The Bad Things: A gripping crime thriller full of twists and turns
Mary-Jane Riley
A darkly compelling psychological thriller, full of twists and turns, perfect for fans of SISTER SISTER by Sue Fortin and INTO THE WATER by Paula Hawkins.We all have our secrets, some are just darker than others.Alex Devlin’s life changed forever fifteen years ago when her sister Sasha's two small children were snatched in broad daylight. Little Harry’s body was found a few days later, but Millie’s remains were never discovered.Now Jackie Wood, jailed as an accessory to the twins’ murder, has been released, her conviction quashed by the Appeal Court. Convinced Jackie can reveal where Millie is buried, Alex goes to meet her.But the unexpected information Wood reveals shocks Alex to the core and threatens to uncover the dark secret she has managed to keep under wraps for the past fifteen years. Because in the end, can we ever really know what is in the hearts of those closest to us?
THE BAD THINGS
Mary-Jane Riley
an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
Copyright (#udef4f4e1-2527-5db8-82f3-dd3209332ad2)
This is a work of fiction. Any references to real people, living or dead, real events, businesses, organizations and localities are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. All names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental.
Killer Reads
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2015
Copyright © Mary-Jane Riley 2015
Mary-Jane Riley asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
Cover layout design by Micaela Alcaino © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017
Cover photograph © Shutterstock.com (http://www.shutterstock.com)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2015 ISBN: 9780008153779
Version 2017-12-08
For Kim, Edward, Peter and Esme
Contents
Cover (#udca85100-5408-53b7-8f91-7fcf286e0e1b)
Title Page (#u38c746d3-e456-5072-90c8-5e33280ff3e6)
Copyright (#u1efa906a-cb1a-5fc7-ae36-00d38c485537)
Dedication (#ub51372c7-225a-5bc2-b4d1-9bcb36c9e20a)
FIFTEEN YEARS AGO (#u48b37ae9-8a48-5816-82c4-0673431fcf19)
NOW (#u6efa843e-6e8d-5402-a7e2-b0dbdcbba615)
Chapter 1 (#u3d565b59-30a7-57e7-a804-5c967f4efda1)
Chapter 2 (#u48538a1f-98b6-585e-8850-e415980ea9ed)
Chapter 3 (#ued8c348d-4e3d-52ff-af90-772a0a280838)
Chapter 4 (#u908945e8-2f27-5579-b416-28c171f5fe0b)
Chapter 5 (#u1ce1d7e2-6b33-59c1-b730-11eab3e8d92a)
Chapter 6 (#u3a4f9baa-ac38-5cd0-a4e3-7454f43985be)
Chapter 7 (#u9ad8f5e4-72f7-53d3-9642-69c0e1bed8b4)
Chapter 8 (#u01111321-3358-57c1-a72d-9a9bd7136dd1)
Chapter 9 (#uc33ca711-0c41-516a-9710-019b18aca5b8)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 38 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 39 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 40 (#litres_trial_promo)
THEN (#litres_trial_promo)
Read on extract from After She Fell (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
FIFTEEN YEARS AGO (#udef4f4e1-2527-5db8-82f3-dd3209332ad2)
The stench was overpowering. Katie squatted on her haunches and pulled at the zip. The material tore; the metal teeth nicked her finger. Thoughts flashed through her mind: should she wait? Could this be evidence? She lifted the lid. The sightless, decaying eyes of a child stared up at her. The little boy, for it must have been a boy, was dressed in blue Thomas the Tank Engine pyjamas. His legs had been folded beneath his body so that he fitted neatly into the space. It rather looked, thought Katie, as if he’d been packed up, ready for death.
NOW (#udef4f4e1-2527-5db8-82f3-dd3209332ad2)
1 (#udef4f4e1-2527-5db8-82f3-dd3209332ad2)
The day Alex Devlin’s life imploded for the second time was one of those bleak February days in Suffolk when the light never got above murky and spring seemed months away. Outside, whey-faced men and women were hunched inside their coats, trying to get their business done and move on. Shopping, working, maybe just passing the time in a warm coffee shop on the High Street. The streets of Sole Bay could be unforgiving.
Standing in the kitchen of her little terraced house with her third cup of coffee of the day, Alex rolled her shoulders, trying to ease the tension in them. She turned on the radio, hoping some background noise would help her relax.
‘And now the news with Susan Rae.’
She hoped the couple of hours’ work she’d put in polishing her news feature about an undercover policeman who’d infiltrated the murky world of Eastern European organized crime had been worth the early start. She’d been awake since four – Christ, always four; that time of night when everything seems to be at its worst – doing her usual bout of worrying about her sixteen-year-old and how she could make ends meet. Two hours of tossing and turning had been enough, and that was when she’d decided to get up and get on with some work.
‘Five people have died in a multiple-vehicle accident on the M25. It happened during the rush hour in thick fog…’
Now she wanted a few minutes to herself before Gus blew in moaning and groaning.
Too late.
‘So?’ He glared at her, mouth a sulky pout and arms crossed, his slightly aggressive ‘whatever’ stance perfected.
It was as if the night, the dark, the four a.m. worrying hadn’t happened; her son was carrying on the argument that had begun the evening before. Alex hoped he’d forgotten about it. Some hope.
She rubbed her temples, fighting against the headache that was slowly but inevitably building, pulsing behind one eye. ‘Choose your battles’ had been her mantra for the past two years, since her adorable boy with his blonde curls and loving cuddles had turned into a sullen teenager – all grunts and hormones.
‘The Ukrainian opposition in Kiev say they have pulled out of the City Hall they have been occupying for the…’
‘So no you can’t go skiing with the school. I’m sorry. Nothing’s changed overnight.’ Alex said it as gently as she could. She would have loved him to go; of course she would if she had the money. Cash was tight, work not exactly coming in thick and fast. But it wasn’t just the money. She had real difficulty letting her son go and allowing him to spread his wings. He knew it and resented her for it.
‘Why not?’
Alex turned away and opened the fridge, taking out a bottle of milk and a tub of butter. ‘Cereal or toast?’ she asked, hoping an appeal to his stomach might defuse the situation.
‘Mum. This is like, really important to me. Everyone’s going. All my mates. And they need to fill up the places. If I don’t go I’ll really, really miss out. Like, I’ll be the odd one out and you don’t want that, do you?’
She took the bread out of the bread bin and put a slice in the toaster. ‘You know why not, Gus.’
‘It’s just crap.’ His sudden shout made her jump. ‘I never get to do anything with my friends. Never get to go anywhere. It’s like you don’t want me to enjoy myself. Have mates or anything.’
She filled the kettle, opened the cupboard, and took out a teabag and a cup. She waited for the kettle to boil and for her irritation to subside. Pushing her hair behind her ears, she realized it needed a good cut and another home dye job. ‘You know that’s not true, Gus. I only ever want the best for—’
‘Give it a rest, Mum.’
‘Downing Street has welcomed a further fall in unemployment and the Prime Minister said…’
His slumped shoulders and look of defeat made her feel worse. Something shifted inside her, a realization that she had to loosen the ties just a little, had to put the trials and tribulations of the last few months behind her. Just be thankful he hadn’t been expelled: joyriding and smoking cannabis not being on the school curriculum.
‘Look,’ she said, knowing she was going to regret it, ‘when do you have to have the money by?’
‘You can still pay in instalments. About five now, I think.’ His sulky, cross expression had miraculously transformed into one of hope and she had to damp down the normal sinking feeling in her stomach that went with any mention of money. ‘So it’s not as if you’ve got to pay it all upfront. Mum?’
The kettle whistled and the toast popped up. Too dark. Alex poured the water onto the teabag and started scraping the toast. She breathed out, trying not to think of the electric and the gas and the phone that all needed paying. ‘Get me the letter about it and I’ll see what I can do.’ She squished the teabag on the side of the mug with a spoon before fishing it out and plopping it into the sink.
His face lit up with a smile, the now habitual petulant look banished, at least, for the moment. ‘Mum, you’re the best.’
A woman jailed in connection with the murders of two children fifteen years ago has had her conviction quashed by the High Court in London. Jackie Wood had been …’
Alex froze. Oh God, Sasha, she thought. Oh God, oh God.
2 (#udef4f4e1-2527-5db8-82f3-dd3209332ad2)
Detective Inspector Kate Todd was sitting in the doctor’s waiting room idly flicking through a glossy magazine. She’d stabbed at the blasted machine on the wall that asked her personal questions in big letters, and confirmed it really was her for the appointment, before sitting down to wait; no doubt, in danger of catching some vile disease while she did so. The television murmured in the corner. She tried to focus on the magazine in her hands. Babies. Food for babies. Getting your baby to sleep. Bloody babies everywhere. She flung it down on the wooden table in front, eliciting a frown from the woman next to her.
‘Sorry,’ said Kate.
The woman gave her a small smile then shrugged. ‘They’re usually dead boring, those magazines. Years out of date, some of them. I’m reading about summer holidays three years ago.’
‘Hmm. Yes.’ Kate was being polite. Didn’t want to get into conversation. Just wanted to get this over and done with and back to the station. Not that there was much excitement there, either. No major incidents to speak of, unless you counted the work that was going into planning raids in some godforsaken town in the Fens to try and combat the trade in poor sods being brought over to work and live in filthy conditions. Cannabis factories upstairs, three or four families downstairs. Trouble was, planning involved more than one force: the National Crime Agency and Uncle Tom Cobley and all. Had the potential to be a right cock-up.
Kate looked around the waiting room. No one she recognized. No one who looked as though they recognized her. That was the beauty of working in Ipswich but living in a small town some miles away – she was far less likely to come across any of her colleagues here.
‘This little one…’ The woman was talking again and Kate dragged herself back to the present. She noticed the woman was holding a bundle in her arms. A baby. How could she not have noticed? The woman carried on talking. ‘She was born with a hole in her heart. Had to have an operation when she was so tiny. Didn’t know if she would survive.’
Kate felt a sudden but familiar twist of fear in her chest.
‘So we have to come for check-ups quite often, don’t we sweetheart?’ The woman cooed at the baby and smiled that smile that cut the pair of them off from the world.
The fear was now coiling around her heart. Whoever said the heart was just an organ didn’t know anything. She took a deep breath and managed to put a pleasant look on her face.
‘You got any?’ asked the woman, who was now stroking her baby’s cheek with the side of her finger.
‘No,’ she said. She must have sounded abrupt because the woman blushed.
‘Sorry.’
‘It’s okay.’ Kate picked up another magazine. This time it was Designing Interiors. Safer, she hoped.
She tried to concentrate on how to organize her living space better, what colour palette to use for a south-facing conservatory, and the ‘beautiful home’ created by some D-list celebrity. She tried not to think of the row she’d had with Chris last night. It was the same row they’d been having off and on with varying degrees of severity for the past ten years. This time, she had been about to turn the light off when Chris said, ‘I wish you’d see someone.’
Her hand froze on the light switch. She was tired, had been doing paperwork for much of the day, and all she wanted to do was sleep. Now Chris had brought up the one subject guaranteed to make her tense and therefore lie awake for ages.
She gritted her teeth and looked over at her husband, who was lying in the bed, head on the pillow, hands crossed over his chest, his breath even. Eyes closed. Eyes bloody well closed. He always did that, so preventing her from having a damn good argument with him. She noticed lines around his mouth that hadn’t been there before, and wanted to trace them with her fingers. Her irritation drained away. Chris loved her without any strings attached, and she loved him for that. He was calm, made her feel peaceful. She adored watching him work, how his hands, rough and calloused, fashioned the most beautiful objects out of wood. She loved him. But she had strings.
‘Chris,’ she said, propping herself up on her elbow, knowing it was going to have to be her making the first move, knowing that this time she had to give him some hope.
He opened one eye, reached out for her, pulled her down into his arms. ‘Honey, I know how you feel, but…’
No, he didn’t know how she felt, not really. He couldn’t know the way her mouth went dry and her heart beat hard and fast whenever she thought about becoming pregnant, giving birth, having to look after another person who would totally depend on her. The emotional attachment scared her; the knowledge that, at some point, the child would leave and tear her heart out. Or worse, something – anything – could happen to him or her that would not only tear her heart out but stamp on it and throw it away. She knew it could happen. She’d seen it before.
‘Can’t we just adopt?’ Even as she said the words, she knew she didn’t mean them, and she knew what his answer would be.
‘Surely we ought to find out first if there’s any reason why we can’t have our own?’ His voice was gentle, and she felt hot tears gather at the back of her throat.
‘Maybe it is all down to me. Maybe I’ll never be able to conceive. Maybe I’m too old.’ Or maybe she should just stop taking the pill.
‘No, you’re not. And if it doesn’t happen soon, there is so much we can do. I just think it’s a good idea to be checked.’
‘Aren’t we happy as we are?’ she asked, guilt heavy on her shoulders.
‘Yes.’
‘Aren’t I enough for you?’
‘Darling, it’s not about that.’
‘I know,’ she said into his neck. ‘I know.’
He had gone by the time she woke in the morning – he often went for an early morning run, summer or winter, when he needed to clear his head, to give himself some thinking time.
As soon as she could, Kate rang the doctor’s surgery.
Which was why she was now sitting on a plastic chair, flicking through a magazine without seeing any words, and wishing she was at the station, drinking filthy coffee out of a flimsy cup and enjoying the banter between colleagues.
The buzzer sounded and Kate saw her name on the electronic noticeboard. She got up, and the woman with the baby gave her an encouraging smile.
She was nervous because she knew she was going to have to say something to the doctor, but she hadn’t worked out what yet.
She knocked on the door and went in.
The young woman GP, the appropriately named Dr Bones, looked up from her screen and smiled. ‘Take a seat, Kate. What can I do for you today?’
Kate sat and blinked. What was she supposed to say?
‘Kate?’
She cleared her throat. ‘The thing is Doctor…’ She thought of Chris and his kind face, the hands that worked so hard for her, the fact that he didn’t ask anything of her, just this one thing. ‘My husband wants a baby.’ She stopped, feeling helpless.
