Under a Silent Moon: A Novel (43 page)

Flora thought about it. She thought about Petrie, the weaselly little shit, with his hands on Polly. Her brain was working better now. The alcohol, maybe. Gradually things were starting to make sense.

“You said . . . you said to that man, who was in here yesterday. You said that he’d seen something. You were talking about Petrie. You said, ‘You’d be mental too, if you’d seen what he’d seen.’ What was that all about?”

Nigel didn’t answer. He was swilling whiskey round his mouth as if it were mouthwash before swallowing it in big gulps. His glass, once again, was empty. He reached for the bottle, refilled his glass, and put it back on the table between them.

“Dad? What did you mean?”

“Petrie was acting up the next day. Excitable. I thought it was just because he’d had a late night. Then, when all the police were here in the afternoon he told me he’d seen all the blood.”

“What?”

“I asked him what he meant. He said he’d been in to see Polly, early. He used to pick her up on the way to the stables sometimes, did you know that? He said he’d gone in the back door and seen the blood. He said he’d been scared and had gone home for a few hours.”

“Dad, why didn’t you tell the police?”

“Oh, have a word with yourself, Flora. The kid knows way too much about the business. Think he’d just stick to what he’s told to say?”

“So what did you do?”

“What do you think? I told him he’d imagined it and sent him home.”

“He
imagined
it? Are you serious?”

Nigel laughed briefly. “I know. But it seemed to work. On Saturday I went round and had a long conversation with him and his dad, made our position clear. He’s been all right since then.”

There was another question she needed to ask, something that had been plaguing her for days.

“You know Mum thinks you’re Polly’s—”

“I know what your mother thinks. She’s got this idea in her head that I had an affair with Cassandra Leuchars and Polly was the result. Right?”

Flora nodded.

“I don’t know, is the honest answer. Cassandra told us all that Polly was conceived after she came back to the U.K., that she went and got herself pregnant thanks to some donor center, or whatever they call it. We didn’t see her again for nearly three years because they went off to the States and I didn’t think any more of it. Look, does it even matter?”

Her mouth dropped open. “Of course it fucking matters! Are you
mad
?”

“Flora,” he said. “Don’t raise your voice.”

“You were screwing her, Dad, and I was in love with her. She could have been your daughter! She could have been my sister!”

He sighed, so calm, so matter-of-fact. “It’s incredibly unlikely. I only slept with her mother once or twice, and believe me Cass Leuchars was sleeping with absolutely bloody everyone. And it’s not as if I wasn’t careful. Do you have any more questions, Flora, because this subject is now closed.”

Flora gritted her teeth. He’d taken advantage of Polly, hadn’t he? He might have told her that their relationship had been sexual only in the last few months, but why should she believe him? He might have been abusing her for years. They’d all taken advantage of her, hadn’t they? All the people she’d gotten involved with. They’d all been prepared to take whatever Polly gave, because she was generous and kind and loving and she had so much love it was spilling out of her, love and pleasure and desire. And none of them had been there when Polly needed them. None of them.

Not even Flora.

“We had a deal, Flora.” Nigel’s voice was perfectly calm. “Now I expect you to go and get me those items. Come straight back here and there will be no more said about it. Understand?”

She stood up, unsteadily. She was clearly in no fit state to drive, but he let her go. The air outside the barn was colder, the breeze bringing her back to life again. It wasn’t far to the studio. The chances were, she might pass only one or two cars on the way.

11:49

It was a relief, in the end.

They took Brian back to his cell and shut the door, locked it. It wasn’t silent, it wasn’t even quiet, he could hear shouting from somewhere further down the corridor, the officers laughing and joking at the desk, but it was good to be alone for a moment.

He hadn’t cried in years. He hadn’t cried when Barbara died, he hadn’t felt much need to cry with pain or self-pity when he’d been in the hospital, even though he’d felt plenty of both. But he cried in his cell. Shoulders shaking, tears squeezing from between tightly closed eyelids, face in his hands.

