Murder in Time Read Online Free Page A

just been diagnosed with breast cancer. Second time round. He was disgusted. He washed his hands of me. He sold up and moved down to the south coast. He said I was on my own, and that he didn’t want me bothering them again. I did what everyone else does; I went to Social Services, they gave me a bed-sitter and finally allocated me a one-bedroom flat, really run down but at least I could shut the front door on the world. I tried to find work. My A-level results were good, but I couldn’t get a proper job with a baby on the way and no parental support. I took whatever jobs I could get. Cleaning, mostly.’
    She laid a hand on Mikey’s shoulder. ‘When you were born I realized whose son you must be. What a shock! I’d never in a thousand years have thought that Abdi was interested in me. He’d been to one or two of our parties in the past but I don’t think I’d ever even had a proper conversation with him. We had nothing in common. To think that he’d been one of the men who’d raped me! For maybe sixty seconds, Mikey, I hated you … and then you opened your eyes and looked up at me. They say babies can’t focus that early, but you did. And I loved you with all my heart.
    â€˜I tried to contact your father, of course. I looked in the phone book and there was his address. Not far away. I delivered a note to the house telling them that I’d had a baby and that he was the father. I didn’t expect much. I thought he might make me some sort of allowance … but that was stupid of me, wasn’t it? I’d given him my address. He came to see me there. He said I was trying to blackmail him, to force him into marriage, that it wouldn’t work, that he didn’t believe me, anyway. He said that if I persisted in trying to damage his reputation, he’d have me killed.’
    â€˜Killed!’ Ellie repeated.
    Vera nodded. ‘He’d been spoiled. Too much money. Brought up to think he could do whatever he liked. He told me the family was moving away and warned me not to try approaching him again.’
    â€˜But now he wants to make amends?’
    â€˜No,’ said Vera. ‘I don’t think so, do you? Mikey, tell me you understand how it was.’
    The boy didn’t look at her. He slung the cat over his shoulder and got to his feet in one smooth movement. And removed himself.
    Vera grimaced, on the point of tears. But she was a brave lass and used to bearing her troubles alone. So she ducked her head at Ellie and Thomas, and followed her son out of the room and up the stairs. Quietly.
    Silence.
    Thomas went to stand at the window, looking out on to the garden. ‘I’m trying to think where I was twelve years ago. July 2002. A sabbatical? Yes, that’s it. All that summer, I was in a terraced house in Cambridge. Pleasant enough. I was working on that textbook, and my first wife was … That was the year in which she began to fade away. Did Dr McKenzie’s death make the national papers?’
    Ellie looked back into the past, too. Her first husband had still been alive, and they’d lived in a pleasant three-bedroom semi near the church where they’d both worshipped … the same church to which Thomas had been appointed after his wife had died, when he’d been told to take it easy for a while. As if Thomas ever took anything easy. Even now, in his semi-retirement, he was editing a national church magazine and filling in at local churches when the incumbent was on holiday or otherwise unable to take a service.
    She said, ‘I really can’t remember much about the murder. It must have been in the local papers, but I only have a hazy memory of it. My first husband was still alive then.’ And kicking. Frank had considered wives ought to know their place … which was in the home. Just as Vera’s father had done.
    Ellie had believed him until he’d died and she’d learned to think for herself.