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10

8/9/07


‘This isn’t about me,’ said Mark Bretherick. ‘You’d like to pretend it is, but it isn’t. Do you know what your men are doing with the earth they’re digging out of my garden?’ He pointed out of the lounge window at the teams of officers in overalls. Sam Kombothekra, more silent and serious than Simon had ever seen him, stood guard beside them, hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched. Simon knew he was hoping they’d find nothing. Kombothekra hated the unpleasantness crime brought with it, the social awkwardness of having to arrest a person, of having to look a man in the face and tell him you think-or know, more often than not-that he’s done something terrible. Especially hard if that man is someone you’re used to treating very differently.

His own fault. A bit less of the ‘Mark, we understand what you’re going through’ and he’d have found today a piece of piss.

‘Our men will repair the damage as best they can,’ Simon told Bretherick.

‘That’s not what I meant. It’s a very clever metaphor you’ve got going here. You look as if you’re unearthing, when burying’s what you’re really doing. That’s the true purpose of all the earth that’s flying around out there!’ Bretherick had finally exchanged the blue, sweat-stained shirt he’d worn for days for a clean, mustard-coloured one, which he wore with gold cufflinks.

‘Burying what?’ asked Simon.

‘The reality of the situation. You got it badly wrong, didn’t you? When facing up to that became unavoidable, you decided to make me the villain of the piece because it was easier than admitting that I’ve been right all along: that a man called William Markes, who you can’t find, murdered my wife and daughter!’

‘We don’t decide to make people villains. We look for evidence that will implicate or exonerate them.’

Contempt twisted Bretherick’s features. ‘So you’re hoping to find proof that I’ve committed no crime hidden beneath a begonia, are you?’

‘Mr Bretherick-’

‘It’s actually Dr Bretherick, and you still haven’t answered my questions. Why are you hacking my garden to bits? Why are there people at my office, disturbing my staff, going through every scrap of paper? Clearly you’re looking for evidence that I killed Geraldine and Lucy. Well, you won’t find any, because I didn’t!’

Simon and Kombothekra had said something similar to Proust yesterday: Bretherick had long since been proved innocent of the only crime known to have been committed. Why exactly were they here?

‘You’re right, Waterhouse,’ Proust had said for the first time since records began. If Simon had been wearing a hearing aid, he’d have taken it off and given it a good shake to check it was working properly. ‘Be grateful you aren’t in my shoes. I had to make a choice: either I end up a laughing stock, fooled into wasting thousands of pounds by some nameless fantasist’s rip-roaring tale of dead cats, red Alfa Romeos and bereaved men gardening at inappropriate times, or I go down in history as the DI who dismissed an important lead and never found the bodies hidden in the perishing greenhouse. Which you can bet your police pension would be discovered five years later by a pip-squeak bobby out sunbathing on his day off.’

‘Sir, either there are more bodies to find, or there aren’t,’ Simon had pointed out. ‘It’s not as if they’ll only be there if you don’t look for them.’

A cold squint from the Snowman. ‘Don’t be a pedant, Waterhouse. The worst thing about pedants is that there’s only one way to answer them and that’s pedantically. What I was trying to say-and what, frankly, anyone whose brain was in good working order would have understood-is that I fear our searches will yield nothing. Equally, I fear that if I ignore the information contained in the anonymous letter-’

‘We completely understand, sir,’ Kombothekra had chipped in hastily. For a man who wanted no trouble, he’d made an odd career choice.

‘Does the name Amy Oliver mean anything to you?’ Simon asked Mark Bretherick.

‘No? Who is she? Is she the woman who came here, who looked like Geraldine?’

‘She’s a child. She was in Lucy’s class at school last year.’

Simon saw his disappointment, quickly masked by anger.

‘Don’t you people listen? Geraldine dealt with all the school stuff.’

A quiet voice came from behind Simon. ‘You didn’t know the names of any of Lucy’s friends?’ Kombothekra had joined them.

‘I think there was one called Uma. I probably met them all at one time or another, but-’

The telephone rang.

‘Am I allowed to answer?’

Simon nodded, then listened as Bretherick issued a brief, baffling diatribe. ‘It has to be client-server based, and it has to have multi-level BOMS,’ was his conclusion.

