by John Connor
‘I don’t know anything about her will. Nothing is a formality.’ She was getting very frustrated.
‘Who certified death?’ Tom asked quietly. They both looked at him.
‘I did,’ Hulpe said. ‘And a colleague.’
‘Was there a post-mortem?’
‘Of course not. She died peacefully, of an illness she contracted over ten years ago …’
‘Was there a coroner involved?’ He had no idea why he was asking the questions. It felt like he was on autopilot, from five years ago. There was nothing to make him really suspicious, given how weird these people were. What was normal here was off the rails in the world outside.
‘No,’ Hulpe said. ‘No coroner, as you call it. We are in Belgium. The requirements are perhaps different to your own country. But all the legal formalities were, naturally, complied with.’
‘Where is she?’ Sara asked. ‘Where is my mother?’
‘I’m sorry, Sara,’ Hulpe said. He looked at the ground. ‘But she really has gone. I’m sorry.’
‘So where is her body? Is it here? What have you done with her, if she’s dead?’
‘The funeral was on Saturday.’ He paused because Sara had gasped. ‘I’m sorry. But your mother had planned well. She was aware of what was coming. Her body was flown to Paris and buried there. Those were her wishes. I don’t know why your father hasn’t told you any of this … I assumed you would know … that there was a reason you weren’t there …’
There was a long silence. Tom watched her struggling with the facts, trying to get on top of them. Finally, she found her voice again. ‘You’re lying. My father isn’t even in the UK right now. He’s in New York.’
Hulpe looked acutely embarrassed. He said nothing.
‘Did you go to the funeral?’ she asked.
‘Of course. Your father was there too, I assure you. On Saturday. A small gathering in Paris. Very private. But it was in the newspapers, of course. It was reported …’
A sob slipped from her lips. She put her head down. Now it was beginning to build up, he thought. No fucking wonder. Bizarre wasn’t the word for it. And coming on top of everything else. ‘Let’s get out of here, Sara,’ Tom said to her. Clearly she had many questions, but he was sure the next step – in the light of all their present problems – wasn’t to irritate Hulpe, but to contact her father. She nodded.
Hulpe walked them in silence to the lifts. The receptionist had vanished. At the lifts Sara turned back to him. ‘Was anybody with her, when it happened?’ she asked.
Hulpe seemed to hesitate, then shook his head. ‘I was at home. I came within fifteen minutes …’
‘She was here alone? She died alone?’
‘Not alone, no. Monsieur Meyer was here, of course. He has rooms on the ground floor and the monitors were all linked in, twenty-four-hour surveillance …’
‘Meyer?’ she interrupted. ‘Who is he?’
‘One of her nurses. Stefan Meyer. You know him, Sara. He’s my nephew, a trusted family member. He has cared for her for nearly a year now.’
‘So where was Alison Spencer?’
‘Not here,’ he said. ‘Elizabeth was too ill. In the end she was too ill to need Miss Spencer …’
‘Too ill? I was here two months ago. She was fine then. She was walking around, talking …’
‘I’m sorry. It’s often like that. The final progression can be sudden …’
‘Why wasn’t I called? If she became ill why didn’t you contact me?’
‘That’s not for me to decide. We immediately informed your father of everyone she asked to see.’
‘Did she ask to see me?’
He was silent, clearly very uncomfortable now.
‘Tell me if she asked to see me.’
‘You should speak to your father about that. I’m sorry. Again. I’m so sorry.’
Sara took a breath, then stared at him, waiting until he looked up. ‘You’re lying,’ she said again. ‘You’re lying to me.’
He nodded. He didn’t look surprised that she should accuse him. ‘I’m sorry, Sara,’ he repeated.
‘You will be,’ she said, just as the lift doors were closing.
Outside, they stood on the pavement like they were lost. She still didn’t cry, but it was going to come. He kept an arm round her, feeling desperately sorry for her. He had been intending to leave her at this point, but that was out of the question now. ‘We should call your father, I think,’ he suggested cautiously. Hulpe was right.
