Thicker Than Water (24 page)

During the next few weeks, the new order gradually took shape. The Lodge went on the market complete with most of its contents, and sold almost at once. In Surrey, the children were enrolled into a new school, which they’d start in September, only weeks remaining of the summer term. And the adoption procedure was initiated. Over supper one evening, Stephen casually suggested it might be easier if they took the name Firbank – a point he and Pam had agonized over – and to their relieved surprise, there was no protest.

‘We have no one left called Poole,’ Cal remarked, ‘so why not?’

It seemed a cold-blooded reaction, but Pam was grateful for it nonetheless. Meanwhile, Abby rode daily, Jilly joined the tennis club and Cal struck up a friendship with the boy next door, who was much the same age. Pam and Stephen were just allowing themselves to breathe more easily when another blow fell.

It was Pam who answered the phone, one evening as she was preparing dinner.

‘Mrs Firbank? This is Detective Inspector Hargreaves, of the Cumbria Constabulary.’

‘
Detective
Inspector?’ Pam repeated, frowning.

‘That’s right, ma’am. There’s been a development in the investigation into the deaths of your sister and her husband. It appears a foreign substance had been added to the vehicle’s hydraulic fluid chamber.’

Pam stood stock-still, her hand gripping the receiver. ‘A foreign substance?’

She must stop repeating what he said.

‘Some kind of gravel, or shale, that caused a blockage in the pipes. A witness stated that Mr Sheridan drove past him, taking the corner ahead without slowing down. If he’d belatedly tried to do so, he’d realize the brakes weren’t responding, pump the pedal, then yank the handbrake, causing the rear wheels to lock. By the time the witness rounded the corner, the car had ricocheted off the wall and overturned on the far side of the road.’

‘But how could this – shale – have got into the pipes in the first place?’

‘That, madam, is what we’re trying to ascertain.’

Pam gasped as a new and horrifying possibility took shape. ‘You’re not saying it was put in deliberately?’

‘On the evidence, it would seem so.’

‘But that’s just not possible! It must have been when the car overturned on the grass.’

‘That possibility was examined, and, I’m afraid, discarded.’

‘You mean someone deliberately tried to kill them?’ Pam’s voice rose hysterically, and Stephen, coming into the house at that point, hurried over to her, incredulous horror on his face.

‘Possibly not to kill them,’ Hargreaves replied, ‘but certainly to cause an accident.’

‘But who—?’

Stephen took the phone from her hand, swiftly identified himself, and listened intently to what the detective was saying.

Pam, watching his face, saw him frown. ‘Is that really necessary? They’re just beginning to settle down, and . . . Yes, I see. Very well. No, they’re not attending school at the moment. Yes, of course. Two thirty tomorrow? Very well, I’ll prepare them.’

He put the phone down and turned to his wife.

‘They’re not going to interview
the children
?’ she whispered.

‘Just ask if they heard or saw anything suspicious the previous evening. Harold had driven the car that day, and it had been fine then.’

‘Oh, Stephen, why do they have to rake it all up again?’

‘It’s a serious allegation, darling. If they can nail someone for this, they could be facing a murder charge.’ He glanced at her stricken face, and added, ‘Someone from the local police will be round tomorrow.’

Pam sat down suddenly on the stair, looking whitely up at him. ‘You don’t seriously think someone wanted to kill
Beth?
’

‘Not Beth, no, but she didn’t normally go out with Harold, did she? If her battery hadn’t been flat, she’d have used her own car.’

‘So he was the target?’

‘
If
this was a deliberate act, it seems possible.’

She shook her head. ‘This is a nightmare.’

‘I agree. And I’m not looking forward to telling the children.’

The following afternoon, a plain-clothes man and woman came to interview them. The three children sat side by side on the sofa, as expressionless as a row of wooden dummies, Pam thought, frightened for them. She noticed they were all holding hands, and felt her heart contract.

‘Did you know anyone who had a grudge against either of your parents?’ the woman, who’d introduced herself as Sarah, began.

