by Roberta Kray
Ten minutes later a black cab came slowly down the road. She held her breath, peering through the gloom as she tried to see the passenger in the back – could this be Masterson arriving? – but after a few yards the cab accelerated again, passed the Mini and disappeared around the corner. She released the breath in a sigh of disappointment and returned her attention to number 36. The curtains in the front were still pulled partly across, but there was a glimmer of light that must have been coming from the room beyond. After a while her gaze slid to the front garden, with its small square of easy-maintenance gravel and its huddle of bins that took up most of the available space. Suddenly her heart missed a beat as she was struck by an idea. Bins meant rubbish – and rubbish included old newspapers, papers that could have been used to provide the cut-out letters for the messages that had been sent to Sam Kendall.
‘Why not?’ she murmured. If Clare Towney had been responsible, she’d have had no real reason to dispose of the evidence elsewhere. She couldn’t have thought that anyone would connect her to the threats. Jess felt a flutter of excitement in her chest. But when had the bins last been emptied? The recycling was probably collected fortnightly and the last note had been delivered about a week ago.
Well, there was only one way to find out. All she had to do was get out of the car, walk down the road and take a look. No sooner had the thought entered her head than she realised how risky it was. What if Clare heard her rooting about outside? What if one of the neighbours saw her? The dread of being caught in the act was more than enough to make her think twice. What the hell would she say if she was discovered? There were some journalists who wouldn’t think twice about rifling through other people’s waste, but she wasn’t one of them.
She rolled through the options, trying to decide what to do next. Surely the end justified the means? If Clare had been responsible, then it would be foolish to pass up the opportunity of exposing her. The sensible thing, however, would be to wait until late, until after midnight perhaps, when there was less chance of getting caught. Yes, that would definitely be the smart thing to do.
She glanced at the clock on the dashboard. Another three and a half hours. God, she couldn’t wait that long. Now that the idea was in her head she had to follow through. And she had to do it quickly before she changed her mind again. She got out of the car, closed the door as quietly as possible and set off down the street.
49
Jess crossed the road and strolled up to number 36. Glancing sideways at the house, she lost her nerve and kept on walking. The front room was probably empty, but the curtains were still partly open. What if Clare or Stella emerged from the back and looked out of the window? It was dark now, but there was an orange glow from the street lamps. And there were still the neighbours to worry about.
She kept on going until she reached the corner, where she stopped and gazed back down the road. Her eyes quickly scanned the surrounding houses. Most of them had their curtains closed, but there was no saying who might be watching from an unlit upstairs room. She lifted her phone to her ear and went through the routine of pretending to chat again.
Jess knew that the longer she lingered, the more suspicious she would look. She put the phone in her pocket and with her heart in her mouth set off back in the direction she had come. But the closer she got to the house the more nervous she became. Come on, she urged herself, determined not to bottle it this time. Thirty seconds, that was all it would take. Maybe even less. All she had to do was reach in and …
She was almost there. Do it! You have to do it! Her mouth had gone dry and she could feel a heavy thumping in her chest. The street ahead of her was empty. She glanced over her shoulder. There was no one behind her either. A couple more steps and she was standing right outside the house again. She could see in through the gap in the curtains to the thin light coming from the back room. All she could hope was that the two of them were watching TV. Hopefully, any noise that she made would be drowned out by the sound of the television.
Jess stared at the cluster of bins. She knew that the purple one was for recycling, and that, fortunately, was the one closest to the entrance. She took another rapid look around and then stepped on to the pathway, flipped open the bin lid and peered inside. It was satisfyingly full, a sign that it hadn’t been emptied for a while. Inside, all mixed together, was a heap of papers and magazines, tin cans, plastic and glass bottles and depleted aerosols.
Tentatively she reached into the bin. The problem was in retrieving the newspapers without making too much of a racket. The first few, lying near the top, were easy, but the further she delved, the more the other stuff shifted around, the bottles clinking against each other, the noise sounding like thunderbolts to her overly sensitive ears. Convinced that she was going to get caught, her hands became slow and clumsy. A feeling of panic began to grow inside her, tightening her throat and making her heart race even faster. From somewhere far away came the sound of a car backfiring, and she almost jumped out of her skin.
For a moment, she stopped, holding her breath and listening for any signs of movement coming from the Towneys’ house. Nothing. In one last manic push, she began to rummage again, grabbing every single paper she could and adding them to the pile at her feet. Then she bent down, swept the pile into her arms and set off for the car.
Even as she was walking away, she was waiting for the shout, for the opening of a door, for the denouncement that was bound to come. Stop, thief! She hurried forward, the fear growing, the adrenalin pumping through her body. By the time she got back to the car, she was in a cold sweat. She jumped in, threw the papers on to the passenger seat, switched on the engine and took off.
By the time she was approaching Station Road, Jess had started to calm down. What was she doing? Her original plan had been to keep watch in case Masterson or someone else turned up. Well, she was hardly going to see them if she was sitting in Harry’s flat going through a pile of old newspapers. Surely the clever thing to do would be to return to Palmer Street and keep up the surveillance for the rest of the evening.
