It was empty, except for the guy with his feet up on a computer console playing Call of Duty who had no interest in anything but the two pounds fifty that bought them an hour on a computer. Bridget couldn’t spare more than half an hour. Laura was opening up but sooner or later even she would think, what is all this?
They started with just his name plus musician. A row of pictures: intellectual at a podium with glasses on; hands raised to conduct a quintet; leaning down over the shoulder of a girl whose face you couldn’t see, only the violin in her hands, her bowed head, her shiny hair, her centre parting. Quickly Bridget scrolled down and the pictures were gone.
There was nothing about his disappearance. Nor was there anything to indicate he might ever have been involved in any kind of scandal. Bridget shifted on the office chair, Carrie pulled up on an identical one beside her.
‘Fucker,’ said Bridget, the word escaping her. And Carrie’s eyebrows raised.
‘Why is there nothing?’ Bridget said, feeling her chest tight.
After a moment Carrie shrugged. ‘People don’t stick their necks out,’ she said. ‘It’s intimidation. Bloke like that. People are scared of getting in trouble.’ She leaned forward and scrolled back up to the row of photographs, and Bridget didn’t try to stop her.
‘Look at him,’ said Carrie, sitting back in her cheap office chair. ‘Thinks he’s fucking God.’
And there he was, filling the screen leaning on a lectern with one elbow, a half smile on his face at some question.
Bridget felt her throat close: leaning quick past Carrie, she typed in the name of the music school she’d seen reported on all those years back. The one where there had been the beginnings of a scandal, swiftly quashed. The time Bridget had gone up to the police station in town, with Finn in his buggy. But because the school had been far away, because this station was the place where she’d reported her bike stolen once, where they knew her as a member of the local independent retailers’ organisation, contributor to the Christmas lights fund, she had just stood there, feeling her heart pound, before walking away.
Why did Bridget need this? She knew what had happened. She knew what he had done.
But still.
Some bland pieces on the music school’s European tours, a student shortlisted for a prize. Photographs of landscaped grounds, a semi-stately home, a cedar tree. It was twenty miles from where Bridget had grown up.
She typed in his name, plus the school’s name.
And there, on page two, buried away, she found it. An investigative piece, five years old, on a national newspaper, about the deaths of two students from the school, a year apart, promising students who also happened to be slim, gawky pre-pubescent girls, one fair, one dark, one with braces, both shy in their yearbook photographs. Anthony Carmichael’s name was mentioned but carefully, judiciously. Only reading between the lines was it possible to infer that the writer suspected him of involvement.
The piece was written by a small investigative team: Carrie pointed at the lead name. ‘That’s her,’ she said. ‘That’s the woman who phoned.’
Bridget stared at the name. Gillian Lawson.
‘Shit,’ said Bridget, feeling language escape her, good manners and everything, going. ‘Shit.’ But under her breath now. ‘She called the house.’ She felt cold with terror. ‘Carrie. She knows. She asked for me by name. She knows who I am.’ Her hand on Carrie’s wiry shoulder, shaking it. ‘Carrie.’ Breathless. Help me.
‘Not necessarily,’ said Carrie, putting a hand up to hers, speaking levelly with one eye on the man with his feet up on the table. He hadn’t moved, except for his thumbs a blur on the console. ‘Stay calm.’ But Carrie spoke in an undertone too. ‘Matt might have mentioned your name to her, I don’t know, or to a colleague. It’s like cold callers, trying to sell you something, it’s their foot in the door, knowing your name. Same for journalists.’
But what if she does know? Staring at Carrie, Bridget didn’t say it: neither of them did. The panic subsided, gradually: she needed to stop this. She needed to stay calm. All she knows is Matt has a wife called Bridget. Plenty of Bridgets: Bridget Webster isn’t Bridget O’Neill.
The man didn’t look up when they left.
The shop was empty when they arrived and Laura was in the kitchen, at the tap with the little watering can they used for the plants beside the door in her hand. She had paused and was looking up at the space where the log had been, but the question hadn’t yet formed, her mind elsewhere. She looked pale, violet shadows under her eyes. Bridget had her explanation ready but it seemed to stick in her throat. A lie: what if she fumbled it?
