The Philosophy of Disgrace Read online

  Angela shrugged, ‘can drink it in the lounge if you want. I have chairs.’

  He followed her through and perched himself on the edge of a large leather sofa. ‘Nice place.’

  ‘Thanks. Is it me, or have we just had a bloody strange day?’

  ‘Oddest I’ve never known. Mind if I recap, you can correct me if I’m wrong?’

  ‘Fire away guv, fire away.’

  ‘OK, let me see if I’ve got this right. The mother is barking, lost the plot. The father is a drunk, a waste of space. Frances is a spoilt bitch; Stella is the Cinderella character. Right?’

  Watson nodded and handed him another beer.

  ‘Porter had been interfering with Stella for years and the mother turns a blind eye to it, there has been one pregnancy when Stella was thirteen, which explains our dead baby. Ferris says stillborn, Stella says smothered at birth by Valerie. The clothes he was found in were the clothes intended for Valerie’s child, the one she miscarried. When Stella is sixteen, there’s another baby, Rachel, who Valerie takes on as her own kid. Stella leaves school, ends up working in the shop so no one knows she’s pregnant, and the mother, sorry Stepmother takes the kid on and passes her off as her own. Have I got this right?’

  ‘That’s the way I heard it boss.’ Watson said with a shudder.

  ‘Right, so, Valerie’s had enough of the old man’s shenanigans when she finds out he’s having a go at Frances, so she boots him out and pretends he’s dead. But Stella looks out for him, gives him money, takes him food lets him live in the flat above the shop til he takes to the streets. By the way, we have some explaining to do to Benton about the fact we missed the flat above the shop. She is not going to like that one bit.’

  ‘Fuck Benton, off the record of course. What I don’t get is how Stella could look after the guy when he’d done that to her, her own father for Christ’s sake. Makes me want to vomit!’ Angela said with a shudder, trying to push the picture of it out of her mind. She had seen the man in the psychiatric unit, a filthy old drunk. In her opinion, he should be shot.

  ‘I know, I know, difficult to stomach. The only thing I can think of is that he was the only one left out of her old life. Let’s face it she is one seriously fucked up individual. Whatever the truth, we aren’t going to get a conviction out of this, so she’ll be going to Broadmoor.’

  ‘Well at least we know what happened to the baby, poor little sod. I don’t’ know about you but I don’t believe that Valerie smothered him. I think Ferris is right, besides if Valerie wanted a boy, she would have kept him and smothered Rachel, right?’

  Ratcliffe pulled a face, ‘Maybe, don’t suppose we’ll ever know. Besides its all semantics really, even if Stella is telling the truth, there isn’t anyone to bring to book.’

  ‘What about Roy Baxter, do you buy her version of events there?’ Angela wanted to know.

  Ratcliffe rubbed his forehead and exhaled slowly. ‘Don’t know, but she’s still the prime suspect even though she insists it wasn’t her. I kind of want to believe her though.’ He said, looking at Angela for affirmation of his instincts.

  Angela scoffed, ‘what? You want to believe all that about him having a fling with Charlie Jones’s wife and planning to leave, and her being relieved. I mean, come on, she claims that Valerie practically sold her to Baxter with the promise of money he soon found out didn’t exist! I mean I can accept it was a loveless marriage and all, but her story isn’t exactly an alibi, in fact it’s more of a motive than anything else.’

  ‘I think she genuinely believed that he left her. She hated him all right, and I can’t say I blame her. But, if she is a killer, why not kill Valerie? She made her life more of a misery than Baxter ever did?’

  Angela threw herself back in the chair, defeated. ‘I don’t know guv. I can’t make head or tale of any of it. It’s the weirdest story I’ve ever heard, that’s a fact’.

  ‘You’re not wrong there kid. Got any more of that beer going?’

  ‘Yeah, but you’re driving aren’t you?’

  He gave her a sly grin, ‘Thought I might commandeer your sofa tonight?’

  Angela shook her head and fetched him another drink. ‘No wonder your wife doesn’t bloody understand you!’

