Thursday, March 27, 10.30 a.m.
Joanna had been looking forward to this encounter, to confronting Jadon’s wife, puncturing Eve’s Teflon-coated character and seeing her reaction. And with that reaction she wanted to assess what bearing Rice’s death had on her husband’s disappearance. As she drew up outside the house in Disraeli Place she reminded herself of the first rule of policing. Suspect ‘coincidences’ and apparent anomalies. Only Eve could thread the stories together and Joanna was buzzing to know a little more about this strange case so she sat outside for a moment and wondered.
Finally she left the car, walked up the drive and knocked on the door.
Time to flush her out.
The longer Eve was without her husband the more she appeared to regain her true self. She looked cool and collected as she opened the door, her perfume wafting out into the street. ‘Inspector,’ she said, apparently surprised at the intrusion. Then, maybe, with her second sentence, her facade was punctured. ‘Have you heard anything?’ The gaze in her china-blue eyes was transparent.
‘I’m sorry,’ Joanna said, ‘no, we haven’t. Might I come in? I have some more questions. It’s possible they might distress you.’
She knew. Straight away the look was there, deep in her eyes: guilt, fear, anger.
She nodded. ‘I think I know what this is about,’ she said quietly. ‘Come in.’ She turned to her side, flattened herself against the wall and Joanna threaded past her.
Joanna wasn’t going to play any games any more. As soon as they were seated she came straight out with it. ‘I know about Rice,’ she said bluntly.
But if Joanna was in no mood for playing around, neither was Eve. A quick gasp was the only sign that she had heard. Then her face hardened. ‘It doesn’t have anything to do with Jadon’s disappearance,’ she said, her eyes full on her, her tone blunt and uncompromising. No grief there either.
Something deep inside Joanna felt vicious then. Matthew wanted a son so badly. She hadn’t at first wanted a child at all but at that moment she wished she could tell him that she was pregnant. He would, she knew, be a loving and caring father. Just look how he was with that she-devil Eloise. And here was Eve, hardly grieving for her own little son, while Jadon, admittedly not the father, had tried to deny his very existence.
‘I only have your word for this,’ Joanna said, folding her arms to hold in her own emotion, ‘but it strikes me as a very important factor in your husband’s disappearance.’
Eve looked panicky and alert. ‘How so?’
Joanna leaned forward, trying not breathe in the cloying perfume that reminded her of honeybees buzzing around, ready to sting if you moved too near. ‘You must have blamed him for your child’s murder.’ She was not going to wrap the facts up in the cotton-wool blanket of euphemism.
‘It wasn’t Jadon’s fault. It was my mother.’
‘And you thought she was fit?’
‘I didn’t realize how unfit she was.’
‘Didn’t you notice that he was losing weight, bruised, battered and frightened?’
‘He was just miserable.’ Eve almost spat the words back at her.
‘Nevertheless,’ Joanna pursued the point, ‘Jadon was, indirectly, responsible for your son’s death.’
As Eve failed to come up with anything Joanna drove the point home. ‘Had Rice lived with you and Jadon, presumably your mother wouldn’t have assumed the role of grandparent.’
But instead of looking guilty or grief-struck, Eve looked angry. ‘And all the time,’ she said, her face set, ‘he was lying to me.’
‘Yes. Your mother is in prison for the cruelty she inflicted on your son and will be brought to trial.’ She gave Eve a few minutes to let the statements sink in before she went for the full frontal. ‘Did you have anything to do with your husband’s disappearance, Mrs Glover?’
‘No.’ She gathered herself enough to blurt out an angry, ‘How dare you?’
‘Do you know who did?’
Again, a defiant and explosive, ‘No.’
‘Do you know where he is?’
Eve shook her head.
Joanna wanted to insert a narrow, sharp blade to open up the cracks. ‘Jadon wasn’t quite the perfect husband, was he? At least, not for someone who already had a child.’
‘It was my mother who …’ Her voice trailed away.
‘Jadon was controlling.’
