Ralph’s Children (21 page)

‘Go on,’ Kate said. ‘Please.’

‘A possible precedent. In Oxford – in Summertown, to be precise – about a year ago, a primary school teacher named Alan Mitcham, charged with armed robbery, claimed he’d
been forced to commit the crime by a gang of abductors wearing black stocking masks.’

‘Goodness,’ Kate said. ‘What happened to him?’

‘He was convicted.’

‘Great.’ Kate paused. ‘I take it there’s more.’

‘I’m afraid Mr Mitcham was murdered in Oakwood Prison.’

‘I thought this was meant to be a good precedent,’ Kate said.

‘It is good,’ Blake said, ‘because the police seem to be looking at Mitcham’s story again with fresh eyes.’ He rubbed the side of his nose with his thumb.
‘It’s also of very great interest for another reason.’

Kate waited.

‘Mitcham claimed after his arrest,’ Blake went on, ‘that the gang had used false names taken from a novel.’

For the first time, Kate experienced a real kick of hope. ‘The Golding?’

‘The very same,’ said Blake. ‘Though he said there were three gang members, not four – but since their names were Jack, Roger and Pig, it’s hardly likely to be a
coincidence.’

‘So Newton has to be starting to believe me,’ Kate said.

‘Let’s say things are heading in the right direction,’ Blake said.

T
he knowledge that it was all over was even more painful than Ralph had ever anticipated it might be.

Knowing there would be no more games.

No more group.

Knowing that when the time came, none of them would be able to attend Simon’s funeral, nor even, later, visit her grave in case the police were watching.

Her grief for Simon and her fears for the others grew daily. They were so scarred, so damaged, and now they would have to go on alone, and she wondered how they would manage.

Maybe they would be fine, maybe
better
than before.

More ordinary, their lives commonplace.

Better without her influence.

Better without
her.

She hardly seemed to care about herself any more, felt unable to. If she didn’t eat or sleep well, or didn’t exercise, or didn’t even get out more than was absolutely
necessary, there was no one to bother about her. She had been managing to continue with her part-time job and a little telephone counselling – she had to pay her bills, after all – but
there was no satisfaction in any of it, which reminded her of the way her life had been before that long-ago evening at Wayland’s Smithy.

Before the group.

One of her great fears was that the other three might be bent on revenge. That Pig, in particular, might try to do something to avenge Simon, endangering himself and the other two. They’d
agreed on as little contact as possible; not even so much as a Christmas card, and phone calls only if absolutely necessary and with great caution, but on the rare opportunity Ralph did find to
communicate with any of them, she was determined to use it to discourage acts of retribution as well as she could.

Keeping her surviving children safe was the least she could do after all the harm she had already done them.

She knew that she would never forgive herself.

And her own hatred for Kate Turner grew stronger every day.

T
hey were both beginning to accept, Kate felt, that they were truly together again, their reconciliation less tentative than it had at first been.

They’d done a few things to mark new permanence, bought new cushions and a couple of jacquard throws for the coffee-stained sofa and armchairs, gone to the garden centre and chosen plants,
then dug them in together. Sharing their home again and their daily lives, through Christmas and into the New Year, felt better than right to them both.

She looked at herself sometimes in mirrors, assessing the damages of the past year. She’d gone to a hairdresser after Caisleán, had her hair cut shorter, and it suited her well
enough. Her hazel eyes gazed almost calmly back at her, the shadows beneath them less pronounced than they had been, though her face was still thinner.

Rob told her she was beautiful, and she told him he was handsome, and that she’d even grown fond of his beard. But then he’d startled her, early one morning, by inviting her to shave
it off for him.

‘Are you quite sure?’ She’d felt tentative.

‘It reminds you, I think,’ he said, ‘of our bad times, so I want it gone.’

‘But you like it.’

‘I love you more.’

It had been an extraordinarily intimate experience, leading to love-making, and that too was better than it had ever been, though the new bond between them seemed far more important than
physical pleasure. Kate thought, perhaps, that it was she who felt that so much more, the sheer relief of coming together, the sense of safe harbour she experienced being closer than close, Rob
deep inside her.

‘God, no,’ Rob told her. ‘Same for me, because I thought I’d lost you forever.’

