They can’t have any evidence against me for Genevieve’s murder, can they? An image flashes into my mind of a bag of blood-covered clothes. Do the police already have it? If they do, their hunt for me will intensify, but I don’t know and I have no way of finding out.
I look at my son’s sweet, innocent face and the future no longer seems clear. I want to flee – to get as far away as I can – but I can’t keep running. It’s not the right thing for Alfie. He needs a life that’s normal, predictable, secure. He loves being with people. He needs friends and the chance to follow his dreams without being tied to a mother who’s permanently looking over her shoulder.
It’s as if Alfie senses that I’m worried, because he doesn’t chatter as we walk, hand in hand, back to the car. He climbs into his seat without a word, and I get in the front. But I don’t start the engine.
It’s not just the police I need to worry about. They are not the only people looking for me. There are others: faceless people, nameless people. I wouldn’t know them if they were standing right next to me, but I do know that if they find me, life for me and for Alfie will never be the same.
In the nearly six years I’ve been on my own, I’ve found my soul. I have my own values, and I need to take responsibility for my own actions. Alfie deserves better from me. It’s time to stop hiding from my mistakes.
I make a decision. A pain so intense that it makes me moan out loud clutches at my heart. I start the engine and make my way back on to the motorway, knowing that when I reach the junction I won’t turn left and head north to Northumberland; I will turn right and head south, to Lincolnshire. One way or another, this has to end.
34
LAKESIDE
After Aram’s arrival at Lakeside, for a while things followed a predictable pattern. He would spend hours with Mum in his meditation room, and often she would come out laughing, happy again – the mother I had always known. Other times she would be in floods of tears. Dad and I didn’t know what to expect, and we waited nervously when we knew she was about to emerge from his lair.
I remember when Aram made her cry for the first time.
Dad was horrified. ‘Darling! What did he say to you?’
Silent convulsive sobs rendered her speechless.
‘That’s it, Nic. He’s got to go,’ Dad said, his hands resting on her shoulders. He pulled her towards him so he could hold her, and I jumped up from the table to rush over to join in. We all needed a family hug, something we had been doing less and less in the last few weeks.
Mum stopped sobbing and raised her tear-stained face to Dad. ‘No! He can’t go, Joel. I need him. He’s the only thing that makes sense in my life.’
If Dad was hurt by that, he didn’t show it. ‘But Nic, he’s tearing you apart!’ He sounded as if he was about to cry too.
‘You really don’t understand, do you?’ she said, pushing him away, her hands against his chest. Dad looked bewildered. ‘This is what our sessions are all about, and it’s not Aram who’s hurting me. I’m crying because I’m beginning to understand all that’s wrong with me – all the things I’ve messed up, the values that I thought meant something. He’s making me face them all. I have to be torn apart, turned inside out, so I can rebuild myself as a better person.’
Dad tutted and threw his head back. ‘That’s fucking ridiculous, Nic. You’re a lovely person.’ He rarely swore in front of me, and I think they’d forgotten I was there, locked as they were in some battle that I didn’t understand.
‘I’m not a good person, Joel. We’re not good people. We have this obsession with what’s ours. Everyone wants to own stuff – we even think there are people we own. You think I’m yours, don’t you?’ Dad was speechless. ‘We make ourselves sick with envy, greed, jealousy. And why, Joel? Why?’
He didn’t have a clue how to answer. I could see how confused he was, but something snagged the corner of my eye and I turned my head slightly. The kitchen door was standing open, the corridor beyond dark, and someone was there. A glimmer of light reflected off pale grey eyes, and I could see the ghost of a smile around his mouth as Aram slowly moved away and out of my sight.
Aram’s sessions with Mum only occupied part of the day. He regularly demanded to see both me and Dad, but rarely together now. Dad sometimes came out looking as if he’d been punched, other times he was smiling, his eyes slightly unfocused as if he was thinking of something wonderful. I never knew what took place, but despite his earlier qualms, it seemed Dad had agreed to try Aram’s form of meditation.
I had such a strange feeling about my own sessions. I trembled for hours before it was my turn to go to the meditation room in a kind of frenzied anticipation. I was half longing to be there, half terrified of how Aram might make me feel. Sometimes he would tell me stories, sitting facing me on the floor, rolling the glass sphere in his hands. It sparkled with iridescence, the light catching its polished surface, flashing bright colours as it whirled between his palms. And I listened.
He made the tales so exciting, so colourful, and I was mesmerised. He would give me one of his potions to drink, made with herbs that he grew in the walled garden at the back of the house. Some were sweet and tasted of flowers. Others were bitter, and I wanted to spit them out. But I never did.
He didn’t always smile. There were times when his face would be harsh, his tone cold, and he would talk to me about the demands I made on my mother for her attention, telling me I was selfish and self-centred.
‘Nicola needs your acceptance for who she is and the journey she’s on. I’m helping her to develop a roadmap that will give meaning to her life, and everyone’s individual journey has to be taken alone. If you hang on like a limpet, you’ll slow her down – you’ll be nothing more than a burden that she must drag along behind her.’
‘But she’s my mum!’ I whinged one day.
