In a Cottage, In a Wood

by cass green

  There is nowhere for her to be. Nowhere she can kick off her shoes, puff out her cheeks and say, ‘It’s good to be home.’

  She’s suddenly aware of a movement on the other side of the window and she looks up blearily to see the policeman’s wife, Linda Dyer, peering in at her.

  She gives a decisive little nod and then opens the door to the café.

  ‘Good,’ she says breezily, once inside. ‘I’m glad I found you. I’ve been looking all the way down the high street. You mustn’t mind my Bob. He’s a very good man but he isn’t good with people he doesn’t know. Can I sit here? I’ll just get a green tea.’

  All this is delivered in a rush of words and a cloud of perfume is left as Linda takes off her coat and throws it on the chair before going over to the counter.

  Neve studies her as she chats to the woman serving as though they are best friends. She is small, only around five feet tall, wearing neat boots with a heel, and fitted jeans. Her hair, now Neve looks at it properly, is of the style that must require constant blow-drying and attention in order not to collapse around her head. Her face is immaculately made-up.

  A few moments later she comes back to the table with a steaming mug and sits down in the chair opposite Neve, where she studies her openly.

  ‘So,’ says Neve hesitantly, ‘Bob and Isabelle were friends?’

  Linda nods, eyes still scanning Neve’s face. ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I saw him,’ says Neve. ‘Near the cottage.’

  There is a long pause. ‘Wanted to lay flowers at her grave,’ says Linda. ‘Couldn’t get her out of his mind. Such a waste.’ She lifts the cup and blows onto the surface before taking a small, birdlike sip. ‘Then he thought he ought to check on her place. Make sure it was all in order. Didn’t expect anyone to be there.’

  Linda takes another sip before speaking again.

  ‘So,’ she says. ‘How did you know Isabelle in the first place?’

  Neve hesitates. She has told this story several times now and it isn’t sounding any better with repetition.

  ‘I didn’t know her,’ she says wearily. ‘She was a random person I met on a bridge. I don’t even want the bloody cottage.’ She realizes this is a non-sequitur by the puzzled pinch of Linda’s brow and continues in haste. ‘Isabelle gave it to me. Just handed it over to me and I’m not exactly in a position to say no to a free house so …’ she shrugs and tails off.

  ‘What do you need from my Bob then?’ says Linda, her expression even. Neve momentarily sees a flash of what might be the steely core under this perfumed, coiffed exterior.

  ‘I don’t know, is the God’s honest answer,’ says Neve with an attempt at a smile. ‘But I think he knows something. I think someone is trying to freak me out and it’s connected to the fact that Isabelle was going to see someone in prison.’ She pauses, seeing Linda’s expression become more focused now. ‘Low Linney prison,’ says Neve, studying the other woman’s face.

  She leans forward and lowers her voice.

  ‘Who was it?’ she says forcefully. ‘You know, don’t you?’

  Linda lets out a long sigh and sits back in her seat. She takes a moment to sip the tea. The earthy, mulchy smell drifts up Neve’s nose unpleasantly.

  ‘Let me ask you a question,’ she says quietly. ‘Does the name Sofie Lindstrom ring any bells?’

  Neve gives this careful thought.

  ‘Nope, don’t think so.’

  Linda makes a regretful face. ‘Well, I suppose it was almost what, thirty years ago now. Time was when everyone recognized that name. For all the wrong reasons.’

  ‘So,’ says Neve, ‘who is she?’

  ‘Who was she.’ Linda lifts her cup thoughtfully to her lips and then lowers it again without drinking anything. Neve feels instinctively that she needs to wait, to not press.

  ‘Sofie Lindstrom,’ she says after a moment in a heavy voice, ‘was a young mother of two who was murdered, brutally murdered, by a man called John Denville.’ Linda’s mouth curls in distaste as she says the latter name.

  ‘What happened?’ says Neve softly. She’s aware that she is suddenly breathing shallowly.

