‘Bean’s my maiden name. I haven’t been Fancourt for years.’
‘Do you normally work Saturdays?’
‘No. I wasn’t working today. I popped into the centre to pick up a remedy for my daughter, Florence, who’s got a tummy bug. You were lucky to catch me. And I hope you don’t catch the bug, but you might, so don’t say I didn’t warn you. I had it before Florence and everyone at work had it before me. It’s a spreader, that’s for sure. Passes out of your system quickly, though, on the plus side. Twenty-four hours of vomiting and diarrhoea and then it moves on to the next poor sucker.’
Great. Something to look forward to.
‘I won’t keep you long,’ Sam told her. ‘If your daughter’s ill.’
‘She’ll be fine. She’s with my friend Briony, who’s like a second mum to her. Keep me as long as you like. I promise not to make it hard for you by asking awkward questions.’
Sam tried not to look surprised. Wasn’t he supposed to be the one with the questions? ‘Like what?’ he said.
‘About Simon. He wouldn’t want you to talk about him to me – I know he wouldn’t.’ Alice reached into her bag, pulled out the envelope Sam had seen through the holes, and held it out for him to take. He saw Simon’s name on the front in blue handwriting, underlined. ‘Could you give him this?’
Sam was aware of not wanting to take it from her, but couldn’t think why at first. Then his brain caught up with his gut. No thanks. Whatever the drama was, he didn’t want even a minor role. His hands stayed where they were, wrapped round his coffee mug. Eventually Alice put the envelope back in her bag, and he felt petty and self-important, knowing that he’d turned the focus from her and Simon to himself and his scruples; he wished he’d taken the damn thing. Ought he to tell her Simon got married yesterday, that he was on his honeymoon? Did it make it worse that it had happened only yesterday? Sam didn’t think it should make a difference, but felt that it did, somehow.
He opened his mouth to try and explain why he didn’t think it was a good idea for him to act as go-between, but Alice talked over him, smiling to show she wasn’t offended. ‘What did you want to ask me about Connie? Is she okay?’
‘When did you last speak to her?’
‘I see her once a fortnight. The last time was . . . Hang on, I can tell you exactly.’ She pulled a small pink diary out of her miniature fisherman’s net. ‘Last Monday, four o’clock.’
‘As in the one just gone? Monday 12 July?’
Alice nodded.
‘Since then, have you spoken to her on the phone? Emailed or texted her?’
‘No. Nothing.’
‘And she didn’t ring you in the early hours of this morning?’
Alice looked worried. She leaned forward. ‘No. Why? Has something happened?’
‘She’s fine, as far as I can tell,’ said Sam. He wasn’t prepared to say more than that.
‘Why the early hours of this morning?’ Alice persisted. ‘Why did you ask that?’
Because that was when a dead woman appeared on her computer screen, and then disappeared. And she told me you’d recommended she contact Simon Waterhouse, who would believe the unbelievable, if it were true. Except that you couldn’t have recommended him at two this morning, because Alice didn’t ring you then. She hasn’t spoken to you since seeing the woman’s body. Unless she lied about when she saw it.
‘Did you advise Connie to speak to Simon?’ Sam asked.
‘I can’t really discuss what I say to my patients or what they say to me. Sorry.’
‘I’m not asking you to tell me anything Connie hasn’t told me herself. She said you recommended Simon as being unlike any other detective, willing to believe what most people would find implausible.’
Alice nodded. ‘That’s right. That’s what I said, almost word for word.’
‘Would I be right in thinking, then – and I’m not asking for details – that Connie was in some kind of . . . situation, or had a problem, and was worried that no one would believe her?’
‘I really can’t go into the specifics, but . . . Connie came to see me initially because she’d had a shock – she didn’t want to believe that something was the case, and yet she feared it was.’
‘When was this?’ Sam asked.
‘January, so . . . six months ago.’
‘And you told her to go to Simon? Was there a criminal angle, then?’
Alice frowned as she considered it. ‘There was no evidence of anything illegal, but . . . Connie thought there might have been a crime involved, yes. But at the same time, she feared she was mad for thinking it.’
‘What did you think?’
