The Day She Disappeared

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The Day She Disappeared Page 18

by Christobel Kent


  Chapter Nineteen

  As she shoved Craig ahead of her into the back seat, bringing a sharp metallic smell with him, of sweat and unwashed skin, Don gave Nat a questioning look in his rearview mirror, but she shook her head quickly, just once.

  “Where to, then?” he asked, shifting out of her line of sight as he engaged gear.

  “Like I said,” she said. “Brandon.”

  “Outside the church, then?” Head half turned.

  “Please.” They moved off.

  Craig seemed to fill the taxi’s hoovered, pine-scented interior, crowding it out with his long legs and his lank hair and his prison smell. Could she handle him, if she had to, if she was alone? Probably not. He was restless, he was angry. She turned on him, tough.

  “Where have you been, Craig? Your mother’s terrified something’s happened to you,” she said. He mumbled. “What?”

  “I called her,” he said. Nat leaned back in the seat, exhaling angrily. “They talked to me,” Craig said, his voice dead. He seemed older, by years. “The police.”

  “I’ve just come from the police station,” she said. “They told me. They said they’re going to look for Beth. They said it’s a woman’s blood, on those rags.”

  “Her.” His voice was level with anger. “It’s him that’s dead,” he said. “It’s Ollie.” His chin thrust toward her. “This is all down to her.” He was unshaven, his eyes bloodshot. She felt herself push back into the corner, trying to get as far away from him as she could. The driver was still there, though, in the mirror. She forced herself out of the corner.

  “Something’s happened to her.” Her voice shook.

  “What if that’s all in your head?” muttered Craig, savage. Avoiding her eye. “She sent him those messages.”

  “What?” She heard herself as if from a distance, whispering. “They were from Beth?” she said, incredulous. “It wasn’t her, it can’t have been her.” Hardly even knowing what she was saying. “She’s … the police have got her phone now. She left it behind.”

  He turned toward her and his face changed, stiffened into something else. “What?” Then shaking his head. “Nah—I’m talking, from way back. Way back. A year ago.” Staring at the back of the driver’s head, Craig wouldn’t look at her: she could see him thinking, though.

  Eventually he spoke again, in a monotone. “He showed me them. The texts. It was her, all right, it was Beth, you could tell it was her, I know her style. Suggesting stuff, you know, hinting. There was a picture … well, he said she’d sent him a picture.” His face was drawn. She remembered Ollie, that boy’s face, a quiff sticking up, lovely skin. A smile that could get any girl, if only he knew it. “He never showed me the picture. But every time he thought he was in there…” He smacked his palms together. “‘Oh, no, it’s not real. Just having fun.’ Or ‘Not tonight, not this weekend, I’ve got someone coming over.’” He drew a breath, bitter. “Or ‘My mum’s sick.’” In a nasty little whiny voice that shocked Nat.

  “You sure we’re talking about Ollie, here?” she said, and his head whipped around and the look he gave her told her there had been something. “Since when did you hate Beth this much?” she said.

  “Since he got hurt.” He sounded on the edge of tears now.

  “Was there something between you and and Beth too?” Her voice quiet. Because you didn’t hate someone this much if there was nothing.

  He didn’t answer.

  “You want to sort yourself out, Craig,” she said, weary. “Are you surprised the police want you for it?”

  “I didn’t like her messing him around,” he said in a low voice. “That’s all.”

  The taxi turned sharply and briefly they rolled together for a second before she pushed back, hastily, Craig reached for the strap above the window, and they were apart again. She registered that they had left the town: they were driving through high hedges, dark with the end of summer; she could smell grass and hot earth through the driver’s window.

  “He stopped showing me the messages months ago,” Craig said, and the anger was gone from his voice. “But not long before he … disappeared, he did say he was going to London to look for a job. And yesterday afternoon I went ariding around town, looking for those lads, the ones I saw having a go at him in the shopping center, the ones that had his phone off him that time. I found one of them in the end and he said he’d looked at the message and as far as he was concerned anyone could see they were fake, a wind-up. ‘When can we meet, I’ve got to see you.’”

