Unforgotten (23 page)

‘I’m sure that’s right,’ Hugh said. ‘I think you should go right ahead and do whatever you feel is best.’

‘I’m relieved to hear you say that, Hugh. Most relieved.’

Hugh waited, wondering if this was the end of it.

‘But maybe you’re ahead of me, Hugh?’ John asked hopefully, his eyes amplified by the lenses of his spectacles. ‘Maybe you can guess what I’m talking about here?’

‘No. Go on.’

‘What she told me was—’ John lifted his head to the sudden babble and whoop of high-pitched young voices outside the heavily barred window. As they began to fade, he resumed in the same low voice. ‘What she told me was that she had found a witness who could prove Denzel’s innocence. She’d gone and met up with him, talked to him personally, but he wasn’t prepared to speak out until he got protection, and she was having a hard time knowing where to go for protection.’ Something in Hugh’s face made John stop and ask, ‘She said nothing to you?’

‘No,’ said Hugh, trying to contain his hurt. ‘No . . . only in general terms.’

‘She said she’d been to the police to ask what would happen if a witness was to come forward. She was careful not to say
anything too definite, she said, not till the witness could be guaranteed protection. Same reason she didn’t want me saying anything to anyone, not even the Lewis family. She didn’t want their hopes getting raised. Most of all she didn’t want talk on the estate – talk that would get the witness running scared.’

‘She actually met this witness, you say?’ Hugh asked quietly, needing to hear it again.

‘That’s right.’

The hurt was like a small torment, eating away at him. ‘I see. I didn’t—’ But he gestured the thought away. ‘Go on.’

‘The reason she told me all this was by way of asking if I would take this witness into my home if anything should happen, if word got out and he began to run scared. I agreed. My wife and I, we often lay an extra place at our table. But I said to Lizzie I wasn’t sure our home was the best place.’ He gestured over his shoulder. ‘We live just down the road here. People come knocking on our door all times of the day and night. It wasn’t going to be a safe place. You understand me? It wasn’t as if people weren’t going to find out someone was there. But Lizzie, she said it would only be in an emergency, if there was no other place for him to go.’

Hugh gazed blindly at the wall of blue surplices. Why didn’t you tell me? he demanded of Lizzie. How could you sit across the table and talk about the campaign and say nothing? How could you look me in the eye?

‘So,’ said John with the air of reaching the end of his story, ‘as soon as Jacqui came and said she was going to ask for your help, I thought of what Lizzie would want me to do . . .’ He spread a massive hand.

‘You did the right thing.’

‘I didn’t feel it was right to tell Jacqui. You understand me?’

Hugh nodded, his mind still racing through fragments of conversations with Lizzie. After a while he became aware of John gazing at him expectantly. ‘Yes . . . I understand.’

‘I appreciate that you already have a heavy burden to carry, Hugh. One of the heaviest burdens a man can bear. I know this
will do nothing to alleviate it. But if there’s anything you can do to help. Anything at all.’

Driving back, overcome by sudden exhaustion, Hugh played loud music and opened the windows to stave off the threat of sleep. I’ll do what I can for them, Lizzie, he decided emotionally, because it’s what you would want me to do. But not straight away. I have you to worry about first. I have to find out how you died, to bury you, to put you to rest, body and soul. To work out how to live life without you.

He made the turn for Oakhill with minimal hesitation. How quickly one adjusts, he thought; soon the turn would become automatic. There were two extra cars outside the house. One was Pat Edgecomb’s, the other he wasn’t sure about.

Lou met him in the hall. He put on a pantomime of weariness, a slumping of his shoulders, a blowing out of his lips, as he went to hug her. ‘Oh, Lou, I’m so glad to be back. What a day. How’ve you been? And Charlie?’

‘All right, Dad.’ Her tone told him nothing. ‘Pat Edgecomb’s here. And the vicar.’

‘The vicar? Oh . . .’

‘About the service.’

The new vicar was female with a masculine haircut, a stern manner and no discernible sense of humour. ‘You’ll help me talk to her, won’t you?’ he said, in momentary panic. ‘And Charlie too, of course.’

‘We’ll need to be finished by seven thirty. I’ve ordered an Indian and Mr Ravikumar’s delivering it specially.’

And after the takeaway, Hugh thought, will come the conversation Lou had made such a point of arranging when she brought his sandwich to Meadowcroft.

Pat Edgecomb and the vicar were in the living room. As he came in, he heard the vicar say, ‘Of course when the parents are working all hours, the children never sit down to a decent meal . . .’

