The Cradle in the Grave

by Sophie Hannah

  ‘DC Gibbs, Culver Valley CID.’

  ‘I was expecting a DC Sellers,’ Stella White said – upbeat, smiling, as if a DC Gibbs was some kind of bonus, or treat.

  Sorry to disappoint you.

  ‘Change of plan.’ Gibbs showed her his ID, and allowed himself to be ushered into the front room. Television noise was coming from the next room, the one with the closed door: some sort of horse-racing commentary.

  ‘Your husband watching the racing?’ he asked. The room they were in looked as if it had had some money spent on it: thick swagged curtains, real wood floor, a slate and marble fireplace. Subtle colours that you couldn’t easily describe, nothing as straightforward as red or blue or green. Debbie would have loved it, though she’d have been unwilling to live on Bengeo Street, however smart the house was inside; it was too close to the Winstanley estate, on the wrong side of town.

  ‘I haven’t got a husband,’ said Stella. ‘My son Dillon’s got a thing about horses. At first I tried to stop him watching the racing, but . . .’ She shrugged. ‘He loves it so much, I decided it was mean to deprive him.’

  Gibbs nodded. ‘Any sort of interest’s got to be good, hasn’t it?’ he said. ‘When I was a kid I wasn’t interested in anything. Nothing. I was bored out of my mind until I was old enough to drink and . . .’ He stopped himself just in time, but Stella White was grinning.

  ‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘I’m just so glad he’s passionate about something – it almost doesn’t matter what. He studies form and everything. Get him on the subject of racing and you can’t shut him up.’

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘Four.’ Seeing Gibbs’ surprise, Stella said, ‘I know. It can be a bit embarrassing. He’s not a child prodigy or anything – just a normal kid who’s crazy about horse-racing.’

  ‘Next you’ll tell me he speaks twelve languages and can cure cancer,’ said Gibbs.

  ‘I wish.’ Stella’s smile dimmed. ‘I don’t want to embarrass you by springing this on you, but I find it’s easier if I do, and then it’s out of the way. I’ve got cancer.’

  ‘Right.’ Gibbs cleared his throat. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m used to it – the cancer, people’s reactions to it. I’ve had it for years, and I’ve lived a better life because of it.’

  Gibbs didn’t know what else he could say apart from sorry. A better life? Who was she trying to kid? He was starting to wish he’d stuck with Beryl Murie.

  ‘Please, have a seat,’ said Stella. ‘Can I get you anything to drink?’

  ‘No, I’m good. I could do with Dillon joining us, if you can tear him away from the horses. I’d like to go over what you’ve already told us about the man you saw approaching Helen Yardley’s front door, see if you remember anything new.’

  Stella frowned. ‘I doubt Dillon saw him. I was strapping him into his car seat – he sits in the back, so he’ll have had a view of the back of the seat in front and not much else.’

  ‘What about before you put him in the car? Presumably the man approached the house from the road. Might Dillon have seen him further down the street, before you strapped him into his chair?’

  ‘He could have, I suppose, though I didn’t notice him, not till he was right outside Helen’s house. But to be honest, I don’t think Dillon saw him at all. The detective who came last time talked to him, and it wasn’t much use. Dillon said he’d seen a man, but that was pretty much it – he couldn’t say when or even where, and by that point he already knew I’d seen a man . . . I think he was just saying it because he’d heard me say it.’

  ‘If only the man had been a horse,’ Gibbs attempted a joke.

  ‘Oh, then he’d have remembered every detail.’ Stella laughed. ‘Dillon’s quite good with detail usually, even when horses aren’t involved, but he couldn’t tell the detective anything: hair colour, height, clothes. Not that I was much better.’ She looked apologetic. ‘I think he had darkish hair and darkish clothes, I think he was tallish, regular build, and at the upper end of young or the lower end of middle-aged. I seem to remember he was wearing a coat, but who wouldn’t have been? It’s October.’

  ‘Not carrying anything, as far as you remember?’ Gibbs asked.

  ‘No, but . . . he could have been, I suppose.’

  ‘And you didn’t notice if he had a car, or if there were any cars not usually parked on Bengeo Street that were there that morning?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know a Volvo from a Skoda,’ said Stella. ‘Sorry. I’m completely car-blind. There could have been twenty bright pink Rolls-Royces parked on the street and I wouldn’t have noticed.’