At the next opportunity she took a left and headed back. When she’d reached her destination, she drove cautiously around the block again. It wasn’t a tail she was worried about this time, but any sign that her underhand activities might have been observed. But everything was quiet in Palmer Street. She pulled into the same space she had recently vacated and had a good look around. When she was sure it was safe, she got out of the car, went around to the boot and took out her torch.
Back inside the car, Jess quickly sifted through the copies of the Sun, throwing anything that had been printed after last Friday on to the back seat, along with all the gossip and fashion magazines and editions of the local paper. Then she started flicking through what was left. Ten minutes later, she was beginning to wonder if she’d got it all wrong. She was coming up with a big fat zilch.
And then, just as her hope was ebbing away, she found it: half a page that had been torn out of the paper. That in itself wasn’t proof positive – it could have been ripped out for any number of reasons – but when she came across another page further on that had been similarly treated, she reckoned she was on to something. She felt that sudden burst of exhilaration that always came with a major breakthrough. All she had to do now was to get hold of the original version and see what headlines had been removed. If the letters matched those in the notes sent to Sam, then Clare Towney was bang to rights.
Jess had left the laptop back at the flat. If she was lucky, she might be able to find the back copies of the paper on the internet, otherwise she’d need to take a trip down to the library. But that would mean waiting until tomorrow, and she was too fired up to leave it until then. No, what she wanted to do was confront Clare right now and find out what she had to say for herself.
Before she had the chance to ponder on it and maybe change her mind, Jess got out of the car. She walked across to number 36 and rang the bell. A few seconds later the light went on in the front room.
>
‘Who is it?’ Clare said from the other side of the door.
‘It’s Jessica Vaughan.’
‘What do you want?’
‘I need to talk to you.’
‘It’s late,’ Clare said with clear irritation in her voice. ‘You’ll have to come back tomorrow.’
But now that Jess had made the decision to confront her, there was no turning back. ‘Oh, okay,’ she said. ‘Should I do that before or after I’ve been to the police?’
‘What?’
‘You’re in trouble, Clare. You can talk go to me or you can talk to the cops, but this isn’t going to go away.’
There was a short pause before Jess heard the sound of a bolt being pulled across. Clare opened the door and scowled at her. ‘What is it? What do you want?’
Jess held up the newspaper, open at the place where part of the page had been torn off. ‘Do you mind explaining this to me?’
A look of alarm passed over Clare Towney’s face, but she was quick to try and disguise it. ‘It’s a paper,’ she said. ‘So what?’
Sure that on this occasion her instincts were right, Jess took a gamble. ‘Not just any paper, though. This particular edition was cut up to create one of the notes sent to Sam Kendall. I found it in your bin.’
‘You had no right—’ Clare began, but then abruptly stopped. ‘There’s no proof that it’s ours. Anyone could have put it there. You could have planted it.’
‘That’s true. But I’m sure the police will be testing it for fingerprints. Or did you wear gloves? Still, even if you did, your mother’s prints will probably be present, which will prove that the paper came from this household. And then there’s the envelope you sent the note in. If you had to lick it to seal it, they’ll be able to retrieve your DNA.’
Clare glared at Jess and then at the paper she was holding. Suddenly her hand whipped out as if to snatch it off her. Jess smartly took a step back, waving the Sun in the air. ‘Oh, you didn’t think I’d bring the actual paper, did you? No, that one’s safely under lock and key.’ Suspecting that Clare might try to destroy the evidence, Jess had had the foresight to bring a different copy, tearing off the top of the page in a way that looked identical to the original.
Clare Towney had two choices. She could either call Jess’s bluff, tell her to go to the police and try and prove it, or she could give in gracefully. Her eyes blazed with anger for a moment, but then the light went out of them and her whole body slumped, her shoulders drooping. Defeated, she turned and walked away, leaving Jess to follow her inside and close the door behind her.
‘Mum’s in bed,’ Clare said as they crossed the front room, ‘so we’ll have to do this quietly.’
Jess, who had no intention of raising her voice, gave a brief nod. ‘Of course.’
The room at the rear of the house was small but cosy, with a couple of easy chairs, a TV and a gas fire turned on low against the chill of the evening. Clare dropped into a chair, put her elbow on the arm and sank her chin into the palm of her hand.
Jess carefully closed the door to this room too and then sat down. She rolled up the paper, placed it beside her on the chair and waited. When it became clear that Clare wasn’t about to start the conversation, she said, ‘So, do you want to tell me why you did it?’
‘Why do you think?’
Now that the time had come for at least some of the truth to be exposed, Jess felt that familiar tingle of excitement. ‘Because you wanted to stop Sam Kendall from talking.’
Clare gave a wry smile. ‘Got it in one. I heard Becky Hibbert chatting at work. She was bragging about how she and the other girls were going to be interviewed for a magazine and have their photos taken. She thought the past was something to be proud of, to show off about. She didn’t give a damn about the trouble it would cause for other people.’
‘You could have come directly to me. I’m not a monster, and I’m not in the business of causing people unnecessary suffering. If I’d have known your situation—’
‘You’re a journalist,’ Clare said bluntly. ‘And all the experiences I’ve had with journalists in the past have been bad ones. I didn’t think you’d listen to me.’
