by Lisa Jewell
She rolls her eyes and says, “Indeed we do.”
He leads her to a spot away from the cars, in the shade of a large tree. “The sign has gone. I went to view it with Miss Beck this morning and it’s been taken down. The nail is still embedded in the fence, but the sign has gone. However, thankfully, Miss Beck did think to take a photograph of the sign, so we have that to send out for analysis. She writes detective novels, apparently, so I guess her mind works like that.”
Kim raises an eyebrow. “Does she, really?”
“Yes. I know. She doesn’t look the type—not exactly Agatha Christie, is she?”
Kim smiles. “No, not exactly.”
“Anyway, we’ve sent the photo for handwriting analysis. Et cetera. But it definitely looks to me like someone is actively trying to draw us back to the case. Someone who knew that a new head teacher was arriving. Someone who wanted the engagement ring to be uncovered. Someone, it feels like, who wants to play games with us.”
“But why would someone want to do that?”
Dom sighs. “People want to do all manner of things, Kim. If it wasn’t for people doing things that the likes of you and I would never do, I’d be out of a job. My theory, currently, is that this is someone who has known something all along whilst remaining in the shadows. Someone who knows what happened to Tallulah and Zach. And for whatever reason they’ve grown bored of the silence. Grown bored of nobody being caught.”
Kim flinches at his use of the word “caught.” “Caught” suggests that someone has done something to her child. It suggests that her child is dead. And not once, not in all of the nearly fifteen months that have passed since she watched her daughter leave the house in cut-off denim shorts and a smock top, an uncertain smile on her face as she kissed her baby son goodbye and headed out into the soft warmth of a sunny midsummer night, not once has Kim imagined that possibility to be anything other than a sliver of a bad dream that she could easily chase away with the power of her own thoughts.
“Annoyingly the school’s CCTV doesn’t extend this far. It cuts off just on the boundary of the residential area. Miss Beck and Mr. Gray have CCTV on the front of their cottage, but not at the back. We’re going through footage now, but unless we have a picture of someone flagrantly walking across the campus holding a cardboard sign, a nail, and a hammer, it’ll be a little bit of a needle in a haystack. But”—he shrugs and smiles hopefully—“you never know.”
Kim closes her eyes briefly and musters a smile.
“Are you OK?”
“No,” she says. “I feel sick.”
“I’m not surprised,” says Dom. He reaches out and touches her arm. “But maybe this is it, Kim,” he says. “Maybe this is the turning point. A little flame of hope.”
“Yes,” she says. “Maybe it is.”
* * *
She calls Ryan when she gets home and fills him in on the police activity in the woods. It’s lunchtime, but she’s not hungry. She puts her hand into a bag of Noah’s favorite cereal and eats the nuggets from the palm of her hand, like a pony eating sugar cubes. She checks the time. Three hours until she collects Noah from nursery. Dom told her that he’d have an update for her in the early evening. Her next shift at the Swan & Ducks is not until tomorrow. She’d been pleased when she’d seen the gap between shifts on her rota the previous week, she’d been looking forward to the time off, but now she wishes she was at work, her mind taken off the painful events unfolding behind Maypole House.
She opens up her laptop and types, not for the first time, the name “Scarlett Jacques” into the search box. And once again, the internet shows her nothing. A defunct Instagram account. A defunct Facebook page. A defunct Twitter account.
She types in the name “Joss Jacques” and gets nothing at all. She cannot for the life of her remember the name of Scarlett’s brother, the handsome boy who’d opened the front door to her all those months ago with a beer in his hand.
As she’s done at intervals over the past year, she tries calling Mimi on the number that remained on her phone after their conversation when Tallulah and Zach had disappeared. And as happens every time, it hits a dead tone. She sighs and runs her hands through her hair. The key players, all the people who were there that night, the people who might know what happened, have vanished. The only ones who remain are the nice boy Liam, Scarlett’s ex, and Lexie Mulligan, who comes and goes from the village for long intervals.
