by J. S. Monroe
Tony hasn’t texted or called since he left. I’ve not contacted him either. He must be with the police again, answering their questions, trying to keep up appearances, denying that he knows my whereabouts. I will text him later.
I take one last look around me and set off down the lane, breaking into a run.
CHAPTER 52
Silas walks through the bar, pushing the thought of a pint and some peanuts to the back of his mind. Later. Much later. When this is all sorted. The public appeal should throw up something. It usually does. He’s also upgraded Jemma Huish’s risk assessment from low to high and flagged it up with the UK Missing Persons Bureau, who have redistributed her file, including her DNA profile, to all UK forces and reclassified her as “missing” rather than “absent.”
He walks around to the stable block, where CSI is searching the room that Jemma stayed last night.
“I thought you should see this,” the CSI manager says, coming out to meet Silas and Strover.
“What is it?”
“We’ve found a hairbrush. Under the bed.”
“Jemma’s?”
“We think so. An initial dust analysis suggests it’s recent, last couple of hours.”
“Roots?” Silas learned on day one of being a detective that a strand of hair is no good to anyone unless the root is attached.
“That’s what’s strange,” the CSI manager says. “Lots of roots. Fresh ones. Someone brushed their hair very hard with this. Much harder than necessary. And then there’s the position we found the brush in.”
“Under the bed,” Silas says, wondering where the manager’s going with this.
“If it fell to the floor and was accidentally knocked under there—kicked, for example—you would expect it to have picked up some dust, or at least left a trace where it had skidded across the floorboards. It’s a very dusty room.”
Why do CSI managers always talk in riddles?
“Are you suggesting it was deliberately placed under the bed?” Silas asks.
“After the user had used it to comb their hair excessively hard.”
“To ensure there were enough hairs with roots attached?”
The CSI manager nods.
“Could I possibly have a word?”
Silas looks up to see a tall man, early fifties, standing in the doorway. He can smell the beer on his breath. Drunk and posh.
“How did you get up here?” Silas asks the man.
“The stairs?” he offers.
Silas thought an officer was on duty below to keep people away. The last thing he needs is drunks staggering up from the pub.
Strover moves toward the man.
“I’m a journalist, used to be,” the man says. “Worked with you guys on the Swindon Strangler case.”
Silas is more interested now. Strover senses as much and drops back. The press and police had cooperated closely on that case—a rare exercise in mutual benefit. Silas had been a key player in the Major Crime Investigation Team that had solved the local case.
“What’s your name?” Silas asks.
“Luke Lascelles. I live in the village. Got something that may be of interest. About Jemma.”
“Go on.” His name sounds familiar.
“I don’t think she’s Jemma Huish,” Luke says.
“She’s a Russian mole,” another voice calls out from down below. Strover struggles not to laugh. Drunk and Irish this time.
Luke turns to remonstrate with the Irishman, who has now appeared at the top of the stairs.
“Can you talk to these two gentlemen in the bar?” Silas says to Strover. “Find out if they’ve got anything useful to say.”
Plenty of inebriated locals have provided Silas with useful intel over the years. He just doesn’t want to be the one to extract it today. Once they have returned downstairs, escorted by Strover, he turns back to the CSI manager.
“What you’re saying is that the hairbrush was meant to be found,” Silas says, for his own clarification.
“That’s not my job to say, but yes, I’d conclude that it was deliberately placed under the bed.”
Why would Jemma do that? Why would she want the police to extract her DNA from the brush within hours of refusing a test? Silas puts a call through to his office. “Get me a search warrant for Tony Masters’s house.”
CHAPTER 53
“I know it’s weird,” Luke says, looking at Detective Constable Strover before he turns away, “but when I first saw Jemma, down at the surgery, I could have sworn I was looking at Freya thirty years ago.”
They are sitting in a quiet corner of the pub, which is empty apart from Sean, who is sulking over a pint at the bar. He had wanted to be interviewed first, can’t understand why, given the Novichok poisoning in Salisbury, his Russian theory isn’t being taken more seriously.
“So let me get this straight,” Strover says, glancing at her notepad on the table. “You think Jemma is your daughter?”
“The likeness was uncanny,” Luke says, frustrated with himself, the emotion in his voice. He’s sounding like a guest on the Jeremy Kyle Show. He has already explained to Strover how late last night he FaceTimed Freya, an old flame who now lives in India and who once looked like Jemma. They had a child together, but she was given away at birth to a mixed-race couple living in Germany, one of whom practices the Baha’i faith...
Strover stares at him impassively.
“Everyone else says she looks like Jemma Huish,” she says, folding over a sheet of her notepad. She’s got tidy, small writing. Everything about her is neat, controlled.
“What’s your opinion?” Luke asks.
“I don’t have one,” she says. “Just a boss who wants this sorted.” Luke feels like he’s wasting police time.
“It’s not like she’s the spitting image of Freya but...” He pauses. “You just know when you see someone that they’re related. Their posture, gait. Their mien.”
She stares at him. Her silent manner is making him talk more than usual, fill in the gaps. A standard police tactic, no doubt.
