After she’d finished, Ellen hung up and went outside. She sat on a wall, lit a cigarette and wondered if anything she’d learned today got her closer to proving that Monica was a killer.
Seventy-Six
Raj met Carl Jenkins in the Ravensbourne pub across the road from Lewisham Hospital. Jenkins was already there, nursing a pint of lager and looking like shit. He’d lost weight and there was a waxy sheen to his skin that Raj hadn’t noticed before. The fact that he had two black eyes and a nose under bandages did nothing to improve his appearance.
‘Get you another one of those?’ Raj pointed to the half-empty pint.
‘Stella,’ Jenkins said. ‘Cheers.’
Raj returned a few minutes later with two pints. He placed one in front of Jenkins and sat opposite him, waiting.
‘On the news earlier,’ Carl said. ‘The woman on the TV. The daughter of that couple who’ve been killed. Bloke in Whitstable, his wife in Brighton, you know?’
Raj nodded. He’d been following the story as well. Adam Telford on Saturday. Then his wife’s body identified the following day. Killed sometime towards the end of the summer at a flat in Brighton. Police wanting anyone with information on the couple’s daughter to come forward.
‘What’s it got to do with Chloe?’ he said.
Carl frowned. ‘Dunno. Might be nothing. But it said to call and I couldn’t get the number down in time, so I called you instead. Not a problem, is it?’
‘Course not,’ Raj said. ‘But I still don’t understand what you want to tell me.’
‘It’s the woman,’ Carl said. ‘The daughter. The thing is, I’ve seen her before. She was a friend of Chloe’s.’
Raj nearly dropped his pint.
‘Are you sure?’
He’d asked Chloe. Straight out: do you know Monica Telford? When she told him she didn’t know Monica, he had no reason to think she was lying.
‘Certain,’ Carl said. ‘She was round at Chloe’s when I went to pick her up on Saturday night. I gave her a lift to the station. If fat boy was alive he could have told you about it himself. He met her too. Invited himself along when the girls went out one night, according to Chloe. Stupid idiot had no idea she didn’t want him there.’
‘Chloe told me she didn’t know Monica,’ Raj said. ‘I asked her.’
‘That’s because Chloe didn’t know,’ Carl said. ‘She told Chloe her name was something else.’
‘What?’
Carl frowned. ‘Not sure I can remember. Anna, maybe? No. Anne. That was it. She told Chloe her name was Anne. Why would she do that?’
There was only one reason Raj could think of. Monica lied to Chloe because she didn’t want Chloe knowing her real name. And when he tried to think of a reason for that, there was – again – only one answer.
Raj swallowed a mouthful of beer and pulled out his phone.
‘Stay here,’ he told Carl. ‘There’s someone I need to call.’
* * *
The Meat is drilling a hole through my fucking head. I don’t even try to stop him. Everything’s fucked. I try rolling a spliff. Hands shaking so bad it takes a while. I still have her lighter. The brass Zippo she said belonged to her mother. I flick it open now, light the spliff and draw it in.
Three puffs in and I’m not feeling it. Keep sucking on the bastard, knowing it’s the only thing that’ll keep me from losing it. Standing in the kitchen. Can’t remember what I’m doing here.
TV on full blast. Newsreader’s voice not getting through the Meat’s roaring. Her face appears and it’s like a punch in the fucking solar plexus. Breath is knocked out of me and I’m on my knees, gasping for air, hand clutching my throat. I’m going to die.
Later.
On the street screaming her name, banging on the front door.
A name in my head. Edges of letters creeping around the music. Emma. No, Emily. It won’t come to me.
She has a shed in the back garden. Can of petrol there. I cut down the alley at the side of the house, over the gate and into the back garden. Shed’s locked but the door’s old and I smash through it. Blood on both hands. Fuck it.
Grab the petrol and run back out. Into the van.
Paradise by the Dashboard Light. Words and voices and music pounding inside my head, drumming against my skull. And mixed up with all of it, the memories. Close my eyes and there she is. Bodies close and tight, just like the song. And when Ellen Foley starts up, it’s not her voice I hear.
