A Banquet of Consequences (65 page)

Barbara switched the digital recorder off. Her entire body was tingling. Charlie, she thought. The other brother. Clare had intended to speak to him. She had intended to unveil for him the nature of the relationship between his mother and brother. The information was a nuclear warhead that detonated directly in the centre of how Caroline Goldacre depicted herself, not only to the world but also to her remaining child.

This, Barbara thought, was the evidence they were looking for, and what rang out for her in that moment were the words overheard by the night porter in Cambridge. One woman saying, “We’re finished, you and I,” and the other declaring, “Not with what I know about you. We’ll never be finished.” Caroline had to have spoken the first, having come across Clare’s mental musings having understood from them that the power had shifted. Clare had responded. She had the goods on Caroline, and she could easily use them. As long as she held the threat of speaking to Charlie over Caroline’s head, she could write her book and proceed on her way to further glory. Unless, of course, Caroline killed her.

SHAFTESBURY

DORSET

Alastair parked in his regular spot at the far end of the bakery. He stared through the windscreen at the building’s brick-clad exterior and shifted his gaze to the window to take in what he could see of
the pristine shelves. Acknowledging that his assistant had got on quite well with the work in his absence, he felt largely numb.

He wondered how he could possibly have got so many things wrong in his life. He wanted to put it down to a badly set broken leg long ago and what that leg had done not only to obliterate his soldiering dreams but also to foster within him the sense of desperate unworthiness that had driven most of the decisions he’d made.

What nearly slew him was the whole concept of
intentions
. No matter what he’d decided or what actions he’d taken, he’d always intended the best. From that first embrace of Caro in the street straight on to sitting on a cold wet bench in Pageant Gardens earlier that day, he’d meant to hurt no one; he’d intended only to express his love.

Despite Sharon’s protests that morning, Alastair had adhered to the belief that he knew the ways of the world far better than she did. So once he’d removed the damning container of baking powder from her house, he’d driven off to Sherborne to be rid of it. Their conversation had delayed him, though, as had looking into Sharon’s stricken eyes. That last had prompted him to tell her not to worry. He’d said, “Let me do this for you,” and she’d let him be on his way.

When he arrived in Sherborne, jouncing over the railway tracks and making the turn into the Sainsbury’s car park, he did it in the company of two articulated lorries, there to make their morning’s delivery to the supermarket. One lorry bore baked goods—there was an irony, he thought—and one bore paper products, and the presence of them pulling up to the great delivery doors at the back of the building necessitated his coming up with plan B to be rid of the container he’d taken with him from Sharon’s house.

Nearest to Sainsbury’s was the railway station, so he scooted there. But people were already gathering for the morning train, and he couldn’t afford to be seen disposing of anything in their presence, which called for plan C.

He left his vehicle near the station, in the car park, and considered his options. From where he was, he could see the autumn-leaved trees in Pageant Gardens across the street from the station, and this seemed to him to be what he was looking for. But it had to seem natural, just in case.

He went first into the station, where he bought a newspaper and a takeaway coffee. Then he carried these across to the garden, where he strolled along the macadam path and paused as if to admire the bandstand in the garden’s centre. There were others in the garden, despite the hour, but they were hurrying across to the railway station and he knew they wouldn’t remember him, just a bloke on his way home with the morning paper and a cup of coffee. Bit young to be a pensioner, of course, but who really knew these days anyway?

Benches stood at intervals along the path, and Alastair was about to stroll to one when a uniformed policewoman came striding into the gardens and set off in his direction. He had a heart-slamming moment as he did his best
not
to note her progress while noting her progress. He was fully expecting her to stop to have a word—just as he was fully preparing some sort of excuse to give her about why he was there—when she strode past with a brisk nod and a “good morning” and went through a gate at the top of the gardens. He followed her a bit to make certain she wasn’t going to linger, and that was when he saw the proximity of the police station to where he was. He nearly gave it up then.

But he pulled himself together and decided his plan was still a good one, for how likely were the coppers to come through the gardens and riffle through the rubbish? He went to a bench, frowned at its sheen of morning dew, and reckoned there was nothing for it but to sit or to walk on to look for another rubbish bin, which he was loath to do.