‘And?’ Doctor Bones prompted her gently, her head cocked to one side.
‘And I’m not sure I can.’
The doctor nodded. ‘Okay. So you’re…what —?’ She looked at her computer screen, ‘Thirty-eight and on the pill. No reason why you shouldn’t get pregnant, you know. A lot of women are having children later these days—’
‘It’s not that,’ Kate said. ‘Sometimes I think that if you’re not meant to have children then you shouldn’t go down that route.’
Doctor Bones nodded. ‘That’s certainly a view.’ She was waiting, wrists resting on the edge of her desk, for Kate to give her more.
What else? ‘I think there is so much misery in this world that I’m not sure it’s the right thing to do.’
‘The right thing?’
Kate looked at the walls, avoiding the doctor’s eyes. Saw the brightly coloured children’s paintings stuck up with Blu Tack, the height charts, the posters about healthy eating, even a chart to test eyesight. She gazed around the surgery, at the box of children’s toys in the corner, a child’s chair, everything catering for children. She refused to let the tears reach further than the back of her eyes.
‘You know, getting pregnant just because I…we…want a baby. It seems a bit selfish, you know.’ She shrugged, aware of how useless she was sounding.
‘And what does your husband think?’
‘Chris? Oh, he’s desperate for them. I mean, he doesn’t put it like that, obviously, but I know that’s what he thinks.’
‘But you’re not sure?’
‘No.’ Her eyes began to fill with tears. For God’s sake. She blinked furiously.
‘Kate,’ the doctor started gently, ‘I’m not sure what I can do for you.’
‘I only came because Chris…’ She tailed off and stood up. ‘Sorry, I don’t know why I came really, I—’
‘Sit down, Kate.’
‘No. I’ve got to go back to work. Thank you for your time.’
Dr Bones looked at her computer screen. ‘You have a stressful job, Kate. Are you coping?’
‘Yes.’
‘Look, I’m going to give you some very mild antidepressants. You don’t have to take them, but they could help. And I’m going to put you on the waiting list for some counselling.’
Kate opened her mouth to object.
Doctor Bones held up her hand. ‘It’s just a waiting list. Have a think. It might be good to talk to someone other than your husband. An outsider. Okay? And I want to see you in a month.’
Kate could only nod.
Outside the doctor’s room she leaned against the wall and took deep breaths. The air was stifling. It had been a mistake to come here, but at least she’d done it and she would be able to tell Chris. And she would tell him that the doctor thought she was a bit down about things. It would buy her some time. Things would resolve themselves, wouldn’t they?
She hurried along the corridor and out into the waiting room. Luckily the woman and her baby weren’t there. She made her way to the swing doors at the back.
‘Ms Todd?’
Kate turned round. It was the pharmacist.
‘I’ll have your prescription ready in a minute, if you’d like to take a seat.’ The pharmacist smiled at her from through the hatch.
‘Right, thank you.’
Kate stared at the television still murmuring in the corner, sitting up when she saw the breaking news headline running across the bottom of the screen.
Jackie Wood wins High Court appeal.
She watched the pictures – Jackie Wood on the steps of the court, reporters waving microphones, cameras, people jostling one another, a self-satisfied man standing next to her, opening his mouth, talking, but Kate couldn’t hear what was said. She hardly needed to, the inference was clear. Jackie Wood, one of two people responsible for the deaths of two small children, had finally won her appeal.
‘Ms Todd? Your prescription is ready.’
Kate stood up automatically, walked over to the hatch, and took the paper bag handed to her by the pharmacist.
Then she went outside, got into her car, and rested her forehead on the steering wheel.
3 (#udef4f4e1-2527-5db8-82f3-dd3209332ad2)
Sasha had always been the troublesome one. The needy one. The daughter their parents worried about. The one they spoke carefully to, treated with kid gloves. Alex had learned from a young age that Sasha had to be indulged. She was ten months younger than Alex, but when they were growing up Alex had often felt ten years older. ‘Look after your sister’ had been drummed in to her. The ‘poor me’ attitude Sasha cultivated had annoyed Alex all her life. Sasha was willowy, with fine blonde hair that curled attractively around her heart-shaped face. Whenever people saw the two of them together, they’d never believe they were sisters barely a year apart in age, because Alex was short with dark hair that was poker straight. She had also inherited her father’s sallow – if she was feeling kind towards herself she’d call it olive – complexion. Sasha was the beauty and Alex was not. Or Sasha had been the beauty. That was the thing. Nowadays, she was still thin, still had blonde hair and the heart-shaped face and the blue eyes, but her thinness was of the bag of bones variety, the blonde hair was unkempt, her glacial features sharp and her blue eyes empty. She also had to wear long sleeves to cover up the scars.
Sasha had never got over the loss of her twins. They were four years old when they went missing. One boy, one girl; the complete set, and both with her blonde hair and blue eyes. Harry was a typical boy: loved rough and tumble and was always grubby. Millie was much the same, but with that cute girlishness that made everyone want to hug her. She smiled all the time. They were adventurous children; curious, inquisitive, loving. It was Harry who turned up a few weeks later; Millie was never found.
Harry’s funeral was unbearable. The little white coffin balanced on the shoulder of Sasha’s husband, Jez, and all the mourners; each and every one of them thanking whatever God they worshipped it wasn’t happening to them. Alex had vowed to keep her own little boy safe. Unusually for that summer, the sky was grey and the drizzle didn’t stop. God’s tears, she heard someone say.
Alex wasn’t sure that either she or Sasha believed in God anymore.
Their parents were there; shocked and bewildered that something like this could be happening to them. The church looked beautiful; a medieval place of worship in the Suffolk countryside. St Mary Magdalene. Sasha and Jez had chosen to bury Harry in their parents’ parish because Sasha couldn’t bear to be in Sole Bay at the time. And she wanted somewhere quiet for him, somewhere the birds would sing and the sunlight would dapple through the trees and warm the earth beneath. So she chose the next door village, where their parents had moved to when she and Alex left home. Someone – the good ladies of the parish, Alex supposed – had decorated the church with roses and willow and honeysuckle that scented the air. Harry was buried in the little graveyard at the back and it was overwhelming to see the tiny mound of earth that was going to hide his coffin forever.
But at least they were able to bury Harry; not knowing Millie’s fate was unbearable.
And now Alex was on a mission to get to Sasha before she hurt herself again. Her sister had stayed in the house she had lived in with Jez and the twins. Couldn’t bear to leave it, she said. Alex thought it was unhealthy, but despite her attempts to get her sister to either move in with her or find somewhere that wasn’t jam-packed full of memories, Sasha refused. ‘What if Millie comes back?’ she said. ‘What if she came back and I wasn’t there?’ And Alex wanted to say to her that Millie was only four when she went missing so she wouldn’t even remember where to come back to, even if she was still alive. Naturally, she didn’t say any of that to her. No one could say anything like that to her. At least, though, Alex was in the town and could look out for her sister, and, on a good day, she could run there in eight minutes.
This was not a good day – lack of sleep and not much food – but adrenalin would add wings to her feet.
‘I have to go, Gus,’ she said, running to the door. ‘You finish your toast. There’s a new jar of peanut butter in the cupboard.’
‘But Mum – what’s up?’
‘I’ll tell you later.’ Alex felt breathless as she pulled on her coat and fumbled with the buttons. ‘I have to go and see Aunty Sasha. Okay?’
He shrugged. ‘Whatever.’
The radio carried on in the background.
The pavements were damp but thankfully not slippery. She ran, weaving through the people who blocked her way. Where was the family liaison officer? He’d said there wouldn’t be a decision this early. She’d have time to prepare Sasha for the possibility of Wood getting off. What had happened?
Two old women pulling shopping trolleys were chatting, taking up the whole pavement. Trolleys with loud red and green spots, the sort that tripped up the unwary pedestrian. She hated them. She had to leap into the road to get round them; a car hooting as it just missed her. Then a woman with one of those pushchairs that could be used to haul babies up mountain ranges suddenly stopped, almost making her fall. A crowd of school kids laughing, pushing each other, appeared in front of her. Inside her head she screamed at them, wanted to shove them out of the way. She barged through.
Not too far now.
She skittered around the corner into Sasha’s road.
She needed to stop, lean up against a wall and catch her breath, but didn’t dare.
She weaved passed two black wheelie bins, noticing that one of them was overflowing with rubbish – cartons, cereal packets, chicken bones – that littered the pavement. She crossed the road, passed the public toilets, to Sasha’s waist-high wrought iron gate. Alex wiggled the catch until it finally gave way, thinking she must get Jez to do something about that, then finally the five steps up the path to the front door.
She slipped her key into the lock, turned it, and pushed the door open all in one movement, almost falling into the hallway.
Sasha was in what passed for the sitting room; a room that had once been light and full of laughter, but with its faded blue and white striped wallpaper and cream carpet that had seen better days, was now oppressive. A two-bar electric fire in the fireplace pumped out a desultory amount of heat. There was a television in one corner, and a sofa pulled up in front of it. The curtains were half drawn and the place smelled fetid and unkempt: all a sure sign that Sasha was in one of her downward spirals. Some thirty pictures of the twins, in various stages of development, right up to the day they went missing, were arranged on every surface. One photograph had been taken in the clearing in the woods, the tartan blanket laid out, picnic basket ready to disgorge its lunch of dainty crustless ham sandwiches, slices of banana, apple, segments of tangerine. And the treat of lemonade to drink, with iced biscuits and little strawberry yoghurts to finish. A perfect day out. A few days later they were gone.
The television was tuned to BBC News, its red logo adding a bit of colour to the room. The breaking news strapline screamed out at Alex from the crawler across the bottom: Jackie Wood wins High Court appeal – conviction quashed. Pictures flashed up: Jackie Wood on the steps of the High Court smiling and waving, her solicitor by her side about to read out a statement. The words washed over her and around her.
‘Held for fifteen years…an innocent woman…rebuild my life…’
She heard the viper’s tongue in every word.
And the shouted questions from reporters: ‘How did you cope with life inside?’
‘What will you do now?’
‘Are you going to try and get some compensation?’
The sound of the traffic and blaring horns obliterating some of the syllables.
Wood smiled, and Alex saw the smug look in her eyes. She could imagine the triumph the woman was feeling and she wanted to reach into the box and grab her round her scrawny neck. At least she didn’t look great on prison life or food – she was alabaster pale and thinner than Alex remembered. Her skirt and jacket looked chain-shop cheap. She quite fancied strangling the solicitor too, though his neck was much less scrawny. In fact, the feeling was so visceral she could almost taste the air being squeezed from the man’s body. How much of any compensation was the woman going to get? Alex looked at Wood again. Three appeals and finally she’d managed to get off. Three appeals, a campaigning television producer, and a discredited expert witness and there was finally enough evidence to make two out of three High Court judges feel her conviction for the abduction and murder of Alex’s niece and nephew was unsafe. She was a free woman. At least, Martin Jessop, her accomplice, was dead and gone. Hanged himself in the first three months of his sentence.
‘I have nothing more to say, thank you.’ Wood turned and went back into the building. The newsreader moved on, unaware of the effect the news was having on both her and Sasha.
The telephone started to ring, making both of them jump.
Alex thought quickly, then picked it up.
‘’Allo?’ she said in a bad imitation of a French accent.
‘Is that Sasha Clements?’ The slightly breathless, high-pitched voice of a journalist hoping to get the first interview.
‘Non.’
‘Is Sasha Clements there, please?’
‘Non. She moved from ’ere three years ago.’ She winced, unsure her days of am-dram had stood her in good stead after all.
‘Oh.’ Disappointment in the voice. ‘I don’t suppose you have a number for her, do you?’
‘Non, sorry.’
‘Do you know where she went?’
‘I think she went to Spain.’
‘Spain?’
‘Spain.’
‘Oh. I see. Well thank you for your time.’
‘Plaisir.’
Alex cut the call and then put the receiver down on the table, wanting to laugh at the sheer absurdity of it all, and wondering if she’d done enough to delay the feeding frenzy. Only time would tell.
She turned off the television and looked at her sister properly. Sasha hadn’t noticed her, hadn’t realized there was no sound or picture coming from the television. She was sitting staring at the now blank screen, tears rolling down her cheeks and her arms hugged around her body, hands tucked in the sleeves of her shirt. The material was stained red. Alex wanted to cry.
She sat beside her sister and put her arm around her, trying to ignore the fact that she flinched. Alex didn’t say anything for a moment, attempting to breathe evenly to get some saliva into her dry mouth. Then Sasha leaned her head on her shoulder and let out a shuddering sigh.
‘Alex.’ She said her name softly, like a small puff of wind. ‘I didn’t think they’d let her out. They told me the appeal would fail. They told me.’
Alex kissed the top of her head. ‘I know, my love, I know.’
‘I thought I was dealing with it, you know; living with the fact that Millie was gone, buried somewhere and we’d never find out where.’
Alex tightened her arm around Sasha. And me, and me, she thought.
‘But now—’
‘We will find Millie, you know, one day. I promise.’ And she felt the burden of that promise settle on her shoulders.
‘I don’t want you here,’ Sasha said suddenly. ‘Not you.’
Alex closed her eyes, briefly, trying not to be hurt, telling herself that her sister was like that, had been for the past fifteen years; that Sasha couldn’t hate her any more than Alex hated herself. That Sasha didn’t mean what she was saying. She didn’t answer.
They sat quietly for some minutes. ‘Sash?’ Alex said. ‘Can I look at your arm?’
A shrug.
Gently, Alex lifted Sasha’s head off her shoulder and took her arm, pushing up the sleeve of her sister’s shirt. The gash down the side of her forearm glistened wetly, but she judged it didn’t need stitches this time. She got up and went into the kitchen, finding a bowl and some kitchen roll. She filled the bowl with warm water, poured in some salt and went back to sit beside Sasha. She wiped the cut, thankful to see it had stopped oozing blood. Her movements were mechanical – if she thought too hard about what she was doing, about what Sasha had done, she wouldn’t have been able to clean up the wound.
