Back at his flat Cross looked at his mother’s letter to his father again, not to reread the contents, which he pretty much knew by heart now, but to double-check the address. It was in Gloucester, where he was going the next day. Ottey and Mackenzie were going to visit Sandra. He was fairly sure the address he had was where his grandparents had lived. He knew they’d lived in Gloucester but they had ceased contact with him and Raymond at the same time as their daughter. He knew it was unlikely that she would still be there after all these years, but it was the only starting point he had. He had checked social media for her in her married and maiden names, but hadn’t come across anything. It was quite possible, probable even, that she had remarried and had a different name. But it was also possible that she, like him, chose not to make her life publicly accessible on the various social media platforms.
If Cross needed to travel any distance on a case he would always take the train, with his bicycle in the carriage with him or in the guard’s van, depending on the type of train. He loved trains; always had done. He loved their predictability and hated it if they were late. He felt modern trains had lost something, though. The new carriages were soulless affairs. He liked the older trains, particularly if they had small compartments. He liked it when the cushioned seats were covered with thick, almost velvety moquette.
He vividly remembered whiling away time on a tedious journey with his father to visit some piece of Brunel engineering somewhere, by making patterns in the seat material. He would do this by brushing the fabric against the pile, making it go darker, then brushing with the pile to make it smooth and light. With a sweep of his hand he could then erase the pattern permanently, leaving no trace of his artistic endeavours. He remembered to this day the names of some of the designs used by the railways in his childhood and teens. There was Trojan, his favourite Red Candy Stripe, and then in later years the Inter City Dogger Red.
The seats also had two very distinct seasonal smells. When it was raining and the seats got wet from people sitting on them or inconsiderately placed umbrellas, they had a smell of damp autumnal rot. It wasn’t altogether unpleasant, as it had an association of being recently sheltered from the rain outside. In the summer they had a musty smell of roasted dust, which seemed to impart the joy of journeying to an eagerly anticipated destination, which promised familiar treats like pier amusements and ice cream. There was something comforting and familiar about those smells. Now the seats offered no sensory additions to a journey. They were functional, bland and without personality. Like much of modern life, Cross thought.
Mackenzie had found contact details for Melissa Conrad, the daughter in the documentary, from the production company who had made it. They informed her that Melissa was happy for Cross to contact her. He had called and made an appointment for that afternoon. He had forewarned her that he wanted to talk to her about the documentary and specifically Sutton. He hoped this might give her time to think and formulate her thoughts about the doctor and the film. This way he thought he might get a more cogent and considered reaction from her, rather than just arriving cold.
Melissa Conrad lived in the small town of Quedgeley, outside Gloucester. It had an interesting-sounding name for such a dull, modern place. She was married now, and a new mother, at home with her six-month-old daughter. She greeted Cross at the door with a muslin cloth over one shoulder and the baby over the other.
‘Sorry, I was just feeding her,’ she said, apologising for the slight delay in answering the door.
‘Breast or bottle?’ asked Cross.
‘What?’ She was taken aback by such a direct, personal question. ‘Um, breast.’
‘In that case, would you like me to return?’ he said.
‘Oh I see. No, not at all. Come in,’ she said, holding the door open for him.
They walked into the small house. It was on a bland modern estate built in the eighties.
‘Can I offer you a cup of tea?’ Melissa said.
Cross would normally have said no to this, but he’d seen a teapot and a box of loose tea on the kitchen counter top as soon as he walked in, which he immediately thought upped the chances of getting a half-decent cup of tea. So it might be worth the risk. In his experience, people who made tea with loose leaves were generally far more interested in the quality of the beverage than those who just chucked a tea bag into a cup. Some even threw the tea bag in with the cold milk before the hot water, to his horror, before squeezing the bag against the side of the cup before fishing it out. So he acceded.
‘Let me just deal with this,’ said Melissa, referring to the baby.
This was when he spotted the opportunity to ensure the tea would be to his exacting standards. ‘Why don’t I make it?’ he volunteered.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course,’ he replied, and set about making a pot for them while she finished feeding the infant. He enquired how she preferred her tea, then brought the pot, two cups and a jug of milk through.
‘What a treat,’ she said as he set the tea down. ‘Thank you.’ She settled the baby in a Moses basket. ‘So, Benedict Sutton; what do you need to know?’
‘How did you find him?’ Cross asked.
‘I didn’t. My mother did.’ Her tone implied that she would never have gone looking for him.
‘What I meant was – how did you find him personally? What did you make of him?’ Cross asked.
‘Can I ask why you’re here?’
‘It’s not relevant to your view of him.’ Cross didn’t want the reason for his visit to affect what she might have to say.
‘I see. Well, I didn’t like him. I was unhappy about the whole thing,’ she replied.
‘The documentary or your mother’s ending her own life?’
