by Tom Bradby
‘No one is lying to you.’
‘Everyone has been lying to me.’
‘All right.’ Caroline leant forward. ‘All right. You want to know the truth? I thought your father was having an affair with Sarah Ford. I thought that. I did. I’m ashamed to admit it, but that’s what I thought. So did Alan. We were both … upset. We did communicate about it. I … I don’t remember how the communication began. I could see that he was being destroyed by what she was doing. It wasn’t just your father. Alan told me there had been … others. Your father was the last in a long line.’
‘He wanted your sympathy.’
‘And perhaps I his. It had come to a pitch that weekend. We had tried so hard to keep it from you. I had tried and similarly Alan with Alice. But it was no longer possible. Alan told me he believed that Sarah was going to leave him. He said he believed it was for your father.’
‘So why where there so many calls that morning?’
‘He said she was getting ever more brazen and open about it. He said she no longer bothered to hide the telephone calls – that he’d heard her arranging to meet him on the common. I – I was trying to calm him. I …’
Julia stared at her.
‘But it’s not what you think. Your father was not the one. He was looking out for Sarah, he was concerned for her, he was … It’s hard to explain, but he was like that, he liked taking on responsibility for people, he liked helping them. It made him feel valued and needed, and the more I thought about it afterwards, the more I believed he had not been having an affair with her. He was prone to a flirtation with a pretty girl, but an affair wasn’t in his life plan and I’ve never met anyone so determined to conform to a prearranged plan for life.’
Caroline Havilland took a step closer, Julia one back. ‘I wanted to protect you from all the innuendo, the accusations.’
‘So you did it for me?’
‘Not just for …’
‘You think you’ve been helping me?’
Caroline stared at her, sensing the cold anger in her voice.
‘Do you have any idea what this has done to me? Do you?’ She took a pace forward, her mother one back, as if no longer certain how this would end. ‘Do you know what I’ve lived with? Do you know what you’ve made me live with?’
‘Stop shouting at me, Julia.’
‘I’ll stop shouting when you stop lying.’ Caroline was staring at the floor. ‘Did you know Alice was not Alan’s daughter?’
Now Caroline was shocked.
‘Who told you that? How do you know that?’
‘How I know it hardly matters now.’
Julia was next to the glass door out to the tiny conservatory off the kitchen. She felt like punching her fist through it. ‘You lied for Alan Ford.’
Caroline sighed, her body sagging. ‘What choice did I have?’
‘What choice? What choice?’ Julia took a step closer. ‘You knew that Alan was aware a meeting was due to take place in the wood. He comes to you after the murders have actually taken place and asks you for an alibi, says he needs an alibi, and you provide it? You lie for him and then you tell me that you had no choice?’
‘He said he wasn’t there, that he didn’t go.’
‘Oh, really? How believable. You have increasingly frantic phone calls all morning. You know he’s aware of a rendezvous. You’re both desperate to stop a divorce and a messy scene, you’re terrified of the humiliation that is going to be heaped on you – oh, the terror of it, the end of your reputation in the village, the shame of being a spurned woman, rejected in favour of your next-door neighbour, the scandal—’
‘It wasn’t like that.’
‘Wasn’t it? Really? You know what’s going on, you’re talking to and fro, call, call, call, and then Alan opts not to go to church – highly unusual – and you come home and you don’t see him and the next thing you know is that they’re dead and he’s asking for an alibi.’
‘It wasn’t like that,’ Caroline repeated.
‘I bet. Did he bother to come round, or did he just call again? Good means of communication. Hello, Caroline, just washing the blood off my hands, would you be so kind, if the police come round, tell them you saw me—’
‘It wasn’t like that.’
‘What was it like?’
Caroline put her head in her hand momentarily. She seemed suddenly terribly old. ‘Alan loved Alice. I couldn’t, didn’t … don’t believe he could have harmed her. He called me. He said it looked bad, he knew that, especially if the substance of our phone calls came to light, and that he knew about the meeting. I believed him. I still do.’
‘Alice wasn’t his daughter.’
Caroline Havilland shook her head in confusion.
‘You’re having a relationship with him, so no wonder—’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Julia.’ Caroline half turned, then thought better of it and faced her again. ‘Don’t make everything about sex. There’s affection. There’s friendship.’
‘But there’s not much warmth, have you noticed that?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean what I said.’
‘He’s always been fond of you.’
‘Yes. The inference is that I’m the surrogate for the daughter he lost, but that’s easy.’
‘I don’t see that.’
‘There’s no intimacy. There’s no need for intimacy. We’re not family, we’re not a threat, we don’t need to conform.’
‘That sounds like—’
‘Psychobabble. Think about it. Alan and Sarah were at war over Alice. Look at the pictures of Alice, remember how she was. Think about the way she was being made into a mini Sarah. It was obscene. She was a sexy little five-year-old, being groomed for some specific purpose and I thought it was perverted – I thought it was something to do with Dad, that he was having a relationship with Sarah and the little girl was in some perverted way part of it, but it wasn’t that at all. It wasn’t any of it. It was a fight. Sarah was taunting Alan. This little girl is mine. She’s nothing to do with you.’
