Jessica laughed. “You do your ex-wife an injustice. She just wants what’s best for her daughter.”
“I know, so do I, but I also know Katy. She’s seventeen now, but will soon be old enough not to need our permission. If we stop her from going, the day she turns eighteen, she’ll be off without so much as a backward glance. I’d rather she left with our blessing and kept in touch. God knows, it will be hard enough when she leaves without driving myself insane with worry because I don’t know where she is or what she’s doing.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jessica nodding in agreement.
“Everything changes. If you have exciting things going on in your own life, you might not miss her as much as you think.”
“I get quite enough excitement in my day to day existence, thank you very much. I don’t think I want to search out any more.”
“Really?” she said. “You might change your mind when you hear what I’ve got to tell you.”
Pulling up outside his home, he glanced over at her. She looked as if she was bursting with news. He opened the door, climbed out and walked to the rear of the car to grab Jessica’s suitcase.
“You are so old-fashioned, Paolo,” she said as he insisted on carrying it from the car into the flat. “How do you think I manage when you’re not around?”
He flicked the door closed with his foot, put the case down in the hallway and walked into the kitchen to prepare some coffee. Jessica followed him in and perched on one of the bar stools flanking the breakfast bar.
“We women are capable of carrying our own bags, you know.”
Paolo grinned at her. “I know and I also know lots of women who are much stronger, tougher and fitter than I am, CC for one, but I like doing things for you. It’s the way I was raised. It’s no big deal. I’m not trying to put you in box marked helpless.”
She laughed. “Such a fine line between chauvinism and chivalry. I’ll forgive you, though, because you do make a wonderful pot of coffee,” she said as he put the cafetière down in front of her.
Placing two cups next to it, Paolo smiled. “Now, if I said you be mother and expected you to pour the coffee, that would be sexist, but if I said, I’ve made it, you pour it, that wouldn’t be sexist, right?”
“You’re learning, Paolo. It’s not just in the words we use, but the hidden meaning behind them. Equal distribution of tasks is fine, but distribution because of gender expectations, regardless of whether or not it’s a fair distribution, is not. However, to show there are no hard feelings, I will pour the coffee.”
“Thank you,” he said, as meekly as he dared.
She laughed, picked up the tea towel and flicked it at him.
“That’s brutality,” he said, “but I won’t arrest you – yet! Okay, now we’ve got the coffee, what’s your big news?”
The smile left her face and she became so serious that Paolo’s emotions once again took a dip.
“You remember the weekend we were due to go away to the Lake District and I had to let you down at the last minute?”
Paolo nodded. It had seemed to him at the time as if she hadn’t told him the real reason for backing out of a trip they’d both been looking forward to for several weeks. He hadn’t been able to get hold of her for a few days afterwards. When they finally made contact again, she claimed she’d been sick and not answering her phone. It was since that time that he’d felt the gap between them was widening.
“I flew to Canada for a week.”
“Canada? Why?”
She reached across for his hand and held it. “I’ve been offered a post in a teaching hospital in British Columbia. I went over for an interview and also to see if it was something I wanted to take up.”
Paolo stomach lurched. Canada? Such a long way away and British Columbia must be about the furthest west you could get without falling off the North American continent. He tried to think of a rational response, but offering congratulations didn’t tie in with how he was feeling.
“You lied to me,” he said, pulling his hand from hers. “Why didn’t you tell me the truth?”
She shrugged. “Because I wasn’t sure if I was going to accept.”
“No,” he said, “there’s more to it than that. If it was just a case of not being sure if you wanted the job, you could have told me about it, but you deliberately kept it from me. Why?”
“Aren’t you going to ask me if I’m going to take up the position?” she asked.
Paolo noted how she’d avoided answering his question. Presumably she had her reasons, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear them.
“Well, are you?” he asked, aware of the resentment in his voice filling the space between them.
She nodded. “But one of the reasons for not telling you before was so that I could make some enquiries and present you with some information you might like.”
“You’re planning to live God knows how many thousand miles away, but you think there’s something I might like about it? You must have found out something truly amazing if that’s the case.”
She smiled and reached for his hand again. “What I found out is that the Canadian Police Force welcomes British detectives with open arms and wonderful financial packages. You could come with me. Katy’s going off on her own adventures, you could as well.”
Paolo wanted to believe he’d misheard Jessica, but there was no point in pretending. He’d heard and understood exactly what she’d said.
“But my life is here. Why would I want to up sticks and move to a different country?”
Jessica shrugged. “Well, one reason would be to live with me, but I can understand that idea has come as a shock to you.”
“No, that’s not a shock at all. In fact, I’ve been thinking about us moving in together and I really like the thought of it. I just don’t see why we would need to move to Canada to do it.”
“Because, Paolo, I’ve been offered the chance of a lifetime and I want to take it. I’ve looked into things over there and you, too, could rise up the promotion ladder much faster than you would here. They are crying out for officers with your experience. You’d really be in demand.”
He shook his head. “I don’t want to be in demand. I want to stay here where I belong.”
