Kyle talked about his American-born sister, stuck in an expensive Colorado hospital since breaking her spine in a ski-ing accident a year ago. ‘She’d just broken up with her bastard of a husband, a big real estate guy, and wasn’t covered for most of the treatment she needed on his health plan. I’ve been trying to raise the cash she needs for co-payments, but you know how outrageous the sums are that they charge over there. I’ve had to mortgage the house, and I keep hoping we can shift her back here, but the immigration paperwork is terrible, and there are always more bills.’
‘Kyle, that’s so good of you. Looking after her like that.’
He shrugged it off. ‘Someone’s got to do it. She’s the only sister I’ve got.’
To Lynne, the next hour seemed to melt away into a buzz of pleasure with wonderful food and a man who held her gaze throughout, never once reaching for his phone. She had never been made to feel so important. She was seriously reconsidering whether to limit this to a one-night stand. She watched as Kyle joked with the waiter and deprecated his own knowledge of wine, one of many subjects he said he couldn’t pretend to master. Almost every woman that passed the table glanced at him.
With the champagne finished, they were just about to order dessert when she made the whispered suggestion. ‘Kyle, let’s forget about the crème brûlée. I want you now. Let’s go to the room.’
‘You horny little minx,’ he whispered, his hand on her bottom. They tiptoed up the narrow wooden staircase arm-in-arm. Leaning on him she made her tipsy way around the Tudor gallery, past suits of pewter armour and stern paintings of Elizabethan nobleman, and climbed the thickly carpeted steps to the honeymoon suite. In the doorway they embraced, she shamelessly caressing the sizeable bulge in the front of his trousers, her other arm around his neck. Her imagination was running riot. She could not remember ever having been so aroused. She had really fallen for this man, and literally could not wait.
Once inside the room, she took in the king-size four-poster, the mullioned windows, the chintzy curtains, and the gigantic red plastic suitcase he had presumably already brought up when checking in.
‘Ha, it looks like you’re moving in for a year,’ she said.
‘Yes, it does, doesn’t it?’ he replied. She had no idea that by morning, after he’d had his fill of her, he would squeeze her slender neck while making love to her until she had been utterly deprived of air. That he would ransack her mobile phone for information about the murder inquiry. Her lifeless body would fit snugly inside the suitcase, and after a leisurely breakfast, he would slide her into the back of his Range Rover to be disposed of at a later date.
Chapter Seventeen
Perry drove back to his own home, unable to defer the inevitable any longer. Mel wasn’t in, but had sent him a rather terse text message asking if he’d heard from their daughter. Vanessa was a law unto herself, often staying a night or two at her boyfriend’s place on the other side of Woking, or with female friends. He looked through his phone and saw that the last message from her was three days ago, on Wednesday, in reply to his request to know if she was actually going to honour them with a visit over the weekend. It simply said: Stop hassling me, ok?
He parked on the front drive, leaving room for Mel’s Audi. He let himself in, and hunted through the fridge for some food that might be ready to eat. There were some leftovers, and in the freezer a couple of ready meals. He pulled one out. Thai vegetarian, as it turned out. He was surprised that Vanessa hadn’t nabbed that one, it was just the kind of food she enjoyed. He was microwaving it when the landline rang. The caller ID identified Becky, Vanessa’s best friend. Perry decided to let it go to the answer machine rather than end up involved in the thankless task of ferrying meaningless messages between teenagers.
‘Hi Van? Where are you babe? You were going to come over this afternoon remember? Can’t get you on your mobile, nothing on Facebook or WhatsApp. Hope you’re not freezing me out because—’
He snatched up the phone. ‘Hi Becky, it’s John, Vanessa’s dad.’
‘Oh hi.’ Becky’s tone indicated she would rather undergo root canal surgery than continue the conversation with him.
‘Wasn’t she at your place two nights ago?’ he asked.
‘Supposed to be.’
‘And?’
