‘I thought,’ Bel said, ‘you wanted space.’
Said with remarkably little irony, Kate thought, considering how often her offers to come and stay through her daughter’s pregnancy had been rejected.
‘This does sound like an emergency,’ she said.
‘And it’s very kind of you to offer,’ Bel said. ‘But you have to be absolutely sure you could stand it. Having a disabled person to stay could be complicated, though clearly you’re already considering that.’
‘It’s quite likely,’ Kate said, ‘that Marie might hate the idea.’
‘Knowing how well she thinks of you,’ Bel said, ‘I rather doubt that.’
* * *
As another, infinitely bleaker, Christmas came and then mercifully departed, Kate sensed that some of the illusory calm she’d just about been managing to keep wrapped around herself, was beginning to disintegrate.
Grief, pregnancy and apprehension about the trial – now less than a month and a half away – were still preventing her from working properly. Her research for the Duval biography had all but ground to a halt, and in mid-December Fireman had told her that he could no longer put off the decision to bring in another columnist.
‘I wish to Christ I could have held on a bit longer, Kate, and I wish I could say this is temporary.’ His youthful face had been regretful. ‘But the fact is, I think we both know that circumstances aside, you’re not really the Short-Fused Female any more.’
‘So who am I exactly, do you think?’ Kate enquired.
She felt no shock, nor even sadness, certainly no resentment.
‘I think you’re a been-through-hell, not-quite-back, bloody brave mother-to-be.’
‘Do you think I’m ever going to be able to write again?’
‘You won’t be able not to,’ Fireman said. ‘Once the hormones have settled, or probably before, who knows? You’re a good writer, Kate. It’s just time to move on.’
Nicest sacking she’d ever had.
Marie, who had been staying with her by then for almost a month and from whom Kate had refused to take rent, said it was high time she started paying her way.
‘Not necessary,’ Kate had told her.
‘It would only be for as long as you want me here, of course,’ Marie said. ‘After the baby’s born, you’ll probably want Bel or a nanny.’
‘I shouldn’t think I’ll want either,’ Kate had said.
The fact was that then, and still now, with the festive season over and with Martin Blake telling her she needed to meet with a barrister to discuss her evidence, Kate couldn’t seem to really think about the birth at all, could scarcely even seem, for the moment, to relate properly to the tiny girl growing inside her – healthily, thank God, they kept reassuring her.
‘Anyway,’ she’d told Marie, ‘money’s not a problem yet.’
Rob’s life insurance policy was cushioning her, along with his pension fund, and to date Kate had been managing to keep at least that side of her life ticking over, paying bills and dealing with Rob’s estate, though each successive stage of that was another harsh reminder, rocking her with fresh sorrow and intense bitterness, seeming to leave her a little weaker rather than stronger.
Marie had been an easy house guest, taking care of herself as much as possible, taking pains not to get in Kate’s way more than necessary; three days a week she drove herself to Rob’s old school in her modified Nissan, then spent hours at a time seeing friends, running errands, monitoring progress on the restoration of her flat and, for the most part, refusing offers of help.
‘You’ve given me a home,’ Marie said. ‘No one could do more.’
An almost perfect house guest, in fact. Yet still, Kate had begun to wonder if she might not start feeling just a little more like a mother-to-be if she had the cottage back to herself again for the remaining weeks before the birth.
‘You mustn’t feel you can’t leave when your place is ready,’ she’d said to Marie between Christmas and New Year, ‘because you think I won’t be able to manage alone. Any time you’re ready to move back, I’ll be happy for you and absolutely fine.’ She’d paused. ‘As it is, for the moment, I can’t seem to see beyond this damned trial.’
‘Hardly surprising,’ Marie said. ‘And if you can stand having me around for a while longer—’
‘It’s not that at all,’ Kate jumped in. ‘You’re a pleasure to have around.’
‘In that case,’ Marie said, ‘I would like to be here for you through to the end of that dreadfulness, whatever the outcome.’
