Destroy Unopened

by Anabel Donald

Now I’m really worried. I thought he was pretending, to annoy me. You know he likes to annoy me. He always has. But he really likes that place he’s living in – I didn’t know why. It was built over that dreadful murderer’s house, where he killed those sad women and buried them or bricked them in. 10 Rillington Place. He chose to live there, and he likes it, and he says some women deserve to die. Our own Boy. He was such a beautiful child I’m now seriously afraid. He talks so oddly about the Notting Hill Killer. Please speak to him, One. He listens to you.

  Now I knew a little more about Jack Hobbs the letter made no sense to me. I’d liked him ever since I’d seen his stuffed animals. A hard-working creative artist who’d been nothing to do with the Bourbaki conspiracy, who’d treated me well and tried to help me when I said I was fainting . . .

  I rang Nick again. ‘Hi. Look, I really want to talk to Jack Hobbs, apologize to him. Is he near you? Is there any way you can get the phone to him?’

  ‘Hang on.’ Muffled conversation, movement, then Nick once more. ‘Yeah, he’s just down the corridor, I’m on the way there now. With Caroline.’ Inaudible conversation, then, ‘Here he is. Talk to you later.’

  ‘Jack Hobbs here.’

  ‘Jack, this is Alex Tanner How are you?’

  ‘Bit of a headache, otherwise OK.’ Same flat pragmatic voice. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘I’m really sorry I hit you. Did the police tell you why? I was frightened, and I didn’t know what was going on.’

  ‘Ah, forget it. Made sense at the time. You did the right thing. How were you to know?’

  ‘What were you doing there?’

  Hesitation. ‘Hard to say. Don’t want to say, really. Let’s leave it that I wondered what Rich and Russell were up to, all right? I’d been worried for some time. I actually thought of hiring you, would you believe it? When I found you in my studio.’

  That’s right, I remembered. He’d started to say something and I’d brushed him off. No point in going over my mistakes on this case, though, it’d take all day. ‘It’s a terrible thing,’ I said, fishing.

  ‘Those girls.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said unhesitatingly.

  ‘Though some might say they deserved what they got.’

  ‘Who’d say that? How could they?’ His voice was incredulous. ‘Did I hear you right?’

  ‘I’ve heard people say it.’

  ‘I haven’t. Look, Rich was my friend for years. He’s still my friend, I suppose. But there’s no way, absolutely no way, that I’d ever defend what he’s done.’

  He sounded genuine and angry. I believed him and did my best to soothe him down. Eventually, half-mollified, he said, ‘Ah, forget it. And hitting me on the head. You can forget that too. You like my animals, yeah? I’ll forgive you anything for that. Right?’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Maybe I’ll see you later this morning. I’m coming in to fetch Nick.’

  ‘She’s a great woman, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yeah. How do you know that?’

  ‘We had a long talk last night. See you later, if you’re here before ten. My ma’s coming for me then, taking me home for a bit of tlc. Fussing, more like. Want me to hand you back to Nick?’

  ‘Don’t bother.’ I rang off and looked again at the letter. What was the woman up to? Her son never would’ve said anything favourable about the Killer; he sounded affectionate when he spoke of his mother. So why had she claimed she was seriously afraid? Was she lying, to get her lover’s attention? Did she actually believe what she said? And what kind of internal pressure was she under, either way?

  I rang Barbara Gottlieb, not sure even as I dialed how I’d get what I wanted from her. ‘Alex Tanner here. Thanks for returning my call.’

  ‘How can I help you?’ She sounded as cool and intelligent as I remembered her, and I decided to go as near the truth as Hilary Lucas’s confidentiality would allow.

  It’s difficult,’ I said. ‘When I called you yesterday, the position was very different. I needed information for an urgent situation then.’

  Pause. ‘And now?’

  ‘Now, I’m just tidying up loose ends.’

  ‘For your research into lifestyle for a television programme on heart attacks.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  Silence. She went in for them. But she didn’t ring off. ‘Can I put a hypothetical situation to you?’ I said.

  ‘You can try.’