Jess gave another small nod. ‘Okay, but why choose Sam to threaten? Why not Becky or Paige?’
‘Because we … because I figured that Sam would probably be at the centre of the article. She’s the thoughtful one, isn’t she? She’s the one with the brain. So I reckoned if I could scare her off, you wouldn’t have much of a piece.’
Jess acknowledged to herself that this was probably true. Without Sam’s contribution, and the knowledge she had of Lynda’s suffering, the article would have been pretty thin. At the same time she wondered how Clare had known what type of a person Sam was. So far as she was aware, the two of them had never met. ‘And so you decided to take matters into your own hands. Well, you and Ralph Masterson. He was helping you, wasn’t he?’
Clare shook her head. ‘No, it was just me. I did it on my own.’
‘If you’re not going to be honest, there’s no point in continuing with this. I went to see Ralph, remember? He’s not the best liar in the world.’
Clare pushed back a strand of long red hair from her face, then frowned and bit down on her lip. ‘Okay,’ she said eventually. ‘But all he ever did was pick me up and drive me over to Hackney. He didn’t … I mean, I was the one who made the notes and posted them and did the damage to her car. He had nothing to do with any of that. He only agreed to help because I persuaded him it was for Mum’s sake, that she wouldn’t be able to cope if all the bad stuff started up again. It would kill her, I know it would. She wouldn’t understand what was going on.’
‘So Ralph must feel very protective towards her?’
Clare stared at her for a second. ‘I guess. They got to know each other pretty well over the years. My uncle was always in and out of prison … Well, you know what for, no point going into the details. But Mum would never turn her back on Donald, not even when he …’ Clare briefly closed her eyes and swallowed hard. It was as if she couldn’t bring herself to think about the act, never mind say the words out loud. ‘Anyway, apart from me, Donald was the only family she had. Ralph understood that, tried to help and support her, but other people …’
Jess could imagine how other people had treated her. She would have been a social pariah. ‘So why did he tell me that he had no idea whether she still lived locally?’
‘To put you off the trail, I suppose. He was worried about you making the connection between the two of us. It was a stupid lie. They’ve all been stupid lies.’
‘And was he also lying about thinking that Donald might have been innocent?’
‘Is that what he said?’
Jess gave a small shrug. ‘He said that Donald never lied to him, that he always admitted to his crimes. But not on the last occasion, not when it came to Minnie Bright.’
Clare flinched, her face twisting a little on hearing the name. ‘I suppose he doesn’t want to believe that my uncle did it. It would mean that he’d been wrong about him for all those years.’
‘Wrong?’
‘You know, that he wasn’t capable of violence.’
‘Trying to protect his own reputation, you mean?’
Clare’s brow furrowed again. ‘Not exactly. I didn’t mean it to sound like that. It’s more that … Well, he always believed that Donald wasn’t a major risk, didn’t he? He went out of his way to try and support him, to offer him some kind of friendship. If my uncle was guilty of murder, then it means that Ralph got it all wrong. Maybe that’s hard for him to face up to.’
Jess could see how Ralph Masterson might struggle to come to terms with his own lack of judgement. At the same time, she found herself wondering if the relationship between Stella and Ralph had been more than friendship. If he had deeper feelings, was it possible that he’d stuck by Donald Peck for Stella’s sake? She was tempted to ask but decided that now was not the time.
Clare bent her head
and buried her face in her hands. ‘Oh God,’ she murmured. ‘What have I done?’
Jess lowered her own eyes for a second. The room that had seemed so nice and cosy when she’d first entered was now awash with pain and turmoil. Clare Towney looked very small and vulnerable, like a child lost in an adult world. Like Minnie Bright, she had been the victim of someone else’s sins. Before Jess could start to feel too sorry for her, however, she gave herself a mental shake, refocusing her thoughts on what Clare had actually done. ‘In the notes,’ she said softly, ‘you claimed that Sam was responsible for Minnie’s death. Why was that?’
Clare slowly lifted her face. ‘Because she was, wasn’t she? All of them were.’ There was a bitter edge to her voice now. ‘They made her go into his house. They forced her. If they hadn’t done that, then—’ She stopped abruptly, pushing her fist against her mouth.
Jess didn’t fill the silence that followed. She waited patiently until Clare was ready to carry on. There was a clock on the mantelpiece and she gradually became aware of its steady rhythmic ticking. The sound seemed to fill the room, to grow ever louder. It must have been a full minute before Clare spoke again.
‘I wanted to scare her,’ she said eventually, shifting her hand away from her lips. ‘Really scare her. The way I was scared back then. No one’s ever made them pay for what they did. A slap on the wrist, that’s all they got. And none of them have ever said sorry for their part in it all.’
‘You threatened to kill her.’
‘I didn’t mean it,’ Clare said quickly. ‘I just wanted her to know how it felt to be constantly afraid, to always be waiting for the next awful thing to happen – the next brick through the window, the next set of insults, the next pile of shit pushed through the letter box.’ Her face grew tight and angry. ‘I just wanted her to feel a tiny, tiny bit of what we had to go through.’