Sam knew what she meant about the eyes. Gibbs had managed to unearth a photograph of Bretherick aged eleven. He’d won a school swimming competition and his picture was in the local paper. The man who sat in front of Sam now was that boy plus thirty-two years.
Bretherick’s voice on the phone, when he’d summoned Sam without explanation but insisting it was urgent, had been a little like a schoolboy’s: full of the sort of anarchic, high-pitched energy that puts adults instantly on their guard. Bretherick had insisted ‘something good’ had happened, and Sam had hurried round to Corn Mill House hoping the situation hadn’t deteriorated-though admittedly that was hard to imagine when you looked at things from Bretherick’s point of view-but fearing it had, somehow.
His last comment had got no reaction from Sam, so Bretherick tried again. ‘I allowed doubt to creep in,’ he said. ‘Because you seemed to have no doubts at all. I should have trusted my wife, not some stranger. No offence.’
Sam was gratified to hear that Bretherick had trusted him at all, however fleetingly-when? For an hour this afternoon, perhaps, in his absence?-even though the phase was now over. Bretherick’s skin was grey, the whites of his eyes speckled with red from lack of sleep. He and Sam were in his kitchen, sitting opposite one another across a large pine table. The green carpet on the floor bothered Sam, made him dislike the room as a whole. Who, he wondered, carpets a kitchen? Not Geraldine Bretherick-the carpet was stained and looked at least twenty years old.
He was inclined to believe Bretherick’s story. For a lie it was too elaborate; a man of Bretherick’s intelligence would invent something simpler. So either it had happened or Bretherick had become delusional overnight. Sam favoured the former explanation.
‘Mark, I understand that you’re telling me that a woman who looked like your wife stole two photographs from your house,’ said Sam carefully. ‘What I don’t understand is why you’re happy about it.’
‘I’m not happy!’ Bretherick was insulted.
‘All right, that’s the wrong word. I’m sorry. But you said this was the best thing that could have happened, both on the phone and a few seconds ago. Why?’
‘You told me Geraldine must have killed herself and Lucy because there were no other suspects-’
‘I didn’t quite say that. What I might have-’
‘There is another suspect. A man who pretended to be me. The woman who was here said she’d spent some time with him last year-I don’t know how long, but I got the impression she was talking about a significant amount of time. Reading between the lines, I think she might have been involved with him. Even though she was wearing a wedding ring. She said he went into detail about my life, talked to her at length about Geraldine and Lucy, about my work. Why would she lie? She wouldn’t. She’d have no reason to come here and make all that up.’
‘If she can steal, she can lie,’ said Sam gently. ‘You’re sure she took these two photographs?’
Bretherick nodded. ‘One of Geraldine and one of Lucy. I’d started packing up. I couldn’t bear the idea of throwing things away, but I couldn’t cope with having them in the house. Jean said she’d take it all, everything, until I was ready to have it back.’
‘Geraldine’s mum?’
‘Yes. I put the two photos in one of the bags. They were my favourites, of Geraldine and Lucy at the owl sanctuary at Silsford Castle. I kept them on my desk at work, since I spent more time there than at home.’ Bretherick rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger, perhaps as a cover for wiping his eyes, Sam couldn’t tell. ‘I brought them home yesterday. I couldn’t keep them out where I could see them. Every time I looked at them, I… it was like an electric shock of pain. I can’t describe it. Jean’s the opposite. If anything, she’s put up more pictures since they died. All Lucy’s framed drawings that used to be here, on the wall…’
‘You’ve been into work?’ asked Sam.
‘Yes. Something wrong with that?’
‘No. I didn’t know you had, though.’
‘I have to do something, don’t I? Have to fill my days. I didn’t do any work. I just went to the office, sat in my chair. Opened sympathy cards. Then I came home.’
Sam nodded. ‘Has anyone else been to the house, anyone who might have removed the photographs?’
Bretherick leaned forward, his eyes locking on Sam’s. ‘Stop treating me like a moron,’ he said, and for the first time since he’d reported finding the bodies of his wife and daughter, Sam could imagine him giving orders to his staff of seven at Spilling Magnetic Refrigeration. ‘I’m not treating you like one, although soon I might have to. The woman who looked like Geraldine, who was here this afternoon-she stole the photographs. I’d only put them in the bag an hour or so before she turned up, and no one’s been here since she left apart from my mother-in-law and now you. I might be bereaved but I’m not an idiot. If there was anyone else who might have stolen them, don’t you think I’d mention it?’
‘Mark, I’m sorry. I have to ask these questions.’
Bretherick twisted in his chair. ‘A man who pretends to be me has an affair with a woman who looks exactly like my wife-a woman who comes here this afternoon, refuses to answer my questions or tell me her name, and steals photographs of Geraldine and Lucy. I want to hear you say that this changes everything. Say it.’
This man has an interview technique, thought Sam. Not many people did, not unless they’d been trained. Sam knew his own interview technique wasn’t one of his strengths as a detective. He hated to put people on the spot, hated it even more when they did it to him.
‘You don’t know for certain that this woman was having an affair with-’
‘Irrelevant.’ Bretherick cut him off, began to tap his fingers on the table one by one, as if playing the piano slowly, one-handed.
Sam felt hot and flustered. This was a show of strength; Bretherick was trying to prove he was cleverer, as if that made him more likely to be right. Perhaps it did. Talking to him was like talking to Simon Waterhouse. Whose analysis, Sam was certain, would be identical to Bretherick’s.
‘How many suicides have you dealt with, Sergeant?’
Sam took a deep breath. ‘Some. Maybe four or five.’ None since he’d become a detective. One, he corrected himself: Geraldine.
‘Did any of those four or five have this many question marks surrounding them, this many strange, unexplained details?’
‘No,’ Sam admitted. You don’t know the half of it. He hadn’t told Bretherick that the diary file on Geraldine’s laptop was opened more than a year after the date of the last entry. He was still trying to work out what he thought of this man who had already been back to the office, already bagged up his wife and child’s possessions.
One detail had bothered Sam from the start, though he’d assumed he was wrong to be concerned about it since Simon Waterhouse seemed not to have registered it: when Mark Bretherick had first rung the police, he’d said, ‘Someone’s killed my wife and daughter. They’re both dead.’ The words had been clearly audible even through his hysteria. Interviewed later, Bretherick had claimed that he hadn’t read or even seen Geraldine’s suicide note in the lounge. He’d let himself into his house after returning from a long and tiring trip abroad, gone straight upstairs to his bedroom and found Geraldine’s body in the en-suite bathroom. His wife’s body, in a bath full of blood. The razor blade lying on her stomach; Bretherick didn’t touch it, left it in place for the scene-of-crime officers to find. Why hadn’t he called the police immediately from the telephone beside his bed? Instead he said he’d gone straight to Lucy’s room to check she was all right and then, when he failed to find her in there, he looked in all the other rooms upstairs and found her dead body in the family bathroom.