  ‘Not a problem,’ said Gibbs. ‘If I could have a quick chat with Dillon, though . . .’ He produced his best smile. ‘I’m not expecting him to tell me anything, but it’s worth a shot. A lot of the blokes I know who are into the horses are also into cars.’

  ‘Okay, but . . . if by any chance he starts to talk about Helen’s death, could you . . .’ Stella stopped. She looked embarrassed. ‘I know this is going to sound weird, but could you try to be as positive about it as you can?’

  Gibbs chewed his lip, stumped. Positive, about a woman who’d been fucked over by the legal system, robbed of her only surviving child and then shot in the head?

  ‘This is going to sound very convenient from a woman with terminal cancer, I know, but I’m trying to bring up Dillon to believe what I believe: that there is no death, or there doesn’t have to be. The spirit is what matters and that never dies. Everything else is trivial.’

  Gibbs sat as still as a stone. He should have stuck with Beryl Murie, quit while he was ahead. ‘What have you told Dillon about Helen Yardley’s murder?’

  ‘The truth. He knows she was a special person. Sometimes special people are chosen for soul challenges that most of us couldn’t cope with, which is why Helen had a harder time than most, but now she’s moved on to the next stage. I told him she’d be happy, if happiness is what her spirit needs, in her next life.’

  Gibbs managed a non-commital nod. He looked again at the room he was in: fireplace with four framed photographs on the mantelpiece above it, two chairs, a two-seater sofa, bellows, a brass bucket for coal, a poker for the fire, two wooden coffee tables. No joss-sticks, nothing tasselled, no yin-yang symbols; Gibbs felt as if he’d been conned. ‘What did you tell Dillon about the person who killed Helen?’ he asked. Whoever he was, he was the one Gibbs wanted to move on to the next stage, the stage of being banged up for life and, ideally, beaten to mincemeat in some shithole of a prison.

  ‘That was hard, obviously,’ said Stella. ‘I tried to explain to him that some people are afraid of experiencing their pain and try to redirect it to others. If you don’t mind my saying so, you strike me as falling into that category.’

  ‘Me?’ Gibbs sat up straighter in his chair. Get me the fuck out of here.

  ‘Not that I’m saying you’d do anything violent – of course you wouldn’t.’

  Gibbs wasn’t so sure.

  ‘It’s just . . . I sense a lot of clouds close to the surface. Underneath those, there’s a light burning brightly, but it’s . . .’ Stella laughed suddenly. ‘I’m sorry. I’ll shut up – I’ve got bigmouthitis as well as cancer, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Can I have a word with Dillon?’

  ‘I’ll go and grab him.’

  Left alone in the room, Gibbs exhaled slowly. What would Waterhouse think about a woman who saw perks where others saw tragedy, and violent death as a great opportunity, facilitating a soul’s entry into a happier next life? What if you decided a friend of yours had suffered enough in her present incarnation and it was time for her soul to move up a level? Gibbs wondered if he ought to mention it.

  Through the wall, he heard the sound of Dillon’s muffled anger as the TV was switched off. He stood up and walked over to the display of photographs above the fireplace. One was of Dillon in his school uniform. He looked as if he was saying the ‘ch’ part of the word ‘cheese’. There was a picture
of Stella and Dillon together, and two of Stella alone, in running gear. In one she had a medal on a ribbon round her neck.

  When she came into the room with Dillon, Gibbs said, ‘Runner, are you?’ It was something he’d considered taking up, before deciding he couldn’t be bothered.

  ‘Not any more,’ said Stella. ‘I haven’t got the strength for it now. When I first got my diagnosis, I realised there was one thing I’d wanted to do all my life that I still hadn’t done, so I trained and I did it: two or three marathons a year for about five years. I couldn’t believe how much healthier it made me feel. Not only feel,’ Stella corrected herself. ‘I was healthier. The doctors gave me two years to live – I’ve managed to wangle an extra eight.’

  ‘That’s not bad.’ Maybe thinking positive about death had its upside after all.