‘She never showed. I messaged Steve, but he’s up in Scotland and she’s not with him. I’ve not seen her at college either.’
Steve was Vanessa’s boyfriend. A big outdoors type, all biceps and brooding silence, he was often camping and hiking in Scotland or Wales in all weathers. It wasn’t Vanessa’s thing at all. Perry was suddenly concerned. ‘Becky, she’s not been here for days. Her mother has been looking for her. If you see her can you ask her to ring home ASAP?’
Becky agreed, then rang off.
Perry shook his head. It was probably nothing. After all, he’d been through this before, when at fifteen Vanessa announced she was ‘divorcing’ her family and going to live in a tepee in Wales. He had only just started at Surrey Police, but using their resources to trace her phone had quickly managed to establish that Vanessa was in Brighton, not Wales. When he found her, she was indeed living in a tent, one erected inside the second floor of a historic building. She and a dozen other squatters had taken over the place and were, she told him, ‘Going to start a world revolution.’ This was when she had first illegally acquired tattoos, and according to Mel, some kind of intimate piercing. When he went to fetch her, she had grudgingly agreed to come back home, on condition that she did not have to apologise, and that her father agreed to read the manifesto that she and her friends had cooked up. He had been so relieved to find her alive that he would have agreed to anything.
He picked up a photograph of her from the sideboard, taken when she was fifteen. She was wearing a pullover, jeans and wellingtons, and sticking her tongue out at him, the photographer. She was standing, with ill-disguised boredom, on some hillside in Derbyshire during one of the many weekends away that he and Mel had tried to use to bond her back into the family. Her blonde, naturally wavy hair and her precocious curves made her look much more grown-up than the little girl he had always so adored. Evidence of her love for him, such as it was, took almost archaeological skills to unearth. One time when he had found her unexpectedly in the kitchen for breakfast with a female friend, he had ruffled her hair and said that he loved her. She had ducked away, responding with an angry: ‘Fuck off!’ Once her friend had gone, he had then had to endure a lecture about how he was ‘destroying her credibility’. So much for parental love. Vanessa’s disrespectful and dismissive tone towards both him and Mel was so ingrained and so pervasive that she barely looked up from her phone when dishing out a wounding comment. Her favourite way of noticing him was: ‘Hey John, you really are short.’ Always John, not dad, since she was fourteen. And it was true, she had half an inch on him even in bare feet. His biggest mistake, a year ago and never repeated, had been to remind her that five foot seven was not actually short for a man, merely the low end of average. Her uncontrollable laughter, which actually required her to hold onto him for stability, had cut him to the quick.
Yet, very occasionally, Perry had noticed hints of daughterly affection: a warm glance, an affectionate dig in the ribs while he was shaving with a wet razor, an attempt to trip him up as they passed in the hallway, even an arm briefly draped around his neck while she was texting somebody else. Was this all the validation a parent was expected to subsist upon? In exchange for the worry, the expense and the endless time of bringing her up? He sometimes felt like an astrophysicist, examining the faintest pulse of radio waves from a far-distant galaxy for signs of meaning, for traces of significance, hoping for evidence of love.
Mel’s last message to him seemed to indicate that Vanessa had been home on Tuesday, because of the great pile of dirty clothes dumped in the laundry basket on that day, and the disappearance of all the fresh vegetables from the fridge. The physicist again: Vanessa was dark matter, and invisible. H
er existence could only be deduced by the gravitational disturbance of objects around her as she swung past on an undetectable orbit. Finding her would not be easy, but if she was still missing by tomorrow night, he would report her missing. That would bring the sky down, all round.
