‘We know that Alex Driver and Neil Cunningham were involved in this too. We have incriminating material from the theatre and we have them both in custody. Now we have you, too, and my next step will be to arrest your parents.’
‘I’ve told you – leave my parents out of this.’
‘No, I don’t think I will. Boxes of those DVDs were stored at your home. I don’t believe for a moment that they didn’t know they were there. In fact, everything points to them being the instigators of this nasty little business. I think it’s time they told me the truth.’
‘LEAVE them OUT of this!’ Edmund was leaning forward, all his affected languor gone, the colour hot in his pale face. ‘It was mine, OK? I thought of it, I brought in Alex and Neil, I did the filming. The recruiting – using the model agencies – the boat – everything – it was me. I’m the mastermind.’
‘And did you also try to kill Mrs Gray?’
‘No!’ He laughed. ‘I’m not owning up to that.’
‘Only it’s obvious that she was attacked because she knew too much and had a copy of the DVD, and Driver and Cunningham both have cast iron alibis.’
‘How convenient.’
‘Isn’t it? Driver was back stage at the theatre – actually “on the desk”, we’re told – and Cunningham left the school after the debate with a canon from the abbey and went into his house in the precincts for a glass of whisky. Unless the canon was also part of your enterprise?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘So that leaves just you. You knew Mrs Gray had the disc – in fact you tried to get it off her – you were at the debate and could easily have followed her. You knew there was scaffolding conveniently lying around in the cloisters. You say you went to your room afterwards but nobody saw you go. An unanswerable case, I would say.’
‘Really, Chief Inspector,’ Laleh Shahidi broke in, ‘it’s no such thing. It’s purely circumstantial. My client –’
‘Your client can speak for himself, Laleh. I didn’t do it, Chief Inspector, and just to save you time I’ll give you a bit of help. Why don’t you talk to Bright Boy?’
‘Bright boy?’
‘Mr Marcus Bright, our esteemed head of sixth form.’
‘How is he involved in this?’
‘He’s involved like the pervy little creep he is. It was pure luck that I realised he’d be interested. Oh, he’s only a punter – doesn’t do the business side – but it’s made it much easier for me to do business, knowing he wasn’t going to come crashing down on me. And I could always get an exeat from old Bright Boy if I wanted to do an afternoon’s filming.’ He stopped. ‘Look, I really don’t want to talk about this any more.’ He turned to the solicitor for support.
‘My client requests a break,’ she said.
‘Five more minutes,’ Scott said, ‘and then that’ll do for now.’ He turned to Edmund. ‘How could you be sure the children wouldn’t tell their parents what had been going on?’
‘I’ve been there. I know how it goes. You know it’s wrong, but you think you’re the one who’ll get into trouble. Grownups can’t be wrong, can they? Besides, they all want to be stars, these kids. Tell them they’ll never get another gig if they spill the beans and they’ll keep their mouths shut. And we paid them. Their parents pocketed what the agencies paid; we slipped the kids some cash for their trouble.’
‘Are you sure Marcus Bright attacked Gina Gray?’
‘Well, I didn’t see him do it, if that’s what you mean. Really, you people expect everything on a plate don’t you? All I can tell you is he was in a complete funk when I told him she’d got a DVD – career in ruins etc – and I saw him follow her into the cloisters. Make of that what you will.’
You had to admire his coolness, Scott admitted. He was like his mother in that.
‘Just now, when I asked you why the children didn’t talk, you said you’d been there. What did you mean,’ he asked.
Edmund gave him a sour little smile. ‘You went to police college, didn’t you, Chief Inspector? Didn’t they tell you that the abused become abusers?’
‘Are you telling me you were abused?’
‘Sounds like it, doesn’t it? Oh, not by my parents.’ He held up a warning arm. ‘Don’t get that idea. Not by them.’
‘But by the people who were supposed to be looking after you when you were in Switzerland. M. and Mme. Ducret?’
‘How do you know about them?’
‘We’re the police. We know a lot.’
‘And you guess the rest.’
