by Fiona Barton
“Shit,” Shaw had said. “I’m feeling shit. Sorry, but this is a fucking nightmare.”
Sparkes had nodded sympathetically. “It must feel like that. It’s a terrible time for you all.” And about to get worse.
“Mike, now that we know more about how the girls died, we need to piece together what was going on in that guesthouse. I need your help.”
Shaw had looked at him properly for the first time. “My help?” he’d said. “What can I tell you? I was thousands of miles away when this all happened. I hadn’t heard from Rosie since before she left. I don’t know anything.” He’d spread his hands out in front of him.
Sparkes had reached for a folder he’d put on the floor beside him. “I want to show you some e-mails that Alex sent to a friend about Rosie,” he’d said. “They may be important.”
Shaw’s eyes had widened and he’d reached for the sheaf of paper.
“I should warn you that you are mentioned,” Sparkes had added.
Mike Shaw’s hand had faltered, but he’d taken the printouts. Sparkes had watched as his eyes darted over the lines and knew he’d found the incendiary quote when his face suddenly sagged.
“Oh God, has Jenny seen these?”
This is all about you, then. Not your dead daughter, Sparkes had noted as he’d shaken his head.
“Not yet. I’m meeting the others in half an hour. I thought it would be fairer for you to see them first.”
“As I’m the one having his character assassinated.” Shaw had loosened his tie.
“Will you be coming to the meeting?”
“What do you think?” he’d muttered. “I wasn’t going to go anyway. To be honest I thought it best to keep out of the way with the way things are between me and Jenny. We had another row after you left last night. She accused me of abandoning her and Rosie all over again. I just can’t deal with it anymore, Inspector. Malcolm said he’d call me afterward.”
Shaw had opened a drawer in his desk and taken out a packet of cigarettes. “I’ll open a window,” he’d said after lighting one and inhaling deeply.
“That would be good,” Sparkes had said. “Isn’t it illegal in the workplace?”
“Oh, bloody hell, go on—arrest me.” Shaw had smiled grimly.
Sparkes had waved the smoke toward the window and carried on.
“I realize how difficult this is,” he’d said, “but I need to ask you if what Rosie told Alex is true. About Rosie forcing you to give her money.”
Shaw had sat up straight and stubbed the cigarette out in what Sparkes hoped was an ashtray hidden in the drawer. “I can’t see that it has anything to do with what happened,” he’d said.
“We need to test the truth of what Alex says. She also says Rosie was taking drugs. That there was jealousy over men they’d met and rows. That may have something to do with what happened. You do see that, Mike?”
Shaw had opened and closed his mouth as if about to deny everything but ended up nodding wearily. “I don’t know if Rosie took drugs before she went—she might have done. I didn’t really know what she was doing. I should have, but Jenny made it as difficult as possible. Changing arrangements, canceling visits at the last minute. I saw her less and less. She used Rosie to punish me for leaving. For being happy with Imogen . . .”
“But your daughter came to see you about the trip?” Sparkes had prompted.
“Yes. Rosie came.” He’d put his head in his hands. “I hadn’t seen her for ages. I thought when she got older she’d be free to choose to see me, but I guess Jenny had done a good job of turning her against me. Anyway, there was a horrible scene. She saw me having a quick fumble with one of the girls here—it was nothing, really, the sort of thing that happens in offices every day,” he’d said.
Well, maybe in your office, Sparkes had thought, glad Zara Salmond wasn’t there to bristle at the “boys will be boys” remark.
“But Rosie overreacted, said she’d tell Imogen. My new wife wouldn’t have understood.” Shaw had looked away. “You can imagine.”
Sparkes had nodded and Shaw had plowed on. “I had to stop her, and she said she wouldn’t say a word if I gave her the money for the bloody holiday.”
“And where did you get the money? You told me you were paying the mortgage by credit card.”