‘I honestly had no idea. All I knew was that being psychologically and emotionally split in two was doing her no good whatsoever. I thought that if she spoke to Simon, he could find out for her one way or the other.’
‘Whether a crime had been committed?’
Alice smiled. ‘I realise there’s no great master list headed “All the crimes that have been committed ever”, but this particular crime would have been documented. Simon could have tracked down the evidence of it in a way that Connie couldn’t.’
‘Do you remember when you first mentioned his name to her?’ Sam asked.
‘Oh, not straight away. About a month ago, six weeks maybe. I tried to help her myself first, obviously, as I do with all my patients, but nothing I said or did seemed to work with Connie. If anything, she started to feel worse as time went on. That was when I realised she might need more than Anacardium or Medorrhinum. Sorry, they’re homeopathic remedies – I forget sometimes that not everyone’s as familiar with them as I am.’
‘Did Connie take your advice?’ Sam asked. ‘Did she share her problem with Simon?’ Was that why he took two days off a couple of weeks ago? He’d mumbled something vague about ‘wedding preparations’, not making eye-contact. At the time, Sam had put it down to embarrassment; Simon was undoubtedly, if inexplicably, mortified to be in a relationship, and avoided referring to his attached status.
Alice looked apologetic. ‘Ask Connie,’ she said. ‘I’m sure she’ll tell you the whole story, if you’re willing to listen sympathetically.’
‘Did her unlikely-sounding and possibly criminal problem involve a virtual tour of a house on a property website?’ Sam asked. Alice’s facial expression was the only answer he needed: she didn’t know what he was talking about.
So Connie Bowskill had two impossible-to-believe problems, one since January and one since thirteen hours ago. Interesting.
Impossible to believe.
‘Did you advise Connie to talk to Simon because you genuinely believed she needed police help, or because you hoped he would contact you to ask about her?’ As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Sam knew he’d overstepped the mark. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, holding up his hands. ‘That’s a question I have no right to ask. Ignore it.’
‘Why, when it’s one I can answer freely?’ said Alice. ‘I genuinely believed Simon ought to hear about Connie’s problem, because . . . well, because it was so odd, so unusual. It was either something truly horrible or nothing at all. I . . .’ She stopped, stared down at the table. Sam was starting to wonder if he ought to prompt her when she said, ‘I’ve only just this second realised it, but I told her to speak to Simon because that was what I wanted to do. I wanted to talk to him about it. He and I haven’t spoken since 2003, and – this, Connie’s . . . issue that she had, made me want to be in touch with him again more than anything else ever has. It made me miss him, though I never really knew him in the first place. Oh, it’s crazy! The funny thing is, I’ve always known absolutely for sure that one day he’d reappear in my life. And when you rang this morning . . .’ She shook her head, looking past Sam out of the window.
He could guess what was coming next. When he’d rung this morning and asked her to meet him, she’d given her sick daughter to a friend and devoted the next two hours to writing the letter she’d wanted to write for the last seve
n years, the one Sam had refused to deliver.
‘Look, I’m sorry about—’
‘Don’t be,’ said Alice. ‘I shouldn’t have tried to turn you into the very-likely-to-get-shot messenger. It was unethical. And unnecessary – I don’t need you. I know where Simon works – I could post the letter to him. I won’t, though.’ She nodded, as if to formalise the decision. ‘I’m a firm believer in fate, and today fate’s made it clear to me that now’s not the right time. I bet you’re not used to thinking of yourself as an agent of fate, are you?’ She grinned.
‘I’m not.’ Colin Sellers would have had a jokey response ready, but Sam couldn’t think of one.
Alice closed her eyes and took a sip of her drink. ‘The right time will come,’ she said.
Chapter 5
Saturday 17 July 2010
‘1.2 million pounds? Oh . . . Ow! Ouch.’ My mother has missed the five mugs lined up on the worktop and poured boiling water over her left hand instead. Deliberately, though I can’t prove it. She has burned herself, and it’s my fault for causing her more worry than she can cope with. Again. She wants everybody to notice and blame me. If they do, if Fran or Anton or Dad says, ‘Look what you’ve done, Con,’ Mum will stick up for me, but her defence will be a veiled attack: ‘It wasn’t Connie’s fault – I should have known better than to look away, with a kettle full of boiling water in my hand, but I was so shocked, I couldn’t help it.’
