Her nieces were three and five. They climbed on top of Gill on the settee when she visited, laying their hot little heads on her belly, making her do funny voices.
She was at the towers, now, and it was cold in the shade. She stood a moment beside the fountain, orientating herself, working the place out a bit. The ground floor of each tower would be occupied by communal areas and admin, she calculated, on the evidence. Janitor, bar, the computer geek’s office at the foot of one of these. Had that been him, the Giacometti? Students up high, so they’d have something to stare out of the window at when they were pretending to work.
Gill’s own university years – down on the South Coast, rowdy, scruffy campus on the edge of a party town, nothing like this place – were a bit of a blur, it had to be said. History and French: she couldn’t remember much of the French but she still had friends from back then. One of them had made a lot of money in magazines – enough to retire to some island in the Caribbean – and he still asked her to marry him every couple of years. In a jokey sort of way.
The trouble was, single blokes her age were mostly single for a reason. The same, of course, must apply to women. Too busy: too busy having fun, or not having fun, or working or hiding. Too busy on a crusade no one wants you on, not even the victims.
A door opened in the dark glass at the foot of one of the towers and she saw inside. A little, crowded, scruffy office – and a white-faced kid on work experience. Bingo.
Chapter Fourteen
It had got dark very fast: driving inland one minute the sky had been a vivid cold green at the wooded horizon ahead of them, then grey, then black. It was freezing outside. Three of them in the van: her and Carrie in the front, silent. Carmichael’s body was in the back.
Bridget had been sitting in the van in the lane behind the shop staring at her phone when Carrie had called her, home from an afternoon in the pub, it sounded like.
Bridget had just decided it wasn’t sensible to google his name. They could check that stuff.
Carrie’s voice was tense and dead. ‘It’s freaking me out being here with him,’ she said. This was how Carrie panicked: she froze.
‘OK,’ said Bridget. ‘I’m on my way.’
She had to go into the shop first, though, or Laura would worry: wearily she had locked the van and hurried inside. The shop was quiet – empty, actually – and Laura looking up from her magazine on the sofa but Bridget didn’t even have the time to care: another bad day, and so close to Christmas. VAT due next week.
‘Something’s come up,’ Bridget said, smiling carefully.
Laura looked up at her quite composed then: she’d had time to do her make-up in the lull, because she was all pink and white and starry-lashed again. ‘Sure,’ she said.
‘Lock up and bring the keys back tomorrow?’ said Bridget. ‘I’ll use the spares in the morning.’
Carrie had been waiting for her in the front garden, hugging herself, lips bloodless in the cold. She was wearing some punk T-shirt and a cheap fake leather jacket over her ripped jeans. Not enough clothes to keep a cat warm. Bridget found herself rubbing her sister’s arms, exasperated, the two of them standing out in the middle of the close, arms round each other. It was four o’clock. They had two hours before Matt got home. It came to her that seeing that man, the friend of Carmichael’s, had made him angry: he’d been angry when she saw him last.
Alan Timpson. The name refused to go away, lodged in her gut like something that would make her vomit.
Standing there in the shadow of the towers beside the van that afternoon, Bridget had stopped still at Matt’s words. Carmichael’s mate: he didn’t have mates. ‘Timpson,’ she repeated, numbly.
‘He was going into Tower Two?’ said Matt, turning to look up at them.
The towers had names as well, but no one used them. It was Tower One the girl had jumped from, all that time ago. It was the tower where Matt had his office: no one had jumped since, Matt often said that, disapproving, when people mentioned it. He had refused to be superstitious too, when they allocated his office.
‘I didn’t see him,’ Bridget mumbled, but Matt hadn’t seemed to notice that she couldn’t get the words out properly.
‘Yeah, well, he waved, I nodded.’ Matt was cool. ‘People can’t just disappear whenever they fancy it. He got Carmichael the job, he’s taking a bit of flak.’
‘Doesn’t anyone …’ Her voice silly and high now, hoping he couldn’t hear the falseness. ‘Hasn’t anyone got any idea where he’s gone?’