  Linda lets out a long sigh, her eyes distant. ‘Bob had only been a detective for a year,’ she says. ‘He’d seen murders before, but usually drugs or whatnot. Never anything like this, you see. Nothing quite so …’ she pauses and looks at the table, ‘well, quite so brutal.’

  She meets Neve’s eyes now. ‘He met her when she was a nurse at a local addiction clinic, did Denville. Developed a bit of a thing about her. No one took it very seriously. He was addicted to all sorts of things of course. The usual story.’ Linda sniffs dismissively before continuing. ‘His defence team claimed he was out of his mind, when he followed her home that day.’ She pauses again. ‘Stabbed her something like thirty times. Says he didn’t even remember doing it.’

  ‘God,’ murmurs Neve. ‘That’s awful.’

  ‘That’s not even the worst part,’ says Linda, lowering her voice further. Neve has to slightly lean closer. ‘Bob said it was the worst thing he has ever seen in his life. Because you see, the kiddies were there. The eldest one was four and the little one only a baby. They were left alone with their dead mother for a whole day.’

  Neve can’t think of anything to say and simply stares, her lips slightly parted.

  ‘Oh, it must have been terrible,’ Linda continues quickly and the edges of her nostrils turn pink. ‘The poor little girl had climbed up to get water from the sink and was trying to get her mother to wake up. When Bob and his constable came into the room – they’d had to break in because a friend had been worried – they saw all the blood, and those innocent little children all smeared in it. It was on their hands, their clothes …’ She visibly shudders and stops speaking.

  Neve says something meaningless like, ‘How awful.’ She’s not even sure what comes out of her mouth beyond it being a totally inadequate response to the horrific pictures now flooding her mind.

  ‘And when they tried to get her to come away, she was so hysterical that she bit the police officer. Not Bob,’ she adds, as though this were an important detail. ‘It was one of his constables. Needed a tetanus shot, the chap, but he never complained about it.’ She pauses and her voice has a tone of wonder about it now. ‘Never said a thing about it.’

  Neve takes a sip of her drink and barely tastes it. Linda is fiddling with her cup and seems reluctant to go on.

  ‘And so,’ Neve nudges, ‘Isabelle was visiting him, right?’ She makes a face of distaste. ‘Why? Was she one of those women who gets off on relationships with men in prison?’

  Linda turns her gaze back to Neve and her pale green eyes seem to rest on her face for longer than is comfortable. She seems to be debating something internally and Neve begins to feel awkward.

  ‘What?’ she says finally. ‘What is that you’re not saying?’

  Linda lets out a long, sad sigh and gives her head a small shake before she speaks.

  ‘She visited him because he was the man who killed her mother.’

  ‘What?’ Neve’s heart is suddenly pounding in her own ears. ‘She’s …?’

  Linda nods sadly. ‘Yes. Isabelle was the little girl. She was Sofie Lindstrom’s daughter.’

  35

  ‘Oh God.’ Neve brings both hands to cover her mouth. There isn’t enough air in this café. Her lungs are sponges filled with soggy water. The sounds in here are exaggerated – each clink of a spoon sounds like a crashing cymbal and the conversation level presses in on her eardrums.

  ‘Come on,’ says Linda decisively. ‘You go and wait outside and I’ll pay.’

  Neve gratefully grabs her coat and bag and almost knocks over the third chair at their table in her haste to get outside. The café door closes behind her and she sucks in the cold winter air.

  The story is so upsetting, so … vivid, and she suddenly feels such sympathy for Isabelle Shawcross that her whole chest aches with it. But as she starts to feel calmer, she t
hinks that there are still so many questions left to ask and looks impatiently to see where Linda has got to.

  The other woman has moved away from the counter inside, evidently having paid. Now she is delving into her handbag in a hurried manner. She gets out her mobile, frowns and then answers. She begins to speak and then listens intently for a moment. Her expression seems to change and she looks up, almost fearfully, to where Neve is standing.

  Linda then puts the phone back into her handbag and hesitates before coming outside.

  Her smile seems forced.

  ‘Everything … alright?’ says Neve.

  Linda’s smile becomes tighter. Her eyes are not quite meeting Neve’s now.

