by Val McDermid
'I don't know that I would have put it quite like that. I think she's all about constructing defences. But you're the vulnerability expert.'
Lisa inclined her head, acknowledging Charlie's riposte. 'Jenna is the key, isn't she? A woman of extremes. Total libertinism then total repression. It makes me wonder what on earth was going on in the mother's background for those two outer limits to be the attractive options. What exactly was she rebelling against or pulling towards?'
'And yet Jenna is quite a shadowy figure in some respects. What Jay gives us is very much the child's-eye view of a parent. The child is oblivious to a lot of what's going on because it's over her head. As we're reading, we don't notice because it's such a pacy narrative. But thinking about it, I feel like I've been shortchanged on Jenna.'
Lisa compressed her lips briefly. 'Maybe that's deliberate. Maybe Jay's afraid she'll give away too much about herself if she reveals Jenna more fully. I don't have to tell you how often it all comes back to the mother.'
The sensation inside Charlie's brain was almost physical. Lisa's words dislodged something in her head, like the stone that shifts and precipitates the avalanche. '"Nobody has heard from her or seen her since." That's what the book says.'
'A terrible, ultimate abandonment,' Lisa said. 'Some people think it's OK to leave your children by the time they're adolescents and can fend for themselves. But in many ways, that's their most vulnerable period.'
'It wasn't such a terrible abandonment for Jay. More of a result, really. She didn't get married off to some happy clappy. She got to go to Oxford and get away from the stifling repression of life in the Bethany Pentecostal Church of Christ the Saviour. Her mother disappearing was the making of her,' Charlie said slowly, looking from all angles at the thought that had hit her, seeing if it really made the sense she thought it did.
'I'm not certain I would put it like that,' Lisa said, looking at Charlie as if she wasn't quite sure of her any more. 'I think Jay overcame a terrible trauma remarkably well.'
Charlie got to her feet just as the doorbell rang. 'I need to go to Roker,' she said.
Lisa looked startled. 'Where?'
'Where Jay came from. I need to check out what happened to her mother.'
'We know what happened to her mother. She ran off with the Dutch boyfriend.'
'Who denied having run off with her.' Charlie started to head for the door.
'Wait,' Lisa said. 'What are you saying?'
'I need to check out what happened to her mother,' Charlie repeated, sounding dazed. 'There's somebody at your door,' she added as the bell rang again.
Lisa jumped off the sofa and caught up with her in the hallway. She put a hand on Charlie's arm. 'I thought you'd given up this crazy quest?'
Charlie turned and smiled. 'Not while there's still something to chase down.' Gently she picked Lisa's hand off her arm. 'Somebody else for you, Lisa,' she said, aware of the ambiguity and happy with it.
There was a new energy in Charlie's step as she strode back to the bus stop. According to the timetable, she only had ten minutes to wait for a bus that would take her close to the train station. She'd be back in Manchester this evening and in the morning she could make straight for the North East. Maybe she could short-circuit the trawl through local newspaper archives with a little help from Nick.
She pulled out her phone and called his mobile. It went straight to voicemail, as she'd half-expected. 'Hi, Nick. It's Charlie,' she said. 'I've just been talking to Lisa Kent, she's a pal of mine who used to know Jay a bit. And she said something about Jay's mother that just set something off in my head. What if Jess Edwards wasn't the first? What if she started even earlier? What if Jenna was her first victim? I know it sounds crazy, and this is going to cut me off - Oh, bugger,' Charlie said as the voicemail ended. She called back immediately. 'Me again. 1990, Jenna Calder was her married name. She was reported as a missing person. Roker in Sunderland. I'm going up there first thing in the morning to see what I can dig up. It would be brilliant if you could get one of the local boys to open the file to me. Call me in the morning, I'll explain better. Thanks, Nick.' This time she beat the beep. Then remembered she still had a more immediate message for Nick. For the third time she called his number. 'Me again. Just to tell you I think I persuaded Corinna that Jay's innocent. At least planted enough doubt to stop her doing something stupid. I'm going back to Manc now. I promise to leave you alone.'
Charlie put her phone away. She wondered what she would find at Roker. It seemed an unlikely location for redemption.