She laughed. “How can you say that? You have no social life apart from our relationship. No friends to speak of outside of work. You don’t see family members other than Katy and, as you pointed out earlier, she is going abroad for a year anyway.”
“But when she comes back,” Paolo said, “I need to be here.”
“If she comes back,” Jessica amended. “Usually, once young adults have lived abroad for any length of time, they can’t settle back in the UK. She may never come home again.”
She smiled and shrugged.
“You know, Paolo, it’s not that long ago that wherever a man was transferred, his wife and family were expected to give up everything and relocate for the sake of his career. I’m not asking you to give up your job, just do it in a new place with different challenges to overcome.”
“Jessica, firstly, we’re not married, but even if we were, you haven’t been transferred, you’ve applied for, and been awarded, a new position. Secondly, you did it without even discussing it with me and now you expect me to jump at an opportunity I hadn’t even realised was on the table.”
“If I’d spoken to you about it before I went to Canada, would that have made any difference? Be honest, Paolo, you’d have done all you could to persuade me not to go.”
Paolo wanted to argue. To tell her she was talking nonsense, but he knew she was at least partly right. He would have tried to convince her there were more reasons to stay in the UK than to leave. His phone rang, sounding like a band playing full blast in the silence of the kitchen. Recognising Dave’s ringtone, he snatched it up. Paolo was usually angry if interrupted during one of Jessica’s visits, but today, even if it was just a traffic violation, he was going to be there in person.
“Storey,” h
e said,. “What’s up?”
“I’m at Montague Mason’s place, sir. It looks like he’s committed suicide.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Paolo parked in the street outside Montague’s house, his mind in turmoil. He had to put all thoughts of Jessica and her bombshell to one side until he’d dealt with Montague’s suicide. The driveway was full of police cars, with an ambulance parked outside the front door, obscuring much of the house from view. Lack of anything to photograph didn’t seem to deter the crowd of reporters already gathered outside in the street. Flashbulbs flickered continuously as Paolo left his car and walked the few yards to the drive entrance.
The reporters were being held back by crime scene tape strung across the road, but that didn’t prevent their voices from reaching him.
“Is it murder?
“Do you have any suspects?”
“Is this to do with the accusation on the plaque at the youth centre?”
“How did he die?”
“What’s the official position?”
Paolo ignored them all; shaking his head as he passed the vehicles on the drive blocking his route, he made his way towards the detached mock Georgian house Montague had loved so much. Negotiating the congestion in the drive, Paolo realised, when the ambulance was ready to leave, it would either have to drive across the miniature manicured lawn, or all the other cars would have to reverse out to make room. Either way, there wouldn’t be any reason to rush. Montague was dead and couldn’t get deader if it took an extra few minutes for the ambulance to edge its way down the drive and out into the street.
Inside, he found the entrance deserted and made his way to where he could hear voices. He came to the room Montague had grandly referred to as the drawing room. Paolo would have called it front room, but then he had been raised in a terraced house in a much poorer part of Bradchester than this estate of identical, but expensive, houses. Dave, CC and Dr Barbara Royston, the forensic pathologist, formed a semicircle around Montague’s body.
Paolo was aware of a strong chemical smell, but couldn’t quite place it in his mind. Whatever it was, it was definitely out of place in a room such as this. He looked down; the dead man’s face was contorted in such a way that Paolo could only assume he had died in agony. Whatever his feelings had been for Montague in life, Paolo would never wish that sort of death on anyone, far less someone he knew.
Paolo nodded to Barbara, who returned his greeting before kneeling down to next to the body. She pointed at a plastic bottle, the contents of which had spilled over onto a patch of the carpet next to the body, removing all colour. Obviously the source of the smell, which was so strong it overrode the other, even more unpleasant, odours of death.
“Until I do the post mortem, it’s unofficial, but I’d say it’s fairly certain he died as a result of drinking bleach.”
“Dear God, no wonder his face looks like that.”
He shuddered and turned his attention to Dave and CC.
“Who found him?”
CC stepped forward. “His sister, sir. She’s in the dining room at the end of the hallway, being comforted by a family liaison officer. I’ll show you the way.”
Paolo shook his head. “It’s okay. I’ve been here before,” he said. “Montague held an open drinks evening when we were fundraising for the centre. I’d like you to come with me, though. His sister might respond more easily to another female. Dave, you stay here with Dr Royston.”
His last conversation with Jessica still fresh in his mind, he tried to put it out of his head, with only limited success. As he walked next to CC, Paolo wondered if Jessica would have seen sexist motives in his allocation of tasks. It was just common sense, surely, to take a female to interview another female? But then again, would he take Dave and leave CC behind if he was going to interview a male? Probably not, as CC was one of the best when it came to wheedling information out of people who didn’t want to give any.
He was going to ask CC if he came across as chauvinistic, but pulled himself up. This wasn’t the time or the place. Concentrate on the job on hand, he ordered his wayward mind. He could speak to CC later, though he dreaded to hear what she might have to say on the subject.
