Stolen

by Roberta Kray

  ‘I beg to differ.’

  ‘Oh, have I missed something?’

  ‘Stanley Parrish,’ he said.

  Anna looked blank. ‘Should that mean something to me?’

  ‘He was the private investigator Mal employed to try and track down Kay. I think it’s fair to say that Esther hated his guts. He died in a hit-and-run, probably not an accident. Maybe I blamed her for his untimely death.’

  ‘And why should it matter to you?’

  ‘Because he was my uncle,’ Nick said.

  Anna’s lips curled up at the corners. ‘How interesting. Well, in that case I’ll certainly add you to the list. Yes, I believe I recall Esther mentioning him now. Something along the lines of a user and a creep – her words, you understand, not mine. Still, I can’t imagine her taking out a hit on him. What do you think, Inspector?’

  Latham – who wouldn’t talk with his mouth full – finished what he was chewing before replying. ‘It’s probably better if I keep my thoughts to myself.’

  ‘Better for you, perhaps, but decidedly dull for the rest of us.’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ Claud said. ‘Personally, I’d prefer to eat my lunch in peace.’

  ‘Peace,’ Anna snorted. ‘You won’t find much of that in this house. Death and disaster, that’s all there is here. Poor little Kay snatched, Mal sent to prison, Esther murdered. Where’s the peace in any of that?’

  Latham spoke again. ‘Not to mention the nanny. We shouldn’t forget about her.’

  Lolly saw Nick glance at the inspector, saw a look pass between them. In that moment she realised they both knew something she didn’t. She tried to catch Nick’s eye again but to no avail. Instead he turned his face towards Heather and said, ‘Ah, yes, the nanny. That was tragic. Did you talk to Esther about her?’

  ‘A little,’ Heather said.

  ‘It must have been terrible for her family. She got kind of overlooked with all the fuss about Kay.’

  ‘For God’s sake,’ Jude said. ‘Can’t we talk about something else?’

  Nick took no notice. ‘Stanley went to see her parents but he didn’t find out much – and not the most important thing. No, unfortunately that was kept hidden from him. Kept hidden from the world, in fact.’

  Heather shook her head, her expression bemused. ‘And what exactly was that?’

  Latham joined the exchange, his face serious, his voice soft but firm. ‘Come on, Heather. It’s over. It’s time to tell us who you really are.’

  Everyone stopped eating. There was utter silence. Eight pairs of eyes focused on Heather Grant. Lolly held her breath, confused but riveted, aware that something momentous was about to be revealed.

  For a moment it seemed that Heather would continue to play ignorant, but gradually her expression changed. Her face paled and her eyes flashed with anger. She pushed aside her plate and placed her elbows on the table. She glared at Latham. ‘The nanny,’ she spat out. ‘Why does everyone call her that? She had a name, you know. She was more than just her job.’

  ‘Yes,’ Latham said. ‘She had a name – Cathy Kershaw – and a mother and a father . . . and a daughter.’

  Heather sucked in a breath and gazed around the table. ‘A daughter she wasn’t allowed to bring up as her own. No, Cathy had to be sent away, banished, because her parents couldn’t bear the shame of her having a child out of wedlock. They preferred everyone to live a lie. Respectability was more important than the truth. I was two years old when she was murdered and I didn’t even know she existed until six months ago.’

  ‘How did you find out?’ Nick asked softly.

  ‘I found her letters after my mother died. Well, the woman I’d called my mother – Cathy’s mother, my grandmother. My grandparents raised me as theirs, you see, moved away so the neighbours wouldn’t ask any awkward questions.’ Heather’s face twisted. ‘The letters Cathy wrote were pitiful, pathetic, begging for news about me. She should have been at home and instead she was here, taking care of someone else’s baby.’

  ‘So there was never any book,’ Nick said. ‘You just . . . what, used it as a means to get close to Mal and Esther? Why not tell them the truth, who you really were?’

  ‘Because they’d have just fobbed me off, told me how sorry they were and sent me on my way. I wanted more than that. I wanted to see where Cathy had lived, where she’d died. I wanted to get to know the Furys. I wanted to understand what these people were like.’