‘
He
wasn’t our parent,’ Cal said stiffly. ‘And no one
ever
had a grudge against Mum.’

‘Your stepfather, then?’ Sarah pursued.

‘A lot of people didn’t like him,’ Jilly said.

‘Anyone in particular?’

She shrugged.

‘The housekeeper, for instance?’

‘You can’t possibly suspect Liza,’ Cal said scornfully. ‘She doesn’t know anything about cars.’

The male officer intervened for the first time. ‘Do you?’ he asked.

Cal stared at him, a small pulse beating at the corner of his eye. ‘What?’

‘Do you know much about cars?’

‘Not really.’

‘About brake fluid, for instance?’

Cal’s hand tightened fractionally on Jilly’s. ‘Is it what makes the brakes work?’

‘Do you know where it’s located?’

Cal shrugged. ‘Under the bonnet?’ Then, meeting the policeman’s eye, he added, ‘Actually, I’m more interested in boats.’

Sarah picked up the questioning. ‘Was anyone else at the house that evening?’

‘Only the gardener,’ Jilly said after a minute.

‘Did he get on with Mr Sheridan?’

Abby looked suddenly frightened. ‘Spencer’s always worked for us, for as long as I can remember.’

‘When your father was alive?’

She nodded.

‘And did he like your stepfather?’

Abby dropped her eyes and did not reply. After several more minutes of unproductive questioning, the children were allowed to leave the room.

Stephen asked with a frown, ‘What’s this about the gardener?’

‘Just following a line of enquiry, sir,’ Sarah replied, as she and her companion rose to their feet. ‘Thank you for your time. You will, of course, be advised of any developments, and in the meantime, if the children remember anything, however unimportant it might seem, do please contact us.’

A few days later, news reached them that Jack Spencer had been arrested on suspicion of double murder.

Pam broke it to the children as gently as possible, but was not surprised when they retreated to the paddock, their replacement for the play area.

Abby was the first to speak. ‘We
have
to tell them!’ she cried. ‘We can’t let poor Spencer take the blame! And it
was
the gravel, Cal! We
did
kill them!’

‘Shut up, Abby!’ Cal said fiercely. ‘Don’t be daft – of course we can’t tell them.’

‘Well, I will!’ Abby said wildly. ‘I—’

Cal seized her wrist in a grip that made her cry out. ‘Oh no, you won’t! Have you forgotten the oath we swore with our blood?’

She stared at him, frightened. ‘But that was when we didn’t think it was our fault!’

‘It was still an oath, and it still holds. Anyway, Spencer didn’t do it, so they can’t prove he did. They’ll have to let him go.’

Abby subsided a little. ‘Are you sure?’

‘’Course. Stands to reason.’

Abby turned to her sister. ‘What do you think, Jilly?’

Jilly, who’d initially panicked when she heard the news, said slowly, ‘I agree with Cal. They’ll have to let Spencer go. All we need do is sit tight.’

‘The children have changed,’ Pam said a little sadly, a week or so later. ‘They’ve grown up too soon and too quickly.’

‘That’s what bereavement does,’ Stephen replied.

‘And another thing: you know how close they were, around the time of the accident? That seems to have changed; they don’t spend so much time together now.’

‘Well, it was the tragedy that brought them together; they never struck me before as being particularly close. Perhaps it’s a sign things are reverting to normal.’

‘But Jilly’s even saying she’d like to board when school starts. Did she tell you?’

‘No, that’s the first I’ve heard of it; but provided there’s a vacancy, there’s no reason why she shouldn’t. They’ve accepted her, after all; she’d only have to switch from being a day girl.’

‘It’s as though she doesn’t want to be with the rest of us,’ Pam said forlornly.

Stephen put an arm round her. ‘I’m sure it’s not that, sweetheart. She needs to find her feet, that’s all, and if she thinks this would help, we can’t deny her the chance.’

The item was at the foot of the front page, and it was Jilly who, having retrieved the newspaper from the mat, was the first to see it.

Pam looked up sharply at her strangled gasp. ‘What is it, darling?’

