The Suspect

by Fiona Barton

  “I’ve just seen him—it’s unbelievably grim. But we’re working on getting the Thais to release him.”

  Ross nods and holds up crossed fingers. Like he’s five and we’re playing a game. When do boys grow up? Probably only when they have children of their own, I think, stirring my coffee. When they finally get the whole being-an-adult thing.

  Ross has finished his drink and is looking edgy. “I’d better get off to the pharmacy,” he says. “Pick up some stuff.”

  “Absolutely. Look, just one thing. Jake said I should speak to Mama, the woman who owned the guesthouse, but I don’t know where to find her. Have you seen her lately?”

  Ross looks at me sideways. “Well, not seen her, but I heard from someone that she’d turned up at a cousin’s place. She’s staying there for a while.”

  “I’d love to talk to her about Jake. Can you give me the address?”

  “She might not want to talk to you.”

  “I promise not to say you gave it to me.”

  He writes it down on a paper napkin with my pen.

  * * *

  • • •

  The woman sitting outside the house on an orange plastic chair is in what looks like full stage makeup and a wig, wafting her face with a bamboo fan.

  “Hello,” I say, “you must be Mama.”

  She curls a lip but stays seated. “Who are you? What do you want?”

  “I’m Kate. I’ve been to your guesthouse.” It’s not a lie. I have. I’ve stood in the ruins.

  She shrugs and rolls her eyes at another woman, sitting beside her. A small, drab peahen beside her own flamboyant display.

  “I don’t remember you, but so many people stayed.”

  “I just wanted to say how sorry I was to hear about the fire. It must be terrible for you to lose everything like that.”

  Mama looks interested for the first time and waves her companion out of her seat for me. “Yes, it is terrible. I lost my home, my business, my money.”

  I tut sympathetically and the cousin is sent off in search of cool drinks. She returns with water in plastic cups.

  “Were you at home when it started?”

  She nods. “Sleeping in my bed. I woke up and smelled the smoke.” She mimes the moment she realized.

  “Wow! How did you get out?”

  “I climbed out of a window. I broke my arm when I fell.” And she lifts the sleeve of her dress to show me a grubby cast. “I went back to my home village to recover. But I had to come back to Bangkok to sort out things.”

  “You were so lucky to get out alive,” I say, laying the sympathy on with a trowel. She was there. At last, I’m talking to someone who was actually there.

  “Very lucky.”

  “How on earth did it start?” I ask. “I heard it was a candle knocked over at a party.”

  The eyes narrow. “That’s what the police say, but there was no party. One of the English boys did it,” she says and fans herself for dramatic effect.

  I am the perfect audience. I sit forward and gasp with disbelief. “How do you know?”

  “I saw him. Running away. I smelled the lighter fluid he used.” She spits on the pavement in disgust.”

  Jamie. Jamie Always in the Way.

  “Those poor girls,” I say, and Mama’s face hardens behind the makeup.

  “I heard one of them, Rosie Shaw, had left to go traveling in Myanmar . . .”

  “That is what she told me.”

  “Did she?”

  “The last time I see her. The night before the fire.”

  “Oh,” I say carefully. “I thought she was supposed to have left two days before.”

  Mama fans herself rapidly. “Yes, yes, that is correct. Two days before. I can’t remember everything.”

  “You must have been a good friend to her. I heard she sent you text messages?”

  “Well, the English boy, Jamie, said to tell people that. People were getting upset about her disappearing. He said it would make them happier.”

  “Jamie?”

  “Yes, he was always whispering in my ear, telling tales. He said he saw everything,” Mama says almost to herself.

  “Did he? What did he see?”

  “He was always watching Alex. He wanted her more than anything. He even drugged her once to stop her going out with Jake.”

  “Really?” I can’t believe what I’m hearing.

  “Yes, he put something in her beer and then put her to bed. Safe away from everyone else.”

  Mama’s cousin suddenly interrupts us, coming out of the door with a phone. She waves it at Mama, who excuses herself. “Sorry, this is important.”