  ‘Suppose there was a man, rather like Philip Gein – call him the Professor – who had an affair which went on for years, and suppose he had a close friend like you.’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘He might tell you about it.’

  ‘He might,’ she said, rather wistfully, I thought.

  ‘And suppose, after his wife died, he found someone else.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘He might tell you about that too.’

  ‘He might indeed,’ she said. Definitely wistful now.

  ‘And he might tell you about his mistress’s feelings. The long-standing mistress, I mean. She’d feel very hurt, surely. Betrayed, even.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you?’ There was anger in her voice now, either for the woman of the letters or for herself Maybe both. Maybe she’d been waiting on the sidelines for his wife to die, when she could step into her rightful place in Gein’s life. No, that was unfair, she was more intelligent than that. Maybe she’d dreamed it, knowing it was only a dream. Either way, I was on the right lines.

  ‘And the Professor might be finding it difficult to break off the long-standing relationship.’

  ‘To break it off gracefully, I imagine he would.’

  ‘It would all depend what his mistress was like, I suppose. Would you care to guess at that, at all?’

  Silence. Eventually,‘She might be a very passionate woman. Even hysterical, at times.’

  ‘Manipulative?’

  ‘Oh certainly.’

  ‘Capable of distorting situations, even lying, if it suited her?’

  ‘If it got her what she wanted, yes.’

  ‘Capable of violence?’

  ‘Physical violence?’ She was more doubtful, this time. ‘I don’t know . . .’ Then, more strongly, and with the beginnings of suspicion, ‘Yes. Yes.’

  After two slices of toast to stave off morning sickness I went for a run, to take advantage of the good weather while it lasted, and to fill in the time until ten o’clock, when I needed to be at the hospital to meet Jack Hobbs’s mother. An added advantage was that it got me out of the flat. Polly hadn’t surfaced yet and I wanted solitary thinking-time before she tackled me about my odd behaviour. I wasn’t going to tell her I was pregnant. More than ever now that he was missing, I felt Barty had the right to be told before I told anyone else.

  As I set off for the Scrubs, past my office, I considered dropping in to check the e-mail for a message from Inge Ericsson in Nairobi, then decided against it. I didn’t want to hear bad news, not now. Good news could wait until I’d finished up Hilary Lucas’s case to my own satisfaction.

  Getting on for nine o’clock on a Sunday morning, the Scrubs were almost deserted. Two dog walkers, an old man doing those slow Chinese exercise movements, some leaden-footed middle-aged male joggers. The fog had vanished as if it had never been. I could see clear across the flat common land to the prison on one side and the industrial estate on the other. I could even make out the outlines of Unit 12, towering solidly over the shacks around it. I ran past the firework party site, strewn with burnt-out fireworks, food wrappings, and the blackened acrid-smelling bonfire-patch, towards Fairfax’s factory. When I got closer I could see the yellow police tape marking it off, some constables guarding it, dark dull middle-range cars parked outside. Scenes of crime people still working, I supposed.

  After the first mile, movement felt easier and I could stop forcing myself to keep going, let my body do the running, and just think. Jumbled, floating thoughts, with jealous Janey Protheroe mixed up with Polly’s model friend’s mother
who’d Been There and my own pregnancy and the likely age of Hobbs’s mother and Lil quoting at me in Notting Hill Police station last night.

  Each piece fitted into place, eventually. Too neatly, perhaps. In my experience neat is often facile and wrong, when you deal with people. Nick says that’s why she likes mathematics.

  By now I’d run the perimeter of the Scrubs and I slowed down for the street-jog home. It was time for forward planning. What could I possibly get out of a meeting with Hobbs’s mother? Hilary Lucas was still my client, and Hilary had made it very clear that she wanted confidentiality about the letters. And if I couldn’t refer to the letters, how could I bring the subject up? ‘Good morning Mrs Hobbs, any lovers died on you lately?’ But I wanted to see her, if only from curiosity, to see what sort of a woman sustained a love affair for that length of time. I’d never even been in love myself, not as an adult, not since Peter. I wasn’t sure love wasn’t just self-delusion rebranded.

