Little Face

by Sophie Hannah

  ‘Assuming I believe you, how did Beer get access to the Waterfront crèche? Did he also have a girlfriend who worked there?’

  ‘Nah, but he and Donna were mates. We all were, the three of us.’

  ‘Could he have hidden the knife without Donna seeing him?’

  ‘Yeah, course. The changing unit’s in a separate room next to the bog, so it’s easy to hide stuff without being seen.’ Vinny Lowe seemed to inflate with pride. ‘That’s the beauty of the lock-up,’ he said.

  Simon stopped, thought hard. Darryl Beer was arrested at home, mid-morning on a Saturday, the day after Laura Cryer was killed. The Waterfront crèche opened on Saturday mornings at 9 am, 8.30 on weekdays. Beer could have gone there first thing, hidden the knife, then gone home. Why not hide Laura’s handbag in the same place, though? Unless he’d chucked that in a bin somewhere and Charlie’s team had just never found it. All Simon wanted was for tomorrow to arrive, so that he could make the call he was desperate to make. Everything would be easier after that; he’d know so much more.

  ‘Does the crèche take children of all ages?’ he said. ‘Is there an upper or a lower age limit?’

  Lowe looked baffled. ‘Birth to five,’ he said. ‘Why, you got nippers?’

  Simon didn’t answer. He produced from his pocket the photograph of Vivienne, Alice, David and Felix Fancourt that had been in Alice’s desk drawer at work. ‘Do you recognise any of these people?’ he asked Lowe.

  ‘Yeah, that little lad used to go to the crèche. Donna used to call him Little Lord Font-el-roy, because of his posh accent. And her, Lady Muck.’ He nodded, smiling. He was behaving like a man without a care in the world. Perhaps he was too dim to understand that he was about to be done for possession of Class A drugs. ‘So, is she something to do with that little posh lad, then?’

  ‘Did you see them together, ever?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why Lady Muck?’

  ‘That’s what me and Daz used to call her. We saw her in the pool and Jacuzzi all the time.’

  ‘You and Beer were members of the health club?’ Simon didn’t try to disguise his disbelief.

  ‘Don’t be daft. I wouldn’t pay those prices. Nah, we used to dodge reception and get in through the café bar, Chompers. Any idiot could do it, but not everyone’s got the inititative.’ Lowe’s solicitor flashed him a look of pure loathing, then turned back to the chipped pale pink varnish on her fingernails.

  ‘Lady Muck was in nearly every day, and so were we,’ said Vinny. ‘Being men of leisure, you know how it is. Well, you probably don’t. I swear she used to listen to our conversations. We used to have a laugh, say that she fancied us and that was why she was following us around. She must have known we weren’t members, but she never said nothing. We reckoned she got her rocks off listening to us.’

  ‘What did you used to talk about?’

  ‘Business,’ said Lowe self-importantly. ‘Times we’d been inside. If she was listening, we’d go way over the top, talking about shooters and taking people out. Daz used to say listening to us talking like tough guys made her . . . you know.’ Lowe winked. ‘We were just talking bollocks. Lady Muck didn’t fancy us, she was just a nosey cow.’

  ‘Did you and Beer ever mention your lock-up in front of her?’

  ‘Probably. We used to laugh about it all the time, that all those toffee-nosed parents had no idea their brats’ bums were being changed on top of our merchandise.’

  ‘I thought you said the drugs were for your own personal use?’

  ‘Just a turn of phrase.’

  Normally Simon would have been furious to have a sleaze like Vinny Lowe in front of him talking shit, but he had too much nervous energy racing around his brain. Anger would have required more attention than he could have mustered. Now that a firm link had been established between the Fancourts and Darryl Beer, Simon had a sense of increasing momentum, and was wrestling with the slight disorientation that always gripped him at this stage in a case. Part of him was afraid to discover the truth. He had no idea why. It was something to do with options narrowing down, the feeling of being pushed into the mouth of a tunnel. He was pretty sure Charlie, Sellers and Gibbs never felt this way.