  ‘I’ve raised pots of money for charity. Last time I ran the London Marathon, all the money I raised went to JIPAC—you know, Helen’s organisation. I did a couple of triathlons, too, also for charity. Now I’m mostly doing public speaking – to cancer patients, doctors, Women’s Institute, University of the Third Age – anyone who’ll have me.’ Stella smiled. ‘If you’re not careful, I’ll show you may cardboard box full of press cuttings.’

  ‘Can I watch telly?’ Dillon asked impatiently. He was wearing a blue tracksuit with a school logo on the top. There were traces of chocolate round his mouth.

  ‘Soon, love.’ Stella stroked the top of his head. ‘Once we’ve finished chatting to DC Gibbs, you can go back to your horses.’

  ‘But I want to do what I want to do,’ Dillon protested.

  ‘Can you remember Monday morning?’ Gibbs asked him.

  ‘It’s Thursday today.’

  ‘That’s right. So Monday was . . .’

  ‘Before Thursday it was Wednesday, before Wednesday it was Tuesday, before Tuesday it was Monday. That day?’

  ‘Right,’ Gibbs agreed.

  ‘We saw the man with the umbrella, beyond,’ said Dillon.

  ‘Umbrella?’ Stella laughed. ‘That’s a new one. He didn’t—’

  ‘Beyond?’ Gibbs knelt down in front of the boy. ‘You mean ahead?’

  ‘No. Beyond.’

  ‘Did you see the man outside Helen Yardley’s house on Monday morning?’

  ‘I saw him and Mum saw him.’

  ‘But he didn’t have an umbrella, sweet-pea,’ said Stella gently.

  ‘He did.’

  ‘What colour was the umbrella?’

  ‘Black and silver,’ said Dillon, without missing a beat.

  Stella was shaking her head in apparent amusement. She mouthed something at Gibbs that implied she’d explain later, once Dillon had been returned to the TV room.

  ‘Did you see the man getting into or out of a car?’

  Dillon shook his head.

  ‘But you saw him outside the Yardleys’ house, on the path.’

  ‘And beyond.’

  ‘You mean he went into the house?’ Gibbs signalled to Stella not to interrupt.

  She ignored him. ‘Sorry, but . . . sweet-pea, you didn’t see him go into Helen’s house, did you?’

  ‘Mrs White, please . . .’

  ‘The more times he’s asked, the more he’ll invent,’ said Stella. ‘Sorry, I know I shouldn’t leap in, but you don’t know Dillon like I do. He’s very, very sensitive. He can see that people want him to tell them things, and he doesn’t want to disappoint them.’

  ‘He was in the lounge,’ said Dillon. ‘I saw him in the lounge.’

  ‘Dillon, you didn’t. You’re only trying to help, I know, but you didn’t see the man in Helen’s lounge, did you?’ Stella turned to Gibbs. ‘Believe me, if he’d had a black and silver umbrella with him, I’d have seen it. It wasn’t even raining. It was bright, sunny and cold – what I call perfect Christmas Day weather, except in October. Most people want snow at Christmas, but I—’

  ‘It wasn’t bright,’ said Dillon. ‘There wasn’t enough sun to make it bright. Can I watch the horses now?’

  Gibbs made a mental note to look up last Sunday’s weather forecasts for Monday. Someone cautious might have taken an umbrella with him even on a sunny morning, if rain had been predicted. And if it hadn’t? Could the gun have been inside the closed umbrella?

  ‘It was raining,’ said Dillon, looking up at Gibbs with a hard-done-by expression on his face. ‘The umbrella was wet. I did see the man in the lounge.’

  Judith Duffy lived in a three-storey detached villa in Ealing, on a windy tree-lined street that felt neither like what Simon thought of as ‘proper London’ nor like anywhere else in particular. He decided he wouldn’t like to live here. Not that he could have afforded to, so it was probably just as well. He rang the bell for the third time. Nothing.

  He pushed open the gleaming brass letterbox and looked through it, saw a wooden coat stand, a herringbone parquet floor, Persian rugs, a black piano and red-cushioned stool. He took a step back when his view was blocked by purple material with a button attached to it.

  The door opened. Knowing that Judith Duffy was fiftyfour, Simon was shocked to see a woman who could easily have been seventy. Her straight iron-grey hair was tied back from her narrow, age-hollowed face. In the photograph of her that Simon had seen, the one the newspapers always used, Duffy had looked much rounder; there had been the hint of a double chin.

