Now it’s the regional news. As a rule, she is forbidden to watch or read the news unless expressly invited to, usually as he shows her the paper and its lack of any mention of her as evidence that his ‘associates’ have hushed up her disappearance.
But she realizes that she has caught him at a crossroads – he can’t decide whether he wants to get angry and fight with her – if you can call it a fight since he always wins – or whether he wants to give her a little longer to submit and play along, and while he thinks it over the local news keeps going, and something extraordinary happens.
‘Yesterday filming completed on a reconstruction of a decades-old mystery, the disappearance of fourteen-year-old Cambridge schoolgirl Bethan Avery, who vanished without trace in 1998. Colette Samson gives us this report.’
‘Thanks Tim, and here at Addenbrooke’s, early on Saturday morning, the hospital is replaying one of the darker scenes of its recent history.’
There is a long shot of a dark girl in an old-fashioned school uniform walking along a hospital corridor, a man shadowing her, his face vague, his hair blond.
Next to Katie, her captor has gone very still.
There is a cloying hit of stunned panic and swarming hope in Katie, and she moves her eyes away to the rug, wondering for a single mad instant whether she has let her face or body betray any of this.
Bethan Avery. That’s the name scratched on the cellar stones beneath their feet.
She waits, for one beat, two, for the blow, or for hard fingers pinching into the hollows of her shoulder; for him to become aware that she is watching this, too, and that he absolutely should not be allowing that to happen, but there is nothing.
There continues to be nothing.
‘On January fifth, 1998, the town was turned upside down by a terrible, seemingly motiveless assault on sixty-one-year-old Peggy Avery and the unexplained disappearance of Bethan Avery, her young granddaughter, who, it is believed, was lured away from her grandmother’s bedside and abducted, then presumed murdered when bloodied clothing was found on the Fens near her home.
‘However, Cambridgeshire Constabulary have confirmed they are reopening the case in light of new evidence, and are commissioning a brand-new reconstruction of the tragic events of early January 1998.’
It’s a film of the same girl from the hospital, only this time she and another girl are walking along a street of new, cheap houses, talking and laughing. They are replaced suddenly by a picture of a policeman in uniform, wearing a peaked cap that betrays him as quite high-ranking.
‘We have never given up hope of finding out what happened to Bethan, and of finding and prosecuting Peggy Avery’s murderer,’ he says. He has rheumy pale eyes and reddish skin, as though he’s been outdoors in the cold for a while. ‘And we now believe that someone out there has evidence that can help us.’
‘Is it true that there is potentially new information on this case?’
The policeman nods vigorously. ‘Yes indeed. We have been given the name Alex Penycote in connection with Bethan’s disappearance, in relation to a blond-haired, blue-eyed man. We suspect it might be an alias, but we’d be extremely interested in hearing from anyone who has met this person, or heard this name in any context, possibly from somebody representing themselves as working in health or social services. And of course, if you are Alex Penycote, we’d be delighted if you could get in touch with us so we can eliminate you from the enquiry as soon as possible.’ Katie steals a sideways glance at him through her lank, overhanging hair.
He has gone ghostly white. She does not think he is even breathing.
Now on TV it’s Mrs Lewis, who teaches English, and Classics to the posh kids who sign up for it; the one who’s got the agony column in the local paper.
What’s she doing on TV?
Katie is familiar with the column. Last year one of her exes, Joshua Barrett, and his best mate had tried writing their own stupid fake problems to the email address in the paper, but Miss had never published any of them. It was like she knew.
‘Yes, my name is Margot Lewis and I edit the advice column for the Cambridge Examiner. I’m just here to say to anyone out there watching who may know something about what happened to Bethan – you don’t have to be afraid.’
Katie thinks that if anyone looks afraid it’s Mrs Lewis – her hair is slightly skew-whiff and her eyes are huge.