Not quite the same, then, Kate realized, because her craving for safety stemmed from those twenty or so hours spent in the company of monsters, with a masked killer who’d thrust a condom
in her face and told her how he would have liked to ‘
educate
’ her, a man who had cut a young woman’s throat . . .

Not quite the same.

Not
all
roses, either.

The Caisleán ‘incident’, as some called it, had given Rob’s ex-wife a maddeningly rational excuse to keep Emmie from her father. They couldn’t possibly imagine,
Penny said, that she would take any more risks with her daughter.

‘Not with those people still out there.’

Kate would have liked to strangle Penny just for the reminder, then do it all over again for her unkindness to Rob. Strangle her
figuratively
, that was, she amended even to herself, the
reality of physical violence still too bloodily fresh in her memory.

She felt deeply altered by the Caisleán weekend in many ways.

‘You’re post-traumatic,’ she had been told by just about everyone from DS Ben Poulter to Richard Fireman – who had been amazingly patient about her inability to string
together a decent
Short-Fuse
since her ordeal.

Guest writers filling her slot for now, which ought, she supposed, to be worrying her more than it was. Not exactly hard to replace, after all, a hack who’d struck lucky with a provincial
paper.

‘Out of work soon, if I don’t get my act together,’ Kate said to Rob.

‘You will,’ he told her. ‘Got to give yourself time.’

Kate supposed he was right, that they were all on the mark too about the post-traumatic thing. She was displaying all the symptoms: anxiety, nerviness, flashbacks, nightmares and periods of
depression (not at all like her PMS black moods, these were quite different, affecting her physically as well as emotionally, often making her feel ill, wanting to sleep rather than lash out). Yet
at the same time, she seemed to have a desire to be kinder, was less impatient and generally less verbally antagonistic with those people she loved.

She was also more suspicious of strangers, whether they came a little too close out in the streets, or rang the doorbell at the cottage because they wanted to read a meter or make a delivery;
and with those people she’d never wholly trusted – like Delia and Sandi – she was more prickly than ever, and she thought she’d have liked to have recovered from that, like
flu, but her hackles continued to rise when they met. Yet despite those abiding dislikes, her family seemed more united than at any time she could remember.

‘I still can’t quite imagine Delia and I ever being friends,’ she had told Michael a couple of weeks ago, ‘but she does seem to make you happy, so I’m going to
promise to try and do better around her.’

‘That’s all I can ask for,’ her father had said.

It was hard, though, for Kate to forget that Delia had been sufficiently sceptical of her account of events to suggest that she see a therapist.

‘I’m not saying I mightn’t need some therapy,’ Kate had said after that to Rob, ‘and maybe I’ll think about it when I’m good and ready. But I
don’t think Delia likes the fact that I’m still occupying centre stage in Dad’s life.’

‘He’s not really spending much more time with you than before,’ Rob said.

‘But I think perhaps I spend more time in his mind,’ Kate had told him. ‘Delia knows she probably can’t do much about that, but I don’t think she’d mind
shrinking my credibility a bit more.’

‘I’d better not hint at paranoia then,’ Rob said.

‘Oh, God,’ Kate had said. ‘Maybe I do need therapy.’

But Rob had just smiled and kissed her, and she’d left it.

She found it harder to leave things alone where Sandi West was concerned.

‘She’s still so shocked by what happened,’ Bel told Kate in mid-January.

‘I wish,’ Kate said, ‘you wouldn’t talk to Sandi about me.’

‘And I wish you’d understand that even if she can be tactless, she’s not your enemy,’ Bel replied. ‘You know what a very good friend she’s been to
me.’

‘And you to her,’ said Kate.

‘I still have trouble understanding what’s wrong with that,’ Bel said reasonably.

So reasonably, in fact, that Kate began to feel that perhaps her mother’s friendship with Sandi was another area she should try reassessing while putting her character in order.

‘Very admirable,’ Rob said to her later, when she told him.

‘Why so wry?’ Kate asked.

‘Because however much you may try, for Bel’s sake, I can’t imagine you’re ever going to change your mind about someone you dislike as much as Sandi.’

‘But you’ve said in the past that I ought to make more effort,’ Kate said. ‘Are you saying you were wrong?’