  ‘Yes, that was Bob. I had forgotten there was somewhere I needed to be. I hope you’re feeling better?’

  ‘Yes, I’m fine,’ says Neve, ‘but I still need to—’

  ‘I’m really going to have to go,’ says Linda and her voice trembles so slightly Neve isn’t sure if she imagined it or not.

  ‘Please!’ she puts her hand on Linda’s arm and the other woman flinches. ‘Can’t you tell me why Isabelle went to visit this man? What happened? I’m really grateful for what you’ve told me so far, but I still don’t understand anything really.’

  Linda sucks in her breath.

  The pavement is narrow and there isn’t room for them to stand here with the steady stream of people passing by. An elderly man wrapped up in a scarf and woollen hat looks at them curiously as he steps past them into the street and a mother with a buggy gives Neve a sour look as she dips the wheels down onto the road.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ says Linda and Neve sees that her eyes are shining with tears. ‘Bob is very upset with me for coming out and finding you. I think he’s right that it’s a terrible story that needs to be relegated to the past where it belongs. There isn’t any good in raking over old coals, is there?’

  ‘But why?’ It comes out angrier and louder than Neve intended and she struggles to control herself. ‘Why did Isabelle go to see him? That’s what I don’t get,’ she says more gently. ‘Please, Linda. I need to know.’

  Linda’s nostrils flare as she seems to struggle to control herself. ‘She wanted to understand,’ she says quietly. ‘To understand, and also to try and forgive him. But the sad thing was, she wasn’t able to do either.’

  ‘Oh.’ Neve feels like there are so many questions left to ask but has no idea where to start. And Linda is already snapping her coat closed at the throat and switching back into her capable, unruffled mode.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says firmly. ‘But I really do have to go. Do what you think best with the cottage. I’m sure Isabelle would understand.’

  Linda then pulls her forward into a quick, fierce hug that takes Neve by surprise so she almost stumbles. ‘And now I really have to go.’ With that she turns away, her small feet in their smart heeled boots tapping out a quick rhythm, head down, as she hurries back up the high street.

  Neve lets out a long breath. Her mind is crowded with too many thoughts as she begins to walk back to the station, barely taking in her surroundings. Looking distractedly at her phone for the time, she is aware that the train she was intending to catch back to Exeter leaves in fifteen minutes.

  The picture that Linda painted – the tiny girl covered in blood, trying to coax her dead mother to wake up – is so terrible that she experiences a lurch of nausea every time she thinks of it.

  No wonder Isabelle was such a screwed-up person, she thinks. But when did she find out?

  She wanted to understand the crime and to forgive John Denville … that’s what Linda had said. ‘And she found she wasn’t able to do either.’

  Was that what had tipped her over the edge? Was the crime just too large and too evil for her to live with for another day?

  Or was it the thought of him getting out and stalking her? The thought of this … monster watching the cottage causes a surge of nausea.

  The station has just two platforms and as Neve looks up at the information board she sees with a pang that the next train going the other way will terminate at London Waterloo.

  A powerful surge of homesickness for the capital passes through her and she quickly debates the logistics of changing her ticket. Her mind races as she assesses her dire financial situation and the practical voice inside her head begins to win over.

  Where would she stay? She couldn’t turn up at Lou’s again, not so soon after their falling out. And Miri and Arjan are not a possibility. Not now.

  Neve runs through other friends in her mind but there is no one else who she could assume would either have the room for her, or have the room and be prepared to let her stay for more than a night or two. She has no job and no means of paying for rented accommodation after that. And this problem with the cottage isn’t going away. She has to get rid of it.

  Climbing onto the train a few minutes later, Neve miserably slumps into the nearest seat. Nothing has changed. She is just as trapped as she was a week ago.

  The free wi-fi is patchy so she has a frustrating time trying to research John Denville on her phone. The cracked screen also makes it less than satisfactory too.

  But she battles on and finds a story that appeared on the Mirror website in 2008.

  BRIXHAM BUTCHER PRISON ATTACK

  John Denville, whose vicious murder of a young mother shocked the nation in 1985, has been moved to another prison after an attack by another inmate.

