The Cradle in the Grave (12 page)

‘Justice Geilow gave Rachel Hines two life sentences for murder,' said Proust. ‘She's nothing to do with Helen Yardley. Why's she on the list?'

‘You said it yourself: the similarities between the Yardley and Hines cases are startling. Obsessions can spread. Obviously it's unlikely that Justice Geilow shot Helen Yardley, but . . .'

‘She's an even less plausible murderer than Mr Justice Wilson, if such a thing is possible,' said Proust impatiently.

‘I've also included the names of the twelve jurors who found Rachel Hines guilty,' said Simon. ‘Unlike high court judges, jurors can be anyone. Isn't it possible one of the eleven who sent Helen Yardley to prison spent the nine years she was there thinking of himself as a good guy who helped put away a child murderer, and then couldn't take it when he heard she wasn't guilty after all? Nine years, sir.' Simon allowed himself the luxury of talking as he would to someone who was really listening. ‘Think how hard it'd be to change the story after that long, the one you've been going round telling everyone you know, about who you are and what you did. After nine years it's a central part of your self-image. Maybe, that's all I'm saying,' he added for the sake of caution.

Proust sighed. ‘I know I'm going to regret asking, but why are Rachel Hines' jurors on the list? You think one of them might have shot Helen Yardley? Wouldn't they be more likely to shoot Rachel Hines, according to your logic?'

Simon said nothing.

‘I can read your mind, Waterhouse—always have been able to. Shall I tell you what you're thinking? This obsessed killer, if he's to be found on the Hines jury, might have shot Helen Yardley because she was instrumental in freeing Rachel Hines. Or he might have extended his retributive obsession to all three women and be planning to punish them all, as well as the appeal judges who overturned the murder convictions. Perhaps our killer's a Hines juror who doesn't want to start with Rachel Hines in case that looks too obvious. How am I doing?'

Simon felt his face heat up. ‘I think we should show the card with the sixteen numbers found on Helen Yardley's body to all the people on the list and ask if it means anything to them,' he said. ‘This case isn't the simple either-or that we're usually faced with: a stranger killer versus someone close to the victim. Most of the people on this list didn't know Helen Yardley personally, but they're not random strangers either. They were as significant in her life as she was in theirs.'

‘Laurie Nattrass.' Proust jabbed the list with his finger. ‘He's already been interviewed and swabbed. You're not usually sloppy, Waterhouse. Fixated, deluded, yes, but not sloppy.'

‘I'd like to talk to Nattrass again myself. I'd like to ask him about the sixteen numbers, ask if anyone he's come into contact with through JIPAC has threatened him or acted out of character, if anything's made him feel uncomfortable recently.'

‘Like perishing what?' Proust pushed his chair back from his desk. ‘A lumpy chaise longue? A boil on his backside?'

Simon stood his ground, didn't even blink at the volume. ‘Those numbers mean something,' he said. ‘I'm no psychological profiler, but I'm pretty sure one thing they mean is that this killer's going to kill again.'

‘I warn you, Waterhouse . . .'

‘He'll leave a similar card next time – either the same numbers or different ones. Either way, it'll mean something. Helen Yardley and Laurie Nattrass represented a lot of the same things to a lot of people. It's possible that whoever killed her might target him next. How about I interview Nattrass, Sarah Jaggard and Rachel Hines, and if none of them can move us forward, if they haven't been harassed recently, if the sixteen numbers mean nothing to any of them, we'll forget the rest of the names on the list and go back to the stranger killer theory.'

‘And if Sarah Jaggard was shouted at in the street last week by some alcopop-swilling lowlife, what then?' Proust bellowed. ‘We start swabbing Justices Geilow and Wilson for gunpowder residue? Where's the connection? Where's the logic?'

‘Sir, I'm trying to be reasonable.'

‘Then try, try and try again, Waterhouse!' The inspector's hand shot out as if to grab something. He clenched it into a fist and held it still for a moment, staring at it.
It's gone, knobhead
. Even the Snowman couldn't smash a mug twice.

