She would have said, ‘Why bother to walk along the quayside to one of the cafés, when I’ve a perfectly good apartment upstairs?’ But the devious sod was up to something, so she decided to let it play out.
The elevator doors slid open. He waited, regarding her enquiringly.
“Oh, whatever,” she said, and walked out into the reception.
There were more police officers here. Some were interviewing the residents, others were checking the CCTV; one of them seemed to be taking a statement from Phil.
When Phil saw the elevator door slide open, he raised his hand. “Are you OK, Miss Grove? He didn’t hurt you did he?”
She shook her head in reply, as everyone turned to look at her. Phil must have been the one to call the police. He would have seen everything unfold on those CCTV monitors. How could her father have taken such a risk, even wearing the balaclava to hide his face? Had he really thought Sarah’s diary was that important? Worth dying for?
As they stepped through the door and onto the street, the DCI produced a sturdy black umbrella and held it over her head. It was not raining so hard now, but the sky was still overcast and the marina lights were popping on, one by one. She thought they would stop at Tom’s Coffee Shop, which was the most popular café in the village, but the DCI didn’t break his stride until they came to the opposite end of the quayside and a familiar Victorian boathouse. High above the arched entrance was the word ‘Remedy’ picked out in blue neon.
Natalie was surprised the club was even open this early in the evening but supposed the DCI must have phoned ahead to let them know his intent. This was confirmed when they went inside and the barman was waiting for them.
The DCI glanced at her. “Two coffees?”
“Fine,” she said. She didn’t even know Remedy sold coffee.
Another member of staff, in the regulation black t-shirt and jeans, was slowly taking the chairs from the tables and putting them back onto the floor, ready for the official opening time. The club had a completely different atmosphere during the day. Silent as a tomb, the overhead lights were on, the fairy lights off - any atmosphere was gone.
“Where did you sit last night?” the DCI asked her.
Natalie pointed four tables down on the left hand side. The DCI picked up their coffees and made his way carefully between the tables to the one she indicated.
He should try doing that in a crowded bar in the dark, she thought, and wondered if that was when the drugs had been slipped into her drink.
“Did you get the toxicology report back?” she asked, before he’d even sat down.
“The what? Oh, you mean the specimen we took last night? Sorry to disappoint you, but our lab doesn’t work that quickly. It’s not like the movies.” He pushed one of the cups towards her as he sat down, reached into his jacket pocket and took out a handful of sugar sachets. He dropped them onto the table. “Sugar?”
She shook her head, and watched him rip open three packets of sugar and tip the contents into his coffee. “Do you think I was drugged?”
“Do you?” he countered.
“I kept blacking out.”
“We think someone slipped Rohypnol into your drink, or something very similar. The effects can be worse if it’s mixed with alcohol - you can pass out for eight hours.”
“I hardly drank any alcohol, I didn’t get the chance.”
“You were extremely lucky. It takes effect in about fifteen minutes and causes dizziness, confusion and memory loss.”
“But who put it in my drink?”
He gave her a pitying look. “Your father. He could have easily stolen the drug from Rose Court. I suspect he did not realise the effects would be so immediate. He assumed you would go home, fall asleep and leave him to break into your apartment undisturbed.”
“Instead, I didn’t drink enough to be affected, didn’t go home right away, and when I did, I walked in and caught him.” She thought for a moment. “You know, he could have killed me right there if he’d wanted. He certainly had the opportunity.”
“If it’s any consolation, I don’t think he wanted you dead. He only wanted Sarah’s diary. His mistake was to start waving a gun around in front of armed police. Those guys don’t mess about.”
“Where the hell did he even get a gun from?”
“It was an old World War 2 pistol, registered to Dr Charles Fitzpatrick. Your father stole his car too.”
Natalie picked her bag up off the floor and unzipped it. The DCI watched, at first interested, and then slightly less so when the only thing she took out was a scrap of screwed up paper. She smoothed it out on the table and turned it around so he could read it.
“I found this beside my computer,” she said. “It was beneath the bag of liquorice. You remember the liquorice? He meant it as a sign. He wanted me to know it was from him. The liquorice was … a private joke.”
“Destroy it? Destroy what?”
“Sarah’s diary,” she said simply. “Now it makes sense. Now it’s too late of course. He knew someone else would be after it. All those times I visited him and he never said a word! The bastard! He wanted me to think he was dead. He was going to walk out of my life and I’d never have been the wiser.”
“Which brings me to my next question. Did you know your father could walk?”
“I suspected his injuries were not as severe as he made out. He was supposed to have a brain injury, yet when I talked to him I could tell he understood me, and not only on a basic level. The last time I saw him - last night in fact, before the fire - he looked and sounded completely normal.”
“Could his injuries have been psychosomatic?”
“Charles said there was always the chance he could improve, but that the more time passed, the less chance there was of it. Dad must have been getting better all the time, and hiding it. Why he would do that?”
“You haven’t worked it out yet?”
