The Cradle in the Grave (47 page)

It's Maya. ‘Fliss,' she says. She sounds caught out, as if she wishes I hadn't answered. I don't need to ask her how she knew where to find me. I hear a drawing in of breath.

‘Let me save you the trouble,' I say. ‘You're afraid you're going to have to let me go. That about right?'

‘Close enough,' she says, and hangs up.

 

I'm sitting cross-legged on the floor in the hall when the front door opens and Ray and Angus walk in. Distractedly, Angus says, ‘Hello, Fliss.' He doesn't look as if he's thinking about me locking him in my flat. If he's surprised to find me at his feet, he shows no sign of it. He squeezes Ray's arm and says, ‘I'll be down shortly,' then heads for the stairs as if he has something important to attend to.

‘Did you tell him you're pregnant?' I ask Ray. His suitcase upstairs can only mean one thing. Not long ago, he didn't even know where she was staying. ‘Is he happy about it?'

‘Happy's difficult for both of us, but . . . yes, he's pleased.'

‘Are you back together, then? Are you moving back to Notting Hill?' Childishly, I want her to say she's moving out because I know I'll have to. I can't stay in Laurie's brother's house.
What did you think, idiot? That someone like you can live in a place like this for ever?
‘Is Angus coming to live here, too?'

Ray's smile vanishes, and I notice how tired she looks. ‘No. We're not going to be living together.'

‘Why not?'

‘Let's get set up for the camera,' she says. ‘It's all part of the same story.'

‘Did you tell Angus the baby might be Laurie's and not his?' I ask, making no effort to lower my voice. I'm guessing that at some point Ray and Laurie slept together. Why wouldn't he try it on with her? He slept with me in an attempt to persuade me not to interview Judith Duffy for the film; he shacked up with Maya to avoid me and the police, or maybe so that the card-sender wouldn't know where to find him. No doubt bedding Ray was part of his campaign to persuade her to be involved in the film: first he offered his body, then Marchington House as a refuge. He must have been furious when neither did the trick.

From Ray's point of view, why wouldn't she have sex with Laurie? At forty-two she could still have another child. If she has Laurie's baby rather than Angus's, there will be no genetic auto-immune issue to worry about.

She takes my arm and leads me into the den. Closing the door behind us, she says, ‘Please don't call it a baby. It isn't one, not yet. And there's no “might” about it. It's Laurie's. Angus had a vasectomy while I was in prison. He wanted to make sure he'd never go through the pain of losing another child.'

‘But . . .'

‘I told him the truth,' says Ray. ‘Don't you think I'm sick of lies by now? Do you really think I'd try to start my new life, and Angus's, based on a lie?'

‘So you're going to tell Laurie?'

‘Laurie Nattrass is nothing to me, Fliss. Personally, I mean.'

Lucky you
.

‘I can withhold information from him and it won't be living a lie, not in the way it would be if I lied to my husband.' She looks caught out. ‘Angus and I are getting remarried,' she says.

But you're not going to be living together?
‘Will he be able to feel the same about Laurie's baby as he would about his own?' I ask.

‘He doesn't know,' says Ray. ‘Neither do I. But we don't have the option of “his own”. This is all we have, our only chance of being . . . well, I suppose a family, though an unusual one. Are you going to tell Laurie?'

‘No.' I'm not going to tell him about Ray's pregnancy, and I'm not going to tell anybody about him bribing Carl Chappell and Warren Gruff. With regard to Laurie, I'm going to do nothing. I don't want to destroy anybody's life – not Laurie's, not Ray's, not Angus's.

‘Can I ask you one more favour?' says Ray.

‘What?' I haven't granted any so far, unless my memory's letting me down.

‘Don't tell Angus you know. It would make it harder for him if he thought anyone else knew.'

What happened to no more lies?
I don't say it because it's a ridiculous thing to say, or even think. If no one ever told a lie again, life would quickly become impossible.

Ray nods at the camera. ‘Shall we get started?'

‘I need to make a phone call first,' I tell her. ‘Why don't you sort us out with drinks?'

