by Rebecca Tope
Drew propped his daughter in one of the armchairs and let Genevieve present the box to her. ‘The tinfoil’s a good idea,’ he said, conciliatory. ‘So long as you don’t want to use it again.’
‘Plenty more where that came from,’ she said. She seemed to be in efficient mode. ‘Now – to business,’ she announced. ‘I’ll make some coffee later on, but I think we should get started.’
They settled into opposite ends of the deep-cushioned sofa, Drew twisting slightly awkwardly to see the woman’s face. He waited for her to make an opening. It came quite quickly.
‘I think you ought to have a bit of background,’ she said. ‘It’ll explain the way things have been between me and my mother. We haven’t been at all close – not since I was just a child. You know about my handicapped brother, Nathan?’ Her face had registered distaste, dislike – even disgust, as she spoke the name. But she continued calmly, ‘He was born when my mother was over forty. My father died while she was still pregnant.’ She looked hard at the blank television screen before continuing. ‘I was twelve. We were together in a terrible car crash—’
‘Yes,’ Drew assured her. ‘Dr Jarvis told me.’
‘It goes back even further than that,’ she said, with a frown. ‘It was all doomed from the start. Or from when she got pregnant again.’ Drew inwardly shuddered, disturbed at the echo of his own life. Genevieve went on, ‘She didn’t want another child, and was in a foul mood for months. When he was born so damaged, she just – forgot about us. She stopped being any kind of a mother to me or my sister. We were twelve and fourteen – which is a time when a girl really needs her mother. I can hardly remember a single conversation with her throughout my teenage years. It was all Nathan. He kept her up half the night, so she was always tired. When he got to five or six, he was supposed to go to a special school, but he had hysterics every time the bus stopped outside our gate, so he hardly ever went. She let him do anything he liked. But she didn’t love him. He just wasn’t lovable.’
Drew concentrated hard. So far the story tallied with what Dr Jarvis had told him, but that hardly proved anything. He struggled to remember his supposed role: he was here to try to discover where Genevieve’s mother was now, and whether it really was her in the mortuary at the Royal Victoria Hospital. It seemed reasonable to be told some of the woman’s background, but it was beginning to feel as if Genevieve was unloading all this personal stuff simply because she had finally found a listening ear. Am I a detective or a psychiatrist? he wondered. He also wondered how it was that none of this story had emerged when he’d known her before. Had pregnancy caused her to re-evaluate her childhood? All he could remember her telling him then was that she had a glamorous-sounding job with the BBC. He’d listened out once or twice for her name since then – but as she worked for Radio Three, the opportunity seldom presented itself; Karen still felt young enough for Radio One to be her channel of choice, and Drew had a growing taste for Radio Four.
‘I suppose if it was happening now, I’d have got into drugs and ended up homeless on the streets,’ Genevieve went on melodramatically. ‘But there wasn’t quite such scope then for going off the rails. Instead I immersed myself in schoolwork. My sister got herself a boyfriend when she was fifteen and more or less moved in with his family. She married him at eighteen, and I married Willard when I was twenty-three. We both – Brigid and me – had the same needs, but we found wildly different ways of fulfilling them.’ She laughed, with a hard edge that made Drew wince. ‘She had five children, and I got myself a career. I’ve done well enough in that respect. I’m a senior producer now.’
‘And then Nathan died,’ Drew prompted her. ‘Not so long ago.’
‘It was ages ago,’ she contradicted him. ‘Seven or eight years, at least. He was twenty-two, and getting more impossible all the time. It was such a relief when I heard. I remember thinking that at last I’d get my mother back. But it didn’t work out like that.’
Discrepancy thought Drew with a stab of excitement. Though on consideration, it didn’t seem enough to mean anything. Dr Jarvis had been vague about the length of time, he remembered.
‘Did you hear how he died, exactly?’ Drew asked carefully.
‘Pneumonia, or something. They always said he wouldn’t live to adulthood.’
‘Did you go to his funeral?’
