Too Much of Water (10 page)

Many people would have broken down on that thought, with a searing regret that the last exchange had not been more meaningful, that they could not even remember the details of what had been said. Instead of that, Judith Hudson touched her well-coiffured ash-blonde hair with the back of her hand and said, like the most conventional middle-class hostess, ‘Do help yourself to the biscuits, Sergeant Hook. They'll be wasted if you don't eat them, you know.'

Lambert thought of his own daughters, who were about the same age as this girl who had died so mysteriously, and how he would feel if either of them was killed. Irritation cut through his carapace of politeness as he said, ‘We need your help. You must know things about your daughter which are going to be vital in this investigation.'

She looked at him with intelligent brown eyes and said, ‘I'm not even sure how Clare died. Was she drowned?'

It was wrong again, unnatural. If she really didn't know, she should have asked the question much earlier, when Hook had seen her with the woman constable to inform her about the death, or at the latest when Hook had taken her to identify the body on Thursday. ‘No, Mrs Hudson, she wasn't drowned. She was strangled. And then someone, presumably the murderer, took her body and dumped it into the Severn.'

He had made it as abrupt and brutal as possible, certain now that there was no real grief here. But she merely nodded quietly and said, ‘Where was that?'

‘We don't know, as yet. We may never know. The corpse had been in the water for about three days when it was found at Lydney on Wednesday morning.'

‘Yes. Sergeant Hook here warned me that there was some damage from the water when I went to identify the body. It wasn't as bad as I expected, not on the face, anyway.' She sounded as if she were reporting on some minor scientific experiment.

‘She had not been sexually assaulted, as far as we can tell.' He volunteered the information most parents would have demanded in the first shocking minutes of their knowledge of the death.

‘That is good, I suppose.' She spoke not spontaneously, but like one picking her words with care.

‘Mrs Hudson, please do not take this the wrong way, but I have to say that you seem to me unnaturally calm about this.' Almost like one who was expecting it, Lambert thought. But of course he could not say that, not yet. Not until they had a lot more evidence against this strange woman. He was striving not to dislike her, because the code said that personal feelings should never be allowed into an interview, since they would obviously affect your objectivity. Yet in the thirty years since he had been a fresh-faced young constable he had never met a mother who seemed less affected by her daughter's death; perhaps this was one you couldn't play by the book.

Judith Hudson sipped her coffee and looked at him coolly. ‘I think “unnaturally calm” is probably a fair summary. I find myself calmer than I could ever have imagined myself in the face of this week's news. Superintendent, I think you should know that Clare and I were not as close as other mothers and daughters.'

He wanted to say that he had seen that already, that it seemed to him patently an understatement. Instead, he said, ‘And why was that?'

She smiled. ‘Perhaps a psychiatrist could tell you. No doubt it reflects some serious defect in my character.'

Lambert let out a little of his irritation with this infuriatingly calm woman as he said sharply, ‘We're trying to find who killed Clare. The least you can do is give us the fullest possible picture of her relationship with you.'

She smiled, accepting the logic of his argument. He wondered for a disconcerting moment if this woman ever lost her control, whether she shouted her passion between the sheets with that other enigmatic figure, Roy Hudson. As he hastily banished that image, Judith Hudson said, ‘It was better when she was a child. Even then, I never seemed as close to Clare as other mothers were to their children. When I met her out of school, for instance, she never seemed to need me the way other children needed their parents.'

Lambert, feeling like a psychiatrist listening to a patient, looked rather desperately at Hook, who said, ‘And how did Clare get on with her father?'

‘She was always closer to him than she was to me.' Judith Hudson seized on that idea eagerly. ‘I used to tell myself that girls always liked their fathers best, that I shouldn't be jealous of Ken. Adolescent girls are always half in love with their dads, aren't they?'

Hook smiled at her sudden animation. ‘I only have sons, myself, Mrs Hudson. But I'm told that's true. Perhaps I'm missing out. So how did Clare receive the news that you were getting divorced?'

She looked as if she had been slapped across the face. Bert Hook got people off their guard quite effortlessly, with his genuine, avuncular interest, and then threw the difficult question at them when they were least expecting it. ‘She didn't take it well. She was very upset, if you must know.'

‘We must, I'm afraid. But it's not unusual, you know, for adolescent girls to be disturbed and difficult, in circumstances like that.' It was stating the obvious, but this woman seemed emotionally ignorant, to be lacking any knowledge of those instinctive responses which were the essence of being human. ‘Did Clare keep in touch with her father?'

‘Yes. She wouldn't hear of taking my new name of Hudson when I remarried. Her father was working in Oxford for a year or so, and she visited him a lot. It was a real blow to her when Ken found himself a new wife and emigrated to New Zealand.' A small smile crept onto Judith Hudson's face, as if she were relishing the memory of her daughter's distress.

Hook said, prompting her towards further revelation of herself, ‘You must have had some trying times, in those years.'

‘It wasn't easy. She made life as difficult as she could for me and for Roy. And then she made the most unsuitable marriage. I sometimes thought that it was part of her defiance, that she took up with Ian Walker just to annoy me.'

‘So tell us about him, please.'

Judith shrugged. ‘There isn't much to tell. He's a rogue, pure and simple. He's been in and out of trouble since he was a boy. But he's more intelligent than he pretends to be: don't let him fool you about that. Clare had known him a little at school. She flounced in one night and told us she was going to marry him. I thought it was just a bad joke at first, something she'd engineered just to annoy me.'

There was another explanation, thought Bert Hook. A girl, desperately unhappy at home, snatching at the first opportunity to get out of it, however unsuitable the means. He felt the familiar frustration that a murder victim, unlike the victim of any other crime, could never balance the scales with her own version of events. He said, ‘We know about Ian Walker's record. We spoke to him ourselves, yesterday morning.'