‘Don’t take me to hospital, Alex. Please. Otherwise, I won’t be able to feel.’ She rubbed her face with her other sleeve. ‘I need to feel.’
Alex nodded. ‘Okay, but you must take care of yourself.’ She bit her lip. What she was saying was nonsense. She could never stop Sasha from self-harming. God knows, she’d tried. Their parents wouldn’t believe it was going on, not even when Sasha had to stay in hospital because she’d cut herself so badly, and not even when the local doctor had her sectioned after she’d cut her wrists – not self-harming, not a cry for help, but a real suicide attempt. But she hadn’t hurt herself this badly for months and Alex had been beginning to hope she might be on some sort of road to recovery.
Sasha looked at her with dead eyes. ‘How can I take care of myself,’ she whispered, ‘when I couldn’t take care of my children? When the woman who murdered my babies is out there again?’
There was nothing Alex could say to that.
4 (#udef4f4e1-2527-5db8-82f3-dd3209332ad2)
It was mid afternoon and the light was already leaching out of the day when Alex left Sasha, having bandaged her arm and made her lunch, which she picked at. Alex also tried to persuade Jez to go round and stay, at least for one night. That was hard work. She knew that statistics for a couple splitting up after the death of a child were higher than average – she wasn’t sure what they were when two children were dead. But Sasha and Jez had disintegrated pretty quickly after Harry was buried, and not even the thought that Millie might come home one day was enough to keep them together. Anyway, Alex had always thought he ought to give his ex-wife more support, so she steeled herself and rang him.
‘Yes,’ he said to her, whispering fiercely down his phone, ‘I do know about the court’s decision. I am in the right place, you know.’
‘And you hadn’t thought to go round to Sasha’s?’
There was silence. ‘I couldn’t, Alex. I thought you—’
‘Yes, well, I’d been told nothing would happen before midday, but they were wrong there, weren’t they? So you can imagine what she was like when I got to the flat and she’d been watching it over and over again on bloody 24-hour news.’ She found she was whispering, too.
He sighed, and Alex imagined him raking his hair with his free hand, making it all stand up on end. ‘Look, it’s difficult enough for me to process this right now, and I’m in the middle of another case.’
‘I’d have thought you would have been there. At court, I mean.’ Alex couldn’t help herself.
‘Why weren’t you?’
‘They weren’t my children.’ No, they weren’t her children, but they were her sister’s children, and if it wasn’t for her they might still be alive. But she had to stop thinking that or it would send her mad. ‘Couldn’t the police give you compassionate leave or something? Look,’ Alex went for a more conciliatory tone, ‘I’m not asking you to drop everything now. I just want you to go over later. Stay there for the night. I would if I could but I’ve got Gus to think about.’
Silence. ‘I can’t, Alex. I can’t do it.’
‘Why not? Don’t you owe her something?’
‘Owe her?’
‘You were married to her.’
‘And now I’m not, okay? I wish things could have been different, God how I wish it. I still—’
‘Still what?’
There was more silence. ‘Never mind. It doesn’t matter. Besides, it’s too late now.’
‘Jez, I know—’
‘No.’ His voice was sharp. ‘You don’t know anything. I’m trying Alex, really trying to get over her; to deal with what happened all those years ago, but the pain is still so near the surface, you know? Even after all this time. Christ, it’s even hard to go out with other women, even though I try. God, how I try.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘And I never thought I’d say that.’ He paused. ‘And I bet she’s been cutting herself.’
Alex said nothing. Two could play the silence game.
‘I’m right, aren’t I? And I know I’m partly to blame. Look, Alex, I don’t expect you to understand, but me and Sasha—’
‘You and Sasha what?’
‘Nothing. Me and Sasha are nothing.’
‘If you can’t go round, could you send another plod round just to, I don’t know, stand outside the flat or something. I don’t want her besieged by journalists.’ She knew her play-acting on the phone wouldn’t fool a determined hack for very long.
‘I will ask,’ he said finally.
She had to hope it was enough.
It was cold and damp and Alex hunched her shoulders as she put the key in the front door. Suddenly a pair of arms encircled her waist.
‘Honey, you’re home.’
She rolled her eyes and felt her depression lift just a little. ‘Malone, you are so predictable.’ She opened the door. ‘And what are you doing? Waiting to ambush me?’
‘And how else am I supposed to get into your house? You haven’t given me a key yet.’
‘Too soon, Malone, too soon.’
‘It’s not too soon for me.’ Malone pushed the door shut behind them, grabbed hold of her hair each side of her face, and kissed her deeply. He smelled of whisky and smoke.
She pushed him away, trying to smile. ‘Down boy.’
‘Come on, sweetheart. And haven’t I just given you all of myself so you can keep yourself in handbags and shoes?’ He laid his slight Irish accent on thickly.
‘Ha. As if. And you know I’m very grateful. But, to be honest, it’s been a shit of a day.’
He stroked her cheek. ‘Did they not like the piece?’
‘I don’t know yet, I haven’t looked.’ Alex rolled her shoulders and rubbed the back of her neck.
‘So?’
‘Sasha.’
‘Ah.’ Such a wealth of meaning in such a little word.
Alex hadn’t known Malone that long. In fact, she met him while researching her latest article; he was the article – the mad man who’d worked undercover most of his adult life. He had posed as a member of a far-right group. His work had included exposing would-be terrorists. It had been a dirty job and his life had been in danger. Then there had been the infiltration of environmental protest groups of the flat sandals and vegan persuasion. Lord, he told her with his lopsided grin, he never wanted to see a lentil again.
‘How close did you have to get to the protestors?’ she’d asked him.
He’d shrugged at that. ‘As close as I had to.’
‘Sex?’
‘As close as I had to.’
It had been a hard slog, but she had eventually been able to tease out more details from him, and her admiration for him had grown. It helped he was amusing, too, and made her forget herself.
And she told him about Sasha and her babies and how her marriage fell apart and how her sister needed her. She’d told him all that, but she hadn’t told him what really kept her awake at night.
‘Tea?’ He picked up the kettle.
‘Yes please,’ she said.
‘So what about Sasha?’
Alex shook her head, amused. It was what she liked about Malone. He might have thwarted terrorists and saved the world, but he had no interest in the news of the moment.
‘Jackie Wood got out on appeal.’ Alex thought if she just said the words in a matter-of-fact way it would be easier. She was wrong. There was a familiar stinging behind her eyes.
‘Ah,’ he said again. He put down the kettle and put his arms round her, holding her tight.
‘Sasha was in a bad way.’ Her voice was muffled by his jumper. ‘I tried to get Jez to go and stay the night, but I don’t know if he will.’
‘He’ll go.’ He kissed the top of her head. ‘I’m sure he’ll go.’
‘I hope so. Though there’s no reason why he should. Although sometimes I wonder—’
‘What?’
‘I don’t know. Yes I do. I wonder if he still loves her in some way.’
‘Well, you can go back in the morning and see how she is, or later, if you want to. I can stay here with Gus.’
She pushed herself gently out of his arms, dashing the tears off her cheeks. ‘Thank you. Now I know why I like you.’
‘And it explains why the telephone wouldn’t stop ringing.’
‘How do you know it was ringing?’
‘I could hear it during the long and lonely wait for you outside the door.’
‘Bugger.’
And on cue, it rang.
‘Alex Devlin?’
‘Yes,’ she said. She could try and protect her sister but when it came to herself it wasn’t so easy.
‘Hi, I’m Ed Killingback from ThePost and I wondered if I could have a few minutes of your time to talk about Jackie Wood and her winning her appeal today?’
‘Do you know what, Ed, I really am not up to it.’ She made her voice as cold as she could.
‘It won’t take long, and if you give me your story as an exclusive then you won’t have to worry about the others, will you?’ His young, eager tone wearied her. ‘We could put you up in a hotel so you’re not bothered by any of the red tops and—’
‘Look,’ she cut in, ‘I know how it goes and I’m not interested. Please leave me alone.’ She put down the phone with a satisfying clunk.
Her mobile began to belt out some grungy piece of music she didn’t know, but it had been set by Gus as her ringtone. She looked at the screen. Unknown number. She sighed and turned it off.
Malone switched on the kettle.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘This is exactly what you don’t want.’
‘What do you mean?’
She gave what she thought was a wry smile but probably looked more like a grimace. ‘You’re trying to avoid publicity now you’ve done your bit, and here I am, bringing it right back to your door.’
‘Hmm,’ he said, the kettle starting to boil. ‘I reckon I’m used to the parasites knocking on the door, don’t you think?’
‘I guess. But I don’t want you bothered by it.’ What she meant was she didn’t want him so spooked that he would leave her just as she was getting used to him in her life.
‘I won’t be.’ He poured water onto the two teabags. ‘How’s Gus?’
Bringing her into the real world. She looked at the clock. Football practice tonight. ‘He’s okay, I think.’ And yes, Malone knew about Gus’s patchy history. ‘Wants to go skiing with the school.’
Malone raised his eyebrows. ‘Expensive stuff.’
‘Hmm.’
‘And?’
‘And what?’ Alex knew she sounded defensive, and it was none of his business anyway.
Malone drummed his fingers on the kitchen unit. ‘And are you able to pay for it?’
‘That, Malone,’ she said, ‘is nothing to do with you.’ He handed her a cup of tea: dark brown builders’; just how she liked it. ‘I’m going up to my study to see if Liz likes you.’
‘I hope you gave me a good write-up.’
Alex stopped, her hand on the doorknob. ‘Sympathetic, I think you’ll find.’
‘And anonymous?’
‘Malone. What do you take me for? It’s an “all names have been changed to protect their identities” article. As you well know.’
He grinned. ‘Just checking.’
She gave a wry smile. ‘I’ll be back in a minute, help yourself to a biscuit or something. Read the paper. Do relaxing things.’ Then a thought struck her. ‘What are you doing here, Malone? Shouldn’t you be going deep undercover into a brothel or something? Saving people, being a hero?’
He gave a slow, gentle smile. ‘Don’t be flippant. It’s important stuff. Anyway, I’ve told you already, I’ve done my bit. Rescued all I can. Thought I’d come and say hallo.’
‘And see if my piece about you is going to be published in the Saturday Magazine. Egotist.’
Malone shrugged his shoulders.
Alex sat down in her study, switched on the computer and waited for it to go through its warm-up routine. She thought about Malone, lounging on the sofa downstairs, reading the paper, all relaxed and smelling of his organic soap, and she thought of Sasha alone in her flat with only the television and a razor blade for company, and she knew where she would rather be. She couldn’t say she felt guilty. How could she when guilt was so much a part of her life? There is only so much of it one can feel.
She and Malone had hit it off as soon as they met. And meeting had been an exhausting task involving clandestine calls to men and women who she was sure wore balaclavas just to answer the phone. Eventually she was deemed worthy of meeting the Man Who Saved The World From Harm, and she presumed they’d also checked out her credentials and whether or not she really was a journalist and not an undercover member of the Russian mafia or a gangland boss. Anyway, they met in a spit and sawdust pub south of the River Wensum. It was down an alleyway in an unprepossessing part of Norwich, and she’d had to muster all her reserves to walk into it without feeling intimidated.
She didn’t know what she’d been expecting – someone in a beanie hat and Jesus sandals she thought was most likely – but sitting at the table in the corner underneath the portrait of the Queen (yes, they still exist in pubs, and yes, that’s where she’d been told he would be sitting) was a man in his early forties – dark jeans, light blue shirt with white polka dots, trainers – nursing a pint.
She held out her hand. ‘Hi, I’m Alex Devlin. You must be Malone.’ Another conceit: last name only. She had resisted the temptation to introduce herself as Devlin.
To his credit he stood up, shook her hand, and offered her a drink. She was impressed, and it only got better from then on. And when they finally got round to it, the interview went well too. He told her what motivated him, the chances he’d taken, like befriending one of the women who was the girlfriend of the leader of the group he was supposed to be a part of. By ‘befriending’ Alex understood that he meant more than having a chat over a cup of coffee. He told her how he kept a flock of geese in the garden as they were the best alarm against intruders, how he had infiltrated the whole subculture of gangs. Although she thought he was mad to have taken some of the chances he had, she ended up admiring him. Oh, and sleeping with him. Pillow talk was quite good for in-depth personality pieces.
Of course, being the good interviewer she tried to be, she let him talk about himself and said very little about herself. But she found it…what – interesting? amazing? – that the gentle, mild-mannered man she got to know had been responsible for some of the major high profile arrests in recent months, after years of work. When she ventured to ask why he was letting himself be interviewed, he said he wanted to publicize what was going on as much as possible while keeping himself in the background. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘We have to be lucky all the time. People who are trying to destroy us and our way of life have only got to get lucky once. That’s why I do it.’
He also, he said, hated to see exploitation of people, and was hoping to be able to play some part in the war against human trafficking. Organized crime. Too much of that was going on. Kids brought in to be held as sex slaves. ‘All driven by the drugs trade,’ he said. ‘This area is rife with drugs factories. Houses on urban streets, isolated farms, sheds, barns – whatever.’ But for the moment, he told her, he was resting, he thought he’d done enough. At least for now.
The two-tone noise of the computer announced it was ready for business, and Alex let the emails download. She decided not to go on Facebook or Twitter; it would only push her blood pressure sky-high. That was the trouble with being a freelance – she felt she needed to be readily contactable, which was easy in the era of mobiles and social media, but, boy, when she wanted to lie low, it was bloody difficult.
The emails were, as she suspected, a mixture of clothes companies, train companies, and supermarkets advertising their wares, and requests for interviews about her and Sasha from various magazines. She deleted them all. But the one she wanted from her editor was there.
To: Alex Devlin
From: Liz Henderson
Subject: Malone
Hey Alex – loved your piece on Malone, strikes just the right balance and gives us a good rounded picture of the man. The photographs all add to the mood.
The photos had to be done in shadow or from the back to keep Malone’s anonymity intact. At least he hadn’t insisted on wearing his balaclava.
