Or as if they thought she’d done it all herself.
“Did you fall out?” Still speaking softly and the male officer smirking across the table. Nat had stared: she knew where this was going, but she couldn’t believe it.
“Your boss—Janine—she said she thought you were a bit too close, for all you were chalk and cheese. You were the home bird and Beth was never going to stick around. She was a bad influence and she was going to let you down.”
Garfield’s face was pleasant but stupid. Nat wanted to push it in.
“Too close?” Nat heard the dangerous edge to her voice. “Beth was my mate. She didn’t let me down. Everyone said she’d be off sooner or later, but she didn’t go anywhere, did she?” As the words left her mouth, she knew what Garfield was going to say next, leaning even closer over the table.
“Looks like she didn’t, no.” Thinking she was clever, with her flat smile. “Looks like someone stopped her before she could.”
“She wanted to settle down,” said Nat, blurting it out before she could stop herself. “She wanted a baby.” Garfield’s small stupid eyes widened. “You didn’t know that, did you?” Nat went on. “The appointment she had at the hospital was with a fertility guy. She could even—” and her voice broke, she had to stop before she said any more. “She could have been pregnant.”
“Pregnant,” said Garfield, sitting back, and Nat saw something in her eyes. She knows about the termination. She thinks I could have hurt Beth.
“She was my friend, you fucking moron, do you know what a friend is?”
And she saw Garfield nod, just once, satisfied. Hard as nails now, against her.
Donna Garfield had started talking about Jim.
She had gotten to work in a state of shock, and there was Janine behind the bar, wiping her hands on a tea towel, avoiding her eye as she started to say it—Look …
And now in the lane Nat’s phone rang and she stopped, feeling sick.
Could it be true, what she’d said. They’d said. Garfield, Janine?
Jim. Jim.
“Look,” and finally Janine raised her head to look her in the eye, “I think all things considered…”
Far off somewhere something rumbled as Nat answered, and it took her a while to catch up with who the woman was that she was talking to, and what she was saying, she felt so sick. Don’t.
I think, all things considered, it would be best if you didn’t come back. Dropping the tea towel.
“Sorry?” she said into the mobile.
The woman was patient on the other end of the line. “Yes, Sam would be happy to see you.”
It was Walters. The supervisor from Moorsom House. The woman who ran the care home where Beth’s brother was living. Sam.
It wasn’t until she’d hung up that Nat realized she hadn’t said anything to the police about Moorsom House, or Sam, and if they were actually looking into Beth’s disappearance they hadn’t gotten as far as finding him themselves. She stood in the lane, hesitant. The air was warm and heavy and she kept thinking she felt rain. She didn’t know if she should tell them. It was her Sam wanted to talk to, though, it was her. She was his sister’s friend.
She dialed the taxi firm. At the back of her mind it beat, Jim, Jim, Jim, it drummed, it circled. Janine was lying. The only explanation. She stuffed the thoughts away, stick them in a bin bag, throw them in the river.
There was a droning Celtic music track while she waited, and when she got an answer, the line crackling and cutting out, she was told they wouldn’t have a driver for half an hour. Impatient, she hung up. Shit. She could wait half an hour. But she felt itchy with something, the need to do something. Had a thought, and dialed Paddy.
“Hey!” She’d never heard him so upbeat. “How are things? This weather…,” and he was off, so uncharacteristic that it took her a while to work out how she might interrupt him. He was talking about rain coming, about Sophie, meandering, the kid Rufus and something he’d done with his life jacket, there wouldn’t be much more sailing this season, lightning strike in Lincolnshire, the caravan site was going to empty out, and would Sophie be able to stay with Nat—
“I phoned to ask for a lift, Paddy,” she said.
“Oh—right.” He was thrown, not quite wounded, but he faltered.
“I need to get to the care home where Beth’s brother is.”
“I didn’t know she had a brother,” said Paddy, quiet.
“I’m sorry,” said Nat, and she really did feel it.
