The Last Stage

by Louise Voss

  ‘Well, my sides are aching and my belly is full of pie and baby,’ she said. ‘But I must go to bed now, to dream of self-wounding pelicans. Thank you for a wonderful evening. Next time you must come to me.’ She was looking Pete straight in the eye, and he caught Meredith’s triumphant smirk as she gave Andrea a quick hug goodbye, then excused herself to go to the loo, leaving the two of them alone.

  ‘I’d love to,’ he said, and before he let himself think too closely about it, he leaned down and kissed her gently on the lips. They felt exactly as soft as he’d thought they would.

  ‘Well?’ demanded Meredith when she returned, staggering slightly, as if the barge was cutting through choppy sea instead of on the millpond-flat river.

  Pete changed the subject. If he confessed his intentions to her, he’d never hear the end of it. ‘Are you really going for a run in the morning?’

  ‘Yup,’ she said, grabbing a pack of Nurofen from the kitchen counter and popping three out. ‘If I take these now, that should nip the worst of the hangover in the bud. I brought my trainers and jogging gear … cos it’ll be more of a jog than a run for sure. I’m hoping it will clear my head, in all ways. Come with me?’

  ‘No bloody way,’ he said. ‘I’m having a lie-in tomorrow. You’re a better woman than I am.’

  Meredith gathered up the dirty plates and scraped the leftovers into the food bin. ‘So, did you ask her out? Even you must have noticed the way she was looking at you!’

  Pete looked briefly self-conscious. ‘I think I did notice, yeah. I didn’t ask her out…’ He saw Meredith’s mouth open to protest and rushed on, ‘But she invited me over. Soon. So I will then.’

  Meredith nodded, a tiny flash of pleasure crossing her face as she piled all the dishes next to the sink, and then she sank back into gloom. ‘Leave these, I’ll do them in the morning. I’m going to turn in. I need to try and sleep off all that wine you made me drink.’ She came over and hugged him. ‘Thanks for dinner, bro. Really helped take my mind off … things.’

  Sadness scudded anew across her features, then she snapped herself back. ‘And excellent news about Andrea. So nice that something positive is happening in the middle of all this … shit.’

  23

  Pete

  Pete slept soundly for the first five hours of that night, serenaded as always by the cheep and chatter of the sedge warbler that nested in the tree nearest the barge. He always slept so much better when Meredith was on board, it occurred to him as he dropped off. Perhaps it was because he could be sure she was safe.

  Later, he wasn’t sure if it was the splash that had woken him, but he recalled that something had, because he’d opened his eyes and tried to figure out why he was suddenly no longer asleep. He told the police it must have been around 5.00 a.m., because the faintest peachy light had been coming through the thin curtains. All was silent, though. No splashing, not even the tiny, thin flip of a fish’s fin, or a duck’s feet paddling over the surface as it lifted off.

  He’d gone back to sleep, closing his eyes against the encroaching tannin headache, until, at about 7.30 a.m., he was vaguely aware of hearing Meredith get up – she never was any good at sleeping in: the pump and flush of the chemical toilet, the click of the kettle and the bubble of the boil, mugs clashing as she reached one down for her tea. He remembered hoping that she wasn’t going to bring him one because he was nowhere near done with slumber – but then heard nothing.

  Until the scream came, piercing his dream. He’d never heard Meredith scream before, but even before he’d sprung out of bed, he knew it was her. He was outside on the pontoon in his boxers before he was even properly aware of being awake, rushing towards his sister, who had collapsed to her knees in the cool morning air, issuing an unearthly banshee sound, incongruous in her Lycra and trainers.

  ‘Mez! What’s the matter!’ He realised he was almost shaking her to try and get her to stop, so he wrapped one arm tight around her body and with the other, pressed her face into his neck as if his skin could gag her into silence. She struggled against his bare torso, trying to free herself, but at least she stopped screaming. Pushing his chest to loosen his grip, she stared into his face with wild bloodshot eyes, her cheeks chalky white.

  ‘What?’

