‘I don’t know. Maybe there is.’ I remembered talking to Donald Hargreaves in person, how much I’d learned during that interview that I’d never have stumbled on over the phone. In terms of my own life and my own safety, Geraldine Hughes was an infinitely more important witness. ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘is there any chance we could meet up and discuss this face-to-face? I can travel, it’s no problem.’
‘That sounds fine. I’d be only too happy to talk it over with someone.’ She sounded suddenly reflective. ‘Colin’s a lovely man, but even he must get tired of hearing about it—he’d never say so, but I’ve gone over it with him dozens of times. And I don’t think anyone else would understand unless they’d been there at the time, or had it happen to them. It was so strange. I still think about it a lot. Probably too much. It’s hard not talking about something when it’s on your mind so often.’
‘I know what you mean,’ I said. ‘I know exactly what you mean.’
‘I haven’t even told my kids the whole story. I didn’t want to worry them.’ She sighed. ‘It’s not that I’m not happy where I am now—I really am—but I can’t stop remembering how it was there. I didn’t just leave, I was driven out. It feels like unfinished business, sometimes.’
A moment’s silence, heavy with imminent practicalities. ‘So,’ she said at last, ‘when and where shall we meet?’
‘The sooner the better, as far as I’m concerned,’ I said warily. ‘I don’t suppose you’re free tomorrow, by any chance?’
Her murmur of casual assent startled and delighted me. ‘That sounds fine. How about meeting in Bournemouth town centre?’ Another pause, this one slightly awkward. ‘I’d give you my address, but after what happened…well, you know. I can’t help being a bit paranoid with my home details.’
‘Don’t worry. I’m sure I’d feel the same way,’ I said. ‘If you had nothing to do with Rebecca Fisher—’
‘Oh, she wasn’t a stranger to me, exactly.’ Her tone was conversational again, offhand. ‘I suppose I had something to do with her.’
The words took me completely by surprise. ‘What?’
‘It doesn’t matter. I’ll tell you tomorrow.’
‘No, really,’ I pressed. ‘How did you know her?’
‘Honestly, it’s nothing particularly exciting. All will be revealed.’ The last sentence came out in ironic quote marks, then she spoke again more briskly, in her normal voice. ‘Do you know Bournemouth at all well?’
I knew I couldn’t ask about her link with Rebecca again without actively nagging, persistent as a little kid yanking at her mother’s sleeve on the way past a sweet shop. Still, my curiosity was overwhelming. We arranged to meet at two o’clock in a town centre café the following day.
Geraldine’s words kept coming back to me, like an echo that somehow grew louder rather than fading with repetition: Oh, she wasn’t a stranger to me, exactly. I suppose I had something to do with her. Becoming more and more ambiguous the more I thought about it. Back in the kitchen, I realised I had no appetite whatsoever for the salad I’d been making myself before the phone rang.
Questions chased their own tails in my mind: what did she mean; what could she mean, what was she going to tell me tomorrow? I went out into the back garden to escape them, hoping that greenery and sunlight might calm me down a little. Liz was there already, doing some gardening by the fence.
‘Hello, Anna, dear,’ she said as I emerged, ‘how are you?’
‘Oh, not bad,’ I said. ‘Thought I’d come out and make the most of the weather.’
‘I can’t say I blame you. Isn’t it lovely?’
A moment’s silence fell, oddly foreboding and incongruous with the nature of our exchange, implying things we both knew, that didn’t belong in such an idyllic scene. When she spoke again, her voice was superficially matter-of-fact, with an almost apologetic undertow of concern. ‘I take it you haven’t had any more…’
She couldn’t quite bring herself to finish the sentence, but in my own mind, I heard the next words only too clearly—events, happenings, terrors. ‘No,’ I said, trying a little too hard to smile. ‘Nothing like that.’
‘Well, I’m very pleased to hear it, dear. I’ve been quite worried since you told me…’ Again, the awkward tailing off, as I imagined the rest for myself. ‘How’s your research going, anyway? Have you been doing any more of it today?’
