‘Do you receive hate mail?’
Something, a flicker, in the man’s face. ‘Naturally,’ he replied, reverting to his old manner. ‘We at the Institute make the kinds of hard observations that offend sad and mad individuals from the loony left.’
‘Loony left,’ muttered Ellen.
‘Have you kept any of these letters?’ said Challis hastily.
‘Generic hate,’ Robert McQuarrie said. ‘Not worth preserving. Will that be all?’
‘We need to speak to your staff and colleagues.’
A weary sigh. ‘If you must.’
They were given a small conference room. A dozen men and women came to them one by one, and it was soon apparent that none could think of a reason why anyone would want to harm Mr McQuarrie-Mack, Robert, old Rob-by killing his wife. He was an exacting boss and partner, but fair. He wasn’t sleeping around. As for his wife, she seemed nice enough. Sad about Georgia, a sweet kid.
They were so crisp and clean, those employees and fellow executives. Buffed and shined and expensively dressed. Yet Challis sensed an awful fear gnawing at them, and could almost hear their thoughts: Am I a winner? Am I being noticed? Is this suit the right cut, this tie the right colour? Will I get a bonus this year? Will I be promoted? Will my ideas be adopted?
Is anyone listening to me?
On the way back they called at a house in Sandringham, which had views over the choppy waters of the bay. Janine’s sister, Meg, answered their knock on the door and her resemblance to Janine McQuarrie was startling. She’d been weeping; her face was raw with grief. ‘You’re lucky to catch me: I’m just on my way to Robert and Janine’s house-Georgia needs me.’
Challis exchanged a glance with Ellen. Was ‘Georgia needs me’ code for ‘Robert needs me’? Had he murdered his wife to have the sister?
She showed them through to a cloyingly warm sitting room. Ellen took over, encouraging Meg to talk about herself. Married, but childless; Janine’s youngest sister (‘There are three of us’); a high-school teacher currently on stress leave.
Challis studied her as she talked. A kindly woman, he decided. Motherly. Unsophisticated. Perhaps a woman who’d wanted to have children but couldn’t. Hardly someone to murder or inspire murder. She wore all of her emotions on her face: pity for Georgia and Robert; dismay and apprehension that her sister could be murdered. ‘I’m glad our parents aren’t alive-it would have killed them.’
‘Did Janine have any enemies? Any altercations with anyone recently? Anything like that?’
‘No. Nothing. I have no idea who would have wanted to kill her. I’m sure it was a mistake.’
Challis gazed at her for a couple of beats, then decided to bypass those polite conversational gambits that are intended to comfort the bereaved but waste police time. ‘Your sister was a forceful woman,’ he said.
Meg blinked. ‘Janine had a demanding job,’ she said stoutly, ‘full of responsibilities.’
Ellen saw where Challis was going, and also pushed. ‘Would you say she was happily married?’
Meg smoothed her thighs as though to dry her palms. ‘Of course!’
‘We heard that she was seeing someone,’ Challis lied.
A barely concealed flicker, the eyes shifting sideways. ‘She wouldn’t do that.’
Perhaps Meg meant that she wouldn’t do that, but couldn’t vouch for her sister, thought Challis. Meg clammed up then, visibly distressed, and they left, feeling small.
16
Scobie Sutton had received word that Mrs Humphreys was ready to see him, but when he reached the hospital, the first thing he saw was his wife’s car parked in one of the reserved slots. He went inside, showed his ID at the reception desk and explained the purpose of his visit. ‘But first,’ he said, blushing a little, ‘could you page my wife? Beth Sutton?’
A call went out on the public address system, and then Beth was there, beaming, and they gave each other a chaste kiss. ‘I wanted to warn you,’ Scobie said, leading her to a vinyl bench seat beside a rubber plant in a huge brass pot.
His wife was round, pink, and easily flustered. Her hand went to her throat. ‘What about?’
He told her what had happened in court that morning. ‘Now that Natalie knows you’re married to a policeman she’ll be suspicious.’
Beth blinked away sudden tears, shook her head, and clenched her fists in frustration and pain. ‘I’m fighting a losing battle, Scobe,’ she said, and it was an old story between them, the social problems on the blighted estates of Waterloo, Rosebud and Mornington. She knew the Cobb family, and dozens more like them, and sometimes it was all too much, there was too much misery, ignorance and indifference for her to bear.
‘There, there,’ said Scobie, rocking her gently, listening as she told him about Seaview Estate, where the Cobbs lived, which offered views of the refinery stacks and wore an air of defeat.
‘There’s this little community hall,’ she said, ‘but no one on the estate ever uses it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s booked solid every day, but by outsiders, like the Gilbert and Sullivan players, the Penzance Beach Cubs and Scouts, the Yoga Club. I’m trying to get the local kids to make it their clubhouse, but we need funds to employ a youth worker, and whenever I approach the Shire for money, the manager of finance and the manager of marketing say no. Their bottom line is always cost. I try to get them to feel something, but they have no feelings. Oh, it makes me so cross.’
That was as close to an oath as his wife could get.
‘The only ray of hope among the kids on that estate is Natalie Cobb,’ she said.
‘Sorry if I’ve stuffed it up for you.’
‘Oh Scobe, you haven’t.’ She brightened. ‘What brings you here?’
He told her about Janine McQuarrie and the connection with Mrs Humphreys. She was appalled. ‘Janine McQuarrie?’
‘Do you know her?’
‘All the welfare agencies know her,’ Beth said. She paused. ‘I don’t want to speak ill of the dead.’
‘That’s all right,’ he said resolutely. ‘We need to know everything we can, the good and the bad. Then we can sort the relevant from the irrelevant.’
Beth’s hands were washing against each other dryly, restlessly. ‘This could be relevant,’ she said.
‘You’d better tell me,’ he said.
He watched her stare into the distance, gathering her thoughts. ‘It was as if she deliberately set out to antagonise people, turn them against each other,’ she said slowly. ‘She was autocratic, had to get her own way all the time.’
To encourage his wife, Scobie said, ‘We heard much the same thing this morning, from the people she worked with.’
Beth nodded. ‘In one case I know of, a fifteen-year-old girl from one of the estates was referred to her because of problems at home. She told the girl to leave home immediately, but failed to do a follow-up, and the girl joined a shoplifting gang so she could buy drugs. It turned out there weren’t problems at home, not really: the girl didn’t like being thwarted by her mother, that’s all. If she’d carried out a proper mediation involving the girl and her family, she would have saved everyone a lot of heartache.’
Scobie nodded encouragingly.
‘Her job was to listen and advise, and if necessary refer people on to other specialists, or place them in shelters or whatever, but often she’d be openly antagonistic, act like judge and jury.’
‘Such as?’
‘Well, let’s say a wife came to her for counselling because her marriage was unhappy or acrimonious: Janine would go after the husband, challenge him directly.’