Dead Secret (19 page)

Back in the B & B room, an opened packet of supermarket sandwiches lies on the table by the window, a bite out of one sandwich. They irritate me too much to eat them. At
twenty
-eight, I still live like a broke nineteen-year-old student. I would have stretched to something better than a sandwich but I wanted to buy a bottle of wine. So they sit there, the egg and cress and the half-drunk bottle of cheapo red, like a silent
reproof
. A symbol of my failure to amount to anything. I want to tell them to fuck off but I can’t. I might need them. Bloody life all over.

A phone rings in the distance, somewhere down the hall, then a tap comes at my door. Nobody has the B & B number except Mrs Carruthers. But when I answer, it’s a man’s voice.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Rebecca Connaghan?”

“Speaking.”

“This is David Carruthers.”

My heart quickens, then slows to a thumping, staccato beat.

“David Carruthers? I thought… I’m sorry I didn’t… I was told David Carruthers was dead.”

“I’m his son. My father died just over a year ago.”

“I’m sorry…”

“I’m told you were looking for my mother,” he continues over
me. I get the feeling he is uninterested in social niceties. His voice is clipped, formal.

“Yes, I thought, well, I hope… that she might be able to help me.”

“I doubt it.”

The dry tone stiffens my hackles.

“I’m Kathleen Connaghan’s daughter.”

“Yes, your message said.”

“I’m up from Glasgow. I’m trying… trying to find out what happened to her.”

“Well there’s nothing my mother can tell you. I must ask you to leave her in peace.”

“What happened to Kathleen Connaghan had nothing to do with my mother or anyone else in my family. As you can
imagine
, she is still coming to terms with losing my father. She’s not well and I really don’t want her upset at the moment.”

“I’m sorry to hear she’s not well. I really don’t want to upset her. I could just speak to her briefly, I won’t…”

“I’m sorry, she can’t help you.”

“But I…”

“You’re not listening to what I am saying. My mother can’t help you. She is already upset by your call and she just doesn’t want any of this stuff resurfacing again. It had absolutely
nothing
to do with her or my dad.”

“Perhaps I could meet with you first and explain everything and then you could…”

But he interrupts again. “What on earth could I tell you? I was so young when all this happened.”

“Just ten minutes…”

“You really don’t seem to understand.” He sounds impatient
now, his words little explosions of irritation. But I refuse to do the polite thing. I surf his anger, use the momentum of it to keep me upright.

“I’ll meet any time that’s convenient for you.”

“Look,” he says. “I’m really busy and I don’t see…”

“I’ve just lost my dad.”

The words catch in my throat, trembling there before
emerging
from my mouth, taking even me by surprise. On the wall where the phone hangs there is a pin board with cards stuck at every angle. Taxi numbers, cinema listings, a pizza delivery number. My fingers pick at a green drawing pin stuck tightly in the cork, working it loose.

“I’m sorry,” he says finally.

“Thanks.”

“I know how hard that is.” His voice is softened, but has not been robbed of its purpose. “But… sorry… I can’t help you.”

I don’t speak because I can’t. My finger works at the pin, the skin red and temporarily indented, until the pin suddenly skites uncontrollably from the board. A taxi card flutters down,
landing
propped against the skirting board.

He says nothing but the silence is disconcerting him. I can sense uncertainty ravelling round him like a cord, choking his certainty.

“Are you on your own?”

“Yes.”

He is weakening. Even in my distress I can detach myself, recognise the main chance. A picture flashes into my mind. Father Dangerous, in the hotel room, lying beside me. I hear his voice. So many ghosts these days, but none the one I am
looking for. “God, you’re hard, Rebecca,” says the ghost.

“Please meet me,” I say quietly, resting my head against the pinboard.

David Carruthers hesitates.

“Please.”

“Ten minutes is all I can manage.”

“When?”

“Now. Let’s get this done.”