When she didn’t reply, the rest of them crowded round, peering over her shoulder.
CUMBRIA DOUBLE
-
MURDER SUSPECT FOUND HANGED IN CELL
, they read.

Jack Spencer, 49, on remand for the murders of Elizabeth and Harold Sheridan, was found hanging in his cell last night, despite the suicide watch that was being kept on him.

Pam snatched the paper out of Jilly’s hand before they could read more. Glancing anxiously at three deathly-white faces, she said rallyingly, ‘That seems to clinch it, wouldn’t you say? He couldn’t bear the guilt any longer.’

PART V – THE RECKONING

Seventeen

It all started with Mum’s death. Funny, in a way; death’s always thought of as the end, but it proved a beginning for me – the beginning of something Mum could never have foreseen – nor me, neither, come to that.

At that time I’d been at Stockford Grammar three years, and liked it well enough. I got on with the other PE staff, and on the whole the lads I coached were fairly biddable. And I’d hooked up with Patty, who taught modern languages. It wasn’t a grand romance or anything, and though she hinted often enough that she’d like to move in with me, I’d managed to fend her off. The flat was my private domain, and if I had my way, that was how it’d remain. Granted, she stayed overnight at weekends, but I wasn’t ready for anything more permanent. Valued my independence too much.

Mum hadn’t been well for a year or two. Nothing specific – leastways, nothing she let on about – but she was in her sixties and she’d not had an easy life. So my sister Hayley took to visiting more often – did her shopping, drove her to bingo, that kind of thing, and I’d look in from time to time and take her for a pub lunch. Then she had this fall, and after that, she went rapidly downhill.

It was a Saturday morning the call came – early, about seven. Me and Patty were still in bed, but the tone of Hayley’s voice brought me quickly awake.

‘Bry, you have to come to the hospital at once! It’s Mum – she’s taken a turn for the worse.’

‘The General?’ I asked quickly, through the constriction in my throat.

‘Yes. Ward Nine. Please hurry.’

‘Fifteen minutes,’ I said, and rolled out of bed.

Patty’s head appeared above the sheet, tousled, eyes half-shut. ‘What is it?’

‘Mum. I have to go.’ I was already on the way to the bathroom.

I hate hospitals. Always have. Something about the endless corridors and the smell of disinfectant and past meals, and the trolleys rushing round corners.

Mum’s bed was at the end of the ward, screened by a curtain, and I pushed it aside to find Hayley sitting holding her hand. Mum was propped up on God knows how many pillows, and her face was as white as they were. I felt a stab of foreboding as I bent over to kiss her cheek. It was cool and damp.

‘What have you been doing with yourself?’ I asked, with forced jollity.

Mum smiled weakly, but Hayley said, ‘She has something to tell us, Bry. Something important.’

‘OK.’ There was a chair on the far side of the bed, and I went and sat down. ‘Shoot.’

‘This isn’t easy,’ Mum began, and her voice was so faint we had to lean closer. That alarmed me some more, but I hoped it was just that she didn’t want anyone else to hear. ‘It’s – about your dad.’

Hayley and I exchanged a puzzled look. Dad had died when we were kids; I’d have been about eight, Hayley only six.

‘I don’t know how much you remember,’ Mum went on, in that thread of a voice, and Hayley seemed to realize this was a question.

‘Well, just that he was taken ill, and went to hospital, and – died.’

Mum half-lifted her hand, as though in contradiction, then let it fall, and Hayley went on more uncertainly. ‘We left home soon after, and went to live with Uncle Bill and Auntie Madge. And wasn’t that when we changed our name, from Spencer to Reid?’

Mum closed her eyes. ‘Did you ever wonder why? Later, I mean?’

We looked at each other, but found no answer in each other’s faces.

‘Couldn’t afford the rent?’ I ventured.

‘I meant – the name change.’

‘Well, Uncle Bill’s name was Reid. Living with him, it made things – tidier.’

‘And it used to be your name, and all,’ Hayley added. ‘Before you were married.’

Mum shook her head feebly. Seemed we weren’t doing too well. She tried another tack. ‘What do you remember about Dad himself?’