Ellen.
My eyes open, the blow kicking in finally, giving me the focus I need. Ellen Kelly. Bitch.
There’s a rich smell of petrol. I look down, see the can lying on the seat beside me. Smear of a bloody handprint. Hands bleeding. Both of them. Can’t remember how that happened.
Key in the ignition. I turn it and the engine rocks into life, the Meat gets louder, voice merging with Ellen’s, louder and louder, blocking out everything else as the van speeds away.
Seventy-Seven
Bridget was annoyed. Ellen just didn’t think sometimes. It was obvious to anyone with half a brain that the children needed to spend time with their mother. Bridget tried her best never to comment on the choices her daughter made. Sometimes that was difficult.
She stood at the sink, watching the children playing outside in the small back garden. Michael was in the sitting room reading the papers and watching Cork play Tipperary in the Munster semis. A recording of a match first played in July. The fact he was watching it now told Bridget as much as she needed to know about the mood he was in. Sulking again over that business with his garden. She thought they’d put that behind them.
She was sorry about the garden, of course she was. Had told him plenty of times. She knew how upset he was and that hurt her because she loved her husband, even when that was no easy task. But it was only a garden. The longer this dragged out, the harder it was to sustain the sympathy she’d first felt. After everything they’d gone through, to waste all this time feeling sorry about a piece of land, it wasn’t right. Everywhere in the world people were dying and suffering. Michael’s time would be far better spent worrying about those poor souls.
Outside, Pat shouted something and Eilish started to cry. Bridget braced herself. Sure enough, seconds later the back door flew open and Eilish ran across the kitchen, bawling.
‘Pat hit me.’ She was weeping loudly, too loud for the tears to be genuine. Bridget grabbed her granddaughter in a hug and looked over her head at Pat. He stood in the doorway scowling, face flushed, ready for a telling-off. She could practically see him getting his story straight, finding a way to show her it was Eilish who’d started it.
She wasn’t in the mood for any of that today.
Gently, she unwound herself from Eilish, took the girl’s little hand and led her into the sitting room. There were two adults in the house and she didn’t see why it had to be down to her to do all the looking after and the refereeing of the endless fighting that seemed to go on between them these days.
‘Michael.’
He looked up, face guilty, like she’d caught him doing something he shouldn’t.
‘Will you watch a film with Eilish? She’s tired and I think she needs a bit of time with her grand-daddy.’
Eilish started to protest but Bridget crouched down and whispered in her ear.
‘Your granddad is in a bad mood about his garden, Eilish. You know you’re the only person in the world who can cheer him up when he’s like this, don’t you?’
She watched Eilish consider this. Knew she was trying to work out whether the compliment outweighed the injustice of being accused of tiredness when she clearly was not. After a moment, Eilish smiled.
‘Can we watch Frozen, Granddad? Please? It’s my favourite movie ever and you like it too, don’t you?’
Bridget backed out of the room before either of them had a chance to change their minds. Closing the door behind her, she allowed herself a small smile. Typical Eilish. Her father’s daughter, for sure. Unable to sustain a
bad mood for longer than a few minutes. Unlike her brother.
Back in the kitchen, Pat was still standing by the door. Still scowling.
‘Oh Pat.’
The scowl wobbled, his chin crumpled and his eyes watered. She crossed the small space and hugged him, whispering soft words, telling him it would be okay, everything was going to be okay.
‘I want to go home,’ he said, voice muffled in the soft wool of her M&S cardigan.
‘Your mum will be back soon,’ Bridget said.
She checked the clock on the wall. Five past three. Ellen had promised to be home by three at the latest.
‘I’ll call her,’ she said.
Except when she called Ellen’s mobile she got the recorded message, asking her to leave her name and number. She hung up.
‘We’ll go across,’ she said. ‘Eilish can stay here with Michael and we’ll wait for your mum at your house. How about that?’
He smiled. ‘Thanks, Gran.’