She shook her head. ‘She died alone,’ she muttered, then put a hand up to her mouth. ‘Meyer isn’t family. Not my family. I don’t have a clue who he is. And that man was at her funeral … and I was not even told about it … it’s beyond belief …’
‘I don’t know what’s going on,’ he said. ‘But I think your father might be the one to speak to.’
She shook her head again, more vigorously this time. ‘No. My father lives in another world. He’s a fool. How could he do that? How?’
He assumed she meant not telling her. He had no answer.
‘We need to get to Alison,’ she said. ‘Alison has more sense.’
‘Alison?’
‘Yes. Alison Spencer. She was my mother’s principal PA. She will know what has gone on. I don’t trust that fucker as far as I could throw him.’ Hulpe, or her father? ‘Alison was the only friend my mother trusted,’ she continued. ‘She handled everything. We need to speak to her first. Then I’ll deal with Daddy.’
‘Your father might …’
‘My father is a …’ She stopped herself. ‘I don’t know what my father is doing. I don’t know where he is. I already tried calling him, this morning. He didn’t answer.’ A sob caught in her throat again, but she held it back. She looked dazed, punch-drunk. He wasn’t sure she was taking any of it in properly. ‘Why didn’t he tell me?’ she gasped. ‘Why?’
‘You could try him again. Ask him that.’
‘We’ll try when we’ve spoken to Alison,’ she said. ‘I need to know more first.’
He could see he wasn’t going to get her out of the idea. He sighed. Now wasn’t the time to remind her that, in actual fact, they had far worse problems to deal with than the death of her mother. He had an image of the pile of dead bodies, lying there in the open on the island, where they had left them. They would be there, rotting, until they told someone about it all. ‘Where does she live?’ he asked. ‘Where does Alison live?’
‘In the suburbs. Woluwe St Pierre. It’s only ten minutes away. Will you come with me?’ He realised she was still holding his hand. She hadn’t let go since they were in the office with Hulpe.
24
Stefan Meyer was in the ground-floor bathroom of Alison Spencer’s place, in the quiet, affluent suburbs at the eastern edge of Brussels. He was on his knees, crouched over an open toilet, vomiting violently, his arms and legs shaking.
Through in the main room of the same floor Alison Spencer herself was flat on her stomach, her body twitching, a thin trickle of vomit coming from between her lips, her eyes closed. Her heart was still beating, but Stefan didn’t know that, because he had been unable to go anywhere near her from the moment she had clutched at her chest and rolled off her sofa on to the floor, gasping like she was choking. He had watched in horror as she had implored him to help in a feeble, cracking voice, a hand stretched out to him. Then she had grasped the truth as he sat there immobile, refusing to go to her. She had accused him with a look of hatred, spitting out the words with rasping breaths, then keeled over on to her front and lay panting. He had only been able to move when she had stopped trying to speak, when her chest was no longer heaving, and though he knew then that he should have bent down and tested her vital signs, assured himself that she definitely was dead, he couldn’t do it. He had run in here instead. If he hadn’t run in here he would have spewed all over the floor.
It hadn’t been like it was with Liz Wellbeck at all. Liz had already been asleep when the drug had started to work,
and he had been downstairs, out of the way. On the monitor showing her bed he had watched as her body jerked around. She had started to shout, crying out her daughter’s name, over and over again, but he had switched the sound off, then switched the TV screen off too. He hadn’t wanted to watch. Instead he kept his eyes on the heart-rate monitor and waited until it was a still, flat line. Only then had he gone up to the room.
This wasn’t what he was meant to be doing. None of it. All his life he had looked after people, never harmed them. He put both his hands in his hair and yanked on it, pulling until the roots started to give. He started to scream with the pain, but it wasn’t enough. He pushed himself off the toilet and banged his head off the mirror above the sink, reeling back then headbutting it again with all his force. The mirror cracked and some pieces clattered into the sink. A few shards stuck in his skin. He stood trembling in front of the distorted image, watching the blood seep down his forehead. He shouldn’t have done that, he realised. He was leaving his traces here, his DNA. How was he going to explain that if they asked him?
