Rae got out of the passenger door and stood at the kerbside. She craned her neck to watch the slender figure as it made its way along the esplanade.
‘She’s just stopped at a parked car. A red VW Golf? Isn’t that hers? She’s just got in. I think she might be crying.’
Sophie nodded. ‘Okay. Let’s forget about her for the time being and concentrate on Dorothy.’
From outside the Lake Guesthouse looked staid, even sombre, but the interior was much brighter. There was a light and airy feel to the reception area, and Sophie and Rae could see the modern furniture in the lounge. The hotel looked well-kept. A middle-aged man with a goatee beard and skin like smooth chocolate came out of a sitting room and walked towards the reception desk.
‘Can I help you?’ he asked. His voice was warm and friendly and he spoke with a pronounced Caribbean accent.
‘We’re police officers. We’re looking for Dorothy Kitson,’ Rae said, and held out her warrant card.
Concern flashed across his face. ‘Just a moment,’ he said. He came out from behind the desk and went into the lounge.
Sophie and Rae heard a murmur of voices. The discussion seemed to last longer than might be expected in such a situation. Finally the man returned.
‘She’s in the lounge. She’s very upset by something another visitor has just said to her. Please treat her gently, won’t you?’ He looked at them, almost pleading, his gaze settling on Sophie. She smiled thinly.
‘That will entirely depend upon the level of co-operation we get, Mr . .?’
‘Waters. Larry Waters. I’m the assistant manager here and I’ve become rather fond of Dorothy since she arrived. She’s a bit fragile.’
She nodded, looking at him closely. ‘Are you in a relationship with her, Mr Waters?’
He nodded. Silently he pointed to the open doorway. The two detectives walked into the sunlit room, whose windows looked across the esplanade to an expanse of blue sea beyond. There was only one occupant. She was sitting in an easy chair at a window table, staring out to sea. Her fingers were nervously clutching at the sleeve of her dress. As they approached they could see red blotches on her face and tears in her eyes. She glanced up at them, and her eyes rested on Sophie. She looked frightened and vulnerable.
‘I know who you are,’ she whispered. ‘I knew you’d find me, ever since I saw you talking to the vicar in the church.’
‘We spotted your sister leaving. It’s just a coincidence that we came at the same time. We hadn’t arranged it.’
Dorothy nodded slowly. ‘I’ve never seen her like that, not ever. I’ve never seen her cry like that. I’ve seen her in every other mood. She’s been livid with anger, upset, disappointed, frustrated, happy, elated. All those, but never so shocked. I couldn’t calm her. She kept hitting me.’
That explains the bright red marks, Sophie thought. ‘What’s your background, Dorothy?’
‘According to my sister I’m a waster who ruins things. I ruin everything, and she’s right. Everything I’m involved with goes wrong and falls apart sooner or later. Jobs, education, marriages, relationships, everything. I couldn’t stick at any jobs I got. For a long time I’ve just done cleaning jobs.’
‘Did you have plans to be an actress too?’
Dorothy shook her head. ‘I wanted to be an English teacher, but I failed my university exams and had to leave.’
Sophie nodded. ‘Why does Pauline think you ruin things?’
‘You know why. You know what I’ve done. Pauline never knew about the twins until you told her. I kept it from her. I was terrified of how she’d react if she found out. Even when you found the bodies I convinced her they were some teenagers. I may not like her very much but she is my sister, and she’s never done anything truly evil. Not like me.’
‘How did it happen?’
There was a long silence. ‘John and I were together then. We were happy. But when the twins came back they changed everything. It was too sudden and I couldn’t cope. When they were naughty I used to lock them in the cellar. Then winter came. The cellar was freezing and I lit an old paraffin heater so they’d stay warm. I found them the next morning.’ She began to sob. ‘I never meant it to happen. I was frantic. I called John and he went berserk. He told me he’d deal with their bodies but it was finished between us.’
‘But why? Why didn’t you just call the police or an ambulance?’