So he sat. He opened his paper with a crack. The heir to the throne and spouse, surrounded by minority schoolgirls in headscarves, a very large cake with dripping candles, everyone smiling toothily. He saw the photo without seeing it. He read the accompanying story without reading it. One bloke passed him on the way to the train and a young woman floated by on a scooter. Two dog walkers said hello. And then, finally, there was no one.

Alastair slid the container of baking powder out of his pocket in the same movement as he rose from the bench. His trousers were wet in the back—he should have had the sense to sit on part of the paper, he thought—but his jacket fell far enough to cover the damp, so all
he had to worry about was the discomfort and not someone catching sight of a pathetic bloke who looked like he’d pissed himself.

He headed in the direction of the railway station and the car park. Directly on his route was a rubbish bin. As he passed it, he slipped the container into its depths. On top, he placed the paper he’d bought. It was all completed in less than three seconds.

He went on his way and decided that it only made sense for him to stop inside Sainsbury’s. He needed to buy Sharon a replacement for the baking powder, for she had to have that stored among her baking ingredients. When the coppers showed up to have a go with her house, it would be something of a giveaway, wouldn’t it, if she had everything else but not a crucial leavening substance without which no decent cake would rise.

He had to wait a bit for the supermarket to open and when it did, he thought it would be wise to purchase a few things that he was accustomed to eating, things she didn’t have like the granola he favoured, the type of honey he liked to use, a lemon curd that she didn’t have in her stock. It would do for him to have shaving gear as well, he thought, and while he was at it, he picked out a bouquet of flowers because what woman didn’t like flowers brought to her, eh?

Thus encumbered with offerings among which was the new baking powder, he returned to Thornford. He called Sharon’s name as he entered the house, and he found her sitting at the kitchen table. She was dressed for work, which called to his mind that it
was
a workday for her, and although he wanted to tell her to forget about going to work today, he knew that it wouldn’t do for her to behave any different from normal.

He presented her with the bouquet, saying, “Flowers for the flower of my heart. That’s you, girl,” and kissing the top of her head. He set the rest of his purchases on the work top and he told her he’d “got rid of that business. I’m not telling you where, am I. Just know that it’s safely gone and just to make certain no one’s the wiser . . .” He rustled through the carrier bag for the baking powder. This he handed over to her. “Wouldn’t do for you not to have this,” he said.

She said nothing in reply. She’d set the bouquet on the table, and now she held the baking powder in her hands. It was a circular
container and she rolled it between her palms. Finally, she got to her feet and went out of the room.

He followed her. She was, he thought, behaving oddly. She looked . . . He wasn’t quite sure what to call it. Just that she walked like someone in a dream. She went to a cupboard in the corridor between the kitchen and the sitting room. This she opened and from within, she brought out a container of baking powder, which she handed to him.

He said, “What’s this then?”

She said, “Like I told you, Alastair. I do my cupboards twice each year. This’s the replacement for the other. If something’s use-by date is close, I toss it. Like I
told
you, Alastair.”

He wasn’t sure what he was meant to think, let alone what he was meant to say. So he said nothing. He merely stood there—a mute—and he couldn’t bring himself to raise his gaze from the baking powder. As she had done, he turned it in his palms. Unlike her, however, he upended it to see its best-by date. He saw what he expected to see: The date was, of course, for the future.

She said quietly, “We don’t know each other ’s well ’s I hoped. Else you wouldn’t’ve thought . . . What was it you were thinking? That I was trying to poison . . . who? Caroline? You? Why? Cos I’m after the bakery myself or something? Why’d you think that?”

He felt something clutching at his throat. He saw a door closing, and he knew he had to rush through it before he was locked out forever, but he didn’t know how to get himself going. He said, “That tree out back. It clouded my mind. It’s due to living with Caro that I can’t think straight, and besides there’s that tree and how easy it would be . . . But I believed you. Every word, Shar.”

“Not the words that counted,” she told him.

“I couldn’t let something happen to you. You’re . . . It’s everything I have, you are. And . . .” He set the baking powder on the shelf from which she’d taken it. “We c’n laugh ’bout this later, can’t we? Me rushin off to Sherborne whiles all along you got this powder here to use and I would’ve found it had I only looked, eh?”

