Cambridge Blue (36 page)

‘And I do, so no more now, OK?’

‘OK.’ She spent a single minute collecting herself, though it felt more like the entire afternoon. ‘My father wasn’t just educated,’ she explained at last, ‘he was by far the most intelligent and inspiring man I’ve ever met. And yet he spent nearly all of his life thinking that I killed my own brother. If he could be so wrong, how could I ever be sure of anything? I actually
know
nothing.’

‘But you think you do,’ Goodhew persisted.

She opened her mouth to speak, but he could see the tears threatening again. She blinked them away and took deep breaths until she seemed to feel confident that they weren’t going to choke the words she was about to speak. ‘I
know
I saw Richard with David that afternoon . . .’ She paused. ‘He was in David’s room, sitting on the floor at the foot of the cot. I wasn’t very old, of course, but I remember thinking that was odd.’ She frowned. ‘Maybe it was later that I thought it was odd. I don’t know now.’

‘What was odd?’

‘Odd that Richard was in the room at all when he had never shown any interest in the baby. No interest whatsoever. He had a pillow on the floor beside him . . . and there was poor little David. Lying in his cot. Looking all wrong. Not even like a baby somehow. I could tell it was all wrong, he was like a toy. Like alabaster. Richard said nothing, just stood up, then walked right past me and through the door. I didn’t go any closer, but I couldn’t leave either. I don’t know how long it was before my mother came and found me there. She said something to me, but I don’t know what, and when she saw David she began to scream, but I can’t remember any sounds, just a huge silence. I only know she was screaming because of her face. She was holding him, and he was completely limp, and I remember thinking that it looked like there weren’t any bones left in his body. Then there were people everywhere. My dad, of course, but I don’t know who else. They were in and out of the house, and they took his body away, and my dad kept asking me what had happened.’

‘What did you tell him?’

‘Nothing.’

‘You didn’t tell him about Richard?’

‘I tried to talk to my sister Alice, but she said I was wrong, called it a stupid story, so I never told anyone else.’

‘Why not?’

‘Oh God!’ She shook her head. ‘I’ve asked myself that so many times. My dad kept asking me what had happened. Over and over. By the time I realized he thought I’d killed David, telling the truth would have sounded like a lie.’

‘And he really thought you’d done it?’

‘Absolutely. He even explained to me, later, how children can create false memories. To be honest, there are times when I’ve even doubted myself.’ Jackie dug a tissue from her pocket and blew her nose. ‘As he pointed out, I was just a small child, I might have been taken into care, and that would have finished my mother off. But she drank herself to death in any case, so I’m not sure what difference it would have made. I regret I didn’t push things further, because it could have saved Emma.’

‘Emma, not Joanne?’

‘I didn’t know her well but, yes, I knew her as Emma. We had what you could call a fledgling friendship. A group of us had gone to watch the racing at Newmarket, and Emma and I seemed to hit it off. We talked about spending a whole day with the horses . . . We were enjoying ourselves until she met Richard. He spotted us and made a beeline for Emma and I didn’t see much of her for the rest of that evening. I don’t even know what went on between them. In fact, I didn’t realize that anything was going on at all. Until I caught them having sex together . . . A few weeks later she disappeared.’

‘You never came forward.’

‘To say what, exactly? I would never have thought anything of it if it hadn’t been for what had happened with David, so I spoke to Alice again. You know they’re really close – you’ve seen it. Alice was furious with me, said I had to promise to keep quiet, that it was too late to stir things up again about David, and far too cruel to my parents. She promised she’d deal with Richard, and said it was my duty to show some loyalty to them both.’

‘So you are saying that you think your brother was responsible for Joanne Reed’s disappearance?’

‘I think so. It’s his jealousy. He gets these rages, till he kind of burns up with them. If there had been any proof that Emma was dead, I might have come forward.’

‘And when “I’m like Emma” appeared in the papers? Did you consider that it might be intended as a message for you?’

‘I didn’t know what to think, but I’d never thought Lorna was in any danger.’

‘Did it scare you? Wasn’t it like a threat?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You told me about your father turning up at the farm and shouting, “Tell me what happened to her.” Who was he talking about?’

