Creeping Ivy (17 page)
‘He told us that he had put up with her infidelities for years before he divorced her,’ said the sergeant. ‘It would help us fill out our picture of her and the child if we had a better understanding of the whole relationship. Do you know why he was so complaisant?’
‘Isn’t that privileged information?’
‘No, Ms Weblock, I’m afraid it isn’t. Even if he were your client, it wouldn’t be. And he’s not, is he – at least, not now?’
‘No, and he never was,’ Bella said, outraged that they could have thought her capable of an affair with a client. In her opinion that was the grossest abuse of the therapist-client relationship, and it was typical of the British cops that they could accuse her of it in that devious way. They hated all Americans, she knew, and professional women, too, so she’d be losing out both ways. ‘My practice is entirely with children these days.’
‘Fine. Then please tell us anything you can, Ms Weblock.’
‘May I ask why?’
Bella felt a blast of hostility from her right and followed it to its source in the constable. If he’d been an American he’d probably have told her to quit stalling by then. But the Brits were different. They just could never say what they wanted. And not only the police either. Everyone did it. Ben was one of the worst, going right around a subject instead of getting straight to what mattered. It made her mad.
‘Quite frankly, Ms Weblock,’ said Sergeant Lacie, ‘I don’t understand why you’re reluctant to talk us. A child is missing. We all know what may be happening to her. We need to find out everything we can about her and her background so that we can have some idea where to look for her. You can help us do that.’
Bella briefly raised her eyebrows and nodded to indicate her willingness to receive questions on those terms.
‘Her mother claims that your husband is the child’s father; he told us that he doesn’t think he is. We need to find out who else it could have been. D’you know?’
‘No. And I don’t believe that’s why you’re here. You want to know whether Ben was lying and she is his child and he had a hand in her abduction.’ Bella was so angry that her voice was shaking as though she was scared. ‘Isn’t that why you’ve beep interrogating my neighbours and searching my garbage?’
‘Yes,’ the sergeant said with all the directness Bella could want.
‘Right.’ She wished she’d rung the US embassy to find out what her rights were here. ‘I have no way of knowing anything about their relationship or Charlotte’s paternity except what my husband’s told me. And I have no reason to think he’s lying. As far as I know, there’s never been a DNA test. Ben didn’t dispute paternity during the divorce because he’s not a vindictive man.’
‘Sure of that, are you?’ said the constable.
‘Perfectly,’ said Bella, amazed to hear how much like Bette Davis she could sound. ‘He’s generous, more generous than any man I’ve ever met. That has always been his problem. It’s the reason he put up with Antonia’s affairs for so long. He’d have done anything to make her happy. He’d have accepted Charlotte as his own if he’d thought that would help. But when he finally acknowledged that Antonia was never going to open up to him, that she’d turned him into part of the problem, he knew he had to get out.’
‘Why did it take him so long?’
‘He has a big problem with self-esteem, Constable Herrick,’ said Bella, looking at him in disdain. ‘A different problem than yours.’
She turned back to the sergeant, whose lips twitched in a smile. So, sisterhood does cross the Atlantic, thought Bella.
‘You see, Sergeant Lacie, he’s a man of very little—’
‘Brain, I should think,’ said the constable as though he’d made a great joke.
‘Sam,’ said Sergeant Lacie unemotionally, ‘I left some notes in my briefcase in the car. Could you fetch it for me, please?’
As soon as he had gone, looking mad enough to shoot someone, the sergeant apologised for him, adding: ‘How far do you think your husband’s generosity would take him?’
‘I don’t get you.’
‘Forgive me. If he believed the fact that you and he are unable to have children was poisoning your life, would he be capable of—’
Bella got to her feet. Her whole body burned with fury. All her inclination to like Sergeant Lacie had gone.
‘No, he would not. That’s an awful suggestion. You’re right out of order.’
‘There are a great many more awful things being done at this moment than an unpleasant suggestion being put into words, Ms Weblock. I can imagine how you feel about not being able to have children. I had a miscarriage myself last year and we’ve been trying for another baby ever since without success. I know how it can come to loom larger than anything else – almost – and make the idea of happiness like something designed only for other people.’
