Chapter Twenty
The polystyrene cup
had left a ring on the table. If she moved the edge of the cup very
slightly, the cold tea would run around the bottom of it like a
little river. By tilting it just the right way, she could make
little bubbles.
‘April,
don’t.’
She dipped her
fingernail into the tea, watching the way the fluorescent lighting
reflected on the milky surface.
‘April, will you stop
doing that?’
She looked up and
blinked, as if she was seeing the room for the first time. Not that
there was much to see - the police interview room had bare
off-green walls, one Formica-topped table and four chairs, that was
it. Her mother was sitting next to her, shifting uncomfortably on
her plastic chair. She had been irritable since they had arrived at
the police station and that had been hours ago. She was swinging
from listless to frantic and back again. April wanted to tell her
mother to calm down; tutting and bristling wasn’t doing anyone any
good.
‘It’s as if they
think we’ve nothing better to do,’ said Silvia with irritation.
‘I’ve got to talk to the coroner again before the end of the day.’
She glanced at her watch for the second time in as many minutes and
clicked her tongue. ‘It’s Friday afternoon, if we don’t get an
answer now, we’re going to be sitting on our hands again all
weekend.’
‘Calm down, Mum,
fretting about it’s not going to help.’
‘But if I don’t fret
about it, who will?’ said Silvia. ‘These people move at a snail’s
pace - if we leave it to the bloody authorities they’ll spend weeks
on the post-mortem, and then where will we be?’
April looked at her
mother sadly. ‘Dad’s not going anywhere, is he?’
‘But how are we
supposed to move on when we have this hanging over us?’ said
Silvia, her eyes beginning to sparkle with tears. ‘We can’t even
bury him, we can’t even say goodbye, I feel like we’re in total
limbo.’
April put her hand on
her mother’s. She knew what Silvia was going through, she knew she
needed the funeral in order to let her grief out and that the delay
caused by the post-mortem was driving them all mad, however
necessary it was. At the moment, everything was bottled up inside
her mother, all her pain and regret; it had nowhere to go. April
could see the tension on her pale, lined face; despite spending
most of the day in bed there were still heavy rings under her eyes.
Not that April was exactly looking her best either. Since her
off-piste visit to the cemetery two days ago, April had been
plagued by bad dreams: faces at windows, sleeping angels that woke
up suddenly and - the most disturbing, for some reason - an iron
door with an upside-down keyhole which she couldn’t unlock. It
hadn’t done wonders for her beauty regime; her hair had gone
unwashed for the first time in years. There didn’t seem much point
any more. It wasn’t like she had anywhere to be; she hadn’t been
able to face school or anything else - in fact, she liked it better
that way. The difference between April and her mother was that
April was in no hurry to bury her father. Right up until the vicar
threw that first handful of dirt onto his coffin, she could pretend
to herself that he wasn’t gone, that he might be waiting for her
when she got home, sitting at the breakfast bar, his nose stuck in
a book. She didn’t want to move on, she didn’t want to face life
without her dad. Yes, she knew he was dead. But to her, he wasn’t
gone. Not yet.
‘Sorry to keep you
waiting, ladies.’ The door to the spartan interview room opened and
Detective Inspector Ian Reece came in, balancing two fresh cups of
tea in one hand. He was followed by his sidekick, Detective
Sergeant Amy Carling, wearing the same badly fitting dark green
suit she’d worn that day they’d interviewed her at school about
Isabelle’s murder.
‘Tea for you both,
thought you could do with it.’ He spilled packets of sugar and
plastic stirrers onto the table and pulled out a chair opposite
them.‘Sorry for the delay, but you’ll understand that in our line
of work, when something important comes up, we have to see to it
right away.’
‘What I understand,
Inspector,’ said April’s mother icily, ‘is that we arranged to come
in to assist your inquiries into my husband’s murder. I had thought
you would deem that “important”.’
The detective was in
his mid-fifties, stocky, with short salt and pepper hair. And
shrewd eyes which April guessed had seen most things there were to
see.
‘Yes, you’re quite
right, Mrs Dunne,’ he said kindly. ‘I do apologise and we’ll try to
make this as quick as possible - I’m sure you have other things to
be doing and we do appreciate your assistance at this difficult
time.’
Silvia looked as if
she was about to say something more, but April raised her eyebrows
at her meaningfully and she just nodded instead.
‘Fine, well, let’s
start, shall we?’ The female officer set up a tape recorder and
opened a large notebook.
