thirty-three

I sat in Monica’s sitting room cum dining room cum kitchen area clutching a mug of tea with pink flowers on it and listened to her account of her latest interview with the police.

“The way the bag was tied around his neck implied that someone else had done it.”

“Because the …” I hesitated. “The individual was left-handed, you said, and the judge was right-handed.”

“I didn’t even notice.” She frowned into the middle distance, perplexed, as though it were remiss of her.

“And?” I said, eager to keep her talking.

“Someone like me.” Her voice, so normally well modulated, rose to a wail.

“Did they say that?”

“My fingerprints were on the bag and I’m left-handed.” She looked glum and cornered.

“Did you do it?”

Had I shot her in the stomach at close range with a sawn-off, she couldn’t have reacted with more shock.

“Sorry, but I had to ask.” I also had to ask myself a dirty great question: Did I think Monica capable of murder? Honest answer: I didn’t know.

She cast me a reproachful look. Circumstantial evidence was all the police appeared to have. I watched her closely. Her eyes narrowed and she tapped her fingers on the arm of the chair.

“What?”

“There’s something they aren’t telling me, I’m sure of it.”

She’d said so before, which meant she was really bothered by it. “Like what?”

She glanced down. “I wish I knew.”

I drank tea that I didn’t want and tried to roll back the timeframe. I needed to get a handle on the missing bits of my mother’s life, to gather up the fragments and place them into a picture I could understand.

“Where did you go with Steven after you left Devon?”

She flinched. “What’s that got to do with this?”

“I’m interested.”

“Shropshire.”

“What did he do for a living?”

“He was in print and design.”

“And afterwards?”

She looked at me blankly.

“After Steven died, where did you go?” I pressed.

“London.”

She dropped her gaze once more and I wondered why. “Brave move.”

“Yes, well I thought there’d be more work there. I already told you,” she said with emphasis.

“So you got a job?”

“Worked in hotels, mostly. Cleaning and such.”

“Hard work.”

“Long hours.”

“Whereabouts?”

“All over.” For a third time, she looked shifty. I got the strong impression that her time in London was an unhappy episode and that she was keeping something from me. My silence betrayed me, and she suddenly looked me straight in the eye with a steady, unflinching gaze. “I’ve made many mistakes in my life, Kim, but murder isn’t one of them.”

We sipped more tea in silence. She asked if I wanted a top up. I accepted and suggested again that she talked to Luke.

Vehemently opposed, she said, “No, I don’t want him involved.”

“That’s absurd.” In danger of breaking, I no longer wished to carry the burden alone.

“Gives it too much oxygen,” she protested.

“This won’t go away because you will it.” It came out snappier than I intended.

She sat stone-faced and fiddled with the material in her skirt. I noticed she did that a lot under pressure. Time to take the plunge and wheel out my secret weapon. “I really believe the time has come to talk to a lawyer. In fact, I’ve already—”

“Kim, I—”

“Hear me out.” I described my conversation with Gavin Chadwick. Initially, her eyes expressed exasperation, her body language indignation and resistance. I’m not sure what it was that finally got through to her—probably my insistence. When I finished speaking, she seemed resigned, which I took to be a good sign.

“I’ll talk to him tomorrow,” I said, feeling more cheerful, “tell him where we’re at, then you can speak to him yourself.”

“Will I get legal aid?”

I very much doubted it. “We’ll cross that bridge as and when.” I stood up, thinking not for the first time that Luke would have to chip in. “Can I use your loo before I go?”

“You know where it is.”

I went to the bathroom. Counting to ten, I flushed the lavatory, ran the hot and cold taps, and flicked open the door to the mirror-fronted medicine cabinet. I found a toothbrush, toothpaste, mouthwash, cosmetic pads, cotton buds and make-up remover, a pack of standard painkillers, and what looked like prescription drugs. Glancing at the locked door, I reached inside and pulled out a pack of Venlafaxine, a superior antidepressant used for severely anxious patients. I grimaced. What the hell? My mother had led me to believe that she’d been happy in her work, settled with the judge and his wife. So what had triggered the need? Obviously, her depression could spark from chemical imbalances in her brain rather than from an event so perhaps I was reading too much into it. Maybe my own anxiety state was hereditary, I now realised with surprise, but when I fished out the second pack, I felt as if I’d crashed headlong into a wall. Zopiclone was the same sleeping drug used by Judge Michael Hawkes.

My mother had lied to me. About what else had she lied?

Grim, I returned and faced her with my findings.

She jumped to her feet. “How dare you snoop—”

I cut her off before she got started. “You damn well lied to the police and then to me.”

“And why do you think I did that?” Her eyes were wide and staring, the irises flecked a sudden sickly yellow.

“I dread to think.” Jesus H. Christ. What was I supposed to think?

“I lied to prevent a reaction like yours. Do you honestly think I’m a murderer?”

“I have no idea.” My anger—hot, burning, and wild—was like a demonic force within me. Words tunnelled out of my mouth. “You look me up after a couple of decades of complete sodding absence. You stay in touch with other people’s kids and don’t give a damn about your own flesh and blood. You run away from the police. You lie. What the fuck is going on?”

“How dare you swear at me and use that kind of language.”

We both stood facing each other like a couple of gunslingers at noon. I was panting hard, my mother harder. The atmosphere in the tiny studio apartment was oppressive, the lighting fake and artificial as if yielding radiation. I found it difficult to see, let alone think and focus. “And why are you on antidepressants?” The words tumbled out of my mouth, accusing. Not a great endorsement of my empathetic qualities. People lied for a whole host of reasons. It didn’t mean that they were guilty. Hounding someone rarely elicits the truth. I knew this in the core of my being but it was as if, with the arrival of Monica, my beliefs and normal rules of civilised behaviour, even my professional expertise and knowledge, had fled out through the nearest exit. I was no good as a daughter, even less as a clinical psychologist.

Spent and grey, she pressed a hand against her temple, probing the pressure point, half closing her eyes. Finally, she spoke, slowly, without rancour, as if each word were costing her dear. “I knew you wouldn’t understand.”

“How can I if you aren’t honest with me?”

Tears spurted into the creases around her eyes. “Because if I’m honest you’ll know the truth and you’ll hate me for it.”

Nausea grabbed my stomach. My hand flew to my mouth. Was this it? Was this Monica’s way of telling me that she was guilty, that she’d drugged an old man, stuffed a plastic bag over his head and cut off his air supply? Were her liver-spotted hands responsible for his bruises? But, as horrible as the truth might be, I had to know. Damn it, I had to know.

Scrabbling for certainty, I lied. “It doesn’t matter what you’ve done. I’ll stand by you, but please,” I begged, “please tell me the truth.”

She looked at me then with such need and desperation, I thought my heart would explode. “Kim,” she said. “I did not kill Judge Hawkes. I swear it.”

I reached for a chair and sat down hard. “Okay.” My voice was shaky. “But, from now on, no secrets. Do you understand?”

Her jaw clenched.

“Do you understand?” I repeated loudly.

“Yes.” That damn shadow passed behind her eyes once more. That’s when I knew for certain that she was holding out on me, and I was powerless to prevent the darkness from smashing in.