by Liz Lawler
Geraldine nodded. ‘Isobel’s nanny. She’s just returned to take charge of her again.’
Henry Dalloway stared at the sight of his small niece hanging onto the woman, the bond between them clear. He sighed and mumbled under his breath, ‘I’m going to regret this,’ before making his way to his wife, his niece and the woman who was her nanny. After a few minutes of talking, Geraldine saw Maria clasp her hands together and raise them as if in prayer and Isobel wrap her arms around her uncle’s long legs. The wife, child and nanny got back into the Range Rover and Geraldine let out a thankful sigh.
Chapter Fifty
Emily was going home from the hospital, five days after her admission, with her few possessions and her one get well card, from Jerry Jarvis. He had offered to take her home, but she’d declined, telling him Geraldine would do it. Emily sensed he was hoping to become a bit more than a friend, but she wasn’t ready for that. She still had too much going on in her head to allow anything else into her life just yet. She hoped he’d still be her friend, and was glad the police hadn’t charged him with anything. His only crime had been to believe in her.
The nurse preparing her discharge removed the cannula from her hand and cut the name band from her wrist. She was free to go. Emily smiled goodbye and then stilled, feeling fear grip her insides. Dr Green was making his way towards her.
He was immaculately dressed and his manner was calm. ‘I caught you just in time, it would seem, to say goodbye,’ he said cordially.
Emily slowly relaxed. She held out a hand to shake his. She had something to say to him. She’d had time these last few days to think everything through. She was going to be impaired at every turn, because of what had been done to her. Every time she filled in a questionnaire she was going to have to tick the ‘yes’ box next to the question, ‘Have you been sectioned under the Mental Health Act?’ She was of sound body and mind, but she might as well have a criminal record.
‘I’m truly sorry for what you’ve been through,’ he said. ‘Perhaps when some time has passed, we can talk about it?’
He saw her instant refusal and inclined his head politely.
‘I read about your seahorses, Dr Green. I had time, lying here this week, and I learned that the seahorse is one of the deadliest predators of the sea.’
He raised his eyes in surprise. ‘But don’t forget that they are remarkable fathers.’
Emily watched him walk away and thought Dalloway was probably a remarkable father. A predator, who’d done everything in his power to save his son – and she, Sophia and Nina Barrows were all his prey.
*
Geraldine glanced around Emily’s flat and felt no concern about leaving her there alone. She had discovered that Emily was a private young woman and was possibly relishing the moment she could shut her own front door and stand in silence, escaping the madness of the world outside for the safety of her own home.
She was sitting on the sofa, her finger twirling the short strands of her hair, her mind elsewhere.
‘Was it Zoe’s?’ Geraldine asked. ‘The necklace I put round your neck? Dalloway said it was important.’
Emily shook her head. ‘No, it’s mine, but Zoe gave it to me. We both have them. Yin and Yang. Mine fits hers. Zoe loved how they interlocked with one another. She said it was her and me. They form a circle when they’re joined together. She had them inscribed.’ Geraldine came and sat next to her, taking the pendant carefully in her hand. The chain was so short it only allowed the pendant to sit just below the hollow of Emily’s throat. Her eyes fixed on the engraved word. ‘Sister,’ she said.
Emily frowned. She touched the pendant and her eyes opened wide. She reached behind her neck and undid the chain. She held it tightly and whispered, ‘It’s a different shape. Mine is the other way round.’ Then her eyes went to Geraldine. ‘It isn’t mine. It’s Zoe’s.’
Chapter Fifty-One
It had taken a week to organise the visit to HMP Parc Prison and be granted permission to see one of its inmates. Geraldine had offered to come with her, but Emily had said she’d rather do this alone. She’d driven carefully to Bridgend in Wales, keeping her mind on the road and not on the visit ahead, and had parked in the large visitors’ car park. In reception she produced her letter of invitation and her passport to prove who she was. She’d been made to stare into a camera for her photograph to be taken and was patted down by a female officer before stepping through an X-ray scanner and metal detector. She was pointed to where the lockers were and was asked to leave personal possessions in them, taking only cash and the key to her locker with her. Finally, she was sniffed by an Alsatian trained to detect drugs before being let through to the next holding bay. Mainly women and children were waiting in the large room, and she sensed the uncomfortable atmosphere. They were preparing themselves to see their incarcerated loved ones.