Just a few moments, that was enough. He pulled himself together quickly.
Can’t go there, no point.

The cell door opened again and they brought him food, pasta with some sort of sauce, a bread roll, a yogurt, and a paper cup of water.

“All right, Brian?” the custody officer asked him. “Want any magazines, anything like that?”

He shook his head, accepting the tray onto the plastic mattress next to him.

“Can I see my daughter?”

“I’ll see if I can sort something out. But you’re feeling all right? You don’t need the nurse?”

The nurse—oh God, the nurse! He’d be perfectly happy if he never saw the woman again, heart attack or no heart attack.

The officer went away again. They’d already explained all the rules to him, what he could expect from them. He had been charged with the murder of his wife and he was to be taken to the Magistrate’s Court tomorrow morning. There was no likelihood of bail. Seeing the magistrate was going to be amusing, Brian thought. He knew most of them; some of them he counted among his close friends.

The food remained untouched next to him. It smelled odd, synthetic. Even the water, when he got close to it, had a metallic odor that put him off.

In the end, he had decided it would be better all round if he told the truth about what he’d done. He was so tired, in any case, so fed up with the whole thing. He could not even blame it on a momentary lapse of judgment because there had been so many of them over the years, starting with the first time he was unfaithful to his first wife, to Jean, Taryn’s mother. Because once you’d done it once, no point not doing it again, was there? If he’d remained faithful, he would never have misbehaved with Polly, he would never have met Suzanne, and when he’d argued with his wife and she had fallen, he would not have allowed himself to be persuaded that killing her instead of calling an ambulance was the best course of action.

Once the admission had been made, Simon McGrath, who had been almost jumping out of his seat, changed his stance toward damage limitation, told him exactly what he might expect and how he could still get off with a lighter sentence, particularly if there was evidence that he had been coerced into this course of action by his partner.

Tired of it, so tired. He listened to McGrath and nodded, and then went ahead and answered their questions anyway.

The woman who was doing most of the questioning, with the hint of a Brummie accent, did not give anything away. The man beside her straightened in his chair, flushed, and began to fidget as Brian explained what had happened, bit by bit. Every time they asked him a question in relation to Suzanne, that would have implicated her in any of it, he answered with a “no comment.”

No comment, nothing to say about that. No comment . . .

He owed her nothing, but he felt safer to leave her out of it. Taking the blame for Barbara at least meant he didn’t have to see Suzanne again, didn’t have to confront her, feel the force of her disapproval.

It ended with more questions about Polly.

“I don’t know anything about that,” he’d said.

“Did you see Polly that night?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Brian,” Sam Hollands had said. “Let’s not start that again.”

He waited for the question, looking at them both.

“We have fingerprints in Polly’s car—on the steering wheel, the handbrake, and the gearstick, among other places—which have been identified as yours. So the evidence suggests that at some point recently you drove Polly’s car. What can you tell us about that?”

He had had to provide his fingerprints, along with a cheek swab, a search, and the loss of the last vestiges of his dignity when he’d been brought in. He hadn’t even thought about it.

He took his time answering, considered making up some story about helping her to park the car earlier in the week, but there was no point. He wanted to get it all over with. The trick of it was figuring out what to say without going into detail.

“I saw Polly in town. She was upset because she had arranged to meet a friend who had not turned up and I offered to drive her home, because I thought she might have been drinking. So I drove her home.”

“Which friend?”

“She didn’t say.”

“Come on, Brian. You drove her some distance and she was upset, but she didn’t say who had upset her?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Where did you meet her?”

“In town, somewhere. I don’t remember.”

Sam Hollands had paused then, checked her notes, taken her time with the next question. He took the opportunity to fill the pause, hoping that this would deflect her attention away from Suzanne.

“When we got back to Morden there was a lorry blocking the drive to Yonder Cottage, so I pulled in to the drive of the Barn, across the road, and got out of the car to see what was going on. Polly climbed into the driver’s seat and drove up the road to go in the other drive, the one that leads to the farmhouse. That was the last I saw of her.”

