The Betrayal of Trust (41 page)

‘What makes you think I know anything about this girl?’

‘She was having private piano lessons.’

‘Well, there are plenty of others. I’m not the only local teacher. It could have been half a dozen.’

‘No.’

‘Of course it could.’

‘You taught her the piano at school.’

‘Doesn’t mean I taught her outside it.’

‘So you
did
teach her at school?’

She flicked her eyes to him and away. ‘For goodness’ sake, man, I taught dozens of girls. I was at that school for fourteen years.’

‘Which school?’

‘Freshfield.’

‘Which Harriet attended and where you taught her the piano.’

‘I’ve said. I could have done. It’s a long time ago. How am I supposed to remember?’

‘Not remember
the girl who disappeared while waiting at a bus stop sixteen years ago? The girl there was a huge national appeal about, a massive local search for – face in every paper, on posters, on television?’

‘We don’t have a television.’

He waited. The hens clucked and scratched. She had her hands on the table now. They were not the hands of a woman who gardened and cleaned out hen houses and did domestic
chores, they were not the hands of a woman of her age, they were hands with long, well-shaped, well-flexed fingers, carefully rounded short nails. Clean.

‘Tell me about her,’ Simon asked, putting his left leg over his right knee and clasping it. Eyes no longer on her face. ‘It must be quite rare for a piano teacher to have a gifted pupil. A teacher of anything, actually. Most of them must grind
away, hating every minute of it, never practising. I know my sister did. Her teacher asked her to give it up, she was so hopeless. So I can guess it must be a joy to find a pupil like Harriet. You’d offer her extra lessons like a shot.’

‘Her parents were philistines,’ Lenny Wilcox said at last. ‘Yes, she was talented, though who knows how she would have done in the long run. You have to be more
than just talented. But she wanted it. She loved it. She would have played and played all
day
, her lessons were always too short, she said. I never had another pupil who said that to me. Never. She asked if I would give her extra lessons and I was thrilled, absolutely excited about it, I knew just how much I could bring her on, how much she would love it. Value it. And then the damn parents. Hobbies
department, they thought. She played the clarinet as well, she was good at that, though the piano was her instrument, she’d never have gone far as a wind player. Damn parents.’

‘So she asked if you’d give her the lessons without telling them.’

‘No, she didn’t, I suggested that. I said I would give her an extra lesson a week, a good long lesson, an hour and a half, here, on my piano, which is
a Steinway, and I wouldn’t charge her a penny.’ She looked him straight in the eyes. ‘That doesn’t mean anything.’

‘In what sense does it not?’

‘So – I gave her some lessons. Here. Without her parents’ knowledge or consent. Doesn’t mean I know what happened to her. How would I know what happened? How did you find out that she had lessons with me?’

‘When did she last come here?’

‘How would
I remember that?’

‘Did she meet Agneta here?’

Alarm on her face, a shadow across the sun.

‘What day did she have her lessons here? Saturday?’

‘No. Or – she may have done once or twice.’

‘How did she get here? Obviously her parents didn’t bring her.’

‘On the bus, I suppose. I didn’t ask. Or on her bicycle. Probably on her bicycle.’

‘Harriet didn’t have a bicycle.’ It was a shot in the dark.
He did not know.

‘So it was on the bus.’

‘During the holidays she could have come any day. So it was Friday afternoon, wasn’t it? The last time she came. The day she disappeared. The Friday you arranged to meet her. The Friday you picked her up on Parkside Drive.’

‘No.’

‘Did you arrange to meet her at the bus stop? Or did she realise it wasn’t a good place for a car to pull up so she walked
on a few yards down the road?’

Silence.

‘You came along and she glanced round and saw you. You stopped by the kerb. Harriet got in. You drove away.’

‘No. This is all invention. I didn’t realise the police invented things but of course I should have done, we’re always hearing about it.’

‘You were seen.’

‘What?’

‘Your car was seen that afternoon. Harriet got into it. You drove away. We have
a witness who saw you quite clearly. What car do you drive?’

‘The van. The one out there. You’ve seen it twice now.’

‘How long have you had the van?’

‘I don’t know. Years. That’s why it’s so unreliable. I can’t afford a new one.’

‘You drove a green car then.’