Shaw had laughed, a bark of fake amusement. “Don’t play games with me, Inspector. You know where Rosie got it. From my mother.”
“Did you arrange the transfer from her account?”
“I can’t remember.”
“And did your mother know?”
Shaw had stood to end the conversation. “This is old ground, Inspector. And we have covered it. My mother has withdrawn the allegation that money is missing. I’m sure you’ve got more important things to be getting on with. Like finding out how my daughter died.”
“Yes.” Sparkes had stood, too, and taken back the printout. “I’m going to show the e-mails to your ex-wife now.”
“I’ll make sure to switch my phone off,” Shaw had said. “What a fucking nightmare.”
* * *
• • •
There were tiny stacking stools to sit on in Jenny Shaw’s kitchen, and everyone looked as if they were balancing on one cheek.
“I don’t know who told Joe Jackson,” Sparkes said. Well, he didn’t for sure. He could take a good guess, but he didn’t want the discussion to disappear down that rabbit hole for the next hour. He cleared his throat again, indicating a change of subject. But Lesley was deaf to his nonverbal signals.
The e-mails were going to remain the elephant in the room, swinging its trunk, biding its time.
“Never mind that—have you had any sightings of Jake Waters since the press conference?” she said. “Where is he?”
“No, Lesley, but we are getting helpful calls from the public.” They weren’t. There were the usual no-hopers. “He looks like the bloke in the chip shop. Except the chip shop bloke is black . . .” was his favorite so far.
He squeaked his chair closer to the table and leaned forward to try to gain their full attention.
“I’ve come to tell you about some information we’ve received this morning.”
“What information? What are you talking about?” they chorused.
“We’ve been made aware of some e-mails that Alex sent to a friend, talking about difficulties she and Rosie were having.”
“Difficulties? Alex didn’t tell us about any difficulties. She said they were having a great time,” Lesley said. “And why are we only hearing about them now?”
He sighed. “Because we’ve only just heard about them.”
Jenny was speaking over them both, demanding to be heard.
“Tell us what is in these e-mails.”
“Well, there are a number of them. They were written to Margaret Harding.”
“Mags? She didn’t say a word about them to me,” Lesley said, alarm making her voice loud and high-pitched. The walls of the kitchen bounced the sounds, distorting everything into an angry buzz. “I called her right at the beginning to ask if she’d heard from Alex, and she said she’d heard nothing—just like us. Then she rang us to say how sorry she was when we got back from Thailand. Why didn’t she say anything to us about this?”
Sparkes held up his hand to halt the flow.
“She’d promised Alex she wouldn’t say anything at the time. The e-mails contained some tricky stuff that Alex didn’t want you to know about. Mags is a teenager. Sometimes they don’t make the best decisions. No doubt you’ll have a lot of questions, but maybe it would be better if you read the e-mails before we discuss them—”
“Do they mention drugs?” Lesley said, cutting him off.
“Yes.”
“Show them to us,” Jenny barked.
“Please,” Malcolm added.
Sparkes pulle
d out copies of the printout and DC Wendy Turner handed them round as he left them to read. He went out into the hallway. “I’ll just check in with the office while you are looking at them,” he’d said, desperate to escape for a moment. He looked at the photos of Rosie near the front door. Birthdays through the years. Variations on a girl in a party dress, blowing out candles on a cake and smiling for the camera.
The growing tension in the kitchen seeped out into the narrow hall, eddying round his feet as he texted Salmond. It was unbearable. The parents exclaimed quietly when they hit the first signs of trouble, the first accusation. But just “Oh!” Nothing more. Then they’d edged forward in an eerie silence, perhaps unsure of what they would find next.
Ten minutes later he was called back in by DC Turner. He could see the distress in their faces.
“Has anyone else seen these?” Malcolm took the lead.
“Only DS Salmond and myself. And Mike.”
“Mike’s seen them?” Jenny shrieked. “When? Why did he see them first? Why isn’t he here now to answer your questions?”
