Forty-Eight

Archie is resting in bed. Jackie and I finally persuaded him to go upstairs with us after she gave him some of the sedative that the doctor left, disguised in chocolate milk. Even though he’s a child and incapable of making choices about his own health, I feel bad about tricking him with the drugs. He’s taken too many drugs in his life, most of them, I suspect, of no benefit to him whatsoever. I leave Jackie sitting beside his bed, holding his hand as he dozes. I grit my teeth, knowing that now I have to run the gauntlet of another interview with DI Yates. Sentance will be here soon, too. And Jean, I suppose. I must think clearly. What I have to do now is close this whole thing down as soon as possible so that I can take Archie away. We can start again together. I’m determined to make him trust me and I’m equally resolved to make him happy. It’s strange that for so many years I was desperate to create an heir, obsessed with the thought that if Joanna couldn’t conceive there would be no-one to take over the business. De Vries Industries! Why would I wish them on anyone, let alone my own son? I’ll divest myself of them as soon as I can and move away from the murk of this Fenland village, the sinister gloom of this house. Archie and I will find somewhere glorious to live in the sun.

I stand for a few moments on the landing, and listen. Jackie is humming to Archie, a wordless crooning to soothe him. He makes no sound. I hope that he is already asleep.

I’m mildly irritated when I enter the drawing-room to discover that DI Yates is no longer there. I’d assumed that the man would have had the courtesy to tell me if he was leaving, but there’s no telling, of course. He strikes me as less uncouth than most of the policemen I’ve met, even so. I glance across the room and see that the small attaché case that he carries is lying on the sofa. Unlikely that he’s left completely, then, but where has he gone? I suppose that he may have returned to the cellar, even though he told me it should be left sealed until the forensic woman can come back. I’m about to retrace my steps when I see him outside, standing close to the bay window. He’s talking to someone. I crane my neck a little and see that it is Jean. She’s looking agitated, which is out of character. I shouldn’t have involved Jean in any of this. It cuts too close to the bone with her. And I know she’s an inveterate schemer. God knows what might be going through her mind, now that Joanna’s died.

She catches my eye momentarily and looks away. The detective takes hold of her arm. He seems to be persuading her to come into the house, which in itself is odd: she doesn’t usually need any encouragement. I decide to stay put and wait for them to show up.

A couple of minutes later, there’s a knock at the door. It’s the detective’s notion of being polite, I guess; I doubt if Jean would have bothered if she’d been on her own.

“Come!” I say, taking an ironic pleasure in sounding like my pompous headmaster when I was at the Grammar School.

They enter the room together. Yates is looking puzzled and Jean is decidedly flustered. I note that she’s more appropriately dressed than usual, in a sober black suit with a skirt that reaches the knee. Out of respect for Joanna? More likely she wants me to believe this is her reason.

“How is your son?” the detective asks.

“He’s upstairs with Mrs Briggs. With any luck she’s managed to get him off to sleep. He’s very distressed, as I’m sure you could see.” I turn to Jean. “When did you say that you asked Sentance to come here? There are several things that I want him to deal with as quickly as possible.”

Jean looks at me without speaking. It’s a look I can’t read: stricken, or mutinous? It’s hard to say, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen her like this before.

“What’s the matter?”

“It’s Tony Sentance,” she says eventually. “I think he’s disappeared.”

“What do you mean, disappeared? As in absconded? If so, why would he? I don’t understand.”

I see that the detective is watching me very closely. Does he know I’m hamming it up a bit? But it’s Jean who speaks next.

“Kevan, I’m not sure what’s happening. I think Tony’s involved in more than we realise. There’s quite a lot of money missing – I think maybe even . . .”

“Forget about the money, Jean. It’s not important. As long as Archie and I have enough to live on in comfort, that’s all that concerns me. And if I never have to clap eyes on Sentance again, so much the better. You’d better make sure all the bank accounts are closed against his signature, so that he can’t take any more.”

“I’ve done that already.”

It’s impossible not to admire the woman. I shoot her an appreciative glance before I turn back to the policeman.

“DI Yates, as it seems we are both unable to see Sentance this afternoon, perhaps you wouldn’t mind leaving me in peace? I’d really rather spend the rest of the day with my son, if it’s all the same to you. Perhaps you’d care to come back when your Professor Salkeld has established why Joanna . . . the cause of death.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but I’m afraid I do have to continue with my enquiries. It’s become a matter of urgency. We don’t have any proof yet, but we suspect that Tony Sentance is somehow involved in the death of the girl whose body was found in Sandringham woods a few days ago. One of my officers is on his way to interview the supervisors at your Sutton Bridge plant again now. If our suspicions are correct, the passports that were found in your cellar may be linked to her murder as well. We still don’t know the girl’s identity, but she was probably from one of the Eastern European countries. Forged passports can be used to get people into the country as well as out of it.”

“Well, I’m sorry, but it’s nothing to do with me. I’ve told you before that I know nothing about the passports and I don’t have any relevant Eastern European connections.”