‘Hello, Hugh.’ Pat smiled, getting to her feet.

‘Mr Gwynne,’ the vicar said in a voice so grave she might already be conducting the funeral.

Pat only wanted two minutes, so they went into the hall.

‘I just dropped by to make sure there was nothing more I could do,’ she said in her calm, businesslike way. ‘I understand from the coroner’s office that they’re ready to issue the interim death certificate.’

‘They left a message, yes.’

‘And the other arrangements – they’re all in hand? You don’t need any help there?’

‘I don’t think so, no.’

‘So there’s nothing else I can do at the moment?’

‘You know I went to see Steadman yesterday?’

‘Yes, he told me.’

‘And why?’

‘Yes. I only wish we could have found more answers for you, Hugh. I only wish we could have put your mind at rest as to the cause of the fire. But perhaps the insurance investigators will be able to shed more light. Was it today they came?’

‘Yes.’

‘How did they get on?’

‘Oh . . . All right, I think.’

‘Did they say anything about possible causes?’

‘Nothing in particular, no.’

‘But they’ve taken samples away for analysis, that sort of thing, have they?’

Hugh gave a vague shrug. ‘I don’t know about that.’

‘If it’s a detailed investigation I expect that’s what they’ve done. Were they on site long?’

Hugh made a show of searching his memory. ‘An hour or so.’

Pat’s unassuming gaze held his. ‘They sent a team, did they?’

‘Not a team exactly, no.’

She waited expectantly for him to elaborate. When he
didn’t, she said, ‘But they’ll be letting you know their findings in due course?’

‘Hopefully.’

‘Well, whatever the outcome I hope it gives you the answers you want.’

They moved towards the door.

‘Shall I wait to hear from you then?’ Pat asked as she lifted her jacket off the hook. ‘I’ll be glad to come any time, any time at all. And of course I’m always on the end of the phone.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Well . . .’ Pat held out her hand. ‘Good luck. And don’t forget – if there’s anything I can do . . .’

On the doorstep Hugh said, ‘Oh, yes – I was trying to remember the name of your chief inspector. What is it . . . ?’ He circled a hand, as if to fire his memory.

‘You mean, in CID?’

‘I think so, yes.’

‘It’s DCI Mitchell.’

Hugh shook his head in puzzlement. ‘No, that’s not it. Perhaps I meant detective superintendent?’

She mentioned another name he didn’t recognise.

Hugh said mildly, ‘Why did I think it was Montgomery?’

‘Oh, there’s a DCI Montgomery all right. But he’s based at Trinity Road.’

‘Nothing to do with you then?’

‘No.’

‘Ah, I remember now . . .’ Hugh said. ‘Yes, of course . . . it related to something else altogether.’

The three of them sat down to lamb rogan josh and chicken jalfrezi, with pilau rice, and onion bhajis, which Mr Ravikumar had brought up from the village in his ageing Cortina and delivered with a speech of condolence and a hand pressed against his heart. Indian food had always been a favourite of Hugh’s, preferably washed down with a cold beer, but after his
performance with the wine last night he was glad there was no alcohol in the house.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘what did you think of the vicar?’

Lou glanced at Charlie before answering, ‘A bit uninspiring.’

‘Charlie?’

Charlie made a face. ‘I dunno. I mean, a vicar’s a vicar . . .’

‘Well, forgetting the vicar bit, what did you think of her as a person?’

Charlie took his time loading his fork. ‘Sort of creepy.’

‘That’s what I thought too,’ said Hugh.

‘Mum wasn’t keen on her,’ said Lou.

‘No, Mum didn’t take to her at all. So here’s an idea – how about us having the pastor from the Carstairs Estate to do the service instead? The Reverend John Emmanuel? He worked with Mum quite a bit. They were friends.’

‘They did the Denzel Lewis campaign together,’ Lou said.

‘He’s a great communicator, and because he knew Mum he’d be able to give a proper eulogy.’

‘Sounds good,’ Lou said. ‘Charlie?’

‘Mmm.’

She nudged him into a fuller response.

Looking up from his food Charlie said more positively, ‘Yeah. Has to be an improvement.’

‘Shall I go ahead and ask him then?’ Hugh said.

Lou nodded.

‘I’m sure he’ll agree. He was very fond of Mum. He said some really nice things about her.’

‘What was the important thing he wanted to discuss?’ Lou asked.

‘Oh . . . nothing,’ Hugh said, with an obscure sense of having been found out.

