After his preliminary interview with Higgins, Gladwin took Fraser Meadows off to compose a formal statement in the hurriedly set-up incident room in a hall on the other side of the high street, and Thea seized the chance to talk to her mother alone. They were in the living room at Thistledown, the house having been declared no longer part of the police investigation. The assumption was that the visitors would stay overnight as originally planned.
‘Have you ever met Oliver?’ Thea began. ‘I’ve lost track, after everything that’s been going on.’
‘No. I spoke to him on the phone when Fraser suggested you could house-sit.’
‘Before or after you spoke to me about it?’
‘Um … I’m not sure. Does it matter?’
‘Not really. But you did tell me you’d dismissed the idea at first. Why did you? Was there something fishy about it?’
‘No, no. I just didn’t want you to think I was interfering. I know how independent you like to be.’
Thea sighed, wondering as always why she felt so chafed whenever a family member claimed to understand everything about her. She didn’t regard herself as unduly independent. She’d never been tempted to emigrate to Australia to get away from the family, or keep her life a dark secret from them. She looked at her mother – the white hair and wrinkled neck, mottled hands and stiffening knees. The woman was old by any standards. The fact that there were now innumerable women twenty years her senior still up and running should not obscure this truth. Her mother had been alive for a long time, and her brain and body might be expected to show some signs of wear. Ought they to be taking the apparent memory lapses more seriously? Were they shortly to be faced, as a family, with the dreaded horror of dementia in their parent?
‘Have you met Maureen, then? Your namesake. Isn’t Fraser living with her? Did you stay there last night?’
‘Um … Mo. You mean Mo. They never call her Maureen. Yes, I have met her. She’s very dark. Her mother was Spanish.’
‘Was?’
‘She died about ten years ago. They’d been divorced for ages, of course. Absolutely ages. They went to Australia, and then she came back.’
‘Where were you this morning? I tried to phone you at home and there was no answer.’
‘I was at Damien’s,’ came the surprising reply. ‘Fraser collected me from there after breakfast, and we came here. It isn’t very far.’
‘So Damien has met Fraser?’
‘That’s right. I said that on the phone, days ago.’
Thea had forgotten, or paid no attention. Somehow it came as a relief to know her brother had met and presumably accepted the mysterious boyfriend. She still felt in need of more information. ‘But you said Fraser married again, didn’t you? Did they have any children?’
‘No. I told you that, as well. She died tragically, only a year after they were married.’
Thea recalled to mind the murdered Melissa, who had betrayed no trace of an Australian accent. If she had been Fraser’s daughter, she might be expected to have been conceived and raised in the Antipodes – although there could be numerous alternative scenarios.
‘But you don’t really remember him at all, do you? From the nineteen sixties, I mean. He remembers it all, but you don’t.’
‘I keep trying. You’d think his eyes would remind me, wouldn’t you? People’s eyes don’t change.’
‘I suppose not.’ Thea tried to imagine the stretch of time between the two encounters. Over fifty years was a huge span, the idea of accurate recall almost ludicrous. But there were constant proofs that the human memory could bridge it effortlessly. War veterans cheerfully described battle scenes in vivid detail; ancient women talked about nineteen fifties domestic routines as if they were last week. But Fraser had already explained these – repetition created much firmer memories, and the heightened stress of war would sear it deep into the brain. A fleeting romance in a crowded London life might well fall into oblivion. The real question, surely, was why did Fraser seek now to rekindle it? What could he possibly hope to gain from it? And the answer came again – Maureen Johnstone’s house and pension. The man wanted a hearth to call his own and a solicitous partner for his declining years. And yet he had a daughter who was apparently willing to give him a home.
‘Does he get on all right with Mo?’ she asked.
‘Oh, yes. But she’s busy – out all day, and most evenings. She hasn’t got much time for him. And she’s just got a new boyfriend, so Fraser feels rather in the way.’
‘How old is she?’
‘Almost fifty. Two months younger than Damien.’
‘Has she got a husband? Presumably not.’