‘I’m waiting to hear from you again. You can come forward and you will be protected from whoever it is you think is looking for you. If you don’t want to talk to the police, then you don’t have to, there’s a victim support number you can call, which is going out with this report, or, if you prefer, you can use the anonymous Crimestoppers number. Even though it was such a long time ago, we all desperately need to hear from you again, before anyone else gets hurt.’
‘Thanks, Margot, and that number is at the bottom of the screen. Back to you, Tim, in the studio . . .’
Katie has forgotten to breathe, forgotten all caution, and the next thing she knows his hands are around her throat and he’s shaking her like a rag doll as she yelps in terror.
‘Is this you? Did you talk to someone? Did you? Did you?’
His eyes are tiny blue marbles of madness. His face seems to be all yellowing gritted teeth. Her hands flutter like birds, trying helplessly to push him away, push him off as she gasps for air, as everything goes grey. It’s like someone is turning the sound down and it hurts, it hurts, then finally he releases her and she falls backwards on to the couch, and they’re both wheezing with effort into the silence.
She flinches again as he reaches down and pats her arm.
‘Sorry,’ he gasps, but it is with the same distracted air as her own reply earlier. He is not thinking about her at all. ‘Sorry.’
Katie does not dare move.
He has switched off the television with the remote and is staring ahead of himself, his bottom lip moving, trembling a little. She has no idea what it means, except that . . .
‘12/1/1998 BETHAN AVERY’
Jesus, she realizes, they think Bethan Avery is alive. She must have written to Mrs Lewis’s column, that’s why she was on TV.
But what did that mean for Katie?
‘Sorry,’ he mumbles again.
He is on his feet and hauling her up, barely looking at her, and though faint and fighting still to fill her lungs, she gets up quickly, keen not to provoke him. He is pushing back the rug with his foot, lifting up one corner, and the trapdoor is there.
There is a second, perhaps two, as he bends down to lift it up by its heavy ring and swing it open, during which the candlestick on the right edge of the mantelpiece seems almost to wink at her over his bowed, balding head. She is perhaps ten feet from it. She could never reach it in time, particularly while he has hold of her arm.
You couldn’t reach it this time, you mean.
Then the moment is past and she is being pushed ahead of him down the narrow steps that yawn before her and thrust through the open doorway of her cell. The stone is cold beneath her feet, the darkness absolute as the door shuts behind her, and yet she cannot be sorry.
He did not touch her – and he does not. It is the first time since her arrival that he has left her alone, and something within her tentatively resets, is allowed to breathe, to think, to cautiously inhabit her own skin.
Once again, she wrestles with the dangerous illusions of hope, while she lies wrapped in her blanket in the dark. Above she can hear his footfalls moving relentlessly up and down the ceiling. He is pacing, and it goes on for a long time.
He feeds her late, much later than usual, providing her with her usual Sunday ‘treat’ of a microwaved ready meal – some kind of meat and rice; it’s impossible in the dark to judge what it’s supposed to be – a can of fizzy drink and a small sweet pastry, but he does not speak to her.
When she falls asleep at last, her head buried against her arm, she is sure she can hear something from the rooms above that may be the wind, or may be him
– a kind of low but rising howl, such as might come from a dangerous wounded animal.
14
‘Ah, Margot.’
The deputy head, Jane, had bustled up to me and was giving me a strange look, as though she had caught me napping. ‘Are you all right?’
I smiled, a little confused. ‘Yes, I’m fine. Just distracted. Is something wrong?’
‘There’s been a call for you,’ she said. ‘Someone for a Margot Lewis.’
I offered her an apologetic look. I was buried in calls, mostly going to the Cambridge Examiner. There had been a constant stream of them, true, though nothing promising by way of leads, Martin had told me.
That said, it was still very early days, and the reconstruction hadn’t yet been broadcast.
‘I’m sorry, Jane.’
She let out a half-sympathetic, half-annoyed sigh. ‘Well, he didn’t mention Bethan Avery. He said he had something of yours that you’d lost.’
I frowned. ‘I don’t think I’ve lost anything. My mind, maybe. Did he leave a number?’
