by E C Deacon
He appeared very vulnerable and Laura felt for him. But she was still her father’s daughter and instinctively wary of any criticism of the law. “What am I supposed to say if they call me?”
“The truth. That we went out on a date and you won on a couple of bets. Look, honestly, I doubt they will. My solicitor reckons it’ll all blow over. You can phone him if you like.”
“No. I don’t want to be involved,” she said with a finality that signalled the end of the discussion and their relationship.
Don shrugged another helpless apology and picked up his cap. Laura caught the tell-tale glimpse of a freckled scalp beneath the thinning hair and wondered why she’d never noticed it before. He caught her looking, quickly jammed the cap back in place and turned away. Laura followed him out of the flat, down the complaining stairs and into the shared hall, eased past him and opened the front door.
“I’m sure your son will be okay,” she said, putting a metaphorical full stop on their relationship.
“He’s going to be permanently scarred,” he replied, hovering on the doorstep. “I feel bad for him… Actually, I feel bad about everything… especially us.”
He waited for her to reply but Laura had run out of words and sympathy. She had her own problems and couldn’t – wouldn’t – take responsibility for anyone else’s. Don knew better than to press her any further. He kissed her lightly on the cheek and, to her relief, turned and pulled the hood of his windcheater over his cap and walked away.
He was fifty metres up the road when he looked back. He knew she wouldn’t still be there. Which was just as well, because she’d have seen him climb into the passenger seat of a black BMW driven by Harry the Hat, a notorious Walthamstow bookie.
“She gonna play ball?”
“Dunno,” growled Don. “She may need some more persuading.”
Dark secrets
The sudden death of her mother from a brain aneurism stunned Amy Tann and changed her life. Not just because of the love she felt for her, but the dark secret that her death revealed.
She was sorting through her belongings when she made a shattering discovery that would redefine her whole life, past and present. It was a letter to her parents, Tim and Sheila Sale, from an adoption agency, and contained a photo of a three-year old, red-haired girl: Amy Sale, their new daughter. Her. She was dumbfounded. She appeared to have been adopted, and by another member of her birth parent’s family.
Tim explained that her mother had been married to his cousin, Bernard, a violent drunk, who’d abandoned her with a young baby, and that Tim subsequently fell in love with her, married her and adopted Amy as his own. He’d begged her not to reopen old wounds, insisting he knew nothing of Bernard’s whereabouts. Besides, he was her father now and he loved her. Surely that should be enough?
Amy desperately wanted it to be, but it wasn’t. Unbeknown to him, she’d begun searching Internet adoption sites and tracing agencies, looking for her birth father. Her obsession had begun to affect her personal life. She lost her teaching job. Postponed her IVF treatments to save money, angering her husband, Philip, a Fraud Squad Detective in the Met.
When she finally found her birth father, Bernard, she felt only contempt for him. But he swore that he hadn’t abandoned Amy, insisting he’d been in hospital with pneumonia and they’d just disappeared. That he only later discovered Sheila had been having an affair with his cousin, Tim. Amy accused him of lying. If that were true, why hadn’t he tried to contact her? Bernard pulled out a faded wad of unopened letters, marked ‘return to sender’. He had tried. They’d all been returned. And he’d kept every single one.
Five years on, Amy still bore the emotional scars: abandoned IVF, a broken marriage, drink, casual sex, prescription drugs. Philip sneered in one of their rows that a person would have to be “fucking desperate” to ask for her help. Amy sneered back that “a lot of fucking people are.”
She was sitting in a tiny office in the West London Holistic Centre, a rather grand name for a red-brick building behind a supermarket, watching her therapist, Simon, tug at his salt-and-pepper eyebrows as he listened to her relaying the story. She suspected he plucked them – although he denied it – and enjoyed teasing him about his obvious vanity. She’d been coming to see him for over a year and was attracted to his casually manicured good looks and brutal honesty, even if she didn’t always agree with it.
“You want to know the real reason you set up this tracing agency business?”
“It’s called Lost and Found, Simon.”
“Whatever. You’re still in denial about your feelings of betrayal over your stepfather.”
“I’m not in denial. I know what he did and I made a conscious decision to cut him out of my life.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about and you know it. You’re not seeing your birth father either. The truth is, whether you admit it or not, you blame men for ruining your life.”
“That’s rubbish.”
“Is it? Why do you think you never had children?”
“I had fibroids. I couldn’t–”
“You could. You stopped your IVF treatment. Not only that, but you didn’t tell your husband you had. And you’re upset because he’s angry with you. No, the truth is, you don’t want kids, Amy, because deep down, you don’t trust men. You’re frightened of being betrayed again. That’s why you always need to be in control – even sexually.”
A smile parted Amy’s crimson lips like a wound. “Have you finished?”
“No. You’re forgoing your own personal life in the vain pursuit of making other victims, like yourself, whole. Why? You’re not God. Sort out your own life and marriage before you start interfering in other people’s.”
“Shit. Talk about calling the kettle black.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re telling me that you don’t live through your patient’s triumphs and tragedies vicariously? Christ, it’s the only thing that gives your sad life a purpose.”