11
The morning phone call had taken the gloss off Jay's day, but by the end of the afternoon, she'd almost recovered herself. The prospect of seeing Magda generally had that effect on her. But her feelings were more complicated than usual. Clearly she couldn't ignore Corinna's investigation of her history. Inevitably, that meant Magda would be confronted with awkward details from the past. Theoretically Jay could wait till she was forced to defend herself, but reaction was never as powerful as revelation. Better that what Magda heard first was Jay's version rather than Corinna's. But she wanted to pick her moment. A romantic setting, good food and wine, nothing to get up for in the morning. That was the way to do it.
But the luxury of choice was stripped from her just as she was preparing to leave the office. Her private phone chimed a text message alert. Expecting it to be Magda, Jay picked the phone up eagerly. Instead, it was the last name she wanted to see on the screen. Beneath that dreaded name, the opening words of the text: Charlie Flint's not giving up. Tomorrow she's going...Impatient, Jay summoned the full message: Tomorrow she's going to Roker. And we both know what's there to be found, don't we? Time to take care of business?
Jay stared at the screen as if the power of her gaze could transform the words into something innocuous. It was too late now for careful plans. It would have to be tonight. There would be no champagne to celebrate the booking of the removal team, no cheerful negotiation of wardrobe space and bookshelf allocation. No matter how carefully Jay constructed the version of her life she was going to deliver to Magda, it was going to alter their relationship profoundly. If she didn't hit the right note, tomorrow morning could easily find her cancelling the removal team Anne had just organised. The truth, certainly. But not the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That would be terminal.
Jay pressed the intercom and spoke to her PA. 'Anne, I need dinner delivered to the house. Get me my usual deli order, with extra artichoke hearts and a baguette instead of ciabattas. I'm leaving now but I need to walk, so any time after six is fine.' Magda wouldn't be home before seven; having dinner delivered would free Jay to plan what she was going to say.
She took the long way home, making a detour down to the river so she could let the rhythm of the water calm her anxiety. The low grey sky and congested air seemed to flatten the surface, giving the river a reptilian appearance, its deep hypnotic swells the forward motion of a giant slow-worm. It seemed inevitable, inexorable yet strangely relaxing. By the time she arrived home, Jay's restless agitation had passed, leaving her determined that the evening would unfold in her choice of direction.
Back home, she leaned on the balcony with a glass of red wine till the delivery arrived. Then she carefully arranged the food on the granite breakfast bar, making the array of meat, cheese and vegetables as attractive as possible. It was the kind of task Jay enjoyed; to an observer, it appeared she was giving it her full care and attention, but in truth, it left enough of her mind clear to untangle the thorniest of problems. Once she was satisfied with the look of the collation, she lay face down on the floor and did a series of McKenzie stretches to keep her lower back supple and free from pain. Too much tension, she knew from experience, would exact its price in pain later unless she took steps to prevent it. The last thing she wanted was for Magda to start thinking she'd hooked up with an old crock.
It was just after seven when Magda returned. 'Please tell me there's a bottle open,' she groaned as she walked i
nto the kitchen.
'Open, aerated and at the perfect temperature,' Jay said, pouring her a glass. Magda hugged her from behind, nuzzling her neck, then reached round her for the wine.
'Perfect,' she said, taking a sip. 'And what a glorious spread. All I've had since breakfast is a slice of an eight-year-old's birthday cake.' She stretched for the olives. 'Mmm. You are the woman of my dreams.' She nibbled a black olive and jumped on to the stool next to Jay. 'How was your day?'
'This is the best part of it,' Jay said, passing Magda a plate. She went to the fridge for a bowl of salad leaves then tossed them in olive oil from a bottle that had cost more than vintage champagne.
'The salad or me?' Magda teased.
Jay took a baby beetroot leaf from the bowl and savoured it, frowning. 'Definitely the salad.'
Magda laughed. 'You do have good taste.'
'Anne booked the removal firm for next Tuesday,' Jay said, sitting down again and piling food on her plate. 'They'll pack clothes, books, CDs, toiletries, all the personal stuff basically. Anything you don't want left for tenants, like good glassware or art, sort it out before then and they'll bring that too.'
Magda leaned over and kissed Jay's ear. 'You make everything so easy.'
'Money makes everything so easy,' Jay said wryly. 'There's not much in the practical realm that can't be sorted with the application of a wedge of cash.'