‘I can’t remember what colour car I had all those years ago for heaven’s sake. Cars get you from A to B. I’m not interested in them
otherwise.’

‘Let me remind you. We have a witness.’

‘What sort of witness remembers a green car sixteen years ago? What sort of witness is that?’

‘He saw Harriet get into your car. I’ve traced your car ownership from 1990. You don’t change your cars often. A blue Ford. A green Lada. And the van that you have now. One green car, a Lada. The one Harriet Lowther got into at four ten on that Friday
afternoon. Friday 18 August 1995. Did you come straight here to this cottage?’

Lenny Wilcox was so still he could not see her breathing. He hardly breathed himself. And suddenly, he felt in no hurry. Sooner or later, she would talk to him, tell him, give him an account of it in the sort of detail people always remembered for ever after such an event. It was going through her mind now, picture
after picture, sound after tiny sound, words spoken, and cries. Silences.

He could wait.

A vein pulsed in her neck.

Simon’s phone rang. Lenny barely noticed. It stopped. Rang again.

She turned her eyes to his face and looked at him steadily but did not speak. She was in no hurry either.

THE SIDE DOOR
led to a passage which led to the kitchen stores on the left, the main house to the right. No one was about. There was the distant sound of someone singing in a thin, high, voice.

‘Oh my love is like a melody

That’s sweetly played in tune.

And fare thee well, my only love

And fare thee well, awhile.

And I will come again, my love

Though it were –’

And broke off.

Molly stood, taking slow, deep breaths, gathering herself, calming down. She needed to think it all through, but if the panic and tension were easing in her body, her thoughts were jagged and broken, like crazy paving, and seemed to jump here and there, from one thing to the other.

She knew what she had seen. Nothing explicit had been said but she was utterly clear about it. She did not know
what Fison planned for her, whether he would send for her, threaten her, bribe her, to make sure she kept silent. This was her last day. If he meant to talk to her he would have to do it in the next few hours. Perhaps he did not.

She would go back into the living areas or the staffroom, the kitchen, to Sister Fison’s office, follow anyone, ask for a job
among
the patients or with one of the carers,
move about so that she was not alone anywhere. She was afraid of him, afraid of what he would say, afraid of her own reactions. Afraid of what she had seen. Afraid.

She turned and went towards the sitting room, where one or two of them sat after meals, turning the pages of magazines without taking in anything on the pages, Mrs Overthorpe crocheting and unpicking what she had crocheted, over and
over again, smiling.

The sun shone into the room, catching the jar of flowers on the sideboard, making the smooth china of an ornament gleam. The doors were open onto the garden. Someone was a few yards away, by the flower bed. No one was in the room itself.

Molly reached the doors and was about to step down onto the gravel when there was a shout and the person she could see swung round and
held out her arms for a second, before flinging herself forward, head down, running, running in a blind, confused way, like a bull that had been goaded, and roaring in the same way too.

At the same moment, she heard a step behind her. A voice. ‘Ah, yes. There you are again, Molly.’

Something hit her in the chest, the throat, the face, arms flailing, a head hard down into her as she was propelled
in the small of the back, lost her balance, fell forward across the step. She knew what was happening but not in any order, knew someone had cannoned into her and that someone else was pushing her so hard from behind that she had no strength to resist them, to turn, to keep her balance. She fell slowly, as she might fall in a dream, until the pain as she hit her face, her head, rushed up not
as pain but as an enveloping blackness.

‘TELL ME ABOUT
Miss Mills,’ Simon said.

Lenny was like a pillar of stone beside him. The sun had moved round and the hens were basking in it, digging out bowls in the dust and rubbing themselves down into it.

‘Nothing left to tell.’

‘But there was once.’

‘Oh yes. Olive.’

‘Talk to me about her.’

‘Why? Olive has nothing to do with it.’

‘When did you meet?’

‘Years ago.’

He waited.

Lenny stared ahead. ‘She was never beautiful but she had a – a spark. Life. Olive was full of life. She was like a Catherine wheel. Fizzed. It was very attractive. Volatile but very … I don’t have that. Now it’s all gone.’

‘When did it start?’

‘Forgetting? It’s hard to know when it does. She was unpredictable, she didn’t operate like you and me, remembering things, putting them in order, she
was all over the place, here and there, things didn’t connect with her the way they usually do. So I missed it at first.’

