Her satnav diverted her, the line of her route suddenly doing a loop the loop on the little screen: she cursed. Had enough of this. She sat back and examined her surroundings. Tall trees, a hedge, a little way on, a street sign she couldn’t read but looking up she recognised it vaguely, even in the dripping dark. This was where he lived, wasn’t it? Somewhere close by. In her lap, her phone rang.
Shouldn’t have it there, dangerous, looking down when driving, assuming the police wouldn’t be able to see. Just another one of her lifestyle choices, along with fags and coffee and fast food and red wine and loneliness. She pulled in at random.
It was Steve, and she’d done something right for once.
‘Great piece, Gilly. Very happy with it. Very happy. Love the girl.’
Girl. The female butcher had been thirty-five if she was a day. And don’t call me Gilly.
The piece had been written in a layby, juggling her laptop and a sandwich while simultaneously googling Alan Timpson, with a styrofoam cup of horrible burger bar coffee to wash it all down. Nasty taste in her mouth.
Timpson had connections in Thailand. A school out there that Carmichael had visited, an orchestra. Another one in Brazil. There had been a photograph of Timpson a couple of years back in a crowd of grinning olive-skinned boys.
The engine ticked down, quiet, but Steve was still talking. He’d had too much coffee, if he was getting this excited. Or maybe he was back on the sauce. ‘You see what you can do when you put your mind to it? You’re the business. A pro. You’re a trouper, love.’
Don’t call me ‘love’.
Gill turned off the headlights. The person she really wanted to see though – now more than ever – was Bridget Webster. The woman she’d only seen in photographs: a yellowing cutting from the nineties, the picture on Webster’s desk, a google image search. Gill had updated her information: now she knew Bridget Webster’s taste, that shop where she’d felt uneasy: neat rows of expensive things, a scent in the air, of money. A flickering image on a screen.
She’d bought a white shirt from Bridget Webster’s shop, astonished at the price. But then the last shirt Gill had bought had been from Marks five years ago, they’d come in packs of five.
Matt Webster had had no idea, had he? Of his wife’s previous connection with Carmichael, of the two years she’d spent in the psych unit. Gill knew. Gill, who’d never met her but had unearthed an old school friend, pierced and tattooed, who’d told her what she remembered about Bridget O’Neill. Her getting a prize for violin in front of the whole school. Her passing out in the lunch break, her legs like twigs, taken off in an ambulance, rambling and slurring.
Did he know now? He didn’t seem stupid. And looking up, looking up into the dark striped with yellow streetlight, there she was. Under a tree a figure bending over a bicycle and when her head tilted into the light Gill knew it was her, as sure as if it was a mugshot.
Unlocking her bicycle, no more than a hundred yards from Carmichael’s house. Why? Why?
Of course, she knew where he lived. Of course. He’d been back in touch with her, of course.
And then, out of nowhere a man was standing there, too, holding Bridget Webster steady, not embracing her, keeping her where she was. One hand on each arm. A man in a hooded sweatshirt.
In the darkened car Steve was talking into Gill’s ear, saying things she couldn’t focus on: she tried to shut him up as she saw the man lead Bridget Webster to a van, saw her stand docile as he loaded her bicycle into the back and opened the passenger door for her.
‘Steve, Steve, I— look can you, can I call you back.’ But as she hung up she could only watch, helpless, as they drove away.
Then she saw that the lights were on in Carmichael’s house.
* * *
He looked like a stranger. His eyes were in deep shadow under the hoodie, his cheekbones showing yellow in the streetlighting: she stared at him. Her Matt.
Bridget. He sounded so sad.
‘What are you doing here?’ They both spoke at once, then were both silent.
Matt spoke first. ‘It’s raining,’ he said, tense. ‘I’ll give you a lift back.’
‘I—’ She faltered, not daring to look at the box sitting in her basket, but Matt didn’t seem to have noticed it. Her mind raced, round and round, all the things she mustn’t say: she was trapped. All she wanted was to go back to the shop and find the laptop. She had already thought she could hide the photographs there. Think; think. If he asked, what’s in that box, why are you here? She needed an answer.
But Matt was talking; he had pushed the hood back from his face and he was her Matt again, or something more like it.
‘I was driving back from town and I saw you, I thought you’d want a lift. You didn’t go the way I expected. You seemed to be in a hurry.’ Quiet, reasonable, curious. ‘Whose house is that?’
She stared at him hypnotised. Stuttered, scrabbled. Get close enough to the truth, she had learned that much, if you want a lie to be believed. And then it came to her.
‘Carrie’s met someone,’ she said, making herself sigh, weary. Jaded. ‘Her new girlfriend lives there, she wanted to meet me. Asked me for a drink.’
He reached across her for the handlebars. ‘Let’s get this in the van, shall we?’
And in a quick, swift movement, before he could touch it, Bridget plucked the box out of the basket, holding it against her. It was already damp from the rain. He walked in front of her, wheeling the bike.