You’ll be pleased to know we’ve found an early slot for it in the Saturday Magazine – should go in two weeks time. Please invoice as usual.
Alex let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. Thank the Lord; she’d be able to eat for a little longer, though she still wouldn’t have enough to pay for the skiing trip. Worry began to gnaw away at her again.
Keep coming up with the ideas, Alex, we love your pieces.
Best
Liz
That lifted a little of the heavy weight that was permanently on her shoulders. It was hard making a living as a freelance, and she was lucky to have found such regular work with the magazine supplement. She’d even done news stories for the main daily paper to earn some extra cash. Sometimes she felt like a jack of all trades and master of none, but her in-depth features seemed to chime with the Saturday Magazine’s ethos.
She looked at the time of the email. Liz had sent it just after the news broke of Jackie Wood getting out of prison. Keep the ideas coming. Sure. Easier said than done sometimes. News features didn’t just fall into your lap; you had to keep your eyes and ears open. Be receptive.
Jackie Wood.
The thought flashed into her head. A thoughtful piece on her time in prison, reflecting on her life; all that bollocks.
She shook herself. Where on earth had that idea come from? Left field, most definitely. She sat back in her chair.
Absolutely not.
She gazed out of the window onto the scrubby courtyard that passed for a garden, the gloom pierced by the lights in the kitchen. The terracotta pots she had planted with geraniums and lilies in the summer looked defeated. They bore cracks from the frost and the plants were withered bits of brown stick. If she’d had an ounce of foresight she would have brought them inside before the winter. The grass was patchy and mostly mud and even the silver birch looked tired of life.
Picking up a pencil, she began doodling, making notes. Suppose, just suppose for one minute that she did get to talk to Jackie Wood, what were the pros and cons?
Pros: she really wanted to talk to Jackie Wood. She never thought she’d be able to and yet here it was. The opportunity. The woman had been let out on a technicality and she was still guilty. At least, in Alex’s eyes. She must know where Millie is buried. She could tell her. She would tell her. And that would bring peace of mind to her sister.
Cons: Jackie Wood probably wouldn’t want to talk to her. Wouldn’t want to talk to any journalist. Would she know who she was? Would she remember her; her name? Not necessarily. It was fifteen years ago and Sasha had captured all the headlines. Sasha and Jez. Jez had managed to keep Alex’s name out of it as far as possible, and, because he was a police officer, that seemed to be a long way. And then she’d kept her head down, not courting any publicity. But she did give evidence at the trial, so that was living in cloud cuckoo land. Jackie Wood would know who she was, there was no doubt about that.
And what about Sasha? And Jez? How would they feel?
But she’d be doing it for them.
And then there was the main stumbling block – her editor would never wear it. Liz was bound to say she was too close to it; it wouldn’t be fair; it wouldn’t be balanced, and all that. In truth, Liz would be worried about bringing the Press Complaints Commission down on the Saturday Magazine’s head.
But, what if she talked to Jackie Wood, managed to write the article and then pitched it to Liz, what about that? She’d done that many times in her career – written an article on spec. And if Liz didn’t want it, she could tout it around. It would be a financial risk, but someone, somewhere would take the article. And there would be no deception involved. All above board. She would declare her interest and sell it as a personal story. Everyone wanted a personal story.
The words went in and out of focus. It could be the best chance she had to get the story out of Jackie Wood; the best chance to find out what happened the day Harry and Millie were taken. From her garden. While she was supposed to be looking after them. The day their family had been torn apart; the day she had let her sister down. And if she knew why Jackie Wood and Martin Jessop had taken the twins away and murdered them, then maybe she could find some sort of peace.
And she would go some way to paying her dues to Sasha; get rid of that guilt that had been eating away at her for the last decade and a half.
She turned back to her computer and opened up a document file entitled ‘Jessop and Wood’. She’d kept all links to the case in one tidy place on her computer. Links to stories; links to people who claimed they’d known Jessop and Wood were evil; she’d even kept a link to the clairvoyant who insisted he’d be able to lead them to Millie’s body, for a fee, naturally. Alex never found out if he went to the police in the end. She stared at the file. She would be adding new links soon, to today’s story, but first—
There it was. A picture and contact number for Wood’s lawyer. She picked up her phone.
Something like adrenalin surged through her. She’d had fifteen years of being passive, of believing that justice would run its course, of thinking that she could run away from it all. Now she knew she’d been wrong all along. She punched in the number.
5 (#udef4f4e1-2527-5db8-82f3-dd3209332ad2)
After that, it was all plain sailing. Alex got through to Jonathan Danby easily, and the conversation went exactly as she hoped. He had heard of her, had read a few of her articles and even enjoyed them, he said in that oleaginous manner she knew he would have. Loved the Saturday Magazine, he said. She crossed her fingers in the hope that he wasn’t great friends with Liz or something. She wanted the interview to be a fait accompli before anyone could say no. However, all Danby said was that he’d met the owner of the paper and the accompanying magazine at a couple of events. That was all right. Clive Lambert had little idea of who his staff were, never mind the freelancers. So when Alex broached the subject of Jackie Wood and an exclusive interview with her, she could hear Danby thinking in pounds and pence and not worrying about anything else.
‘It would be a fair depiction of Jackie and everything she’d been through?’ he asked. Alex heard the tippety-tap of his pen on his desk, or more likely on his blotter on what she imagined was his mahogany desk.
‘Yes,’ she said. It had to be fair otherwise it wouldn’t get published. It was just that she hoped to get so much more out of it.
‘I would need to be there.’
‘No, Mr Danby, I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that.’ Alex kept her voice even. ‘It needs to be just me, and preferably somewhere she feels comfortable and relaxed. I want her to open up.’
‘I see.’ She heard him breathing down the phone. ‘And what’s in it for my client?’
‘The magazine can pay its standard rate.’ She named the usual figure and crossed her fingers. It would be worth it to confront the woman who had brought such misery to their lives. ‘But that’s all. What she will get is publicity, which she would be able to use to her advantage.’
‘She is innocent you know. Of conspiracy to murder.’
‘As you say, Mr Danby.’
‘We’d want that underlined in the piece.’
Alex gripped the phone. ‘I can only work with what I get.’
‘It would be sympathetic to her?’
If she wasn’t careful she would break the damn phone. ‘It all depends how she comes over. Another reason for talking just to me with no one else around.’
‘Actually Ms Devlin, that’s a very good reason for me to be there. I wouldn’t want her to say something…inappropriate.’
Alex let the silence hang.
‘You realize the media are this close…’ She imagined him holding his forefinger and thumb apart so there was hardly any space between them ‘…to being gagged. And that includes you, Ms Devlin.’
‘I’m sure,’ she replied.
‘And the fact you’re Sasha Devlin’s sister?’
Damn. How long had he been waiting to say that? Foolish of her not to expect it.
‘Makes it all the more personal, Mr Danby. Obviously. There would be no deception involved. It’ll be written as a first-hand account of meeting the woman who had been accused of being involved in the murder of my niece and nephew. And acquitted, of course.’
‘Of course.’ A heavy sigh came across the line. ‘Leave it with me. I don’t think it’ll happen, though. She wants to keep a low profile. But I will be in contact with her and let you know, okay?’
‘That would be great, Mr Danby, I appreciate it.’
Alex gave him her number before finishing the call and turning her phone off again, sapped by the effort of remaining civil throughout the conversation, but also strangely exhilarated.
‘Hey you,’ Malone’s voice drifted up the stairs. ‘Am I going to see you at all?’
She put her computer to sleep and went down to the kitchen. ‘Sorry, I was just trying to fix up my next interviewee.’
Malone looked up from the paper he was reading. ‘Oh? Am I allowed to know who?’
She put her arms around him and her chin on his shoulder. ‘No.’
He turned and looked at her. ‘Any particular reason?’
‘Nope. Just the way I work.’
For some reason she wanted to keep it to herself. Was it because somewhere deep down she knew her motives for wanting to interview Jackie Wood were more than just to help Sasha? She wanted, she needed to see the woman up close and personal; to look in her eyes and see her guilt. Or perhaps, she reasoned, it was because the fewer people who knew, the less likely it was there would be a slip-up that would give away the woman’s whereabouts.
‘Look, I’ve made you a sandwich.’
He pushed a plate towards her and she realized she was hungry. In her efforts to get Sasha to eat she had neglected to eat anything herself. Cheese and pickle. Perfect.
The front door slammed. Gus was home. Alex looked at the clock – he was later than normal.
‘Hi darling,’ she called out, knowing she had to tell him that Jackie Wood was out of jail. Nothing. Just the sound of his size tens thudding up the stairs.
She looked at Malone. That was unusual. Gus normally came in and gave her at least a civilized grunt before disappearing into his lair.
‘I’d leave him be,’ said Malone. ‘He’s a teenager, probably wants a bit of privacy.’
She put down the sandwich. ‘Nonetheless, I’ve got to go and talk to him.’
She went upstairs and knocked on his door. No response. She knocked again, harder this time, in case he was plugged into his iPod.
‘Come in.’
Alex didn’t think she’d ever get used to her little boy’s gruff new voice.
As she went in, he minimized the web pages he’d been looking at and turned to her. She switched on the light. ‘Did you bring the letter home about paying for the skiing by instalments?’ she asked.
‘What’s that? A sweetener?’ His lip curled.
‘Gus?’
‘Why didn’t you tell me, Mum? About the woman? Jackie Wood.’
Alex suppressed a sigh as she went further into his room, stepped over the discarded books and DVDs that littered the floor, and sat down on the bed. She patted the cover. ‘Come here.’
Avoiding her eyes, Gus sat down next to her.
She put her arm around him, trying to ignore the tick tock of the clock on the wall and the shock of stale booze on his breath. He leaned into her. She could feel the bones of his shoulder, his arm. Had he always been this thin?
‘They said at school that she was out. Someone had seen it on their phone. They said her conviction had been overturned so that meant she hadn’t had anything to do with it and so probably the bloke – Martin Jessop – was innocent as well, and we were all shitty liars.’ His eyes glittered with unshed tears.
‘She is out, Gus, but her conviction was said to be unsafe.’
‘What does that mean?’ he muttered.
‘It means that they found some discrepancy in the evidence that was used to convict her of conspiracy—’
‘What evidence?’
‘Forensic evidence. Something to do with particles of dirt found at the scene and the particles found on her clothing in the flat hallway.’
Gus ran his fingers through his hair. ‘You mean—’
Alex winced. ‘Yes, sweetheart, where little Harry’s body was found. Gus,’ she knew she had to tread carefully, ‘have you been drinking?’
He wiped his sleeve over his face. ‘Bit.’
‘In the afternoon?’
‘Why, wouldn’t you mind if it was in the evening?’ he shot back.
She rolled her eyes, hoping to defuse the situation. ‘Don’t be smart with me. You know I would, that’s not the point.’
‘Look, I was stopped outside the school gates by some reporter scum who wanted to do an interview, take my picture and all that.’ He plucked at the sleeve of his jumper. ‘And I don’t want it, Mum. I don’t, like, want it to be anything to do with me. I was only a baby. I don’t even remember Harry and Millie.’ He sniffed. ‘But they kept asking and asking and saying we were liars, that you were a liar. And I wanted to get away.’
‘I’m sorry, love.’ She pulled him closer.
‘And then a couple of mates asked me if I wanted a drink.’
‘Mates?’ she asked, more sharply than she intended. Please don’t let him have fallen in with a bad crowd again.
‘Yes, mates.’ He glared at her. She decided to leave it, for now. ‘Anyway,’ he carried on, ‘I thought you’d be more concerned about the reporters than the half pint of lager I’d had.’
‘I am concerned about that,’ she said, trying to believe it really was just a half pint of lager. ‘They had no right to stop you and talk to you. What did you say?’
‘Nothing.’
‘How did they know you had anything to do with her?’
He shrugged. ‘Dunno. But there are a couple of them at the gate now.’
‘What?’ Alex jumped up and went over to the window. Sure enough, a man in a shiny grey suit and yellow tie and a woman in a black shaggy coat were standing just outside the gate under the streetlight and looking at her front door. Both of them on mobile phones and having animated conversations. She wondered which of them would be the first to come up with an offer. Vultures.
‘Bugger,’ she said, stepping back from the window before they saw her, heart thumping, ‘I thought they wouldn’t find us.’
‘Come on, Mum, you know you can find anyone these days through the internet.’
Irritation crawled up her spine. She knew that. She damn well knew that, so why hadn’t she given it a thought? ‘They’ll go away as soon as they realize we’re not giving them anything. Or until they get cold or tired or hungry, or all three.’ She half drew the curtain.
‘How’s Aunty Sasha?’
It was her turn to shrug. ‘You know, coping.’
‘Badly?’
She nodded. ‘Yes. I’ve just got to support her through this.’
‘We will, Mum. We will.’
Alex looked at her little boy. Taller than her with wisps of facial hair and that deep voice. ‘Thank you, sweetheart.’ She resisted the urge to lean over and kiss his cheek.
‘So are you going to do anything about her?’
‘Her?’
‘Jackie Wood?’
‘I—’ No. She wasn’t going to tell him. ‘Look, there’s nothing we can do. She’ll be whisked to some safe house somewhere until the furore’s died down and then she might change her identity and find somewhere new to live. The best thing we can do is to help Sasha through this.’
‘Mum?’
‘Yes?’
‘What can you remember about that day?’
Alex drew him back into her arms and hugged him close to her, resting her chin on the top of his head. ‘Oh, love, it’s difficult to describe.’
‘Try. Please.’
She closed her eyes. ‘I remember the police coming round, making lots of notes. Everyone going to look for them. Not finding them.’
‘They were taken from our garden, weren’t they?’
A spear of pain lanced Alex and the guilt threatened to overwhelm her. ‘Yes. Yes they were.’
She was responsible.
