Kind of Cruel (34 page)

Gibbs’ mum and dad didn’t talk much at all, and when they did, it was about nothing in particular. Just the usual shit, same as most people. Gibbs had more in common with his parents than he did with Olivia. Beauty and joy? No one he knew talked about them, and it was obvious why not. Even thinking about them felt wrong when you were sitting across a table from Marianne Lendrim, their diametric opposite. Her grey hair was plaited and wound into two Cumberland-sausage-style circles behind her ears. On either side of her nose, her cheeks drooped like two empty pink bags. Her expression was superior and critical, as if nothing she saw or heard suited her at all. Her clothes wouldn’t have suited anyone: an expensive-looking red velvet skirt with a slit in the side and a visible silk lining, worn with black woolly tights and bulky black and grey trainers. Was she planning to sprint to Buckingham Palace for an audience with the Queen as soon as Gibbs had finished with her?

‘If I were you, I’d start appreciating your ma and pa,’ Marianne advised him. ‘You don’t want to die young, do you?’

‘I didn’t say I don’t appreciate them. What’s me dying got to do with it?’

‘Children who don’t appreciate their parents tend to die young. Sharon did.’ Gibbs attributed the glee in her voice to her mistaken assumption that she’d shocked and scared him.

‘Sharon died because someone set fire to her house,’ he said. ‘Was that someone you?’

‘You know it wasn’t,’ Marianne barked at him. She got angry whenever he tried to steer the conversation. She wanted to hold forth without interruption. ‘I was in Venice.’

‘Did you have someone else set fire to Sharon’s house on your behalf?’

‘No, and if you’re going to—’

‘Then her dying can’t be anything to do with her being unappreciative of you as a mother, unless I’m missing something,’ Gibbs said.

A smug smile appeared between the two crumpled pink cheek-bags. ‘Think of all the great writers and artists who died young: Kafka, Keats, Proust, almost any you care to name. Their biographies will tell you illness killed them, but what caused the illness?’

‘Spoken to all their doctors, have you?’

‘Instead of cherishing their parents and honouring them, they perceived them as problems. Obstacles. It stands to reason: if you feel ingratitude and resentment towards the people who gave you life, you’re attacking the life force inside you. That’s the cause of nearly all illness.’

Gibbs wished he had a job that didn’t involve listening to so much crap. If he’d been sacked this morning, it would have been someone else’s turn by now. He could have lived his whole life without meeting Marianne Lendrim.

‘Think about the people you know. Who are the robust ones? Who are the ones always off work with a cold or a migraine? Healthy people respect and appreciate their parents. If you don’t believe me, do your own research. You’ll come and find me to tell me how right I was. You won’t be the first, I can promise you that. If you’re harbouring any kind of negativity towards your parents in your heart, your body will attack its own vital energy. It’s just a matter of time.’ A cunning look appeared on Marianne’s face. ‘This Katharine Allen person – how did
she
feel about her parents? She died young too.’

‘There was no problem between Kat and her parents,’ said Gibbs.

‘So you say. You can’t know that.’

‘Kat Allen was beaten to death. It’s hard to see how your theory could apply to her, or Sharon. Can negative attitudes start house fires? Can they bring metal poles crashing down on people’s heads?’

Marianne threw him a pitying look. ‘I’m not God. I don’t know everything about the laws of cause and effect. What I do know is this: if you send jagged heartwaves out into the world, they end up coming back to you in ways you can’t possibly anticipate.’

‘So Sharon didn’t appreciate you. Did you appreciate her?’

Marianne laughed as if the question was ridiculous. ‘I was her mother. Mothers are supposed to love their daughters, not appreciate them. Daughters sacrifice nothing for their mothers, nothing at all. Appreciation and respect are what children owe their parents, and it’s a one-way debt, just as the duty of care is one-way, parent to child.’

Gibbs was baffled.

‘I never stopped loving Sharon,’ Marianne told him. ‘Though God knows, from any objective standpoint you’d have to say she was unloveable.’

‘Where were you last night between midnight and 2 a.m. ?’ Gibbs asked.

‘In bed, asleep. I usually am, in the middle of the night.’

‘Alone?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you remember where you were on Tuesday 2 November?’

‘I work on Tuesdays, as a volunteer at the infirmary,’ said Marianne. ‘I must have been there. I haven’t taken any days off recently.’

‘Katharine Allen was killed between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. on Tuesday 2 November,’ Gibbs told her. ‘What did you do during your lunch hour on that day, do you remember?’

‘Well, I didn’t kill a girl I’ve never heard of, if that’s what you’re implying.’ Marianne stared at him with contempt. ‘I get a free lunch from the canteen when I volunteer, and that’s where I always go, with my magazine and my crossword – ask anyone who works there.’

Gibbs planned to, though it was hard to summon enthusiasm for the idea when he already knew what he’d hear. Marianne Lendrim was telling the truth. She was right up there on the list of people Gibbs hoped never to meet again, but she hadn’t murdered Kat Allen and she hadn’t killed her daughter. Until a law was passed outlawing unpleasantness, there was nothing he could lock her up for or charge her with.

