The Bride: A twisty and completely gripping psychological thriller

by Wendy Clarke

  DC Armstrong looks doubtful. ‘That’s not quite true, is it. There’s the injury to your head… your wrists.’

  I look down at the ring of red skin above my palm that’s starting to fade. ‘It’s fine. I don’t have to, do I?’

  It’s DS Barnes who answers. ‘We can’t make you, but if you don’t want to see the police surgeon, I’d advise that you make an appointment with your own GP tomorrow, Joanna. Just to be sure.’

  I let out a breath, relieved. ‘I will.’

  ‘We’ll leave it there for now then.’ DS Barnes comes over to the table and picks up the sheet of paper her colleague has been writing on. ‘We won’t be long. As soon as we’ve made the hotel arrangements, we’ll let you know.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  They both leave the room, and I want to shout after them not to, but I don’t. Instead, I sit on my red plastic chair and think of everything that’s happened. Realising I’m trembling uncontrollably, I clamp my hands between my legs, willing them to be still.

  The minutes tick by, and I wonder what they’re doing. I picture DS Barnes on the phone, giving orders in her calm, reasonable voice. DC Armstrong waiting for her to finish before the two of them can discuss me. The missing bride.

  Lowering my head, I stare at my linked fingers, the shiny gold band on my ring finger still waiting for the inscription Mark had wanted us to add once things settled down. Once everyone knew about our marriage.

  Love at first sight.

  Bile rises to my throat as I rock forward in my chair then back again. Forward. Back. On and on… not caring that if they come back and see me, I’ll look as though I’ve lost it. For that’s how I feel. Mad. How could you do this to me, Mark? Is this how you treat someone you’re supposed to love?

  Eventually, I come to my senses. Make myself get up and go to the window. The blinds are open and outside the night sky is black. Starless. To pass the time until they come back, I try and think of as many words as I can to describe it: inky, jet, coal, raven. There must be more, I’m sure, but I’m not very good at this game. To me, darkness is simply the absence of light. Nothing more. It’s always made me feel safe. Like a comfort blanket.

  Where is Mark now? Is he out there looking for me or has he moved on?

  I’m starting to feel sick again, the enormity of everything that’s happened pressing down on me. When they find him, Mark will pay for what he’s done, most likely go to prison for it, yet still the doubts won’t leave me. I could tell them I made a mistake, that now I’m not sure I can be certain it was him, let Mark carry on with his life as though nothing has happened. But what about me? What will happen if I weaken? After all, I’m the victim, not him.

  I think of all the other things I could have told the detectives, words that DC Armstrong would write down in his slanting hand, but what I’ve told them is enough.

  There’s no time to think any more as the door opens again and the detectives come back in. DS Barnes’ face is serious. She indicates for me to sit again, then pulls out a chair opposite me, the one DC Armstrong had occupied earlier.

  ‘Since you spoke to us and told us what happened, there have been some further developments.’ She clears her throat. ‘Though whether you will consider them good or bad I’m not sure.’

  I look from one to the other, not understanding. ‘What sort of developments?’

  DS Barnes picks up a biro from the table and clicks it. Once. Twice. I watch as the nib pops out then retracts, wondering what she’s going to say.

  ‘It’s your husband, Joanna.’ She lays the pen flat on the table. ‘He’s been in an accident.’

  ‘An accident?’ I try and get my head around what she’s just said. ‘What sort of accident?’

  DS Barnes picks up the pen again. ‘He was cut out of a car on the road leading out of Black Water Dock. He’d lost control and it hit the wall of the old pumping station not far from where you live.’

  My stomach falls away from me. ‘I don’t believe you. It can’t be Mark.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but there’s no doubt. He had his driving license with him.’

  It can’t be true. It can’t.

  ‘Are you sure there hasn’t been some mistake?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. Are you all right, Joanna?’

  I clutch my stomach, wondering if I might be sick. It can’t be my husband, they’re lying. But why would they?

  Slowly the power of speech returns to me. ‘Tell me how? When…?’