‘What good would an ambulance have done? They were dead from the fumes. John said it must have been carbon monoxide and I should never have used a paraffin heater in such a poor state and I’d been totally negligent. Anyway, no one knew they were here. When they came I just got a phone call at my flat telling me to be at the bus station at a particular time. No explanation. And there they were. No one with them. Someone had brought them back from Hong Kong, brought them to Dorchester and abandoned them in the café. They told me it was their aunt and that she was already on her way back to Hong Kong. So I brought them to Finch Cottage. It was empty at the time and my flat had no spare room. I didn’t know what to do. I was waiting for Pauline to get back from the States because I just couldn’t handle them. I’ve never been any good with children.’
‘So you locked them in the cellar? Often?’
‘No. Only a couple of times. It was what our parents used to do to Pauline and me if we were naughty.’
‘There was a metal ring set into the wall at the far end of the cellar. Did you ever use it? Did you tie the children to it?’
There was a silence that seemed to last for minutes. Dorothy’s voice was a whisper. ‘I couldn’t let them run around down there, could I? There was all kinds of stuff that could have been dangerous. It could have harmed them. It was only a few times. They could have hurt themselves otherwise.’
Sophie closed her eyes, thinking hard. Rae still had her mouth open in shock. Finally Sophie spoke. ‘Dorothy, you’ll need to come back to Dorchester with us. You need a solicitor and I’ll need a signed statement from you. Do you understand that?’
Dorothy nodded. She looked at the detectives through her tears. ‘Maybe it’s time. I’ve hated myself for twenty years. I couldn’t go on any more, not once Pauline found out.’
‘Did you tell her what happened?’
There was a nod. ‘She didn’t say anything after that. She just started crying and she stared at me. I tried to hug her but she just pushed me away and kept hitting me. She hates me. She’ll hate me forever.’ She paused. ‘I deserve it all. I don’t know how I’ve managed to live for twenty years after what I’ve done.’ She sank back into the chair, her head dropping onto her chest.
‘What about John Wethergill, Dorothy? Can you shed any light on his death?’
There was no answer.
* * *
Late in the afternoon Sophie and Rae finally made the drive to Maiden Castle. One of Europe’s largest iron-age hill forts, its brooding presence dominates the land to the south west of Dorchester. And there, parked under the shoulder of this monstrous structure, was a bright red Volkswagen Golf.
‘Thank goodness,’ Sophie muttered. ‘I was starting to worry, wondering where she was and what she was doing. Then I remembered what Jill Freeman told me.’
‘But the place is huge, ma’am. She could be anywhere. Shouldn’t we just wait here? She’s bound to come back, isn’t she?’
Sophie frowned. ‘To tell you the truth, I’m a bit worried about her. I think I may have misjudged her. I want to have a look around just in case, but you stay here.’
Sophie got out her pink wellies from the car’s boot and slipped her feet into a pair of well-worn, bright pink socks. Rae smiled.
‘Chosen by Jade when she was twelve,’ Sophie explained. ‘I need a new pair of socks but I’ll need to plan the changeover like a military strategy. She used to view these socks and wellies as the most important symbol of our mother-daughter relationship. Dare I suggest a new pair for my birthday?’
‘I noticed that Barry tends to be a bit nervous ar
ound Jade,’ Rae said.
‘He has every reason to be. She can floor any man with one withering comment, if she chooses. God knows where she got that particular skill from, certainly not from me. Martin has taken her to too many Shakespeare plays, I expect.’ She paused. ‘If Pauline arrives back here before me, don’t let her go. Here’re my car keys. Block her in if necessary. And if any Jobsworth arrives to lock that gate, threaten him or her with a night in the cells for obstructing the police in their duties.’
Sophie pulled her coat more tightly around her and set off in an anticlockwise direction, guessing that most people did the circuit the opposite way. Not that there were many other people. The afternoon had become overcast. It would be raining soon, she thought, and the wind will start to pick up. She chose the top rampart: from there she should be able to see the lower sections and, with luck, would be able to spot Pauline Stopley. The views were spectacular, despite the cloud cover and the gradually dimming light. Sophie promised herself a visit on a sunny day. She walked on, occasionally meeting small groups of people coming around the site in the opposite direction, but even these grew less as time wore on. Where was the woman? Twenty minutes had passed. That meant that she was about a third of the way around the huge site. Assuming Pauline was walking clockwise, and had at least a twenty minute start on her, she should have met her by now. Maybe she was one of those awkward people who always perform circuits in the unexpected direction. In that case she’d already be back with Rae.