Cornered, Eve defended herself. ‘If I hadn’t wanted that control, if I hadn’t loved him I wouldn’t have put up with it.’
‘Was he worth the cost then?’ Joanna asked, partly out of curiosity.
‘I thought he was.’ The words and the manner in which she spoke them were stilted.
How things had changed.
‘Eve, do you know what’s happened to your husband?’
Eve simply shook her head, her eyes blank, devoid of any emotion.
Joanna left. She had an appointment.
11.30
‘Mrs Levin.’ The doctor, male, in his fifties, appeared unsympathetic and impatient. ‘You really can’t expect things to happen so quickly. I suggest you relax, find a little patience from somewhere. Keep trying. Your husband already has a daughter. We know he’s all right and you have had one previous pregnancy.’
That ended in disaster.
The GP was anxious to end the consultation. He even glanced ostentatiously at his watch, holding his forearm out in front of him stiffly. ‘Come back in six months if nothing’s happened and I’ll run some tests. As it is you’re being just a little premature.’
His patient smile was unconvincing. She left. He couldn’t be expected to know what this meant to her.
She sat outside in the car, reflecting. She knew exactly how Ann Boleyn had felt – desperate. But at least she’d produced a decent daughter. She smiled – at least she wasn’t about to lose her head. Only, maybe, her husband. Riding on the back of that was another thought: if Matthew had doubted she could bear him a child – the son he so desperately wanted – would he still have married her?
She leaned forward, resting her forehead on the steering wheel.
The phone dislodged her from her uncomfortable thoughts.
She had a compulsion, something almost as powerful as an electro-magnet, drawing her back there again. It was the stupidest thing to do. But however much she advised herself against going there … Leave it alone. However dangerous it was, she knew she would return.
‘Just to make sure,’ she told herself.
She had recurrent nightmares. She’d close her eyes ready for sleep and the name would be there, roughly drawn, free hand, on a block of wood fixed to the gate by wire. Starve Crow Cottage. In her dream she opened the gate and walked through, feeling no cold and no weight. She simply glided along the path towards the cottage. She pushed open the door of corrugated tin and looked.
And in her dream, just before she woke, a hand beckoned to her.
It was lucky she lived alone or someone would have heard her scream.
When she woke, she was more rational.
She justified her actions but underneath she was puzzled.
She had never expected to have a conscience, never expected to feel remorse. He was a shit. A greedy, cheating bastard. The trouble was that when she thought about it she still got angry. And when she was angry she wanted to get them all. Destroy the entire business. Pay them back the misery and unhappiness they had inflicted on her and her friends. Shit. It was awful. She fought the instinct – focused on work, on friends. Anything but that.
But still the hand moved.
She read the papers obsessively. Nothing found. Nothing found. She scanned the columns. There was no mention of him. Since a column inch or two on page three of the Leek Post & Times two and three days after he had gone missing there had been no mention of him. He had been forgotten about. People slide from the front page to the back, from headline to obituary. No one was looking for him. She could almost feel sorry for him. No one loves you, Jadon. No on
e.
But he continued to invade her mind. She knew that the power drawing her back would win in the end.
‘You all right?’ her friends asked and she just smiled and made some silly joke about the time of the month.
And yet, even so, she found herself in the car on a Saturday morning, following the same road. When she reached the cottage the sun was on the gate. She looked, shielded her eyes and looked again. No, it couldn’t be. Her heart skipped a beat. This was, surely, another part of her bad dream?
She looked yet again. And saw, with the clarity of fierce daylight and an unblinking sun, hammered into the ground, a For Sale sign. Solid and uncompromising as any statement.
The property was for sale. It would soon have visitors. Potential buyers. Perhaps someone would decide to develop the cottage, dig up its secrets … She covered her face with her hands.
She had relied on his staying hidden. Now it was just a matter of time.
Leroy, Jeff and Scott had come to the same conclusion.
‘Our business has to keep going, mate. We can’t live on fresh air. You need to do this on your own now.’ His slap on the back was meant to seem friendly but Jeff read it for what it was. A threat. You take over Wednesday evenings alone.
