by C. J. Skuse
‘It had washed ashore. It was on the rocks.’
‘You found it on the beach?’
‘It belonged to Ellis. I went to speak to Vanya or whoever she is, her line manager here. She said Ellis brought in a wedding dress to show it off, the day she vanished. I went to the only wedding dress shop in town and the lady showed me a picture of the one she bought. I remembered seeing something on the rocks when we were watching the coastguard yesterday. And I went down there and found it.’
‘Why the hell did she buy a wedding dress?’
‘Show of bravado, maybe? A couple of her colleagues seem like utter bitches so it wouldn’t surprise me if she bought it just to stick it up their arse. It cost thousands.’
‘She spent most of her wages on the cats and random stuff off the internet, but whenever she had a bit left over she’d save up.’
‘So she was saving up for this?’
‘I don’t know. She was saving up for something. Her credit card’s maxed out.’
I shake my head. ‘I spoke to the handyman here – Trevor. He’s done time for burglary. Did you know that? Did you know she was working with a criminal?’ Neil shakes his head, less certainly than me. ‘He’s a burglar but maybe you should check him out, I don’t know. It has blood on it.’
I look at him and it’s all I can do not to have a full panic attack.
‘The dress, I mean. There’s blood.’
Neil lies the dress out on the carpet, and smooths the arms out. Turning it over, he squints his eyes at the faint pink spatters. ‘Shit.’
‘I think it might have been in the bin bag that we saw on CCTV. You know?’
‘Yeah. You could be right. I need to call this in.’
‘Will they take it seriously now?’
‘They’re already taking it seriously. They’re out looking for her, aren’t they?’
‘But this is… this is something else now, isn’t it?’ I’m too afraid to hear his answer. But I need to hear him say it. He will tell me the truth.
‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘This isn’t good.’
‘Neil? Did you know a woman was murdered in this hotel last week?’
He nods, slowly, expecting me to say something else. But I wait for him. ‘Tessa Sharpe. She was strangled.’
‘That janitor bloke said Ellis seemed too interested in her death. Like the killer was going to come for one of them next. Maybe her?’
‘She thought the woman looked like her. She was paranoid that he got the wrong person.’ He stands up and removes his phone from the charger on the desk.
‘Who are you phoning?’
‘Assistant Chief Constable’s office. They have national portfolio responsibility for protected persons. They’ve been assisting on Ellis’s case. I won’t be a mo.’
He goes outside into the corridor to make his call. I don’t earwig. I don’t want to hear it. I’m left to pace the floor around the splayed-out wedding dress. Outside it starts to rain again, battering wind and rain which churns and angers the sea. I sit on the end of the bed and Google Tessa Sharpe. All the news items carry the same photo – a young woman, twenty-eight, fire-red hair, bright blue eyes, kind smile. Her hands were bound with cable ties. An ongoing investigation. Still no arrests.
It’s usually Isaac who has to give me the pep talk when I start catastrophising, my mind going into full-tilt overdrive, imagining some man breaking into Ellis’s flat and murdering her in her bed, stabbing her so hard the blood sprays all up the wedding dress that was hanging up on the wardrobe door. A body is going to wash in on that next tide, isn’t it? Naked. Cold. I can’t bear it. I can’t bear this.
I need to breathe. I need to focus. I need to calm down. I need Neil to come back in and hold both my hands like Paddy does sometimes.
I grab the pillow on my bed and I release a scream into it. There’s no consequence to that, except a slightly wet pillow. Neil doesn’t come rushing in. Nothing happens at all. Nobody’s there. I can’t even hear him outside the door now. I grab my phone and scroll my contacts. I locate Paddy and connect.
‘Hey-lo?’ comes his cheery greeting. I swallow a bubble of emotion.
‘Pads, it’s me.’
‘Hiya, how you doing? Is everything okay? Did you find Ellis?’
‘No, not yet. Everything’s fine though, don’t worry.’
‘Everything’s fine or everything’s fine?’ he asks.
‘It’s fine, really,’ I reply. I don’t want him to share this agonising pain splitting my chest into two. I want him to keep that bouncy little note in his voice. ‘No news.’
