She acted all innocent. ‘What do you mean, love?’ she said.
I lost my temper, started screaming at her. ‘Big Sleep? Big fucking sleep? I haven’t slept for more than an hour at a time for ten fucking weeks!’ I threw the mug at the fireplace and it smashed into pieces. Mum burst into tears and swore she hadn’t done it deliberately. Looking back, I don’t suppose she did. She’s not nasty, just thoughtless-too sensible to be sensitive.
I couldn’t help noticing that, having told me I ought to want to look after Lucy during half-term, Mum didn’t ring back and offer to do so herself, as many a doting grandmother would have in her position. I am increasingly convinced that she only worries so much about Lucy because, in terms of offering practical help, she is willing to do so little.
10
8/9/07
‘This isn’t about me,’ said Mark Bretherick. ‘You’d like to pretend it is, but it isn’t. Do you know what your men are doing with the earth they’re digging out of my garden?’ He pointed out of the lounge window at the teams of officers in overalls. Sam Kombothekra, more silent and serious than Simon had ever seen him, stood guard beside them, hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched. Simon knew he was hoping they’d find nothing. Kombothekra hated the unpleasantness crime brought with it, the social awkwardness of having to arrest a person, of having to look a man in the face and tell him you think-or know, more often than not-that he’s done something terrible. Especially hard if that man is someone you’re used to treating very differently.
His own fault. A bit less of the ‘Mark, we understand what you’re going through’ and he’d have found today a piece of piss.
‘Our men will repair the damage as best they can,’ Simon told Bretherick.
‘That’s not what I meant. It’s a very clever metaphor you’ve got going here. You look as if you’re unearthing, when burying’s what you’re really doing. That’s the true purpose of all the earth that’s flying around out there!’ Bretherick had finally exchanged the blue, sweat-stained shirt he’d worn for days for a clean, mustard-coloured one, which he wore with gold cufflinks.
‘Burying what?’ asked Simon.
‘The reality of the situation. You got it badly wrong, didn’t you? When facing up to that became unavoidable, you decided to make me the villain of the piece because it was easier than admitting that I’ve been right all along: that a man called William Markes, who you can’t find, murdered my wife and daughter!’
‘We don’t decide to make people villains. We look for evidence that will implicate or exonerate them.’
Contempt twisted Bretherick’s features. ‘So you’re hoping to find proof that I’ve committed no crime hidden beneath a begonia, are you?’
‘Mr Bretherick-’
‘It’s actually Dr Bretherick, and you still haven’t answered my questions. Why are you hacking my garden to bits? Why are there people at my office, disturbing my staff, going through every scrap of paper? Clearly you’re looking for evidence that I killed Geraldine and Lucy. Well, you won’t find any, because I didn’t!’
Simon and Kombothekra had said something similar to Proust yesterday: Bretherick had long since been proved innocent of the only crime known to have been committed. Why exactly were they here?
‘You’re right, Waterhouse,’ Proust had said for the first time since records began. If Simon had been wearing a hearing aid, he’d have taken it off and given it a good shake to check it was working properly. ‘Be grateful you aren’t in my shoes. I had to make a choice: either I end up a laughing stock, fooled into wasting thousands of pounds by some nameless fantasist’s rip-roaring tale of dead cats, red Alfa Romeos and bereaved men gardening at inappropriate times, or I go down in history as the DI who dismissed an important lead and never found the bodies hidden in the perishing greenhouse. Which you can bet your police pension would be discovered five years later by a pip-squeak bobby out sunbathing on his day off.’
‘Sir, either there are more bodies to find, or there aren’t,’ Simon had pointed out. ‘It’s not as if they’ll only be there if you don’t look for them.’
A cold squint from the Snowman. ‘Don’t be a pedant, Waterhouse. The worst thing about pedants is that there’s only one way to answer them and that’s pedantically. What I was trying to say-and what, frankly, anyone whose brain was in good working order would have understood-is that I fear our searches will yield nothing. Equally, I fear that if I ignore the information contained in the anonymous letter-’
‘We completely understand, sir,’ Kombothekra had chipped in hastily. For a man who wanted no trouble, he’d made an odd career choice.
‘Does the name Amy Oliver mean anything to you?’ Simon asked Mark Bretherick.
‘No? Who is she? Is she the woman who came here, who looked like Geraldine?’
‘She’s a child. She was in Lucy’s class at school last year.’
Simon saw his disappointment, quickly masked by anger.
‘Don’t you people listen? Geraldine dealt with all the school stuff.’
A quiet voice came from behind Simon. ‘You didn’t know the names of any of Lucy’s friends?’ Kombothekra had joined them.
‘I think there was one called Uma. I probably met them all at one time or another, but-’
The telephone rang.
‘Am I allowed to answer?’
Simon nodded, then listened as Bretherick issued a brief, baffling diatribe. ‘It has to be client-server based, and it has to have multi-level BOMS,’ was his conclusion.
‘Work?’ said Simon, once the conversation was over. How could Bretherick function professionally at a time like this?
‘Yeah. I suppose you’ve tapped my phone, haven’t you? If you want to know what anything means, feel free to ask.’
Patronising turd, thought Simon. ‘The two photographs that you claim were stolen,’ he said, deciding it was time to retaliate. ‘Inside the frames, behind the pictures of Geraldine and Lucy, were two other photographs that we believe might be of Amy Oliver and her mother.’
Bretherick exhaled slowly, a frown gathering around his eyes. ‘What? What do you mean? I… I didn’t have any photographs of… I didn’t know Amy Oliver, or her mother. Who told you that?’
‘Where did the pictures of Geraldine and Lucy at the owl sanctuary come from? Did you take them yourself?’
‘No. I’ve no idea who took them.’
‘Did you put them in their frames?’
‘No. I don’t know anything about them. One day they just appeared on the mantelpiece. That’s it.’
Fundamentally Simon believed him, but it sounded lame. ‘They just appeared?’
‘Not literally! Geraldine must have put them in frames and… she did all that, framed her favourite photos and Lucy’s paintings and put them up. I saw those two and liked them and took them to my office. That’s all I know about them. But why would she have put photographs of this Amy Oliver girl and her mother inside the frames? It makes no sense.’
‘Were the Olivers significant to Geraldine, do you know?’
Bretherick answered with a question. ‘How come you know all this, about the photographs? Have you found the woman who stole them?’ He leaned forward. ‘If you know who she is, you’ve got to tell me.’
‘Mark, what sort of thing did you and Geraldine used to talk about?’ Kombothekra asked. ‘You know-of an evening, after dinner.’
Simon made up his mind to draw the sergeant’s attention to the wedding anniversary cards, the oh-so-courteous messages inside them.
‘I don’t know! Everything. What a stupid question. My work, Lucy… Aren’t you married?’
‘Yes.’
‘No,’ said Simon quickly. He didn’t want to have to sit there worrying he would be asked the same question. Better to get it over with.
Bretherick stared at him. ‘Well, then you’ll never know how it feels when someone murders your wife.’ Simon thought that this was stretching the concept of looking on the bright side beyond its capacity.