‘Both,’ she said. ‘He was, is, a big advocate of assisted dying, as you probably know. My mother got in touch with him, initially, to discuss it. He seemed to be the only person around in a position of knowledge.’
‘Are you saying he’d been to Switzerland with patients before?’
‘Yes, three to my certain knowledge.’
‘That I didn’t know,’ he replied.
‘Anyway, over time he became more and more involved in my mother’s life and so more involved in ours. It was “Benedict this, Ben that”.’
‘Whose idea was it for her to end her life abroad, when it came to it?’ Cross asked.
‘Well, to be fair, it was mostly hers. I mean, that’s why she got hold of him in the first place. But then he kind of took over. It was happening. She was going. End of discussion.’
‘But you discussed it quite a lot in the film,’ Cross pointed out.
‘It was restaged for the film. We’d done our talking in private away from the cameras. They asked us to do it again. It was awful.’
‘How did you feel about your mother wanting the whole thing documented in that way?’
‘Oh, it wasn’t her idea,’ she replied.
‘But again – it’s in the film,’ Cross said.
‘It’s a much better story if she’d decided to have it recorded for posterity than being persuaded to do it by her doctor. He pushed her into it. Pushed us all into it.’
‘How did he come to have such an influence over you?’
‘He had a secret weapon. Her. None of us wanted to upset her. We wanted things to be the best possible version of themselves towards the end of her life. We loved her. He used that against us. Can you believe that? He used a family’s love against them. He’s very patient. That’s his killer skill, if you’ll excuse the pun. He takes his time, inveigling his way in, till he’s suddenly everywhere and completely in charge. He was indispensable to my mother by the end. It was really insidious.’
‘You didn’t like him?’
‘Have you met him?’ she enquired.
‘I have.’
‘Then you’ll know he’s not someone it’s easy to warm to.’
‘I understand.’
‘You make a mean cup of tea,’ she said, taking a sip.
‘I’m sorry, do you not like it?’ he asked.
‘Yes, it’s excellent.’
‘Yes, I thought so too.’
‘Like I’ve said before,’ she went on, ‘it was a bit like joining a cult with this charismatic leader with followers adoring him devotedly and hanging on his every word, however crazy. They’d do absolutely anything he said. Anything.’
‘Like killing themselves?’
‘In this instance. Yes,’ she said emphatically.
‘Have you kept in touch?’ asked Cross.
‘No. He tried to. My brother spoke to him. He said he wanted to include us in his follow-up research. I didn’t want anything to do with it. My mother wasn’t just some example to illustrate an academic thesis. She was my mother, not a statistic. I hadn’t wanted her to go through with what she did but in the end she listened to him more than she listened to us. Have you any idea what that’s like? She was more willing to listen to a complete stranger than her own daughter; and about something like that. Something so final. She would’ve seen and met Chloe. She had vascular dementia and it wasn’t progressing as fast as they initially thought. It’s often much slower than Alzheimer’s, but she wouldn’t listen to us once she’d met him.’
‘Do you blame Sutton?’ said Cross.
‘I don’t blame him, but I hold him partially responsible. After all, it’s what she wanted. I resent his encouragement. He’s like a Svengali; completely controlling.’
Cross realised that was the second time someone had described him that way.
‘And then, right at the end, there he was with his bloody film crew. What was a sad, tragic end to a life which should’ve been private and sacred, if you like, but became a piece of public property. Propaganda,’ she said.
‘The film made it seem like he’d been unwilling to attend and your mother had insisted,’ said Cross.
‘Completely untrue. He persuaded my mother he should be there “for her”, to give her strength. He described the film as her legacy. It was more of a monument to his ego, though,’ she said bitterly. Cross processed this. ‘So now can you explain your interest in him?’ she asked.
Cross did so. She was taken aback and thought for a bit about the implications of what he’d said.
‘Do you think he did it?’ she asked.
‘I don’t as yet think anything.’
‘It seems unlikely, doesn’t it?’ she asked. ‘Even I find that a bit of a stretch, and as you know I’m not his biggest fan. Unless…’
‘Unless what?’
‘Unless he’s completely lost the plot.’
‘What exactly do you mean by that?’
‘That he’s gone mad with it all. He’s always had a bit of a god complex about him. What if now he actually believes it?’
*
Cross cycled back into Gloucester to what he presumed was his maternal grandparents’ house. His first instinct, out of habit, was to reach for his warrant card, but he remembered that he wasn’t there on police business, so not only was it unnecessary, but it would’ve been against regulations for a private matter. The current residents weren’t familiar with his grandparents’ surname. They’d bought the house seven years before. But they did recall the previous owner saying he’d bought it from a family who’d owned it for over forty years. That had to be his grandparents. They were more than happy to go and look, while he waited in the hall, for the forwarding address they had for the previous owner, but reminded him that it was from seven years before so might well be out of date. Cross was just impressed that they were organised enough to be able to put their hands on it so quickly.