Sophie stopped to gather her breath, ready for the next part of the circuit. Then she saw someone sitting on an outcrop below her, half hidden in shadow. The person was wrapped in a dark blue coat, of exactly the same shade that Pauline had been wearing earlier in the afternoon. Sophie stepped down the grassy bank. The actress heard her footsteps and half turned. She moved to one side, making room for Sophie to sit beside her.
‘I saw you earlier,’ Pauline murmured. ‘Back in Weymouth. I was in my car but I couldn’t drive because I was shaking so much. I got out again and that’s when I saw you, just as you entered the hotel. I needed some air, to be alone with my thoughts. So I came here.’
Sophie nodded. The view to the west stretched out in front of them. Miles of undulating countryside under a sky of darkening, scudding clouds.
‘You know, I guess. She told you?’ Pauline’s voice was thin, as if she was having trouble forcing the words out.
‘Yes. She’s in custody. We’ve charged her with murder, but if what she says is found to be true, it might drop to manslaughter. That won’t be up to me. The prosecution service will decide.’
‘I can’t get my head round it. I just can’t comprehend it. For twenty years she’s been holding on to that secret. My lovely twins. I know you and everybody else are going to say that they weren’t mine, I was only their stepmother, but in the years I had them they became mine. Do you know what it’s like to lose children like that? To realise that you’ll never see them again? Do you?’
Sophie slowly nodded. She answered quietly. ‘I lost a baby twelve years ago, halfway through the pregnancy. He would have been my only son because we already had two daughters. When I lost him I howled the place down for hours. One of the student nurses thought I might be in need of a psychiatrist. The older and wiser staff took her aside and told her to leave me alone and I’d get over it. I did get over it, after a fashion. But I still miss him. Every day I miss him. He was my own flesh and blood. My only son. But it’s true. The pain does lessen with time. What was razor sharp and could shred my emotions like tissue paper has changed to a dull ache.’
Pauline looked at Sophie. ‘I checked with the Hong Kong police every three months to see if they’d been traced. Did you know that? For twenty years. And they were here all the time, in a hole in the ground, put there by my own sister.’ She shook her head from side to side as if to clear her brain of its terrible thoughts.
‘I know. We were in contact with the Hong Kong authorities yesterday and they told us. They also told us that you’d visited at least once a year, every year since the twins vanished. I spoke myself to the officer in charge this morning. What can I say?’
Pauline burst into tears so suddenly that Sophie was taken aback. She put her arm round the other woman’s shoulder and felt the great heaving sobs that racked through her body. ‘Life can be a totally fucked up experience for some of us, Pauline, and not due to our own actions. Christ, don’t I know it. All I can say to you is, welcome to the club.’ She sat in silence for a while, her arm still around Pauline’s shoulder. ‘We need to know it all, Pauline. Not just what you know happened all those years ago, but what you suspect happened. You, Dorothy, Richard, John and Li Hua. We need to get to the bottom of it. Do you want to tell me now or come back to the station with me? Either way, it’s time to be honest. Were you having an affair with Richard before Li Hua died?’
Pauline turned to face Sophie, tears still running down her pale cheeks. She nodded slightly. ‘He was so unhappy at what she’d become. She’d turned into a first class bitch, he said. She’d changed completely from when they first married. She treated him like dirt and the children not much better. He couldn’t put up with it any longer.’
‘So what happened? Was it him in the car that night?’
Pauline turned to face the dark clouds, scudding in from the west. ‘We never talked about it. Just the fact that she was dead made everything right for us. Why would I want to find out the gory details? And he didn’t want me involved, I could sense that. If I came to know anything I’d become an accessory, so I didn’t ask and he didn’t tell.’
‘But you picked up clues? You guessed it was him driving the car that killed her?’