Once she's gone, I use the antique phone on the table in the corner to ring Tamsin. She doesn't sound pleased to hear from me. ‘Just to remind you of the etiquette: you're supposed to drop your friends when you've got a new man, not when you've lost your marbles,' she says. ‘In the event of a loss of marbles, you're allowed to spend as much time with your friends as you ever did, as long as you remember to look confused and call them by the names of people who've been dead for years.'

‘Please tell me you haven't got a new job yet,' I say.

‘Job?' She sounds as if she's forgotten what one is.

‘How hard would it be for you and I to set up on our own?'

‘As what?'

‘As what we are: people who make TV programmes.'

‘You mean our own production company? I've no idea.'

‘Find out.'

I hear a long, gusty yawn. ‘I'm not sure how I'd go about finding out, to be honest.'

‘Find a way,' I say, and then I cut her off to show her I mean business. I'm sure that's how MI6 would handle her lazy, uncooperative streak. It'll all work out, I persuade myself. It has to work out.

Now all I have to do is tell Ray and Angus that it's not going to be Binary Star making the film after all.

‘So we're sure Warren Gruff's Baldy?' Simon asked Sellers.

‘I am.' Charlie stared at the grainy photograph on the computer screen. ‘That's the man I saw.'

‘I am too,' said Sellers. ‘Gruff's ex-army, went to Iraq first time round. And look at this.' He leaned across the desk, reaching for an article he'd printed out, and knocked over his can of Diet Coke. ‘Fuck,' he muttered as the liquid fizzed over the keyboard.

‘I never thought I'd see the day,' said Charlie. ‘Colin Sellers on a diet.'

‘This was in the
Sun
, June 2006,' said Sellers. ‘What diet?'

Simon took the article and started to read. ‘Heard of Joanne Bew?' he asked Charlie.

‘No. Who is she?'

‘She was convicted of murdering her son, Brandon, then retried and acquitted. Gruff was her boyfriend, Brandon's father. He was none too happy about her acquittal. Far as he's concerned, she smothered his son, and he doesn't care if she sues him for saying it. She mistreated Brandon from the day he was born, by the sound of it.' Simon winced and dropped the article on the desk. ‘I can do without the depressing details.'

‘Are you saying I need to lose weight?' Sellers asked Charlie, covering his gut with a protective hand. ‘It's all muscle, this. Used to be, anyway.'

‘Sorry. I just assumed, because of the Diet Coke . . .'

‘Diet was all the machine had left,' he told her. ‘It tastes like shit.'

‘His girlfriend killed his kid and got away with it,' said Simon, more to himself than to Sellers and Charlie. ‘He's exmilitary – maybe he's killed before. Probably has. How easy would it be for the card-sender, the Brain, to get him on side? Easy enough when Sarah Jaggard and Helen Yardley are the targets, women who – like Joanne Bew, as Gruff would see it – murdered kids and got away with it. But what about when the Brain decides Judith Duffy's the next victim? Duffy testified against Joanne Bew at her first trial – it says so in the article. Gruff'd be favourably disposed towards Duffy . . .'

‘Which explains what he said to me,' Charlie finished his sentence for him. ‘That Duffy didn't deserve to die, that she'd done her best. He meant she did her best to put Joanne Bew behind bars, didn't he?'

‘He also said you did your best,' Simon reminded her. ‘He meant the collective “you” – the police.'

‘So the Brain had some kind of hold over him?' said Charlie. ‘If Gruff didn't want to kill Duffy, but did it anyway.'

‘Gruff had attacked Sarah Jaggard, provided the gun for the murder of Helen Yardley. What he said to you was spot on: he was in it up to his eyebrows and couldn't back out at that point – the Brain would have made sure . . .' Simon stopped mid-sentence, seeing Sam Kombothekra heading their way.

‘Just because I'm drinking Diet Coke and I'm not skinny like you doesn't mean I'm on a diet,' Sellers muttered to Charlie. He tilted his head, inspecting his belly from a different angle.

‘I think we've got a solid lead on Ray Hines' whereabouts.' Sam sounded excited. ‘Laurie Nattrass has a brother, Hugo, who owns a house in Twickenham. He doesn't live there – he lives in Streatham – which is why it's taken this long to unearth it, but . . . Simon?'

