Birth Marks by Sarah Dunant Page B

papers anyway, but it was better to hear it from Frank. Ears to the ground, these ex-coppers. Bless his Mr Plod boots.
    â€˜Just thought you’d like to know. The missing pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, eh?’
    â€˜I don’t believe it.’
    â€˜Come on, Hannah, even given your warped vision of the police they could hardly fabricate that kind of evidence.’
    â€˜So why didn’t they say so when they found the body.’
    â€˜Maybe they were waiting for the PM.’
    â€˜Frank, you don’t need a post mortem to tell a woman is eight months pregnant.’
    â€˜Well, you know these guys on the river. It’s dark and they want to get home for the mug of cocoa. She’s just another floater. They probably thought she was fat.’
    Frank tells Irish jokes too, usually when there are Irishmen in the room. But credit where credit is due. He notices, eventually.
    â€˜Don’t give yourself a hard time. Some things you can’t do anything about. Obviously the kid got herself knocked up and didn’t know how to tell her fairy godmother. It happens all the time. The person who needs to feel bad is the old lady. Maybe if she’d brought you in a week earlier you might have stood a chance. As it is no one likes to hear the truth from a suicide note.’
    And such a pathetic one at that, although having read the postcards I of all people should not have expected poetry. Even so…I got him to recite it twice so I could write it down. ‘By the time you read this you will know the truth. I am sorry for all the deceit and the trouble I have caused. Also for all the money which I cannot repay. It seems the only thing I can do is to go. Please, if you can, forgive me.’
    So I was right. It had been at least partly to do with money. Somehow she must have scraped together enough to pay off the most pressing bills, then dodged the debt collectors for the rest. But with a baby and therefore no job…As sad stories go this was one of the saddest. Frank was right. If I were Miss Patrick I would prefer not to have received it. No doubt that was why she hadn’t told me about it on the phone. Or maybe it was even worse. Maybe she hadn’t got it then. Maybe it was waiting for her when she returned home to take the photos down off the piano. The last postcard.
    â€˜Uh uh. According to the police they found it in her flat. No envelope, no nothing. It wasn’t even addressed to anyone. Just tucked under the vase on the table, waiting for someone to find it.’
    I reran the film of Saturday night in my head. I walked into the living-room, switched on the light and saw the bare floor, the three chairs and the old dining-table, all flashing on to my retina before the bulb went. Surely if there’d been something under the vase I would have noticed it? Or would I? I made another tour of the room this time in slow motion with the torch beam. Still nothing. But had I really checked the whole table? Then I went into the kitchen and looked around the surfaces. Empty. And the bathroom, just in case. Same conclusion. Yet according to the pathologist her body had been in the water for between thirty-eight and forty hours. Which meant that she’d gone into the river between 4.30 p.m. and 6.30 p.m. on Saturday evening. And since nobody kills themselves until after they’ve written the suicide note, it must have been there by the time I entered the flat. Shit. I had been so busy with my precious archaeological dig in the cupboards that I’d missed what was right under my nose. For a moment I began to see female private investigators from the police’s point of view. But the table? Were they sure?
    â€˜Listen, what’s the big deal? That’s where people usually leave suicide notes. Either there or on the mantelpiece, although I did once come across one in the oven. But that was a demented housewife. Couldn’t cope with her husband’s affairs because