We meet in a town-centre bar with purple, marbled-effect
wallpaper
and dim, conical lights that hang low over wooden tables. Tea lights flicker in purple glass jars in the centre of the table. I know David Carruthers when he enters because of the way he hesitates, his eyes flicking round the room, searching. I try to catch his eye but he doesn’t see me, tucked as I am in the corner by the window. I like corners. They hold you in tight, like a womb.

He’s dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, a soft, expensive-looking, black leather jacket on top. I can tell he’s vain. It’s far too hot for a jacket. He smells of money.

It’s not just in his clothes but in his confidence, in the way he stands sure-footed in the centre of that room. I see it in the hotels I work in. Rich people walk differently.

They talk like someone ought to listen. They hold themselves differently. The way David Carruthers holds himself now.

I watch him turning, slowly, slowly. Eyes flicking but no haste, no scurrying need to move from the centre stage. He is a little older than me; I’d guess in his early thirties. He has a strong nose. Not a boxer’s nose; it is too fine and chiselled for that, but irregular. Delicately arched, almost feminine lips. His skin is
olive
, and a faint dark stubble is beginning to shadow his chin. I must say I like a man with dark hair. I move from the table.

“David Carruthers?” I say from behind him.

He turns, unsmiling. His eyes hold mine a little curiously as he holds out a hand.

“Hello.” Grip firm, but brief. Long piano-player’s fingers.

“I’m over here,” I say, nodding at the table where my bag is hung over the back of my chair. “Can I get you a drink?”

“I’ll get them,” he says. It’s more statement than offer. I let him. Why should I argue with a rich man?

“What is it you want to know?” he asks, putting a large glass of wine down on the table in front of me.

“I want to know if your father ever talked to you about my mother.”

He shrugs carelessly. The gesture gets under my skin.

“Once.” He takes a sip of beer. “Not until a few years ago. We went on a trip to London together.”

“What did he say?”

“Not much.”

“My father worked for him.”

“Yes I know.”

“He used to send my father out of town when James Cory wanted to see my mother.”

“Hmm.” It is a neutral sound. I don’t know what it means.

“I want to know if James Cory killed my mother.”

“You mean you want to know if your father did.”

It is the truth. I bite my lip.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “That was harsh.”

A waitress comes to remove empty glasses from the next
table
. We watch her, saying nothing, as she wipes a cloth over the surface. The glasses clink as she fits four into one hand between her fingers.

“Did your father think Cory was capable…” The waitress turns back, an afterthought, lifts the ashtray. I stop talking until she has left again. “Did your father think Cory was capable of murder?”

“Absolutely not.”

The white wine in my glass is chilled. It hits my stomach, and the lake of supermarket red, with the sudden force of a
swallowed
ice cube. It feels good.

“Why was he so sure?”

“He was with James when James got the call that your mother was missing. A friend of your mother’s called him wanting to know if he knew where she was.”

“Karen Sandford?”

“Could have been.”

“You don’t know Karen Sandford? Know where she, is I mean?

“No.”

“And?”

“My father said James went ashen. He was standing when he took the call but dad said he remembered him grabbing hold of the back of the chair.”

“Why would he do that? He didn’t know she was dead, did he?”

“I’m only telling you what he said. I wasn’t there,” he retorts brusquely. “But if someone goes missing when they are meant to be picking up their child, it’s not looking good, is it?”

I take another drink. A dull ache has been spreading through my skull for the last half-hour, I guess from lack of food. One cream cake. One bite of egg and cress.

“Did your father really
never
doubt Cory?”

I notice that just for a second, David Carruthers avoids my eye. Just long enough for me to wonder.

“He really thought my father did it?”

“He liked your dad.”

“But he supported Cory.”

“They went back a long way.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“What?”

“Did your father have any doubts?”

“I don’t think he could believe James was capable of murder.”

Still he does not answer the question directly.

“Or he didn’t want to believe…”

“Maybe.”

“And he didn’t want to get involved.”

“Can you blame him?”

“Yeah, I can actually. He helped screw up my dad’s fucking life.”