‘Isaac mentioned some miserable detective bloke’s on the case, is he?’
‘Yeah, he’s not really a detective. He works with the police in witness protection. He’s not so bad. How are things there?’
‘Yeah, good. Well, we had a bad storm the night before last and lost a couple of the tall trees along the drive.’
‘Oh.’
‘We’re waiting for the tree surgeon to come out and take off some of the branches. Should give us a load of firewood for the store though.’
‘That’s good.’
‘Yeah. Me and Isaac have made a start on the rendering in the downstairs loo and we’ve got some students from the local college in and they’re doing the nettles and ivy down by the pond, digging all that out. Lysette’s friend’s husband’s coming out tomorrow to look at those old lead water pipes in the stable. He knows a scrapyard, too. Might make a bit of money out of them, you never know.’
‘Okay.’
‘Oh and the pond’s got a leak, that’s the biggest news. Joe noticed the water level was dropping a bit when he was out with the dog yesterday. And you were right about that plasterwork on the stairs. It’s all got to come off.’
‘Great,’ I say, closing my eyes.
‘Great? Haven’t you been listening to me, Foy? It’s all a massive head-fuck.’
‘No, it’s perfect.’
‘You’re not missing us by any chance, are you?’
‘Bit.’
‘When do you think you’ll be back?’
‘I don’t know. Soon. I hope.’
‘You sure you’re not getting your hopes too high, sis?’
‘Quite sure.’
I want to say, I’ll come home as soon as I have Ellis with me, but I can’t. Because I don’t know that I will anymore. I feel tears coming.
And somehow, my brother being my brother, knows.
‘Keep your chin up, Foy. You’ll find her.’
I know he’s bullshitting me. Because he knows I need it. I manage to squeak out a ‘Bye’ and hang up, throwing the phone to the end of the bed. I go to the window, panicking. I place my palms on the cool glass. I’m trying to think of a poem but I’m panicking too much. Need to breathe. Find the breath. Deep in for seven, out for ten. Still none come to mind, only that war one about the mad soldier in the ambulance counting his cabbages. Then one line emerges:
Now I am six, I’m as clever as clever. So I think I’ll be six now forever and ever.
Now I am six, I’m as clever as clever. So I think I’ll be six now forever and ever.
Now I am six, I’m as clever as clever. So I think I’ll be six now forever and ever.
A.A. Milne wrote it. That’s all I remember from it, that one line, like a stuck record. I’m still panicking.
Far across the bay on the jetty the coastguard’s boat is coming in. It’s only 1 p.m. I can feel bad news in the air. Ready to land on the next strong breeze.
Neil comes back in moments later, and my chest clenches tight.
‘Why is the rescue boat coming back in? It’s only lunchtime.’
‘They’ve called off the search,’ says Neil. ‘That’s what I wanted to tell you earlier. They’re not treating it as a search and rescue anymore.’
‘What?’
‘It’s been four days, Foy.’
I sit back down on the bed. ‘You mean they’re not looking for a living person anymore. T
hey’re looking for a body.’
Neil throws his phone on the bed too and bends down to pick up the wedding dress. ‘I need to bag this up. Could you grab the suit bag from the wardrobe please?’
I don’t move. I’m frozen. ‘When did you know they were calling off the search?’
‘This morning. I got a call from the police liaison guy who was here the other day.’ He grabs the suit bag himself and bundles the dress inside, zipping it up the front.
‘Can’t we go out there? Charter a boat or—’
‘No, we can’t do that.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s too dangerous. Look at it.’ The wind and rain in the bay have whipped up into a storm. Rain pelts the windows and it feels like the whole building will at any moment uproot and whirl off into the sky. ‘The people who go out there and search are volunteers. It’s not fair to send them out in a hurricane.’
‘What can we do then?’ I don’t bother wiping my tears away.
He pulls the armchair forwards so it’s next to me and sits down. ‘I need to tell you something. But you’ve got to keep your temper in check, okay?’
I stare at him hard.