  I sit with the cup of water warming in my hands and wait. Rosie never left. Jamie made up the text messages. Did Alex find out? Was that why she was killed?

  When she returns, Mama is furious.

  “Who are you?” she hisses from the doorway.

  “I told you, Kate . . .”

  “You are British police—my contact told me.”

  “No, of course I’m not. You’re right—the British police are in Bangkok, looking into the death of the two girls. But I’m not with them. I’m the mother of Jake Waters.”

  She actually laughs. A deep, dirty rumble. “I am glad I’m not,” she says and closes the door on me.

  * * *

  • • •

  It takes the rest of the day for the results of Jake’s blood test to come back, confirming the mistaken identity, and for the Thais to release him. I spend much of it in taxis, running round the city collecting and delivering pieces of paper, phoning home to get Steve to scan documents or Joe to find a number. I’ll thank him properly when I get back. With Jake.

  In the end, his release is done very quietly, without fuss or any admission of blame. The Thai way.

  I stand and wait while Jake is brought through, the heavy clunk of slamming doors marking his passage toward me. I’ve got the emergency passport, plane tickets, and my luggage with me—Don and the lawyer thought it best to leave immediately, before anything else could happen. I hold Jake’s hand in the taxi and he presses back.

  “Nearly home,” I whisper. “Dad and Freddie will be at the airport to meet us.”

  SIXTY-FIVE

  The Reporter

  TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2014

  They are not the only ones. The arrivals hall is rammed with film crews and reporters. I should have expected it, but I’m not firing on all cylinders. I spot Steve at the back of the throng, waving frantically, and push our trolley as fast as I can toward him, with Jake hanging on to the handle like a toddler in Sainsbury’s. But it’s like swimming against the tide. The reporters crowd in, ducking under the photographers’ lenses, blocking our way and firing their questions at us.

  “How does it feel to be home, Jake?”

  “Are you suing the Thai authorities?”

  “What’s the first thing you’re going to do?”

  “Have a pint of beer, then sleep for a week,” my son says and smiles his beautiful smile. The cameras beep and whir to capture the moment of release.

  Then we move forward like a rugby scrum, the reporters still keeping their heads below the lenses and walking backward as we edge forward. Steve is wading through the crowd to meet us. He finally breaks through and folds Jake into his grasp and holds him long and hard.

  “You’re a wonderful sight,” he says, and then hugs me, too.

  “Still ugly,” Freddie says and man-bumps his brother.

  “Come on, let’s get you home.” Steve takes his eldest son by the arm.

  “Do you want to say anything to the parents of Alex and Rosie?” a familiar voice shouts over the hubbub.

  Jake stops smiling. I grip his arm to stop him, but he is searching for the source of the question.

  �
�That I am so sorry . . .”

  “Sorry about what?” Louise Butler calls back.

  “Sorry that they died.”

  “Do you know how Rosie died, Jake?”

  He looks stunned by the sudden change of tone, and Steve and I hustle him forward, away from the questions.

  Joe Jackson appears at my side. “Can we get a few words on our own, Kate? An exclusive interview? I can come to the house.”

  SIXTY-SIX

  The Detective

  THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2014

  Bob was putting on his socks, sitting on the unused side of the bed. The others were waiting downstairs and he knew he should hurry, but he needed five minutes with Eileen. All the talking had been done, the endless cups of tea and the poring over photo albums and the remembering. The ritual of loss had been observed in every detail. But he ached to be alone with his wife. To hear what she had to say about it all.

  He closed his eyes and summoned her. As she’d been last Christmas, before it came back. She’d presided over the kitchen like a battle general, cursing the roast potatoes that wouldn’t crisp up and whisking the lumps out of her legendary, terrible gravy. And she’d smiled in the middle of the chaos.

  “Well, this was worth getting better for, wasn’t it?”

  It had been. Every minute had been worth it.

