Death of a Stranger (16 page)

“I want to see him,'' Lorna said, when the weeping had subsided to huge intermittent sobs that shook her whole body.

“Mother, I don't think—''

“I have to see him.''

“I'll go with her,'' Anna said. Partly because she found herself not wanting to be the only member of their trio who had not seen Simon Shaw in death, and partly because once was enough for Tim. “ It isn't far, Lorna,'' she whispered into the tousled hair. “The mortuary's here in the hospital.''

“So I'm near him …''

“Come on, Mother, then, if you insist.'' It was starting to be difficult not to let the irritation show.

Together they helped Lorna out of bed and into her dressing-gown. When it was fastened she pulled herself from their grasp, picked up a comb and walked unaided to a looking-glass. “But he won't see me, it doesn't matter,'' she murmured, when she had pulled it a few times through her untidy hair, and was sagging when Tim reached her. Anna went out into the corridor and asked for a wheelchair. Then, when they had manoeuvred Lorna into it, managed – more easily, he hoped, than she suspected – to dissuade Tim from accompanying them.

“I'll go in alone,'' Lorna told her, as they arrived.

Someone from the Victoria wing had rung through, and the body was ready. Lorna got out of the chair outside the room where it was lying, waving away assistance, and Anna waited with racing heart for another cry to pierce the walls. But there was silence, which continued as Lorna came out with the young man who had taken her in and who she allowed to help her back into her chair. Then she looked up at Anna, her eyes so grieved Anna had to turn away.

“D'you want to see him?'' the young man asked her.

“Yes.''

It was a relief that the body didn't look like Simon Shaw, like any living being, but before she could turn away she had superimposed on the still flesh the animation of its life. As she had done with Mickey, when she had looked into the unseeing eyes of her eleven-year-old son.

“Are you all right?''

Anna nodded, unable to speak, and was escorted out to Lorna. They made the return journey in silence.

Tim was talking to some nurses outside Lorna's room. It was the look of Anna, now, which alarmed him the more, and when they had helped Lorna back on to the bed and were sitting as before each side of her, he asked his wife if she was all right.

“I will be. It made me remember Mickey.''

“Oh, God.'' Tim smote his forehead. “I should have thought!''

“I'd still have gone. It had to come. Mickey was my son, Lorna,'' she said, although Lorna wasn't looking a question, she was staring into space. It just might help her start to regain a sense of proportion if she thought about her daughter-in-law having lost a son. “ He was eleven and he was …''

Anna stopped, looking across at Tim. Only then realising the significance at that moment of how Mickey had died.

“Anna's son was run down by a car, Mother,'' he said, so clearly and firmly that he caught her attention.

“What did you say, Tim?'' she asked slowly, turning her head towards him.

“I said that Anna's son Mickey was killed by a car. He was eleven. She'll never get over it but she's learned to live with it.''

Lorna turned her head the other way. “Well done, Anna!'' she said, with a ghastly sprightliness which had both her son and her daughter-in-law involuntarily recoiling. “Well done! I wonder if
I'll
ever manage that?'' And she went off into a paroxysm of hysterical laughter.

The laughter was shorter-lived than the earlier weeping, and when it was dying down Tim, feeling self-righteous as well as indignant, told Lorna he would never have thought to hear her comparing the death of a son with the death of a toyboy.

“For heaven's sake, Mother, try and pull yourself together! Anna lost her
son
, and you're behaving as if the world has come to an end because your
boyfriend's
dead! A boyfriend young enough to be
your
son!''

“Oh, Tim.'' Lorna wiped her eyes, then picked up his hand. “Simon
is
my son. And your brother.”

W
atching Tim's face, Anna found herself remembering the first time she had met him, her neighbour at a dinner table, because it was the only other time when he had looked totally unfamiliar.

He had shuddered as Lorna spoke, and then his face had settled into a sort of grave attentiveness. The face of a policeman at work.

“Does anyone else in Guernsey know this, Mother?''

