Dragging the table back, Toby helps Martha and Liv from their seats, guiding them together, woozy and stumbling, up into the winter sunlight above.
The police swoop in in a flurry of noise and activity, arriving on the scene as Toby sits Martha on the wooden bench beside the houseboat. His arm is around her shoulders, his other hand pressing the handkerchief to her neck. ‘It’s just a surface wound,’ he reassures her, pulling her closer, kissing the top of her head as though it’s the most natural thing in the world.
Liv stands to Martha’s side, watching the activity at the houseboat, a steady stream of tears coursing down her face. She’s in shock; they’re all in shock. Five minutes ago they believed they had found Juliet, that at last they might put her body to rest. But it isn’t Juliet under that patio in the Garden of Reflection, is it? It’s David Crown. It’s David bloody Crown. Liv sits beside Martha now, clinging to her as though she’ll never let go. How she’s missed Liv, Martha thinks, fighting the shudder of emotion that threatens to spill out of her. Somehow, she knows that Liv is back in her life now; all that is missing is Juliet.
‘Where is she?’ Liv whispers, her words still sodden with whatever it is Katherine put in their drinks. ‘What did she do with Juliet?’
A fresh wave of anger flashes in Martha. She doesn’t have time to wait for Janet to confess in some interview room, to delay this nightmare any longer. More than anyone, Alan Sherman doesn’t have time, and, for him, Martha gathers the strength to make her voice heard.
‘Janet!’ she shouts over as Mrs Crown emerges from the boat, flanked by two uniformed officers. The woman turns to face her, her expression stony, unrepentant. Martha softens her own tone. ‘For her father’s sake, Janet – please. Where is Juliet?’
Janet Crown studies Martha for a moment, before jerking her chin back towards the houseboat. ‘She’s under the boat,’ she says simply, and then she’s led away, her neat head held high.
36. Martha
It’s getting late, and back at the apartment Toby sits at one end of the sofa, Martha at the other, takeaway curry containers spread out over the coffee table in front of them. The room feels more like home than it has for months, music playing softly from the kitchen, the London skyline glinting as far as the eye can see. Right now, Martha wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, or with anyone else, for all the money in the world.
After several hours in A&E, the doctors had patched up her hand and given her the all-clear, handing her over to Toby, who had remained with her the entire time, despite her protestations that he should head off home and get some rest. Before they’d left the canal, she had offered Liv a bed for the night, but once the medics had checked her over and she’d given her statement, her friend had been keen to get back to the twins, and the police had arranged for her to be driven home. When they’d said goodbye, Liv had assured Martha that she’d be back in a week or two for a proper reunion. A happier reunion, Martha had promised as they’d embraced at the riverside. Already, she’s been on the phone, telling Martha she arrived home safely, and they’d wept together, the realisation that it was finally over dawning on them both. It feels like the start of something; it feels as though Liv is back in her life for good.
Martha’s phone is, surprisingly, intact; in fact, it had saved her. When Katherine had knocked it out of her hand, the connection had stayed open, and Toby had heard enough to call the police before setting off at speed to find her. An hour ago, Finn had sent a text through.
Police divers have recovered the remains of a female body from the canal bed beneath the houseboat Dovedale. We’ve found her, love. We’ve found Juliet.
Martha’s reaction is strangely serene. Somehow this seems less terrible than the idea of Juliet being buried beneath the concrete and rubble of the Bridge School gardens. The canal was a place Juliet knew and loved, the towpath a well-worn route the girls took together throughout their schooldays; it was the backdrop to their teenage lives. It seems oddly fitting that this was where she had been all those years, silently waiting for them to piece it all together, to be returned. If Juliet could see how this had all turned out, she’d be proud, of that Martha is certain.
Thank you, Finn, she responds to the text message. It’s all she needs to say.
