She entered the address Trevor gave her into the sat nav. The estimated journey time was forty-three minutes.
‘I’m worried about what Shane might have found in my laptop,’ she said.
‘Did it have a password?’ Trevor asked.
‘We both know how easy it is to get past a laptop password. I use the same password for my email. If Shane used software to get into my laptop, the first thing he’d have done was try the same password to access my email.’
‘But when I sent you the email with Roxanne’s address, Shane didn’t have your laptop. It was with Billy by then, remember?’
‘I use webmail,’ Dee said. ‘If Shane got my login details, he could access my email from any device.’
‘There’s a good chance that hasn’t happened. You and I know about that sort of stuff because we’re journalists. Shane Gilbert’s an ex-con. Probably not very well educated. Only a proper techie would know about stuff like that.’
‘Shane is a proper techie. He has a degree in computer programming.’
‘Well, even if he has been able to access your emails, there’s every chance we’ll get to Chislehurst before he does. He can’t know we’re on our way there right now.’
‘I hope you’re right,’ Dee said, but she couldn’t shake off the feeling that they were already too late. She looked at the line of cars snaking slowly ahead of her along the A2 and wanted to scream. ‘I wish this bloody traffic would shift. How could I have forgotten how clogged up the roads in London can get?’
‘It’ll clear once we get the other side of Eltham,’ Trevor said. ‘Try to stay calm until then.’
Dee tapped the steering wheel with the tips of her fingers and took several deep breaths. It made no difference. All she could think about was Jake. Her need to see him was increasing with every slow mile that passed. To distract herself, she told Trevor what she’d worked out so far about Gus Hope’s murder.
‘Shane didn’t kill him,’ she said. ‘That was Ella or Roxanne. I don’t know why he was killed, and maybe that doesn’t matter. What’s important is this: after the murder, the two women lied to the police, framing Shane for something he didn’t do. He served his time in prison, and when he got out, Ella was scared he’d come looking for her. She was pregnant; she panicked and decided to steal Katie’s ID. And the plan worked. Until Katie found out what she did and confronted her.’
‘And when she did that, Ella killed her,’ Trevor said.
‘No. That’s not what happened. Ella was right to be scared of Shane. He came looking for her. But he had help. I think Shane and Katie were working together. At some point, possibly when he was in prison, Shane convinced Katie he’d been set up. They used to go out with each other. Maybe she still had feelings for him. Either way, my original theory still stands. Katie was killed because someone – Shane Gilbert – thought she was Ella. He made a mistake and killed the wrong girl.’
‘Which one of them killed Gus?’ Trevor asked. ‘Roxanne or Ella?’
As she considered this, Dee remembered something Tom had said. She glanced across at Trevor. ‘Get my phone out of my bag. You’ll find Tom’s number in my call log. Call him and put him on speaker phone.’
Tom answered on the second ring. ‘Dee, is everything okay?’
‘We may have a lead on Roxanne Reed. But there’s something I need to ask you first.’
‘Sure,’ Tom said. ‘Fire ahead.’
‘You mentioned something about Gus’s murder causing a rift between you and Ella?’
The silence at the other end told her all she needed to know.
‘It’s going to come out sooner or later,’ she said. ‘Shane’s already telling anyone who’ll listen that his trial was a miscarriage of justice. If Ella killed Gus, that might help us understand why Katie was killed.’
‘She swore it was an accident,’ Tom said. ‘I believed her about that. The thing I couldn’t get past, the thing that caused us to break up, was that she’d let an innocent man go to prison for something she’d done.’
‘How do you kill someone by accident?’ Dee asked. ‘She sliced his throat open.’
‘I don’t know. She would never have spoken about it if it wasn’t for Katie. We were in a pub one evening, waiting for Ella, and Katie told me her father had been killed. She assumed I already knew about it.’
‘Because Ella was a witness.’
‘Exactly. When I asked Ella about it later, she told me she didn’t speak about it because she was consumed with guilt. And then she told me what she’d done. I couldn’t handle it, and we split up.’