No one else, except Martin Blake, had been honest enough to raise with Kate the possibility of a negative outcome to the case.
After so much time having passed since the crime, the Flies trial (the name bestowed by the media) seemed suddenly to be closing in with alarming rapidity. The eleventh of February, the scheduled date, was just inside the custody time limit appertaining to the charging of Edward Booth – Pig – the last of the trio to have been arrested; the prosecution having managed to circumvent the rules to a degree because all three defendants were to come to Crown Court in one trial.
CPS approval notwithstanding, Kate and Blake were still aware of the prosecution’s continuing misgivings over the burden of proving beyond reasonable doubt that the three accused, together with the late Carol Marsh – allegedly directed by an unseen leader – were guilty. Kate’s identifications and statement having been enough to result in charges, certainly, but still potentially shakeable by sharp cross-examination.
‘I didn’t go through all that,’ she told Blake, ‘to let them unnerve me in court.’
‘I don’t doubt that,’ the solicitor said.
Fine words, they both knew, cloaking her ever-rising nervousness.
There was still too little conclusive evidence for their liking. A few copies of a famous book owned by each of the accused was not irrefutable proof of anything. Nor even their time together at the same children’s home.
The Summertown newsagent’s robbery, though helpful, was no huge booster either, with Mitcham dead.
Only one of the gang could be proven conclusively to have been at Caisleán, and that only because she had died there.
Kate’s parents, Blake and Marie all strove to buoy up her spirits.
‘They wouldn’t be continuing with the prosecution,’ Michael maintained, ‘if they weren’t fairly certain of a good outcome.’
Fairly.
‘For myself,’ Kate said to Marie one evening in the first week of January, ‘I still sometimes wish there didn’t have to be a trial at all.’
‘Let them get off scot-free, you mean?’ Marie shook her greying head. ‘I don’t think I could be as generous in your place.’
‘Nothing to do with generosity,’ Kate told her. ‘More to do with cowardice. Having to see them, go through it all again.’
‘But you are an exceptionally forgiving person,’ Marie said. ‘Having me here.’
This was one of the reasons Kate thought she wouldn’t mind when Marie left.
‘Please,’ she said. ‘Stop.’
She had told her repeatedly that she did not blame her for Rob’s death, but that talking about it was almost unbearably painful and draining, which troubled her for the baby’s sake more than her own.
‘I do worry,’ she said now, ‘about not being able to get justice for Laurie.’
‘So is that the real crux of the trial for you?’ Marie asked. ‘What happened to Laurie Moon, rather than to you?’
Kate felt a surge of irritation, the question seeming to her intensely stupid. ‘It’s both, obviously. But Laurie is dead, and her son has no mother.’
‘Though it seems he never did have much of one.’
‘Please don’t.’ Kate was sharp. ‘I suspect Laurie may have suffered more than enough of that while she was alive, poor girl.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Marie said. ‘I seem to be upsetting you tonight.’
‘It’s upsetting stuff,’ Kate said.
‘I know how much you hate me nagging,’ Bel said next day, after she’d turned up at the cottage bearing lunch, ‘but you’re not eating properly, whatever you say, and you don’t look very well, and I’m frankly worried about you.’
Kate didn’t answer, an attack of bleakness threatening to engulf her.
‘Do you think, perhaps,’ Bel said, after a moment, ‘it might be time for you to ask Marie to move out, especially since her place seems almost ready?’ She paused. ‘You know you could stay with me for a little while – I promise I’d leave you in peace. Or I could come back here, give you a little TLC.’
‘I’m sure I’ll manage perfectly well on my own when Marie does go.’ Kate sighed. ‘I just don’t want to seem ungrateful to her, especially since she seems so keen to keep me company till after the trial.’
‘Even so,’ Bel said, ‘it does occur to me that you might not be doing Marie the greatest of favours by letting her become too dependent.’
‘She hardly lets me do anything for her,’ Kate said. ‘On the contrary.’