They talked about the service, the atmosphere it should have, not too dismal, with a strong element of celebration, and all the time he was aware of Lou waiting for them to finish
eating so she could launch the conversation she had been so anxious to set up.

Finally Lou took a sip of water and, setting her glass down, said with an air of rehearsal, ‘Dad, Charlie and I want to ask you something.’

‘Of course, sweetheart.’

Charlie, who was cleaning the last food off his plate, paused and, with a sideways glance at Lou, took his cue and put his fork down, as if to provide a united front.

‘We know you’ve been doing what you think is best, trying to protect us and all that. But we need to know what’s going on. And, well . . . we’d like to hear it from you, not from other people.’

Hugh said, ‘Why? What’ve people been saying?’

‘Oh . . . just things.’

‘Like what?’

Lou seemed thrown, as if she hadn’t foreseen the conversation taking off at quite such a tangent. ‘Like . . . well . . .’

‘Pat,’ Charlie murmured.

‘Yes – Pat. Saying she was sorry you weren’t happy with the police investigation. And us not knowing what she was talking about.’ She shot Charlie a glance as if for corroboration. ‘And then . . . well, Ray—’

‘
Ray?
’

‘Yes, he kept calling us because he couldn’t find you. He asked if you were at the police station, like he thought that’s where you must be, and of course we didn’t know where you were, or why you’d be at the police station.’

‘Forget Ray.’

‘But not telling us where you’re going, Dad. And going mad when we touched things at the house. And all the people this morning – why were they there, Dad? You said you wanted to find out what caused the fire, but . . .’ Faltering, Lou turned to Charlie for help.

Charlie looked up and Hugh noticed how tired he looked,
how marked were the shadows under his eyes. ‘Yeah, what’s it matter what caused the fire? I mean . . . nothing’s going to bring Mum back.’

Hugh’s throat tightened. ‘I know it’s not going to bring her back. I know . . .’

Lou said, ‘But is there something you’re not telling us, Dad? Something we should know.’

Hugh sighed, ‘I didn’t want to worry you unnecessarily. I didn’t want to leave you with questions that may never be answered.’

‘But, Dad, we’re old enough to know,’ said Lou, looking immensely young and grown up all at the same time. ‘And we’d rather know than not know.’

Charlie’s eyes had been back on the table again, but now he was gazing obliquely at Hugh, waiting for an answer.

‘You’re right,’ Hugh said. He took a sip of water to ease the thickness in his throat. ‘At the beginning, it wasn’t just that I didn’t want to worry you – I thought perhaps I was imagining things, looking for something or someone to blame for Mum’s death. But then . . . well, I realised I wasn’t. Imagining things, I mean.’

In the heightened silence the telephone began to ring but no one thought of answering it.

‘There were just too many things that weren’t right,’ Hugh said with new certainty. ‘Things I noticed that first morning when I went round the house with the fire brigade investigator. He said the fire started in the sofa, with a match or a cigarette or a candle. Well, that’s just not possible. Mum would never have lit a match or a candle, not when she was working at her desk. And cigarettes . . . She wasn’t expecting anyone that evening. She would have told me. And who leaves cigarettes smouldering on a sofa anyway?’

Lou was gazing at him steadily, while Charlie was frowning at the table.

‘And then there was an open window,’ Hugh went on. ‘Mum would never have left a window open, not after she’d
gone to bed. One of us always checked the doors and windows last thing. And it wasn’t just on the latch, the window, it was properly open. And you know, it takes air – oxygen – to feed a fire. To make it spread.’

Lou was so still she seemed to be holding her breath.

‘Then the door to the hall was open. Okay, sometimes we did leave it open. Well, perhaps more often than not. But our bedroom door, that was open too, and we
never
left it open at night. Unless Mum was hoping to catch you when you got home, Charlie.’

Charlie looked alarmed, as if he was being accused of something.

‘She didn’t say anything about wanting to speak to you when you got in, did she?’

Charlie shook his head.

‘Well, that’s right. She’d have left a note on the stairs if she’d wanted to talk to you, wouldn’t she? She wouldn’t have left the door open on the off-chance of hearing you come in. No. So the door was open. And her—’ But he broke off, loath to tell them about the clothes and the way they were folded, and how their mother had been naked when she was pulled from the house.

Both children were motionless, waiting for some sort of conclusion.

‘There was no sign of a break-in of course,’ he said. ‘But . . . I think there must have been someone there.’

Lou whispered tentatively, ‘Someone who started the fire on purpose?’

‘I think so.’ Then, more definitely, ‘Yes, that’s what I think.’

