The Wrong Mother (49 page)

‘The pictures?’ Charlie reminded him.

‘Geraldine had forgotten her camera. I’d brought mine. I offered to take photos of her and Lucy.’

Simon and Charlie waited.

‘The owl sanctuary trip was just before . . . just before Encarna and Amy died. By the time I got round to thinking about developing the pictures, I knew I needed both sets. I needed photographs of my wife and daughter—’ He broke off. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Give me a second.’

‘I think I understand,’ said Simon quietly. ‘You also wanted the pictures you’d taken of Geraldine and Lucy. You hoped that, given time, they would become your new family.’

Hey nodded. ‘I was selfish. I could have made copies for Geraldine, but I didn’t. I didn’t want Mark to have them. At first I put Encarna and Amy in the frames, on a shelf in the lounge. After a while, I couldn’t bear to see them staring at me.’ He shuddered. ‘I couldn’t bear to throw them away either, or to put them in the bathroom with everything else. That would have felt like . . . stamping out their last glimmer of life. Does that make sense?’

Simon nodded. No, it didn’t make sense—not in the way he wanted it to. His feeling of unease was growing. Something was wrong with the story that was taking shape, but what? What was it?

‘So you put the photographs of Geraldine and Lucy in the frames instead,’ he said.

‘Not instead,’ Hey snapped. ‘As well. I never once took Amy’s photograph out of that frame. Or Encarna’s. I loved Geraldine, yes, but not the way I loved my family.’ He began to cry, making no attempt to wipe away his tears. ‘Whatever I’ve done, however wrong it was, I loved them. Like I loved Sally—she was my true family. Or she could have been. Can’t you understand? I just wanted to make things
right
.’ He looked at Simon. ‘Have you always been the person you are now? I haven’t. I was a different person once.’

‘How did the four photos you took at the owl sanctuary end up in Mark Bretherick’s office?’ asked Charlie.

‘An unforeseen disaster,’ said Hey. ‘Geraldine popped round one day unexpectedly. She never did that. I was rarely in, anyway. After I lost Encarna and Amy I spent most of my time at the university. She came round because she’d not heard from me for a while, she was worried about me. I’d told her Encarna had left me, taken Amy to Spain. When I got back from Seddon Hall, I went to see her. Sorry, I’m telling this in the wrong order.’ Hey stopped to take a deep breath.

‘You lied to make her feel sorry for you.’

‘I felt sorry for myself,’ Hey conceded. ‘I was completely alone. Do you know how horrible that is? No loving family around you? No one to ask you how your day’s been, no one to make you feel you really exist?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘When Geraldine turned up on my doorstep, I thought . . . I was thrilled to see her. I completely forgot about the photos. I realised almost straight away, but by then she’d walked into the lounge. The pictures of her and Lucy were up on the shelf—if she’d looked to her right she’d have seen them. What would I have said?’

‘What did you do?’ Charlie asked.

‘I told her to close her eyes, said I had a surprise for her. I grabbed the photos off the shelf and gave them to her, told her I’d had them framed as a present for her and Mark. I made sure to say Mark too, so she wouldn’t think it was . . . anything untoward.’

‘And she took them home,’ said Simon. ‘Unknowingly taking the photos of Encarna and Amy as well. Weren’t you scared she or Mark would open the frames and find them?’

‘What do you think?’ Hey’s voice shook. He blinked away tears, tutted. ‘I started to go round more often, pretending I was just dropping in for a chat. I wanted those pictures back—I needed them—but I couldn’t find them anywhere at Geraldine’s. Now I know why: they were in Mark’s office.’ He clenched his hands into fists. ‘I felt as if I’d betrayed my family. I’d sworn to myself that even though I couldn’t bear to look at the photographs, I would always keep them there, in their frames, on the shelf. But I hadn’t even managed to do that.’

In their frames on the shelf, behind pictures of another woman and child—their replacements.
Hey’s derangement had its own inner logic that put him beyond Simon’s reach.

‘You say you loved Encarna and Amy, and Geraldine—’ said Charlie.

‘And Sally,’ Hey insisted. ‘It just took me a while to realise I’d been searching for something I’d already found.’

‘What about Lucy?’

‘Lucy?’ Hey’s eyes clouded over. He looked annoyed, as if something irrelevant and inconvenient had been placed in his path. ‘Geraldine loved her. She was Geraldine’s daughter.’

‘We know that,’ said Charlie gently. ‘How did you feel about Lucy?’