  ‘Around ten this evening. He was taken to A & E. I’ve organised for a police watch to be put on your husband’s room and as soon as he’s in a fit enough condition to be interviewed, we’ll be able to find out more.’

  ‘You mean he’s not dead?’

  ‘No, but he’s in intensive care. It will be a while before he can tell us anything.’

  ‘Will I be able to see him?’ Despite all that’s happened, I have a desperate need to.

  DS Barnes steeples her fingers under her chin. ‘Under the circumstances, it wouldn’t be a good idea.’

  The room is starting to spin, and I close my eyes. It feels like a long time since I slept. ‘I just can’t believe it.’

  ‘I’m sorry… I know it’s a shock.’ DS Barnes tucks a strand of thick blonde hair behind her ear. ‘Is there someone you’d like us to ring for you? Your parents, perhaps?’

  I shake my head vehemently. ‘No. I don’t want you to call them.’

  ‘A friend then. The one who’s been staying at your apartment, maybe? Apparently, she left a while ago, but you could ask her to come back if she doesn’t live far.’

  I look up at her. ‘A friend?’

  ‘Yes, Alice Solomon. She told our uniformed colleagues that you invited her to stay. She was with your husband when they reported you missing. In fact, we’ll be needing to speak to her as well.’

  ‘Alice.’ I smile as a memory comes floating back. A girl with auburn hair stands in the doorway of the classroom, looking nervous. Out of place. When the head teacher asks if anyone would like to look after her on her first day, my hand shoots up, unbidden. I’d like to look after her, Mrs Talbot.

  ‘It’s a shame she left, but your message to Mark made it clear that you weren’t planning on coming back. She obviously felt there was nothing to stay for.’

  ‘But I didn’t send any message. Mark made it up.’

  DS Barnes looks at me. ‘We know that now.’

  ‘But how do you know Alice has left? She could still be there.’

  ‘According to the local officers who took her to see Mark in the hospital, she was planning on packing her things and leaving directly. Probably just wants to get back home. The whole thing must have been very upsetting for her.’

  ‘She went to see him?’ I stare at her in disbelief. ‘Yet you won’t let me.’

  ‘There was no reason for her not to. It was before we knew the true story.’

  I look away. Nobody knows the true story.

  ‘I’ll phone Alice later… ask her to come back. I know she will.’

  When DS Barnes had said she’d gone back home I’d been glad, but now curiosity has got the better of me. After ten years, I’ll see her again. Alice who sucked up to my parents. Alice who copied all my clothes. Alice who’s been living in an apartment that she wishes was hers.

  Alice who I saw kissing my husband.

  Forty-One

  Joanna

  The police car pulls up outside the hotel. It’s just a Travelodge, but I don’t care. I press my forehead against the cold window and force my eyes to focus on the vertical blue sign with its white writing. I’m tired of hotels. The windows of this one are small and plain, and I wonder about the people sleeping behind the heavy curtains that shut out the night. Businessmen and tourists, I expect – not women who have come straight from a police station.

  It’s not home, but I don’t care any more. I want a shower and a drink from the minibar. Time to myself to think about what I’m going to do next.

&
nbsp; The uniformed officer who’s been driving turns around in his seat. ‘Here we are then.’

  All the way here from the police station, I’ve watched his eyes in the rear-view mirror. Concerned eyes that every so often would leave the road to check I was all right, even though there’s a female officer sitting beside me.

  ‘Let’s get you inside.’ The policewoman gets out, comes around to my side of the car and opens the door.

  ‘I’ll see you in. I should warn you I’ve had word that because it’s so late, forensics won’t be able to get a team out to your apartment until the morning. You might have to stay here a couple of days.’ She leads the way to the hotel entrance, turning to me when we reach it. ‘You know it’s important you don’t go back to the apartment until we give you the all-clear, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, they told me.’

  We go inside, and I wait as the policewoman collects a key card from the bored looking girl who’s sitting behind the reception desk. She hands it to me.

  ‘Do you want me to come up with you?’

  ‘No. I’m fine.’

  ‘And you’re sure you’ll be all right here on your own?’