  “No emojis,” murmured Nat.

  “What?” said Craig and she just shook her head.

  “You told the police about the messages.” She stated it.

  He rubbed his arms, as if he was cold. “They said, could he have been making it up. If we hadn’t seen the messages, it could have been a cover for some other plan he had, or just … bigging himself up. Or I could’ve been making it up.” Disbelieving.

  “He never got to London, did he?” said Nat, thinking of the weir, and of Ollie’s carefully gelled hair, the fluff on his chin. “Perhaps he got a message telling him to meet her there. At the weir.”

  “They never found his phone,” said Craig dully.

  “Why did they let you go in the end?” she said softly, and he turned his eyes on her, red-rimmed.

  “I don’t know,” he said, his voice rising. “Because I didn’t do it?”

  She saw Don glance in the rearview mirror again, but she wasn’t scared of Craig. With the hair out of his eyes she could see he was on the verge of tears.

  “They thought we fell out over something, maybe over her. They thought we had a fight and I smacked him, or whatever.” He was staring at her. “Like I could do that. And tie him up and fucking drown him?” His voice rose, disbelieving, challenging her. Then he sat back. “But they had no evidence. Nothing. No DNA. Nothing.”

  And the taxi swayed again as they rounded a bend and there was the long slope of a field, stubble glittering, running down to a cluster of houses and the gray spire of a church rising out of them, before the tall hedges closed in again. She hadn’t been this way before. The hedges rushed past, silent and dark beyond the windows, a smell of summer in them, of warm foliage.

  They pulled up outside the church, but before Nat had even gotten her purse out Craig was already fumbling with the car door, as if he was suffocating.

  Don stashed the notes in his holder. “You want me to wait?” he said, glancing over at Craig, who stood under a row of pollarded limes along the churchyard wall, hands shoved down in his pockets.

  “Did she want you to wait?” The driver looked up at her a moment, then he shook his head. “Drop off here, then you had to be back three hours later. Same place.”

  “You never wondered what she was here for?”

  “You mean if it wasn’t the vicar?” Winking. “Not much mystery about it.” He had a nice smile, sunny, open. “I mean, there’s what he was in for—well, he or she, but you don’t put on makeup and heels for your mum or your sister, do you?”

  “In for?”

  “Most fares to Brandon are for the Hall,” he said patiently. “They take all kinds, I believe. There’s a drying-out center, a rehab place, spinal injuries, there’s residential care, dementia and what not. I don’t know which she was visiting.”

  She stared, and he engaged the gear. “So no pickup, then?” He tilted his head to look at Craig through the window. “You all right with that one?” Craig looked very tall, suddenly, and angry, as he stalked away.

  “Yes, I…,” she said, distracted, but she took the card he gave her. “I’ll call.” Just as well too, she realized as he disappeared down the lane: she’d gotten the number from Beth’s phone, and the police had it now.

  It was only when she caught up with Craig at the far end of the churchyard wall under the heavy-headed trees that it occurred to her to wonder why he was still with her, and hadn’t taken the cab back somewhere else, to find someone to haul his trail bike to a ga
rage. He set off walking: he seemed to know where he was going. They turned a corner and there was a set of iron gates at the foot of a wide drive stretching up a lawned hill. Nat could see some low buildings dotted about among trees, and a big, pillared, gray-brick house at the top of the hill. They stopped.

  “Brandon Hall,” said Craig.

  “How come you know about this place?” she said. “Did you know she came here?”

  Craig looked up the hill. The sight of the building seemed to have calmed him down. “I grew up out this way,” he said, simply. “It’s the nuthouse, isn’t it?” he said. “Every kid knows where the loony bin is. We used to come out here on our bikes, hide behind the wall looking out for them. We thought we’d catch them wandering around like zombies in their straitjackets.” He gave her a sidelong glance. “Never saw ’em, but that didn’t stop us.” He looked different, his face was sadder, more grown-up. “I think they moved the psych unit into town, so it’s not the loony bin anymore, is it?”

  “Why are you still here?” she asked. “I mean, now, why did you stay?”