‘Work?’ said Simon, once the conversation was over. How could Bretherick function professionally at a time like this?

‘Yeah. I suppose you’ve tapped my phone, haven’t you? If you want to know what anything means, feel free to ask.’

Patronising turd, thought Simon. ‘The two photographs that you claim were stolen,’ he said, deciding it was time to retaliate. ‘Inside the frames, behind the pictures of Geraldine and Lucy, were two other photographs that we believe might be of Amy Oliver and her mother.’

Bretherick exhaled slowly, a frown gathering around his eyes. ‘What? What do you mean? I… I didn’t have any photographs of… I didn’t know Amy Oliver, or her mother. Who told you that?’

‘Where did the pictures of Geraldine and Lucy at the owl sanctuary come from? Did you take them yourself?’

‘No. I’ve no idea who took them.’

‘Did you put them in their frames?’

‘No. I don’t know anything about them. One day they just appeared on the mantelpiece. That’s it.’

Fundamentally Simon believed him, but it sounded lame. ‘They just appeared?’

‘Not literally! Geraldine must have put them in frames and… she did all that, framed her favourite photos and Lucy’s paintings and put them up. I saw those two and liked them and took them to my office. That’s all I know about them. But why would she have put photographs of this Amy Oliver girl and her mother inside the frames? It makes no sense.’

‘Were the Olivers significant to Geraldine, do you know?’

Bretherick answered with a question. ‘How come you know all this, about the photographs? Have you found the woman who stole them?’ He leaned forward. ‘If you know who she is, you’ve got to tell me.’

‘Mark, what sort of thing did you and Geraldine used to talk about?’ Kombothekra asked. ‘You know-of an evening, after dinner.’

Simon made up his mind to draw the sergeant’s attention to the wedding anniversary cards, the oh-so-courteous messages inside them.

‘I don’t know! Everything. What a stupid question. My work, Lucy… Aren’t you married?’

‘Yes.’

‘No,’ said Simon quickly. He didn’t want to have to sit there worrying he would be asked the same question. Better to get it over with.

Bretherick stared at him. ‘Well, then you’ll never know how it feels when someone murders your wife.’ Simon thought that this was stretching the concept of looking on the bright side beyond its capacity.

‘I know the name of every single one of my sons’ friends, and their parents,’ said Kombothekra.

‘Bully for you,’ said Bretherick. ‘Do you know how to build, from scratch, a cryogen-free nitrogen-recycling cooling unit that every laboratory in the world will need to buy? That will make your fortune?’

‘No,’ said Kombothekra.

‘And I do.’ Bretherick shrugged. ‘We all have our strengths and weaknesses, Sergeant.’

Simon was starting to feel inadequate; it didn’t take much. He said, ‘Your mother-in-law says there are things in Geraldine’s diary that are factually incorrect. Jean didn’t buy Geraldine a mug with The Big Sleep on it, for example. Geraldine didn’t fly into a rage, smash the mug, accuse her mother of being insensitive to her sleep-deprived state.’

Bretherick nodded. ‘Geraldine didn’t write that diary. Whoever killed her wrote it.’

‘Yet you only became sure of this once you’d heard what Jean had to say. Isn’t that right?’ Bretherick had asked why he was a suspect; Simon hoped it was becoming clearer. ‘You read that diary long before Jean did-several times, I assume?’

‘Over and over. I can recite much of it from memory, my new party trick. What a popular guest I’ll be.’

‘Why didn’t you say straight away, “This didn’t happen, this isn’t true, my wife can’t have written this”?’

Simon watched uncomfortably as Bretherick’s face lost its colour. ‘Don’t turn that on me! You all told me Geraldine had killed herself and Lucy. You kept telling me. No, the diary didn’t sound like Geraldine-it sounded nothing like her-but you said it was her diary.’

‘I’m not talking about the feelings and attitudes she expressed, things you might have assumed she’d withheld from you,’ said Simon. ‘I’m talking about facts: the smashing of the mug, the things that simply didn’t happen.’

‘I don’t know anything about a mug! How was I supposed to know if it happened or not? That diary’s full of… distortions and lies. I told you it was all wrong. I told you someone else must have written it. I don’t recognise Geraldine’s voice, or her thoughts or her description of our lives. That business about God being called Gart? I never heard Geraldine or Lucy say that, not once.’