Hey glared at her.

Simon wanted to lean across the table and grab him, shake the truth out of him. A look from Charlie warned him not to. ‘We don’t have to talk about Lucy if you don’t want to,’ she said. ‘Would you rather tell us about Encarna’s diary? Geraldine’s translation?’

Hey looked at Simon. ‘I only found the diary after Encarna . . . once she was gone. She knew I didn’t speak Spanish. That’s why she wrote it in Spanish. I had to know what was in it, in case . . . Encarna wasn’t like Geraldine. She was capable of anything.’

‘She was dead,’ Simon reminded him.

‘I had a right to know.’ Hey’s tone was defensive.

‘So you asked Geraldine to translate the diary?’

Hey nodded.

‘Did you pay her?’

‘Of course not. She did it as a favour to me.’

Charlie and Simon waited.

‘Geraldine knew how much I loved Amy. She was always saying what a great dad I was. I’d never have let Encarna steal Amy, take her to Spain where I’d never see her. I told Geraldine I was going for custody. I was sure Encarna’s diary was one long rant about how much she hated being a mother.’ He shrugged. ‘You can guess the rest. I’m not proud of having lied.’

‘You told Geraldine her translation of the diary would help you win custody of Amy,’ said Simon, all the more disgusted because of the respect he had once had for Hey.

‘It was a terrible mistake.’ Hey’s voice shook. ‘One of many. Geraldine started making excuses not to see me. At first I thought Encarna must have written something in the diary that showed me in a bad light, some lie or distortion—she was good at that. But when I finally persuaded Geraldine to talk to me about it, it turned out not to be that at all. She was thinking of me. Putting others before herself, as she always did.’ His eyes filled with tears again. ‘She asked if I was sure the diary would make a difference in court. She wanted me to talk to my lawyer, check it would be decisive. I told her there was no need, but she kept going on about it.’

‘Because she wanted to spare your feelings, and Amy’s,’ Simon deduced aloud. A detail slotted into place: Geraldine Bretherick’s phone call to a firm of solicitors. She’d wanted to consult an expert before letting Hey see the destructive words his wife had written, words she believed might ruin not only her friend’s future but his past too, retrospectively. How she must have regretted agreeing to do the translation.

Hey used his sleeve to wipe his eyes and nose. ‘All she’d wanted was to help me get Amy back, and she ended up having to . . . show me that poison, page after page of it.’

‘Is that why you killed her?’ asked Charlie matter-of-factly. ‘You couldn’t forgive her for showing you the truth?’

‘How was it Geraldine’s fault?’ said Hey. ‘I gave her the diary, I asked her to translate it.’ He looked bewildered.

‘Why didn’t you tell Sally Thorning your real name at Seddon Hall? Why pretend to be Mark Bretherick?’

‘I didn’t think about it. I just said it. After what I’d just done, I didn’t want to give my real name. And . . . I thought about Mark all the time. My wife and daughter were . . . I’d . . .’

‘You’d buried them in his garden,’ said Charlie.

‘He and Geraldine were in Florida. I knew that. Having a lovely, happy time. I wanted to ruin it. I wanted to ruin something of theirs.’

‘Were you jealous of Mark?’

Through his tears, Hey made an impatient noise. ‘People like me are jealous of almost everybody, Sergeant.’

‘You must have regretted using Mark’s name,’ said Simon. ‘Once Geraldine and Lucy were dead, and it was all over the news. You must have known Sally Thorning would see Mark on TV. Is that why you tried to kill her by pushing her under a bus?’

‘I didn’t push Sally under a bus.’

‘You expect us to believe that—’

‘I pushed Geraldine.’ A long pause. ‘I’d been in a terrible state for days. They were all dead, all the people I loved. And then I saw . . . I
thought
I saw Geraldine in Rawndesley.’

‘You’d spent a week with Sally Thorning and you didn’t recognise her?’

‘He’d forgotten Sally,’ said Simon, keeping his eyes on Hey. ‘He’d used her and discarded her, hadn’t seen her for over a year. Isn’t that right, Jonathan?’

Hey let out a loud sob, too distressed to reply.

‘Geraldine was the one who knew he’d lost Amy, who felt sorry for him, who was helping him by translating the diary. Geraldine was the one he’d just killed, and so at the forefront of his mind. And suddenly there she was in Rawndesley, alive and well. So he tried to kill her again.’

‘I . . . I panicked. I . . .’