She was quiet for a moment, her gaze on the container: where he’d put it and what it meant. She said at last, “You would’ve found more ’n that if you’d only looked. I wish you’d done that.”

Now, Alastair forced himself to open the door of his van. Because he couldn’t face coming home to Caro after what had passed between Sharon and him, he’d spent hours driving round Dorset instead. He’d visited his bakeries. Might as well see how well his assistant had done, he’d reckoned. So he went to five of the shops, and while he felt like a block of ice in every single one of them, he could see that business was brisk and that his assistant could do very well without him. As, he was concluding, could everyone else.

He approached the house. It looked unoccupied, but he had little hope that this was the case. Caro’s car was in its usual spot and as she wasn’t given to walking, she was probably within.

She met him at the door. “They’ve taken everything,” she told him. “They’ve been here, they’ve torn the house apart, it’s taken me the rest of the day to put it together. But you’re not to worry about that because the important bit is that you had your night with your piece of tail.”

“Don’t call her that.” He pushed past her into the body of the house. “Her name is Sharon. Call her that or keep still.”

“I’ll keep still when I’m dead,” she said behind him. “Of course, that’s what you were hoping for, isn’t it? The two of you with your Very Big Plans. Well, they’re about to come to nothing, Alastair. The police have your computer and mine and everything else that can possibly link you and her . . . And they’ll go there next. Don’t think they won’t. So if there’s nothing to find among your things—because there’s certainly nothing to find among mine—then off they’ll go to that bloody little cunt—”

“I damn well
told
you, Caro.” He heard his voice in an entirely new way, as the instrument of violence it had never been before.

“—once they work out that whatever they think
I
might have done was actually done by someone with a hell of a lot more to gain.”

“You listen to me,” he said, and he grabbed her wrist for emphasis. “Shar wanted nothing.”

“Oh please,” she scoffed.

“You don’t understand cos you’re not like that. You want everything. You want to suck a man dry. I should’ve seen that when you went on and on about Francis like you did, when you did everything
you could to keep your fingers on Will and Charlie and not let them, not
ever
let them—”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. And let go my arm. You’re hurting me.”

He found he quite liked that idea of hurting Caro. He gave her wrist a sharp twist. He said, “God but I was mad for you. ’Course, you knew that. That was part of it. Men always go a bit mad for you and you use that, don’t you?”

She tried to jerk away from him. He held her fast. “Let
go
of me!” Her voice rose. He liked that as well: the sound of fear in it. But then she regrouped as she would always do. She tossed her head and said, “Let me understand this. Sharon didn’t use you, but I did. Sharon offered you
nothing
to get you exactly where she wanted you, but I did. I’m some sort of . . . What am I? A schemer? A demon? While she is what? What is she, Alastair?”

“Decent and good,” he said. “Only for ten minutes maybe I forgot that: the decentness and goodness that would’ve stopped her. I saw that tree outside and I remembered what she said and I thought she . . . But she wouldn’t’ve, ’course, and I see that now. Because she was telling the truth from the first, just like from the first you never knew what the truth even was.” He released her then and threw her arm to one side and was intensely gratified to see the harsh redness of her wrist and to know that it was going to bruise.

She said, “You’re mad.”

“Prob’ly,” he told her. “But for the first time what I feel is sane.”

SHAFTESBURY

DORSET

Lynley wasn’t impressed. It was an intriguing detail, he told Barbara, but it wouldn’t serve their purpose because there was—and she knew it—no way to prove that Caroline Goldacre had ever listened to what Clare Abbott had dictated onto another track of the digital recorder. Yes, yes, it stood to reason that just as Barbara had discovered there were two more tracks, so Caroline could have done had she, too, pressed the
wrong button on the recorder. And unlike Barbara, Caroline might have assumed that what was on the third track was another letter she was meant to type so she had reason to listen to it just to make certain. But Barbara
knew
this was supposition and declaring it proof of anything, no matter how it helped fill in the picture of what had happened, would get them tossed out of the CPS office on their collective ear. It would also serve as yet another element to convince Isabelle—