6 (#ulink_3d26388d-db36-5059-bfda-73e64af232ac)
Kate shoved the pills to the back of the bathroom cupboard and closed the door. Her head was pounding; the picture on the health centre’s telly of Jackie Wood on the steps of the High Court, smiling, going round and round in her head. The smug lawyer. The sentence quashed. A murderer’s accomplice set free.
She thought back to when the judge had sentenced Wood and Jessop to life imprisonment for the murders of Harry and Millie Clements, and how she’d felt as though she could breathe again. Although she’d been the one to find Harry’s little body all squashed up in the suitcase, abandoned behind a bin in a shitty lay-by as if he was just a piece of rubbish, she hadn’t had anything more to do with the investigation, apart from celebrating in the pub when they arrested Wood and Jessop.
She’d had her day in court, of course, when she stood in the witness box and told the judge exactly what had happened the morning she had found the little boy, reliving it in her head as she kept her voice even and unemotional. She’d glared across at the pair of them in the dock; wanted them to look her in the eye so she could stare them down. But they didn’t give her the satisfaction; just kept examining their hands, Wood occasionally dabbing at her eyes with a white handkerchief edged with blue. Funny how she could remember the little things. And then she’d been in the public gallery when the professor of dirt and stones or whatever he was delivered his damning evidence. The unusual type of soil and gravel found in the corridor of the flats in Sole Bay matched that found inside the suitcase that had contained the body – that was the gist of it, and the jury bought it, every single damning word. So did they all, to be fair.
And now, fifteen years on, the great professor had been discredited. The evidence he had given in another trial had been called into question five years previously. After that, the convictions tumbled, and it was only a matter of time before the Jessop–Wood trial was scrutinized. And yes, the evidence was called into question. Unsafe conviction. The gravel and soil could have come from several places in Sole Bay. So Wood was now out in the community.
Kate found herself obsessed with Wood. She didn’t believe for one moment that Jessop and Wood were not guilty, and she knew her colleagues would be of a like mind. There was no question of it being opened as a cold case, and it wouldn’t be too long before the force would trot out the line: ‘We’re not looking for anyone else in this matter.’ Subtext: they did it, and Jackie Wood has got away with it.
She turned on the cold tap and splashed her face, remembering too late the make-up she had put on earlier that morning. Bloody hell, she’d have panda eyes now. Opening up the cupboard again she took out her make-up remover wipes and began to clean her face so she could redo her mask.
‘Is that you Kate?’
A door slammed as Chris’s voice floated up the stairs. Her hand stopped its cleaning. Damn. What was he doing home? She thought he’d gone to source more wood for the table and chairs he was making.
‘Kate?’
She put down the make-up remover wipes and gripped the basin, head bowed. Then she dragged in a deep breath and pasted a smile on her face. If she made herself smile, it would sound in her voice.
‘Hallo sweetie,’ she said, emerging from the bathroom and going downstairs. ‘I thought you’d be out for most of the day.’
Chris enveloped her in a hug. With her nose pressed into his thick woollen jumper she breathed in the familiar smells of freshly-cut wood and linseed oil. There was a prickling in the back of her nose. ‘Hah. So your secret lover could come and go with impunity.’
‘Something like that,’ she mumbled, not wanting to think about the visit to the doctor. ‘What about the wood?’
‘Bloke I needed to see won’t be back until this afternoon. Bit of a wasted journey.’
She lifted her head up. ‘Didn’t you check he was going to be there?’
‘No. I had some other stuff to do and I fancied a drive so took a chance.’ He smiled down at her, his cornflower blue eyes wrinkling at the corners. ‘Is that okay?’
‘’Course it is.’
Typical of Chris. Freewheeling; not worried about what other people thought; always able to go with the flow. Which was probably why she married him – a good contrast to her tendency to be uptight.
‘Anyway, what are you doing home?’
‘Meeting my lover, what else?’ She laughed lightly. ‘Have you had anything to eat? Do you fancy some toast?’
He grabbed her by the shoulders and planted a kiss on her lips. ‘Toast sounds good. Unless you fancy something else…’ He looked up the stairs and then back at her. Cocked his head to one side.
She thought of the pills she had got from the doctor and the pill she took every day, both shoved in the back of the cupboard, and felt guilty and irritated at the same time. She pushed him away. ‘No time for that. I must eat and get going. So, toast?’ She tried to make her voice sound bright.
Chris held up his hands. ‘Whoa. Sorry. Just a thought. Toast would be great.’
Kate kept her head down – she couldn’t bear to see the hurt look on his face. Instead, she went to the bread bin and took the loaf out, trying to undo the red plastic tape. ‘Bugger, bugger, why do they wrap bloody bread like this.’ She took a knife out of the drawer and started to hack at the tape.
‘Careful, don’t hurt yourself.’
‘I won’t,’ she snapped, taking a couple of slices from the now open packet. ‘See? It’s done. But the sodding bread’s mouldy.’
Chris was beside her, taking the bread out of her hands. ‘It’s only a bit of green along the edges. It’ll be fine when I’ve got peanut butter and jam on the top.’
‘Up to you.’ Kate reached up into a cupboard and took down the pack of muesli, shaking some into a bowl, looking crossly at the dried fruit, seeds, and oats. ‘Urgh, why can’t I like this stuff?’
‘Because it’s rabbit food.’
‘That’s lettuce.’
‘Well, some animal that eats oats and fruit and enjoys it.’
‘Good for me though.’ She poured milk out of the bottle onto it.
‘Sometimes it’s good to have things you enjoy.’
Kate looked at him sharply, then caught her breath at the sadness of his expression. She put down her bowl and went over to him, putting her arms around his solid waist. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m just a bit twitchy.’
‘Any particular reason?’
The toast popped up and Chris began to slather it with butter. Kate’s irritation flared up again. ‘You’ll give yourself a heart attack if you’re not careful.’
‘At least I will have enjoyed myself,’ he said mildly.
‘What are you saying?’
‘Nothing. Nothing at all.’ Out came the peanut butter and jam. He sighed. ‘I don’t know what’s eating you this morning. I’m beginning to think I did disturb you and your lover.’
All the fight went out of Kate and she sat down. What the fuck was she doing, trying to pick a fight with him? ‘I’m sorry, Chris. It was something I heard on the news today that’s made me feel a bit out of sorts.’ Understatement of the year.
‘Oh?’
‘A woman called Jackie Wood has been released from prison. Her sentence was quashed—’
‘I heard about that on the radio. While I was driving. Put away for – what was it – conspiracy to murder or something? Her and some guy called Martin Jessop had murdered two little kids, is that right? I was abroad at the time so don’t remember it really. But why has that made you so—’
‘Bad-tempered? Irritable?’
He grinned. ‘If you put it like that, yes.’
She sighed. How much to say? She had never told him about finding little Harry, about eventually holding him in her arms after the photographs, the examination of his little body, the forensics that had been carried out, and about the sheer and utter helplessness she had felt. She had never wanted to feel his pity. ‘I was involved in that case.’
‘Oh?’ Chris began to eat his toast.
‘Worked on it. Had to give evidence in court. It was a bit…’ She hesitated. ‘Upsetting.’
‘But it was, what? Sixteen years ago?’
‘Fifteen.’
‘Right. Not your case now.’
‘No. But I feel for the family. They must be pretty upset to see her coming out like that.’
‘I’m sure. But it’s not for you to get involved, is it? I mean, not personally.’
She shrugged. ‘I just keep wondering what they’re feeling, thinking. I wonder if I ought to go and see them.’
‘Because you were on the case all that time ago? You were only a PC then, weren’t you?’
Kate didn’t heed the warning note of exasperation in Chris’s voice. ‘Yes, it was one of my first jobs after months on the beat.’ She spooned some of the muesli into her mouth. ‘I’ve had enough of this.’ She walked over to the sink and dumped her bowl in it with a clatter. ‘I ought to get to the station, I’ve got plenty to do.’
Chris stood and took hold of her hand. ‘Can’t you give it a few more minutes? You’re out all the hours God sends and I’d really like to talk.’
‘We do talk.’
‘Properly, I mean. Without you falling asleep on me.’ He smiled. A serious smile.
‘I can’t help it, you know. It’s tough out there.’ She shook her hand free of Chris’s.
‘Hardly the mean streets of New York though, is it?’
‘You’d be surprised. And New York isn’t like it used to be. If you listened to the news more often you’d know that.’ She cringed inwardly at her own words.
‘Kate—’
‘No. I really do have to go.’
‘Why is it you’re so damned keen to interfere in everyone else’s lives but keep our life together at arm’s-length?’ Chris asked, his tone deceptively mild.
‘Interfering?’ Kate let a note of self-righteous anger into her voice. ‘What? You mean my job? I thought you were proud of me? I thought it was part of why you love me—’
‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I am proud of you, of course I am, because you’re you. But I care about us, you and me. Not drugs or prostitutes or murderers. You and me, Kate. You and me. And sometimes—’
Kate stood still. ‘Sometimes what?’ It was like picking a scab.
Chris picked up his toast again. ‘One day, Kate, we’re going to have to talk about this. I mean, really talk.’
Kate went to the door. ‘Chris?’ Suddenly she wanted to tell him about the trip to the doctor’s, the pills, the possibility of counselling, of finding Harry’s body, how it had made her feel.
‘Mmm?’ He appeared to be engrossed in the newspaper that had been lying on the table, and he didn’t look up.
Anger surged through her once more. ‘I’ll see you later,’ she said.
7 (#ulink_4447479d-dcf9-593e-a00c-1df921f78873)
Alex pulled the front door closed behind her and hunched down into her coat, trying to avoid the worst of the east wind and the rain lashing at her face. She loved Sole Bay with its jumble of terraces, semis, and mansions, and the B. & B.s, and the chi-chi shops that sold everything from designer clothes to plastic windmills, but, God, how she hated the winter weather. The wind and rain whipped off the grey North Sea, across the sand, around the beach huts, straight at anyone who dared get in the way. In the summer, the streets were clogged with visitors – the little train running up and down the pier doing good business; barrels of beer were transported to the pubs by a dray pulled by shire horses, and holidaymakers whiled away the day on the beach. But at this time of year the few tourists spent their money in the steamy tea shops or art galleries rather than brave the outside.
The wind pulled at her as she walked along the coast road, out of the main town, passed scrappy grass with its ‘No Ball Playing’ notices and the pub that still sold ‘Austerity Lunches’. She was heading to her favourite part of Sole Bay – the trashy harbour end, with its caravan park, dodgy prefab houses growing shells and beach paraphernalia in the gardens, and the black rickety sheds advertising fresh fish for sale. Today, the boats were tied up in the harbour, the fishermen not foolhardy enough to brave the North Sea conditions. There would be no boxes of slippery silver fish or snapping crabs until the weather had calmed.
The call from Jonathan Danby had come a few days after she first spoke to him. Days that were spent going to and from Sasha’s, making sure she ate something, even if it was only a bowl of soup. Days of going over and over the whys and the wherefores of Jackie Wood’s release from prison. Alex tried her best to sound soothing and caring, but however much you love someone, however much you care, after a while your patience runs out. She couldn’t risk her sister doing anything else stupid so she just gritted her teeth and carried on caring. Sasha’s house became ever more claustrophobic. The one good thing was that Jez did come up trumps and was spending each evening there, and the occasional night. She managed to avoid him nicely.
So when Danby called, she was ready to do anything, go anywhere.
‘This’ll be a sympathetic look at her life?’
Not this again. She took a deep breath. ‘As I’ve already told you, it’ll be an honest one. That’s how I’ve got my reputation. Whether it’s sympathetic or not is up to her, in a way. I write as I see it.’ She held her breath.
‘Fee?’
‘As we agreed.’
An inhalation and then a sigh. Smoking, Alex reckoned.
‘Look, I’d be lying if I said I was happy about this, I’m not. But Miss Wood seems keen, for some reason. Says she likes your work.’ Sure she does. ‘Will only talk to you. Doesn’t want me there.’ Alex closed her eyes. All above board. Now there was no reason for Liz to get the jitters and say no. This interview could be gold dust.
‘So the answer is yes, but with certain restrictions.’
‘I don’t do restrictions,’ Alex said. Ground rules have to be set from the outset, parameters defined, otherwise you end up dancing to your subject’s tune, and that just doesn’t work. Alex knew she’d done the song and dance thing with Malone, but that was an exception.
She heard the crackle of cellophane; the flick of a lighter, another inhale. ‘Jackie doesn’t want anyone to know where she is.’
‘I understand that.’ The dance continued.
‘You know what this country’s like; there’ll be a lynch mob after her before you can say “not guilty”. The Mail will be writing editorials about the death penalty and all the other red tops will be baying for blood.’
‘Right.’ She balled her fist. But she is guilty, Alex wanted to shout at him down the phone. She was found guilty. She was only let off on a technicality, some obscure legal thing; the expert witness making a fuck-up, being discredited. Alex had believed him, they all had. And she didn’t see any reason to change her mind now.
‘You won’t have to travel far,’ said Danby. ‘She wanted to go somewhere she knew. Figured it would be easier for her.’
‘So…?’
‘She’s in your neck of the woods, as it happens. Suffolk.’
Alex closed her eyes. She was so close. ‘Fine,’ was all she said.
Eventually she and Danby managed to thrash it out. She was to tell no one where she was going, who she was interviewing – apart from her editor, she lied – and for that Jackie Wood was going to grant Alex one or two mornings of her time.
Deal done.
It was half-term and Gus was at home. Alex had been trying to get him to do some schoolwork; to help her with shopping; to get him chatting to Malone: anything to keep him away from trouble. Smelling the drink on his breath had unnerved her, as had his run-in with a reporter. She didn’t want him to be sucked into something else he couldn’t deal with. And she had started paying for his skiing trip, crossing her fingers at the same time.
He was in the sitting room on his Playstation, swatting zombies. Malone was due round in a couple of hours.
‘Gus?’
‘Mmm?’
‘I’m just off out.’
‘Mmm.’
‘Malone’ll be here soon.’
‘What to— gotcha!’ She saw a splat of red on the television screen.
