And in that moment Sophie felt that someone was behind her—it was as though the sun had gone behind a cloud, or as if Richard was there, he’d come to get her—but when she turned, she could see no one. A gaggle of girls climbing out of a car, and Wilkins the site manager closing the gate behind them and the sound of a motorbike through the trees.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The pressure in the cottage’s shower was feeble, and Nat felt the need to stand under it a good twenty minutes before she felt clean. The water trickled down her back as she scrubbed savagely. Beth would have told you, eventually. She didn’t want to hurt you. That didn’t make it any better: she wanted to cry.
Walking out of the flimsy cubicle, hunching under the low ceiling, she felt a sudden urge to just get out and leave it all, just for a second, until they crowded back, all the people she couldn’t leave behind. Victor, Sophie looking at her reproachfully, Rufus beside her, Craig.
Janine and Steve? She’d have thought so once, but things had changed, things kept changing. The pub felt shaky on its foundations, its angles all wrong.
Victor. Mostly Victor.
When this was over, what would she do? This horrible endless summer. Where would she be? She couldn’t leave. She had to find him. She had to know.
The cottage, like it or not, felt like someone’s focus: she needed to be sure it was only Jim, only poor miserable Jim, got so skinny he could climb through a bathroom window and lay the table for her. Jim trying to pretend they were still together.
It had been Jim who’d said it, in the middle of the night—he’d had the feeling there was someone else there, outside the cottage. Just Jim, paranoid, thinking there was someone else in her life? Or like Nat, huddled in Beth’s place, knowing there was someone sitting outside in a car, his engine idling?
She put on jeans and a clean shirt—she even ironed, she couldn’t remember when she’d last had time to iron anything, but it felt better, it felt good, she should do it more often—and went out into the garden. It jumped out at her straightaway, stopped her dead.
A strip of turned earth among the overgrown roses. Bigger than she could imagine Rufus doing on his own, a long rectangle, it was the size of it that dropped down somewhere in the back of her mind, too preoccupied this morning to register it, but it had sat there. Two meters long by one wide? Had she wondered if Janine had decided to employ a gardener, some dopehead who’d started on the rose bed before getting bored? Not for more than a millisecond.
Nat knelt and, hesitating, put her clean hand down to the turned earth. She pushed her fingers in, down, it was soft, down, then down farther. She felt sick. Her ears ringing suddenly she stood, went back to the cottage, located a trowel she knew she’d seen just inside the back door, where she took off her boots.
There was a kind of buzz in the air, Nat couldn’t work out if it was in her head or outside, and her body felt horribly heavy as she walked back toward the long patch of turned earth: a flat mound, six feet long. She knelt, and began to dig.
Half an hour later she was bathed in sweat and the knees of her jeans were dark with dirt, the shirt was crumpled and filthy, earth was heaped and scattered around her, and she had found nothing. Stiffly she got up and went inside. The first thing she did was to lock the door behind her. Then standing with her back to the kitchen door she called the police.
She was aware that she sounded nuts. Someone’s dug a hole in my garden. She had asked to speak to Donna Garfield, but she was out and Nat was put through to a male officer, a PC something whose name she already couldn’t remember.
“You need to see it,” she said urgently. She couldn’t quite make herself say what it had looked like to her as she walked out of the back door toward the rose bed. And of course it didn’t look like that anymore, did it? It looked like a badger had gone wild among the rosebushes.
The PC was talking, she had to work to listen. “… the other night,” he finished wearily and then she realized, feeling sick, that he had been to the cottage before, he was one—the younger, by the sound of his voice—of the two officers who’d come around when she found the table laid. That had turned out to be Jim, only she hadn’t told them that yet. Nat could picture him straightaway. She felt her heart pound. He’s not going to believe me.
“Yes,” she said, pleading. “That’s me.” Her clothes felt damp and heavy on her suddenly, her hands caked with dirt, she needed to get clean. She was sweating: the fear wouldn’t leave her.
