Risking It All (36 page)

Very carefully, I asked, ‘So neither of the Wildes is being charged in connection with murder?’

Morgan shrugged her tailored shoulders. ‘Why should they be? Cornish has made a statement taking full responsibility for both deaths, but confessions have to be supported by evidence these days and that’s why he’s only being held over the disposal of a body until we get everything right. He’ll be charged eventually, I’m sure. But there is no evidence involving either of the Wildes in the deaths. Admittedly, both victims represented a threat to them. But there’s nothing to suggest they themselves turned to murder. Well, it’s not likely, is it?’

I wanted to shout out that hey! even the middle classes kill! But I didn’t bother. What Morgan was saying was that china-doll Flora, living in her own little doll’s house, and respectable professional Jerry were what Susie would call nice people living in a nice place. People with clean hands, clean records, good lawyers and good contacts. Murder? Perish the thought.

The dissatisfaction must have showed in my face, because she went on, ‘They admit LeeAnne Cooper came to see them with the aim of getting money from them. Wilde told her to clear off and reminded her that blackmail was a serious offence. He called her bluff, in other words. Jerry Wilde himself was satisfied they’d seen the last of her after that. Unfortunately, Flora had been very distressed by the episode and, unknown to her husband, confided in Ben Cornish, an old friend. He took it upon himself to remove the threat permanently from the scene. Neither of the Wildes was aware of that.

‘Later, Rennie Duke showed interest. This time, both Wildes confided in Cornish and asked him to meet Duke, acting as their go-between, and see if some sort of pay-off couldn’t be arranged. LeeAnne Cooper had been a rather nervous amateur. Duke had a seedy reputation. They didn’t think he could be frightened away so easily and they were prepared to pay.

‘But there’s nothing to show that they were prepared to resort to violence. They’ve admitted they had discussed skipping out, going abroad, if that was the only way they could protect their daughter, as they saw it. But Wilde says it was only a contingency plan. He really didn’t think it would come to that. He was content LeeAnne had already been scared off and he really thought he could do a deal with Duke. Their foolishness was in taking someone like Cornish, a real loose cannon, into their confidence. They’d no way of knowing he was a killer. He was to be their middle-man, not their executioner.’

‘Wilde acted really cool when I mentioned Duke to him,’ I said sullenly. ‘He’s one very good actor. Perhaps you ought to remember that when he starts spinning you his tales.’

‘He was one very frightened man,’ said Morgan, ‘because, by then, he knew Duke was dead. To go back to the beginning, first LeeAnne had appeared, then Duke. The Wildes were very, very jittery. Then a bombshell. Mrs Mackenzie told them about you and your mother, Eva Varady, and that you’d asked for their address. Jerry Wilde went at once to the hospice to see your mother, to discover if she were the source of Duke’s information, and to beg her not to tell anyone else the truth. But before he could see her, he received a call on his mobile phone from Cornish, telling him that Duke had been found dead and the police were involved. Cornish urged that it was imperative all three of them, himself and the Wildes, close ranks and deny they’d ever heard Duke’s name. Neither of the Wildes suspected Cornish had killed Duke any more than they suspected he’d killed LeeAnne Cooper. It was all Cornish’s doing from start to finish.’

‘I see,’ I said. I did, but what I saw was a different picture to the one Morgan had painted. I’d had personal experience of Flora’s instability and tendency to violent reaction. I felt sure, though I couldn’t prove it, that LeeAnne had sought her out alone. To tackle the Wildes together wouldn’t have made sense. Why let yourself be outnumbered? Anyway, LeeAnne might have reckoned the mother would be the more vulnerable of the two. When she saw that tiny blue-eyed doll she must have thought it was going to be a doddle. Instead, Flora had flown into a rage, perhaps in that very same cosy farmhouse kitchen where she’d attacked me, grabbed a knife and killed LeeAnne in a frenzied attack. Then she’d phoned her devoted slave, Ben Cornish, and asked him to help her get rid of the body. ‘No problem,’ says Ben, and buries LeeAnne in the raised flower bed he’s constructing in Mrs Mackenzie’s garden. It was at least possible, at that point, that Jerry had not even known of LeeAnne’s existence. Whether he’d found out later was another matter, and one we’d never get to know the truth of. But one aspect of his behaviour really bothered me.

