The door pinged and one half of the middle-aged couple came in. The woman, still smiling and flushed, shyly expectant. As if they all should know what she was here for.
In Laura’s handwriting Bridget saw a name carefully written. A mobile number. An address. ‘Laura, when did you—’ But Laura wasn’t listening. The woman was standing right on the other side of the desk now and Bridget had to look up. She had to smile.
‘I’m getting married next week,’ said the woman, breathless. Sixty if she was a day, and so happy.
‘Yes,’ said Bridget, in a daze. ‘How lovely.’ Automatically. ‘Let’s – well we have—’
Mechanically she led the woman through the rails, as though she was sleepwalking, sleeptalking. Sometimes the shop was in her dreams, more and more: clothes stained, boxes full of hands where shoes should be. Moving down the rail Bridget just kept talking. ‘Do you want sleeves?’ They always wanted sleeves, as though a bare arm was shameful.
The woman – Marie, she confided, her second marriage, the first had been a disaster and she thought she’d never find anyone else, But Gerry was, well, he was – took about an hour and a half to decide on a pale grey suit. And then the door pinged shut behind her and the quiet settled, terrifying, in the room.
Bridget stepped back behind the desk and looked down at the book again.
‘Laura?’ she said, and she knew it had crept into her voice – a little too high, a little too light – because of the way Laura’s head lifted sharply.
‘Who is this, did you say?’ Tap, tap on the book.
Laura moving slowly, a hand gingerly on each side of her belly, neat and contained now in her navy wool. ‘When did you write this?
‘It’s the man who wanted to talk to you about the present for his wife,’ she said straight away, obedient. ‘You served him the first time, he’s been back twice. That man.’
The name written in the book. Alan Timpson.
Carmichael’s friend at the university, the man who had recruited him, the man who was covering for him, the man Matt hated. Matt never hated someone for no reason.
Laura seemed quite composed again. She wouldn’t call any helpline, Bridget was suddenly sure of it. She was pretending it had never happened.
At her shoulder Laura said, ‘Yes. Professor Timpson. He said would you call him maybe.’
Fuck it, thought Gill gloomily, staring at her emails as a girl tried laboriously to work a spluttering espresso machine behind the grubby counter. Running out of time.
Six hundred words? See if you can get a photograph while you’re there, striped apron, big smile, all right? We can use stock pictures for Sandringham.
It was how the world worked. Did people think journalism was about righting wrongs? Maybe they did, but what they wanted to read was how low the Duchess of Cambridge’s neckline was going to be on Christmas morning. Or how she liked her three-bird roast. Sitting on the tube she’d seen them turn the page quickly when it was another story about celebrity abusers or grooming gangs. Making a disapproving noise under their breath: not decent.
She sighed and began to type. On it. Should be able to file by Sunday evening.
She could always make it up. The thought sprang outrageous into Gill’s head and all the consequences it would trail after it. No shame greater than faking a royal story: her journalistic career would be over, dead and buried. For some reason the prospect left her unmoved. She could always work in a coffee shop.
The school-leaver working the machine flashed a mouthful of metal in an apologetic smile as she set the cappuccino gingerly down in front of her. Gill smiled wearily at her.
The other girl, the one on Carmichael’s doorstep had been a tough cookie, not giving an inch. His cleaner, chipped nails, overall, thousand-yard stare. Presumably that was why he’d chosen her: someone who knew exactly what her job was worth and was going to defend it tooth and nail. Did she turn a blind eye to her employer’s private life? Or had he got too old? Abusers went on and on, particularly now they could get it up till they were ninety but even before. It wasn’t about sex, after all. It was about hurting someone. It was about power.
The cleaner had been young, too: Gill guessed she was nineteen or twenty, under the thick layer of slap. Girls did that – always had, always would, in defiance of a mother saying, Get that rubbish off your face – but there would be an advantage to looking older than your years if your employer was Anthony Carmichael.