“You’re going to tell me he was overwhelmed with guilt over Sarah’s death? That he tried to kill himself by driving over the cliff and faked his injuries to spend the rest of his life in a care home, as some kind of self-punishment? Don’t bother, I’ve heard it before and I still don’t believe it. What kind of a person would do that?”
“A frightened person,” said the DCI. “I have a theory that your father was hiding.”
“From whom?” she demanded.
He smiled. “Now that is an excellent question.”
In other words, you don’t know,” Natalie said.
“Find your father’s Nemesis, find the murderer.” As she glanced up sharply he smiled. “A line of thought you’ve had yourself?” He raised his cup to his mouth and took a long drink. “This coffee is great, by the way. Would you like another?”
“No, I don’t want another cup of coffee. I’m up to here with cups of coffee, and talk talk talk, and nothing gets done, nothing gets solved. Why are we sitting here? You should be out there, finding my sister’s murderer.”
The DCI leant back in his chair. “You would be surprised at how much talking can achieve,” he said. “Far more than a shoot-out where the star witness ends up dead.”
“The witness? You mean my father?” She struggled to get her head around this. “So he didn’t kill my sister?”
“‘Brutal father kills daughter’. It would have made a great headline. Fortunately it’s not true.”
“It doesn’t make sense. He made all that fuss about wanting Sarah’s diary. Why would he do that, unless it implicated him? I was so sure he knew something - all those hours I spent visiting him, talking to him, trying to provoke him into telling me the truth about what happened that night. You’re telling me it was for nothing?”
“Perhaps you asked the wrong questions?” he said blithely.
“Why do you think my father wanted the diary?”
“To protect you from whoever did kill Sarah?”
She almost laughed. “You think he would go to all that trouble? For me?”
There was an
awkward silence.
“You know, it occurs to me that every time I get into some kind of trouble the police appear at exactly the right moment. Why is that? Are you following me?”
This amused him. “Why would you think we were following you?”
“My father brandishes a gun and two policemen instantly turn up to rescue me? Please don’t tell me it was a coincidence.”
“Ah, but why would you think we were following you?”
For a moment she didn’t understand, then, “You were following Bryn?”
Before the DCI could form a response, his phone rang.
Riled that he had not answered her question, she took up her bag and pretended to check her own phone for messages, even though it wasn’t switched on. In reality, she listened intently to everything he said. It was not difficult. While the DCI took no trouble to lower his voice, unfortunately he did not give anything away.
“Really?” he said, after listening to the person on the other end say their piece. “As my old Mum would say, it never rains but it pours. Do what you have to do. I’ll be there shortly.” He clicked the phone shut and laid it carefully on the table before him.
“You’ll be pleased to know we’ve finished here.” He indicated her father’s note, which lay on the table between them. “Is it all right if I take this?”
“Sure.” What did he think she was going to do with it? Frame it?
He produced a small plastic evidence bag from his pocket and, using the clean end of his teaspoon, batted the note into the bag. Evidence bags, specimen bottles? What else did he have hidden away in that coat?
“We already have your fingerprints from last night,” he said, “but if you could go down to the station tomorrow and give a formal statement, I would be most grateful.”
The jovial banter had been replaced by impersonal professionalism. He wanted to be gone. He thought he had all the information he needed and was now happy to discard her. He had made the same mistake as the men before him. He thought he knew her.
“No problem,” she said. If he thought that was the end of the matter he was severely mistaken. She had plans of her own.
She reached for her bag, now sitting on the table, but his hand closed over hers.
“There is one more thing,” he said. “If you could hand over that diary of Sarah’s?”
She looked him directly in the eye and said, “No.”
“It’s evidence for an on-going enquiry.”
“I can’t.”
He tried a different tactic. “You realise it’s not safe for you to be walking around with it in your possession? You’ve mentioned it in every interview you’ve given to publicise your book. There will be other people who want it. Unlike your father, they might not give you the choice of giving it up before they kill you.”
When she failed to reply he added, “You’re going to lose all credibility, not to mention public sympathy, if you make me get a warrant.”
“I couldn’t care less about public sympathy,” she began, and then saw his dour expression. “You really don’t get it, do you?” she sighed. “There is no diary. There never was.”
36
“Why would you lie about something like that?” the DCI asked Natalie, all trace of his former good-humour gone.
“If I could explain from the beginning?”
“I’m counting on it.”
“The night Sarah died she met with someone waiting outside the house. I didn’t see his face but Sarah knew him. She threw her arms around him, he picked her up and whirled her around … ” Natalie trailed off, lost in the memory.
“What happened then?”
“He took her by the hand and they walked away.”
“In which direction did they go?”
“They walked through the castle gateway and down the hill towards the village.”
The DCI regarded her thoughtfully, as though half-inclined to disbelieve her. “I have never heard this story. Your mother said Sarah’s bed had not been slept in but no one seemed to know exactly when she had left the house.”