I could tell she was trying to sound politely and passingly interested, but the edge of worry was obvious to me. I had an impulse to tell her all I knew, that my research had nothing to do with events, that Mr Wheeler had been innocent all along. Still, the sheer extent of my own confusion stopped me; I’d be trying to explain a situation I didn’t understand anything about myself, and she’d find it every bit as incomprehensible as I did. I’d tell her after I’d talked to Geraldine, I decided, when things were clearer to me. Then I’d explain why I hadn’t told her before.
‘Not today,’ I said, ‘I’m not really in the mood, to be honest. I think I’ll carry on with it after the weekend. Maybe I’ll feel more like getting back to it then.’
‘If you say so, dear. I still think you’d be wiser to let it drop, but, if you just can’t bring yourself to…’ She sighed, her expression thoughtful. ‘I don’t really know why I feel that way. I’m sure you’re right about Mr Wheeler—he couldn’t possibly know whether you were carrying on with it or not. But, oh, I don’t know. It’s hard to know what to think about something like that.’
She didn’t know the half of it. My thoughts circled Geraldine’s words obsessively and pointlessly, like a starving dog round an unopened can of Pedigree Chum. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘you can never tell. Maybe it’ll all start making sense, soon.’
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
OF COURSE, I didn’t tell Carl anything about going into Bournemouth. When he’d left for work the following morning, I got up and got ready, then some hours later, I set the burglar alarm and left the house myself. Opening the car door, a sudden impulse made me turn and look back at it; its blinding white façade and surrounding greenery looked indescribably picturesque in the sunlight. The powder-blue Fiat in Liz’s driveway made the picture a hundred times more reassuring than it would have been otherwise.
Still, I couldn’t help but be reminded of that nightmare Tuesday last week, how I’d felt leaving the house that morning. I’d had exactly the same anticipatory, butterflyish sensation as I did now, before going into London to meet Donald Hargreaves, and coming home to broken glass and police cars…
I wouldn’t think about that, I told myself, as I started the engine. I’d simply refuse to. But my awareness of stark parallels between that day and this wasn’t quite that easy to banish. Travelling to speak to a virtual stranger, a sense of crucial revelations waiting in the wings. Nobody knowing where I was.
As I parked in the multi-storey in Bournemouth, the similarities became appalling; the dead silence and the deserted look of the place were exactly as they’d been last Tuesday. Even the shadowy hints of other cars around me seemed to be in the same places. But, when I stepped out into brightness and normality, there was nothing in my mind but the prospect of meeting Geraldine.
While it was a good three quarters of an hour before we’d arranged to meet, it seemed that I couldn’t reach the appointed meeting place quickly enough, as though I could hasten her arrival by turning up early myself. When I reached the café, it was half past one. All four outside tables were occupied by chattering groups surrounded by shopping bags. Inside the shadows spilled comforting smells of cake and coffee, and it was virtually deserted. I sat down at the only window table, lighting a cigarette. One of the waitresses came over, and I ordered a cappuccino, sitting and smoking and watching the street outside, waiting for Geraldine to be there.
The minutes dragged interminably, and a steady tide of strangers flowed past. I kept thinking I’d seen her in the distance, then realising it wasn’t her at all, wasn’t anything like her. But then…
The woman
approaching across the road, was fine-boned and middle-aged, with greying fair hair tied indifferently back from her face. She had a big, shiny, cord-handled shopping bag in one hand, the kind that looked effortlessly chic when new and now looked distinctly battered. As she came closer, I raised my hand in greeting and saw her waving back, quickening her step.
My mobile bleeped abruptly from my handbag. Getting it out, I checked the message I’d just received. HAVE U WON A MILLION? TXT BACK NOW 2 FIND OUT!!! I deleted it, then, on second thoughts, turned the phone off—I didn’t want anything interrupting our imminent conversation. I was putting it back in my bag when Geraldine came in, smiled across the coffee shop at me and walked over to the table.
‘I never had the least idea why they targeted me. Or even who they were,’ she told me. ‘But when I found Maxie dead, I knew they’d stop at nothing to get me out. I came back from the shop one afternoon and there he was, on my back doorstep. He’d been tied up in packing tape. There was a screwdriver through his throat.’ She spoke matter-of-factly, but her sudden, convulsive breath implied a deep and lingering grief. ‘Whoever it was, he wouldn’t have given them any trouble—he was just a little thing, a mongrel, more Jack Russell than anything else. A bit smaller than a Jack Russell, in fact. Tiny.’