‘I just spoke to Rani, my colleague back in Bristol. She’s been following up a few leads on the database. Do you want to go and change out of that first?’ He was staring down at my soaked top and jeans. I only realise it then, but I am very cold.
‘No.’ I fold my arms, readying myself. Like I did that day at the hospital when we got the news about Dad. When I got the news Paddy would need amputations. When the paramedic told me about Luc. When the sonographer told me there was no heartbeat. Twice. Folded arms is my default setting.
‘There’s a broken arrow in the investigation, one I haven’t been aware of until now. In police terms it means someone fairly dangerous has gone off the radar. And in this instance, one of the cartel – a sometime member, not from the original cohort convicted – has gone off grid.’
‘Which means?’
‘Which means any witnesses that didn’t get the message the first time, could be in danger. You didn’t tell anyone Ellis’s real name this morning, did you?’
Yeah, everyone. But I don’t tell him that. ‘No. Why?’
‘Because Rani told me that our particular broken arrow has been in these parts in the last month. And he has fairly strong links to the Bristol cartel. They put a trace on his car which was found dumped in woodland about seven miles from here.’
‘Who is he and why wasn’t he in the original bunch who went to prison?’
‘He was already in prison when Ellis and her dad were attacked. An unrelated crime. But he was very good friends with the blokes who got sent down for it.’
‘Not the man who was the sex offender?’ I say, my blood chilling at the thought. Neil says nothing. That says everything. ‘Oh, Jesus. He is, isn’t he?’
‘When he got out, he joined up with the remaining members of the Bristol cartel and carried on operating in Bristol North East, for a time. Did a five-year stretch for a sexual assault on a woman leaving a nightclub. He was released in June.’
‘And Ellis moved here—’
‘—August.’
‘You SAID she was safe here! You SAID she wasn’t being followed! That it was all in her mind, that she was being paranoid!’
‘This guy was not on our watch list. We didn’t know about him until now.’
‘So he’s been living here the past few months, watching her?’
‘We don’t know yet. Rani’s still running checks.’
‘Was he staying here? Where she worked? Where that woman was murdered? What’s his name? Is it Sean? Is it Kaden Cotterill?’ I don’t know who to believe anymore. ‘That Trevor guy, the porter, Vanda said he’d done time.’
‘Sean’s nothing to do with it, and Rani’s run checks on Cotterill and the Chinese guy at the supermarket Ellis visits and her landlord, they’re clean as a whistle. This guy’s name is Knapp. John Knapp. I’ve got my laptop here. I’ll run my own trace on him.’
‘Did Ellis know anyone called John Knapp? Can you think of anyone at all with that name? John? Johnny?’
Neil shakes his head. ‘No. Off the top of my head, I can’t.’
24
STILL Tuesday, 5th November (early evening)
With the wedding dress safely sequestered in a suit bag inside Neil’s wardrobe, we go back to the flats, only to find Ellis’s landlord, Sandy Balls, has got there before us. The guy is tall and wide, with a mop of curly brown hair flecked with sawdust. He’s brandishing a long screwdriver when we meet outside the flat.
‘Hey, what are you doing?’ says Neil.
‘Changing the locks, what does it look like? And who are you?’
‘We’re… police.’ I throw him a look but his stare is fixed and unwavering. ‘You can’t change the locks. She hasn’t moved out.’
‘Yeah, well I got Christmas presents to buy for my grandchildren so I need this space filled. I got people lining up for this one. Top floor’s already filled as of yesterday and I got the bailiffs coming tomorrow to kick them druggies out in between.’
‘You can wait a bit longer, surely,’ says Neil.
‘Listen,’ says Balls, pointing the screwdriver at Neil’s solar plexus. ‘I’ve been on the phone half the morning to your lot, asking me all sorts of questions about her, and I want her out of the place now, I don’t want any more hassle.’ He looks me up and down. ‘She’s not dressed like police.’
‘She’s helping with the investigation,’ says Neil.
‘I don’t reckon you’re police either.’
‘You can’t sign away this flat yet, sir. This could be a crime scene,’ says Neil, but Balls scoffs and carries on unscrewing the Chubb. ‘How much?’
‘What?’