Her mother shook her head. ‘Divorced, seven years ago.’
‘Three. All girls, born within four years. The last one finished university this year.’
These responses brought a distinct sense of progress, of a picture coming into focus. Maureen Junior was wanting her freedom, now her daughters were off her hands. The arrival of an ageing father on her doorstep could not have been welcome. Therefore the prospect of a new girlfriend for him must have been thoroughly appealing. ‘I bet she really likes you,’ she said.
‘Why shouldn’t she?’ her mother said, with a grin. ‘What’s not to like?’
It was a reminder of earlier times, when a rare flash of wit would brighten the moment for the whole family. As a mother, she had been no better than adequate, focusing more than necessary on the duller aspects of her role. She complained about scuffs on the furniture, possessions strewn untidily around, coffee mugs in bedrooms and socks adrift from their brothers. She made her husband and her offspring impatient with such trivia. Not one of them ever accepted that it mattered whether or not the cushions were straight and the washing-up done within seconds of the meal being finished. ‘It’s me that’s the normal one,’ she said, more than once. ‘Without me, we’d be living in chaos.’
It was probably true – certainly the bit about being normal was. But Richard Johnstone and his four children all rejected, one way or another, the lure of normality. Even Damien, with his passion for religion and charitable works, was unusual. Damien could not find a matching pair of socks if his life depended on it, and he had chosen a wife who had a PhD in numerology, which was definitely profoundly abnormal. She told people she had married him for his name, which fitted with a highly significant numerical sequence that made no sense to anybody but her.
What’s not to like? echoed in Thea’s ears. Not just the sentiment, but the way it had been expressed, made her laugh. ‘Right,’ she said, with an affectionate pat on the mottled hand.
She had more questions, but the sensation of turning into an inquisitor kept her from voicing them. Instead, other queries were becoming increasingly persistent. Who killed Melissa? What was her connection with the Meadows family? Why was there a growing sense of careful background planning leading to her, Thea, being here at Thistledown at such short notice? Where was Oliver? Questions bred more questions, swirling around in her head, each one more worrying than the one before. She found herself feeling glad she’d have company that night.
But that led to another question, which ought to have been settled before now. ‘Er … Mum? You and Fraser? Do you want to be in the same room? He seems a bit frail to be sleeping on a sofa. He can have my bed, if necessary, and I’ll be down here.’
Maureen Johnstone blinked confusedly. ‘I thought we settled that. Aren’t there three bedrooms?’
‘Not really. The bed in the third one is piled high with junk. The room’s full of photographic stuff and a computer and books. Why? Did Oliver tell you differently?’
‘He can’t have done. I just thought …’ Worry deepened grooves around her mouth. ‘No, I don’t want to share a room with him. Please, Thea – don’t make me do that.’
Before Thea could properly respond to an alarmingly urgent plea, the front door opened and Fraser came in, looking almost as stricken as his new friend did.
The women both stared at him, while he squared his shoulders and forced a smile.
‘What happened?’ demanded Thea’s mother. ‘Why do you look so distraught?’
‘Delayed shock, I think,’ he said ruefully. ‘It hit me, all of a sudden, that a lovely young woman, in the prime of her life, has been wickedly killed. All I could think before was that she was not my daughter. But now I understand that she was somebody’s daughter, somebody’s desperate tragedy.’
It sounded to Thea as if he’d been rehearsing the words before uttering them. Not that there was anything wrong with that, she told herself. She remembered how she’d done it herself – searching for words to convey her feelings, and finding them woefully inadequate.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It does take a while to absorb, I know.’
He met her eyes. ‘The policewoman wants me to give you a message. She says to tell you that they now know where my brother is, and that there is every likelihood that he’ll want you to stay here at least for the rest of this week. They will interview him in … where he is, but he won’t be able to come home for some time. He still wants the birds to be fed. Is that all right?’
She had no choice but to concur, despite a feeling that the birds might have been deterred from coming to the feeding station for at least the coming week. Then she had a thought. ‘The camera!’ she said. ‘Have they found anything on the camera?’
