As they moved off, he had heard them murmuring, their voices carried further than they would have expected by the still flat air of the Fens.
‘Sorry about your cross. But what a creep.’
‘Aw, come on, Nat. He was only being friendly.’
He searched for hours before he found the necklace, glinting at the side of the lane. He had been about to give up. It was a sign, he realized, turning the fragile links over in his hands, running his finger down the cheap thin silver cross. It was a sign that fortune was finally answering his prayers. He squeezed the broken link in the chain closed with ease. The thing was probably worth a tenner, if that. Its value was clearly sentimental.
He didn’t reach the house until nearly eleven. The gardener, Malcolm, was already packing tools away and treated him to a curious wave.
Chris returned it, with a brusque good morning, but didn’t stop for conversation. He could barely breathe, the little silver necklace tucked into his fist. He retreated up into one of the first-floor bedrooms, and when he was sure Malcolm was gone, he thrust his hand into his unzipped jeans and worked himself frantically. Twice in the ditches by the lane had failed to slake his burning desire, had only increased it. He heard her voice again – ‘I don’t suppose you’ve seen it, Mister?’ – that gentle entreaty, the way that Mister turned to Master in his memory, and it was over in seconds.
Later he turned the pages of his magazine, sprawled on the carpet, and the girls in the black and white photographs all had her face. He hung the necklace over the bedpost, so he could look at it and keep his hands free. The afternoon’s setting sun lit it into a little silver blaze, a star shining against the antique Jacobean wood.
Bethan Avery. Even her name was like music.
After all of these lonely years, these furtive gropings, there would be love at last. He could be anything she wanted. She was too young to know what she wanted, anyway, so he would be able to teach her, to mould her into whatever he desired. He imagined returning the necklace to her at some point during their special intimate times together, fastening it around her naked neck while she lifted her abundant dark hair up, and her pleased, grateful smile glowed more brightly than the silver.
He did not go to the school. That would have been madness. Instead he waited, hiding in plain sight, on pub benches and at bus stops, slowly piecing together her route home, his face hidden in newspapers as Bethan and her friend, who he took to calling The Gnat, sauntered by, too caught up in their girlish gossip even to notice him.
The Gnat left her on the corner of Church Road, and sometimes if their conversation had not quite finished, they could loaf there for hours, through the growing snow and rain, half-sat, half-leaning on the street sign, laughing at nothing, their hoods up over their heads. This both pleased and infuriated him – though it meant he spent more time with her, it also meant that some other man might see her there, as she twirled in her little grey school skirt, black cotton tights and cheap nylon coat, showing some dance move to The Gnat. Some spotty rival might appear and steal her away. When she was his girl, there would be no more exhibiting herself on street corners, that was for sure.
He didn’t have a car then – he’d been taught to drive in the Army, before he’d jumped/been pushed, though he’d never needed one – but he saw now that the time had come to get one, as surveillance was becoming impossible without it. There was nowhere to sit and wait on the rest of her route home without curtains twitching. All of this would be much easier with a car, especially now the bad weather had arrived, and sitting outdoors in it only attracted attention. Time to dip into his hoarded savings. He bought a neat but old Ford Fiesta from a taciturn man in a baseball cap on Milton Road, sold with the implicit understanding that it was going to fail its next MOT. Chris thought its sassy red colour might please her – and in any case, it suited his cover.
A plan had begun to form in his mind.
Snow fell and the freezing winds turned to ice. The Indian summer of a mere three weeks ago, when he’d first met Bethan, was little more than a memory. His hunger for her grew dangerously, explosively. He drove out to Ipswich, to Newmarket, to Norwich, picking up small, malnourished prostitutes he could pretend were her, thinking that soon, soon, he would have the real thing in his arms.
