The Vital Chain

by Sally Spencer

  Poor Paul! She’d had to seduce him, if only to stave off the inevitable.

  And he had gone along with it because his conventional upbringing impelled him to do everything he possibly could to convince himself that he was really a heterosexual.

  ‘I think I know why you had to kill them when you did,’ I said. ‘It was because you could see that Grandfather was dying, and you were afraid that the second he was decently buried, John would go through with his plan to resign and move to Greece.’

  ‘He had no consideration for me,’ Lydia said bitterly. ‘No thought at all of the position I hold here.’

  Images of John’s wedding day flooded my mind.

  Dialogue ran through my brain as clearly and unfalteringly as if I was listening to a tape through headphones.

  John, sitting hunched on my bed, as if all the cares in the world were pressing down on his powerful shoulders.

  ‘I think this whole thing is a mistake.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘I just don’t think it’s going to work.’

  ‘But you must have a reason. Has Lydia done something or said something which has led you to believe …’

  ‘It’s not about Lydia. It’s about me.’

  My father, sitting at the breakfast table, looking uncomfortable when I’d asked him what he knew about Lydia.

  ‘Not a great deal.’

  ‘And haven’t you even tried to find out?’

  ‘John’s an adult.’

  ‘But even so—’

  ‘ … and therefore perfectly capable of taking his own decisions. Besides—’

  ‘Besides what ?’

  ‘I’m so relieved that John is getting married at all.’

  And then, of course, there had been Philip at the reception, leaving the girl he was with in order to boast to me.

  ‘I’ve only just met her, but I’ll have her before the night is out. Probably have more luck than your brother John will.’

  ‘And just what do you mean by that?’

  ‘You don’t know, do you? You really don’t know.’

  ‘Know what? Is this something to do with Lydia?’

  ‘Well , bugger me. And I always thought you were the smartest out of three of us.’

  But all that had been as nothing compared to the way I’d misread the signs during the last few weeks of my brother’s life.

  ‘When John said he was in love, I thought he meant he was in love with you,’ I told Lydia. ‘He talked about “us” when he mentioned moving to his Greek island, but you weren’t part of that “us”, were you, Lydia?’

  ‘I could have given him everything, if only he’d worked with me,’ Lydia said. ‘He could have been Sir John in a few years – and I would have been Lady Conroy. But he was prepared to sacrifice all of that – just to follow his animal instincts.’

  ‘He fell in love,’ I said, ‘something I don’t think you’ve ever experienced. To you, John was never any more than a ticket to getting what you really wanted. And you knew what he was like even then, didn’t you? That’s why you wore clothes which disguised your figure and had your hair cut so short – all so you’d look boyish for him.’

  ‘You’d been a great disappointment to the family,’ Lydia said, taking obvious pleasure from knowing how much she was probably hurting me. ‘You were the one who was expected to get married, because you were the one best able to bring the next generation of Conroys into the world. When it became obvious you wouldn’t do it, John took the responsibility on himself – even though that was the last thing he wanted personally. Shall I tell you what he was like in bed?’

  ‘No, that isn’t necessary,’ I said.

  ‘He couldn’t get it up, however hard he tried – and each time he failed, he’d cry like a baby and say he was so sorry. As if I cared! As if sex ever really mattered to me!’

  ‘And the strange thing is that, in his way, I think John really did love you,’ I said. ‘But it was nothing like the love he came to feel for his new partner. Paul might have been weak and sometimes even unfaithful, but that didn’t matter to John – because he knew he’d found the real thing.’

  What a complicated life the three of them had led, each of them knowing what was going on, yet none of them being able to admit it – John because of what it might have done to Grandfather, Lydia because …

  ‘Can you imagine what it would have done to my position here in the village if I’d allowed the two of them to go off together?’ my sister-in-law asked. ‘I’d have been nothing but a laughing stock. Everything I’ve worked for all these years would have been taken from me overnight. It simply wouldn’t have been fair.’

