Six-year-old Oonagh O’Hara, with a grave expression on her face, had told Sam a secret, after much encouragement from her mother, a secret Lucy Bretherick had told her. Sam wondered if there was any truth in it. He hoped he was about to find out.
Mark Bretherick stood up when Sam entered the interview room with Paula Goddard. ‘What’s happened?’ he said.
‘You mean other than the discovery of two dead bodies in your garden?’
‘I mean what’s happened since? Do you know whose the bodies are?’
‘Not yet,’ said Sam.
‘The detective who interviewed me before, Gibbs, he kept asking about Amy Oliva from Lucy’s class, and her mother. Do you think that’s who they are?’
‘We don’t know.’
‘I think that’s who they are,’ said Bretherick, turning to his solicitor. ‘DC Waterhouse told me about the photos hidden in the frames, behind the ones of Geraldine and Lucy.’
Bretherick seemed almost as well-informed as the investigating team. ‘The head of St Swithun’s has seen the pictures and confirmed that they’re of Encarna and Amy Oliva,’ Sam told him. ‘Now, I’ve got some questions I’d like to ask you, Mark.’
‘Listen: if those bodies turn out to be Amy and her mother, you’ve got to look again for William Markes. You couldn’t find him before because Geraldine didn’t know him. Maybe he’s an associate of this other woman-Encarna.’
Sam smiled politely, fighting down his irritation. Colin Sellers had made the same suggestion about half an hour earlier.
‘You’ve got to take that school apart. Markes is connected to St Swithun’s somehow, and it looks as if he’s targeting mothers and daughters from Lucy’s class. Have you done anything about warning the other families? I’d want to be warned if I were them.’
Sam turned to Paula Goddard. ‘Do you want to ditch him and take me on as your client instead? Since I’m the one who seems to be under interrogation.’
‘All right.’ Bretherick held up his hands. ‘Ask away.’
‘I want to talk to you about last year, the May half-term holiday.’
‘What about it?’
‘The school was closed between Friday the nineteenth of May and Monday the fifth of June.’
‘So?’
‘You and your family went to Florida,’ said Sam.
‘I’m not sure of the dates, but… yeah, we went to Tallahassee last year, spring. We rented an apartment for two weeks. And Lucy came, so it must have been school holidays. I mean…’ He blushed. ‘I don’t mean Lucy came as in we might have gone without her. Geraldine would never have done that.’
‘Did you often take your family on holiday?’
‘No. Hardly ever.’
Goddard rolled her eyes and leaned back in her chair.
‘I went away all the time for work, never made time for holidays. I don’t like being on holiday, I get fed up. I don’t think you can arrange to relax. And Geraldine didn’t work, so it wasn’t as if she needed a break from anything, and she loved our house so much, she said, she didn’t mind staying at home-’
‘Yet you went on holiday to Florida for two weeks.’ Sam cut short the justifications.
‘Yes.’ Bretherick frowned, as if worried by the discrepancy. ‘It wasn’t a holiday for me. I was working at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory; hold on a minute.’ He bowed his head. ‘That’s right. My trip had been arranged for a while when Geraldine told me she and Lucy wanted to come too.’
‘She didn’t normally tag along on your work trips?’
‘No. That was the first and only time.’ Bretherick flinched. The word ‘only’ hung in the air.
‘Can we get to the point, Sergeant?’ said Goddard.
‘So why this one in particular?’ Sam asked.
‘I don’t know. Florida ’s, you know… Disney World. She took Lucy to Disney World.’
‘One of Lucy’s classmates claims Lucy told her she was going to Florida because Geraldine didn’t want her to play with Amy Oliva during the holidays.’
Mark Bretherick and Paula Goddard said ‘What?’ in unison. Both looked perplexed.
‘There were three of them who tended to get together during the school holidays,’ Sam told Goddard. ‘Lucy, Amy Oliva and Oonagh O’Hara. Oonagh went away to her grandparents’ last year for the May half-term fortnight.’ He turned to Bretherick. ‘If Geraldine and Lucy hadn’t accompanied you to Florida, Lucy and Amy would have played together most days, presumably? ’
‘I have no idea,’ said Bretherick. ‘All I know is Geraldine asked if she and Lucy could come with me, and I was delighted. It was much nicer not to go alone.’
‘I’ve been told that Lucy said to a friend of hers, “My mummy hates it when I play with Amy. She and my granny think Amy’s a bad lot.” She’s also supposed to have said, “Amy’s not horrible all the time, but I’m glad my mummy doesn’t like her because now we can go to Disney World.” ’
‘It’s possible.’ Bretherick shrugged. ‘Lucy’s understanding of the way people’s minds worked was… advanced for a child of her age.’
‘Geraldine didn’t work,’ said Sam to Bretherick and Goddard equally. ‘We’ve established that she rarely went on holiday. Would someone have risked burying two bodies in her garden while she nipped to the shops or round to a friend’s house? They’d have had to dig for hours, and lay new lawn afterwards.’
Bretherick’s eyes sparked with excitement. ‘The bodies in the garden: how long had they been there? Do you know?’
‘The pathologist couldn’t be precise, but-’
‘They were buried while we were in Florida, weren’t they? Whoever killed them knew we’d be away, knew he’d have time to… And that part of the garden, where they were found, isn’t overlooked.’
There was something that hadn’t occurred to Mark Bretherick and maybe never would: among the people who had known about the trip to Florida was Geraldine herself. Had she arranged to go abroad with her husband and daughter in order to leave the coast clear for a double murder and burial? Or perhaps only a burial-the murders might already have been committed. In which case, Geraldine had either had an accomplice or was herself an accomplice.
‘William Markes.’ Bretherick slapped the table with the flat of his hand. ‘Find out if he’s the father of a child at St Swithun’s.’
‘We’ve already checked,’ Sam told him. ‘There are no children with the surname Markes.’
‘Is there something wrong with you mentally? What about any single mothers, or divorced ones who might have changed their names back, and their children’s? What about cohabiting parents, where the kids have got the mother’s name? Or mothers who have got new boyfriends or partners, father-substitutes? Start with Lucy’s class and don’t stop until you’ve checked the background of every child in the school. And then check the teachers, and their husbands and partners.’
Cordy O’Hara had a new boyfriend, baby Ianthe’s father. What was his name? Sam saw Paula Goddard watching him, amused. Should he end the interview now, he wondered, or wait for Mark Bretherick to dismiss him?
He didn’t have to wait long. ‘Come back and tell me when you’ve found Markes,’ said Bretherick. ‘And you…’ He swung round in his seat to face Goddard. ‘Make sure they check properly. I’ve said right from the start: William Markes killed Geraldine and Lucy.’
13
Friday, 10 August 2007
I hear a clinking sound, like two glasses banging together. Cheers. A noise I’ve heard before. I’m not dreaming. Opening my eyes rearranges the chunks of raw pain in my head. I have to close them again.