“No, no,” said Paddy, “it’s all right, I’m sorry, it’s me…” His voice receded as if he’d taken the receiver away from his mouth, then he was back. “I couldn’t get my car started this morning.” Apologetic, humble. “I’d been thinking I really should get a decent—”
“It’s OK,” said Nat, unable to be patient. “It’s fine, Paddy, see you.” She hung up, feeling guilty at having cut him short, not listened, at the shame in his voice at having only a dusty old banger. Perhaps Sophie had seen it and laughed, perhaps Rufus had.
She stared at her phone, about to dial the taxi firm again, thinking.
Bill. Would he be the natural call to make? The man she spent the night with. No. In her head that bin bag bobbed and floated in dark water. Sink: she willed it to go under.
She called Jonathan Dowd’s number.
He was there by the time she got to the top of the lane. She had lingered at the turning to the close where Beth had lived, at the dull curtained windows all looking in on each other, no one moving in the heavy midday air. There was police tape across the door now, and at the thought of the police she felt angry. She hadn’t thought they wouldn’t believe her; she hadn’t thought they would keep information from her. Such as what it was exactly they suspected her of. How was this supposed to work?
Dowd was unshaven, he smelled like he’d been up all night, and she said so as she climbed in.
“It’s the weather,” he said. “Up processing samples before it breaks. I didn’t get in till around eight this morning.”
“Sorry,” she said and he darted a glance at her in the passenger seat.
“Also it’s hard to sleep at the moment,” he said. “I keep thinking—I think about her body.” He stared ahead, stony. “I think every time I turn on the radio, search for news stories on my phone, there’ll be something, they’ll have found … remains.” His profile was grim. “Where are we going?”
The sickness was back, souring in her throat. Remains: that bin bag drifted and circled, it wouldn’t go under.
Whoever killed Ollie hadn’t hidden his body, hadn’t weighted it; he had tied it up with bloodstained rags and let the water carry it. Just chance it had taken so long to surface. No shame, no need to hide. Did they think a woman had done that? When she lay next to Jim on that sofa he had oozed shame from every pore, or had she just been projecting her own onto him? She blinked, trying to scatter the thoughts, of what Janine had said, of the accusations she had made.
“We’re going to the place Beth used to get dressed up for every Monday night.” Dowd stiffened, hands on the wheel. She told him, “Brandon. Moorsom House. You know where that is?”
“The rehab place?”
Of course, that would be what it was known for. “There’s a residential home,” she said, hesitating. “Beth used to go there to see her brother. He’s got Down’s.”
“A brother,” repeated Jonathan Dowd, blank. “I didn’t know that.” He swallowed.
“He’s agreed to talk to me.”
Wordless, pale, he started the car. When they got to the big gates at the foot of the drive Dowd didn’t turn in but pulled up on the verge. “I can come in with you,” he said. “I—” He cleared his throat. “I’d like to meet Beth’s brother.” She couldn’t tell if he was grieving, somehow, or in a kind of trance.
“They’ll only let me in,” she said gently.
He nodded and leaned across her to open the door for her. “I’ll wait for you here,” he said.
&nb
sp; “I can get a cab,” she said lamely, but he shook his head.
“I’ll wait.”
Sam was a nice-looking boy. Nat hadn’t expected to see Beth in him, she hadn’t known what to expect, but there she was even if Nat couldn’t pin down where. In the eyebrows, the cheekbones, the coloring. He was slighter than she expected too, and Nat felt herself uneasy in her skin at having thought she knew what Down’s kids were like, that they might be all the same.
Walters the supervisor had escorted Nat down a carpeted corridor. She stopped halfway and turned to her.
“Sam’s condition isn’t severe,” she had said quietly. “He’s a bit above the middle of the spectrum, some cognitive difficulties, speech problems. But he’s a bright lad, he can cook, he’s done acting classes, and as a matter of fact he’s got a girlfriend in the unit, so you won’t find it hard to get through to him. He’s still vulnerable though. Things frighten him. So please don’t frighten him.” She held Nat’s gaze a moment to make sure she’d understood, and then walked on. When they got to the door she knocked.
Sam had opened the door immediately, and Nat saw a short shock of hair that stuck up at the brow line, a shy smile, long delicate fingers. A short-sleeved check shirt open over a dark T-shirt.