She stared at him, her expression suddenly defensive. ‘No I didn’t. I never visited him in hospital, either. I can’t bear hospitals—’ She tailed off, her face pale, and looked down at her bump. She looked very solemn – almost afraid, Drew thought. ‘It feels like history repeating itself,’ she burst out. ‘As if this is Nathan all over again. I’m almost exactly the same age she was. And don’t tell me I’m crazy.’
‘I wasn’t going to. It’s a very unnerving coincidence.’
‘Now, here comes the tricky bit. You probably remember my saying I thought Willard might have killed her?’
Drew nodded, letting his face reveal how impossible it would be to forget such a detail.
‘The fact is, he always had a thing about my mother.’
‘A thing?’
Genevieve flipped a hank of hair over her shoulder. ‘He says I imagined it. They first met when Nathan was about sixteen. My grandmother died and Willard insisted we went to that funeral – he said it was stupid to go on refusing to see each other, that it was giving me a complex. Anyway, it turned into a sort of reconciliation exercise, at least at first. I didn’t have quite so many hard feelings towards my mother by then – just couldn’t see that she had much of a place in my life any more. I didn’t see Brigid very often, either.’
‘Your sister,’ Drew confirmed, to show he was keeping up.
‘That’s right. She went to live in Anglesey. She’s still married to Martin and they all live on a sheep farm. I think they eat wild berries and animals that die of old age. They haven’t got any money at all.’
Drew put up a hand to stop her. ‘Then surely it would be very much in her interest to have your mother’s death confirmed? Isn’t there any property to inherit? Isn’t Brigid going to want this business settled properly, even if you don’t?’
‘There isn’t any property,’ Genevieve said shortly. ‘She gave it all away after Nathan died – not that there was very much. Caring for him had cost a fortune, with wheelchairs and all the gadgets he needed. She told everybody she was going to live as a free spirit. An out-of-date hippie. She made it work, which is the surprising part. She has a stronger will than Brigid or me.’ She fell silent, her hands twisting together in agitation.
‘I’m sorry to go on about it,’ Drew persisted, ‘but what was the exact relationship between Willard and your mother?’
‘I’m coming to that,’ she said. ‘Not that I’m going to be able to give a very coherent account. Where was I?’
‘Money, I think. I was wondering whether that was connected with your decision to move house?’
‘Oh, that move!’ she cast her eyes to the ceiling. ‘Willard was so furious when we lost that house. He’d have killed you if he’d found out what you did.’
‘You never told him?’ Drew realised that he hadn’t considered this aspect of his earlier encounter with the Slaters. He remembered Willard Slater’s ice-cold blue eyes, the mild manner which concealed something ruthless and fixed, and felt glad the man remained ignorant of Drew’s treachery.
‘No, I didn’t!’ she said forcefully. ‘I’m not that stupid.’
‘What would he have done?’
‘He’d have watched your wife for signs of pregnancy, and when it didn’t happen, he’d probably have found a way to get back at you.’
‘Except she really did get pregnant three months later.’
‘Willard can count,’ she said flatly. ‘It wouldn’t have placated him. But luckily for you, things went much better for him at work than he’d expected, so we didn’t need to move house after all. He thought we wouldn’t be able to keep up the mortgage payments on this one, when his
contract ran out. He’d been told unofficially that the university weren’t going to renew it, you see.’
‘But they did?’
She nodded. ‘I think they had misgivings, mind you. I don’t think he’s very good with students, except for one or two favourites. And there don’t seem to be many of them any more.’
Drew tried to turn the conversation back to something more immediately relevant. ‘Your mother,’ he prompted. ‘You were going to tell me more about what she was doing last year.’
She didn’t respond immediately and Drew felt his patience ebbing. Stephanie wouldn’t be content with destroying eggboxes for much longer, and he knew they were avoiding some of the most difficult issues. ‘Come on,’ he urged. ‘This is all very interesting, but I still don’t see why you’re pursing this clandestine way of dealing with it. I feel there’s some kind of game going on. It’s just wasting time, when in the end if your mother is dead, we’re going to have to square things with the law.’
