Read Online You Will Never Find Me by Robert Wilson - Free Book Online Page B

about her parents. The two of you were a mystery to her. That’s why we got on. We just used to sit at this table and talk. She’d ask about my life. I’d ask about hers. And, thinking about it, quite a lot of the time we were talking about you and Mercy. A couple of dark horses if ever there were.’
    â€˜You ran away from home too,’ said Boxer. ‘And you never went back . . . not even for your father’s funeral.’
    â€˜It’s a long way to go to see a bastard stuck in the ground.’
    â€˜And I suppose you covered the subject of my father, your husband’s . . . disappearance.’
    â€˜You mean, seeing as we’re talking about bastards,’ said Esme, her accent drifting back towards Parramatta, the vodka loosening her throat.
    â€˜That doesn’t sound like you gave him—’
    â€˜A fair press?’ said Esme, cutting in mercilessly. ‘It was one thing to leave me, but quite another to walk out on you. I told Amy the truth with no slant: that he was wanted for questioning in connection with a murder and he absconded. Clothes and passport found on a beach in Crete. Heard of no more.’
    â€˜When did you tell her that?’
    â€˜She wasn’t a minor. She was over sixteen. Able to hold her liquor. If that’s what’s worrying you. She’d asked me a couple of years earlier and I’d been vague. Then she mounted one of her campaigns and I cracked.’
    â€˜Everything?’ said Boxer. ‘As in, who he was accused of murdering?’
    â€˜He never got as far as being
accused
,’ said Esme. ‘But yes, I told her it was my business partner and director.’
    Esme’s hand trembled slightly as she reached for the shot glass. She sipped, took a crackling drag from her cigarette, held it in, let it trickle from her nose.
    â€˜It’s just history,’ said Esme, ‘and you told me that was the very reason you didn’t want to be a homicide detective any more. It was all past tense. It wasn’t going to bring anybody back. And it won’t bring Amy back. You might be able to winkle out some cockeyed reasoning as to why—’
    â€˜I’m angry,’ said Boxer.
    â€˜With me?’ asked Esme, astonished. ‘You think I put this idea into her head? Don’t be bloody ridiculous. This has been building for years.’
    â€˜I’m not angry at you,’ said Boxer. ‘I’m angry at myself.’
    â€˜Welcome to the club,’ said Esme. ‘We’re all platinum card members here.’
    â€˜So what have you got to be angry about?’ asked Boxer.
    Esme didn’t answer but looked out of the kitchen window, and Boxer saw what looked like some colossal hurt worming its way across her face as if she too had a stack of unanswerable questions, which for a moment had seen the light of day.
    â€˜I suppose that’s what humans do when left to their own devices,’ said Boxer. ‘Rake things over. Part the shit in the hope that there will be some revelatory nugget to explain it all.’
    â€˜In my experience,’ said Esme, taking another thumping drag deep into her lungs, ‘parting shit will only reveal more shit underneath. The best thing to do, and also the most impossible, is to bury it. Forget about it. Move on with your life. Remember, nobody ever learned anything from history.’
    Silence while Boxer wrestled with her penetratingly cynical insight.
    â€˜Did Amy leave a note?’ asked Esme.
    Boxer produced a copy. Esme read it and was visibly struck by something.
    â€˜Kids,’ she said, shaking her head and scratching around in a kitchen drawer. ‘Nosy little buggers.’
    She found a key. He followed her through the living room to the second bedroom, which doubled as Esme’s office. There was a large wooden desk with a leather inlaid top and drawers down either side of a footwell. The key opened