‘Sometimes. They filmed you, I suppose, you and your sister? And made a lot of money out of it. So when you came back to the UK, you thought you’d have a go at it.’
‘I wanted to go to a good school.’
‘You were paying your school fees? And you expect me to believe that your parents weren’t involved?’
‘I told them I’d got a scholarship. Well, I have, actually, but it only covers tuition fees. I wanted to be a boarder, so I needed to find the rest.’
‘And what about your sister?’
‘What about her?’
‘What was her part in all this?’
‘She was no use. She got freaked by what happened to her in Switzerland. She couldn’t handle it.’
‘But she knew about it, didn’t she? What happened? Did she come back early from school one day – one of those days when she was worried about her mother – and find it going on?’
Edmund said nothing. His animation had left him. He sat slumped in his chair. Scott continued, ‘So you decided she had to be silenced, did you? Your own sister, a little girl of thirteen?’
Edmund roused himself. ‘I didn’t do it. You know I didn’t. I was in class.’
‘Yes, you were. So who did kill her? Was that Marcus Bright too?’
Edmund looked at him for a long time. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.
Marcus Bright started by blustering, soon declined into whining and quickly petered out in a welter of tearful confession. Yes, he had attacked Gina Gray, but he hadn’t meant to do her any harm He’d just wanted the DVD back. He had a headship in his sights and he couldn’t allow her to wreck it all. Not that he had been involved in the making of the DVDs or the selling of them – he’d just watched them, only watched them. It was a weakness, he knew, but it was pretty harmless stuff, really – he doubted the children involved thought anything was wrong. It didn’t make him a worse teacher, did it, that he liked these things? He had never touched a child in his care, and never would. Was it fair that his life should be wrecked because of this one weakness? When Scott pointed out that that he’d comprehensively wrecked it now by getting charged with GBH, he managed a smile. ‘It’s always the cover-up, isn’t it?’ he said.
He had an alibi for the afternoon of Marina’s murder, though: he had been teaching and twenty-two GCSE History students could vouch for him. He had given them a test that afternoon, and their dated answers in their exercise books testified to it. So who had killed her? They had everything else: the DVDs, the mailing lists, the confessions. They could prosecute the four of them – Carson, Cunningham, Driver and Bright – and be pretty sure of convictions. But they still didn’t have the killer.
26
SATURDAY 20th NOVEMBER
Daylight and champaign discovers not more
I am woken by the unprecedented arrival of Annie bearing a mug of tea. As I struggle out of the frowsty cocoon of my drugged sleep, I ask, ‘What’s wrong? Why are you here?’
‘I came to see YOU. Ellie said you’d been nearly killed. I came to see you and you weren’t here and Granny didn’t know where you were and we were frantic, and then you came home and fainted all over us.’
‘Fainted? Did I?’
‘Don’t you remember?’
In a way, I do. Only I would have thought it had been a dream. I do remember lying somewhere and they were all looking down at me: Annie, Ellie, my mother, even Freda. ‘Was I out for long?’ I ask.
‘No
. I thought you were dying but Granny was very imperious. She said, “Open your eyes, Virginia” and you did.’
‘There’s no saying no to Granny.’
‘And then she took charge and we got you into bed and she gave you a sleeping tablet and I hope you had a good night’s sleep.’
‘I did.’ I sip my tea. ‘I feel ready for anything this morning.’
This is not true. I feel rather peculiar, actually, but I can’t possibly spend the day under the iron tutelage of Annie and my mother. ‘What time is it?’ I ask, groping for my watch and my glasses, neither of which I can find.
‘Nearly ten o’clock. We let you sleep. We’ve been up for hours. We’re going to the supermarket. You’re to stay there. Granny’ll be here if you need anything.’
‘I’ll need to come with you,’ I protest.
‘No you won’t. You’re not going anywhere, especially not in those clothes you were wearing yesterday. How could you, Ma? You looked like some random bag lady.’
‘They took my clothes for forensic whatever…’
‘Anyway, Granny’s put us in charge. We’re shopping and we’re cooking.’
‘You – cooking?’
‘El can cook. You’re not to think about anything. Granny says you need a complete rest.’