Charlie clicked her fingers in front of his face. ‘Wake up. Sam's trying to tell you something.'

Simon turned to Sellers. ‘What did you just say? About the Diet Coke. Whatever you said, say it again.'

Sellers gave up trying to pull in his stomach muscles. He sighed. ‘Just because I'm drinking Diet Coke and I'm a bit on the heavy side doesn't mean I'm on a diet.'

‘That's it.' Simon spun round to face Charlie. He stared at her as if he'd forgotten Sellers and Sam were there. ‘That's
it
. A thin person with a diet drink might just like the taste of it, but a fat person with a diet drink . . .'

‘Fat?' Sellers sounded outraged.

‘So the alibi's bullshit.'

‘What alibi?' Sam asked.

‘I need to talk to Dillon White again.' Simon's words tumbled out as his thought process speeded up. ‘And Rahila Yunis.'

‘The journalist who interviewed Helen Yardley in prison?' asked Charlie.

‘I need her to tell me why she withheld the most important part of the story about her visit to Geddham Hall. I know why, but I want to hear it from her. Sam, I need photographs: Laurie Nattrass, Angus Hines, Glen Jaggard, Paul Yardley, Sebastian Brownlee.'

Sam nodded. He could have pointed out that, as skipper, he was the one who ought to have been assigning the tasks; he was wise enough not to.

‘
Whose
alibi's bullshit?' Charlie asked, knowing the chances of getting an answer at this point were considerably slimmer than Colin Sellers.

‘Sellers, you check out the Twickenham address,' said Simon, his eyes darting back and forth as he pieced together the story in his mind. ‘If you find Ray Hines there, don't let her out of your sight.'

‘He suspected me from the first time the police came to the house,' Ray says to the camera. I nod, willing her to carry on, to tell me as much as she can before Angus joins us. I'm afraid she won't be quite so open once he's listening. ‘He changed towards me, became horribly cold and remote, but at the same time he wouldn't let me out of his sight. He moved into one of the many spare rooms we'd at one point hoped to fill with children . . .' She stops. ‘You know we wanted to have lots?'

‘No.'

‘Angus is one of six. We wanted at least four.' She falls silent.

‘He wouldn't let you out of his sight,' I say, prompting her.

‘He . . . monitored me. It was as if someone had asked him to spy on my every move and report back. In my most paranoid moments, I wondered if that might be the case. It wasn't, of course. The police would have assumed – did assume, in fact – that Angus and I would stick together. He was watching me closely for his own purposes, no one else's. He was trying to gather evidence of my guilt or innocence.'

‘He didn't believe Marcella and Nathaniel reacted badly to the vaccine?'

Ray shakes her head. ‘I don't blame him. All the experts tell you vaccines are safe, and he wasn't there when both children had fits. Only Wendy and I saw what happened. For all Angus knew, I was a murderer who'd persuaded Wendy to lie.'

‘You were his wife,' I remind her. ‘He should have known you wouldn't kill your children.'

‘Maybe he would have, if it hadn't been for the zombie-like depression I faked in order to go to Switzerland with Fiona. That made him doubt everything he thought he knew about me. I can't blame him for that – it was my fault. I didn't blame him even then, but—' She breaks off, eyeing the ceiling as if afraid he might burst through it at any moment.
She can't be frightened of him, not if she's planning to marry him again
.

‘I quickly became terrified of him,' she says. ‘He wouldn't talk to me – that was the scariest thing. I kept asking if he thought I'd killed Marcella and Nathaniel, and he wouldn't answer. All he ever said was, “Only you know what you've done, Ray.” He was so blank, so horrendously . . .
calm
. I couldn't believe how composed he was when our lives were falling apart – me charged with murder, maybe going to prison. Looking back, I think he had a breakdown. I'm
sure
it was that. People never tell you it's possible to go mad in a quiet, orderly way, but it is. That's what happened to Angus. He didn't think he'd broken down with grief, he thought he was in full possession of his faculties and responding in the only rational way: I'm accused of murder, so it's his job to watch me and record my behaviour in order to ascertain whether there's any factual basis to the accusation – that's how he'd have put it to himself, I'm sure.'