“We were going to come and see you anyway,” he said, and at that point she heard sounds in the background, a door banging, a woman’s voice, his hand went over the receiver, but she still heard him say, It’s her. There was a scuffle, an exchange, and Donna Garfield was on the line.
“Natalie,” Garfield said, and there was a heaviness to her voice that set off alarm bells.
“It’s important,” Nat pleaded, not wanting to hear it suddenly. Whatever it was. “You’ve got to come and see.” Should she have started this, digging, digging, digging, and where did it get you? She had to fight the urge to hang up—and run.
“We wondered if you’d like to come into the station.”
She felt winded. “What? But it’s here. There’s a hole in my garden, someone’s come in and dug it up, it looks like a—”
“Someone’s dug a hole.” Donna Garfield repeated her words with dry disbelief and Nat’s gut churned, sick with panic. They didn’t understand.
“You don’t—”
Garfield wasn’t listening. “We can bring you in tomorrow morning, how about that?”
“Bring me in?” said Nat. “What for? What is it?” Dreading the answer. “Have you found her? Have you found Beth?”
Not in my garden, under the long mound of turned earth that looked like a grave, not there.
Nat was standing at the little window by the back door that looked out into the garden. She had had her back to it, but now she turned. She could see the mess that looked like a wild animal had made. At the end of the garden something moved. She turned away again, she sat at the table with her back to the window.
“We haven’t found her,” said the woman, her voice leaden.
“So what—”
Donna Garfield went on talking, over her. “We’ve searched her place, though, Forensics have taken samples. We’ve got a certain amount of evidence and we’d like to talk to you…” She hesitated, and in the pause Nat thought, What, what? Then something Janine had said stopped her in her tracks. The shy plain friend and the girl who gets all the lads. Always ends in tears. What did they suspect her of? Stealing one of Beth’s boyfriends—then murdering her, out of spite, out of jealousy?
“We’ll be there in the morning,” said Donna Garfield, shortly. Ending the conversation, there and then. Dumping her. “It’s getting a bit late now, isn’t it? For looking in holes.”
Nat didn’t even know if Donna Garfield didn’t hear her begin to beg “Please—” or if she heard and just hung up anyway.
She stared at the phone, feeling it all boiling up in her. “Fuck you,” she said, squeezing the mobile till her nails dug into her palm, wanting to feel it, the rage, the frustration. “Fuck you too.”
But it sounded hollow: all she heard, all she felt was terror. Nat stood.
She wasn’t going to stay here. She wasn’t going to sit around and wait.
* * *
As there was no window in the private room, when Victor tentatively pushed open the door he was startled to see how light it still was in the wide hospital corridor.
There was a figure in his old bed, motionless beside the window. The nurse who’d settled him in the room an hour earlier frowned when she saw him go past on his frame, she might even have sighed. But she didn’t say anything. He had his sights on the pay phone in the dayroom and he kept going steadily until he was there.
Money: Victor had a coin purse for this very purpose and he was always careful to stash two-pound pieces there, whenever he got one, because a ca
ll to Sophie should never be cut short for lack of funds. Now she had a mobile phone at least, it wouldn’t be cut short because of Richard, either. There was no chair, but he could lean against the wall-mounted machine a little for extra support.
Rufus answered, halfway through an unintelligible sentence about a boat.
“Rufus?” But the sentence ran on oblivious. “Rufus? It’s Grandpa.”
The babble stopped abruptly. “Mpa.” Repeated solemnly, wondering.
“Grandpa. Victor. Where’s Mummy?” asked Victor, as gently as he could. “Is she there?”
“She’s with the man,” said Rufus. “The man’s going to take us on his boat.” And for an awful moment a wave of panic lifted Victor. In his head he glimpsed them far out to sea; he saw a man on a deck lifting a strong bloodied forearm.
Then Sophie had the phone. “Daddy!” and he felt himself breathe at the cheerful sound. How long since she’d called him that? All these other presences that forced her to say “my father.”
“Darling,” he said. There were other voices in the background, Rufus’s babbling to someone. All right, it’s all right.