  She’d still been alive when he’d touched down at Heathrow—“She’s still here, Dad,” Sam had said when he phoned home. But when he was somewhere on the M3 she’d slipped away from him.

  “She didn’t regain consciousness, Bob,” Helen Angel said at the door. “I am so sorry, but it was peaceful. A good death.”

  He’d sat on the Lloyd Loom chair and held her cold hand, starting to rub it warm from habit, then stopping.

  “Hello, love. I’m home.”

  * * *

  • • •

  He’d put Eileen’s instructions in his inside pocket, against his heart, when he and Sam had gone to the funeral directors to talk about arrangements for the service. “I might try to sneak in ‘The Old Rugged Cross,’” he’d said, and Sam had laughed.

  “She’d haunt you forever if you do.”

  “That would be nice.” He’d smiled back.

  * * *

  • • •

  The funeral went well, with everyone laughing and crying over “Starman” at the end, then tea and more tears in Eileen’s chosen garden-center restaurant, surrounded by the heady scent of late blooms.

  “She’d have loved this, Bob,” his sister-in-law whispered. “You’ve done her proud.”

  He hoped he had. Have I, Eileen? he wondered.

  Everything is perfect. Now, go and help Sam with the oldies, his wife murmured back.

  “When are you going back to work?” one of the aged uncles asked, dropping crumbs down his black tie.

  “Tomorrow,” he heard himself answer. “I’ve got a case on that I need to finish. It’ll keep me busy for a bit. Then I’ll take some time off.”

  He couldn’t leave it unfinished. There would be time for grieving later.

  * * *

  • • •

  There’d been sightings of Jamie Lawrence overnight. The boy he’d been looking for had been hiding in plain sight, it seemed. But his photograph had ended that. Every man and his dog had seen him. Salmond had sent a text to let him know, and he’d responded immediately, unable to sleep and grateful for the distraction.

  “When did you get back?” he’d asked when she picked up the phone.

  “A couple of days ago, or maybe yesterday. Sorry, still not sure what time zone I’m in. Were you awake?”

  “Yes. Not sleeping.”

  “I’m so sorry, sir.”

  “Thank you, Zara. We all are, but we are coping. We’ve had time to prepare.”

  “Do you want me to keep you in the loop re Jamie Lawrence?”

  “Definitely. Eileen’s funeral is this afternoon, and I’ll be in tomorrow.”

  “Sure?”

  “Sure.”

  BANGKOK DAY 20

  (FRIDAY, AUGUST 15, 2014)

  It hadn’t been much of a party. Just a case of drinking enough to dull the misery she felt. Jamie had drunk recklessly, disappearing to Mama’s cold store for more booze and sending bottles skittering across the floor as he emptied them.

  It was late, way past midnight, time to make the call.

  “I’m ringing home,” she said, more to herself than to the boy slumped on the floor. “Mum and Dad will be back from work now. I’ve got to. But what am I going to say? What would you say to your mum, Jamie?”

  He’d looked at her blankly for a moment. “My mum? Which one?”

  “What? You’ve got a stepmum? Like Rosie?”

  “Actually I’ve had four, if you include the two foster mums.”

  “Oh!”

  He took a deep breath as if he were about to dive into a wave, and there was nothing she could do to stop him.

  “I was in care and then adopted. Then, when I got too much for my adoptive mum, I lived in a home until I was seventeen.”

  “Oh, Jamie,” she said, pushing a bottle out of the way and squeezing in beside him.

  “It’s all a long time ago. I don’t tell people usually. Because it makes them think I’m different from them. My social worker said I was too sensitive—that not everyone is judging me. But they are.”

  And it all tumbled out. About his childhood. His mum couldn’t cope. He had vague memories of her—her smell. A burning smell. Cheap cigarettes constantly burning down in the ashtray or between her nicotine-stained fingers. Matches being struck, that smell of stale ashtrays.

  “She sometimes smiled at me,” Jamie said, off somewhere in his head. “And I’d hug her legs. Then she’d cry. I remember being hungry.”