  Stella contemplated the meal the custody sergeant had just deposited in front of her. A shrivelled beef burger, some congealed beans, and a scoop of mashed potato, all served unceremoniously on a paper plate. He handed her a plastic knife and fork and she thanked him. Though it was possibly the most unappetising food she had ever been faced with, she ate it anyway. Better to force it down than stay hungry. She had a morbid fear of hunger. Withdrawing food had been one of Valerie’s favourite punishments.

  After she had eaten, and placed the plastic cutlery neatly on top of the plate on the shelf near the cell door, she lay on the hard bunk, rolling up the blanket to make a pillow. They had taken her shoes, her coat and her belt. Anything in fact, which she might have used to hurt herself with. Curling herself into a tight, foetal ball, she went back over what she had told the police that day.

  She had told them the truth. Of course, they were shocked about her relationship with her father. Nevertheless, she loved him, despite all his faults, she loved him. And he loved her. Though now he didn’t even know who she was. Was it so wrong to seek comfort in the people one loved? By the look on their faces it was. She had always known that other people wouldn’t understand, her father had told her that. They would impose wrongness on it, he’d said. He was right, they had. Valerie had never prevented it, but she must have known, wasn’t it her jealousy of it that had driven her to do the things she did? It must have been or she would never have taken the babies the way she had.

  The first one had been a shock. She had known that something was happening to her body, she was getting fat, which was hard in a house where food was a bargaining chip. No one had noticed, not until the pains had started and she had thought she was going to die. Valerie had made Frances hold a rag in her mouth to stop her screaming during the birth, there had been a lot of pain, and a lot of blood. She had never seen the baby, it had never cried, neither had she. She didn’t even know it was a boy until she had read the paper, she had cried then. Had whispered it into her father’s ear the next time she saw him, but he had just stared at her, his eyes blank.

  Rachel had been different, she had known then what was happening, had hidden it too, but had known what was making her belly swell. Valerie had noticed more quickly that time, had pulled her out of school, had fed her and made her rest and then taken the baby for her own.

  Her father had not been pleased, had turned away from her, and now wouldn’t look at her anymore. He just drank and shut the door in her face. He wouldn’t speak to anyone, only Frances. She had hated Frances even more than usual then. She wasn’t allowed to touch the baby and she wasn’t allowed to see her father. Then Valerie threw him out because she had found him in Frances’s room.

  He had stayed in the flat for a while, taking her money, eating the food she took for him, drinking the brandy she left by the door. But he didn’t love her anymore. Didn’t even look at her. Valerie had found out about the flat and had made him leave, he had lived on the streets then, but she’d still looked after him. Until he disappeared. It had taken her years to find out where he’d gone, but she’d gone to him as soon as he’d found out.

  They hadn’t believed her about Roy, she knew that for sure. They still thought that she had killed him. It wasn’t true, though she had thought about it a few times. Valerie had made her marry him, because he’d thought they had money. Valerie had thought vice versa. She was easily taken in by a well cut suit and a flash car, but that was all there was to Roy. Just a car, some clothes, and a temper.

  He had been a builder, had taken Charlie Jones on as his little acolyte, enjoying the role of teacher and mentor, enjoying the fact that he could seduce Charlie’s girlfriend with practised ease. She wasn’t the first, and she wasn’t the only one either. Even Frances
chased after him like a lovesick puppy, giving Stella snide glances as she flirted with him. She flirted with Charlie too. However, she hadn’t really cared, she had her father and she had Rachel, what the others did hadn’t mattered.

  She had stood in court and given evidence against Charlie Jones, not just because it was the right thing to do, she had seen him kneeling by Patsy’s body holding the knife after all. No, it hadn’t been just that, she had been angry too. Roy had been planning to leave with Patsy, she had wanted that, wanted to be free of him, and in killing Patsy, Charlie had robbed her of that freedom, it was only fair that she played her part in robbing him of his. Only fair.

