by Mel McGrath
‘Off piste?’ asks the woman.
‘Dalliances,’ Cullen says. ‘The university discourages them but they’re not a sackable offence, or at least, not if there’s been no academic benefit to the student as a result. The heart wants what the heart wants and all that.’ He lets out an indulgent little chuckle. ‘Unfortunately there was some suggestion that Mark had allowed his personal preferences to affect his impartiality, began to alter his paramour’s grades, which is why we decided, on balance, to let him go. Evidently Thirsk believes in second chances in a way that more exacting institutions don’t.’
DC Hassan smiles pleasantly while his colleague remains buried in her notepad.
‘Lovely house,’ he says, ‘Big. Just you and Mrs Cullen here, is it?’
‘Yes,’ Cullen says, shifting on his seat. ‘At least, my wife, who prefers to go by her unmarried name, by the way…’
‘Which is…’
Cullen suppresses an internal smile. This will impress them. ‘Well, officially she’s the Honourable Veronica Fanshawe-Drew.’ He’s about to go on and explain that Veronica is pregnant, when DC Hassan says, ‘You and Mrs Cullen both seem unusually fluid about your names. Let me see…’ he consults, or pretends to consult a notebook, ‘Didn’t you originally go by Mulholland…?’
‘Yes. That was my stepfather’s name. Cullen is my birth name. I changed it by deed poll back to Cullen after my mother and stepfather got divorced. It was a long time ago.’
‘Hmm. According to our intelligence, you would have been…’ DC Hassan hesitates and checks his notebook once again, ‘…six when your mother and stepfather divorced. Quite precocious to change your name by deed poll at that age.’
‘Well, um no, it was…’
‘And you appear in your student records as Christopher Mulholland.’
‘Well, yes, I mean, that was still my official name but I was calling myself Christopher Cullen even then.’
‘Though none of your records indicate that. But let’s proceed. I’d like to know when Cullen did become your “official” name… Was it after your conviction for credit card fraud? Or following the incident of alleged rape at St Olaf’s University, which is near Ludlow I believe?’
Christ, he thinks, doing his best to hold himself in. They’ve done their homework.
‘That was dropped,’ he said. ‘A storm in a teacup. I was never even charged.’
An idea bubbles up. He flicks his eyes first to one officer then to the other, sees that they are attentive and launches in. ‘As a matter of fact, I’m glad you raised that. Because the woman who made that malicious and vindictive accusation – which was wholly without merit – happens to be using her daughter to spread outrageous lies about me as we speak. I am being harassed. This is what all of this is about.’
The two police eyeball one another. ‘Professor Cullen, if you have a complaint to make about this person, you’ll need to come down to the station and we can deal with it there,’ DC Hassan says.
For a moment he thinks that this is just what he’ll do until a small voice inside stops him. Suppose this is a trap to lure him down to the cop shop so they can put him in a cell?
He clears his throat. ‘As I said, I have an appointment to get to.’
‘We won’t take any more of your time than we have to, then, sir. Just a few routine questions.’
‘Very well,’ he says, graciously, adjusting his position in the chair.
‘You mentioned earlier that Natasha might have had a drug problem?’ DC Worsley says, checking back her notes and reading carefully, ‘“The sort who might have to take something to steady herself, get through the day.”’
‘Yes, yes, you know, Valium or something like that.’
‘Did you know she was taking Valium? Did she disclose that to you?’
‘No, no, as I said, I didn’t really have much to do with her. It was more of a thought, really. A guess, you might say.’ He smiles. ‘Just trying to be as helpful as I can.’
‘We appreciate that,’ DC Worsley says. ‘There’s something else you can help us with. Do you remember what you were doing on Thursday, sir, the 3rd of April that would be?’
The day Natasha Tillotson went missing.
‘As I said, officers, Mark Ratner is the person you want to speak to. I’m pretty sure he was…’
‘We’ve spoken with Dr Ratner. He was in Thirsk on the 3rd and 4th attending an interview.’
‘Oh, well then, as I said, I can’t help you.’
