The Next to Die, page 21
Gibbs was looking at his notes on Hopwood, which told a different story. “It says here you work for a company called Struthers Breary. Just you, is it? No colleagues? Don’t bother answering. I happen to know that firm’s owned by a husband-and-wife team, Tim and Gaby Breary. I know them personally, and I’m a hundred percent certain they don’t only employ you.”
Another long-suffering sigh from Hopwood. “They employ hundreds of people, and most are based at head office. Some aren’t. I’m not. I make a very specific kind of wire for them—I have a lab in my garden where I’ve worked since I set up as a sole trader, and they’re fine with that. I don’t like busy, noisy environments. One of my conditions when I started working for them was still being able to work in my own lab. If you know Gaby and Tim so well, why don’t you check all this with them?”
Gibbs nearly laughed. Gaby Struthers—as he still thought of her—was the kind of person who’d dish out fake alibis to loyal members of staff without the slightest qualm. She’d done much, much worse. Gibbs tried not to think about her role in the Francine Breary murder case; every time he did, he wanted to punch a hole in a wall.
“So what you’re telling me is that on the dates of Billy’s first four murders, you were in your own personal laboratory making special wires, and no one will be able to verify that?”
“Basically, frustratingly, yes.” Hopwood offered an apologetic smile.
“On Tuesday, January 6, when Marion was murdered, you were at the hospital with her, in her room nearly all the time.” Gibbs stared at him. “You say you saw no one else in or near her room who shouldn’t have been there.”
“I didn’t, but I fell asleep for small spells. I was exhausted. And . . .”
“What, Mr. Hopwood?”
“I assume you’ve considered Kim? My sister?”
“As a suspect, d’you mean?”
“Well, just . . . in the same way you’re considering me.” Pink spots had appeared on Hopwood’s cheeks. “If you think three hundred grand give or take is a viable motive, how about no three hundred grand? How about lack of inheritance?”
“Marion left everything to you and cut Kim out.” Gibbs made a note. Hopwood was right: brother and sister both had a motive. Opposite motives, equally strong. “Well, it’s kind of you to be willing to divide it equally between you.”
“What? I never said . . . I’m not willing. I mean—”
“You seem upset, Mr. Hopwood.”
“Did Kim tell you I’d promised her half the money?”
“No, she didn’t. You misunderstood me. I wasn’t talking about your three hundred grand, give or take. Well, take, anyway,” Gibbs amended. “When I said it was kind of you to divide it equally, I didn’t mean Marion’s money. I meant suspicion of murder. That, you’re willing to share with your sister. Aren’t you?”
“I don’t deserve this!” Drew Hopwood looked around the small interview room as if hoping to spot someone in a corner who might defend him. “I’ve done everything you’ve asked of me—paid for my own travel to and from your police station so that I could give a DNA sample, answered all your questions politely, and this is how you treat me? Carry on like this and I’m going to be speaking to your boss, I’m sorry to say.”
Gibbs grinned at him. “I recommend you do that. I think you’d enjoy it.”
“Do you address all recently bereaved people in such a heartless way?”
“I don’t know. You’d have to ask them.”
“I have some experience of bullies,” said Hopwood. “They try to intimidate until they see it won’t work, then they slink off underneath the nearest stone. You can’t scare me, DC Gibbs. We’re in Britain, one of the most civilized countries in the world, in the twenty-first century. I’ve murdered no one; therefore I have nothing to worry about. I won’t be going to prison. Kim, as my next of kin, won’t be getting her hands on Gran’s money by framing me for five murders so that I can’t legally inherit—much as you and she and all your cronies would no doubt love for that to happen!”
Not another one. You could divide people into two groups, Gibbs had always thought: those who had a realistic idea of how little they mattered to you and those, like Drew Hopwood, who imagined a detective he’d known less than an hour gave a single shit about any aspect of his life. The suggestion that Gibbs and his colleagues were conspiring with Kim Tribbeck to cheat Hopwood out of his precious three hundred grand, that any of them would love for that to happen, was laughable. You’re just a name in a file, mate, until I can find more evidence.
