by Anita Waller
‘Oh, don’t worry, I didn’t say anything. But somebody obviously has, so I can’t be the only one who knows about it. And when the police do ask me the direct question I will answer honestly. That young girl was a virgin, Steve, and you took advantage of her.’
He sank down onto the settee and stared at the television screen without seeing it. When DI Marsden solved this, it would become a court case. He would be called as a witness and the whole sordid mess would be in the public domain. He doubted he would keep his job; he hoped he would keep Ruby.
In everyone’s eyes he would be the one to blame, that was obvious. He was older than Orla, double her age. But had nobody seen her glances, the winks as she said something outrageous, the flirtatious smiles, the low-cut tops she wore all through the summer? He had, and he had responded.
His mind went back to the first time they made love, that night in the vestry when everybody had gone home. She had made the first move, almost as if she had planned it carefully. He had tried to explain to her that it was out of the question, but her smile lit up the room as she said it was going to happen.
And it did.
They talked afterwards, and she had confessed to him that she wasn’t a virgin, but she had only done it once, and that was so that she would know what she was doing when it came to making love with him. He loved her open attitude, her frank honesty.
Steve was vaguely aware that Annabel had put on her coat, and as she said goodnight, she paused in the doorway.
‘Go to Ruby, Steve. I’m sure she’ll still be awake. Tell her, don’t tell her, it’s your decision, but I’m guessing at some point everybody will know.’
He stood and followed her from the room. ‘Thank you for tonight, Annabel. I’m going to have to tell Ruby, I know that.’
She wished him goodnight, and left the vicarage, reflecting on how much easier life had been in the Reverend Brewster days, when all he did was take the Sunday service and bury people.
Steve poured himself a brandy, and sipped at it, dreading the moment when it would be finished. He held the cut-glass goblet to the light, saw there were dregs still in it and tipped them into his mouth. He took the glass into the kitchen then opened the bedroom door.
‘Are you awake?’ he whispered.
‘Of course,’ Ruby answered. ‘Did you really think I would be asleep with my husband heaven only knows where?’
His heart sank. ‘Well, I’m home, sweetheart. Do you need anything?’
‘You.’
He hesitated. ‘And I need you, my love, but there’s something I have to tell you.’
‘Orla French,’ she said quietly.
‘You knew?’
‘It’s my body that’s giving up, Steve, not my brain. I had to pray you hadn’t killed her. It seems my prayers have been answered as you’re back here with me. You’ve been with the police, I take it?’
‘Yes. They wanted to know what my relationship with her was, and whether or not I had killed her.’
Ruby turned her eyes towards him. ‘Orla went missing, and presumably died, on the night you went to the Cathedral in Sheffield to meet the new bishop. I’d already worked that out. It’s why you’re still here, Steve. If you hadn’t got such a strong alibi – and how much stronger can it be than a bishop vouching for you – I would have told that DI everything. I know you didn’t kill Orla, but I also know you had sex with her. Don’t deny it, it’s not fitting that a man of the cloth should tell lies.’
‘There’ll be no more lies,’ he acknowledged. ‘We did have sex, several times, and in a way I loved her. But it wasn’t anything like the way I love you, it was more enjoying being with her. I’m so sorry, Ruby, and if you don’t want to be with me any longer, I’ll understand. I won’t be happy, but what happens next is your call.’
She turned over in bed, clearly in pain, and lay with her back to him. ‘That’s a big decision, Steve, but plan on sleeping in the spare room from now on.’ She reached out and switched off the lamp.
Steve stared at her for a moment, then left the room, closing the door gently behind him.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Ewan pulled up outside the Connection office, watched by three pairs of eyes. He wasn’t aware of them; his mind was on the previous evening. The meal with Doris had been special. They had many shared interests and they laughed and talked constantly. It had taken all his willpower not to ask questions about their trip. Now he hoped to get answers.
He locked the car and walked across to the door. Doris opened it for him.
‘Thank you,’ he said, giving a mock bow. ‘That’s the sort of service women should offer.’