‘I think what I’m saying,’ Rob said, ‘is that, for the most part, I’ve learned to trust your instincts.’

That warmed her in a way that few compliments ever had.

And then the phone rang, and it was Martin Blake, telling her that DCI Helen Newton had requested that she come back to Oxford.

A real turning point, at last.

Blake was already at the SOMIT offices, waiting for her.

‘Don’t look so worried,’ he told her quietly. ‘It seems they’ve made a little progress, and they’re doing us the courtesy of keeping us informed.’

They were shown, moments later, into one of the interview rooms.

Getting too familiar, Kate thought, looking around.

DCI Newton and DS Poulter both present.

Usual suspects
, Kate thought.

‘We’re telling you this in confidence,’ Helen Newton said.

‘Of course,’ Blake said.

‘We identified Simon,’ the DCI said, ‘ten days ago.’

Kate’s pulse rate increased.

‘Her real name was Carol Marsh.’ Newton looked directly at Kate. ‘She was a teacher’s aide at an Oxford primary school.’

‘Twenty-four years old,’ added Poulter.

‘Bit of a loner, so far as we can make out.’ Helen Newton referred to notes. ‘No partner or notable social life, according to the neighbours. Marsh’s teenage mother
battered herself to try to get rid of her, then committed suicide after Carol was born. Father unknown, so the little girl was raised in a children’s home.’ The DCI looked up.
‘The home’s records state that she was prone to bouts of depression.’

‘Poor little cow,’ Ben Poulter said.

Which might, Kate thought, have described the mother or Carol Marsh.

Simon.

The image of her hanging from the hook in Caisleán flew into her mind, and she pushed it away.

‘Did she, by chance,’ Blake asked, ‘work at the same school as Alan Mitcham?’

‘Summertown Primary,’ Newton answered. ‘Yes, she did.’

Which was the reason, presumably, for Simon not having been part of the attack on Mitcham; he might have recognized her as a colleague.

Relief hit Kate first, for several sweet seconds, then renewed anger.

‘So now you believe me,’ she said.

‘I don’t recall telling you that we didn’t believe you, Mrs Turner,’ Newton said.

‘But you’ve known all this for ten days.’

‘Not all of it,’ Newton said.

Frustrated, Kate glanced sideways at Martin Blake, who gave a gentle shrug.

‘Before I share one more thing with you,’ the DCI went on, ‘I must impress on you both again that this information is strictly confidential.’

‘You already told us that,’ Kate said, still crisply, though her anger was fading.

‘We appreciate everything you feel you can share with us,’ said Blake.

Kate flashed him another look, which he returned with a smile.

‘I rather think,’ Helen Newton said, ‘that you will appreciate this.’

She nodded at the detective sergeant.

‘Marsh’s flat in Cowley wasn’t much to write home about,’ Poulter took over. ‘Sparsely furnished and a bit sad, really.’ He paused. ‘Being in the
teaching game, though, there were quite a lot of books, as you’d expect.’

Kate felt skin creep at the base of her spine.

‘What you might
not
expect, however –’ Newton’s eyes were fixed on Kate’s face – ‘was that there were five editions of one novel.’

‘
Lord of the Flies
?’ Martin Blake asked.

‘Yes, indeed,’ Newton confirmed.

Kate remained silent for a long moment, then said: ‘You start to wonder, after a while, if perhaps you imagined it all.’ She paused. ‘If maybe you are a little mad.’

Helen Newton smiled at her.

‘Not even a little, Mrs Turner,’ she said.

* * *

S
urprise of a different kind two days later.

‘Sandi and I have fallen out,’ Bel told Kate on the phone.

‘I’m sorry,’ Kate said.

‘Don’t be silly,’ Bel said. ‘Of course you’re not sorry.’

‘She’s your friend. You’ve been very close.’ Kate felt her cheeks warm with guilt. ‘So, yes, I think I really am sorry.’

Her mother made a wry sound.

‘What happened?’ Kate asked. ‘If you don’t mind telling me.’

‘Sandi said one spiteful thing too many about you,’ Bel said.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘It’s not complicated,’ her mother said. ‘And I think it’s better this way. Which has nothing whatever to do with the fact that you disliked Sandi so
much.’