“Have a think, look at any records you’ve got and see if you can do better for those four dates,” Gibbs told Hopwood. He rose to his feet to signal that the interview was over. “Imagine you’ve got three hundred grand riding on it—that might help you to focus.”
12
from Origami by Kim Tribbeck
Tuesday, January 13, 2015
“Battery acid?”
Remember how you felt when a detective told you someone had murdered your grandmother by injecting battery acid into her? That there was no doubt from the postmortem, and also a syringe had been found, but there were no fingerprints on it?
Of course you don’t. It doesn’t happen to most people, only a select few.
“As I understand it, it’s not quite the same chemical—” Waterhouse breaks off. Decides to change course. “Essentially, yes. In layperson’s terms: battery acid.”
When I don’t respond, he asks me what I’m thinking.
We’re in my kitchen, sitting across the table from each other, mugs of coffee in our hands. At one time, I’d have associated a scene like this with “A friend pops round for a chat”; now it’s more “An enemy whips out a gun and shoots you in the head while you’re putting on the kettle.” I was pleasantly surprised when Simon Waterhouse didn’t, which shows how far my definition of good news has stretched lately.
“Is Billy a psychological sadist?”
“Why do you ask that?” says Waterhouse.
“Only explanation I can think of.”
“Meaning?”
“The four victims before Marion—none of them had terminal cancer, did they? From what I’ve read, they were all relatively young and healthy.”
“Correct.” Waterhouse’s way of speaking reminds me of an automated till in a Tesco Express. Please insert payment. Unexpected item in bagging area.
“My guess is that’s why Billy gave me the first book but still hasn’t killed me. He was planning to—I was first on his list—and then he found out Marion, who was meant to be second for the chop, had terminal cancer. He made a new plan: kill the other four first because there’s no point waiting, and only kill Marion once she’s had a chance to suffer the full extent of her illness.”
“That’s an interesting theory.” Waterhouse addresses this unexpected praise to my kitchen window.
“If you want someone dead, chances are you hate them, right? It might irritate you to think that by murdering them, you could spare them some pain that was coming their way naturally. So you wait as long as possible and kill them just before they’re about to die. You’re a sadist.”
“And you’re saying originally Billy planned to kill you before Marion but changed his mind because there was a clock ticking on her and not on you?”
“My theory’s way sicker than that. He didn’t want me or Marion to miss out on a cancer death. It was gruesome for both of us—more for her, but it’s no fun being a spectator, believe me. And Billy might have assumed I loved Marion deeply, which of course would have made it more painful for me.”
Waterhouse takes a long slurp of his coffee. I wish I hadn’t given him the hideous “Hello, is it tea you’re looking for?” mug.
“Didn’t you?”
“Didn’t I what? Oh—love Marion? I don’t know. I expect I did in a way, but . . . of the feelings I’ve always been aware of having for her, love didn’t figure prominently.”
“Is that a tactful way of saying you hated her?”
“There were moments when I hated her. I was always scared of her.”
“Why?”
“Long story.”
Most people would have said, “It’s okay, we have plenty of time,” or words to that effect. Waterhouse says, “I have to hear it, so . . . maybe condense it down a bit if it’s really long.”
Thanks for your sensitivity, mate.
“Bullet points?” I smile. If I could summarize it all in list form, it would be less likely to upset me. “I’m not sure there’s a short version, to be honest. My mother fell pregnant with me at fifteen, and my father ran for the hills when he found out. My mum begged to keep me—I found this out later from her best friend at the time—but her parents, Marion and Trevor, were worried about the shame she’d bring on the family. This was 1971, so I don’t know how bad it would have been for them—it was hardly the 1840s or anything, but I suppose if you’re the respectable facade type . . . and my grandparents definitely were. So I was given up for adoption.