* * *
Angie Wright had given Perry an address for Halliday’s storage unit at Shildon, not far from Pirbright, halfway between Woking and Farnborough. The light was failing by the time he got there, and he only just spotted the turn-off, an anonymous right turn on the B3400 just before a railway bridge. The detective steered his VW down the long, bumpy and descending private road alongside the main London to Basingstoke railway, which gradually rose above him to the left. The access road was lined with dozens of 1930s industrial units which backed on to the embankment of the busy line. Perry guessed that they had been originally owned by the army, from their curved hangar-like roofs and because in many cases they still bore the flaking remnants of olive drab paint on doors and windows. They now hosted low-rent businesses, from car repair, windscreen replacement and marine engineering through to skip hire and party supplies. Most entrances were hedged in by vertical sheets of corrugated iron, crowned with barbed wire, and the gates padlocked. Many had no signs at all. The largest was a scrap metal yard whose chained Alsatians barked as Perry drove slowly by. The road dipped gradually, and turning left through an arch under the railway line reappeared in the man-made canyon between two diverging train tracks. This crescent-shaped piece of land boasted a dozen businesses under the railway arches to left and right, with the gravel apron between them gradually widening as the two railway lines diverged, until it ended at a disused spur of a canal. Halliday’s place, unit K, was right at the end, nearly on the canal, separated from the towpath by a high barbed wire fence, through which nettles, ragwort and a variety of other weeds grew in profusion. A mini skip sat outside.
Although the brickwork of all these units looked neglected, and was dotted with buddleia at the higher levels, there were signs of care. Perry spotted two modern CCTV cameras with night vision capability over Halliday’s place. The white cabling looked fairly new, as did the roller door, which was secured by a series of new, shiny and very hefty padlocks.
Perry stroked his chin. There was no one here, and it didn’t make a whole lot of sense to go digging around under this kind of surveillance. There were easier ways to get back at the man. He stepped out of the car, and walked over to the skip. There were bits of timber, a bag of plaster, and some old electrical kit. Shining his torch in, he spotted a sheaf of soggy papers. One or two were business letters to Kyle Halliday at this address. He hauled them out, and stuck them in a bin bag to examine later, once he had dried them out.
He had one more piece of theft to do before the night was out.
* * *
Perry had only ever seen cops going through bins on TV dramas. It was the sort of thing that private detectives did, sneaking in for a dig through the rubbish. But having heard that Halliday was away on business, and his wife out for the evening, he had a golden opportunity. He had studied the CCTV of the car theft from the same address, and knew that the only motion sensor light was on the house to the right, as you faced it. Fortunately the wheelie bins were on the left, next to the garage. It was the recycling he was after. Any incriminating paperwork would be in there. It had to be done before Monday morning, when the bins were emptied at the same time as his own.
Ideally he would have waited until the middle of the night, but in some ways any noise at that time would be more incriminating. If Angie Wright heard any kind of disturbance, given that they’d already had a car stolen, she would be sure to ring the police. Instead, he drove up at 9.15 p.m. and reversed the Polo right up the drive, almost to the front door. Neither the Range Rover nor the white Merc were there. He got out, wearing an old high-vis jacket, boots and a woollen hat pulled low. He quietly flipped open the blue lid of the recycling bin, saw it was satisfyingly full of paperwork, and laid the bin gently on its side. He fitted a black bin bag over the mouth of the bin, and tipped it. He scrunched up the mouth of the bag, checked the bin was empty, tossed the bin bag in the boot of his car, and then drove away to his own home.
Anxious to avoid being disturbed, he took the bin bag to his shed. Mel and Vanessa avoided this spider-infested place, which suited him just fine. He used a bundle of old newspapers to dry the correspondence he had found in the skip. Among these he found a jiffy bag, in which were a series of handwritten envelopes addressed to Halliday’s address at the unit. The writing was familiar. It looked a bit like Mel’s. He pulled out a Valentine’s card. When he saw what was inside, he gasped.
No, it couldn’t be.
This was too cruel. He couldn’t bear it.