Neil parks his laptop underneath his arm and gets out his wallet. ‘How much to rent it for another week?’
‘I can only take six weeks’ money at a time.’
‘How much for six weeks then?’
‘You ain’t got £650 on yer,’ Balls laughs. ‘Knew you two weren’t cops. She’s done a bunk, hasn’t she?’
‘I’ve got three hundred. Keep the place empty for now, alright?’
Balls laughs, his neck wobbling like a turkey’s. ‘That ain’t enough, is it?’
‘This is a police investigation, Mr Balls,’ says Neil, his grey eyes flashing like he’s rearing up for a fight. ‘I could have this place commandeered and cordoned off within the hour and then you’d get nothing.’
Balls laughs again. ‘No you couldn’t. Police said they weren’t going to do that. They reckon she’s gone over the sea wall. Nothing suspicious, they said.’
Neil rears up like a stag and for a second I think he’s going to deck the man, so I dig into my rucksack for my purse and hand Neil £200 on top of his £300, leaving me just under £50 until I can get to an ATM. The Good Cop approach. ‘Please, sir. She’s coming back. We just don’t know when.’
I feel Neil look at me, but this time my gaze is fixed and unwavering.
‘Fine,’ Balls says, snatching the money from both of us and shuffling the wad of notes into the back pocket of his shorts. ‘I’ll cancel the cleaners tomorrow. But I want that window mended, that carpet in the bedroom cleaned and that floor in the kitchen put right. And I’ll be coming to inspect it first thing in January.’
‘We’ll see to all of it,’ I say as Neil stands there, still fuming as Balls huffily puts the screws back in, clicks shut his toolbox and lumbers down the steps towards his van – Sandy Balls Does It All. General Builder.
‘Twat,’ says Neil under his breath as we watch the van bomb along the seafront, belching out fumes from a dangling exhaust. He checks his phone.
‘Come on, let’s go and see what state he’s left the place in.’
Inside the flat, Balls has bagged up all Ellis’s belongings into bin bags and placed them in the centre of the lounge, the same type of bin bags the wedding dress
was in when it went over the sea wall. The damp smell is stronger now and all Ellis’s trinkets and toys have been cleared away. The doll’s feet stick out of one of the bags, along with several other cuddly toys and books. Her bed’s been stripped and the sheets sit in an untidy clump in the corner. The bath’s been emptied too. The contents of the cupboards sit in a cardboard box on the breakfast bar.
Neil sits on the edge of the sofa and opens the lid of his laptop, logging in to the trace he was running back at the hotel.
‘Do you want a tea?’ I offer, with no real intention of making one anyway as I can’t immediately see a kettle or any teabags.
‘No thanks,’ he says. The clock on the microwave ticks over to 3.22 p.m. ‘Think I’m getting somewhere here.’
‘You are?’ I say, returning to the lounge and sitting down next to him.
‘Yeah. Knapp’s record makes for sinister reading. Seems the coffin catalogue was one of his calling cards, back in the day. Along with silent phone calls. He did it to check his victims were suitably disturbed before he struck.’
‘Oh Christ.’
‘He was of no fixed abode,’ he says. ‘There’s no paper trail for him at all. No social media. Oh, wait a minute… a garage lock-up. He was renting it in his own name.’
‘A lock-up?’ I repeat after him, my chest constricting. ‘Where?’
‘Not sure yet.’
A lock-up garage means nothing, I tell myself. It’s just a lock-up where you keep an old car or tools. ‘Why would he be renting a lock-up but not a flat?’
It’s Neil’s face that tips me over into full panic mode. He slams the lid of the laptop, grabs his coat and is out the door before I’m even on my feet. ‘It’s near here. Half a mile away.’ He looks at me then tucks his laptop under his arm and makes to leave. I follow him.
The management company Knapp rents his lock-up from are called Frazer & Lloyd and they have an office at the top of the high street, above a hairdresser’s. They’re surveyors, in the main, but they also bought the plot of land and began renting out the garages twenty years ago. It’s a blink-and-you-miss-it kind of place with a small plain board where the frosted glass should be out the front, visible from street level.