“We’re here to talk about you. I don’t want to talk about me–”
“Of course you don’t. Why don’t you sort out your own marriage and 2.4 perfect children, Simon? Rather than lecture and fuck me.”
Simon’s aquiline features creased in a smile. “Touché.” Easing himself forward on his chair, he took Amy’s bird-like hand, as if to emphasise the point he was making. “Except I’m not the one drinking. I’m not the one self-medicating to numb my anger and bolster my low self-esteem.”
“I am not an alcoholic! So I have a couple of drinks. It relaxes me. Makes me feel more attractive – okay, wanted; is that what you want me to say?” She took his hand, placed two fingers in her mouth and said, “So does sex.”
He could smell her boozy cigarette breath. Feel her tongue working up and down his fingers. He pulled them roughly from her mouth and pushed them up her skirt.
After it was over, Simon went home to his perfect family, whilst Amy went to meet Kieron Allen in The Black Cat, a recently renovated pub on the edge of Catford Market. There, she toyed with a second vodka and tonic and the attentions of a Ryanair pilot from Belfast as she waited for Kieron to arrive.
Kieron, who’d been held up in traffic on the South Circular, arrived half an hour late, by which time the pilot, who felt he’d paid for Amy’s attention for the evening, took exception to him trying to share it.
Kieron, a quietly spoken, reserved man, tried to defuse the situation. “Honestly, I’m not trying to… muscle in… Look, my sister died… rather tragically… and, well, tonight is the first chance we’ve had to talk about it.”
The guy deflated, muttering, “Oh. Right. Well… that’s different… Right, well… I’ll say goodnight.”
“Thank you, Ryan,” said Amy, confusing his name with the company he worked for.
The pilot let it go and strode off with his dignity more or less intact. Kieron suggested that they sit at a table away from the bar. Amy found them an alcove beside the spluttering gas
log fire and Kieron bought a bottle of Prosecco so that they could toast Gina’s memory. They sat there quietly on the worn oak pews, sipping their wine and grieving her loss.
“Are you going to the funeral?” Kieron asked. “I read in The Standard that it’s on Friday.”
“I don’t know. Why? Would you like us to go together?”
He shook his head and said softly, “I’m not going. I don’t want to cause any more trouble.”
“Kieron. You’re her brother. You have every right.”
“Her step-parents don’t want me there.”
“Gina would have.”
“I know. But I don’t want to make it worse. I got a message from Mrs Lewis stating that I wasn’t welcome. She said there was stuff missing from Gina’s house. Her laptop. She accused me of taking it, threatened me with the police.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“They haven’t spoken to you, then?”
“No, and neither have the police.
He nodded in relief and took a sip of his wine as if to celebrate a small victory. “She may have just been trying to scare me off. I wouldn’t put it past her.”
“You mustn’t let them do that, Kieron. You’ve done nothing wrong.”
“I know. Would you like some water? I think I need some water,” he said, changing the subject and quickly removing himself from the distressing conversation.
Amy drained the last of her Prosecco and poured herself another glass. She sipped it as she watched him at the bar, thinking that even from the back he looked crushed. Haunted. She felt for him. After years of searching, he’d finally been reunited with his sister and Amy had had to phone him with the news that Gina had committed suicide. Worse, her step-parents, the real culprits, who’d put every obstacle in the way of their reunion, were now blaming him. It was so unfair. Why didn’t they blame her? She’d been the person Gina had come to asking for help to trace her birth mother. She’d been the one to set the train of events in motion. How could she have known the tragic consequences? She’d warned Gina about the risk of being rejected by her biological mother, but hadn’t foreseen the malicious reaction of her adopted parents. The Lewis’ response to Kieron was inexplicable. The poor man had done nothing but want to find his long-lost sister and they seemed to hate him for it – just like her own lying shit of a stepfather had with her.
She hid her concern behind a smile as he turned back to the table, carrying two glasses of water and an array of bar snacks on a metal tray displaying a faded print of a cockerel.
“I’m sorry,” he said apologetically as he placed packets of crisps and peanuts on the table. “I thought it would be good to have something to line our stomachs, what with us driving, but this is all they have unless we have a full meal.”
“It’s fine. Thank you,” she replied.
He ripped open the individual packets one by one and laid them flat on the oak table like little silver picnic plates. She took the gentle hint and picked at a few of the crisps. The combination of cheese and onion and cheap fizzy wine was horrible but she made sure she ate enough to satisfy his concern.
Kieron picked up a dry-roasted peanut between his finger and thumb and held it up to his face as if forensically examining it.
“Aren’t you going to eat that?” she said rather lamely, struggling to fill the silence.
“No,” he said. “I’m allergic to them. So was Gina. Isn’t that weird? Someone you’d never met, that you didn’t even know existed, and you finally meet and find you’ve both got the same allergy.”
“They reckon that some twins have a sort of sixth sense between them.”
“I know. But I was over fifteen years older than her.”
Amy said nothing, but thought that he looked every day of it. His jacket hung loose on his concave shoulders, giving him a hollowed-out appearance. And the boyish enthusiasm and hope she’d first seen in him had been eroded by a deadening, misplaced belief that Gina would still be alive if they’d never met.
