‘It’s Ed Killingback. From The Post.’
She sighed, her finger reaching for the off button.
‘Wait. Before you hang up, please listen to me.’
Something in his tone made her finger hover, just for a moment.
He went on quickly, as if he knew he was on borrowed time. ‘I know the body in the caravan was Jackie Wood’s. The woman who helped kill your niece and nephew.’ He left a silence. An old journalistic trick; most people abhor a silence in a conversation and rush to fill it. That’s how she often got some of the meatiest lines for her articles. He probably was just making some sort of guess and was waiting for her to confirm it, so she said nothing.
‘Okay, fair enough,’ he said eventually. ‘But it was her, and I know you were there; you found her body. I haven’t had any confirmation from the police, so all we have is speculation—’
Too damn right.
‘…and the fact I saw you talking to DI Todd; but I am going to run with this tomorrow and thought you might like to talk to me. Give me your side of the story.’
‘My side of the story?’ Dear God, he knew something. She broke out into a sweat.
‘Yes. How you found her, what you were doing up at Harbour’s End, that sort of thing. Best to set the record straight.’
If that was the record he wanted setting straight, then maybe she should speak to him. However, she was curious. ‘Why are you so interested?’
He chuckled. ‘I have been interested in this case for years, since I was a journalism student, actually. It’s fascinating. You know, the fact that Martin Jessop killed himself, that Millie’s body was never found. Jackie Wood’s role in it all. Whether she really did know what Jessop had done. It’s like an unsolved murder mystery from the telly. And now she’s dead. You can surely see what a great story it is. A great human story.’
She felt unbearably sad at his excitement. This was her life he was talking about, that he wanted to splash all over the paper, and she knew that next month most people would have forgotten all about it while she would be left to pick up the pieces of Sasha that remained.
‘Alex? Alex? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.’ How did he know? ‘But I think we really should meet. You’ll get a better press from me than you will from other tabs.’
Alex slumped in her seat. How could she be so naive as to think the whole thing wouldn’t be splashed all over the papers tomorrow? Maybe even on the local news tonight. She hadn’t been thinking straight. These days even the BBC went with ‘locally named’ rather than waiting for official confirmation – all in the rush to be first with the news. Sky – never wrong for long. They were all at it. And after being able to hide from it for fifteen years, now she didn’t seem able to get away from being the news.
‘Look,’ she said, making a decision, ‘I’ll meet you, okay? I’m not promising anything, but I will meet you.’
‘Really? Where?’
She thought for a minute, already regretting it. ‘There’s a café on the beach that’s open all year round. It’s called Jim’s, it’s just where the beach huts start.’
‘I know the one, I’ll see you there in what, an hour?’
Alex nodded, then realized he couldn’t see her. ‘All right. There’s something I have to do first, but I’ll see you then.’
‘Okay. And, by the way. Did you know he had another lover, not just Wood?’
‘Who did?’
‘Martin Jessop.’
She pressed the off button without saying goodbye. She reckoned he’d gone beyond the need for pleasantries.
‘You did what?’ Sasha straightened up from her crouching position and threw the garden shears on the ground. She pushed her hair back off her face, leaving a grubby mark across her forehead.
Alex had gone round to Sasha’s with her heart in her mouth, dreading having to tell her what she had done, and wondering what her reaction would be to the news of Jackie Wood’s murder.
There was no reply when she knocked on the door, so she took out her key and let herself in.
‘Sasha?’ she called.
No reply.
She went through into the kitchen, resisting the temptation to look in the cutlery drawers or at the knife rack, but she did notice the dirty plates, the sink full of greasy water and saucepans, the sound of the washing machine. Peering through the window into the gathering gloom, she could just about make out Sasha in the garden, clearing weeds and the detritus of summer and autumn. On her good days it was her therapy. She said jobs in the garden helped her not think about anything else, provided a distraction from her thoughts, which was why her garden was always well kept, neat, and full of colour in the summer months. She liked spring for the explosion of new life. She said she wanted somewhere lovely to sit for when Millie came home. Alex wished she could spend some of that energy inside the house sometimes.
