The Night Book (29 page)

Seb have a short, humourless laugh. ‘Yes, I think I can. I had exactly the same question. Last night after I’d left the coroner I went back to Cathedral Crag to see Meriel. Perhaps I
shouldn’t have, but I felt I owed her an explanation of what I’d done. It was a difficult conversation, as you might imagine. But during it she told me it wasn’t she who made
these copies, let alone hid them. It was her husband. He did it without her knowledge, after he’d found the originals.’

DI Thompson sat up a little straighter. ‘Let me get this right. Cameron Bruton discovered the book and made the photocopies behind his wife’s back? When did she become aware
he’d done that?’

Seb shook his head. ‘I’m not sure. But it was obvious she knew, because she told me she’d searched all over the house for them, without success.’

The detective sat in silence for some time.

‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘We’ll come back to this. Meanwhile, what about Miss Kidd’s relationship with her husband? You told Dr Young it was a pretty bad
set-up.’

Seb went through what he knew about the Bruton marriage. When he’d finished, the DI put both hands behind his head and stared up at the ceiling.

‘Right, let’s take stock here. So far, we have a relationship gone toxic, a wife so angry with her husband that she writes vengeful filth about murdering him, he then discovers it,
duplicates it and hides it – and at some point, tells her what he’s done. Where’s the original diary, by the way? Any ideas?’

‘Meriel burned it.’

‘What? Why?’

For the first time during the interview, Seb looked distressed.

‘Last night she told me that when she realised that she had fallen in love with me . . . that I’d
saved
her, as she put it . . . she suddenly wanted to get rid of it. She
said she wasn’t proud of what she’d written; in fact, she said she was deeply ashamed of it. So she burned it.’

The policeman looked at him with barely concealed sympathy. ‘I’m really sorry, Seb. Truly, I am. I can see all of this is proving extremely difficult for you. Your whole
world’s turned upside down in the last twenty-four hours, hasn’t it?’

Seb stared miserably at the floor.

‘You could say that. This time yesterday I thought I’d found the woman I was going to marry. Now look at me. I’m helping in a murder inquiry that could see her jailed for life.
And God knows what she’s going through right now.’

He suddenly looked up. ‘Is Meriel all right? She must be in a dreadful state. Christ, I feel awful about this . . . What a fucking
mess
.’

DI Thompson looked shrewdly at the man opposite him.

‘I wonder how well you really know this woman, Seb. Far from being in a state, as you put it, she’s remained remarkably calm under the circumstances. When I went to her house this
morning to bring her in, she was cool as a cucumber.’

Before Seb could reply to that, the detective pressed on.

‘Now, I want you to tell me
exactly
what she told you about what happened on the boat that afternoon. Try to remember anything and everything she’s said about it.’

Seb nodded. ‘All right . . . Well . . . she’s always been quite straight about it with me. She said they had a row.’

‘So you knew at the inquest that she was lying – lying by omission. Because she never mentioned any such argument to the coroner.’

Seb looked slightly uncomfortable.

‘That’s right. But I didn’t think it was important . . . not at the time, anyway. I thought she was just, well, embarrassed that the last exchange she’d had with her
husband was an unpleasant one.’

‘OK, Seb, that’s fair enough. Do you know what the row was about?’

‘Yes, I do. Meriel told Cameron that she wanted a separation, that she was leaving him. He got very angry and threatened her with a nasty divorce. A lot of mud-slinging. Bad PR for her
career, all of that. But . . .’

Seb paused.

‘Go on. But what?’

‘Now I think there was more to it than that. A
lot
more. I think when she told him the marriage was over, he took the gloves off. Revealed to her he knew all about her diary, that
he’d found it, taken copies and hidden them. I think
that
was the threat he made: that if she left him, and humiliated him, he’d retaliate, using
The Night Book
as
grounds for divorce. The publicity would have been off the scale and it would certainly have finished Meriel’s career. She would have clearly understood that.’

‘Hmm.’ DI Thompson stroked his chin. ‘That’s an interesting theory, Seb. But why do you believe it was out there on the boat that Bruton told her he’d found the
book? Why not at some earlier point?’

