The next words he heard didn’t register at first, so unexpected were they. ‘I know what Kind, Cruel, Kind of Cruel means.’
Simon listened, stunned, as she started to explain. He’d have been angry if Amber had been someone else, someone who hadn’t insisted on special treatment from the start and duped him into believing this meant she deserved it. Where was her apology for not telling him sooner, as soon as she found out? She was making up for it now, recounting the story in minute detail: Dinah and Nonie’s school, their politically correct headmistress and her world religions assembly, the Hindu caste system that had inspired Dinah to invent one of her own. Amber kept interrupting her narrative to remind Simon that none of what she was telling him would help him, that she still couldn’t remember where she’d seen the piece of paper that might have come from the notepad in Kat Allen’s flat.
Interesting that she felt the need to tell him this so many times. He’d heard her admit to Ginny, however reluctantly, that she was sure she’d seen the lined A4 page at Little Orchard. He’d heard her confess to the irrational conviction that if she could only get into the locked study, she’d find it there. Didn’t she remember any of that? Ginny had made a point of reassuring her, at the beginning of the session, that hypnosis doesn’t affect memory or control: you know what you’re doing and saying, and you remember it afterwards.
Simon was picturing Dinah and Nonie Lendrim inside Kat Allen’s flat on the day of her murder, writing ‘Kind, Cruel, Kind of Cruel’ on the notepad, when Amber said, ‘The girls swore to me they hadn’t written anything down. Anywhere, ever. Dinah might lie to avoid trouble, but Nonie wouldn’t.’
If she’d claimed both girls were incapable of lying, Simon would have discounted her opinion. As it was, he believed her. But if not them . . .
‘They told two people, and swore them to secrecy.’
‘William and Barney Utting,’ Simon said. Wanting to prove he’d worked it out before she told him; stupid. He thought about William’s explanation of transitive and intransitive relationships. Dinah tells Nonie a secret, Nonie tells William a secret, William tells Barney a secret . . . Did that mean Dinah tells Barney a secret or not? Indirectly, yes; directly, no. Did that make ‘tells a secret to’ transitive or intransitive? Depends if it’s the same secret. ‘Jo’s sons,’ he said. ‘It all comes back to Jo.’
‘It was half term when Kat Allen was murdered,’ Amber said. ‘The day of the DriveTech course. Jo was busy being me. Sabina would have been looking after the boys. But . . . could a woman have done it?’
‘What, killed Kat Allen? You’re thinking Sabina, at Jo’s request?’
‘No, I . . .’ Amber looked and sounded flustered. ‘Nobody would take two children with them to commit a murder. Especially not Sabina. I know it sounds mad, she’s a nanny, but Sabina doesn’t cope with kids very well on her own. She gets stressed and hassled. No one notices, because Jo’s almost always there taking the pressure off, freeing Sabina to nanny the grown-ups in general and Jo most of all.’
‘So . . .’
‘If Sabina had sole charge of the boys for a day, she’d find it hard to unbearable, and take the easiest option: plonking them in front of the telly, probably, and disappearing off to another room to go on Facebook. She wouldn’t attempt a trip to the shops, let alone a murder. And . . . she’s a lovely person.’ Amber said it as if she was describing an exotic and unfamiliar species. ‘It’s crazy that we’re discussing it. Sabina couldn’t kill anyone. It’s just that I told you Neil or Ritchie must have done it, and then I remembered Sabina and felt guilty on their behalf, because I’d left her out. It didn’t occur to me that a woman—’ She broke off. ‘Neil’s not a killer either. Nor is Ritchie. Useless, yes, but not a murderer.’
Simon thought about Hilary, Jo’s mother. Parents, in his experience, were the ones who committed heinous crimes to help their children.
Why? The question gnawed at his brain. Why was Sharon dead? Why Kat Allen? ‘I need you to do something for me,’ he told Amber. ‘Leave your car here and come with me to Little Orchard. Charlie’ll be there by now.’
‘Charlie? What . . .’
‘Ring Luke, tell him to collect Dinah and Nonie from school and take them somewhere where Jo won’t know where they are. Away from Hilary’s.’
