Once again, I told Marie everything: from the moment I entered the woods in Dove Dale to when I caught the train back to Market Harborough. She listened intently, smoking another three cigarettes and switching from lemonade to red wine. We sat and talked for well over an hour. I answered her questions as honestly as I could.
When I had finished Marie went back to the question she had asked over an hour earlier. “Richard, you said that when you found her in the morning, she had been stabbed and that some of her clothing was missing.”
I nodded.
Marie was doing her best to speak without letting her emotions show, but as she asked her question, her eyes began to water. She quickly reached for her sunglasses.
“You also said that her abdomen had been slashed.” I nodded again. “Can you say whether the cuts were,” she hesitated, “were random cuts or whether they formed a picture?”
I frowned. “A picture? I’m sorry, Marie, I don’t understand.”
Marie dipped her finger in her wine and traced some lines on the Formica surface of the table.
“Did the cuts look anything like this?” she asked.
I twisted my head to see what she had drawn. It looked like a ‘9’ and a ‘t’ with a line across the top - . Seeing the marks made by the red wine on the white surface, my mind went back to the time when I sat next to Ingrid holding her hand while I waited for the police. All I had seen was the rather grotesque wounds left by the knife. The cuts had been quite deep. Looking again at what Marie had drawn, I couldn’t say that there was any resemblance to the image I had of Ingrid’s slashed stomach.
Shaking my head, I said, “No, Marie … I don’t mean, no. I mean, I can’t say definitely that this is what I saw. There was a lot of blood.”
Marie winced and took a deep breath. “Are you sure?”
“I can’t be sure either way, I’m sorry. Surely the police would have been able to tell you? There was a photographer there and he would have taken pictures of the wounds.”
“I asked the police but they told me that what I described meant nothing to them.” Marie looked down, obviously disappointed that I wasn’t able to confirm either way what she had asked.
“What does it mean?” I asked pointing at the now fading lines on the table.
“It may have suggested who had killed her, that’s all.”
“Why?”
“It’s a calling card left by one of the most vicious groups of drug-smugglers in the Far East. When they murder the opposition, they are not frightened of telling the world they were responsible. They are proud of their work. What I drew is the Chinese symbol for death.”
Marie drained her wine after which she looked around for the waitress. If she had found out so little from the police in England, I wanted to ask her how she knew about drug-smugglers and their calling cards. But then it dawned on me that because Michael Lim was with the Singapore police, he would know such things and would have told Marie. When I found the drugs in Ingrid’s rucksack, I concluded that they were more than she needed for personal use, but any conclusion I drew then and now was pure supposition because of my ignorance on such matters. On the other hand, Marie now seemed to be a lot more knowledgeable than she originally implied. My original suspicions were, to some extent, confirmed by Henke and Schwartz but now Marie seemed to know more than they did … courtesy of her travelling companion.
“Are you telling me that Ingrid was mixed up in drug smuggling?” I asked, hoping I sounded genuinely surprised.
“I think so,” she replied. “She became involved with the criminal world while she was at university in Singapore. I don’t know any more than that but eventually it has to be the reason she was murdered.”
‘I thought such things couldn’t happen in Singapore,” I said, knowing my question was unnecessarily frivolous.
Fortunately, Marie didn’t see it that way. “Even in Singapore with the threat of the death sentence hanging over the drug smugglers, it still happens.”
I sighed. “I don’t think there is anything else I can tell you, Marie. I’m so sorry about Ingrid and if I could go back –”
Marie reached across the table and placed her hand in mine. “There is nothing you could have done, Richard, believe me but thank you for trying to help Ingrid and thank you for telling me what you have.” She drank the last of her wine. “Now, I must go and find Michael, if we were going to see him he would be here by now.” She began to get up but then resumed her seat. “Richard, if you are in the habit of taking advice from people you hardly know, may I suggest that you put what you have experienced, and what you now know, behind you and get on with your life. I know nothing about you but I can only guess that sitting back in England you have a lovely wife and some equally adorable children. Go back to them and, although you will never forget what has happened, do not let it play any part in your life from now on.” I started to interrupt but she carried on. “I can understand why you felt the need to come here but now you have done what you needed to do. Leave this place and leave with it what I have told you. You are not involved anymore.”
She took her bag from the back of the chair and this time she did stand up. I stood with her.
“It is my turn to thank you,” I said.
“There is no need. You are an intelligent man who inadvertently got mixed up in something that must now seem to you to be in a different world. Leave it there.” She moved closer to me and reached up to kiss me on the cheek. Then with a final weak smile, she brushed past me to the top of the steps leading down from the café.
I turned and watched her go.
She walked quickly down the hill until she was out of sight and maybe, out of my life.
She was right.
I had become involved in something that, regardless of my experiences gleaned from around the world, put me well and truly out of my depth.
Although the lovely wife Marie referred to was no longer there for me to return to, Belinda was still with me in every other way. I still had the twins and I had a future to plan … whatever it might be. In the last a twenty-four hours, I had been in a world that was alien to me.