‘Probably swanned off to Salzburg or Glyndebourne,’ Matt said. Still apparently indifferent, but she knew when he was angry. He’s on my side, the hope sprang, foolish, for a fraction of a second. No. He can’t know. Never.
‘Timpson was the one who recruited him,’ Matt had gone on, hands in his pockets, looking back at his place of work up the hill. ‘They’re old mates. From way back. Oxford, probably.’ There was still something in his voice that wasn’t like Matt, and the longer it went on the more anxious it made her. As if there was something he wasn’t saying: but Matt was always upfront. Her Matt.
She pushed it, despite herself. ‘What?’ she said. ‘You don’t like him.’
Matt, still staring away from her, had shrugged. ‘He’s rude to the secretaries. Carmichael was too. You can always tell an arsehole when they blame the secretaries for their fuckups.’
She’d fumbled, stupidly grateful that that was all there was to it, just Matt’s chivalry, with the key in the van’s lock then. A quick peck, and he started back to his office.
Almost at the foot of the hill in the van, Bridget had passed Isabel, on her bike, recognisable even in the uncertain light: the flossy hair, the little colt legs freewheeling. As she overtook, slowly, Bridget had seen the girl’s face, pale and set and as she looked in her rearview mirror she saw she had no lights on the bicycle. With a tight feeling in her chest she hesitated, reluctant, then something took over, a fierce need to know what the girl knew. She indicated and pulled in. Wound down her window and stuck her head out.
‘Isabel?’ she called backwards, her voice high and anxious. Isabel wobbled to a halt and looked at her uncertainly, not quite recognising her.
‘You came into the shop,’ she said. ‘Do you remember? The dress?’ She didn’t need to mention Carmichael. This was between her and Isabel. Isabel nodded slowly. ‘Haven’t you got any lights?’ she asked. Isabel hung her head, fiddling with a bit of tape on her handlebars. ‘Can I give you a lift?’ The girl looked worried now. Hanging back. A woman in a van. ‘You do remember me?’ said Bridget gently, winding the window down further. ‘From the shop. My husband works at the university, I saw you there. It’s fine if you don’t want a lift. Have you got far to go?’
Isabel hesitated and in that moment Bridget willed her to get back on her bike and freewheel away. But she nodded, frowning. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
They put the bike in the back, Bridget laying it down gently on the metal floor. Thinking, she shouldn’t be doing this. She’s too easily led. Too eager not to offend. Too late now, she’d made the offer, it had been accepted. Bridget had to remind herself she wasn’t the predator, but the chime it set up still jangled.
‘Where to?’ Isabel named an affluent suburb, a couple of miles on, and sat back, silent, her hands folded, obedient, in her lap.
It would have been better to drive past. Everything she did seemed to stick her tighter to Carmichael. Whose body had been in the back, where Isabel’s bike was.
The silence grew: sensing anxiety, Bridget asked Isabel if she was all right. A moment of quiet before she answered, in an undertone. ‘I have to take the dress back,’ she said. ‘My mum and dad said so.’
Good for them, thought Bridget, that tall, lean serious pair, good for them. ‘That’s fine,’ she said. ‘That’s nothing to worry about. I can take it back, Isabel.’
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Isabel fidget, ‘Yes, but—’ still hesitant, still wary, and for all Bridget
approved that instinct the other side of her wanted to know what she was going to say. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said again, gently. Hating herself, because the gentleness was a trick. She waited a beat, and another. ‘But what?’ Glancing quickly sideways, a mild look or inquiry.
‘I – I haven’t managed to get hold of him yet.’ Looking straight ahead. ‘I have tried,’ pleading, and she could hear it in Isabel’s voice, a tiny echo of her own younger self. She’s anxious, she wants to know she hasn’t done something to offend him. She wants to please everyone. Him, her parents, even me, even me, even this woman in the shop she hardly knows. ‘I sent an email. His colleague Alan – his colleague said he was unwell.’ And it was still in her voice, that wounded note, trembling on the brink of rejection, not knowing how to be good.
‘Alan?’ said Bridget, hearing a kind of roar in her ears, ‘Who—’ but she managed to stop herself, to change tack. ‘Never mind,’ she said again. ‘Just bring the dress back, any time.’ Isabel just nodded, mutely and Bridget looked back at the road.