‘Then you'll know what a thoroughly unsavoury character he is.'

‘You must have been glad when the marriage ended without any children.'

‘Yes. But he'd ruined her education, among other things. She'd left school when she should have been going on to university. In effect, she gave up her education to get a job and support that waster.' There was a sudden hiss of hatred on the last phrase. It was what you would have expected, in the circumstances she described, but coming from this emotionless woman, any display of feeling was almost a relief.

‘Are you still in touch with Ian Walker?'

‘No. I haven't seen him for years.'

‘He seems to have been in contact with Clare, not long before she died.'

‘He'd be after money, then, I expect. He's a sponger, as well as everything else. I could cheerfully murder Ian Walker myself.' But she said it without passion, as if she were studying herself objectively and being surprised by the thought.

‘Were you aware that he was still in touch with Clare?'

‘No. It doesn't surprise me. But any contact from him would be bad news, I'm sure.'

‘Do you think he killed Clare, Mrs Hudson?'

She examined the notion for a moment, as dispassionately as if she were considering the murder of some girl she had never known. ‘He might have done. He hasn't the guts or the intelligence to plan a murder, but he might have strangled her in the heat of the moment, if they had a row. He'd certainly have known some quiet spot to dump her body in the Severn.'

It was so exactly what Lambert had thought about the man that it made the hairs rise on the back of his neck, coming from this source. He said hastily, ‘We have as yet no reason to suspect Mr Walker of this crime. And it would be best if you kept your own thoughts on the matter to yourself.'

‘Of course. Detection is your business, not mine.'

Lambert nodded and took up the questioning again. ‘Do you know anything about a man named Martin Carter?'

‘No. I don't think Clare ever mentioned him. Who is he?'

‘He's a postgraduate student, doing research for a degree at the university. He helped Clare a little with her studies. He was pretty well the same age as Clare. I thought she might have mentioned him when she was at home.'

‘No. Not that I can recall. Look, Superintendent, there's something you should know. Clare didn't come home during these last few months. My contacts were by phone. She made regular calls, to keep in touch.'

But you didn't report any disquiet to the police or the university when the regular phone call never came last week, he thought. As an ordinary mother might have done. But they'd already had ample proof that this was no ordinary mother. He said, ‘Why did Clare stop coming home?'

She looked as if she was considering the question for the first time. ‘A variety of reasons, I should think. Excitement over her new studies at university: she was a bright girl, who should have been reading for a degree five years earlier. When you start late, you want to make the most of it, people tell me. New friends: she hadn't had many of those, during her years with Walker. Perhaps a new boyfriend, for all I know. What about this man you mentioned a moment ago.'

‘Martin Carter? He says not. It seems he would have been willing, but Clare wasn't.'

‘Someone else, then. I know from the phone calls that she was enjoying being at the university.'

‘Yes. It must have been quite a decision for her, embarking on a degree course as a mature student. Did you offer her any financial assistance?'

‘No. She wouldn't have accepted it.'

The same reply as her husband had given them. Lambert would have given a lot to hear the exchanges in this strange household when Clare Mills had announced that she was going back into full-time study. He said, ‘Do you think one of the reasons why Clare no longer came here was the presence of your husband in the house?'

For a moment, it looked as if she would react angrily. A flash of temper would have been a relief from this disturbingly composed woman. But then she collected the coffee cups and put them back on the tray, like a stage actress using props during a pregnant pause. ‘I shouldn't think so. Roy and Clare had their problems, during the early years, but they now have – had – an excellent relationship.'

The same phrase her husband had used. Lambert wondered how much collusion there had been over what they would tell him. ‘Did they see much of each other?'

‘Very little, over the last year or two.' She smiled at him. ‘I won't deny that that probably contributed to the improvement in the way they got on with each other.'

Lambert wondered just how well she herself got on with the absent Roy Hudson. Each of them had so far seemed determined that they would not meet him together. He said rather desperately, ‘Is there anything you wish to ask us?'

He would have expected her to ask when she could have the body for burial. That was one of the things which always upset parents, when he had to explain that the body had to be retained indefinitely, that when someone was eventually charged with this killing he would have the right to a second, independent post-mortem examination, if his defence requested it. Instead, Judith Hudson said after a moment, ‘Are you close to an arrest?'

He smiled. ‘You probably realize that I would hardly be likely to tell you if we were. Until we actually have someone under lock and key, most of our findings have to remain confidential. But I will tell you that we are at present still in the early stages of the enquiry. That is why we need all the help we can get, from the relatives and friends of Clare Mills.'

He had used the girl's full name like a rebuke, and Judith Hudson said immediately, ‘Yes. I'm sorry I haven't been able to be more helpful to you. But you will appreciate that owing to the circumstances surrounding her, I haven't seen much of Clare in the last few years. First of all, she was involved in a marriage of which Roy and I both thoroughly disapproved, and then she was studying at the university.'

She made both of these circumstances sound like deliberate attacks upon her by the dead girl. He said, almost accusingly, ‘But you must have been happy to see Clare justifying her educational potential at last. You said you had been upset when she gave up the chance of university in order to get married.'

‘Yes, of course. And it's good to hear that she was doing well.'

But apparently you didn't know that until I told you today, thought Lambert. And shouldn't you now be desperate to get into her flat in Gloucester, to retrieve whatever souvenirs you can of the daughter who has gone?

Lambert stood up and said, ‘Please get in touch immediately if anything occurs to you which might have a bearing on this death.' He paused in the doorway as she nodded dutifully. ‘I'm afraid we can't release anything from Clare's flat at the moment. We've had to bag up a lot of her belongings and take them away. We don't know yet what may prove to be evidence later in the case.'

‘What belongings?'