Is this what being close to someone means – knowing their limitations, their ego-boosting delusions and self-serving grottiness, as well as you know your own? Being able to predict their reactions, their facial expressions, down to the last word and grimace, so that disappointment and a sickening sense of predictability surge up and crush the breath out of you the moment you clap eyes on them, before anyone’s uttered a word? Kit would say that was too pessimistic an analysis, but then he was never close to his parents, and now he has no relationship with them at all. He is for ever saying he envies me my membership of what he calls ‘the Monk clan’. I don’t dare tell him the truth; he would accuse me of being ungrateful. He’d probably be right.
The truth is that I would rather be less close to my family, so that they could surprise me from time to time. So that their disapproval, when it came, wouldn’t have the capacity to burrow so deeply into me and plant seeds of self-doubt, pre-programmed to grow to the size of large oak trees. At least Kit is free.
‘Come on, Benji,’ Fran whispers. ‘One more bit of broccoli and then you can have a chocolate finger. Just the curly bit at the top. Please.’
‘Go on, Benji, mate – show Mummy and Daddy how brave you are. Like a superhero!’ Anton doesn’t bother to lower his voice. It hasn’t occurred to him that there’s anything more important going on in his parents-in-law’s kitchen today than Benji’s war on green vegetables; he feels no need to confine the broccoli negotiations to the background. Making a loudspeaker out of his hands, he puts on a booming voice and says, ‘Can one little boy defeat the broccoli monster? Is Benji brave enough to eat . . . his . . . broccoli? If he proves that he’s as brave as a superhero, his reward will be two . . . chocolate . . . fingers!’
Am I going mad? Didn’t Anton hear any of what I said, about seeing a murdered woman lying in a pool of blood, and talking to a detective this morning? Why is no one telling him to shut up? Did nobody hear me? That none of them should have anything to say on the subject seems as impossible to me as what I saw on my laptop last night – impossible, yet real, unless I’ve lost my capacity to distinguish reality from its opposite.
Kit thinks I have. Maybe my family do also, and that’s why they’re ignoring me.
‘Don’t say two,’ Fran admonishes Anton in a sing-song voice, wearing an exaggerated smile in order, presumably, to prevent their son from wondering if the emotional carnage of a broken home might be all he has to look forward to. ‘One’s enough, isn’t it, Benji?’
‘I want two chocolate fingers!’ my five-year-old nephew wails, red in the face.
I open my mouth, then close it. Why waste my breath? I’ve done what I came here to do: told my family what they need to know. In order not to look as if I’m waiting to be asked questions, I glance out of the window at the swing, slide, climbing-frame, treehouse, free-standing sandpit and two trampolines in my parents’ back garden: Benji’s private playground. Kit calls it ‘Neverland’.
‘Ow,’ Mum says again, making a big show of examining the red skin on her hand. She’s wasting her time with Fran and Anton; she ought to know that the ordeal of Benji’s supper has driven away all other thoughts, as well as their normal powers of observation.
‘All right, two chocolate fingers,’ says Fran wearily. ‘Sorry about this, everybody. Come on, though, Benji – eat this first.’ She takes the fork from his hand, impales the broccoli on it and holds it in front of his mouth, so that it’s touching his lips.
He yanks his head away, spitting, and nearly falls off his chair. Together, like anxious cheerleaders, Fran and Anton yell, ‘Don’t fall off your chair!’
‘I hate broccoli! It looks like a yucky lumpy snot tree!’
Privately, Kit and I refer to him as Benjamin Rigby. Kit started it, and, after a few cursory protests, I went along with it. His full name is Benji Duncan Geoffrey Rigby-Monk. ‘You’re joking,’ Kit said, when I first told him. ‘Benji? Not even Benjamin?’ Duncan and Geoffrey are his two grandads’ names – both unglamorous and old-dufferish, in Kit’s view, and not worth inflicting on a new generation – and Rigby-Monk is a fusion of Fran’s surname and Anton’s. ‘As far as I’m concerned, he’s Benjamin Rigby,’ said Kit, after the first time we met him. ‘He seems like a decent baby and he deserves a decent name. Not that his father’s got one, so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.’ Kit thinks it’s only acceptable to ‘go around calling yourself Anton’, as he puts it, if you’re Spanish, Mexican or Colombian, or if you’re a hairdresser or a professional ice-skater.
