‘Thank you, that’s really kind,’ she said, ‘Honestly.’ Laying it on so he wouldn’t bail on her. But she had to get back on track: she had most of the day still then. ‘I’ll be there.’ And hailing a cab as she hung up. Sod the expense, her head hurt.
There were things she could be getting on with.
Chapter Eighteen
Bridget was driving, hunched over the wheel. Up the hill towards the corner where she’d dropped Isabel: she could see the big trees, bare now. The street was mercifully empty.
Laura had stared at her: it had felt as though everyone in the shop was staring at her.
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ Bridget had said into the mobile, turning a little so they couldn’t see her face. Walking to the door, out into the street with all their eyes on her back. Once out there she said, ‘Stay right where you are.’
Looking up and down the narrow, cobbled lane. In the window opposite Justine was peering at her over her glittering display. Bridget found herself registering the detail of this street as if she’d never seen it before. How many people there were out shopping this lunchtime. The other shops: a shoe repair man, a shop that sold home stuff, mirrors and lamps and linen, a newsagent’s. She knew them all by sight, some for longer than others, the feeble independent retailers’ organisation that put on the Christmas lights and petitioned the council over business rates.
Through the glass Laura was still staring at her: Bridget waved cheerily. ‘Don’t, Carrie,’ she said. ‘Just, don’t. I’ll call you back.’ She hung up. When she walked back in the customer was at the desk: Bridget held out her hand for the card.
When the woman had gone – the husband took an age to get up off the sofa, folding his paper, tutting – Bridget made herself turn to Laura, smile.
‘How you feeling now?’ Solicitous. But Laura was bright-eyed; she liked work. Bridget turned away.
Before she had shifted two steps she could hear Laura on the phone to her husband, half listening to her droning on, Yes darling, no darling, comfortable, no, I’ll leave it in the oven for you. She went into the kitchen, to text Carrie. What the hell do you think you’re doing? Wait for me. Wait.
‘Who was that on the phone?’ said Laura when she emerged, looking across the counter at her mildly. On cue. ‘Do you need to get off again? It’s fine if you do.’
‘Family stuff,’ said Bridget, grimacing cheerfully. ‘You know the kind of thing,’ though she knew Laura was an only child, and probably didn’t. ‘My sister, a bit of a black sheep, you know. She’s—’ she improvised. ‘She’s gone off in search of an old girlfriend.’ Laura still nodding helpfully. ‘Trouble is she’s got tanked up first and—’
‘Oh, go on then,’ said Laura, flapping her hand complacently. And Bridget didn’t wait to be told a third time: she grabbed her coat and was off.
She’d dialled Carrie again as she headed up the alley: the phone rang and rang but Carrie wasn’t answering.
Finn’s school came into sight on the wide ring road. The lunch break seemed to be still on, a handful of lanky sixth formers were milling at the gates eating chips. She was almost past them on the other side of the road when she spotted Finn, talking to a girl, head down. The girl was smoking. He didn’t see her; the van was small, white and anonymous, and there were three lanes of traffic between them. Gazing back at him in the rearview mirror Bridget remembered a serial killer of children who used his white van to abduct them. White van man.
And then the slow incline appeared and the rooflines of big houses between tall bare trees.
The harder her heart pounded the more carefully Bridget drove. She indicated. She knew why Carrie was there: it was almost a game to her. Find out about this man. Carrie was fearless, but it had always been Bridget’s job to be careful.
She’d just turned into Carmichael’s road and had time to register it was a short, discreet street, no more than five or six big houses, when her mobile rang in her lap. She pulled in abruptly. It was Matt.
He was asking if someone called this morning, a woman called Gillian. He sounded on the alert.
‘Sorry?’ she said. ‘Oh, yes, Carrie answered the phone just as I was heading off to work, she did say something but – I’m sorry. Was it important?’
‘Not sure,’ he said, distant. ‘Well, she got hold of me, anyway. She – I wanted to check how you were feeling.’
The engine ticked quietly and she sat, hands on the steering wheel. ‘I—’ Bridget realised she was about to tell him she just saw Finn with a girl but realised in time that then she would have had to go into an explanation of where she was and why. ‘I’m fine,’ she said. Hearing a hesitation in his voice. ‘Why?’