‘No.’ Amber frowned. ‘Not “no” to coming with you to Little Orchard, but “no” to the rest. Why can’t I follow you in my car?’
‘I want your car left here, where Ginny can see it. And I want your family safely out of Jo’s reach. Surveillance or no surveillance, she knows where you are.’
Amber waved his words away. ‘Relax,’ she said. ‘The police presence outside Hilary’s house is irrelevant, nothing to do with why the girls are safe there. And nothing to do with why I’ve started sleeping better, whatever Ginny would have us believe. What is it with you and Ginny?’ she asked Simon. ‘Why does she need to see my empty car parked outside her house?’
‘Why are you sleeping well at Hilary’s?’ Simon asked. It was happening after all, though no formal agreement had been made: trading information, trading secrets.
‘Hilary’s Jo’s mum,’ said Amber. ‘She’s sacred. Jo wouldn’t set fire to her mother’s home under any circumstances, not even if all her enemies were staying there.’
All her enemies. Simon wondered how many there were. Jo Utting struck him as a woman who might have plenty of groundless grudges. His biggest fear was that her motives for murder might be so irrational that he would never work them out, however long he puzzled over it. He could end up with all the evidence he needed to convict her, and her still refusing to say why; at that point, keeping her reasons to herself would be her only way of exercising power.
‘If Jo wants to attack my family again, she’ll wait till we’re back at home.’ Amber’s voice broke into his thoughts. ‘That’s when she’ll feel the need to, if she does – when we’ve escaped her grasp. For as long as we’re at Hilary’s, she’s in control, or thinks she is. I know it makes no sense to you, but . . . Please.’ She clutched at Simon’s jacket sleeve. ‘Let Luke and the girls stay at Hilary’s. They’re safer there than anywhere else.’
It couldn’t be Simon at the door, thought Charlie. He’d texted half an hour ago to say that he and Amber were only just setting off from Great Holling. Who, then? Was Charlie about to meet the more-attractive-than-her Jo Utting, owner of the enormous house Charlie had been rattling around in for the last four hours, for no reason that anybody had bothered to explain to her? If this was Jo at the door, the first three questions Charlie would be asking her were: why was the study locked, where was the key and why advertise in the manual for guests that there was a locked room they wouldn’t be able to get into? It was couched in more welcoming terms – ‘Do feel free to use the whole house and all of the grounds, apart from the one locked room, our private study’ – that put Charlie right off this woman she’d never met. The word ‘study’ on its own, fine; ‘private study’ sounded superior and excluding. Charlie had looked everywhere she could think of and found several keys, but none that worked.
The bell rang again. ‘Coming!’ she yelled, though she was still too far away for whoever it was to hear her. ‘Give me a chance.’ As she ran from the conservatory in the direction of the back door, she wondered about Little Orchard’s give-up-and-go-home rate. It wasn’t a problem for her in her small terraced house in Spilling, but here there was little chance of making it to the door before the person who’d rung the bell grew old and died. Tonight, the cause of death was likely to be hypothermia. Charlie’s drive to Surrey had been dicey; Simon’s was likely to be even worse. She’d texted him, pointlessly, to say he shouldn’t risk it, that the official advice from the radio was don’t drive anywhere. Simon had texted back four words: ‘They didn’t mean me.’
Fair point, Charlie had been forced to admit: no one who didn’t know Simon personally meant him when they talked about people in general, since he was about as far from a
typical human being as it was possible to be.
It was good that he was coming, even with Amber, though Charlie would have given anything to have him turn up alone, and didn’t understand why Amber needed to come too. She was praying the snow would die off. All she needed was a text from Simon saying he was stuck in a blizzard on the M25 and likely to be there for the next eleven hours. Stuck in a cold car with only Amber Hewerdine for company.
Amber wasn’t attractive, particularly, but she had something – a strange appeal, even for Charlie.