“I saw him on his own this morning, Jenny.”
“He couldn’t face us, could he? Cowardly bastard. And up to his old tricks again. Still messing around with the office girls. The saintly Imogen won’t forgive him, will she?”
“Stop it, Jenny!” Lesley slapped her hand down on the table. “This is not about you and your marriage breakdown. We need to focus on the girls.”
Jenny reddened. “I’m sorry. I can’t help it; it just brings everything back.”
“That’s natural, Jenny,” DC Turner said quietly, closing the subject.
“Who else is going to see these e-mails?” Malcolm doggedly pursued his question.
“We won’t be sharing them with anyone else apart from the Thai police at this stage,” Sparkes said carefully.
“Thank God,” Jenny said. “Isn’t it enough that she’s dead? Does she have to have her character dragged through the mud?”
Sparkes left that hanging.
None of them looked at one another while he talked about the possible ramifications of the information.
“Alex talks about other people at the guesthouse. Rosie’s friend, possibly boyfriend, Lars, and the other Dutch boy, Diederik. And a boy she names as Jake and JW who she likes.”
“Jake Waters,” Lesley said quietly. “The Stoner, she called him. He’s in loads of these e-mails. And she doesn’t always like him. She says she wishes he would get out of her face in one of them.”
“And anyway, most of this isn’t true,” Jenny added suddenly.
The O’Connors wheeled round to look at her.
“Oh, Jenny,” Lesley said. “Of course it is.”
Her daughter’s litany of blame was dancing in Sparkes’s head.
“My daughter wouldn’t steal money. And she didn’t take drugs,” Jenny insisted. But her voice trembled.
“We don’t know what they were doing,” Lesley said.
No, Sparkes thought.
“Why didn’t Alex tell us how unhappy she was?” Lesley whispered to her husband. “Why did she pretend?”
“I don’t know, love,” Malcolm said. “They were young and on their own. We all did foolish things when we were that age.”
“I just don’t believe it. I’m sorry,” Jenny stated, as if for the record.
“We can’t have this conversation,” Lesley said. “You’re too upset to think straight.”
“Shut up, Lesley. I’m not,” Jenny screeched. “I know exactly what I’m saying. This is all lies.”
FORTY-EIGHT
The Reporter
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2014
After I put the phone down on Lesley, I can’t speak. It isn’t just rage at the hideous injustice of it. I feel shocked and bloodied, as if I’ve been physically attacked. Where is your murderer son? bangs against my heart.
In the silence, I slide down the wall to the hall carpet, trying to catch my breath and thoughts. Trying to hoist my “Jake Is Innocent” banner out of the dirt.
I don’t know if Joe has heard any of it, but when he puts his head round the kitchen door, I have my answer. He looks as ashen as I feel.
“Are you okay? Was that Lesley O’Connor?” he says.
I nod.
“She’s upset,” he says, trying to comfort me. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”
But she does.
“I don’t want to talk about it. Come on, let’s get on with something useful,” I say and try to lever myself up. “How far have you got?”
“I’ve found someone,” he says, pulling me to standing.
* * *
• • •
It had taken Joe less than thirty minutes to locate Mags Harding—the original travel companion—who featured heavily on Alex’s Instagram account back in the day. He rings the news desk to say he’s going down to Hampshire on a tip and we head out to his car.
“What did they say?” I ask, plugging my phone into his charger.
“Sounds interesting . . . It’s what they always say when they’re not listening.”
“It’s good to be off radar sometimes, Joe. Come on, let’s get a wiggle on.”
* * *
• • •
He drives like Postman Pat, sticking to the speed limit all the way even when I shout, “For God’s sake, why are you driving at one mile an hour? You’re not ninety. Put your foot down!”
“And how many speeding tickets have you had this year?” he says. “You could probably pay for a new car with the fines.”
That shuts me up. But I’m still screaming in my head when he slows for every traffic light.
