Joanna scanned the room. This was how she liked her officers: awake, alert and, above all, eager. All except Hesketh-Brown, who looked a little bleary-eyed and was doing his best to disguise a yawn as a cough. She could forgive him. He had a little baby, Tanya, who had the habit of keeping Danny and Betsy, his wife, up for much of the night. Lately he had looked permanently tired. But studying the others’ expressions she knew they would work doggedly and keep working until they’d got right to the bottom of this.
She turned to the whiteboard and began briskly. ‘So, we’ll begin with you, Bridget and Phil. I think you were going to tackle the two ex-husbands and Rolf Van Eelen, as well as speak to Mrs Weeks’ solicitor about her will.’
Phil spoke up for both of them. He’d always been keen to join the plain-clothes branch and had only recently moved to the detective force from uniformed. Joanna smothered a smile. The newly created Detective Constable Scott was still intent on proving himself and self-conscious enough to blush like a virgin when addressing his colleagues.
He cleared his throat, looked around to make sure he had everyone’s attention, and began. ‘We spoke to Mrs Weeks’ solicitor,’ he said, ‘a Mr Claude Drake from Battersea. As Timony died intestate and she had no other close relatives he’s confirmed that Mr Rolf Van Eelen will be cited as her next of kin. There’ll be nobody to contest it so he’ll probably get everything as they were never divorced.’ He grinned. ‘There’s not quite as much as Mr Van Eelen might have hoped. Apart from the farmhouse Mrs Weeks didn’t have a lot of assets. In fact she might have struggled to hang on to the farmhouse. According to Mr Drake she wasn’t exactly careful with her money. And then – his words not mine – there were Mrs Tong’s wages to be paid.’
Joanna felt her expression change. She had not asked about or considered the companion’s wages.
‘Did he say how much Mrs Tong was paid?’
‘Forty thousand a year plus expenses. But he did add that for that Mrs Tong practically gave up her life.’
‘I see. And the farmhouse – how much is it reckoned to be worth?’
‘Well, naturally, being a solicitor rather than an estate agent he thought that large country properties in this area, with not enough land to viably farm, would probably fetch well under a million. Still …’ He’d found the confidence now to grin at his fellow officers. ‘I wouldn’t mind it.’
There were a few nods of agreement around the room and Phil Scott looked pleased with himself.
WPC Bridget Anderton spoke next. ‘Mr Drake said that he’d tried to persuade Mrs Weeks many times to make a will but she was superstitious and was convinced that it would, somehow or other, hasten her death. He couldn’t make her see that this was nonsense.’ A few people in the room nodded. It fitted in with their opinion of Timony Weeks, a superstitious woman, who wanted to drink from the eternal fountain of youth. Bridget Anderton continued, ‘Mr Drake also pointed out to her that if she died intestate a considerable sum of money might well go somewhere she wouldn’t want – also that the government would take a substantial cut.’
‘Did he actually point out to her that Mr Van Eelen would inherit?’
Bridget shook her head. ‘She assured him that they were divorced so he’d assumed that the lot would go to the State or to some distant relative. Not to Van Eelen.’
It was another of Timony Weeks’ idiosyncrasies. She had lied about Van Eelen. They weren’t divorced at all but still married.
‘So when did he find out that they were still legally married?’
‘Apparently Mrs Tong told him. She rang him yesterday evening.’
Joanna’s toes began to prickle. ‘And did she know that Timony had died intestate?’
‘Apparently not. She rang him to ask about the terms of Timony’s will.’
It got murkier. Joanna wondered if Diana Tong, faithful companion, had expected a little something in return for her doglike fidelity.
‘Right,’ Joanna said. ‘Does the solicitor have a current address for the lucky Mr Van Eelen who has just won life’s lottery? She smiled. ‘Maybe not quite a Rollover but a Win all the same.’
There were a few chuckles around the room.
‘Not a current address, Joanna. The last one he has is a Marbella address, but he said he’d find out where he was now within twenty-four hours.’
Bridget smirked. ‘Somehow I think the idea of inheriting money will soon flush Van Eelen out, waving a flag. Over here. Over here.’ She shimmied her hand in a suitable action.