‘I still don’t understand.’
‘It was about possession. It was Sarah saying this girl is mine, mine, she’s nothing to do with you and she never will be.’
‘I can’t …’ Caroline had raised her hand. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t listen to this any more.’
She walked out, up to her bedroom.
Julia waited for a few minutes, then returned to the attic, her hands shaking. She heard the front door slam, the sound of footsteps on gravel, then the car being started up and driven off.
Julia had not moved for several hours. The house was silent. The first shadows of the evening were creeping across the garden below and the valley was quiet. The common would soon be lost in the dwindling light.
Julia looked at the garden. Her eyes followed the line of the fence to the corner where it met the hedge and the shed that stood in darkness.
She closed her eyes again and brought to mind an exact image of the day of the first search, when her father had stood with some of the men and she had watched them and felt her eyes straying to the shed and the small line of discoloured grass that told her, but apparently no one else, that the shed had been moved during the night while everyone in the village – everyone – had been out scouring the wood, searching for the body of Alice Ford.
Everyone but Alan.
No one, of course, had expected a father to help in the search for his daughter.
Julia thought of Professor Malcolm’s confusion over the body and where it had gone. Had he worked it out yet?
It seemed so obvious. The scared, confused little girl had run across the field not to her own home, but to the one man she thought might save her. She had run away from Alan, towards Mitchell.
But she’d never made it. Somewhere, she’d been caught – perhaps by the fence at the bottom of her own back garden and she’d been murdered, in cold blood, her body hidden beneath Mitchell’s shed in the dead of night to impl
icate him.
Julia had believed that her father had hidden the body there.
A new wave of doubt overtook her. What did her mother know? What did Caroline …
Julia turned, descended three steps, then jumped to the landing, thumping against the wall on the turn of the stairs and ducking under the low entrance to the living room.
Outside, her footsteps were loud on the gravel.
In the garage, she flicked on the light, took the big spade from the wall beside her and returned to the drive and the gathering darkness of the garden.
She pushed herself between the hedge and the shed and then shoved. It was stuck. She pushed back, the hedge scratching at her neck, then got the shovel into the ground and tried to lever up the bottom, moving along until there was some sign of movement.
There was a pop as the shed came out of the mud. It seemed light.
Julia bent down, got her hands under it and heaved. It toppled over with a loud bang.
It was light because the floor had rotted away, so the contents of the shed were left in front of her, the lawn-mower along with pots and trays full of seeds, a hoe and garden implements. She scattered them around her, lifting the lawn-mower last and throwing it on top of the shed, before moving round to the side and dragging the remnants of the structure clear.
Julia began to dig. She was sweating, imagining a man emerging from the darkness with a bundle in his arms, Alice’s face hidden by a cloth. She thought of him moving the shed and then beginning to dig. He would have been sweating, too, despite the cold she recalled from that night.
All the time that everyone had been out looking with dogs and torches and dwindling hope, he had been here, burying her beneath this shed.
Julia asked herself if her mother had been here watching and helping. She remembered her mother being involved in the search, but perhaps she had slipped back to the house. No one would have remarked on anyone’s absence in the dark.
There was something solid beneath the edge of her spade.
Julia turned over the earth beside her. It was a stone. She bent and picked it up. It was a long, flat stone.
The spade went in easily again. She turned more earth, waiting once again to strike bones.
The sweat was in her eyes. Her shoulders began to shake. The spade struck something hard again.
Would there be a belt, or a buckle? Had Alice been buried in her clothes? The moon had been bright that night, as it was tonight. The darkness would have provided inadequate cover, heightening the nerves.
Bright as it was, Julia thought she would still need a torch. She turned and saw the rush of something. There was a split second of terrible pain from the side of her head and then nothing.
Black.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
SHE THOUGHT SHE heard an owl hoot.
For a moment, Julia was not certain if she was alive or dead. She tried to turn, the pain in her head blinding, and caught sight of a figure close to her. She could see he was digging and hear the sound of a spade striking wet earth.
She tried to sit up, but couldn’t. She closed her eyes as it occurred to her that the figure was digging her grave.
He was hooded, not more than ten feet away, his body rising and falling as he drove the spade into the earth and, as she listened to the sound, Julia found her right hand was instinctively grasping in the dirt beside her, closing around a stone.
If she moved, he would sense it instantly.
She tried to control the torrent of thought. She could see the clearing in the distance, through the trees, the wizened tree stump visible in the moonlight, but he’d chosen well – the bank on which she lay led down into a ditch, where it would be easier to conceal a grave. She closed her eyes again and steeled herself, biting her lip so hard she could taste her own blood.
She rolled, using the momentum of the slope to get on to her feet, swinging her right hand down towards the hood as he sensed her and tried, too late, to duck. Julia felt the stone impacting and heard a low grunt and then she was on her feet, running, tearing down through the trees, ducking, weaving …
He grabbed at her and she pulled to the left, underneath a low branch, and was free. She heard the sound of him falling, a sudden curse then a groan of agony, and she was running still, the terror not subsiding, her mind not wanting to grant her the relief of knowing that he was seriously hurt.
