Mercedes said that, no, Clare Abbott wanted to talk only about Carolina. She had a notepad with her, Mercedes revealed, along with a recording she’d made on her smartphone. This she played for Mercedes, and it bore the sound of Carolina talking about her childhood. Clare Abbott had explained to her that she’d made the recording on the sly. She’d said she didn’t want Carolina to know she was recording her because she didn’t want the fact of a recording “to influence” what Carolina had to say. It seemed, from listening to it, that they were in a restaurant or perhaps just having a meal together because the sound of cutlery was clear.
“Did she tell you why she wanted you to hear the tape?” Lynley asked.
Having finished her cigarette, Mercedes lit another. She had a way of drawing in on the tobacco that put Lynley in mind of a young Lauren Bacall although there the similarity ended. She rested against the fireplace mantel and went on to explain. “There is story Carolina is telling on the recording, and Clare wishes me to hear it so that I make comments. And this story . . .” For the first time, Mercedes seemed affected by the tale she was telling. Her eyes grew cloudy. She was silent for a moment as out in the corridor the cleaner began to slosh water on the floor.
Lynley gave her a moment. When still she said nothing, he prompted her with, “Anything regarding Clare Abbott might be helpful. Did Francis tell you she was murdered?”
She nodded. When she went on, her voice was altered. A heaviness had replaced the prior frankness. “What she says on this recording . . . There are lies I know Carolina has said in the past about Torin, my husband. How he breaks her nose in a rage one night when she comes home late, how he only allows her clothes from Oxfam till she has money to buy her own, how he will have no holidays in this house . . . No Christmas, no Easter. These things I hear before, from what my other children tell me that Carolina has said.”
“But on this recording there’s something else? Is that what you’re saying?”
She went on in a lower tone, and Lynley had to lean forward to hear her. “She has said things to Clare about what I am as a mother. I have many men during her childhood, she has said, and this is true. I admit. I have a liking for men and till I found Torin, I had them. But I do not leave her for a week with one of the cleaners each time I meet a new man so that he and I can . . . you know, in bed. But this is what she tells Clare. And she says I awaken her in the middle of the night to accuse her of this and of that . . . and I allow Torin . . . when I am heavy with the babies . . . to do what he wishes on her. This is what she has said.”
“On the recording,” Lynley clarified.
She shook her head. “No, no,” she said. “All of this she has reported over time to Clare Abbott, but this recording, it is something more. And for me to say it . . .” Her eyes filled with tears. She coughed mightily. She did not appear to be a woman who allowed herself the luxury of weeping about things over which she had no power.
Lynley said to encourage her, “Francis told me that Caroline sometimes has trouble with the truth.”
Mercedes gave a broken laugh. “She tells Clare that in the dark of night when she is small I come into her room. I force her to . . . I use a Coca-Cola bottle on her. This is what she says. She says she tells her teacher about this and then it is very bad for me.”
“This is on the recording Clare played for you?”
“It is on the recording. She is placed in care, she says, and there is an investigation. I am held in gaol for a time, but no one is willing to believe her story, she says, because she can’t remember enough of the details, and they change—these details—this way and that. Because of this, I am released and she is returned to me and I seek my revenge when I am able.”
“How old did she say she was when this occurred?”
“She has eight years, she says.”
“And are you saying that none of what she said to Clare was true?”
“I say this, sí. None of it is true. I did nothing and she did not ever accuse me of nothing and there was no investigation and none of this happened. Everything, this is her fantasy. Clare Abbott, she has suspected this and that is why she has come to have me listen to the recording. She tells me she has already checked many records from the police so she has decided the story isn’t true but what she wants to know is why.”
“Why she told the story in the first place?”
“And why she lies. And this is something I do not know, Inspector. Me, I would think it was an evil she had inherited if I did not have other children. But I do have other children and they are not liars. I would think, too, it was because I bring her to London and tear her from the granny who loved her, but this granny did not wish her to remain behind and made this very clear. So I have no real reason to offer and this is what I tell Clare Abbott. And what I think when we are finished together—Clare Abbott and me—is that she wants to have a collection of reasons to sack her and maybe lying is one of the reasons.”
Mercedes pulled some tissues from a pocket of her tunic and used them beneath her eyes. She stubbed her cigarette out and blew her nose as Lynley considered everything she had said. She was right, of course. Had she been accused of child abuse, questioned, and held in gaol for a period of time during an investigation, there would be records of this and they wouldn’t be difficult to track down. One wondered, though, why Clare Abbott had gone to such trouble.
He said, “You mentioned something about seeking revenge. You said Caroline reported on you getting your revenge when you were able to do so after she made her accusations.”
“She would think my revenge was the child.”
“What child?”
At fourteen, Mercedes said, Carolina had fallen pregnant. Her mother had insisted that the child—delivered when the girl was just fifteen—be placed for adoption, for what fifteen-year-old girl should be allowed to raise a child? “I could have raised her on my own—”
“It was a daughter?”
“Sí. And I could have raised it, but I was not willing and this is, I think, the sin she holds against me. This, I think, is what she means when she says I got my revenge.”