“In Guernsey? No one.''

“Good. We'll leave it that way during the investigation, I'll have more clout if no one knows that I—'' Another shudder, making Anna hope he was coming back to life. But the terrible composure was immediately restored. “We'll say he was an old friend of the family.''

But Simon Shaw was his brother, Tim raged, Simon Shaw had been far more deeply inside his mother than his wildest nightmares had imagined, as deeply as he had been himself. His brother, the dear younger brother he had always longed for, who had stood within reach of his caress and looked at him with what he now knew had been a tremulous hope that he might soon be accepted and loved.

But soon was too late.

Savagely Tim pushed the anguish away from him, tried to push away every emotion save his rage. There would be time for grief later, when he had brought whoever had murdered his brother to justice. Now, he dare not attempt to absorb his loss because the process would show, he must force himself to be as inwardly detached as he would appear on the surface. Shock was making that easy now, but when it wore off he would have to spend every waking moment at work on it. And the price he was going to pay was detachment from everyone and everything which a few moments ago had made up his life. Even his wife, who seemed suddenly a long way away. He would have to hope she had the understanding to see that even with the two people he was closest to he must be as he would be among his colleagues and the public if he was to hold his role as prosecutor.

“I must go. See my Chief and get things under way. He let me head the investigation when my cousin Charles was murdered, so there shouldn't be any trouble with the death of – a friend.'' Tim shuddered again.

“Of course, darling,'' Lorna whispered.

Now he had to force himself to focus his eyes on his mother. “I'm sorry I said what I did,'' he told her. “But I didn't know.''

“Of course you didn't, Tim.''

“Why didn't you tell me earlier? Years and years earlier?'' He didn't know, either, that he was going to say that. And so angrily.

“Simon was adopted by Gina. She'd lost a baby and was in a bad way. I'd lost Geoffrey, he died before Simon was born. He wouldn't have let Simon go, but he wasn't there and I'd learned I was no good as a mother.''

The old Tim, Anna thought fearfully, would have offered some kindly gesture of dissent, but the new one continued to stand frowning, tapping a foot as he waited impatiently for more information.

Lorna showed no awareness of the change. “No one in Guernsey knew I was pregnant when Geoffrey and I left, and no one in England except Gina and our lawyers knew Simon was my son. I saw a lot of him as he grew up, because I saw a lot of Gina. Gina had told him he was adopted as soon as he was old enough to understand, and when he was thirty and completely independent of our generation she told me she wanted him to know that I was his blood mother. It's only a couple of months since his birthday, so we were still excited by each other and I can see how you were afraid—''

“So why didn't you tell me when you arrived? At least I could have …'' But he mustn't speak, or even think, about what he could have done.

“Tim!'' The sudden severity in Lorna's voice caught his attention, and the long focus of his eyes shortened to take her in.

“Well?

“It was your wedding! I know I've done some upstaging in my time, but I wouldn't upstage your wedding. Simon and I agreed on that. I could see you were upset when I said I'd hang on in Guernsey until Simon had finished his assignment then leave with him before you got home, but we were going to come back together in a week or so after your return and tell you then.''

“I see. All right.'' He couldn't think, now, about what might have been. “Mother, I need to know all there is to know about Simon's assignment.'' Anna noted with a pang that despite his self-control Tim was no longer calling his brother by his surname. “Seeing that he was run down outside the Golden Rose. How did he get it?''

“He got it because the MD of the insurance company investigating the possibility of fraud is Gina's brother, which makes him Simon's adoptive uncle. But he got it on merit too, he's done some good work in the City. Tim!'' For the second time the imperious note in his mother's voice had Tim coming temporarily to attention. “Constance could have followed him last night. Waited until he came out of the Golden Rose, and then—''

“You said no one in Guernsey knew he was your son,'' Tim said sharply.

“No one does. But if she'd got the idea he was important to me in a different way … The way
you
thought.''