“It’s so lovely here,” she said. She sounded like a different person; she sounded happy, she sounded relaxed.
“Where are you?” he said.
“At … well…” She was confiding, excited. “There’s a man called Patrick, a friend of your friend Nat. He’s been so kind! He’s got two boats, one he lends to Natalie and another he … he’s taking us out for a … he has even found life jackets.”
“Patrick,” said Victor. “Paddy.”
They had had conversations, he and Paddy. They had talked once about history, the Crimea, a conversation in which he had understood that Paddy was an intelligent man. A thoughtful man. A quiet, private man. And he was taking Sophie in his boat? Victor tried to put the pieces of this puzzle together. Natalie liked Paddy. Therefore Paddy was safe.
“Life jackets,” he said, helpless. “Isn’t it getting a bit late? To go out on the water?” It was after eight, by the clock on the dayroom wall, and the sun was low over the suburban rooftops and dark trees to the west of the hospital.
“Just a quick row,” she said, “maybe a little sail. Patrick says the wind does sometimes get up a little at sunset, we won’t be out long. Half an hour.” Her voice was so bright and happy.
“Well…” This was entirely his trouble, Victor thought, he only wanted her happiness. He had never been able to intervene. “Just be careful, darling,” he said. “Be careful.”
“We’ve been to his little cottage, Daddy,” she said as if she hadn’t heard. “He made us a cup of tea. The cottage was so pretty, it was charming. He even seems not to mind all the questions Rufus keeps asking him.” There was a muffled sound and he heard her laughing, then she was back.
“Can I speak to him again?” Victor asked timidly.
“Patrick?” she said, sounding bewildered.
“Rufus,” said Victor, but even as he said it he thought it was indeed Paddy he should have been talking to.
“Well … just a minute.” Again her hand went over the phone, but the next voice he heard wasn’t his grandson’s, it was hers.
“Oh, he won’t come,” she said, but unembarrassed. “He’s just climbing into the boat.” There was more laughter and a low rumble he recognized as Paddy’s voice. “Patrick says we have to get a move on or it will get dark,” she said, and he heard the beginnings of anxiety.
“You go,” he said hurriedly; the last thing he must be is the cause of anxiety. “Yes, go on. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Yes, yes,” she said, distracted, his Sophie. “It could be your last night there, who knows. Sleep well. Sleep well.” And she was gone.
On the walking frame he edged his way back past the nurses to his room and once inside stood a moment against the door. The room’s cool began to creep up on him.
If necessary he could call his own taxi in the morning. He only had to get through another night.
* * *
Nat was going to the weir.
She hadn’t even been sure she would remember how to get there. Since the discovery of Ollie’s body the geography of it had hung in her head, frightening. She hadn’t come down here in a long time. Water trickled and gushed somewhere out of sight, and as she left the road to head down toward the river Nat could smell mud and rust.
The estuary dwindled after the caravan site, and there was an ugly single-track road bridge, a Victorian warehouse building someone had planned to develop and given up halfway through, leaving it with empty window sockets. It was getting dark. A track led off parallel to the muddy river with a faded sign that said PRIVATE ROAD. The path was narrow now, steep downhill and knotted with roots. At one point Nat tripped, painfully, and had to grab for a thorny bit of branch. Listening to her own heart pound, she stopped where she was, suddenly unwilling to move.
All the windows in the private road had been dark, mostly curtained, mostly thick with dirt. One of them had five or six abandoned cars outside it. People must live there, but she’d seen no one. People didn’t come here.
Down there waiting below her, the weir wasn’t a beauty spot. Densely overgrown to either side, there was nowhere to sit in the sun: it was marked with rusty signage warning people off. DANGER, DEEP WATER. A low long wall the water trickled over, a sluice it rushed through, a dark swirling pool. She couldn’t imagine Ollie coming even this far alone, unless he had good reason. She’d come, her reasons tangled and painful. She wished she hadn’t.