‘He was a gardener,’ I said promptly. ‘Used to take me with him sometimes, after school.’

‘You remember going to the Big House?’

‘Yeah.’ I had a mental picture of a long, sloping garden, with a playground in the far corner. ‘We used to clean the lady’s car,’ I added. Memory stirred. ‘Didn’t something happen to them, the family? A car crash, or something?’

Mum let out her breath in a long sigh. ‘That’s right. Mr and Mrs Sheridan were killed. Someone had tampered with the car, and it went out of control on the lake road.’

Her hand tightened round Hayley’s, gripping it so that her knuckles stood out like pebbles. ‘And your dad was accused of their murder,’ she finished in a rush.

The shock went through me like a lightning bolt, and I saw it reflected on my sister’s face. There was a long silence, while we tried to get our heads round this totally unbelievable statement. Mum was lying back against the pillows, her eyes closed again, as though that last sentence had sapped all that remained of her strength.

Then Hayley said incredulously, for both of us, ‘
Dad
?’

Mum’s eyes trembled open. ‘A more mild-mannered man than your father would be hard to find, and there wasn’t many he didn’t get on with. But Mr Sheridan was always one for criticizing and finding fault. Months it had been going on, and that last day, Jack finally lost his temper. You were there, Bry, though you probably don’t remember. Any road, there were words – some of them overheard by the housekeeper – and the upshot was he got the sack. That night in the pub, he drank too much, started mouthing off about what he’d like to do to Mr Sheridan. And the very next day, the man died.’ She drew a deep breath before adding flatly, ‘They found gravel from your dad’s shed in the brake fluid.’

‘But that doesn’t mean anything!’ Hayley objected, indignant tears in her eyes. ‘Anyone could have put it there!’

‘Point is, love, they couldn’t. That shed was kept locked, so the kids couldn’t get at the weed-killer and such. Your dad had the key.’

My heart was pulsing in my throat as I put in my own two penn’orth in Dad’s defence. ‘But he’d never have done a thing like that.’

‘Course he wouldn’t.’ Mum’s voice was briefly stronger. ‘But the worst part – the absolutely worst – was that they locked him up, and you know he couldn’t stand that. Remember how we could never shut doors in the house, no matter how cold it was?’

She smiled briefly. ‘Even at the pub, his pals grumbled they had to sit outside till they were near frozen, and when forced to go in, he always sat by the door, so he could get out quick if need be. Claustrophobia, they call it. I tried to tell them at the police station, but they thought I was making excuses.

‘He was never charged, mind you, only on remand, but it was double murder so they wouldn’t grant him bail. And he’d made a scene when they took him to the cell, lashing out, like. It was panic, of course, but they called it “assaulting a police officer”. I swore to him it wouldn’t be for long, that I’d get up a petition, but he was near out of his mind, shut up like that. And next thing, he – he went and hanged himself.’

We both stared at her, our world falling apart and reforming in a totally unfamiliar pattern.

‘They’d taken away his belt,’ Mum went on in a whisper, ‘even the laces from his shoes, but he were that desperate, he ripped the sleeve out of his shirt and tore it into strips. Didn’t take much – his feet were only two inches from the floor.’ She drew a deep breath. ‘Well, they took that as proof, didn’t they? Remorse, they said, and no matter how often I explained, no one believed me. They closed the case and never even looked for no one else.’

‘You mean—’ Hayley’s voice croaked and she started again. ‘You mean the real killer never came forward? Let Dad take the rap for it?’

‘That’s exactly what I mean. One thing’s for sure: whoever killed the Sheridans also killed your dad. As surely as if they’d knotted that sleeve round his neck.’

Her words hung on the air, bitter and accusatory. Then, heavily, she went on. ‘So – we packed up and left Scarthorpe. I wasn’t having people pointing you out as a murderer’s kids, and I changed our name for the same reason, apologizing in my heart to Jack. But “Spencer” was on everyone’s lips, and I had to protect you.’