‘Hallo, Sasha.’
Her sister was pulling up old grasses, chopping back others. She glanced at Alex, then went back to her work. Then Alex told her.
Now she faced Alex, her face a picture of disbelief. ‘Are you telling me you actually went round to see that woman? Why, Alex? Whatever possessed you? Did you think she was going to tell you where Millie is buried or something?’ She pulled her old duffel coat tighter around her body, but that didn’t stop her shivering. Alex stamped her feet, trying to keep warm; the day’s cold slithering into her bones.
‘I thought she might, yes. It was for an article, Sash.’
‘An article? A bloody article?’ Sasha bent down and picked up the shears before slicing the tops off shrubs. ‘You sold your soul for a bloody article.’
‘Don’t be so melodramatic, Sasha. I didn’t sell my soul. I thought it would be a good idea to meet her, see what sort of person she was—’
‘I can tell you what sort of person she was—’ Sasha jabbed the shears towards her. Alex took a step backwards. ‘She’s poison. Scum. She should never have been let out. She deserves anything bad that is coming her way.’ There was a smear of dirt down one side of her face. ‘So what did she say, then, sister dear? Did she tell you where to go in order to find my daughter’s body? Did she tell you so we could take her back and bury her next to her brother? Did she? Did she?’ The pointed ends of the shears were getting closer and closer to Alex’s chest.
She put up her hands as if to ward her off. ‘Sash, don’t. You’re scaring me. Let me tell you what happened.’
‘Do you know what?’ Sasha’s face was twisted with…what? Hate? Fear? ‘I don’t want to know what she said to you because I know it won’t have been anything useful. She will never tell. She will defend her lover until she goes to her grave, which can’t be soon enough for me.’
Her sister turned back to her shrubs and began hacking at them again, anger oozing from every pore.
She whirled round. ‘I just want her dead, that’s all. She killed my children. She did it. Nobody else. She’s weird and evil and doesn’t deserve to be on this earth. We’re never going to find Millie so now the next best thing is for her to curl up and die somewhere.’
‘She is,’ Alex said quietly.
‘What?’ Sasha stared at her, a film of sweat on her forehead.
‘Dead. Jackie Wood. That’s what I came to tell you.’
Her sister crumpled in on herself. ‘But I wanted to know, Lexie. Now she’ll never tell us.’ And she fell into Alex’s arms.
Alex hugged her close, feeling the frailty of her body and smelling the grease in her hair, knowing how fragile she was when she used the childhood version of her name. ‘Darling, I’m so, so sorry.’
Her shoulders heaved. ‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘Tell me what happened.’
Alex rubbed her back through her coat. ‘Sweetheart, it was when I went to see her for the second interview.’
Sasha drew away from her. ‘Second interview?’ Her voice was sharp. ‘So you went to see the bitch more than once?’ Alex was taken aback by the intense, feverish light in h
er eyes. ‘Where was she living? A swanky hotel in London? A bed and breakfast, what? Where?’
‘She was here.’
‘Here?’ Sasha blinked.
‘In Sole Bay, yes.’
‘Who let that happen, for fuck’s sake? And you didn’t think to tell me?’
Alex took a deep breath. ‘No. I knew how you would react. I wanted to see what would happen before I said anything to you.’
‘See what would happen? What do you mean? See if you could find out about Millie? What’s this? Atonement? A hope that I might forgive you?’ A glob of spittle landed on Alex’s face. She wiped it away.
‘No,’ she said, as calmly as she could. ‘I wanted to find out more about the woman, what made her tick, try and understand.’
‘Understand? Understand? What the fuck do you mean? Understand what, exactly?’
Alex shrugged, trying to stay calm, telling herself that this was Sasha and she was hurting. ‘Understand her thought processes. Then maybe I could find out about Millie.’
Her sister threw back her head and laughed. ‘You poor cow. So bloody eager to make things right. You really think a couple of interviews for that excuse of a magazine you work for would get Millie back? You have no idea.’