“Mr. and Mrs. Tribbeck adopted me. That’s how I think of them in my head: Mr. and Mrs. Tribbeck. They were good people, they did their best, but I’m not in touch with them anymore. Not a day went by when they didn’t demonstrate that, while they adored their three flesh-and-blood children, I was their good deed. They approved of themselves for having taken me on. For my whole childhood I was the perfect, well-mannered, parent-pleasing suck-up—top grades at school, Duke of Edinburgh’s Award star, tidying my room every night even when it didn’t need tidying—”
“That doesn’t sound like you,” Waterhouse cuts in.
I laugh. “You don’t know me.”
“You’re a big part of a big case—means I need to find out about you. I’ve watched some of your stuff online. You portray yourself as a rebel, always doing what you want no matter what the world thinks. Going your own way.”
“Yeah, that’s me now. I’m bright enough to realize when a tactic’s not working. Being the perfect child didn’t make me or anyone else feel I was a proper member of the Tribbeck family. I was a lonely, unhappy kid, and now I’m a lonely, unhappy adult, but at least I get to be myself and make other people unhappy too—you’d be surprised how much that takes the edge off.”
Waterhouse scowls into the dregs of his coffee. I’m sensing that of all the people he’s ever met, I’m the one he disapproves of the most. At the same time, he strikes me as the sort of man who might make everyone feel that way.
“That was a joke,” I explain. “Well, partly. Don’t worry, I’m not expecting sympathy. I was trying to make you laugh, but . . . I can see that was overly ambitious.”
“Carry on with what you were saying. The Tribbecks adopted you . . . ?”
“Yes, and did their best, which was probably more than adequate, and better than I could do myself in a similar situation, but I didn’t have a fantastic time growing up in that house. To put it mildly. I had the chance to trace my biological mother when I was eighteen—should have left well alone, but I’m not the sort of person who can ever do that—so I leapt at it. Found out very quickly that she’d died the year before. Choked to death after getting a piece of chicken lodged in her throat. Her best friend was with her at the time but couldn’t help her. Horrendous. Last time I saw Cheryl, she still wasn’t over it.
“They were close, her and my mum. Cheryl was able to tell me stuff I might have been better off not knowing: Elaine desperately wanted to keep me—”
“Elaine? Your mother’s name was Elaine?”
“Yes. Why’s that important?”
“Was it ever shortened to Lane?”
“Not as far as I know. Why? Cheryl calls her El—I think most of her friends did, but Marion and Trevor insisted on the full Elaine and didn’t care what she wanted to be known as.”
“Never mind. Go on.”
“My mother hadn’t planned to get pregnant so young, but once she found out she was, she desperately wanted to have the baby: me. She’d already figured out that her parents were twats, and she had no siblings, so having a baby seemed to her to be the only way of securing a halfway decent relative for herself.”
“This is coming from Cheryl, all this information?” Waterhouse asks.
I nod. “And she’s convincing. I don’t think she’s just saying it to make me feel I was wanted. Some of the details I’ve heard are too specific, and Cheryl’s not imaginative enough to invent them. Elaine wanted to keep me. She talked about me every single time Cheryl saw her—being forced to give me up haunted her. It became an obsession. She never forgave Marion and Trevor. And there was an added twist that made it all so much worse for her.”
I need extra supplies of oxygen to talk about this bit. My lungs feel squeezed of air before I’ve even started. “Elaine got pregnant again while still a minor. Almost exactly a year after she’d given me up for adoption, she had my brother Drew. Different dad, also made himself scarce very quickly.” Time for a joke, to cheer us all up. “I mean, no one likes to speak ill of the dead, but clearly contraception wasn’t my mother’s strong point. Marion and Trevor went into full doom mode once again—family shame panic—and insisted on another adoption. Elaine was distraught again—and then a miracle happened. Drew was born, Marion took one look at him in the hospital and her heart melted. She couldn’t bear for him to be given away, so she talked Trevor around, and suddenly the family shame didn’t matter anymore because everyone loved Drew so much.”
I smile brightly. “If you’re wondering whether I was a hideous baby and Drew a cute one, I don’t think so. I’ve seen photos of us both—we look remarkably alike.”