There was a tap on the lounge window, one of the search team from outside. Kombothekra, who had been leaning against the glass, turned, obscuring Simon’s view of the garden. Simon watched the sergeant’s back, its stiff stillness, and listened to the absence of background noise. No voices any more, no sound of shovels cutting into earth. His heart started to thump.

‘What?’ Bretherick saw the look on Kombothekra’s face. ‘What have you found?’

‘You tell me, Mark,’ said Kombothekra. ‘What have we found?’ He nodded at Simon and raised two fingers almost imperceptibly, the barrel of an imaginary gun. Either Simon had lost his ability to read signals or else two bodies had been found beneath Mark Bretherick’s rectangular lawn.

What no nod could tell him-for Kombothekra couldn’t possibly know at this stage-was whether these were the bodies of Amy Oliver and her mother. And now there was a new question that had leaped to the top of Simon’s list. More than anything, he wanted to find out the name of the anonymous letter-writer.

How did she know so much, and how the fuck was he going to find her?


‘Amy Oliver,’ said Colin Sellers, looking over Chris Gibbs’ shoulder at the photograph of a gangly, sharp-eyed young girl in school uniform sitting on a wall. Until today, neither detective had been in a school office since his teenage years, and neither felt entirely comfortable. Gibbs had been loathed by his teachers, and Sellers, though amiable and popular, had been berated daily for chatting to his friends when he should have been working.

‘Not a happy girl,’ Gibbs muttered.

‘Shit.’ Sellers lowered his voice so that Barbara Fitzgerald and Jenny Naismith, the headmistress and secretary of St Swithun’s Montessori Primary School, wouldn’t hear him. He didn’t want to offend them, and imagined that because they worked with children they would be quick to take offence.

Sellers didn’t fancy either of them. Mrs Fitzgerald was old, had waist-length grey hair and wore glasses that were too large for her face. Jenny Naismith was in the right age bracket and had a pretty face and good skin, but looked too neat and meticulous. Bound to be a ball-breaker.

On the plus side, both women were efficient. They had produced the two photographs and confirmed the identities of their subjects within seconds of Sellers’ and Gibbs’ arrival. Now Mrs Fitzgerald was hunting in a filing cabinet for a list of all the people who went on the school trip to Silsford Castle ’s owl sanctuary last year. Sellers couldn’t imagine why she’d kept it this long. ‘We keep everything,’ Jenny Naismith had said proudly.

‘Shit what?’ Gibbs asked.

‘Nothing. For a minute I thought the name Amy Oliver rang a bell.’

‘From where?’

‘Don’t get excited.’ Sellers laughed away his embarrassment. ‘It’s Jamie Oliver I was thinking of. That’s why it sounded familiar.’

‘I hate that twat,’ said Gibbs. ‘Every ad break, he’s there telling me what to eat: “Try putting some butter on your bread. Try having some chips with your sausage.”’ Gibbs attempted a cockney accent. ‘As if he invented it!’

‘The spelling is different.’ Barbara Fitzgerald abandoned the filing cabinet. ‘Amy’s name is O-L-I-V-A. Oliva. Spanish.’

Gibbs checked his notebook. ‘So that’s why her mother’s called…’ He couldn’t read his own writing. ‘Cantona?’ He was aware of Sellers beside him, trying not to laugh. Too late, he realised what he’d said.

‘Encarna.’ Barbara Fitzgerald didn’t laugh, corrected him matter-of-factly, as if it were an easy mistake to make. ‘It’s an abbreviation of Encarnaci'on. Which is Spanish for “Incarnation”. Many Spaniards have religious names. I told you, Amy moved to Spain.’

‘Mrs Fitzgerald’s got the most amazing memory,’ said Jenny Naismith. ‘She knows every detail about every child at this school.’

Gibbs altered the spelling of Amy’s surname. Evidently that was something the anonymous letter-writer didn’t know; had she never seen it written down? Esther Taylor: that was the name of the woman who had turned up at St Swithun’s with the two photographs. Or at least the name she had given Jenny Naismith. Taylor was a common name, but Esther was more unusual, and if she looked like Geraldine Bretherick… well, it shouldn’t be too hard to track her down.