Earlier, as they cleared the scene at the houseboat, the police had found an empty bottle of sleeping tablets in Katherine Crown’s bag, so at least they know what she put in their coffee. Assessing Liv and Martha’s limited level of sedation, the doctors aren’t too worried, but Martha is under strict instructions to rest for the next twenty-four hours, especially since she was already supposed to be recovering from that knock on the head two nights earlier. Despite Toby’s nagging, she’s certain she’ll be fine in the morning, when she has arranged to meet Tom Sherman at the Sparrow Hospice, where his dad was admitted yesterday night. It turns out that Alan Sherman has recently taken a serious turn for the worse, and by the time Janet and Katherine Crown were under arrest, Tom was already on the next flight home to be at his father’s bedside, unaware of this huge breakthrough in the case of his missing sister. Of course, this is the news they’ve all been waiting for, albeit bittersweet news, and Martha prays that Alan can hang on until the morning, so that he might die knowing his beloved daughter will at last be laid to rest.
‘We did alright, didn’t we?’ Martha says now, tearing into a piece of naan bread, using it to mop up the remainder of her curry. For the first time in weeks, her appetite is raging.
‘Not bad for a jumped-up posh boy.’ Toby smiles, reminding her of her snippy earlier self.
God, she had been such an arse to him back then. ‘Or a council-flat girl who slept her way to the top?’
‘Touché,’ Toby replies, reaching out to pat her knee. It’s a warm gesture, natural and uninhibited. He passes her a bowl containing bhajis and she takes one, biting into it, glad to not be alone.
‘Glen was pretty pleased with the outcome,’ she says. She’d phoned him from her hospital cubicle, anxious that he shouldn’t hear the news of Janet Crown’s arrest from anyone else. ‘I thought he was going to break into song when I told him that Jay and Sally got the whole thing on film: you and Finn breaking down the door on the boat, the police arrest, my dripping, bloody hand. If this pilot doesn’t guarantee us a full series, I don’t know what will!’
Toby sits back, pushing his plate away, bringing his socked feet on to the sofa between them. ‘Jeez, you had me worried back there, Martha Benn,’ he says, running a hand through his uncommonly messy hair. He looks exhausted. ‘When Vicky Duke told me what had happened back in eighty-six – about David Crown’s wife abducting her like that – it all fell into place. I just knew Janet Crown was at the heart of it all.’
‘So, tell me again. She abducted Vicky Duke? Janet Crown?’
He shakes his head, as though still making sense of it all. ‘Yes. Vicky said she had been about to retract her allegation about David assaulting her – it was a complete lie – the very next day. But on her way home from school that night Mrs Crown pulled up at the roadside and bundled her into the boot of her car. She drove her out to a secluded spot in the woods and held a knife to her throat, telling her she’d kill her and the rest of her family if she didn’t drop the charge. She left her there, in the woods, to walk the five miles home alone in the dark. Vicky was so scared, she never breathed a word of it.’
‘Wow, Janet Crown really is something else, isn’t she? Pretending to have cancer, for God’s sake! And sending herself postcards for all those years. According to Katherine, her mother went abroad with a social group every May, and the postcards would always arrive shortly after. I think Katherine knew in her heart that her dad wasn’t coming home, but her mother kept that seed of doubt alive just enough to keep her on-side.’
‘What will happen to Katherine?’ he asks.
Martha sighs heavily. ‘Finn says she’ll be charged with assault and wasting police time, maybe even identity theft. But she won’t get long, a
nd with any luck she’ll start to get the kind of help she really needs. You can’t begin to think what it does to a person, carrying a secret like that for so many years. Imagine knowing your own mother is a murderer?’
‘So Janet killed Juliet – we know that much – and then we can only assume that she did away with David when he confronted her about it? She as good as admitted it, didn’t she?’
Martha brings her legs up too, stretching them along the sofa so that her feet rest against Toby. ‘She can’t have known the cement was due to be delivered to the school that week. That was one hell of a lucky break she had. Her husband virtually prepared his own grave.’
Toby reaches for his notebook, scribbling down a few thoughts, a small crease forming between his brows. ‘But it blows the theory that David killed Tilly Jones back in 1970, doesn’t it? Poor bastard, dead all these years and under suspicion for two deaths he had no responsibility for whatsoever.’