‘Drop me here,’ said Isabel suddenly: they were not quite there as far as Bridget understood, but it was a good part of town, big houses, tall trees. Christmas trees in big bay windows. ‘I’m nearly home,’ unclipping her seat belt as Bridget pulled up. ‘Mum would kill me if she thought I’d taken a lift.’
‘Sure,’ said Bridget, turning off the engine. ‘I’d be the same.’ Wanting only to reassure her. ‘You know my son,’ she said. ‘Finn? He’s in the year above you, isn’t he? Or is it two years?’
‘One year.’ Isabel seemed uncomfortable. Yes she knew Finn. They climbed out together and Bridget hauled the bike out for her. Dusting it off.
‘And this girlfriend of his?’ Trying just to sound like the friendly mum.
‘Yes, yes,’ said Isabel.
‘Phoebe, right?’ Bridget handed the bike over to her.
‘Oh, yes, she’s really pretty.’
She seemed embarrassed now. Pushing her bike away, suddenly in a hurry, and in a moment of revelation as she watched Isabel struggle to get the heavy, old-fashioned frame on to the kerb, Bridget knew why that was – from somewhere, way back, aged thirteen or whatever. Before violin lessons, before periods, a time so innocent she felt herself on the brink of tears at the memory. You fancied a boy, you gazed at him – then he came round a corner with a girl on his arm. Older, prettier, longer legs, a girlfriend. And you felt like you’d never be a girlfriend.
Isabel fancied Finn. The girl paused, hand raised quick and awkward, not even looking back and said, ‘Thanks.’ And hurried off, on those delicate bird’s legs.
Pulling away, it had seemed to Bridget a good sign: it meant, though she couldn’t say exactly why, that Carmichael hadn’t yet done anything to Isabel. And that was good. That was wonderful. She had driven on to the shop, fixing on that. Hadn’t yet. She realised that in her head he was still alive. She veered away from the thought.
Sitting parked in the lane had been when she’d thought to google him: Carmichael. Timpson, too, while she was at it. Where they’d been, what they’d done. And stopped herself. The phone wasn’t just how they knew where you’d been it was where they found messages, searches.
The police.
She would look, but some other way. Some other time.
She didn’t need to look him up, not yet. What she needed was to get rid of him. And on cue, that was when Carrie had called. He’s freaking me out. Even dead, he could do that. Not for much longer.
Bridget could feel Carrie’s thin shoulders under her arms now, and released her.
‘Right,’ she said, looking into Carrie’s eyes and Carrie nodded, shivering.
Chapter Fifteen
Inside the garage, together they lugged the carpet containing Carmichael’s dead body into the van. Deadweight. Carrie’s morale seemed to improve with just the physical activity: Bridget remembered her as a kid, hyperactive, fidgeting at her desk, always in trouble. Mum just at her wits’ end: Carrie had been nothing like Bridget, not quiet, submissive, patient. But was that what had saved her? She’d have never had the patience for violin practice.
They sat, hunched in the van at the kerb, with the engine running.
‘Where are we going?’ Carrie said, not shivering any more but her face pale and set: outside it was dusk. ‘What? Bury him?’ Insistent. ‘Chuck him off a tall building? Drop him in the sea?’
Bridget engaged gear but her mind was a blank, terrified. Pulled away from the kerb.
‘Drop him in the sea,’ she said, peering both ways at the junction but she didn’t know. She clicked the indicator left, down to the estuary. Where?
There was a place where they went walking. But what if there was someone there, parked for a twilight walk. And there was the tide: the thought of the body washed back in, turning up on a beach, haunted her. The movements of the water and the shallow channels snaking inland were something she knew nothing about.
‘Somewhere to wash him clean of the DNA, though, of carpet fibres, all that,’ she said. She still hadn’t moved off from the junction: soon someone would see. ‘I can’t—’ her voice broke. ‘How can we be – how can I be thinking like this?’
‘Stop it,’ said Carrie, beside her, her voice rising, panicked. ‘It’s done.’