‘Not to babysit you, no. He’s come to see me, but I’m just off to interview someone for the magazine.’
‘Anyone good? Yesss.’ His fist punched the air. ‘More points.’
She hesitated a little too long.
Gus took his eyes off the undead. ‘Mum? You’re looking shifty. C’mon, who is it then?’
Should she lie? Tell a half-truth? What? She sat on the arm of the chair. Tried to ruffle his hair. He jerked his head away. ‘Listen, Gus, it’s Jackie Wood.’
He turned away, his eyes now glued to the screen. More splats of red, more zombies’ heads exploded.
‘Why?’ His voice was flat, his knuckles white where he gripped the games console.
‘I think it could be useful, helpful even.’
‘What are you going to ask her?’
She shrugged. ‘You know, the obvious really.’
He stared at the screen. Even the undead were motionless.
At last he turned and looked at her, blinking slowly, coming out of zombie-land again. ‘You’ve got your coat on.’
‘Yes. Walking, saving petrol.’ Bloody hell, she could have bitten her tongue.
He nodded. ‘So she’s nearby. Come back to the scene of the crime, as it were. How can she do that? How can she come and live here, of all places? Surely there should be some sort of law against it or something? I dunno. Anything?’
‘Gus—’
‘I know, I know, you can’t tell me. Confidentiality and all that. But I don’t reckon you’d make much of a detective.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Didn’t take me long to suss out she’s come crawling back to town.’
Alex attempted a laugh, but it sounded hollow. ‘Please don’t say anything, Gus. Part of my contract is that no one knows where she is.’ And she’d made a right fuck-up of that already.
‘What are you going to ask her?’
She was on firmer ground now. ‘I’ll begin by asking about her time inside, you know, just to get her confidence. Nod sympathetically and all that. Ask about her childhood. How she met Martin Jessop. Draw her out, that’s the plan.’
‘Do you get to ask about, you know?’ He swallowed, his eyes darting around the room. Not for the first time she cursed the fact that her boy had grown up defined by the murder of his cousins. But she believed in telling the truth. What was the point in shielding him when he would find out another way? And probably in a badly thought-out muddled way from his mates.
She gave a small smile. ‘I hope so.’
Gus shuddered. ‘I can’t think of anything worse,’ he said, turning back to his game. ‘She doesn’t deserve to be out, free, does she?’
Boom. Thud. Splat. Zombies started hitting the deck again.
‘She won her freedom, sweetheart.’
‘It was what? – quashed – isn’t that what they say? Doesn’t mean she’s innocent.’
‘That’s the way it works.’
He sighed and turned to look at her. ‘Is this gonna make you even worse?’
‘Even worse? What do you mean?’
‘Come on, Mum. You know what I mean. You don’t let me have a life now. And if there’s some murderer roaming the streets—’
‘It’s only because I care and want to keep you safe. Anyway, the courts say she’s not a murderer.’
‘Mum. I’ve said this before. Harry was killed fifteen years ago. Fifteen, you know? And Millie? Who knows what happened to her, but it happened. A long time ago. It wasn’t my fault and it wasn’t yours.’
Alex closed her eyes and let the guilt invade her body.
‘Mum? Mum? Are you listening to me?’
She opened her eyes. ‘Yes, of course I am.’
‘No, you’re not.’ He turned back to the screen, disgust evident on his face. ‘You never do.’
Alex looked at him. Did she have any idea what her own son was thinking or feeling? She saw more than the beginnings of fluff on his chin and wondered who was going to teach him to shave. Maybe he had already done it, guided by his friends. She ached for him inside and, for the first time, wondered at her wisdom in going it alone after she’d got pregnant. Not that she’d any choice, as the one-night-stand father hadn’t wanted to know. But still.
His hands were busy with the controller. ‘Besides. Me and my mates think they should bring the death penalty back. For murderers of kids. They don’t deserve to live. Do they, Mum?’ Another zombie bit the dust.
What should she say? Teenagers saw things in black and white – there was no grey or in-between in their world. But then, how could she disagree with him when she didn’t? For most of her life she had been vehemently against the death penalty, arguing that it was plain murder by the state, and that the sign of a civilized society was the way it treated criminals. But that was then. Fifteen years ago she changed and believed nothing short of hanging would have been good enough for Martin Jessop and the same for Jackie Wood, even though she was only found guilty of being an accessory. But the pair of them made the family go through a long and tortuous court case, which completely destabilized Sasha. There had been no rest for any of them; every day they had to live with what had happened.
Now she hated her, Jackie Wood, more than him. That woman could have stopped Jessop. She could have not given him an alibi and saved them weeks of misery, of the police hunting for the bodies.
But although Jessop was dead, the guilt was still alive in her. Her house. Her garden. Her fault.
If Jackie Wood had any self-respect, any at all, she would reveal where Millie was buried.
‘Do you ever wonder what happened to Millie?’ Gus’s voice broke into her thoughts.
She took his hand and squeezed it. ‘All the time.’
‘Ask her, Mum, won’t you?’
She nodded, her throat all at once too full to speak.
8 (#ulink_a6b267ce-fb83-5c98-9c9d-25691f88dd9d)
The rain had eased off by the time Alex reached the caravan site at the harbour end, but still she pulled her scarf up around her face. The rain might have stopped, but the wind was still strong enough to make skin sore, especially when combined with the salt from sea spray. The sea looked rough and wild, too, and you couldn’t tell where the greyness of the sky bleached into the greyness of the sea. Plenty of white horses rolled into the shore, only broken up by the groynes that stretched out like witches’ fingers into the water. Seagulls swooped and screeched overhead, and in the distance the smooth, ping-pong dome of the nuclear power station rose like a modernist sculpture.
The caravan site, rather obviously called ‘Harbour’s End’ was, as it said on the tin, at the end of the harbour road and opposite the lifeboat station. At its entrance were the public toilets.
She looked at the piece of paper that had the directions to the caravan on it; the cold air making her shiver. Number forty-four. Down the main bit of road, turn second left, and it was at the end of the row.
The wind moaned in and around the lines of static caravans. She saw the odd person in the distance, tending to the outside of the vans, but generally it was very quiet. A ghost town.
Jackie Wood’s caravan, which was cream and green with a lick of decay, just like the other hundred or so, was opposite the river that ran into the sea, with a good view of the fishermen’s ramshackle huts and the row upon row of fishing boats, some from Lowestoft, some from Aldeburgh, most from Sole Bay. There were net curtains at the windows, and a couple of terracotta pots either side of the door, sporting fronds of grass and dead twigs. Alex stopped, realizing she was shivering not just from the cold, but also because she felt lost, a bit frightened even. What was she expecting Jackie Wood to say? Come on, she told herself, treat this like any other interview.
She thought back to the last time she’d seen Wood, before the court case. She was being interviewed on the News Channel – News 24 as it was then – sitting in her flat, Martin Jessop by her side. Mr Jessop from upstairs. Nice flats they were too; a well done Georgian conversion in a decent part of town. Nobody wanted to rent them after Jackie Wood and Martin Jessop were arrested for murder. They were holiday lets now; completely repainted, redecorated, rehabilitated. There was a campaign to get the whole block demolished and a memorial garden planted. But the Sole Bay Society put their boots in and saved the Georgian building. It didn’t really matter to Alex – Georgian building or memorial garden – it was still where her nephew and niece had been murdered.
When they first went missing, there she was, Jackie Wood, sitting next to him – the murderer – and saying what a tragedy it was. How the community had to pull together, that they were pulling together, and were organizing searches of the town, the beaches, the dunes, the harbour. The local and national media were hungry for interviewees about ‘the situation’, and Jackie Wood and Martin Jessop fitted the willing bill. Wood, the local librarian; Jessop, a lecturer at the college in Ipswich. There was much speculation about their relationship. Again, something else the media wanted to romanticize; document every twist and turn.
If only they had known there was a much better story than that.
If she closed her eyes, Alex could still see her, head cocked slightly to one side, the furrowed forehead, the oh-so-sympathetic expression. He, meanwhile, just looked at his shoes. Then, suddenly, he gazed at the camera and shook his head.
‘They were lovely children,’ he said. ‘So polite. Full of life.’
Past tense.
And she remembered knowing then; knowing absolutely that they were the ones who had taken the twins.
When they were arrested, the feeding frenzy really started.
‘She is in,’ said a voice from behind her, interrupting her memories. ‘She’s always in.’
Alex looked over her shoulder. A woman of about thirty with a cigarette in one hand, mug in the other, was standing in the doorway of the caravan opposite. The dark roots were showing in her hair, and her face had lost the fresh-skin look of youth. Alex wondered what she was doing in a caravan on the Suffolk coast in the middle of winter.
‘I came this way looking for work.’ The woman had read her mind. ‘Thought it might be easier here than in the city.’
She wondered which city she meant. ‘And has it been easier?’ she asked.
The woman shrugged. ‘No, not really. But I have got a few shifts at the Tesco’s on the high street, so I reckon that’s better than nothing.’
Alex nodded. The idea of a new supermarket in the middle of the town had caused a lot of local consternation when planning permission was granted. There were petitions, and placards, and letters to the planning office and the local MP, and God knows who, but it had lumbered forward like a boulder rolling down a hill squashing everything in its path.
‘Anyway,’ the woman went on, ‘give her a knock.’
‘Thanks,’ Alex said.
‘Do you know her?’
‘Sort of.’ She managed to give a rictus smile.
‘She looks familiar.’
‘Really?’
The woman shrugged. ‘Tell her she can come over and have a coffee if she wants. Wouldn’t want her feeling lonely here.’
Alex nodded. ‘Okay.’
The woman shut her door.
Alex swallowed. Her mouth was dry and her heart was thudding. She pressed her fist against her breastbone. ‘You can do this,’ she whispered. The enormity of her actions had just dawned on her. She was about to come face-to-face with the woman who was – whatever some bloody judge said – complicit in the murder of Harry and Millie. And she was supposed to be carrying out an interview with Jackie Wood when all she wanted to do was to shake out the answer to the question that had haunted her family for more than a decade – where was Millie buried?
And why shouldn’t she? There was no need to talk to Jackie Wood for any length of time; she could even ditch the idea of an article. Nothing lost, except more of her dwindling savings. And she would have had the chance to ask her about Millie. On another level, Alex was curious about the woman; about what had made her tick then and what made her tick now. How she could sit and blatantly lie to everybody; the lies she was still continuing to tell now?
Let out on a technicality. That was not innocence.
Squaring her shoulders, she lifted her hand up to knock on the door.
It opened before her hand made contact.
‘I saw you standing outside. Alex.’ Jackie Wood’s voice was pitched a little too high and had the soft Suffolk burr that Alex remembered from the courtroom – both characteristics had been blurred by the television microphones. What was more startling was that the long black hair she had seen on the screen was now cut short and dyed blonde. Jackie Wood was dressed in an off-white fluffy fleece, faded, ill-fitting black jeans, and brown slippers with pom-poms on the toes. She was even more diminished than she had seemed on television and her skin had not yet regained a healthy colour. Alex guessed the woman opposite was telling the truth; Jackie Wood didn’t venture out much.
She was so very ordinary.
Then Alex noticed the scar down one side of her face, the skin puckered, as though it had been sewn up by a child.
Jackie Wood blinked at her. ‘Come in. I’ve been expecting you for ages. Let’s not talk on the doorstep.’ She opened the door a little wider while keeping herself inside the caravan.
For a moment, Alex was outside of her body. One part of her looking at what she was doing and wondering how the hell she could do it, the other part of her relishing the idea of talking to the woman. She wanted to sniff the air, see if she could smell evil.
Not evil, but fustiness. The smell of a tin box that rarely had its windows or doors opened. Stale cigarette smoke, too. Grease, fat; the lingering smell of fast food. The lightness in her head dissolved.
‘Take a seat.’ Jackie Wood waved to a cloth-covered bench to one side of the caravan. The table in front of it was crowded with papers, a plate with a piece of half-chewed toast on it, and an overflowing ashtray. Some sort of convector heater was pumping out warm air. She sat on the bench, sliding round behind the table.
‘Sorry about the mess,’ said Jackie Wood, whipping away the plate and putting it into the tiny sink. ‘I should have cleared up before you came.’
‘It’s okay,’ said Alex, noticing that she had quite an array of daily newspapers, from The Times to the Daily Star. Again, Jackie Wood saw her looking and began gathering them up into a pile.
‘Something to do, isn’t it?’ she said, nodding towards the papers. ‘I like to see whether there are any stories in them about me. Since I came out. Sometimes, you know, they get the facts about me wrong. One of the papers kept saying I was forty-four years old. I’m not. I’m forty-three. It’s horrible reading really personal things about yourself in newspapers. And it’s even worse when they’re lies. Do you think I should write to the editor?’ She stood still, looking at Alex, blinking slowly. Then she turned away and dumped the papers onto the floor with a thump. ‘Are you warm enough? I’ve taken to wearing these thick fleece things, keeps the wind out.’ She plucked at the material. ‘It’s so bloody cold in this part of the world.’
‘Wind off the Urals,’ Alex said, for the sake of saying something after the sudden change of subject.
‘That’s what they say.’ Jackie Wood was nervous. Probably as nervous as she was, Alex realized. ‘I’ll make the coffee.’ Pom-poms flapping, she made the short journey over to the sink, filled the kettle and set it on the top of the cooker.
Alex shrugged off her coat and put it down beside her, looking around the caravan. Not much to see, really. A small kitchenette, cupboards above the sink and cooker; a corridor that she guessed led to the bedrooms – two?– , and bathroom. A couple of paintings on the walls. One was a view of beach huts. The other of a few lonely sheep in the middle of a snowy field. Both had the corpses of insects preserved behind the glass.
There was silence while they both waited for the kettle to boil.
‘Here we are.’
Jackie Wood set a tray down on the table. On the tray was a cafetière of coffee and two plain, white mugs. There was a plate with chocolate digestives. A jug of milk. A bowl of sugar. She hovered.
‘Shall I pour?’ Alex asked.