She shook her tight curls. ‘No. He said he’d just call back. He wanted your home phone number but I wouldn’t give it to him. I told him to talk to you.’
Curiouser and curiouser.
‘Did he say when he’d call back?’
She shrugged expressively. ‘No idea. Told him not to bother in class time.’
‘I see. Thanks, Jane.’
‘Probably a reporter,’ she said. ‘Trying to find out what this “new evidence” is.’ She threw me a speculative look.
I sighed. ‘Well, he’s on a hiding to nothing. Even if I knew what it was, the police say I’m not to talk to people about the letters.’
It was a delicate hint, but she took it regardless.
‘By the way, Margot, can you do Biology with Year Ten in the lab? Rob is going home at two; he’s got a hospital appointment.’
I nodded. I didn’t have a choice.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘See you later.’
‘Bye,’ I said, lost in thought. Whoever this mystery caller was, it wasn’t Martin. He had my home phone number already. Could it have been Mo Khan, or the police? Surely they’d contact Martin before me.
Something I’d lost? Like what?
I searched through my bag – my wallet, my keys, my phone, all present and correct. Whoever it was had known I was a schoolteacher, but not where I lived.
Not where I lived yet, I thought with a sick little start. And he’d been after my phone number.
I’d been very naïve, I realized. I had been worried that this business might follow me to the school. I hadn’t suspected that it might also follow me home.
Whoever they were, they still hadn’t phoned back when I left for the Examiner offices. I was back in the car again, idling my engine at the painted, wrought-iron gates of the school, as I had a supermarket run to do – I loathe supermarkets, so plan each trip as comprehensively and rarely as possible, as though they were expeditions to the summit of Everest. Lily is constantly telling me to have my shopping delivered, but something about this seems, I don’t know, decadent.
I was waiting for a cream-coloured station wagon to get out of my way so I could pull out. Also idling at the kerb was a scruffy dark Megane with a single man at the wheel. He was casually dressed, but something about his demeanour seemed to suggest that he would be more at home in a uniform. His back was straight, his shoulders squared, and he stared at nothing so intently that he distracted me. When I looked back at the road the station wagon was gone and had been replaced by another car. I thumped the wheel in annoyance.
Gaggles of children swarmed out of the gates, making it even more difficult to drive out of the school. I scratched my scalp, leaning on the wheel, as someone pulled up right in front of me, boxing me in, and swung wide their car door, inches away from my front bumper. Bloody madmen – their children had to run into the middle of the road in order to get in. One, Alice Wright, turned to wave at me. I smiled in a strained fashion.
As the idiot took off I pulled out right after him, managing to cut up the guy in the Megane, who pulled away from the kerb at the same moment I did. I waited for the expected honk of rage on his horn, but it never came. I glanced in my rear-view mirror, and saw him, his face implacably calm, hidden behind large sunglasses and a baseball cap, his thick knotty arms crossed on the wheel.
I supposed I had wished the traffic upon myself. Usually I wait around at school, marking a few essays, until it thins out. But I very badly wanted to go home after shopping. I was tired, nervous, and I wanted a long bath, and then afterwards to sit in my bathrobe, drinking tea and watching Sherlock. The gridlock improved after the bridge, as the road forked. My temples were sore and I rubbed them. I must have been frowning again without noticing it.
It wasn’t until I’d actually got to the Examiner, or it might have been a little before, that it occurred to me that there was something strange about the man in the Megane. He’d parked at the gate, running his motor, for all the world just another dad come to collect his children from school, but when he’d pulled out after me there’d been nobody in the car with him.
There were no letters from Bethan, though there were a dozen messages from helpful folk who had watched the news segment, and while having no inside knowledge they definitely had opinions, which they were keen to share. Some claimed Bethan had murdered Peggy for an inheritance. Or that Bethan had had a boyfriend who murdered Peggy. Or that she had been mixed up with Satanists.
Wendy looked at me very strangely indeed.