  Yes, as the abandoned wife – a woman who had not only lost her husband, but had lost him to another man – she would have been nothing but a joke to all those people she sat on committees with. But being a widow was quite a different matter – there was a certain cachet in being a widow.

  ‘The police will be here in a few minutes,’ I said. ‘You’d better get ready for them.’

  ‘The police?’ Lydia repeated. ‘You mean that nasty little Welshman? Why would he come here?’

  ‘To arrest you.’

  Lydia through back her head and laughed. ‘Arrest me? It’s true he’s searched my house, but do you seriously think he’d be allowed to arrest me? I told you before, the chief constable is a personal friend of mine. The Lord Lieutenant of the county has drunk cocktails in this very garden.’

  She was still laughing as I stood up and walked away.

  ****

  Owen Flint was waiting in the lane outside with two constables.

  ‘Are you glad you talked to her?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, I think I am,’ I said. ‘Hate’s a very destructive emotion to carry around with you, and it’s hard to hate someone who lives so much in a fantasy world that she’s lost both her sense of responsibility and any feelings of guilt.’

  Owen popped a sweet into his mouth.

  ‘Half an hour ago, I arrested your cousin Philip for the murder of Bill Harper,’ he said. ‘The forensics are absolutely rock solid. Do you have any idea why he did it?’

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘But whatever reason he gives you, you can be sure of one thing – as far as he’s concerned, it won’t be his fault that Bill’s dead.’

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Marie was not in Oxford. I knew that for a fact – not simply because she never answered her phone but because, since my return from Cheshire, I had spent two more long nights in my car outside her flat. And she never appeared.

  As I sat there, on the third night of my vigil, watching her front door through tired prickly eyes, I was haunted by memories of a phone call I had received an emotional lifetime earlier – the one that Jill’s father had made to me.

  It wouldn’t be Marie’s father who made it this time, of course. It couldn’t be, since he had recently died. But perhaps some other caring relative from the other side of the water would think it a kindness to ring me.

  ‘Mr Conroy?’ the call would go.

  ‘Yes, that’s me .’

  ‘I’m Marie O’Hara’s cousin, Siobhan.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘We’ve never met, but she’s told me so much about you that it’s almost like you were one of the family.’

  And all the time she was talking, I’d be thinking, ‘Why doesn’t she get on with it ? Why doesn’t she say what she’s got to say ?’

  Finally, she would. ‘I’m afraid there’s been an accident. Marie’s … well, there’s no easy way of putting it … Marie’s dead.’

  Yes, that was how it would happen.

  And it would happen because I hadn’t been there with her – just as Jill’s accident had happened because I hadn’t been there with her!

  I told myself I was thinking like the lunatic I had once officially been – that I couldn’t have saved Jill then any more than I could now save Marie now – but it didn’t help. I was obsessed with the longing to pr
otect her, yet I had no idea of how to even find her.

  If only she’d ring me!

  If only she’d tell me where she was!

  But she didn’t ring, and it wasn’t until the end of my third night’s watch that I realised what I was going to have to do if I was ever to have a chance of finding out where she’d gone.

  ****

  It was eleven-thirty in the morning. Andy McBride and I sat in the bar of the Bulldog, on St Aldate’s. I was sipping lethargically at my now tepid coffee. Andy was looking moodily into his glass of orange juice. Neither of us had spoken a word for several minutes.

  It was Andy who finally broke the silence. ‘You’ll never manage it on your own,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll have to do it alone,’ I told him, ‘because I’m not prepared to take you along and run the risk of you going back to prison.’

  Andy shrugged. ‘Och, I’m noo stranger to a prison cell. There’d be noo hardship there for me.’ He grinned. ‘An’ think of what great publicity it’d be for ma new book.’

  ‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘Just tell me how it’s done and I’ll do it on my own.’

