Backlash (8 page)

Going to bed late usually meant getting up late, too, and normally Marie slept straight through until noon.

But not on that particular morning.

That morning, after a restless night in which she'd tossed and turned and tried to persuade herself she was asleep, she finally admitted, at a quarter past seven, that she was in fact wide awake.

She felt lost with this totally unexpected free time suddenly on her hands. She simply didn't know what to do with it.

She knew what she
wanted
to do, of course. She wanted to go down the hallway, open Grace's bedroom door, and see if her friend was safely tucked up in her bed, just as she was supposed to be.

But that would be tempting fate, she told herself.

She couldn't exactly explain what she meant by that, but it ran along the lines of, ‘If I think things have gone wrong, then they probably will have. If I go and look in Grace's room now, she won't be there, because something terrible will have happened to her. But if I leave it till later – if I go into her room at the same time as I normally do – she
will
be there. She will have been there
all night
.'

None of it made sense – she accepted that – but it brought her a little comfort – and comfort could be very thin on the ground.

She lay perfectly still, convinced she wouldn't fall asleep, but trying to empty her mind, so time would have passed before she knew it. Then, at a quarter past eight, when her landlady, Mrs Dawkins, began vacuuming noisily downstairs, even keeping her mind empty became an impossibility.

Marie didn't like the landlady, and tried to avoid her whenever possible, even going so far as to get one of the other girls to hand over her rent for her.

It wasn't that Mrs Dawkins was unfriendly. Far from it, she treated all her guests like young ladies. And not only treated them like it, but pretended that was what they actually were.

What skill that took – ignoring the whispers in the hall at two o'clock in the morning, as one of the girls led a punter upstairs; being seemingly oblivious to the fact that when ‘respectable' girls were already at work, her guests had not even got up.

Yes, it was her hypocrisy that Marie really hated, because when rent day came around, her guests handed her a rent for their shabby bedsits which was five or six times as much as the shorthand typists and shop assistants would be paying for theirs.

The vacuuming stopped, and Marie looked at her bedside clock.

‘I'll give it two hours – a full two hours – before I go and see Grace,' she promised herself. ‘If I leave it that long, I'll have made sure that nothing could possibly have gone wrong.'

Mary Philips was a brisk, energetic woman in her early fifties, who did indeed live at the opposite end of the dual carriageway to her mother.

Her lounge, into which she invited her visitor without hesitation, contained no mementoes or even personal touches. It was, in fact, as stripped down and functional a living space as Paniatowski had ever seen.

‘Would you like a cup of coffee, or should we cut to the chase and start hitting the gin?' Mrs Philips asked her guest.

‘Vodka's my drink . . .' Paniatowski said.

‘Got some of that, as well – bottles of the stuff.'

‘. . . but, at this time of day, I think I'll stick to coffee.'

Mary Philips sighed regretfully. ‘And so another beloved stereotype – the hard-drinking copper – bites the dust. Very well, I'll make you a cup of coffee – and you might just have shamed me into joining you.'

She swept into the kitchen, and returned with two mugs of coffee.

She gave Paniatowski the one which had an image of Whitebridge town hall on it.

‘They give them out free to employees, in lieu of paying us a decent wage,' she said.

Her own mug said, ‘Bitch On Wheels'.

‘I bought that for myself,' she told the chief inspector.

Paniatowski grinned. ‘You must let me know where you got it,' she said. ‘I could use one, too.'

‘Poor Tom,' Mary Philips said, sitting down in the minimalist armchair opposite Paniatowski's. ‘I suppose, in a way, it's my fault the crash happened, because if I'd had a phone there'd have been no need for him to drive like a bloody maniac.'

‘You're a social worker, aren't you?' Paniatowski asked.

‘That's right,' Mary Philips agreed. ‘Though I wouldn't want you to get the wrong idea about that,' she cautioned.

‘The wrong idea?'

‘I'm not one of those namby-pamby bleeding-heart types who can see the good in everybody and know it's only their upbringing that makes them act as they do. Once I get my hooks into some man who's been beating up his wife and kids, I don't rest until I've got the bastard firmly behind bars.'

Paniatowski smiled. ‘I was wondering why, given your job, you don't have a phone?'

‘It's precisely
because
of my job that I don't have a phone,' Mary Philips replied. ‘I once heard that you can measure your success in any job by the number of people who dislike you – and if that's true, I must be
very
successful indeed.'

‘You kept getting anonymous calls,' Paniatowski guessed.

‘Dozens of them – and while it was very gratifying, in a way, to engender such hatred, most of the callers would insist on ringing after the pubs closed, which meant that I was losing a great deal of my beauty sleep.'

‘Why didn't you go ex-directory?'

‘I tried that, but it didn't work. Because though the foul-mouthed scum who rang me are so lazy that they've never done a decent day's work in their lives, they somehow summoned up the energy to track down my new number, and, in the end, I simply had the phone taken out.' She paused for a moment. ‘But you're not here to listen to me recount amusing anecdotes of my life in the sewer – you want to ask me about Elaine.'

‘You don't seem very concerned about the fact she's gone missing,' Paniatowski said. ‘Is that because you don't think there's anything to worry
about
?'

Mary Philips shook her head vigorously. ‘No, it's not that at all. In my line of business, you learn to discipline yourself not to worry about something bad happening until you know – for a fact – that it has. It's the only way to survive. So in answer to your implied question – which may actually have been a veiled criticism – yes, despite myself, I am concerned. But I'm not going to show it – even to a thoroughly nice young woman like you.' She paused again. ‘Would you like something stronger to drink now?'

‘No, thank you.'

Mary Philips shrugged her shoulders. ‘Always worth a try,' she said, philosophically. ‘I expect you've already been to see my mother.'

‘I have.'

