Risking It All (32 page)

She looked mutinous, lower lip thrust out.

‘Nicola,’ I urged, ‘part of growing up is learning to respect other people’s need for privacy. I’m sure you’ve got your secrets from your parents. If they have some problem they don’t wish to discuss with you, I think it would be mature of you to accept that.’

She still didn’t look happy, dragging her toe through the grime on the platform. ‘I’m not agreeing to go on some stupid holiday when I’ve got my exams coming up.’

‘Fair enough. Explain that to your parents. Then leave it at that, right?’

She mumbled something and we parted. I wasn’t at all sure she was going to leave things alone. She was persistent and curious and, heck, a lot like me. I wouldn’t have given up easily at her age. I’d just have got more devious. Nicola, a kid who listened in on other people’s conversations and searched their pockets, would, I fancied, think of some other stratagem. But I had no time for that. I had other things to do.

Lights shone from almost every window at Newspaper Norman’s place. It looked as if everyone was in for supper. I rang the bell and called through the letter-gap and eventually Norman came shuffling down the hall.

‘Come in, dear,’ he invited. ‘I’ve been expecting you. Come about the room, I expect.’ He had a grubby apron tied round his middle over his red jogging pants.

‘Well, no, Norman, not exactly. I haven’t quite made up my mind about that.’

He looked surprised and reproachful. ‘I’ve been holding it for you. Several people have been to look and expressed lively interest.’

I suggested, as tactfully as I could, that perhaps it would be best if he let it to one of them.

‘Norman, I’ve actually come round to see if you can help me over something else. It’s about a newspaper story . . .’

Norman brightened. ‘Let me go and switch off the cooker. I was just about to start on a few chips.’

He trotted off towards the kitchen. I made my way into the room on my left and gazed with misgiving at the stacks of newsprint lying around everywhere. I wished Norman hadn’t mentioned making chips. Chip pans are a prime source of house fires.

‘You know, Norman,’ I said when he came back, ‘you ought to get a smoke detector put in the hall. Just think, if anything happened to destroy your newspaper collection, what would you do?’

He looked horrified. ‘Don’t even speak of it, dear. It would be a disaster! Now I can take you back to nineteen seventy-three.’ He pursed his lips. ‘Those would be in the other room.’

There was another room like this? Norman was considering the smoke alarm idea. ‘I’ll give it some thought, dear. What can I do for you? Offer you a sherry, perhaps?’

I declined the sherry. ‘Recently there’s been a running story about a missing nurse.’

Norman clicked his fingers. ‘I know the one. All of them have covered it. Do you prefer a broadsheet or a tabloid account?’

‘The fullest one, please. Oh, and last night’s
Evening Standard.’

He sat me down in a sagging armchair and began ferreting away happily in his boxes and cupboards. ‘I have an infallible filing system,’ he told me.

‘Great, Norm,’ I said. Goodness only knows what it was.

Eventually he came back with an armful of papers, and after searching through them one at a time, he laid a selection before me. ‘Sure you won’t have a sherry while you’re reading? It’ll take a while.’

I’d already grabbed the first paper and was scanning it eagerly. Norman must have taken this as acceptance of his offer, and produced a bottle and glasses from a small wall cupboard which must have been the only one without newspapers in it.

I read on, then sat back, my head spinning. LeeAnne Cooper, the missing nurse whose mother had been appealing for news, was a thirty-one-year-old divorcee who shared a flat with a nursing colleague. Her former husband worked abroad, had been traced, and was out of the picture. She had no current boyfriend but was described as friendly, outgoing and capable. She had done a lot of work with young people and charity. No one could imagine what had happened. To disappear was not in her character.

Then, one line in one paper only, a tiny bombshell hidden among all the rest. Asked if LeeAnne had expressed any worries, the flatmate had mentioned that the missing woman had been concerned that she wasn’t earning enough to buy a flat of her own. This was followed by some general observations by the paper on nursing pay.