  ‘You were looking for someone to blame,’ Latham said.

  ‘Teddy Heath was to blame. But they played their part too. It was Esther who brought that man into their lives, and what did Mal do about it? A big fat nothing is what he did. He tolerated her affairs, let her get away with them. They had a toxic marriage and neither of them gave a damn about the consequences of their actions.’

  ‘Too true,’ Anna murmured.

  Nick kept his eyes on Heather. ‘So you used the book as a cover, did some research?’

  Lolly couldn’t understand why he was still banging on about the book. There were more important things, surely, to be concentrating on.

  ‘I was a reporter, remember? All I had to do was find a plausible lead, a way in. A few months’ hard work chasing down Teddy Heath’s old friends and Hazel Finch’s name turned up. She was the perfect candidate, an old girlfriend with a daughter around the same age as Kay. I knew Mal wouldn’t agree to see me unless I had some hope to offer – and so I gave it to him. I wanted him to be here when I revealed who I was, to be here in the place my mother died. I wanted to confront them both, look into their eyes and make them realise what they’d done.’

  ‘But Mal didn’t show up,’ Latham said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘How did you get Esther down to the lake?’

  The question was a leading one and for a moment Heather said nothing. But then, knowing the game was up, she started talking again. ‘I told her Hazel Finch was there, that she wanted to talk, that she wouldn’t come to the house because of all the other guests. Even though Esther didn’t really believe Vicky was her daughter, I knew she wouldn’t be able to resist.’

  Heather sipped more water, ran her tongue along her upper lip.

  ‘But you were the one who did all the talking,’ Latham said. ‘You told her who you were, right?’

  Heather’s face grew dark. ‘I knew she was going away soon, that everything was rosy and going her way. She was going to make a big announcement about getting the starring role in some stupid bloody film, about going to Hollywood, and I couldn’t stand that smug expression on her face. She was swanning around like the bloody queen and I was just so . . . I don’t know, angry and frustrated, I suppose.’

  ‘And what did she say when you told her who you were?’

  Heather’s smile was grim and there was venom in her voice. ‘She accused me of trying to profit from my mother’s death, said I was a greedy little bitch who’d never see a penny from the book. I told her it wasn’t about that. It was about them caring, giving a damn about what had happened to Cathy. She’d died protecting their baby when she should have been at home with me.’ Heather briefly closed her eyes, opened them again. ‘She said if Cathy hadn’t been so useless, Kay might still be alive today.’

  There was a collective intake of breath, a murmuring that rolled into an edgy silence.

  ‘I didn’t mean to kill her.’

  Lolly could feel the anger growing inside her. All the lies, all the deceit. And Mal left to take the rap for a murder he hadn’t committed. She half rose from her seat, but DS Barry, sitting to her right, laid a restraining hand on her arm.

  ‘What happened?’ Latham asked softly.

  ‘It was an accident, I swear. I only wanted her to shut up, to stop saying those things. I grabbed hold of her, put my hands around her throat, and there was a struggle. She . . . she staggered back, stumbled and kind of rolled into the water. I don’t know, she might have hit her head on something on the bank. I tried to help, to get her out but the wa
ter was too deep. I just panicked and ran.’

  Lolly stared at Heather along with the rest of them. A dreadful quiet filled the room. Did anyone believe her? Did the police? She didn’t have to wait long for an answer.

  DI Latham pushed back and his chair and stood up, his expression grim. ‘Heather Grant, I’m arresting you for the murder of Esther Fury . . . ’

  63

  Saturday 24 September. West Henby

  It was four o’clock in the afternoon. Lolly and Nick were sitting on the bench by the lake, their eyes fixed on the rippling water. They’d be leaving soon, going back to London, and Lolly had the feeling she would never see this place again. Latham and Barry had already gone, taking Heather Grant with them, and the others – apart from Mrs Gough – had departed soon after. Nick had offered Jude a lift back to Kellston but he’d preferred to take the train. Lolly sat very still, turning everything over in her head.