The way he knew Constance Lorimer thought, too, from what she had said when he had visited her. But he wouldn't tell his mother that. “ Even then, she'd have to have been shadowing him round the clock to know he'd be going out in the middle of the night. Which isn't very likely.''

“I suppose not,'' Lorna agreed reluctantly, then let out a cry that had Anna and Tim shying like nervous racehorses. “Gina! I have to tell her. Oh, God. Anna …''

“I'll stay with you. No one's expecting me anywhere else. Tim, you go!''

He went willingly and without a word, because there was nothing helpful he could say or do. When he had gone Anna asked Lorna if she would like her to make the call. Lorna's face looked lopsided, as if she had had a stroke, and everything about her seemed smaller.

“Yes, but I must do it myself. Don't go far away, though. I'll want you afterwards.''

Anna left the building and strolled about in the sunshine, shivering in the warm air and worrying about Tim. It was only as she looked at her watch and decided it was time to be back that she remembered she was on her honeymoon and gave a snort of overwrought laughter.

She found Lorna in tears, but calmer.

“Is she coming over?''

“No. And I got the feeling she'll never come. That she couldn't.'' The way Anna couldn't go to the place where Mickey had died. “We didn't get round to talking about the funeral, but Tim told me we'll have to wait a while, till they release Simon's body. I'm glad Gina isn't coming, I don't think we could take each other just now. Anna, what am I going to do about all the days and weeks and months ahead?''

“You're not going to think about them.'' Anna took one of the suddenly agitating hands. “Lorna, any advice I give you … I've lived through it.''

“I'd forgotten!'' Lorna stared at her, shocked. “ I know I'm self-obsessed, but to forget that! Forgive me.''

“There's nothing to forgive. Except for a few saints grief is a selfish emotion, and you have to give in to it to get through it. For a long time my dead son and I were the only two people in the world.'' Anna thought with a pang of one of the saints, her then husband Jimmy, patiently sublimating his own grief into unwearying effort to help her through hers.

“Oh, Anna. I know already what you mean. I've lost Simon, but thank heaven I've found
you
. But I'm not going to cling to you. Or to Tim.'' To her pleased surprise, Anna saw the fleeting suggestion of a smile. “ Now, having said that, may I leave this hospital and come to Rouge Rue?''

Tim's anger needed as much fuel as he could give it, and as he drove into Town he was glad to find it engulfing his mother as well as fate and Constance Lorimer and the Charters. His brother was – had been – thirty years old, and she had only just told him he was her son. Deference to the anger-inducing Gina, he supposed, but it had meant three wasted decades, above all for himself and Simon, who had been denied their rightful contact. His mother had known Simon was her second son and had been able to enjoy his company, but he, Tim, had been deprived of his only sibling. “Selfish bitch!'' he hissed aloud, as he slewed too quickly into his parking place in the police courtyard.

When he had switched off he sat a few seconds to recover his new facade, approving his closed face in his rear mirror before getting out. When he reached his office he looked out angrily at the tree and turned his blind against the sun before ringing for Ted.

“I want an immediate incident room set up. Whatever authority the Chief gives me, we need that. I thought the conference room, there isn't anything on the horizon needing it and even if there were—''

“It's under way, sir. In the conference room. The Chief asked to see you the moment you got in.''

“Thanks, Ted.'' His sergeant was looking at him with concern, he'd have to say something more. And temper his stoicism with Ted as well as with his mother and his wife: to appear more detached than was his wont could excite as much speculation as letting his sorrow show. Fortunately he hadn't shared his doubts about Simon with any of his colleagues. Because from the start he hadn't wanted them to be true, Tim realised with a fresh pang that had him catching his breath. “Don't look so worried,'' he managed, aware of his lips stretching in a reflex smile, a gesture that already felt unfamiliar. “ But you're right, Ted, I
am
upset. Simon Shaw was a very old friend.''

“Oh, Tim! I hadn't realised. I thought your shock was for your mother.''