“It was about ten o’clock in the evening. It was the night of the Regatta. There had been fireworks. I was watching them through my bedroom window when I saw her leave.”
“Sarah was found at nine in the morning. That’s eleven hours unaccounted for.”
“She went to the funfair. I climbed out of my bedroom window and followed her - then I lost her. Later, I saw her with Alicia - ”
“Mrs Fitzpatrick gave us a statement at the time. She said your sister had seen you enter the caravan of a fairground worker named Geraint Llewellyn and she was concerned for your safety. Mrs Fitzpatrick never mentioned any other man. Are you sure it wasn’t the same person?”
So Alicia had been the one to land Geraint in it.
“None of us had met Geraint until that night.”
“You followed this other man to the funfair though. You must have seen something of him?”
“I saw him in the distance. He was tall and had short dark hair. That’s all I could see. He could have been anybody.”
“That’s more of a description than we’ve had in fifteen years. Why didn’t you tell someone?”
The unfairness of it stung her into retorting, “No one asked me! You know what my father was like. He hated the police. I thought if I spoke out of turn he would take it out on me.”
“We requested an interview but it was refused on medical grounds.”
She stared at him in astonishment. “I didn’t know this. What medical grounds?”
“Your doctor thought you were too traumatised to give evidence. It would have been flawed.”
Another piece of the puzzle fell into place. “This doctor - would he have been Charles Fitzpatrick?”
He was suddenly wary. “Yes, what of it?”
“It didn’t occur to you there may have been another reason for keeping me silent?”
“He was ‘the doctor’?” The DCI cursed beneath his breath. “I thought the names in this diary were the nicknames Sarah gave her school friends? It never occurred to me that he might have been a real doctor. Fifteen years ago Charles Fitzpatrick would have been in his late twenties. Do you think he killed her?”
“I’ve no idea. There’s no diary. I made it up because I thought it would force the murderer out into the open. But I know all about the men Sarah dated. She told me about them, almost everything about them except for their names. I’m sure one of them was responsible for her death.”
“We interviewed her school friends, her boyfriends - ”
“Some of these men were older. She used to tell me about them - not their real names unfortunately, just these silly nicknames. She thought she had them dangling on a string. It was a game to her. It made her feel powerful. I don’t think it even occurred to her that she could be in danger.”
“Do you have any idea who these men were?”
“I had my suspicions. When my GP suggested I had counselling to help me deal with Sarah’s death, I asked to be referred to Dr Fitzpatrick’s clinic. I’d already guessed he was one of the men Sarah was seeing. It didn’t take him long to make a move on me. I knew he would, because I looked so much like her. Eventually I got him to admit that he’d had an affair with her. Whether he killed her or not, I have no idea. He was threatening to sue me the last time we spoke.”
The DCI bit off another curse. “OK, tell me about ‘the teacher’?”
“That would be Charles’s younger brother, James Fitzpatrick. He’s now the headmaster at Calahurst Comprehensive School.”
“I know who he is,” the DCI didn’t bother to hide his irritation, “but he was only eighteen at time.”
“He was studying to be a teacher. He certainly had a brief affair with Sarah and made it quite plain he’d like me to carry on where she had left off, even though he was supposedly engaged to Alicia at the time.”
“Just how many men were there?”
“Sarah used to talk about a gardener -
presumably one who worked in the castle grounds with our father. I’m not sure which one she meant. She also mentioned a guy who worked at one of the clubs on the quayside, but I don’t think she was serious about either of them. Finally, there was the one she called ‘the librarian’.”
“There is no library in Calahurst, and all the staff at the school library were women.”
“It wasn’t a public library.”
“I need a name, Natalie!”
“I assumed she was talking about Sir Henry Vyne. She helped him catalogue his books and papers at the castle during the weekends. A kind of Saturday job, if you like.”
Now she had caught his attention. “Is that all she did?”
She hesitated. “Why? Has someone else has come forward and - ”
“We have heard certain reports over the years - mainly rumours, gossip, that kind of thing. No one has ever been willing to make a statement, and there is no hard evidence.”
“What kind of reports?”
He did not reply right away, then, “You worked for Sir Henry too, didn’t you?”
Slowly she inclined her head.
“Was it in his library?”
There was no way to avoid the question. “Yes, but I didn’t do much filing. I spent my time naked; he spent his time taking photographs. I didn’t mind too much. He never laid a finger on me and he kept the fire well stoked. It paid for me to go to university. I could never have afforded to go otherwise.”
“You didn’t have sex?”
“Of course not!” Even the thought of it made her feel sick. “He only took photographs.”
“And that made it all right?”
What right did he have to judge her? “I was young and stupid, what can I say?”
As he stared at her, his expression a mix of distaste and incredulity, his phone rang, making them both jump. Instead of answering it, he scooped it up and slid it back into his pocket, before taking out his wallet and peeling a tenner from the top of a thick wad of notes. He dropped the money onto the table as he got up.
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