I sat back. It was horribly, hideously clear to me. Fate had led LeeAnne Cooper to give a talk at Nicola’s school. LeeAnne, one of the few people who would know that baby Nicola Wilde had died in St Margaret’s Hospital thirteen years ago, without ever going home. And Nurse LeeAnne Cooper was feeling short of money.

‘Drink your sherry, dear,’ said Norman. ‘You look a bit pale, in need of a restorative.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think I am.’

Chapter Sixteen

I don’t like breaking promises and generally do my very best not to, but this time it was being forced on me. I just couldn’t handle this alone any more. I was going to have to tell Ganesh everything.

I hoped my mother would understand, even though it was going directly against her expressed wish. Hadn’t she said to me that all anyone can do is make a decision and then live with it afterwards? What I couldn’t live with was the thought of a killer. What I didn’t know was what I was going to do about it. I didn’t expect Gan to come up with the answers, but I needed to share the responsibility. He had, after all, been feeling left out. He was about to be brought in with a vengeance.

They were just shutting up the shop when I got there. I nipped in through the door as Gan was closing it. He flipped the card hanging in it round to
Closed
and slid the bolts. Hari was busy behind the counter. Gan and I looked at one another. I knew my face was a picture of misery.

‘I see your good mood didn’t last long,’ said Gan. ‘Am I to be told what’s happened to knock you off your happy little cloud?’

I rallied with, ‘Not if you’re going to be sarcastic!’ and then surrendered with a pitiful. ‘I’m in an awful fix, Gan.’

He glanced at Hari. ‘Just give me half an hour to finish up here and we’ll go somewhere quiet and you can tell me all.’

I told him I’d wait in the garage. I exchanged a brief ‘Good evening!’ with Hari, who asked me absent-mindedly how I was as he shovelled cash into little bags. I don’t know what I replied. Whatever it was, he probably didn’t hear me.

Bonnie jumped up happily when I appeared in the storeroom, but even she sensed my mood and her exuberance was dampened. She followed me out to the garage and sat down, head on one side and one ear cocked, wondering what was going on. I opened a tin of dog food and spooned out her supper. She might have been worried about me but she didn’t let it come between her and her food. Like me, Bonnie is a survivor. You don’t turn down a meal when you’re not sure where the next one’s coming from.

Gan appeared in twenty-five minutes holding two cans of Coke from the cold cabinet. He handed me one and hauled up a crate to sit on.

‘Are you in trouble with the law?’ he asked, popping his Coke can.

‘Yes and no. I will be if Morgan finds out what I’ve been doing.’

I took a deep breath and, starting at the beginning, explained the whole deal to him. He sipped at his Coke but didn’t say a word. When I’d finished, he shook the can to check it was empty, set it down on the floor and said: ‘I know what I’d like to say to you.’

‘I can guess.’

‘Fine, so I won’t say it. But I’m glad you’ve told me now, Fran.’

‘I did feel mean leaving you out,’ I confessed. ‘But I’m not too happy now I’ve told you, either, because I’ve dragged you into it with me. I wanted to keep you out of it, out of the Nicola bit, anyway. I couldn’t keep you out of the Rennie Duke bit.’

‘About this nurse—’ he began.

‘Don’t say it’s a mix-up of some sort, because it isn’t. How many Nurse Coopers are likely to pop up in one connection? I can see what happened. She obviously had a good memory. When Nicola started talking to her she remembered the Wildes. Who knows? She was new on the job at St Margaret’s when all this happened. Perhaps it was the first time she’d had to deal with parents who’d lost a child. It made a big impression on her. Anyway, even though it was thirteen years ago, she knew that what Nicola was saying was all wrong. Nicola may have been born in St Margaret’s but she wasn’t Flora’s kid.’

‘She might have been adopted quite legally,’ Ganesh interposed. ‘Nurse Cooper wasn’t to know.’

