The Wrong Mother (31 page)

‘Yes, please,’ said Sellers.

‘You didn’t notice who took those two photographs, by any chance?’ Gibbs asked. ‘Or anyone taking photos of Geraldine and Lucy Bretherick?’

Barbara Fitzgerald shook her head. ‘Everyone was snapping away, as they always do on school trips.’ This was the first time the name Bretherick had been mentioned. The headmistress seemed unflustered by its appearance in the conversation. Jenny Naismith was still ransacking the filing cabinet. Sellers couldn’t see her face.

‘What can you tell us about Encarna Oliva?’ he asked.

‘She worked for a bank in London.’

‘Do you know which one?’

‘Yes. Leyland Carver. Thanks to Encarna, they sponsor our Spring Fair every year.’

‘Do you have the family’s contact details in Spain?’

‘I don’t think we were ever given a snail-mail address,’ said Mrs Fitzgerald, ‘but we did get an e-mail shortly after Amy left St Swithun’s, telling us all about her new home in Nerja.’

‘Nerja.’ Sellers wrote it down. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve still—’

‘No, but I do remember the e-mail address.’ Mrs Fitzgerald beamed. ‘It was [email protected]. No apostrophe. My secretary and I had a long discussion about it. Not Jenny—my previous secretary, Sheila. The missing apostrophe annoyed me. Sheila said she’d never seen an e-mail address with an apostrophe in it, and I said that if one couldn’t use apostrophes in Hotmail addresses, then why not avoid the problem altogether by coming up with an address that doesn’t require an apostrophe?’

‘Is there a computer here that I can use?’ asked Gibbs. Jenny Naismith nodded and led him to her desk. ‘Worth a try,’ he said to Sellers.

‘What about Amy’s old address?’ Sellers asked the headmistress. ‘The people who live there now might have a forwarding address for the Olivas.’

‘They might,’ Mrs Fitzgerald agreed. ‘Good idea. I can root that out for you, certainly.’

Sellers was relieved that she didn’t know it by heart. He’d been starting to wonder if she had special powers.

When the head turned to face him again, armed with a sheet of A4 paper, she had a more reserved expression on her face. ‘Is Amy . . . all right?’

Sellers was about to say something reassuring when Gibbs said, ‘That’s what we’re trying to find out.’ He didn’t look up from the keyboard.

‘We have to work on the assumption that she’s fine unless we find out that she isn’t. Which hopefully we won’t.’ Sellers smiled.

‘Will you let me know the very second there’s any news?’ asked Mrs Fitzgerald.

‘Of course.’

‘I liked Amy. I worried about her too. She was extremely bright, very passionate, very creative, but like many sensitive, creative children, she tended to overreact. Hysterically, sometimes. I think she did it to make life more interesting, actually. As an adult, I’m sure she’ll be one of those women who creates drama wherever she goes. She once said to me, “Mrs Fitzgerald, my life’s like a story, isn’t it, and I’m the main person in the story.” I said, “Yes, I suppose so, Amy,” and she said, “That means I can make up what happens.” ’

‘Number 2, Belcher Close, Spilling,’ Jenny Naismith read from the piece of paper in her boss’s hand. ‘Amy’s old address.’

‘Do you want to look at our
A-Z
or have you got sat nav?’

Sellers covered his mouth with his hand to hide a grin. Barbara Fitzgerald had pronounced it as if it were the name of an Eastern deity: his venerable holiness, Sat Nav. ‘We’ll find it,’ he said.

Was a trip to Spain likely to fall into his lap? Why couldn’t it be France? He could take Stace; she could practise her French—there was no doubt she needed the practice. Sellers had done French O level, got a B, and he reckoned Stace was the sort of person who’d never be able to learn a language. She just didn’t get it. She was rubbish. If he could have taken her to France, it might have helped. Maybe Spanish was easier. Maybe he could persuade her to switch. Better still, he could take Suki to Spain . . .

Barbara Fitzgerald handed Sellers a list of names. He counted them. Twenty-seven. Great. Would Kombothekra want him to collect twenty-seven accounts of a visit to an owl sanctuary in the hope that someone would remember who took which photographs? That’d be fun. Sellers was halfway out of the school office when he remembered he’d left Gibbs behind. He turned, doubled back on himself.

Jenny Naismith was walking up and down behind her desk, too polite to ask when she might once again have the use of her computer. Gibbs had stopped typing and was staring at his Yahoo inbox, blowing spit bubbles. ‘Are you ready?’ Sellers asked him.
How to be charming and graceful, by Christopher Gibbs.
‘You’re not waiting for Amy Oliva to reply, are you? She’ll be at school.’