‘Roxanne perjured herself to protect Ella,’ Dee said. ‘Why?’
‘I never asked. Once I knew the truth, I didn’t want anything else to do with her.’
‘Didn’t stop him sleeping with her a few years later,’ Dee said to Trevor after she’d rung off.
‘New voicemail on your phone,’ Trevor said. ‘Someone must have called you while you were speaking to Tom.’
‘Stick it back on speaker phone and dial my voicemail, would you?’
‘Anything else I can do for you, your ladyship?’ Trevor asked.
Dee waved her hand in the air, gesturing for him to hurry up and do what she’d asked.
She listened to the automated voice telling her she had a new message. This was followed by a silence, and then a woman’s voice, sounding timid and far away.
‘Dee? It’s me, Katie. Well, you probably know by now that’s not my real name. I’m so sorry I lied about who I was. Can you call me back as soon as possible? I need your help.’
The shock made Dee almost crash the car. She swerved into the hard shoulder, switched the engine off and grabbed the phone from Trevor. A van swung past, horn blasting. Dee barely heard it as she replayed the message twice more.
‘Shit,’ she said. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’
She pressed 3 to return the call, and got Ella’s voicemail.
‘Ella?’ she said. ‘I got your message. Call me back. I need to know you’re okay, that you’re both okay. Nothing else matters. I don’t care that you lied, or why you lied. Call me.’
‘You don’t care that she lied?’ Trevor said, after Dee hung up.
‘She’s my friend and she’s in trouble. Right now, that’s the only thing I care about.’
She switched the engine back on and checked in the rear-view mirror before pulling away from the kerb.
‘Keep calling that number,’ she told Trevor. ‘Hopefully she’ll pick up before too long.’
‘Whatever you say, boss,’ Trevor said. Then, a few minutes later, ‘I think her phone may be switched off. All I’m getting is her voicemail.’
‘Keep trying,’ Dee told him. ‘Jesus, this bloody traffic.’
‘It’s thinning out a bit. You need to take the next right. After that, I reckon another fifteen minutes and we’ll be there.’
‘I may be a woman,’ Dee said, ‘but I’m more than capable of following sat nav directions, thanks.’
* * *
Roxanne’s house was a pretty whitewashed bungalow down a quiet road on the edge of the village.
‘What if she’s not here?’ Trevor asked when Dee pulled up outside.
‘We wait.’
Dee opened the door and stepped out of the car. Almost immediately, the smell hit her. Thick and acrid, the stink of something burning in the still summer air.
‘Someone’s having a barbecue,’ Trevor said. He opened the gate and indicated for Dee to pass through before him.
The front door was red, the same colour as the roses planted in the beds lining the path that led up to the house. Normally Dee would have commented on how pretty it all looked. Right now, though, her attention was focused not on the flowers but on the plumes of smoke rising up behind the house.
‘You don’t get smoke like that from a barbecue,’ she said. ‘I’m going back there to see what’s burning.’
They ran towards the source of the smoke, stopping abruptly when they saw
the inferno. At the end of a long, tidy garden, a wooden shed was burning rapidly to the ground. Flames licked up the sides, sending thick plumes of smoke into the air. Heat radiated off the blaze, so hot Dee felt as if her skin might peel off.
Someone was screaming. The sound came from inside the shed. Dee ran forward, but Trevor caught her arm.
‘You’ve got your phone,’ he shouted. ‘Call 999. I’ll get a bit closer and see if I can do anything.’
When Dee hesitated, he pushed her gently back.
‘If you go down there, you won’t be able to hear when they ask you where you are.’
‘Don’t get too close,’ Dee said, but her voice was lost in the hiss and spit of the flames eating up the sides of the shed.
She pulled her phone out, punched in three nines.
‘Fire brigade,’ she shouted when someone answered. She gave the address and said the fire engines needed to get here as quickly as possible.
