A Death of Distinction Read online

  Bridie O’Sullivan woke when the alarm went off in the next bedroom. It was still dark, and she pulled the bedclothes up round her ears and turned over to sleep again. But the noise as he clumped about, getting dressed, stomping down the stairs in his Doc Martens, prevented her. She reached out to switch the light on and look at the clock. Half past five. Jesus, the middle of the night! His car, parked in the road outside, revved up, the roar split the silence. What in the name of God was he doing, going out at that time? Most mornings, she couldn’t get him out of bed till noon.

  But Bridie had long since learned to put disrupting thoughts about Dex to the back of her mind. She’d done everything she could for him since he entered his teenage years, tried pleading with him, threatening, reasoning, belting him round the ear ... she’d spent hours of her life in police stations and magistrates’ courts with him ... and it’d got neither of them anywhere, except to exhaust and make an old hag of her. Dex was grown up now and she couldn’t be responsible for him any more. He came and he went, more secretive than he’d ever been, he was tight lipped about his affairs, but she knew he mixed with a right lot of villains. Money came from time to time and Bridie no longer asked where from.

  The other four kids were grown up as well and though Tara and her boyfriend were still with her, occupying the back room, and Tara already pregnant with her first, Bridie had her own life that she was determined to lead. Now that he’d upped and left her for that Josie and her two kids – and much good would that do any of them! – there was still time to try and recapture some of the youth that had passed her by since leaving County Kerry to look for better things ... she was only forty-three, for God’s sake, and though she sometimes felt nearer sixty, she knew she didn’t look it. Sure, she’d put on a bit of weight, but her troubles hadn’t yet robbed her of her abundant black hair and white skin and her blue, black-lashed eyes. There was still time to be Bridie O’Sullivan again, the name she’d been baptized, Bridget Philomena Mary O’Sullivan, devil take Mrs Barry Davis.

  She stretched her legs blissfully to the cool corners of the bed that was hers alone, luxuriating in hitherto undreamed of freedom. No more cooking him the tripe and onions that made her stomach heave – nor having to tart herself up to go down to the club or the pub with him, whether she felt like it or no. No watching him becoming roaring drunk, either, and getting beaten nearly senseless when they got home. Best of all was this stretching herself out in a bed she didn’t have to share, unless she wanted to, knowing that her body was all her own. Without lying awake afterwards, sleepless, sinfully praying there wouldn’t be yet another pregnancy.

  She reached out for her first cigarette of the day, propped herself up on the pillows, looking forward to a free weekend from the school where she worked as a dinner lady. Little knowing it was to be her last day of peace for a long time.

  Marc had come across the papers in Frank’s desk when he was sorting things out after the funeral, a neat collection of newspaper cuttings and some old letters clipped together. Avidly, he read every word, his excitement mounting, and when he’d finished, he’d known at last who he really was: the child of two people called Marie-Laure and Charles Daventry. Now he’d learned their story, there was no longer any need to wonder why he’d never been told of his origins.

  He tried out his new name – Marc Daventry – and liked it infinitely better than the bland, nothing sort of name he’d had for twenty years. He repeated it like a mantra, and gradually things which had previously puzzled him began to make sense: half-forgotten things which could have had no connection with June and Frank came back to him. The way, for instance, he’d amazed his teachers at his senior school by picking up French so quickly, almost as if he’d learned it before. He remembered – or thought he remembered – from the dim distances of childhood, someone telling him he was going to live somewhere else and have a new mummy. And he knew now the source of the recurrent nightmare he’d had until his teens, the dream in which he’d been a small boy again, being pulled screaming from some woman’s arms. The letters explained the other disturbing memories that had flashed, unexplained, across his mind for as long as he could recall.

  When his so-called parents had been brought into the hospital and he’d made that devastating discovery, he’d felt as though the centre of his life had fallen apart, as though he’d lost his identity and become nobody, a nothing without a past. He’d hated them then, June and Frank, but now he felt only indifference towards them. Well, he’d always been undemonstrative, unable to show his emotions, and though he’d taken it for granted that because they were his parents, he must love them, he’d never been conscious of feeling any particular closeness with either of them, and no wonder: there’d never been any blood tie.

  Finding the papers had re-energized him, he was born again, with another, real identity waiting to be reassumed. He discovered in himself a strength he hadn’t known he possessed, a determination amounting to a fixation, to find his true, biological mother and put things right. It dominated his thinking, even after all inquiries fetched him up against a brick wall, all his requests met with refusals. Of his father, Charles Daventry, he didn’t think at all.

  He’d imagined it wouldn’t be hard to find her, but he soon discovered that if a person doesn’t want to be traced, they needn’t be. He tried all the usual channels when the obvious one, to his rage, failed him, but without luck, and at one time he became so desperate he’d even contemplated the ultimate step of going to the police – though not for long. As if they’d be interested! Useless bastards, he thought scornfully, they didn’t want to know unless they were forced into it, unless the missing person was underage, or there were mysterious circumstances. Nothing, in fact, had come of anything.

  Months went by – a year – it was Christmas again, and he was no nearer finding her.