“I see,” says DI Yates. “In that case, I’ll leave you in peace, as you request. If, when you’ve thought about it, you can come up with any ideas about where Tony Sentance is, or where he might be heading, I’d appreciate your letting us know. There’s a possibility that another girl may be at risk. I shall put checks on all the ports and airports. I think it’s likely he’ll be trying to leave the country. And we shall get to the bottom of this, sir. I’m sure Ms Rook will be able to tell you about the penalties for obstructing the police and perverting the course of justice.”

There is another uncomfortable silence. The last thing I want is some little slut’s death on my conscience. Much more importantly, nothing must hinder me now from taking Archie away from here. But Sentance, a murderer? A dishonest and avaricious little crook, certainly. But I’d never have thought him capable of murder. I doubt he’d have the guts, for one thing.

“Kevan, I think you should tell DI Yates about Archie now.”

Jean’s voice breaks in on my thoughts. I am incredulous when I take in what she is saying.

“What are you trying to say, Jean? Everything that you know about my family and my business is confidential. Besides, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Jean looks at me with stricken eyes. For an instant, I think I see real devotion there, before she brings down the shutters.

“For God’s sake, Kevan, stop incriminating yourself unnecessarily by sticking to a few stupid lies. All you’re succeeding in doing is convincing the police you’re mixed up in whatever it is that Tony Sentance has been up to. DI Yates has already been checking up on Archie. He’s failed to find any proper record of his birth. Now, do you want to tell him the truth? Because if you’ll take my advice, it will be your best option if you really care about Archie’s future.”

I suddenly feel quite weak. I sit down on the sofa.

“Are you all right, sir? Would you like me to fetch you some water?”

“No, thank you. I’ll tell you about Archie. Just give me a minute.”

“Please, take your time.”

I draw a few deep breaths. Will this nightmare never end? Surely they can’t take Archie away from me now. I start at the beginning, or as close to it as I think they need to know.

“Joanna and I married young. She was bright, but she chose to marry me rather than go to university. From the financial point of view, she didn’t need to develop a career, though I think she always rather regretted not doing. Like my mother, she got involved in working for quite a few charities. She was particularly interested in helping childless women. At first, it had nothing to do with the fact that she was childless herself. She was very young and we had no idea that she would be unable to conceive, although we never practised any kind of birth control.

“Eventually, when we’d been married for several years, she went to see a doctor. He carried out some tests and discovered that she had leukaemia. As you can imagine, we were horrified. Of course, I was able to pay for the best specialists and the disease then seemed to stabilise. It isn’t the death sentence that it used to be – not always, anyway.

“Her illness was, however, responsible for her infertility. I was desperate to have an heir to carry on the businesses and she craved a child just as badly. IVF was out of the question – no legitimate provider would have helped a woman with Joanna’s medical problems and even if they had it would have been irresponsible to try. So we agreed we would adopt a child, though I have to admit that for me it always seemed a second-best option. Joanna disagreed; she said she knew right from the start that she could love an adopted child as much as if it had been her own.

“We were both surprised to find that no UK adoption society would help us. We were still only in our early thirties. We obviously had the means to support a child. And Joanna’s medication was working. She’d been stable for several years by this time. But we were told that the societies wouldn’t allow a child to be adopted unless they believed that both parents would live to see it reach adulthood. We believed we could fulfil this requirement; they disagreed. We tried every argument we could think of, but it was of no use. We were devastated – Joanna, particularly. I was worried that the disappointment might have a detrimental effect on her health.

“During the same period, de Vries Industries was expanding rapidly. As well as enlarging the existing food-packing and canning plants, we’d opened a new canning plant and one for chilled and frozen foods. There was always a glut of seasonal work in the main harvesting periods – from May to September – and we were beginning to exhaust the supply of regular local workers. There was some student labour available during the summer, but not enough, and most students didn’t want to work for the whole of their vacation. We employed some gangs of land-women, but they were notoriously unreliable and could be disruptive: there were sometimes fights in the plants between rival gangs.

“We already had an arrangement with the Maltese government by which we employed about fifty women on a seasonal basis. We paid their fares and provided them with Portakabin accommodation close to the Spalding packing plant. We also paid some of our own employees to take Irish students as lodgers for three months in the summer. Both of these schemes proved to be quite successful. Sentance suggested that he should build on them by trying to recruit seasonal staff from Eastern Europe. He mentioned Romania and Albania particularly. I should have smelt a rat then, because I’ve always operated on my grandfather’s principle that a fair day’s work is worth a fair day’s pay, so if I’d thought about it I’d have realised that we’d have been as likely to attract staff from within the EU as from outside it. Anyway, I can only conclude that I didn’t pay enough attention. I was probably distracted by the whole adoption thing. I gave Sentance permission to go and suss it out.

“When he came back, he asked if he could visit us at Laurieston. He didn’t come to the house as much then as in recent years, even though I got on much better with him at that time. I was a bit surprised, particularly as he made it clear that he wanted to see Joanna as well, but we agreed to see him.

“He told us he’d been to an orphanage in Romania. There would be quite a lot of red tape involved, but he thought he might be able to come to an arrangement with the authorities to take girls who’d reached the age of sixteen who had grown up in orphanages there. There might be some boys as well, but from what he’d seen the girls were more tractable and more likely to make good workers.