“The father? Who was it?”
Mercedes laughed shortly. “She says it is a man I was seeing, but this turns out not to be the case. Then she says it is the father of one of her school friends. But as she lied before, I do not know if this is the man. Then I find a bank book, with much money put in, and this bank book, it is in her name.”
“The father was paying to support a child she no longer had?”
“No. She tells me very openly when I ask her: She is making him pay so that she does not tell his wife.”
“Blackmail,” Lynley said.
“She does not think of it that way. She says it is what she is owed for letting him do what he wanted on her. This I must stop, so I go to speak to this man. He denies everything—baby, blackmail, all of it—and I do not know what the truth really is, so what can I do? There are tests, sí, and I can force him to have them, but the baby, she is with a new family, and Carolina cannot be trusted to hold to the same story from one day to the next. I think it is best to put it all behind us.”
“D’you know what happened to the baby?”
“The child is gone, the adoption is finished, and I pray she grows up well and is not afflicted like her mother with this lying thing.” Mercedes smiled, an infinitely sad expression. She said, “I tell you this, Inspector. Had I not three other children to prove to myself I am not so evil a mother to have produced such a child as Carolina, I would have long ago strangled myself in my own bed.”
Caroline’s child, Lynley learned, had gone to a Catholic charity for placement, and the records had been sealed. But many aspects of adoption had been altered by law, so it was no longer impossible to find one’s biological parents or one’s lost offspring. He wondered if Caroline Goldacre had done so or if the lost child had done so
and if either was the case, what that might have to do—if anything—with Clare Abbott’s death.
What remained was the name of the putative father of Caroline Goldacre’s lost child. Mercedes was reluctant to give it, and as the man had denied everything anyway, there wasn’t much point to having it unless the child herself could be found and the appropriate DNA tests could be given. And even then . . . Lynley simply wasn’t sure what a man’s identity and the whereabouts of an adult daughter had to do with anything, unless, of course, Caroline Goldacre was now interacting with them both or with one of them for some reason. So while Mercedes finally gave him the name of the putative father of the child—one Adam Sheridan—Lynley put him low on the list of people to speak with.
Outside, the grey sky had cleared and a milky blue had taken its place. Work was going on in the allotments across the street: several gardeners trundled wheelbarrows down the rows of autumn vegetables, collecting the heaped-up and rotting remains of the summer harvest.
His mobile rang. He answered with his name, as usual.
A voice he did not recognise said, “Inspector? Got something for you here.”
SO7, as things turned out, was reporting in at last.
SHAFTESBURY
DORSET
Despite her displeasure about being denied access to whatever of her belongings were squirreled away in Clare Abbott’s house, Caroline Goldacre seemed only too happy to give Barbara chapter and verse on Lily Foster. In very short order, Barbara learned that Lily Foster was not only the erstwhile partner of Caroline’s deceased son Will, but also a resident of Shaftesbury who’d come to live there after Will’s death, according to Caroline, in order to make the life of the young man’s mother hell. The truth of this lay in the ASBO that was now attached to Lily Foster’s presence in the town. The police—and Barbara did not need Caroline to inform her of this although the woman did so at some tedious length—did not hand out ASBOs unless there was a very good reason for them to do so. In the case of Lily Foster, there were apparently a half a score of reasons having to do with the young woman’s persistent tormenting of Will Goldacre’s mother. What lay beneath these behaviours was her apparent belief that Caroline was responsible for the young man’s death.
On the other hand, Caroline declared Lily the responsible party since she’d called an end to her relationship with Will, casting him into a black depression from which only a removal from London and several months under the care of his mother and stepfather had saved him. “But then back she came like a yearly visitation of influenza,” Caroline asserted. “And then Will . . . He couldn’t get over her. He wouldn’t get over her. He was loyal and true while she . . .” She clenched her fist at her side, either to do metaphorical violence or to keep herself under control. Then she added, “I did tell you what happened to my son.”
“Clare knew all this, did she?”
“What does Clare have to do with it?”
“Don’t know, especially,” Barbara told her. “But when someone dies unnaturally . . .” She let the rest hang there.
“Are you saying Lily might have . . . ? Why won’t you tell me what actually happened to give Clare this heart thing, for the love of God?”
“Sorry but I’ve not been authorised.” Barbara brought forth Clare’s engagement diary and asked Caroline to have a look at it. Could she identify anyone with whom Clare had an appointment? They had first names, initials, place names, and surnames on various dates. Anything she could tell them would be extremely helpful.
Barbara was at Clare’s desk, and she slid the engagement diary across it. Caroline, as Barbara had hoped, made short work of the matter. Radley was Clare’s dentist, she told her. He was here in town and . . . She paused and an expression of startled understanding flickered on her face. Did Sergeant Havers think that perhaps a tooth filling had been cleverly designed to hold something until, after a time of chewing, it finally broke through to a substance that caused the victim to have a heart attack? Very imaginative was what Barbara thought. What she said was that everything was being looked into. After all, when people were done away with by poisonous injection through means of an umbrella in the streets of London, anything could happen, eh? As to the rest of the names . . . ?
