fifty-two

Deciding to cut short my visit, I arrived back in Cheltenham the next morning as a faraway clock sounded eleven, and drove to Monica’s apartment. I didn’t call ahead of my visit. I wanted to catch her unawares. The problem with surprises is that they don’t always go to plan.

She wasn’t in. It was a nice day, cold and crisp, with turquoise skies. Most probably, she was out making the most of the fine weather. I didn’t have her down for a church-going type.

Scrawling a note on the back of a random leaflet I’d chucked in the glove compartment, I asked her to call me.

Back home, stepping over the threshold, I picked up a card on the mat from Royal Mail. I’d missed the delivery of books I’d ordered and would have to collect them in my lunch hour on Monday.

I went upstairs, took minutes to unpack. Stowing the gun took longer. I pushed it to the back of a cupboard in the corner of the bedroom, briefly paused by Stannard’s gifted painting, and returned downstairs.

I checked my phone. There was one message from the cop-shop on the Lansdown Road. Slater asking to interview me at my “earliest convenience.” Reluctant to comply, I took pineapple juice out of the fridge, filled a tumbler, and drank it straight down. I’d had my pills earlier before setting out. They didn’t have the subduing chemical effect they normally had. Wired and hyper, like a neurological storm was brewing, I pulsed with recklessness.

Snatching up my keys, I walked straight out of the house and crossed the streets to the park. Dogs and owners and little kids with balls and …

I twisted round, scanned the vista of shops in Montpellier Walk, zoned in on faces of passers-by, as sure as I could be that someone was dogging my footsteps. We fear most the things that have already happened to us. Did I imagine that I was being stalked again, or was it for real?

Rattled, I speeded up, crossed into the park and darted along the square near the bandstand. Racing up the steps past the Gardens Gallery, skirting the tennis courts, out the other side and over the pedestrian crossing, I cut down Suffolk Parade, past The Suffolk Anthology, a bookshop, and fled towards Paris Vellender’s house. I needed to know what made a mother lie. I needed to find out why Paris really would disappear her son and where Nicholas Vellender was hiding now.

I opened the gate to the house quietly, walked with a soft footfall and, tucking myself under the porch so that I could not be viewed from an upstairs room, rang the doorbell. It had a deep, sonorous, military tone.

Footsteps. Rasping sound of a security chain hitched off the latch, a door unlocked. It swung open and I was eyeball to eyeball with Paris Vellender.

Gaunt and pale, she wore a tight-fitting black and grey tracksuit, no make-up. Her hair was dishevelled. I watched her eyes, which crackled first with shock and then anger. Before I knew it, the door bounced back towards me. I reached forward and jammed my foot between it and the frame.

“You can’t do this,” she screamed at me. “You can’t barge in.”

“Mrs. Vellender, I want to talk to you.” I sounded cold and calm and in control, a mile from the truth.

“Get out, you bitch, or I’ll call the police.” To add weight to her words, she opened the door a fraction then slammed it hard against my leg. Pain darted from my knee to my thigh.

I dropped my voice, for her ears only. “I’ll tell the police how you spirited your son away to Beesands, how you faked his disappearance, how you wasted everyone’s time. God only knows what they’ll uncover, but you can bet your life they’ll prosecute and lock you up. Where will that leave your precious son then?”

Fear shadowed her eyes. She had the look of an art collector whose most precious work had been sliced to pieces with a Stanley knife. I made the most of the moment. “Paris, I want to help you. I’m on your side. You’ve lost two children and now a lover. It’s not possible for you to carry on like this. You have to let me in.”

Fat tears flooded her eyes. With relief, frustration, or resignation, I couldn’t say, but she stepped back from the door and gestured for me to walk inside.

I followed her into a grand room that had once been two and was now divided by floor to ceiling ornate bi-fold shutters. She indicated for me to sit down on one of a pair of Regency striped sofas. On the low table between us were, a glass half full of white wine, the bottle, virtually empty, and an open pack of Marlboros alongside. A lit cigarette guttered half smoked in a saucer that served as a makeshift ashtray. She hastily stubbed it out, pushed the drink aside. I wondered if clients at the fitness centre who came to Paris to improve their health knew that she smoked and drank so early in the morning.

We sat across from each other. Paris perched, knees together, demure, as if she were seeking an audience with a priest. I’d need to play it right to extract a confession. No way could I afford to mess it up. I could not launch in with demands to know why she had chosen to conceal the fact that her children were adopted. Not yet. Jittery as hell, I could easily blow it.

I forced a smile, tried to put her at ease; her reciprocal vanilla expression was an automatic response. If I didn’t speak directly and soon, Paris would concoct a verbal escape plan, and the opportunity would slip through my fingers.

“I’m sorry about Troy, but there was never anything between us. Surely, you believe me? He asked for my help, that was all.”

“To trace Nicholas?” Her expression was stiff and stony.

“Yes.”

“That’s all he was ever interested in.” She looked and sounded bitter.

“Didn’t you find that odd?”

“Not to start with. He’d always been fond of Mimi. It made sense, but …” she trailed off, looked down. Despondent.

“But what?”

Glancing up, she flicked another plastic smile. “Nothing.”

“How long had you been together?”

“About fifteen months.”

“Do you think Otto had a hand in Troy’s murder?”

She bit her lip. I think she wanted to say yes in the same way she’d falsely accused Otto of murder outside the church, but she couldn’t, and she recognised that I knew that. “Absurd,” she said eventually, “even if the police have their suspicions.”

“Why are they so fixed on him?” I wondered if she’d yield something extra.

She looked at me hard. “The way Troy was killed.”

And cut up. “If not Otto, who did it?”

The hesitation was fractional. She said, “I don’t know,” but her eyes said something else. I waited, hoping that she would fill in the gap. She didn’t.

“Do you remember when you talked to me in the corridor?” I said. “You said it was all your fault?” The muscles around her mouth flexed. “It’s not an accusation, Paris.”

Frozen, unsure how to react, she levelled her gaze with big pleading eyes reminiscent of her daughter even though I now knew that they were not related by blood. Did children grow to look like the parents who adopt them?

“I could have sacrificed one child to protect the other,” she said, her voice low and strained. “Instead I lost both.”

“You mean you could have told Mimi the truth?”

She nodded dumbly, although I’m not certain to which truth we were alluding.

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because Nicholas forbade it.”

And you do everything your teenage son wants? Lyn Mason’s observation of the unhealthy and unnaturally close relationship between mother and son battered my brain. “But he loved his sister, surely? She certainly loved him.”

“He did love her. That’s why he thought it best to disappear.”

I must have looked as mystified as I felt because she continued, “To protect her.” As soon as the words left her mouth, panic flashed across her features. To her mind, she’d given away too much. “Would you like a drink or something? Tea or coffee?”

“I’m fine. Thank you.” Thoughts cantered through my mind. Nicholas had fled for two reasons: to escape Otto and to find his biological father. I believed it; what I didn’t believe was what happened later.

“Did Nicholas feel betrayed?”

The wary light returned to her eyes.

“In his mind,” I said, “he’d gone out of the proverbial frying pan into the fire, taken from a father who might have treated him better than Otto. I know that your children were adopted, Paris.” No point in hiding it now.

Her face pinched with shock. “You knew all along?”

I shook my head. “I found out.”

“How?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

She glared at me in a way that assured me it did.

“You said there were tensions,” I persisted.

She grimaced. “You have no idea what went on.” She spread her hands, as if she couldn’t believe it either.

“Tell me.”

“Otto tortured him.”