  After the funeral, he’d continued at the hospital in Birmingham until he’d acquired his qualifications, then come to work here at the County Hospital. He’d drifted, out of sheer lack of interest, into living in drab accommodation in the Branxmore area, a ‘garden flat’ – actually a back-of-the-house, one-room pad with a scullery attached, nasty, second-hand furniture and a landlord too tight-fisted to do anything about the rotten window-frames or the mould growing in the corner of the room, despite the exorbitant rent he charged. Marc had spent as much of Christmas as he could working, and in return he’d been invited to a New Year party by the man whose Christmas Day shift he’d taken over. Returning to his own depressing surroundings from the snug, happy little home which Peter Mansell and his wife had created, it suddenly occurred to him that it was sheer masochism to live like this, when he didn’t have to. It wasn’t what he’d been brought up to. June, whatever her faults, had always kept an attractive home, which he’d taken for granted and grown accustomed to.

  The sale of 14, Rumbold Avenue, even though it had been beautifully maintained, hadn’t fetched much – because of declining property values, he was told. But it had left him with a useful amount of money, which at first he’d sworn never to touch, a gesture he now saw as futile, benefiting no one. Why shouldn’t he make use of it? It was what they’d intended when they’d willed it to him, hadn’t they? It was what they owed him. He was earning a decent salary, so it shouldn’t be beyond his means to take out a mortgage and buy and furnish some attractive flat, or even a small house, where he could live independently, and – this was what clinched it – where he could bring his mother and take care of her, make up to her for everything, he swore, his determination feeding on his sense of injustice. Just as soon as he found her, which he would, one day, of that he was utterly convinced.

  That day, however, seemed a long time in coming. He’d read somewhere that the Salvation Army was very helpful in tracing missing persons, and he was on the point of approaching them when he stumbled on something which was to lead him to where she was, quite by accident. By one of these amazing coincidences which no one admits to believing in, but which are happ
ening to someone, somewhere, every day ...

  8

  Dorothea Lilburne, accompanied by a pair of noisy spaniels with ear-splitting barks, came directly from the garden to speak to Mayo and Abigail Moon when they’d made their appointed way to the governor’s house the next morning. There was earth beneath her fingernails, and her hair was escaping from its pins but she was regally calm. Apologizing in a well-bred way for not being ready for them, she explained that she had to see Flora at the hospital later and she’d thought to get an hour in the garden before their arrival. ‘I’m afraid I lost track of time.’

  Abigail nodded understandingly, as if she found nothing at all strange in grubbing about in the earth, outdoors on a freezing morning, while your life was literally in ruins about you. No accounting for tastes. There was no hope for her, Mayo saw, she was hooked, already a card-carrying member of the universal brotherhood of gardeners. Abigail Moon and the governor’s lady were sisters under the skin.

  ‘I need to change my clothes.’ A rueful glance at the workmanlike garments – Viyella shirt under an olive sweater, green padded body warmer and cotton trousers, black at the knees ... ‘Would you like me to make you some coffee while you’re waiting?’

  ‘Show me where the kitchen is and I’ll make it,’ Abigail offered.

  ‘Oh, would you really? How kind.’

  The two women disappeared and Mayo, left to himself, wandered round the pleasant, comfortably shabby room at the back of the house. Although it was so cold outside, bright sunshine poured into the room, on to the delicate pink flowers of a huge cyclamen on a round table by the window, bringing forth the heavy scent of blue and white hyacinths. A large photo in a silver frame stood next to the hyacinths ... Jack Lilburne in morning dress and grey topper, outside Buckingham Palace on the occasion of his investiture, flanked by his wife and daughter – his wife in navy blue and a becoming, wide-brimmed hat; Flora, a laughing girl in an eye-catching yellow outfit. A charming family group.

  The room was low ceilinged and with an open hearth where the ashes of a dying fire glowed red, and stored warmth still pulsed from the bricks. He reached out and threw on another log ... it was beyond him to let what was obviously a permanently lit fire go out through fear of taking a liberty. He sat himself in a big, roomy chair, listening to the flames catching hold. In a few minutes he was joined by the smelly old spaniels, one of whom jumped up to occupy the chair opposite, while the other, with a soulful gaze challenging Mayo to boot him away, sat on his feet. Much too close to the fire for a dog with a problem like his, but he let the poor brute stay, fondling his ears.

  ‘And where were you two, when somebody was creeping around on the gravel with bombs – the dogs who didn’t bark in the night?’ he asked, and sat back, dangerously at ease in the warmth of the fire ...

  He’d stayed late at the station the previous evening with Abigail, working out strategies, sent her home and then spent several more hours upstairs, alone in his new office, getting used to not having the hurly burly of the CID room next door, accustoming himself to sitting in Howard Cherry’s chair and to his new role as His Nibs, arranging the disposition of his forces and assessing the reactions of the men and women downstairs to his appointment.

  Goodwill, for the most part. But wariness, as well. Relief in some quarters, no doubt, that he’d been kicked upstairs. But if you value your jobs, my friends, he’d thought sardonically, don’t count on it making that much difference. He’d no intention of taking his finger off the pulse, not for a minute. Nor did he mean to regard the position as merely administrative. The previous incumbent. Cherry, had done the job in his own particular, if pedantic, way, and done it well. And he’d carry on, doing it in his own style.