‘There's one person on this list to whom your obsession theory might apply,' Proust said with exaggerated weariness. ‘Judith Duffy. She's made it her life's work to ruin innocent women's lives. That smacks of a level of obsession and . . . detachment from reality that ought to give us pause for thought, however professionally eminent she is, or has been. We should make it a priority to eliminate her, at least.' Proust rubbed his forehead. ‘The truth is, I can hardly bear to utter the woman's name. You think I'm unaffected by all this? I'm not. I'm a person just like you, Waterhouse. You've read Helen Yardley's book. Put yourself in my place, if you can.'

Simon stared at the floor. He wasn't foolish enough to confuse an accusation of insensitivity with a confidence.

‘There's a lot the book leaves out,' Proust went on. ‘I could write a book of my own. I was at the hospital when Helen and Paul gave their consent for Rowan's life support to be switched off. Didn't know that, did you? Little Rowan was brain-dead. There was nothing that could be done for him, nothing at all. Do you know what I was doing there?'

‘I was sent to collect the Yardleys, bring them in for questioning. Barrow's orders. A nurse from the baby unit had phoned us within an hour of them bringing Rowan in, accused Helen of attempted murder. Rowan had stopped breathing, not for the first time in his short life. When he was admitted to hospital, he had a Modified Glasgow Coma Score of 5. They put him on a drip and got it up to 14.' Proust glanced at Simon, as if suddenly remembering he was there. ‘15 is normal. For a while it looked as if he might be all right, but then he deteriorated. Helen and Paul weren't even in the room when his score started to drop again. Helen was too upset – Paul had to take her out. She wasn't even in the room,' he repeated slowly. ‘If that's not reasonable doubt, I'd like to know what is.'

‘Did the nurse have any proof Helen had tried to kill Rowan?' Simon asked. The only way he could deal with this was practically, by trying to fill in the gaps in the story, focusing on the Yardleys instead of on the Snowman.
He's not baring his soul, he's filling you in on the background. Relax
.

‘Paul and Helen were known at the hospital,' said Proust. ‘First Morgan and then Rowan had several ALTEs—apparent life-threatening events. Both boys stopped breathing every now and then, for no reason that anyone could identify. Some sort of biological deficiency, I suppose – the most obvious explanation, but it didn't occur to the troublemaker who called the police. She called twice, the second time several hours after the first. Anonymously – no doubt she was ashamed of her despicable behaviour, and worried we'd taken no notice of her first attempt to spread poison.'

Whenever he heard the phrase ‘no doubt', Simon doubted. Couldn't a baby's health go rapidly downhill as a result of damage previously inflicted by a parent, even if the parent wasn't present when the deterioration took place? He wanted to ask if there was anything else, apart from Morgan and Rowan Yardley's ALTEs, that had given the hospital staff cause to suspect their mother. Instead he said, ‘Everyone working this murder ought to know all this.' A desperate attempt to block intimacy. Simon couldn't stand Proust telling him anything he wouldn't as readily have told Sam Kombothekra, or Sellers, or Gibbs. ‘When we're not on shift, we should all be reading up on the background: Helen Yardley's trial, the appeal . . .'

‘No.' Proust stood up. ‘Not when there's no reason to assume her death is linked to any of it. It could have had as much to do with her physical appearance as with her imprisonment for murder. Judith Duffy, Sarah Jaggard, Rachel Hines, Laurie Nattrass – talk to those four, but no one else on your list, not yet. If we can avoid swabbing Elizabeth Geilow and Dennis Wilson for gunpowder residue, let's do that. Come to think of it, let's make it six: interview Grace and Sebastian Brownlee too. I've yet to come across a juror murderously obsessed with a case he heard thirteen years ago, but adoptive parents, paranoid their daughter might one day want to have a relationship with her biological mother, when the mother is someone as admirable and inspiring as Helen Yardley?' Proust nodded, as if making up his mind.

At what stage did he decide she was innocent? Simon wondered. The first time he met her? Before that, even? Was his staunch support of her a kind of contrariness, two fingers in the face of Superintendent Barrow's assumption that she was guilty? Could Proust have been in love with Helen Yardley? Simon flinched; the idea of the Snowman as an emotional being was repulsive. Simon preferred to think of him as a problem-making machine, human in appearance but in no other respect.