‘Oh, Mum!’ Hayley said softly, tears raining down her cheeks.

‘I tried to get Bill to do something . . . clear Jack’s name . . . but he didn’t want the bother.’ She was speaking less fluently now, with pauses between words, as though she needed to keep building up her strength. ‘Said he was . . . doing his bit . . . giving us a home . . . and anything else . . . was a waste of time . . . and wouldn’t help Jack any road. He might have been . . . my brother . . . but him and Madge made it . . . clear . . . we were a nuisance. As right enough we were . . . the three of us, landed on them. But it weren’t for charity. We paid our way . . . even though it meant keeping two jobs going.’

Her words brought back those cramped quarters over my uncle’s pub, the noise in the evenings when we were trying to sleep – bellows of raucous laughter, singing, and sometimes raised voices and the sound of crashing glass. Mum worked day shifts in a shoe factory, and as she helped out in the pub in the evenings, we hardly ever saw her. She’d come late at night into the room we all shared, white with exhaustion, and just fall into bed. As kids, we’d accepted it as part of our changed lives, never realizing the agony that lay behind it.

I put my hand over her free one. ‘You did us proud, Mum,’ I said, my voice choked, and she gently squeezed mine in acknowledgment.

The curtain was pulled aside and a nurse stood there, frowning down at us.

‘Your mother’s tired,’ she said briskly. ‘She needs to sleep now. We’ll let you know if there’s any change.’

Reluctantly, since we couldn’t argue the point, Hayley and I stood, bending from opposite sides of the bed to kiss Mum goodbye. I glanced back as the nurse held the curtain for us, but her head was turned away and her eyes shut.

Realizing Hayley was sobbing quietly, I took her arm and led her down the long ward past the rows of beds, some of whose occupants stared at us curiously. Out in the car park she dabbed her eyes.

‘Can you come back to ours, Bry?’ she asked. ‘We need to talk this through.’

I’d been thinking the same thing. I pulled out my mobile, pressed the button for Patty’s, and her still-sleepy voice answered me. Patty would have stayed in bed all weekend, given the chance.

‘I’m not coming straight home,’ I said. ‘I’m going back to Hayley’s. Can you let yourself out? I’ll give you a bell later.’

‘OK.’ Always acquiescent, was Patty, accepting anything I said. Most of the time I liked it, sometimes it irritated me. ‘How’s your mum?’ she added.

‘Not good,’ I said briefly, and rang off.

My mind was spinning as I followed Hayley’s blue Focus out of the hospital car park and along the crowded Saturday streets, where market stalls narrowed the pavements, and people wandered heedlessly on to the road. We’d been hit with two shocks in the space of as many minutes – a double whammy. First, Dad had been accused of murder – shy, quiet Dad – and second, he’d topped himself. Neither seemed even remotely possible. And added to all that was a gnawing worry about Mum; she’d looked so much worse than when I’d last seen her, some ten days since.

Ten minutes later, we were drawing up outside the little semi where my sister lived with her husband and kid. There was a trike in the small front garden, and an abandoned doll. Hayley, going up the path ahead of me, stopped and retrieved the doll, carrying it with her into the house.

As we came into the hall, Gary appeared from the kitchen, a tea towel in his hand. Good about the house, was Gary; Hayley always said so.

‘How is she?’ he asked, putting an arm round his wife as she stumbled against him.

‘Pretty poorly,’ she replied, ‘but that’s not the half of it.’ She looked at me over her shoulder, and I knew she was asking permission to tell him what we’d learned. I nodded; Gary had been part of the family for the past seven years.

‘Where’s Jade?’

‘In the back garden, playing with Jasmine.’ The kid next door, and Jade’s best mate.

We moved by mutual agreement into the kitchen. Through the window, we could see the two little girls in the Wendy House, having what appeared to be a toys’ tea party. Gary and I sat at the table while Hayley made instant coffee. None of us spoke until she joined us at the table, distributing mugs.

Then Gary, looking from one of us to the other, said, ‘Well, what is it?’

Hayley reached for a handkerchief. ‘You tell him, Bry.’