Trevor was nearly at the shed. He stopped running, seemed unsure what to do next. Heat came off the shed in waves, scorching the air and burning the back of Dee’s throat each time she breathed in.
‘Come back!’ she screamed, but Trevor either didn’t hear her or chose to ignore her.
She was about to shout again when she heard the smash of glass breaking. The noise came from the house, behind her. She turned round, saw a burst of flame rush through the newly broken window.
She swung back to check on Trevor. Saw him run a few steps forward, then withdraw again, driven back by the smoke and the flames and the unbearable burning heat.
She dialled 999 again, screaming to the emergency operator that the fire was worse than she’d thought. ‘It’s not just the shed,’ she said. ‘It’s the house too.’
‘The fire service is on its way,’ the woman told her. ‘Estimated arrival time ten minutes. You need to move away from the area, madam. Take yourself out of danger.’
‘I can’t stand here and do nothing,’ Dee said. ‘What if someone’s inside the house?’
‘You can’t help them if you’re injured too. Get as far away as you can.’
Trevor had disappeared. Dee scanned the area, searching for him. Her eyes were streaming, making it difficult to see. At the end of the garden, the fire blazed brighter, flames rising higher so that she couldn’t see the shed any more. All she could see was a burning mass of fire and smoke.
Something shot across the flames. Someone was running towards the fire.
‘Trevor!’
‘Madam?’
Dee hadn’t realised she still had the phone pressed to her ear.
‘I need you to confirm you’re moving to a safe area.’
She ended the call and ran towards the fire. Heat and smoke and flames. No sign of Trevor. She screamed his name, but her voice was lost in the storm of noise the fire was making.
And then she saw him. He was at the entrance to the shed, his body a black silhouette against the flames. Relief made her want to laugh. He was okay.
‘Trevor!’ He turned his head and she gestured for him to move back.
He looked like he was about to say something, but Dee never heard it. A deafening sound cracked through the air, drumming through her body. At the same moment, there was a flash of light, white and bright, and an explosion so strong it threw Dee up into the air.
She was flying, weightless and free. Spinning in the air with the flames and the smoke and exploding pieces of wood. And then she was falling.
She hit the ground, hard. Landed on her back, all the air knocked out of her. Unable to move or breathe or speak, she lay on the neatly mown lawn. Above her, thousands of burnt and broken pieces of wood were twisting and turning in the whirling orange and black air, like tiny dancers beneath a setting sun.
Fifty-Five
Ella
Smoke clogged her nose, burning the back of her throat. Choking her. The tape across her mouth meant she couldn’t shout for help. She could barely breathe. Flames raced along the edges of the curtains. Red and roaring. She never knew fire could make so much noise.
The hero next door.
Words from a song. Music jingling. Jake pointing at the TV, laughing. Fireman Sam. Jake was here somewhere, in this burning shed, breathing in the same thick smoke. It would kill him quicker than it would kill her. She had to find him before that happened.
She was lying on her side, her hands tied behind her back. Tape cut into the skin on her wrists, blood ran down her hands as she tried to pull them free, desperate to find Jake before it was too late.
Then she remembered. She wasn’t in the shed. She was in the house. Shane had caught her in the garden. He’d dragged her up off the ground, punched her in the stomach, knocking all the air from her body. Then he’d pulled her back up the slope, away from the shed. And she couldn’t do anything because she couldn’t breathe. She was dying.
Except she hadn’t died. She’d woken to find herself lying on the floor of the sitting room, watching the curtains dissolve into the flames. She tried to get up, but the smoke meant every breath was a struggle. Standing, the effort it would take to push herself up without using her hands or arms seemed impossible.
Tears of rage and frustration ran down her face. Damn him. He wasn’t going to win. Not now. Jake wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be. Ella was going to get out of here and save him. And when she’d done that, she was going to find Shane Gilbert and she was going to kill him.
Shane’s voice, echoing in her head.
Mummy’s a murderer.
Not murder. Self-defence. Maybe. A mistake. Yes.
An eye for an eye.
She deserved to die. She had killed, and so she should be killed.