Paolo had met Gwendolyn Mason on two previous occasions. The first time when she’d played hostess here at the fundraising event and the second time had been the day before the opening of the youth centre. Although he knew, because Montague had told him many, many times, that his sister had been working tirelessly behind the scenes, she hadn’t been able to attend the night of the opening. At the time Paolo had been glad she’d been spared the humiliation heaped on Montague that night, but given a choice, he’d rather she’d seen that than been the one to find her brother’s dead body.
He and CC entered the dining room to find a WPC sitting at the table with Gwendolyn. They were talking too quietly for him to hear the words, but the feeling in the room came over loud and clear. Disbelief and horror on the one part, sympathy tinged with professional curiosity on the other. Paolo would find out later if the WPC had uncovered anything he needed to know while comforting the distressed woman.
Gwendolyn was considerably older than Montague, but the resemblance between them was strong. There could be no doubting the family relationship. He nodded to the WPC before sitting opposite Gwendolyn at the table.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Gwendolyn. I know how close you and Montague were. I hope this won’t add too much to your distress, but I have to ask you some questions.”
She nodded mutely, her grey hair falling over her face in untidy waves. Tears filled her eyes and threatened to fall. Paolo waited while she pushed the hair behind her ears and rubbed at eyes reddened from earlier attempts to stem the flow.
“Can you take me through what happened this morning?”
“I was going to Wales for a few days to visit my friend, but she fell over yesterday and broke her leg. She’s in the hospital and said not to come as she’d all her family round her. You see, I wasn’t supposed to be here,” she said. “I think that’s why he did it this weekend; so that I wouldn’t get to see him like that, but I opened the door and I could smell… I knew something wasn’t right. I came in and…”
She put her hands over her face and sobbed.
That at least answered one question for Paolo. He knew Montague had gone out of his way to protect his sister, so arranging things so that she would be the one to find him hadn’t made sense.
“Gwendolyn, I’m sorry, but we know Montague was being blackmailed. Do you have any idea why or by whom?”
She stopped rubbing at her eyes with the sodden tissue and looked up. Her face was a picture of horror.
“Blackmail?”
Paolo nodded. “Montague didn’t tell you?”
She shook her head. “No, he never said a word. How do you know?”
“He admitted it when he gave his statement about manipulating the youth centre’s funds, but wouldn’t say what it was he was paying someone to keep secret.”
“Oh no, someone must have found out. Did he kill himself to protect me? Why didn’t he tell me? I’d have said it didn’t matter. Things are different today. No one would have cared, would they?”
“Gwendolyn, I’m sorry, you’ve lost me. What is it that no one would have cared about?”
A fresh burst of tears meant Paolo had to wait for her answer.
“I’m not Montague’s sister. I’m his mother.”
***
Paolo stood in front of his hastily assembled team and apologised for bringing them in yet again on a Saturday.
“I promise you, at some point in the future you’ll get an entire weekend to yourselves, but obviously it won’t be this one. Barbara Royston is going to conduct the PM on Tuesday, but it seems pretty clear from the evidence at the scene that cause of death was directly related to his ingestion of bleach. We know Montague Mason was being blackmailed, what we don’t know is why, how long it’s been going on, or who was turning the screw on him.
”
CC raised looked up from the notes she’d been writing.
“You don’t think it was about Gwendolyn being his mother?”
Paolo shook his head. “I could be wrong, but that doesn’t seem to fit for me. I’m just not convinced fear of the mother/son relationship coming out is enough. Personally, I wouldn’t have thought so, especially as Gwendolyn said Montague had known for several years. The only reason they kept it quiet was to protect her reputation, not his. Apparently, he was raised believing she was his elder sister, but guessed from various things that were said as he grew up that she might be his mother. There was only fifteen years between them. She was involved with someone who ran as soon as he heard she was pregnant.”
“So why did he continue to say she was his sister after he knew the truth?” Dave asked.
“For the sake of her parents. They kept up the pretence with their friends and neighbours and forced Gwendolyn to do the same. By the time her parents died, it would have been difficult to come out and tell the truth, but even so, had it come out, it wouldn’t have been bad enough to warrant suicide. You’ve got to be bloody desperate to swallow bleach. Would he do that to cover up his mother’s so-called shame? I don’t think so. There has to be more to it. Andrea has Montague’s laptop and is going to go through the files and emails this weekend. If she can’t find anything pointing to motive for him to take his own life, we’ll hand it over to the IT guys to search for hidden files or fragments left behind after wiping.”
“Could he have topped himself because he couldn’t face the music over the youth centre finances?” Dave asked.
Paolo nodded. “Again, it’s possible, but it feels like too extreme an action just to avoid bad publicity. He’d likely not even have been given a custodial sentence as there was no actual money missing. He’d misappropriated it, yes, but always put it back once he’d sold something. The chances of a judge sending him to prison were pretty remote and he must have known that. No, there’s something in Montague’s life he knew would come out because his source of funding to pay the blackmailer was drying up. Did you notice the bare walls and places where statues should have been? I think he’d reached the end of the line when it came to selling off his possessions.”
Looking For A Reason (#4 - D.I. Paolo Storey Crime Series) Page 11
