Andrew only had eyes and ears for his ex-wife, though.
‘How long have you been back?’ he asked.
‘Five days,’ Keira replied. ‘Maybe six. It’s a long flight. I went via Dubai, then I wasn’t sure whether I’d gone forward or back in time.’ She paused, fingering her cappuccino mug but not drinking. ‘I’ve had a few things to do. Six weeks is a long time to be away. You should see my mail pile – mainly bills, of course. I’ve not got through it all yet.’
Andrew was finding it hard to look at Keira directly. He could almost manage it and yet there was a spot on the wall a little over her shoulder at which he found it easier to look. She was there, right in front of him, the woman whose face he’d been picturing every day since she walked out. Since he thought they were done for the second time. Then the postcard with its simple message arrived and he didn’t know what to think. Now they were in the same place again.
‘How was Thailand?’ he asked.
Her face lit up. ‘Amazing – one of my charity contacts helped set me up to work on this project for desalinating water. It’s going to change the lives of hundreds of people, perhaps thousands. Then I spent a bit of time teaching and working with these kids. It was exhausting – twelve hours a day or more. I didn’t feel it at the time, though.’
She yawned and then giggled as she tried to wave it away.
‘I needed the break,’ she added.
A break from you, Andrew thought. He was glad she didn’t say it.
Keira sipped her drink, nibbled at her cookie. This was what they’d become – coffee and cookies. An amiable afternoon thing to do with a friend, not exactly yanked heartstrings and the love of one’s life.
She put down the cup very deliberately and then looked up, waiting for Andrew to catch her gaze. ‘I’ll never forgive you,’ Keira said softly but firmly. ‘I’m sorry – I want to. I thought about it a lot while I was away. I wanted to be able to come back and tell you everything was fine, that I can forgive and forget. But I can’t.’
Andrew felt something sharp stabbing his chest. This was a heart attack, wasn’t it? He tried to remember the first signs. Wasn’t it something like shortness of breath? It was – and he could breathe fine. No heart attack – just the stabbing, vicious blow of the woman he loved saying she’d never forgive him. He wasn’t sure which was worse.
‘I don’t blame you,’ Andrew heard himself saying. The words plopped out from nowhere.
‘I understand why you took my father’s money,’ Keira added, still sounding firm. She’d clearly rehearsed. ‘He never wanted us to marry in the first place and when we started talking about children, he wanted to do anything he could to break us up. When he told you it was leave me with his money or have him destroy us – and you – I know what you must’ve been feeling. I grew up with him. I know he’s overbearing…’ She stopped, coughed, gulped. ‘He’s a bully – always has been – and he’s used to getting what he wants. I know how powerful he can seem and I really do get why you chose the money. What I can’t forgive you for is not talking to me. Not giving me the option of choosing you over my parents. You dumped me and that was it.’
She stopped as her voice cracked. Andrew was desperately trying to swallow the enlarging lump in his throat, though he had no idea how to reply. She was right.
Keira took a long breath and then continued. ‘I’ve been home and told my father that my relationship with him is done. I’ll never forgive either of you for what you’ve cost me over the past nine years.’
This was not what Andrew had expected. Whether or not her father was a bully, Keira had always been a Daddy’s girl. Rebelling against him by marrying Andrew was just about the only thing she’d ever done to defy her father. Andrew could barely get the words out as the lump in his throat was now some sort of bowling ball.
‘Does this mean we’re done?’ he asked.
There was a pause. A really long pause. Andrew watched his former wife’s nostrils flare and unflare as she breathed. There was a loose eyelash clinging to the top of her cheek, bobbing up and down as she inhaled.
Eventually, she spoke – though her lips didn’t move. The single word was so quiet that Andrew nearly missed it.
‘No.’
The pain in Andrew’s chest returned with a stabby vengeance and he found himself gasping, realising he’d been holding his breath for however long he’d waited for the reply.