  He shrugged, uneasy. “I thought you might … I dunno. I thought you might want someone with you.” Nodding. “Up there.”

  They started walking, up toward the big pillared house. They passed a big well-tended shrubbery, where they saw two women in tracksuits sitting quietly on a bench. Farther on there was some kind of a ball game going on among the trees and Craig slowed. “I never knew she came up here, no. Beth, I mean. Visiting someone.”

  “Nor did I,” said Nat. “But then—plenty she kept quiet about, isn’t there? Ruin her image maybe, hospital visiting.”

  Craig’s mouth set in a line.

  “She was kind,” said Nat. “A good friend.” He snorted and she took hold of his arm. “She shouldn’t have messed about with Ollie’s feelings, but maybe she had her reasons for being like she was with men. Maybe she’d have liked to be different.” Nat had never thought this before. “We all make mistakes. We all want to be better.”

  Beth sticking up for her, Beth laughing with her on a night bus home, Beth hauling her out of the way of a car. Beth’s sigh, standing behind her at the mirror in the pub toilets, examining her green-pale face and knowing what there was, inside her. Emptiness. Oh, love.

  Out of the blue Nat felt tears spring to her eyes, and angrily she dropped his arm and turned away so he wouldn’t see. “You lot, you just saw this brassy barmaid, behind the bar with her boobs out. Did you think you could do what you wanted to her, nothing was going to hurt her?” Her back was still to him when she heard him clear his throat.

  “Hold on,” he said, his voice brittle and angry, “hold on, who said anything about wanting to hurt her?” And his hand was on her shoulder, big knuckles.

  And as if on cue, in her pocket the phone blipped and she pulled away and took it out. Craig turned to watch her.

  Can you come back please

  It was from Sophie.

  * * *

  The nurses were talking about Richard at their station: Victor could hear them.

  “Ah, bless. And so good with the little boy, you don’t always see that, look how—” They broke off then and one—not Lisa, Lisa had gone home, gave them half a glance backward, Victor in the bed and Sophie perched on it, holding his hand. The nurse’s voice lowered a little. “So well behaved now his daddy’s here.”

  Victor had to close his eyes. He felt Sophie’s hand squeeze his, he felt the warmth of her close to him through the blanket, her comfortable weight on the bed. He had seen her, her eyes darting from Richard to the nurses, he had seen her formulating a plan secretly, fearfully, knowing she wouldn’t dare carry it out.

  They meant that Rufus had not been well behaved before. Victor would have liked to disagree with that, to point out that he was only three and that small boys needed to run about. But with Sophie’s hand in his, he didn’t need to: she, of course, would have heard the words and understood them too. Sophie had been such a clever little girl, most particularly where understanding what went on between other human beings was involved, who liked whom, who was telling lies, who would be faithful and true. He had been exceptionally proud of her when she completed her training and became a parole officer, it seemed so brave. He felt that her parolees were very lucky to have her, she was so kind and clever and sensitive. Richard—she’d met him through the job, of course, a solicitor—had not wanted her to continue, but she had done, until she got pregnant.

  Victor had trusted her understanding of human beings too much: he had trusted her to marry a good man.

  “I’ve asked her to come back,” she said, and he opened his eyes. “Your friend Natalie.” She glanced over to make sure Richard wasn’t back. At their station the nurses had moved on to a different subject.

  Richard had started to talk about Victor being put into a home within about ten minutes of his arrival. He had managed—Victor didn’t know how, or whom he had bullied—to get hold of the curly-haired consultant who appeared, and bring the senior nurse who was not Lisa to his bedside.

  “Well”—the consultant had been hesitant—“whenever possible, we like to return the patient to his or her own home, assisted living.” She looked dubious then, looking from side to side. Was this, Victor wondered, even her job? “Assisted living is the gold standard, really, we do find patients respond best to their own—”

  “Of course, of course.” Richard was earnest, he was reasonable. He smiled at the consultant, then at the staff nurse, then back at the doctor. “But these circumstances are … well, they’re tricky. Goodness knows, we’d love to have him with us. Love to.”