“When someone turns up in a village like this, it can be unsettling,” Strover says, surprising him with a more sympathetic tone. “People project their own theories. Is there anything else apart from her ‘mien’—” she exaggerates the word in her Bristol accent “—that might link Jemma to your old girlfriend’s daughter?”
“Like hard evidence, you mean?” he asks. For the first time in their conversation, she smiles at him.
“That would be useful.”
“Jemma’s got a tattoo on her wrist—a lotus.” Strover nods. He’s got her attention now. “It’s an important flower for Baha’is, a minority religion practiced by Freya’s... Our daughter’s adoptive mother.”
Strover makes a note, he assumes about the tattoo. Her writing is too small to be read upside down. Another police trick.
“I know how it must sound,” Luke continues, fiddling with a beer mat. “But if she’s not Jemma Huish, then who the hell is she? She has to be someone, must have come here for a reason.”
“I thought the Kremlin sent her,” she says, nodding toward Sean at the bar. Luke laughs dryly.
“Will you let me know, when you find her, about her DNA?” he asks, more serious now.
“You know I can’t do that.”
“I just mean where she’s from in the world. Asia, Africa, North America.”
“How well do you know Tony, the American who runs the café?” she asks, ignoring his question.
“He’s been living in the village for a year or so. Decent bloke, community-minded.” Luke likes Tony—they’re quiz pals, village mates—but how well does he know him? Well enough to pop around to his house after he’s finished here and tell him that the police have been asking questions.
“Happily married?” she asks.
Luke pauses, looking at Strover. He was never able to do that as a journalist: slip in a personal question without batting an eyelid.
“As far as I know, yes,” he says, remembering what Laura had said on the phone, how Tony had started to behave strangely.
“He cooked Jemma dinner on the second night. At his house. After his wife had gone to London.”
His phone rings, saving him from having to comment any further on the state of Tony and Laura’s marriage. “Do you mind if I take this? It’s actually Laura.”
Strover nods. “We’ve been trying to speak to her.”
Luke glances up at Strover as he takes the call. Can she hear their conversation? Laura sounds increasingly agitated, talking quickly. She’s seen the police news reports and is glad that someone is finally sharing her concerns about Jemma.
“She’s coming back to the village,” Luke says, checking his watch as he hangs up. “In half an hour. I’m meeting her off the train.”
“Mind if I join you?”
CHAPTER 54
The knife is tucked up inside the sleeve of Jemma’s right arm, the handle gripped firmly in her hand. She was carrying it down by her side until a minute ago, when she thought she heard someone up ahead. It was nothing more than a twig snapping, but it sounded heavier than an animal.
She listens again and then she sees her, diagonally to the right: a woman running through the trees. Jemma watches, transfixed. The woman is like a gazelle, her stride long and light. Soon she is crossing the path that Jemma is on, two hundred yards up ahead. The woman stops, breathing heavily, and looks back down the track. The two of them stare at each other, like reflections. And then she is gone, running away through the forest.
Jemma turns and heads for the hill she used to climb as a teenager, on nights when the anger could no longer be contained. She is out of breath by the time she reaches the top. More memories come flooding back. Up here, by the solitary, windswept tree, its branches thrown out to one side as if dancing at a rave, she used to rail at the sky. Not today, though. Not anymore. The village is spread out far beneath her, the valley dissected by the canal and railway line. She can just make out School Road, running down from the pub; the surgery and the train station. And there’s the church, surrounded by its graveyard.
Jemma sets off down the hill, breaking into a run.
CHAPTER 55
Luke stands outside Tony and Laura’s front door, waiting for it to open, smiling at the police officer standing guard in the street. He doesn’t smile back. It sounds like there are a lot of people inside.
“What’s going on?” Luke asks, following Tony into the sitting room. Two CSIs in white oversuits are coming down the stairs.
“I invited the cops round for tea,” Tony says, tracking the CSIs as they go past them into the hall. “You know me. Don’t slam the door,” he shouts, his voice full of sarcasm. He shakes his head and sits down on the sofa, gesturing for Luke to do the same. Tony is flustered.
“I’ve just been interviewed by DC Strover,” Luke says.
“Lucky you. I got the fat guy.”
Luke waits until the door has closed—they don’t slam it—before he speaks.
“They were asking about Jemma, said you cooked dinner for her last night.”
“So I cooked Jemma dinner. Big frickin’ deal. Clam chowder. Scallops, actually. She stayed here the previous night. That’s why the cops are upstairs, searching her bed for some DNA to frame her with.”
“They wanted to know about Laura too, said she left yesterday to stay with her mom in London.”
Luke looks up as another CSI walks past from the kitchen and heads upstairs.
“She’s coming back,” Tony says. “Just called.”
“She called me too. The police want to meet her off the train.”
“Good luck to them. She doesn’t want to meet me, that’s for sure.”
Tony stands up and walks over to the bottom of the stairs. “Careful with those pictures on the landing,” he shouts out. “They’re Picassos.”