Gus and Katie. Both dead because of her.
Poor Katie. She must have hated us so much.
It didn’t matter now. Nothing mattered except not dying.
It was too hot to breathe or think. She had to close her eyes to stop them burning. There was a roaring sound inside her head, matching the noises all around her as the fire moved closer.
A ring of fire. Johnny Cash. Dee’s favourite.
Gus and Shane and red, red blood. Jake. There he was. Standing with his back to her, surrounded by a light so bright and white it made her body ache.
Jake! She called his name and he turned slowly, his arms reaching for her. But when she saw his face, it wasn’t Jake. It was Gus. Smiling and walking towards her. His mouth was moving but she couldn’t hear the words until he was right in front of her.
‘What took you so long?’
He reached for her and she tried to resist, because she knew that the moment he touched her, it would be over. She tried to step back, but she couldn’t move. And now his hand was on her shoulder, drawing her into the white light and saying her name, his voice so full of love and loss and joy and pain all at the same time.
‘Katie. My Katie.’
It’s not me, she tried to tell him. I’m not Katie. But he didn’t hear, because there was another voice. Katie’s. Ella couldn’t see her, but she could hear her speaking, soft and close. So close.
I could be you. I could be you.
The words whispering around her and through her until there was nothing except Katie’s voice and the bright white light that was love and life and nothing to be scared of. She would never be scared again.
Because the ache was gone. She was free.
Fifty-Six
Dee
There were three fire engines. And lots of people. Firemen and women and police and paramedics. Someone was talking to her. A fireman with ears that were too big for the rest of him. Asking questions about Trevor and the screams and the fires still burning in the house and the shed. Was anyone inside the house? Dee didn’t know. She didn’t know anything except that Trevor, dear, lovely Trevor, had gone inside that… thing. That burning inferno.
‘Will he be okay?’
She had asked the same question already, kept asking it because no one would tell her. They would
n’t tell her, yet they expected her to answer all their questions. The fireman – Frasier, his name was Frasier, like the TV show – told her she should see the paramedics.
‘We need to get you checked out,’ he said. ‘Let me take you over to one of the ambulances.’
‘No.’
She wouldn’t go. She had to wait until Trevor came back out. Four firemen were aiming a hose at the shed, water pumping out of it. But the water disappeared into the flames, didn’t seem to make any difference. Dee wanted to tell them they would have to go inside, but she couldn’t find the words she needed, so she just stood there like a stupid, useless idiot, holding onto the blanket the fireman – what was his name? – had given her.
It was the second time in the space of a few days that someone had wrapped a blanket around her. She didn’t understand why she needed a blanket. It was too hot for one. But she kept it around her shoulders, holding onto the edges so it didn’t slip off, because she didn’t know what else to do and she was a stupid, useless idiot who had done nothing to help anyone.
‘Will he be okay?’
‘Frasier!’
That was his name. She remembered now. Frasier, like the TV show that she and Billy used to watch together. Tossed salad and scrambled eggs.
‘We’ve got a body.’
A fireman, his eyes white and huge, the only part of his face not covered in black soot, was running towards them. Coming from the house, not the shed.
A body. Not a person, a body. But it wasn’t Trevor. It couldn’t be Trevor because the body was inside the house and Trevor was in the shed. Jake. Oh sweet Jesus, please, not the little boy. He was too young to die. He liked ice cream. Chocolate ice cream from Fusciardi’s.
Dee remembered one day a few months ago. Walking along the seafront, on her way to meet Louise for lunch. She’d heard someone calling her name and knew it was Jake. Knew because she’d recognise his little-boy voice anywhere. He was coming out of Fusciardi’s, clutching a cone that looked bigger than his face. A huge scoop of chocolate ice cream wobbling precariously on top. Katie was wearing the blue T-shirt and she looked so pretty. She took Jake’s hand as they crossed the road, and Dee felt such a swell of warmth inside her, knowing they were crossing because of her.
I Could Be You Page 27