  She pointed towards the river with a shaking finger, in the direction of Andrea’s barge. For a moment he wondered stupidly if it was on fire, but there was no smoke or smell of burning. It looked fine, exactly as it had done the night before, it’s navy livery smarter than Barton Bee’s shabby dark green … He shook his head with incomprehension but Meredith still couldn’t speak.

  The neighbours were popping alarmed heads out of their hatches, and Trevor and Johnny were pounding towards them, both in slippers, Trevor in a towelling robe and Johnny still in his pyjamas. They stopped in front of Pete and Meredith, who had now folded down to the ground like a malfunctioning garden chair, then they too followed the direction of her still-pointing finger. Pete stood up slowly and began to advance towards the edge of the pontoon, Trevor behind him, Johnny crouching down to take over comforting Meredith, who had begun to babble and sob.

  Pete wanted to put his fingers in his ears. He had never heard Meredith like that, not even last week with the trauma of Ralph’s disappearance. Shit, he thought, what could be worse for her than that?

  Then he peered over the edge of the pontoon, in the gap between his boat and Andrea’s, and he saw what Meredith had seen. Long strands of black hair rippling out like seaweed across the water’s dark surface, a body bobbing up against the wall, face down, clad in a spotty pyjama top. He recognised it – he saw it every morning when she came out for her morning herbal tea on her deck table, frowning at whatever jigsaw she currently had on the go; the little triumphant noise she made when she managed to slot in another piece. It was a sound she didn’t even realise she was uttering but which always made him grin to himself.

  He’d never hear it again. She’d never cook him that supper; he’d never have the opportunity to tell her how beautiful she was, and how much he would love both her and the baby.

  The baby.

  His face contorted with grief and he too fell to his knees.

  ‘Fucking hell!’ Trevor shouted in panic next to him. ‘We have to get her out!’ He started stripping off his robe as if to dive in, but Pete reached out and gripped his ankle. ‘No point. She’s clearly gone.’

  ‘We can’t just leave her in there!’

  ‘Who is it?’ moaned Johnny. ‘It’s not Andy, is it? Please tell me it’s not her. Not her!’

  Pete nodded slowly without turning. Andy, he thought. Andrea. I love you. Then he began to cry.

  24

  Pete

  ‘What’s wrong with us?’

  They had returned to Meredith’s cottage after the police had taken their statements. Meredith parked her Morris Traveller in the car park, and both of them gazed momentarily at the space that had held Ralph’s car before the police had towed it away.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asked flatly as they trudged down the steps to the cottage gate.

  Pete rubbed a hand across his face, as if he was trying to wipe away the memory of Andrea’s body in the water.

  ‘Did a gypsy put a curse on us as babies, or something? I mean, what the fuck is going on? It doesn’t make sense. It’s as if everybody we get close to is being bumped off.’

  As Meredith jiggled the key in the lock, he turned away to look over her cottage garden, a riot of hollyhocks and tea roses that blurred into a floral cloud. He blinked hard and took a deep breath.

  ‘“Everybody we get close to” is a bit of a stretch,’ Meredith said, her voice sounding as strained as he felt. ‘And you’ve got me. I know it’s not the same as a wife or anything, but at least we have each other … I don’t think I would ever trust anybody else.’

  Poor Meredith, he thought. Her trauma had been stitched so well into the fabric of their lives that he just didn’t see it any longer, like the invisible m
ending that their mother used to do on his school trousers; like the hole in Meredith’s hand that he no longer noticed, because after a while it had become too painful to see. His head was a mess.

  ‘Andrea and I kissed last night when you were in the loo,’ he said, heading straight for the living room and flopping down on the sofa, as he always did. He put his face in his hands. ‘It was so bloody lovely. And I told you she invited me over, right…? I was so excited. I thought at last something was going to happen; that it was time, that I’d been right to wait and not rush it. And now she’s fucking dead. How can she be dead?’ His voice cracked. ‘And her baby. Can’t stop thinking about that little baby too, it’s just so…’

  Meredith knelt at his feet and wrapped her arms tightly around his neck. ‘I know,’ she said. She was crying too; he could feel her hot tears on the skin below his ear. ‘I’m so sorry. It’s not fair, it’s just not fair. She was such a lovely person, and could have been so right for you…’

  They wept together, rocking, taking comfort from their closeness, as if their grief was halved by sharing it.

