Kind of Cruel (39 page)

‘All right, William, that’s enough,’ said Jo. ‘I think DC Waterhouse gets the point. Go on, run along.’

Her son left the room with an air of disappointment, as if he’d had more to say and would now never have the chance. An odd boy, thought Simon.

He wanted to cheer when Jo walked over and closed the kitchen door, putting a barrier between the two of them and the noise. ‘His dad
isn’t
richer than his uncle Luke,’ she said, as if it mattered to her. ‘I think William assumes that anyone who runs his own business is Bill Gates, or something. I wish!’

‘I need to ask you about last night,’ Simon said.

‘Not before I’ve asked you if what Amber’s told me is true. You’re not going to tell anyone she didn’t go on that driver awareness course herself?’

‘I’m going to do my best not to.’

‘In that case . . .’ – Jo let out a long breath – ‘. . . thank God. I’ve got two small children, a dependent father-in-law living with me permanently since his wife died of breast cancer, a severely mentally handicapped sister living with me temporarily, a mother who’s getting on and not as strong as she used to be.’

‘I’m hoping there’ll be no need to bring up the DriveTech course,’ Simon told her.
Two small children
. Was the strapping, articulate, approximately twelve-year-old William one of them? Simon wouldn’t have described him as small. He also wouldn’t have called Jo’s accent ‘cut glass’, as Edward Ormston had. Educated, yes; upper middle class, yes, but not royal. Not aristocratic.

‘People rely on me.’ Jo handed Simon a cup of tea. ‘I know what I did was wrong. I care about people too much, and take all their self-made problems onto my own shoulders.’ She let out a bitter laugh. ‘Everyone’s always saying I’m helpful and self-sacrificing to a fault, but even I draw the line at being prosecuted!’ She turned on Simon, as if in response to a threat he’d made. ‘You can’t punish me for caring enough to try to help people.’

I could, actually
. ‘Where were you last night between midnight and 2 a.m.?’

‘In bed, asleep. You don’t seriously think I’d set fire to Amber’s house?’

‘Will your husband be able to confirm your whereabouts?’

‘He was asleep too. We all were.’

That was easy, then. If everybody had been asleep, that meant no one was in a position to confirm that everybody had been asleep. Any one of them apart from the kids, Jo included, could have got up and gone to Amber’s house to start that fire. Risky. What if they didn’t make it back before the news woke the rest of the family? Amber was known never to sleep. She could have noticed the fire much sooner than she did and phoned Jo’s house within minutes, immediately after calling the fire brigade.

Who in this house would have taken that risk?

‘Who is “we all”?’ Simon asked. ‘Who stayed here last night?’

‘Me, Neil, William, Barney . . .’

‘Your husband and sons?’

‘Yes. And Quentin, my father-in-law.’

‘Sabina? Is she a relative too?’

‘She’s the boys’ nanny. No, she didn’t stay the night. Neither did Mum and Kirsty. They went home round about six, six thirty-ish.’

‘Before you served the evening meal?’ Simon asked.

Jo turned a wounded look on him, as if he’d deliberately raised her hopes and then let her down. Was he reading too much into it? He reminded himself that they’d only just met. Nothing she did or said could put him in the wrong here. He was doing his job. ‘You’re taking a closer interest in the details of our daily life than I feel comfortable with,’ she said eventually. ‘You must know nobody here would set fire to Amber and Luke’s house? God! We’re their family. We’re all they’ve got. Ask Amber if she thinks one of us might have done it. She’ll laugh in your face. What does it matter when we had dinner, for God’s sake?’ Jo was looking not at Simon but at the cup of tea she’d given him. He half expected her to grab it back.

‘Amber, Dinah and Nonie stayed for dinner, yes?’ Simon continued evenly. ‘Did Sabina stay too?’

‘Yes,’ said Jo in a clipped voice. ‘She stayed all evening, went home about eleven. Why?’

‘So the people at dinner were you, Neil, your two sons, Sabina, your father-in-law, Amber, Dinah and Nonie? Anyone else?’

‘No.’

‘And it was during dinner that Amber told everybody what happened when she went to see a hypnotherapist the day before – the police officer she met, with the notebook?’