‘This list isn’t leaping out at me,’ Mrs Fitzgerald said apologetically. ‘I’ll have a proper look later, and I’ll bring it into the police station as soon as we track it down.’ She folded her thick, tanned arms. ‘Actually, I went on that trip myself, and I’m pretty sure I could jot down most of the names for you now. Would you like me to?’

‘Yes, please,’ said Sellers.

‘You didn’t notice who took those two photographs, by any chance?’ Gibbs asked. ‘Or anyone taking photos of Geraldine and Lucy Bretherick?’

Barbara Fitzgerald shook her head. ‘Everyone was snapping away, as they always do on school trips.’ This was the first time the name Bretherick had been mentioned. The headmistress seemed unflustered by its appearance in the conversation. Jenny Naismith was still ransacking the filing cabinet. Sellers couldn’t see her face.

‘What can you tell us about Encarna Oliva?’ he asked.

‘She worked for a bank in London.’

‘Do you know which one?’

‘Yes. Leyland Carver. Thanks to Encarna, they sponsor our Spring Fair every year.’

‘Do you have the family’s contact details in Spain?’

‘I don’t think we were ever given a snail-mail address,’ said Mrs Fitzgerald, ‘but we did get an e-mail shortly after Amy left St Swithun’s, telling us all about her new home in Nerja.’

‘Nerja.’ Sellers wrote it down. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve still-’

‘No, but I do remember the e-mail address.’ Mrs Fitzgerald beamed. ‘It was [email protected]. No apostrophe. My secretary and I had a long discussion about it. Not Jenny-my previous secretary, Sheila. The missing apostrophe annoyed me. Sheila said she’d never seen an e-mail address with an apostrophe in it, and I said that if one couldn’t use apostrophes in Hotmail addresses, then why not avoid the problem altogether by coming up with an address that doesn’t require an apostrophe?’

‘Is there a computer here that I can use?’ asked Gibbs. Jenny Naismith nodded and led him to her desk. ‘Worth a try,’ he said to Sellers.

‘What about Amy’s old address?’ Sellers asked the headmistress. ‘The people who live there now might have a forwarding address for the Olivas.’

‘They might,’ Mrs Fitzgerald agreed. ‘Good idea. I can root that out for you, certainly.’

Sellers was relieved that she didn’t know it by heart. He’d been starting to wonder if she had special powers.

When the head turned to face him again, armed with a sheet of A4 paper, she had a more reserved expression on her face. ‘Is Amy… all right?’

Sellers was about to say something reassuring when Gibbs said, ‘That’s what we’re trying to find out.’ He didn’t look up from the keyboard.

‘We have to work on the assumption that she’s fine unless we find out that she isn’t. Which hopefully we won’t.’ Sellers smiled.

‘Will you let me know the very second there’s any news?’ asked Mrs Fitzgerald.

‘Of course.’

‘I liked Amy. I worried about her too. She was extremely bright, very passionate, very creative, but like many sensitive, creative children, she tended to overreact. Hysterically, sometimes. I think she did it to make life more interesting, actually. As an adult, I’m sure she’ll be one of those women who creates drama wherever she goes. She once said to me, “Mrs Fitzgerald, my life’s like a story, isn’t it, and I’m the main person in the story.” I said, “Yes, I suppose so, Amy,” and she said, “That means I can make up what happens.” ’

‘Number 2, Belcher Close, Spilling,’ Jenny Naismith read from the piece of paper in her boss’s hand. ‘Amy’s old address.’

‘Do you want to look at our A-Z or have you got sat nav?’

Sellers covered his mouth with his hand to hide a grin. Barbara Fitzgerald had pronounced it as if it were the name of an Eastern deity: his venerable holiness, Sat Nav. ‘We’ll find it,’ he said.

Was a trip to Spain likely to fall into his lap? Why couldn’t it be France? He could take Stace; she could practise her French-there was no doubt she needed the practice. Sellers had done French O level, got a B, and he reckoned Stace was the sort of person who’d never be able to learn a language. She just didn’t get it. She was rubbish. If he could have taken her to France, it might have helped. Maybe Spanish was easier. Maybe he could persuade her to switch. Better still, he could take Suki to Spain…

Barbara Fitzgerald handed Sellers a list of names. He counted them. Twenty-seven. Great. Would Kombothekra want him to collect twenty-seven accounts of a visit to an owl sanctuary in the hope that someone would remember who took which photographs? That’d be fun. Sellers was halfway out of the school office when he remembered he’d left Gibbs behind. He turned, doubled back on himself.