Did I still want any part of it?
No.
It was a few minutes before twelve o’clock and it was a lovely day. A group of Japanese tourists were hovering at the top of the steps, obviously wondering whether I was about to leave the table.
The waitress approached, and after writing on a pad she gave me the bill I had completely forgotten about. I paid her before following the same path Marie had taken down into the town of Cochem.
Leaving this lovely German riverside town within the hour would mean I could leave Ingrid and Marie’s world behind.
I had my own life to lead now.
A couple of thirteen-year-old children needed me.
I also wanted to talk to Belinda about things that mattered.
Chapter Ten
True to my word, an hour after Marie disappeared from my life I had booked out of the Am Hafen hotel, and was on my way back to Düsseldorf for an unscheduled flight home.
During the drive, I gave a lot of thought to what had happened, its implausibility at times making me wonder whether any of it had actually occurred. Had I been dreaming from the moment I found Ingrid in Dove Dale? That possibility was even more incredible but it showed how my thought patterns were developing.
I opened the front door of Blue-Ridge late on the Saturday afternoon. It was an overcast day and there was quite a wind blowing, with grey clouds scudding across the sky. I immediately went to the phone, rang the twins’ school and managed to speak to Isabelle. She sounded happy and was really looking forward to the following weekend, which was an unexpected exeat because normally there were only two per term. When I dropped the twins off before I flew to Germany, they said they would prefer to come home for their next exeat rather than go on another of my educational tours of museums.
While on the phone, Isabelle asked whether she could bring a friend home
with her. “She’ll be no bother, Daddy.”
“Of course,” I told her. “You’re not going to let me do the cooking, are you?”
“Daddy, I wouldn’t wish that on my enemies, let alone my best friend,” she replied, laughing.
“I’ll have you know, young lady, I’m quite a good cook.”
“Who told you that?”
“Well … erm … nobody actually, but …”
“I’ll do the cooking, then.”
“Yes, all right.”
“How was Germany? Did your last conference go well? Do you miss it?” she asked in a rush.
“Whoa, whoa! Which question do you want answering first?”
“Sorry, Daddy,” she said.
“Germany was fine. Your mother would have hated it.” That got a snigger from Isabelle. “The conference was a success and I must admit I enjoyed it. And to answer your third question, no, I don’t miss it …”
“Not yet,” Isabelle said.
“I took a slight diversion on the way back and went down the River Mosel as far as a place called Cochem, spent a night there and then came home.”
“Why?” Isabelle enquired in a typical teenage voice that expects a logical explanation for everything.
“Just for a breather before coming home, to unwind after my final break with Astek, I suppose.”
“And?”
“And what?” I asked.
“What happened?”
“What do you mean, what happened?”
“You’re dithering, Daddy.”
I smiled at her choice of word. “No, I’m not, I’m having a conversation with my daughter and telling her what I’ve been up to for the last week, that’s all.”
“But what have you been up to?”
Her persistence began to worry me. It was almost as though she knew what had happened and was testing me.
“Isabelle,” I said warily, “what exactly are you getting at? There’s more to your question than daughterly interest.”
“Oh nothing.”
“Isabelle, come on, no secrets.”
“It’s something Carrie said when I told her you were away,” she said quietly. “And stop calling me Isabelle. Your name for me is Bella,” she added indignantly.
“Sorry, Bella, yes, I’m sorry. Who is Carrie and what did she say?” I reached up and adjusted the picture that was hanging above the phone table, smiling when I realised it was one of the few pictures I had never straightened before. Belinda liked pictures to be slightly crooked because of something she’d read in a Feng Tsui book. It used to infuriate her when I went round the house straightening them all.
“Carrie’s a girl in my year. She’s a troublemaker and likes winding people up,” Isabelle said.
“And how has she been winding you up?” My mind relaxed. It was nothing to do my own experiences.
“She … she asked me the other day how many women you’d been to bed with since mummy died. I … I lost my temper and told her that you weren’t like that, that you and mummy loved each other and that you still loved her.” Isabelle paused momentarily and then said almost in a whisper, “Carrie said that I was being naïve and that men were all the same and that you would take every –”
“All right, Bella, I get the picture,” I said unnecessarily forcibly.
In many ways, what Isabelle had said shook me more than if she had told me the police had been to the school and asked her and David questions about me. I didn’t know quite what to say to her – would she believe me if I told her the truth? There was little point in telling her anything else.
I had no idea what Isabelle knew about the facts of life, but I had to assume at nearly fourteen she knew more than I gave her credit for. Belinda told me during one of her forward planning moments a few weeks before she died about the more intimate discussions she and Isabelle had. Of course, I knew that they used to go into a huddle every now and again but neither of them ever told me what they talked about, even when I asked. If it was anything serious then I knew that Belinda would have told me, but otherwise it remained strictly confidential between the girls, as Isabelle used to call the two of them.
Now my nearly fourteen-year-old daughter was asking me a straight question. Had I or had I not been to bed with another female since her mother died? It was obviously important to Isabelle and I suppose it should have been important to me but, up to that point, the opportunity had not been there and nor had the need.