Having done the right thing and refused to do Amber Hewerdine’s very big favour, Charlie saw no reason why she shouldn’t visit the My Home For Hire website and have a look at the house Amber claimed was nothing to do with Katharine Allen’s murder. Little Orchard. She typed the name into the search box, thinking that she didn’t like it much. There was something falsely modest about it. ‘An orchard? Yes, but only a teensy one.’ There was no other reason for it to have that name, and anyone with an orchard at the bottom of their garden would do better to be honest and call their house Lucky Rich Git Manor. Or
Manoir
, since the owner, Veronique Coudert, was presumably French.

Why was nothing happening? The words ‘Little Orchard’ were still sitting in the search box; Charlie had forgotten to press enter. She did so as the phone on her desk started to ring. It was Liv. ‘Got a minute?’ she asked Charlie cheerfully, as if no long silence had ever stretched between them.

If you’re going to tell me you and Gibbs have finished, I’ve got all day
. ‘No. I’m working.’

‘Liar. What are you really doing?’

Charlie made a face at the phone. ‘What do you want, Liv?’

‘This Sharon Lendrim woman who died in a fire, whose children—’

‘You shouldn’t know any of that,’ Charlie cut her off, battling against the usual struggle-for-breath feeling that accompanied bad news.

‘Neither should you,’ said Liv.
And I’m going to tell
. If only she’d show her true colours and say that next, Charlie thought, it would be satisfying in a funny sort of way.

‘True. I shouldn’t know about it either.’
The difference is that I work for the police and you don’t. And I’m married to Simon, not just shagging him while we wait for him to have twins and for me to marry someone else
.

‘I was thinking: given that Kat Allen starred in some TV stuff when she was younger . . .’

‘Liv, I’m not going to talk to you about a case that’s nothing to do with either of us.’

‘Fine.’

Charlie heard a loud click. She was suspicious. Since when was Olivia so easy to get rid of? This was the second time in a week that she’d ended a conversation, which was something the old Liv would never have done. Whatever the situation, she always wanted to carry on discussing it until you were slumped on the floor with blood trickling out of your ears.

No, Charlie wasn’t going to allow herself to fall into that trap. There was no old Liv and no new Liv. Her sister was her sister, the same person she’d always been.

She can afford to end conversations now; she doesn’t have to cling any more. She’s in the middle of the action, whether you like it or not. There’s no getting rid of her.

Now that this had occurred to Charlie, and now that she was looking at photographs of a wisteria-covered red-brick house that instantly, for some reason, made her think of an upmarket old people’s home, she found she’d lost interest in Little Orchard. Liv’s phone call had taken all the fun out of it.

You’re supposed to be at work, not having fun
. Specifically, Charlie was supposed to be drafting a document called ‘Crisis Intervention in a Multi-Agency Environment: A Guide for Practitioners’. To say that it wasn’t what she fancied doing this afternoon would have been putting it mildly.

She clicked on ‘Check Availability’. There seemed to be some bookings, despite the house allegedly being no longer hireable. Had Veronique Coudert blacklisted Amber, as Amber suspected? Would there be any harm in Charlie putting it to the test? She could send an email, ask about availability. Would it matter, as long as she backed out before any money had to change hands? As long as she didn’t tell Amber what she’d done, which she wouldn’t?

She clicked on ‘Contact the Owner’, and drafted as short a message as possible, without even a ‘Dear Sir or Madam’ or a ‘Yours faithfully’. She didn’t want to waste any more time than she had to, so she stuck to the basics: was Little Orchard available for any of the weekends in January 2011? She pressed send, annoyed with herself for feeling guilty. The part of what Amber had wanted her to do that was wrong was the part she had no intention of doing: booking the house so that Amber could stay there in her name, without the owner’s permission. Outrageous. A simple enquiry, on the other hand, was harmless.

Charlie wondered why she felt the need to keep telling herself that. She wondered what Simon would think. At what point would she tell him?

She sipped her cold tea, wishing it was hot, but not enough to do anything about it. One of three things would happen: Veronique Coudert wouldn’t reply, or else she’d reply and say that the house was available, or she’d say that it wasn’t.

Whatever she does, you’ll have no idea what it means.

Charlie knew she should tell Simon straight away. Or Sam. The name Veronique Coudert did not feature in the Katharine Allen files, Charlie knew that, but it was possible Coudert was connected to the Sharon Lendrim case. Somewhere in Rawndesley nick there might be files full of her name. Or she could be bugger all to do with anything criminal. Which would mean that Amber Hewerdine had even more nerve than Charlie had credited her with, if she’d tried to enlist the help of a police sergeant simply because she was put out not to be able to rent the holiday home of her choice.
Cheeky cow
.

Why had Liv phoned? What had she been about to say? Something to do with Katharine Allen having acted in a few films as a child – why was that important? Phoning her sister back was out of the question. Charlie decided instead to re-read all the Katharine Allen notes, see if she could work out what it was that had drawn Liv’s attention.

She had a new email, from [email protected]. She clicked on ‘Open Message’ and saw that Amber had been right about having been blacklisted. The owner of Little Orchard, whose entirely un-French name Charlie did not recognise, was happy to let the house to Charlie, it seemed. So why not to Amber?

And if this woman whose email Charlie was looking at now was the owner of Little Orchard, as she claimed to be, who was Veronique Coudert?