  If only it were tomorrow morning. But that was just a formality, wasn’t it? The phone call? He knew the truth, didn’t he? Or was there something more? Was he afraid of finding out something else? Simon couldn’t shake off a sense of foreboding, of something deeply unpleasant lurking just around the corner, something he couldn’t avoid because he couldn’t stop walking towards that corner . . .

  Alice. That was what really terrified him. What would he find out about Alice? Please let it be nothing bad, he prayed, staring at the photograph in his hand, the family portrait. He shuddered. He didn’t want to look at it, didn’t want to think about it, but why?

  ‘Just to clarify,’ he said to Lowe, mainly to distract himself from the ominous awareness he knew was struggling to reach him. ‘Which of the two women in the photograph is the one you and Darryl Beer referred to as Lady Muck?’

  Lowe pointed to Vivienne Fancourt. Simon felt a surge of relief.

  33

  Thursday October 2, 2003

  I am sitting at the dressing table brushing my hair when David walks in. ‘Do you remember our honeymoon?’ I say to him, determined to speak before he does. ‘Do you remember Mr and Mrs Table, and the Rod Stewart family? The evenings sitting on the balcony drinking retsina? Do you remember how happy we were then?’ I know that a few shared nicknames won’t bring back those feelings, but I want David to remember, at least, that they once existed. Let him be as tormented as I am.

  Scorn contorts his face. ‘You might have been,’ he says. ‘I wasn’t. I knew you’d never mean as much to me as Laura did.’

  ‘That’s not true. You’re just saying that to hurt me.’

  ‘We only went to Greece. Anyone can go to Greece. Laura and I went to Mauritius for our honeymoon. I didn’t mind spending that sort of money on her.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter how much money you spend, David. It never has. Your mother always gives you more. How many times has Vivienne bailed out your business over the years? More than once, I bet. If it wasn’t for her charity you’d probably be working in some grotty factory.’

  He clenches his teeth and storms out of the room. I continue to brush my hair, waiting. A few minutes later he is back. ‘Put the brush down,’ he says. ‘I want to talk to you.’

  ‘I’ve got nothing to say, David. I think it’s a bit late for talking, don’t you?’

  ‘Put the brush down! Look what I’ve got.’ He shows me a photograph of my parents and me, taken when I was a child. He must have got it from my handbag. It is my favourite picture of the three of us. David knows this. He knows that if anything happens to it, it can never be replaced. ‘I think your hair suits you better like it was then,’ he says.

  In the photograph I am five years old. My hairstyle is an unflattering, masculine short back and sides. My parents were not the most stylish people in the world. They didn’t care a damn what anyone looked like.

  ‘I don’t like hairy women,’ David tells me matter-of-factly. ‘The less hair the better.’

  ‘Laura had long hair,’ I cannot resist saying.

  ‘Yes, but hers wasn’t limp and greasy like yours. And she didn’t have hair all over her body. I noticed, when you did your little striptease in the kitchen earlier, that you haven’t shaved under your arms for a while.’

  ‘My daughter’s been abducted,’ I say in a monotone. ‘My appearance hasn’t been the main thing on my mind.’

  ‘Obviously not. I bet you haven’t shaved your legs either.’

  ‘No, I haven’t,’ I say. I know what is coming, but for once I can see a way out of it. First, though, I have to plunge deeper in. ‘Why did you do that, before?’ I ask.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Pretend I’d refused to get changed, when it was you who wouldn’t let me take off that dirty jumper
.’

  ‘Because you deserve it,’ says David. ‘Because you are dirty, deep down, and it’s about time Mum realised.’

  I nod.

  David walks over to me. He reaches into his trouser pocket and pulls out Vivienne’s white-handled kitchen scissors and a disposable razor. He holds the black and white photograph of me with my parents in front of my face. ‘This was a happier time for you, wasn’t it?’ he says. ‘I bet you wish you could turn back the clock.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You weren’t a liar then. You weren’t all disgusting and hairy.’

  I say nothing.

  ‘Well, now’s your chance.’ He nods at the razor, at the scissors. ‘Cut your hair, so it looks like that. And then, when you’ve done that, I want you to take off your nightie and shave off the rest of your hair.’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘Don’t make me do that.’

  ‘I’m not making you do anything. You’re free to do exactly as you choose. But so am I. Remember that, Alice. So am I.’