‘Now, obviously we’ve
spoken to both of you before about William’s death, but I wanted to
get April in for a more formal chat to see if there’s anything
we’ve missed. I understand that going over this all again will be
difficult for you, April,’ said Reece gently, ‘but can you tell me
in your own words what happened that day? Tell us everything you
can remember, and don’t worry if it seems trivial or silly. We need
to know as much as possible so we can find whoever hurt your dad,
okay?’
April had been
dreading this moment. She glanced at her mother who smiled
reassuringly, but it wasn’t reliving the day that was worrying
April: she hadn’t told Silvia about the fight with her dad yet. Her
mother had left the house unusually early that morning to visit
Grandpa Thomas, so she had missed the shouting match and April
would have preferred that her mother never knew. It hadn’t escaped
April’s notice, either, that she had no way to prove where she had
been for that whole morning on a day when the police were going to
find any change to her routine suspect. But that hardly mattered
when, above all, April wanted to avoid recounting that horrible
argument with her dad, to avoid explaining what it was about,
making her look like a bitch and her father like a lunatic; she
certainly didn’t want that being the last thing anyone remembered
about him. But April knew she was trapped - they were bound to have
spoken to the school - so, haltingly, she began.
‘I left the house at
the usual time, I suppose,’ she said, looking hard at the teacup,
‘but then I walked down to Highgate Ponds. I didn’t get to school
until gone eleven, and when I got there I went to the
library.’
‘Just a minute,’ said
her mother, looking at April, then the two police officers. ‘What’s
this? Why didn’t you go straight to school?’
She glanced up at DI
Reece. ‘I had a free period,’ she muttered, knowing it was futile
to lie, but desperately hoping she could avoid an
explanation.
DS Carling was
shaking her head before April had even finished the lie. ‘We’ve
spoken to your teachers, April,’ she said with some relish. ‘We
know you were supposed to be in lessons. What we don’t know is why
you skipped class that morning.’
It was that witch Layla, thought April angrily.
I bet it was, she
was probably making the call to Crimestoppers the second she heard
about Dad. ‘No, she wasn’t in lessons all morning, hair was wet,
looked very guilty.’ Or maybe they just spoke to her
teachers. April knew she was just looking for someone to blame when
it was actually all her fault.
‘I … I wanted to be
alone.’
‘April? Why? What
happened?’ said Silvia.
‘Nothing, I j-just …’
April stammered, ‘I just had some things to think
about.’
‘At that time in the
morning?’ said Silvia. ‘And what were you doing down by the
Ponds?’
April frowned at her
mother. Who was doing this interview, her or the
police?
‘I don’t know,’ said
April lamely.
‘Did you see anyone
there?’ asked Reece.
April shook her head.
She could tell him before he started making any inquiries that no
one had seen her there, not even the dog-walkers.
‘Why did you go for
this walk, love?’ he asked her gently.
‘Was it because of
this boy?’ asked Silvia.
‘God, Mum!’ cried
April. ‘Whose side are you on?’
April let out a long
breath. She was loath to come across as some weepy airhead, but she
supposed it was better to be a heartbroken teen cliché than a
murder suspect. Much better than discussing what had happened
between her and her dad that morning. She felt bad enough about
that as it was. So she nodded, looking down at her
hands.
‘He was supposed to
call and he didn’t and I didn’t want to go to Mr Sheldon’s class
because he would be there,’ she said in a rush. ‘So I walked around
in the rain, then I went to the library for a bit.’
Of course only Layla can confirm that, she thought.
And I can’t see her rushing to help me
out.
She turned to her
mother. ‘I’m sorry, Mum, I didn’t mean to upset
anyone.’
Silvia surprised her
by squeezing her hand. ‘That’s okay, baby,’ she said. ‘I’m not
upset.’
DI Reece looked down
at his notes, tapping the pad with a pencil thoughtfully. ‘And you
didn’t see anyone suspicious or out of the ordinary hanging
around?’
April shook her
head.
‘What about the other
time, the night Isabelle Davis was killed? Did you see anyone that
night?’
‘What’s all this
about?’ snapped Silvia. ‘April’s already given you a statement
about that night. I thought this interview was about the day of my
husband’s murder.’
Reece nodded. ‘Okay,
so let’s go back to the start of the day,’ he said mildly. ‘What
time did you get up? What did you have for breakfast?’
‘Oh. Well, I was up
at about seven, I think.’
April winced as she
thought of her excitement that morning, jumping out of bed, getting
herself ready to see Gabriel.
‘Did you wake up, or
did your dad wake you?’ asked DS Carling. April noticed that the
chubby policewoman’s manner was much less friendly, her eyes cold
and cynical. Good cop, bad cop so soon?
she thought.
