Dying Flames (14 page)

Graham fiddled and fussed for as long as possible in the kitchen. When the coffee was ready, he took it in on a tray, muttered something about biscuits, then left them to it again. There was conversation going on, but it seemed to be mostly question and answer, and it lacked passion. Back in the kitchen he found some chocolate and some ginger biscuits and put them on a plate. There was some panettone in the bread tin, and he sliced it and buttered it, as Adam liked it. He was just taking it in when the telephone rang in the study.

“Graham Broadbent speaking.”

“Ah, Mr. Broadbent. This is Sergeant Relf here.”

Graham felt a sinking feeling in his stomach.

“Do you have some news?”

“Maybe, and maybe not. Does Brightlingsea mean anything to you?”

“I've been there. It's a little seaside and yachting place about ten miles from Colchester. I seem to remember two of the characters in a Graham Greene novel having a dirty weekend there. It doesn't seem likely, but I suppose he would know. It's the yachting that it's known for.”

“I was really asking, did it have any associations with Peggy Webster?”

“With Peggy? Not that I know of, but it's within fairly easy reach of Bidford, where she used to live.”

“Only there's been a body found there. Woman of about the right age. The body's been in a little wrecked motorboat on the flats there for some time—two weeks or more, they think.”

“I see. Have you told Ted Somers?”

“Yes. He's going down to Colchester, to the police morgue there. He's taking his son with him. I think he's pretty shaken by the news. I'd guess he always expected her to turn up.”

“Well, apparently she has before. You sound as if you're fairly sure it's her.”

“Not fairly sure. But we've e-mailed them the photo we had and they think it could be. I wondered if you would care to be there when the Somerses see the body.”

“I don't know about that. Ted and the brother know her far better than I do. But I'd like to be there for Ted, if he's upset. I've got a lot of respect for him.”

“They expect to be at Colchester police headquarters about seven tonight.”

“I'll be there…. I just hope it's not her.”

“Well, naturally. So do her family, I'm sure. But I wouldn't get your hopes up too high.”

“It seems so unlike Peggy. To go out with a whimper like that.”

As he put the phone down, he heard the front door closing. He regretted he had not shut the study door. When he went into the front room, he found Adam crying. He was willing to bet it wasn't for his mother.

When Graham arrived in Colchester, it was nearly seven o'clock in the evening. Parking was easy to find, and when he made himself known at police headquarters, he was told that the two Mr. Somerses had arrived five minutes before. He was taken through to the waiting room outside the mortuary by a fresh-faced, young constable who looked as if he were playing truant from school.

The two Mr. Somerses mentioned were sitting on a bench—together but apart. Ted was bent forward, his face in his hands. His son was staring at the wall opposite, his face granite. When he saw Graham approaching, he got up and went to meet him.

“I think you must be Graham Broadbent. I'm Oliver Somers. It was good of you to come.”

“I just thought your father might need all the support he could get. It's going to be difficult for him.”

“It's difficult for him now,” said Oliver, gesturing. “For all of us. The emotions are so…mixed.”

He was, Graham guessed, not much older than himself. It suddenly seemed strange that he knew so little about him. If people had mentioned him at all, the references had been unspecific. He was sturdy, with plenty of flesh on him, but no feeling to him of comfort or relaxation. Restless, questing—someone, Graham felt, who didn't easily make do with second best or with slipshod work or dubious standards. Graham's thoughts were interrupted by a police sergeant emerging from a door at the far end of the room and coming to fetch the two men to the mortuary. If he had actually dragged his feet, Ted could hardly have been more obvious in showing his reluctance. Mixed emotions or not, grief and regret were now clearly in the ascendant. Walking beside him, Oliver offered his father his arm. It was rejected gently.

Graham sat down on the bench, and it was now his turn to stare at the opposite wall. Somehow he had no doubt that the body was Peggy. Perhaps it was Essex that seemed conclusive to him: here she was, in her ending, back in the area that had started her on her rackety life of lying, fantasy, making waves, and disastrous relationships.

The door at the far end opened again. It was obvious he was right the moment he saw Ted's and Oliver's figures in the doorway. Ted seemed to have shrunk, his shoulders to have become still more bowed where once they had been square and straight. He and Oliver talked to the police sergeant, then Ted went off with him and Oliver came over.