‘What do you mean, I have no idea?’
‘Millie’s gone,’ she said, tugging the sleeves of her coat down over her hands. She noticed Alex watching her. ‘Don’t worry,’ she snarled. ‘I haven’t been cutting myself again, I’ve been a good girl, a very good girl.’ She sank back down on to the grass, the fight draining out of her. ‘We’re never going to see her again.’ She sniffed. The end of her nose was red.
Sasha was exhausting; Alex didn’t know which way to jump.
‘Anyway,’ Sasha continued, looking up at her. ‘You said she was dead. How? Where?’
Alex crouched down so she was level with her, wanting to see Sasha’s eyes as she told her. ‘I found her in her caravan on the Harbour End site. You know, the one—’
‘At the end of the harbour, yes, I know it. Go on.’
‘She was lying on the bathroom floor.’ Alex tried to stop the image of Jackie Wood coming into her head, but it was impossible. Again she saw her eyes, milky with not-being-there. Her clothes, covered in red. The way her body was twisted to fit into that small room. Alex swallowed. ‘She’d been stabbed, Sash, stabbed many, many times.’
Sasha stared at her, then smiled. ‘I’m glad she’s dead.’
‘Did you kill her, Sasha?’
‘Wish I had,’ she said.
Alex slumped down next to her on the grass and put her head in her hands. Did she believe her? She thought she did.
Sasha touched her arm. ‘You believe I did it.’
Alex’s head jerked up and Sasha laughed. ‘Come on, Alex, you must know by now that I know the way you think. And I’ll bet your first thought was that I had somehow known she was there and gone and murdered her. Well I didn’t. I didn’t even know she was back in Sole Bay.’
Alex nodded. ‘I believe you. But now we’re never going to find out where Millie’s body is buried. And it’s my fault.’ She started to shiver with the cold.
Sasha rubbed her back with soothing, circular motions. The tension slowly drained out of Alex and she leaned into her sister. ‘We were never going to find out, I realize that,’ Sasha said. ‘I’ve sort of come to accept it. I think I knew when Jessop killed himself. And you know what? I’m so tired. So tired of living a half-life and wondering what happened to Millie. She’s dead, her soul has gone, and wherever her body is doesn’t really matter now, does it?’ Her voice was soothing; her words were what Alex had been longing to hear. ‘We’ve lived in the shadows for so long. That bitch Wood was only a minor player in the whole thing. Jessop was the driving force.’ Sasha paused in the rubbing of Alex’s back. ‘Well, you knew that, didn’t you?’ She began to rub Alex’s back again. ‘Millie’s a mermaid.’
‘What do you mean?’
Sasha smiled. ‘Just something I sometimes think, that’s all.’
Alex felt the cold from the ground seeping into her bones. But the numbness she was feeling in her body was not just from the cold. She couldn’t do the guilt any more. She heaved herself up.
‘I’ve got to go,’ she said. ‘I have to meet someone.’
Sasha looked at her from under her eyebrows, then she stood up too. ‘Okay,’ she said, as if Alex hadn’t said anything about the interview, about Jackie Wood getting murdered. She put her arms out for a hug. Alex folded herself gratefully into her.
‘How could you do it?’ her sister hissed in her ear.
Alex pulled away and left, not looking back.
15
‘So nothing on CCTV?’ Kate paced the floor of the musty smelling dump that passed for the incident room she’d been promised, trying to ignore the smell of hot dust emanating from the inadequate heaters. Two officers were tapping away at their computers while technicians set up the telephone lines to be manned after she’d done the press conference about Jackie Wood. Already satellite trucks were lining up along the road, attended by thin young men and women shivering in inadequate coats, gripping scripts or holding iPads, and harassed engineers, running around with microphones and talkback units – journos diverted from more mundane pieces to come and report on some real news. The newspaper reporters were the more hardened types, used to standing around passing the time in all weathers, and they were gathering in the police station car park. She would let them in to the warmth of the conference room when she was good and ready.