  Eventually Meredith sniffed and sat back on her heels, scrubbing her eyes. ‘I still haven’t told the police that I slept with Ralph.’

  Pete blew his nose with the cotton hanky he kept in his pocket for when he had hay fever. ‘Shit, Mez. You can’t now. Especially not after Andrea. They’re going to think you’ve got something to do with it!’

  ‘That’s crazy, why would they? Ralph and Andrea were both my friends. Why the hell would I ever drown them? I suppose it depends what the post-mortems show. At the very least they’d have me for obstructing the course of justice, or withholding evidence, or something.’

  ‘That Davis guy would probably forgive you anything. I doubt you can do any wrong as far as he’s concerned.’

  ‘He might be a fan but he’s a cop first, Pete. I mean, seriously – you think if I’d killed them he’d, like, just let me off with a warning because he had all Cohen’s albums?’

  Pete stood up slowly, like an old man, a hand in the small of his back. ‘I’m not thinking straight. I just keep seeing her…’

  ‘Me too,’ Meredith said, idly tracing the edges of her scar with a forefinger. Pete had long ago observed it was a thing she often did when she felt unhappy, as if she was reading her pain like Braille. Meredith drawing attention to it herself was pretty much the only time he ever noticed it these days. ‘How are you going to go back to the barge after this? I don’t know how I am.’

  Pete sighed heavily. ‘I don’t know either.’ He walked towards the kitchen and opened the fridge door. ‘I’m not hungry, but we haven’t eaten all day. What have you got in?’

  ‘Eggs. Might be a bit of bacon left. I really don’t want anything though, apart from wine, and I don’t even have any of that.’

  ‘Is that all? You need to go shopping.’

  Meredith leaned on the kitchen door frame and scowled at him. ‘Well, sorry, Pete, but I’ve had other things on my mind.’

  He turned, egg box in hand. ‘Are you wondering…?’

  ‘What?’ They held each other’s gaze. Meredith put her damaged hand defensively behind her back.

  ‘That,’ Pete said, glancing towards her concealed hand. ‘You are, aren’t you? And you were after Ralph, too. I tried to ask you then but you cut me off. But we can’t not talk about it now. You’re wondering if he—’

  ‘Don’t.’

  ‘You have to tell—’

  ‘No! There’s no way. It was a lifetime ago!’

  ‘But you said that twat at the record company found you last year.’

  Meredith’s face had turned a sickly yellowish colour, and Pete felt compassion flood through him like an adrenaline rush. He put the eggs down on the counter, went across and hooked his arm casually around her neck. ‘Tell them what happened, Mez. It’s important. It’s probably nothing to do with it at all, but…’

  ‘Yeah. OK. I’ll tell Gemma about it. And about me and Ralph.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘Um … I’ll try.’

  25

  Gemma

  Gemma could still faintly smell the bitterness of burnt orange on her fingers the next morning as she keyed in the request for information on Meredith Vincent from the General Registry. The last thing she’d seen before leaving for work was a row of empty sterilised jars, still waiting to be filled. They were like some sort of metaphor for her life – the marmalade she spent much of her free weekend making had never set and had to be flushed down the toilet. Why did work always seem easier than the rest of her life? It was a relief to be back at her desk – less so when Mavis strode in, however, his trousers slightly too tight around the crotch, his clean-shaven face like a cross-looking Action Man.

  ‘Morning, Mark,’ she said. ‘Nice weekend?’

  ‘PM results are in on both vics,’ he replied, staring at a polystyrene ceiling tile over her desk as if it was about to reveal some sort of profound secret. ‘Tell the team there’s a briefing for ten a.m., please. Lincoln’s coming in as SIO. This is an MIT investigation now.’

  ‘What, so they were dead before going in the water? Both of them? No!’

