‘You’re a dark horse, Bill Driver. And a weird one at that.’
‘Quick, she’s on.’
‘Let me get a glass of wine first,’ said Jessie, retreating to the kitchen.
Jessie’s home phone started to ring.
‘Leave it!’ shouted Bill.
Jessie poured out the wine as the pager in her jacket pocket beeped to life. She ignored that as well.
‘Quick, you’re missing it! Jesus, she looks great.’
‘Hang on, I just want to turn my mobile off,’ she replied, fearing the persistent caller, whoever it was. She scooped it out of her bag, walked back into the sitting room and saw what Bill was riveted to. Amanda Hornby, all leggy and blonde, standing outside an elegant townhouse. Jessie cocked her head to one side.
‘… That’s right, the family are refusing to comment and as yet no one has been able to track down the missing heiress.’
Jessie’s phone twitched in her hand. Her brain was operating a few seconds behind Greenwich Meantime. She glanced down.
‘… So now the big question is: was the body found in Marshall Street Baths that of Malcolm Hoare? And, if so, has he been doing some haunting …?’
DCI Moore. Private line.
‘Isn’t that your case?’ said Bill, leaning back over the sofa.
‘Oh my God,’ said Jessie, staring back at the TV screen. ‘What the hell have you done?’
‘… Leading the case is DI Jessie Driver, pictured here a few days ago leaving a London hotel in the early hours of the morning with the musician P. J. Dean. No stranger to the spotlight, Driver first made the headlines when …’
‘I’m going to fucking kill you,’ said Jessie, seething.
‘… I am reliably informed by someone close to this very individual detective that she is using a retired exorcist to help her determine who the remains in the Marshall Street Baths belong to …’
Bill looked pleadingly at Jessie. ‘She’s just doing her job.’
‘I mean you, you fucking idiot! Someone close! Close, Bill! Who the fuck do you think that is!’ Her landline started to ring again. So did her mobile. ‘Have you got a mobile yet?’
‘… strange goings on have beset development plans for this historic building …’
Bill scrambled in his pocket and threw her a small blue Nokia phone. Jessie dialled a number from memory.
‘You brought her back here, didn’t you?’
Bill ran his hands through his hair.
‘Didn’t you!’
Eventually the call went through.
‘Are you watching this?’ Jessie continued to stare at Amanda Hornby’s pert mouth spouting shit about her life. ‘I’m finished if you can’t pull something miraculous out of the bag.’
‘How much time have you got?’
Jessie’s doorbell rang.
‘None.’
17
‘I didn’t leak the story,’ said Jessie as soon as the lift doors opened. Well, not intentionally, anyhow.
‘Then what was it doing splashed all over Channel Five news?’ asked Moore in an arch voice.
‘I dread to think,’ said Jessie, which was at least an honest response. ‘It wasn’t in my interest for the story to go public because I didn’t know all the facts.’
‘I ordered you not to go looking for the facts.’
‘We’re talking about a murder.’
‘You think we are.’
Jessie pulled a face. ‘You should have more faith in me.’
‘That works both ways, Detective. When I said this came from the top, I meant from the top. The Deputy Commissioner is in there. He had a taxiing plane return to the gate in order to get here this evening. This is serious. Mr Scott-Somers gave a lot of money to the government during his lifetime and his friends are still prepared to go to the aid of his very wealthy widow.’
‘And that buys the Scott-Somers their get-out-of-jail card?’
‘No. But it should buy them the guarantee of not being dragged through the press again.’
‘They weren’t dragged through the first time; I’ve looked. It was sat on then, it’s being sat on now.’
‘They are very private people.’
‘Private or afraid?’
‘I am hoping you can tell me. In fact, I would say your career depends on it.’
Jessie could not bring herself to tell Moore that she didn’t have absolute confirmation that the dead man was Malcolm Hoare. But her silence spoke volumes.
Moore shook her head with disappointment. ‘Then I cannot support you. My hands are tied, Jessie,’ she said.
‘Please, unpick the knot. I need to buy a little time.’
‘How long?’