'It's not that simple,' Magda said. 'Thanks to Philip, I can afford all sorts of things - and I hope you're going to give me the bill for this, by the way - but what you do is the organising, which is the really hard bit.'
'Thanks. But arranging things for you makes me happy. Truly.' She stroked Magda's hair, letting her fingers stray down to the tender skin beneath her ear. Magda shivered with pleasure. 'Now eat. You need to keep your strength up.'
Magda giggled. 'No kidding.' For a while they concentrated on eating, their conversation focused on the delights of their food; the intensity of a sundried tomato, the subtlety of a grilled artichoke heart, the nuttiness of a prosciutto and the pungency of a cheese. For both women, the sharing of food had quickly taken a place at the heart of their life together. Each had an appetite for the sensual pleasure of good food; both would rather go without than eat rubbish. 'I'll happily eat food that's inexpensive,' Jay had once told an interviewer. 'But I won't eat food that's cheap. It ends up costing a lot more than money.'
Finally Magda polished off the last sliver of chargrilled red pepper and sighed. 'That was bliss. Let me sort out the leftovers and the dishwasher, you go and relax. Monday night, University Challenge, right?'
Another excuse to delay, Jay thought. And then there would be something else, she was sure. Before she knew it, it would be too late to begin tonight. And if Charlie Flint managed to find what nobody else ever had in Roker, it would be too late for ever. 'I need to talk to you,' she said, ignoring Magda's attempts to shoo her away from the clearing up.
Magda stopped scraping leftover salad into the bin and gave Jay a worried look. 'What's wrong?'
'Let's finish in here, then we'll sit down.'
'That sounds ominous,' Magda said.
Jay knew a push when she heard it, but she wasn't about to yield. They'd do this her way. 'We'll be done here in no time,' she said, loading dirty crockery into the dishwasher. People sometimes wondered why a woman as wealthy as she was did her own kitchen chores. For Jay, it was a tiny trade-off in return for the privacy she retained. She couldn't imagine having the conversation she was about to have with her lover if there was another living soul under her roof.
They cleared up in record time and Jay sat back down at the breakfast bar, this time gesturing to Magda to sit opposite. 'This is a hard thing for me to talk to you about,' Jay said, folding her hands together and meeting Magda's worried eyes.
'There's nothing you can't tell me,' Magda said, her words more certain than her voice.
If only. Jay spoke softly, her voice sorrowful, her face serious. 'I think I've found out why your mother banished me all those years ago. And why she is so hostile to the idea of us being together. And it's nothing to do with me being gay.'
Surprise widened Magda's eyes and straightened her back. 'What do you mean? What else could it be?'
Jay gave a twisted smile, her eyebrows steepled in apology. 'This is not a joke, OK? This is really what she thinks.' She waited. Magda frowned in puzzlement. 'Your mother thinks I'm a murderer.'
Magda's mouth fell open in incredulity. 'A murderer?'
'Better still, she thinks I've done it more than once. She thinks I'm kind of a serial killer.' Jay smiled and shrugged, spreading her hands in a gesture of baffled innocence.
Magda stuttered and spluttered, finally managing to get coherent words out. 'A serial killer? You? This is crazy. Why are you saying this? How can you think that?'
'I'm not the problem here, sweetheart. Corinna's the one who's got the crazy notions, not me.'
Magda shook her head as if to dislodge something unpleasant. She ran her hands over her face and through her hair. 'I've never heard anything so . . . so . . . so ridiculous. Where has this come from, this mad, stupid idea?'
Jay sighed. 'Let me try and tell it from the beginning.'
'You think that'll make any more sense of it? Jay, I feel like I've fallen down a rabbit hole and everything's gone Alice in Wonderland.'
'It's not exactly been easy for me either. I'm the one who's supposed to be the psychopathic multiple murderer, after all.'
'Of course, I'm sorry, it's just so mad. I'm listening, I'm listening. ' Magda shook her head, disbelieving.
Jay poured them both some more wine. 'This all goes back to when I was running for JCR President. My main opponent was a rower called Jess Edwards. Just before the election, she had an accident. Early in the morning, she was at the boathouse on her own. She hit her head on the jetty and fell in the water and drowned. It was an accident, pure and simple. There was an inquest, accidental death. It never occurred to me that anyone would think anything different.' Jay rubbed her forehead with her fingertips. 'What I never knew at the time was that Corinna saw someone in the meadow around the time Jess died. In the dark and the morning mist, she thought it was me.' She gave a dry laugh that was more like a cough. 'She thought I'd killed Jess Edwards so I would get to be JCR President.'