‘We think you might be able to, sir,’ DC Worsley says. ‘We think you might be able to tell us why your car, a dark blue Volvo…’ she rattles off the licence plate number, ‘…the same car as is currently in the driveway, was caught on CCTV in the Three Lakes area at 9.23 p.m., very close to the time it’s estimated that Natasha allegedly committed suicide?’
‘Look,’ he says, ‘If this is about Nevis Smith…’
‘Why would it be about Nevis Smith?’
‘As I said, I am the subject of vindictive harassment from one of my students and her mother.’
‘If you want to make a complaint about that…’
Cullen cuts him off. ‘What exactly are you after?’
‘What might we be after, sir?’
‘I’ve told you what you need to know.’ He is feeling flustered and irritated now. What can he say to get these irritants to buzz off? ‘These girls were copycat suicides. There’s no allegedly about it. Natasha Tillotson was unstable and a Valium user. As for me driving around in my car, I have no recollection of that at all.’ He thinks of Veronica. Even if she doesn’t want him back, he will always be the father of her child. She’s always hated scandal. She won’t want to see him getting into any trouble. If he plays his cards right, promises her whatever she wants, the house, everything, then surely she’ll back him. Just as Amanda did all those years ago. ‘My wife often drives my car, so I expect that was her.’
‘We’ll ask her, sir, obviously. She’s not here?’ DC Worsley says.
‘No,’ he says, panicked. He cannot allow the police to speak to Veronica before he does. ‘She’s visiting relatives for a few days but I can ask her to get in touch with you when she gets back if you like?’
Worsley smiles and says nothing. Do they know more than they’re letting on? What if they’ve already spoken with Veronica and they’ve just caught him out in a lie? He feels his tongue catch, the roof of his mouth dry as sandpaper, his legs jiggling so that he has to press his feet hard into the carpet so as not to let it show. He tells himself to bloody well calm down. They haven’t got anything real or they would have arrested him, wouldn’t they? He was too careful. Though was he careful enough? How careful do you have to be to cover up… something like that? He cannot bring himself to say the word. So long as it remains unnamed, he can pretend it never really happened except in the dark recesses of his mind. A fantasy.
‘Well,’ Worsley is saying now, shifting in her chair, ‘we don’t want to take up more of your time than we have to.’
‘Thank you,’ Cullen says stiffly, rising.
The two police officers exchange glances. He notices the woman nod briefly to the man. So there it is, they haven’t got what they wanted from him. No confession, nothing like that. There will be no arrest.
With mounting relief he leads them down the hallway to the front door.
‘One thing,’ DC Worsley says, standing her ground. ‘I’m wondering how you could be so sure that Natasha Tillotson had taken Valium?’
‘Students take uppers and downers all the time.’
‘But you were quite specific, weren’t you? And you’re right, as it turns out. Natasha did have Valium in her blood, but the tests have only just come back from the toxicology lab so…’ DC Worsley side-eyes her colleague ‘…that was a pretty good guess, now, wasn’t it?’
Chapter 50
Cullen
Cullen shuts the front door and reaches for the wall to steady himself. He takes a deep breath before stumbl
ing into the living room and going over to the drinks cupboard, then decides that now would be a good time for that bottle of Macallan after all. The still deep of the cellar is as comforting to him as death. Finding the bottle, he comes back up into the living room and takes a long swig, waiting for the burn to do its job. He thinks about calling Maddy Ince. A week or two ago he would have. Now, he’s not so sure. Maddy has always been about Maddy.
He’s standing in the narrow hallway again now, the whisky bottle clasped in his hand, feeling the world closing in on him. He can’t think straight. His head is screaming. Fleeing might be an admission of guilt. Staying might risk arrest. What to do? Has he ever felt this alone? He is on a frozen sea in a tiny boat. He takes a swig and lets the alcohol burn some sense back into his brain.