But the fact remained, Gill hadn’t gained access. ‘Can I come in and wait maybe?’ No joy. The girl standing there holding her gaze till she had to just turn round and walk away. ‘He is not here,’ she said, jaw jutting. The girl foreign but pretending to have worse English than she did have.
Closing ranks. Why would anyone want to protect Carmichael? People whose job it was. People who didn’t know. People who did know, and were part of it.
He had a big house. So he had money, from somewhere. His wife’s will had made the paper, wills and announcements, four million. Less tax. Which is why he had hung on in there. Had she known she was cover? Her musical evenings, standing next to him on podiums. Nice bit of town, maybe he planned on staying, maybe not.
Not exactly net curtain territory, hedges and shrubberies and people minding their own business. Up to a point. Gill had thought she was being watched all right.
The girl had stood there, though, till she’d had to go.
Gill pushed the cup away across the table. Time to head back up the hill.
Chapter Twenty
‘Sorry, darling,’ she said, on the phone to Matt. Holding her breath when he didn’t respond. ‘The stuff needs to go back this evening to their depot. It’s only a half-hour drive and we can just make it.’
A story she’d cooked up about mis-delivered stock that was worth a lot of money. The insurance wouldn’t cover it if it was left in the shop overnight.
‘It’s fine,’ Matt said, distant. ‘I told you, I might be a bit late anyway.’
‘Oh,’ said Bridget evenly. Was he just distracted? ‘Yes. The journalist.’ Matt made a sound of impatience in his throat but Bridget couldn’t tell if it was with her or the prospect of talking to the journalist. ‘I’ll get home as quick as I can,’ he said. ‘I really – I wish I hadn’t said I’d talk to her but—’
‘Well, just be polite,’ she said, to reassure him. ‘Make sure you don’t give her our home address, all right?’ Trying to make it sound like a joke. ‘Oh – and Laura found your pliers after all. So now you’ve got two pairs.’ Regretting it almost as soon as she’d said it, in the silence that followed.
‘Sure, right,’ said Matt after a long moment. Bemused. There was a sound in the background, and he said, ‘Got to go. See you later.’ And hung up.
No love you. The desire for the words was irrational: it would have been so out of character they would have freaked her out. But she felt as though she was on the brink, about to fall, she needed something to grab.
‘Bye,’ she said into the dead phone.
Finn and Carrie had been in the garage when she got back from work, thick as thieves. Finn had his bike up on the stand and was explaining something to Carrie about his gear set. She was looking interested, even.
Standing there in the garage Bridget remembered Carrie had been a cycle courier, once upon a time, when Finn had been five or six. Bridget had begged her to stop when she found out but she did it for a year, in defiance. She remembered Matt looking up from his paper when Bridget had hung up after that conversation and pondering how odd it was that they were sisters, one of them with a deathwish, the other one so risk-averse she turned the gas off at the mains when she left the house. ‘I like you that way,’ he’d said gruffly, from behind his newspaper when she’d stood there anxious.
Peering at his bike in the dim garage Finn had been upbeat, happy. Excitable. He even mentioned Isabel, darting a glance at Bridget across the bike frame, Carrie looking away.
‘I bumped into her after school,’ he s
aid, nodding. ‘I like her, she’s nice.’ Obediently, as if he knew that would please her. He didn’t mention the girl she saw him talking to in the lunch hour but then why should he?
‘That’s good,’ Bridget said. He had wiped his hands on a rag.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘I’m making tea, am I?’
She and Laura had locked up the shop together, Laura restored to being calmly feminine, pretty, her pale pink lipstick carefully applied. Back at the other end of the spectrum, suddenly, with Bridget and Carrie at the sweaty, bloodstained end of being women, as if what Nick had done had never happened. And Laura went home to him.
It was impossible to know what actually had happened between two people, without witnesses. Was Laura so easily shocked that it had been in fact something innocuous, just something he said, or a drunken fumble? It hadn’t felt that way. Should Bridget have told her: go to the police? She wouldn’t have gone – but still. But still. It ticked away inside Bridget as she followed Finn inside.