She paused as though to give Bella a chance to contradict or agree, but Bella was so locked into her rage that she could not feel even sympathy for another woman who shared some of her suffering. At least the sergeant had gotten as far as a miscarriage. She herself hadn’t ever conceived.
‘For a man like your husband – as you have described him – generous and longing to give, your distress might have been too much to endure without taking some kind of action,’ said the sergeant. There was compassion in her big, dark eyes. ‘If he had come to believe that Charlotte was his child after all, the temptation might have been too much. Mightn’t it? Don’t you think he could have taken her?’
Recognising the fairness of the question with difficulty, Bella gave it only a moment’s consideration. She was still angry, but she was a just woman and had to admit that the sergeant couldn’t know Ben; couldn’t know how unlikely he would be to do anything as evil as that.
‘If he had, which is more unlikely than you’ll ever know, he would have brought her straight to me,’ she said, trying to choose a form of words the detective might understand. ‘And he hasn’t, as you must know from the questions you’ve been asking round here and at home.’
The constable returned at that moment with Kath Lacie’s briefcase. She did not even make a pretence of looking in it.
‘Fair enough. If you think of anything that could help us, Ms Weblock,’ she said, ‘will you get in touch with me?’
‘What kind of thing?’
‘Anything your husband might have said or done recently or in the past to throw any light on who might have had an interest in the child or a grudge against her mother.’
Bella laughed. She couldn’t help it. The question was really dumb.
‘If you’ve been destroying her reputation with her friends and neighbours in the way you’ve been doing to us, you’ll know that half the world has a grudge against her.’ Thinking about Antonia and everything she had done to Ben, Bella suddenly lost her temper.
‘She’s an evil woman,’ she said. ‘If it weren’t that there’s a child involved, I’d say she deserved everything she’s getting now.’
‘Why d’you say that?’
‘She uses people and gives nothing back. She almost destroyed my husband, and from what I’ve heard, she does that to everyone who comes into her orbit.’
‘I see. Well, thank you for being so frank, Ms Weblock. Come along, Sam.’
Bella watched them both go, gave them time to get well clear of her building and then pulled the telephone towards her.
‘Ben?’ she said, when he had been fetched from the staffroom. ‘Ben, I’ve had the police here asking more questions.’
‘They’ve been here, too. But don’t worry, Bella. They’ll go on talking to both of us and everyone else who’s even remotely involved until they’ve found Charlotte. You can’t blame them. We’ll just have to hang on in there until it’s over. I can’t stop now, my darling, I’ve got to take my kids to the library and they’re clogging up the lobby and making an awful din. Will you be home this evening?’
‘Sure. My last client’s due at five-thirty, so I’ll be home by a quarter of seven at the latest. Shall I bring some takeout with me?’
‘Great. Bella, I’m sorry about all this. I know it’s vile. It’ll be over soon; one way or the other. We’ll just have to keep our peckers up until they lose interest in us.’
‘Unlike you, Ben,’ she said, remembering her amazement the first time she had heard him use the phrase, ‘I don’t have a pecker.’
He laughed. ‘In England you do. It’s a chin on this side of the Atlantic, as you well know.’
She laughed with him and put down the phone feeling the littlest bit better. So long as she could believe in Ben’s laughter – and not be faced too often with melodramatic phone messages from Trish Maguire or questions like the ones Sergeant Lacie had just asked – she’d survive until Charlotte Weblock was found. If she ever was found.
‘Get that, will you, Nicky?’ Antonia called as the sound of the door bell died away.
She waited until she heard Nicky’s acknowledgment and then closed her bedroom door again. It was important to keep Nicky in the house where the police could get their hands on her whenever they needed to, but that didn’t mean Antonia wanted to have to look at her.
Antonia returned to the important business of applying the glossy surface she needed to keep between herself and whatever the day was going to turn up. She had known all along that she would not be able to work until Charlotte was found, and so there was no real need to have set the alarm so early, but she was not sleeping much anyway and it seemed absurd to change her routine. Besides, a later start would have allowed Nicky to slack off and Antonia wasn’t going to allow that. As it was Nicky skulked in her room for most of every day instead of doing anything useful.
