by Roberta Kray
Worried that Esther might spot them – in her present mood she was more than capable of ordering him off the premises – Lita quickly led him round the house to the back lawn and then chose the path leading down to the lake. She wanted to go somewhere quiet, somewhere she was sure they wouldn’t be discovered. In all the time she’d lived here, she had never known Esther go near the water; it was a place with too many bad memories for her.
‘Mr Fury didn’t warn you off, then?’
Lita looked at him. ‘Why would he do that?’
‘Some people don’t take kindly to the past being raked up.’
‘Mal liked your uncle. I’m sure he wants to help if he can.’
‘Perhaps.’
Lita threw him another glance, this one more wary than the last. ‘And what’s that supposed to mean? He agreed to talk to you, didn’t he? That’s hardly a sign of not wanting to help.’
‘It depends on how you look at it.’
They came to the wooden bench and Lita sat down. She was starting to wonder if Esther had a point. Maybe Nick Trent was only here to cause trouble. She waited until he was seated too before asking, ‘And how do you look at it?’
‘With an open mind.’
‘It isn’t sounding that way.’
‘In my experience, such as it is, I’ve found that people with something to hide want to know what someone else might know – if you get my drift. That’s why they agree to talk to you. It doesn’t have anything to do with openness or honesty. It’s all connected to self-preservation.’
Lita rolled her eyes. ‘I think you’re being completely ridiculous. No one has anything to hide. Why would they? Mal and Esther are victims too. You don’t even know for sure if Stanley was deliberately killed and already you’re throwing accusations around.’
‘Hey,’ he said, raising his hands for a second, ‘I’m not accusing anyone. I’m just being straight with you, telling you how it is. Would you rather I lied? Would you rather I was sly and devious, creeping about, saying one thing and doing another? Only that’s not my style. I prefer to be upfront, to put my cards on the table. What happened to Stanley… Well, something isn’t right about it.’
‘People have accidents,’ she said. ‘What makes you think this is any different?’
‘Did you know he rang here on the day he died?’
Lita shook her head. ‘There’s nothing unusual about that. He was working for Mal. I’m sure he rang him all the time.’
Nick Trent leaned back and stretched out his legs. ‘Except that no one can remember this particular call.’
‘It was five years ago. Could you remember a call from that far back?’
‘I’d remember if the person died the same day. I mean, that kind of thing tends to stick in your mind, doesn’t it?’
Lita didn’t like the way the conversation was going. ‘I don’t know what you’re getting at.’
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Forget it. I’m just thinking aloud. You ever heard of a bloke called Joe Quinn?’
The sudden change of tack caught her off guard. ‘What’s this got to do with him?’
‘I’ve no idea. But he paid Stanley a visit at his office. There was a note about it in his files. He was a very meticulous man, my uncle. He recorded everything.’
‘Joe Quinn’s a gangster,’ Lita said.
‘Was a gangster. He’s been dead for years.’
This was news to Lita, but then she hadn’t exactly kept up with events in Kellston. And she couldn’t really say that his death brought her any grief. The man had been a brute, an animal. Everyone had been afraid of him. ‘Really? I didn’t know that. But what could he have wanted with Stanley?’
‘To warn him off.’
‘Off what?’
‘I guess that’s the million-dollar question. Stanley wasn’t sure, but he thought it was to do with Billy Martin. The guy disappeared years back and hasn’t been heard of since.’
‘Yes, he asked me about him. The name didn’t mean anything. I didn’t… I can’t remember my mum ever mentioning him.’
Nick Trent gave her a strange look.
‘What?’ she asked.
‘I thought… No one told you?’
‘Told me what?’
Nick pulled a face. ‘I thought you knew.’
‘Knew what?’ Lita gave a sigh of exasperation. ‘For God’s sake, just tell me, whatever it is. I thought you were all for being honest and straightforward.’
He took a quick breath. ‘Okay, she was married to him, right? When she was young your mum was married to Billy Martin.’
Lita barked out a laugh. ‘No she wasn’t. She wasn’t ever married. What makes you think that?’
‘Because I’ve got a copy of the marriage certificate. They ran off to Gretna Green when she was sixteen. It didn’t last – she left him – and later they got divorced.’
‘What?’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t realise. I thought you would have known.’
All kinds of thoughts were running through Lita’s head. ‘No, she never told me. No one told me.’ A tiny flower of hope blossomed in her chest. ‘So is he my dad, then? Is this Billy Martin my father?’