‘Er, I woke up
myself.’
‘Why’s
that?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Well,’ said Reece,
‘why do you think you woke up so early? I’ve got kids myself and
most mornings a bomb wouldn’t shift them.’
‘I don’t know,’ said
April, unsettled to see Carling scribble ‘Doesn’t know’ in her
jotter. Is not knowing things an
offence? she wondered with alarm.
‘Well, what did you
do the night before?’
Her mind flashed on
Gabriel, his face looking up at her window. They couldn’t know
about that, could they?
‘N-nothing,’ she
stammered.
‘Her friends came
over,’ said Silvia.
‘And this would be -’
Reece consulted his notes ‘- Caroline Jackson and Simon
Oliver?’
Jesus, how did he know that? April was now
seriously off balance. If they already knew about Caro and Simon
coming round, what else did they know? Did they know she had lied
about seeing Gabriel on the night of Isabelle’s murder? If it had
been Gabriel who had tipped the police off about finding her body,
then he could well have told them she was there too. Suddenly she
became really frightened. What if she couldn’t prove where she had
been at the time of either murder? What if they thought she had
something to do with her dad’s death? Nerves made her try to
bluster it out, cover her fear up with anger.
‘Yes, so what? Can’t
I have friends over?’ she snapped.
‘Of course, love,’
said Reece. ‘We were just wondering what the occasion was. Some
problem at school? Or was it all about this boy?’ he said, his tone
jocular and amused, like it didn’t matter much, but April could see
the way his mind was working: if she hadn’t been in school the next
day, something must have happened the evening before or first thing
in the morning to keep her away, something serious. Reece consulted
his notes again. ‘And I understand you had a talk with Mr Sheldon
after school that day?’
Silvia looked at
April sharply. She didn’t need to speak to communicate her meaning:
You and I are going to have a little chat
after this, young lady.
‘What did you discuss
with him, exactly?’ continued Reece.
‘He wanted to know
why I hadn’t been in class that morning,’ said April
defensively.
‘Look, what’s all
this about?’ said Silvia impatiently, looking at Reece. ‘I thought
you brought us here to help you, not to have you grill my daughter
like this.’
‘We’re simply trying
to establish how April was feeling that day, Mrs Dunne,’ said
Carling with a slightly superior tone. ‘It’s important to know the
state of mind of all the suspects—’
‘Suspects?’ snapped
Silvia, her cheeks flushing. ‘My daughter is a child grieving for
her father, not a suspect!’
‘Now, now,’ said
Reece, ‘let’s not get all het up here.’
‘I think I’m well
within my rights to get “all het up”, Inspector,’ said Silvia.
‘April has told you everything she knows and you seem to be intent
on insulting her. She is sixteen years old, for goodness sake. Her
father has been murdered. We came here voluntarily, so if you’re
not going to ask any relevant questions, I think we’ll leave,’ she
said, moving her chair back.
DS Carling cleared
her throat. ‘Actually, the meeting with Mr Sheldon was lucky for
April. If she had left five minutes earlier, she might have been
there when the attack happened. Their talk gives her an
alibi.’
‘An alibi?’ hissed Silvia. The fury came off her like
heat and DI Carling flinched. ‘Do you really think that my little
girl might go to her own home and tear her own
father’s throat out?’ She was on her feet and screaming now.
‘How dare you even consider such a
thing?’ she yelled, leaning forwards over the table and spitting
the words out. Silvia turned to the detective inspector and her
voice was suddenly cold and hard as stone. ‘I will have your job,
your career, your comfortable, cosy life for this. Mark my words, you have made a
terrible mistake.’
April could see from
his expression that DI Reece fully agreed with her.
With that, Silvia
took April’s hand and calmly walked to the door. ‘Goodbye,
Detective Inspector,’ she said.
‘Why didn’t you tell
me you missed school that morning?’ asked Silvia.
April shook her head.
‘Because you don’t want to know.’
Silvia slammed the
car door, breaking the silence. They hadn’t spoken on the drive
back to Covent Garden. April was still reeling from the grilling,
Silvia was still fuming, and somehow in the space of the journey
mother and daughter had turned all their anger and frustration
towards each other. April had been grateful for her mother’s
fearsome protectiveness in the interview, but slowly that had
turned to annoyance; why had she asked so many questions? It was
almost as if she was trying to help the police catch her out. She
guessed that Silvia was similarly annoyed that April hadn’t told
her about skipping school. But then why would she? She wasn’t going
to tell her mother everything, was she? Especially when her mother
barely acknowledged her most of the time.
