Fell Purpose (5 page)

Mrs Wilding had whitened to her lips, but she fought back. ‘You wanted to treat her like a child!’

‘She
was
a child!’

‘She’s seventeen.’

‘She was too young.’

Mrs Wilding blazed, ‘
I
was seventeen when you—’

Wilding was out of his seat. ‘Don’t you
dare
bring that up! At a time like this!’

‘You didn’t think
I
was too young!’ Mrs Wilding said viciously, in the manner of one wanting to inflict the maximum hurt. ‘Zellah’s the same age!’

And in the same manner, he hissed, ‘Was! Was!
Was!
’

It was too much for everyone in the room. A hideous silence fell, the Wildings staring at each other with terrified pain and realization, Wilding on his feet, trembling, his wife gripping the arms of her chair so hard her knuckles were white.

Time for a little time out, Atherton thought. There was history here, which might or might not prove helpful to understanding the situation. Think like me, Slider had said; and Slider would have got to the bottom of it. He caught Connolly’s eye and conveyed his wishes by eyebrow and an infinitesimal flick of the head, and said, ‘Mrs Wilding, I wonder if PC Connolly could see Zellah’s room. And we shall need a clear recent photograph, if you have one.’

Mrs Wilding tore her eyes from her husband’s like someone peeling off a plaster, and not without pain, either. She stood up, the meat of her face quivering with suppressed rage. ‘You want to talk to him on his own,’ she said. ‘Well, you’re welcome to him! Much good may it do you.’A last little spurt of viciousness. ‘Much good he ever did me.’

A response almost escaped Wilding’s lips, but he held it back, and she walked from the room with unexpected dignity, Connolly following.

In the silence that followed, Wilding remained standing where he was, as if he had forgotten how to sit down. Atherton, trying hard to imagine what he must be suffering, thought he would probably have welcomed death at that moment, so that he would never have to move on from that moment and face what was coming in the future, for the rest of his life.

‘Please sit down,’ Atherton said eventually, half expecting an explosion. A cornered animal will often attack. But Wilding did sit, blindly, staring at nothing again. Slowly he unfurled his clenched fists and rested them on the chair arms with a curiously deliberate gesture, as though determined to remember where he had left
them
, at least. Atherton sat too, giving him a moment to compose himself.

But Wilding spoke first. The effort of control was audible in the strain in his voice, but it was a very fair attempt at normality. ‘I apologise for that. My wife is an emotional woman, and . . .’ He didn’t seem to know how to end the sentence.

‘No apology necessary,’ Atherton said. ‘This is a terrible time for both of you.’

‘We ought to have handled it better,’ Wilding said. ‘But it’s not something you ever anticipate having to face. Please don’t pay any attention to what she said. She didn’t mean anything. She was just lashing out.’

‘I understand,’ Atherton said. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

‘I suppose you must be used to it,’ Wilding said, looking at him properly for the first time. ‘I hope you
don’t
understand. Have you got children?’

‘No,’ Atherton said.

‘Then you can’t,’ Wilding said. ‘Though I suppose you’ve done this before.’

‘It’s never easy,’ Atherton said.

‘I suppose not. A strange job, yours. Not one I envy you. You must have seen all the worst aspects of human behaviour.’

‘And some of the best,’ Atherton said, to encourage him. ‘Great courage and dignity.’

‘We should have handled it better,’ Wilding said again. ‘
I
should have, as an educated man. But Zellah is our only child. She . . . she was everything to me. You can’t conceive how much she . . .’ He made an unfinished gesture towards the large photograph on the wall, as if that said what he could not.

‘She’s beautiful,’ Atherton said, deliberately not using the past tense.

But Wilding noticed. ‘Not any more,’ he said with black bitterness. ‘Someone’s taken all that away. All that beauty, that talent, that intelligence. All that promise. She was my perfect star.’ He was winding himself up again. ‘But there’s always somebody who can’t bear perfection, who has to tamper with it and destroy it. And I know who.’

THREE

Ride, Reading Hood

M
rs Wilding was breathing hard by the time they reached the bedroom, and it wasn’t all the effect of the stairs. She was congested with anger as she stalked ahead, leading the way to Zellah’s room.