“What time was this, Brian?”

“I don’t know. Late. Half-past eleven, maybe twelve.”

“And what did you do then?”

“I went home and had a bath, as I said.”

There were more questions about Polly. They explained to him about the shot put, suggesting he had taken it to the quarry and thrown it over. He had not. They explained that they believed it was possible he had killed Polly in order to frame Barbara for murder. He had done nothing of the kind.

Time passed. They were still having regular breaks, but now they took him back to his cell, leaving the nurse outside, for which he was grateful. She kept checking his blood pressure and that was about it.

When they charged him with Barbara’s murder, it was a relief. Now he would get some peace, he would be able to rest.

He picked up the tray of food, which had long since grown cold, and moved it over to the floor beside the cell door. He moved like an old man because sitting in one position had made him stiff and his shoulder twinged when he bent down with the tray. Then he went back to the bed and lay down on his side. Everything was uncomfortable, but he was going to have to start learning to put up with it.

Soon he would get to see Taryn again, at least. The thought of that made him smile. The only thing he had left now was her.

12:14

Hamilton had had a queasy, off feeling all morning. This wasn’t like him. Yes, he was a player. Yes, he liked flirting and misbehaving when the opportunity presented itself—but this was a whole new ball game. The situation, which had started with her telling him about Brian’s calculated plan to get rid of his wife—which back then had seemed almost straightforward—was now beginning to feel uncomfortable. He was used to working as part of a team. This new policy of going it alone—which admittedly was brought about by his own failure to behave himself—was not sitting well.

Karen and the kids had gone round to visit her sister, and although he had promised to stay home and put some things in the loft, he found himself pacing the living room, trying to find the way to get himself out of the mess.

In the end, he dialed Lou’s number, half-expecting to get her voice mail. But she answered.

“Andy?”

“Sorry to bother you, Boss,” he said, keeping his tone light. “Just wondering how it went this morning.”

He could hear the sound of her heels on a linoleum floor. That meant she was in a custody suite, probably Briarstone nick.

“All fine so far.”

“Has he said anything?”

“We’ve just charged him. He’s admitted to killing his wife—accidentally. Nothing about Polly.”

“What about that woman he was seeing?”

“No comment to that. He’s having a rest now while we get everything ready for the magistrate tomorrow morning.”

This was the moment he should have told her what was going on. Not ideal to do it over the phone, but equally the longer he went on like this, the worse it would be once the suits at Professional Standards got hold of him.

“Is everything okay with you?” Lou asked. The faint echo had gone; she must have got herself into an office.

“Yeah, yeah. I think—I don’t know—I might have a few answers.”

“About what?”

“A—a few loose ends. It can wait until tomorrow morning.” Brian would get charged no matter what. Nothing Andy told them now would affect the visit to the magistrate tomorrow anyway. Better to think everything through, plan how to tackle it. Make sure he had all the facts.

“Andy, I don’t like being kept in the dark. You know that. If you want to talk to me about it—”

“No, no. Honestly, it’s fine. I’ll be in tomorrow, we can talk then.”

And after he’d rung off, there had been nothing left to do but get into his car and drive across town. He parked outside 14 Waterside Gardens. And before he could talk himself out of it, he was knocking on her door.

Suzanne opened the door promptly, as if she’d been expecting him, and let him inside. She was dressed in smart black jeans, a beige cashmere sweater, simple gold earrings. As always, she looked calm.

“No uniform today?” he said, trying to sound jovial.

“It’s my day off,” she said. “I was half-expecting to see you, Inspector. I wanted to make sure I was appropriately dressed.”

“I came to tell you Brian’s been charged. He’s admitted to dumping Barbara Fletcher-Norman in the quarry.”

Suzanne looked up at him sharply. “Really? Good heavens.”

“Don’t worry. He refused to answer any questions relating to you.”

That made her smile. “Good for him.”

“There wasn’t enough evidence to charge him with Polly’s murder, though.”