  When Roy had gone a few months later, she had been relieved. So relieved she had never questioned it. In the weeks after Patsy’s death, he had been a mess, showing a depth of grief that had surprised her. She hadn’t realised he was capable of love, or the kind of cruelty the loss of it had brought out in him.

  When he had gone, the space he had occupied in their lives had closed subtly and succinctly, it was as if he had never existed. No one talked about him, and no one grieved his absence, not even Frances who had been his biggest fan.

  Life had consisted then of the shop, of home, of Rachel, of keeping her father alive, of tolerating Valerie, avoiding Frances when possible, of being civil to Frances’s fiancé Peter, and being rude to Rachel’s boyfriend. Then Lilian had died, Valerie had smelled money, and Rachel had run away. It had broken her heart when she found out that Rachel had had a baby and had married Charlie Jones and that she would never see her again.

  It was only a few years ago that she had found out what Valerie had done, had heard the cruel lie that had robbed her of her daughter and her grandchild. Valerie had been particularly unpleasant that day, her health was failing and she was eaten up with bitterness by then, and would goad, push and poke at Stella at every opportunity. But the best strategy with Valerie was never to bite, never to acknowledge the sting of her words. She had tried to walk away that day, but Valerie liked to win, and had played her trump card, spewing out the lie she had told that had sent Rachel away. Then she had laughed, Stella could her now, in her mind’s eye, laughing at her, head thrown back, showing her rotten yellow teeth, pointing her skinny crooked finger at her and laughing.

  It had felt like a piece of elastic snapping in her brain, a twang that had released her from the quiet reason she had always known. Something unfamiliar and liberating had sent her running across the room towards that hideous gaping hole of a mouth and had forced her to pick up a cushion and press it with all her might against the source of that awful tortuous noise. She had kept it there until the skinny arms had stopped clawing at her, and had sagged lifeless to the old woman’s sides. Only then did she take the cushion away so that she could spit in the face that had caused her so much misery.

  Valerie hadn’t died, but she had had a stroke, her face collapsed in a horror mask of shock and disbelief. Stella had watched dispassionately as her tormentor had fought to get out of the chair, her face creasing with confusion as her body and her voice refused to do her bidding. When she was sure that Valerie was not going to regain her speech she had called an ambulance. It was a day later, she thought, but she couldn’t be sure, she had spent a long time watching. She hadn’t told the police about the cushion, just that Valerie had had a stroke and that she had closed the shop in order to care for her.

  And care for her she had, in that mouldering old house, just the two of them, Valerie silent with just her own thoughts for company, Stella at peace with her world, though it was decaying around her ears. It was surprising how little money two people could survive on, especially when one of you ate so little. Just porridge, twice a day, every day. Cheap and nutritious, at least that had been what Valerie had told Stella when she’d fed it to her as a child. If you economised on one person, the other could have more, and Stella had whatever she wanted, and ate it in front of Valerie. She had learned a lot from Valerie over the years, everything she knew about looking after those less fortunate than herself had come from her stepmother’s teaching.

  Then, Valerie had died all on her own. Another stroke. And Stella had been free for a little while. She had left the house the day of the funeral, after Frances and Peter had left. She knew there would be trouble as soon as Peter found out there would be no inheritance, not then anyway. There was no reason to stay. So she had gone to the flat and then sought out her father to tell him the good news.

  Then her face had been in the newspaper. She had read the article and come to the quiet conclusion that there was no peace for the wicked. After all, hadn’t her whole life been a cliché?

  Ratcliffe lay on Angela’s sofa, zipped uncomfortable into a too warm sleeping bag, wearing just his underpants. He had phoned Maria and left a message telling her he would not be home that night. She was used to it, so used to it she didn’t even bother to stay home and wait for him anymore, god knows where she was when he rang, probably at some Pilates class or at her book group. After the day he’d had even Angela’s sofa had more appeal than a night in front of the TV with a microwave meal and his own company. Even when Maria did come home she would just complain about the mess he’d made, then take herself off up to bed in the spare room, where she would spend the night banging on the wall to interrupt his snoring. He didn’t know why he stayed really, or why she did for that matter, he guessed that neither of them really had anywhere better to be, either that or it didn’t occur to them to look. He didn’t hate her, but he just didn’t like her very much anymore.

