Gil tapped his pen on the monitor.
‘Okay, I’ll show you. Let’s look at the video clip immediately before she comes into the kitchen. On April 13th – the original shot – she was dusting the living room. Last Tuesday – the day with the duplicate shot of Olivia in the kitchen with the daffodils – she was vacuuming their bedroom. The bedroom segment is copied from another day entirely, March 29th, I think. It’s a masterful and quite brilliant job. Whoever has done this has selected extracts from other days when she is wearing the same clothes. Every detail of her clothes on these days is identical. When she wears this grey jumper, it is always with black jeans and white flip-flops. They had to choose clips with identical clothes, of course, because why would her outfit change as she moved from the kitchen into the living room?’
Gil looked hard at Becky, as if to be sure she understood what he was saying.
‘The illusion that these videos have created is that Olivia Brookes came home from her holiday in Anglesey and was indeed in the house all last week, along with her children. In fact, she wasn’t there at all. There’s no genuine footage since the day she left – theoretically to go to Anglesey. We’re meant to believe she was alive and kicking right up until Friday afternoon, but it’s not true. I’m afraid Mr Brookes has been playing us.’
Tom watched Becky’s face as the penny dropped. His last argument was in the wind. Robert hadn’t had a few short hours to dispose of Olivia and the children. He’d had two whole weeks.
29
Sophie Duncan lay on the floor where she had fallen. She cursed loudly, screaming out a torrent of fury and vitriol.
‘Bastard. Fucking bastard,’ she muttered venomously, when all her screaming was done. How the fuck did he know where she lived anyway? Stupid bloody question. He knew absolutely everything about Liv. Every last sodding detail. And she was Liv’s best friend, so of course he knew where she lived.
And now here she was, tied to a chair and totally helpless. She wasn’t worried about herself; it was her mum she was anxious about. She needed to get to a place where she could talk to her – put her mind at rest. But she was shut in this room, about ten feet from a closed door. These 1930s houses were too well built, with solid brick internal walls. If only they had lived in a modern semi, she could just have hollered and the whole street would have heard. But she wasn’t getting anywhere.
Her mum would be freaking out, and Sophie hoped to God she didn’t try to get downstairs. Robert swore he hadn’t hurt her – and he’d better not have done. She would have him if he had harmed her mum. He didn’t know who he was messing with here. He said he’d brought the stair lift to the bottom of the stairs, disconnected the phone and taken the key to the window lock. The windows were double-glazed and there was no way her mum would be able to break one. Anyway, her bedroom was at the back of the house, and typically the neighbours had gone on holiday, so that was a non-starter.
Sophie couldn’t believe she’d let herself get in this mess. When she’d heard Robert’s voice from upstairs, she had panicked. How sodding pathetic was that? She was a soldier, and yet she did the absolute daftest thing she could possibly have done. She’d raced upstairs, taking them two at a time, to find him at the top with the serrated blade of a Swiss army knife to her mother’s throat.
Of all the dumb things to do. If she’d just stopped and thought there were a hundred other options she could have chosen, because a threat wasn’t any use if you didn’t know it was being applied, and he wouldn’t have hurt her mother. He just needed her as leverage. He was a fucking nutter.
He’d made her poor mum tie Sophie’s hands behind her back. A clever tactic, because even Robert must have realised that the minute he’d moved the knife away from her mum’s throat, Sophie would have taken him down – bad leg, or no bad leg. Then he’d marched Sophie downstairs, making it clear that one false move and he’d be back upstairs in a flash to finish the job with her mother. He’d shoved her in here, in the back room, closed the curtains and then done a much better job of tying her hands and feet to a dining chair.
The questioning had begun.
‘What were you doing in Anglesey?’
‘Why were you pretending to be Olivia?’
‘Who was the man who came to visit you?’
‘What do you know about me and Olivia?’
