she’d be a good corporate wife – an asset to his career. It was all about him. He was an awful snob, you know – still is, I suppose. I don’t know why I’m talking about him in the past tense. At the Christmas parties he was always name-dropping, buttonholing the most important people, trying to ingratiate himself with anyone with a title. I think he thought Melanie would give him a leg up the social scale.’
‘So he didn’t love her?’
‘Oh, goodness, I didn’t mean that. I’m sure he did. He was certainly all over her, embarrassingly so sometimes. But I don’t think he ever really – what do they say nowadays? – got her. He loved her for the wrong reasons, because he didn’t really know her.’
‘If he was so unsatisfactory, why did she love him?’
‘He was handsome, well dressed, attentive, he loved her. That most of all, I think – she was desperate to be loved. But I think deep down she knew it was no good. Almost the whole time she’s been with him she’s been unhappy. They moved in together about three months after they met – almost exactly two years ago – and I noticed a change in her at once. Something’s been troubling her, something she won’t talk to me about, and I don’t know what it could be if it’s not Scott. And it gets worse the longer it goes on. Just lately she’s been really worried, withdrawn and preoccupied. I know he’s been pressing her to marry him, because he wants to start a family, and as I said, she has doubts about her fitness to be a mother. But I wonder if underneath she hasn’t realized that Scott simply won’t do?’
Swilley noticed she had slipped into the present tense. A good sign that they really had been close, and that her testimony was therefore worth something. ‘Did she say that to you?’ she asked.
‘No, never. She’s very loyal to him. As I said, these last two years there’s been a part of her closed off even from me. But you know . . .’ She hesitated, and went on with an appeal to Swilley, woman to woman. ‘You know that women are always supposed to end up marrying their fathers? I think perhaps she’d realized she’d picked a man who, on the surface looked right – steady job, money in his pockets and so on – but underneath was like her father after all – an unreliable charmer.’
Or maybe she hadn’t, Swilley thought, resisting the appeal. Maybe it was something else entirely. All women marry their fathers, eh? She considered her own Tony. Actually, ghastly thought, he was a bit like how she remembered her dad – not to look at so much as in personality – the kindness and patience, the way he’d look at her with that sort of what-are-you-going to-get-up-to-next wry smile, all up one side . . . She jerked herself back from the edge of the abyss.
‘What can you tell me about last Friday?’ she said, extra sternly to make up for having weakened.
Simone Ridware blinked, but stood up to the question bravely. ‘It was just an ordinary Friday, as far as I remember. Let me see. Melanie had a bit of a tiff with Scott that morning, but that wasn’t unusual.’
A tiff, eh? How posh, thought Swilley. ‘What about?’
‘Oh, it wasn’t serious. Just one of the niggling little did-didn’t arguments people have. He was going away for the weekend to see some of his old friends from home, whom Melanie didn’t like: they were rather noisy and vulgar. Words were had; but she was over it by mid-morning. She said it was her fault – nobody likes to think their partner despises their friends. And she was going out herself that evening to meet some of her old friends from home, and Scott probably didn’t like any of them any better. She was a very balanced person in that way – always able to see the other side.’
‘So when she left work, she was in a normal mood, going out for a drink with the girls? Not unhappy or worried or anxious or anything?’
She frowned. ‘I’m – not sure. She did seem very quiet that afternoon. Preoccupied. When I spoke to her just before she left, she was smiling and cheerful, but then she was always a good actor. I did feel there was something on her mind, something hanging over her. But it could just have been Scott’s weekend away. Or I could have been-imagining it.’
‘You don’t know of anything specific she might have been worried about?’
‘Beyond her relationship with Scott – no.’
‘She didn’t have money worries?’
‘Not as far as I know.’
‘Health problems?’
‘She never mentioned any. She seemed well.’
‘Did she have a drug habit?’
‘Good heavens, no!’
‘And was that the last time you spoke to her? Friday going home time?’