‘Oh, and we do, at all times,’ Mouse said. ‘It’s in our genes.’
Kat burst out laughing. ‘Well said, Mouse, well said. It’s a pity nobody believes you. Ewan, would you like to go through to my office. We’re ready for you.’
Doris had decided not to be in on the discussion, and moved to her own desk in reception. Ewan looked a little surprised, but made no comment.
He followed Kat and Mouse through into the office, and Kat made coffees for all of them. She knew she was putting off the point when they would have to destroy his hopes.
Eventually they settled, and Mouse spoke. ‘On Monday Doris and I went to see a man we believed was the best contender out of the two possible ones, for being your son. We did a brief background check on the second one, but there were no links to you. The first one, however, had a mother called Helen, was born on the birthdate you gave us, and lived in Scarborough, a further link.’
Ewan smiled.
Mouse took a deep breath. ‘We went to see him at work, after deciding it might be better to keep it away from his home life until he said it was okay. He is CEO of a manufacturing company, and we were lucky to get an appointment, but we did. Here comes the difficult part, Ewan.’
Ewan’s face changed. The optimism disappeared at some speed, along with his smile. ‘He doesn’t want to know?’
‘No, it’s not that. He can’t be your son. Yes, he is the baby Helen was carrying when you were together, but you didn’t father him. This is probably why she left; not because she didn’t want marriage, but because she didn’t know if the baby was yours or this other man’s. I believe if the baby had been indisputably yours, she would have come back to you, but the baby was mixed race.’
She pushed the picture of Michael Fairfax across the desk, and waited.
He stared at it, then picked it up. Finally he spoke. ‘This doesn’t make sense. Remember the friend of Helen’s? Carla Blake? When the baby was a couple of months old, she went to see Helen. The next time I rang her she told me about it, said the baby was my double, had lovely blonde hair. There’s no way on earth this man ever had blonde hair. No way at all. In fact, she had a photograph, one taken with her holding the baby, that Helen sent on to her. I never saw it, but maybe she still has it. You spoke to this man?’ He tapped the picture on the desk.
‘We did. And he admitted to being Helen’s son, and always hoping his father would come for him. I think he was disappointed to learn our client was white British, and therefore couldn’t possibly be the man he had hoped to meet.’
There was silence in the office. Ewan was clearly thinking things through. ‘Did he say if his mother was still alive?’
‘She is.’ Mouse hesitated, but said nothing further.
‘Can you trace her? And maybe Carla Blake may still have that photo, we don’t tend to destroy photos, do we. I don’t want this to be the end, because there’s something not right here. Why would Carla tell me the baby was white, if it was mixed race? It would have got me off her back, no more phone calls, if it had indeed been somebody else’s baby, but she clearly saw it was mine. Please… don’t stop. There’s something not right about this.’
‘Of course we’ll try to track Carla. She lived in Sheffield?’
‘She did. I don’t know which part of the city though. Her boyfriend was called Luke, and I know they were engaged, but I’ve
no idea if they married. She asked me to stop ringing, so I did. That phone number I gave you was her mother’s telephone, she lived at home then. And that’s about as much as I know.’
Mouse nodded. ‘We’ll do our best, Ewan. Carla is roughly your age, and there’s no guarantee that she is still alive, but we’ll try to find her. It does give rise to the question though, if that man we saw isn’t Michael Fairfax, who is he? Until we get proof that the baby was not of mixed race, we can’t really pursue that, but believe me, we will if we can get that photo.’
‘You’re not going to contact Helen?’
‘No. It would be morally wrong, wouldn’t it. I know she will know things we don’t know, but it sounds as though she lived a life of secrets. You have to prepare yourself for the possibility, Ewan, that we may never know the full story. But be assured, if this man is Michael Fairfax, he has no genetic common ground with you.’
Ewan stood. ‘I trust you. I’ll leave it in your hands. Do you mind if I go? I need time out, I think.’
He disappeared through the door, they heard soft words as he spoke to Doris, and then the shop doorbell pinged as he left.
Doris joined them. ‘He didn’t take it well?’