A door on the far side of the room was opening and an officer beckoned everyone forward. Emily followed the crowd and found herself outside staring at some of the innards of the prison, at the red-brick walls and high mesh fences, her eyes mainly fixed on the endless rolls of barbed wire at the tops of them. She saw a glimpse of blue sky before being taken into the visitors’ hall.
At each white table sitting on a red chair was a man wearing a yellow sash. Blue chairs on the opposite side of each table were waiting to be sat in.
Emily waited for most of the visitors to sit down before letting her eyes travel across the room searching for him. He was staring at her, waiting for her to find him. She walked towards his table noticing the area had been set out like a canteen with vending machines on one side and a serving hatch on the other. A prison officer was standing at each corner of the room.
She sat down with trembling legs.
‘You look well, Emily,’ he said. ‘Better than I feared.’
He seemed so out of place in the grey sweatshirt and yellow sash that Emily found it hard to look at him. Beneath the table she could see that he wore basic white trainers and grey tracksuit bottoms. An image of him in his tuxedo and bow tie on the night he came into his son’s room filled her mind and she couldn’t imagine when or if he would wear such clothes again. Out there he had been an eminent surgeon. Here, he was a prison number awaiting his sentence.
Emily opened the collar of her blouse and pulled free the two chains to show the two pendants she was wearing. Geraldine had found the other one when she searched the same drawer in which she had found the first necklace. In a drawer in his bathroom, she had taken Zoe’s pendant without realising what she had discovered. She was only glad Geraldine had questioned her about it. The horror of discovering it alone, maybe while she was in bed that night, would have been even more distressing. She would have been alone knowing it was Zoe’s.
‘I knew the minute I saw you in that bed who you were. It was like looking at her. I’m so glad you have it,’ he said. ‘That you can finally know. I think I must have kept it for that reason.’
Her mouth trembled as she asked, ‘Have you had it since she went missing?’
He nodded. ‘I tried to make you stop looking for her.’
‘How?’ she asked, aghast. ‘How could you possibly do that? By taking my mind off her? By making me think I was mad?’
‘By writing you a letter,’ he said quietly.
Her eyes rounded in astonishment. ‘It was you. You.’ She stared at him in shock. ‘You were in my flat?’
He gave her a moment to let it sink in. ‘I had her key. I had her mobile. Her messages showing me how she wrote. She always referred to you as Sis.’
‘How could you?’ she asked bitterly. ‘How could you let me think for one minute that she was still alive?’
He glanced away and Emily banged the table. ‘Don’t look away from me. You don’t have that right.’
He looked back at her and she saw sorrow in his eyes. ‘I did it to give you some peace. I saw your room—’
‘You touched her things!’ Emily exclaimed, knowing it to be true.
He had moved things about to make it seem as if Zoe had searched those bags.
‘I had to convince you she’d been there. I’d hoped it would let you move on. There was no other agenda, Emily.’
She stared at him and felt no pity. He had destroyed her life. Let her be locked away. Knowing all along that her sister was dead. She wanted none of his paltry excuses.
‘How did she die?’
He blinked and looked away.
‘Aren’t you going to answer me?’
She saw his chest heave as he silently shook his head.
She had only one more question to ask him.
‘Where is she?’
He wiped a hand across his eyes and she saw they were wet. He cleared his throat.
‘There’s a stone wall on my property which stretches halfway down the hill. There’s a row of trees beside it. You’ll see a leafless, smaller tree among them – it stopped growing after . . . She’s there. That’s where you’ll find her.’