But they wouldn’t ask him. His uncle – Monsieur Hulpe – had assured him. They would assume it was a burglary gone wrong, that the woman had suffered a heart attack with the shock. The drug he had given her was almost impossible to detect, unless you were specifically testing for it, and they didn’t do that. They hadn’t tested Liz for it and her body was in the ground now.
Still, leaving blood was reckless. He had to clean it up. He took deep breaths, pulling his mind from the pain and trying desperately to think. He took a towel and pressed it against his forehead. What else had his uncle told him? There were things he had to do, things to remember. The security system. There were cameras at the front gates and doors, recording. The recordings would be somewhere in the house. He had to find them. And the envelope, the letter from Liz Wellbeck. He had to find that too. That was why he was here. Because Liz had told this woman something, maybe told her everything, everything she knew or suspected. She’d got a letter out to Alison Spencer, just three weeks ago. She’d used the woman who brought the food from the basement kitchens. So maybe Liz had known what was going on, known that his uncle had stopped the treatments – the chemo, the radiation therapy. They were letting her die and had been doing it for nearly three months.
But she hadn’t gone quickly enough. So then his uncle had told him to put the chemical into her drip. It was his idea, his fault. Bernard Hulpe. Everything was his fault. He hated his uncle, hated the way he spoke to him like he was a retarded six-year-old. He bent his head and started to cry about it, uncontrollably. This woman – Alison Spencer – had done nothing. Absolutely nothing. He’d given her the drug because his uncle had told him to. Because once you started you couldn’t stop, you had to follow through. They’d got rid of Liz then found out this woman had the letter, that she knew something. So that had to be dealt with. His uncle had stood over him, shouting at him, blaming him because she’d got the letter out.
But Alison Spencer had let him in today like he was an old friend – so whatever it was she knew his uncle must have lied to him, because she hadn’t looked at him like he was a killer. What was it she knew? He had to search this place, find everything Liz had sent her recently. There wasn’t time to cry over her. If this all went wrong then the police would come for him. Who then would care for Lancelot and Guinevere? He was the only person who loved them. The dogs were his life. His real life. They would be taken away, destroyed. He couldn’t stand that. He would not be able to live with himself if that happened.
And Liz Wellbeck had only herself to blame. That bitch. He had been making her food, changing her bed, fetching and carrying for her for over a year. Servicing her insane ideas about infection and sterilisation. She had been a lunatic long before she was dying of the cancer – everything had to be spotless, sanitised, disinfected. She had money enough to employ a whole army of nurses and cleaners, but during the last six months had in fact sacked everyone else. She wanted just Stefan. She wanted him to do everything, night and day. Foolishly, he had imagined this implied some kind of trust. Now, he knew, it was just control. The fewer servants she had, the more effectively she could control them.
He had spent his entire day cleaning. The whole floor she lived on had stunk of disinfectant. It was the only smell she could bear. She had to have different shoes for each different part of the place, special baths of disinfectant to wash her hands and feet. She couldn’t touch anything without washing her hands or wearing rubber gloves. They had got through three thousand rubber gloves and disposable slippers a month. He’d had no life away from her. Nine hours a day he had put up with it, living that life, cleaning and scrubbing and sterilising her world. In the last months he had even wiped her arse, bathed her, cleaned the spittle off her chin, spoonfed her. She would have died anyway. Anyone could see that. You didn’t need to be a doctor. At the end she couldn’t even walk. The treatment halted, she had slipped into decay suddenly, over a space of no more than two weeks. Her brain was scrambled. There was cancer all over her, his uncle said, she was riddled with it.
But ten days ago she had stared at him as he changed her pillows and started to cackle like a witch. ‘You’ll get nothing,’ she’d shouted suddenly in that coarse American accent. ‘Nothing. You and that quack. You’ll be out on the fucking street.’