A sigh. ‘She’s coming to see me. I might be a bit late home,’ he said.
‘That’s all right,’ she said quickly, relieved. The later he got back the more breathing space. Only— ‘Who is this Gillian, then?’ she asked, airy. The one who knows my name.
‘The journalist,’ said Matt with a sigh. ‘She wants to come and talk to me about Carmichael again.’ Again. And then Bridget remembered: the journalist who’d been at the lecture that Carmichael hadn’t turned up to.
‘Oh, him,’ said Bridget, and tried to put a whole world of possibilities into the two words, some flaky, arrogant academic she hardly knew from Adam who’d missed a lecture, gone up to London to audition or socialise.
When would this be over? She sat back in the driver’s seat, thought about the police, about prison: it looked like an option, suddenly. The peace, the calm. No more toxic fear in her system.
She thought about Finn. Finding out. A courtroom.
Just hold your nerve. She realised she could identify Carmichael’s house: he was number five and she was parked outside number three. A tall, solid Victorian house, a garden with shrubs neatly tended. There was no sign of Carrie.
Something had to happen. To explode, somehow. So she wouldn’t have to live feeling this way.
‘What’s she after, this Gillian? Any idea?’
‘She didn’t really say,’ he said shortly. ‘A lot of stuff about how eminent he is, what an interesting figure. But the questions – well, does he do private music teaching, do I know why he left his previous position.’ A silence. ‘I probably shouldn’t talk to her, but—’ But you’re too straight, you’re too kind, you’re too honest. He’d never say that stuff.
His previous position at a prestigious collegiate university. Organ scholar. Bridget knew all about that, all those fruity-voiced middle-aged men protecting each other. ‘Do you know why?’ she asked. Matt never gossiped, it hadn’t occurred to her that he would know stuff, would hear stuff.
‘No,’ said Matt, shortly. But Bridget wasn’t sure about the way his voice sounded.
‘What’s she hinting at?’ she asked, persistent. This was dangerous: it wasn’t like her and Matt knew it. In a moment she was going to have to say the word. But Matt did it for her.
‘Paedophilia,’ he said, clearing his throat. ‘I think she’s after him for abusing girls.’
Isabel, thought Bridget, poor little Isabel. Her own self she didn’t think about. Her other self, little Bridget in her flowered dresses to hide how skinny she was getting. If she thought about that girl, it was as if she was someone else. An almost-stranger.
There was still no sign of Carrie in the wide, quiet street. The gate between the hedges, though, was ajar.
‘She asked about his internet use, his computer history,’ said Matt. ‘If I’d noticed anything suspicious.’
‘You didn’t tell me all this,’ said Bridget.
Matt sighed. ‘Of course I told her, no way. No way could I talk to a journalist about a colleague.’ Or his wife either.
‘But is there anything?’ The words escaped her. She tried to sound unruffled, merely interested.
‘I haven’t looked,’ he said calmly.
‘Right,’ said Bridget uncertainly and then, hurriedly, she was pretending to be distracted. ‘I�
��d better go,’ she said, ‘I’m at the post office, Laura’s on her own.’ At the end of the road an old woman had come out of her gate. She had a small dog with her and was fussing with a lead.
‘Anyway,’ said Matt, ‘I only wondered if she was telling the truth about calling the house. She seemed suspicious. Talked about people closing ranks.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Bridget. ‘Like I said, I – we – just forgot.’
After she’d hung up she sat a second, trying to sense what the conversation meant. What it had told her. Gillian Lawson the journalist thought Carmichael was a paedophile: well, she was right, wasn’t she? And now she was suspicious of Matt, too. At the far end of the pavement the old woman was making her way slowly towards the main road, the dog zigzagging joyfully at her feet. She’d have to come past the van. Bridget kept very still, head down.
How could you know about anyone? How had Bridget known Matt wasn’t threatening when she first met him? Geeky with his bike, awkward but determined. She just did. Matt was her touchstone. Matt bringing her tea on a tray, Matt worrying over Finn. The old woman was level with the van now and Bridget could hear her muttering, she could hear the click of the dog’s nails on the pavement: she held her breath, and then the woman was past and receding in the rearview mirror.