Jenny Naismith was walking up and down behind her desk, too polite to ask when she might once again have the use of her computer. Gibbs had stopped typing and was staring at his Yahoo inbox, blowing spit bubbles. ‘Are you ready?’ Sellers asked him. How to be charming and graceful, by Christopher Gibbs. ‘You’re not waiting for Amy Oliva to reply, are you? She’ll be at school.’

‘So? That’s all schools do these days, isn’t it? Buy kids computers to play with?’

‘In this country, sadly, things are going in that direction,’ said Barbara Fitzgerald from the doorway. ‘If you’re talking about the state sector, that is. In Spain, I’m not sure. But, you know, there’s no point sitting there and waiting.’ She smiled fondly at Gibbs; Sellers found himself feeling quite impressed. ‘Forget about it for the time being and try again later.’

Gibbs grunted, abandoned the keyboard and mouse.

As he and Sellers walked back to the car, Sellers said, ‘Wise words indeed, mate. Is that what Debbie says when you can’t get it up? Forget about it for the time being and try again later.’

‘Not a problem I have.’ Gibbs sounded bored. ‘Right, what now?’

‘Better check in with Kombothekra.’ Sellers pulled his phone out of his pocket.

‘Is he Asian?’ Gibbs asked. ‘Stepford?’

‘Of course not, pillock. He’s half Greek, half upper-crust English.’

‘Greek? He looks Asian.’

‘Sarge, it’s me.’ Sellers gave Gibbs a look that Barbara Fitzgerald would no doubt have thought too discouraging, bad for morale. ‘The photos are of Amy Oliva and her mother, confirmed. That’s Oliva spelled O-L-I-V-A. They were brought in by a woman who called herself Esther Taylor… sorry? What?’

‘What?’ Gibbs mouthed, when the silent nodding had gone on for too long.

‘All right, Sarge. Will do.’

‘What, for fuck’s sake?’

Sellers rubbed the screen of his mobile phone with his thumb. He thought about the helium balloons his children were given at parties and in restaurants. They tried so hard to clutch on to the strings, but they could never maintain their grip and eventually the balloons drifted up and out of reach. There was nothing you could do but watch as they escaped at speed. That was how Sellers was starting to feel about this case.

Double or nothing. He would have preferred nothing.

‘Corn Mill House, in the garden,’ he said. ‘They’ve found two more bodies. One’s a child.’


‘Boy or girl?’ asked Simon, aware that this question was normally asked in happier circumstances. He, Kombothekra and Tim Cook, the pathologist, stood by the door to the greenhouse, away from the rest of the men. Kombothekra hadn’t worked with Cook before. Simon had, many times. He, Sellers and Gibbs knew him as Cookie and sometimes drank with him in the Brown Cow, but Simon was embarrassed to make this obvious to Kombothekra; he hated the nickname anyway, regarded it as unsuitable for a grown man.

‘Not sure.’ Cook was at least five years younger than Simon, tall and thin with dark, spiky hair. Simon knew that he had a girlfriend who was fifty-two, that they’d met at a local badminton club. Cook could be unbelievably boring on the subject of badminton, but would say little, even when urged by Sellers and Gibbs-especially then-about his older partner.

Simon couldn’t believe the age gap didn’t bother Cook. He, Simon, could never have a relationship with anyone twenty years older than himself. Or twenty years younger, for that matter. Or with anyone. He pushed away the unwelcome thought. Half the time he prayed Charlie would change her mind, the other half he was grateful she’d had the good sense to turn him down. ‘ “Not sure”?’ he said impatiently. ‘That’s the sort of expert opinion I could have come up with myself.’

‘It’s a girl.’ Sam Kombothekra sighed heavily. ‘Amy Oliva. And the woman’s her mother, Encarna Oliva.’ He turned, glanced at the makeshift grave behind him, then turned back. ‘It’s got to be them. Family annihilation mark two. Keeping the media at bay’s going to be a nightmare.’