Through the open doors, Connolly could see the upstairs rooms: a double bedroom, with old-fashioned wooden furniture and a silk quilted eiderdown on the bed; a cramped bathroom with a pale-blue suite, crystal tiles, cheap blue carpet, and matching drip-mat and toilet seat cover in shag-pile cotton; a small spare bedroom set up as a sewing-room, with material and part-made garments spread over a bulky armchair that probably turned into a single bed. It reminded her painfully of her parents’ interwar semi in Clontarf: same layout, same taste, just a bit smaller.

The third bedroom, in size falling between the double and the sewing-room – which at home Connolly had shared with her sister Catriona – was Zellah’s, and there was nothing remarkable about it at first glance, except that it was unusually tidy for a teenager, and rather young for a sixteen-going-on-seventeen-year-old. There was no computer or television, no sound system except for a portable radio on the bedside cabinet, and a CD walkman on the windowsill. There was a single bed up against the wall under the window, with a menagerie of stuffed toys lined up along it with their backs to the bricks. Cheap, worn carpet partly covered by a home-made rug. Shelves of books and an MFI desk with what looked like homework and school books spread across it. Cheap wardrobe with a door that wouldn’t close properly. Cheap dressing table with ornaments and an elderly Barbie mingling with the hairbrushes and a modest array of make-up. Ancient floral wallpaper partly obscured by framed family photographs and two cheap reproduction paintings, one of a cantering horse and one, very faded, of the Margaret Tarrant picture of Jesus with the sheep and the collie dog and the curly-headed children. In the circumstances it was horribly touching.

Mrs Wilding was not looking. She hardly waited to get in there before turning on Connolly to vent her spleen.

‘Can you believe he’d talk to me like that, at a time like this? But he’s always been the same. He thinks he’s the only person that feels things. Him and his education, and his “superior understanding”! What good has it done us, you tell me that! Here we are stuck in a place like this, hardly big enough to swing a cat, and neighbours you wouldn’t pass the time of day with. And everyone knows these were council houses. I can’t hold my head up. But that’s men for you. Promise you the earth, but you end up stuck in a council house, scratching about to make ends meet!’

‘Mr Wilding’d be a bit older than you?’ Connolly suggested, to keep her going. Not that she needed much encouragement – she was plainly ready to spill everything to another woman.

‘A bit? Try a
lot
! That’s half the trouble. He treats me like a child, or an idiot. I’m just as bright as him, let me tell you that! Where do you think Zellah gets her brains? He thinks it’s all him, but I used to write
poetry
when I was a girl. Always got top marks at school for my essays and things.
I
could have gone to university if I’d wanted to. But I couldn’t be bothered with it. Waste all that time getting a piece of paper that’s no use to man nor beast as far as I can see? Did you go to university? No, of course not – you’ve got more sense. I wanted to get
on
with life, get out and have a bit of fun. So I left school at sixteen, did a secretarial course, and got a job. Nothing wrong with that, is there?’

‘Nothing at all.’

‘I’ve never regretted it for a minute. But he looks down on me for it now. Didn’t mind it at the time, though, did he? Oh no. Couldn’t wait to employ me, soon as he set eyes on me.’

‘You worked for him, then?’

‘That was my first job. Shorthand and general office work at Wildings, Telford Way. A friend of mine’s dad worked there, that’s how I heard of it, but the employment agency sent me there for a vacancy. It was his own firm, making metal address plates. Not very big, but successful, mind,’ she added sharply. ‘It was – what do you call that, when you make something no one else does?’

‘A niche, you mean?’ Connolly suggested, after a moment’s thought.

‘That’s it. Well, like I say, it was very successful, but because it was a small firm he liked to interview everyone himself, to make sure they’d fit in. Oh, he was very grand, you know. The big boss!’ She curled her lip. ‘But he couldn’t keep his eyes off me, right from the beginning. I know the signs, believe you me. Well, long story short, he wasn’t getting on with his wife at the time, and before you could say knife he was asking me to work late. Then he started driving me home after. Then it was stopping for a drink on the way, then it was taking me out to dinner. One thing led to another, and – well, you know.’