‘Yes. Sometimes she would ring me at home in the evening for a chat, but as she was out with friends I wouldn’t have expected that, on that Friday. And she didn’t ring. So the last words I spoke to her were, “See you on Monday.”’
She relapsed into a very despondent pose, looking as if she might cry. But Benenden girls don’t cry in public. They breed a gritty sort of chap down there.
In fairness, Swilley suspended her automatic hostility to privilege for long enough to acknowledge that she really had cared for Melanie, and to be glad that someone had.
Atherton’s idea of a trip to Salisbury would probably have featured a stroll through the cobbled streets looking in the antique shops, a glance round the Cathedral, and possibly tea in Ye Olde Precinct Tea Rooms if the time was right. It wouldn’t by any stretch of the imagination have involved his standing in some very chilly rain on the edge of an arterial road (along which the traffic, suspiciously, was all heading out of the city at great speed, buffeting him in passing and dashing dirty spray at his back in the process) looking enquiringly into the Stygian shadows of an independent garage workshop. His nostrils flared at the smell of oil. There were oil patches on the floor and oily pictures of large-busted women on the walls. A red Ford Focus was up on the lift and dripping oil into the lube pit. Oil, he fancied he could say with some assurance, was the motif du jour.
A man emerged from the depths of the cavern, wearing oily overalls and wiping his hands on an oily rag. He had a puggily good-looking face, liberally streaked with yes-you’ve-guessed-it; his gingery fair hair was cut into a halo of spikes and – Atherton would have thought it unnecessary given the prevalence of freely-available dressing, but there you go – waxed to keep them in position. He said, ‘Can I help you?’ but without notable friendliness.
‘I’m looking for Paul Heaton,’ Atherton said.
‘That’s me,’ said the man, with a slight increase in latent hostility as his eyes raked Atherton, in his well-fitting coat and expensive shoes, trying to guess who he was.
Fortunately, Atherton had spotted, lurking in the shadows, something a bit more interesting than a Focus. ‘Like the Aston,’ he said. ‘DB6, isn’t it? Not as pretty as the five, but it handles so much better. Is it yours?’
‘Yeah,’ said Heaton, all resistance seeping away like water down the plug hole. ‘I’m rebuilding it.’
He led the way over and a satisfactory conversation followed as they examined the car together in every aspect and Heaton described the condition he had bought it in, the processes he was going through to restore it and what he planned to do with it when it was finished. At the end of which Atherton was no longer a snotty-looking stranger and possible trouble but a fellow DB-lover, and was offered a cuppa. The tea came in a mug decorated with oily fingermarks (Atherton noted them professionally – you’d get beautiful lifts off those) and had a faint fragrance of Castrol about it, but he sipped it bravely and brought the conversation round to the wedding and Scott Hibbert.
Paul Heaton had been the best man – in the absence of the groom on honeymoon, the closest Atherton could get to the horse’s mouth. And subtlety and perseverance turned out not to be needed. To a fellow DB fan, Heaton was happy to spill everything, and at once, no questions asked.
‘Oh, he was at the wedding all right, but he never turned up to the stag do. Dave was pissed off about it, but what can you do? Scott’s like that – unreliable bugger.’ It was said without heat – blokes who’d been at school with each other accepted each other’s little peccadilloes.
‘Called off, did he?’ Atherton asked, trying not to sound as if that was very, very interesting.
‘I don’t know about called off. He just never showed. Typical, when he was the one who’d made all the fuss – there had to be a stag night, and had to be done a certain way. He was the one who made all the arrangements, booked the place and phoned everybody up, and then he’s the one who doesn’t turn up.’
‘But wasn’t he supposed to be doing the entertainment?’
‘Eh?’
‘He was going to do his Elvis impersonation act, wasn’t he?’