It can’t be a coincidence, she thinks now; it can’t be a coincidence that they’ve all gone, that they’ve abandoned houses, social media platforms, college places, friends. And now this: the deliberate presentation of the previously missing ring to the world, someone purposely restarting the engines of the investigation. But why? Why now? And who?
And as she thinks this, she thinks again of the nice boy called Liam, the big bearlike boy with the gentle West Country burr. She thinks of the fact that he is still here, he who had the most reason to leave. He’s still in the village, still at Maypole House, where he works as a teaching assistant. He would have known that there was a new head teacher arriving. He would have known about the entrance to the woods at the back door of the head teacher’s cottage. He was there the night that Zach and Tallulah disappeared. Maybe he found the ring? Maybe Zach dropped it and Liam found it and kept it for some reason?
Or maybe…? No. She shakes her head against the thought. Such a nice boy. There’s no reason why he would want to harm Zach or Tallulah. None whatsoever. But maybe he knows who did and maybe he’s tired of keeping the secret.
She switches on her phone and types in a message to Dom:
You should talk to Liam Bailey again.
A moment later Dom replies.
Good idea.
29
SEPTEMBER 2018
The police are busy at the entrance to the woods. From the kitchen window Sophie can see a police officer in a high-vis gilet holding the lead of a silver-and-white springer spaniel, also wearing a high-vis gilet. She turns at the sound of the front door opening and closing and calls out, “Hello?”
Shaun walks into the kitchen, looking tired and concerned.
“Bloody hell, Soph,” he says, taking off his lanyard and putting it on the kitchen counter. “What have you started?”
“That ring,” she says. “It belonged to the boy who went missing. You know, that couple I told you about who disappeared from the village last year. He bought the ring from a shop in Manton and was going to propose to his girlfriend with it that night. And then they disappeared and so did the ring and now…” Her words spill out in a rush; she feels guilty for some strange reason.
“Someone wanted us to find it?”
She blinks at him, surprised that he has worked this out so quickly. “Yes,” she says. “At least, that’s what it looks like.”
He opens the fridge, pulls out a packet of ham, and starts to make himself a sandwich. “Do you want one?” he says, waving the packet at her.
“No,” she says. “I’ll probably have something a bit later. When the police have gone.”
“God,” he says, “this is the last thing I need. New job, new school year, dead fucking teenagers in the woods.” He sighs.
Her breath catches. “You think they’re going to find bodies?”
“No. I doubt it. Apparently, they did a full search of the woods twice when they disappeared. But still, even if they don’t find anything, the press are going to jump on it, aren’t they? And I’ll be overseeing a media circus.” He sighs again.
“Do you hate me?” she asks him.
“Of course I don’t hate you. But I am wondering why you didn’t tell me about the ring? Why you didn’t mention to me that you’d found it? That you were going to take it to the woman, to the mother?”
He spreads butter onto fat white bread. She sees the muscles of his face straining under his skin, his knuckles white and pronounced. She thinks of the suntanned man in T-shirts and shorts she’d spent her last few London summer weeks with,
the guy with the ready smile and the look in his eye of a man who couldn’t quite believe his luck. She wonders where he’s gone, a week into this new life.
“I suppose I thought you had more important things to worry about,” she says. “I was bored, I guess, and I thought it would be fun to follow up a mystery. It just went a bit further than I thought it would. I’m sorry it’s landed on you, I really am. Hopefully it’ll all fizzle out.”
“Hm,” he says, snapping the lid onto the butter tub and putting it back in the fridge. “Unlikely. They just asked to speak to a member of staff.”
Sophie’s heart jumps slightly. “Which…? I mean, who?”
“Liam Bailey?” he says. “He’s a special ed assistant. I think you met him at the Registration Day Dinner? Apparently, he was around the night those kids disappeared.” He closes up his sandwich and cuts it in half. “So, yeah. I suspect this might run on a bit.”
“But if they find out what happened to the teenagers, then it’ll be worth it, yes?”