Nick shook his head. ‘No, there’s nothing to indicate that. She left him when he was in jail and that was a good few years before you came along. Then he showed up again in Kellston when you were about five, stayed a few months and disappeared again. Stanley tried to trace him, but he didn’t have any luck. Word must have got to Joe Quinn about it, and he didn’t seem too pleased. He threatened Stanley, told him to keep his nose out of his business.’
Lita swallowed down her disappointment about having perhaps found her father – although the jail bit didn’t sound too good – and stood up and walked over to the water’s edge. She gazed out across the lake for a while before glancing back at Nick again. ‘You think Joe had something to with Billy’s disappearance?’
‘Maybe.’
‘And Stanley’s death?’
‘It’s not impossible.’
‘But how is any of that linked to Kay’s abduction?’
Nick stood up and came to stand beside her. ‘I haven’t a clue. Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with it.’ He paused and then said, ‘Does the name Teddy mean anything to you?’
Lita probably hesitated a little too long – it had to be the same Teddy she’d heard being discussed at lunch – but then shook her head. ‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘Teddy Heath,’ he said.
‘No,’ she said again. But then the name suddenly clicked into place. She remembered her mother rambling on about him in her less lucid moments, but of course everyone – including herself – had thought she was referring to Ted Heath. She frowned. ‘You know, maybe my mum did mention him, but I always presumed she meant the prime minister. Well, he was at the time.’
Nick Trent’s eyes brightened with interest. ‘Really? What did she say?’
‘It was a long time ago. That he was following her, spying on her? But she said that about all sorts of people. When she was ill, she got confused about stuff. Does it mean anything? Do you think it could have been the same guy?’
‘It’s not that uncommon a name, but there might be a connection. Unfortunately, our Mr Heath seems to have disappeared too.’
A light breeze ruffled the surface of the lake. Preoccupied by their own thoughts, a silence fell between them. It was Lita who eventually broke it. ‘What do you think happened to Kay?’
‘Stanley thought she drowned on the day of the kidnap.’
‘And what do you think?’
‘Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t. But of course, that’s where you come into it. Brenda Cecil had you in the frame as the missing child and it was Stanley’s job to investigate the claim.’
Lita gave a dry laugh. ‘He was barking up the wrong tree there.’
‘It would appear so, yes. But he had to follow through, especially after he discovered Angela wasn’t your actual birth mother.’<
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The words came out of the blue and hit Lita like a punch to her guts. ‘W-what?’ she stammered hoarsely. ‘What are you saying? What do you mean she wasn’t —’
‘Shit,’ he said quickly. ‘I didn’t… I presumed…’ Nick’s face twisted, his mouth widening into a grimace. ‘I’m really sorry. I honestly thought you knew.’
‘It’s a lie!’ Lita yelled at him. ‘You’re talking rubbish! Why are you saying these things? What’s wrong with you?’ Her hands clenched into two tight fists. It couldn’t be true. She wouldn’t allow it to be. ‘You’re just a vile, nasty person, trying to stir up trouble. You’re sick, do you know that? You’re sick in the head.’
Nick reached out a hand as if to try and console her, but then dropped his arm back to his side. ‘I wouldn’t have ever wanted you to find out like this. If I’d thought, even for a minute that —’
‘You’re twisted,’ she continued. ‘You come here and… How could you? Do you get some kind of kick out of trying to hurt people? Is that it? Is that your game?’
‘If you don’t believe me, ask Mal Fury. Stanley told him all about it.’
Lita’s whole body went cold. She couldn’t move, couldn’t think straight. She felt angry and nauseous and utterly bewildered. He was lying. He had to be. Or he’d just got it horribly wrong. Angela Bruce was Lita’s roots, her flesh and blood, her mother, for God’s sake. And now this disgusting man was trying to snatch away the last good thing from her past. Her mouth opened and closed but no more words came out.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said again.
Lita couldn’t even bear to look at him. She turned away and started to sprint back along the path, her pumps pounding against the path, her chest heaving. When she reached the house, she ran up the steps, through the large reception room and along the corridor to the library. She burst through the door and advanced towards Mal who was sitting by the window.
He stood up, frowning. ‘What is it?’
‘Tell me it isn’t true,’ she said, still trying to catch her breath. ‘Angela was my mother, wasn’t she? She was! Just tell me that she was!’