Both Sister Helen and I had witnessed his panic at the hospice, after according to Sister Helen, he’d made his call by mobile. But she’d made a mistake. Wilde hadn’t made a call, he’d received one. This bit of Janice Morgan’s account I believed. Sister Helen had thought he’d walked outside to use his mobile to make a call. Instead, he’d walked outside because he was so jittery he couldn’t just sit in the foyer, waiting. However, it was after speaking to Ben that he’d leapt into his car and driven out of the grounds like a bat out of hell, nearly running me down. Was that just because he’d heard Duke was dead and the police were investigating, as Morgan apparently accepted? Or because he knew how unstable his wife was; had maybe even learned by then that she’d killed once?

It was a funny thing, I thought, but Jerry Wilde, whom I’d suspected from the first, had turned out to be the only one in that trio without blood on his hands. I’d been right to judge him a thinker. With Ben arrested, he’d rapidly stitched up a pretty neat version of events to protect his wife and get himself off the hook. It’d been easy with Ben playing along, taking all the blame. What better for Wilde? It left Flora and him in the clear and got Ben out of their lives. Two’s company, three’s a crowd. Jerry must have sussed out by now how Ben felt about his wife.

So Ben and Flora were killers in my book, partners in crime. But they weren’t, it seemed, in Morgan’s. Did I argue with her? No. Cornish would never implicate his beloved Flora. Even given the unlikelihood that he did, it wouldn’t be backed by evidence. Enough people’s lives had been messed up. The important thing now was to try and salvage something for Nicola from all of this wretched tangle. She was having to come to terms with the information that her ‘parents’ were not her parents. To learn that one of them was a killer would be to lose them twice.

‘If you’re not going to charge me with anything,’ I said, ‘can I go? I want to visit my mother.’

They let me go, Cole reluctantly. Morgan walked with me out of the building.

‘A lot of people are very unhappy with your role in all this, Fran,’ she said. ‘I managed to swing it in your favour but don’t let me down. It’s on file. You know what that means. Keep out of trouble from now on, please!’

I promised to do my best. ‘I appreciate what you’ve done for me,’ I told her. ‘Though I still don’t think the cops appreciate what I’ve done for them.’ I eyed the charcoal suit. ‘You might mention a public-spirited, currently resting actor at the press conference.’

‘Don’t push your luck,’ she said. ‘The less mention made of your name the better at the moment.’

With that she trotted off for her fifteen minutes of fame. I went to Waterloo to catch the train out to Egham.

The afternoon was wearing on and the commuters starting to make for home, so Waterloo was quite crowded. My journey was squashed and uncomfortable. Apprehension about what I’d find when I got to the hospice made things worse.

My mother had clearly been going downhill during the last couple of visits. I’d agonised over whether or not to tell her that her secret was out. But since it was quite likely that the police or social workers would turn up, I’d had to forewarn her.

She’d taken it quite well, all things considered. ‘I suppose it had to come out eventually,’ she said pettishly. ‘It’s a real nuisance. It was such a
good
arrangement. Why do people have to interfere? But they won’t take Miranda away from the Wildes, will they? Not after all this time?’

I told her I thought it unlikely, not because I believed it, but because it was what she wanted to hear. I didn’t point out that the person doing quite a lot of the interfering had been me, on her instructions. She still didn’t seem to think that either she or the Wildes had given rise to the basic situation. Instead she fixed blame on Rennie Duke.

‘Rennie could never leave well alone,’ she grumbled. ‘I didn’t tell him anything, really I didn’t, Fran. I don’t know how he pieced it together. But that was Rennie for you.’

