The Family Remains(93)

Chicago has healed me. Lucy and her children have healed me. And now this unctuous pasta aglio e olio is also healing me. When I get back to London, I will reclaim my identity. I will reclaim Henry Lamb. I will own the little boy who I last saw looking at me in a mirror in a Chelsea townhouse all those years ago. I have no reason to pretend not to be him any more. No reason whatsoever.

‘Oh,’ says Lucy, breaking into my thoughts. ‘I can’t believe I didn’t ask. But Phin? Did you ever find him?’

I cough on a mouthful of pasta and bring my napkin to my face.

‘No,’ I say. ‘No, unfortunately not. But not for lack of trying.’

I see something pass across her features then. I’m not sure what it is. Disbelief? Fear? But it’s gone before I can grab hold of it to analyse and then she smiles again.

‘Ah, well,’ she says. ‘Maybe it wasn’t destined to be.’

‘Maybe not,’ I say. ‘Maybe not.’





Part Five





63




Samuel


The screen goes blank, taking Henry Lamb with it. I run my hands down my face.

Donal glances at me.

‘Pub?’

My head says, No, go home, Samuel, sleep. But my heart makes my mouth say, ‘Yes. Pub.’

The pub is busy, the pavement teems with Friday-night drinkers, the night is warm and still almost light. Donal braves the queue at the bar, and I sit on a stool at a tall table that has just been vacated. I try to let the day’s stress pass through me in a Zen-like fashion, from my core, via my breath. But it has been such a long day. I have driven to Wales and back, even before conducting three back-to-back interviews. My body holds on to its stresses stubbornly and I know that only alcohol will help me to release them. While I wait for Donal, I switch on my phone. There is a message from Cath Manwaring. She wants to know how I got on with Justin earlier. I assume that she is being nosey, wanting to get full value from her Good Samaritan phone call of earlier today. But then she says that she is worried about him. That he normally comes to the pub on a Friday night but that this evening he’s not there and does Samuel know anything about his whereabouts.

Have you arrested him? she asks.

I reply quickly: No. He was not arrested. I left him in his van, at around 2pm.

Did he seem upset?

No. He seemed OK.

I think I’ll send my husband up there. I’m worried. I feel guilty.

Please, Mrs Manwaring, don’t feel guilty. You did the right thing. Justin’s recollections were very, very helpful.

I hope you’re right, Detective, I really do.

Donal appears with my pint. It looks miraculous as he sets it down on the tabletop, a golden, beautiful thing that I could not have dreamed of at any point during this day that has felt endless and resulted in nothing. Henry Lamb has shown me how impossible this case is. We cannot prove anything. It is all anecdotal. The case is thick with dust and I cannot cut through it and now, as I take my first large sip of the ice-cold beer that I deserve so much, I feel my grip, my resolve start to weaken. How much more of the taxpayers’ money can I throw at this thing? An evil woman. A woman loved by nobody, missed by nobody, a woman with shards of ice in her heart. A case of child abuse where no evidence remains, where numerous people were in the house, where no records of any description exist for an entire six-year period of time, where a family of itinerants moved in and took over without anyone ever knowing. It’s impossible. It’s terrible. It’s going to kill me if I keep fussing at it. I think maybe I must let it go. Maybe. But first I will finish this beer and talk nonsense with Donal and then I will go to bed and tomorrow I will decide if there is anything more to be done here.

Because there is something still niggling and nagging at me and that thing is Henry Lamb. He is more than just a damaged child. There is something else about him, something twisted. Something wrong. I have not drawn the US authorities’ attention to the fact that both Henry and Lucy entered the country on fake passports. I need them both to return. I need them here, in London, close at hand, because there’s more to this story, I know there is.

I am halfway through a second pint of lager when my phone buzzes. It’s another message from Cath Manwaring. I read it and my heart stops beating.

Please. Call me. It’s about Justin. Something terrible has happened.





64




July 2018


Rachel returned to Antibes a few days later. Michael’s body had been discovered by Joy, his housekeeper, and the police, of course, wanted to speak to her. Yes, she told them, she had visited him just a week ago. Yes, they had left on bad terms. Yes, they were separated. Yes, there were some financial issues they’d been trying to iron out. But no, she said, no, I had no real reason to kill him. None whatsoever. I left his house, she told them, determined that I would never see him again.

He was an abuser, she told them, a criminal, a man who sold equipment to drug manufacturers, who operated inside a netherworld of darkness and subterfuge and kept a handgun in his home office. He was a bad man, and she was glad that he was dead, but no, she had not killed him, and she had no idea who might have done so. He owed a lot of people a lot of money, she told them. He knew some very bad people. There were a lot of people in this world, she told them, who might have cause to want Michael Rimmer dead. A lot of people.