‘Are you saying that she sent the messages to herself?’
‘I’m simply telling you what the police have uncovered.’
I feel my throat beginning to close. ‘But Goodall found her address. He terrorised her.’
‘There is no evidence of that.’
‘He attacked my car with acid.’
‘He was meeting with his lawyer when your car was vandalised.’
‘He painted the word WHORE on Tempe’s front door.’ Even as I make the claim, I remember the spatters of red paint on her white shoes.
‘Did you speak to anyone while you were being held at the police station?’ asks Helgarde.
‘No.’
‘You didn’t talk about your arrest – how Goodall had ruined your career?’
‘No.’
‘The police have obtained a statement from someone called Katrina Forsyth, who shared a cell with you. She says you admitted to killing Goodall.’
‘That’s a lie! I would never—’ I bite off the sentence. The girl who vomited in my cell. She was a plant.
‘I barely spoke to her. She was sick. I looked after her. I said nothing.’
Fairbairn is stitching me up. That bastard!
‘How damning is it?’
‘Katrina Forsyth has a history of drug possession and soliciting. We can use that to discredit her statement. I’m surprised the police went down this route, and it suggests their case is weak.’
‘What about the sapphire ring?’
‘Nothing has turned up.’
‘But it was in the suitcase.’
‘Not according to the police.’
Goodall must have hidden the ring or disposed of it.
Unsteady on my feet, I reach for the bottle of Scotch.
‘Perhaps you’ve had enough,’ says Daddy.
‘Perhaps you should mind your own business,’ I say, mimicking his tone.
I know that I’m angry at the wrong person, but this fuckery has gone too far. It isn’t my father’s fault, but he could have chosen another career. He could have been a stockbroker, or an engineer, or an actuary. I don’t know what an actuary does, but it has to be better than being a criminal.
‘I’m sorry, David,’ he says, apologising for my behaviour.
‘He happens to be my lawyer,’ I say. ‘You shouldn’t even be here.’
‘I’m paying for him.’
‘There it is, ladies and gentlemen, if you can’t be a proper father, throw money at the problem.’
Daddy gets slowly to his feet and takes the bottle of Scotch from my hand.
‘You think I’m standing between you and your future,’ he says softly, ‘but I am trying to make sure that you have one.’
He turns away, but pauses at the door.
‘Did Tempe Brown kill the detective?’
Our eyes meet. Mine have a cold certainty in them. I nod my head.
63
When I was a little girl, my parents bought me a fish tank for my bedroom. It was a proper aquarium with a water heater and overhead lights and an aerator that bubbled up from a shell amid water plants and a bed of white gravel. I chose the fish and went for the most colourful tetras and guppies and loaches, giving them all names. That night I fell asleep listening to the bubbles and watching my underwater Eden.
In the morning, I found a tiny dead guppy on the carpeted floor beneath the tank. The aquarium had a glass lid and only the smallest of gaps where the aerator cord ran over the corner of the tank. We buried Penny in a matchbox in the garden. A day later, Crystal lay stiff and glassy-eyed on the floor. One by one, each of my beautiful new friends did kamikaze-like dives, perishing on the beige carpet. I was blamed for over-feeding them, or leaving the lid off, but none of those things were true.
Replacement fish arrived. The suicides continued. Eventually, only one fish remained of my original dozen. Moby was small and copper-coloured, and had a rainbow sheen and short fins. Convinced it was my fault, I took him back to the pet-shop in a plastic bag of water.
‘How did she slip in there?’ said the aquarium man. His face was magnified as he looked into the bag. ‘She’s a Siamese fighting fish – very territorial and aggressive. She must have terrorised the others until they couldn’t take it any more.’
He placed Moby in her own small round bowl.
‘That was our fault,’ he said. ‘You can choose some new fish.’
‘What’s going to happen to her?’ I asked.
‘She’ll be staying by herself.’
‘Won’t she get lonely?’
‘She’s happier that way.’
Henry called Tempe a cuckoo, but I think she’s more like that Siamese fighting fish, who has forced every other fish out of the tank except me. She sought me out. She manipulated me. And now, she thinks we are tethered by a secret, bonded by spilled blood, friends for life.
I am curled up on my bed, clutching a ragdoll called Hermione that I haven’t played with since I was a child. I found it on a shelf in a small unused bedroom, along with a pile of books from my childhood: Matilda. The Secret Garden. The Hobbit. I thought my mother was the keeper of my childhood mementos, but she must have surrendered these, or Daddy took them without her knowledge.
Hermione is made of wool with beige limbs and a knobbly bald head and crosses for eyes. She has such a blank expression that I envy her ambivalence as I wallow drunkenly on the sheets, and the room spins each time I close my eyes. I am grimy and sweat-stained and used up and angry, but I shall strike another match tomorrow and hope it lights a new day.
64
Summer has come to pound on my eyelids because I was too drunk to close the curtains. Fumbling in a bedside drawer, I search for paracetamol, every movement a fresh assault. Pills swallowed, I cover my head with the duvet, wanting the sun to go away and the seagulls to stop fighting.
Time passes. I crawl out of bed and shower, leaning against the tiles, letting the water wash over me, wishing it could take away more than dirt. I have lost Henry. I have lost my career. I have been charged with murder. I am clinging to the wreckage.
Making my way downstairs, I find Constance mopping the parquetry floor of the library. She’s wearing tailored slacks and a fitted cotton blouse.
‘What happened?’
‘A spillage.’
‘It was probably me,’ I say. ‘I’ll clean it up.’
‘I’m here now.’ She dips the mop into the bucket and squeezes out the excess water.
‘Don’t you have Molly to do that?’ I ask.
‘I can mop a floor.’ She pushes the bucket with her foot. ‘I know you all call me the duchess behind my back, but whatever money my family once had was gambled away before I was born.’
‘Where’s Daddy?’
‘I thought you might know.’
‘Me?’
‘He left late last night after you went to bed. He asked Tony to bring the car and they drove off.’
‘Is that unusual?’
‘I guess. He left his phone behind, which is strange.’
Water sloshes over her sandal.
‘Bugger,’ she says quietly. ‘He’s not been himself lately. I blamed his heart, but I think he’s worried about you.’
Her statement barely registers. My mind is putting together the pieces of last night. Snippets of conversation. Words exchanged. It’s like watching fragments of a montage shift and reform to create a new picture. He asked me if Tempe had killed Darren Goodall. I didn’t say yes. I nodded. God help her.