“Ignore her, Bella. You’re right, she obviously enjoys winding other girls up,” I said.
“But have you, Daddy?”
“I think that’s a rather personal question, don’t you? And not really one a daughter should be asking her father, especially a daughter who is only thirteen.”
“Nearly fourteen,” she threw in absentmindedly. “I’m sorry, Daddy, but you did tell me to discuss anything with you, anything that might be worrying me. I just …”
“All right, I understand.” But I probably didn’t. “You can tell Carrie that all men aren’t the same and for your ears only, no, I haven’t.”
There was an audible sigh on the other end of the phone. “I said you wouldn’t have. You couldn’t.”
“Then there’s nothing to worry about is there.”
I didn’t add that the opportunity hadn’t arisen and if it had I would be able to give her the same answer. Although, perhaps Carrie was right, maybe all men were the same. If the opportunity had arisen … well. It was less than two months since Belinda died and I did not want to be with another woman. If I went with somebody else, it would mean Belinda wasn’t the last …
I changed the subject. “Who will you be bringing with you next weekend?”
“Jane, she’s my best friend now.”
“Oh, I thought Sue was your best friend?”
“We had a row.”
“I see.” Isabelle had gone back to being the thirteen year-old and I thought it would be best if I didn’t pry.
“I’m looking forward to meeting her. I’ll be there a little before midday on Saturday.”
“Don’t be silly, Daddy, lessons will go on until at least four o’clock. We’ll be ready minutes after we finish.”
“You’d better be. Have you seen David?”
“I saw him at breakfast but the cricket team has an away fixture. They’ve gone over to Haileybury, I think.”
Having promised I would get through for sports matches and other events as often as I could, perhaps I ought to have known. However, I couldn’t remember David telling me what games were on. Somewhere in my study I had the school programme for the summer term. I made a mental note to find it. Things were going to have to change.
“All right, tell him I called and I’ll see him next Saturday. Oh, and Bella, do you want Jane to share your room or shall I make up the spare bed?” I asked.
“No, she can use my bed. I’ll sleep on the futon.”
“Fine, see you on Saturday, then.”
“Don’t plan anything special, Daddy. I fancy a lazy weekend at home.”
“I won’t. ‘Bye, Bella.”
“‘Bye, Daddy, and Daddy, I love you.”
“And I love you. ‘Bye.”
There were tears in my eyes when I put the phone down. It only ever happened after Belinda died. The secure world I thought we lived had been shattered. Losing Belinda had made Isabelle and David more precious than life itself, and when I put the phone down it was as though I was severing more than a telephone connection. The Cochem incident should not have happened; I had put myself at risk.
After shaking my head and drying my eyes, I checked the mail, which was on the telephone table. I assumed Elisabeth and Charles had paid the house a visit during my short absence, unlike when I was in Derbyshire.
One of the letters advised me that the inquest into Ingrid’s death would be held in Buxton the following Thursday and I was required to attend. It had taken an inordinate amount of time for the inquest to happen and now I had received
only a few days’ notice to be there. The post-mark told me the letter was a week old. I rang the number given in the letter and was surprised when somebody answered at that time on a Saturday. After advising the abrupt woman who called herself Ms Felton, she assured me it would take no more than one day. Even if it did, she told me, “It wouldn’t continue over the weekend.”
To be honest, I had forgotten about my attendance at the inquest in Ingrid’s death. The letter and phone call annoyed me. I wanted to move on not be reminded that there was now a need to repeat everything in an open Coroner’s court.
After unpacking, I went into the study to find the school programme. Belinda often referred to me as a methodical person rather than tidy. She wasn’t being critical, simply observant. Everything on my desk had its place and I knew to within an inch where things should be.
The paperweight wasn’t as I had left it, the miniature clock Belinda’s mother gave me had been moved and the ornamental letter opener wasn’t in the same compartment in the Georgian letter rack.
I frowned.
Since I flew to Germany somebody had been in my study and moved things on my desk. I looked around the room for any other signs but none was immediately apparent until I noticed a book slightly proud of the others in the tall bookcase. It was an atlas Belinda and I had bought the children when they first started school. I shrugged and put it back, this time lining it up with the other books.
My purpose in the study momentarily forgotten, I went from room to room to see what else there might be that had been interfered with. The living room and dining room produced nothing suspicious, neither did the conservatory … but the kitchen did.
Some of the tins of food were not as I had left them and the cutlery drawer had definitely been disturbed. Upstairs there was further evidence that somebody had searched every room. I had left Belinda’s clothes alone. She had her own space and that space remained important and personal to me.
Her underwear drawer wasn’t fully closed. Her bras and pants weren’t in the same order. She had always kept the whites and blacks at the front and the coloureds at the rear. Each bra should have had its matching pair of pants adjacent to it, but now there were unmatched pairs. The drawer below, where she kept her slips and what she always referred to as her ‘yes please’ apparel, had also been disturbed.
Pooh Bridge: conscience stricken Page 10