  Much later, he’d walked home through the sleeping town and up the moonlit hill, eager now to get home rather than indulge in one of his famed night prowls through the shadowy reaches of the silent town. And with him had walked the shadow of the one now permanently occupying his thoughts, the guilty one, the one who’d so violently taken a life, who might even now be awake, sweating – or gloating – contemplating his crime. Or might be sleeping like a baby. All were equally possible.

  Arriving home, not wanting to waken Alex, he’d decided to spend the rest of the night on the sofa, before remembering it wasn’t there. She was awake anyway, and called out sleepily to him. He slid in beside her, into the soft, warm embrace of her arms, and he was instantly fathoms deep in sleep ...

  Abigail and Mrs Lilburne met at the foot of the stairs and he sat up with a start as they entered the big drawing room together. The dogs were immediately shooed out of the room and Mrs Lilburne took up her position in a straight, tall-backed chair. Quietly impressive, if not intimidating, in a classic outfit of camel skirt, beige and cream sweater, with a matching scarf tucked into the neck, pearls in her ears and her hair in an immaculate French pleat, she was very composed. Perhaps she’d done with weeping, perhaps it was still to come.

  It’s Flora who’ll feel it, they’d said. Real Daddy’s girl, the apple of his eye. The wife was a bit of a dragon, a snooty piece, one of the old county families. Perhaps because of this, Mayo couldn’t feel at ease with her yet, unable to rid himself of the idea that a degree of forelock-tugging was expected. Abigail, on the other hand, settling herself to take unobtrusive notes as Mayo began to find out what Mrs Lilburne could tell them that they weren’t already aware of, seemed quite at home with her.

  ‘We’re going to have to ask you some personal questions, Mrs Lilburne. If they seem intrusive, please remember that it helps us to know as much background as we can,’ he began, though nobody knew better than he that in the search for who had perpetrated the outrage against Jack Lilburne, they were going to have to take his affairs apart. Intrusive questions would be the least of it.

  The faint nod Mrs Lilburne gave could have been appreciation of the tact which had prompted the statement, but she gave no other sign, listening politely and answering decisively as he went through the routine of establishing whether Lilburne had had any strong political affiliations – he had not – any antipathies against particular organizations – no. Had there been threats, had he had any recent quarrels, upsets, any enemies –?

  ‘A man in his position can hardly fail to have attracted a few enemies during his career, Mr Mayo,’ she answered firmly. ‘In which case, shouldn’t you be looking in the direction of his professional life?’

  ‘We should and we are – but we can’t overlook the possibility of any more personal connection.’

  ‘Then I can’t help you there. Jack wasn’t the sort to go out of his way to upset people – as you must know,’ she said stiffly, reminding him that he’d been acquainted with her husband.

  ‘You’d no family problems?’

  ‘None whatever,’ she answered, with more conviction than most people could have done, faced with the same question. And if he were to bring up what Alex had suggested, the possibility of other women in her husband’s life – which as yet he saw no reason to do – he was sure it would have been met with the same firm denial. ‘We were a very united family, he was the easiest of men to live with.’

  This last was very likely true, from what Mayo remembered of Lilburne. She was right, though, he must have had his enemies, he was in a position to attract them, as all prominent men were, more than most, in fact – especially enemies who’d take revenge in so extreme a fashion.

  ‘Let’s talk about the new wing he wanted to build. There’s been some local opposition, I gather – how did he feel about that?’

  ‘He was inclined to dismiss it. I personally felt he underestimated the force of the objections – but since the protestors appear to be still going ahead – I hear there’s a meeting scheduled for this week – they couldn’t have seen him as posing enough of a threat to do anything so – so utterly evil.’

  As the stiff, guarded speech faltered to a close, for the first time she appeared to lose some of her composure. Mayo saw fit to give h
er an encouraging smile. His highly selective smile, bestowed only on favoured recipients – or those he meant to disarm. Abigail was interested to notice that its effect on Mrs Lilburne was the same as on most people: they began to wonder why they’d found him intimidating, something that almost certainly hadn’t occurred to him. She was pulling herself together visibly, even summoning up a faint answering smile of her own, as he went on, ‘I’m inclined to agree with the principle of what you say, but we can’t take it for granted.’ He added soberly, ‘Unfortunately, there are plenty of people fanatical enough.’

  When it came to discussing the actual events of the last two days, rather than abstract opinions, Dorothea Lilburne became surprisingly less sure of herself.

  ‘I’ve been over it all in my mind so often, it’s becoming a blur – I hardly know what did and what didn’t happen.’

  ‘That’s understandable – just tell us what you can remember.’

  What facts she was able to tell them threw no new light on the situation. The two days had followed their normal pattern, apart from the celebration dinner at the Town Hall, and the fact that Lilburne had left for work later than usual the next morning, for a scheduled meeting with Denis Quattrell, whose name Mayo was familiar with as manager of a local bank. He was interested to learn that Quattrell was also on the council planning committee, suggesting that Lilburne had maybe not been above using a little persuasion to achieve his aims.