“I was dubious about this. We’ve always employed school leavers, but to put whole groups of young teenagers on the payroll, especially if they couldn’t speak English and were from a deprived background, struck me as rash and probably unworkable. What would happen if they proved not to be suitable employee material? Who would be responsible for them while they were still officially minors?

“Sentance danced around the point quite a bit in that ingratiating way he has. He was wringing his hands nervously. I could see he was directing his comments much more at Joanna than at me, even though she had little to do with the day-to-day running of the businesses. He finally blurted out that he had been appalled by the conditions he’d seen in the orphanages; that there were little babies lying in cots all day, some of them in filthy conditions, all of them underfed and under-stimulated. He was watching Joanna’s face all the time. Once he’d mentioned the babies, he had her rapt attention.

“He said, knowing that we were interested in adoption, that he’d made enquiries, but he’d been advised it would be extremely difficult. There was a lot of red tape involved. It could take three years, possibly more, to get a child out of a place like that legally; even if it happened, which it might not, by then the damage would have been done. He said he’d made some ‘reliable contacts’, who had offered to help. He asked us if we’d like him to use these contacts to ‘spirit a child away’, as he put it. Of course, these contacts would have to be paid. They’d be taking a big risk for us, and they’d have to put in some painstaking work in order to succeed.

“I was very angry. I told him I was furious he’d come to our home in order to suggest that we should commit a crime and even more incensed that he’d dared to raise Joanna’s hopes in this way. I suppose it was inevitable that Joanna took a different view. She asked me quite abruptly to stop shouting at Sentance, pointing out that he was only trying to help, while he cast down his eyes and grovelled and muttered that no offence had been taken. He said that he quite understood my concerns, but that he would ‘leave it with us’. If we should change our minds, the ‘door was still open’. You may have noticed that Sentance loves trotting out these platitudes. They make my blood boil.

“As soon as he’d gone, Joanna began to work on me. She said Sentance had our best interests at heart: we should be grateful that he was prepared to run such a risk for us and that we should take his offer seriously. It might be our only chance ever to have the child we longed for and it would save at least one orphan from an appalling childhood.

“It took a long time, but, to cut a long story short, eventually I gave in. Archie was the result. He was a beautiful baby and we had a few happy years with him before he began to display symptoms of being unwell. He was diagnosed as severely autistic. At about the same time, Joanna’s condition de-stabilised again and has been volatile ever since, though it was only during the last year that we were told her case was hopeless. When Archie was five, it became obvious that he would not be able to attend an ordinary school. Until we went to St Lucia, he was a weekly boarder at a special school in Sleaford. He’s now been a full boarder for the past two weeks, but I’ve just removed him from the school. I intend to obtain specialist support to help look after him myself.”

To my surprise, as I finish my story and look DI Yates full in the face, I see that his eyes are moist with compassion. It is a dangerous moment. It won’t take much to make me break down. He swallows.

“Thank you, sir,” he says. “I realise that it took a huge effort for you to tell me all of that, and I appreciate it. Of course I have questions, but most of them will keep. There’s just one thing I’d like to know now.”

“Yes?”

“What kind of relationship does – did – Tony Sentance have with Mrs de Vries?”

“You mean, after he brought Archie to us? Joanna was always prepared to overlook Sentance’s faults. I don’t think that she liked him, any more than I do, but she tended to show him respect. I always wondered . . .”

I hesitate. I know that I shall loathe myself forever if I sully Joanna’s name, whether justly or unjustly.

“Please go on, sir. It might help us to apprehend Sentance.”

“I always wondered if she enlisted his help to get babies for some of the other women involved in that charity.”

“How much did you pay Sentance and his ‘contacts’ for Archie?”

“£50,000, initially. But Sentance has had free access to an account that was specially set up to provide Archie with regular papers. Although he’s nine now, we still haven’t managed to do this. Sentance keeps on saying that there are hitches. Every time one of these ‘hitches’ cropped up, Joanna was terrified that we would lose Archie. Sentance was always told that we would pay whatever it took. Sentance is a signatory to most of the business accounts, too. Those are the ones that Jean has just barred him from.”

Jean nods. “And from the special one, too. I thought you would want me to do that.”

DI Yates cuts in. “Romania is now an EU member.”

“I know that – and now that people from Romania and Bulgaria have the freedom to work where they like in Europe, we have plans to develop a small capsule workforce from there and see how it goes.”

“So nothing came of the idea of employing teenage girls from the orphanages?”

“No. It was too risky.”

“The forged passports couldn’t have been intended to help such girls get into the country?”

Jean doesn’t give me time to answer.

“You can’t expect Kevan to comment on that, DI Yates. He’s already told you he knows nothing about the passports.”

“Quite. Just one last question. Do you have any idea at all where Tony Sentance might be at the moment?”

“No. But if I were him, I’d be heading for Hull, for the ferry. If he is in serious trouble with the law, I’d say his best chance would be to head as far East as possible, quite possibly using our own transport on a regular route of ours.”