‘Yes,’ Connolly assented.

‘Of course
you
do, dear,’ Mrs Wilding said, in generous acknowledgement of Connolly’s not-bad looks. Then she put herself into a different league. ‘I was gorgeous then, believe me.’

‘I can see that.’

‘Thank you, dear.’ She simpered a little. ‘I could have had anyone, you know. I was seventeen, with my whole life ahead of me. And the next thing I know, I’m pregnant.’

Connolly did a quick bit of maths and tried not to sound surprised when she said, ‘And would that be . . .?’

Mrs Wilding waved an impatient hand. ‘No, no. Zellah came later. Well, anyway, he’d been talking for ages about leaving Valerie – that was her name, the cow – and finally he had to put his money where his mouth was. He divorced her and we got married, but it was never the bed of roses he promised me. She’s been bleeding him white ever since.’

‘Valerie?’

‘The bitch,’ she spat. ‘Nothing was too good for her, was it? Lap of luxury, every comfort for her and the boys.
She
got the family house, this gorgeous detached house in Acton. While him and I had to start our married life living in his mother’s house. With his mother! I couldn’t believe it when he told me that’s where we’d have to go. It’s no wonder I lost the baby.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

‘Well, I wasn’t. Not really. I was too young to be saddled with a baby then. I wanted to have a bit of fun – and I did after that, believe you me. Dancing, shows, night clubs – I still had too much life in me to settle down to nappies and bottles and all the rest of it. I don’t think Derek minded all that much about the baby, either, though he pretended to, because it would have been extra expense, and he was having to work like a dog anyway, with Lady Muck to support, not to mention school fees for the boys – though why they had to go to private school
I
don’t know. Like leeches they were, the three of them, sucking the life out of us. No, I was twenty-five when I fell for Zellah, and
that
wasn’t planned, but at least I’d had a bit of pleasure by then. Though it’s goodbye to all that when you’ve had a baby. Your figure goes, and you’re tied hand and foot. But I never resented it. She was a gorgeous baby from day one, and she just got more gorgeous as she grew up.’ Her eyes filled with tears as reality struck another blow. ‘I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it. Who would do such a thing? This’ll kill him, I’m not kidding you. He thought the sun shone out of her eyes. He’ll never get over this.’

She stared at Connolly, her large eyes swimming, tears slipping over in an almost theatrical way; but it was not theatrical. There was a world of genuine pain, the real, gritty, unbearable sort that only happens in real life, not on the screen. ‘She wasn’t raped?’ she asked pathetically. ‘You promise me she wasn’t raped?’

‘The doctor said not.’

‘And he didn’t cut her? This maniac? He didn’t – disfigure her?’

Connolly shook her head. ‘No, nothing like that.’

‘But – the other thing,’ she went on. ‘The thing he did. You know.’ She didn’t want to say the words. ‘Strangling. Does it hurt? Did she suffer?’

Connolly made a helpless gesture. How do you answer a question like that? ‘Mrs Wilding . . .’

‘I want to see her,’ she said. ‘I’ll know if I see her. I have to know.’

‘You can see her, of course. And somebody will have to identify her – you know, formally. Either you or your husband could—’

‘It had better be me,’ she said, suddenly sounding strangely calm and capable. ‘He’d go to pieces. Him and his superior education! He’s never been able to cope. The divorce, Valerie – he never stood up to her, just gave her anything she asked for. It was me that was short-changed – having to settle for second best, while she got the big house and everything. And then when she died, it turns out she owned half his company, more than half. She left it all to the boys.
They
didn’t want it, of course – just wanted the money. So he had to sell. She’d poisoned their minds against him, of course. They took the money and ran. Alan’s in Canada and Ray’s in New Zealand. Good riddance, as far as I’m concerned. But he practically killed himself building up that firm and putting them through school and everything, and when he had to sell it – well . . .’ She shook her head. ‘It knocked the stuffing out of him. He’s never really been the same since. After that, the only thing he cared about was Zellah.’