‘We know nothing,’ Simon pointed out. Sometimes he heard a phrase that he knew would be impossible to dislodge from his mind. Family annihilation mark two. ‘Whoever they are, this can’t be a family annihilation.’ He resented having to use Professor Harbard’s crass definition. ‘Mrs Oliva can’t have buried her own body, can she? Laid a lawn over herself? Or are you saying her husband killed them? Mr Oliva? What’s his first name?’

Kombothekra shrugged. ‘Whatever his name is, his body’s buried somewhere nearby, and our men are going to find it any second now. Mark Bretherick killed all three Olivas, and he also killed Geraldine and Lucy.’

Simon wished Proust were here to give Kombothekra the slating he deserved. ‘What the fuck? I know we can’t avoid charging him, but… Do you really think he’s a killer? I thought you liked him.’

‘Why?’ Kombothekra snapped. ‘Because I was polite to him?’

‘I think he’s a killer,’ Cook chipped in. ‘Four bodies have turned up on his property in less than a fortnight.’ Neither Simon nor Kombothekra bothered to reply. Simon was thinking about the shock and fury on Bretherick’s face as he was helped into the police car that would by now have delivered him to the custody suite at the nick. Kombothekra stared at his feet, mumbled something Simon couldn’t decipher. ‘Anyway, have I said anything about the adult skeleton being a woman’s?’ The pathologist returned to his area of expertise, reminded the other two men that they needed his input.

‘You haven’t said anything, period.’ Simon glared at him.

Kombothekra looked up. ‘You’re saying the adult skeleton is a man’s? Then it’s Amy’s father.’

‘No. Actually, it is a woman.’ The revelation got no response. Tim Cook looked embarrassed, then disappointed. ‘It’s easy to identify an adult female pelvic structure. But a young child…’

‘How young?’ asked Simon.

‘My guess would be four or five.’

Kombothekra nodded. ‘Amy Oliva was five when she left St Swithun’s school, supposedly to move to Spain.’

‘Get me dental records,’ said Cook. ‘Don’t give the bodies names until we’re sure.’

‘He’s right,’ said Simon.

‘How long dead?’ Kombothekra demanded, his usual charm and tact having deserted him.

‘I can’t say for sure at this stage. Somewhere between twelve and twenty-four months would be my guess,’ said Cook. ‘There are remnants of tendons and ligaments, but not many.’

‘How did they die?’

Cook made a face. ‘Sorry. If we had more soft tissue, I might be able to tell you, but all we’ve got’s bones and teeth. Unless the murder weapon made some sort of mark on a bone… I’ll have a good look when I get them on the table, but don’t bank on finding a cause of death.’

Kombothekra pushed the pathologist out of the way and headed for the house.

‘Is he always like that?’ Cook asked.

‘Never.’ Simon wanted to speak to Jonathan Hey, but felt he couldn’t walk off so soon after Kombothekra had, leave Cook stranded. When he’d visited Hey in Cambridge, the professor had as good as asked him if he was sure Mark Bretherick hadn’t killed Geraldine and Lucy. What exactly had he said? Something about husbands being more likely to murder wives who don’t work, who have no status outside the home.

Encarna Oliva, from what Simon had picked up second-hand via Kombothekra and Sellers, had been a banker at Leyland Carver. In professional and commercial terms, status didn’t come much higher than that. She must have earned a small fortune. Her body had been found in Mark Bretherick’s garden, but he wasn’t her husband.

It was all wrong. They were finding out more, but Simon had no sense of a coherent shape emerging.

Cook said, ‘I’d better get back to it. Why do we do it? Why aren’t we postmen or milkmen?’

‘I worked for the post office for two weeks once, at Christmas, ’ Simon told him. ‘They sacked me.’

As Cook wandered reluctantly back to the bones, Simon pulled out his phone and his notebook. There was time, he told himself, before Kombothekra came back from wherever he’d disappeared to. Jonathan Hey didn’t answer his office telephone, so Simon rang his mobile. Hey answered after the third ring.

‘It’s Simon Waterhouse.’

‘Simon.’ Hey sounded pleased to hear from him. ‘Are you in Cambridge again?’