Burrows’ mate at the Forensic Science Service hadn’t been able to say. This procedure usually took months, not days – and certainly not hours, which was all they had.
‘Not long,’ she prayed.
They were all there. Their weapons were loaded, raised and pointing at her. Jessie faced the firing squad alone with only one hope of reprieve and she didn’t know how far away it was.
The Deputy Commissioner’s office was a spacious room with two leather sofas, two armchairs and a low oblong glass coffee table. Refreshments stood neatly in the centre of the table: a flask of coffee and a decanter of whisky. Whisky seemed to be the preferred option that evening. Also in attendance were Mrs Scott-Somers, her daughter Charlotte, their respective lawyers and their assistants, and a man in a suit whom she did not recognise. It turned out he was a lawsuit specialist employed by the Metropolitan Police in crises like this. Presently he was here in a mediating role. If that were true, thought Jessie, shouldn’t he have heard her side of the story prior to entering the room?
Christina Scott-Somers was thin like her daughter. Whereas on Charlotte it looked vulnerable, on Christina it looked pinched. The angles on her face were sharp, her eyebrows were plucked into a razor-thin arch and her chin was set a fraction higher than was comfortable. Condescension seethed out of every pore. She wore her ebony hair swept back in a chignon held fast with an ivory pin. Her wardrobe was cool, understated wealth. A black cashmere jersey, dark grey slacks and patent leather pumps. Her only jewels were a large engagement ring and a pearl choker. Mrs Scott-Somers looked every inch the respectable, grieving widow, though Jessie suspected that anything resembling sympathy would be knocked away with a single barbed comment. Jessie tried an apology instead, but that too was swiftly brushed aside. Mrs Scott-Somers didn’t want an apology, she wanted an explanation. And so the tap dance began.
‘Mrs Scott-Somers, when your daughter was kidnapped –’
‘Not me. I wasn’t kidnapped.’
Pacing the back of the room, looking minuscule in knee-high boots and a floral print dress, was Charlotte. She had one of the Deputy Commissioner’s heavy-base lead-crystal tumblers in her hand. It looked too big for someone so slight. Jessie was reminded of a child again, picking up an adult object and lurching under the weight of it.
‘Just for the record,’ she said, before raising the glass to her lips.
‘Please, Charlotte, for once, let’s not make this about you.’
Jessie remembered Dr Turnball’s words: if Charlotte was guilty of attention seeking, surely it was because this had never been about her. Jessie turned back to Mrs Scott-Somers. ‘Malcolm Hoare was very careful not to leave any fingerprints on the ransom letter, but he didn’t think twice before licking the envelope.’ Someone had licked the envelope – Burrows’ forensics man had been able to confirm that much. ‘In 1976 the police lacked the technology to extract DNA from the gum on the back of an envelope …’ She paused for effect. ‘We now have that technology.’ Of course, having the technology and finding a technician willing to set aside everything else to rush through a series of tests that would normally take weeks were two different things. Once again Jessie prayed for the text message to wing its way to her across the ether.
‘Indeed, Detective. I too have watched CSI,
but what has this breakthrough in forensic science got to do with my family?’
The tap dance continued.
‘A match between that sample of DNA and the body we found in the Marshall Street Baths would prove that the dead man was Malcolm Hoare.’
‘So?’
‘He never paid for his crime.’
‘A matter for the police force to obsess over, Detective. My husband was never interested in catching the man, he only wanted Nancy home.’
Jessie found the sweetness in her voice sickly. She wasn’t the only one. Charlotte reached out for the decanter. ‘His precious little princess,’ she said in a barely audible whisper. Everyone else pretended not to notice.
‘It didn’t matter to him that the person responsible walked out of court a free man?’ asked Jessie incredulously.
‘What mattered was that Nancy was alive, Detective. Nothing more.’
‘Alive. But not the same.’
Mrs Scott-Somers stood in disgust. ‘I am not prepared to sit here and listen to these veiled accusations. You will be hearing from my lawyers.’
‘Nancy’s feet were bound,’ said Jessie, standing too. ‘Her hands were tied, pulled over her head and attached by a rope to a beam. Her feet only just touched the floor of the well.’