He bites into his sandwich and leans up against the kitchen counter, his legs crossed at the ankle, his gaze fixed hard on the floor at his feet. She watches him wipe a smudge of butter from the corner of his mouth, hears his jaw grinding down on his food.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
He lifts his gaze from the floor and his eyes meet hers and his face relaxes. He smiles at her. “Don’t be,” he says. “It’s not your fault. And you’re right. If they find out what happened to those teenagers, you’ll have done a good thing. I just wish you’d involved me, that’s all. Remember, we’re a team now. You and me. We work together. Yes?”
She smiles, grateful for the softening of his mood. “Yes,” she says. “I know that. I love you.”
He gazes at her for a moment and then, after a beat, says, “I love you too.”
“Let me know,” she says a moment later as he places his plate in the dishwasher and collects his lanyard, “let me know what happens with the teaching assistant. With Liam. Won’t you?”
* * *
Sophie spends the afternoon wandering around campus, trying to pick up developments via osmosis. The school grounds manager and Kerryanne Mulligan are overseeing the search of the woods; students going between lessons slow down as they glimpse the activity. She feels the bubble of her pulse as the drama ripples through the grounds. She thinks of her hand on the rough wood of the trowel from the Jacqueses’ greenhouse, her fingers scrabbling in the soil, the feeling of dread that she might be about to find something gruesome; she remembers how alone she was then, how small a moment it was in the scheme of her life and how weird it is that that tiny, lonely moment has somehow blown up into this: detectives, dogs, a potential media circus.
At around three o’clock, Sophie finally feels hungry, decides she doesn’t like the look of any of the healthy stuff in their fridge, and heads to the vending machine outside the school refectory. She finds some coins in the bottom of her purse and slots them in, presses the buttons that correlate to the salt-and-vinegar crisps and the Dairy Milk bar, which is all she can face, collects them, and walks to the cloisters at the back of the hall. Here she sits on the same bench where she’d sat on the evening of the Registration Day party, looking at Liam Bailey’s feet.
The sun appears suddenly from behind a cloud and she closes her eyes against the rays. When she opens them, Liam is standing in front of her. She jumps.
“Sorry,” he said. “I thought you’d seen me coming.”
She laughs to hide her embarrassment at being caught with her eyes closed in public. “No, it’s fine. How are you?”
He shrugs and says, “Bit wrung out. Just had the third degree from the cops. They seem to think that ring being buried there is something to do with me.” He shakes his head in bafflement.
Sophie moves up the bench and gestures to him to sit down. He looks up at the windows of the college and then back to her. “I should go back to class, really, I’ve already missed a whole lesson.”
“Just quickly, what were they asking you about?” she asks.
“Just, you know, more of the same about the night those kids went missing. Who was there. What time did I leave. What did I see. What didn’t I see. The same questions I answered a hundred times after it happened. They showed me the ring, asked if I’d ever seen it before. I told them you’d shown me the photo of it.”
Sophie starts. “You did?”
“Yeah. I mean, I just wanted to answer all their questions one hundred percent truthfully, and when they said, ‘Have you ever seen this ring before?’ I had to tell them that I had. I mean, it’s OK, they didn’t seem to make anything of it. And anyway, hopefully that’s that. Hopefully they won’t be back asking me any more questions, because I can tell you for nothing, they’d be totally wasting their time.” He puffs his cheeks and then exhales. “Well,” he says, “I really should get back to it. Enjoy your lunch,” he says, eyeing her crisps and chocolate bar.
“Liam,” she says quickly. “Before you go. The Jacques family. Did you ever think it might have been them? You know, that they might have had something to do with those kids’ disappearance?”
“Of course I thought that,” he replies. “It’s the only theory that makes any sense.”
“But why would they have wanted to hurt them? And how did they get away with it? And the ring? What about the ring? Who would have put it there? And why?”
He shakes his head slowly. “I really need to get on now,” he says. “But maybe we could meet up, another time?”