‘No. I’m at Mark Bretherick’s house in Spilling.’

‘Right. Of course. Why would you be in Cambridge?’

‘We’ve found two more bodies on the property-an adult woman and a child.’

‘What? Are you sure?’ Hey tutted. ‘Sorry, that’s an idiotic question. What I mean is, you’re saying two more people have died at the Bretherick house since Geraldine Bretherick and her daughter?’

‘No, these bodies have been here at least a year,’ Simon told him. ‘This is highly confidential, by the way.’

‘Of course.’

‘No, really. I shouldn’t be telling you any of it.’

‘So why are you?’ asked Hey. ‘Sorry, I’m not being rude, I just-’

‘I want to know what you think. My sergeant, when we dug up the bodies, said “Family annihilation mark two”, and I just wondered-’

‘Dug up?’ Hey’s voice was squeaky with incredulity.

‘Yeah. They were buried in the garden. Under a smooth, green lawn-not quite so smooth any more.’

‘That’s terrible. What a horrible thing to find. Are you okay?’

‘Obviously they didn’t die naturally. No clothing on the bones, so either they were murdered naked or stripped postmortem. ’

‘Simon, I’m not a cop.’ Hey sounded apologetic. ‘This is way off my territory.’

‘Is it?’ This was the part that held the most interest for Simon. ‘Nothing’s been confirmed, but we think the remains we’ve found might be a classmate of Lucy Bretherick’s and her mother.’ He spelled it out. ‘Another mother and daughter, killed in the same place-or at least bodies found in almost the same place…’

‘Geraldine and Lucy Bretherick’s bodies were found in two bathtubs, weren’t they?’

‘That’s right.’

‘So they were also nude.’

It was a good point. Simon wasn’t sure what it meant, but it was another connection between the first pair of bodies and the second.

‘I suppose there’s no reason to think the poor souls you’ve found today were also killed in the bath and then… Simon, I can’t quite believe I’m taking part in this conversation. What help can I possibly be to you now?’

‘What do you mean “now”?’

‘Well, now that familicide’s ruled out.’

‘Is it, though? That’s why I rang you.’

‘I never thought it likely, from what I’d read and from what Keith told me, that Geraldine Bretherick had killed herself and her daughter. Now that you’ve discovered the bodies of another woman and child, I’d say it’s virtually certain the Bretherick deaths weren’t a familicide committed by Geraldine Bretherick.’

‘So, what, then? What do you think happened?’

‘I’ve absolutely no idea. Surely… well, isn’t it likely that the same person killed all four victims?’

‘I think so. Yes.’

‘You said a classmate of Lucy Bretherick’s; was it a boy or a girl?’

‘We think a girl, but it’s to be confirmed.’

‘Well, if it does turn out to be a girl, that would make it ninety per cent certain that your killer’s a man.’

‘Why?’ asked Simon.

‘Because he’s going round killing women and girls. Mothers and daughters.’

‘Couldn’t a woman be doing that?’

Hey let out a hollow laugh. ‘Like the perpetrators of familicide, serial murderers are almost always men.’

‘Don’t say that.’

‘What?’ Hey sounded worried.

‘Serial. It’s a word we avoid if at all possible.’ Simon closed his eyes. Kombothekra was expecting to find the body of Amy Oliva’s father; now Jonathan Hey was suggesting that they might at any moment uncover the remains of another mother and daughter. Simon wasn’t sure his mind could accommodate that possibility.

‘Also… I mean, would a woman be able, physically, to dig up enough earth to bury two bodies?’ asked Hey.

‘A strong one might,’ said Simon. ‘If you’re right, though, and one man is responsible for all four deaths, what if that one man is Mark Bretherick? Then the murder of Geraldine and Lucy could still be viewed as a familicide.’ Hearing himself say this convinced Simon it had to be wrong. He believed, increasingly, in Mark Bretherick’s innocence.

‘You told me he had an alibi,’ said Hey. ‘But, leaving that aside… No. What sociologists mean when they talk about familicide is a very specific crime, the crime we discussed at length when you came here, to Cambridge. Male family annihilators kill only their wives, children and, sometimes, themselves.’

‘Restrained of them,’ Simon murmured.

