Read Online The Wrong Mother by Sophie Hannah - Free Book Online Page B

boys. He carried photos of them in his wallet, in the same compartment as his money. The pictures fell out whenever he pulled out a note; Simon often found himself having to scoop them up off the floor.
    ‘Geraldine didn’t write that diary, Sergeant. I know that now.’
    ‘Pardon?’
    Simon watched Kombothekra’s eyes widen: a satisfying sight.
    ‘The man who wrote it knew enough about her life to make it convincing. I’ve got to hand it to him—he knew more about Geraldine and Lucy’s lives than I did.’
    ‘Mark, you’re letting your—’
    ‘I let my family down in many ways, Sergeant. Too many to count, too many to bear. There’s not a lot I can do for them now, but I’ll do the one thing that’s within my power. I’ll refuse to accept your feeble theory. There’s a murderer out there. If you don’t think you can find him, tell me and I’ll pay someone else to do it.’
    Kombothekra was starting to look uncomfortable. He never issued direct challenges and hated even more to receive them. ‘Mark, I understand how you feel, but it’s a big leap from a suit going missing to opening a full-scale murder enquiry when there are no obvious leads or suspects, and when a suicide note was found at the scene. I’m sorry.’
    ‘Have you found William Markes yet?’
    Simon tensed. That would have been his next question too. He didn’t like the idea of himself and Bretherick as allies and Kombothekra the outsider, didn’t want to identify too closely with this stranger’s thought processes in case they took him closer to his pain. Bretherick, he knew, was picturing William Markes—insofar as one could picture a stranger—leaving Corn Mill House carrying a bundle of bloodstained clothes and wearing a brown Ozwald Boateng suit. As was Simon. Well, a brown suit, anyway. The fancy name meant nothing to Simon, apart from ‘bound to be ludicrously expensive’.
    ‘I want to know who he is,’ said Bretherick. ‘If Geraldine was . . . seeing him . . .’
    ‘We’ve found nothing to suggest Geraldine was involved with another man.’ Kombothekra smiled, making the most of this opportunity to say something that was both true and encouraging. ‘So far the name William Markes has drawn a blank but . . . we’re doing our best, Mark.’
    Doing, or have done? Simon wondered. Originally there were three teams working on the case. Now, with Mark Bretherick ruled out as a suspect, nothing to indicate Geraldine wasn’t responsible for both deaths and a suicide note to suggest that she was, the investigation had been scaled down to Simon, Sellers, Gibbs and Kombothekra. With Proust waiting in the wings to shower them with his icy disapproval when they least deserved it—his idea of team leadership. Simon doubted any further attempts would be made to track down the William Markes mentioned in the diary.
    He needed a piss, and was about to excuse himself when he remembered: there was no toilet in Corn Mill House apart from those that were in the two bathrooms upstairs. Simon had asked Bretherick during an earlier visit and been told that converting the large pantry beside the utility room into a downstairs shower room had been next on the list of home improvements. ‘Won’t happen now,’ Bretherick had said.
    Geraldine’s body had been found in the large, sunken en-suite bathroom, a small flight of steps down from the master bedroom, and Lucy’s in the second, smaller—though still large—bathroom on the landing next to her bedroom. Simon thought about the contrast: the bathtub full of bloodstained water in the en-suite, so red it might have been pure, undiluted blood, and the pristine white marble of the house bathroom, the clear water, Lucy’s unmarked body, her submerged face. The floating strands of hair, like black seaweed in the water. Polished limestone steps leading down to one bath, the other in the middle of the floor . . . Both focal points. Almost as if the rooms were stage sets, had been designed to