  ‘You knew about Heather before we went into lunch, didn’t you?’

  ‘Latham told me.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘Because we pooled our information this morning. I told him what I knew – I’ll explain about that later – and he told me what he’d found out about Heather. They’d done a check on her, followed the paper trail and discovered exactly who she was.’

  ‘So why not just arrest her?’

  ‘Because being Cathy Kershaw’s daughter isn’t a crime. Latham couldn’t prove she’d killed Esther. He knew she’d be on her guard during the interview and so he kept that brief, acted like she wasn’t under any kind of suspicion and waited to make his move over lunch. He reckoned the element of surprise might be enough to get a confession.’

  ‘What will happen to her now?’

  ‘If she’s got any sense, she’ll get herself a decent solicitor and plead manslaughter with diminished responsibility. She’ll go to jail but with the mitigating circumstances . . . finding out about her mother like that . . . Who knows? Five, six years?’

  Lolly stared hard at the water, feeling the weight of the past crowding in on her. She thought of Cathy Kershaw wheeling the pram beside the lake, looking down at someone else’s baby, feeling the torment of being apart from her own.

  ‘Cathy was sixteen when she got pregnant,’ Nick continued. ‘Unmarried and probably not a hope in hell of getting a ring on her finger. I imagine her parents gave her the choice, adoption or letting them raise the baby themselves. The latter having a condition of course, that she kept her distance and didn’t live at home. After her murder they moved again, even changed their name to Grant, so Heather would never find out about her real mum or that she was illegitimate.’

  ‘But the truth always comes out eventually.’

  ‘Not always,’ Nick said. ‘Some things stay buried for ever. Still, Mal’s in the clear now. Do you think he’ll hand himself in when he hears that Heather’s been arrested?’

  ‘I hope so. They’ll give him extra time but he’s better off doing that than being on the run for the rest of his life.’

  ‘Yes, he’ll want to come back. What I was saying before about telling Latham something . . . well . . . ’

  Lolly didn’t understand his hesitation. ‘What? What is it?’

  ‘You might want to prepare yourself.’

  ‘Now you’re starting to worry me. Just say it. Tell me.’

  Nick left a short pause but finally started talking again. ‘The reason I was late this morning was because I went to Somerset House. I wanted to check out Vicky’s birth certificate, just to make sure that Hazel was being straight with us.’

  ‘And was she?’

  ‘Only partly.’ He took a sheet of paper from his pocket, unfolded it and passed it to her. ‘Here, this is it.’

  Lolly quickly scanned the details and then looked at him, puzzled. ‘I don’t get it. It says here that Hazel’s the mother and Teddy Heath’s the father. Where’s the problem? That’s what she told us and there it is in black and white.’

  ‘You know what else she told us? That Teddy scarpered as soon as he found out she was pregnant and that she never saw him again. Which put her in the clear as regards Kay’s abduction. If she was no longer with Teddy, she couldn’t have been a part of it.’

  ‘Okay,’ Lolly said, still nonplussed.

  ‘Except . . . ’ He put his forefinger on Teddy’s name. ‘There’s a little detail Hazel Finch overlooked. The mother is only allowed to register the father’s name in his absence if they’re married.’

  The penny finally dropped with Lolly. ‘And they weren’t. So he must have been there with her?’

  ‘Exactly. Which rather belied her claim that she hadn’t seen him since her baby’s birth. Now why would she lie about a thing like that? That’s what I wondered and so I did another search, this time through the deaths register, and came up with the answer.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘That Mal was right about Vicky. She is his daughter.’

  Lolly’s mouth dropped open. ‘What?’

  ‘Yeah, Hazel’s daughter, Victoria, died when she was just a few months old. Rheumatic fever. Teddy dumped the Fury baby on her after the kidnap went wrong, and did one of his disappearing acts before the law could catch up with him. Hazel’s already been picked up by the police. She came clean as soon as she was presented with the evidence of Victoria’s death.’

  ‘But why did she keep Kay? I mean, she knew what it meant to lose a child. You don’t just take someone else’s.’