‘Yeah.’
And so the rounds began again, Jeff Armitage taking over the Wednesday evening pick-up – alone this time, following the same route that his predecessor had, parking at Sainsbury’s, taking the money from the families in Mill Street, walking up the hill, calling in Wellington Place then Britannia Avenue, crossing the children’s play area to Barngate Street then down Nab Hill Avenue and back to Sainsbury’s. But every Wednesday when he followed that same route he felt apprehensive. Without an answer or an explanation as to what had happened to Jadon he couldn’t know something bad hadn’t happened. He didn’t want to drop down the black hole. Like him.
Time went by.
SEVENTEEN
Sunday, 30 March, 11 a.m.
It was hard showing people round the little cottage where they had been so happy. Each room had memories sealed into its walls, love-making, conversations, wedding plans, even arguments. As she showed the first couple around Joanna felt slightly resentful, as though she had been coerced into this. She wasn’t sure she wanted to leave Waterfall Cottage at all. In the end it didn’t matter anyway. They didn’t like it.
Too small; sloping ceilings in the bedrooms (gave them a poky look and made them feel claustrophobic); proximity to the church (we’ll be woken up by the bells on a Sunday morning); the yellow paint in the hall (change it).
And so as they walked through her life, from room to room, picking the house apart, criticizing and insulting, she wouldn’t have sold to them had they offered twenty thousand over the asking price.
A second couple, seen two hours later, worried about being snowed in in the winter. Yeah, it happens – no one dies. Her hostility was compounding with each negative couple who toured Waterfall Cottage. She and Matthew loved the place. They had from the first moment they’d bought it from a local shepherd.
When Matthew finally came home from a day on call, eyebrows raised, she felt deflated. A failure.
A third couple seen that evening wanted it as a second home. They already had a house in London and a flat in Spain but needed to escape ‘to rural England’. Joanna felt even more insulted. Patronized. The Staffordshire Moorlands were not a theme park but a real place for real people with real life everyday struggles and Waterfall Cottage was part of that. A home – a real, live home. Not an escape to a perceived idyll.
And then, in the evening, along came a couple so much in love, so starry-eyed with each other and the cottage that Joanna felt almost jealous. She watched their eyes meet, their hands lock as they cooed and exclaimed, as she and Matthew had once done, over the original features, the blackened beams, the arched windows, and she sighed for the past. The things we lose. She watched in the mirror over the mantelpiece as they exchanged a kiss.
By Monday the young couple, both teachers in different schools in Leek, were the ones to make an offer but were, apparently, four thousand pounds short for the deposit. Joanna wasn’t sure whether she was pleased or not. She just felt numb and the waiting game continued.
Work was a welcome distraction – particularly when in early April Matthew’s parents came down for a week, staying in a bed and breakfast to secure their property and plan for any work to be done before they moved in. Naturally Eloise came over most nights with Kenneth, whom Joanna was beginning to welcome as another outsider. Kenneth was the one who made conversation seem less like a chore and she began to warm to him, reading shyness behind his awkward smile, unease and insecurity when he challenged both Matthew and Eloise on medical matters. He was obviously a pedant, stripping any issue right back to its core. He sat at the kitchen table, frowning as he combed through the house details, even helped Joanna with the washing up, the pots and pans that wouldn’t fit in the dishwasher, while the others sat in the dining room, pouring over house details and sums. When they were alone Kenneth chatted easily to her and when Eloise joined them, draping her arms possessively around his neck, he seemed impervious to the barbed comments she directed towards her stepmother. He was tall and skinny rather than slim, with loose, gangly limbs that didn’t seem quite coordinated. He had beautiful hands with long, sensitive fingers and talked about being a children’s thoracic surgeon, a comment to which Matthew listened without responding. She watched his reaction to the youth, his appraisal of his comments. Kenneth wore thick glasses and had a pleasant, slightly hesitant manner. But what Joanna really liked about Kenneth was the effect he had on Eloise. Eloise, who had always been so difficult and hostile towards her, suddenly seemed to have grown up, her resentment towards Joanna ameliorating into something else. Not quite friendly but certainly more tolerant – or truthfully, less intolerant. She even gave Joanna the odd smile and did not seem quite as determined to cling to her father like a sprig of particularly poisonous and tenacious bindweed. Together with Matthew’s parents, Joanna invited them over for supper one evening and cooked a lasagne and tossed a salad, feeling awkward as she served the meal because she didn’t even know what to call Matthew’s parents, her in-laws. Peter and Charlotte seemed far too informal for the stiffly mannered retired doctor and his wife. Mum and Dad, mother and father – none seemed appropriate. So she simply served the meal as though she was a dumb waitress with a risus sardonicus papered over her mouth. Only Kenneth offered to help with the clearing up, leaping to his feet and picking up the dishes before helping to load the dishwasher then picking up a tea towel when Joanna rinsed the wine glasses. When they’d finished he gave her an awkward but companionable smile and they re-joined the others, who were still poring over papers scattered across the table. She felt quite resentful as none of them even looked up. Their discussion was patently too lively for distraction.