*
On a day that was predicted to be warm the sun refused to come out and Phil Marsh, the senior crime scene investigator, pulled on a jumper before putting his arms back into his Tyvek suit and zipping it up. He felt a shiver run down his back and hoped he wasn’t coming down with summer flu. He slung a chain around a root, one which was proving too stubborn to dig out with a spade and fork. He hooked the chain to the small orange digger and gave a thumbs-up to the driver. The satisfying snap was heard as it broke free, before it was dragged away.
The tree they were digging beneath was dying. The wood under the bark was brown and dry. So far they had cleared an area a foot deep and three metres square. He picked up the spade and fork and handed them to one of his colleagues as he took a breath to reassess the site and heard the sound of a dog barking. He stared up the hill and saw a police dog handler making her way down it, accompanied by an Alsatian on a leash. It was a cadaver dog, trained to smell corpses buried deep beneath the ground.
He didn’t touch the dog. He stepped out of the way as its handler took the leash off. ‘Go, Digby,’ she said. He pranced back and forth across the place where they were digging. He circled the area, his nose sniffing the air and the ground and then coming into its centre, before lying down.
The dog handler grinned proudly. ‘Good boy.’ She glanced at Phil. ‘Looks like you’re in the right spot.’
Phil went over to pat the dog, but Digby was back up sniffing the air some more, moving away from the place they had dug. He scampered further down the hill, moving in between the trees and the drystone wall. He disappeared from sight and then they heard his loud bark. Following the trail, Phil went to find him. Behind a tree Digby lay on top of a mound of earth. The soil looked freshly dug. Slowly Phil trundled back up the slope, his expression telling the rest of the white-suited team their situation was about to change. He needed to bring half of them down to that mound of earth. They had two graves to dig now.
Twenty minutes into digging at the second site, the team unearthed the remains of a body from a shallow grave. Geraldine and Emily stood up from the bench they were sitting on as the senior crime investigator told them the news. Geraldine bade Emily stay at the top of the hill while she made her way with Phil to inspect the find. She was not excluding her, believing she had the right to be there, to know everything that was going on, but she wanted to protect Emily from unnecessary pain until she was sure of the findings. At a glance she knew it was not Zoe Jacobs. The small body was too short, and she suspected they had just found the remains of Sophia Trendafilova. She returned to Emily and sat with her and stared at the stunning views befoe them, happy to sit there quietly and wait.
‘How did he know her? That’s what I keep asking myself. How did she end up here? Did he bring her here? Secretly? Already dead? Or did something happen here?’
Geraldine glanced at her to show she was listening.
‘Walter said my face looked strange. Smudgy. And at the time I thought it was because he was ill, his blood pressure causing his vision to blur. Isobel told me her daddy said I was asleep. She didn’t believe him. And she didn’t like it. Do you think it’s possible his children met Zoe? That they thought I was her?’ Emily stared at the green landscape and rolling hills. Geraldine heard the pain in her voice as she continued. ‘I’ve asked myself the same question a hundred times. Was it an accident? Intentional? Did she suffer? Dalloway’s the only one who knows the answer. You know I have to go back and see him. I have to find out how she died.’
Geraldine hoped she’d get answers. The next few months were going to be long and hard, waiting for trial dates to be set. All four had been charged and denied bail. Meredith and Jemma were considered flight risks. Death resulting from assisting in an illegal operation was no lightweight crime. Jemma, Meredith and Dalloway had also been charged with conspiracy to murder, as it was believed from further interviews with Shelly that all three knew about the action Shelly was to take against Nina Barrows. It seemed that Shelly now had a jaundiced view of her uncle. Geraldine hoped Emily would stay strong. As the key witness, the prosecutors would rely on her.