  When he thought about the Porter clan, he figured he ought to count himself lucky. His loveless marriage was a walk in the park compared to that melting pot of iniquity. The story that Stella had told beggared belief and left him in a difficult situation. She had accused her father of incest, but the man was old, hardly able to withstand arrest let alone trial. Besides, though she had made the claim, she didn’t see it as the real crime of her past. In Stella’s mind, Valerie was the real abuser. The whole business left a sour taste in Ratcliffe’s mouth and for the first time since he had worked for her he had to concur that his bosses instincts about his case had been good, Benton had steered well clear of it. However, Stella had still not confessed to the murder of her husband. They couldn’t legitimately hold her much longer without charging her, so either way, confession or not, he would have to charge her the next day. He glanced up at the clock, and saw that it was already the next day.

  Amy sat on the steps of the building where her mother lived, aware that the woman in the cafe was sending surreptitious glances at her from across the road. In less than twenty-four hours, everything that she had ever been certain of had turned on its head, and she didn’t know what to do.

  The door behind her clicked open and a small, elderly woman towing an excitable little dog made her way down the steps giving Amy a disproving glance as she passed.

  ‘Come along Miffy, we shall go for our walk in the park, where there are benches for people to sit on’, the woman said loudly as she made off down the road, her chin raised showing an indignant profile.

  Amy glanced backwards and noticed that the door was still slowly easing shut, without thinking she hurtled up the steps and caught it a fraction of a second before it closed. Without looking behind her, she slipped quietly into the building and found herself in a large hallway. The house was immensely quiet after the busy rush of the London streets. Now that she was inside, she was undecided about her next move.

  She walked along the silent passageway, noting the number of the first door. Her mother’s flat must be upstairs. Feeling like a thief, she made her way up the stairs, expecting that at any moment someone would leap out and start yelling at her. But the hushed house presented no unpleasant surprises. Except for the dried blood on the landing floor, smeared and dirty from many feet.

  The door to her mother’s flat stood ajar. A thin strip of crime scene tape had been stuck across the doorframe as if it would actually ke
ep anyone out. Checking once more to be sure, some silent, stealthy witness wasn’t observing her, she ducked under the tape and walked into the flat. Opposite the front door was a kitchen, the floor of which was thickly covered in smeared, congealing blood. She stared at it for a long time, unable to establish the name of any emotion she could attach to the scene. The blood looked so incongruous, juxtaposed as it was against a backdrop of faded 1950’s domesticity. All china and chintz, it looked like a murder scene set from a bad Agatha Christie film. It occurred to her that a pool of blood on the floor would never look congruent, no matter what the setting.

  She wandered through to the sitting room. It was furnished like a rococo boudoir. Everything was ornate, all scrolled and fussy. Not what she had expected at all, it painted a picture of some femme fatale, dressed to kill, sporting a martini. There was even a cocktail cabinet to prove the point. It wasn’t the picture of her mother that she’d had in her mind at all. From the one or two photo’s she had ever seen, Rachel did not look like someone who would drape fringed silk shawls over lampshades.

  This didn’t fit. She was trying to imagine her father here, last night, attacking her mother. It didn’t fit. Though her heart told her he couldn’t have done it, logic told her he must have. Rachel had been attacked, he had been here, and his van was on CCTV. And it hadn’t been the first time. An unexpected butterfly of fear unfurled its’ wings in her gut and fluttered painfully through her chest. No one was who they pretended to be, not him, not the mother who was supposed to be dead, not her grandmother. If they weren’t who they were supposed to be, who was she? It seemed she was the child of a violent misogynist and some kind of nostalgia freak hooker, and the grandchild of a liar. The thought made her laugh and want to cry at the same time, she put her hand across her mouth to stifle a sob and sank down miserably onto a chaise longue.

  She didn’t notice her father come into the room.