Keira quickly continued: ‘I’m going to get a flat in the city. I’d been thinking about it for a while and I’m bored of being in the country. It’s not really me. It’s good in the summer, but I don’t think I could take another icy winter stuck in the middle of nowhere.’ She sighed and then laughed. ‘You don’t know what it’s like – farmers having to run tractors through the lanes to clear the frost, people freaking out because their kids can’t get to school – and then panic-buying bread and milk from the corner shop. Everyone thinks Britain’s this cosy little island – but they wouldn’t think that if they saw what goes on with parish politics. There was this whole thing last year over a waiting list for an allotment plot. Anyway, it all…’ She tailed off, smiling. ‘Anyway… I’m moving back to the city.’
‘That’s good.’
Keira nodded a small acknowledgement. ‘I left my job working for Daddy…’ She coughed. ‘…Working for the charitable division of my father’s business. I’m going to set up my own foundation and he’s paying. I didn’t give him a choice. I told him that I’m not ready to talk to him anytime soon – but if he wants any sort of relationship in the future, then he’ll leave me be – and stay well away from you, too. I talked it through with Mum last week. She says she didn’t know what he’d done. He’s now put a lump sum in an account. I want to do something working with children, a bit like I was before. I’m looking for projects around the city. I want it to be self-funding in the end. I don’t want his money. It’s a means to an end.’
‘Where does that leave us?’
Keira took another breath, perhaps playing with him, perhaps thinking it over. ‘We’re divorced,’ she said.
‘I know—’
‘But, if you want, I would be happy to begin again from zero. We’ve not really known each other these past nine years, so it’ll be like starting over anyway.’
She sat back, having apparently said everything she wanted. Andrew wasn’t exactly unhappy – it was so much more than he deserved – and yet it was so matter-of-fact that he wondered what starting ‘from zero’ might actually mean.
As if reading his mind, Keira leaned forward. ‘I want to go back to the beginning,’ she repeated. ‘That means living apart, having separate lives away from each other. It means the odd date once or twice a week. Taking it slowly. Dinner and a movie. Perhaps a walk up in the hills if it’s a nice Sunday. The sort of thing that we used to do when we were kids.’ She stared directly at him. ‘You can have a day or two if you want – but it’s that or nothing. You have to let me know if you’re in.’
Andrew again found himself speaking before he’d thought about the words. ‘I’m in,’ he said.
Keira nodded but didn’t smile. ‘This time our first date will not be at a launderette.’
Twenty-One
Andrew walked at Keira’s side along the pavement that led back to her student halls. It was in the opposite direction to his, but he hadn’t told her yet for fear that she’d say something about making her own way. He wondered if he should offer her his hand to hold. It had been a good night… Well, he thought it had been anyway. Their first date – according to Keira anyway – had been at the launderette. In Andrew’s mind, when she’d asked ‘are you up to anything tonight?’ and he’d replied ‘I was going to wash all my clothes’, that hadn’t counted as an invitation to a date. For Keira, it apparently had – and so their ‘first date’ (for her) was at the launderette. Tonight’s date – his first, her second – had been more traditional. They’d gone for a meal at the Italian just off Oxford Road, close to Cornerhouse
. He didn’t have much money and had panicked when she ordered scallops for starter, but Keira had insisted on paying her share anyway, refusing to let Andrew put anything down on her behalf. After that, they’d had a couple of drinks in a nearby pub, one of the quieter ones, and now he was walking her home.
It was all rather pleasant, rather normal.
Discounting the launderette, this was the first proper date Andrew had been on. There’d been group trips to the bowling alley as a young teenager, a cinema visit for three lads and three girls at about the same age – but none could properly count as a date.
This was the type of thing people talked about, made movies about. Somehow, five hours had passed with just him and some beautiful girl, and he’d not even noticed. Funny how those hour-long lectures seemed to drone on until the end of eternity, and yet his evening with Keira had lasted five times that and had blinked by.
‘I’m here.’