‘No,’ Jo said sullenly. ‘She didn’t say anything about a notebook. She did her usual trick of saying as little as possible. All she told us was that she’d seen a hypnotherapist, and this had led to her getting mixed up in a murder investigation.’

‘Did she tell you the name of the woman who was murdered?’ Simon asked.

‘Katharine Allen.’

‘Did that name mean anything to you?’

‘No.’

‘Yet you’ve remembered it.’

A slowly released sigh from Jo. ‘I’ve been Googling her all day, haven’t I? As anyone would. Murder might be an everyday occurrence for you, but in our family it’s quite unusual. Not that I’m saying my life’s boring or anything, but . . .’ She shrugged.

‘So your mother, your sister and your brother were the only members of the family who didn’t know that Amber had been questioned in connection with Katharine Allen’s death?’

Jo frowned. ‘No, they all know. Well, apart from Kirsty, my sister, who isn’t capable of understanding things on that level.’

‘They know now,’ Simon clarified, ‘but before the fire . . .’

‘Even before the fire, Mum knew,’ said Jo. ‘I told her all about it when I rang her.’

‘You rang her? When?’

‘Last night, before I went to bed. I don’t know exactly what time. Half eleven-ish? I ring her every night, to check she and Kirsty are okay and say goodnight. Even if I didn’t, I’d have rung her last night to tell her about what had happened to Amber. I rang Ritchie too.’

‘Why?’

‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Jo asked.

‘No.’

She filled the kettle with water, put it on again, selected a cup for herself. Simon noticed it was superior to the one she’d given him, which was chipped around the rim and covered with a tracery of cracks under the glazing.

‘If something important happened to someone in your family, wouldn’t you make sure everyone knew, soon as you could?’

‘How often do you see your mother, sister and brother?’ Simon countered with a question of his own.

‘My brother every two or three days, I guess,’ Jo said. ‘I see Mum and Kirsty every day. It’s hard for Mum, looking after Kirsty, and since none of us works, it makes sense for us to get together – someone to talk to, you know.’ She smiled brightly; the expression remained fixed in place for too long, unmoving.

‘If you don’t work, why do you need a nanny?’ She was presenting her account of her family as if it made sense, but it didn’t, not to Simon. Seeing each other every day, ringing every night?

Jo laughed. ‘Have you ever tried looking after two children on your tod? Neil’s at work all day, Mum’s busy with Kirsty . . . If I tried to do it all on my own, I’d go loopy. Not so much now, but certainly when the boys were little. Even now, Sabina supervises their homework while I make the dinner most nights. And one of us is normally dealing with Quentin too. Since Pam died of liver cancer – that’s Neil’s mum—’

‘Breast cancer,’ Simon corrected.

‘Liver cancer.’

‘You said breast cancer before.’ Something was badly wrong here. Simon felt a shiver pass through him.

‘No, I didn’t. Are you telling me I don’t know what my own mother-in-law died of? It was liver cancer. It was horrendous. Start to finish, it took five years to kill her, and now she’s not suffering any more – good for her – but Neil and I are stuck looking after Quentin and feeling terrible if the thought ever crosses our mind that it would have been
so
much easier the other way round.’ Jo’s eyes were bright with tears. ‘If Quentin had died first, if Pam had been the one to survive . . .’ She flung out an arm towards the door, pointing. No more shiny smile. ‘
You
don’t have to live with him every day. You didn’t have to stand by and watch Pam die. I did, so don’t tell me she died of breast cancer, as if you know more about it than I do.’

‘When did she die?’

‘January this year.’

Simon nodded. He found it interesting that Jo was choosing to present their disagreement as a diagnostic one. Clearly she knew better than he did what illness had killed her mother-in-law, so it made sense for her to pretend that their argument was one she could easily win. In the matter of what she had said earlier in the conversation – whether she had initially said liver cancer, as she claimed, or breast cancer, as Simon remembered – the two of them were evenly matched, each as likely as the other to be right or wrong.

‘So you rang your mother twice last night? The second time after you’d heard about the fire?’