‘Tilly Jones,’ Martha says. ‘Just a coincidence, I guess. Like that runaway Charlotte Bennett. Mind you, thank God she disappeared when she did. I don’t think the police would have reopened the Juliet case if she hadn’t.’ She smiles at Toby. ‘Hey, maybe Tilly Jones could be our next cold case?’
‘Slow down,’ he says. ‘Why don’t you get yourself better first?’ But still, he looks interested, and Martha knows he won’t be able to resist getting to work on it the minute this case is over.
She runs her fingers over the lines of her silver bangle, rotating it, feeling the throb of pain returning to the site of her stab wound. Thankfully, the blade had missed her tendons by a whisker, slicing cleanly through the flesh and out the other side.
‘Where did you find it?’ he asks.
‘It was in my memory box all along,’ she replies, ‘in an envelope with a load of old cards and keepsakes that I didn’t even know I had. I found all sorts of things in there – I can’t wait to show them to Liv.’ She smiles at the sight of Toby at the end of her sofa, at the warmth that radiates from the contact between her feet and his body.
‘Martha …’ he says, hesitating uncertainly.
‘You want to know why I didn’t say anything about me and David Crown? About the kiss that Katherine saw?’
Toby nods, laying a steadying hand on her foot.
‘The truth is, Toby, I barely remembered it. Back then, my life was in chaos. It’s not that I’d forgotten, exactly, but at the time I was making so many stupid mistakes – drinking, smoking, getting off with the wrong kinds of boys. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t a slapper or anything …’
He laughs.
‘I just … I just kind of lurched from one disaster to the next. My dad was a full-on alcoholic, and my mum had left home two years earlier. I didn’t have siblings, and Juliet and Liv were the closest thing I had to family. When David came along, I think he was just such a nice man that I got a bit of a crush on him. It was nothing more than a bit of mooning about, and a drunken lunge at the poor beggar. It was such a small thing – and I was so ashamed of myself – that I don’t think my mind held on to it, especially after what happened with Juliet. I guess the minute that David was under suspicion for her disappearance, it suited me to forget any positive feelings I had towards him. I think I just pushed those memories away.’ Martha suppresses a yawn, stretching her arms high, pressing her toes against Toby’s side.
‘You’re tired,’ he says. ‘Maybe I should go?’ But he doesn’t move, doesn’t go to stand up.
‘You don’t have to,’ Martha replies. ‘You could stay.’
Their eyes are locked again, in that way that sends a tremor through her, and she dares herself not to look away. Toby takes a deep breath.
‘So, you and my dad,’ he says. ‘Don’t you think we should talk about it?’
They are apart now, the moment of intimacy lost, the atmosphere of ease between them strained, and Martha feels off balance. ‘So what do you want to talk about?’
Toby stalls for a moment, shifts uncomfortably in his seat. ‘Well, he’s been phoning you, hasn’t he? My dad.’
Martha puts a hand to her mouth, stifles a smile. ‘Dylan? You think Dylan’s been phoning me?’
‘Well, yes. All those calls you’ve been rejecting – from “D” – I mean, you’ve been so cagey about it, and you wouldn’t tell me when I asked who it was. I thought, short of it being “D” for David Crown, why else would you keep it from me?’
Martha waves for him to stop. ‘Oh, Toby, you’ve got it all wrong. Your dad and me – it was a huge mistake. You know that, and it was all done with years ago. He wasn’t really interested in me – I needed a distraction from my marriage break-up, and he needed a distraction from the boardroom. It was something and nothing. Anyway, he was far too old for me. “D” doesn’t stand for Dylan, I promise.’ She holds out her good hand, reaching for his.
‘Then what does it stand for?’
It surprises Martha when she tells him the truth without hesitation. ‘D for dad. It’s my father.’
Toby’s expression shifts into one of confusion. ‘But, I thought—’
‘You thought he was dead? Well, I never said as much, but I guess it’s easier for me if people think that. I haven’t seen him for a few years because he’s been a constant problem in my life, and when he started phoning again I just didn’t know how to respond. He says he’s dying.’
‘You sound like you don’t believe him.’