Mrs Scott-Somers quivered with fury. ‘There is no need for this,’ she spat through clenched teeth.
Jessie remained very calm. ‘Not so easy to forget, is it?’
‘Of course we haven’t forgotten. How do you forget something like that?’
‘You don’t,’ said Jessie.
‘Well, of course you don’t. Come on, Charlotte, we’re going.’
‘The man in the baths was tied up in exactly the same way, Mrs Scott-Somers. Exactly the same way. On exactly the same date.’
‘I can see what you are trying to do.’ The widow visibly composed herself. The condescending tone returned to her voice, enabling her to remain far removed from any event that was not to her liking. ‘Nancy came home, our prayers were answered, and that was the end of it as far as we were concerned.’
‘Was it? Really? Perhaps Nancy wasn’t able to brush it under the carpet as easily as you and your late husband were.’
‘You are on very thin ice, Detective,’ she sneered. The lawyers hovered.
‘I’m on thin ice? You’re the one with all the lawyers.’
‘That’s enough, Driver,’ said Moore.
‘Why do you feel you need all this protection? I only want to talk to Nancy.’
‘Driver!’
‘It’s Nancy I am trying to protect,’ said Mrs Scott-Somers.
A mean little laugh escaped Charlotte’s lips.
‘My daughter has nothing to do with this. I don’t care if it is that man. As a matter of fact, I’ll be glad if it is.’
‘Mrs Scott-Somers –’ warned the lawyer.
The phone buzzed in Jessie’s pocket. She glanced at the display and saw all that she needed to know.
‘Well it is that man. The DNA confirms it. Now you are going to have to answer some questions.’
Jessie re-read Burrows’ message while the lawyers made frantic phone calls to other lawyers, inching their final bill ever skyward. It was a positive match. There was no longer any doubt: fourteen years ago someone had killed Malcolm Hoare on the anniversary of the kidnapping using a method that imitated the way Nancy had been held captive. At last her case wasn’t looking so tenuous.
Moore took the opportunity to have a quiet conversation with the Deputy Commissioner. Jessie watched him retrieve his cap and nod once, curtly, in her direction. She couldn’t read the nod. Friend or foe? Goodwill or trap?
Moore whispered in her ear: ‘Ask the questions, keep it to a minimum – just get enough to cross Nancy off the list.’
‘And what if I can’t cross her off the list?’
‘You don’t really think Nancy Scott-Somers went into a place like that and killed a man with her bare hands, do you? There’s a swimming pool in the basement of their house, Jessie. And it’s hardly likely she’d have taken a job at the baths! So, go gently. It’s your neck on the line.’
‘I think I got that.’
Jessie faced Mrs Scott-Somers on the sofa and asked the only question she’d ever wanted to ask her: ‘Where is Nancy?’
Jessie watched Mrs Scott-Somers struggle with the words. They stuck in her throat like burrs. Not to be extracted without causing pain.
Charlotte leaned over the back of the sofa. ‘Malcolm Hoare is haunting that pool, isn’t he?’
This was not the answer Jessie was looking for. She attempted to ignore Charlotte, as everyone else did.
‘We all saw the news,’ Charlotte continued. ‘Strange things have been happening, and you’ve been talking to an exorcist.’ It sounded so damaging coming from her. Moore coughed nervously.
‘I spoke to a retired vicar on matters that do not concern this case. Apropos of nothing, he thinks the term “exorcist” is objectionable,’ said Jessie firmly. ‘Now, if we could return to the question of Nancy’s whereabouts …?’
‘I’ve seen spiritualists, they all say I’m quite psychic. I hear ghosts sometimes, footsteps at night – clairaudience, it’s called.’
They also tell you you’re surrounded by a lot of angry dead people, thought Jessie. Poor Charlotte. They would have seen her coming. The walking wounded, so easily swayed. Her imagination took over where their suggestions left off.
‘Charlotte, those people aren’t to be trusted –’
‘Enough of this nonsense!’ said Mrs Scott-Somers loudly. She continued in a quieter voice: ‘I don’t know where Nancy is. She left home some time ago. We miss her very much and we are looking forward to her return.’