* * *
• • •
Mags Harding is waiting for us at a burger bar. Her suggestion, obviously. She’d been excited when Joe had rung her from the house. We were her first reporters, she’d told him.
“Bingo,” I’d crowed when he told me. “First in.”
I let Joe order the double cheeseburgers for him and Mags—“I’ll have a coffee, thanks”—while I warm her up. I introduce myself as Kate, Joe’s colleague. No surnames to trigger any alarms.
“How are you doing? You must be so upset about Alex,” I say, opening the door to our chat.
“Yes. We’ve . . . we’d been best friends since primary school. I still can’t believe it’s happened. First the fire and now they’re saying she was murdered.”
Tears fill her eyes and she chews at a nail.
“You were supposed to go with Alex to Thailand, weren’t you?”
The finger comes out of her mouth and I notice a tiny sliver of nail drop onto the table. Mags flicks from sorrow to wide-eyed teen drama and back again. I can see her thinking about her escape from the clutches of death. Starring in her own survivor’s special.
“It could’ve been me, couldn’t it? I said that to my mum. If I’d gone. If I hadn’t dropped out. It could’ve been me. It’s so horrible.”
“Absolutely. Why didn’t you go, Mags?”
“It was the money. I really wanted to go and I kept thinking I’d start saving the next week, but it didn’t happen. I just couldn’t afford it. I kept putting off telling Alex. I thought she’d go mad. It was all she talked about. Thailand.”
“And did she go mad?”
“No. I think she was too shocked to say much. I still feel guilty. I kept saying sorry, but I let her down, didn’t I?”
She wants me to say she didn’t. I pause while Joe puts the burgers on the table and disappears to fetch my drink.
“You mustn’t beat yourself up. Her mum said she was having a brilliant time over there before . . . before all this,” I say, watching her hand hovering over the stack of animal snouts and eyelids.
“Well . . .” Mags says. She takes a bite and limp lettuce falls
out onto the table. She doesn’t bother to pick it up. Salad’s clearly not her thing.
Joe sits down and joins her.
I wait them out. It will take only a couple of minutes for them to devour their meals.
Mags wipes her mouth with a napkin and smiles at me with shiny lips.
“Better?” I ask and she nods.
“Sorry. I was starving.”
“So, I was saying that Alex’s mum said she was having a great time in Thailand . . .”
Mags pulls a face. “Not really. Actually, she was having a terrible time with Rosie.”
“Why? I thought they were best mates.”
“No, I was Alex’s best friend,” Mags corrects me. “Rosie was the last-minute substitute. I couldn’t believe she was going with her. I said to her, ‘Are you sure, Alex? Do you even know anything about her?’ But she said it’d be okay. I knew it wouldn’t. They didn’t go out together at the weekends like we did. Rosie hung around with the Dangerous Sisters at school—the girls who slept around and got drunk all the time. She wasn’t one—a dangerous sister—her mum kept her on a tight lead after her dad left. But she wanted to be.”
“And that wasn’t Alex’s idea of fun?”
“No way. People probably think we’re a bit geeky. We like Harry Potter . . .” she adds.
“So how did they get on in Thailand?”
“Not good. Rosie was a complete nightmare, Alex said.”
“Did you speak to Alex, then?” Joe says. “FaceTime her?”
“Once, right at the beginning, but the time difference kept catching us out. We e-mailed most days instead.”
“She must have been so glad to have you to talk to,” Joe says, and I sip my coffee and sit back.
“We’ve always been able to talk. Peas in a pod, our mums said. We told each other everything. She knew I wouldn’t tell anyone else. And I didn’t. Her mum rang me when Alex stopped e-mailing, but I kept my promise. I said I hadn’t heard from her that week—I wish I’d said something then, but I couldn’t show Lesley some of the stuff Alex wrote. It was about drugs and sleeping with boys. Parents never want to hear that, do they? I only went to the police when they said Alex was murdered.”