Pauline took Sophie’s arm away. She seemed to draw herself together and stared coldly at her. ‘Do you really think I’m going to tell you anything that would confirm that my only true soul-mate was a murderer? Do you really think I’m that feeble-minded? I loved him. I still love the memory of him. I loved those two children of his. That’s all you need to know, and that’s all I’m telling you. If you want to interview me under some kind of caution then that’s your choice. But don’t expect me to surrender up my pride either in myself or the man I adored. Because that’s all I’m left with, and I’m not letting it go.’
There was a long silence. Sophie asked, ‘what happened that night last week between you and John after you left the Italian restaurant? Is there anything you want to add to what you told me last week?’
Pauline took a breath. ‘John finally realised who I was. We’d been talking about our backgrounds. He already knew I worked for the Arts Council, but no more than that. I let slip on our way out that I used to be an actress. It took him a moment or two to twig. I was amused that it took so long. We’d spent a couple of hours or so together when we first met on the walk, I spent the night with him at his flat, we’d just spent a couple more hours talking at that restaurant, and he still hadn’t caught on. I thought I was famous. Clearly not. Well, not among hardware shop owners, anyway.’
Sophie was exasperated. ‘Why didn’t you tell me this at our last interview? I could charge you with wasting police time.’
‘But you won’t, will you? Because you, Detective Chief Inspector Sophie Whatnot, are too much like me. Manipulative and devious maybe, but not bloody-minded, not evil. I wish you were the sister I never had, not that selfish, murdering, child-killing waste of space, Dorothy fucking Kitson.’
Sophie stood up. She was beginning to feel cold and the air was becoming misty. They’d need to start walking back to the car park soon. ‘So you did target John deliberately? Despite your denial last week?’
‘I wanted to find out what had been going on at Finch Cottage. I wanted to know whose bodies they were, and what had been going on. He’d been the gardener there for yonks, for Christ’s sake. The first press reports didn’t say they were children, just that bodies had been found.’
‘Why didn’t you ask your sister? She still had a conn
ection because of her cleaning work.’ Sophie held out an arm and helped Pauline to her feet.
‘I did and she told me she’d heard they were the bodies of two teenagers, probably tramps. Anyway, it’s been an absolute rule of mine since we were children. Never ask Dorothy for a favour of any kind. It’ll just get thrown back in your face when you least expect it. Never ask her for information. It’ll be twisted and bent. I wish I’d spat in her ugly face back there in Weymouth, but I was just too shocked by it all.’
Sophie took out her mobile phone and called Rae. ‘We’re just starting back,’ she said. As the two women climbed back up to the footpath, a light rain began to fall.
Chapter 36: Money Matters
Monday, week 4
‘The facts are, Barry, that both sisters did very well financially at that time. Pauline would have inherited the property in Bristol after her husband died. Assuming he had life insurance, she’d have no mortgage repayments to make, so she’d have got the lot. She and Dorothy jointly owned Finch Cottage which was sold soon after our assumed date for the death of the twins. Pauline had also completed a long stint on Broadway which would have earned her a tidy sum. They’d have been swimming in money. And this was at the time that Wethergill got this mysterious deposit in his account, the one that allowed him to buy his shop. But it doesn’t stop there. That flat of his was worth a lot and if you think about the quality of the furniture and fittings, it doesn’t add up. His shop wasn’t doing that well, not according to the figures I’ve seen. And we’ve been puzzling for days about how he got the money to start up his business.’
Rae looked at her boss. ‘What are you suggesting, ma’am?’
Sophie tapped her fingers on the desktop. ‘I wonder if he was blackmailing Dorothy, and over a long time period. She’s not got a huge amount in her bank account and her home is very threadbare. What did she do with that cash? It’s not obvious at the moment.’
‘So Wethergill seems to have much more disposable income than he should have, and Dorothy had much less? And blackmail would give Dorothy enough motive for killing him, if that’s what you’re suggesting? It’s a highly plausible theory. But do we have any evidence for it?’ Marsh was being his usual pragmatic self.
BURIED CRIMES: a gripping detective thriller full of twists and turns Page 24