“Kieron,” she said, suddenly stone-cold sober. “Meeting you, knowing she had a brother, was one of the happiest days of Gina’s life. She told me that.”
Kieron’s grave face lit up, and for a moment he allowed himself to believe it.
Arriving home, Amy felt good about herself for the first time in weeks. But she should have changed the locks on her front door. She thought that, being a detective, her husband would have obeyed the restraining order she’d taken out against him. She was wrong. Philip was waiting for her in the hall when she fumbled her way in, dropping her handbag and keys on the coir entrance mat and muttering a stream of expletives.
Out of the darkness a disembodied voice said, “They’re by your feet.”
She staggered back and switched on the light. Philip was sitting midway up the stairs, tugging at his wispy beard, watching her.
“How did you get in here?”
“With a key. This is my house–”
“You don’t live here anymore. You can’t just let yourself in.”
“I’m still paying the mortgage.”
“Get out! Now! Before I call the police.”
“I am the fucking police! What d’you think they’re going to do, Amy? Nothing.”
She knelt and searched through the spilt contents of her handbag for her mobile. He watched her, pursing his thin lips in disgust, as she scrabbled around on the expensive oak floor that he’d laid himself.
“And what do you think they’re going to say when they arrive and find you pissed after driving home?”
She pulled herself to her feet, her hand resting on the wall to steady herself, and said with as much dignity as she could muster, “I am not pissed, thank you very much.”
“You are! I can smell it from here,” he said as he stood and made his way towards her. “You stink of it. Who’ve you been screwing tonight? One of your saddo clients?”
The riposte spat from her mouth before she could stop herself. “No. My saddo therapist and he’s a better fuck than you’ll ever be!”
He didn’t hit her hard; it was more of an open-handed cuff than a punch. But it knocked her back – smack – against the door, cracking the frosted-glass panel. He was as surprised as she was to see the blood, her blood, spattering onto the engineered wood floor.
“You bastard,” she said, and pulled out a pepper spray from her bag and sprayed him full in the face.
He screamed and launched himself, fists and feet, blindly at her… until her screams drowned out his own.
Everton and Helen spent the morning with Laura Fell, compiling a list of Gina’s friends and associates. DS Clarke insisted he should accompany them to get a feel for the case, but Helen bullshitted him about not wanting to go in mob-handed and risk unsettling Laura. Instead, she tasked him with tracing all the other numbers that Gina had called from her mobile in the week before she died. Everton reminded her that they were supposed to be working as a team and that she couldn’t just ostracise him. But she was unrepentant, arguing that Clarke wasn’t interested in getting a feel for the case; he was interested in burying it.
Helen was keen to pin down the exact timings of Laura and her Chill Out friends movements on the night of the suicide. She’d already pulled the CCTV traffic camera image of Laura’s car jumping the red light on Putney Hill, which had helped narrow it down, but was keen to learn the events leading up to her decision to visit Gina. Laura was reluctant to say too much, especially about Don Hart, and the meeting ended inconclusively.
Everton drove them back to Wimbledon. He decided to take a shortcut through Richmond Park, but the twenty-mile-an-hour speed limit meant that he had to drive slower to accommodate the perennial “Lycra louts”, as he called the cyclists.
“I’ve just realised something,” said Helen, opening her pad to check her notes. “Gould and Hart are the only male regulars of this Chill Out thing. And both of them were absent on the night of Gina Lewis’ death when they’d both been expected.”
�
�Hart phoned to apologise.”
“But only later that night, when Laura Fell was outside the house.”
“Yeah, that’s true. And Laura reckons that Gould had a real thing about Gina Lewis.”
“It could be nothing, but we have to start somewhere, so let’s put them first on the list. I’ll get Nobby to run a background check on them and we’ll do the interviews.”
“What about Mrs Lewis?”
“She can wait. We don’t need any more flak.”
“Okay. But she’s hiding something – and I don’t just mean about the laptop. Gina Lewis changed her will the day she died and made Laura the sole beneficiary. And Mrs Lewis knew she’d done it before Laura saw the will.”
“What? How do you know that?”
“Laura told me.”
Helen mentally noted the repeated use of her first name, stored it for later and said, “Does she know why she changed it?”
“No, but Mrs Lewis clearly does.”
“And how do you know that?”
“Because she’d already contacted her daughter’s solicitor contesting the will.”
“Which means, she must have known what and who was in it previously.”
“Exactly. Odd, considering that Gina Lewis evidently loathed her mother.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“Because it was told to me in confidence and I didn’t know if it was relevant.”
She shot him a quizzical look. Everton steadfastly tried to ignore it. But, momentarily distracted, he clipped one of the small wooden bollards that bordered the road. The front offside tyre punctured with a spectacular bang, sending the car slewing off road and towards a herd of grazing fallow deer. Barking in alarm, they stampeded past the car and across the tarmac, like a scene from Jurassic Park, decimating a peloton of cyclists.
“Shit!” exclaimed Helen as the car finally slid to rest. “What happened? Are you okay?”