The pale-blue eyes under the raised sandy eyebrows were genuinely puzzled. ‘Elvis act? What are you talking about? Scott doesn’t do anything like that. He organized a strippergram – she came dressed as a postman, because Dave’s with the Royal Mail. She was good, too,’ he added with reminiscent relish. Then came back to the present. ‘What you on about?’
‘He told a friend back home he was doing an Elvis impersonation at the stag on Friday,’ Atherton said.
Heaton shrugged. ‘That’s Scott all over. He’s a bit – you know.’ He made the ‘mouthy’ gesture with the hand that wasn’t holding the mug. ‘You don’t want to take any notice of half he says. He was always like that – at school he was always on about stuff he’d done, and you knew it was all bullshit. Like, he’s driven his dad’s car when he was ten, and gone all the way with a girl when he was twelve, and he’d done this, that and the other. Showing off, you know. But that’s just his way. He’s all right, really. Elvis impersonations!’ He shook his head in amused wonder. ‘What’ll he come up with next? He’s a joker!’
‘So,’ Atherton said, getting down to business, ‘he didn’t come to the stag, but he did come to the wedding?’
‘Yeah, he turned up at the church, but he was like a cat on hot bricks. He was on the end of the pew behind me, and I could see him fidgeting about all the way through. Then as soon as the photographs were finished, he comes up to me and says he’s not going to the reception – asks me to apologize to Dave. Says he’s got a really important piece of-business for his firm he’s got to see to. Says it’s a massive deal and worth a big bonus and a promotion if he pulls it off. Then off he goes.’ He shrugged. ‘I didn’t say anything to Dave right then – no point in upsetting anyone. But later on Dave comes up to me and says, where’s Scott, I haven’t seen him, so I tell him then. Well, he shrugs and says, same old Scott, but I could see he was a bit pissed off, when he’d missed the stag as well.’
‘Did he say why he’d missed it?’
‘I never got the chance to ask. He arrived at the last minute, and you can’t chat in church, can you? Then there were the photographs, and time that was all over, he’d gone again. I suppose he wanted to get back to his bird. All that about a big deal going down – that’s just the sort of thing he s
ays. He’s only an estate agent, for crying out loud. You’d think he was doing oil deals with Arab sheikhs.’
He swilled down some tea, and then a frown came over his well-lubricated face. ‘Why are you asking me all this, anyway?’ Awareness dawned. ‘Oh Christ, I forgot about his bird – his girlfriend getting killed. Poor old Scotty – but you don’t think he had anything to do with it? That’s not why you’re asking, is it?’
‘It’s just routine,’ Atherton said soothingly. ‘We have to establish where everyone was, whether we suspect them or not. It’s like a pattern, you see – only if you know where everyone was, can you see who’s missing.’
Heaton looked baffled, as well he might, by this piece of hoo-ha. ‘I see,’ he said doubtfully.
‘So, have you any idea where he might have been on Friday night and Saturday morning?’
‘No,’ Heaton said, as though that were obvious. ‘Why don’t you ask him?’
Atherton dodged that one. ‘Was there anywhere you know that he went when he was down this way? Where he might go? Other friends? Hobbies, sports, clubs?’
‘No. I mean I don’t know. He’s lived here all his life, till he went to London, so it could be anywhere, couldn’t it? Anyway,’ he concluded with an air of relief, ‘wherever he was, he couldn’t have had anything to do with – with the murder.’ Like many people, he found the word odd on his lips when it was real life and not fiction or the telly. ‘He was dead keen on her. Always talking about her – how smart she was, how posh she was, what a good job she had, how she was nuts about him. They were going to get married in September.’
‘Is that what he said?’
‘Yeah, September. I remember because I usually have me holiday in September and he said I’d have to change it this year because of his wedding. He was going to fly everybody out to St Lucia for a week. Well –’ he shrugged again – ‘I took that with a pinch of salt. But it sounded good when he said it. This resort with all tropical flowers and a pool with a free swim-up bar, and they were going to get married on the beach at sunset, and Mel was going to arrive on a white horse, riding through the surf.’
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