After getting hung up on by DS Donna Garfield, Nat’s desire to walk out of the front door and up the lane and not look around had become too great. A quick look, out of the corner of her eye, through the kitchen window, it was nothing, Nat told herself she wasn’t even sure if she’d seen it. Something white, moving in the trees, something that could have been the pale leaves in the wind. It wasn’t till she got to the turn in the lane, it seemed, that she had even let out a breath.
She wasn’t going to shut herself into the cottage and wait, frightened by every snapping twig. She had to do something real: go where she knew for sure something had happened. Since the picture in the paper of the discovery of Ollie’s body it had been there, waiting, down the lane, turn inland toward the water and the empty windows of the warehouse. How far had she come? Three miles, maybe? The closer she got, though, the less she wanted to arrive. But if the police weren’t going to do anything, she had to. Scene of the crime—or at least the discovery of the body. Something real.
But the faster she walked the more Nat knew she hadn’t imagined that strip of dug earth, and Rufus hadn’t dug it, so neat and rectangular; she couldn’t even imagine putting the question to Sophie. Rufus had been out there ten minutes at the most, messing about: the earth had been dug deep. It would have taken an adult a good hour. Maybe more.
At some point there had been a man out there, digging methodically, taking his time. Knowing she was inside.
Could it have been Jim? Had it been a kind of diversion from the weirdness of his own behavior, for him to imagine another person there that night? A way of saying, Not me, I’m not the real stalker, that’s someone else? Or thinking that last time he had been rewarded with a night on the sofa. Why not scare her again?
It didn’t make sense. Not the Jim she knew. Jim didn’t have the focus. Jim was lost.
Still hesitating at the junction of the paths, she got out her phone and dialed. She could hear her heart still thumping: it didn’t want to slow down. Sunset was a long way away, she told herself. It was only just gone seven. But where the field dipped down toward the reedbeds, it was dark.
“Nat!” She closed her eyes involuntarily at the excitement in Jim’s voice when he answered.
“No—Jim.” She was firm. “I want to ask you a few things.” She heard him subside at her businesslike tone. “That night,” she said, then quickly, so he wouldn’t think about last night instead, “that night when you broke in, when
you laid the table.”
“Yes.” His voice was flat.
“You said you had a feeling. That someone else was there.” He said nothing. “Jim? Was it just a feeling, or was there anything concrete?” Still silence. “You do know why I’m asking, right?” she said, getting angry. “You think I’m just making this all up, about Beth? You know me, Jim.” Better than anyone, probably. The thought made her angry. “Do you think I’m the type to get hysterical, to imagine things, to think the worst?”
She was on the point of telling him about the dug earth but stopped herself. She pushed through the hedge and set out across the grass—down at the bottom of the slope, something moved. A rabbit, two rabbits, scooting for cover, low and urgent.
“I don’t know,” said Jim, dully sad. “You might have … you might…” She could almost hear him thinking. The abortion might have sent her nuts. But what had it done to him? What about you, Jim?
He sighed. “It was more than a feeling,” he said. “There must have been something.” She waited. “I think I heard something in the trees at the end of the garden,” he said finally, but distracted, unsure. “I mean … I did hear something. But I thought it was an animal, a badger or something. Noisier than a cat.” He was thinking harder, more carefully now.
She kept walking, stumbling on the uneven tufted grass, hearing her own quick breathing as she waited for him to answer. “Anything else?”
“Maybe,” he said slowly. “Maybe. There was a car parked up the lane a way, but that could have been anyone.” He was unsure now, wary. Was he frightened? It was a frightening thought, him slipping in around the back of the cottage and all the time someone else was there watching.
Something occurred to her. “Have the police been in touch with you?” she asked, feeling the flutter in her chest. “About Beth?”
“No,” he said. Something in his voice. “Nat?” He sounded odd, ill, feverish. “Can I see you again?”
“Not now, Jim,” she said, very quietly. She hardly heard the click, it was so softly done. “Jim?” He had hung up.
The Day She Disappeared Page 25