The only person left in his world is Amanda. The moment this thought comes to him he sees the sense of it. Right now, like a dying soldier slung over barbed wire, he needs a mother, any mother, even one as disastrous as Amanda. But what does he want from her? Advice? Love? Courage? Maybe all of those things. But mostly hope, he thinks. I need hope to be able to carry on right now. Will he get it? Who knows, but there’s no one left to ask. He puts down the bottle of whisky, thinks better of it and picks it up again, swipes his keys from the hallway table and goes to his car. A fifteen-minute drive brings him to Wychall’s. He parks, inexactly, in the visitors’ area and walks across the threshold into the blanketing heat of the nursing home. In the office off the hallway, Maura gives him a cheery wave. He proceeds through the living room past the Christmas cactus and the hand sanitiser dispenser, through the double doors into his mother’s cucumber green corridor.
He finds Amanda in bed with what she claims is a terrible headache, watching a rerun of a baking show on TV. He pulls up a chair beside her and pretends to be engrossed for a few moments.
‘Mother, I wonder if you’d like a whisky? It might help clear that headache.’ He feels mildly tipsy but not drunk enough to be able to summon the courage to tell her what is going on. ‘I bought a bottle of Macallan.’
Her head spins around ninety degrees and creases her brow into an anxious inverted V.
‘I thought you’d been drinking. I can smell it,’ she says. ‘I suppose you realise it’s not yet dinner time?’
He slips the bottle from under his jacket.
She gives him a testing look. ‘What is going on Christopher?’
He removes the stopper cork and, emptying Amanda’s water glass into the plastic orchid, pours her a very large serving. Adds just the right amount of water, not from the plastic jug, but from the tap in the bathroom.
‘Oh, that’s much too much,’ she says, glugging down half. He watches her smile and drift into an internal reverie, humming very softly to herself, and finishing up the whisky. ‘You really are a very good boy sometimes,’ she says, returning to the present. She holds out her glass. ‘I suppose I could have just a little more.’ He fills it, his heart quickening now. Any minute now he will tell her.
A knock comes on the door and a carer pops her head round.
‘Oh, you’ve got a visitor, Amanda.’
‘We’re just having a lovely chat, aren’t we mother?’ he says.
Amanda side-eyes him. The carer smiles broadly and backs out of the room. Cullen goes over to the door, closes it and, with his back to Amanda so that she cannot see, turns the lock.
‘Mother, I need to tell you something,’ he says.
‘Do you?’ she says. ‘I wonder if it’s just better if you don’t.’
He moves over to the bed, takes the remote control from her bony fingers and switches off the show.
‘Put that back on!’ she barks.
‘No, mother. I have something to say. It’s important.’
‘In that case, give me another whisky,’ she says, petulantly.
He fills her glass and watches her take one elegant sip before reaching for a plate of biscuits on her bedside table and taking a nibble on one, wrapping her tongue around the crystals of powdered sugar left at each corner of her lips.
‘I do so love a shortbread,’ she says and with a smile still playing on her mouth, she leans back against her pillows, closes her eyes and lets out a murmur of pleasure. Cullen lights on the call button at Amanda’s bedside. He puts her glass on the bedside table and slides the call button out of reach.
‘The police came…’ he begins but she lifts a staying hand, her eyes still firmly closed.
‘There you go again, you see, always ruining things. You never had the slightest regard for timing, Christopher.’
‘Mother, I’m in trouble and…’
She lifts an imperious hand. ‘Please, Christopher, don’t go on. I am too old and tired for this. Didn’t you hear me say I have a headache?’
‘Please,’ he says, feeling the hope tremble inside him like a wild bird. ‘Without you…’
The hand comes up again. ‘Christopher, if you continue to assert yourself in this way, I shall call a carer to escort you out.’
He feels his legs go from under him, manages to make it, just, to a tub seat by the window. All the old feelings of injustice rise like dark birds disturbed in the act of picking clean a carcass.
At that moment there’s a knock on the door. He goes over to unlock it. A carer appears with a supper tray. He waits in silence, his heart pounding, lest his mother betray him. Once the carer is gone, he says, ‘I ruined everything?’
Amanda opens a single eye and looks at him with measured disdain. ‘Yes, you disappointed my expectations. First you made me lie for you. I have had to carry that lie for twenty years, Christopher. I could have gone to prison for bailing you out of your sordid teenage enterprises. And the thanks I’ve had is to be abandoned here, in this terrible place. Now you have stolen my bracelet, the only thing I had left of my mother. Don’t think I don’t know it was you.’