Chapter Eighteen
Dearest Kyle,
It is only a few months since we met, when you so sweetly gave me a lift in the rain after my bike had a puncture. I still recall that dark cold January evening, in which your lovely hazel eyes and that huge handsome smile were the only warmth. How you took me out for coffee, how you ran your fingers through my damp hair. There is something so nurturing and caring about you, which makes me so happy to give my heart and body to you. You have taken me to places that I didn’t know existed, done things to me that I didn’t know could be done to a woman. My body was just fizzing with happiness all day afterwards! You told me not to worry that you are married, and when I hear how she has treated you, I understand. I know that I am much younger, but I think I understand you in the way that she doesn’t. I can give you the care and the love that she won’t. I’m so grateful that you came into my life and together we can change the world.
God, I can’t wait to see you! Until Friday!
Van xxx
The next card he picked up was earlier, dated 30 January.
Dearest Kyle,
I do understand why you don’t want me to text or ring you. I hope you don’t mind me saying but your wife sounds like an absolute witch. I would have thought you could get a secret phone, where I could ring you as you travel, but if it’s too risky, I accept that. You’re the telecoms expert, after all. And for me, it’s really great to actually sit in the college library writing love letters to you just like people did fifty years ago. By the way, I have never mentioned you to my parents (obviously), but my mum mentioned your name. You did a really good job on her phone. Really good customer service, apparently. Small world!
All my love
Van xxxx
The final card was the first, dated 14 January, and was the soggiest, the words smeared where the rain had got to the ink. It actually looked like tear tracks across the thick card.
Dearest Kyle,
Thank you so much for yesterday, I’ve never eaten oysters before! I thought they’d be slimy but they were nice. And champagne too! I’ve never stayed in a posh hotel before, my dad is far too tight to ever pay for such luxury. And what we did in that huge supersoft bed, my God! It is wonderful to be with a real man, someone who knows how to please a woman. You can rely on me always. When I finally get my A-levels and leave college, I want to be with you. Always. Always, always. I have wanted to change the world, ever since I was fourteen. To break the rules, not enforce them like my dad (he hates anyone knowing he’s a cop! I don’t think he is much of one to be honest). Only two days to wait until I see you again. I wish you didn’t have to travel so much, the absences tear me apart. I love you. I really, really love you.
Van xxx
Perry’s hands were shaking. The enormity of the transgression by this hateful man. Taking his wife and his daughter, one thirty-eight years old and the other just seventeen. Halliday didn’t even value them, tossing aside the testaments of Vanessa’s love into a skip to be destroyed by the rain. Vanessa, his own child, who had not even written him a birthday card this year, was completely in thrall to this monster. Fantasies of revenge uncoiled in his mind. Of murder, torture and dismemberment. His rational physicist’s brain was helpless to
extinguish the mediaeval furnace of rage which consumed him. He squeezed his eyes shut, fighting for mental balance, for sanity, but in the poorly lit, rough wood confines of that garden shed, surrounded by tools and rusting garden implements, he had discovered a personal dungeon of hell.
What have you done with my daughter? Where was she? Were there any clues he had missed? He picked up a garden fork, and stabbed at the wooden floor of the shed with it again and again and again, crying with anger and fury, until the screeching pain in his shoulder, unused to such activity, forced him to stop. Panting, sweating, his eyes wild, he tried to reach for rationality.
He put the cards aside and turned to the bin bag full of stolen recycling. Peering inside, he fished out pieces of paper, leaving the drinks and food cans. There was a great mass of shredded material, which was disappointing. What was left was largely old correspondence relating to Angie Wright’s property business, AWL Ltd. He only spent five minutes on it. There was nothing of any interest there.
A light from the kitchen alerted him to Mel’s arrival. Through the shed window, he watched her pacing about in the kitchen, putting on the kettle, getting a cup down from a cupboard. Estrangement perfectly described his feelings for her. He had thought he knew almost everything there was to know about this intelligent, petite, well-turned-out career woman, running her own wellness shop, with an MBA and a glowing self-confidence that put his to shame. But now he looked at her as if he was seeing her for the first time. As a stranger. For she had concealed something so cosmically enormous within their marriage. He was staggered never to have had a clue about it.
The Body Under the Bridge Page 21