But then Laura looked past her, at Carrie and the moment was gone. Bridget had forgotten, the effect her sister had on people. Her white face, cropped hair, the line of studs up one ear. They didn’t expect Bridget to have a sister like that.
‘This is my sister Carrie, Laura,’ she said and saw Carrie’s deadpan look settle on Laura’s smile.
Laura nodded, weary. Her hair straggled at the collar of her cardigan. Bridget remembered how that was: too tired at the end of pregnancy to do anything, Matt hovering, waiting for her to explode. She took the watering can from her and crossed to the plants, Laura following obediently. ‘Sit down,’ she said, and Laura hoisted herself on to the stool next to her at the desk. Carrie took the sofa, elbows on her knees, watchful.
‘He didn’t come back,’ she said.
Carrie’s head lifted, inquiring. Bridget pressed her fingers into the soil of the plants.
‘Who didn’t?’ Carefully, head down.
‘The one with the present for his wife who wanted to talk to you.’
‘Right,’ said Bridget, and only then did she look up, everything slowing, back to normal.
‘I could have sworn I saw him looking in the window but when I got to the door he had disappeared.’ And then Laura was struggling to get down off the stool and Bridget moved to help but by the time she was on her feet she had moved on to varicose veins. ‘I thought it was old ladies got them,’ despondent. ‘And Nick—’ Bridget smiled and nodded, zoning out. Something about him telling her to get the veins done, about him going drinking when he should be home decorating the nursery. When she came to a standstill, Bridget told her to go for lunch.
‘Where’d you find her?’ said Carrie when the door had closed behind her. ‘The Stepford wife?’
Bridget found herself defending her. ‘She’s all right,’ she said, stopping herself saying, you don’t know what it’s like, being pregnant. All the hormones, that slow, heavy feeling, that anxiety. She wondered if it would ever happen to Carrie.
But Carrie had moved on: she was on her knees extracting cleaning products from the little kitchen cupboard. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Let’s get started.’ Looking up. ‘So it happened in here, right?’
Where she knelt there was some bark Bridget hadn’t seen, round the side of the cupboard under the little sink. Kneeling she began to prise it out, scraping, scraping, reaching for the cloth Carrie held out to her, wiping. It was easier to say the words if she didn’t have to look at anyone.
‘It fell. It fell. I hadn’t realised how heavy it was but when I saw—’ she paused and did look up then – and found Carrie was watching her, not shocked, not angry, just nodding.
‘So he could have been already dead,’ Carrie said. She was squatting, balancing on the balls of her feet like a kid ready to sprint. ‘You – it might not have been you, at all.’
Bridget sat back on her heels. ‘He was still alive,’ she said, and as the words bloomed between them in the cramped space, quite suddenly she was calm. ‘I could have phoned the ambulance, I could have phoned the police.’
Carrie straightened, leaning against the doorframe and listening, sombre, arms folded across her taut little belly. She had rolled up her sleeves and Bridget could see a tattoo, of a heart and the last girlfriend but one’s name, on her forearm.
‘He could be alive now in a hospital bed and I could be
telling the police what happened,’ said Bridget. ‘But I’m not.’ Still calm: not happy, exactly, but certain at least. ‘I’m not glad I killed him,’ she said. ‘But I’m glad he’s dead.
And there was a long pause before Carrie exhaled and said with a quick nod, ‘And then you took the body next door.’
Going through it again for Carrie’s benefit Bridget found she could think about it fairly clearly: how long it had taken her, where she had paused, dragging him across the floor. She remembered checking she had been obscured from the street by the window display. The stockroom took longer than the kitchen to examine: there were rails to remove and boxes of stock to look over. By the time they were sure it was clean, Laura had been gone almost an hour.
‘Could anyone have seen him come into the shop?’ said Carrie. They were both hot, sweating with the exertion, washing their hands together in the sink by the tiny toilet.
‘It’s possible,’ said Bridget, thinking. ‘The lane was fairly quiet, though. A November Tuesday is quiet. And—’ she hesitated, forcing herself to be rational. ‘It would have to have been someone he knew, wouldn’t it? Someone who recognised him. For it to be a worry.’