‘I meant dependent on your company.’
Kate managed a smile. ‘You mustn’t worry about me.’
‘Comes with the job,’ Bel said.
‘How often do you think about the fifth gang member?’
Marie’s question, that same evening, startled Kate, jangling her nerves.
‘As seldom as possible,’ she answered.
‘I can imagine,’ Marie said. ‘Because it could, of course, be anyone.’
‘One of my reasons for not thinking about it,’ Kate said pointedly.
‘It’s all a bit of a mystery, isn’t it?’ the other woman persisted. ‘Why their leader wasn’t there with them?’
Kate bit down her irritation. ‘Rob’s theory was that he might be a coward.’
‘He?’ Marie queried.
‘Rob thought so.’
‘And you?’
‘I don’t want to think about it at all,’ Kate said. ‘As I’ve told you, repeatedly.’
‘You’d like me to shut up now.’ Marie was good-humoured.
‘On this subject, yes,’ Kate said. ‘Definitely.’
‘Of course,’ Marie said. ‘No problem.’
The time really was coming, Kate knew, for her to ask her to go.
Those questions about the fifth member had felt almost deliberately provocative, which seemed strange given the nature of their friendship till recently; a calm, restful kind of companionship, just what Kate had needed in the early weeks after losing Rob.
Something else, too, had been nagging at her.
An incident a couple of weeks ago that she’d neglected to mention to Bel or Michael – that she had, in fact, been trying hard not to dwell on.
She’d gone to the cemetery with a pot of budding white Christmas roses, and been startled to find Marie there, sitting in her wheelchair on the gravel path close to Rob’s grave.
Tears in her eyes.
‘I’m sorry.’ Marie had brushed them swiftly away. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’
‘Of course not,’ Kate had said, not quite truthfully, for she had found, perhaps oddly, that she did mind.
‘I just feel so guilty,’ Marie had explained.
Which Kate had certainly believed. Yet finding her there, so visibly upset, had made her wonder suddenly if perhaps Marie might have been a little in love with Rob. Which was, despite the age difference, not so improbable, since Rob had been an attractive man, and plainly fond of Marie.
Admiration on his part, Kate had no doubt, but on hers . . .
Which would make Marie’s drawing close to Rob’s widow quite sad.
And a little disturbing.
* * *
Martin Blake telephoned on the eighth of January with news of a breakthrough.
‘They found Laurie’s car,’ he said, ‘some time ago.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Kate asked.
‘Because no one told me,’ Blake said. ‘There’s more.’
Anticipation sent a prickling down Kate’s spine.
‘Whoever drove her car and hid it was not quite as meticulous as they were, later, at Caisleán.’ Blake paused. ‘Kate, they have a DNA match for Carol Marsh.’ He noted her silence. ‘Which proves, at least, that “Simon” was party to Laurie’s kidnap.’
‘But doesn’t necessarily help convict the others,’ Kate said.
‘Patience,’ Blake said, gently.
* * *
An unwelcome visitor arrived, without warning, three days later.
Sandi West, coming to call on Kate.
Just what she needed, after a night of crazy dreams that had seemed, so far as Kate could recall, to have included everything from being tied up in the bath at Caisleán to breastfeeding an unnaturally large baby.
‘I’ve come now,’ Sandi said, ‘because I know it’s a school morning for Mary.’
Having no real alternative, Kate invited her in and offered her coffee.
‘I don’t want you to put yourself out,’ Sandi said.
‘It’s no problem,’ Kate said.
‘All the same,’ Sandi said. ‘No, thank you.’
Her disability was plainly causing her more pain than ever, Kate saw, as her mother’s friend made her way into the living room. She was using two sticks now, manoeuvring herself with difficulty towards one of the armchairs.
‘I’ve come,’ she said, settling down at last, ‘because I have something to tell you.’
‘All right.’ Kate sat on the sofa in the centre of the jacquard throw she and Rob had bought together in the brief golden months of their reconciliation.