She shakes her head. ‘Experience tells me not to. But you know what? This time, I think he might just be telling the truth.’
‘Will you see him?’ Toby asks.
‘I don’t know,’ she replies, and, for the first time, she thinks perhaps she might. She thinks now about that last desperate voicemail from him, begging her to make contact, telling her his time was running out. He’s not dying, she knows, not like Alan Sherman. But he is killing himself. She knows she can’t save him, but maybe she can show him some kindness at the end of his life. Right now, though, what Martha needs more than anything is to save herself. To be kind to herself. ‘Maybe I will,’ she says softly. ‘So, there you have it. It was my dad phoning, not yours.’
Toby’s fingertips brush hers, resting in the space between them. ‘I know I was only a gawky teenager when you and Dad were seeing each other,’ he says now. ‘But I always thought you were wasted on him.’ Quite naturally, he moves towards her, their fingers never breaking contact.
‘Are we about to make a huge mistake, Toby?’ she says, but already she knows she’s lost to it.
37. Hattie
In the silence of my cell, I have all the time in the world to think about the events that conspired to bring me here, and, strangely, it is some comfort to allow myself to revisit those places in my mind.
In many respects, I regret the way things have turned out, when, for the most part, I had managed it all so well, for so long. I suppose it was Katherine’s sudden desire for independence that marked the start of this certain decline, for she became so fixed on the idea of living apart that she used our secret against me. ‘If I tell people what you did, I wouldn’t have to move out. I could live here alone,’ she’d said, when my inheritance eventually came through. She was giving me a choice. ‘But if you let me have me the money and I don’t tell, you could stay here, and I could move out.’ So I gave her the money, and within six months she was gone. I never received an invitation to visit her new home, and she never returned to see me again. All those years I’d wasted on her, trying to convince her that David might come back any time soon, trying to convince her that the events surrounding that girl’s death were not as she remembered them. I suppose it’s alright for me to use the girl’s name, now that I know she’s not the whore I originally took her to be. Juliet.
There’s a surreal reality that takes hold after an event of this kind, in which all sensations are intensified, while at the same time feeling muted. That night, as the girl – Juliet – lay at my feet beside the bench at the canal, I knew I had
only a matter of minutes to deal with her disposal. Ahead of me was the path, the hedgerow at my back. The wind was gathering and a short distance away a loose sheet of blue tarpaulin flapped and swayed, threatening to break loose of the bungee cords that held it in place. Deftly, I unhooked the cords, freeing the plastic sheet, revealing nothing more than a pile of old junk beneath: a small mound of building blocks and sand, a rusty iron anchor and a broken length of guttering. I looked down at the girl, suddenly fearful that she might not really be dead at all. But the life had left her face altogether now, the colour of it grey-white in the dark of the towpath. Her limbs looked strangely dislocated, lying limply where they had fallen, the curled stack of her fingers resting against the toe of my shoe. For a few dreamlike seconds I gazed upon her, until the bubble burst, and I was overwhelmed by the sure conviction that I was being watched. From the shadows, just feet away, I heard Katherine’s voice. ‘Mummy,’ she said, and she sounded the way she did when as a child she’d tick me off for tugging her hairbrush through a knotted strand. I had no way of knowing if she’d seen me in the act of murder, but one thing was for sure: she would have to help me cover it up if I was to rely on her silence. Before us was Dovedale, the houseboat she and David were so fond of. It belonged to that hairy loner John, and beyond its drawn curtains a light glowed, throwing soft illumination over the narrow strip of ground that edged on to the bankside. Between us, Katherine and I untangled the girl’s leg from her bike and dragged the body on to the blue sheeting I’d laid out at the boundary of the water, where a shadowy gap presented itself between the houseboat and its moorings. I saw Katherine slip the girl’s bangle from her wrist and take it as her own, a swift and subtle action that I might have missed if my wits were not so alert. I pretended not to notice. Let her have it. She was always a little magpie, that one. Thought I didn’t notice her squirrelling away things from my jewellery box every chance she got.
Beautiful Liars_a gripping thriller about friendship, dark secrets and bitter betrayal Page 28