Jackie Wood nodded. ‘Please.’
She pressed the plunger of the cafetière, hearing that pleasing sucking sound, then poured out two mugs of coffee. ‘Milk? Sugar?’
Jackie Wood nodded again. ‘Lots of milk. Three sugars. Please.’
Alex did the honours, wondering when the Mad Hatter was going to turn up. ‘Here you go.’
‘Thanks.’ Jackie Wood lowered herself onto a plastic chair.
Alex took a sip of coffee and then reached into her bag, taking out her digital recorder. ‘I hope it’s okay to record our interview, Jackie.’ She tried not to stumble over her name. She had never thought of her as ‘Jackie’, only ‘that woman’ or ‘the murderer’s accomplice’, or ‘Jackie Wood’, both names together. To call her Jackie was implying an intimacy that she didn’t feel. But then that’s what she did all the time; that was her job. She had to think of this as another job. Money. Cash. Gus’s skiing trip. Millie’s grave. No, not that, not yet.
‘I know who you are, you know.’ The words were spoken quietly.
Alex switched on the recorder then looked up at her. ‘Really?’
‘I’ve known ever since Jonny Danby told me you were coming.’ She smiled. ‘You think I’d forget you? Sasha’s sister?’
Alex held up her hand. ‘Don’t,’ she said.
‘Don’t what?’
‘Just…don’t. Her name.’
‘What? Sasha? What should I call her?’
‘Not her name. After what you and Jessop did. It does not give you the right to call her by her first name.’
She looked startled. ‘What Martin did. Not me. Not me. Anyway, I looked you up. Googled you. Found out about your work. I’d never read any.’
It didn’t surprise Alex that Danby had lied. ‘She likes your work.’ Please.
Jackie Wood smiled. ‘We didn’t get too many upmarket newspapers in High Top. And when we did, someone had always nicked the supplements.’ She shifted herself and reached into the back pocket of her jeans, pulling out a squashed packet of cigarettes. ‘Do you mind?’ she asked, pulling one out and putting it between her cracked lips. ‘Only it’s a hard habit to break. Something to do when you’re banged up.’
Alex shook her head, wanting one herself.
‘Here.’ Jackie Wood thrust the packet at Alex. ‘You can have one if you want.’
How did she know? ‘No thanks, I’ve given up.’ Alex found herself smiling apologetically.
Jackie Wood shrugged, put the cigarette between her lips, took a lighter off the table and lit it. She inhaled deeply, then coughed – a great hacking cough that shook her whole body. Alex hoped the smoke was furring up her lungs, causing changes in the cells of her body. She hoped it was killing Jackie Wood.
‘I missed my books,’ she said, quietly.
‘Pardon?’
‘Books. Being around them all the time. Discovering new authors. Flicking through a book, deciding if I wanted to borrow it from the library. I missed that.’
‘Right.’ Alex was suddenly wrong-footed by a sudden feeling of compassion. ‘But you had a library in the prison?’ What did she know?
‘Oh yes.’ Jackie Wood waved her hand, a dismissive movement. ‘Statutory requirement and all that. But it wasn’t the same. I mean, I could look at books at all times of the day in my job. Savour them. There was a time limit in prison.’
‘I see.’
‘I miss the children.’
Alex’s back stiffened.
Jackie Wood waved her arms. ‘No, no, what I meant was the children in the library. I miss seeing them, reading to them, story time. You know.’ She stubbed out her cigarette. ‘Anyway, I expect you’ve got better things to do than spend all day with me. What did you want to know?’
A loaded question, but Alex restrained herself. She smoothed back her hair. ‘You agreed to see me because you wanted to do the interview?’
‘’Course I did.’ Jackie Wood blinked at her. ‘Why else? It’s a good chance to put my side of the story, to tell the world what really happened.’ She leaned forward on her chair, put her elbows on her knees, and it was all Alex could do not to recoil. ‘It’ll be a good scoop for you as well. Don’t think I haven’t thought of that.’
Alex ignored the jibe. ‘Your side of the story?’
She blinked again. ‘That’s what you told Jonny. That it’d be an opportunity for me to tell everyone what really happened. How I was only trying to help.’
‘Trying to help?’ Why was she echoing everything?
Jackie Wood put her mug down, leaned back again. ‘Look, I hardly knew him, before, before the…you know.’ There were tears in her eyes.
Alex tried not to move a muscle; if she did she would hit her. How dare she cry. How dare she.
Jackie Wood blinked harder than ever. ‘Sorry.’ She gathered herself. ‘He – Martin Jessop – just came to my door and asked if I wanted to help, organize searches and stuff. Well, there was no question about it. I knew little Harry and Millie from the library. Sash – your sister – used to bring them to story time.’ She gave a sad smile at a memory. ‘They used to love the stories.’
Alex had a prickling sensation in her nose and was finding it hard to swallow. She hated hearing Jackie Wood say their names. Sasha’s names, the children’s names, all of it.
‘But I want to start at the beginning. Can I do that, Alex? I can call you Alex, can’t I? Even if I can’t call your sister by her first name?’
She nodded, but she still didn’t want to call her Jackie.
So Jackie Wood told Alex about her childhood – middle class, ordinary, lonely, brought up in Great Yarmouth by parents who were both teachers. She liked books, didn’t want to go to university so she thought she would enjoy working in a library.
‘You know, I was quite happy, in my own world. I even had a boyfriend.’
Alex must have looked startled. ‘Surprised you, haven’t I?’ she said. ‘And it wasn’t Martin Jessop, whatever the papers might have said.’
‘Who was it?’
Jackie Wood looked out of the window. ‘I didn’t say anything about him then, and I’m not going to now.’
‘Come on, Jackie. It’s been fifteen years.’ Alex could scent a good story here. A different story. She didn’t think she’d read anything about her having a boyfriend before.
She shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter who he was. He wasn’t involved, wasn’t around when it was all happening.’ She gave a harsh laugh. ‘Certainly didn’t want to know when I was arrested.’
Alex sensed she would not open up about this mysterious boyfriend. Yet. It was a case of gaining her trust and confidence, and to do that she really had to put any negative feelings aside. ‘And then?’ She tried the gentle probing, concerned face, furrowed brow.
‘And then I was alone.’
Jackie Wood stubbed out one cigarette, but not before lighting another from its stub. ‘When the children disappeared it was a dreadful day.’
A dreadful day. Alex shuddered inwardly and wanted to tell the woman how her sister’s life had been destroyed that afternoon. How she had waited, not knowing what to do with herself while Jez hunted for the children, dreading Sasha’s return. Then, after what seemed like days but was only hours, a police car picked her up and took her to Sasha’s house. Jez white-faced, holding Sasha’s hand saying over and over again: ‘they’ll be back soon, Sash, they’ll be back soon.’ Sasha crying. At first great screams that tore the air to shreds, then silent gulps, her face running with tears and snot and saliva. More police turning up, wanting a picture of the twins. Sasha scrabbling in her bag. Finding that picture taken on a sunny day in a clearing in the woods. They were having a picnic: Sasha, and her, Millie and Harry. Who took the picture? Must have been Jez. Then a policeman asking questions while a young woman police officer sat by, her notebook out, pen poised. She didn’t take one note as far as Alex could tell. Endless questions. Questions she couldn’t answer. Alex, not looking at Jez, keeping her arm around Sasha, comforting her, telling her it would all be all right. Their parents driving over from Mundburgh to stay. Then the endless searches, the false sightings, the weirdos who wanted a piece of the grief. How, as the days went on and there was no news, Sasha grew thinner and smaller. Insubstantial. When they found Harry it was a sort of tortured relief.
Then they found the clothes in Jessop’s rubbish bin. More evidence in his flat. Evidence linking Martin Jessop and Jackie Wood. And the guilt that settled on her, suffocating her. So, yes, Alex wanted to tell her how her sister’s life had been destroyed that afternoon.
‘Why did you do it?’ Alex looked at her properly then, for the first time. She looked past the scar and noticed how her eyes were dull, her skin lifeless. She had lines around her eyes – not so much crow’s feet as bloody great emu feet – and there were smoker’s lines around her mouth. Her forefinger and middle finger were stained yellow and her nails bitten down to the quick.
She took out another cigarette from the squashed packet. Lit it. Inhaled deeply. ‘I told you, I didn’t kill anybody.’
‘You gave him an alibi.’
She smiled, the scar down the side of her face rippling. ‘He didn’t do it. Funnily enough, he was in the library that day, researching something or other, I can’t remember what now.’
‘Nobody else saw him.’
She laughed. ‘For one thing, hardly anybody came in that day, and for another, he was tucked away in a corner behind one of the book stacks. Unless you went round there, you wouldn’t see him. Anyway, I’ve been over that a hundred times. I was only telling the truth, and look what it got me. Accessory to murder.’ She stubbed out the half-smoked cigarette and grabbed Alex’s arm. ‘I didn’t do it. Nor did he. That’s what I want you to say.’ Her voice was earnest, a note of desperation.
Alex sat still for a moment, then shook her hand off. ‘You were both put in prison. The police didn’t believe you. Nor a judge and jury.’
Jackie Wood’s mouth twisted in a parody of a smile. ‘You think evidence can’t be manipulated? That the police can’t be corrupted? That a jury can’t be fooled? What are you? Stupid or something? Have you already forgotten that I got out because the evidence was suspect? The expert witness was discredited!’
Alex clenched her fists, tried to breathe evenly, not wanting to shout at Jackie Wood, not wanting to shake the truth out of her. She knew she had to be careful, treat her as though she were normal and that she thought she had a point. After what seemed like minutes but was probably only seconds, she got her breathing under control.
‘Jackie,’ she began gently, ‘signs of the twins were found both in Jessop’s flat and in yours. Items of their clothing were found in the rubbish bin. So much evidence.’ She wanted to pick up her coffee cup but knew her hands would be shaking.
‘I was acquitted.’
Alex thought she saw a sly look flash across Jackie Wood’s face, then it was gone.
‘The particles of dirt didn’t add up,’ she went on. ‘Professor Gordon Higgs was discredited.’ Professor Gordon Higgs. Such a competent name. One you would trust, don’t you think? But he was wrong. Or lying.’ She leaned forward. ‘I wasn’t involved.’
‘Jessop was.’
‘Jessop was what?’
‘Involved,’ said Alex, the lightness in her head threatening to come back.
Jackie Wood shook her head. ‘I told you. He had an alibi.’
‘No, the evidence was too strong.’
She shrugged. Silence opened up. ‘He kept a diary, you know.’
‘What?’
‘A diary.’
Alex tried to look uninterested, as if her words hadn’t made her heart beat faster, the palms of her hands sweat. ‘Oh?’ She hoped she’d hit a casual note. ‘And what happened to it?’
Another shrug. ‘Dunno.’
She was lying. Alex knew she was lying, she could feel it in her bones. ‘Why did he keep it?’
‘Said he’d always kept a diary, right from when he was young. Always told the truth in it, he said.’
‘So,’ said Alex, measuring her words, ‘it might contain details of where he buried Millie.’
She shook her head. ‘We didn’t kill them.’ She put two fingers either side of her temples and pressed hard. ‘At least, I didn’t kill them. Can you go now? Come back another time.’
Alex stared at her. She wanted to shout at her. Demand to know what Martin Jessop did, how he did it. Why did he put Harry into the suitcase – what was the point of that? Why they let Harry be found but not Millie. She wanted to grab Jackie Wood around her neck and shake the answers out of her. Shake the whereabouts of Millie right out of that horrible, thin, lying mouth.
But she didn’t do any of that. She merely leaned forward and pressed the off button on the recorder, trying to stop her hand from shaking. She was going to have to be patient. ‘So who do you think did kill them?’ she asked quietly.
Jackie Wood leaned back, eyes closed, fingers still on her temples. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore. Sometimes I wonder what’s real and what I’ve imagined.’ She opened her eyes, looked into Alex’s. ‘But it’s a long time. Fifteen years. You know?’
Depression washed over Alex. Was she ever going to get anywhere? Any nearer to finding out about Millie?
‘I understand,’ she said, getting up and putting her coat on. ‘I’ll come about the same time tomorrow, is that all right?’
‘Yes. It’s been good talking to you, actually. Cathartic. Maybe,’ Jackie Wood hesitated, ‘maybe we could go out tomorrow as well, have a coffee or something? There’s a really good pastry shop in the town. They do lovely doughnuts and things. At least, they look nice in the window. I haven’t dared go in. You know.’ She sounded pathetic. ‘Do you know, I don’t even know how to use a smartphone?’
For a second Alex got an insight into what her life must be like. Not being able to do, or being used to doing, the things she took for granted. Just simple things like having a coffee. How the world had passed her by. ‘Do you worry that people will recognize you?’
Her mouth twisted. ‘You don’t think the hair dye does much, then? You think people would know who I am?’
‘Why did you come here?’ asked Alex. ‘Why not Scotland or somewhere really far away?’
Jackie Wood shrugged. ‘Why not? It’s where I grew up. I don’t know anywhere else. Besides, I’m innocent aren’t I? I haven’t got anything to fear.’
‘And the caravan?’
‘Worried the taxpayers are footing the bill? Don’t be. My parents died some years ago, one after the other. I think the shame got to them in the end. They’d bought this caravan so they could stay in it when they visited me. They loved this town. After they sold their house to pay for my legal bills they had to live in it. When they died it came to me. It was all they had left to show for forty years of marriage. They wanted me to have the best, but the best wasn’t good enough, was it?’ Alex could almost reach out and curl her hand around the bitterness in Jackie Wood’s voice. ‘They were hounded every day by people wanting to talk to them about me, about Martin.’
‘That’s the trouble though, isn’t it? The families always suffer.’
She looked at Alex, obviously trying to gauge if she was being made fun of. But Alex was deadly serious and sidled along the bench, standing and putting on her coat. Jackie Wood sat very still, looking at her.
‘I could tell you things.’
Alex stopped, mid shrug. ‘Oh?’
