‘If they’re actually looking for her,’ he muttered.
The notion that John might be responsible for Zoe’s disappearance kept forcing its way into Bella’s thoughts, but she dismissed it fiercely. Such a possibility was too horrific to contemplate. It could not be true. John adored Zoe, and Bella could not believe he would ever do anything to hurt her. With a sob, she turned to glare at him but he was already leaving the room. A moment later she heard his footsteps pounding up the stairs. She was not prepared to drop the subject and dashed after him. She dared not admit that she could not trust him on his own at night in London; she was afraid of what he might do. At least in York she could try to keep an eye on him and hopefully prevent him from giving in to his evil impulses. He did not know that she was aware of his vicious tendencies, but knowing she was nearby must surely help him resist temptation. It must be more difficult for him to go out and chase women knowing she was at home, waiting for him. Once he was away from her, in London, he would be alone and anonymous, and she would have no influence over his behaviour. Somehow she had to stop him going.
She found him in the bedroom, packing his case. Cautiously she sat on the bed and approached the subject in a roundabout way.
‘You can’t wait to get away from here, can you?’ she said. ‘Not that I blame you.’
He did not answer straightaway, so she repeated herself.
‘What are you talking about?’ he asked her wearily. ‘I’ve already told you, I’m not going because I want to. And now this discussion is over.’
He turned away from her and zipped up his case. ‘I’ll tell you what, I’ll only stay overnight and be back late tomorrow.’
‘What if something happens while you’re away?’ she asked in a low voice.
‘Then you’ll phone me immediately. I’ll keep my mobile on, even in meetings, I promise. I’ll have it silenced in my pocket all the time, so I’ll feel it vibrating if you call.’
‘What if they find her and you can’t get back in time?’
‘In time for what?’
‘I don’t want to be left alone here, not while –’
‘Nothing’s happened to Zoe, and no one’s going to “find her”, because she’s going to come home of her own accord. She’s not going to stay away forever, is she?’ he asked, with a forced smile. ‘If something had happened to her, we’d know about it already. She’s hiding somewhere, and she’ll come home when she’s had enough of this foolishness.’
But she could tell he was as worried as she was.
‘I mean,’ she said miserably, ‘what if they find her? What if they’re too late?’
‘What do you mean, too late?’
‘You know what I mean. If anything’s happened to Zoe I want you to be here, with me.’
‘Nothing’s happened and nothing’s going to happen,’ he said.
‘You don’t know that.’
‘Oh do stop worrying. She’s a teenager and she’s gone off with a friend, that’s all.’
In spite of his efforts to sound reassuring, he looked really anxious. Bella was furious, but there was nothing she could do about it. John grabbed his case and walked out of the room, and a few moments later she heard him call out and the front door slammed. She had an uneasy suspicion she knew exactly what he was planning to do in the buzzing metropolis once his meetings were finished. He had assured her that he and the other regional managers would be spending the evening together, but once he slipped away there were bound to be numerous women out on their own on the streets alone in London, any one of whom might become his next victim. She could imagine the scene. It kept replaying in her mind, over and over again.
John would wait until his first colleague went to bed, to avoid drawing attention to himself by leaving the table early. Then he would take the opportunity to excuse himself on the grounds that he too was tired and wanted an early night. But instead of going straight up to his hotel room, he would step outside for a breath of air before retiring for the night. And once he had left the hotel, or the restaurant, wherever they were having dinner, he would vanish and claim his next victim.
She did her best to reassure herself that there were far too many CCTV cameras everywhere in London for anyone to be able to move around without being captured repeatedly on film, but that did little to dispel her fears. Had she known where he was staying, she could have followed him, but she had not thought to ask for the address, and now it was too late to find out without seeming to make a fuss. John would not thank her for calling his office to find out where he had gone. There was nothing she could do now but wait for him to come home, and pray that he exercised restraint while he was away from home. And then the thought that he might be involved in Zoe’s disappearance resurfaced. With a low moan, she flung herself down on the sofa and wept. At first she did not hear the doorbell, but it rang again, insistently. Wiping her eyes on her sleeve, Bella hurried to answer, praying fervently that she would see Zoe on the doorstep. But when she opened the door, Susan was standing there, with a concerned smile on her face.
‘Hello, Bella,’ she said. ‘I just came to see how you are.’
‘How do you think I am?’ Bella snapped, unable to suppress a sob. ‘Go away, just go away. I don’t want to talk to anyone until Zoe is home.’
25
Geraldine was feeling worn out. Along with Ian and a team of officers, she had spent the best part of two days questioning a stream of staff and customers who had been at the bar on Friday night. When she had not been interviewing people herself, she had been reading statements taken by her colleagues. Most of the people questioned had been eager to help, and many of them had spent a long time gossiping about encounters that had no bearing on the murder investigation at all. A lot of the remarks seemed to focus on a particular member of the bar staff who had done nothing to attract suspicion beyond being rude to many of the customers.