My anger is like a sudden surge on an accelerator pedal.
Instantly
, instinct makes my foot slacken and the anger dies. I take a slug of wine. Carruthers seems startled. I feel tired suddenly, emotionally tired, like tiredness is a great big mouth that is just slowly sucking me in and swallowing me up without even
bothering
to chew. I lean my elbows on the table and put my head in my hands. Carruthers watches silently.

“Your dad just went back to normal and got his life back. It was easy for him. Like it was obviously easy for you,” I say
bitterly
. I reach for my glass, swallow the rest in one.

He says nothing but catches the eye of the waitress, points to my glass.

“Another large white wine please.”

That’s the confidence of the rich. They don’t ask; they just do.

“How do you know I want one?”

“Don’t you?”

“Yeah.”

His eyebrows shoot up, then he half laughs, shakes his head. He lifts his glass.

“You’re talking shite, you know.”

“What?”

“About things being easy. Sometimes what’s easy is seeing people the way you want to see them, rather than the way they are.”

The dull ache in my head is becoming a throb, a distant
drum-beat
in my head.

“What’s wrong? Did your toy train break when you threw it out of the pram?”

His hand freezes, the glass halfway to his mouth.

“My God you’re arrogant!”

It’s my turn to shrug.

“Listen,” he says, “I’m not going to try and pretend my life has been like yours. I had my mother and my father around and I’m grateful for it. But I’m not going to apologise for it. Maybe my father shouldn’t have got involved, but whatever happened – and you don’t know what happened any more than I do – it wasn’t his fault.”

What does he mean, get involved? The thought is only a
passing
one. Carruthers leans forward over the table and his voice is low and urgent.

“The police crawled all over our house when she
disappeared
. My father was taken in for questioning along with James. At one point, they were even trying to say that he had helped James dispose of the body. They took his car away and had it stripped right down, looking for blood stains or hairs.
And every time they went away, he was never sure when they were coming back, what the next theory would be. My mother was convinced Dad was going to be locked up for something he had no part in… It was your mother who had the affair,” he says, stabbing a finger at me. “But it was my mother who spent years on antidepressants.”

Carruthers slumps back into the chair.

“She became ill?”

“She’s always been… a bit fragile. She’s been bothered with depression off and on for years. I’m not saying it wouldn’t have happened anyway because Mum, well…” He changes his mind about what he is going to say. “But it certainly started around that time. It didn’t help. Look, that’s why I don’t want you to meet with her. I really don’t want her upset and there’s nothing she could tell you, I know that. Honestly. I want you to promise not to try and contact her again.”

“Why did the police think your father was involved?”

“Because they were close friends. Because they worked
together
. Because my father’s car was seen parked outside James’s house the night before your mother disappeared. As if that was something strange. They were always in and out of each
other’s
houses. And Dad said he had some complicated tax stuff to sort out that he needed to speak to James about. But according to some ludicrous local theory, they were sitting round having supper and a bottle of wine while they discussed how to bump off James’s bloody mistress.” He grimaces. “Christ I’m sorry… I didn’t mean…”

I shake my head, dismissing him with a wave of my hand. The wine is biting, making me feel light-headed.

“The police left him alone eventually, though?”

“Eventually. When Terry Simons took over. He was the police chief who was sent in to take over the case.”

“I know. We’ve met,” I say dryly.

Carruthers looks surprised.

“Anyway, my dad wasn’t involved. I think Simons realised that pretty early on. And I mean, if James was going to commit murder, there’s no way he’d sit and discuss it. He’s a loner.”

“If? I thought you said there was no way?”

Exasperation shadows Carruthers’ face as he stares into his glass.

“Was James Cory a Mason?”

He looks puzzled.

“He and Dad both were. Why? What’s that got to do with
anything
?”

“I just wondered….Were you close to your dad?”

“Yeah. But closer to my mum.” He is looking at me
suspiciously
.

“Only child?”

He nods. “You?”