She didn’t answer, distracted by the smile. His mother’s smile. A pity neither of them could find it in them to smile a bit more often. If they could manage that, they might find life a whole lot easier for themselves.
* * *
Traffic stalls on Kidbrooke Park Road. Wind the window down, take another pull of puff and slam my hand down. At the same moment the blow hits. My head lifts, spins and little red dots skitter-scatter across the front of my eyes.
The horn’s loud. Keep my hand pressed down until I’m drowning in the noise. Other cars start up and it’s like an orchestra, a great big fucking orchestra of rage.
Spliff’s finished. Flick it out the window and the car in front of me starts moving. Handbrake off and away we go. Slow going, but at least we’re moving.
A woman standing by a broken-down car. Long dark hair. Heart jumps, stomach does a dance. And then everything settles again. When I look again, she’s gone. I think maybe she was never there at all.
Ellen Kelly.
Petrol sloshing around inside the can. The van sick with the smell of it. Sticks to the inside of my nose and the taste of it coats my mouth and throat.
I pat my shirt pocket, check again for the lighter, even though I know it’s there. Beside the pack of tobacco and the little hard lump of dope.
Traffic speeds up.
The electric guitar starts. Keyboard. The beat grows faster. Louder. He comes in slow and low. Then he’s speeding up, other voices joining in. And I swear you can feel the heat in the front of the van.
I’m shouting the words out now, hot city streets and steaming pavements. Hand beating out the rhythm on the steering wheel.
A2 up ahead. Cars flying past. I swing a left, join them. Press my foot down. The van jumps once then lurches forward.
Time to burn.
Seventy-Eight
Maybe it was nothing. A coincidence. He heard Ellen’s voice, the mantra she’d drummed into him.
No stone unturned. No coincidence too small.
Raj dialled her number. Again. It went to voicemail. Again. He hung up, unsure what to do next. Monica and Chloe. From the news reports, Raj knew Monica’s mother was called Annie. The same name, more or less, Monica had called herself with Chloe. Raj worked with an Irish bloke once, Patrick Stewart Maguire. Everyone called him Stewart, even though his warrant card clearly showed his first name was Patrick. When Raj asked about it, Maguire told him he’d been called Stewart for as long as he could remember. He’d been named Patrick, after his father. To avoid the confusion of two Patricks in the same household, he’d always been referred to by his middle name.
Raj wanted to think maybe the explanation was that simple. Even though he knew it wasn’t. If she was known as Anne, why tell Ellen and everyone else her name was Monica? More importantly, why did she lie about not knowing Chloe?
He was sitting in his car, parked across the road from The Ravensbourne. Jenkins was still inside the pub, onto his third pint. Raj had left him to it. Come out here, smoked two cigarettes while he called Ellen’s voicemail. Then got into the car and realised he didn’t know where he was going.
There were too many conflicting ideas knocking around inside his head. He’d lost sight of where this was going. And underlying that uncertainty, a feeling that he was missing something. They all were.
Chloe’s stalker wasn’t her killer. Nathan Collier. He was in love with Chloe. Obsessively in love. When Chloe started dating Carl, Nathan lost it and killed her. Except he didn’t kill her. Monica Telford. She knew Chloe. She lied to Chloe about who she was. She lied to the police about knowing Chloe. Conclusion: she killed Chloe. Why?
Raj punched Abby’s number into his phone, hoping he’d get a real person this time, not another recording asking him to leave a message.
* * *
Pat’s mood improved in direct proportion to the distance put between himself and his sister. By the time they reached his house on Annandale Road, he was positively ebullient.
They walked slowly, holding hands while he chatted about Minecraft. Bridget didn’t understand what it was and didn’t care, either. She was perfectly content, strolling along, his hand in hers, listening to his excited chatter.
As they approached the house, it started to rain and they moved faster, hurrying past the white van parked outside, along the driveway to the front door. Under the porch, Bridget looked around for Ellen’s car, hoping maybe her daughter had popped home first. But there was no car. Bridget’s mood plummeted as she rummaged around in her bag for the key.