Once I got home, and the shopping was unloaded and stowed away, I made myself a thrown together salad of halloumi and spinach and ate it at the counter in the kitchen, washing it down with a glass of Merlot. In the maroon depths of the wine I could see my own loneliness reflected back at me. It was the sort of thing that Eddy and I had always drunk together.
It was eight o’clock by now and it was dark outside. On the table were a pile of marked essays – I’d worked steadily to catch up on them – so all that was left were the letters for my column; the non-Bethan letters. I was looking forward to them. I could lose myself in them; pretend to an objectivity that I could never seem to apply to myself.
First, however, I’d have to go to the corner shop. I had bought pallet loads of supplies but forgot milk. I finished the salad and grabbed my coat, which I’d left carelessly lying on the back of one of the chairs. I took a tenner out of my purse and pocketed my keys.
It was freezing outside. I thrust my hands deep into my pockets and set off at a fast clip up the street. I could see the lights on in Marek’s shop, a friendly glow in the cold black night.
‘Hello,’ he said, as I entered the shop. A buzzer grizzled briefly, then silenced as the door shut behind me. Marek was seated at the counter – a large, roughly triangular-shaped mound of heavy-jowled middle-aged man with a perpetually mournful downturned mouth and thin, flat hair. With a little frisson of alarm I saw that the Examiner was open before him, with the feature they’d run on the filming of the reconstruction. A picture of me, looking wild-eyed and waylaid in the middle of my interview, was under his right hand.
‘Hello there,’ I nodded in response, and quickly picked up a plastic jug of milk from the shelf. ‘It’s bloody cold outside,’ I observed while he carefully poked the amount into his ancient till.
‘Hah. This is not cold,’ he said, frowning at the keys. ‘I have seen what real cold is like.’
Behind him, his teenaged son, who was stacking cigarettes along the back of the counter, rolled his eyes at his father’s back and offered me a grin.
‘Are you still off the fags?’ asked Marek.
‘Yep.’
He let out a tiny disappointed sigh.
‘I gave up three years ago, Marek. I think it’s going to be a permanent arrangement.’
Again he sighed. ‘People worry too much about being healthy,’ he said with disapproval. ‘You should enjoy life more. Buy more cigare
ttes.’
He held out his hand for my tenner, which I surrendered.
‘I see your picture was in the paper,’ he said, while he very carefully counted out my change. ‘You look good.’
‘Why thanks, Marek.’
‘Is that husband still gone?’
I felt the blush rise to my cheeks. ‘Um, yes.’
‘Not coming back?’ asked Marek, checking my change again, while his son looked pained and shrugged at me.
‘No,’ I said, and felt the truth of the words. ‘I think that’s going to be a permanent arrangement too.’
Marek rumbled out a long hmmmm that could have meant approval or disapproval. ‘A good-looking woman like you will not be single for long.’
‘I’m in no rush,’ I said, sparing him a smile, the jug of milk dangling from one hand. ‘Good night.’
‘Good night,’ he said, following me to the door to lock it for the night.
As the light went out behind me, the street seemed a more threatening place. The night was still freezing, at least to me. Whoever was it, I thought, that invented orange street lighting? It makes everyone look evil and the sky goes a horrid, lurid violet. It’s unnatural.
I was musing on this, and other, less weighty matters as I walked home along my street when I realized, with a shock, that someone was sitting in their darkened car, right next to me, as I passed it. I’d assumed that I was totally alone, and now there was a person, not three feet away, separated from me only by a car door. The engine was off, the headlamps were dark, but there was a man in there, in complete darkness, doing nothing, merely staring straight ahead, as though waiting for something. I stole a surreptitious glimpse of him as I passed by.
He turned away as soon as he saw me looking, but it was the man who’d waited outside the school, the man I’d cut up in the car. I knew him by his squared shoulders, his unmoving form. The baseball cap was still on his head. At first I’d thought he belonged in a uniform – my quick glance saw an almost military precision in his bearing, although his features were hidden in the darkness.
Dear Amy Page 13