This time the look on Jackie Wood’s face was sly. Mercurial; she had changed from someone pathetic to a woman with a secret.
‘What things?’ Alex’s heart was beating fast. ‘What things?’ Her voice was louder.
A quick smile and Alex saw in her face the reason she had survived prison for all those years. She had a shell; a toughness to her.
She rubbed her scar with her finger, up and down, up and down. At that moment Alex hated her so much that she wanted to slap her, hit her, rake her nails down her face; make her bleed. She had to clench her jaw and her fists to stop herself from launching at her across the bench.
‘Things that might make you change your mind about me. Things that happened that you know nothing about.’
‘The diary? Is it in the diary?’
‘Come tomorrow,’ she said, ‘and maybe I’ll tell you more then.’
‘Tomorrow,’ echoed Alex. How could she wait a whole twenty-four hours?
‘My scar,’ said Jackie Wood suddenly. ‘Do you know how I got it?’ That slow blinking again. She traced it with her finger. ‘Someone took a shank to me a couple of years ago.’ She shrugged. ‘Probably one of the worst things that happened. I had the usual spit or piss in my tea. Punches here and there. Things stolen. People not talking to me. Even when you’re on Rule 45 other prisoners try to get on it purely to do you. They don’t like child killers in prison. Even ones who are innocent.’ She smiled. ‘Goodbye, Alex.’
Jackie Wood was in control; Alex had no option but to go.
She felt weightless, dizzy with Jackie Wood’s words. She tied her scarf around her neck and opened the door. Breathed in the cold fresh air that smelled like freedom. Tomorrow.
But Jackie Wood wasn’t finished. Alex heard her clear her throat behind her. Then she spoke.
‘By the way—’
‘Yes?’
‘All those years ago, what were you doing with Martin Jessop?’
Alex pretended not to hear.
9 (#ulink_8ec51d77-c07c-54f7-ad09-9fa4c1dadb25)
He’d held her hand a little longer than necessary when they first met, but Alex hadn’t minded that. He was tall, with dirty blond hair just touching his collar. The sleeves of his white shirt were rolled up to his elbows, showing strong, tanned forearms.
They met, about six months before the murders, at a talk being given by a couple of well-known authors at the college in Ipswich. She asked a question – she couldn’t for the life of her now remember what it was – but it must have ignited a spark of interest because at the toe-curling have-a-glass-of-warm-Chardonnay-and-meet-the-author event after the talk, he approached her.
‘My name’s Martin,’ he said.
They chatted for a while, he asked her to go for a drink with him and she did, realizing that the attraction was mutual. He was clever and witty, and made her laugh. The drink led to dinner, dinner led to a hotel and a clandestine relationship. Oh, she knew there was a wife somewhere but she fell for the classic ‘my wife doesn’t understand me’ line and that there was a ‘messy divorce’ going on, which was why he’d prefer to keep their relationship quiet for a while. It was Alex who found him the flat in Sole Bay, who was careful not to be seen when she visited, and was convinced no one knew about the two of them.
When she looked back and wondered why she had been drawn in, she realized it was because she’d been lonely. She was struggling to get her freelance career off the ground and look after a lively baby boy on her own. She was young, and having a clandestine lover made her life more exciting, which was why she never questioned Martin closely about his personal life.
It wasn’t until after he’d been arrested that she found out he was spinning her one great lie. Several lies. There was a wife, but very much married to Martin (no ‘messy divorce’ in the foreground or background), and two teenage children living in a small village in Cambridgeshire. He stayed in Sole Bay two or three nights a week, sometimes weekends because of his job at the college. Not because of her. She didn’t figure at all. She read all the details in the papers and knew she had been well and truly duped. The classic woman who believed everything her cheating lover told her.
At the time, it was all she could do not to fall apart. Something she had started for fun had been destroyed. She had brought a murderer into the family. The only reason she kept on living, kept herself together, was Gus. If it hadn’t been for him, she wouldn’t have been able to get out of bed in the morning. She also had to put on a show. No one had known about her affair with Martin and she wanted to keep it that way. How she managed to get through each day, putting one leaden foot in front of another, was now a blur. But she had done it.
Alex saw Martin’s wife in court, not unexpectedly. Tall, blonde, always well turned out – well groomed, well dressed. She never said anything or displayed any emotion, not, that is, until Martin was sentenced to life in prison. Then Alex watched as a solitary tear rolled down her cheek. She didn’t wait for him to be taken down.
The only emotion Alex felt when he was sentenced was thankfulness. He would be out of her life forever. Throughout the hearing she was terrified he would bring her into it, but he never did. Perhaps he thought she had suffered enough.
The last thing she could do was confess to anybody that she knew Martin Jessop.
But it was worse than that.
She walked quickly out of the caravan park and went to sit on a bench overlooking the sea. In its seeming infinity, the water always made her feel as though nothing was as bad as it seemed. And she sat there, hunched over, watching the grey waters dash against the harbour wall and feeling the wind tug at her clothes while the salt air scrubbed her skin, making it sore.
How did Jackie Wood know?
The question gnawed at her. She must have seen them at some point. Same block of flats. But why didn’t she say anything at the trial? Why didn’t she stand up and shout, ‘the sister knew the murderer too!’
Why?
Alex arrived home to hear the grunting speak of teenage boys and the drone of the Playstation in the sitting room, and no sign of Malone.
‘Hi guys,’ she said as she took stock of the dirty plates and cups on the floor, magazines lying about, and the feral smell of male youth. It was good, though, she had to return to normal mode, forget about Jackie Wood and think about everyday life. To be honest, it was a relief. She didn’t want to wrestle with her conscience any more and she didn’t want to be going over and over in her mind what Jackie Wood might have meant by ‘things’ and what might have happened to Martin’s diary.
‘Hey, Alex. How’s tricks?’
‘Fine thanks, Jack,’ she said, resisting the urge to tidy up. ‘You?’
‘Great.’ He didn’t look up from his laptop perched on his knee, fingers flying over the keyboard. Jack, gangly and yet to grow into his cheekbones and aquiline nose and full mouth; was a little different to Gus’s other friends; into computers and gaming, though he did enjoy his sport. Alex liked him. He always said hi, and when Gus was going through his difficult phase (the difficult phase that nearly gave her a mental breakdown), he stuck by her son; helped him shake off the bad group of lads he’d been hanging about with. Probably something to do with them both being in the local youth football team and the fact that he didn’t go to Gus’s school.
Gus stood. ‘Hey, Mum, hope you don’t mind a few of us hanging out here.’
‘Nope,’ she said, counting, as well as Jack, two boys she hadn’t seen before and, sitting with slim legs curled under her bottom in an armchair in the corner, flicking through a magazine, a girl. She almost did a double take. This was the first time she had ever known a girl penetrate the male circle of Gus’s friends.
‘Great. We might go to the cinema later.’
‘Okay.’ Alex hung on, hoping for some introductions, and trying not to stare at the girl who was gorgeous. Curvy figure, masses of auburn curls, brown doe-eyes which she turned on Alex now, her bee-sting lips curved in a smile. Her nose, slightly too large and a tad crooked gave her face character.
‘Thanks, Mum,’ Gus said in that dismissive voice, giving her a fierce look, which meant she was supposed to leave.
‘Okay,’ she said again. ‘Enjoy yourselves, won’t you?’
She backed out of the room, and, although she was sorry not to be introduced to the girl, she was pleased that the presence of Gus’s friends meant he wouldn’t be able to quiz her on how the interview with Jackie Wood had gone.
She made herself a coffee and sat in the kitchen, sipping it slowly and watching the wind blow through the bare trees in the back garden. All that was needed was a bit of tumbleweed rolling on through. It was how she felt. Empty, spent.
Come on.
She needed to concentrate on the interview in the context of the article she would be writing; make herself forget about any personal connection between her and Jackie Wood.
Okay, so she’d discovered the woman had a boyfriend. Who? Surely someone local; and it was odd that Jackie Wood hadn’t given up his name then or now. He might have been able to help her by providing some sort of character reference. Did he get cold feet? Not love her enough? Just wanted to have his name kept out of the whole mess, plain and simple? And she couldn’t say she blamed him. Or maybe he had something to hide. Or Jackie Wood did. But now? Well, if she’d told her about him now it might make her seem more human to the readers. Elicit some sympathy, maybe.
Alex took her notebook out of her bag and started to write. It was the way she preferred to work, recording her first impressions on paper. Then she’d listen back to the interview. So what were they? She wrote. I felt sorry for her. Why? Her time in prison? That and her life as it is now. Compared to then, when she had a life. But she doesn’t deserve life now. Why not? Because she’s guilty? Is she? Before she realized what she was doing, she had underlined that last sentence twice. Her pencil had gone through the paper.
She needed a drink. She was guilty. Definitely. Judge, jury, the media – had all found her guilty. There was no question, no question at all. And her mission was to find out where Millie was buried. Then they could give her a proper burial. And the other thing she had to do was to write the bloody article. And then there was the diary. A bloody diary. She slumped back in her chair.
The front door opened. Voices. It slammed shut.
‘Hi.’ Malone came into the kitchen and kissed the nape of her neck, sending a delicious shiver down her spine. ‘Gus let me in,’ he said pointedly, before walking over to the fridge and taking out a can of beer. ‘Want one?’
Alex shook her head. ‘Glass of wine, though?’
He popped the can and took a deep swallow. ‘Okay,’ he said, wiping the foam moustache from his top lip, before going back to the fridge.
Did she mind how familiar he was around her house, treating it as his own? She supposed not, otherwise she wouldn’t have allowed it, but still…
She was irritated. Her back itched and she wanted to squirm around on her chair. What did she really know about Malone? Damn all, really. Despite all the time she’d spent interviewing him she didn’t feel she had got to the bottom of what made him tick. She knew he was holding back. There had been the tales of derring-do and infiltrating gangs and all that. She knew he was in his forties and bloody good-looking. And he’d told her he’d been born and spent his early years in a town near Dublin, before moving to England. But what made him risk his life like that? And although he said he’d finished with that kind of life – could she trust him?
And even if she didn’t trust him, what was she doing bringing him into Gus’s life?
‘Here you go.’
He handed her a cold glass of something white. She took a gulp and immediately felt better. Not sure that was a good thing.
‘How was it then?’
Alex froze, her glass halfway to her lips ready for a second swig. What did he know? She hadn’t said she was going to see Jackie Wood, so how had he found out? Gus? Surely—
‘Hey.’ There was laughter in his voice. ‘No need to look so worried.’
‘Worried?’
‘You look like a rabbit caught in headlights.’
‘Oh?’
‘Look. I don’t know where you’ve been, and I don’t particularly want to know. But my guess is that you’ve been somewhere interesting and spoken to someone important and I sort of thought it might be to do with your work.’
Alex looked at him: calm, steady, strong. No, she didn’t know him that well, but she did know that he cared about her and that if she let it, their relationship could grow into something special. And she hadn’t had anyone to make her feel safe for so many years. She had built a wall around her and Gus and not let anyone breach it. Perhaps now was the time to let the cracks widen that had come with Malone.
She let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. ‘Jackie Wood.’
‘That’s who you went to see?’ He gave a low whistle. ‘Wow, no wonder you’re uptight.’
‘I am not uptight. Well, maybe a little. You mustn’t tell anyone. If it got out where she was living then I’d be done for.’
‘But I don’t know where she’s living; you haven’t told me,’ Malone pointed out, probably quite reasonably, she supposed.
‘True,’ she said.
‘And I won’t mention it again.’ There was a pause. ‘So what did she say?’ Malone sat back, balanced the ankle of one leg on the knee of the other. Perfect relaxing pose.
She shook her head. ‘Malone.’
‘Come on, Alex, spill the beans. You know I won’t say anything. I’ve worked under the radar, as well you know.’
Alex pursed her lips. Blew out some air. ‘Said she didn’t do it.’
‘Do you believe her?’
She rubbed the rim of the glass with the tip of her finger. ‘Not really.’
Malone lifted an eyebrow. ‘Some doubt there, though?’
‘I suppose I’m not entirely sure. She was pretty convincing.’
Malone put his drink down, went over to her and took her hand. ‘Look. If I can help at all, I will. I’ve got contacts. Friends, you know?’
‘Friends. Do I really want to know, Malone?’
He gave a twisted smile. ‘Probably not. But then you wouldn’t need to know; you could leave it to me.’
She gave a heartfelt sigh. ‘I’m going back to see her tomorrow. For the final part of the interview.’ She looked down at Malone’s hands. Began to stroke the signet ring he wore on the little finger of his left hand. ‘I’m sort of hoping that she’ll have had time to think and that she’ll trust me.’
‘And she’ll just happen to tell you where Millie is buried? Why should she do that? It would send her back to prison, wouldn’t it?’ His expression was kind.
‘I thought I would tell her that I wouldn’t tell anybody where the information had come from. Plead protecting my sources, that sort of thing.’
Malone cupped her chin. ‘Is that going to work? Post Leveson? There are other people involved in this, you know. Sasha for one. Jez. Gus, too. And if she does tell you, it’d be tantamount to her admitting killing the twins. You’d have to tell the police.’
She gritted her teeth. ‘I’m not telling the police. She has to be able to trust me on that. My only consolation there is that she has already served fifteen years. Not enough, but I’d accept it, if we could only know where Millie is. I just want to know, that’s all.’
He kissed her lightly on the lips. ‘No you don’t, you want retribution. Love, Millie’s gone. Buried in some wood or field. This woman is not going to put herself at risk by telling you anything.’
Deep down, she knew Malone was right.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’ll put in a couple of calls to some people I know, see if she said anything in jail. See if Jessop said anything before he topped himself.’
‘Jessop?’
Malone gave a shrug. ‘I know it’s a while ago, but people who’ve been inside have long memories. It’s worth a go.’
Alex took his hand. ‘Thanks, Malone.’
‘Now,’ he got up, stiffly, rubbing the small of his back, ‘I’m too old for squatting down on my knees. I suggest you go and write up at least the first part of your article while it’s fresh in your mind.’
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