Phil was halfway up the hill before Geraldine heard her name being called. She could tell by the slow wave of his hand raised in the air that they had found something. Preparing herself, she slowly walked towards him and then past him to stare down into the hole. They had uncovered a shape wrapped in a white sheet. The length suggested the shape was likely to be Zoe’s body. She nodded to the senior crime scene investigator. ‘Just the top of the head if possible,’ and watched as another officer held a camera recording the whole thing as his boss leaned carefully over the grave and loosened a part of the cloth. She saw him pick out what looked like dead flowers and among them take up a small square of white card. He flipped it over and held it out for Geraldine to see. Two smiling faces stared back at her from a photo booth shot. They could have been twins. She stared back into the hole as Phil moved the cloth a little more and saw black hair.
She was startled when she heard Emily speak. ‘Is it her?’ she asked softly.
Geraldine turned to her. ‘We think so.’
Tears rolled down Emily’s cheeks. ‘To think she has been here all this time. I climbed into a mortuary fridge to find her, and I wish I had. To have at least held her in my arms.’
Geraldine watched as Emily undid the chains from around her neck. Zoe’s and her own. With trembling fingers she pressed the two pendants together to form a circle. Before Geraldine could stop her, she stepped forward and dropped them into the hole. They landed on the sheet and despite the fall they stayed together.
‘I’m sorry for leaving you,’ Emily softly called. ‘But I’m with you now.’
Geraldine held Emily’s hand as they stood side by side at her sister’s grave.
*
‘She died from a genetic heart condition.’
He stared at her in confusion.
‘Sophia,’ she stated. ‘The post mortem revealed that to be the cause of death. Her mother died suddenly at the age of twenty-nine. There had been no cause of death given. Her father died of a heart attack three years ago. The pathologist found an abnormal thickening of the walls of her heart, which can result in sudden death at any age.’ She looked at him sadly. ‘You didn’t kill her.’
‘So you found her?’ he said, clasping his hands, and she noticed the tremor in the long, tapered fingers. To someone who had healed so many, she wondered if he now viewed them as useless tools.
‘How did Zoe die?’ she asked.
If it was possible, Dalloway had aged a decade in the days since she had last seen him. In less than a week she had been granted permission to visit a second time. She knew that it was thanks to Geraldine. Special circumstances, Geraldine had said, when she told Emily it was arranged.
‘Did you take her liver to give to Walter?’
He stared at her, horrified. ‘Is that what you think?’
‘Her post mortem is today, so I’ll know soon enough, but
I want you to tell me how she died. I want to hear it from you.’
He shut his eyes and gave a small shake of his head. Then he looked at her. ‘I’ll tell you the truth. Nothing but the truth. It was an accident.’
Chapter Fifty-Two
Zoe
The sun was warm on her face and she felt energised as she walked barefoot along the pathway. She had wanted to be out of the ward before Emily heard she was there, knowing that her sister would be angry with her for ending up at her workplace and embarrassing her in front of her work colleagues. Emily was a professional and took her work very seriously. Her younger sister’s behaviour would be frowned upon.
Zoe wished sometimes that Emily would lighten up and let her hair down and not take things quite so seriously. Last night had only been a drunken night out to forget about all her worries, and she hadn’t been arrested or got into a fight like some girls she knew. She had just drunk too much. Her loans were adding up and she could see no way of paying them off. She had failed her exams and doubted her ability to pass them next time. Those were reasons enough for anyone to go out and let off steam. And at the core of her worries was the real reason she had gone out and behaved so recklessly. She no longer wanted to be a nurse. She was not like Emily. She didn’t have her drive or stamina. She tired more easily and wanted a nice job, maybe in a beauty salon or something like that, where she didn’t have to worry all the time about making a mistake. If you painted someone’s nails badly, you could wipe it off and start again. It was not the same pressure as dealing with sick people. She worried every time she touched a sick person that she was going to do it wrong and hurt them. And now she worried how she was going to tell Emily.
She had been lovely to her on the phone last night and told her that things would look better today and she was right, because Zoe had made her decision. She was going to hand in her notice and suspend her training.
Emily would have to accept that she had made up her mind, and if she could persuade her to help out just one last time with these money worries, she would pay her back double, because she would be earning a better wage. Then these worries would be nothing more than bad memories.