She hurtled down towards the path.
She stopped, not knowing which way to turn. The first rule of escape was that hesitation could be fatal, but he could too easily put himself between her and home, so she ran away from the entrance to the common, towards the old well, thinking she must hide and stay still to survive.
Julia gathered speed and then jumped off the path, clearing the bank with one leap, crashing into the undergrowth beyond and rolling away, lying stock still when she came to rest at the edge of the clearing that surrounded the well. She was breathing heavily.
An owl hooted in the distance again.
The air was alive with the sound of crickets, as if they were shouting a warning. Julia twisted one way, then the other, but the clearing was empty. It looked as if it was being lit directly by God.
She thought of the lies, of the obscenity of his public, fake grief, of the sympathy so many had felt and the comfort they’d given, of the years of neighbourly deceit.
What had he done to the little girl?
Julia stood, looking for and finding a sturdy branch, anger consuming her.
If Alan had not lied, she’d still have something of her father, because the deceit had led her to destroy his reputation, to doubt his love, drowning it in a well of suspicion, stripping her of everything he could have left behind.
She tried to recall Mitchell’s big, smiling, open, frank face, but could visualize only Alan’s, a leering image stoking her fury, which she fought to control, thinking of the hunting and stalking games she had played here, remembering that darkness shielded her and movement gave her away.
The seconds dragged slowly out. She heard something down to her right and snapped her head round, instinct almost forcing her into a run.
It was a footstep, she was certain – and then she saw him, breaking cover on the other side of the path, twenty yards ahead, clearly visible in the moonlight.
She crouched down, hiding behind the bracken, but keeping her eyes on him. He walked a few paces and then stopped, listening. For a second, he edged towards the trees on the other side.
He was listening for the sound of someone fleeing.
She had a chilling vision of history repeating itself, of a young girl running, petrified, the world closing in on her.
Julia closed her hands around the branch. Was it strong enough to kill him with?
He was walking towards her, up the path, slowly – ambling almost, his head on one side.
He stopped again, close to her, looking down for her footprints. Time seemed to have stopped as he walked slowly away, not turning round. Julia moved forward to the edge of the path and crouched down, ready to lunge forward. She tried to concentrate on getting a sense of the time passing.
Five minutes? Ten? Twenty? An hour?
Surely he would come back this way.
She felt cramp building in her legs and knew that she needed to straighten.
Just as she was about to do so, she saw that he was right beside her.
‘Hello, Julia,’ he said.
She turned to him.
She found it difficult to speak. ‘You’ve dug my grave, Alan,’ she said, eventually.
‘Yes.’
His face was strange and distracted, a patchwork of moonlight and shadow.
‘Alice must have run away.’
‘Yes.’
‘She saw you … stabbing Sarah and … she must have been terrified … She did not know what to do so she ran … across the field. She almost made it, but you got to her … you killed her. You hid the body and buried it in our garden at night while everyone was on the common s
earching.’ Julia had been talking quickly.
‘Yes. You’re clever. Like your father.’
Julia could hear the sound of her breathing. ‘Did he suspect you, Alan?’
‘Oh, yes, of course.’ His voice was the more chilling for being almost casual, as if nothing had changed. ‘He knew everything, you see. So solicitous he was. So solicitous for the well-being of my wife and little girl.’ He sighed. ‘I would have enjoyed watching him mow the lawn.’
Julia felt her whole body shake. ‘He was a million times the man you are …’
‘Revenge is sweet, Julia.’
‘What did you do to my father?’
‘He was a self-righteous prig.’
‘What did you do to him?’ Her voice was shrill.
‘War is a beautiful thing. So much confusion and hate.’
Julia saw the knife in Alan’s hand.
‘You murdered him.’
‘I don’t like the term murdered. It’s pejorative. There were some Argentinian prisoners, we were dealing with them and he came along and started shouting. Guns sometimes go off by accident, you know, fog of war … And the others, they shouldn’t have been murdering prisoners anyway, so they had enough to hide, didn’t they? But, you know, people just have to talk.’
‘You’ll pay for it,’ Julia said quietly. ‘You will pay.’
He looked at her. ‘You don’t normally like to talk. I like that. Sarah should have been like that. It would have been better. Sarah … she thought she could get away with it, you know that?’ He grunted in disgust. ‘She really thought she could just treat me …’ He grunted again.
Julia tried to think back to the training exercise that had dealt with being held captive. It belonged to a different world.
She breathed in deeply, trying to suppress her fury. ‘Where did you kill Alice, Alan?’
‘Where did I kill Alice?’
‘What did you feel, Alan?’
‘What did I feel?’ There was bitter humour in his voice. ‘Is that what the training manual tells you?’
‘Alice ran away in fear. Where did you find her?’
There was a moment’s hesitation. His face was in shadow now because he had turned so that his back was to the moon, but Julia thought that he had lowered his head. ‘She almost made it, Julia, do you know that? She almost made it to your daddy. If she hadn’t been so out of breath, she might have been able to cry out, but …’ He sighed. ‘It was close. There was luck. She ran along the fence and that helped.’