  But I wasn’t sure it wasn’t possible, either, which was one of the reasons I had been dragging my heels with Barty. Barty knew he loved me. I thought Barty knew he loved me. Or perhaps I only thought Barty thought he knew he loved me. But I was pretty dam sure I didn’t love him, though I liked him a whole lot and I desired him, and was there any more to love than that?

  Anyway, if he came back from Zaire, it would be too late for heel-dragging. It was straight-to-the-registry-office time, if he came back, so that at least our child would be provided for by its father as well as its mother. Especially since its mother was on the hormonal blink.

  And if he didn’t come back, should I go ahead and have the baby anyway? Money would be tight. Life would be hard. What kind of a start would the baby have?

  My mother had gone ahead and had me in far less favourable circumstances. On the other hand she’d also effectively gone off her head as a result. First depression, then schizophrenia, then Alzheimer’s. Could that happen to me? Well, of course it could, but was it likely to? And did I have any right to consider killing the baby in the first place?

  Destroy unopened. Whatever spin you put on it, that’s what I was considering. The more I thought about it, the less I liked it. My mother had done her best for me. At the very least, she’d given me a chance. My chance had effectively destroyed hers. But I was tougher than she was, and my baby might well be tougher than me.

  And besides, I thought collapsing exhausted on the front steps, it wasn’t only my decision to make, and I didn’t have to make it until I knew about Barty, for sure.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Polly still hadn’t emerged from her flat when I left for the hospital, so I borrowed her car, which got me there at a quarter to ten.

  The hospital, like the Scrubs, was Sunday-morning deserted, though when I got up to Nick’s corridor police were still on duty guarding doors. I asked my way to Jack Hobbs’s room, but the constable outside wouldn’t let me in. Only one visitor at a time was allowed, he said, and Hobbs’s mother was in there. If I went to the waiting room he’d ask her to come along and tell me when Hobbs was free.

  That suited me fine since it was her I wanted to speak to, so I didn’t argue. I took myself off to the empty waiting room which looked even more shabby and exhausted in daylight, scanned the battered outdated lifestyle magazine Polly had been reading the night before, and tried to imagine under what circumstances anyone would want to cook a four-course dinner for eight and then spend hours pissing around with table decorations. I kept flicking through. My husband’s affair – how I coped. Six delightful desserts using summer fruits. Things to do for kids in the long August days. Keep your hands lovely on only thirty minutes a week. I looked at my hands: short nails, squarecut. Perhaps if I let the nails grow, shaped and buffed them, I’d fall in love. Or perhaps not. How could women read this stuff? They told me my baby was deaf – bit near the knuckle, that. ‘You’re not deaf, are you?’ I said to my stomach. I really must get a book on nutrition in pregnancy.

  ‘Hello. Are you the person waiting to see Jack?’

  She was in her fifties, medium height, medium build, well preserved, plenty of greying black hair in a loose top-knot, arty clothes: expensive materials, rich dark colours, several layers. A good-looking strong-boned rather lined face, no make-up, dark burning eyes. Nothing about her reminded me of her son, except her hands, big, strong, square and work-roughened.

  I got up and introduced myself. ‘Alex Tanner.’

  ‘Antonia Hobbs,’ she replied, without making a move to shake hands.

  I explained who I was and what I’d done to her son. ‘I’m sorry,’ I concluded.

  ‘Never mind,’ she said.‘You must have been frightened, I suppose. It’s quite understandable. Would you like to go in now? I need to take him home.’

  There was something wrong with her voice. It sounded mechanical, as if she wasn’t listening to herself. Tranquillizers? Or just shocked by what had happened to her son?

  I had to keep the conversation going, couldn’t think how. ‘Jack does terrific work, doesn’t he,’ I said. Couldn’t miss with a mother, surely.

  ‘Do you think so?’ she said.

  ‘I like them a lot. I hope to buy one. Depends on his prices, of course.’

  ‘Oh, good,’ she said. There was something wrong with her posture, as well. She hadn’t moved at all since I first saw her. She was standing locked, like a statue, one large hand clasping the other, her eyes fixed at a point somewhere out beyond the window, somewhere in the London sky. ‘Will you go in now?’