Behind him was a small self-contained flat, a kitchenette visible through a door and French doors opening onto sloping grass. “You all right for me to leave you with Miss Cooper, Sam?” said Walters gruffly. Nat could see how much she liked him. He nodded.
He offered her a cup of tea and she watched him make it painstakingly. “I make it strong,” he explained, and his slight speech impediment was there, the fluffing of the consonants. He handed her the cup, with a saucer, reached down from a cupboard, carefully. He sat on a chair, elbows on his knees, leaning forward and examining her. “I’ve got a girlfriend,” he offered, watching her drink. The tea was very hot.
“Do you think she’ll mind me talking to you?” Nat said seriously, and he squirmed a little in his chair, smiling. “I won’t be long, Sam,” she said. “I’m trying to work out where Beth has gone. I’m trying to find her.” She’s dead.
It came to Nat that she should be the one to tell him. When the time came.
Sam nodded, brightening. “Tell her I need some more cool T-shirts,” he said and he opened his checked shirt to show her a Japanese anime figure underneath. “She always brings one when she’s been somewhere.”
Nat nodded, smiling. Don’t frighten him. She went on, quiet. “She didn’t say anything to you? Goodbye, or when she’d be back, or … a new relationship, maybe?” When he said nothing she rephrased. “A new boyfriend?”
“Someday my prince will come,” he said. “Beth said that all the time. If she’d found her prince she’d be back anyway, though. She promised me she would.”
“What about your mum?” she said, and Sam frowned, uncomfortable. “She came once,” he said. “She came before Christmas once.” He shifted agitatedly on the chair. Shit, shit, shit, thought Nat. “She brought me a calculator.” He’s only got Beth. Of course she wouldn’t have left him. The tea had cooled enough, and she drank it while he watched, still frowning.
“Can I come again?” she asked. “Just to … just to, you know, say hello? You could introduce me to your girlfriend.”
“All right,” he said uncertainly.
“Is there anything … could I bring anything? Take you somewhere?”
Sam chewed his lip, hesitating, then sat up straighter. “Fish and chips,” he said triumphant. “Beth brings me fish and chips sometimes.”
“Yes, I—” Nat began but he hurried on.
“Got to be from the Seashell in Litton, though, Beth only goes there, she says it’s the best.”
“Litton?” She was taken aback. “It can’t have been too warm by the time she got it here, can it?”
“She said her knight in shining armor took her,” said Sam, smiling, just a slightly worried look to him, as if he wasn’t sure, as if he was beginning to understand. “He flies like the wind, she said that.”
Nat thought of Dowd, waiting in his pickup for her at the foot of the hill now. “Right,” she said slowly, and got to her feet. “Well, I’d better get myself one of those for next time.”
Sam stood up, taking his cue, shifting from foot to foot, trying to be polite, trying to get it right. “Maybe Beth married him,” he said uncertainly at the door. “I asked her if she was going to marry him, but she just laughed.”
Nat didn’t know what to say, so she put her arms around him: she smelled boys’ aftershave and washing powder. “Don’t worry, Sam,” she said, holding on tight. “We’ll sort it out.”
She was glad he couldn’t see her face.
Dowd was waiting where she’d left him in the driver’s seat of the pickup, staring straight ahead.
“All right,” she said, climbing in. “I fancy some fish and chips. You know where Litton is?”
* * *
The woman behind the fish counter frowned down at the picture Nat showed her on her phone. She shrugged. “Might have,” she said. Something a bit sneering about the way she said it. She had thick fingers, a broad gold band embedded in one of them.
Dowd had known where Litton was. He had cleared his throat, nodded, engaged gear. (“You ever bring Beth here?” He shook his head, not looking at her. But he knew where to find it.) He might just think she was hungry. They took a turning and got a flash of the estuary gleaming brown between the banks, a roof that might or might not be the Bird in Hand, and she had to blink.