  ‘What do you want me to do? Tell me exactly what you want me to do.’

  ‘Take the scissors,’ he begins slowly, as if he is talking to a retard. ‘Chop off all your thin, straggly, snot-coloured hair. Then take off your nightie and shave your legs and under your arms. And then, when you’ve done that, you can shave between your legs as well. And when you’ve done that, you can shave off the hair on your arms and your eyebrows too. When you’ve done all that, I’ll let you go to bed. Big day tomorrow.’

  ‘And if I refuse?’

  ‘Then I’ll tear this into tiny pieces.’ He waves the photograph in the air. ‘It’ll be bye-bye Mummy and Daddy. Again.’

  An arrow of pain pierces the shield I have built, out of numb disbelief and necessity, to protect my heart. I wince and David smiles, pleased to have struck home. ‘Okay, I’ll do it,’ I say. ‘But not with you in the room.’

  ‘I’m going nowhere. I’m the person you’ve wronged, so I’m entitled to watch. Just get on with it. I’m tired and I want to go to sleep.’

  ‘And I suppose you’re going to tell Vivienne I did it by choice, aren’t you? More evidence of my depravity.’

  ‘I had all the evidence I needed last Friday, when you decided to pretend our daughter was a stranger. But some people take a bit more convincing. Mum’s not usually as slow as she has been about you. Actually, I think she’s beginning to get the message. That business this afternoon . . . and when she sees what you’ve done to your hair, when she sees you with no eyebrows, and finds a big pile of hair on the bedroom floor . . . because you’re too much of a pig to clean up after yourself . . .’

  He has said enough for my purposes. I walk over to his wardrobe, open it, and take out the Dictaphone that I put in one of his trouser pockets this morning. I press the ‘stop’ button, making sure that he sees me, and back away, holding the little silver machine behind me. ‘Everything you’ve said since you came in here is on this tape,’ I tell him.

  His face turns crimson. He takes a step towards me. ‘Don’t move,’ I say. ‘Or I’ll scream the place down. You won’t be able to get the tape off me and destroy it before Vivienne gets in here. You know how quick she is when she knows something’s going on that’s not yet under her control. So unless you want her to know what a sick, twisted creep you really are, you’ll do what I say.’

  David freezes. He tries not to look worried, but I know he is. He has always played the perfect little boy in front of his mother. His ego could not survive exposure as a pervert and a sadist.

  ‘Luckily for you, I’m not as sick as you are,’ I say. ‘All I want you to do is leave me alone. Don’t speak to me or look at me. Stop thinking up new ways to torture me. Pretend I’m not here. I want nothing more to do with you, you sad, pathetic scumbag.’ David shrugs, pretending he doesn’t care. ‘Oh – and one more thing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Where’s Florence? What have you done with her? Tell me that and I’ll destroy the tape.’

  ‘Oh, that’s easy,’ says David scornfully. ‘She’s in the nursery. She’s here at The Elms where she’s always been.’

  I shake my head, sadly. ‘Good night, David,’ I say. I leave the room, holding the Dictaphone tightly in my hand, and close the door quietly behind me.

  34

  10/10/03, 9 am

  ‘Is this a newly discovered eighth circle of hell?’ said Charlie, gesturing at the mayhem around her. She and Simon were in Chompers, Waterfront’s brash, mock-American diner-style café full of parents in sportswear with fake tans and their snotty, shrieking children. Survivor’s ‘Eye of the Tiger’ was playing at full volume. ‘Why’s it so packed?’

  ‘They’re all waiting for the crèche to open,’ said Simon. ‘It was supposed to open half an hour ago. I expect they’ve had trouble finding new staff, after sacking Lowe’s girlfriend. Look.’ He nodded as a young red-haired girl with a ponytail and freckles came in. She stood at the door and waved. At the sight of her, most of the adults in Chompers leaped out of their seats and began to gather together their bags and toddlers. ‘Lisa Feather,’ said Simon. ‘She was Donna’s assistant. Maybe she’s in charge now.’

  ‘How come you know so much?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘I got here early. I’ve been in already. I didn’t want to do it while the kids were there.’ He rubbed his watch strap with the index finger and thumb of his right hand.