  ‘I’ll tell you in the meeting.’

  He marched past her desk and on to the coffee machine. Gemma’s thoughts whirled – a maelstrom, with Meredith Vincent in the eye of the storm. What were the chances of two people close to the woman – both in terms of geography and their relationships – being murdered then dumped in water within a week of each other? This surely made Meredith a prime suspect; yet she had no motive, no beef with either victim and both were her good friends. She hadn’t had any sort of breakdown or psychiatric problems, to their knowledge.

  Could someone be trying to get at Meredith? The thought seemed preposterous. A respectable, fifty-something gift-shop manager didn’t have those sorts of enemies.

  A world-famous household name pop star, however, could easily have crossed someone at some point in her career – and they still didn’t know what had caused Meredith’s sudden withdrawal from the public eye. She’d been wondering if it was something to do with the hole in her hand that Meredith wouldn’t discuss. Gemma made a mental note to look into this further. And Meredith herself seemed worried, albeit more about Paula Allerton than herself. She’d rung Gemma a couple of days before to report that a statue outside the Allertons’ house had been vandalised, and that Paula had told her she thought someone had been creeping around there the night before.

  An hour later the conference room was packed – Gemma had sent out a blanket email. Emad sidled in at the last moment with another newish PC – Damian someone – and took a seat at the back. When she flashed him a brief grin, she noticed the sheepish, pleased expression that crossed his face. He was such a sweetheart.

  Mavis and DI Lincoln stood at the front, next to a board on which were pinned photographs of Andrea Horvath and Ralph Allerton, pre- and post-mortem.

  ‘Right. Morning everyone,’ Detective Superintendent Lincoln began. He was a tall, handsome, chisel-jawed man with wavy blond hair and just the right amount of darker stubble, but he had an unfortunate voice and a weird way of coughing, where he flung back his head and coughed into the back of his hand with short staccato barks. This looked very melodramatic, like a speeded-up swooning Victorian heroine. He did it so often it had to be a sort of tic, and this, plus the nasal voice, instantly cancelled out much of the sex appeal of his appearance. Gemma could tell, though, that Mavis still felt threatened in his proximity.

  ‘I’m now the SIO on this, so, for those who don’t know the details, I’ll fill you in. Thursday, fourteenth of June, PCs Khan and Jackman here were called to Minstead House, where the shop manager, Meredith Vincent, had been on her lunch break by the pond and had found Ralph Allerton’s body in the pond. He’d been reported as a misper the previous Thursday after not returning from work. Two days later, Ms Vincent was also at the scene of discovery of a second body: Andrea Horvath, a Hun
garian national who’d lived in the UK for ten years. She worked as a hairdresser off her boat at the Wey Wharf, next to Meredith Vincent’s twin brother’s boat. Meredith had been staying with her twin, Pete, the night before and found Andrea’s body in the water when she left for a run in the morning. We’ve now had PM results in on both vics, which has ruled out accidental deaths, definitely on Allerton, who’d been strangled, and probably on Andrea Horvath, who suffered a blow to the head before she went into the river. It’s possible that she banged her head and fell in, but unlikely – the severity of the blow and shape of the wound indicates something like a baseball bat. Seems a bit of a coincidence that Ms Vincent finds two bodies in the same week, wouldn’t you agree?’

  Nods from around the room.

  ‘So obviously she’s the primary focus of our investigations. Her brother’s the alibi for both occasions, and there are no motives for either death – vics were her friends – and she seems genuinely distraught. But we need to look at both twins, check out their relationships with the deceased.’

  Gemma put up her hand.

  ‘Yes? You’re DC McMeekin, correct?’

  Lincoln did the weird coughing thing, so Gemma nodded and waited till he’d finished barking. ‘Sir, I’m wondering if someone is after Meredith herself, trying to hurt her. I think there’s something she’s not telling us, maybe from years ago. You know she was the lead singer in the band Cohen? They were big in the eighties and nineties.’

  This information elicited a ripple of excited murmurs from around the room, particularly from the personnel who were in the forty-plus age bracket.