She’d need to remember to take the hand towel home to wash.
‘I told Matt he’d been in,’ she said slowly. ‘A fortnight before.’
‘All right, all right,’ said Carrie, dismissive. Jamming her hands in her pockets. ‘I know Matt. He won’t think it’s relevant. Will he? The guy’s just gone AWOL but it sounds like he never took the job seriously anyway. It’s just if – they have any way of retracing his steps. How did he get into town? He must have left his car somewhere?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Bridget, hearing her own anxiety. Something beginning to sound, all the possibilities, fuzzy images on a camera screen, last seen. She needed to think clearly, be methodical. Like Matt. Remembering the little car parked on the kerb opposite her house, the smart little black car. Did anyone see? Carrie was leaning against the door of the little toilet.
‘Parking’s a nightmare in town,’ Bridget said, thinking hard. ‘You’d walk if you could. If you lived—’
Then she remembered.
‘I have got his address,’ she said. ‘He wrote it down.’ And she was behind the till, and flipping the pages of the big exercise book they used for notes and customer details, back, back, and Carrie looking over her shoulder.
‘Look,’ she said, at last, and pointing. His handwriting: it was vivid now in her memory. How could she have forgotten how it felt when he smiled across the desk at her in the shop that evening with Isabel waiting, uncomfortable, at the door. He had taken the biro from Bridget’s hand to write it down. As if she couldn’t manage.
‘He lives in town,’ said Bridget now, staring at the address. Near where she’d dropped Isabel. ‘He would have walked.’ She raised her head and someone was there in the street, a youngish woman standing looking at the window display. She smiled, automatically and the woman moved for the door. ‘Must have.’
‘It’ll be OK,’ said Carrie, nodding. ‘No car – that’s good.’ The door pinged and the customer was coming inside. A woman on her lunch hour, in a skirt suit, with earphones in listening to music. Tschkk tschkk, they could hear, her head moving a little to the sound as her eyes travelled over the rails. Paying them no attention.
Carrie moved away to the sofa and shouldered her little backpack. ‘I’ll do the food shopping for this evening,’ she said cheerfully, one eye on the newcomer. ‘I’ll cook, even. All right?’ Bridget nodded.
Watching her profile as she moved off in the lane Bridget felt suddenly stupidly protective of her, her small white face out here in the sticks. Anything might happen to her, and she looked so brave, so tough.
Across the shop floor the woman in the suit had taken a long, dark, chiffon dress off the rail and was waving it at Bridget, earbuds still in. Reluctantly she pulled one out only when Bridget was in front of her. ‘Anything more like this?’ she said, in a voice too loud.
The customer was barely installed in the cubicle when the door opened again, and then again. Lunch hour was often like this, too busy for Bridget to think, and she was grateful for it, even though she was alone. The phone rang and, rooting in the stockroom for sizes she had to ignore it.
When finally the door pinged to admit Laura, a customer Bridget hadn’t even seen come in was standing with one shoe in her hand in the middle of the floor demanding attention. Her husband was already on the sofa opening his local paper.
The phone rang again. ‘You get it,’ said Laura comfortably, taking off her coat and reaching for the single shoe. Bridget lifted the receiver.
‘Hello?’ she said. A crackle on the line.
The headline on the man’s paper was about a missing teenager. A blurred photograph of a laughing boy. It set her nerves jangling.
‘Hello?’ she said again. Laura was on her knees hauling shoeboxes out from their cupboard, and Bridget wanted to get over there and tell her to stop it.
‘Hey.’ It was Carrie, and her voice was full of something suppressed.
‘I’m at his house,’ she said.
He was sitting in the hotel lobby when Gill came out of the lift. When he saw her he half hovered to his feet, peering sheepishly down at his own shirt open at the neck. He had come back for his tie. Gill’s heart sank. She stopped.
She couldn’t remember what he did for a living. Engineer? She couldn’t remember his name, even. Did he know hers? She’d rather he didn’t. Google made finding out names all too easy.
