The Wrong Mother by Sophie Hannah Page B

either Mrs O’Hara hadn’t bothered to seek out Kombothekra and repeat her insights to him, or else she had failed to make any impact on his certainty that Geraldine was responsible for both deaths. Simon had noticed that Kombothekra’s softly spoken politeness cloaked a stubborn streak that would not have achieved its goals nearly so often were it more overt.
    ‘Michelle Greenwood wasn’t someone Geraldine Bretherick knew well.’ Kombothekra sounded apologetic about contradicting Simon. ‘She babysat for Lucy from time to time, that was all. And, yes, she referred to her husband and daughter in the diary as “Lucy” and “Mark”, but what about “my terminally cheerful mother”?’
    ‘There’s a clear difference between inventing your own private, comic labels for friends and family and saying “a man called William Markes”. Don’t tell me you can’t see it. Would you ever describe the Snowman as “a man called Giles Proust”? In a diary that no one else was meant to read?’ Come to think of it, Simon had never heard Kombothekra refer to Inspector Proust as ‘the Snowman’. Whereas Simon, Sellers and Gibbs often forgot that it wasn’t his real and only name.
    ‘Okay, good point.’ Kombothekra nodded encouragingly. ‘So, where does that take us? Let’s say William Markes was someone Geraldine didn’t know. But she knew of him . . .’
    ‘Obviously.’
    ‘. . . so how could someone she doesn’t know and has never met be in a position to ruin her life?’
    Simon resented having to answer. ‘I’m a disabled, gay, Jewish communist living in Germany in the late 1930s,’ he said wearily. ‘I’ve never met Adolf Hitler, and I don’t know him personally . . .’
    ‘Okay,’ Kombothekra conceded. ‘So something she’d heard about this William Markes person made her think he might ruin her life. But we can’t find him. We can’t find a William Markes—even with the surname spelled in all its possible variations—who had any connection with Geraldine Bretherick whatsoever.’
    ‘Doesn’t mean he doesn’t exist,’ said Simon as they got out of the car. Mark Bretherick stood in the porch, watching them with wide, stunned eyes. He had flung open the front door while they were still undoing their seat belts. The same had happened yesterday. Had he been waiting in the hall, peering through the leaded stained glass? Simon wondered. Walking round his enormous house, searching every room for his missing wife and daughter, who were as alive in his mind as they’d ever been? He was wearing the same pale blue shirt and black corduroy trousers he had worn since he’d found Geraldine and Lucy’s bodies. The shirt had tide-marks under the arms, dried sweat.
    Bretherick stepped outside, on to the drive, then immediately reversed the action, retreating back into his porch as if he’d suddenly noticed the distance between his visitors and himself and didn’t have the energy.
    ‘She wrote a suicide note.’ Kombothekra’s quiet voice followed Simon towards the house. ‘Her husband and her mother said there was no doubt the handwriting was hers, and our subsequent checks proved them right.’ Another thing Kombothekra did all the time: hit you with his best point, the one he’d been saving up, at a moment when he knew you wouldn’t be able to reply.
    Simon was already extending a hand to Mark Bretherick, who seemed thinner even than yesterday. His bony hand closed around Simon’s and held it in a rigid grip, as if he wanted to test the bones inside.
    ‘DC Waterhouse. Sergeant. Thank you for coming.’
    ‘It’s no problem,’ said Simon. ‘How are you bearing up?’
    ‘I don’t think I am.’ Bretherick stood aside to let them in. ‘I’m not sure what I’m doing, if anything.’ He sounded angry; it wasn’t the bewildered voice Simon had grown used to. Bretherick had found a fluency; each word was no longer a struggle.
    ‘Are you sure this is the best place for you to be? Alone?’