I drink some more tea. ‘OK,’ I say.
‘There is just a question of the money for the shopping, though,’ she says. ‘Neither El or I are up to financing it.’
‘Pass me my bag.’
I hand over my debit card and my PIN number and she leaves. I lie with my tea, listening to the sounds of the house – the shouting, the running up and down stairs, the cries of protest from Freda, my mother’s stick on the tiles in the hall – and I try not to think about yesterday. I try not to think at all.
Ellie arrives with a plate of toast and marmite, another mug of tea and The Guardian. She announces that they’re off. ‘Don’t try to go anywhere,’ she says. ‘Granny’s guarding the door.’
The toast and marmite is good and I find that I’m rather hungry, which I take to be a good sign. Fainting! Oh really, how pathetic. How could I have done that? I finger the bump on my head. It’s going down. No more excuses for being weedy. I pick up the paper and glance at the headlines, but I can’t seem to engage with the news. I turn to the futoshiki puzzle – one of the pleasures of the Saturday paper – but I can’t even get started. And the quiz looks unfathomable. Have I suffered brain damage? Will I ever function properly again?
I abandon distraction and allow myself to think about what I really want to think about. What do the police know? Who has David arrested? Why won’t he tell me what’s going on? Does he know who attacked me? Does he know who killed Marina Carson? How can I make him tell me?
I go to the bathroom and clean my teeth. On my way back, I glance in at the chaos of Annie’s room and my computer sitting primly in the corner. I could, I think, just check my emails. That would feel like normal life without being too taxing. I delete a lot of spam and surf some trivia before deciding to send a message to Hannah. I realise that I never even let her know that Marina got killed, let alone that her diagnosis has helped the police to net a child porn syndicate (at least, I assume it has, and that David will tell me so in his own good time). I trawl back to have a look at her original message before writing mine, and that’s when I see the link she sent me to Glenys Summers’ fan site.
I click on the link, and there she is, quite a bit youngerlooking than I’ve seen her recently, and winsome as buttercups and daisies. I read the text:
Glenys Summers is one of the best-loved actresses in the UK. Born in Cardiff, the youngest of three daughters of a postman, she started her theatrical career at the age of twelve, working in pantomime and summer shows. She starred in several television series in her teens, but her first adult role was as pretty, tragic Dora in Oh Mr Copperfield, the film musical that was to make her name in the wider world. Many other film musicals followed, including Princess Anastasia, The White Cliffs of Dover and Queen for a Day. A period of ill-health forced her into retirement at the height of her career but she made a triumphant return to show business in 2009, when director Neil Cunningham persuaded her to take the title role in Amy – her first major stage role.
Amy opened in the West End at the Duchess of York’s Theatre in November 2009 and is still enjoying a sell-out run. Get tickets if you can!
Glenys lives near the small market town of Marlbury and says that her main hobby is country life. She was married to designer, Justin Chaput, but they divorced in 1998. In 2000 she married the well-known writer Hector Carson. They have one son. Their daughter recently died tragically, but Glenys says that work is the best cure for a broken heart and has gone on with the show.
I sit and consider this. I note the omissions and euphemisms – no date of birth and “a period of ill-health” – but what really strikes me are the dates. Surely they must be wrong? I google Hector Carson to check, and find not a fan site but a brief Wikipedia entry:
Hector Gordon Carson (born Edinburgh 1948) is best known as the author of The Trilogy of Corisande, a series of epic novels drawing on folk tales and Arthurian legend, first published in 1978. His subsequent work was not as well received, though his volume of poems, Minstrel Boy, was nominated for the Rupert Brooke Award in 1984.
In 1990, he married the painter, Janice Halwood, with whom he had one daughter (born 1997). Halwood died of cancer in 1998. In 2000, Carson married the actress, Glenys Summers.
I gaze at the screen; I flick back to the Glenys Summers site; I write down some dates; I consider them; I go back to my room and I call David Scott. He doesn’t answer. I am returning to my computer when my mother, on the alert, calls from the bottom of the stairs, ‘What are you doing, Virginia? Go back to bed.’