Joanna smiled at her in agreement. ‘Yep. Money’s a great magnet for finding folk. And Sol Brannigan?’
‘No luck there, sorry.’ Phil Scott gave a tentative grin. ‘We’ll keep on it though.’
‘Did you try the last known address in Brighton?’
‘He left there six months ago and left no forwarding address.’
‘And what about Mr MacWilliam?’
‘Died last week of alcohol-induced cirrhosis of the liver.’
So that let him off the hook.
‘There’s a warning to us all,’ Korpanski muttered darkly at her shoulder. He was already looking irritated with his shadow, Jason, who was bouncing at his side with eagerness.
She turned towards them both. ‘Did you get anywhere yesterday evening?’
Korpanski had secreted Jason in the corner of the barn where they had surfed the Internet for details of Timony’s stalker.
‘The long-lost sister?’ Joanna prompted. ‘I don’t mean the one that died, Kathleen, I mean the one that stalked her.’
‘One and the same,’ Korpanski said, frowning, as though he didn’t quite believe it.
‘What?’ It wasn’t the response she had been expecting.
‘We found some stuff on the Internet and looked in the police files.’ Korpanski winked at Jason Spark, who beamed back. ‘Then we made a couple of phone calls and had a quick word with our mutual friend, Mrs Tong.’ His grin was bordering on cheeky but she didn’t care.
‘Go on.’
‘It was Kathleen who wrote to her from the time her sister left home until the time of her death.’
‘I don’t understand. If she really was her sister why not acknowledge her?’
‘I can only think that Timony’s humble roots were an embarrassment to her.’
‘But they were in regular correspondence?’
Korpanski nodded.
‘Mrs Tong offered nothing about all this.’ She looked at him.
There was something about Korpanski’s face. Deliberately bland. But his eyes were gleaming. Joanna could have punched him in frustration. He was keeping something else up his sleeve.
‘Kathleen Muriel Hook,’ he recited. ‘Born in nineteen thirty-nine. Married nineteen sixty to a Tom Renshaw.’
‘Renshaw?’ Joanna repeated. ‘I don’t suppose …?’
Korpanski gave an irritating and, in Joanna’s opinion, slightly smug, smile. ‘They have one son.’
‘Stuart,’ Joanna supplied. ‘So she’s kept in touch with her nephew.’
Korpanski prompted Jason with a nod. ‘Born in nineteen sixty-six,’ Jason said importantly. He had been dying to give this one out. ‘And he was adopted.’
‘Timony would only have been fourteen years old.’
Jason nodded.
‘And she would only have been thirteen when she got pregnant. The father?’
Jason shrugged. ‘Anybody’s guess.’
Joanna wondered who it was. The obvious choice was Gerald. That was her first response. Then she remembered the clip of film she had seen of Sean Butterfield, aka Malcolm Hadleigh. The way he had sat little Lily on his lap, the way his hand had strayed over her knee, the creepy way he had gripped her arm.
She needed to read more of those memoirs. Perhaps all this legwork would then prove unnecessary. All she had to do was to read that book from beginning to end. But would it actually tell her who had killed its author? She shook herself. The rest of the officers were ready and eager to report their findings.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘So let’s move on. Well done, Mike and Jason.’
Special Constable Sparks blushed orange to match his hair while Korpanski grinned a slightly sheepish smile. But his eyes were dark and friendly and for a brief moment she felt the glow of their friendship and camaraderie like a sudden burst of sunshine on a dull day.
She broke away and turned to Danny Hesketh-Brown, who was still yawning. ‘You want a coffee?’
He nodded gratefully.
‘OK, we’ll have a short break and then you can give us your report.’
There was a buzz in the air as they queued up at the drinks machine and filled their cups. While they were drinking Joanna wandered across to the board which held a photograph of Timony Weeks in happier days. It was a wedding photograph taken from the house of her and Van Eelen, the date below 2000. She was beaming into the camera, wearing a short white dress and fresh flowers in her Titian hair which tumbled down her back. It was undoubtedly her most striking feature. And certainly not a wig – not then. She looked lovely. Twelve years ago, at the age of forty-eight, Timony Weeks had been a beautiful woman. The facelift and Botox had frozen her in time but had left her with a strange disparity between her real and apparent age. Even the most skilled scalpel-wielder cannot completely disguise the ravages of time.