‘He was just mean, you know,’ one girl claimed.
‘He was on some kind of power trip,’ another girl said.
To the question, ‘Did you see him leave the bar at any time?’ all the guests who disparaged him shook their heads.
‘No, that’s the thing,’ one of them said. ‘He was there all night, just standing behind the bar ignoring people who had been waiting an age to be served. It’s not as if he had anything else to do. He was just a complete dick.’
Geraldine was not interested in staff inefficiency. That was the manager’s problem. As far as she was concerned, a man standing behind the bar all evening could not be responsible for battering a girl to death in the alley outside. All the complaints had achieved was to provide the abrasive barman with a watertight alibi. Other customers grumbled about trivial incidents where someone had pushed ahead of them in the queue and then sworn at them for protesting, or about people engaging in sexual activities or taking drugs in the toilets.
‘Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised to hear so much was going on at the club that night,’ Geraldine said ruefully to Ian. ‘I think I’m showing my age.’
‘I can’t imagine you had sex with many strangers in public toilets, even when you were younger,’ he replied.
Geraldine laughed. ‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’
There was a chance a few comments from different sources might combine to form a picture of events leading up to the attack, so every statement was recorded and cross-referenced for inconsistencies. It was a time-consuming task and so far they had not come across anything significant. Along with customers eager to gossip, quite a few others had been reluctant to co-operate, insisting the crime had nothing to do with them, and demanding to know why they were being questioned at all. No one noticed that anyone had gone missing, and nothing suspicious was reported.
Geraldine only had three more people to question. The first was a sullen girl who had been at the bar while Jamie was outside.
‘What�
�s going on?’ she demanded before Geraldine had opened her mouth.
Patiently Geraldine explained yet again the reason for the investigation.
‘Well I never saw anything that happened outside because I was in here, wasn’t I? Can I go now?’
Geraldine’s next potential witness was a thin, young girl who had started working at the bar that week.
‘I don’t know anyone here,’ she stammered nervously, ‘and I don’t know anything about what happened. I was just focused on trying to remember what I was supposed to be doing.’ She was nearly in tears.
Geraldine assured her that the questions were routine, and there was little expectation she would be able to pass on any information, but they had to question everyone, just in case they had happened to spot anything unusual.
‘I’m not sure I’d know if anything was unusual,’ the girl replied. ‘I mean, everything seemed unusual to me, because I’m new here. All I can remember is that it was noisy and there was a lot of jostling to get to the bar, and some people were dancing.’
‘Did you notice anyone acting suspiciously?’
‘What do you mean by suspicious?’ the girl asked.
Geraldine did not detain the girl for long. It was pointless talking to her. There was one more person to question and Geraldine was struggling to concentrate on the task. Her final interviewee was a girl who had a part-time job handing out tickets in the cloakroom near the entrance to the bar. She was unlikely to have seen anything of interest, but in a murder enquiry even the most obscure avenues had to be explored. The girl, who was in her mid-twenties, was well built, with pencilled eyebrows and a mop of curly, dark hair. She took a seat when invited to do so and waited respectfully for Geraldine to begin, a welcome contrast to some of the obstreperous customers who had been answering questions all day.
‘I never go out there in the alley,’ the girl said in answer to Geraldine’s first question.
Geraldine gave a noncommittal nod.
‘I mean, why would I?’ The girl shrugged her broad shoulders. ‘It’s probably nothing, but –’
‘Yes?’ Geraldine stifled a yawn.
‘There was a man acting suspiciously.’
Geraldine was instantly alert. The witness seemed to be a sensible woman and, being staff, was more likely to have been sober than most of the guests.
‘What was he doing that looked suspicious?’
‘For a start, he was older than our average punter. He looked about fifty. Maybe more. Old, anyway. I saw him following a girl who was young enough to be his daughter, if not his granddaughter. But it wasn’t just his age. I remember noticing him because she seemed scared of him.’
‘Scared?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where did you see them?’
‘In the foyer.’
‘And what happened?’
‘She was telling him to leave her alone. That’s why I noticed them. She wasn’t that polite about it. She swore at him, calling him an arsehole and worse things, and told him to leave her the fuck alone. That was more or less what she said. She was drunk, or high, or both, because her speech was slurred, and she was staggering on really high heels, you know, like so many girls wear. Anyway, she left and he went after her. I didn’t really think much more about it until now.’
‘What was she wearing?’
‘I can’t really remember. Jeans, I think, and some sort of skimpy top. It was her face I noticed more than anything else, because she looked so frightened.’
Usually crucial, a description of the girl’s face was the one detail that would not help in the current investigation.
‘What about her hair?’
The woman frowned with the effort of remembering. ‘She had it tied back in a ponytail. It was mousy coloured, I think.’
The description was vague, but it could fit the dead girl.
‘Can you describe the man?’