Seb leaned forward impatiently. ‘Because I would have had an inkling. Meriel told me that very same morning – when we were in bed together – that she was going to ask Cameron
for a divorce when she got home. If he’d already threatened her with the book, she would have been far less confident about doing that. She would have said it was more complicated than I
realised, or something. Plus, I’d managed to reassure her that the publicity surrounding a divorce wouldn’t be all that bad. If she’d known Cameron had found her notebook, she
would definitely have argued with me about that. Even if she didn’t actually tell me about the book.’

The detective nodded slowly.

‘You might be right. In fact, my hunch is that you are. But it’s all still entirely circumstantial; actually, it’s closer to conjecture. The prosecuting police officer is going
to need something a lot more solid to throw into the mix. Which brings us on to the business of the missing watch. Has Miss Kidd said anything to you about that?’

Seb sighed. ‘No. Not really. I knew nothing about it until the inquest. Which was odd, because a few days earlier Meriel had sat next to me going through a box full of her husband’s
personal valuables – gold cufflinks, tie pins, that kind of thing – and she never mentioned the Rolex, or that she’d lost it. Later, when I asked her why she hadn’t, she
said it was simply because she was embarrassed to have mislaid something so valuable.’

‘Did you believe that?’

‘No, I didn’t. I thought she was lying.’

‘Any theories?’

Seb nodded. ‘Yes. It ties in with something else Meriel didn’t tell me about; her last exchange with Cameron – you know, that stuff about him asking her the time. After the
inquest I asked her about that, too, and she said she hadn’t thought it was important.’

‘But you think otherwise.’

‘I do. I think her reluctance to tell anyone – including me – about Cameron asking her the time, and then her dissembling over the watch, are
definitely
connected in
some way. Last night I directly accused her of lying about all of it. In fact, I went on to ask her outright if she’d killed her husband.’

‘And?’

‘She told me to clear out.’

DI Thompson examined his fingernails.

‘An option that won’t be available to Miss Kidd when I question her.’

The policeman stood up.

‘Thank you, Seb. You’ve been extremely helpful under difficult circumstances. I’ll be in touch.’

Seb looked surprised.

‘I can go?’

‘For now. As I said earlier, we’ll need to conduct a more formal interview with you, on the record. I suggest you have your solicitor present on that occasion.’

‘Why? Should I be worried?’

DI Thompson offered Seb what he intended to be an encouraging smile as they left the room together.

‘Not specifically, no. But as I believe the coroner may have already said to you, if this matter comes to trial, I think it extremely likely that you will be called to give evidence. In
fact, I’m certain of it.’

‘Evidence for the prosecution, you mean.’

The inspector turned around in the doorway and stared at him.

‘Oh yes. You’ll be their star witness.’

Seb knew the game was up the moment he left the building. Over towards the main entrance of the car park he could see glaring lights, two or three of them, on tall metal
stands, and as a marked police car swung through the gates, a few flashbulbs popped.

The pack had descended. Merryman must have broken the story already.

Seb looked at his watch. It was almost three o’clock. If he got to his car quickly he’d catch the bulletin at the top of the hour.

He was just in time. The station jingle was playing as he switched the radio on, and then the voice of one of his colleagues filled the little car.

‘The news headlines at three. Within the last hour Cumbria police have confirmed that they are questioning Lake District FM’s Meriel Kidd over the drowning earlier this month of
her husband, millionaire businessman Cameron Bruton. Mr Bruton’s body was recovered from Ullswater after what an inquest later ruled had been an accidental drowning.

‘However, this morning police officers visited the couple’s home above Derwent Water and commenced a search of the property. Miss Kidd, who has been a familiar voice on Lake
District FM since she joined the station in 1973, was driven to Cumbria Police headquarters in Penrith for questioning, although it is understood she went voluntarily and has not been arrested.
More from reporter Colin White.’

Seb bit his lip. Merryman had been quick to hand the story over to someone else. He couldn’t blame him: as a police witness he himself had become hopelessly compromised.

White spoke in a soft, Scottish burr and Seb upped the volume.