  ‘Tell me all I need to know aboot becoming a publisher,’ Andy said. ‘You’ve got five minutes.’

  ‘I couldn’t possibly begin to explain—’

  ‘Exactly – an’ no more could I explain housebreaking in five minutes. It’s a skilled job we’re talkin’ aboot here, and you wouldna have a snowball in hell’s chance on your own.’ He put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Let me do this, Rob – please.’

  There was a begging look in his eyes I simply couldn’t resist.

  ‘All right,’ I agreed.

  Andy drained his orange juice ‘Well, if we’re gonna do it, we’d best get it over wi’.’

  ‘Now?’ I said, shocked. ‘Hadn’t we better wait for darkness?’

  Andy gave me the same professional look of pity that Marie had given me outside the crumbling terraced house in Bristol where we found Paul Taylor.

  ‘I’ve always worked in daylight,’ he said. ‘The more folk there are aroond, the less chance there is you’ll be noticed.’

  ‘Don’t we need some tools?’ I asked.

  ‘Like what?’ Andy asked, grinning again.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said helplessly. ‘Skeleton keys or something.’

  Andy reached in his pocket and produced a bunch of odd-shaped keys.

  ‘Like these?’ he asked.

  ‘Where did you get them from?’

  ‘I borrowed them from an “acquaintance”.’

  ‘And how long have you been carrying them around with you?’

  ‘Ever since you told me Marie that had’na come back to Oxford.’

  ****

  Either by luck or judgement, the first key Andy tried opened the front door of the house on the Banbury Road.

  ‘Piece o’ piss,’ he said softly to me. ‘You’d think a private detective like her would be more security-conscious.’

  Marie had taken more precautions with her own flat, and for two gut-wrenching minutes I stood in the corridor while Andy tried a series of keys on both the standard and the security locks.

  And then we were in – right inside the place which, despite all the other things that Marie and I had shared over the previous two years, she had never allowed me to see.

  At first sight it was innocuous enough. The main room contained the kitchenette, and the living area. There were three other doors leading off it, presumably to the bathroom and two bedrooms.

  ‘The first 90 seconds you’re in a place, you’re as safe as hooses,’ Andy whispered. ‘Every minute after that, your risk doubles.’

  I looked around me – two armchairs, a television, a filing cabinet and a large table with Marie’s computer and fax machine on it.

  ‘Check through the filing cabinet and I’ll see what’s on the table,’ I told Andy.

  ‘It’d be a big help if we knew what we was lookin’ for,’ the Scot said.

  But the problem was we didn’t know. I could only hope that we came across a memo she’d written to herself, a set of directions she’d taken down over the phone, or a sketch map of a place she intended to visit – something, anything which might tell me where my Marie had gone.

  I sifted through the papers on the table. There were reports for clients, receipts for petrol, bills for restaurants outside the Oxford area – and an envelope with a Limerick postmark which dated it as having been sent only a few days earlier.

  I took the single sheet of paper out of the envelope.

  “My dearest Marie,” it began.

  I quickly scanned the rest of the text. The writer said that everyone was fine and missing her, that the dog had had puppies, that the milk yield was up from the previous month, and that preparations were well underway for the annual fête.

  At the bottom of the letter were the words, “I’m always thinking about you. Your ever-loving Dad.”

  Her dad!

  ‘My father’s died,’ she’d told me. ‘We weren’t very close, but I still feel guilty.’

  Lies, all lies! Her father was alive, and from the tone of the letter, they had a very affectionate relationship.

  How many other falsehoods had she fed me, I wondered despairingly? How little of what she’d said to me had ever been true?

  Had she been smiling when, over the phone, she said she loved me – almost amazed at how easy it was to fool me?

  ‘Not much in there,’ Andy said, sliding the filing cabinet drawer closed. ‘She dunna seem to be much of a woman for paperwork.’

  ‘No,’ I said dully. ‘I don’t think she is.’