An image of Socks rose in my mind. ‘You didn’t call the police?’
She shook her head. ‘There was a letter beside him, weighed down with a stone so it wouldn’t blow away. I remember noticing that. I was too scared even to feel scared. I opened it straight away. It was all cut out of newspaper letters, stuck on A4 paper. It told me to move out, or I’d be next—and that, if I went to the police, I’d be next anyway.’ That deep, shuddering breath again, entirely incongruous with her calm façade. ‘I felt like—I don’t know how I felt. Up till then, I’d thought having my windows broken was the worst that could happen, and you know that had happened already. I’d gone to the police then. I’d told them about the anonymous letters and phone calls I’d been getting, too.’
‘What did they do?’
‘They didn’t do a thing. Perhaps I’m being paranoid, but I really don’t think I am—I could honestly see them thinking no smoke without fire as soon as they read the letters for themselves. And the notes. Someone had tied them round stones with elastic bands, then used the stones to break my windows.’ Her face was blank now, utterly bewildered. ‘I could see the police thinking it had to be true. Why else would anyone go to so much trouble to force me out?’
‘I can believe it,’ I said. ‘What did the letters say?’
‘They were insane. Bizarre. I couldn’t make any sense of them. GET OUT REBECCA FISHER, that was one of them. WE KNOW WHAT YOU DID, that was another. And the notes tied round the stones all said the same thing: GET OUT NOW. THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING. They were all cut out of newspaper letters, like the one I found by Maxie. Newspaper letters stuck on that A4 paper.’
‘I can imagine how confused you must have been.’
‘Oh, I was. But it’s hard to explain—part of me was convinced that it was some ridiculous mistake, that it would all blow over.’ A long, uncomfortable pause—I saw my own present reflected far too clearly in the recent past she evoked. ‘But when Maxie was killed, I knew it wouldn’t. I still can’t quite forgive myself for not taking the threat as seriously as I should have, at first. I’d had him for eight years. Of course, I didn’t call the police then. Would you have done?’
I shook my head, and didn’t say a word.
‘In a horrible way, it’s so ironic,’ she continued quietly. ‘I’d moved to Abbots Newton because it looked so peaceful and neighbourly, so picturesque. I’d just got divorced from my husband, I didn’t work and I wanted a new start. There was nothing to keep me in the old place, the kids had all moved away years ago. And the divorce had really isolated me. I got the dog and quite a generous settlement, my ex-husband kept most of our friends…’
She fell silent for a few seconds, looking at her folded hands on the table. ‘I’d always wanted to live in Dorset, ever since I read some Thomas Hardy at school. And of course, Colin was here. We were together before I got married, and we’ve stayed close friends ever since. He encouraged me to move, thought a change of scene would do me good. When I first saw Abbots Newton, I just couldn’t believe my luck. When I saw that house in Ploughman’s Lane. It was like a different world from Teasford.’
I spoke sharply. ‘You’d lived in Teasford?’
‘All my life, born and raised. It was why I wasn’t exactly a stranger to Rebecca, as I told you over the phone. I was at primary school with her, a year above her, but I can still remember her clearly. It was a small school.’ The big, battered shopping bag I’d noticed earlier was on the floor by her chair and, unexpectedly, she bent towards it. ‘I’ve got a picture from back then. I don’t know why, but I thought you might be interested.’ Her voice came from below table level, somewhat indistinct. ‘This bag was all I could find to fit it in—it’s not exactly a convenient size to cart about on its own.’
She extracted a foot-long black-and-white photo mounted on age-grimed cardboard; handed it across the table to me. It was identical to Annette Watson’s photo, the one I’d had copied. ‘It was taken in the summer term,’ she said. ‘Less than a month before Rebecca killed Eleanor Corbett. Perhaps it’s morbid to keep it, but I don’t think anyone in that photo threw it away. There I am, right there.’
She pointed, and I looked—saw she was recognisably herself, a pretty fine-featured girl of maybe eleven, with long straight fair hair in a high ponytail. One of dozens of anonymous faces I’d never noticed at all before. Background scenery for the main characters to stand out against.