  ‘And?’ said Charlie.

  And after he’d checked out the crèche, while he waited for Charlie, he’d made two phone calls. Yesterday he had thought one would be enough, but in the middle of the night he’d sat bolt upright in bed, knowing exactly why he’d felt apprehensive at the sight of that bloody photograph of Alice, David, Vivienne and Felix in the garden of The Elms. He’d realised that he needed to make two calls, not one.

  And now he had, and his hopes were confirmed along with his worst fears. There was no uncomfortable rumbling in his subconscious now; everything had risen to the surface. Simon saw the whole picture as clearly as Charlie’s face right in front of him.

  ‘Simon? The crèche?’

  ‘Lowe was right. The baby changing unit’s next to the bog. There’s a closed door in between it and the main part of the crèche. Hiding anything in the unit would’ve been a piece of piss.’

  Charlie nodded. She felt as if she had embarked upon a long, slow convalescence from a serious illness. She had been torn to pieces and she had only two choices: disintegrate further or fight to rebuild her equilibrium. She chose the latter. Simon didn’t love her and he never would. She didn’t know why he’d rejected her at Sellers’ party, or if he’d told some or all of their colleagues about the incident, and she never would. There was something comforting about accepting, finally, that certain things were beyond her control.

  Others weren’t. Charlie knew, when she was able to be rational about it, that her value as a person was unrelated to Simon’s opinion of her. She had been a confident woman before he came along, and she could be one again. And until she was, however desolate she felt, she would behave well. She would be friendly to Simon, instead of dismissing his suggestions simply because they were his. Charlie hoped she wasn’t so much of a pillock that she would let a man who didn’t appreciate her fuck up her work, the one thing she’d always known she was good at.

  ‘That’s how Beer and Lowe got in.’ Simon pointed at the door that led out on to Alder Street. ‘It’s where I came in when I met Alice Fancourt. Both times.’

  ‘Right. So Beer used the health club without paying, and he hid the knife he used to kill Cryer in the crèche. Is that what we’re saying? Is that all we’re saying?’

  Simon hadn’t decided yet whether he wanted to tell Charlie some, all or none of what he’d found out. Certainly not all. But if he gave her only a partial account, she might make a phone call herself and find out the rest. Shit. He hated feeling so cornered.

  ‘Beer and Lowe called Vivienne Fancourt Lady Muck,’ he said. ‘She used to
listen to them bragging about their many run-ins with the law. She’d have known Beer’s DNA would be on our database, she’s not stupid. She wanted Cryer dead because Cryer was restricting her access to her grandson, but she wasn’t prepared to take the risk of killing her unless she could be sure she wouldn’t get caught. What better way of making sure than framing someone, planting physical evidence of that person at the scene? Especially when that someone’s a scrote the police already know.’

  ‘So, what, one day she leaned over in the Jacuzzi and pulled out a clump of Beer’s hair?’

  ‘What’s the one thing everyone has with them all the time in a place like Waterfront? Come on, swimming, Jacuzzi, sauna – what would you take with you?’

  ‘Fags.’

  ‘A towel,’ said Simon. ‘All Vivienne would have had to do is swap her towel for Beer’s. Or wait until he discarded his and pick it up. It would have had his hair and skin all over it.’

  ‘He could easily have seen her,’ said Charlie. ‘What if he left his towel in a locker in the changing rooms and didn’t take it to the pool area with him?’

  ‘What if he did take it with him?’ Simon persisted. ‘What if Vivienne watched him for weeks, months, while she thought up her plan? She’d have known his habits, wouldn’t she? She could have worked out the best time to take his towel.’ Please let her go for this, he prayed. He couldn’t bring himself to reveal the rest, though he knew he’d have to eventually. Unless Vivienne Fancourt were to confess – and why the hell would she?

  ‘This is all speculative.’ Charlie sighed.

  ‘I know.’ Simon’s mouth was a hard, determined line. ‘But while we’re here, we might as well see what the set-up is with the towels.’

  Charlie shrugged, then nodded. It was worth a look, she supposed.

  ‘David and Vivienne Fancourt must have been bloody thrilled when Beer pleaded guilty,’ Simon muttered.