The bell rang a third time, longer and more insistently, as Charlie raced through the kitchen. She groaned when she opened the door and saw Olivia. ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’
‘What an amazing house!’ Liv stared up above both their heads at the lit-up windows. The first thing Charlie had done when she’d arrived was switch on all the lights. ‘No back door should have a doorbell, though,’ Liv went on. ‘Doorbells are for front doors. If you’re going to have a permanent back door policy, it has to be knocking only, otherwise it defeats the object. Can I come in, ideally now? It’s snowing out here.’
‘I’d noticed.’ Charlie stood aside, allowing the invasion. She was annoyed to find herself, after the initial shock, glad of her sister’s company. ‘How did you get here? You shouldn’t have driven.’
‘How else was I going to get here? Middle of bloody nowhere. You drove here. Your car’s outside.’ Charlie knew the tone well from her childhood: you did it first. ‘I hope there are lots of beds made up, because I’m buggered if I’m driving back to London tonight,’ said Liv.
‘Lots? Won’t one be enough for you?’ Charlie asked. ‘Or are you planning to move between rooms during the night, as you would if they contained men?’
Liv’s the slag these days, she thought. Not me. I’m the faithful wife.
‘Of course not. I just meant . . . I know Simon’s coming. For all I know, other people are too.’
‘Liv, this isn’t a house party.’ What was it, though? Charlie had no idea. She hoped to sustain her pretence that she knew what was going on until it became the reality.
‘How many bedrooms are there?’ Liv craned her neck to see beyond the kitchen into the hall. ‘Can I have the tour?’
‘No,’ Charlie snapped. ‘You can tell me how you knew where to find me, and why you wanted to.’
‘Aren’t you going to offer me a drink?’
Charlie had changed her mind about wanting her sister here. ‘I’m not the hostess, Liv. My relationship to this house is no different from yours. I got here before you, that’s all. The cleaner who gave me the keys said there was milk in the fridge, and there’s coffee, tea, sugar and a kettle on the side there. Get yourself a drink if you want. You can do it at the same time as answering the question I’ve now asked you twice.’
Liv made no move towards the kettle. ‘I rang Simon,’ she said.
Charlie swore loudly.
‘It’s not his fault. I forced him to tell me where you were. I think his mind was elsewhere.’
‘I bet it was,’ Charlie muttered.
‘I don’t want to fight with you, Char.’
‘Then what do you want?’
‘I’ve found something out. I can’t tell Chris. He mustn’t find out it came from me, which means Simon mustn’t either.’ Liv straightened up, as if steeling herself for confrontation. ‘It shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll tell you, and you can pretend it was you that had the idea—’
‘Is this to do with Katharine Allen’s death?’ Charlie broke in.
Liv nodded. ‘It won’t occur to Simon that it’s come from me. We can tell him the reason I came was to . . . sort things out between us.’
Charlie didn’t get it. ‘Everything you know about Katharine Allen came from Gibbs,’ she said. ‘I’ve told you nothing.’
‘I never said you had.’ Liv frowned.
‘Then if you’ve found something out, why can’t Gibbs know?’
Liv chewed the inside of her lip, stared down at the floor. ‘It’s too important,’ she said.
Charlie laughed. ‘You’re worried his male pride’ll never recover if he finds out his shag-on-the-side’s a better detective than he is?’ She walked over to the kettle and lifted it. It felt full. Not knowing how old the water inside was, she knew she ought to pour it out and refill it, but she couldn’t be bothered. ‘Go on, then, let’s hear the brainwave,’ she said. ‘Look in that guest manual on the table, will you? See if it says where the mugs are.’
‘I don’t need a manual to find mugs in a kitchen,’ Liv snapped. ‘Open the cupboard nearest to the kettle.’
Charlie followed her instructions. ‘More brilliant detective work,’ she said, when she found herself staring at more mugs than she’d drunk from in her life, probably, if she were to add them all together.
She picked two at random and put teabags in them. She wasn’t listening properly as Liv started talking. When she heard the words ‘costume supplier’, something twisted in her stomach as she realised she’d been wrong to treat this as a joke. Much as she would have loved to believe her sister had nothing significant to tell her, her discomfort was shouting loudly that it wasn’t the case. She asked Liv to stop, start again at the beginning.