‘Years ago?’

‘I suppose so. Dementia. Being demented. I used to tell her she was demented, sometimes. How cruel.’

‘You weren’t being cruel.’

‘No. But it feels like that now.’

‘Did Olive meet Harriet Lowther?’

She stiffened. Said nothing.

‘Was she here when Harriet came
for her lesson? Was she always here when your pupils came?’

‘Nobody else did come.’

‘Just Harriet?’

‘I told you. Harriet was exceptional. I didn’t want the cottage invaded. Girls here at home. This is home. It was our home. Now it’s my home. Just mine.’

‘Tell me about that day.’

‘What day?’

‘You know what day.’

Her mouth twitched. Her fingers twitched. Then went still. She said nothing
for a long time. She would. He knew perfectly well now. It was all there. He just had to wait.

‘I’d like a cup of tea. I suppose you would.’

‘Very much.’

‘Or gin. I have gin.’

‘Tea.’

‘I could have gin.’

‘If that’s what you’d like, why not?’

She turned to him, her blue eyes bright with a moment of amusement. ‘Is that allowed?’

‘It’s your gin. Your home. Why would I stop you?’

‘Ah.’ She
sighed deeply, and then got up.

He filled the kettle. Found the tea. Milk. A china mug with a picture of Tintagel.

‘Cornwall,’ Lenny said. ‘We loved Cornwall before they spoiled it with tourists. We swam in the sea. We went out in fishing smacks. Cottage overlooking the harbour. Every year. Then it started to fill up. Visitors. Gift shops. Yes, all right, I bought that in a gift shop. We had
half a dozen. That’s the last.’

‘I’ll be careful with it.’

‘Why bother?’ She sat down at the table and poured a single measure of gin. Topped it up. Creeper hanging down over
the
kitchen window and a couple of pots of geraniums on the ledge made the kitchen dim. The sun was on the other side now.

Simon put a splash of milk into his tea. It struck him that he had never taken an interview so
slowly, never let it run on for so long. But he could not push. Sometimes pushing, jostling, putting on the pressure, was the way. Sometimes it was the last thing to do. It could take hours. He would get there, all the same.

‘She was a pretty girl,’ Lenny said. ‘Fair hair. Pale skin. She had a composure you don’t often find at that age. Not the awful shoulder-shrugging. Can’t be bothered, not
interested. Just composure. A quietness around her. That’s what singled her out, that’s what gave her the extra quality she needed. Perhaps she could have had a bit more fire as well. They can go together, you know. The very best musicians have a fire in the belly. I don’t have any. Not sure she did. It was what would have held her back in the end. But the calmness gave her something else. I picked
her up. She had no other way of getting here, you’re right. I’d have dropped her back at the bus stop into town.’

Simon lifted the mug of tea to his mouth but barely sipped it. Held his breath.

Lenny had finished the gin in a couple of mouthfuls but she did not pour herself any more.

‘It was her second lesson here. Olive had seen her the first time. She was trimming the forsythia. She turned
round and she looked at Harriet, took in everything. She would. She saw.’

‘Saw?’

‘Saw her. Saw it all. Her prettiness. Her calmness. She wouldn’t miss anything. Never missed anything. Agneta wasn’t here that first time. She came irregularly. But that afternoon she was here, cleaning the windows. Olive wouldn’t get up on the step-stool, it wasn’t a job she would ever do, and since I’d broken
my leg I was wary of clambering about. Still am if it comes to that. Agneta would do them, she was fearless, did anything, climbed up anywhere. She was very willing, very capable. Useful.’

‘You liked her?’

‘Agneta? Yes I did. Olive didn’t but that was only jealousy.’

‘Jealousy?’

‘Oh, there was nothing to be jealous about, never had been for all those years, never would be. But jealousy isn’t
rational, is it? Olive was born jealous. So when she knew I liked Agneta … anyway, Harriet was playing Schubert. Perfect composer for her. It was a new piece to her. Tricky. The bass hand is tricky. If you don’t get the fingering exactly right … It’s unforgiving, music like that. I had to show her the fingering. But she went on getting it wrong, getting it wrong, not listening properly, not taking
any notice of what I was saying.’