Cambridge Blue - Alison Bruce [122]
‘I’m going to interview him?’
‘Why not? Your interview with his sister made very good TV.’
For the nine-to-fivers in the city of Cambridge, the day had only just begun. Schools were ringing their bells for morning break and the traffic had settled down after the rush hour. Goodhew glanced out of the nearest window and saw heavy clouds were heading in their direction; he guessed that meant another wet twenty-four hours. Already he wished the day was over. He was fuzzy with tiredness and had spent the first few hours of the morning reviving his brain with a succession of cups of coffee. He’d reused each polystyrene cup until it cracked, but even so was about to ditch the third of the morning. He took his latest half-drunk cup along with him to Interview Room 3, where Alice and Richard Moran sat side by side.
Alice was looking slightly tidier than immaculate. Whereas on previous occasions her appearance had been A-grade faultless, today she deserved an added star for extra endeavour. Richard, on the other hand, had crumpled even further, and now looked as though he were the shorter of the two. The combined effect gave the impression that they shared the same reserves of energy and emotional strength and just passed them back and forth by osmosis.
As Marks held up the journal, Richard’s gaze did a skittish jig from one person to the next, whereas Alice just said, ‘Oh.’
‘Do you know what this item is?’ Marks asked.
Richard nodded and Alice said, ‘Yes, of course. My father kept journals for as long as we can remember: the burgundy ones were for work and the dark-blue ones were about our . . .’ She took a breath, ‘our family.’
‘I see, and why didn’t you tell us that one of them was missing?’
‘I didn’t know.’ She turned to Richard. ‘Did you, Richard?’
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘They were packed away with the rest of his possessions.’ He looked down into his hands. ‘Jackie’s here, isn’t she?’
‘She’s been making a statement. But this diary was found at Victoria Nugent’s house.’
‘Is Jackie under arrest?’ Richard asked. Alice was watching him closely, but didn’t seem unhappy that he’d decided to do the talking.
‘Not yet,’ Goodhew replied. ‘Tell me about your half-brother, David.’
Richard’s gaze then met his sister’s, and from his imploring expression Goodhew guessed it was some kind of SOS.
It was Alice who replied, ‘Because of what my father wrote?’
‘I can’t comment.’
She scowled. ‘Well, it wouldn’t have come from anywhere else. David was the youngest of us – I think I told you that before – and he died. He was a small baby, but not ever ill, as far as I can remember. Our stepmother had put him down for an afternoon nap and she found him dead a couple of hours later – a cot death, the doctors said.’ She looked towards her brother. ‘Except our father couldn’t accept that, could he?’
Richard shook his head and picked up the story, the handover seamless. ‘Our stepmother wasn’t a healthy woman, she suffered from severe post-natal depression after Jackie was born, and by the time David arrived, she’d started drinking heavily too.’
‘And your father blamed her?’
‘No, no, he felt he needed to protect her. You see, he thought Jackie had killed David because she was jealous of him. But she was only six at the time and he felt that she wouldn’t have understood what she’d done. If she’d been taken away, our stepmother would have been devastated, Jackie was all she had.’
‘Apart from you two?’
Richard shrugged. ‘She was only our stepmother. In any case, who would hand over their six-year-old child, even in that situation? She probably would have been institutionalized, and for what purpose? I can quite understand why our father kept quiet.’
Alice took over again. ‘But that’s when he started keeping his notes on Jackie.