Joanna turned her scrutiny to Van Eelen. He was big and blond, with a slightly pudgy face which made him look bloated and dissolute. He also looked calculating and, looking at the body language, Timony rumpling his sleeve as she clutched at his arm, gazing up at him adoringly while he stood, confident. From the body language a few hours into the union Joanna surmised that Van Eelen, Timony’s brand-new husband, was rejecting the contact, his smile aimed not at his new wife but straight into the camera lens. On Timony’s left was a smiling woman, a little younger than her, wearing a raspberry cocktail dress and similar flowers in her hair. Presumably this was the bridesmaid. Joanna unpinned the picture and looked on the back. Me, Rolf and Trixy. So Van Eelen had absconded with the bridesmaid. What a cliché! She looked a sharp-featured, conniving sort of woman. As Joanna studied her smirking face one could almost imagine that she already knew she would end up with the bridegroom. However, Van Eelen had not actually divorced Timony and married her, which might have been laziness on his part or it might have been optimism that Timony would die and he would inherit her money.
But that was all changed now. Timony had a son. Adoption by her sister might have displaced him as her child but he was still her nephew, therefore her next of kin. No wonder Timony had not wanted to publicly acknowledge her sister. Kathleen had held the key to a less-than-savoury period in her little sister’s life. Joanna wondered, for a while, which one of Butterfield’s star cast had been Stuart Renshaw’s father. Whoever he was, he should have gone to prison. Timony had been underage. Whoever had had sex with her, the scandal would have meant the end of his career, possibly the end of the series. Butterfield exposed, not as an idyllic, beautiful and safe place for a child to grow up but somewhere where a child was coerced into having underage sex, persuaded to marry a man old enough to be her grandfather and exposed and humiliated by the very people who were supposed to protect and care for her. Butterfield was not a beautiful place but sordid and ugly.
The officers filed back, a couple reeking of cigarette smoke, a few still nursing mugs of coffee. Joanna was very reflective as she returned to the front of the room. Now that she knew more about the actress she felt slightly guilty at the abrupt way she had dealt with her. But she also wished that Timony had been more honest. Perhaps found the courage to face up to her demons?
‘OK, Danny,’ she said to Hesketh-Brown, revived by the coffee. ‘How did you and Hannah get on with Mrs Tong?’
‘She wasn’t amazingly helpful and she didn’t give us anything we didn’t already know.’
‘What was your impression of her?’
‘Hard to work out,’ Hannah said, frowning. ‘She and Mrs Weeks have been together for years but I really wasn’t sure how fond she was of her.’
‘Did you pick up on any particular animosity or resentment?’
‘No. It seemed more like a grudging admiration, the sort of fond respect you might have for someone you knew very well.’
‘Did she appear very upset by the murder?’
‘Upset, yes. Very, no.’
‘What I’m getting at is could you imagine her shooting her friend?’
They both shook their heads.
‘Can you think of any reason Diana would want her dead?’
Hannah considered the question before answering, shaking her head very slowly. ‘Not that I can imagine. Unless she thought she’d inherit some money.’
It seemed to be a weak motive.
‘Did she talk about her Butterfield days?’
‘A bit. She obviously felt great nostalgic affection for those days.’
‘Mmm.’ Joanna frowned, chewing over the word nostalgic. ‘I don’t suppose she offered any explanation as to who shot Timony or who’s been playing these tricks?’ Something was gnawing into her mind like a rat through a corpse. It released the same stench. Something rotten.
‘She just kept claiming it must be Dariel,’ Hesketh-Brown added wearily. ‘She said he was the only person who had ever wished Timony harm.’
‘Maybe she’s right,’ Joanna said. ‘Maybe it was Dariel.’ She considered this for less than a second before rejecting this too. Too much time had passed from his first attack.
Alan King and Dawn Critchlow shifted on their feet but said nothing. Their turn would come.
Joanna resumed her questions, still searching for something. ‘Did you get a chance to speak to the Rossingtons too?’
‘They weren’t a lot of help either,’ Hannah said, obviously feeling that they had drawn the short straw in the investigation. ‘They seem to come in, do their work and don’t – didn’t – interact much with either Timony or Diana. They don’t appear to have much opinion about anything.’