‘If this place is so terrible, you won’t mind leaving it,’ he says furiously. An idea has surfaced in the way a bruise surfaces, purple and green and ugly. And like a bruise he is compelled, somehow, to keep pressing and pressing, the pain spreading through his limbs into his deeper parts. His mother’s eye pops open, ominously. He has woken the spider and she is unfurling her spidery legs, readying herself.
She blinks at him. Is that a hint of fear in her eyes? Or a glint of triumph?
‘I am ready to unburden myself, Christopher. I am sick of hiding and lying for your sake.’
His mind freezes. He hears a voice hiss, ‘What are you talking about?’ and realises it is his own.
‘You always told me she let you, that girl, all those years ago. You said she didn’t mind. But she couldn’t stand you. I saw you together once, in the gardens of the college, you sidling up to her like a whipped dog, her recoiling from your presence, repelled. I could smell it on you that night, your disgusting lust. She let you? Ha! You had your way with her and then expected me to lie for you. I had to shut up and lie or wave goodbye to every hope I had. To all my dreams and aspirations for my child, my only son. But even after I’d saved you, you couldn’t keep it together, could you? The snivelling self-pity. Oh poor me, child genius, undone by a minor indiscretion. Boohoo.’ Her eyes narrow and gleam. ‘Well now someone else can know about your dirty little secret. I’m ready to finally release the poison I’ve been carrying around all these years and let someone else know the truth, that my son is a rapist and a thief, a weak, disgraceful creature, a source of nothing but shame.’
There are no thoughts now, only pure instinct. In an instant he is reaching behind him for the large cushion on the chair, then he is upon her, pressing the soft down into her face. He feels her grow rigid with shock or perhaps fear and then begin to thrash. The sound of her choking makes him retch but still he carries on. He hears himself say, ‘Don’t make this last longer than it has to, mother.’ When eventually she grows stiff again and then floppy and still, he removes the cushion. He cannot bear to look at her face to check if there is still brea
th coming from her lips. Instead he grabs a plump wrist and holds it, waiting for a pulse which, to his relief, never comes.
Replacing the cushion, he sits himself in the wing back chair by the bed and, reaching for the supper tray, takes a few bites of a nondescript sandwich, washing it down with another swig of Macallan. He picks up the tray and stands to leave. At the door he does not turn but in a quiet voice says, ‘Goodbye Amanda.’ Then he goes back to the nursing office and finds the care worker who came in not long before.
‘I’ve left her sound asleep,’ Cullen says. ‘She ate her supper. We shared a few whiskies.’ He passes over the tray.
‘Hopefully she’ll sleep through till morning now then,’ says the carer. On the room board a light begins to flash. ‘Oh, I have to go to this resident,’ she says and, turning and nodding, adds, ‘See you next time Mr Cullen.’
From the home Cullen drives up to the Downs from where he can see both the bridge and the gorge on the other side, where Natasha Tillotson’s body was found. In his head he can hear his own words, the advice he’d given to Natasha as he’d driven her to her death. ‘You are ruined. You have brought this on yourself. You have nothing left to live for. There is only one honourable way out and it is beautiful in a way, to give yourself up to the air and to the water, a pure thing, one final act of love.’
There will be time to free himself. Before he does, there is an old score to settle.
Chapter 51
Nevis
A flashing light wakes her. She rubs her eyes and blinks away her dream. The curtains are still open and she is dressed and lying on top of the duvet. It’s cold, too, the air bringing a damp chill off the water. She reaches for the phone and notes the time. Just after 10 p.m. There are a couple of check-in texts from Honor and a voicemail from Stavos at the chippy. The voice says: Γεια σου υπέροχο which is what Stavos always says. She thinks it means, hey lovely! But maybe not. Most likely not, since she has just remembered that her shift at the chippy should have begun four hours ago. That has never happened before. Texting Stavos back. Really sorry missed my shift. Not feeling well. This is true and not true.
