Peter Robinson - Not Dark Yet

‘What did you say?’

‘After I got over the shock, I said I didn’t think she’d be interested, that she would be happy where she was again once she... Anyway, he wouldn’t give up. He wanted to talk to her so he could try to persuade her to go to Albania.’

‘What did you tell him?’

Charlotte turned away.

‘Charlotte?’

Slowly, she looked up, tears in her eyes. ‘I made a mistake,’ she said. ‘I gave him her mobile number.’

Annie looked at Gerry. ‘The man she met on the cliffs,’ she said. ‘The reason she was running.’

‘What?’ Charlotte said.

‘Nothing. What else did you say?’

Charlotte paused and glanced at Jessica Bowen, who whispered in her ear. Charlotte nodded and went on. ‘I told him that she was very upset. I told him what happened at the party. I told him that Blaydon had raped Marnie. Raped his daughter. Leka was already paranoid enough about Connor’s loyalty. It didn’t take much to push him over the edge. His men had also seen Connor talking to a policeman — Banks — who wasn’t on his payroll.’

‘And then?’

‘A few days later, Connor was dead. I honestly never imagined all this would happen. I thought they might beat him up or something, put him in hospital. He deserved that. And I was angry. I couldn’t think of any other way to get back at him. All right, so maybe I was a little bit crazy, too. Marnie absolutely refused to bring the police in. She said she knew what it was like for rape victims. I wasn’t strong or brave enough to do anything myself. I thought maybe this would work, if I stirred things up, that maybe Leka or his friends would beat Connor up or something. I never imagined that they’d murder him.’

‘And Marnie? Did Gashi tell you that he found her?’

‘No. I’ve no idea whether he ever met her. I never saw Marnie again, and I haven’t seen Leka since.’

Annie wondered if what she was hearing was mere naiveté or whether she had been outflanked and outwitted. ‘That’s what Gashi is, Charlotte,’ she said. ‘A killer. And we think he might have been to see Marnie in Dorset on the day she died. Maybe he told her he was her father and tried to persuade her to go to Albania with him. We don’t know, but she appeared to be running away from him. Witnesses saw a man getting into a posh silver car. Gashi drives a grey Mercedes. It’s close enough.’

‘He didn’t...?’

‘No, he didn’t kill her. She took her own life, Charlotte. She jumped off a cliff.’

‘Because of him?’

‘I doubt it. Though I’m sure he contributed. If what you told me earlier is correct, I’d guess he was just putting the proposition to her.’

‘But he couldn’t force her, could he?’

‘Maybe. But I don’t think so. I think she was upset enough to start with because of the trauma of the rape, and the pregnancy. Gashi only increased her confusion. I imagine that she listened for a while, and when it all got too much for her, her resolve strengthened, and she ran. She didn’t want to hear any more. That’s why she was running when she reached Durdle Door. Not because he was going to harm her or anything. It was just all too much. She did what she had intended to do anyway.’

Charlotte put her head in her hands.

The Albanians, Annie thought. Dammit, it was the Albanians all along, even if not for the reasons she had thought. But she was right. And Charlotte’s crime? They called it ‘soliciting to murder,’ and it could carry a life sentence. Gashi certainly wouldn’t be helping them, even if they could find him. He was hardly going to admit that Charlotte had more or less asked him to murder Blaydon and that he had done so. And it would be damn near impossible to prove anything; they would have their work cut out convincing the CPS that Charlotte had solicited Blaydon’s murder merely by telling Gashi about the rape, and that he was the girl’s father. Unless...

‘Is it true?’ she asked softly. ‘Was Leka Gashi Marnie’s father?’

Charlotte stared at her, wide-eyed, and said, ‘No.’

‘Are you sure?’

Charlotte simply reached for another tissue and nodded.

‘Blaydon?’

‘No.’

‘Then who? Do you know?’

‘It was after I got back to Oxford,’ she said. ‘The middle of July. There was an old boyfriend. His name doesn’t matter. We got too carried away to worry about precautions.’

‘But Marnie’s birthday was 15 March. You say you slept with Blaydon and Gashi in mid-June. That works out at exactly nine months from...’ Annie put her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, my God,’ she said. ‘Marnie was a month premature, wasn’t she, born after only eight months?’

‘That’s right.’

Annie looked at Gerry. ‘We should have known. Francine Sedgwick, Marnie’s mother, told us the baby they adopted had been born early, kept in the hospital a little longer than usual.’

‘Do what you want with me,’ Charlotte said. ‘I don’t care any more. I’ve told you the truth and that’s all there is to it.’

There was still ‘soliciting to murder’, which they might have a better chance of proving now that Charlotte admitted she had lied to Gashi about his being Marnie’s father, but even then, there were so many extenuating circumstances, the CPS might easily refuse to prosecute. All that remained was ‘wasting police time’ or ‘interfering in a police investigation’ or ‘obstruction of justice’ — lesser charges, but still serious. But it was unlikely that anything much would happen to Charlotte Westlake, Annie thought. And maybe that was all for the best. What would be the point in locking her up in prison? As was so often the case, she would probably be far harder on herself than the law would be on her. After all, she had been indirectly responsible for three deaths: Connor Clive Blaydon, Neville Roberts, and Marnie Sedgwick.

Jessica Bowen was busy making notes, and Charlotte was lost in her own grief. Then Jessica glanced up at Annie, questioning.

Annie just shrugged. ‘Later,’ she said. ‘We’ll consider all the options. But later.’

They gathered up their papers and left.

Banks got back to Newhope Cottage around six-thirty that evening, had a quick shower, and changed clothes. He picked up a bottle of Cahors from the rack, then he was ready to set off for Ray’s.

After ringing Jean-Claude and finding out that there hadn’t been a hint or whisper about Zelda visiting Paris recently, he had spent the morning wandering the bookstalls beside the Seine on the Left Bank, where he had bought a hefty copy of À la recherche du temps perdu in the original French. He didn’t know why, as he hadn’t been able to get very far with it in English, but it had just seemed the thing to do. And it wasn’t very expensive. He also bought what he guessed was a reproduction of a sixties poster for Francoise Hardy’s debut studio album, Tous les garçons et les filles , the picture with the umbrella. She looked just like the woman he had seen on the Rue Montmartre with the four long-stemmed roses.

He had no real news to give Ray, but at least he could try to keep his friend’s mind off his worries for a few hours. He sometimes felt a little guilty for contributing to Ray’s optimism about Zelda, when he had no definite idea where she was or what she was doing, but then he also believed that she might turn up one day, when things had blown over.

He also had a vague idea where she might be, gleaned from the Moleskine notebook, and he thought he could probably track her down if he wanted to. But he would give her time to make the first move, if that was what she wanted to do. She would either return in her own time, or she wouldn’t. He had no idea if it was fear of arrest that was keeping her away. The file was still open on the two corpses in the burned-out treatment plant, but given the lack of solid evidence, even that investigation would soon slow to a crawl.