The Betrayal of Trust (27 page)

‘Whatever. But now he’s said something which has clearly upset you. Doesn’t sound sensitive to me.’

‘He isn’t good at timing.
I‘d just had a long phone conversation with Vivien, who keeps going from one unhappy relationship to the next, and right after that, one with Emma – you know, she has the new bookshop? – and she appears to be doing exactly the same.’

An image of Emma flashed into Simon’s mind. He’d found her attractive – but not very. And that had been before Rachel. Emma? He couldn’t even remember her last name.

Judith was looking down at her plate.

‘So I was feeling a bit battered. He must have known – he must have heard me. I came off the phone and put the dish of lamb chops on the table and he said, “Martha’s death wasn’t natural, you know. I can’t remember if I’ve told you this. Her mother took the decision that Martha’s life was no life.”’ She spoke so quietly that Simon had to lean forward to catch
every word. ‘He told me that you knew.’

‘Yes.’ He finished half his glass of wine in one go, before he could trust himself to say anything and his hand shook as he did so. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I knew.’

‘Simon …’

‘But I can’t believe he told you.’

‘Well, I’m his wife now, aren’t I? Maybe it’s as simple as that.’

‘If that’s the case, why didn’t he tell you before now? Why not even before you were
married to him? Had you been talking about Martha?’

‘No. He never talks about her. Simon, your father has barely so much as mentioned her name in all the time I’ve known him. I don’t know why he came out with what he did, let alone at that particular moment or in that way, but I know I wish he hadn’t. I so wish that. He should never, ever have said any of it. That should have remained something
between him and Meriel. But not me. It’s a family matter in which I have no part and I shouldn’t be made to have one.’

He knew she meant it. She had never attempted to discover things about their past nor felt that she had any right to be told them. So far as Judith was concerned, her life in the Serrailler family began with her marriage to his father. It was
one
of the things that, once he understood
it, had brought him round to liking and respecting her – albeit late in the day.

‘What did you say to him?’

‘I was very angry. I have never been so angry. I couldn’t sit down at the table and eat with him, I had to go out … I just stood there in the dark, I didn’t know when I might be able to go back into the house and face him.’

‘When did you?’

‘I don’t know – it must have been half an hour.
It was a long time. I walked around … I was shaking so much … I couldn’t think. The worst part was when I went back – he’d eaten supper by himself, he’d cleared away and gone off into his study. I went to bed … I was trying to read but not taking in a word. I knew we’d have to talk but I couldn’t face it that night. I just turned over and pretended to be asleep. That old one.’

‘Did he try to
wake you?’

‘No.’

‘Next day?’

‘He got up and made the tea – just brought the tray up as usual, and the newspaper. And …’ She looked at him.

‘And,’ Simon said, ‘he carried on as if nothing had happened.’

‘Yes.’

‘Jesus, don’t I know that one. I know every word of the script. God knows it was played out often enough at home. I don’t know how my mother stood it. I couldn’t, nor could Ivo. It’s
what my father did time after time – dropped something in the middle of a perfectly pleasant normal occasion, breakfast or Sunday lunch or when everyone was in the garden, anything, so long as we were all together and happy. And bang. Crump. The sound of a bomb going off, scattering everyone, shaking us up, horrifying us … you see? You see what he’s like? I thought you’d changed things.’

‘Yes,’
Judith said. ‘I thought I had too.’

‘Have you talked to him about it since?’

‘No. I can’t. For the first time, I don’t know how, I don’t know where I could possibly begin.’

They finished the bottle of prosecco, had coffee. Several tables emptied, other people came in to fill them. Judith turned the
conversation
, asking a few questions about the Lowther case, then about Sam, who had been in
detention twice at school recently.

‘And that’s not like him.’

‘Bad work or bad behaviour?’ Simon asked.

‘Behaviour. He works hard. But Cat has enough on her plate at the moment, she doesn’t need this.’

‘I‘d better have a word with him. Try and dig a bit.’

‘He likes going walking with you.’

‘I’ll drive up to Wales with him, stay overnight in a B & B, climb. Trouble is, I don’t know when.’