‘And how might that be relevant?’ he asked, leaning forward, his thick eyebrows forming a deep V.
I didn’t know the answer.
‘I’ll tell you, shall I? Giving birth is an act of nature. As a baby, you need your mother to provide you with food. But you’re not a baby any more, India, and Nicola is free of the obligation to nurture you. Your reliance on her is restricting both her growth and your own – you’re a deadweight that’s too heavy for her to bear. That’s why I’ve decided you should sleep in another part of the house.’
My heart was hammering in my chest. Were they not my parents any longer? Didn’t they love me any more? I hoped Mum wouldn’t let him move me. Those were the days when he still appeared to consult her about decisions, although she denied him nothing. But maybe he was right: I wasn’t a baby who needed her mother. After all, I was almost eleven years old.
Aram was as good as his word. For the protection of my mother’s ‘journey’ to becoming a better person, the sleeping arrangements were changed, and my mother didn’t object.
I was distraught. For the first week as I walked away from my parents each night to the opposite end of the house, up a different staircase, knowing they wouldn’t be there if I needed them, it felt like the end of the world. In truth it had been a few years since I had crawled into their bed in the middle of the night, but I had known they were there – the other side of the wall – and their presence had always comforted me.
My new room was isolated from everyone. It felt cold whatever the weather, but I think what I was missing was the warmth that comes from feeling loved. I wasn’t loved any longer – or at least that’s how it seemed to me – and each night I huddled under the duvet, knees pulled to my chest, my head buried in my pillow as I sobbed, wondering what I had done wrong, what was so awful about me that no one loved me. I knew that crying was self-indulgent and Aram would be angry if he knew, so I told no one.
It was weeks before I realised that I wasn’t the only one who had moved. Dad was no longer permitted to share Mum’s bed. When I asked him about it he tried to smile. ‘We still love each other, DeeDee, but if I’m lying next to her, my
presence distracts her. Right now she needs space to think, without worrying about me. It won’t be for long.’
He was wrong about that, and it wasn’t the only change. Aram said that not only did I have to sleep in a different part of the house, he insisted I use my parents’ given names – Nicola and Joel – although I secretly continued to think of them as Mum and Dad. Yet despite this – or maybe because of it – we circled Aram like satellites, increasingly worried about causing unrest, ever more eager to win his approval.
I convinced myself I had plenty to look forward to. My eleventh birthday was coming, and I would be going to school in September, so I allowed myself the luxury of being excited. At least until I learned that celebrating birthdays was for the vain and self-obsessed.
Nothing seemed steady or secure, and the ground beneath me kept shifting, but somehow I continued to believe that things would get back to normal once Mum was feeling better and Aram had moved on. He wasn’t with us all the time. He had commitments that took him away, but he always returned as if coming home, and was welcomed with open arms by Mum, who was much more subdued in his absence.
Life had settled into a pattern. Apart from the time each of us spent with Aram, Mum cooked our meals and Dad cleared up with my help. Aram ate with us but made no contribution and made little or no comment about the food.
‘We eat to sustain our bodies,’ he said. ‘Food should be nutritious and healthy, that’s all.’
I didn’t agree, but of course would never have voiced an opinion that was contrary to Aram’s. Mum cooked mouth-watering food, and we’d always enjoyed family meals together, but our diet slowly changed, the emphasis moving to bland food that fulfilled its purpose without evoking murmurs of delight. Little did I know then that this was only the start of the ways in which our lives would alter, but I was soon to find out.
Two days before my eleventh birthday, Mum said she would take me into town for new shoes and a school uniform.
Aram stopped us at the door. ‘Where are you going?’
As always when she spoke to him, Mum’s smile was wide but not entirely steady.
‘India starts her new school in a few weeks, and she’s grown out of all her shoes,’ she said with a slightly tinny laugh.
He glanced from her to me and back again. ‘May I have a word, Nicola?’
‘Of course,’ Mum said to his back as he walked away from us into the sitting room.
He held the door open for her and turned to close it, leaving me in the hall. I could hear the low murmur of his voice, and for a moment Mum’s voice was slightly raised, but I couldn’t tell what she was saying. I don’t know how long they were in there. To me it seemed like hours, but I suspect it was only a few minutes.
When Mum came out, she was pale. She looked at me anxiously. ‘Change of plan, India. I’ve got some exciting news for you. As Aram will be staying with us for a while, he said he’s happy to teach you, so you don’t have to go to school. Isn’t that amazing? He’s brilliant! You’re so lucky!’
‘But I want to go to school! I want to make friends with other kids. Please, Mum, can I go?’
She sucked her lips into a tight line and shook her head.
‘You’re forgetting, India. I’m Nicola. How many times do you need to be told? And don’t be ungrateful. It’s a wonderfully kind offer from Aram. Mixing with other children will unsettle you and pull you from the path to becoming a better person.’
The door to the sitting room was open, and he could hear every word. I didn’t want to cry, because I knew there would be consequences, but Mum had gone into that room smiling, looking forward to a day out with me. Whatever he’d said to her, her joy had evaporated.