When she was out of sight Bridget opened the door quietly.
She hurried along the pavement. The hedges were high here, the houses were quiet. No windows visible but these places were too grand for net curtains, anyway.
Inside her it sat like lead: the journalist and her suspicions. That they were closing ranks. There were things she’d wondered, on and off, sometimes sparked by those news reports, sometimes flowering out of the dark spaces in her own head. The abused go on to abuse their children. Memories of motherhood surfaced, but they seemed only to hold love, her hand stroking his head while he slept but what if she was no judge? Her thoughts zigzagged, terrified.
Slowly she walked past the house then turned and walked back: on the return she spotted an alley, narrow between laurel hedges, and turned down it.
‘Carrie?’ High and nervous.
A sound, almost a laugh, suppressed. ‘Bridge?’ It was Carrie’s voice, low and excited, and then her face appeared between the leaves overhanging a low wall. She was in his back garden.
‘Come out of there,’ hissed Bridget. ‘What d’you think you’re doing?’ Agonised. ‘It’s bloody trespassing.’ Carrie disappeared and a little further along the alley a wooden door opened and her head peered round.
‘Come on, Bridge,’ she said. ‘It’s not like he’s going to catch us, is it?’
Just to get out of the alley – what if anyone came along? – Bridget pushed her back through the door and followed, pulling it shut behind her. She could feel her heart patter as she set her back against it. The garden was lush, even for November: money had been spent on it. Trimmed evergreens mounded against a soft grey brick wall, the grass trimmed and bright. A long, handsome window with fresh paint was set in the side that faced them, and a wide porch at the back. It was a version of the same house he’d had when Bridget had been fourteen and his student. She could still remember the feeling of standing at his front door, hand raised to a big brass knocker.
‘Nice place, right?’ said Carrie, scornful. Taking Bridget by the shoulders, giving her a little shake. ‘Look, soon people will know he’s properly missing,’ she said. ‘And then they’ll come to the house looking for him, the police even, maybe. I don’t know why they aren’t already, do you?’
Bridget felt numb with panic: they were trespassing. She made herself focus. ‘No,’ she said. ‘He’s got friends, after all. Or a friend, anyway.’
‘Right,’ said Carrie, eagerly. ‘So soon it’ll be too late.’
‘Too late for what?’ said Bridget, but even before Carrie spoke she knew. Daredevil bloody Carrie.
‘To go in there.’ Eyes wide with excitement.
Bridget almost groaned. ‘It’s not a game, Carrie,’ she said, agonised, again. ‘They’ll know. Break in? It’s illegal.’ Carrie dropped her hands, took a step back, and smiled.
‘I’ve got his keys,’ said Carrie. Then her head whipped round and she put a finger to her lips.
Someone was coming along the alley.
They ducked to a squat under the laurels and waited, hardly daring to breathe. Slow footsteps and an excited bark, a voice grumbling tiredly. The old woman with her dog, or another one. After what seemed like an age the dog had exhausted its snuffling and had moved on, and they got up and made their way across the soft winter grass towards the back porch.
It was neat, orderly: he had a gardener. They edged round a stack of garden chairs, a compost heap and a mound of leaves ready for burning. She’d made a bonfire of hers that morning, only there’d been barely enough leaves to cover the small pile of clothes, hers and Carrie’s. They’d caught quickly, the smoke rising in the cold blue morning, and she had been grateful for the seclusion of their garden, on the outer curve of the close. They’d offloaded the carpet in a skip they’d passed on the way back in the dark. It had already been overflowing with flytipped rubbish, old kids’ toys and takeaway wrappers.
She’d need to make sure the ashes were swept up before Matt got home. Matt saw everything.
Carrie was on the porch, crouched, and Bridget joined her. ‘Carrie, what if— look, the police could—’
‘We’ve got to find his mobile,’ said Carrie impatiently. ‘I’ll go in, you don’t have to.’
Bridget patted the pockets of her coat and to her relief found her leather gloves stuffed down in one of them. ‘We’ll both go in,’ she said. ‘Just don’t – don’t touch anything.’