The woman nodded. ‘We’re expected to be aware of our customers, so I’m used to observing faces,’ she replied with a touch of pride. ‘He was fattish, bald, about fifty I’d say, maybe older, clean shaven and sweaty, and he was wearing a grey T-shirt with some kind of image on it, I can’t remember what – no, wait, it was a picture of Marilyn Monroe.’
‘And you say he followed the girl outside?’
The woman nodded solemnly.
‘And what time was that?’
‘I didn’t make a note of the time. I’m sorry. I didn’t realise it might be significant.’
Geraldine assured the woman she had been extremely helpful and let her go after making a note of her contact details. She wasn’t sure, but she had a feeling they might be making progress at last.
26
Bella believed in the power of prayer, but lately everything had been going wrong in her life and her prayers didn’t seem to be helping at all. She felt as if God had abandoned her. Ever since she had stumbled on her husband’s dark secret she had been praying for him to give up his sinful ways, but he seemed resolved to continue along his chosen path. And now, not only had she discovered her husband’s wickedness but her daughter had gone missing, and even Zoe’s friends didn’t seem to know where she was. The school assured her they had contacted all the parents who had pupils in Zoe’s year group, and Bella had been to see Zoe’s few friends herself to question them, begging them to tell her if they knew anything about her daughter’s disappearance. None of them did. There was nothing more Bella could do to find Zoe, except pray for her safe return.
But there was something she could do to prevent another poor soul from falling prey to her husband’s evil ways. If she could have reported him to the authorities she would have done so, but in the absence of proof her allegations were bound to be dismissed as spiteful nonsense, and she dreaded to think what John might do to her if he learned that she had discovered his terrible secret. In the meantime, no one was going to believe a wife’s accusations against her husband. They would conclude that she was suffering from stress over her missing daughter. She had to take action to control him herself.
On a memo she had found on his desktop, she had seen an entry about his meeting, and in the notes there were details of the hotel where his conference would be taking place, as well as the nearby Travelodge where he was booked to spend the night. It was only five minutes’ walk from King’s Cross station. Once he had left the house, she packed a hold-all and set off for the station, determined to follow him, only to discover that the train to London cost a small fortune at such short notice. She would have to pay for a ticket in cash so that she could hide her purchase from John, and at King’s Cross she would have to find the conference hotel. Once there, she would not be able to enter the hotel itself in case he noticed her. All she could hope to do would be to find a table in the window of a café on the opposite side of the road, if there was one, where hopefully no one would take any notice of her as she sat all afternoon and evening over one mug of coffee.
Even as she was formulating her plan, she knew it was hopeless. If there was a café in sight of the hotel, she might sit there until it closed and John would probably still be at dinner with his colleagues, out of sight inside the hotel. He might even find his next victim while he was in there, but that would probably be too risky. Whatever else he was, John was no fool. She shivered, considering the repercussions if he was caught. It would be terrible for Zoe to hear about the sin her father had committed, not once but several times. Perhaps, after all, it would be better if he met with an accident so that he could no longer carry out his atrocities. She tried to dismiss the idea, but found herself planning what she might do to put an end to his activities. He would have to be immobilised in such a way that no one would ever suspect she was responsible. Somehow she would have to carry out her assault without betraying her identity. He must believe the
attack had been carried out by a stranger. Either that or he would have to be silenced as well as incapacitated. She was not sure how that could be achieved, unless it was by killing him, and that was the last thing she wanted to do.
John arrived home late on Monday afternoon, dishevelled and tired from travelling.
‘I came straight back,’ he told her. ‘I didn’t stay on with the other guys. They all understood that I wanted to come home, in the circumstances…’
He broke off and gazed at her anxiously, as though Zoe’s disappearance affected her alone, and he was worried about how she was coping.
‘How are you bearing up?’ he went on, as if to corroborate the impression.
‘I’m all right,’ she replied, asking almost as an afterthought, ‘How was your trip?
He shrugged. ‘It went OK, I suppose. I can’t say I was really taking in what anyone was saying.’
‘I don’t know why you went,’ she said bitterly.
She understood only too well why he might be drawn to spending a whole night away from home. He had no doubt had dinner with his colleagues and then slipped away, ostensibly to his hotel. Once he was out on the streets of London, alone, he could have gone anywhere. She wished now that she had gone to London, and watched for him leaving the hotel. Like a private detective, she could have followed him. She pictured herself jumping in a taxi and instructing the driver to ‘Follow that cab!’ But of course that would have been impossible, not to mention outrageously expensive.
‘I went because I had to go,’ he replied crossly. ‘We’ve been through all this before. It’s not my fault I have to go to work.’
A moment later, she heard his feet thundering up the stairs, and the bedroom door slammed.
‘Welcome home,’ she muttered. ‘Although I don’t know why you bothered.’
It was true. He might as well have stayed away for all the support he gave her. He barely spoke to her all evening, and left early the next morning for work, still maintaining a sullen silence.
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