After a short silence Charlie got up to refill the water jug.

Lou was biting hard on her lip, close to tears. ‘But Mum wouldn’t have known anything, would she?’

‘No,’ Hugh said. ‘Absolutely not.’

‘And the men at the house this morning?’

‘Independent fire investigators. I hired them to see what they could find.’

‘Oh, Dad . . .’ Lou reached for some kitchen paper to dry a sudden tear.

‘That’s what I mean, sweetheart. There may never be any real answers.’

Charlie put the water jug on the table and sat down.

‘But who could’ve done such a thing?’ Lou cried.

Hugh gestured mystification. ‘There was the break-in of course. And—’

‘Break-in?’ Lou interrupted, looking startled.

‘It was nothing much. Just a broken window and a bit of cash.’

‘But when was this? Why didn’t you tell me?’ She threw a glare at Charlie as if to accuse him of being in on the plot.

‘It was about three weeks ago. We didn’t want to worry you, not when you were so far away.’

She shook her head despairingly.

‘Then, a couple of days before the fire, I got home and saw a hoodie lurking in the garden – ’

Lou clapped her hands over her face as if she could hardly bear to hear any more.

‘ – but he ran off when he saw me. Probably just a local kid fooling about.’ The statement sounded unconvincing even to his own ears.

Lou lowered her hands. ‘The police are looking for him?’

‘No. That’s one of the things I complained about.’

‘But why on earth not?’

‘They’ve accepted the fire brigade report, that the fire was accidental.’

‘But what about everything you told them? The doors, the windows . . . someone being there?’

‘Well, that’s the thing, you see. They think Mum had a visitor, someone she knew, someone who smoked.’

Lou said plaintively, ‘I don’t get it.’

‘There were two wine glasses on the draining board. To their minds that’s as conclusive as it gets.’

Charlie reached for the water jug and pulled it closer to his glass. ‘What about fingerprints, stuff like that?’ he said.

‘Exactly. But they don’t want to be bothered with any of that till they have evidence of foul play.’

Lou said, ‘What’s going to happen, Dad?’ She was a child again, seeking reassurance.

‘We see what the independent fire investigators come up with.’ What would happen if they found nothing hung uncertainly in the air between them. ‘And we keep up the pressure on the police.’

There was a silence which Charlie broke hesitantly. ‘The, um . . . addresses on Mum’s computer? Found them okay.’

‘Well done,’ Hugh murmured.

‘I could look for more stuff . . . if, you know . . . it was any use . . .’

‘Sure.’ Fearing this had sounded half-hearted, Hugh added an encouraging smile. ‘Anything to do with Denzel Lewis and the campaign would be really good. His family want to know.’

‘Denzel Lewis. Yeah, sure.’

No one could think of anything more to say. They cleared the plates in silence, then Lou came to Hugh for a hug. Laying her head against his chest she said in a voice still muffled by tears, ‘Thanks for telling us, Dad. It’s better to know.’

He leant his cheek against her raven hair. ‘I’m sorry, my darling. I’m so sorry.’

For an hour they watched a TV game show together, then Charlie disappeared to work on his computer, Lou to have a bath, while Hugh fell asleep in front of a police drama, to be woken by his mobile phone. Digging it out of his pocket, he stared at the name on the display for a long time before deciding to answer.

‘Hi, Tom.’

‘How’re you doing?’

‘Okay.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Tough day?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What did you do?’

Hugh thought, Oh, just told my children their mother was probably the victim of arson. Just ensured they’d never get to have another moment’s peace. ‘It was just stuff, you know. Formalities.’

‘Feeling stressed?’

There was no answer to that. ‘You know . . .’

‘You have to work on your breathing. Take it real slow. Count the breath in and out.’

‘Sure.’

‘I mean it. When you get your breathing right, then you can get through the shit better.’

‘I’ll work on it.’

‘Had a drink?’

‘What? No.’

‘That’s good. Very good,’ came the relentless voice. ‘Support system up and running?’

‘I’ve got the kids. That’s all I need.’

‘One lucky guy.’

‘And you, Tom? How’re you doing?’

‘Hey. Forget about me. This is about getting you through the night.’

‘Thanks,’ Hugh said with a sinking heart.

‘Don’t forget, Hugh – she felt no pain.’

Hugh wasn’t sure why it seemed so important to do it just then, but immediately he had rung off he went into his makeshift office in the dining room and, taking Lizzie’s charred handbag out of its cardboard box, opening it very carefully, looked through the contents.