Jenkins was her GP in London, Caroline revealed. Hermione, Linne, and Wallis were all power brokers in the Women’s League in Shaftesbury, a group who met and listened to guest speakers and took up good causes and mentored young girls in need of positive role models and raised money for charities. The Women’s League was, in fact, how Caroline and Clare had met not long after William’s death when Clare came to the group as a speaker.
“I can’t think why she had appointments with them,” Caroline said in reference to Hermione, Linne, and Wallis. “Perhaps they’d taken up the task of persuading her to join, as she lived here in town. She wouldn’t have done, of course. Clare wasn’t a joiner. But to have her in the league would have meant a big fish to that lot”— with a nod at the diary—“and ready money for them as well.”
“As individuals?”
“I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”
“I mean her money. Would they have been after that for themselves or for the group?”
“I expect you’ll have to ask them. But when someone has money, don’t you find that someone else is generally intent upon having some of it?”
That, Barbara thought, was an intriguing point with possibilities pointing to Caroline herself if it came down to it. She asked her about the entries in the diary that were indicated by initials only: MG, LF, FG. Did Caroline have any idea what these were about? She watched the other woman closely. Caroline surprised her with, “Oddly enough, M and G are my mum’s initials. L and F . . . ? Well, she did know about Lily Foster as I’d told her when Lily made her occasional nasty appearances in my life. This would be before the ASBO. But why Clare would want to meet with her . . . unless it was to have herself tattooed . . . ? As to the other . . . It’s odd that she used only initials, isn’t it? . . . Could it be she was in a rush? Or . . . well, I expect she must’ve known these people well else she would have completely forgotten what she was meant to do with them or where she was meant to go.”
Barbara didn’t miss the fact that FG—obviously the initials of her former husband—had been avoided or dismissed by the other woman. She said to her, “What about the name Globus? Any clue there?”
“None whatsoever, I’m afraid.”
“And the place names?”
“Same thing. Sorry.”
Barbara studied her. Aside from the FG matter, she did seem to be forthright. Perhaps she was utterly clueless as to Clare Abbott’s incursions into her personal world. But she also seemed like someone who could be an excellent liar, just as her former husband had told Lynley.
Considering what she’d seen in Rory Statham’s flat as well as the questionnaires for Bob T and John S, Barbara asked Caroline about Clare’s current writing project. Had she herself met either of the blokes whom Clare had interviewed for her next book?
“Next book? There was no book,” Caroline replied. “Clare was working on nothing.”
“Anonymous adultery?” Barbara tried.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Knee tremblers between consenting adults with no questions asked and no strings attached? Sound familiar? She appears to have been interviewing blokes on this topic and there was something that looked like a book proposal for it in Rory Statham’s desk.”
Caroline shrugged. “There may have been a proposal but I know nothing of that. And there’s certainly no book. But if there was a proposal, it explains why Rory and I disagreed.”
Barbara frowned. “Disagreed?”
“I tried to tell her there was no book being written. She’d brought up hiring someone to finish what Clare had started and I advised her not to bother as Clare wasn’t writing anything. For all I know,
Clare was reporting herself slaving away at a massive project she’d agreed to write, but if she was . . .” Caroline gestured round the room. “Have a look round and see if you can find it.”
“So was Clare lying to Rory? Why?”
“I’m not sure. I do know she was under contract. I know she’d taken an advance for the next book. Perhaps she just didn’t want to return the money. Would you?”
“Barb . . .” It was Winston at the door to Clare’s study, her laptop in his hands. Caroline bristled at the sight of him, and her expression said that she hadn’t forgotten his attempts to keep her out of the house. “Found summat in’eresting here,” he went on. “Could be you need to have a look.”
FULHAM
LONDON
The elderly woman said, “You’ve had a terrible time of it, darling, but you’re on the mend,” and her voice was kind. There was a tenderness to it that suggested Rory ought to know her, but the difficulty was that Rory did not. Nor did she know where she was or why she was in this place. There was a word for it—this place where she lay in bed with small tubes shooting what seemed to be oxygen into her nostrils and a clip on her index finger that was connected to a flex of some sort that itself led to a blipping monitor to one side of the bed—but Rory could not come up with that word.
The woman bent over her and smoothed her hair from her forehead with a shaking hand. Palsy? Rory wondered. Fear? Parkinson’s? She said, “You gave us a terrible fright. When the police came round . . . We thought at first that one of the neighbours had complained about our music, about that African drumming, especially. But they told us that you’d been brought to hospital and then—”
That was the word, Rory thought. Hospital. She was in hospital. Her chest was heavy and sore, her throat was so dry that she couldn’t swallow, her vision was slightly blurred. Were these the reasons she’d been brought to this place?
“Here, Rory.” Another woman came into Rory’s field of vision. She was younger—perhaps somewhere in her forties?—and in her hand was a plastic lidded tumbler with a straw emerging from it. She held it to Rory’s lips which, Rory could feel, were badly chapped and ached as if in places they had entirely split open. “Have some water,” the younger woman said. “You must still be parched.”