‘Where did you get the GHB?’ asked Charlie.

‘It can’t have been hard,’ said Simon. ‘You told me in Cambridge; you have to get close to the scrotes in order to write your books about them.’

‘Who?’

‘Criminals. Offenders. Like Billy—remember telling me about him? You’ve got contacts who can get you whatever you want, I reckon. A gun, for example.’

‘Why did you kill Geraldine and Lucy, Jonathan?’ asked Charlie. ‘Tell us. You’ll feel better.’

His eyes glazed over. ‘She would have been happy with me. Geraldine. I redecorated Amy’s playroom for her. I wouldn’t have rushed things. I wanted her to have her own space.’ Looking down at his hands, he started to mumble, ‘She loved cranberry glass. Mark wouldn’t let her have it in the house; he said it was too feminine.’

‘And Lucy?’ said Simon. ‘Did you have a room for her?’

Hey’s face shut down.
What was it about Lucy?

‘Tell us about the massage table.’

‘After I saw Sally in Rawndesley, I . . . I realised, of course.

Almost instantly, after the shock had faded. I knew Geraldine was dead. Sally . . .’

‘We understand,’ said Charlie. ‘Sally was still alive. Geraldine’s room became Sally’s room. You bought the massage table for Sally.’

Hey hunched forward in his chair. ‘You’ve got to stop,’ he said. ‘You’re making it sound so . . . bad. It is bad. I know it is. There’s nothing you know that I don’t, believe me.’ His eyes seemed to challenge Simon. ‘I wanted a happy family. That’s all. Please, don’t let Sally think it was like that, the way you’ve just described it. Don’t say I was on the rebound. She’ll never forgive me if you tell her that.’

‘Why did you try to kill Mark Bretherick?’ asked Simon.

‘Is he alive?’

‘Yes.’

‘Tell him I’m sorry. I can’t forgive him, but I’m sorry.’

‘Forgive him? For what? For having the happy family you wanted? For having Geraldine?’

‘Was your family ever happy, Jonathan?’ Charlie asked. ‘You, Encarna and Amy?’

‘Before Encarna went to work for a bank, yes,’ Hey said bitterly. ‘A bank! I couldn’t believe it. She was so brilliant, so talented, she could have done anything. But she chose to be a cog in the capitalist machine. She used to say making money was an art, and mocked me for disapproving. This is the woman who got the highest first in her year at Oxford.’ Hey shook his head. ‘Not just in History of Art—in any subject.’

‘What did Encarna think about your work?’ asked Simon. ‘She must have known you and Keith Harbard were working on family annihilation killings.’

Hey stared down at the table, eyes wide, body tensed.

‘Did your work put the idea into her head? She hated being a mother, and—’

‘No!’

‘Did she know that you and Harbard had been discussing whether women might start to commit familicide with increasing frequency?’

‘What are you saying?’

‘Encarna killed Amy, didn’t she, Jonathan?’ It had to be. Nothing else made sense. Something had to have tipped Hey over the edge. He hadn’t always had it in him, this madness, the ability to kill. ‘And you blame yourself, for putting the idea in her head. She committed murder and suicide in the same instant.’

‘No! She never would have—’

‘You came home and found their bodies in the bath. And Amy’s night light. And you couldn’t stand for the world to know: the professor whose life’s work is to explain and prevent this terrible crime—’

‘No! No!’ Hey’s face was red and wet. ‘Encarna would never have hurt Amy. Look, please, believe me! I . . . I can’t prove it, but—’

‘You’re doing it again, Jonathan,’ said Charlie, standing up.

‘What?’ Simon could have smacked her in the face. He’d been so close to breaking Hey; what was she playing at?

‘You mislead us, then you tell the truth. More lies, more truth. You can’t decide what you want us to believe, can you?’

‘Stop, please . . .’

‘At first you hoped to pass off Encarna and Amy’s deaths as a family annihilation killing. Your speciality. That’s why they were both naked in the bath: you wanted us to believe Encarna did it. But now, when you hear us say it, when we’re in danger of really believing it, you can’t allow that, can you? You have to defend Encarna, because if you don’t who will?’

Charlie stopped. Hey was convulsing, and Simon was staring at her, outraged. ‘Encarna didn’t kill Amy, or herself,’ she told him. Seeing Simon’s eyes move towards Hey—guessing he was reverting, mentally, to his original theory—she said quickly, ‘No. Jonathan didn’t kill them either.’