Destroy Unopened
Page 24
‘Partly. And partly because Antonia Hobbs is my sister.’
Our eyes met. Now I was angry. She’d well and truly jerked me about, and I wasn’t going to tiptoe round her sensibilities any more. ‘If she’s your sister, then Jack is your nephew.’
‘Of course.’
‘So you must have known that the last letter was a complete lie. Jack’s a sweetie. He’d never have said those things about Christie and Rillington Place and women.’
‘Of course not.’
‘Knowing your – sister – as you do, you can help me out. If Jack had told her he was worried about the men he was living with and their attitude to women and the Notting Hill Killer, would she have used that idea, only put it on Jack? Told Jack’s father all that stuff as if it had come from Jack, just to keep her lover’s interest and keep his involvement going?’
‘No!’ she said. Pause. I reckoned she was weighing up how badly she’d treated me, how much she owed me. Then, reluctantly, ‘She might have done.’
‘I think she did. And I think when all her manipulations weren’t working any more, she stabbed him to death. That’s what I think.’
‘No evidence,’ she snapped, but I saw the evidence in her eyes. That’s what she thought too.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
We were in Polly’s living room because she has two sofas. She wanted to lie on one and nurse her broken arm; Nick wanted to lie on the other and get some mileage out of being an invalid, and I got to sit on the upright chair and run around after them. They’d been nagging me to go round to the office and check for an e-mail about Barty, but I wouldn’t, and they’d given up and were nagging me about Antonia Hobbs instead.
‘But why do you think she killed him?’ said Nick. ‘I don’t get it. Why shouldn’t it just have been muggers, like the police thought?’
‘I think she killed him because she was menopausal and desperate,’ I said.
‘That’s not very PC,’ said Polly. ‘Menopausal.’
‘I think hormones make a difference,’ I said, nibbling a dry biscuit.
‘Of course they do,’ said Nick. ‘But not every fiftyish woman kills someone.’
‘She’d had a lover for over twenty years. She’d spent all that time and effort and passion on him. Then he was going, and she knew it, and she tried everything, even lying about her son, and it wasn’t working. I just feel it, all right?’
‘Did you know she was a sculptor?’ said Nick.
‘What’s that got to do with it?’ said Polly.
‘Strength. Familiarity with tools, knives,’ said Nick. ‘When did Gein die?’
‘August.’
‘Jack said she’s been more or less off her head since August,’ she said. ‘Neither of us could sleep last night. We talked for hours. He’s OK. Actually, Alex, I think you could be right.’
‘But you’ve got no proof,’ said Polly. ‘And she could just have gone off her head because her lover had died.’
‘It doesn’t matter either way,’ said Nick, ‘because she’s not likely to do it again, is she? She doesn’t have another twenty years in her and she’s not likely to get another lover, not at her age.’
‘Well, I can sort of understand it if she did. What I can’t understand is Fairfax and Jacobs,’ said Polly. ‘That whole thing.’
‘I can,’ said Nick. ‘They’re men.’
‘That’s not an explanation,’ said Polly.
‘OK, try this. Fairfax is spoilt rotten by all that money, and he likes things his own way, and he’s fixated on little blonde blue-eyed girls, but maybe they don’t come through for him as quickly as he thinks they should because all he ever talks about is himself, and maybe also they think he’s gay, because actually I do, and then he meets the real love of his life, a big strong man, and the big strong man sees easy pickings . . .’
‘But the violence. The killing,’ protested Polly.
‘They liked it,’ said Nick flatly. ‘Believe me. That’s the bit they liked.’
Polly looked at Nick, who was beginning to sweat, and said ‘What do you think, Alex?’
Obviously she wanted me to take the weight off Nick. I didn’t think anything, much, because all that mattered to me at the moment was Barty, so I rambled. ‘Odd, what people like. Football, for instance. Anyhow I agree with Eddy.’
‘Eddy Barstow? Your sweaty policeman?’ said Polly.
‘Yeah. He said not to worry about what people could or should or might have done, or why. He said to find out what they did do, and Nick has. What I’d like to know is why they didn’t get rid of me earlier. They picked Nick up straight away.’
‘I really got up Fairfax’s nose,’ said Nick. ‘Right from the start. And I mentioned the Killer, because I said Sam was Killer-bait, and he thought I knew more than I did. I knew sod-all about—’
‘Listen,’ interrupted Polly.
‘What?’ I said.
She flapped a silencing hand in my direction and opened the window on to the street. Then I could hear, too. A dog barking. A woman bellowing.
‘O! stay and hear! your true love’s coming,/ That can sing both high and low:/ Trip no further, pretty sweeting;/ Journeys end in lovers meeting,/ Every wise man’s son doth know.’
‘Yer what?’ said Nick.
‘Alex? Alex?’ Lil was bellowing even louder now, to be heard over Benbow’s frenzied barks. ‘Alex? I went to check at the office. There’s an e-mail for you, I’ve printed it out, I’ve got it with me. Alex?’
Anabel Donald
Anabel Donald has been writing fiction since 1982 when her first novel, Hannah at Thirty-five, was published to great critical acclaim.
In her thirty-six-year teaching career she has taught adolescent girls in private boarding schools, a comprehensive and an American university. Most recently, she has written the five Alex Tanner crime novels in the Notting Hill series.
Bello
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The Notting Hill Mysteries
An Uncommon Murder
In at the Deep End
The Glass Ceiling
The Loop
Destroy Unopened
Copyright
First published 1999 by Pan Books
This edition published 2015 by Bello
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ISBN 978-1509-8134-69 EPUB
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ISBN 978-1509-8134-52 PB
Copyright © Anabel Donald 1999
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