‘The couple had gone out alone on their motorboat on the day Mr Bruton died. At the subsequent inquest, his widow told Kendal coroner Dr Timothy Young that her husband had got into
difficulties while swimming in the lake and, as a non-swimmer herself, she had been unable to go to his assistance. She said she managed to throw him a lifebelt but he was in no condition to use
it. By the time help arrived, Mr Bruton was unconscious and later he was declared dead at the scene by police.

‘Sources close to this investigation
(that’ll be me, Seb thought)
indicate that new evidence has emerged which may cast a different light on events. As well as searching
Miss Kidd’s home, a former rectory overlooking Derwent Water, the motorboat is to be examined later today.

‘In a short statement Miss Kidd’s legal representative emphasised that his client has not been arrested and is expected to return home later today after fully co-operating with
police during questioning.

‘Colin White, Lake District FM News.’

Seb turned the radio off and looked over his shoulder at the brick building behind him. DI Thompson had probably started on Meriel by now. Thompson had struck Seb as an extremely intelligent
man. Whatever it was Meriel was concealing from everyone, Seb’s instincts told him the detective was likely to get to the bottom of it.

He started the car and drove slowly towards the main entrance. Yup, it was swarming with press and TV, both channels. The ITN reporter, an instantly recognisable thirty-something blonde in a
turquoise top and matching flares, was recording a piece to camera. Seb caught the words ‘suspicious’ and ‘completely unexpected’.

Merryman had kept Seb’s name out of the report but the pack wouldn’t be surprised to see him driving out of the police station car park; after all, he’d got the exclusive
interview with Meriel the day after Cameron drowned. This was very much ‘his’ story.

If he’d hoped to drive away without being stopped, he was wrong. As soon as the reporters saw who it was behind the wheel of the car, they surrounded it and he was forced to pull up.

‘Seb! Seb!’ Flashbulbs popped and the TV cameramen hefted their equipment onto their shoulders and began filming.

‘Seb!’ It was the ITN girl. ‘Have you seen her? Have you seen Meriel? How is she? What’s she saying?’

‘Come on, Seb!’ He recognised the redhead who’d been so rude to him on the morning of the postmortem. ‘Give us a break! We’re all in this together,
right?’

He cleared his throat and began to lie. ‘Guys, I know as much as you do, no more. Of course I haven’t spoken to Miss Kidd; she’s under interview. I just wanted to find out when
she’s being released, but no one in there’s saying.’

‘Oh piss off, Seb.’ It was the
Sun
reporter. ‘You know more than you’re telling us. How come the police let you in there but are keeping us outside?’

‘Favour from a friend, a contact, that’s all. Much good it did me.’

‘Bollocks. Is it true you and Meriel are having an affair?’

Shit.
Shit.
Someone at the station had leaked.

Seb managed to keep his voice steady.

‘We’re just good friends,’ he said. ‘Colleagues, too. You shouldn’t listen to rumours.’

The
Sun
man sneered. ‘From what I’ve heard it’s a lot more than a rumour and the two of you are a lot more than friends. It’s all over Lake District FM, for
Christ’s sake. Come on, Seb, give it up. What’s going on here? What’s this new evidence they’ve found?’

Seb shook his head. ‘Sorry, mate, but you’re barking up completely the wrong tree. I can’t help you.’

‘You’re not kidding anyone, Richmond.’ Now it was the
Daily Mail.
The woman, a veteran hack who’d been on the paper for decades, had elbowed her way to the front
of the throng. ‘How long have you been screwing her? Did it start before her husband drowned? Did he find out? Is that what’s at the bottom of all this? Are we looking at a crime of
passion here?’

Seb decided the time for politeness was over.

‘Fuck off, Barbara. You’re talking through your arse, as usual. Now piss off out of the way, all of you. I’ve got to get back to work.’

He didn’t think they were going to let him through but at that point a police car pulled up behind him and briefly sounded its klaxon. The pack reluctantly parted and Seb drove onto the
main road and left them all behind, heading for the motorway and Carlisle. He had a lot to discuss with Bob Merryman.

Seb had two principal concerns: the first was whether the station was going to suspend him until all this was over.