The rest of the time he spent working on the old priesthole below the main sitting room. It was filthy and full of layers of dead cobwebs – not suitable for a young girl – but he swept the flags, took measurements for a bed, a toilet, some soundproofing material. While he was sure that Bethan would come round, there was probably going to be a little girlish reluctance at first, until she understood the full force of the love and desire she had raised in him. And once she knew, how could she fail to return it? This was just a temporary measure, to stop her from running off home in a strop, he told himself. Once he was sure of her, he could move her into one of the main bedrooms. Or perhaps, considering her age and how near they were to her home, they could flee together, to the continent. Live together on the Costa del Sol, run a bar maybe. They’d serve runaway gangsters on the lam from England, who’d be unlikely to dob them in.
He lay in bed imagining scenarios where he mixed freely with these violent, dangerous men in their silk shirts and golden sovereign rings – besting them at poker, hiding their contraband from the corrupt Spanish police chief, defeating them in gun battles and being acclaimed their leader – and then returning to his adoring Bethan as she lay in bed, weeping at the thought of him almost being killed; vulnerable, tender, and entirely and utterly his.
Surely such love was worth risking everything for.
25
Chris waited, watching the police station in an agony of suspense. Bethan and her man had suddenly gathered themselves together and headed off in a hurry back to their car – a big Range Rover, a car for people with big heads, in his opinion – and he had followed them here at a discreet distance, which had been difficult considering how hot on the pedal the other man had been.
They’d parked round the back of the cop shop, then walked in through the front door.
Finally, Chris had pulled up in the car park opposite the police station – he didn’t know what they did in the offices the car park belonged to, it looked like law. In amongst the gleaming Beemers and Mercs his dusty blue Megane stood out, and he attracted jaundiced looks from the suits that walked past him. Parking in Cambridge was always hotly contested.
Well, let them try and contest it with him now. He had an illegally imported canister of Mace in the dashboard, which he kept in case any of the girls had ever required a little extra encouragement to get in the car for the first time, and he was in just the right mood to use it. After all, you couldn’t build proper relationships with all of your sweethearts at first – the world was full of nosy beggars and troublemakers, endlessly wanting to see ID or get you to sign in or run fucking criminal background checks. That was the latest thing – this is what you got for volunteering to help underprivileged kids in today’s society; no wonder the country was going to the fucking dogs – sometimes you had to admire your girl from afar before you were ready to let her into your life. Sometimes that was safest – for both of you.
On the other side of the street, people streamed in and out of the police station and students cycled by, but Bethan and that fellow she was with didn’t come out again.
Oh, Bethan. What am I going to do with you?
Well, if she was dobbing him in he was safer here than at the house, he supposed. It was hardly worth rushing back to his little Katie if they were heading that way anyway. He’d already withdrawn what was left of his savings while he was out buying Katie’s nightdress, and it was wadded in his jacket pocket. There wasn’t much money left after all these years – these girls, they bled a man dry.
On the other hand, it would do nobody any good if they got talking to Katie. He should end it decently with her. If he left now for the Grove and got it finished with, he could be on his way to the coast,
or the wilds of Scotland, with Katie tidied away and nobody any the wiser.
And now this one, his first love, who’d broken his heart. What did she think she was playing at? He’d watched the house CCTV, no one had come while he was out last night; there’d been no one while he was digging the new patch by the rhododendrons to put poor Katie in. Katie loved rhododendrons – well, he was sure she would, if he asked her. No sign of the police. No sign of anyone.
What was Bethan playing at?
He let his forehead fall on the steering wheel, ignoring the besuited tart that scowled at him through the car window.
Was she torturing him? Did she know he was following her, and she’d come here to bait him? Inside, she was probably describing a lost cat or stolen bicycle, aware of him out here, sweating, watching her.
Oh, you wicked minx.
He’d been so wrong about her. He’d had clues, early on, that there would be trouble in paradise, during Phase One. But did he listen? Did he pay attention? Did he buggery.
Phase One, as he called it in the little black notebook he kept with his stash of magazines, began on 15 December 1997. He had arrived at this date after considering various practical factors. It would be nice to have everything cleared away and spend Christmas with Bethan, after all, and see the New Year in with her.