There must be the most awful fug in there. Nicky hated fresh air, and so she never opened the window. What with the cigarette smoke – and probably worse – the room must be disgusting. In normal times Antonia would have gone storming upstairs to catch her in the act and nip it in the bud, but these were not normal times and the less she saw of Nicky or her room, the better. Antonia thought yet again of the way the police had searched it and gone so ominously quiet, and whether they were likely to come back again for another go. They ought to.
Hearing a quiet knock on her door, Antonia checked the perfection of her makeup in the dressing-table mirror, tightened her dressing-gown cord around her waist and went to see who was outside.
‘Yes, Nicky?’ she said, noticing that the girl was red-eyed again, as though she had been crying more useless sympathy-inviting tears, and she looked even less healthy than usual. Antonia shuddered and turned her head away so that they did not have to meet each other’s eyes.
‘It’s the police, Antonia,’ she said, sounding properly scared. ‘They want to see you.’
‘Tell them I’ll be down in a minute and offer them coffee, will you? Or tea. I suppose that sort might drink tea at this hour.’
Antonia shut the door without waiting for an answer, and stripped off her dressing gown. The beige suit she would have worn to work was hanging in its Tuesday position in the long cupboard and she reached for it automatically, taking the top shirt off the pile in the adjoining shelves with her other hand. She put them on, examining the effect with care and then added a gold pin to her lapel. Her fine Lycra tights were exactly the same colour as the taupe leather shoes into which she pushed her wide feet. Walking towards the door, she noticed a single blonde hair on the shoulder of her jacket and picked it off, frowning.
Then, at least looking as though she might be able to deal with whatever had to be faced, she went slowly downstairs to find out what the police had come to tell her.
As she pushed open the door, she saw that DCI Blake was standing in the kitchen with a mug in his hand, talking to Nicky, while his pretty constable was staring out of the open French windows towards the expensively landscaped garden. Antonia deliberately slowed her heart-rate by looking out, too, and noticing even from that distance that the
Acer japonicum
was thriving and that the last few camellia flowers were turning brown and dying. Almost certain of her self-control, she shut the door loudly behind her, making them all jerk to attention.
‘Good morning, Chief Inspector Blake.’ Her voice did not tremble at all and her back was very stiff. ‘Constable Derring.’
Blake handed the mug to Nicky without looking at her and came towards Antonia with his right hand outstretched. It seemed absurdly formal, but she shook hands with him, glad that his grip was firm. She waited to be told to sit down and, when she was not, tried to smile and asked for news.
‘There isn’t any yet, Ms Weblock. Nicky?’
Nicky looked stupidly at him and then obeyed the jerk of his head and left the kitchen without looking at her employer again.
‘Ms Weblock, would you like to sit down?’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ she said, twisting her hands together and feeling the sharpness of her diamond rings as they slid around her fingers. ‘What are you going to tell me?’
He pulled out one of the Italian rush-seated chairs she had been so pleased with when they were delivered, but she ignored it.
‘What, Chief Inspector?’
‘We need to dig up part of the garden.’
She did sit down then, her legs crumpling beneath her. She felt his hand under her elbow, easing her down, and hated the brush of his coffee-scented breath on her cheek and nose. It would have given her a lot of satisfaction to push his face away, but naturally she did nothing of the kind.
‘Why?’ she whispered, leaning away from him.
‘We need to eliminate the possibility that—’
‘That Charlotte’s body is buried there. I understand that,’ she said, quite proud of the way she kept her voice just the right side of collapse. ‘But why have you got to eliminate it? Is it something to do with what you found in the pram?’
‘Not entirely. We haven’t had the results back from the lab. yet.’
‘Then have you identified the boy Nicky claims to have bandaged up on Saturday, is that it? Why won’t you tell me? What’s the matter? What are you hiding?’
‘We’re not hiding anything.’ Blake looked as though he’d have liked to put an arm around her. She shrank away from him. She couldn’t help it.
‘And yes, we have found him.’