‘So? That’s all schools do these days, isn’t it? Buy kids computers to play with?’

‘In this country, sadly, things are going in that direction,’ said Barbara Fitzgerald from the doorway. ‘If you’re talking about the state sector, that is. In Spain, I’m not sure. But, you know, there’s no point sitting there and waiting.’ She smiled fondly at Gibbs; Sellers found himself feeling quite impressed. ‘Forget about it for the time being and try again later.’

Gibbs grunted, abandoned the keyboard and mouse.

As he and Sellers walked back to the car, Sellers said, ‘Wise words indeed, mate. Is that what Debbie says when you can’t get it up? Forget about it for the time being and try again later.’

‘Not a problem I have.’ Gibbs sounded bored. ‘Right, what now?’

‘Better check in with Kombothekra.’ Sellers pulled his phone out of his pocket.

‘Is he Asian?’ Gibbs asked. ‘Stepford?’

‘Of course not, pillock. He’s half Greek, half upper-crust English.’

‘Greek? He looks Asian.’

‘Sarge, it’s me.’ Sellers gave Gibbs a look that Barbara Fitzgerald would no doubt have thought too discouraging, bad for morale. ‘The photos are of Amy Oliva and her mother, confirmed. That’s Oliva spelled O-L-I-V-A. They were brought in by a woman who called herself Esther Taylor . . . sorry? What?’

‘What?’ Gibbs mouthed, when the silent nodding had gone on for too long.

‘All right, Sarge. Will do.’

‘What, for fuck’s sake?’

Sellers rubbed the screen of his mobile phone with his thumb. He thought about the helium balloons his children were given at parties and in restaurants. They tried so hard to clutch on to the strings, but they could never maintain their grip and eventually the balloons drifted up and out of reach. There was nothing you could do but watch as they escaped at speed. That was how Sellers was starting to feel about this case.

Double or nothing. He would have preferred nothing.

‘Corn Mill House, in the garden,’ he said. ‘They’ve found two more bodies. One’s a child.’

 

‘Boy or girl?’ asked Simon, aware that this question was normally asked in happier circumstances. He, Kombothekra and Tim Cook, the pathologist, stood by the door to the greenhouse, away from the rest of the men. Kombothekra hadn’t worked with Cook before. Simon had, many times. He, Sellers and Gibbs knew him as Cookie and sometimes drank with him in the Brown Cow, but Simon was embarrassed to make this obvious to Kombothekra; he hated the nickname anyway, regarded it as unsuitable for a grown man.

‘Not sure.’ Cook was at least five years younger than Simon, tall and thin with dark, spiky hair. Simon knew that he had a girlfriend who was fifty-two, that they’d met at a local badminton club. Cook could be unbelievably boring on the subject of badminton, but would say little, even when urged by Sellers and Gibbs—especially then—about his older partner.

Simon couldn’t believe the age gap didn’t bother Cook. He, Simon, could never have a relationship with anyone twenty years older than himself. Or twenty years younger, for that matter.
Or with anyone.
He pushed away the unwelcome thought. Half the time he prayed Charlie would change her mind, the other half he was grateful she’d had the good sense to turn him down. ‘ “Not sure”?’ he said impatiently. ‘That’s the sort of expert opinion I could have come up with myself.’

‘It’s a girl.’ Sam Kombothekra sighed heavily. ‘Amy Oliva. And the woman’s her mother, Encarna Oliva.’ He turned, glanced at the makeshift grave behind him, then turned back. ‘It’s got to be them. Family annihilation mark two. Keeping the media at bay’s going to be a nightmare.’

‘We know nothing,’ Simon pointed out. Sometimes he heard a phrase that he knew would be impossible to dislodge from his mind.
Family annihilation mark two.
‘Whoever they are, this can’t be a family annihilation.’ He resented having to use Professor Harbard’s crass definition. ‘Mrs Oliva can’t have buried her own body, can she? Laid a lawn over herself? Or are you saying her husband killed them? Mr Oliva? What’s his first name?’

Kombothekra shrugged. ‘Whatever his name is, his body’s buried somewhere nearby, and our men are going to find it any second now. Mark Bretherick killed all three Olivas, and he also killed Geraldine and Lucy.’

Simon wished Proust were here to give Kombothekra the slating he deserved. ‘What the fuck? I know we can’t avoid charging him, but . . . Do you really think he’s a killer? I thought you liked him.’

‘Why?’ Kombothekra snapped. ‘Because I was polite to him?’