A new start for a new year.
The Fates had smiled on the venture early – his phone call to the UK Border Agency had quickly seen the Eastern European cleaning duo removed from their weekly slot. Old Mr Broeder had charged him through the agent, Mr Merrills, with finding replacements, but it was easy enough, with Christmas coming up, to fob him off. Everyone knew Old Mr Broeder, in his Knightsbridge lair, had no interest in anything but his club and his antique collecting, and Young Mr Broeder, his grand-nephew and the ersatz heir, who was allegedly a student, had no interest in anything that wasn’t turbocharged or in skirts.
At the Grove, Chris was effectively the Master.
And there was no reason to tell Bethan any different once he got her here.
He’d bought a new outfit that made him feel awkward and clownish – baggy jeans, a hoodie, a stupidly expensive pair of what his mother would have called tennis shoes. It was what trendy liberal do-gooders wore, apparently. He had his shaggy blond hair cut into the longish style that was popular for men, just like that one out of Oasis, the group with the two Manc brothers that swore all the time. They were inexplicably popular with Bethan and The Gnat, though The Gnat had loudly declared to Bethan that she preferred Blur, who were just more of the same as far as Chris could make out. He had to remember to forgive Bethan for her immature tastes and poorly chosen friends – she was young, and had no father figure in her life to correct and guide her . . . at least not yet.
He parked up the street from the dumpy little brick maisonette she lived in, trying to control his pounding heart, his mouth dry as he walked out of the car and towards her door.
It was all about confidence. Fair heart never won fair lady, and all that. Christ, years ago, before his mother’s latest boyfriend, Derek, had made him join the Army (it had been that or dobbing him in to the coppers), he had been a past master at chatting up old people on the doorstep and getting inside their houses. If Derek the Dick hadn’t started noticing the money and stuff coming through the flat, he’d have got clean away.
The flags leading to the door were cracked and uneven but weeded, and there was a bright little planter by the front, though the flowers in it were gone, of course, their dead remains already in compost. Peggy was particular about the garden, it seemed, if not about herself.
He knew there was no mother, hence Bethan’s distress at the loss of the necklace. He had braced himself for the presence of a father, though hopefully one that would be in full-time work.
But his surveillance had proved that there was only a grotesquely fat old woman, clad day-in and day-out in the same leggings and one of three baggy tunic-like shirts. These all bore the names of holiday destinations she could never possibly have visited in big letters, as though by force of will she could persuade herself this was Barbados or Fiji or San Diego.
Most days she didn’t leave the house, but every so often his binoculars had caught her hobbling her doughy self out with her cane to the post office to collect her pension, or to the shops for cigarettes if Bethan wasn’t around to run these errands for her.
The doorbell produced no response, as his nervousness grew. Finally, he knocked loudly, twice.
‘Give us a minute!’ came back the cracked, hoarse reply, and through the dappled glass he could see Peggy coming towards him, her gait halting. He could hear her breathing even through the door. The disgusting fat pig . . .
The door opened, showing a sliver of the woman’s face.
‘Hello . . . Peggy, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’ In their folds of flesh her eyes were deep-set, bright and suspicious. ‘Can I help you?’
‘I’m Alex Penycote. From South Cambridgeshire Social Services.’
‘Yes?’
‘This is just an informal visit. Can I come in?’
‘Of course, yes, yes.’ She shuffled backwards. Her accent was different, something Northern, possibly Geordie. ‘Sorry I was a bit abrupt. Thought you were here to sell me something. Or convert me. Come in.’
And just like that, he was inside the sanctum, being led through the tiny, neat house with its smell of boiling potatoes and roasting beef pie. She hadn’t even asked him for ID.
His heart soared.
‘Is this about Melissa?’ Her voice was rasping and the breathing harsh. It was not just exertion – something was wrong with her.
‘Sorry?’ he asked.