‘Nurse Cooper smelled a rat,’ I said obstinately. ‘So she trotted off to see Flora Wilde and check it all out. If she was right, and Nicola wasn’t legally adopted, there was money in it. Blackmail’s a nasty thing but things hadn’t been going well for LeeAnne. She was short of money. Her marriage had busted up. She’d turned thirty and life was going nowhere. Maybe she thought, hey, these people are living in a pretty expensive part of the world. They won’t miss a couple of thou. I don’t suppose she meant to blackmail them for ever.’

Ganesh took a deep breath. ‘Even if you’re right so far – and it’s all supposition, remember – are you now saying that Nurse Cooper’s disappearance is down to the Wildes?’

‘It has to be, Gan!’

‘No, it doesn’t.’

‘Oh, come off it!’ I argued. ‘I’ve met Flora and Jerry. Flora’s an outright screwball. She’s violent. She knocked me flat on the floor. She tried to beat my brains out with a tin of chickpeas. As for Jerry, he’s more of a thinker and worrier than his wife but I haven’t the slightest doubt there’s absolutely nothing he wouldn’t do to protect Flora and Nicola. In fact, I’m not so sure he didn’t mean to run me down that day he just missed me at the hospice. If I hadn’t thrown myself into the rhododendrons I’d be dead meat right now, and wouldn’t that just suit the Wildes fine!’

‘So,’ asked Ganesh, ‘are you going to the police?’

I sighed and shook my head. ‘No. How can I? As you say, it’s all supposition. I think that either Jerry or Flora killed LeeAnne Cooper. Then Rennie Duke came sniffing round and they killed him. I can’t prove it. Look, I’ve had doubts myself! I’d almost persuaded myself Jerry hadn’t killed Duke, but now . . . LeeAnne Cooper’s got to be dead, Gan. She’s been gone three months without a sign of her anywhere. She disappeared two days after giving that talk at Nicola’s school. I’ve read it all up in Norman’s newspapers. They even mentioned her visit to the school as an example of how she worked with young people. You should see how the press have written this up. They’ve made LeeAnne out to be some sort of saint. Her mother’s been seen on telly pleading for information. Here am I saying she was a blackmailer. Am I going to be popular, I don’t think!’

‘I don’t think you’re very popular with Morgan as it is,’ said Gan.

‘So suppose I tell her all this and she goes to the Wildes and they swear they’ve never set eyes on Nurse Cooper. Oh yes, she came and talked to the school, but that’s it. Who can prove otherwise? What will come out is Nicola’s real identity. I can’t let that happen, Gan.’

Ganesh said carefully, ‘I don’t see how you can prevent it happening, Fran. Inspector Morgan is on the trail of your mother’s other child and she’s got as far as Mrs Marks. As I see it, Mrs Marks is where all this is eventually going to blow sky-high. Think about it from her point of view.’

Ganesh began to tick points off on his fingers. ‘First, Duke contacts her to talk about Eva Varady but doesn’t turn up. Second, the police contact her to talk about Duke. Third, you turn up and want to talk about your mother and Duke. The poor woman’s practically got a queue of people outside that crèche of hers. It’s been made pretty clear to her that she’s sitting on some really explosive information. All right, she didn’t want to get daughter Linda in shtuck so she’s kept quiet till now. But I bet she’s had a long talk with Linda by this time and the two of them are going to end up going to the cops. They’re a law-abiding couple of citizens. They run nice little businesses. No one in business,’ concluded Gan, ‘can afford to upset the police.’

‘So why not just keep quiet?’ I argued. ‘Wouldn’t that suit them better?’

‘Fran,’ he said patiently, ‘we’re talking about people who live well inside the law, not wavering on the edge like a lot of people you and I know. I’m not including Hari in that, by the way. Hari’s so law-abiding they wouldn’t need coppers if everyone was like him. But that’s just what I’m saying. Mrs Marks and Linda are like Hari. They’re honest, hard-working and have consciences. You can bet your life they’re worriers. They are going to spill the beans, sooner or later, take my word for it. What’s more, I reckon it’ll be sooner rather than later.’