Strange. And if she and Matthew had a child where would he or she fit in? she wondered. Would the child be the new focus of their attention?
Later, she and Kenneth sat on the sofa, finished the bottle of wine and watched; bystanders while the others remained at the now cleared dining-room table. Matthew glanced over once or twice, tight-lipped, and she knew that later, when they were in bed, he would accuse her of not making an effort with his daughter and parents. It was an old argument, one neither of them would ever win. But Kenneth caught her eye and grinned and she had an ally in the room. Maybe, she thought, looking around, it would all work out – somehow – in the end.
C’est la Vie.
C’est la Mort.
And of Jadon Glover, there was no sign.
Wednesday, 16 April, 7.30 p.m.
Leroy was away. He’d gone to Spain for a fortnight’s break to stay with a friend, and Scott was having a well-earned night off so Jeff was left holding the fort, or the baby, or whatever. Anyway, he was the one picking up the money that night. Alone.
The supermarket was busy. Easter fell at t
he end of the week, Good Friday just two days away, and people were stocking up, buying their chocolate eggs and simnel cakes, picking up chickens and turkeys, steaks, burgers and sausages, lagers and beers. Plenty of stuff to throw on the barbecue and celebrate a few days off work. The weather forecast was promising and the mood optimistic. Spring creating a spring in their steps. Finding a space in the crowded supermarket car park, Jeff parked up. When he’d done his rounds he’d pop in and pick up a couple of chocolate Easter eggs too.
It was funny, he thought as he locked his car, how quickly they’d forgotten about Jadon. The waters had soon closed over his head, as though he’d ceased to exist, had never existed. Rumour had it that these days Eve was swanning around in a brand-new silver Mercedes E-Class. Rumour also had it that she and Robertson had been seen around together. She didn’t seem to be wasting her time grieving for her missing husband so why should they? He, Leroy and Scott had spent a whole day going right through the books. There didn’t seem to be any money missing, apart from the eight or nine hundred Jadon should have been carrying the night he’d disappeared – so why should they bother? Particularly as the police didn’t seem to be doing anything.
The further away from that rainy March night they moved the less real it seemed. It was fading into a memory, bleached and faded, something that might or might not have happened, something to be folded and placed in a drawer. One of those puzzles that would never be solved.
Jeff Armitage left the bustling supermarket car park and almost instantly it was quiet. He turned to the left, walking quickly. Mill Street appeared deserted. The shops here were shuttered and dark. He quickened his pace. Maybe they were all at the supermarket. He knocked on the first door. Maybe they’d have sold out of Easter eggs by the time he got back. The door opened.
‘Huh. I might have known the Easter spirit wouldn’t touch you.’
He’d learnt not to react but met her eyes steadily. ‘Forty quid.’
She slapped it into his palm.
He walked to the next house. But as he lifted his hand to knock it was pulled open.
Crooked Street Page 21