  ‘You don’t need to worry. When I get to my room, I’ll call my friend, Alice. She’ll come straight away. I won’t be on my own for long.’

  She seems happy with my answer. ‘That’s good. As you were told at the station, DS Barnes and DC Armstrong will pick you up tomorrow morning and take you back to see if you can identify the unit where you were kept. Do you think you’ll be up to it?’

  In the locked unit are the furniture and fixtures from the house Mark once shared with his wife. His dead wife. I wouldn’t let him bring any of it with him when we moved in together, into the apartment my father bought for me when I was twenty-five. After all, why would I want to share my space with a dead woman’s things? It was bad enough having to look after her crackhead son. Not that I minded at first, when he genuinely needed me. No, it was once he’d got clean that he started to get on my nerves. Followed me around like a lost puppy. Him and Derek.

  ‘Of course. I’ll be all right once I’ve had some sleep.’

  The policewoman smiles at me. ‘You’ve been very brave. From the information you’ve given us, the unit shouldn’t be difficult to locate.’

  The words are so genuine, so kind, that I feel a stab of guilt. I’ll show them where it is and they’ll find the mattress, the tray, the dried blood on the metal door. They won’t know I only stayed one night, long enough for it to be clear I was there. For the others I was in a cheap hotel… well, not all the others.

  But now isn’t the time to start wrestling with my conscience. I smile back at her.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say.

  I take the lift to the third floor and let myself into the room. It’s clean and functional, and I can’t help comparing it to the places I’ve stayed with my parents or with Mark. The hotel bedrooms in New York with floor to ceiling windows that looked out over the New York skyline. Mosaic-tiled rooms in Marrakesh facing on to courtyards whose fountains played as I fell asleep. The apartment in Cannes where the bed was twice the size of this small double with its striped bed runner.

  Going over to the window, I part the curtains and watch as the police car drives away, then I take my shoes off and lay on my bed, thinking about Alice. Remembering when we were young, and she’d spend more time in the holidays at my house than her own. Mum had loved it, as it meant she didn’t have to spend time with me. Entertain me. I was just an inconvenience to her, filling her ordered life with first nappies and bottles, then later, arguments and school fees. It wouldn’t surprise me if she wished she’d had her tubes tied… or given birth to a quiet, well-behaved child like Alice.

  Ever since the day I last saw her, all those years ago, I’ve wondered what Alice looks like now, whether she’s morphed into a self-assured, red-headed beauty or whether she’s as she was then, her auburn hair pulled into a ponytail and her face bare of make-up. Unable to think for herself. Unable to make decisions unless someone made them for her. Unless I made them for her.

  Of course, I know now.

  What I don’t know is how life’s been treating her. How she’s managed without me. She thought she’d be able to, but I’ve always known better. Known that it would only be a matter of time before she realised her mistake. That she still needed me. A sudden white-hot surge of anger and disillusion washes over me. I wasn’t to know she’d let me down again.

  On the bedside table is the basic phone the police gave me. It’s so they can keep in contact. I pick it up and, knowing Alice’s number off by heart, punch it in and wait. It goes straight to voicemail. She’ll have switched her phone off, but that’s not surprising as it’s almost three in the morning. It looks like my best friend won’t be running to my side tonight after all.

  For the moment, at least, my anger abates. I leave a message. Alice, it’s me, Joanna. Call me, then end the call and drop the phone onto the white duvet.

  I wait for the disappointment to set in, but it doesn’t, and I realise it’s because I don’t really care if she gets the message or not. After all, her job is done. She’s played her part.

  Forty-Two

  Alice

  In my dream Mark is standing over me, his face swollen and bruised, the skin crazed with blooded glass from the windscreen. He’s trying to tell me something, but I don’t know what it is and even now I’m awake, he’s there still in the cold and lonely bedroom, his colourless lips pleading with me to understand.