‘Oh, dear.’
So that was that.
DC Alan King and WPC Dawn Critchlow came next. It was obvious from their brisk demeanour that they did have something to contribute.
Alan King spoke first. ‘We tracked Paul Dariel down to a Care in the Community Hostel in Manchester,’ he said. ‘The person in charge said he’s quiet and withdrawn, very thoughtful and intuitive. She said he’s on medication and isn’t a danger to anyone now. He’s in his late sixties but looked well. She said we’d be perfectly safe so we saw him alone.’
‘Did he tell you why he attacked Timony?’
‘He said that, as a youngster, he was obsessed with her.’
‘Any particular reason?’
‘He said it was because of her purity and innocence.’ King’s eyebrows rose. ‘Those were his exact words.’ he said. ‘Then one day he sensed she’d lost it. She was just pretending to be innocent but it was all fake. She had become a whore.’ He looked apologetic. ‘His words,’ he said quickly.
‘Strong sentiment,’ Joanna said. ‘Go on.’
‘He said her deceit made him mad. He knew she’d lost her purity. Worse,’ he said, ‘he also sensed that she was pregnant.’
Joanna held her hand up. ‘Wait a minute,’ she said. ‘Timony was attacked when?’
‘November, nineteen sixty-five.’
‘And Stuart was born?’
Jason Spark supplied the answer. ‘Late January, nineteen sixty-six.’
‘So Timony was six months pregnant when Dariel attacked her.’ She thought for a moment, remembering. Lily Butterfield had been stick-thin. A six-month pregnancy would have been visible to an obsessive fan. And a little obscene – a child who was about to produce a child?
DC Alan King continued, ‘He said he was enraged.’
‘With her?’
King nodded.
‘And that was why he attacked her?’
‘Yes. He called her his fallen angel. In the aftermath he was arrested. It was a very high-profile case. Subsequently he tried to hang himself in his cell. The verdict was that he was of unsound mind and he was detained under a section of the Mental Health Act, considered a risk both to himself and to the general public. He was finally released in nineteen ninety and has committed no further offences.’
‘Does he still feel angry with Timony?’
Both officers shook their heads.
‘Has he made any effort to contact her since being let out of a secure unit?’
Again, the answer provoked shakes of the head.
‘Does he know where she lives?’
‘No.’ King answered for both of them.
So could she let him off the hook? Had the verdict been correct? Was Dariel no longer a danger to the general public and Timony Weeks in particular? She wished she felt more convinced.
She aimed a questioning glance in Korpanski’s direction and raised her eyebrows. He simply nodded and smiled. And she made her decision. For now, rightly or wrongly, she would focus the investigation elsewhere.
‘Right. Ruthin. You spoke to Stuart Renshaw?’
‘I rang his office,’ PC Paul Ruthin said, ‘and spoke to him.’ He looked uncomfortable. ‘Mr Renshaw said that he was acting for Mrs Weeks, managing some of her affairs.’
‘That might be true,’ Joanna said coolly. ‘I take it he didn’t think to mention that she was also his aunt?’
Ruthin shook his head. ‘No, Inspector,’ he said. ‘He didn’t. He just said he was acting for her in a professional capacity which could have no bearing on her murder. He said he couldn’t help us but would be happy to cooperate in any way he could.’
‘Hmmm,’ Joanna said dubiously, her eyes narrowing. ‘I’ll bet.’ She was only too aware that Timony had deceived her about Renshaw.
The son of a friend? That had been her statement. Oh, no. Much closer to home.
The case would have been so much easier had Timony only been honest with them about her entire past. Maybe if she had she would still be alive. But none of this was taking her any nearer unmasking the killer.
She moved on. ‘And did you have any luck tracking down any of the stolen jewellery?’
‘None of it’s turned up yet,’ Paul Ruthin said. ‘I’ve pasted a notice out to jewellers, checked eBay and spoken to one or two people who can give me information about fences for stolen goods,’ he said. ‘Most of the pieces were distinctive and one of the local dealers in antique jewellery told me those pieces might have already been broken up or melted down. There are a few places who will take precious metals and even stones, no questions asked. Just stuff them in a Jiffy bag.’ He looked apologetic. ‘Sorry, but these days, with the economic downturn, it’s not uncommon for people to raid their jewellery boxes.’