Andrew realised he’d been daydreaming. It was dark but still warm enough to be comfortable without a jacket. The sound of partying students was booming from a nearby building, with multicoloured strobing lights blinking onto the darkened street. He’d continued on for a couple of steps, even though Keira had stopped.
He turned to see her pointing at a red-brick square block on the opposite side of the road from the party. ‘Here,’ she added for emphasis.
‘Oh, right.’
‘Where are you living?’
Andrew pointed in the vague direction of his halls, trying not to make it too obvious they’d already gone past.
Keira nodded at her flat again. Her head remained tilted as she looked at him and he felt as if there was a spotlight on him. That some over-enthused game-show host was about to ask a question to which he didn’t know the answer.
‘Do you want to come in for coffee?’ she asked.
Andrew glanced to the flats, then back to her. ‘I don’t really drink caffeine this late,’ he replied. ‘I avoid Coke as well. It messes up my sleep.’
She smiled a little more, twirling a strand of loose hair. ‘How about a drink of anything then? We’ve got beer, water, all sorts of spirits. I think there might even be a bottle of orange squash somewhere. It’s not mine, but no one will mind. If you’re really lucky, there’s still a bottle of full-sugar cherryade in the fridge. We were making cocktails at the weekend.’
Andrew didn’t get to reply as the door to the party flat across the road banged open, sending a stream of thumping music barrelling out into the night. A lad stumbled onto the pavement, almost colliding with a lamp-post before catching himself. The door slammed closed behind him, dimming the music but only adding to his confusion. He straightened his clothes, turning in a full circle before realising Andrew and Keira were watching him. At that, he gave a crisp military salute and then stumbled off into the shadows without a word.
‘That was weird,’ Andrew said.
‘Kinda normal at this end of town.’ Keira took a step towards her flat. ‘So, are you coming in then?’
‘I don’t drink that much at night – not unless I’m out out. Generally, I try not to drink at all after eight. I always need to wee during the night, then I can’t get back to sleep…’ He tailed off, realising Keira was staring at him.
‘You’ve never had a girlfriend, have you?’ she said.
‘Um…’
Before he could say any more, Keira reached out and grabbed his hand, dragging him onto the path that led to her flat. ‘Come on. Coffee or no coffee, cherryade or no cherryade, let’s go inside anyway.’
Twenty-Two
When Andrew got back to the office after his coffee with Keira, he was met by a loud ‘ta-da!’ as he opened the door. Jenny jumped up from her desk, pointing towards a stack of boxes in the corner that contained printer paper.
‘What am I looking at?’ Andrew asked.
‘I built a fort. Don’t worry, I got a bunch of other stuff done, too.’
‘You built a fort?’
Jenny slumped back into her chair, chocolate digestive in hand. ‘I’d kinda finished everything you wanted doing, then you’d put forts in my mind, so… ta-da.’ She pointed at the boxes again. ‘I was going to build a crossbow with a ruler and some rubber bands but you got back too quickly.’
Andrew eyed the fort once more and then took his seat. He wasn’t sure if he should be annoyed, impressed or bemused. He was a mix of all three.
‘Brew?’ she asked.
‘I’m all brewed out for one day.’
Jenny was fidgeting in her seat restlessly. ‘Everything all right with—’
‘It’s fine.’
There was an awkward silence, with Jenny leaving a gap for Andrew to fill with details. He didn’t take it.
‘Any phone calls?’ he asked instead.
Jenny winced slightly, which was unusual for her.
‘How many?’ Andrew added.
‘Three – as soon as I said hello, there was just breathing at the other end of the line. The number’s showing as a mobile – but it’s nobody I know and no one picks up if I call back.’
‘Is it the same number that called when we were at Darren Wiley’s house?’
‘Same number all day.’