‘Dad said he’d be home in about an hour,’ Bridget said to Finn’s back as he knelt in front of the fridge, fishing things out. Carrie had bought tuna steaks and green beans and some tubs of prepared things.
‘Sure,’ he said, peering at a box of potato salad, and Bridget had jerked her head to Carrie. Upstairs.
They sat side by side on Bridget’s bed. Bridget pulled her phone out of her pocket and slipped it under the pillow. ‘We’ve got to leave them behind.’ Carrie rolled her eyes. ‘And yours,’ said Bridget, holding out her hand. Taking hold of her by the shoulder and pinching: it’s the whole point. Carrie wriggling under her grip and it was like they were ten and five again. If only.
Standing, she sorted through the drawer where she kept gloves and scarves and found some fine-knit gloves for Carrie. Carrie shifting from foot to foot, looking around at her neat dressing table, the photograph of Finn on the wall, the dresses hanging in the open wardrobe as if she was in a foreign country. Daredevil excitable Carrie, raring to go.
Bridget left calling goodbye until the front door was closing behind them, and got a mumble in return. A pan clattered on the stove.
Carmichael’s wide, peaceful street looked quite different by night. It was well-lit and the tall, bare trees shed ghostly shadow-patterns on the pavements. Big windows glowed behind neat hedges as Bridget pulled in to park around the corner.
The phone was still there in the glove compartment of his car, where Bridget had left it.
‘Right,’ she said, handing the van’s keys to Carrie. ‘You can remember how to drive, right?’
Carrie’s eyes glittered, mischievous in the streetlights. She shrugged. ‘More or less.’
‘I’m serious,’ said Bridget, under her breath. The street was empty and quiet, but she heard a burst of chatter from a couple of houses down as a window or door was opened. ‘Take it easy. No clipping anyone’s wing mirror, even. No speeding, no dazzling people with headlights, no drawing attention to yourself. No punctures: if we get into trouble we’ve got no phone to call for help.’ Carrie just nodded. ‘Let’s go then.’
She climbed into his car. There was air freshener in it, a little pine tree hanging from the rearview mirror that made her want to be sick: she had known she didn’t want Carrie in here, and now she knew why. He was in here, inside the expensive padded space, his backside on this seat, his hands on the wheel. His smell. His smell. She indicated and pulled away smoothly from the kerb, monitoring the rearview mirror to check Carrie was following.
He’d had a bigger car before, a flashier one. He had leaned over her to recline the seat. He’s too old for that now.
All right. All right. It ticked away in the back of her mind, not old, not old any more. You killed him, remember?
They’d talked about it, she and Carrie, in whispers outside his house. Take the car to where his body is. He’ll have committed suicide. When they find stuff in his house, on his computer, they’ll understand why. The police. The car needs to be in the right place and the mobile in the glove compartment to help them trace it. His last movements.
It was a plan. It was all they had.
The luck of it, Carmichael’s leaving the phone at home when he came to the shop that last time, almost took her breath away. Bridget indicated to join the ring road. A sheen on the road, of wet or frost. Carrie was still there in the rearview mirror. The junction loomed, too many lanes, two sets of traffic lights and then with headlights coming at her from all directions, bouncing off the road, the yellow glow of streetlight: it jumped into her head and abruptly everything inside her accelerated, screaming.
Don’t panic. Smoothly Bridget crossed the traffic, left the ring road, out of nowhere a layby appeared and she indicated, mirror signal, pulled off and turned off the engine. Her heart beating like a deranged machine, faster, faster, faster. She sat. Carrie’s face appeared in the window, angry, confused but for a moment Bridget couldn’t talk.
Carrie came round the other side and tugged open the door.
‘What the fuck, Bridge,’ she said, white-faced. Wordless Bridget shook her head, No. She climbed out and stood there, holding on to the small black car. Her legs were jelly. They stood there in the dark. The sea was still visible, an inky gleam, the other way the red lights on the towers of the university.
Bridget spoke. ‘We can’t leave the car at the quarry.’