She suspected the Portakabin would become too small once the news got out about who the victim of the Harbour’s End caravan site murder was, and she was sure Cherry would want to take the investigation back to Martlesham. Despite the cramped conditions of their temporary home and the damp, stifling air, Kate preferred to be able to work close to her cases. She would argue the toss with Cherry later.
‘No boss.’ Steve wrinkled his nose. ‘It was all for show.’
Kate had asked for Steven Rogers to be on the team; he was steady and reliable and could also provide the doughnuts.
‘By “all” you mean that one sodding camera attached to wall of the toilets. Bloody hell, don’t these people have any sense of security at all?’ She sat down heavily on one of the hard chairs by the trestle table in front of the pinboard.
‘It would seem not. No video in it, nothing.’
‘It’s a wonder anyone stays at that godforsaken place when they’ve got that level of security.’
Kate changed tack. ‘What did you think of Alex Devlin, Rogers? Do you believe her story?’
Rogers loosened his tie and undid the top button on his shirt. ‘I think she stuck to the truth. Mostly. But I don’t think she told us everything. And that Malone character was a slippery piece of shit.’
Kate drummed her fingers on the table. ‘You’re not wrong there. There’s something about him I really don’t like. He was rude and obstructive. Not in the least behaving like someone who had been called by his girlfriend to the scene of a murder.’ She stood up. ‘Hasn’t been in yet, has he?’
Rogers shook his head. ‘Said he’d be in in the next day or two.’
‘Very relaxed. I wonder what that says about him? As if I didn’t know. Anyway. Alex Devlin. What did you think?’
‘A bit ghoulish I’d say she was.’
‘Why?’
‘Wanting to interview one of the people who’d been done for the murder of her sister’s children? If that’s not ghoulish, then I don’t know what is.’ He shivered theatrically.
‘I will remind you, Detective Sergeant Rogers, that Ms Wood had been let out on appeal,’ Kate replied with mock seriousness, ignoring Rogers’s snort of derision.
‘Yes Ma’am. Sorry Ma’am.’
‘Hmm.’
‘She didn’t mind having her fingerprints taken. Or DNA. And she came straightaway. Most people would leave it for a day or two.’
‘A bit odd I a
gree,’ Kate said, frowning. ‘As you rightly point out, most people would want to go home after an ordeal like that. Have a cup of tea or whatever and come back in a couple of days. But then she’s not most people, is she?’
‘Ma’am?’
‘Having a family member murdered must mark you, Steve, don’t you think? Especially if it’s a child.’ Kate sighed and looked up at the board, which at the moment only had a map of the area pinned on it. Soon there would be a timeline charting Jackie Wood’s whereabouts in the days and hours leading up to her murder, photographs of the caravan site; the caravan itself, and her body: photographs taken from as many angles as the police photographer could manage in the cramped area of the caravan bathroom.
‘Maybe she just wanted to get it over with. I would in her place.’ Rogers scratched the back of his neck. ‘Though why we’re bothering about the murdering bitch I don’t know.’
Kate turned. ‘Rogers, that is not what we think. Whenever a crime has been committed we want to bring the perpetrator to justice. Jackie Wood deserves our attention and hard work just as much as anyone. She deserves justice too.’
‘Even though she didn’t show any mercy towards those kids?’
‘Do I have to keep reminding you that her conviction was ruled unsafe?’
‘Huh.’
‘We devote as much time and as many resources to catching her killer as we would for anyone else. Okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘She hasn’t changed much,’ said Kate after a silence. ‘Just looks older.’
‘Changed?’
She looked at Rogers. ‘I found the little boy’s body, Steve, but then I expect you knew that.’
‘Aye, I did,’ he replied. ‘One of your first, wasn’t it? Bodies that is? Never nice to find the body of a child.’
‘Especially a murdered one.’
‘No.’
She pushed away the picture of the little boy folded into the case, his eyes wide open and, she’d thought at the time, pleading with her. ‘But none of us would be any good if we collapsed in a gibbering heap at the sight of a dead body.’
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