“Ted's going to give his account of that last night,” he said, “the one in the restaurant. The sergeant's agreed that we can go, since we probably haven't got much to add. They think this case will be handled mainly by the Romford police, but they'll be going into how and why the body was found around here, whether she was known here, whether anyone remembers her being here around the time of the disappearance. I've told Dad we'll be in the nearest pub, which is the Crown. Is that okay?”

“Of course. I want to give any support I can.”

“The children are okay?”

“Yes. Well, not entirely. Christa is always all right of course, being so in control of herself and everyone else. She's in Romford living with a friend most of the week. Adam's just had a visit from his father, and it didn't go well. But he's resilient, even if he's not as tough and together as he thinks. He'll be with friends. I told him I might not be back till tennish.”

The Crown was a pub of the brass-lamp and funeral-parlor walls variety, and it was too early for it to be crowded. Graham got two pints and they found themselves a table where they could talk privately. Oliver reverted to the matter of Adam.

“How do you think he will react to his mother's death?”

Graham thought.

“I don't know…. I've given up making assumptions about the lad. He may feel very uncertain at the moment, though he gives the impression that he lives for the day and fits into whatever the circumstances of the time are. That's upbringing and training, I suppose. I gather Peggy's time was always her own, rather than her children's. He must be wondering what the next few years have in store for him, not to mention where I fit in.”

Oliver looked at him hard.

“So what do the next few years hold for him?”

“Possibly going to live with your father—especially if he marries Kath Moores and comes back to live in Bidford. Or alternatively staying on with me. Possibly commuting between the two: he seems to have settled well into school at Hepton Magna, and he could go to his grandfather for weekends.”

“You've no connection with him though, have you?”

Graham shook his head. “None at all. I've never had children, and though I'm not conscious of having missed anything, I wouldn't say no to having responsibility for one I liked for a few years. How about you?”

Oliver jumped.

“I'm…well, pretty much in the same position as yourself. But my job—I'm in insurance—takes me away a lot. And I've virtually never met the boy. I was leaving my father's one evening when he and Christa arrived on a visit. Hail and farewell. Frankly, I don't relish the idea of taking him on.”

“I didn't suggest that you should, only that you might welcome the opportunity. One thing Adam doesn't need at this stage is a reluctant guardian.”

Oliver gazed gloomily into his still-full glass.

“You make me sound like a real bastard.”

“Not intentionally.”

“Perhaps there's no other way it could sound. But not knowing the lad, and never having had anything to do with Peggy for the last ten years or more…”

“That would be when she cheated you over the house sale?”

“Yes. She had just got married, it was soon after Adam's birth. I liked Harry Webster so far as it went, which wasn't very far. He got on all right with Christa, brought in a reasonable income, and Peggy and he seemed fairly happy. So there were good omens for the whole family, and I was willing to throw in a contribution to making things work. I had made a nice little nest egg from buying shares during the privatization boom and selling them before things went sour. The money would go direct to Dad, would provide him and Mum with a really stable last few years, and it would come back to Peggy and me when they died.”

“Only it never got to him, did it?”

“No.” Oliver shifted in his seat. “That was the first inkling I had that Peggy was slippery about money, with no conscience about how she got hold of it. Before I'd just lent her the odd few pounds that never came back, but this was something else. As soon as I learnt what had happened—from Dad, who was absolutely bowled over, and really bitter and sad—I cut off ties entirely. Quite apart from anything else, I knew I had been made a fool of, and it would have done me no good for that to get around at work. I never felt the smallest urge to make any advances, try for a reconciliation with her. So there's been no contact between me and the children.”

“But it's brought you closer to your father.”

“To Dad
and
to Mum. You never met her, I gather. She was a wonderful woman. Dad had been in the garage trade, and he knew about dodgy dealings, even if he never went in for them himself. Mum was straight as they come, and warm and amusing too.”

“But they both had made a favorite of Peggy as a girl?”

Oliver almost flinched.

“Yes…. You can't blame them—she was so sparkling, had such life…. I could understand her being Daddy's girl: that was a thing one saw so often and felt was only natural. But Mum was just as besotted. I was only a year or so older, and though I loved Peggy too and thought she had wonderful talents, I could see through her on the human level, and I knew she twisted them round her little finger. That was something they eventually found out when they only got half the money for the house…. It was good to see a lot of Mum in her last years, and it's been good to see close up what a fine, decent man Dad is, what strength he has shown through it all.”

“Here he is.”