Joanna nodded and tried to suppress her growing irritation. So many factors were making this investigation difficult.
She turned next to Timmis and McBrine. ‘You were looking into the two farmers and our Happy Hikers. Have you got anything to add?’
They blew out their cheeks, unconsciously mirroring her own frustration. ‘No. Both the farmers say they don’t know anything about Mrs Weeks, that they aren’t interested in the property at all, not even in the land, and they can’t help us in any way, because …’ He grinned at his fellow officers and quoted the farmers’ words verbatim and in a broad Staffordshire accent, ‘“We know nowt.”’
‘What about our happy hikers, Roger and Helen Faulkener?’
‘They’ve gone back to London but we managed to contact them on their mobiles. They can’t help us either.’
‘Did you ask them why they chose that particular spot to have their picnic?’
‘Just because they thought it looked a nice place to stop.’ Saul McBrine paused, frowning. ‘Mrs Faulkener, Helen, said it reminded her of somewhere in a film.’
‘How right she is. OK.’ She addressed the entire room. ‘Well done. I think in spite of all the blind alleys we are getting somewhere. It’s just a bit slow. There are still some good lines of enquiry and plenty of work to do.’ She smiled encouragingly round the room, looking at each face in turn, trying to instil confidence in them. ‘Keep at it. We’ll meet again in the morning.’
She turned to her side. ‘Mike, I want you to do something for me. I want to pursue two other lines of enquiry, but low profile. Get in touch with James Freeman, the producer. I want to interview him again myself. Face-to-face this time. And the other person I want to speak to is the guy that played Lily Butterfield’s older brother, Sean. What was his real name – Malcolm?’
‘Hadleigh,’ Korpanski supplied, a little surprised. ‘Malcolm Hadleigh.’
‘Track him down, Mike. I will get to the bottom of this.’
Korpanski frowned. ‘By “this” I take it you mean Mrs Weeks’ murder?’
‘Which surely has its roots in her abuse as a child? Someone didn’t want the truth to come out.’
Korpanski looked sceptical. ‘This many years later? What could it possibly matter?’
‘I think, to someone, it does.’
‘OK.’ Korpanski sounded dubious. ‘So why haven’t they destroyed Timony’s manuscript? Broken the computer, lost the backup files?’
‘It’s not that easy these days, Mike. She had Cloud Cover. Anyone could access those files as long as they had her code. Every word as she wrote it became indestructible.’
He blinked. ‘And you? What are you going to do?’
She patted his muscular shoulder. ‘I’ll be busy. Don’t you worry.’
The officers filed out and Joanna sat at a table and read a little more of Timony Weeks’ autobiography. She’d got to the end of 1964 and wasn’t surprised that events were sounding much more complicated.
Sean has been really nice to me lately. He told me only yesterday that I’d improved. He’s started flirting with me, saying things like I was getting more beautiful every day. I just giggled at first. And then he told me as we were brother and sister we could … The writing stopped. And then it was as though Timony’s current voice cut in. Baldly, she stated, I can’t say. I won’t say. Even now, years later, I cannot write it down. I know now that what he said was nonsense. What he did was evil.
I reflect now, so many years later: how many people watching that wonderful, beautiful series, supposed to portray a perfect, happy family, had any idea of what was really going on behind the scenes? That I was abused in one way or another from the day I arrived on set. I’d always thought that the studio picked me because I was pretty or showed talent. That was not true. They picked me for two reasons. One: I was completely innocent. Like raw pastry they could do as they liked with me. Flatten me, roll me out, cook me till I was hard and when I became stale they could just throw me out. And the second reason I was fit for purpose was that my family were quite happy to abandon me. This meant that the studio could do as they liked with me because I had no one to run to – except my sister …
Joanna stared into the distance, shocked by Timony’s naivety and vulnerability then which had been exploited, and her venomous insight now.
She continued reading, still wondering what bearing these words and the story behind them had on its author’s murder. But now she had confidence. She would understand all this in the end. It was just so much more complicated than she had initially realized. She continued scanning the words and knew, without a doubt, that this book would be a bestseller. But a cruel exposure to anyone who had watched and loved Butterfield Farm. Like Colclough’s sister, Elizabeth Gantry.
