He was nothing to her.
Well, all that would change.
He let Peggy talk – the point of the exercise was to establish Peggy’s trust in him, after all, and not Bethan’s – but it was very hard to pay her any kind of attention, and he had to work to stay civil and focused as she slurped her tea and breathed in her laboured, noisy way, whinging on about the failure to track down Melissa, as though this was Chris’s fault somehow. He had no sympathy. If Peggy hadn’t wanted a runaway child-abandoner for a daughter she ought to have raised her better.
For his part, he rifled through the forms he’d taken from the post office and put in the folder under his arm, tutting that he’d forgotten the right one, careful to make sure that Peggy only saw the official printing in the briefest of snatches. Of course Peggy didn’t look, not really. That was the wonderful thing about the power of authority.
He was terribly sorry, he explained. He needed to complete the right form. He would have to come back and talk to both of them some other time, and with Bethan alone at some point, and in any case, he could see that he was interrupting their dinner. Could he have their phone number? He wrote it down in his folder as she read it out, trying to control his triumphant tremor.
And then, because he couldn’t bear to leave without seeing Bethan again, even though she had so wholly disrespected him, he asked to use the toilet and was directed up the stairs.
The stairs creaked beneath him, the cheap carpet worn and frayed with countless steps. There were three doors at the top of the landing, as he’d been told – one lying open at the end, which was the bathroom, one on his right, door closed, with a little novelty sign saying, ‘GONE CRAZY – BACK SOON!’
On his left, the door was open, and Bethan Avery lay upon her belly on her pink bed, while walls of posters of gleaming-toothed young men surrounded her on all sides, like an admiring audience.
The air left his body in a low whoosh.
She was poring over a textbook lying open before her, her legs raised up and crossed at the ankles, a pair of headphones against her ears, holding back the dark tide of her hair. She was oblivious to his presence, and he could hear some kind of distant tinny sound, obviously the music, being piped into her head while she chewed the end of a ragged pen.
And then, as though some sixth sense had prompted her, she glanced up.
‘Hi,’ she said, though the word had more of the character of a question, and she did not smile.
‘I was . . . sorry, I was looking for the bathroom . . .’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Straight ahead of you,’ and pointed towards the end of the landing with the pen.
‘Thanks.’
He was rewarded with an equally brisk smile that vanished as soon as her head dropped once more to her book. He had been dismissed.
He was trembling as he shut the thin door behind himself. He splashed his face with cold water and rubbed it dry on one of Peggy’s foofy little pink guest towels.
Scraping his hands through the ridiculous haircut, he imagined going into her room, seizing her about her mouth, straddling her back, teaching her a good hard lesson while that fat sow waited downstairs, oblivious . . .
No, no. He was here on a mission. A time was coming when he would get to see all of Bethan whenever he wanted; it would be stupid to spoil everything now. He was the hunter, the stalker, the wily one. He passed by her door again, pleased that he managed not to steal another glance at her, aware only of Bethan as warm periphery, of the tiny beat coming out of her headphones. He managed a friendly but professional smile at Peggy, a few parting words, and then he was outside and letting himself back into his car. He was shaking, shaking with terror and desire and fury and elation at his success.
Fumbling to fit the keys in the ignition, teeth gritted, he replayed her again and again in his mind. He had been mistaken about her, he realized, and she was not the imploring waif he remembered shedding tears on the Fens. She was cheeky sometimes, and distant, and would be in need of some correction if she was to be his dream girl again.
Who did she think she was, treating him that way?
He sighed. It was hardly her fault, he supposed, considering how she’d been brought up by that pig in a dress, but it made a difference to how he would have to deal with her. He would have to put the fear of God into her. He would have to . . .
And it came to him, whole and of a piece. The Grove, the girl, and what he would tell her. As he played it in his mind, he could feel himself believing it.
He was a rich man, a powerful man, and he was in a club that exchanged young girls amongst themselves. He had kidnapped her and was supposed to pass her on, but he had fallen in love with her, and he was going to keep her.
But these others, oh, they were rich and powerful too. If one let the side down, they would all be in trouble, so they would do all they could to punish both her and him if they caught them. So she would not be able to leave him, he would tell her, because they would kill her loved ones – her granny, and that friend of hers, The Gnat.
They had done the same to Melissa, after all.
That was it. He would tell her that they had killed Melissa – beautiful Melissa, who had run off to London to be a model, then given birth to her and vanished, never to be seen again. After all, neither Bethan nor Peggy had any real idea of what had become of Melissa – only suspicions.
And this shadowy cabal; they’d ordered him – well, not ordered him, because he was rich and powerful, nobody ordered him around – but strongly suggested that they pick up her daughter too. And he couldn’t say no, because they would ruin him, but now here she was and unless she helped him conceal her then . . .
His shame at his reception was going out, like a fast tide. That was it. That was the answer. And perhaps he would tell her the truth eventually, one day, when they were both far away and he was sure she knew who really held the whip hand over her.
When the car started, he felt much, much better. He was already glad – so very glad – that he had come. Everything was falling into place.