She turned, her knuckles whitening on the cane’s head, and the suspicion was back. She knocked on the wall, just under a hanging photograph of an exquisite brunette with a wavy perm and Bethan’s fathomless black eyes – a photo that had clearly been taken by a professional. ‘Bee’s mother. My daughter. Melissa. Have you found her?’
‘Oh, sorry, no. This is just a follow-up visit to check that everything’s OK with Bethan.’
‘What d’you mean, checking on Bethan?’ she asked, her voice rising. ‘Nobody’s come for years. We’re fine here. Just the pair of us wondering where her bloody mother is, that’s all.’ She breathed in hard, her eyes narrowing. ‘Did some interfering bugger call you lot up?’
‘What? No, no, nothing like that. It’s purely routine. It’s just that since she’ll be leaving school in a year or so, and our care, we just want to manage her transition . . .’
‘She’s not leaving school.’ Peggy had dropped her anger as quickly as she had picked it up, and was once again moving into the kitchen. ‘She’s staying on. She’s bright. Aren’t you, pet?’
‘What’s that, Nanna?’
The kitchen was as small and pokey as the rest of the house, but bright and clean. A pot bubbled merrily on the stove, and the oven made a gentle humming. At the Formica table in the middle of the room sat Bethan, surrounded by books.
He could hardly breathe at the sight of her, her dark hair drawn up in a ponytail, the top button of her school blouse unfastened, the tie discarded, showing the white flash of her neck. And those dark, bottomless eyes . . .
‘Hello, Bethan,’ he said. His throat was dry. Smile at her. Do the smile.
‘Hello,’ she answered politely but distantly, her eyes moving over him once, and then back to her books.
‘Pet, why don’t you take your homework upstairs so . . .’ she gestured impatiently at him. ‘Sorry, forgotten your name.’
‘Alex. Alex Penycote.’ He hitched the smile at Bethan a little higher, aware that it was desperate, almost a rictus.
‘. . . So Alex and I can talk.’
‘About me.’ She fixed Peggy with a look. There was something Chris didn’t like in that look – cynical, knowing, older than her years. But it was also affectionate, full of shared understanding. A strong bond, in other words. Togeth
er they would have borne the burden of the missing Melissa over long years.
Bethan had no business having strong bonds she would only have to learn to break. This was a complication.
‘Aye, we’ll talk about you,’ went on Peggy with a hacking laugh. ‘But if your ears start to burn then shout down.’
Bethan shrugged and swept to her feet. ‘It was nice to meet you,’ she said to Chris, with the same throwaway civility she’d greeted him with.
And then she was gone, books in hand, her light footfall tripping up the stairs.
‘Always in such a bloody hurry, aren’t they? Cup of tea?’
It was as though a bomb was going off between his ears, a ringing silence of shock and humiliation.
She hadn’t recognized him.
He’d prepared a story to explain their meeting, was braced for her opening burst of surprise, her follow-up questions about the necklace – but nothing. Bethan had looked straight through him. As though he was some sort of stranger.
‘I said, a cup of tea?’ reiterated Peggy, her heavy brows coming down. The glint of suspicion returning.
‘Oh yes, milk and three sugars please,’ he beamed up at her, through the gut punch feeling, his sick disappointment and his growing rage.
Peggy rambled on, as she shuffled slowly around the kitchen, turning off the potatoes and the oven, boiling the kettle, carefully placing the cup before him with a shaky hand. Telling him about Melissa, who’d run away to London to be a model and had come home with more than she’d bargained for; dumping the daughter on Granny and heading off for Amsterdam and another vague modelling contract – in Chris’s opinion Melissa sounded like the sort of self-absorbed wastrel better off unfound – and how tough it had been taking on Bethan at her time of life. But she was no trouble, not really, a very good girl. Chris nodded along and smiled and let her talk and tried to calm the storm of misery at work in his heart.
She had obsessed him, taken possession of him body and soul, to the point where she was his first thought in the morning and his last one at night, and for her part she did not even recognize him.
Dear Amy Page 24