  Was it Victor’s imagination or did the consultant’s eyelids flicker at this, did she see how flagrant was his lie? Perhaps she had heard it before, perhaps it was so universal that it was allowed to pass, a convenient, a necessary lie.

  “But even leaving aside my father-in-law’s reluctance to bother us”—a kindly smile now for Victor—“it’s just … well, London houses, we haven’t the space since Rufus was born.”

  A guest room, with its own bathroom, occupied the top floor of their house in London: Sophie had shown it to him, hurried and anxious, when he had visited almost a year ago. She had said, I wish, I wish, maybe one day he’ll … And Victor had squeezed her hand and said, “I’m really so happy where I am.” He felt Sophie’s eyes on him now—was she willing him not to challenge Richard? He tried to smile at her, but his mouth wouldn’t obey, it only trembled.

  “And he’s so … determined,” said Richard. “Really very brave of him, I’m sure he doesn’t understand…” Victor struggled, I do understand, I do, but no one turned to look at him. Richard lowered his voice. “He doesn’t grasp the fact that his insistence on independence … that … it only causes more trouble.”

  “It’s rather lovely, actually, darling,” said Sophie bravely. They looked at her, Victor with love, as she quailed but kept on. “The caravan, it’s very nice.” Looking around for Rufus. “Isn’t it, Rufie? It’s a lovely place to live. Everyone’s so friendly, and the … the caravan is really very comfortable.”

  The consultant looked down at her own feet at the word “caravan” and Victor closed his own eyes but then he heard her speak, holding her line. “We do encourage independent living, or within the family environment, if at all possible.” And Victor opened his eyes just in time to see something dawn, in Sophie’s face, a little spark of hope.

  And then he looked at Richard and Richard looked back at him like that pale-eyed lieutenant on the beach, so many years ago, the man he’d seen drawing back his boot, white-lipped, to kick a subordinate on the churned and filthy sand. Richard looked at him with such loathing that Victor knew that his son-in-law wished quite simply that he would die: if a button could make it happen—within the law, of course—Richard would press the button without hesitation.

  Then Richard had knelt and said to Rufus, in the move that brought the nurses to his side but that had been to disguise his rage,
“Let’s get something to eat, shall we, old boy?” Rufus had just stood there still and straight, hands down at his sides, his head bowed, and again Victor was reminded of that white-lipped lieutenant on the beach, so many years ago.

  “So.” Richard’s voice was quite different, now the consultant had gone, and it was just the four of them in the cubicle. His voice was pushing, it held a threat. Beside him Rufus looked unhappy: there was a damp patch on his T-shirt where something had been spilled or scrubbed.

  “Daddy says we’re going home now,” he said to Sophie, his small voice high with anxiety.

  Richard’s hand settled heavily on Sophie’s shoulder. “They’ll keep us informed,” he said, turning her so she had to look at him. “And you haven’t forgotten that my mother’s coming for lunch tomorrow?”

  “No, but … surely…” Sophie pulled away in alarm. “Surely…” She even put her hand up to detach his from her shoulder.

  But he ignored her. “And there’s the dinner on Thursday. Clearly there’s no question of canceling with two of the partners coming.” Not once did his eyes stray to Victor—it was as though he didn’t exist, had already vanished. Only Rufus dared a glance up at his grandfather, a small pleading look.

  Victor saw the hand on Sophie’s shoulder relax its grip and he thought, It’s done. It’s all done, but she shifted, just enough. “I’m sure they wouldn’t mind, under the circumstances,” she said in a calm clear voice, and then Richard did look, his eyes slid across to Victor. His voice was quiet, velvety, a lawyer’s voice, but his eyes were hard.

  “This is a very important dinner,” as though speaking man to man, although Victor knew he had only contempt for Victor’s life as a man, muddling along fueled by sentiment, making no provision for himself or his daughter. “They say you’re doing very well, that there’s no cause for concern, none of this bedside vigil stuff.” The harder edge entering his voice there. “None of that’s necessary, and, I know,” the voice used never to being contradicted, “I know you wouldn’t want to keep Sophie from her family.”

 

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