He didn't look strong now. He skirted the little knots of drinkers, his eyes going everywhere, his stoop still more pronounced. He nodded to Graham and sat down, saying nothing. He seemed to be oppressed by a great burden of misery and memories. To leave him and his son together, Graham got up and fetched him a drink from the bar. He didn't have to ask him what he wanted. Ted was a beer man. Only when he had downed a quarter of the glass did some kind of life appear in his eyes.

“God, I needed that,” he said. “I haven't needed one so much since Mary died.”

“What did they want to know, Dad?” Oliver asked.

Ted seemed to struggle to find a memory of the last half hour. “Oh, the party at Luigi's. Why she left, and what she was going to do. What we did afterwards…. I'd been over it all before, when I reported her missing at Romford.”

“I've been over it too,” said Graham.

“Well, that's police work. They have to do it, apparently—go over and over the same things…. But these people also wanted to talk about her ties with round here.”

The two younger men thought about that.

“You mean with Essex? With the Colchester area?” asked Graham.

“Yes. I really had to puzzle my brain. Of course she was brought up not so far from here, and I told them about that. But had she had any connection with the area since she moved with us to Romford?” Ted looked at his son, who shook his head.

“Not that I know of, but then I
wouldn't
know, not about recent years. There's been no communication. I don't know of any connection in the years after we moved, but I only lived at home now and then, as you know, Dad.”

“I'm a contact,” said Graham. “I'm a sort of relic of her years living in Bidford.”

“But you only came back into her life a few weeks ago,” said Ted.

“Long enough, if you're scraping around for suspects.”

“Do you keep up contacts with Colchester as a rule?” asked Oliver.

“No. My parents are both dead. I have no links. I came back about seven or eight weeks ago to go to a school reunion. It was in the local paper, and it was that that brought Christa to pay me a visit. It was a birthday party for the man who directed Peggy in
St. Joan.
”

“George Long. I remember him,” said Ted. “He's still alive, is he?”

“Yes, very much so. But he's eighty-two, so I don't think they'll be looking at him as a suspect.”

“I wasn't meaning—”

“There was one of the old boys there—he was in
St. Joan
as well, and so was I—who got both sentimental and aggressive at the thought of Peggy. But I never got the impression that he'd had anything to do with her since that time.”

Neither Ted nor Oliver felt this was a very fruitful source of speculation.

“I was back here a few days ago,” said Graham, the thought suddenly coming to him. “To see Adam's grandmother in Stanway.”

Ted nodded. “Peggy used to get on well with her. She and Harry used to visit her quite often.”

“So she could have made local contacts then,” said Graham. “Was Harry from round the Colchester area?”

Ted shook his head. “I don't rightly remember, but I think his mother moved to Stanway from Romford, as a lot of people do move to this area when they retire or are widowed: it's a bit cheaper, and a lot quieter. Anyway, Peggy and Harry met in Romford, I do remember that. She was in a pub with the acting crowd after a rehearsal. Harry wasn't one of that mob, not then or after, though he did a few odd jobs for them now and then because he was always handy.”

“So what happened? Did they just get talking?”

“Either he picked her up, or she picked him up,” said Ted, back in his scales-fallen-from-eyes mode.

“Graham, did Harry come with you and Adam to see his mother?” asked Oliver.

“Not a chance. He's under orders from his wife to see as little of Adam as possible. She has him completely under her thumb, apparently. He was paying a secret, snatched visit to Adam earlier today, but when he heard me talking on the phone to the police about the body at Brightlingsea, he took off like a rocket.”

The father and son looked at each other, but said nothing.

“Isn't it sad?” said Oliver eventually. “Dad and Mum were ideal parents, nothing too much trouble, always there when they were needed. And all they produce is a boring insurance man and a fantasist whose only interest was in herself. And yet she and Harry—he may just be weak, but Peggy!—apparently produce or at least bring up strong kids, full of character and basically decent and honest, if Dad is to be believed. If you'd looked at her, you'd have said there was no way she should have had those two.”

“Three,” said Graham. Ted and Oliver looked abashed.

“Of course, three,” said Oliver. “But Peggy couldn't get either credit or blame for—what's his name?”

“Terry Telford,” said Graham. “No, I suppose she couldn't. I just mentioned him to emphasize that he does exist, was around on the night, and yet we seem to have forgotten him. I don't suppose the police have.”