‘Emma.’

‘And what was he looking for?’

When Jackie hesitated, Goodhew cut in, ‘Don’t make me tease it out of you one sentence at a time, Jackie. You know where this is going.’

She nodded. ‘He never told me what he meant by “very clever”, but I walked everywhere that I’d seen him go. There was only one place that could have hidden Emma’s body and that was the manure heap, which, if you think about it, is pretty cunning. I assumed then that he said “very clever” to me because he thought it was all my doing. I didn’t even try to convince him that it wasn’t me. I thought about digging it over just to see for myself, but I never did.’

‘In fact, you never did anything.’

‘No, I didn’t.’

FIFTY

When Goodhew stepped outside the interview room, he wasn’t surprised to find someone waiting in the corridor. It was PC Kelly Wilkes.

‘I’ll go in with her now,’ she said. ‘DI Marks is next door.’

That made sense. Goodhew had deliberately ignored the camera in the corner of the room because he didn’t want to be put off by it, but at the back of his mind he’d been certain Marks was in the adjoining room, and with him for every second of the interview.

Marks himself opened the door from the inside before Goodhew was even close. ‘She agreed to the search then?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I’ve requested to see everything that’s available on David Moran’s death. Richard and Alice Moran are already on their way. We’re picking them up together, because we don’t want to raise his suspicions until he’s interviewed on his own. I’m going to keep out of the way, let him think it’s all low-key, then I’ll join you at the appropriate moment.’

‘
I’m
going to interview him?’

‘Why not? Your interview with his sister made very good TV.’

For the nine-to-fivers in the city of Cambridge, the day had only just begun. Schools were ringing their bells for morning break and the traffic had settled down after the rush hour. Goodhew glanced out of the nearest window and saw heavy clouds were heading in their direction; he guessed that meant another wet twenty-four hours. Already he wished the day was over. He was fuzzy with tiredness and had spent the first few hours of the morning reviving his brain with a succession of cups of coffee. He’d reused each polystyrene cup until it cracked, but even so was about to ditch the third of the morning. He took his latest half-drunk cup along with him to Interview Room 3, where Alice and Richard Moran sat side by side.

Alice was looking slightly tidier than immaculate. Whereas on previous occasions her appearance had been A-grade faultless, today she deserved an added star for extra endeavour. Richard, on the other hand, had crumpled even further, and now looked as though he were the shorter of the two. The combined effect gave the impression that they shared the same reserves of energy and emotional strength and just passed them back and forth by osmosis.

As Marks held up the journal, Richard’s gaze did a skittish jig from one person to the next, whereas Alice just said, ‘Oh.’

‘Do you know what this item is?’ Marks asked.

Richard nodded and Alice said, ‘Yes, of course. My father kept journals for as long as we can remember: the burgundy ones were for work and the dark-blue ones were about our . . .’ She took a breath, ‘our family.’

‘I see, and why didn’t you tell us that one of them was missing?’

‘I didn’t know.’ She turned to Richard. ‘Did you, Richard?’

‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘They were packed away with the rest of his possessions.’ He looked down into his hands. ‘Jackie’s here, isn’t she?’

‘She’s been making a statement. But this diary was found at Victoria Nugent’s house.’

‘Is Jackie under arrest?’ Richard asked. Alice was watching him closely, but didn’t seem unhappy that he’d decided to do the talking.

‘Not yet,’ Goodhew replied. ‘Tell me about your half-brother, David.’

Richard’s gaze then met his sister’s, and from his imploring expression Goodhew guessed it was some kind of SOS.

It was Alice who replied, ‘Because of what my father wrote?’

‘I can’t comment.’

She scowled. ‘Well, it wouldn’t have come from anywhere else. David was the youngest of us – I think I told you that before – and he died. He was a small baby, but not ever ill, as far as I can remember. Our stepmother had put him down for an afternoon nap and she found him dead a couple of hours later – a cot death, the doctors said.’ She looked towards her brother. ‘Except our father couldn’t accept that, could he?’

Richard shook his head and picked up the story, the handover seamless. ‘Our stepmother wasn’t a healthy woman, she suffered from severe post-natal depression after Jackie was born, and by the time David arrived, she’d started drinking heavily too.’

