‘I know the name of every single one of my sons’ friends, and their parents,’ said Kombothekra.
‘Bully for you,’ said Bretherick. ‘Do you know how to build, from scratch, a cryogen-free nitrogen-recycling cooling unit that every laboratory in the world will need to buy? That will make your fortune?’
‘No,’ said Kombothekra.
‘And I do.’ Bretherick shrugged. ‘We all have our strengths and weaknesses, Sergeant.’
Simon was starting to feel inadequate; it didn’t take much. He said, ‘Your mother-in-law says there are things in Geraldine’s diary that are factually incorrect. Jean didn’t buy Geraldine a mug with The Big Sleep on it, for example. Geraldine didn’t fly into a rage, smash the mug, accuse her mother of being insensitive to her sleep-deprived state.’
Bretherick nodded. ‘Geraldine didn’t write that diary. Whoever killed her wrote it.’
‘Yet you only became sure of this once you’d heard what Jean had to say. Isn’t that right?’ Bretherick had asked why he was a suspect; Simon hoped it was becoming clearer. ‘You read that diary long before Jean did-several times, I assume?’
‘Over and over. I can recite much of it from memory, my new party trick. What a popular guest I’ll be.’
‘Why didn’t you say straight away, “This didn’t happen, this isn’t true, my wife can’t have written this”?’
Simon watched uncomfortably as Bretherick’s face lost its colour. ‘Don’t turn that on me! You all told me Geraldine had killed herself and Lucy. You kept telling me. No, the diary didn’t sound like Geraldine-it sounded nothing like her-but you said it was her diary.’
‘I’m not talking about the feelings and attitudes she expressed, things you might have assumed she’d withheld from you,’ said Simon. ‘I’m talking about facts: the smashing of the mug, the things that simply didn’t happen.’
‘I don’t know anything about a mug! How was I supposed to know if it happened or not? That diary’s full of… distortions and lies. I told you it was all wrong. I told you someone else must have written it. I don’t recognise Geraldine’s voice, or her thoughts or her description of our lives. That business about God being called Gart? I never heard Geraldine or Lucy say that, not once.’
There was a tap on the lounge window, one of the search team from outside. Kombothekra, who had been leaning against the glass, turned, obscuring Simon’s view of the garden. Simon watched the sergeant’s back, its stiff stillness, and listened to the absence of background noise. No voices any more, no sound of shovels cutting into earth. His heart started to thump.
‘What?’ Bretherick saw the look on Kombothekra’s face. ‘What have you found?’
‘You tell me, Mark,’ said Kombothekra. ‘What have we found?’ He nodded at Simon and raised two fingers almost imperceptibly, the barrel of an imaginary gun. Either Simon had lost his ability to read signals or else two bodies had been found beneath Mark Bretherick’s rectangular lawn.
What no nod could tell him-for Kombothekra couldn’t possibly know at this stage-was whether these were the bodies of Amy Oliver and her mother. And now there was a new question that had leaped to the top of Simon’s list. More than anything, he wanted to find out the name of the anonymous letter-writer.
How did she know so much, and how the fuck was he going to find her?
‘Amy Oliver,’ said Colin Sellers, looking over Chris Gibbs’ shoulder at the photograph of a gangly, sharp-eyed young girl in school uniform sitting on a wall. Until today, neither detective had been in a school office since his teenage years, and neither felt entirely comfortable. Gibbs had been loathed by his teachers, and Sellers, though amiable and popular, had been berated daily for chatting to his friends when he should have been working.
‘Not a happy girl,’ Gibbs muttered.
‘Shit.’ Sellers lowered his voice so that Barbara Fitzgerald and Jenny Naismith, the headmistress and secretary of St Swithun’s Montessori Primary School, wouldn’t hear him. He didn’t want to offend them, and imagined that because they worked with children they would be quick to take offence.
Sellers didn’t fancy either of them. Mrs Fitzgerald was old, had waist-length grey hair and wore glasses that were too large for her face. Jenny Naismith was in the right age bracket and had a pretty face and good skin, but looked too neat and meticulous. Bound to be a ball-breaker.
On the plus side, both women were efficient. They had produced the two photographs and confirmed the identities of their subjects within seconds of Sellers’ and Gibbs’ arrival. Now Mrs Fitzgerald was hunting in a filing cabinet for a list of all the people who went on the school trip to Silsford Castle ’s owl sanctuary last year. Sellers couldn’t imagine why she’d kept it this long. ‘We keep everything,’ Jenny Naismith had said proudly.
‘Shit what?’ Gibbs asked.
‘Nothing. For a minute I thought the name Amy Oliver rang a bell.’
‘From where?’
‘Don’t get excited.’ Sellers laughed away his embarrassment. ‘It’s Jamie Oliver I was thinking of. That’s why it sounded familiar.’
‘I hate that twat,’ said Gibbs. ‘Every ad break, he’s there telling me what to eat: “Try putting some butter on your bread. Try having some chips with your sausage.”’ Gibbs attempted a cockney accent. ‘As if he invented it!’
‘The spelling is different.’ Barbara Fitzgerald abandoned the filing cabinet. ‘Amy’s name is O-L-I-V-A. Oliva. Spanish.’
Gibbs checked his notebook. ‘So that’s why her mother’s called…’ He couldn’t read his own writing. ‘Cantona?’ He was aware of Sellers beside him, trying not to laugh. Too late, he realised what he’d said.
‘Encarna.’ Barbara Fitzgerald didn’t laugh, corrected him matter-of-factly, as if it were an easy mistake to make. ‘It’s an abbreviation of Encarnación. Which is Spanish for “Incarnation”. Many Spaniards have religious names. I told you, Amy moved to Spain.’
‘Mrs Fitzgerald’s got the most amazing memory,’ said Jenny Naismith. ‘She knows every detail about every child at this school.’
Gibbs altered the spelling of Amy’s surname. Evidently that was something the anonymous letter-writer didn’t know; had she never seen it written down? Esther Taylor: that was the name of the woman who had turned up at St Swithun’s with the two photographs. Or at least the name she had given Jenny Naismith. Taylor was a common name, but Esther was more unusual, and if she looked like Geraldine Bretherick… well, it shouldn’t be too hard to track her down.
‘This list isn’t leaping out at me,’ Mrs Fitzgerald said apologetically. ‘I’ll have a proper look later, and I’ll bring it into the police station as soon as we track it down.’ She folded her thick, tanned arms. ‘Actually, I went on that trip myself, and I’m pretty sure I could jot down most of the names for you now. Would you like me to?’
‘Yes, please,’ said Sellers.
‘You didn’t notice who took those two photographs, by any chance?’ Gibbs asked. ‘Or anyone taking photos of Geraldine and Lucy Bretherick?’
Barbara Fitzgerald shook her head. ‘Everyone was snapping away, as they always do on school trips.’ This was the first time the name Bretherick had been mentioned. The headmistress seemed unflustered by its appearance in the conversation. Jenny Naismith was still ransacking the filing cabinet. Sellers couldn’t see her face.
‘What can you tell us about Encarna Oliva?’ he asked.
‘She worked for a bank in London.’
‘Do you know which one?’
‘Yes. Leyland Carver. Thanks to Encarna, they sponsor our Spring Fair every year.’
‘Do you have the family’s contact details in Spain?’
‘I don’t think we were ever given a snail-mail address,’ said Mrs Fitzgerald, ‘but we did get an e-mail shortly after Amy left St Swithun’s, telling us all about her new home in Nerja.’