He comes back to sit on the sofa, smiling. “Assholes,” he says, his leg bouncing nervously.
Luke’s never seen Tony like this before. He realizes how little he does know him. Their village friendship has been forged in the pub, on the cricket pitch, and has its limits. They’ve never talked about marriage, for example, or love or death. It’s the same with Sean. Drinking pals.
Luke takes a deep breath. “I got the impression that the police think there might be something going on between you two.”
Tony laughs. “Is that what they said?” Strover didn’t say as much, but it was obvious to Luke that’s what the officer was implying.
“Well, is there?” Luke asks, charting new waters.
“Of course there isn’t. I’m a married man. What’s it to you anyway?”
“I was just wondering,” Luke says.
“Well don’t,” Tony says, heading off into the kitchen. Luke watches him fill the kettle, wipe down the sideboard unnecessarily. He knows why he hasn’t asked Tony about such things before.
“Have you seen Jemma recently?” Luke asks, keen to move things on. “Everyone seems to be looking for her.”
“Have they sent you?” Tony says, coming to the kitchen doorway. “Is that it?”
“Of course not,” Luke replies, struggling to understand Tony’s behavior, where he’s coming from. Another CSI walks through the kitchen, watched by Tony. Is this all an act for their benefit?
“I’ve told the cops everything I know,” Tony continues, still in the kitchen. “I last saw her heading down towards the train station this morning.”
Luke’s phone buzzes. It’s from Laura: Got off the train early, want to walk canal path to clear my head. Can we meet? Welcome a chat. Keen to make up with Tony but he’s refusing to see me. Lx.
“I’m sorry,” Tony says, coming back into the sitting room. “You know how much I love cops.”
Luke doesn’t know what to think anymore. He just wants to get out of here, meet Laura.
“My dad just texted,” he lies, putting away his phone. “Their Wi-Fi’s playing up. I ought to head over there and sort it.”
CHAPTER 56
Laura walks along the towpath, a heron lifting forlornly from the water in front of her to settle farther down the canal. She was feeling fine about returning to the village, happy to give a statement to the police and catch up with Susie, who’s not been returning her calls, but she lost her nerve one station before the final stop. The police appeal for information about Jemma Huish has given her a certain grim satisfaction, making her own paranoia that first night seem less irrational, but it’s been tempered by Tony’s worrying behavior, how protective of Jemma he has become. Does Tony has something to do with her disappearance?
Her phone rings. It’s Luke, who had texted earlier to say that he would come out to find her on the towpath.
“Where are you now?” he asks.
“Near the Blue Pool,” she says. It’s somewhere she hopes to visit often one day. A mile out of the village, it’s an old millpond where the local kids come to swim and play, swinging off a rope from a high branch and launching themselves into water. One day.
“I’ll be there in a minute,” he says. “Have you tried Tony again?”
“He won’t pick up.” After failing to speak to him, she’d sent a text asking to meet but he hadn’t replied.
She hangs up and walks on toward the Blue Pool, which she can see up ahead. It’s a hazy summer’s day, but the canal is not busy except for a couple of fishermen, seated far apart from each other on the opposite bank. There’s a place along here where she and Tony first came when they moved into the village. Set back from the towpath, it’s meant to be the site of a holy well, although the water has long since dried up. A wishing tree marks the spot, covered in brightly colored ribbons
and trinkets with messages written by people with hopes and dreams. Tony and Laura wished for a child and tied their card to a high branch, away from prying eyes. She wants to see if it’s still there, maybe write another one.
She turns off the towpath and heads down through the undergrowth toward the well, following a faint track. Most of the wishes are made in spring, when there’s a steady stream of people coming down here. As she draws near, she thinks she hears something up ahead: a woman starting to talk. Her voice is strained, desperate. She’s never heard such anguish before. Laura walks closer, treading quietly, holding her breath.
“I really need to speak to the police,” the voice says.
Laura’s first instinct is to turn and run, but she’s transfixed by the person’s pleading tone.
“I’m scared what I might do, you know?” the voice continues. “Please... It was hearing my name on the radio that stirred it all up. Why are they suddenly looking for me?” Laura can hardly bring herself to move. “I need help here. I’ve tried everything, but nothing’s working. I’m telling you, I need fucking help. They want me to kill the first person I see.”
Laura manages to turn around and walk back to the towpath, where she calls Luke. Why isn’t she ringing Tony? Up until a few days ago, she would have done—he’s her husband, the love of her life—but everything’s changed now. And so quickly. She can’t trust him anymore, which breaks her heart.
“Are you near?” she says, her voice barely a whisper.
“You okay?” Luke asks.
“She’s here. By the wishing tree. The well.”
“Who is? I can hardly hear you Laura.”
She stops talking and looks up. The woman has come down the footpath from the well and is standing ten yards away, a large kitchen knife in her hand by her side.
“Laura?” Luke asks again. “Are you there? Laura?”
She doesn’t want to say or do anything. Her eyes are fixed on the woman, who is standing motionless, staring back at her, pain in her eyes.