‘What do you mean, I
don’t want to know?’ snapped Silvia, unbuttoning her trenchcoat as
they walked from her granddad’s underground garage up into the
house.
‘Because you haven’t
been there for me, have you?’ said April.
‘What are you talking
about? I’ve been here with you every moment since we left
Highgate.’
‘Oh, is that what you
call it? Sleeping the day away, sitting in the dark? I came in to
speak to you loads of times, but you just wanted to watch daytime
TV with the curtains closed. I’ve not gone to school all week - is
that news to you too?’
‘I’m finding this
hard as well, you know,’ said Silvia as she pushed through the
front door and threw her car keys on the hall table.
‘I know, Mum! But
this is what I mean - even now, now when I need you the most, you
can’t help being completely selfish.’
‘You won’t talk to me
like that! I’m your mother!’ she shouted.’
‘Are you? Well, it’s
a little bit late to start acting that way now.
Silvia grabbed her
arm, spinning her around. ‘You will show me respect,’ she hissed.
‘Your father—’
‘My father? Don’t
talk about him! You made his life a misery, yelling at him all the
time, telling him how useless he was. Well, now you’ve got what you
wanted, haven’t you? I bet you’re glad he’s dead.’
Silvia’s hand came
flying out of nowhere, leaving a stinging mark on April’s cheek.
‘How could you? How could
you?
April ran through the
house and out through the French windows onto the balcony looking
down over the small courtyard garden. She needed to escape, to find
some space, some air - she couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. She
leant on the white marble balustrade, watching as the tears plopped
down onto the stone. April knew she’d gone too far, but she needed
to strike out at someone or she’d explode, the pressure in her head
was too much to bear. What if it was all her fault? What if the
things she’d said to her dad that morning had made him do something
that led to his death? What if she’d stayed at home, or ignored Mr
Sheldon - maybe she could have saved him? Or
you’d be dead too, her mind mocked her, just like Isabelle Davis. And you didn’t help her
either, did you? For a moment,
April wished it had been her. She knew
people said it in films all the time, but she genuinely would have
swapped places with her father in a heartbeat. Death was preferable
to this living hell. She pulled a raggedy tissue from her pocket
and wiped her eyes, taking a few deep breaths. It’s all so unfair, she thought, why can’t I have normal parents? But she didn’t
have parents plural, did she? Not any
more. April gasped and covered her eyes as it hit her what had
happened the last time she’d had a screaming fight like this.
I can’t cry again, she thought,
squeezing her nails into her palm. I’m
always crying. I’ve got to stop this,
it’s so childish. But then April knew that was the real
reason why she’d been so angry with her mother: she wanted to be
childish, she wanted to curl up into a ball and have her mum hug
her and kiss her and tell her it was all going to be all right.
Some hope: hugs weren’t exactly Silvia’s strong suit, never had
been. ‘I’m sorry,’ said a voice.
April turned around.
Her mother’s eyes were red-ringed and wet. ‘Well, this is a first,’
said April sarcastically. She knew she should relent, give her
mother some credit, some compassion - after all, she was suffering
too - but April was still too angry to be reasonable.
‘Don’t, darling, it’s
hard enough as it is.’
‘Well, why shouldn’t
it be? Why should it be easy for you?’
Silvia shook her
head. ‘Because I need it to be,’ she said quietly. The tears were
now running down her face and she swiped them away angrily.
‘Because I can’t handle this, it’s too much to bear. I mean, if
it’s all about …’ she trailed off. ‘This shouldn’t be happening to
me.’
‘To you?’ shouted
April. ‘It’s not just happening to you, or haven’t you noticed? And
what’s with all these half-finished sentences, and all your stuff
with Grandpa? What aren’t you telling me?’
‘Oh, and I suppose
you tell me everything, do you?’ snapped Silvia. ‘Do you know how
embarrassing it was to hear about your truancy from the police? To
hear you lie to the police? If your
father had been there—’
‘Dad knew all about
it!’ shouted April. Even before the words were out of her mouth,
April knew she had made a mistake.
‘How did he know all
about it?’ Silvia’s eyes narrowed and she took a step towards her.
‘Did something happen that morning?’
‘No, I didn’t
mean—’
Silvia caught April’s
arm and squeezed. ‘Tell me!’
‘Mum, you’re hurting
me,’ said April, pulling away. ‘We had a fight, okay? That was it.
I didn’t see him again until …’ Her voice caught. ‘Until I saw him
at the house.’