He didn’t get Bethan for Christmas, or see in the New Year with her. He arrived at the Grove the next Friday afternoon, 19 December, and with a sinking heart recognized the glossy 4x4 in the drive, its front tyres crushing the lawn, and the cheerful bellow of Young Mr Broeder. Phase Two, it seemed, would have to wait.
Young Mr Broeder (or Caspar, as he insisted upon being called) would be staying for a long weekend, with two Hooray Henrys he rowed with and an icy posh self-assured blonde called Julietta who Chris detested on sight. He threw out their champagne and Cognac bottles and their empty trays of takeaway, listened to them yowl and chatter to one another in the house while he busied himself in the grounds, their ghetto blaster filling the cold winter air with meaningless pounding noise that they never seemed to tire of. Dubstep, they called it. Apparently Young Mr Broeder had composed it, out of a selection of dustbin lids banging together from the sounds of things. What the fuck did they teach them at university, anyway?
When Christmas Eve rolled around and they finally buggered off, it was too late to move to Phase Two. Christmas came and went, and then New Year, and he sulked at the inherent unfairness of his life. He knew social workers had this time off, so despite endless and furious thinking, he could come up with no reason to contact the Averys, and stalking Bethan was too dangerous.
It had been the longest he had gone without seeing her since that day he had first laid eyes on her, and the absence was killing him. First thing Monday morning, he was calling that number of Peggy’s.
He had, when he started, no clear idea of what he intended, other than to get close to her and wait for an opportunity to suggest itself. He had half-formed the conviction that she should go willingly with him – which was not to say, fully informed, that would be a little too ambitious – but there could be no question of trying to force her into the car or using violence against her, at least anywhere where he might be seen. Some ruse would have to be devi
sed.
But the cold lonely Christmas had hardened his dreams into plans, and the closer he came to realizing them, the more he had to bleakly consider the danger they put himself and Bethan in. Especially him. Unfair as it was, they wouldn’t be sending her to prison.
On the other hand, nobody but Old Mr Broeder knew about the hidden cellar, and good luck if they wanted to get any sense out of him. When the hue and cry went out, as it almost certainly would, the police had to be in a position to search the house and find nothing.
If they even got this far. He had a plan for that too, now he thought about it.
He used up the soundproofing material he’d purchased, and bought more just in case, driving for miles so as not to arouse suspicion, being constantly jostled by a post-holiday crowd of shoppers. He queued patiently in Marks & Spencer in St Albans with his lacy bras and panties, his cotton nightdresses in the basket. He surveyed the other women in the queue around him – not one of them was a patch on his girl, he thought with quiet satisfaction. His glee seemed to fill him up, threaten to spill over. His girl.
He bought ready meals and cans of soup and individual pots of yogurts. He pondered whether to buy games, or books, or chocolates, before deciding that he would let her earn them first. The thought made him smile.
In the final load of soundproofing and rope he purchased from the building supplies store in Stevenage, he also threw a ball-peen hammer into the cart.
In the car, in the here and now, Chris tried to ease out his tensed, cramped shoulders, rolling them in their sockets, feeling his wiry muscles sing and stretch.
Nothing from the police station still.
All right. Ten more minutes.
If nothing happened and she didn’t come out, he was heading back to the Grove.
To Katie.
26
I rested my weary chin on my hand.
Through the high barred windows the snow was falling, the first snow of winter, whirling past and down in huge, diaphanous pieces. It had been snowing for a while, doubtless the ground outside was now soft and white. I wouldn’t have known, I’d been sat in a cheap plastic chair for the last two hours, being mercilessly grilled like some kind of criminal.
I suppose, technically, I was some kind of criminal.
Martin stood up and offered to get me a coffee, and I nodded assent. The policeman sat opposite us leered unpleasantly.
Also with us, finally, was the legendary Detective Superintendent O’Neill, who was running the investigation, though at the moment he was largely (very large – he must be at least 6 foot 5) silent, leaning against the desk, regarding me with a curiosity that was not quite hostile, not yet, but was far from friendly, the vast surface of his forehead wrinkling at me. The reflection of myself I saw in him merited no better response. What kind of selfish nutcase, who could be able to finger a rapist and murderer of young girls, uses pitiful ruses like letters and fugue states to call attention to herself first?
I shifted uncomfortably. I had no answer for this. I had no answers at all, until somebody finally hit on the right question.
I had been astonished by the amount of personnel involved. Various people, most of whom were police officers, had come in at junctures throughout the day, wanting to speak to O’Neill about some aspect of the case, and drawing him outside the room for circumspect conversations. At one point the woman detective who had come to my house appeared. I had smiled at her. She did not smile back.
Greta was the one standing next to O’Neill now.
And as for Greta . . . well, the less said the better.
‘I am astonished at you, Martin. Abusing a vulnerable woman like this!’
Her complexion was marbled with red and white. She was really very, very angry.
‘I’m not vulnerable.’
She threw me a look, and I met it with steel.
‘I am not vulnerable. I don’t know if any of this is true or not. I literally don’t remember. But while my memory might not be up to much, there’s nothing wrong with my intelligence. Or my will.’