‘They didn’t say, but my suspicion is to the negative. I detected an atmosphere of dogged plodding, rather than any excitement as to leads or hard evidence.’
‘What did they ask you?’ Maureen wanted to know.
‘Oh, the obvious things. Whether I was sure I’d never seen the woman before, where my brother was, how often I came here. Nothing unexpected. I think I made a fairly good witness, though I say so myself.’
‘Witness to what?’ Thea asked, in puzzlement.
‘Sorry – wrong word, I suppose. Provider of background information, I mean. Family connections and so forth.’
‘Did they take a DNA sample from you?’
Fraser flushed. ‘They did, as it happens. I wasn’t very happy about it, and insisted they destroy it as soon as the case is closed. I strongly disapprove of the tendency to store people’s personal data, against all reason or legality.’
‘So do I,’ said Thea, in heartfelt agreement. For the first time, she felt a flicker of actual liking for the man. ‘But they’ve got to confirm that the dead girl wasn’t your daughter, I suppose. After all …’
‘Yes, yes, you don’t have to be delicate. I know there’s a theoretical possibility that I had a daughter without knowing it. But if she’s the age they think – around thirty – then I can solemnly declare that I was at that time in a prolonged period of self-imposed celibacy. My wife had not long left me, taking my very much loved daughter with her, and after the calamity of my second venture into matrimony, I was most emphatically scared off the entire female half of the species. I was working in a very male environment, helping establish a new mining industry in the Pilbara. It was sufficiently exhausting for me not to feel any sense of deprivation.’
‘Pilbara?’ Thea repeated.
‘It’s in the north-west, the middle of nowhere. Massive iron deposits. It’s currently ensuring the Australian economy has very little to worry about for at least two or three decades.’
‘Blimey!’ said Thea. ‘I had no idea.’
‘It’s not important. It was a long time ago.’
Jumbled quotes ran through Thea’s head: And besides, the wench is dead was the chief one. And The past is another country; they do things differently there. Neither seemed to have much relevance, except to reinforce the impression that where her mother’s happiness and well-being were concerned, the past did have some significance.
‘So the DNA results will come back negative?’
‘If they come back at all. The woman said they’d only do a test if they couldn’t identify the body in the next day or two. They expect to find her car any time now. They’ve put little notes on all the ones parked out there, in Vineyard Street, asking the owners to call in and eliminate themselves from enquiries. Rather clever, actually. I’ve never known that to happen before.’
‘You’ve been involved in this sort of thing before, have you?’ Thea was sharper than intended, and she heard a small squeak of protest from her mother. ‘Sorry,’ she quickly amended. ‘That wasn’t meant to sound so …’
‘Competitive?’ he suggested with a forgiving smile. ‘Think nothing of it. Actually, no, I can’t claim to have been questioned by the police about a murder before. It’s not a pleasant experience.’
‘And not one you’d forget,’ said Thea’s mother softly. But soft or not, the comment effectively put a stop to the conversation.
‘Let’s have some tea and then go for a walk,’ said Thea a few minutes later. ‘We can go and look at Sudeley House from the outside. There are some lovely old trees. And we can’t just hang about here. There’s nothing to do.’
The TV camera caught them totally unawares. They emerged onto Vineyard Street and turned left, before realising that filming was taking place. Assuming it would not concern her, Thea led her visitors towards the park, before finding herself in the camera’s line of fire, as it slowly panned across the allotments and the Thistledown acres. Instinctively she shrank from it. When it passed she breathed a sigh of relief and continued on in the original direction. But then, a minute later, after a brief consultation between the cameraman and a person with a clipboard, it began the same process again, starting with the barely visible roof of Thistledown, and drawing back to include the foreground, then the road, and finally the people in it. This time, Thea bent down to fiddle needlessly with her dog’s collar, hoping to keep her face averted. But she stood up too soon, and once more found herself staring down the barrel of a large lens.