‘But what was it
about? You’ve had fights, but you’ve never skipped a lesson
before.’
April rubbed her arm
and shook her head. Silvia had been right: it was too hard to bear
on your own. But to tell her the truth, to tell her exactly what
she had said to her father - no, what she had yelled at him - that morning would mean having to
admit to herself that ‘I hate you’ and ‘I’ll never forgive you’ had
been the last real things she had said to her father. Could she
stand that? Could she bear that? No. Not in a million
years.
‘I told you. We
fought about the boy thing.’
‘Why would you fight
about that?’
April took a deep
breath and told herself she was only protecting her mother. After
all, what good would it do to say the truth out loud? I found out Dad moved us to Highgate so he could
investigate some stupid vampire story. Would her mother
really want to hear that her husband was deluded? Irresponsible?
Downright reckless? Telling her about the job offer from
The Sunday Times certainly wouldn’t go
down well either. That would definitely colour her memory of the
man she loved.
‘He told me I
couldn’t see Gabriel any more.’
‘But
why?’
April shrugged. She
looked as if she was reluctant to talk about it, but in reality she
was playing for time: why would he
forbid her to see a boy he’d never met? She ran through a variety
of possibilities and seized on the most likely.
‘He said my
schoolwork was suffering,’ she said, trying to sound as petulant as
possible. ‘He thought …’
‘What?’
‘That money was more
important!’ said April angrily. ‘He said that he was working every
hour possible to send me to that stupid school for gifted pupils
and that he wanted me to concentrate. Like qualifications are the
only thing that’s important!’
Her mother gave a
small smile and nodded sympathetically. ‘You shouldn’t be so hard
on him, love,’ she said, touching April’s hand. ‘That boy was
distracting you, remember? Your dad only wanted the best for you
and he was working really hard trying to make ends meet.’ She
paused. ‘I don’t know if he ever told you this, but Grandpa offered
to pay the school fees and your dad wouldn’t hear of it. He was a
very proud man. And he was most proud of you.’
April nodded sadly.
She knew her mum was being kind, but she wasn’t sure if it was
true. She stared out over the garden, wishing he was here to tell
her those things himself.
‘Mum, can I ask you
something? What do you think happened to Dad?’
Silvia avoided her
eyes. ‘I don’t know. That’s for the police to work out, isn’t it?
I’m sure they’ll get fingerprints or fibres or
something.’
‘But you must have
thought about it. Why would someone want to kill him?’
‘It could have been
anything, darling, a robbery gone wrong, some junkie out of their
mind, maybe we’ll never know.’
April frowned. Her
mother was being very dismissive; did she know
something?
‘Did anyone threaten
him?’
‘What? No! He would
have told me.’
‘But he spent years
investigating organised crime and drug trafficking, all that sort
of thing. He must have angered people.’
Silvia shook her
head. ‘He wasn’t MI5, darling. He was
just a reporter.’
There was a strange
faraway look on Silvia’s face. Like she was remembering something,
or something was falling into place for her.
‘What is it, Mum? Do
you know something?’
‘No, no. I don’t know
what he was working on, we didn’t discuss his work really. I’m sure
the police will be following up all those leads.’
April wasn’t entirely
convinced. There was definitely something preying on her mother’s
mind.
‘Mum, why did you and
dad argue so much in those last few weeks?’ asked April
quietly.
‘What? Why? Did
we?’
‘It’s just all that
stuff with Grandpa and the painting and I’d overhear the rows you
and Dad used to have. I used to think—’
‘What?’
April shrugged
weakly. ‘That I was adopted.’
Silvia laughed. ‘No,
darling, you’re definitely ours. You’ve got so much of your father
in you - you’re clever and single-minded and stubborn.’ She reached
out to touch April’s face. ‘Oh, he loved you so much.’
‘And what about
you?’
‘Of course I love
you!’
‘No, how much of you
is in me?’
‘Not so much of me,’
she said sadly. ‘And thank God for that.’
She walked over and
pulled April into a hug, squeezing her tight. ‘It’s just us now,
you know that, don’t you? And I’ll never let anyone hurt you, I
promise.’
April nodded. It was
all she had wanted to hear since her dad’s death. She brushed a
tear away. ‘So what now?’
Her mother’s face was
bleak. ‘I want us to go home, darling.’
April shivered,
thinking of that pool of dark blood spreading across the study
floor. ‘Really? Go back there?’
Her mother looked at
her and April had never seen her look so sad.
‘It’s the only place
he still is,’ she said.