  The now 61-year-old was found guilty of what the Old Bailey judge called, ‘one of the most brutal and distressing crimes I have come across in my twenty-year career,’ when he stabbed young mother Sofie Lindstrom (26) thirty times in the kitchen of her Brixham home.

  Sofie, who was of Swedish heritage, had two children who were believed to be present at the time. The four-year-old girl and a boy, believed to be almost one, were later cared for by social services and are believed to have been adopted into different families.

  Denville became fixated on Lindstrom after meeting her at a local addiction clinic, where she was a nurse. The single parent, a widow, was known locally as something of a Samaritan. According to one neighbour, ‘she was always kind to waifs and strays. She could see the good in everyone.’

  The jury took just one hour to deliberate, unanimously finding Denville guilty of murder. It later transpired he had a string of previous convictions for crimes including domestic violence and the non-fatal stabbing of a man in a pub brawl.

  The judge, his Honour Judge Benedict Browne QC, said when sentencing Denville, ‘The sheer depravity of this crime means you must be removed from ordinary society for a very long time.’

  He will be eligible for parole in 2016 and the Mirror has been told that he is ‘recovering well’ from the recent attack.

  She looks around the busy carriage uneasily.

  He could be out.

  He could be watching her right now.

  36

  14th August 2016

  The bad dreams cling to me like succubae in the morning. I see his face constantly.

  I smell him.

  He’s out there. I know he is.

  The police won’t listen. They say he has alibis for his whereabouts since he was released. But he has found a way to get to me, I know it.

  I know it I know it I know it I know it I KNOW IT I KNOW IT I KNOW IT I KNOW IT

  Bars on the windows won’t stop him. Bricks and mortar, locks and bolts, none of them are enough to keep him out. He’s inside my head. He’s been there all my life.

  Wasn’t it me who let him in? I was always being told not to do this without checking first. But I let him into the house. I let him in and he killed her.

  And now he wants to kill me too.

  I hide all the knives and then I find them laid out on the table. I think I must have done it while I slept. I hear things. Footsteps outside.

  I can’t stop thinking about what he said.

  YOU LOOK JUST LIKE HER …

  37


  As the train pulls into Truro, Neve waits in the aisle behind passengers who are gathering belongings from overhead and between the seats. A woman with two boys is directly in front of her, looking harassed.

  Her eldest, a bespectacled boy of around five with a mop of thick, sandy-coloured hair, is repeatedly kicking the seat next to him as she struggles to pull out a buggy from where it has been stashed between the seats. There is no room to help so Neve can only stand and wait.

  The toddler holds onto his mother’s leg unsteadily then turns to peer up at Neve, blinking large, sleepy blue eyes. She smiles cautiously down at him, feeling her usual awkwardness with the very young. The boy regards her for a moment before his face splits into a heart-melting grin, all tiny pearl teeth and shining eyes. She pulls a silly face and he rumbles with a giggle, which makes his brother pause in his kicking game and turn to look at Neve too, curiosity and suspicion fighting for prominence.

  As she gazes down at the chubby freckled face before her, she suddenly pictures the scene described by Linda Dyer and looks quickly away again. But a thought has lodged in her mind.

  Isabelle’s birth brother. What happened to him? He would be around thirty now, by Neve’s calculations. What if he was even less adjusted to his past than Isabelle was? Could he have found his sister? And could something, somehow, have gone badly wrong?

  So much she doesn’t know. So many toxic secrets.

  When she walks out of the station, Neve realizes with a cold sinking stomach that she can’t remember where to get the bus from.

  Making a furious noise under her breath she turns, wanting to kick something. Why can’t anything ever go right?

  Then, across the road, she realizes someone is watching her.

  It’s Matty, clad in a parka-style coat that’s old-fashioned and strange on someone of his age. He turns to look at the window of a bakery with apparent fascination.

  Debating whether to speak to him, she sees Sally Gardner coming out of the chemist shop next door. She has a brief exchange with her son and then she turns and looks across at Neve, before giving her a beckoning wave.