‘And your father blamed her?’

‘No, no, he felt he needed to protect her. You see, he thought Jackie had killed David because she was jealous of him. But she was only six at the time and he felt that she wouldn’t have understood what she’d done. If she’d been taken away, our stepmother would have been devastated, Jackie was all she had.’

‘Apart from you two?’

Richard shrugged. ‘She was only our stepmother. In any case, who would hand over their six-year-old child, even in that situation? She probably would have been institutionalized, and for what purpose? I can quite understand why our father kept quiet.’

Alice took over again. ‘But that’s when he started keeping his notes on Jackie. He told us much later that he wanted to be sure he had a record of her behaviour in case she showed signs of doing something like that again.’

‘And you all knew about this?’

‘We knew he made all these notes, but we had no idea of the contents,’ Alice said. ‘He kept it entirely to himself until near his own death, and it was only then that he told us what he had suspected.’

‘And you both thought it best to keep that secret from this investigation?’

‘Our father wanted it kept in the family.’

‘Even if there was another murder?’

Alice stiffened. ‘You misunderstand us. We think our father’s suspicions were wrong. He was a complex and intelligent man, but not infallible. He was devastated when David died and, for some reason that we’ll never know, he directed the blame on to our sister. He was obsessed with his notes, but why would we connect those to Lorna’s murder?’

Goodhew ignored the question. ‘In his notes he also mentions Joanne Reed. Did you both know her?’

Alice shook her head, but Richard nodded, and Goodhew found the sight of them responding independently of one another slightly startling.

‘I met her,’ Richard said, ‘through Jackie. I saw her twice, or maybe three times, I don’t remember now for sure. Dad knew, only because I’d told him, and after she disappeared he asked me about her and Jackie, and what they’d done together.’

Goodhew spoke without realizing he’d planned to, and his voice sounded sharp. ‘What did he mean by that?’

‘How do I know? Joanne was uncomfortable about Jackie hanging round at the stables, and Dad asked me if I’d seen Joanne the weekend she disappeared.’ Goodhew studied Richard closely, though he didn’t seem to enjoy the attention, and quickly added, ‘But I hadn’t, I swear.’

‘Then why not tell us all of this before?’

‘We told you, we promised our father that we’d look after her.’ There was an audible trembling in his voice.

‘Yes, and Alice has just told me that you both considered your father’s suspicions unfounded. Do you share that opinion with her or not?’

Richard wavered, then replied, ‘Yes.’

Perhaps he realized that it was the wrong answer, or maybe he’d been distracted by an unexpected thought but, as Goodhew waited, Richard simply stared at him, his eyes unnaturally focused on the bridge of Goodhew’s nose. When he spoke again, his voice was low and ponderous, as though he was articulating unfamiliar thoughts. ‘But now I think about it, my life was perfect until she arrived.’

‘DC Goodhew?’ It was Alice who’d cut in, sounding calmer than ever, thus supporting Goodhew’s theory of osmosis. ‘What can we do to help Jackie?’

His initial response to Alice’s interruption was relief; her simple question had redirected her brother into a calmer state, possibly saving them all from another emotional eruption.

Then Goodhew rethought his strategy and decided to move Alice to another room.

By the time he returned, PC Wilkes was waiting for him in the corridor again.

‘This is becoming a habit,’ she announced, and handed him a single sheet of paper. ‘That’s all we’ve come up with so far. I’ve got a mate in the County Records Office and she scanned it for me. Lucky we got anything at all, I guess.’

The copy was pale and Goodhew had to turn it to the light before he saw it was the death certificate for David Joseph Moran. He glanced at the dates: born in August, just after Goodhew’s first birthday, and dead before Goodhew’s second. The verdict: ‘natural causes’.

It was the mention of the County Records Office, housed on the site of the former jail, which reminded Goodhew – that, and the word justice . . .

He had left Richard Moran alone for, what he hoped was, enough time to make him wonder whether he’d been abandoned. He folded the copy of baby David’s death certificate in half and returned to the interview room with it tucked in his inside pocket. He sat back down, this time pulling his chair much closer.