Jessie watched Charlotte turn away and lean against the office wall.
‘When will that be, Mrs Scott-Somers?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘When did she leave home?’
Charlotte was eyeing her mother. ‘When she was too fat to stay hidden in the house.’
‘How long ago? A few months, a few years? Fourteen years, by any chance?’
‘Mrs Scott-Somers is here because she wants to help. Any more threatening questions, and she will leave,’ said one of the lawyers.
‘It’s ironic, really,’ continued Charlotte, unabashed, ‘in that the Scott-Somers are renowned for their large houses.’
‘How long ago, Mrs Scott-Somers?’
‘Some people just can’t control what they eat.’
Jessie looked at Charlotte again. ‘You’re right. It is an addiction –’ she glanced down at the recently refilled tumbler – ‘like any other.’
‘I fail to see what Nancy’s eating habits have got to do with anything,’ exclaimed Mrs Scott-Somers.
‘I’m sure it has a great deal to do with everything,’ said Jessie, deflected again.
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning: children often eat to protect themselves. They see safety in size.’
‘Your point is?’
‘Nancy kept on eating. Why? Because she kept on being afraid. She couldn’t forget what happened, could she? And you, with the help of your daughter here, are procrastinating. So, for the last time: where is Nancy and when did she leave home?’
… Some time after turning sixteen, Nancy started walking out of the house during the day and not returning for hours. She wouldn’t tell anyone where she was going, and she wouldn’t tell anyone when she was home. The child psychiatrist believed these wanderings were a direct result of the claustrophobic surveillance Nancy had undergone since the kidnapping. They were told that locking her in at this stage might prove fatal. She had already shown suicidal tendencies, signs of depression and food addiction, had fitful sleep and problems with bed-wetting. It was a good indicator, therefore, that she felt confident enough to get out of the house and the family was advised to let her go. When she returned, the doctor told Mr and Mrs Scott-Somers to welcome her back with open arms;
the phase would soon pass. It didn’t pass. Gradually the hours turned into days. Sometimes weeks. Then months would go by before Nancy returned and eventually years …
‘The last time we saw her was on the eve of Charlotte’s eighteenth – 1985.’
Jessie was staggered. ‘You haven’t seen her for nineteen years?’
Mrs Scott-Somers shook her head. ‘I thought she would come back for my husband’s funeral, but …’ She cleared her throat.
‘Do you speak to her?’
‘No.’
‘And you haven’t seen her since –’
‘No. Are you enjoying rubbing my nose in it?’
‘Actually, that’s not strictly true …’
‘Charlotte, please –’
‘She rolled up one year, right in the middle of Christmas dinner. The size of a house and as bald as a baby. She knelt down at Daddy’s feet and cried. Fucking mad, right? But once again, we killed the fatted calf then heaved the gargantuan up the stairs. In the morning she was gone. I would have thought it was another dream, but the Christmas cake was missing, so I guess it wasn’t.’ Again Charlotte drained her glass. She had honed her act of arched indifference. It was close to flawless, but not perfect.’ Perfect indifference did not require alcohol as a prop.
‘When was that?’
‘The following Christmas,’ said Mrs Scott-Somers. ‘She only stayed for one night.’
DCI Moore stepped forward. ‘This is very serious, Mrs Scott-Somers. How do you know she is even alive?’
‘The money,’ replied Mrs Scott-Somers. ‘Every month it goes out of the account we set up for her.’
‘How much?’ asked Jessie.
‘That is none of your business.’
‘I’m afraid it is,’ said Jessie. ‘There are many unscrupulous groups of people who target the vulnerable, especially if they have a lot of money. Is it a lot of money?’
‘Twenty thousand.’
‘A year?’
‘A month.’
Jessie’s eyes widened. ‘And do you know for sure she collects it?’
Mrs Scott-Somers shook her head. She started to weep. Another lawyer stepped forward and offered her a handkerchief. Jessie wondered how much he’d get of Daddy’s money for that small gesture.
The Unquiet Dead Page 25