1965.
Sean has been funny with me for a month or so, sometimes looking as though he wants to hurt me. He’s always been a bit cruel. Even on set he’ll pinch my arm hard enough to bruise me. He pushed me over once when I was about ten and I hurt my arm very badly. It felt terrible. I cried and cried it hurt so much. Ever since then I’ve been a bit frightened of my ‘big brother’. He has a nasty streak to him all right. He loves to humiliate me. At times I think he wants to kiss me. At other times I think he would be more likely to kill me. Bang bang. He says his lines in a nasty, mocking way and when this distracts me so I forget my own lines and get everyone angry he just laughs. I can’t work him out. And he loves this. It puts him in the driving seat, right there in full control.
There were a few empty pages where nothing was written and then in April there was another entry.
Sean asked me what I would be doing later, after rehearsals. I told him Diana and I were going to the pictures. He asked if he could come instead of Diana so I told her I didn’t want her to come. That I was going with someone else. But I didn’t tell her that someone else was Sean.
We didn’t go to the pictures that night. Instead we went back to his flat. He talked to me first, telling me what he wanted me to do, as though he was the director and we were in rehearsals.
‘Let’s pretend it’s just a scene,’ he said. ‘You’re about to have a bath.’
When I said no, I didn’t want to have a bath, he grabbed my shoulder. ‘It isn’t real,’ he said, sounding as though he was laughing at my stupidity. ‘It’s just a scene.’
I didn’t want to but I didn’t want to appear a silly little girl any more either.
Joanna read through the account, feeling vicious, as many people do, towards a person who assaults a child. But then she looked around her and thought a little deeper. Timony hadn’t really been a child, except in the eyes of the law. She had been a stunted adult and would remain so for the rest of her life. She had kept her secret well until now. And Joanna’s policeman’s nose, which Matthew laughingly told her actually twitched when she was on to something, sniffed out that this was the reason why Timony Weeks had had to die. Bang, bang. One shot in the head, another in the heart.
She continued reading. Timony had finished the chapter and moved on seven months. It was an account of Dariel’s assault. I hadn’t been well. I’d been feeling very sick and my stomach was swelling. Diana was looking at me in a very odd way, as though something was very much the matter. I found her uncomfortable company so I avoided being with her as much as possible. I often told her to stay at home when I went for rehearsals.
Joanna frowned. It appeared that, if her theory about Stuart Renshaw’s identity was right, Timony was writing some very selective memoirs indeed. Some bits in, others out. For example, when was she going to pen in her pregnancy? Where was Freeman in all this, the producer who was supposed to be in loco parentis? And how much of this was actually true? Diana had suggested Timony might have dramatized events in her life to spice up her memoirs or maybe, even, to invite sympathy. Or was Diana herself to be believed? Might she have an ulterior motive for casting doubt on Timony’s memories?
It was in November 1965. I was coming out of the studio after some late rehearsals when a young man came towards me. He looked quite nice. He was smiling and had lovely blue eyes. I smiled back. I thought he wanted my autograph so I asked my bodyguard for a pen. He was fishing in his pocket for it when I felt something hit my face. Then something warm ran down my cheek. I put my hand up and it came away smeared with blood. The man was still looking at me, still smiling. I screamed and my bodyguard grabbed him but I was bleeding and screaming and terrified. Some blood must have trickled into my eye because I couldn’t see. I thought I would be blind. I don’t know why he did it. He said I was evil. He said lots of things but I don’t know why he wanted to blind me. It made me frightened but Gerald comforted me and then Malcolm did.
Joanna frowned. Years later she had an explanation – of sorts.
I heard later that the person who’d attacked me was someone called Paul Dariel and that he was crazy, telling lies about me. I took a few months off from filming after that.
So that was how they had covered Timony’s pregnancy up, by calling Dariel crazy and avoiding a public court case. The assault had been opportune. While the nation’s sweetheart crept off to give birth and dispose of the child they had had the perfect excuse.
Further on she read: ‘I feel so guilty. So neglectful. Responsible. They told me I had led him on but I didn’t know what I was doing. He told me it was all my fault.’