‘I think he’s a killer,’ Cook chipped in. ‘Four bodies have turned up on his property in less than a fortnight.’ Neither Simon nor Kombothekra bothered to reply. Simon was thinking about the shock and fury on Bretherick’s face as he was helped into the police car that would by now have delivered him to the custody suite at the nick. Kombothekra stared at his feet, mumbled something Simon couldn’t decipher. ‘Anyway, have I said anything about the adult skeleton being a woman’s?’ The pathologist returned to his area of expertise, reminded the other two men that they needed his input.

‘You haven’t said anything, period.’ Simon glared at him.

Kombothekra looked up. ‘You’re saying the adult skeleton is a man’s? Then it’s Amy’s father.’

‘No. Actually, it
is
a woman.’ The revelation got no response. Tim Cook looked embarrassed, then disappointed. ‘It’s easy to identify an adult female pelvic structure. But a young child . . .’

‘How young?’ asked Simon.

‘My guess would be four or five.’

Kombothekra nodded. ‘Amy Oliva was five when she left St Swithun’s school, supposedly to move to Spain.’

‘Get me dental records,’ said Cook. ‘Don’t give the bodies names until we’re sure.’

‘He’s right,’ said Simon.

‘How long dead?’ Kombothekra demanded, his usual charm and tact having deserted him.

‘I can’t say for sure at this stage. Somewhere between twelve and twenty-four months would be my guess,’ said Cook. ‘There are remnants of tendons and ligaments, but not many.’

‘How did they die?’

Cook made a face. ‘Sorry. If we had more soft tissue, I might be able to tell you, but all we’ve got’s bones and teeth. Unless the murder weapon made some sort of mark on a bone . . . I’ll have a good look when I get them on the table, but don’t bank on finding a cause of death.’

Kombothekra pushed the pathologist out of the way and headed for the house.

‘Is he always like that?’ Cook asked.

‘Never.’ Simon wanted to speak to Jonathan Hey, but felt he couldn’t walk off so soon after Kombothekra had, leave Cook stranded. When he’d visited Hey in Cambridge, the professor had as good as asked him if he was sure Mark Bretherick hadn’t killed Geraldine and Lucy. What exactly had he said? Something about husbands being more likely to murder wives who don’t work, who have no status outside the home.

Encarna Oliva, from what Simon had picked up second-hand via Kombothekra and Sellers, had been a banker at Leyland Carver. In professional and commercial terms, status didn’t come much higher than that. She must have earned a small fortune. Her body had been found in Mark Bretherick’s garden, but he wasn’t her husband.

It was all wrong. They were finding out more, but Simon had no sense of a coherent shape emerging.

Cook said, ‘I’d better get back to it. Why do we do it? Why aren’t we postmen or milkmen?’

‘I worked for the post office for two weeks once, at Christmas, ’ Simon told him. ‘They sacked me.’

As Cook wandered reluctantly back to the bones, Simon pulled out his phone and his notebook. There was time, he told himself, before Kombothekra came back from wherever he’d disappeared to. Jonathan Hey didn’t answer his office telephone, so Simon rang his mobile. Hey answered after the third ring.

‘It’s Simon Waterhouse.’

‘Simon.’ Hey sounded pleased to hear from him. ‘Are you in Cambridge again?’

‘No. I’m at Mark Bretherick’s house in Spilling.’

‘Right. Of course. Why would you be in Cambridge?’

‘We’ve found two more bodies on the property—an adult woman and a child.’

‘What? Are you sure?’ Hey tutted. ‘Sorry, that’s an idiotic question. What I mean is, you’re saying two more people have died at the Bretherick house
since
Geraldine Bretherick and her daughter?’

‘No, these bodies have been here at least a year,’ Simon told him. ‘This is highly confidential, by the way.’

‘Of course.’

‘No, really. I shouldn’t be telling you any of it.’

‘So why are you?’ asked Hey. ‘Sorry, I’m not being rude, I just—’

‘I want to know what you think. My sergeant, when we dug up the bodies, said “Family annihilation mark two”, and I just wondered—’

‘Dug up?’ Hey’s voice was squeaky with incredulity.

‘Yeah. They were buried in the garden. Under a smooth, green lawn—not quite so smooth any more.’

‘That’s terrible. What a horrible thing to find. Are you okay?’

‘Obviously they didn’t die naturally. No clothing on the bones, so either they were murdered naked or stripped postmortem. ’

‘Simon, I’m not a cop.’ Hey sounded apologetic. ‘This is way off my territory.’