‘Just going to the loo,’ I lie.
‘What, again?’
‘Am I being rationed now?’ I shout, and return to bed.
The “complete rest” my mother prescribed is out of the question, though. How can I rest when I’ve got this halfthought running round in my head? Because it is only a halfthought. It just changes the landscape a bit, so that what I thought before – and feared – seems more possible. I knew why and now I think I know who. What I don’t know is how, and that’s what David has got to work out. I phone again, and again ten minutes later. His phone remains switched off. What is he doing?
I lie and fret and from somewhere, unbidden, comes a picture of Annie’s room as it was when I was in there just now. What was wrong with it? No bed. There was no bed in it. Just a sleeping bag on the floor. Because Annie’s bed is downstairs in my mother’s room. Her first visit home from university and she has to sleep on the floor and I haven’t even asked her how things are going. Come to think of it, wasn’t she looking thinner? And when was the last time I asked Ellie about school or about her play? And Freda? Panic grips me. Where is Freda? I haven’t heard her downstairs? Did they take her with them or has my mother nodded off and left her to wander off God knows where? Useless. I’m a useless, stupid woman, obsessed with the death of someone else’s daughter and thoughtless about my own. I’m hauling myself out of bed again to go in search of Freda when I hear the front door open and Ellie and Annie returning with the shopping.
I strain my ears for sounds of Freda and when they come running upstairs, bright-eyed and shiny-cheeked with the cold, to present me with a yard-long till-receipt I scream, ‘Freda! Where’s Freda? What’s happened to her?’
The stop dead and stare at me, their smiles frozen. Then they exchange a look. ‘She’s downstairs, Ma. In the kitchen,’ Ellie says.
‘Well she shouldn’t be left alone in the kitchen,’ I yell. ‘There are knives in the kitchen and bleach and she might turn the cooker on and –’
Ellie starts to say something but Annie gets in first. ‘For fuck’s sake, Ma, get a grip. She’s unpacking the shopping and Granny’s with her. Dr Fletcher left a prescription for some sedatives for yo
u and we got it made up. I’m going to give you one.’
My phone rings and I grab it. ‘David?’ I say. ‘What the hell have you been doing?’
The girls roll their eyes and depart.
‘I’ve been working,’ he says tersely. ‘How can I help you?’
‘I think I know who killed her, David. In fact, I’m sure I do.’
There is a silence. It’s a silence with a suppressed sigh in it, I can tell. Finally he says, ‘Listen, Gina. You had a lucky intuition and it’s been helpful and we’re working on it. But what’s not helpful – what is, in fact, in danger of derailing the whole case and sabotaging a prosecution – is you deciding to conduct a one-woman investigation of your own. I assume you’re off work and have nothing to do but sit around having bright ideas, but for heaven’s sake just watch day-time TV or something.’
‘Don’t you dare be so bloody patronising. Well, all right. All right. Fine. If you don’t want to hear what I’ve got to say, fine. But I’m entitled to information from you. I’ve been the victim of an assault. If you’ve charged anyone with that, I’m entitled to know. I’m entitled to know if you’ve found out who mugged me because then I’ll know if I can feel safe.’
Now he sighs out loud. ‘We have charged someone with the attack on you. We got a confession, in fact. And you are entitled to know who it is.’
‘Which of them was it? Driver or Cunningham?’
‘Neither.’
‘So Edmund then?’
‘No.’
‘So who on earth –’
‘ Marcus Bright.’
‘Marcus Bright? No! Why?’
‘He was a customer. He knew if the DVD got to us the whole thing would come out. Said he didn’t mean to do you any harm. He was just saving his skin.’
I’m actually deeply rattled by this news. When someone you thought of as annoying but harmless turns out to be thoroughly vicious in thought and deed, the world tilts on its axis a bit, but I’m not letting David know I’m shaken or he’ll be telling me to have a nice cup of tea and a lie-down. So, I say, ‘Marcus Bright! Well I always knew he was a sleaze ball. And that would explain why he was a bit half-hearted in that punt.’
All the Daughters Page 25