75
Sunday, 6 May 2012
‘Mr Harmon, you needn’t do this if you’d rather not.’ Martin Cashman was gruff. ‘We have officers who are trained. How did you say you were related?’
‘It would be better from me.’ Jack circumnavigated the question. He would give anything to leave it to Cashman but he owed it to Mary. Cashman would not understand. Stella would. He wished she were here.
‘Please make it short.’ A female nurse reading a chart on a clipboard barred the way to the intensive care room. ‘He’s agitated. I’d say wait until he’s stronger, but he’s not going to make it. If he wasn’t asking for his daughter you could leave it.’
When he walked in, it crossed Jack’s mind that they were too late. The old man – Robert Thornton – looked dead, his skin grey, his bony features even more cadaverous. He was festooned with tubing beneath a scaffolding of drips. Waste bags draped off the hospital bed. He was so slight he made little impression beneath the sheets. Jack started. Thornton’s eyes were fixed on him, bright and discerning.
‘Michael.’ The voice was strong.
‘Actually, Mr Thornton, this is…’ Martin Cashman stationed himself at the end of the bed facing the patient. He fiddled with the knot on his tie.
The old man ignored him. ‘What can you report?’
Jack sat by the bed, leaning in; he spoke low so that Cashman would not hear. ‘Mary did as you asked…’
Thornton’s hand began an inexorable crawl over the sheets. He pinched the lapel on Jack’s coat. ‘You have never let me down, Michael.’
‘She found the driver.’
‘You are an angel,’ Robert Thornton cut in.
‘Mary is an angel,’ Jack whispered.
‘She left you on your own. She lied.’ Robert Thornton nodded towards Martin Cashman. ‘That policeman brought your sister back. I said, “Keep her, she’s not mine, I’ve done with her.’ The hand dragged at Jack’s coat, twig fingers scraping, groping. ‘She tried to killed my boy, but she didn’t, did she, son?’
‘Myra asked me to give you these.’ Jack held out seven green chips. ‘It took me too long to work out why Myra wanted my A to Z. She found streets with no CCTV, reported on landmarks for your fantasy land. She told me, she did all she could to make you love her. When you married her mother, you took Myra on too – only you didn’t. If she is an angel, then you, Robert Thornton, are the devil.’ Jack could smell death on the man and with his words he urged it on.
Thornton gripped the glass. ‘That girl wasn’t proper police, Mary was a clerk. Where is she now when she should be taking care of you? You need your tea, a growing boy.’
‘She always took care of me. She took the trouble to know me. She was the only one who did.’ Jack was floating above him on a sea of white. The walls went convex then concave. Someone muted the sound.
Jack was slumped on a chair, his head down between his knees. A steaming beaker appeared. Automatically he took it and, sitting up, held it as if it would anchor him.
‘Jack, it’s me.’ Stella knelt on the floor. ‘You fainted. I should have been there.’
‘He was going to make her kill Matthew Benson for him.’ Jack spoke thickly. ‘Mary saw no way out.’
‘They only had tea and coffee. I went for tea.’ Stella guided the mug to his lips.
‘Thornton did the murders, but he got frail. He made her take over.’ Jack inhaled the steam from the cup and looked up. Cashman was pacing further along the corridor, talking on the phone. ‘According to Lucie’s file, Thornton worked for an insurance company until he was made redundant in 2002. On top of losing his job, he was losing his touch. When he murdered Harvey Gray, he was seen by Carol Jones. Without his work, he had no access to accident data. He made Mary get it; her role gave him access to what he needed. She loved her work; she loved your dad. Her own father compromised her. It was unbearable, but she would have done anything to make her father love her. Except murder.’ He swirled the liquid in the cup. ‘Mary was lost after her brother died. From what you said, her work was her life. Her stepfather ruined it. He’s ruined her.’
Stella sat on a chair beside Jack; he shifted closer to her.
‘She didn’t have to do what he said,’ she countered. As she said it, she knew that Mary did. There was so much Stella would have done for Terry.
‘She blamed herself for Michael’s death. Jackie told me Mary stole Douglas Ford’s cards instead of bringing Michael home. Douglas came to see Jackie at the office last night; it’s been preying on his mind since a visit I paid him at the garage. She told him he had to go to the police. He said that Mary – we should call her Myra, it was her proper name – chased her brother into the path of Barlow’s car. Thornton must have guessed.’
‘Could Terry have known it was Marian?’
‘We’ll never know. Perhaps she wanted him to know so brought him Brooke Bond tea not as a present but as a sign.’ Jack rested his head back against the wall. ‘I thought the old man was frightened of his daughter. It was the other way around.’
‘And I thought Marian had a violent husband,’ Stella said. ‘Amanda Hampson inflicted the bruises fighting for her life.’
‘Amanda would have had the upper hand. Marian’s bruises were defensive. Amanda was desperate; her quest gave her purpose. Marian was thwarting her. You thought Marian was jealous because she wasn’t at the scene with Martin; she was actually shocked that Amanda was dead. Marian ran out of the house, leaving her by the temple; she had let her die.’
‘That old fellow wants locking up.’ Martin Cashman was off the phone. ‘He told me that Myra, as he calls Marian, should be dead and not his son. Can you credit that? Don’t care if he’s on his last legs, blokes like him don’t deserve children. When I think of what Marian did for him.’
‘Martin.’ Stella used Jack’s knee to stand up. She rummaged in her rucksack. ‘You need to see this.’ She handed Cashman the blue folder.