‘Something’s not right, Nan,’ Mouse said. ‘Ewan says there is a picture of Michael as a baby and he is clearly not of mixed race. So who did we meet on Monday? We need a brainstorming session followed by a laptop session.’
Kat smiled. ‘I’m up for the first part of that, count me out for the second part. Do we need doughnuts?’
The box of doughnuts sat in the middle of the table, and Mouse had a piece of paper in front of her.
‘Nice to write occasionally, instead of typing.’ She headed up the page with the words Michael Fairfax, then underlined it. ‘Any initial thoughts?’
‘Gut feeling says he wasn’t Michael, but if he wasn’t, who was he and why the impersonation? And why are there no photographs of him anywhere?’ Doris frowned. ‘Do we go back?’
‘I think we do,’ Mouse said. ‘But I think we do it differently this time. We don’t let him know we’re coming. I would like to do a surveillance session on his home. We can either get there early and see who comes out to go to work, or we can go mid-afternoon and wait for him to return home. Which do you prefer, Nan?’
‘Early morning. We’re not hanging around twiddling our thumbs then. If we leave home around half past five, that will give us time to find a decent place to park where we can see what’s happening. He’ll certainly be in work by half past nine at the latest, I would think. Then we can decide what to do next.’
‘Okay,’ Mouse said. ‘You good for tomorrow?’
‘I am. Kat, you clear for being here?’
‘I am. I might bring Martha though. I’m missing her.’
‘Good idea,’ Doris said. ‘Mouse, you want me to start searching out Carla Blake?’
‘Please, Nan. If she does still have that photograph from fifty years ago, it will be a big help.’
‘Mouse, you got a plan?’
Mouse shrugged. ‘I do, but it’s a bit hit and miss. I’m basically going to tear the Internet apart looking for Michael Fairfax; not his name, his face. If the person we saw isn’t him, and I don’t think he was, there must be a reason for that. The real Michael Fairfax doesn’t want to be found, and we were royally fobbed off on Monday. We accepted everything at face value, but Ewan didn’t, and as our client we owe him a full investigation into this. Let’s get to it.’
It took Doris two hours to find Carla Blake, now married to Luke Newton and living in Chesterfield.
‘Gotcha!’
Mouse lifted her head. ‘You’ve found her?’
‘I believe so, if all the stars and moons are aligned and in the right order. I’ve tracked her life, and I’m as sure as I can be that it’s her. I also have a telephone number… Do we ring or go visit her? If we ring she might clam up.’
‘I agree. I think we need a visit. No word to Ewan yet though, we don’t want him to have foreknowledge of this. It may come to nothing.’
Doris gave a slight dip of her head, and sent documents to the printer.
Mouse was feeling frustrated. How could such a successful company have no pictures or information about its CEO? The only item she had seen was that he was the CEO. She had tried newspapers, magazines, everything in which he could possibly be featured, but it almost seemed like a complete blackout on the man.
She gave up with a sigh. ‘Nothing. He’s like the bloody Scarlet Pimpernel.’
Chapter Twenty-Three
Kat finished the piece of work on blood groups and everything related to it, and saved it to the relevant folder. It briefly occurred to her that she was getting better at this computer malarkey – not so much at the research side, but the general management of the work they had to do was almost second nature to her now, and she felt both Mouse and Doris trusted her to get it right.
It came as something of a shock when the shop bell pinged, and she looked up. A young woman stood in the doorway and Kat smiled at her. ‘Can I help you?’
‘I… er… don’t know. Do you do advice?’
‘We do,’ Kat said with a smile. The woman looked unsure of herself, and Kat moved around the counter. ‘Come in, and tell me what you need.’
The dark-haired woman, who looked to be in her late teens or possibly early twenties, gave a brief glance out of the door. ‘Can my partner come in? He brought me here.’
‘Of course. He can’t stand out in the cold.’
She waved and a few seconds later was joined by a young man who looked about the same age.
‘Okay,’ Kat said. ‘Let’s start with names.’ She moved across to Doris’s desk and took out a client form.