The back door, flanked with etched panels of red and blue Victorian glass, opened on to the back of a wide, bright, double-height hall with a grand staircase. The floor was polished wood with a strip of pale thick carpet. Bridget put a hand on Carrie’s arm to stop her.
‘Wait,’ she said. ‘Take off your shoes.’
Not even feeling foolish, they hid them behind a big ceramic jar holding an umbrella. Would that help anything, if the police came and knocked on the door, or the gardener? The house was hoovered, tidy, the woodwork freshly painted and impeccable. A raincoat on a rack and a vase of big white lilies standing on a console table halfway down the hall.
It gave Bridget the creeps.
Carrie was ahead of her, padding on men’s woollen socks she must have pinched from Matt’s drawer. She disappeared through a panelled door, leaving Bridget alone in the bright hallway that smelled of wax polish and lilies. She took a step closer and saw the big flowers were on the turn, one or two of them edged with brown.
It was warm, stifling in the house. Those flowers would need changing soon, thought Bridget, a little smoke spiral of anxiety rising inside her.
‘Hey!’ Carrie’s hiss of excitement came from round the corner. When Bridget got to the door she was standing by a long bookshelf in one corner of a big, square room where a piano stood in the window, and holding something up triumphantly. Without gloves.
A mobile phone, plugged in and charging.
‘All right, all right,’ said Bridget, relief mixed with fear. ‘So we found it. So it can’t – he can’t be traced to me, to us. Now, look, wipe it down and leave it where it was and let’s go now, Carrie. Please.’ But Carrie had that smile on.
‘No, Carrie,’ Bridget pleaded. ‘This isn’t stealing apples. This isn’t safe.’
‘Come on, Bridge,’ said Carrie, quite relaxed, defiant. ‘Don’t you want just a bit of a poke around? It’s not like we’re going to get this chance again.’ Looking around the room, up at the shelves. Bridget was beside her now: she took the mobile and wiped it carefully with her gloves, set it back down. Carrie moved off, restless, and Bridget followed her. It wasn’t safe to leave her alone.
The books on the floor-to-ceiling shelves seemed to be all about music – a whole shelf on Bach, two – rows and rows
of CDs. A stacked music system was in the far corner, with tall, elegant speakers that looked like some kind of artwork.
Carrie came to a stop at a fancy side table polished to a high shine that looked like it might be used as a desk.
‘He’ll have a computer somewhere,’ said Bridget, her heart sinking.
‘No doubt,’ said Carrie. ‘But – it’ll be password protected,’ tapping her teeth. ‘That might not be a problem. It’s more—’
‘More, what?’ said Bridget.
Carrie tapped her fingers against her lips. ‘Well, if we find it, take it, it sounds alarm bells, doesn’t it? If we get into it and look – well.’
‘Look for—’
‘Look for anything about you.’ Carrie was blunt.
‘Like emails.’
Carrie shrugged. ‘Or – whatever.’ Nodding. ‘But you know what? He left his mobile at home. He’s old school, right? He’s going to be wary of keeping things on the computer. He’ll do his thing in person, one to one – he—’
‘He might have photographs of me,’ said Bridget, interrupting.
There was a silence, Carrie looking at her. Nodding, like this didn’t surprise her. ‘Like I say,’ she said, ‘I think he’s not going to put that stuff on the computer. Prints, negatives? People have known that stuff was safer kept off the laptop for a long time now. And if he has been looking at – paedo websites online, that’s different. If the police look on his laptop and find that – bingo. He’s busted.’
Bridget stared, feeling sick.
‘Don’t you want him to be busted?’ Carrie’s hands on her hips. ‘Like, can you think of a better reason for him to just – disappear?’ And there it was, the tiniest crystallisation of hope.
‘And if I’m identifiable?’ said Bridget. ‘If I can be connected to him?’
Carrie nodded. ‘It’s a risk,’ she said.
‘But—’
‘But everything’s got risk attached, right?’
‘I was going to say, but you won’t be the only one,’ said Carrie.’ Not smiling, serious. ‘And straight up I think if he’s kept actual pictures they’ll be hidden away somewhere.’ Looking around the big pale tasteful room. ‘Give me the gloves,’ said Carrie.
What We Did_A gripping, compelling psychological thriller with a nail-biting twist Page 18