  ‘I don’t think I invited you to peer through my letterbox,’ she said. It was the sort of phrase that begged, Simon thought, to be delivered with barely suppressed outrage, but Dr Duffy sounded as if she was merely stating a fact. ‘Who are you?’

  Simon identified himself. ‘I’ve left you two messages,’ he said.

  ‘I didn’t return your calls because I didn’t want to waste your time,’ said Duffy. ‘This will be the shortest interview of your career. I won’t talk to you or answer your questions, and I won’t allow you to do whatever test it is that establishes whether or not I’ve fired a gun. Also, you can tell your colleague Fliss Benson to stop bothering me – I won’t talk to her either. I’m sorry you’ve had a wasted journey.’

  Colleague Fliss Benson? Simon had never heard of her.

  Duffy started to close the door. He put out his hand to stop her. ‘Everyone else we’ve asked has agreed to be swabbed, and cooperated with us in any way they can.’

  ‘I’m not everybody. Please take your hand off my door.’ She closed it in his face.

  Simon pushed open the letterbox again and saw purple. ‘There’s someone I can’t find,’ he addressed Duffy’s cardigan, the only part of her he could see. ‘Rachel Hines. I’ve spoken to her ex-husband, Angus. He said she’s staying with friends somewhere in London, but he doesn’t know where. I don’t suppose you’ve got any idea?’

  ‘You should ask Laurie Nattrass that question,’ said Duffy.

  ‘I’m planning to, soon as he rings me back.’

  ‘So it’s everyone minus one, then.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Cooperating. Laurie Nattrass can’t be cooperating if he hasn’t returned your calls.’

  Do we have to have this conversation through a letterbox? ‘Mr Nattrass has already been swabbed, alibied and eliminated, as you would be if you—’

  ‘Goodbye, Mr Waterhouse.’

  Simon heard the shuffle of her feet on the wood floor as she moved away. ‘Help me out here,’ he called after her. ‘Between you and me, and I shouldn’t be telling you this, I’m worried about Mrs Hines.’ No matter what the Snowman said, no matter what Sam Kombothekra said, Simon’s instincts told him he was looking for a serial killer, or a person with the potential to become one – someone who left cards bearing strange numerical codes in the pockets of his victims. Was Rachel Hines one of those victims? Or was Simon’s imagination as out of control as Charlie was always telling him it was?

  He let out a heavy sigh. As if in response, Judith Duffy took a few steps towards the front door. Now Simon could see her again, her shoulder and her arm. Not her face.
‘I had lunch with Ray Hines on Monday,’ she said. ‘There, I’ve given you my alibi – and hers – so you can go away happy, and even if you aren’t happy, you can go. Neither of us knew that it was the day someone would murder Helen Yardley. At that point it was just Monday 5 October, same as any other Monday. We met at a restaurant, spent the afternoon together.’

  ‘Which restaurant?’ Simon got out his pad and pen.

  ‘Sardo Canale in Primrose Hill. Ray’s choice.’

  ‘Do you mind my asking . . .?’

  ‘Goodbye, Mr Waterhouse.’

  This time, when Simon pressed the letterbox, he met with resistance. She was holding it shut from the inside.

  He went back to his car and switched on his phone. He had two messages, one from a man he assumed was Laurie Nattrass whose message was a strange noise followed by the words ‘Laurie Nattrass’ and nothing more, and one from Charlie, saying that Lizzie Proust had rung to invite the two of them for dinner on Saturday night. Didn’t Simon think it was weird, she wanted to know, given that they’d known the Prousts for years and no such invitation had been forthcoming until now, and what did he want her to say? Simon texted the word ‘NO’, in capitals, to her mobile phone, dropping his own twice in the process, in his eagerness to get the message sent. The Snowman, inviting him for dinner; the thought made Simon’s throat close like a clenched fist. He forced his mind away from it, unwilling to deal with the violence of his reaction and the element of fear it contained.

  He rang one of the three mobile numbers he had for Laurie Nattrass, and this time someone answered after the first ring. Simon heard breathing. ‘Hello?’ he said. ‘Mr Nattrass?’

  ‘Laurie Nattrass,’ said a gruff voice, the same one that had left the message.

  ‘Is that Mr Nattrass I’m speaking to?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Pardon?’