‘Margot.’ She sighed before she could stop herself. ‘Only last night you were raving . . .’
‘Raving,’ I repeated crisply. ‘Thank you for that.’
She blushed, red winning over white, her mouth freezing into a tough little line. ‘I only meant . . .’
‘I know full well what you meant. What I’m telling you is that if this is real, we need to get to the bottom of it. If it’s not real, well, that’s a problem for a different day.’ I held out my arms. ‘So, if it was real, what would you suggest? Hypnosis?’
She paused, as though lost for words.
It was her first moment of silence since she’d arrived. I don’t think she’d drawn breath before now, having hotfooted it from London by taxi and resenting the imposition every step of the way. Or resenting something. Her normally pristine little red bob looked vaguely disarrayed and her language so far, though couched in terms of Martin’s irresponsibility, had come dangerously close to using some very interesting words to describe me – elusive, troubled, and I thought but couldn’t prove that she had been within a hair’s breadth of calling me ‘manipulative’ fifteen minutes ago, but pulled back just in time.
I was disappointed, as by then I was in the mood to have a proper stand-up row with her.
Insane as it sounds at such a moment, a quiet little corner of me suspected that the thing Greta so resented might be the attention Martin was paying to the crazed lunatic with the selective forgetfulness. As she pointed, shouted and slammed down her bag on the desk, I couldn’t help feeling – from her cold glaring and the way she talked over my head, as though I were some kind of sentient vegetable – that I had achieved in a week or so what months of working lunches with Martin and jokey/borderline flirty email exchanges had not.
Furthermore, I could tell that Greta was the sort of person who considered herself relentlessly professional, because she lacked the insight to distinguish her own desires and prejudices from the diktat of authority.
As a consequence, her grudges carried to her the semi-divine fiat of law, and I had no doubt that she would go to extraordinary lengths to ensure that they also carried its force.
This made her very, very dangerous, so I needed to watch my step.
I let my gaze rise to Martin’s face as he placed the coffee before me – to his tired eyes, the little creases bracketing his mouth.
Oh, Martin. You need to watch your step, too.
‘We need to start the DNA testing,’ he said, and not for the first time.
The detective raised his head, as though a bell had rung. ‘Test her against what?’
‘The blood on the nightdress,’ replied Martin. ‘I know a sample was pulled off that years ago.’
‘At the very least it wouldn’t hurt,’ I threw in, despite the fact that everybody was refusing to look at me. ‘But I’m also betting that these things take a little while to be processed.’
O’Neill dismissed this as of no consequence. ‘We’ll do it. But if Martin’s right, Katie Browne is in danger right now.’ He uncrossed his arms, crossed them again. I was left with the impression of him as a huge, impenetrable fortress, and nothing useful would issue forth out of the gates until he was quite ready. ‘I don’t pretend to understand this whole dissociative amnesia thing. I always thought the trouble with bad memories is that you can’t get rid of them, not that you could forget them all wholesale.’
I opened my mouth, to attempt to reply—
‘You can’t forget them wholesale,’ snapped Martin, and there was a sharpness, a protectiveness in his voice and, wonder of wonders, I think it was meant for me. ‘That’s the point. You live in terror of remembering them. You have to work and keep working so that they remain forgotten.’ He pointed at Greta. ‘Am I right?’
‘Martin, there are a lot of factors—’
‘Perhaps there are,’ he said, and now he was getting angry. ‘And maybe none of this is anything to do with
Margot. But as she keeps trying to tell you, that’s a question for another day. What I want to know is, what are we going to do next?’
‘What about hypnosis?’ I said. ‘We could do it now. You see it on the TV and in movies all the time . . .’
Greta exchanged a glance with O’Neill.
‘What?’ asked Martin.
‘Several things,’ said Greta. ‘Firstly, the use of hypnosis in such cases is . . . controversial. And possibly dangerous, in terms of Margot’s therapy . . .’
‘We’re not doing it for my therapy,’ I burst out. ‘We’re doing it to solve a crime and find a missing girl.’
‘Secondly,’ she continued, as though I hadn’t spoken, ‘you’d need a specialist – a psychiatrist, not a psychologist. There are medical implications.’
‘Yes, Martin said as much. Handy that we’re in Cambridge then,’ I replied, ‘as there’s bound to be one knocking around.’
‘And you’d be looking at using an injected opiate or barbiturate-induced semi-hypnotic state rather than a hypnotic trance.’
I went absolutely numb. ‘Injected?’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Martin.
Greta pushed a long strand of her bob behind her ear. ‘The risk of false memory creation is too high with ordinary hypnosis. You’d require something like sodium pentothal or some kind of benzodiazepine, which doesn’t eliminate the risk of false memory or confabulation, but makes it less likely. And I say again, though nobody wants to hear it, that there would be serious psychological risks for Margot in such a procedure. If Margot really is Bethan Avery, she will experience all the emotions that grew out of the original trauma all over again. And if she isn’t . . . all of that will be doubly true, as I have no doubt that some trauma is present – just not the one we need.’
‘You’ll have a go though anyway, won’t you, Margot?’ asked Martin.
I did not reply. I could not open my mouth.
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