The voice was pathetic, childish, vulnerable and naïve, but Joanna was puzzled. Whom did she mean? Who had told her, so cruelly, that the assaults, whether from Dariel or members of the Butterfield cast, were all her fault? Who was it she was supposed to have ‘led on?’ And who had spun this monstrous lie? Gerald or Sean Butterfield? Or someone else, someone so far faceless? There were bits missing and bits out of place and the rest was all jumbled up.
Joanna sat and puzzled over the words then left the barn and slowly walked back towards the house. The door was unlocked and she walked in and found Diana Tong, on the floor of the sitting room, surrounded by a scatter of photographs.
She looked up when Joanna entered but said nothing. Joanna sat down and picked up a couple of the pictures. Names and dates were pencilled in on the back. Me – on set.
She turned it over. Timony, aged about eight, looking about six, leaning precociously forward, big bow in her hair, short nylon dress, hands clasped together, head coquettishly to one side, smiling into the camera. Joanna stared at it for a while, reflecting what a strange childhood Timony Weeks had had. Abandoned by her parents, the darling of the country throughout her childhood and into her teens. Behind the scenes abused and belittled, scolded and scorned. Multiple marriages which, if Joanna remembered from her psychology degree, usually meant someone desperately seeking an idyllic, perfect love. Desperately trying to cling on to her youth, cosmetic surgery for the physical ageing and five marriages to preserve the illusion of still being the nation’s pet. But a pet is constrained and has to live by the rules of her master – in this case the general public. And when a pet is beyond his or her usefulness he or she can be taken to the vet’s and ‘put down’. Joanna met Diana’s calm grey eyes and sensed a communication that Timony’s death had been fitting, the final act in a play. A death as theatrical as her life. The last scene.
She looked again at the companion. Diana Tong would be a woman who would do ‘the necessary’. Whatever needed to be done she would do. It was as simple as that.
Wordlessly she leafed through more of the photographs. Gawky teenager, smartly suited in Crimplene, wearing clothes too old for her, white gloves, pillbox hat, standing with a tight-lipped smile into the camera. The wedding photograph of a very, very young Timony clutching the arm of Gerald. Joanna peered closer. He was wearing the Rolex watch on his wrist. The one which had been buried with him? Or the one which had turned up here a few weeks ago? Were they one and the same? Who knew?
She smiled to herself. Even if Colclough had not been about to be replaced by Chief Superintendent Gabriel Rush she knew she would never get permission to exhume Gerald’s body purely on the pretext of checking whether he was still wearing his Rolex watch.
She picked up another wedding photograph. Sean Butterfield, aka Malcolm Hadleigh, stood proudly, legs apart, hips thrust testosterone forward. Gerald’s best man. Hadleigh was keeping a wary eye on Timony, glance sliding surreptitiously to his side. Joanna studied the bride’s face under a magnifying glass. Her head was facing forwards as though if she did not hold it rigidly it would swing around to Hadleigh. Joanna sat back and thought. So who was Stuart Renshaw’s father? DNA would prove the point quickly enough. It was very possible that Timony had borne Hadleigh’s child three years before this picture was taken, way before she had been of marriageable age. It was also possible that Renshaw’s father was someone else. Joanna looked for clues at the other members of the wedding group. May Butterfield, Lily’s mother, was watching, a little detached from the others, a slightly sour expression on her face. She looked as though she wanted no part in this. Keith and David were lined up but also looking as though they were playing no part in the proceedings, as though they too, wanted to detach themselves from this particular scene. No – the magic triangle existed between Timony, Gerald and Sean. Magic triangle? Joanna questioned her phrase. If it was magic it was black magic. There was nothing good about this. Behind Timony stood a tall, bulky woman who glared into the camera as though she resented being there. Joanna looked up and saw the same angry glare in Diana Tong’s face. She smiled. The dogsbody hadn’t changed much. But she was waiting for Joanna to see something else. She looked back at the photograph. In the place where Timony’s father should have stood was a tall, thin man with a hooked nose. He had thick grey hair, eagle eyes and a hooked nose.
‘James Freeman,’ Diana said. ‘Producer.’ Then, quietly, ‘There’s somewhere you should visit.’