  Forcing the image away, I sit up. Even though my nightdress is damp with sweat, I’m shivering; the heating hasn’t come on and the room is freezing. Reaching across to the bedside light, I switch it on and check to see if my phone has charged, offering up thanks to the police who, on the way back from the hospital, stopped at a garage to let me buy a new cable. I’m surprised that it’s only forty per cent charged, but I haven’t been back that long and when I see the notifications of emails and messages on the screen, my concern turns to relief. I’m back in contact with the world again.

  The dream has rattled me, and I know there’s no way I’m going to get back to sleep. Hardly any wonder when only a few hours ago I was standing by Mark’s bed, watching his vital signs trace across the monitor. Trying not to give in to my distress when I saw the tube in his mouth, the cannula in his hand, the breathing machine that made his chest rise and fall.

  Of course, it should have been Joanna at his bedside, not me, but Joanna is somewhere else. Scared. Wondering, maybe, if she’ll die. A tide of panic rises up my body, but I refuse to let it get a grip on me. Instead, I push back the covers and get out of bed, the floorboards frigid under my feet.

  Putting my sweatshirt over my nightdress, I unplug the charging cable from the socket and take it with me to the kitchen. As I pass the fridge and switch on the lights under the eye-level units, I look at the empty place where the photograph of me and Joanna had once been, realising as I touch my finger to the champagne-shaped magnet, that it’s exactly the same as the one Eloise had. The one that’s now in the pocket of my jeans.

  I still haven’t said anything to the police about Eloise. Neither have I told them about the ransom note. Mark had insisted that by telling them, it might have put Joanna in more danger, but now I’m scared he was wrong. Besides, Mark is unconscious in a hospital bed. My thoughts are in free fall. Spinning out of control. Even as I try to persuade myself I’m doing the right thing, I know I’m acting irrationally. Yet I’m unable to do anything about it.

  As I plug my phone into the socket in the wall above the steel worktop, the screen lights up and I take a closer look at the notifications. I’m just thinking there’s nothing of much interest, when I see that at 2.50 this morning I had a missed call from a number I don’t recognise. There’s a voicemail too.

  Taking a mug from the cupboard and spooning in some coffee, I put the phone onto loudspeaker and click play on the message. It’s as I’m filling the kettl
e that the recording starts, and a woman’s voice fills the kitchen.

  I freeze, my hand on the tap, wondering if it’s just my imagination that’s conjured up her voice. But by the time the message has ended, I’m certain.

  ‘Joanna.’ The word echoes in the high-ceilinged warehouse.

  Turning around, I stare at my phone as if expecting to see her standing there holding it. It’s only when a spray of water bounces off the side of the kettle, soaking my sleeve, that I come to my senses.

  I turn the tap off, and wait to hear if there’s anything more, but there’s nothing.

  The voicemail was short, giving nothing away. No mention of where she is, where she’s been. Just a request for me to call her back.

  Christ. I don’t even know if she’s safe. Where did she send this message from? Where is she?

  Clanging the kettle down onto the metal worktop, I run to my phone and go to my missed calls. Pressing the most recent number, I wait for Joanna to answer. Eventually, when it becomes clear that she’s not going to, I start to leave a message, but I’m still in shock from hearing her voice and I can’t think what I want to say.

  When I play her message again, I listen more carefully, searching for clues – background noises, the nuance of her words – anything that might tell me where she is and how she’s feeling. There’s nothing obvious, though.

  Have they still got her? Could this be a trick?

  Not knowing what to think, I refill the kettle and make the coffee, my hand shaking as I pour the boiling water into the cup. Then, unplugging the phone again, I take it with me to the settee and type a message, clicking send as soon as I’ve finished.

  Forty-Three

  Joanna

  I reach across to the minibar, take out a bottle of wine and unscrew the lid. Pouring some of the amber liquid into the water tumbler, I take a sip of it, then lean my head back against the headboard and let my eyes wander around the room. Opposite the bed is a veneered desk, a red leather-look tub chair pushed under the space beneath. On it, next to the phone and the tea tray with its assortment of beverages in their coloured sachets, is a tablet of plain paper and a pen. Clearly, the space is designed so visitors to the hotel have somewhere to write. But what would they be writing on that plain white pad? Letters to loved ones? Shopping lists? Ransom notes?