He held out his hand for his list of names. If he left it in here, it would end up in the bin.

‘First thing I did when I got to the hospital and saw what was happening, I rang Roger Barrow,' said Proust, settling back in his chair. He hadn't finished with Simon yet. ‘He wasn't Superintendent then, and nor should he be now. I rang him, told him I couldn't bring Helen in for questioning. “She's just signed a consent form for her boy's life support to be switched off,” I said. “She and her husband are about to watch their son die. They're in pieces.” Helen was as innocent of murder as any person I'd ever met, and even if she wasn't . . .' The Snowman stopped, pulled in a deep breath. ‘Bringing her in for questioning could wait until Rowan had passed on. Why couldn't it wait? What difference was an hour or two going to make?'

Simon was aware of his own breathing, the stillness in the room.

‘“You want her brought in now, get someone else to do it,” I said. “No, no,” said Barrow. “You're quite right. Go and have something to eat, get yourself a pint, simmer down,” he said. As if I'd lost on the horses or something – something trivial. “You're right, bringing the mother in can wait till later.” He wanted me out of the way, that was all. When I got back to the hospital, the doctors told me Helen and Paul had been taken in for questioning by two bobbies, minutes after I'd left them – hauled out screaming, like some kind of . . .' Proust shook his head. ‘And Rowan . . .'

‘He was dead?' Simon blurted out, his discomfort starting to spin into panic. He needed light and air. He needed not to be hearing this, but couldn't find the right words to make it stop. It felt like an assault. Had Proust planned it? Had he watched Simon become hardened to his derision over the years, and decided that enforced intimacy was to be his new weapon?

‘Rowan died with neither of his parents there,' said Proust. ‘Alone. Doesn't that make you proud to be human, Waterhouse? Assuming you are.' A dismissive hand gesture indicated that he didn't expect an answer.

Simon exited as quickly as he could, giving no thought to where he was going.
The khazi
; his feet knew even if his brain didn't. He went in, headed for a cubicle and just had time to slide the lock across before a wave of nausea bent him double. He spent the next ten minutes spewing up black coffee and bile, thinking,
You make me sick. You make me fucking sick
.

I'm in Laurie's office when I hear someone yelling my name. I think of Rachel Hines and freeze, as if by keeping still I can make myself invisible. Then there's more shouting and I recognise the voice: Tamsin.

I get to reception in time to catch the end of what looks like a strange dance. If I didn't know better, I might think Maya and Tamsin choreographed it together: each time Tamsin takes a step forward, Maya blocks her path or puts out an arm to stop her.

‘Fliss, will you tell her I'm supposed to be here? I'm getting the imposter treatment.'

‘Don't do this, Tam,' says Maya gravely. ‘You're embarrassing all of us. We agreed yesterday would be your last day.'

‘I asked her to come in,' I say. ‘I need someone to get me up to speed on the film, quickly. There was no sign of Laurie when I came in this morning and I can't get hold of him on any of his phones, and anyway, he's . . .' I break off, wondering what I was about to say. He's leaving? He's crackers? ‘I needed a reliable expert, so I rang Tamsin.'

‘I'm offering my services for free,' Tamsin says cheerily. She's wearing a figure-hugging pink and orange dress that looks new and expensive. I wonder how to check, tactfully, that she's not planning to blow all her remaining money on luxury items as a prelude to driving off a cliff. I know Tamsin: she'll chicken out of the cliff part, but get as far as running up massive debts before latching on to her next faddy idea.

‘Look, I've even brought my own refreshments,' she says. ‘An old mineral water bottle from the days when I could afford it, full of nice cheap tap water. Yum.' She waves it in front of Maya's face. ‘See? No concealed weapons.'

‘Thanks
so
much, Fliss, for letting me know.' Maya twitches her nose like an offended rabbit, taking backward steps in the direction of her office. She's been arsey with me all morning. I keep giving her my best, most radiant ‘hello's and getting only grunts in response. Binary Star is a different company today. Everybody's keeping themselves to themselves, trying not to meet anyone else's eye. It's like an office in mourning.