“Probably a generational thing,” Simon says. “I know my parents wanted a boy. Not me, probably—a different boy.”
I lean forward. “Did you just make a joke?”
“No, I was being serious.” He looks embarrassed and seems keen to move briskly on. “So your mother kept your brother? He wasn’t adopted?”
“Nope. Marion did all the childcare; Elaine was free to go about being a teenager, but Cheryl says she wasn’t happy. She adored Drew, but her relief at being able to keep him, and her love for him, only increased the pain of having given me up. And Cheryl says—”
I break off. This is the hardest part to say, as I know from telling Gabe (“Jesus Christ! What a pair of unmitigated cunts! Isn’t this the perfect opportunity never to see Marion and Trevor again, since they’re also mind-numbingly dull?”) and Liam (“Families are strange. Are you wearing anything under that?”).
“Cheryl says Elaine would have ended up hating her parents less if they’d made her give Drew up for adoption, too. She’d have been bereft again, and she’d much rather have had Drew than a better opinion of her parents, of course, but . . . it was the hypocrisy she couldn’t stand: the double standard, and the brick-wall refusal to acknowledge it. Marion wouldn’t accept that it was cruel or wrong in any way to force Elaine to give away one baby then allow her to keep the next purely because she felt instant love for one and not the other. It wasn’t a generational thing or a boy/girl thing. Marion apparently said that she looked down at newborn Drew and he looked up at her with so much love in his eyes that she simply couldn’t go through with the adoption plan.”
I breathe out long and hard, trying to exhale the tension that’s accumulated from telling my least favorite story. It doesn’t work. “So there we have it: Drew got to stay chez Hopwood and have a mother who loved him, because he was able to provide evidence of love for Marion early enough to save himself. I didn’t.”
Simon shrugs. “I still think it’s more likely to be the boy thing. The rubbish about eyes was a less offensive-sounding excuse.”
“Less offensive?” I laugh. “How d’you figure that? I’d rather it was because I was a girl, but I don’t think it was. I think Marion just didn’t warm to me. I’d prefer ‘Marion’s a sexist idiot’ to ‘I’m inherently unlovable’ as an explanation.”
Could he be right? Even if he is, I’ll never convince myself.
“If you’re about to ask me why I sought out the Hopwood family after the only member of it who gave a shit about me had died . . . I wanted to meet my brother. I thought I might have hit the nuclear family jackpot: at last, a blood relative who was neither dead nor a conspirator in a plot to banish me. Unfortunately . . .” I stop. This bit’s going to be harder to convey.
I used to think Drew was simply uninterested in anyone but himself. Then Gabe and I got together, and I noticed Drew related to Gabe differently. He asked him proper questions. That’s when I realized how uninterested in me he is. The questions he asks me are always what car I’m driving at the moment, how much I think my house is worth, which airline I think is the most reliable. That’s because he’s interested in cars, houses, travel. He hides his refusal to ask me anything about myself amid an extensive and varied assortment of questions about all the things I know about but care nothing for, bombarding me with trivial inquiries as a way of blocking me—of demonstrating that I’m not someone with a heart and soul that matters, as far as he’s concerned.
Questions Drew never asks when I see him include: How are you? What have you been up to? How’s work going? Are you writing new material at the moment? Have you decided what your next tour’s theme will be yet? Any love life developments?
Gabe, on the other hand . . . I watched time after time as my brother chose the exact right words that would enable my husband to expand on all the things that mattered most to him: the films of Michael Haneke, the legalization of marijuana, Gabe’s work for a verbal branding company.
Since Gabe and I split up, Drew’s first question to me is always, “How’s Gabe? Have you heard from him? What’s he been up to?”
Another of my brother’s strange and discouraging habits is suggesting I’m probably guilty of everything I criticize others for. If I get an uncooked chicken breast in a restaurant and complain, he points out that I once served him an inedible meal; if I say a politician’s a hypocrite for dodging inheritance tax and then condemning tax avoidance, he reminds me of the time I said everyone should give blood and then chickened out because I’m scared of needles.