Then Bridget remembered the reservoir. Where she’d gone with Matt to look at the dinghy.
Reservoirs were deep and cold and empty. She clicked the indicator the other way.
A half hour’s drive inland. She remembered the route from the journey with Matt. They passed a pub he’d pointed out to her. ‘Nice Sunday lunch, I’ve heard.’ Matt and Finn, diving in to roast beef and Yorkshires, happiest moment of the week.
About halfway she’d taken her foot off the accelerator and said, ‘This is nuts, isn’t it? The sea is right there on the doorstep.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Carrie, unexpectedly calm. She’d been just sitting there, staring out into the dark. The headlights on the frozen grass of the verge, a rabbit hurtling across a narrow lane, ears flat on its back.
‘I think that’s why it isn’t crazy,’ she went on slowly. ‘And if we do it right – they’ll never find him. Or – not much of him.’
As they got closer, a sign for the sailing club appeared and Bridget made herself think. Not there: people there. So where?
She and Matt had stood at the edge of the water, looking. A tufted island at the centre, some people walking along the eastern edge. On the far side, opposite, there’d been a kind of rock cliff and a stand of trees above it. And then, miraculously, before they got to the sailing club there was a turning, a narrow lane between high, bare hedges, to where the sun was just a lemon glow on the horizon. West.
They were skirting the reservoir now: the lane ran close to it then receded and more than once they almost stopped but didn’t. They went slower now, and silent, both of them leaning forward and searching, searching, for the right place. And then it came into view: a slight semicircle of gravel on a bend, the gleam of water glimpsed between a scruffy stand of pines. They came to a halt and turned off the engine.
A motionless second as the engine ticked into silence, then another. Then Bridget looked at her watch. ‘Let’s get going,’ she said. It was five fifteen. They climbed out.
It was quiet, a wintry evening: no birds. A faint smell of pine. Thank God, thought Bridget, it isn’t summer. People walking. Did they come here? Picnics. Swimming. She hoped fervently that it was as deep as she imagined. She opened the van’s rear doors, and there it was, a misshapen roll, diagonally across the metal floor.
He was heavy, or the carpet was. They lugged at the rolled shape, one on either side, fruitlessly for a second, until Carrie was ready to climb inside and shove from the other end – but then it shifted, scraped over the lip and thudded at their feet, already beginning to unroll. Something fell out, a gleam in the thin moon, a little something. Carrie leaned down and when she straightened she had it in her hand: she held it o
ut. Matt’s pliers, tape wound round one of the handles. Bridget took them from her quickly and set them inside the van, out of sight. The tape round the handles made her want to cry, and she couldn’t afford the time.
Carrie was already leaning over the rolled carpet, shoulders swaying as Bridget looked down. A foot was visible at Bridget’s end, an ugly shoe, worn down at the back, an ankle that looked blotchy in the thin light. Everything in her head screamed for them to just haul him through the trees, shove him into the water and drive away. Quick, quick, quick.
Instead Bridget took a deep breath. ‘Hold on,’ she said, steady. ‘Let’s get him closer still rolled up. Then we search him again.’
They hauled him as near as they could get to the cliff-edge, between two pines where the soil dropped away. The water was about five feet below them, black, wavelets lapping a little in the sharp wind. ‘You all right?’ Bridget said to Carrie, who was squatting with her back against one of the trunks. She nodded, but her face was in shadow. ‘I’ve got a torch,’ said Bridget. It was in the van’s glovebox.
They got to work. Bridget found it was all right if she just focused on the cloth under her hand, not what lay beneath it, inanimate now. Into one pocket then another. Dust. There was still no phone. Carrie sat back on her heels.
‘Do you think,’ she said, her face uplit by the torch, set and determined, ‘we should get his clothes off? Like, so he can’t be identified, or, or,’ she wavered. ‘I don’t know.’
‘I don’t, I don’t—’ Bridget stiffened, rigid. She didn’t want to do it. But the more she didn’t want to do it the more she told herself, it had to be done. It wasn’t the time to be squeamish.
What We Did_A gripping, compelling psychological thriller with a nail-biting twist Page 14