  ‘You might. If you were disturbed, grieving or just too scared to hand her back. With Teddy gone, she’d be the one to take the rap. Who knows what was going on in her head.’

  Lolly wasn’t sure what was going on in hers either. She felt shocked, stunned, elated for Mal but scared for him at the same time. What if Vicky rejected him, refused to accept him as her father? How would the girl deal with Esther’s death? And with what Hazel had done? What if Mal didn’t hear the news about Heather and never came back? There were so many unknowns and they all swirled around her head, jostling for position, bumping and colliding until her temples started to ache.

  ‘So Heather was right,’ she murmured.

  ‘That’s the irony – she’d found Kay and didn’t even realise it. She got so caught up in all her own lies, she couldn’t see the truth when it was staring her in the face.’

  They both fell quiet. Lolly was thinking about the morning Vinnie had pulled up by the gates, of the cries she’d heard, the cries of a baby. Even now she didn’t know where they had come from – an echo from the past or just her mind playing tricks? She gazed at the willows, at their long silvery fronds brushing the surface of the water. Once, in a park long ago, she had asked her mother why they were called that, why they were weeping willows. ‘Because they come from China and they’re missing home.’ She supposed it was time for her to go home and yet she couldn’t quite bring herself to leave. Just another minute or two . . .

  Nick stirred beside her. ‘I’m here, you know, if you ever need someone to talk to.’

  Lolly nodded and leaned against him, feeling the warmth of his shoulder against hers.

  Epilogue

  Three Months Later

  Everything had changed and yet some things remained the same. Lolly was standing in a prison visitors’ queue waiting for her number to be called. After handing himself in to the Garda, Mal had been returned to London where six months had been added to his sentence. He’d taken it philosophically. Once the time was done he’d be a free man again. He’d come back to a blaze of sympathetic publicity – the man who’d been wrongly accused, the man who’d been forced to run to prove his innocence – and now his reputation was restored. A villain one minute, a hero the next.

  Naturally he’d said nothing about the help she’d given him at West Henby. Latham had his suspicions but could prove nothing. Perhaps he didn’t even want to. Some cases were complicated enough without adding extra paperwork to them.

  The day after Mal’s ret
urn she’d received a letter in the mail, posted from Dublin. Inside was a cash cheque for a grand. She knew he must have sent it shortly before he’d handed himself him, money he’d got for the ring and the necklace. She had gone down to the Fox and given the cash to Terry.

  ‘So are we quits now?’

  ‘Sure,’ he’d said. ‘We’re quits.’

  But she knew she’d never work for him again. The trust was gone and it was never coming back. Still, perhaps it was for the best. You could only play with fire for so long before your fingers got burned. There were safer ways to make a living.

  She glanced at the clock on the wall and tapped her foot impatiently against the floor. It felt like the bond between her and Mal had grown, been strengthened, after everything that had taken place. Things had changed but not in a bad way. A part of her had feared that she would lose his affection now that his real daughter had been found, that she would be surplus to requirements, but the very opposite had happened. They were closer now than they had ever been.

  Vicky had come to see him for the first time last week. In addition, letters were being exchanged, thoughts written down, small connections gradually made. The girl had her own demons to face and nothing would be easy. It would take time but eventually a new family might be forged, unconventional and tinged with tragedy, but with the only thing that was really needed – hope.

  Vinnie knew that he had dodged a bullet – and learned a painful lesson in the process. Never trust a bloody woman. He was lucky to be a free man, out on the street, breathing in the lovely London air. Les Poole had been shot through the head three months ago, murdered as he left a nightclub in Soho. The gun used to kill Sandler had later been found in his home. Ballistics had come to his rescue. Or maybe Terry had. To this day he didn’t know the truth and doubted that he ever would. There were some questions it was better not to ask.

  When he thought of Laura, something still shifted in his chest, but it would pass. Had she conspired with Poole to have her husband murdered? He didn’t think so. He preferred his own version of events where she had simply panicked after her husband’s killing, looked for someone to blame and put him firmly in the frame. Well, either way she’d betrayed him and there was no going back.