Magda's face was screwed up in an expression of bewildered incredulity. 'She thought you're the kind of person who could kill somebody? And for something so pathetic?'
'That's the hard part to believe. That it was so easy for her to think so badly of me.' Jay bit her lip and looked downcast.
'That's the hard part? Jay, I'm struggling to find the easy part here. You're saying my mother thought you'd killed somebody. But she didn't say anything about it? She didn't call the police? Surely . . . I mean, why would you think that and not do anything about it?'
'It's insane, isn't it? But you've got to remember this was seventeen years ago, and I'm only just hearing about it for the first time. So all I've got to go on is what I've been told. Which isn't much. I don't know why she didn't go to the police, but what she did instead was cut me out of her life. And by extension, your life.'
'I can't believe I'm hearing this. The whole thing is completely mad. It's like a parallel universe. You say this is the first you've heard about this. Who told you? Did Corinna accuse you? Or what?'
Jay shook her head wearily. 'No. I wish she had. To tell you the truth, I wish she'd gone to the police.' She spoke with a vehemence it would be hard to doubt. 'Then this could all have been cleared up years ago. Whoever she saw, it wasn't me. She punished me for a crime I didn't commit.'
'So if it wasn't Corinna, who did tell you?'
'I had a phone call today from someone I used to know. This old friend knows a psychiatrist called Charlie Flint.'
'Charlie Flint? She was at my mother's house last Saturday. Remember? I told you about her. She's a dyke, she was really kind to me.'
Jay gave a mirthless
smile. It took all the warmth from her face, turning it into a dangerous, sardonic mask. 'Exactly. She was really kind to you because she's the person your mother has asked to investigate me.'
Magda clamped her hands to the side of her head and pressed her fingers into her scalp. 'This just gets worse. You're saying Charlie was kind to me because she's spying on us?'
'Not us. Me. According to my source, your mother wants to split us up. So she's set Charlie the task of digging into my past and proving I'm a serial killer. So when she reveals the awful truth, you'll run a mile.'
Magda laughed, an off-kilter sound that had nothing to do with joy. 'So who the fuck are you supposed to have killed? Apart from this rower?'
Jay ticked them off on her fingers. 'First, Jess. Then Kathy. My former business partner. I told you about that.'
'The climbing accident? But you had no choice. That wasn't murder. You told me, the judge said you did the only thing you could to save yourself. No way was it murder.'
'I know. But Charlie Flint spent the weekend on Skye, apparently trying to prove otherwise.' Jay drank some wine and shuddered. 'It's horrible, the idea that I could kill Kathy deliberately. She was my friend, for God's sake. I know we didn't always see eye to eye in business, but you don't throw someone off a bloody mountain for that.' She made a derisive sound. 'Besides, it's not exactly a reliable way of killing someone. People sometimes live to tell the tale when they come off a mountain. If I was the killing kind, I'd like to think I've got the brains to pick a better way of doing it.' She rubbed her eyes with one hand, as if brushing a tear away. 'Kathy. Unbelievable.'
'That's horrible,' Magda said, reaching out for Jay's free hand and squeezing it tight.
'And then there's Ulf Ingemarsson,' Jay said. 'At least he was actually murdered. Though not by me, obviously.'
'Who's that? I've never heard of him. Or her.'
'Ulf Ingemarsson was a Swedish programmer who had an idea very similar to 24/7. Back before we launched, we talked to him about licensing the software he was developing. It would have worked well with what we had in mind. But we couldn't agree terms. A bit later, he was murdered in the course of a burglary in the Spanish villa where he was on holiday. That's what the Spanish police say.' As anger seeped into her voice, Jay's narrative gained momentum. 'They couldn't pinpoint the exact day he died, but my diary was crammed with appointments all that week. Like I said, this was back before we launched and I was desperately trying to get all my ducks in a row. I didn't have time to nip off to some mountain village in Spain and knock off the so-called opposition. Who wasn't actually opposition because he didn't have the business nous or the travel contacts to make it work.' Jay threw up her hands in exasperation.