Genevieve instantly adopted a hurt look, sticking out her lower lip in childish petulance. ‘I’m only doing this because of Willard. And because I don’t think the police would be any use, anyway.’
Drew gave her a severe look. ‘Those two statements are contradictory,’ he pointed out. ‘If they’re useless, then Willard won’t have anything to worry about, will he?’
‘Oh, well,’ she shook her head irritably. ‘You never know, do you? You don’t know what sort of ideas they might get hold of. That’s what’s so difficult. I’d be so frightened—’
‘Frightened?’ Drew echoed. ‘For Willard, you mean?’ He remembered the story Dr Jarvis had told him – that he was afraid he had somehow driven Gwen to suicide because of her unassuaged guilt over what they’d done to Nathan. The doctor had disclosed a welter of background detail once it had become apparent that Drew had already met Genevieve. How, after Nathan’s death, Gwen had started using her original surname of Forrester, rather than Absolon, which had been her married name. How she’d spent five years and all her reserves of cash on flitting from country to country, taking up with unsuitable companions and indulging in practices more appropriate to much younger travellers. How there had been some kind of trouble in Egypt last year, which seemed to have shaken her up. How very like Genevieve she was to look at. ‘Like clones,’ he’d said with an unhappy smile. But there had been no mention of Willard Slater, no hint that he might have had reason to murder his mother-in-law.
Drew shook his head slowly. Neither account seemed credible. ‘It isn’t adding up,’ he said.
‘Then you’ll have to trust me, won’t you?’ she said seductively. ‘I thought you’d enjoy a bit of a diversion. A nice mystery to solve in your spare time.’
Drew’s irritation was finely balanced with his desire to agree with her. He tried to remember everything she’d told him so far, looking for obvious evasions or discrepancies. Perhaps it could all be explained by her being no more than a neurotic pregnant woman, over-emotional and saying whatever came into her head that she thought would persuade him. It didn’t work.
‘This business with Willard,’ he repeated. ‘This “thing” you mentioned?’
‘I think there was a sexual attraction between them. A few years ago, anyway, if not more recently.’ She glared at him. ‘Satisfied now?’
‘That must have been very unpleasant for you,’ he said carefully.
‘Infuriating,’ she agreed. ‘But it explains why he turned against her last year.’
‘Does it?’ He struggled to keep up with her logic. ‘So – can you honestly say that you think he could have killed her?’
She scowled darkly. ‘Yes!’ she said. ‘Yes, I honestly can. Willard’s a very strange man. You’ve seen him, how cold and hard he can be. And my mother could be extremely provocative.’ She sighed and looked directly at Drew, holding his gaze. ‘I often think I don’t know him at all. I look at him and he’s a total stranger to me. I can’t believe I’ve lived with him for eighteen years.’
‘Hmmm,’ was all Drew could manage. He thought of himself and Karen. Surely they could never be strangers to each other? The idea chilled him to the bone.
‘Look,’ said Genevieve, more briskly. ‘Are you going to do it or aren’t you? You sounded interested enough on the phone.’
He squared his shoulders, knowing he was already in too deep to escape unsullied, but unsure of the moment at which he’d passed the point of no return. ‘I don’t seem to have much choice,’ he said drily.
‘Of course you have!’ she snapped. ‘You can walk away now and forget the whole thing.’
But then he would never see Genevieve again. ‘Believe me, I’d like to,’ he agreed. ‘But the Coroner is releasing the body at the end of this week, and I’ve been given the contract to bury her. I’m trapped now, simply by not saying anything when I had the chance. Regardless of how I might feel about you—’ he tried to ignore the lifted chin, the preening smile at these words ‘– it’s too late for me to speak out. What would I say? “Oh, by the way, Officer, I think you might find that this is actually a woman named Gwen Absolon. A little bird whispered it to me while I was asleep last night.” Or maybe I could send them an anonymous note, giving your name and address. “Ask this woman why her mother hasn’t been seen for nearly a year. Because she was lying in Peaceful Repose Burial Ground.” That would make them take notice, I shouldn’t wonder.’