I’d had an idea or two, but I’d kept them to myself along with everything else. To begin with there was my mother’s letter to me, which, as I told you earlier, I suspected he’d managed to read. But perhaps things had gone wrong even before that. They’d started going wrong when she’d called Rennie in to find me, so that in turn I could find Miranda-Nicola.

Of course, she hadn’t mentioned Miranda to Rennie. But on the other hand, she was very ill when she spoke to him, and on medication. Little wonder if she’d been confused at times, especially when discussing such a stressful subject. Was it possible that, in talking to Rennie about me, she had sometimes slipped into calling me Miranda—‘Find Francesca for me’ alternated with ‘Find Miranda’—and that Rennie had sussed pretty quickly she was talking about two different daughters? Like a lot of other theories I’d had about this business, though, it would remain in the realm of ‘perhaps’.

It had been one of those clear, cool days following rainy weather when the light seems to make everything look crisp and distinct. Although by the time I turned into the hospice grounds evening shadows were gathering, the light still seemed to hold a special quality. The surrounding vegetation had a curious luminosity. The big, irregularly shaped rhododendron bushes were like slumbering beasts. Their shiny dark-green leaves looked softer and more tactile. Everything looked about to move, to reach out and touch me. This Surrey garden was as exotic as the rampantly tropical Palm House. A light breeze blew across my face. For a second, I felt as if I were someone else, that I stood in the dusk and watched me walk up the path. The house ahead of me looked unreal. As I approached the front door, I saw a movement. Sister Helen had appeared on the other side. She pulled the door open and stood waiting for me.

I knew what had happened, what she was going to say, and anticipated her. ‘Mum’s died, hasn’t she?’

‘I am so sorry, Fran,’ she said. ‘It was only about an hour ago. I’ve been trying to find you. I telephoned the shop and they said you’d gone to the police station, so I called there but you’d left. I guessed you were on your way.’

She stood aside and let me into the foyer. Delicately, she asked, ‘Would you like to see her?’

I nodded.

‘Have you seen a dead person before?’

‘Yes,’ I said. I’d seen my dad and my grandmother, both nicely laid out. I’d seen a girl I shared a squat with hanging from a ceiling fixture. I’d seen Rennie Duke collapsed in his car. I was notching up more than my fair share of scenes of death.

‘You have to remember,’ she said, ‘the undertaker hasn’t been yet. We’re waiting for him. We phoned our regular funeral parlour. Do you have an alternative wish?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m sure the usual man will be fine.’ I thought of Susie Duke and wondered if I was going to be expected to pay for the funeral. I hadn’t those kinds of funds and it was too much to hope that Mum had been insured. Hideously embarrassed, I began, ‘I can’t – I’m unemployed . . .’

She put a hand on my shoulder. ‘It’s all right. We’re a registered charity, and one of the things we take care of, in specified circumstances, is the funeral costs. Don’t worry.’

I followed her down the corridor. It seemed wrong to have been discussing money like this, but I didn’t know what I was supposed to say or do.

Mum was lying nicely in her bed by the window. Through it I could see the birdbath and a pair of starlings jostling one another in it. I wondered if she’d been watching them when she died. She looked surprised, as if despite living with the knowledge of her own mortality, Death had still seemed an odd sort of visitor to have turned up in her room. Her lips were parted as if to ask what he was doing there. I wanted to cry but there weren’t any tears. I felt, if anything, numb.

I heard my voice asking, ‘Was she alone?’

‘Yes, but she’d just had visitors,’ said Sister Helen’s voice in reply.

That permeated the fog surrounding me. ‘Who?’ I asked.

‘A young girl and a social worker.’ I must have looked shocked. She asked, ‘Are you all right, dear? Do you want to sit down?’

I sat down on the chair she pushed forward. She stretched out her hand to Mum’s water jug, but I waved it aside.

‘Was the girl Nicola Wilde?’ I asked hoarsely.

‘Yes.’ Sister Helen put her head on one side, much like one of the birds out there in the garden. ‘You knew about her?’