Judith stirred her coffee. She did not ask the question but it was in the air between them. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to answer, to talk about Rachel at all. He had never felt himself to be on such ground before, so important, so uncertain.

‘Darling, you have to go home and take a call, I am dropping with good food and wine and tiredness, so if you would walk me to the taxi rank …’

‘When is
Dad back?’

‘Tomorrow. I want a long sleep and a good lie-in tomorrow morning while I do some thinking.’

‘Are you going to talk to him?’

‘About Martha? No. But I need to think about it – or rather, about why he told me and what he might have been expecting to come out of it. What he thought my reaction was going to be. I just don’t know. I don’t understand and that makes me feel …’

‘Unhappy?’

‘Not so much unhappy as – bewildered, I suppose. I thought I knew where I was. I don’t. Insecure is more the word. And I shouldn’t feel that, not by now.’

Walking along towards the cab rank, Simon felt another surge of anger towards his father. ‘He doesn’t bloody well know what he’s got,’ he said, ‘he doesn’t know how lucky he is and he doesn’t deserve you. Listen –’ he opened the taxi door,
but put his other hand on Judith’s arm – ‘listen, don’t let him bully you. He bullied us, he bullied my mother. I won’t have him doing it to you, Judith. Neither Cat nor I will. We care about you.’

She kissed him and got quickly into the cab without saying
anything
else. In spite of her best efforts to conceal it from him, he saw that she was crying.

The call came seconds after he had sprinted
up the stairs.

‘Serrailler.’ There was a silence. ‘Simon Serrailler here. You’ve been put through directly to me and no one else is on the line.’

Silence.

‘How can I help? Do you have some information about Harriet Lowther?’

Silence.

‘Listen, I’m on my own and nobody else can hear this.’

Which was not true. The call was being recorded.

‘If you don’t talk to me I can’t help you.’

He waited.
She was there, he knew. She hadn’t replaced the receiver. But it was another thirty seconds or more before she said, ‘Hello?’

‘Hello. This is DCS Simon Serrailler.’

‘I don’t want to give my name.’

‘That’s fine. But please understand that if you don’t it makes it harder for us. I’m trying to solve a serious crime. I need you to give me any information you may have about this, and I might need
to get back to you. That’s hard if you won’t even tell me your name. Listen – this is a murder investigation. I am trying to catch a killer who is still out there, after sixteen years. A murderer.’

He heard the slight reaction to the word as he emphasised it but then there was a silence again.

‘It’s my job to find this murderer, and I will, but it isn’t easy and every bit of information, every
tiny detail and snippet, might be the vital bit that links things together. So if you have anything to tell me, however small or apparently irrelevant it is, then please tell me. If it isn’t important and it doesn’t lead anywhere, how can that matter? It can’t. But what if it is? You don’t know. It’s my job to decide, my job to follow it up. You’ll have done your bit. Only, if you don’t tell me,
and it does turn out to be the one missing piece I need – how would you feel? Can you live with that? Now – please talk to me. Will you talk to me?’

There was a small sigh and then the woman said, ‘It’s probably nothing. I’m sure it’s nothing. But … well, like you just said.’

‘Yes. I‘d rather hear about nothing than miss something important. What’s worrying you?’

‘The television programme …’

‘Yes.’

‘They showed that day – well, they made it look like that day.’

‘The reconstruction, yes. You saw it?’

‘Yes, I was watching – I was actually in the middle of watching the programme when he – when Steve came in. My husband came in. He started watching it … we watched about ten minutes, I suppose, but then that bit of the programme came on … about the girl. The reconstruction part. And
he … he just behaved … well, it was odd. I don’t know. It is nothing, isn’t it?’

‘Just go on telling me what happened, Mrs …?’

‘Foster. Oh.’

‘Mrs Foster. Will you tell me your first name?’

‘I didn’t mean to say it.’

‘Mrs what Foster?’

She sighed. ‘Noeline. Born on Christmas Day of course.’

‘Did your husband say anything while he was watching the programme?’

‘No. He just got up, and changed
chairs, then he seemed – I don’t know – fidgety. He picked up the paper to look at what was on the other channels … he found the remote and flicked over but then he went back and sat watching really … really intently, you know? As if he was afraid to miss any of it. He sort of – leaned forward as well. I’ve never seen him do that.’