She’d started by saying nothing, but she could see the dark fury in his eyes. His thin lips were clamped tightly together, and he had two red spots high up on his cheekbones. Sophie knew enough about people to know this was anger, and it was all being directed at her. His eyes were black, like wet flint stones, the light shining out of them hard and white. Finally, she had spat the answers out with as much venom as she could muster. She wasn’t scared of this nasty little man, but she was scared of what he would do to her mum if she didn’t comply.
‘Why were you in Anglesey?’ Robert repeated, slapping Sophie hard with the back of his hand. She glared at him.
‘I’m not some wimpy little woman, creep. I’ve been beaten up by better men than you. I was shortlisted for the SAS – so I promise you, you’ve not got a fucking clue. What sort of a pathetic little shit are you, to threaten a pensioner with a knife?’ That had earned her another slap. But then the threats had come.
‘I won’t kill your mother,’ he’d said, a mean toothless smile causing his eyes to glint even more brightly. ‘I just need to be creative. Have you ever heard your mother scream, Sophie?’
Sophie spat out every expletive she could think of. He could do what he liked to her, but not to her mum.
‘I went to Anglesey so that Liv could go where she wanted. Somewhere away from you. Somewhere that was her secret, and a place where she didn’t have to think about you. A place where she felt safe. Safe from you.’ She spat the last word at him.
‘Liar,’ he shouted. The glint had gone now, to be replaced with a flat stare. She could see she’d hit a nerve.
‘You haven’t got any children, Sophie. So whose children did you have with you? Did you take my children?’
Sophie laughed at him, and he liked that even less. He lashed out at her leg with his foot. Pure luck guided him to her wound, and she couldn’t quite suppress a yelp. It was only a few weeks since her last operation, and it still wasn’t totally healed. Her spontaneous cry made him smile.
‘Of course I didn’t take your children. Do you think Liv would let them out of her sight for a moment, knowing what a fucking psycho you are?’ He knew her weak spot now, and it seemed he was determined to exploit it with further brutality as he lifted his foot and brought his heel down hard. Sophie felt the recent stitches burst apart, but she was better prepared this time. She gritted her teeth and waited for the pain to subside.
He wasn’t going to win. She had no intention of telling him that the two boys she’d had with her in Anglesey were her sister’s children, and the girl was her cousin’s. God knows what he might do to them. Her cousin and sister were both single mums and getting child care for the holidays was always a nightmare, so it was a huge relief when Auntie Sophie offered to take them on holiday. But there was no way Robert was finding this out.
‘Who came to visit you?’
‘None of your sodding business. I’m not your wife, so I can screw whoever I like. And, as it happens, so can she.’ She didn’t know why she felt compelled to add that, but she wanted to hurt this man, and as deeply as she could. The punishment was swift.
‘My wife has screwed nobody but me – and you know it,’ he growled, his voice dropping ominously low.
‘Do you think?’ she asked innocently. ‘What would you say if I told you she never got over Danush – she’ll always love him, and nothing you can do will ever change that?’
The bastard laughed. With genuine mirth. Poor Olivia. Robert was everything she’d ever said he was.
‘What do you know about Olivia and me, Sophie? What’s she told you?’
‘She’s told me everything, you sicko. I know it all. I know who you ar
e, I know what you are. You’re a shit – a psychotic fucking shit.’ Sophie spat the last word as he plunged the serrated knife into the now open wound in her leg.
As she passed out, she heard him ask the one question she couldn’t answer – and she was glad. Glad that he’d never know whether she could have answered it or not.
30
As he got into his car and put the key in the ignition, Tom had to admit he was feeling weary. It had been a day of revelations, but still nobody had any idea how they all slotted together. Somebody had died in that house – but who?
Since Gil had exposed the sham of the video footage, a review of the CCTV had confirmed that Robert’s car had left the garage of the Newcastle hotel at 11.39 pm on Wednesday evening, and arrived back there at 8.32 am the next morning. Something else he had lied about. And his credit card statement confirmed that he had made some purchases from John Lewis in Newcastle on Thursday at lunchtime, although they wouldn’t be able to find out exactly what he had bought until the following day.
