When he could no longer hear the professor’s heavy footsteps, Simon stopped and pulled out his mobile. He’d been meaning to phone Mark Bretherick, before Charlie’s unexpected fury had made him regret everything, even the things he hadn’t done. Sod it; he’d do it. He was going to get it in the neck anyway, now that Harbard had seen him, so he might as well do what he believed to be the right thing.
Bretherick answered after the second ring, said, ‘Hello?’ as if he’d been holding his breath for hours.
‘It’s DC Waterhouse.’
‘Have you found her?’
Simon felt something uncomfortable lodge in his chest, something that was the wrong shape for the space it was trying to occupy. To say no would be misleading; Bretherick would assume the police were actively looking for the woman he insisted had stolen photographs of Geraldine and Lucy from Corn Mill House. Simon wasn’t convinced she existed, and was beginning to wonder about the missing brown suit. ‘Your wife’s diary,’ he said. ‘You asked about showing it to your mother-in-law. What did you decide?’
‘I keep changing my mind.’
‘Let her read it,’ said Simon. ‘As soon as possible.’
Bretherick cleared his throat. ‘It’ll kill her.’
‘It hasn’t killed you.’
A flat laugh. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Show Geraldine’s mother the diary.’ Simon was shocked to hear himself. An elderly woman would be devastated, and possibly nothing would come of it.
He and Bretherick exchanged curt goodbyes, and he climbed the remaining stairs to Jonathan Hey’s rooms. The white outer door, with Hey’s name painted on it in black, was open, as was the wooden inner door. Music drifted out to the stone staircase. Country and western: a woman’s voice with a Southern twang. The song was about someone waiting for her man who was a riverboat gambler, who promised to return and then didn’t. Simon gritted his teeth. Did all sociology professors feel the need to pretend to be American? Hey’s accent, on the telephone, had been well-to-do home-counties English; how could someone from Hampshire or Surrey listen to songs about the Bayou and the Mighty Mississippi without feeling like a twat?
Simon knocked on the door. ‘Come in,’ Hey called out. Mercifully, he switched off the forlorn American woman. Simon walked into a large, high-ceilinged room with white walls and a threadbare beige carpet, much of which was covered by a red and black patterned rug. The pattern reminded Simon of faces, specifically, the faces of the constantly moving target creatures in ‘Space Invaders’, the first and only computer game he’d ever played. On one side of the room there was a wine-coloured three-piece suite, and on the other a white table with a wooden top surrounded by six white chairs with flat wooden seats.
There was no sign of Hey, though his voice was representing him in his absence. ‘Be with you in a sec!’ he shouted. ‘Have a seat!’ Simon couldn’t tell if Hey was in the kitchen or upstairs. Through one half-open door he could see an old-fashioned cooker with a stained top; it reminded him of the one in the student house he’d shared with four people he’d despised, all those years ago. Another door at the other end of the same wall opened on to the stairs.
Simon didn’t sit. While he waited, he looked at Jonathan Hey’s many glass-fronted bookcases. He read a few of the titles: Folk Devils and Moral Panics. A Theory of Human Need. On Women. How to Observe Morals and Manners. He saw names he’d never heard of, and felt disgusted by his own ignorance. Sexist that he was, he’d assumed sociologists were mainly male, but apparently not: some were called Harriet, Hannah, Rosa.
One whole shelf was dedicated to Hey’s own publications. Simon skimmed the titles, which were variations on a theme; again and again, the words ‘crime’ and ‘deviancy’ cropped up. He looked to see if Hey had written any books specifically on the subject of what Harbard called family annihilation. He couldn’t see any; perhaps the article he’d co-written with Harbard was the extent of his work on the topic.
There was a framed poster on one wall advertising the film Apocalypse Now. Next to it was another poster, a cartoon of a black woman wearing a headscarf and holding a baby, with the caption: ‘The hand that rocks the cradle should also rock the boat’. The slogan irritated Simon, for reasons he couldn’t be bothered to think about. There was nothing else on the walls apart from Hey’s framed degree and PhD certificates and a truly repulsive painting that looked like an original, of an ugly adult’s face wearing grotesque clown make-up beneath a white, lacy baby’s bonnet.
‘The picture.’ Hey appeared in the room. He had a pleasant, plump face, and was about twenty years younger than Harbard. Simon noticed his clothes: a shirt and formal jacket with faded jeans and blue and grey trainers-an odd combination. ‘It was supposed to be an investment, but the artist sank without trace. Who was it who wrote that poem about money talking? “I heard it once-it said goodbye.” Do you know it?’
‘No,’ said Simon.
‘Sorry, I’m wittering.’ Hey extended his hand. ‘Nice to meet you. Thanks for coming all this way.’
Simon told him it was no problem.
‘I’ve been considering contacting you. I probably wouldn’t have plucked up the courage, though, which would have been lazy and wrong of me.’
Simon prepared himself to receive unwanted information about Whewell College ’s intruder alarm system or choral scholars’ cars being vandalised. A lot of civilians seemed to think that all police officers ought to make themselves available to deal with all crimes, irrespective of geography. Simon tried not to look bored in advance.
‘I’m worried about this book Keith’s writing,’ said Hey, lowering himself into an armchair. Simon instantly changed his mind about the man. ‘Keith Harbard. I know he’s been working with you. He was here just before you, actually. I tried, yet again, to talk him out of it…’
‘He’s writing a book?’ This was the first Simon had heard of it. ‘About family annihilation killings?’
‘He’s planning to use the Brethericks as his main case study.’
‘Mark Bretherick will do everything in his power to stop that from happening,’ said Simon, hoping it was true.
Hey nodded. ‘That’s the trouble, for people like Keith and me. We’re researching familicide, and we publish our research. But the women whose husbands have killed their children before committing suicide don’t want some academics coming along and writing about it. They see us as careerists, profiting from their misery.’
‘I don’t blame them,’ said Simon.
Hey sat forward. ‘I don’t either,’ he said, ‘but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop working on the topic. Familicide’s a terrible crime, one of the worst human beings have managed to come up with. It’s important that people think about it.’
‘Especially if those people get promoted as a result?’
‘I was a professor long before I first took an interest in family killings. There’s no more promotion for me. I work on familicide because I want to understand it, because I would like it never to happen again. All my writing on the subject is in pursuit of that sole aim.’
Simon couldn’t help but be impressed by Hey’s seriousness. ‘All right. So you’re not in it for careerist reasons. Same true of Harbard?’
Hey’s face changed. He looked as if a part of his body had started to hurt. ‘Keith’s been a mentor to me my whole career. He was the external examiner for my PhD, my referee for this job. He took me under his wing from the start. I know he can be a bit full of himself-’
‘You’re defending him,’ Simon pointed out. ‘I didn’t attack him.’