‘Did you say anything?’

‘No. Yes, yes, I think I said how awful
it was, or “that poor girl” or something like that.’

‘Did he answer?’

‘No. It was as if he was – sort of transfixed by the television.’

‘And when it finished?’

‘He got up and went upstairs. He almost ran up. He didn’t say anything at all. And then I heard the bathwater starting.’

‘Did he say anything later on?’

‘No. I tidied up and did the doors, then I went up to bed. He didn’t come for
ages. He stayed in the bath for such a long time. He never does that. I was reading a magazine but I‘d put it down when he came to bed. I was almost asleep. I‘d been going to ask him about it … the programme. Only I was so tired, I just didn’t.’

‘And the next day?’

‘No. But he wasn’t himself.’

‘In what way?’

‘It … it’s not easy to say. Only … there was just something. It’s all rubbish, isn’t
it? I feel stupid.’

‘No. I don’t think it’s rubbish and you are certainly not stupid. I don’t know why your husband – Stephen, did you say?’

‘Steve. Well, yes, Stephen, only he never is.’

‘He was obviously affected by the programme for some reason. I’d like to talk to him.’

‘Oh no, you can’t do that, you mustn’t come round here, he’ll know it was me, that I said something to you, won’t he?’

‘No. Can you just give me the address please?’

‘It’s 60 – No, no, I won’t, sorry. I shouldn’t have made this call. I … sorry. Forget it all. Stupid thing to do. Just stupid.’

‘Mrs –’

But she had hung up. He jotted down ‘Stephen Foster, 60? Lafferton?’ and added ‘Noeline’. And the time of her call.

‘THERE ARE WARNINGS
of gales in Viking, North Utsire, South Utsire, Forties, Cromarty, Forth, Tyne, Dogger, Fisher, German Bight, Humber, Thames, Dover, Wight, Sole, Lundy, Fastnet, Irish Sea, Shannon, Rockall, Malin, Hebrides, Bailey, Fair Isle, Faeroes and south-east Iceland
.’

Jocelyn wondered which was more comforting, the voice of that night’s continuity announcer reciting the
shipping forecast, or being safe and warm under her duvet while the gale raged round Lafferton.

Both were, but she knew that the deepest satisfaction came from the simple fact of being here at all, in her own bed, her own house. Alive. She looked around the room. There were three new library books on the bedside table beside the lamp, another on the quilt. The bedlinen was fresh. The photo graphs
of Penny as a child, of Carol’s wedding, of Tony in his uniform, of Lottie, the old spaniel, with Penny again, arranged in one large frame on the dressing table. The reflection of the soft pink wallpaper in the mirror.

Alive.

She closed her eyes for a moment and the horror of what she now thought of as the Death Room was there in every detail.

Alive.

Since they had returned she had had nightmares
of such horror and ferocity that she had made an appointment to see Dr Deerbon again. The nightmares woke her several times, or else attacked her just as she slipped down into sleep, and she came out of
them
shaking and sweating, her heart pounding so fast and hard she was afraid it would burst out of her chest.

How did people go through with it? She had asked Penny a dozen times on the journey
home – because they did, many of them, people who had travelled, as she had, a long way, to the terrible apartment block, who would then lie down in the dingy room on what had looked less wholesome than a veterinary couch and accept a glass of fluid which would kill them. Had those people been more honest? Had they confronted the facts first, not fantasised about a tranquil room with clean crisp
white bedlinen and a gauzy curtain fluttering in the breeze, gentle music, low lighting and sweet-faced nurses? Had they found out what it was really like and yet gone through with it?

She opened her eyes on her room again and at once she felt safe. It had not happened after all, she had run away and she would never go there again. She felt as if she had escaped from Death Row and been transported
home on a magic carpet – for even though the actual return had been tiresome and fraught with delays and discomfort, it had been transformed into the most wonderful journey of her life, because of her relief and happiness. She and Penny had clung to one another for most of it, in a way they had never done before, holding one another’s arms, and even clutching hands at one point, crying together
and sharing a packet of tissues, and then laughing and drinking their little bottles of wine on the plane, their hearts light, unable to believe they were both on their way home.