  Then there were the foster mums. Alex tried to keep up with the moves, but Jamie was talking faster and faster. “The first was old and smelled funny. Lots of children. I was in a crowd but on my own. I was only four. I kept a matchbox that belonged to my real mum in my pocket. To put things in.”

  Alex reached for his hand in sympathy and held on tightly.

  “That must’ve been awful. You were so little,” she said.

  “Yeah. The second foster mum was younger, but I was wetting the bed and she cracked one day and slapped me. The social worker saw the mark and then there was mum number three. My adoptive mum—and dad. I’d had to change school to live there. I was wearing the wrong uniform and the children stared. And one asked, ‘Why are you wearing a blue jumper?’ I didn’t know. I had to talk to the nice lady in the staff room. With biscuits and squash. I was punching and biting the other children. That was the worst time. And when I got into more trouble later I ended up at the home. I was glad in a way. I’d had enough of families by then.”

  “Did you ever try to find your real mum?” Alex said, fascinated and horrified in equal measure.

  “I thought she was dead—one of the foster mums told me that. But I got my full adoption certificate and my original birth certificate when I needed a passport to come here. It was the first time I really knew who I was, I suppose. When I saw my mum’s name, Anita Way, I thought I’d go and look at the house where she’d been living when I was born. The address was on the certificate. It wasn’t that far—up near Kingston. I caught a train from Portsmouth and changed at Clapham. When I found the address, I stood on the pavement trying to remember living there. A woman walked past me up to the door and I asked her if she knew Anita who used to live there. But it was her.”

  “No,” Alex breathed.

  “I thought I must be hallucinating, but it was Mum. She didn’t know it was me until I told her. And she went all panicky. She pulled me in so no one else would see me. It was funny; she didn’t smell the same. She was smartly dressed. There was a big telly in th
e living room. Other children’s things. She had another family. She didn’t care when I said I’d been told she was dead. ‘I was,’ she said. ‘Dead inside.’ When I tried to ask her why she put me in care, she got angry.

  “‘You were a mistake, Jamie.’” He imitated a woman’s voice, high and harsh, and Alex shivered. “She said it wasn’t her fault. She didn’t find out until it was too late to get rid of me. My dad wasn’t around. She’d been young and she couldn’t have me in her life now. She hadn’t told her husband about me. Or her kids. I said I was one of her kids but she said I was her dirty secret.”

  There was a silence. And Alex wondered if there was more or if he’d told anyone else. She hoped he had. She didn’t want to be the keeper of his secrets. She had too much to deal with already.

  “I shouldn’t have gone to look, should I?” Jamie whispered to himself.

  “This is not your fault,” she said, taking charge. “It was a wicked thing to say. You didn’t deserve that.”

  “But now you’re leaving me, too.”

  “Oh, Jamie, please let’s not start that again. You are going to be fine,” she said. “Come on, you need to go to bed. You’re going to feel awful in the morning.”

  She left him climbing onto his bunk and went to her room. She was thirsty after the beer. She needed a bottle of water. Mama kept them in the cold store—she wondered if it was open. Must be. Jamie went out there earlier to get beers. She’d go and help herself. She was leaving in the morning anyway. She didn’t care what Mama would say.

  The guesthouse was quiet. She wondered if she was the only person still awake as she crept through the door into the courtyard. She’d been out there a couple of times to find Jake, chatting to him while he did his chores. The door to the cold store was stiff, and she put all her weight into pulling it open, hoping it didn’t make a noise. It was pitch-black inside. She got her new phone out and pressed a button to light up the screen. She was shivering at the sudden drop in temperature and quickly reached into one of the crates for the water, then turned to leave. She stumbled, stubbing her toe on something solid but soft. She steadied herself against the crates, making the bottles chime, and flicked her phone down at her feet. There was something sparkly. She reached down to pick it up and recoiled violently, wetting her pants in fear.