  But holding that letter in my hand, I asked myself if I really knew anything about her.

  ‘Time tae check oot the rest o’ the place,’ Andy said.

  I nodded, and almost in a trance walked to the nearest of the doors which led off the living room. I turned the handle, but it was locked.

  ‘Now tha’s what I call a gud piece o’ work,’ Andy said, gazing admiringly at the lock. ‘You go an’ check the other rooms, while I work out a way ta get this booger open.’

  The bathroom was neat, tidy and totally devoid of any clues. Marie’s bedroom told me nothing, either. I did note that some of her outfits were missing, but that just said she’d gone away – which I knew already.

  I was checking under the bed when Andy appeared in the doorway.

  ‘I think you’d better come an’ see what I’ve found,’ he said gravely.

  And suddenly I was very, very afraid.

  ‘It’s not … she’s not…’ I managed to gasp.

  ‘I’ve noo found her body, if that’s what you’re worried about,’ Andy assured me, ‘but you’d still better prepare yourself for a shock.’

  In trepidation I crossed the living room again and forced myself to enter the second bedroom. It was smaller than the one I’d just been in, and there was no furniture at all. Instead, corkboard filled every inch of wall – and to that corkboard were pinned a large number of newspaper articles, photographs and documents.

  I examined the closest ones. There was an article from one of the Northwich papers which carried a picture of my Uncle Tony at a charity function. Next to that were two photographs of him, both obviously taken with a long-distance lens.

  I moved on. There were copies of articles he had written for a haulage trade magazine, and any number of pictures of him out with his various girlfriends.

  The whole room was nothing but a museum – a shrine – to my uncle.

  ‘Does this mean wha’ I think it means?’ Andy asked.

  Unable to find the words to answer him, I merely nodded.

  I had learned the bitter truth at last, I thought, as I felt a hard iron band tightening across my chest. I finally understood why she had been waiting outside St John’s College that night. And I knew now why she had lost all control in that dilapidated house in Bristol and attacked Paul Taylor so viciously.

  I’d no idea where she h
ad first met my uncle – perhaps at some kind of security conference, perhaps in a pub – but that didn’t really matter.

  What did matter was that she had become just another one of the long string of mistresses that my uncle had had since Aunt Jane left him. He had got bored with her in the end, of course – he always got bored with his concubines – but unlike all the others she had not been able to let go.

  And the bitter truth now facing me was that Marie had never been interested in me at all – I only existed for her because of my connection with him.

  The room was starting to spin before my eyes, and there was a strong taste of bile rising in my gullet. Holding onto the wall for support, I made my way across the lounge to the bathroom. Once there, I leant over the toilet bowl – and was violently sick.

  ****

  The first double brandy I’d knocked back in the Bulldog had helped to settle my stomach. The second had done a little to ease the aching in my soul – but not a great deal.

  ‘I’ll be around for as long as you want me to be, Rob,’ Andy McBride said from across the table. ‘You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘I know it,’ I said, ‘and I’m very grateful.’

  ‘Och, it’s nothin’ ta be grateful aboot,’ Andy replied. ‘I owe you. When I needed it, how many months did you stick to me like glue?’

  ‘Several?’ I speculated.

  ‘For ten months, two weeks an’ three days you never left my side while there was still a chance of me gettin’ my hands on a drink. An’ if ye need the favour returning, you only need to ask.’

  ‘That won’t be necessary,’ I said.

  But even as I was speaking, I was looking down at my empty brandy glass and thirsting for a refill.

  ‘I’ve been through it all maself, Rob,’ Andy said softly. ‘I can recognise the symptoms creepin’ up when I see them.’

  One more drink and I would call a halt, I promised myself.

  ‘If you don’t mind, I’d like to be alone now,’ I told Andy.

  The Scot shook his head. ‘You don’t want to be alone at all. It’s just that given your choice of company, you’d prefer the bottle to me.’