  I wasn’t going to get anywhere at all, chatting. It had been stupid to think I could. I took a deep breath, and said, ‘Did you kill Philip Gein?’

  She didn’t move her body, only her eyes. They focused on me, then refocused beyond the window. ‘No,’ she said, in the same mechanical voice. ‘He was killed by muggers, poor Philip. Did you know him?’

  ‘We never met.’

  ‘He was an old friend,’ she said. ‘Will you go in now?’

  * * * * *

  Hilary Lucas made excellent coffee, I remembered as she handed me a cup, and this time there was no problem getting her to the point.

  She sat down in the same place on the same sofa three days almost to the minute since she hired me, looked me square in the face, and said, ‘You said this was urgent so I presume you’ve discovered something.’

  ‘Yes.’ I pulled the DESTROY UNOPENED envelope out from my squashy leather bag and put it back on the coffee table between us.

  ‘Will this be painful?’ she said, and bristled her eyebrows at me. She was frightened. The quicker the better.

  ‘Absolutely not,’ I said. ‘The most important thing for you to know is that I’m convinced those letters weren’t written to your husband.’

  She stared at me in astonishment. ‘To whom, then?’

  ‘Philip Gein.’

  ‘Philip?’ She let out a great breath of air. ‘Of course. Philip. Of course.’

  ‘But I can’t actually prove it unless you’ll let me use them to show someone.’

  She’d got up and was pacing up and down. The size of the room gave plenty of scope for pacing. ‘Who do you propose to show them to?’ she said.

  ‘The woman who wrote them.’

  ‘And that is?’

  I shook my head.‘I’m not going to tell you,’ I said.‘You shouldn’t actually have seen those letters at all, I don’t think. Your husband should have destroyed them. He didn’t. Maybe he never saw the envelope. Was Professor Gein’s office sorted and cleared before your husband died?’

  She was still pacing.‘It may well not have been,’ she said precisely.

  ‘If I can use the letters I can get definite confirmation for you, but I’m sure I’m right.’

  ‘Let us be clear about this. Are you guessing about the identity of the writer of those letters?’

  ‘No. I’m sure about that. From internal evidence. I’m nearly sure about who they were written to – beyond reasonable doubt sure �
� but if you want absolute confirmation, I need the letters.’

  ‘That won’t be necessary,’ she said. She looked quite different: relieved, radiant, vigorous. ‘I’m sure you’re right. Of course! I was so stupid . . . Oh, thank God! I’ll write you a cheque . . . What do I owe you?’

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ I said. ‘There’s something else I think you should know. It may be a police matter.’

  ‘Police? Why?’

  ‘Because I think she killed him.’

  ‘Killed Robbie?’

  It took me a few seconds to remember who Robbie was, then I caught on. ‘No, not your husband. Philip Gein. Her lover.’

  ‘Do you have any evidence for that serious allegation?’ she snapped.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘But I’m sure—’

  ‘If you have no evidence, then you will be very ill-advised to repeat it,’ she said. ‘And I have no intention of allowing you to use the letters. Is that clear?’

  She was as intimidating as a hungry alligator. If I had an international contract pending, she’d be my chosen legal adviser. ‘Right,’ I said, and told her my final fee, doubling it. She wrote the cheque, handed it over, then looked at me consideringly. ‘Alex,’ she said. ‘Perhaps it would be only fair . . . Yes, it would.’

  Silence. She was sticking again. I put the cheque away and waited.

  Eventually she said, ‘You’ve done a good job on this.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘So perhaps you should know that I was nearly certain in my own mind, before I hired you, who wrote those letters.’ ‘Did you read them all, then?’ ‘No. I told you. I didn’t want to. But the letter I did read in full – the last one – made it quite clear. And I was angry. No. Not just angry. Furious.’

  She looked at me defiantly and I could feel her rage. ‘Which is why you said you ate the letter.’

  ‘Did I say that? Lord, so I did.’ She clicked her teeth together, reminiscently. ‘I wanted to bite someone or something, that’s true.’

  ‘Then why hire me?’

  ‘Because I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t. It couldn’t be true. I’d have known.’

  ‘Known because of your husband?’