By the time she’d found it and got it into the lock, she had already planned the talking-to Ellen was going to get when she finally turned up. The key turned, she pushed the door and they were inside. As she shut the door, she thought she heard a noise from further inside the house. When she listened again, there was nothing.
The hall was darker than usual. She couldn’t work out why, at first. Then she realised the kitchen door was closed. Ellen always left it open, enjoying the way the light from the French windows flooded into the hallway, making it appear bigger and brighter.
Pat was already gone, running upstairs into his bedroom. His sanctuary. Recently, she’d noticed he was spending more and more time up there on his own. It wasn’t healthy for a child that young to choose solitude over activity and company. Although when she thought about it, Ellen had always been a solitary child, introverted and independent, rarely seeming to need anyone’s company. The one exception was Sean, who she always had time for.
Bridget listened to Pat as he moved around in his room above her. The pitter-patter of his footsteps, the click-clatter of plastic falling down as he pulled pieces of Lego from his box and prepared to add bits onto the spaceship he’d spent the last two weeks creating. All this followed by total silence.
She smiled, picturing him crouched down on the bedroom floor, face crunched up in concentration as he put the tiny pieces of plastic together, constructing something magnificent out of random bits of Lego. She would go up to him in a minute, check he was okay and maybe help him a bit. If he let her.
She moved towards the kitchen, thinking she’d make a cup of tea first, steal a moment for herself. Pushing open the kitchen door, the first thing she noticed was the mess. She couldn’t understand it at first. Ellen was always so tidy. Even if she’d been in a hurry, she’d never leave the place like this. Drawers pulled open, the contents spilled onto the floor, a chair overturned, lying like a dead person, its four legs sticking up.
Something wasn’t right. Bridget stepped back, mind jumping through all the possibilities, reaching the only logical conclusion. A break-in. An image flashed in front of her. Michael’s garden, the flowers ripped out at the roots, petals drifting in the breeze like bits of confetti.
Pat.
Upstairs on his own.
She swung around, opened her mouth to call his name. Nothing happened. She couldn’t speak. A man stood in front of her. Knife in his hand. Vincent’s knife. The man reached out, grabbed her wrist and dr
agged her until her body was pressed up against his.
A flash of light on steel as he lifted the knife in the air.
Fear like she’d never known before. Legs went but she was still standing, because he was holding her tight as he sent the knife slicing down through the air to kill her.
* * *
Traffic was slow on the way back and by the time she’d reached London’s outer suburbs, Ellen was almost an hour late. Her phone had rung several times but each time she’d let it go to voicemail. The caller was Raj and whatever he wanted, it could wait until after she’d picked up her children.
As she approached Greenwich, Ellen called ahead to let her parents know she was nearly there. When her father answered and told her where Pat and her mother were, she decided to detour past her own house first and pick them up.
A white van was parked outside her house, blocking the entrance to her driveway. Irritated, Ellen reversed back and found another space further away.
She’d just locked the car when her phone rang again. Thinking it was Raj again, Ellen answered without checking the caller ID.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I was driving earlier. Couldn’t pick up. You okay?’
‘Ellen?’
Not Raj. Abby.
‘Raj has been trying to call you,’ Abby said. ‘Monica knew Chloe. Raj thinks she killed Chloe as well.’
Ellen knew that already. What she didn’t know was why.
‘Raj thinks Monica used Chloe to get at you,’ Abby said. ‘Because of Jim. She made up the story about having a stalker. When we didn’t take her seriously enough, she killed Chloe. She knew if she did that, she’d have our full attention.’
It made a sick sort of sense. Some of the detail was missing, but they could fill that in later. Their priority now was finding Monica.
‘Speak to Alastair,’ Ellen said. ‘Get him to check with all the main train stations, airports and ferry terminals. We’ve already circulated Monica’s picture. Tell them to check all CCTV from the last twenty-four hours. Someone must have seen her. Malcolm’s already liaising with other forces. Find out where he’s got to.’
The Waiting Game Page 31