‘They don’t kill school friends, mothers of school friends.’ Hey sighed. ‘I don’t mean to put a spanner in your works, but none of the details fit. I mean, sometimes you get men who snap and go on a short, localised killing spree. They open fire in a shop, or restaurant-a public place. They kill strangers, and then they go back home and kill their families and themselves, but it all happens within a time frame of twenty-four hours, seventy-two at most. If the two bodies you found today have really been there over a year… I’m sorry, but that doesn’t fit with anything I know or have ever come across. Men who commit familicide don’t kill two strangers first, then wait a year, then kill their nearest and dearest. They just don’t.’

‘Yeah, yeah. Okay.’

‘Simon? Any opinion I give you, you’ve got to take with a barrelful of salt, right? I’m not a psychologist or a detective.’

‘Just tell me what you think. You’re an intelligent person-those are in short supply.’

‘Unless Mark Bretherick’s alibi turns out to be false, I don’t think he killed anybody,’ said Hey. ‘Whoever killed the first mother and daughter must have killed the second. If I were a police officer, and this were my case, I’d start from that assumption.’

Simon thanked him and promised to drop in next time he was in Cambridge. Hey spoke as if Simon was bound to find himself strolling past Whewell College at least once a week. Simon wondered if it was a version of what he thought of as London syndrome: the way people who lived in London always assumed you would go to them rather than them come to you. He had a mate from university who did it all the time. ‘We haven’t met up for ages,’ he’d say. ‘When are you next going to be in London?’ As if there were no trains out.

After saying goodbye to Hey, Simon went in search of Kombothekra. Tim Cook and his two assistants were busy attending to the bones. Simon stepped around the cordoned-off area, asking himself if it was safe to assume that, if Bretherick wasn’t the murderer, then he had to be of great interest to the murderer, perhaps the object of the murderer’s obsession. Why else would he kill Bretherick’s family and bury two people on his land?

Kombothekra was in the kitchen, sitting at a large, wooden table with his arms stretched out in front of him.

‘Are you okay?’ Simon asked.

‘I’ve been better. I thought I ought to tell Proust where we’re up to.’

‘What did he say?’

Kombothekra’s expression said it all. ‘It shouldn’t be as bad, but it’s worse,’ he said quietly.

‘What?’

‘Finding a child’s skeleton. It oughtn’t to be as hard as… well, say, Lucy Bretherick. I mean, that got to me, but this…’ He shook his head. ‘Seeing a skeleton, the inside of a person. It makes you focus on what should be there but isn’t. Skeletons look so… vulnerable.’

‘I know.’

‘Lucy Bretherick was dead, but she was still recognisable as a child.’

Simon nodded. ‘Sam…’

‘What?’

‘It could be two different killers. It could.’ Even an expert like Jonathan Hey could be wrong. ‘What if Mark Bretherick killed Amy and Encarna Oliva and that’s why Geraldine and Lucy were murdered-in retaliation?’

‘By Amy’s father?’ Kombothekra’s mouth twisted. ‘I wouldn’t let Proust hear you say that. Speculation’s out. Finding out for certain what happened before close of business today is in.’

‘That bad, was he?’

‘I’m not allowed even to think these bodies might be Amy Oliva and her mother. I’m not allowed to say it, obviously, but I’m not allowed to think it either. He says he’ll be able to tell from my face when he sees me if I’m still thinking it, and if I am I’ll “rue the day”.’ Kombothekra made quote marks in the air.

Simon grinned. ‘Dental records’ll tell us soon enough.’

‘I hope he finds cause of death.’ Kombothekra nodded towards the garden. ‘Grooves in the bone made by a big knife, or… some great big fuck-off mark from a clearly identifiable weapon. It’d be nice to know they were dead when the killer buried them.’ He looked up at Simon. ‘Don’t tell me it hasn’t occurred to you. That they might have been buried alive?’

It hadn’t and it didn’t now; Kombothekra’s words barely registered. Simon had had an idea. A mark from a clearly identifiable weapon… He went over it once more to check it was sound. In his mind, a tangle of incomprehension began to unravel. He saw a way in which the apparently impossible might make perfect sense-the only way.

He was out of the kitchen in seconds, pulling his phone out of his pocket.


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