‘Neil phoned her, immediately after Luke phoned and woke us up. I was in shock, couldn’t think straight, but Neil knew I’d want Mum there, and Sabina. He phoned everyone – Ritchie too, but Ritchie couldn’t come. He’s got a stomach bug.’

‘And someone woke Quentin, presumably?’ Amber had said everyone but Kirsty, Ritchie, William and Barney had convened in Jo’s lounge in the early hours of the morning.

‘Neil woke his dad, yes.’

‘Going back to dinner time . . .’ Simon began.

‘Pasta with mozzarella, basil, tomatoes and olive oil,’ Jo snapped. ‘Treacle tart for pudding. How interested can you be in an ordinary family supper, for God’s sake? How’s us talking about my dinner last night going to help you catch any murderers?’

‘Were William and Barney there when Amber told everyone about Katharine Allen, and being interviewed by the police?’

‘No. They and the girls had left the table. I knew Amber had something important to tell us, so I sent them off to play.’

Simon nodded, relieved that the family wasn’t so abnormal as to discuss murder at the dinner table in front of children.

‘About the DriveTech course . . .’ he started to say.

‘We’ve talked about that,’ Jo said in a warning tone. ‘You said you wouldn’t bring it up again.’

No, I didn’t.

‘I need to know that I don’t have to worry about . . . any kind of comeback,’ said Jo. ‘I want you to give me your word.’

‘No comeback,’ Simon promised. If he had to, he’d renege on it. For the time being, he was prepared to say whatever worked. He sensed that at any moment, if Jo didn’t like what she heard, she might end the interview.

He forced a smile. She tried to match it, flattening her mouth into a line.

‘One more question, then I’ll be out of your hair,’ he said. ‘You told Amber about Edward Ormston – his daughter Louise, who died?’

Jo’s face was a blank. ‘Who?’

‘Ed from the DriveTech course.’

‘Oh.’ Pink spots appeared on her cheeks. ‘Ed, yes. Sorry, I just . . . without the context . . . I told Amber everything. She insisted. Not that either of us ever thought
this
would happen.’

‘You didn’t quite tell her everything,’ said Simon.

‘Yes, I did. What didn’t I tell her?’ A clear challenge:
name one thing I missed out
.

For the second time today, Simon described the speech made by the woman calling herself Amber: the hypocrisy of a society that overvalues cars but refuses to accept their downside.

Jo didn’t say anything. She seemed to be still listening, long after Simon had finished. Was she waiting for him to say something else?

‘Why didn’t you tell Amber that you said all that?’

‘I’m not sure I did say it.’ Jo’s shrug was offhand, as if nothing could matter less to her.

‘Ed Ormston’s sure you did. I believe him.’

‘Well, then . . . Look, I don’t remember, okay?’ Jo rubbed her forehead. ‘Maybe I said something, but it wasn’t
that
, I wouldn’t have come out with a load of nonsense like that. Ed’s no spring chicken, is he? I had a bit of a rant, yes, but I don’t remember the details.’ She made a dismissive gesture with her hand. ‘I was angry to have to be there, wasting a day, and I went off on one, I suppose. But if Ed thinks that’s what I said, then he misunderstood me.’

‘How, exactly?’ Simon asked.

‘I don’t know! It was a month ago. Do you remember things you said a month ago?’ Seeing that she’d given Simon pause, Jo pressed her point. ‘You don’t,’ she said. ‘No one does. We remember what other people say, not what we say ourselves.’

Like I remember you saying breast cancer first. Not liver cancer.

‘You weren’t impersonating Amber, then?’ Simon said. ‘Coming out with what you imagined to be her opinions, in her absence and as her stand-in?’

Jo’s face twisted. ‘You’d be better off asking her about impersonating me. Why do you think she’s so desperate to adopt Dinah and Nonie?’

‘For their sake. They want parents,’ Simon repeated what Amber had told him.

‘No. No! That’s not what it’s about, not at all. It’s about Amber wanting to be me, like she always has. I’m the mother of two children, so she has to be. It’s sick.
She’s
sick.’ Jo lunged towards Simon. He backed away, but all she seemed to want to do was peer into his cup. ‘You need more tea,’ she told him in a voice that was nothing like the one she’d been using a few seconds ago. ‘You should have said.’