‘Can we go for the shoes, like you promised, even if we’re not getting the uniform?’
Mum gave her tinkling laugh, the one I had started to recognise as fake. ‘You don’t need shoes! That’s the joy of not going to school.’ She bent down and pulled off her own shoes. ‘You see – I won’t wear any either!’
I felt a now familiar beat of unease. What was happening to my family? But I knew I’d lost. The gates to the world beyond Lakeside were beginning to close. Not just for me, but for all of us.
It was more than six years before I had any shoes, apart from a pair I stole from Mum’s box in the attic and hid in my room, but I never left the house and its grounds from the week before my eleventh birthday until Aram decided that he needed me to do something for him more than six years later. And because it necessitated straying beyond the locked gates, he bought me one pair of thin slip-on shoes. Good enough for walking, but not for running.
I was allowed to keep them for three months, and then they disappeared.
Wednesday
35
Tom was in the incident room by 7 a.m. the next morning, eager to check any progress on the whereabouts of Martha Porter. He glanced over at the board. Her photo was up there, along with that of Eddie Carlson and, of course, Niall Strachan. The husband wouldn’t be ruled out until they were certain his alibi stacked up. They’d confirmed that his car had been driven home at the time he stated, but that wasn’t conclusive enough for Tom. There were other possibilities.
He wasn’t surprised to see Keith already at his desk, and a few moments later Becky strolled through the door, stifling a yawn.
‘Sorry – didn’t sleep too well. I thought I’d be out like a light, but I couldn’t shut my head up! Rob’s on his way in too,’ she said. ‘He just called. He came back here last night, and I don’t think he left until after midnight.’
‘He’s certainly keen – you have to give him that,’ Tom said. ‘While we’re waiting, any news on Martha Porter?’
Keith nodded. ‘Yes, sir. Now she is a confirmed suspect, we’ve requested her financials, but there’s not much chance of anything for a couple of hours until the banks open. The digital team have been going through her computer and have found the payroll files. We hoped it would be a quick route to her bank details. We knew she was paid as a contractor, but her earnings aren’t paid into a personal account. She submits invoices to XO-Tech from three companies, each for a different service – bookkeeping, administrative services and human resources. Each invoice is paid to a different account.’
‘Complicated. Is her home address the registered office?’
Keith shook his head. ‘She uses a virtual office address for each of them. The company that manages the service is required to provide the legal address if we request it, and we’re trying to get hold of them.’
‘Good God. This woman did her best to keep herself well hidden, which makes me even more suspicious. Good work, Keith. We’ve got a woman with no passport, no driving licence, no NI number as far as we can tell, who hides her earnings as best she can. I have to wonder if she has another identity.’
At that moment the door swung open, and Rob strode in. ‘Sorry, boss, am I late?’
‘Hardly, and I gather you were here until midnight.’
Rob grinned. ‘I think the adrenaline must have been pumping. I thought I’d check on a few things – see what I could find out about the knife, for one thing. But before we get to that, on my way in I got a call on my mobile. Elise Chapman, no less.’
Becky raised her eyebrows. ‘You gave her your number?’
Rob grinned. ‘Only in the interests of the job, I can assure you. She took the Facebook post down, as we asked, but not before it had gone viral locally. Someone recognised Martha, but before she had the chance to respond the post disappeared from her newsfeed – presumably when Elise deleted it. She asked all her friends if they knew who posted the picture of the murderer and by some magical crossover between friends of friends of friends, she discovered it was Elise, and sent her a message.’ Rob pulled out his phone and read from the screen. ‘“I don’t want to go making trouble for this woman, but I know who she is. Do you know who I should talk to about it?” Elise called me. Smug as hell, she was. She said the woman wouldn’t give any details about ho
w she knows Martha, but she’s called Naomi Simpson, and it says on her Facebook page that she’s a childminder.’
‘Martha Porter doesn’t have children, does she?’ Becky said.
‘Not that we know of, but it seems there’s a lot we don’t know about Ms Porter,’ Tom replied. ‘Okay, Rob, it should be easy to get hold of her. Make it a priority, but first what about the knife?’
‘Not as conclusive as I would have liked. It’s a long-bladed paring knife, used by chefs to cut fruit and vegetables. I had a photo of it, so I stuck it in Google Images, and the closest match was one available on Amazon. It had 170 reviews, so finding out who’s bought one recently could be a needle-in-a-haystack job. Not sure if it’s relevant at all, but along with the blood, forensics said there were traces of lemon juice on the blade.’
Tom shut out the sounds around him. Someone had mentioned lemons in the last few days. Who was it? He ran through the conversations he’d had about the murder of Genevieve Strachan, and suddenly it hit him.
He looked at Becky. ‘Niall Strachan mentioned lemons. Do you remember?’
Becky frowned as she concentrated. ‘I do. He said something about ice and lemon for drinks when he had visitors.’ Her eyes opened wide. ‘And he said Martha always prepared them, didn’t he?’
Tom felt a beat of excitement. There must be hundreds of knives with traces of lemon on them, but somehow he was sure that this was the knife.
Close Your Eyes Page 14