Finally, Jumbo had called through to say that, as expected, they had found a minute trace of blood that hadn’t been cleaned by the bleach. It was tiny, but enough to extract DNA from. He had taken Olivia’s hairbrush from the bedroom, and had asked for a super-speed rush job. He knew how important this was.
Tom was driving on autopilot, but fortunately the roads were quiet. His mind was spinning. They had so much to go on, but still hadn’t a clue what had happened, and now the whole family was missing, including Robert.
It was the video that was puzzling Tom, though. There was something contrived about Olivia’s clothing. Were they somehow both involved? But in what?
The FaceTime trail had temporarily gone cold, but they would get the court order tomorrow to demand the correct IP address for Olivia Brookes, or at least the IP address of whoever was using Olivia’s email address.
Tom had promised to go round to see Leo to find out what she’d discovered about his break-in, if he could get away at a reasonable time. It was good of her to sort this for him. He knew from experience how devastating it could be to walk into a home that had been turned upside down, and he was just glad he hadn’t had to see his place that way. It was another thing he should be dealing with but was ignoring. He needed to make sure it was secure, though, because Lucy was coming to stay for a fortnight at the start of her summer holiday, and if her mother got wind of any of this she might just decide it wasn’t safe for their daughter to spend the night there. He could do without dealing with Kate if she decided to be difficult.
For once, he didn’t feel remotely like cooking, and anyway it was getting late. Maybe they could just go to a local restaurant. He would see what Leo thought – let her make the decision, because just now he felt it would be beyond him.
Three missing kids, and nothing that he seemed able to do about it. He had spoken to Becky about getting an artist to go to the school, or somebody to produce an e-fit. They might not have photos, but the combined efforts of the teaching staff should produce some reasonable results.
Tom pulled his car into one of the two reserved spaces for Leo’s apartment, grabbed his briefcase off the passenger seat, and made his way to the lift. He rang the bell and waited. Leo opened the door with a sympathetic smile. One thing he could say for her was that she was always very conscious of his mood. She reached towards him and pulled him close for a hug and a kiss on the cheek.
‘Come and sit down. I’ve got a glass of wine waiting for you,’ she whispered softly against his ear.
‘What about food?’ Tom asked. He knew Leo wouldn’t have cooked. He was never sure whether his prowess in the kitchen had made her wary of ever making a meal for the two of them. But he had to eat, and he was certain that if he sat down before a decision was made, he would never get up again.
‘I’ll sort it,’ Leo answered. Tom just looked at her, and she laughed. ‘I thought you might be tired, so I had a word with the Japanese restaurant down the road. They’re going to do us some tempura, and then steak and salmon teriyaki. I just have to call them about twenty minutes before we’re ready – is that okay with you?’
Tom felt overcome with relief. Not his decision, not his job. Fantastic.
‘Whatever you’ve decided will be just terrific,’ he murmured with a grateful smile as he sank down on to the sofa.
‘Crap day?’ Leo asked.
‘Confused day, and too much has happened,’ Tom replied, blowing out a long breath of air through pursed lips as he picked up the waiting glass of wine. ‘As I told you on the phone, the bloody husband has done a runner. We hadn’t put him under formal surveillance because up until now he appeared to be co-operating, albeit grudgingly and with a few lies thrown in.’
Leo said nothing. Unlike any woman he’d ever met, she rarely expressed an opinion unless he asked for it.
‘Anyway, enough about me. How did you get on at the cottage?’
Leo picked up her drink and took a sip. She looked puzzled.
‘I don’t know what to make of it,’ she said, frowning slightly. ‘They seem to have rifled through your drawers – but then never having looked, I don’t know if your drawers are normally tidy or not. Stuff was jumbled, that’s all I can say really. But they completely ignored anything of value in the house. You’ve got that lovely little abstract painting – a Spanish artist if I remember rightly. Paco somebody? That would have been so easy to take, but it’s still there.’