He tells me I ought to be grateful for my family, and pleased to live so near to them, and then he mocks them mercilessly in front of me, and avoids seeing them whenever he can, sending me round here on my own instead. I never complain; I feel guilty for entangling him. I would hate to marry someone with a family as overwhelming and ever-present as mine.
‘Leave the poor child alone, Fran,’ says my mum. ‘It’s not worth the effort, for one measly floret of broccoli. I’ll make him ch—’
‘Don’t!’ Fran cuts her off with a frantic wave of the arm, before the fatal words ‘chicken nuggets and chips’ are spoken aloud. ‘We’re fine, aren’t we, Benj? You’re going to eat your nice yummy healthy greens, aren’t you, darling? You want to grow big and strong, don’t you?’
‘Like Daddy,’ Anton adds, flexing his muscles. He used to be a personal trainer at Waterfront, but gave up his job when Benji was born. Now he lifts weights and hones his biceps, or sinews, or whatever fit people call the parts of their body that need honing, on various odd-looking machines in his and Fran’s garage, which he’s turned into a home gym. ‘Daddy ate all his greens when he was little, and look at him now!’
At this point my father would normally pipe up with, ‘The only way to turn children into good eaters is to present them with a simple choice: they eat what everyone else is eating, or nothing at all. That soon teaches them. It worked with you two. You’ll eat anything, both of you. You’d eat your mother if she was on the plate!’ He’s said that, or a version of it, at least fifty times. Even when Fran hasn’t been there, he still says ‘you two’ rather than ‘you and Fran’, because he’s so used to all of us being together in this room, exactly as we are now: him sitting at the rickety pine trestle table that’s been in Thorrold House’s kitchen since before I was born, with the Times in front of him; Mum bustling around preparing food and drinks and waiting on everybody, refusing all offers of help so that she can sigh and rub the small of her back when she finally finishes loading the dishwasher; Anton leaning diagonally – in the mann
er of someone too cool to stand upright – against the rail of the Aga, which was once red but is now cross-hatched with silver from years of scratches; Fran fussing over Benji, trying to force one Brussels sprout, one leaf of spinach, one pea into his mouth, offering him vats of chocolate mousse, mountains of crisps and endless sugary butter balls as an incentive.
And me sitting in the rocking-chair by the window, fantasising about wrapping a thick blanket around my head and smothering myself, biting back the urge to say, ‘Wouldn’t it be better for him to have fish, potatoes and no courgette rather than fish, potatoes, a bit of courgette, twenty Benson and Hedges, a bottle of vodka and some crack cocaine? Just wondering.’
I’m at my most vicious when I’m with my family. One good reason why I shouldn’t live a hundred and fifty yards down the road from them.
‘Do you think I ought to run it under the cold tap,’ Mum says to Dad, stroking her hand. ‘Isn’t that what they say you should do with burns? Or are you supposed to put butter on them? I haven’t burned myself for years.’ She’s given up hope of attracting Fran’s or Anton’s attention, but she’s a fool if she can’t see that Dad’s too angry with me to listen to anything she might say. The extent of his fury is clear from his posture: head bowed, forehead pulled into a tight frown, shoulders hard and hunched, hands balled into fists. He’s wearing a blue and yellow striped shirt, but I’m sure if Alice were here she would agree with me that the energy radiating from him is a stony grey. He hasn’t moved at all for nearly fifteen minutes; the grinning, back-slapping Dad who ushered me in here when I arrived has vanished and been replaced by a statue, or sculpture, which, if I were the artist, I would call ‘Enraged Man’.
‘Have you lost your marbles?’ He spits the words at me. ‘You can’t afford a house for 1.2 million!’
‘I know that,’ I tell him. It isn’t only the prospect of my financial recklessness that’s bothering him. He resents the upheaval I’ve brought into his life without consulting him. We used to be a family that, between us, had never seen a murdered woman who then inexplicably disappeared. Now, thanks to me, that’s no longer true.
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