‘All right,’ said Carrie, warily. ‘Why not?’
‘Because that will lead the police to his body and if they find his body they’ll know he was dead before he went in to the water.’ Something eased, the thundering in her ears ebbed just fractionally.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Carrie, obstinate.
‘I read it somewhere.’ She was certain. ‘If you drown your lungs are full of water. They’ll know he died of something else. Somewhere else. And someone put him in the water.’
Blunt head trauma: the words jumped into her head.
Slowly Carrie began to nod. ‘Right,’ she said, obedient at last. ‘OK. So what do we do?’
A heartbeat, another. Bridget couldn’t say, I don’t know. She couldn’t scream and shout and bang and run. She’d got them into this. Think. The next step came to her only as she opened her mouth to speak. She said, ‘We’ll leave the car by the sea. And the phone in it.’
She knew the way, even in the dark: when Finn had been small they used to come here for long days, at the first hint of sun. A half hour to the north, a stretch of velvet greensward on those summer days, breakwaters and beach huts. They hadn’t been in five years, more: it had changed, or perhaps it was out of season. The down-at-heel high street where they bought buckets and spades and fish and chips was deserted in the cold: in convoy Bridget and Carrie drove down it at a snail’s pace, obedient to the speed limit.
Bridget knew there was a camera, on the front. She turned off before they reached it and parked on an unlit street at right angles to the sea, where small, dark, Victorian houses crowded against each other. When Bridget climbed out she could hear the waves, shushing softly in the dark at the end of the street. She could smell seaweed and ozone and had a vivid memory of those long days, sheltering against the greenish-black slimed supports to the beach huts, Finn stamping on bladderwrack with his small bare feet.
Would Carmichael come here to kill himself? He might. If he had been the kind ever to contemplate suicide, and they weren’t to know he wasn’t. She knew. His mate Timpson probably knew.
This was a quiet place, unfashionable, unpicturesque, a blunt parade of modern flats beyond the terrace where they stood. A windfarm’s array out to sea, tens then hundreds of little red lights at the horizon. No music festivals, no gourmet pubs.
Carrie stood beside her, shivering. There was a damp, cold wind off the sea. Bridget took Carmichael’s phone out of her pocket.
‘Right,’ she said, hesitating. Once this was done, it was done. ‘We’ll leave this in the car.’
A silver bullet, heavy in her hand. It was too old t
o be code-locked but she hadn’t wanted to look at it. She didn’t want to see messages, or pictures.
They’d follow it, that was the point. Eventually. Wouldn’t they? They’d find the car, in this down-at-heel little backstreet, in this dead out-of-season place, the closest access point to the open sea. They’d think—
‘But why would he disappear?’ asked Carrie, rubbing her upper arms in the cold. As if she knew what Bridget was thinking; she always used to have that knack, of asking the question Bridget didn’t want to answer, doggedly, the grit in the wheel. ‘Why, though? Why would he walk into the sea?’
‘We’ll work that one out,’ said Bridget, as stubborn in return. She could only think of his arrogance, his certainty that he could bluff anything out. He would never kill himself.
Carrie had her hands in her armpits, pacing on the dark pavement. Marching back to stand in front of Bridget. ‘Can’t I have a look first?’ she said. ‘After all, once we lock it in there—’ Hand out. ‘I bet you I can get into it.’
Bridget contemplated her, the little chin thrust out. ‘Get in the van,’ was all she said. Once inside she handed the phone over without a word.
Carrie frowned down at it in her hands. ‘It’s a piece of shit,’ she said, looking up cheerfully. ‘I suppose they’ll be able to track it from the signal but it hasn’t got location services, any of that.’ She flipped it open.
‘No—’ said Bridget. ‘Don’t—’
‘Keep your hair on,’ said Carrie. ‘Just making sure there’s nothing that will lead to us, that’s all.’ Swallowing, Bridget looked away, out of the window, down the dreary, dark little street. One light on in an upstairs window, far from the sea.
What We Did_A gripping, compelling psychological thriller with a nail-biting twist Page 20