‘For Christ’s sake, Char! Did you hear any of it? You heard the bit about me ringing the school?’
‘School?’
‘Where Kat Allen worked.’
Charlie swallowed a heavy sigh. This was going to be bad. And something she should have thought of herself. ‘No. I didn’t. Why did you ring her school?’
‘Because Kat was an actress when she was young. She was in films. I wondered whether she might have still been interested in drama as an adult, whether maybe she’d done it with her pupils at school.’
‘So what if she did?’ Charlie asked.
‘Whoever set fire to Sharon Lendrim’s house wore a fireman’s uniform. A costume, maybe, from a costume shop. I thought . . .’ Liv looked embarrassed. ‘It was a long shot that I never dreamed would come to anything, but I thought that, if by some chance Kat had still been involved in any kind of acting-related activity, she might have access to costumes.’
Charlie could laugh at this at least. This couldn’t be Liv’s big revelation. It was preposterous. ‘You decided that because she was a child actress, Kat Allen must have killed Sharon? Why would she? Is there even any connection between the two of them?’
‘Yes. There is.’ The look of mortification on Liv’s face had given way to something else, something deeper. Guilt, Charlie realised, as a mixture of anger and envy surged through her. Liv knew she had no right to be the person who worked anything out first; she must have known how Charlie would feel. Yet what choice did she have? She couldn’t keep quiet about it.
‘There’s a connection between Kat Allen and Sharon Lendrim?’
‘Yes,’ Liv said solemnly. ‘The connection’s somebody called Johannah Utting.’
Charlie gestured around the room. ‘Owner of our mansion for the weekend.’
‘Johannah Utting owns this house?’
Didn’t know that, did you? Charlie felt childishly satisfied.
Liv pushed her out of the way and set about making them cups of tea, a task Charlie had realised was too boring some time ago. ‘I rang Kat Allen’s school,’ she said matter-of-factly, as if she was reciting a series of mundane instructions. ‘I was right: Kat was still a drama enthusiast. More than that: she was the teacher with overall responsibility for drama at Meadowcroft.’
Charlie stopped herself from asking just in time. Meadowcroft was the school’s name.
‘I asked if she ever hired costumes for school productions, or—’
‘Wait a second,’ Charlie interrupted. ‘Why would the school talk to a random arts journalist about a member of staff who’s . . .’ She stopped, shook her head as fury sealed her mouth shut.
‘Obviously, I couldn’t say who I was. Look, I’m not proud of it, Char, but I had to t
hink of something and I was so livid about the way he’d spoken to me . . .’
‘He?’
‘Sam. That’s who I said I was: DS Sam Kombothekra, Culver Valley Police. Sam’s a unisex name: Samuel, Samantha.’
‘You didn’t pretend to be me, then,’ said Charlie. ‘I suppose that’s something.’
‘I thought about it, but . . .’
‘You decided it’d be an identity theft too far. Agreed. Go on.’
‘No, it wasn’t that. I . . . I wanted to make it as true as possible. You’re not a detective any more, you’re a suicide person.’
‘And I owe it all to you,’ Charlie murmured under her breath. ‘What did fake DS Sam find out? I can’t believe you got away with it. How many times must Sam have been to that school since Kat died?’
‘He hasn’t,’ said Liv. She handed Charlie a cup of tea. It was too weak and too milky. ‘Sellers did all the school interviews. Chris told me.’
‘How would Chris feel if he knew you were telling me all this instead of him?’
Liv sighed. ‘Kat Allen’s best friend from Pulham Market, the village where she grew up, runs a costume business,’ she said. ‘Kat was in the habit of visiting her folks every couple of weeks for the weekend. All the costumes for Meadowcroft’s nativities, plays – everything came from her friend.’
‘Where does Jo Utting come into it?’ Charlie asked expressionlessly. She wanted to get it over with, since there was no avoiding it.
Liv hid behind her mug as she answered. ‘I asked the school if they knew this friend’s name. They didn’t, but they knew the name of her business: The Soft Prop Shop.’
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