‘I’ve tried talking to Bel about this,’ Sandi said, ‘but she doesn’t really listen to me these days, and I accept that’s out of loyalty to you, which is fair enough. But I’ve decided this is something you really do have to know.’
Kate had been tired before Sandi came, the baby’s kicking wearing her out.
‘It’s about Mary,’ Sandi said.
‘Her name is Marie.’ Kate hadn’t bothered to correct her the first time, but now it irritated her. ‘What about her?’
‘I know she’s been living here,’ Sandi said, ‘which is not my business, of course, except I feel you should know what a great interest she’s always shown in you.’
‘And isn’t that a good thing?’ Kate asked.
‘It’s a peculiar thing, I’d say,’ Sandi answered. ‘I’m talking about long before you met her, Kate. When Bel was still coming with me to the group, and Mary always used to pick out people to be especially interested in. When it came to you, I can tell you she often used to pump me for information.’
For just a moment or two, Kate had found herself starting to listen with a degree of real curiosity, but then she remembered Sandi’s appalling insensitivity at the group meeting she’d attended, and recalled, too, Marie’s intervention – and Sandi West was most definitely the type of woman to bear a grudge, of that she was certain.
‘I think, perhaps, you’re overreacting,’ Kate said.
‘I don’t think so,’ Sandi disagreed. ‘I’ve thought about this long and hard, Kate, and I know we’ve never got along, so I expect you think this is sour grapes. But don’t you think, given what those terrible people were saying to you about your poor dead baby before they killed Laurie Moon—’
‘Sandi, I’m not allowed to speak about the case.’
‘I’m not asking you to,’ Sandi said. ‘Just to listen when I tell you that what Mary Coates seemed most interested in about you was your miscarriage.’
‘For God’s sake.’ Kate stood up, trembling with anger, one hand covering her abdomen. ‘I’d like you to go, please, Sandi.’
‘Mary kept her questions low-key, but there was no mistaking her curiosity.’ Sandi had always been tenacious. ‘The fact is, your mum used to bring her problems to the group, and in those days, let’s face it, you were often one of her biggest problems.’
‘I want you to go now,’ sai
d Kate.
‘All right,’ Sandi said, ‘but—’
‘Now.’
‘Just don’t say I didn’t warn you,’ Sandi said.
Of what, exactly, Kate wondered afterwards, had Sandi been warning her? If any of that rambling unpleasantness had been true, what had she been suggesting it meant?
That Marie was a much nosier creature than one might believe.
Which might be cause for annoyance, but hardly constituted a capital offence. Especially considering that disability might, for some, lead to an unhealthy interest in other people’s lives.
Except that Marie Coates was an active woman, and even though she hadn’t wanted to return to the disabled children’s riding group since Rob’s accident, she still worked at the school three days each week. Hardly the personality to sit and feed off the misfortunes or joys of others.
There was one other possibility, too ludicrous even to consider, and it had only flashed up in Kate’s mind because of Sandi’s melodramatic ‘warning’.
Could she, by any insane chance, have been implying something else altogether? That Marie – or Mary, as Sandi persisted in calling her – might have been somehow connected to the gang?
Had perhaps even been the fifth member? The Chief?
That was laughable. Truly mad. Although not much more so, Kate reminded herself, than the time after that meeting when she had briefly entertained a wild suspicion that Sandi West herself might have been involved.
‘Too many chiefs.’ The remark Sandi had made then that had sparked the suspicion. Looking right at Kate as she’d said it.
And that had happened, now she thought about it again, immediately after Marie had stopped Sandi from harassing her.
Which only meant that, as Kate already knew, Sandi was a mixer, nothing more sinister than that. And that Marie was an occasionally irritating, but wholly innocent, bystander.
Who might have been in love with Rob, Kate reflected again. Who was now living with her because of her friendship with Rob.
Because of Rob’s death.
Who had been with him when he had died. The only person with him.
Their tiny daughter kicked inside her, coinciding with another entirely new possibility.
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