He had tried to soothe her, thinking it was the illness, but she had pushed him away, lashed out at him. She had never been like that before. ‘Your dogs will die,’ she’d said. ‘They’ll shoot them. They’ll hang you and shoot your fucking dogs.’ He had stood gasping, stunned, not sure how to deal with it. She had sunk back into herself then, and he had waited until he thought she was asleep then tried to arrange the pillows, but as soon as he stepped near her hand had caught his arm and held on to it with a grip like a claw. ‘You think I like you?’ she hissed. ‘You think I don’t know what you two are doing? I fucking hate you. I hate you both. You’ll get nothing off me, nothing.’
He had reported it all to his uncle, who had made some enquiries, probably with her husband. Her husband – Sir Frederick Eaton – was an English gentleman, always polite, always supportive. Though never there. A very busy man. That was when they had discovered it was true. Everything she had told him was true. She had made a will and left them nothing. Every promise she had made them she had broken.
That hadn’t bothered him as it had his uncle. His uncle had been screaming and shouting about it. Stefan hadn’t been able to get over her ingratitude. He had cared for this odd woman like she was his own dying mother, but she hated him. How could that be? He didn’t understand, but it had made it easier to give her the drug. That and the idea she was going to die anyway.
But this woman – Alison Spencer – was different. She hadn’t hated him, she’d done nothing against him. He would rot in hell for this, for what he had done to her. He started to feel sick all over again, his head spinning. Don’t think about it, his uncle had said. Just do it. But he couldn’t keep his thoughts off her. He had slipped it into her drink and sat there with her, trying to seem normal, chatting, waiting for it to work. He was worse than the Nazi doctors they showed those documentaries about on Télé Deux.
He pulled his mobile phone from his trouser pocket and realised it had been ringing for some time. He could see from the number it was his uncle. He switched it off. He was meant to have come here and done this abominable thing several days ago, but hadn’t had the courage. He didn’t dare tell his uncle that. He wished now he had stayed at home today. This was all a mistake.
He started to tidy the blood, quickly. Then thought better of it. Time was against him. Two people – a couple – lived and worked here, besides the dead woman, though they occupied the smaller building at the gates that he hadn’t even been in. Her housekeepers. Right now they were enjoying a vacation somewhere that his uncle had somehow arranged. So there was little chance of interruption from them. But there was always a chance that Alison Spencer had
other staff that they didn’t know about. He couldn’t hang around. And he had to get back to the dogs, give them their lunch. They would be going crazy, barking and scratching. He couldn’t leave them too long. They would need a walk as well. They depended on him. They were like his children. His beautiful little dogs.
He stood at the sink and itemised again what he needed to do. The priority was to find the letter from Liz Wellbeck. That was all that really mattered.
He started to open the drawers in front of him, pulling them right out and tipping the contents on to the floor. He would have to do this with the whole house. Turn it upside down, search everywhere. It would take hours.
25
Sixteen minutes later, Tom was standing on the pavement right outside Alison Spencer’s house, Sara beside him.
In a street full of spacious properties, each set back from the road in its own grounds, screened by mature trees, this particular one looked significant. Tom put it at roughly ten bedrooms. Certainly big enough to be a small hotel. There were eight-foot wrought-iron gates with security cameras, and then a double-winged building, about twice the size of the semi Tom had grown up in, but that appeared to be only a gatehouse. About one hundred feet behind it was the main event, a squat, three-storey, French-style miniature chateau, complete with towers and decorated archways, three sides partially enclosing a courtyard. Past it Tom could see the beginnings of neat, ornamental hedges and closely cut lawns, stretching back to a wooded area about two hundred yards past the main building. ‘This belongs to your mother’s PA?’ he asked, slightly incredulous.
‘No. She just lives here,’ Sara said. ‘This belongs to the family. She’s looking after it, I suppose.’
‘So this will be yours one day?’
She looked at him and he turned red. ‘Sorry,’ he said. Her mother was dead, the will was being read on Friday. It was possible this would belong to her before the end of the week.