The young couple moved around the reception desk, and sat on the two chairs facing Kat.
‘I’m Alyson, Alyson Read.’
‘And I’m Ed Danvers.’
‘Thank you.’ Kat smiled again, at both of them. They seemed ill at ease, scared even. She passed the forms across to them. ‘Fill those in and then we’ll see how we can help.’
‘We’ve got money to pay,’ Alyson said, the words tumbling out of her, as she handed over her form. Apart from his name, Ed hadn’t spoken.
‘We generally don’t charge for simple advice,’ Kat responded. ‘We charge if it requires further action. So tell me what your problem is. Do you mind if I record it? It saves me having to remember everything when I’m explaining to my two colleagues later.’ She placed the small recorder on the desk.
Alyson reached into her bag and took out a letter. ‘Please – do whatever you need to do. This is the problem. Ed has been researching his family history for a couple of years, and we’ve managed to get back to the seventeenth century with it, but we’re a bit stuck. To give us a bit of a break, we decided to start on mine.’
Ed’s eyes never left Alyson as she was speaking. He reached across and took hold of her hand.
‘I only have one parent, my mum, and no grandparents, so we started mine knowing very little. I’m sorry if this is sounding a bit long-winded, but there’s no other way of you seeing the picture.’
‘Don’t worry, take your time. I’d rather have all the facts. We deal with quite a lot of cases that require delving back into family history, and the more of the overall view we can start with, the better.’
Ed gave a slight nod, obviously in full agreement with Kat.
‘We started with Mum. She gave me a box of photographs, black and white ones as well as coloured, and we photocopied her birth and marriage certificates, and the death certificates for all four of my grandparents. My dad’s parents had died before he met Mum, but he brought the certificates with him when they married. He died in a motorcycle accident two years after the wedding, when I’d just been born, so she can’t really remember anything about his family. And that’s all we have for our starting point.’
Alyson paused for a moment, as if collecting her thoughts. ‘We’ve
made a fair start on it, gone back as far as my maternal great-great-grandfather…’ She turned to look at Ed and he nodded. ‘Yes, my great-great-grandfather, but then ground to a halt. We’re in a couple of groups on Facebook for genealogy, so we used their request for information and put in Arthur Bennett of Chesterfield. Within a couple of days we had a response, but it came in the post and not online.’
‘You gave out your address?’
‘No, that’s the scary part. We didn’t, and it’s certainly not available on Facebook, any more than our telephone numbers are. We… erm… won some money six months ago, and immediately made our privacy settings at the highest level. Only close friends, and obviously our families, know where we live.’
Kat felt as though a torch clicked on in her brain. ‘Ed Danvers. You picked up a nice little lottery win.’
‘We did,’ he said. ‘It was a joint win, but we asked them to keep Alyson’s name out of the publicity, she wasn’t comfortable with everyone knowing. We used Alyson’s Facebook account to join the genealogy group so that nobody would connect her name with the lottery win, which is why we’re feeling a little uncomfortable with this letter arriving. We’ve only lived at this address for a month, we’re not even on the electoral roll or anything yet.’
‘Where did you live before?’
He laughed. ‘In a tiny little bedsit in Chesterfield town centre. We’ve now got a four-bedroomed house at Ashford in the Water, and we no longer catch a bus to get to the Peak District, we live in it. We’ve told nobody where we live, other than people who need to know. We’ve bought Alyson’s mum a small cottage about five minutes from where we are, but she’s not moving yet, it’ll be a couple more weeks before that is completed. My mum and dad didn’t want to move, so we gave them a dollop of cash, and they’re currently on a cruise for the first time in their lives. We’ve been so careful, so private…’ His frustration showed in his voice.
‘Okay,’ Kat said quietly. ‘Let me tell you that tracking people down is one of the easiest things to do, provided you have some degree of IT skill. A high degree of it, I must admit.’ Her mind drifted to Mouse and Nan, currently working on laptops in the back office. ‘You did nothing wrong, you covered your backs as much as possible, but if somebody wants to find you, believe me, they will. May I see the letter, please?’