Tom shrugged. ‘I guess most people wouldn’t know its value. My brother Jack was a collector, and most of his paintings were sold or given to art galleries. I particularly liked this one, so I kept it. But even I don’t know what it’s worth.’
‘Well, whatever it is, it’s strange they didn’t just whip it off the wall,’ Leo said. ‘So as far as I can tell, they took absolutely nothing. They upended several boxes of papers, and they were spread all over the floor. But they were Jack’s boxes, not yours. What happened to Jack, Tom? You told me he died, but you’ve never seemed keen to talk about him.’
Tom was silent for a moment. Jack. The wild one of the pair of them. The one who had hated school and locked himself in his bedroom building computers, listening to Whitesnake and Black Sabbath at full volume when Tom was trying to study. Putting the essence of Jack into words was impossible, because life with him had been full of colour with never a dull moment.
‘You know he made a killing in the whole Internet security field and sold his company for a phenomenal sum of money, don’t you?’ Leo nodded. ‘Well, he went out and bought a mega-fast speed boat and killed himself, the stupid, irresponsible bugger,’ Tom muttered the last bit, his throat tightening, and took a long swig of his wine.
‘So how did the accident happen?’
‘Nobody knows. When he didn’t return, a search party went looking for him. They found the boat upside down in the water, but they never found his body. Washed away, according to the coast guard. The manufacturers said they couldn’t find anything wrong with the boat, so the assumption was that it was some kind of freak accident. Hitting a wave at the wrong angle when he was going too fast, or something like that.’
Leo stood up and went to get the wine bottle from the table to refill Tom’s glass. He couldn’t help thinking how great she looked, in a tunic top that was mainly white with a huge black rectangle on one side, and tight black jeans. They should have gone out really, so he could have shown her off to the world.
After she had poured more wine, Leo sat down next to him and curled her feet underneath. She held his hand for just a moment or two.
‘Tell you what,’ she said. ‘I’ll order the food now and go to pick it up in about fifteen minutes. You relax.’
Relaxing sounded good, but he knew it wouldn’t be possible. He opened his briefcase and pulled out the folder he’d brought home with him. He flipped the file open just as Leo leaned across to give him a soft kiss below his right ear. Tom moved his head slightly towards her and closed his eyes for a mome
nt.
‘What do you want with a picture of our local war hero, then?’ she asked, with a puzzled tone in her voice.
‘What?’ Tom said, jolted from the moment. ‘What do you mean, war hero?’
‘It’s Sophie Duncan, isn’t it? Is that her name? Don’t you remember? There was a programme about her – well, it was actually about heroines of the war in Afghanistan and she was featured. It wasn’t a big segment, but because she was from Manchester I remembered her. She saved a load of people from some random bomb or other, didn’t she?’
Tom held up the photo – the one that had been taken at the guest house in Anglesey; the one of the woman that Mrs Evans believed to be Olivia Brookes. Finally, and belatedly, Tom remembered where he’d seen her before. He and Leo had watched the programme together on some obscure satellite channel, but he’d been engrossed in something else at the time and had only glanced intermittently at the screen. She was right.
Sophie Duncan.
He needed to speak to Becky. Now.
31
With a weary groan Becky pushed the keyboard away from her and stretched her arms above her head. It was time to go home. It had been a frustrating day, but try as she might she couldn’t find a connection between the multiple threads of information that had been revealed over the last fourteen hours, and maybe a good night’s sleep was what she needed.
She shuffled the papers on her desk together into a pile and grabbed her bag from the bottom drawer. And then her mobile rang.
‘Bugger,’ she muttered. ‘Is there no peace for the wicked?’
She grabbed the phone and turned it round to check who was calling. Unless it was somebody important they could sod off. It was Tom.
As Becky listened to what he was saying, she felt the heavy weight of her tiredness dissolve. Tom had identified the woman at the guest house. Was this the breakthrough they had been waiting for? Please, please, she prayed to a God she didn’t really believe in.
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