‘You did look a bit like Rebecca,’ I ventured at last. ‘Maybe that’s what started it all. A case of mistaken identity.’
‘Because I’m about the same colouring and height, and come from Teasford?’ It was true, I realised; it was a fleeting similarity rather than an uncanny resemblance. With a small, rueful laugh, Geraldine pointed out the real Rebecca, and replaced the photo in her shopping bag. ‘I don’t know how anyone came to link us together. But they did. I could tell everyone in the village believed it implicitly, that I was her. At first, they couldn’t have seemed nicer or friendlier. I didn’t have that much to do with any of them, but when I did, they always seemed welcoming. Then suddenly…who knows?’
‘People changed when it all started?’
‘After I started getting those anonymous letters, they changed more than I’d have believed possible. If I’d known they’d react like that, I’d have kept my worries to myself, but it never occurred to me to do that. I honestly didn’t think they’d believe it was true. I remember the lady next door, Liz Grey—you must know her now. She was very friendly at first, we got to know each other over a cup of tea when I’d been there a few days. I expected we’d see quite a lot of each other. Then she just…cooled. When she found out about the letters. It was like that with everyone in Abbots Newton. However nice they’d seemed at first.’
Silence fell between us, and intensified. Her gaze moved restlessly out of the window, then her sharp indrawn breath made me jump. ‘Oh, Christ,’ she said, ‘speak of the devil. I know that woman—well, I know of her.’
Following her gaze, I saw an anonymous crowd for a second or two, then my attention zoomed in on one person. It was Helen. She was walking in our direction. In a handful of seconds, she’d pass us.
‘I can’t say I miss her much,’ Geraldine continued. ‘I didn’t know her at all well, but when all that happened, she was more standoffish than anyone else in the village. Even before it started, she seemed like a cold bit of work… afterwards, she wouldn’t even look at me. If we saw each other on the street, she’d just walk straight past with her nose in the air, cutting me dead.’
As we spoke, Helen was coming closer and closer. I found myself hoping she wouldn’t notice us—it would have been eminently possible for her not to have done. But, as she re
ached the café, she seemed to sense us both looking at her, and turned her head sharply to the right. I saw her seeing us behind the glass. Saw her recognising Geraldine a split second after she’d recognised me.
Her smile was directed at me alone, the kind of smile that served only to acknowledge recognition. Somehow, she managed to ignore Geraldine pointedly. As she passed by, Geraldine turned back to me with a rueful smile. ‘See what I mean? I had to put up with that sort of thing all the time, in Abbots Newton. Oh well, at least it’s all over now. I still remember poor little Maxie, but I’ll never have to go through that again.’
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ I said, but, as I spoke, my thoughts returned to Helen. I wondered what on earth she’d thought of this meeting, what she must be thinking now. To all intents and purposes, she’d seen me having a coffee with Rebecca Fisher. ‘I only hope it ends that well for me.’
It was quarter to three when we said goodbye outside the coffee shop and went our separate ways. Turning, I saw the summer holiday crowd swallow her up and make her part of itself. An ordinary middle-aged housewife and mother, recently divorced as so many people were. As far as I could tell, before she’d arrived in Abbots Newton, only one fact would jump out of her life and make it newsworthy—she’d gone to school with a notorious murderess, had seen Rebecca Fisher when she was just another face in the playground.
Why would anyone target her? I thought, then, hot on the heels of that, why would anyone target me?
In the multi-storey car park, the sense of déjà vu I’d felt earlier leapt back out from the shadows. I’d forgotten all about it, and its return chilled me. Again, I was caught in a memory of last Tuesday, returning from London, approaching the car, eerily perfect acoustics amplifying my footsteps in crystal-clear surround sound. This time, the feeling didn’t loosen its grip as I drove out into the sunlight. I wanted to take a different route back to Abbots Newton just to make it go away, but I couldn’t. There was only one way to get there. Beyond the windows, the scenery unwound in exactly the same order and at exactly the same speed as it had done then, an undistinguished residential area giving way to Wareham’s town centre, the rapid approach of the side-turning onto Ploughman’s Lane.
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