“Yes,” she says, “yes. Please.”
He tips his head at her, throws her a smile, and heads away. But then he turns back and he says, “Oh, I meant to say! I ordered your books, the whole series; they arrived this morning. I started reading the first one straightaway.”
“That’s so lovely of you. You really didn’t have to.”
“I know,” he says. “But I wanted to.”
* * *
By the time Shaun gets home from work at eight o’clock that night, the police have gone and the school feels restored to equilibrium.
The sun has already set, the summery day turned instantly to autumn, and Sophie is on her knees in the spare bedroom, finally unpacking some of the movers’ boxes, almost, she suspects, as a silent apology to Shaun for making his first few days in his new job more stressful than they needed to be.
His children are coming at the weekend and it’s time to make the place look like a home for them. He calls up the stairs to her and she calls back: “In the kids’ bedroom! I’ll be down in a minute.”
But she hears his steps coming up the stairs and then he is there. He sees that she has dressed the beds in fresh sheets, the same bedding that had adorned their beds in his spare bedroom in Lewisham. He sees that she has hung the prints on the wall, that she has folded towels onto the feet of the beds, plugged in bedside lamps, and thrown down sheepskin rugs. His demeanor softens at the sight of it.
“Oh God, Soph, thank you so much. This has been hanging over my head. I was going to do it… I was going to… I don’t know. I don’t know when I was going to do it. I’m so grateful to you. You really didn’t need to.”
“It’s nothing,” she says. “I’m all over the place right now and I can’t get into work so it’s good to have something mindless to focus on.” She rises to her feet and surveys the room. It looks lovely.
“Shall we go to the pub?” he says, pulling her to him. “For dinner?”
She thinks of the crisps and chocolate she had for lunch and realizes that she would love a proper meal, a glass of wine, some time away from this place, just her and Shaun.
“Give me a minute,” she says. “I’ll put something warmer on.”
* * *
“This is where they were,” she says to Shaun as they settle themselves at a table in the small lounge area just to the left of the bar. “Zach and Tallulah. They were in here, with the kids from Maypole House. They all ended up back at a girl’s ho
use just outside the village. Liam Bailey was with them. Kerryanne’s daughter too.”
Shaun nods. “I’m starting to get the full picture. It’s all a bit unsettling.”
“Have you spoken to Peter Doody about it?”
“Yeah, I called him earlier when the police were here. He was very dismissive. Very blasé. It’s clearly not a topic he wants to give any oxygen to.”
“But was he involved with the school? At the time? Did he know about the connection?”
“Yes, was very much part of it at the time. He dealt with the press, the PR side of things, kept the parents happy. I mean, really it’s nothing to do with the school or our children or their families. The students involved had already left the school by the time the couple disappeared, and Liam and Lexie had returned to the school that night way before anything untoward happened. The woods aren’t technically school property and as far as Peter’s concerned it’s nothing to do with us. And he’d like it to stay that way.”
“And what about the previous head, Jacinta What’s-her-name? Was she here when this was all going on?”
“Yes, she was right in the thick of it. It was a nightmare, by all accounts.”
A waiter appears then; it’s the same guy who’d been behind the bar with Kim when Sophie came in earlier in the week for a coffee. He smiles a brilliant white smile and says, “Hi, guys! How are you both doing tonight?”
Sophie returns his smile and says, “We’re great, thank you. How are you?”
“Knackered,” he replies. “They work me like a dog in here.” He rolls his eyes. “Have you had a chance to look at the menu yet?”
“No,” they both reply apologetically.
“Could we order some wine?” Shaun asks.
“Absolutely. And who would blame you? The day it’s been today. Police all over the place. Again.”
“Oh,” says Sophie. “Were they in here?”
“Yes. You know those two kids who disappeared from the village last summer? Looks like it’s all being raked up again. On the plus side, the hot detective is back.” He flashes his white teeth at them again. “Sorry. Anyway. Wine, you say?”