‘Stop it!’ she pleaded. ‘Stop being so horrible. I haven’t done anything to make you so cross.’
‘No,’ he sighed, letting his shoulders sag. ‘No, I don’t suppose you have. But I really really wish you hadn’t come to see me again, all the same.’
To avoid seeing her reaction to that, he got up and went to Stephanie, who was toppling sideways over one edge of her chair, letting an arm dangle heavily. It was a habit she had, which Drew usually found enchanting. Now he pretended to be concerned that she’d land head first on the floor if he didn’t straighten her. She looked up at him drunkenly, head tipped onto one shoulder, and a wad of chewed eggbox in the non-dangling hand.
‘What are you like?’ he said to her, in a mock Somerset accent. ‘Crazy, you are, my girl. Sit up straight, why don’t you?’
A loud sniff from Genevieve made him freeze. Jesus, she wasn’t crying, was she? He forced himself not to look until he’d got Stephanie sorted out. In that half-minute, he’d hardened his heart enough for it not to matter whether she was weeping or not. Either way, it was probably all part of a deliberate plan to ensnare him, he told himself fiercely.
When he did look, she seemed very much as before – perhaps slightly pink around the nose, but nothing that couldn’t safely be ignored. He decided that adopting a businesslike manner was the safest option. It was, after all, the way an undertaker – and probably a detective – was expected to behave.
‘Have you got the address of the last place she lived?’ he asked. ‘That’s probably the best place to start. Though I assume you know she isn’t there now?’
‘You assume right. She was there last summer. She gave us the address, and phoned us once or twice, apparently from there. It was a bolthole she used on and off. Just a cheap basement bedsit.’
‘But—’ he shook his head disbelievingly. ‘Why haven’t you gone yourselves to look for her? You surely must have been worrying, even before that piece in the paper, that there was something wrong?’
‘We phoned the number she gave us, and a man answered. He said she thought Mum had left in July or August, without any forwarding address. I didn’t see any point in going there, after that.’
Drew felt a powerful return of his earlier scepticism. Something really was not making sense here. But he’d had enough of Genevieve for one day. Stephanie would be wanting her lunch, and he was tiring of the effort to control all his conflicting emotions. He remembered the way Genevieve had had this same effect on him two years earlier. One minute he’d been telling a warm and sympathetic woman his life story, the next she’d s
eemed strange and remote. Clearly, she could switch from being a perfectly capable adult to a self-obsessed bundle of neuroses and back again with no warning. He’d been mad to allow her back into his life, knowing how dangerous she could be. But there didn’t seem any way out now. She wasn’t going to leave him alone until he’d at least made a token effort to locate her mother.
‘Just a bit more background,’ he said, ‘and then I’ll have to be off.’
‘Background?’ she repeated. ‘Haven’t I given you all that?’
‘I mean – apart from where she was living where had your mother been in the weeks before she disappeared? What had she been doing? Who had she been seeing? What about Dr Jarvis? Do you know when he last saw her? I need facts, if I’m to be of any help.’
She sighed impatiently, and said nothing. Drew had to acknowledge that her obfuscation merely piqued his curiosity. What was the truth of the matter? Who had Gwen Absolon been – this seventy-year-old with no strings to hold her in place? An old woman, with her complicated love life, living like a nomad? She was too intriguing now to abandon. He deliberately brushed aside the nagging question – What in the world am I going to tell Karen?
CHAPTER SEVEN
Impatiently, Genevieve dumped a further jumbled mass of information on Drew’s bewildered ear, as he tried to keep Stephanie amused for another twenty minutes.
‘Once Nathan had died, and she was finally free, she started going off round the world, doing it on the cheap, by herself. Like I said before, she was making up for lost time. We got postcards from the wildest places. In a year or so she’d got the bright idea of taking small groups of adventurous tourists with her. None of them half as adventurous as her, of course. She did all the paperwork, visas and so on. Got them somewhere to stay and told them what to look at. They paid rather handsomely, I think. But she spent it as soon as she got it, and there were enough calamities to wipe out much of her profits.’