‘Hmmm…’
Andrew glanced at the filing cabinet, thinking about the cases with which he’d recently dealt and the ones that were ongoing. Nobody jumped out as an obvious nutter. Persistent hang-ups were often the work of dodgy call centres trying to dial too many people at the same time. This was more than that, yet crank phone calls – for the most part – were a thing of the past. Caller ID and better systems for tracing those responsible had made it easier to prosecute. Not only that, in the age of website hacks, viruses, trojans, denial-of-service attacks – or even plain abuse via anonymous social media accounts – it wasn’t a very twenty-first century way of targeting someone.
‘Jack Marsh?’ Andrew mused out loud. ‘He could’ve easily found out the company’s phone number?’
Jenny shrugged. ‘Doesn’t really seem like his thing, does it? Nor his mother.’
Andrew turned away from Jenny, not wanting her to look directly at him. ‘Did Ollie take your break-up badly…?’
‘He wasn’t happy, but this isn’t his style. He’s more likely to get high and try to write a song.’ She paused. ‘Braithwaite?’
Andrew shook his head. ‘Not his style, either. He’s got Iwan to send any messages.’ He drummed his fingers on the table and then picked up the phone. It wasn’t so much the hang-ups or the heavy breathing about which he was concerned – it was the fact that when he’d answered the first time, the caller had asked for Jenny. He asked Jenny to read the number and then dialled it. One ring, two rings… six rings. Andrew was getting impatient, ready to leave an angry voicemail, but after ten rings, there was a long beep and then the line went dead.
‘This is going to be a burner phone,’ Andrew said.
He started hunting through his own list of contacts anyway, looking for someone at the mobile company with whom he’d not been in touch for a while.
Twenty minutes and a fifty-quid promise later and he had the details he wanted. The number that had been calling his office came from a pay-and-go SIM. Andrew got the network name – not that it made much difference – plus the fact it had been topped up with a voucher that morning. The owner had made six calls – all to Andrew’s office. The only way to trace any further – at least according to Andrew’s contact – was with a warrant. The source had been nervous at passing over the little information he had, saying Leveson and the News of the World had changed things. ‘You can to go to prison for this sort of thing nowadays,’ he added.
Andrew hung up and passed the news onto Jenny, though neither of them was surprised.
‘Do you want some good news?’ she asked.
‘You’re planning a bigger fort?’
‘Oooh, yes. But, first, I’ve found a girl who used to waitress in the restaurant part of the Radisson last autumn. I re
ckon she might have been working on the night Jack Marsh and his teammates were staying there.’
‘How did you find her?’
‘Twitter. Her name’s Mia Church. Three weeks ago, she wrote that it was her final day at the Radisson. She’s a student, so she was giving up the job to concentrate on her exams.’
‘She doesn’t work there any more?’
‘No – so she might talk. I went back through her profile. There’s all sorts of stuff about music, films, nights out, lectures – the usual stuff. Anyway, on the night Michelle Applegate went missing last September, she wrote that she was off to work. After that, she didn’t post again for a month.’ Jenny peered up, dimples on display. She might be hard to read sometimes, but everyone liked a good pat on the head when they’d done well.
‘Good work,’ Andrew said, writing ‘Mia Church’ on the pad on his desk.
Jenny wasn’t done. ‘I’ve also got Darren Wiley’s criminal record. He—’
‘Hang on a minute. Who did you get that from?’
Jenny batted him away with a dismissive wave of the hand. No big deal, don’t worry about it. ‘Someone I know,’ she said coyly.
‘It’s just…’ Andrew bit his lip, not wanting to shut her down, but still…
‘I was careful,’ Jenny added. ‘The person won’t get in trouble. No call logs, no computer trails – just an exchange of information between two mutual acquaintances. Anyway, I don’t think Darren has learned his lesson. Despite all that stuff at his house, he’s been done twice for handling stolen goods. Once for nicking car stereos back in the day when they weren’t so modern and built-in. He was eighteen at the time, so over a decade ago. He got unpaid work.’ Jenny typed away on her keyboard, muttering something under her breath and then she looked up again. ‘Two years later, he was on a joint charge with someone named Finn Renton.’
Something Buried: An absolutely gripping mystery thriller Page 13