44
Mal gazed silently back at her with a pained expression. And in that moment Lita knew the answer to her question. She covered her face with her hands as the bottom of her world fell out. The one sure thing in her life and now… It was like losing her mum all over again, the pain as sharp and visceral as the first time.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Sit down,’ Mal said. ‘Please. Let me explain.’
‘I don’t want to sit down.’ Lita paced around the room, trying to come to terms with this devastating truth. Anger bubbled up inside her. ‘How could you have kept it a secret? All these years and… How could you? Didn’t you think I had the right to know? Instead you let me hear it from Nick Trent, a total bloody stranger.’
Mal rose to his feet, shaking his head. ‘I didn’t realise he knew. I swear. He didn’t say anything to me last night, nothing to indicate that —’
‘And that makes it all right, does it? That makes it okay? You’ve lied to me for years. How could you?’
‘That isn’t true.’
Lita wrapped her arms around her chest, her heart beating so hard she thought it would explode. ‘And in what way isn’t it true?’
‘Because we didn’t know for sure, not a hundred per cent. Nothing was ever proved one way or the other. Stanley heard things, was told things, but it was all hearsay. I didn’t want to burden you with that, not after everything you’d been through. Why would I want to put that doubt in your mind when you had so much else to deal with?’
Lita, seeing a glimmer of hope, stopped pacing and stared at him. ‘So Nick Trent could be wrong?’
‘Sit down,’ Mal said again. ‘I’ll tell you everything I know.’
For the next ten minutes Lita sat and listened while Mal went through everything Stanley had discovered. But with each new piece of information – what Ma Fenner and Calvin Cross had said, what the junkie Darren had claimed and what the pathologist remembered – her new-found hope began to flicker and fade. She felt a lump forming in her throat and tried to hold back the tears gathering in her eyes.
‘It sounds pretty cut and dried to me,’ she said, her voice thin and wavering.
‘But not proven. I should have told you, you’re right, and I’m sorry that I didn’t – but I wanted to protect you. She was still your mother in all the important ways. She cared for you as best she could. She loved you.’
‘Not enough to stay with me.’
‘Maybe, if she wasn’t your biological mother, she was scared of the truth coming out, of you being taken away from her. She was ill, confused, probably suffering from some kind of paranoia. And Stanley couldn’t find any official adoption papers. There was nothing definitive, nothing to say that she absolutely wasn’t your mother.’
‘Apart from the fact she couldn’t have children.’
‘Women have been told that before, but still gone on to have them. Doctors aren’t infallible. Sometimes they get it wrong.’
Lita’s heart battled with her head. She desperately wanted to cling on to the slender chance Angela Bruce was her mother but it was becoming increasingly difficult to do so. It was as if the fragile edifice her life had been built on was gradually crumbling. Who was she? Where had she really come from? A hundred questions lobbied for dominance, jostling in her mind, but the one that eventually found its way to her lips seemed odd and irrelevant, like a stranger plucked at random from a crowd.
‘What about this Teddy Heath?’
‘What about him?’
She heard something in the retort – fear, defensiveness – and as she glanced up again, she met Mal’s eyes for a second before his gaze slid away. ‘You were talking about him at lunch. You and Esther.’
‘He has nothing to do with this.’
‘Nick Trent was asking about him.’
‘Forget about it,’ Mal said. ‘It’s not important.’
As the information about her mother began to sink in, Lita’s head started spinning. She couldn’t think in a straight line, couldn’t concentrate properly. Her lungs felt hot and tight as she gulped in a breath. Quickly she jumped to her feet.
‘Lita?’
She shook her head, her mouth too dry to speak. When she looked around she felt like the walls were closing in on her. She had to get out. She was suffocating. Her legs were unsteady as she stumbled across the room. When she opened the door she had the impression Mal was saying something else, but her brain couldn’t process it.
Lita wasn’t sure how she got upstairs. By the time she reached her bedroom, she was on the point of collapse. Hot tears were streaming down her face. She lay on the bed, wrapped her arms around her knees and curled up into a ball. Great heaving sobs racked her body. She cried for a long time until she was too exhausted to carry on.
For a while she lay and stared blankly at the peacocks on the wall. Her own breathing filled the silence, a weird rasping sound. She felt desolate: alone, betrayed, abandoned. As if her heart had been ripped out, a sense of emptiness lay at the centre of her, a dreadful void that could never be filled.