Donna Garfield’s stupid face: she didn’t understand Beth. She just thought Beth was a party girl, like party girls didn’t have brothers they loved, like they never had to make hard decisions or went to see genetic counselors or stuck by their female friends, chalk and cheese or not. She wasn’t going to find out who killed Beth, because she didn’t understand, and she wasn’t listening.
Jonathan Dowd had shot her an anxious glance. “What?” he said, torn between looking at her and needing to keep his eyes on the road. She just shook her head, flapped her hand. “Nothing.”
It wasn’t just Nat who was sure Beth was dead, was it? They hadn’t listened to her say that.
“What do you mean, might have?” From behind the fryer cabinet where a slab of fish in batter lay alongside other, less identifiable items, the woman gave her a level, heavy-lidded look from under her plastic mobcap and Nat felt something flare inside her. She controlled it. “She might have looked a bit dressed up, you know, for the fish and chips?” she said. “Heels on, that kind of thing?”
The woman’s head tipped back a little, and taking the phone, she held it out to focus. “All right,” she said grudgingly. “Yeah, now you come to mention—I seen her. Every few weeks, once a month maybe.” A jeer just below the surface, at Beth flying in, Beth clicking in and out in her heels. Jealousy. “Not for a while.”
“Was there ever anyone with her?” Nat tried to sound casual. The woman handed the phone back.
She shook her head. “Not that I ever seen.” Jerked her head. “I wouldna’ seen anyway,” she said. “Car park’s out the back.”
And when she came out with the hot greasy vinegary bundle of cod and chips, that was where Nat found Jonathan Dowd waiting for her.
* * *
Sophie bounced in through the door to Victor’s room, full of a secret pleasure, and Victor couldn’t spoil it for her. He wondered if she had forgotten that Richard was coming for them. Richard will kill me, was the thought that popped into Victor’s head. He’ll find a way.
Imagine, if Sophie had wheedled Richard into letting Victor come and live with them. The supper table with Victor’s eye on him, Victor peering around the door without knocking. Sophie fretting, anxious.
This was the Sophie he remembered, sunny, trusting. He should perhaps have taught her to be different, though he couldn’t imagine how one went about doing that. She hauled one of the old-fashioned heavy chairs with padded leatherette s
eats and armrests up next to Victor’s.
There was so little time, so little room for maneuver. Victor felt his heart jitter with the prospect of getting all things to the right place at the right time.
There was the possibility, of course, that he was wrong. That he was safe in here; for a moment he wanted so much to believe that. After all, what evidence could he present—to those policemen, with their dubious looks, their exchanged glances, their book of suspects? To poor weary Lisa, all too used to silly old men. The sound of a voice in the corridor, the sick patient who’d been given his bed, dead in the night. A scattering of earth, still damp, outside the side room he’d been moved to. That had been real, earth from a shoe, not a nurse’s. But it was hardly conclusive, was it? It was hardly anything. All that Victor knew was, if he had trusted to an instinct, long ago, he might have saved Sophie from Richard. If sitting on that bench in the sun he had held his nerve and waited for the man with blood on his arm to take a few more steps into the light, he could have said to the police, not my imagination.
But the one thing Victor knew with certainty was that the man with blood on his arm had seen him.
The understanding made him quiet a moment. All right. And then he set that to one side. What was important was that he should be out before Richard came. That Sophie should be in place and holding her resolve.
“Where is Rufus?” he asked, heart sinking. Surely, surely Richard hadn’t already come? The next person to come through those doors.
“Oh, I left him with Paddy,” she said, blithe.
“Paddy,” repeated Victor, ruminating, anxious. Paddy was certainly better than Richard. But what, after all, did one know about people? Paddy, quiet and tall and thoughtful, carrying Victor’s sherry over to him in the corner of the Bird in Hand. Could one trust him with something as precious as Rufus?
“He was desperate to go out again on the little boat,” said Sophie, leaning forward to take his hand. He felt her gentle presence, just like her mother, only sees the good. “I thought it would be a good argument, you know, for us staying, just a little longer—when Richard, if he … if Rufus is adamant, enjoying himself…” She faltered. “Of course it might … Richard might get—” Victor put up a hand and seized hers.
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