Messed up: this is messed up, she told herself. She smiled stiffly.
He was properly on his feet now and heading towards her as she stood there like a lemon.
‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘sorry, it’s just – well, I haven’t got another tie and the conference starts in—’ He held out his wrist to examine a battered watch. ‘Ten minutes ago.’ The trace of a cheeky smile.
She sighed. ‘OK,’ she said, turning sharply and marching back to the lift, not waiting to see if he was following. He stood in the lift next to her with his hands folded at his crotch like a naughty schoolboy. She said nothing.
At the door he followed her into the room and Gill stopped immediately, holding up a hand. ‘Wait there,’ she said.
She whisked the tie off the chair and came straight back with it and he made a little lurch towards her, trying for a kiss. ‘No!’ she said, outraged.
He subsided. ‘Sorry.’ Tucked the tie in his pocket but didn’t move. ‘Can I see you again?’ he said promptly.
‘No,’ said Gill, just standing there. What else was there to say?
Slowly he nodded, backing out of the door. Jack, she thought. That was his name. Stopping just a second with his hand on the frame, then he fished in his pocket and brought out a business card, shrugged, apologetic, and was gone.
With the card in her hand – why had she even taken it? – Gill waited: she didn’t want to go back down with him. She watched him turn the corner and only when she heard the shoosh of the lift doors did she lock the room back up and walk after him.
He had slowed her down. That was all she knew. As she was walking out though the purple lobby she was dialling Matthew Webster’s number at the university: he picked up immediately.
No one had given him any message. Well, surprise, surprise. But he covered for his wife, loyally: Gill pretending he’d spoken to her. ‘Bridget’s not my secretary,’ he said mildly, ‘and besides, she’s got a lot on her plate at the moment. Christmas and all that.’ Hearing the name on his lips Gill could still hardly believe it but there it was: Bridget O’Neill, married, normal, housewife and businesswoman. Matt Webster was her hiding place.
She held the phone to her head: the receptionist was signalling for her room key and she walked back and slapped it on the desk.
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Sorry to have called you at home, it was just—’
‘It’s fine,’ said Matt Webster, easy.
Nice guys, though, could you trust any of them to be what they say? The engineer giving her his card: Christ, he’d almost bowed when he did. He’d looked at her like she might be about to slap him but he was going to do it anyway.
‘I’d like to come back up and ask you one or two more things,’ she said.
‘I could see you at the end of the day,’ said Webster, hesitating. ‘Six-ish? Though, honestly, I don’t know what help I can be. I hardly know Mr Carmichael.’
Carmichael wouldn’t like that, his honorary doctorate dispensed with so carelessly: either Webster was an innocent or there was no love lost between them. There was something there: Gill hadn’t got this far without being able to hear that tiny pause that meant something wasn’t being said. Then he said it. ‘What’s it about, really?’ he said.
She hesitated. Because now it was a bit different, wasn’t it? Now she knew he was married to Bridget O’Neill. One of Carmichael’s little prodigies, a girl who looked scared in that picture from twenty-five years ago, a girl who might be scared still.
It was a complication that had been in the equation almost since the beginning. Do no harm, was that the phrase? These were girls, women, just about hanging on, struggling to climb out of the shithole he left them in. The last thing they wanted was to have a camera trained on them, a microphone shoved in their faces. She could hear Steve’s voice. That’s for doctors, that do no harm crap. You’re a journalist, Gillian Lawson. And Matt Webster could be a goldmine, to a journalist. Matt Webster knew all about who was doing what, on the university server.
An edited version was what she gave him. Controversy, she’d been following Carmichael’s career, such a talented man who gives to the community. Blah, blah. She couldn’t come out and say it, of course. ‘I’d like to talk to some of the people who work with him.’ A silence: he could laugh, in that silence. Say, what? Like the computer guy? She had an instinct Matthew Webster knew what she was after. And knew he shouldn’t talk to her, all right. But he was going to. ‘Five thirty, six ish, then,’ he said. ‘It’ll have to be quick.’
What We Did_A gripping, compelling psychological thriller with a nail-biting twist Page 17