‘And did she tell you that there was really no problem at all, because
Tom
would find Elaine?'

‘Yes, she did.'

Mary Philips laughed. ‘And so he would – if he were allowed to. But I'm a little bit more worldly than Mother – and I know he'd never be let within a mile of the case.'

‘You sound like a big fan of his,' Paniatowski said.

‘Let me tell you about my sister,' Mary Philips suggested. ‘Elaine's twenty-odd years younger than me – which, if you think about it, makes her almost twenty years younger than Tom. She was only eight when our father died, and it hit her very hard. She was like most kids – she thought the world centred on her – so if anything went wrong, it had to be
her
fault.'

Paniatowski knew what she meant. As a child herself, constantly on the run with her mother in war-torn Europe, she'd often had the feeling that if she'd been just a little bit better, none of this would have happened.

‘So Elaine clung to the one certainty she had left,' Mary continued. ‘She tried to be exactly like Mother, but that didn't work, of course, because she was still a kid and Mother was already in her forties.'

‘Did she get picked on in school?'

‘She most certainly did. And there was nothing that even a bossy busybody like me could do about it. When she left school, she went to work for our uncle, and she'd probably have been working for him still, if she hadn't met Tom.'

And now we come to the point that still puzzles me, Paniatowski thought. Just
what
did Kershaw see in her – and just
what
did she see in him?

‘You're speculating about how the relationship ever got off the ground,' Mary Philips said.

‘I am,' Paniatowski admitted.

‘We'll probably never have a completely accurate answer to that, because if we don't really know our own partners – or even ourselves – how can we ever really know
anybody
?' Mary Philips said. ‘But I'll make a stab at answering, if you want me to.'

‘I want you to.'

‘Tom, to do him credit, must have caught a glimpse of something none of the rest of us saw – the real Elaine, the one that froze when Father died.'

‘And Elaine?'

‘I think it was that she sensed he really wanted her. I'm not talking here about just
loving
her, you understand – she got plenty of love from Mother and me – but actually
wanted
her. And with a tall, handsome, confident man like Tom Kershaw virtually falling at her feet, she was finally forced to admit that she couldn't be quite as worthless as she'd always imagined herself to be.' Mary Philips waved her hands helplessly in the air. ‘That's not a good answer. It's probably not even the
right
answer. But it's the best I can do.'

‘Are they happily married, would you say?'

‘Very happy indeed. I'd go so far as to say they complement each other perfectly.'

‘So there's no chance Elaine might have been having an affair?'

‘You think she might have run off with a lover?'

‘It's a possibility we can't dismiss.'

‘Maybe you can't – but I certainly can. If she'd been having a bit on the side, she'd have told me. She wouldn't have been able to help herself.'

‘And if she found out Tom was having an affair? What would she have done then?'

‘Tom hasn't been having an affair. Elaine's all the woman he's ever wanted.'

‘Has he told you that himself?'

‘No. And even if he had told me, it wouldn't necessarily make it true. But I've
seen
them together. I've seen the secret way he looks at her in company – as if he just can't wait to get her to bed. It's a look most women go through their entire life without experiencing. I know I've never had it. My Harry loves me to pieces, but I've never felt that he was fighting the urge to rip all my clothes off in a crowded room – and damn the consequences.'

Paniatowski stood up. ‘You've been very helpful,' she said.

‘I haven't really, have I?' Mary Philips asked.

No, she hadn't, Paniatowski admitted silently.

‘You've helped towards eliminating certain lines of inquiry, and that's a valuable thing in any investigation,' she said aloud.

And then she noticed the tears that Mary Philips had been working so hard to fight back.

‘She will be all right, won't she, Chief Inspector?' Mary asked.

‘Let's hope so,' Paniatowski replied.

Chief Superintendent Kershaw looked a wreck, but then it would have been a marvel if he hadn't.

‘We're sorry to drag you round to the . . . to the . . .' Beresford began.

‘To the scene of the crime?' Kershaw suggested.

‘Yes, sir,' Beresford admitted uncomfortably. ‘The scene of the crime. We know this must be very hard for you.'

‘If your sergeant hadn't thrown me out last night, you wouldn't have needed to drag me round, because I'd already have been here,' Kershaw pointed out. Then he looked Meadows straight in the eye and said sincerely, ‘I want to thank you for that, Sergeant.'

‘There's no need, sir,' Meadows said, looking embarrassed.

‘But there is,' Kershaw insisted. ‘I want to thank you for reminding me that, despite my personal grief, a crime had been committed and it was my duty to act like a police officer.' He took a deep breath, then continued, ‘Now what can I do for you, Colin?'

‘Like most men, you probably don't know half the stuff your wife has got in her wardrobe,' Beresford said, ‘but we'd appreciate you looking through it anyway, because there's always a chance you'll notice that something is missing.'

A smile, too poignant to be called anything like amusement, came to Kershaw's face.

‘Is that what you think, Sergeant Meadows?' he asked. ‘Do you believe, as Inspector Beresford seems to, that I'll have only a vague idea of what's in Elaine's wardrobe?'

‘No, sir,' Meadows replied. ‘I think you'll know exactly what should be there.'

‘And so I do,' Kershaw said. He turned his attention back to Beresford. ‘Elaine has never bought a dress without asking me if I liked it, and I wouldn't even purchase so much as a handkerchief without getting her approval first.'

‘I see, sir,' Beresford said.

‘I don't think you do,' Kershaw contradicted him, ‘but then I know for a fact that you're not married, and I
suspect
you're not in love.' He sighed. ‘Even if I hadn't played a part in buying the clothes, I would still remember every dress that Elaine has ever worn, simply because she was the one who wore them.' He paused. ‘You still don't understand, do you? Never mind. Let's go and look at Elaine's wardrobe.'