Bridget suddenly wanted a drink. Desperately. Anything to loosen this feeling. She followed him obediently, then round to the passenger seat.
The box felt heavy on her lap. The smell of the van reminded her of him, the old smell of air freshener, a hint of rust from the rear, and a new note, something muddier, dirtier.
‘All right?’ Matt turned to her, the key in the ignition. There was something wrong with this, Matt almost never drove, he hadn’t said why, where he had been going – but her thoughts kept turning back, pulled by the weight. Go to the shop, find the laptop, find somewhere to hide the box of pictures.
‘Sure,’ she said, hesitating, making herself smile. ‘This rain, I just wondered if—’
Or maybe it wasn’t safe? Her hands tightened on the box in her lap: safer to keep the photographs with her, to take them home. Because how was it going to work? Pictured herself carrying them into the shop, Matt asking questions, but she couldn’t leave them in the car with him, either.
The thought of the laptop tormented her. Part of her was fascinated, too: she wanted to see it from outside. See what happened, the grainy images, she would have the power to slow it all down, slower, slower, stop. Rewind.
All she could remember was what she’d been wearing that day, the skirt that had got his blood on it, the tights that were snagged. She’d burned them all – but even that could incriminate her. If the police asked her to hand over the clothes to them, what would she say?
She had to remind herself, there were no police. There was no search. Carmichael had gone to Thailand or Brazil, he wasn’t coming back.
‘What?’ said Matt, indicating, pulling out into the quiet street.
‘Nothing.’ She subsided into quiet beside him. All she had to do was delete the footage. Whatever it showed. Tomorrow, she’d find an excuse to go in even though it was Sunday, she’d done that before, something left behind, a light left on. She couldn’t bring it home, though, where Matt and Finn, both techno savvy, could look at it. The laptop had been Matt’s once, handed down to her. A new-old piece of kit in the house, neither of them would be able to resist, flipping the lid, hey, remember this?
They were on the main road, heading home. The towers were up ahead, blinking red against the night sky. Think of something to say, something safe.
‘Did Finn get his present? For—’ For a moment she couldn’t remember the girl’s name, her brain mush. ‘For Phoebe?’ She cleared her throat, hearing the timidity in her voice with the streetlights strobing over them, d
ark, bright, dark.
‘Yes,’ said Matt, leaning forwards to turn on the radio. ‘He got something. He’s happy. He had fun with that girl, Isabel, apparently. He’s at home cooking dinner for us now, he’s suddenly into it, recipes and everything.’ But Bridget was hardly listening, leaning forward in the seat over the box, still calculating. How could she sleep, knowing the laptop was there, where anyone could see it? Could she get him to turn around now, rehearsing in her head, searching for the right tone, light, cross, shit, I forgot, can we.
The radio burbled, and Matt turned up the sound, she could tell by the way he cocked his head that something had caught his attention. Police have called a temporary halt to the search. ‘You hear this?’ said Matt, turning to her, serious. ‘Just as well Finn’s home safe.’
‘What—?’ The wipers were struggling with a sudden gust of rain that was pelting the windscreen but then Bridget caught the newsreader’s voice, a woman, calm but with just the right level of concern. She was talking about the missing boy, the boy whose disappearance had started out in the local paper then moved to the nationals. The report Bridget had been looking at only today. The weather is expected to improve.
Divers will focus their attention on Bardleigh reservoir.
Bridget turned, involuntarily, to Matt in the dark, they slowed at the lights, came to a stop under a streetlight that illuminated his face and would have to illuminate hers. Matt shifted and looked at her, just for a second, two, but long enough for them both to know. He said nothing.
They were both lying.
Matt had come out looking for her and followed her to Carmichael’s place. All this turning off her phone had been for nothing because there was a witness – more than one. Multiplying witnesses: Carrie, Magdalena, Matt. What about neighbours, the gardener?
The lights changed and Matt engaged first gear, the wipers flogging relentlessly in the steady rain. Let it rain. Let it rain for a week and that would keep them away from the reservoir long enough for her to plan something.
What did he think? That she was having an affair? That would be the usual thing to think. The idea made her sick. An affair in that house. Was that what she had with Carmichael? An affair? A love affair? It’s what she had wanted it to be, all that time ago, was it? She’d groped blindly for love and could only blame herself. She had wanted it: it had been in his every soft word to her, telling her what she felt, you can’t help yourself, can you? Everything he had ever said to her was still in her head somewhere. It’s all right, I love you, that’s what you want to know, isn’t it? Isn’t it?
Bridget sat in the passenger seat in the dark and her body seemed small, soft-shelled. disgusting as a jellied undersea creature. If Matt made her talk she would have to admit that she had never even managed to end it: she had just tried to die rather than break it off. She had never said no.
So she couldn’t talk. Wouldn’t.
And then at last they were turning into the close, quiet houses, soft lighting.
‘God, I’m knackered,’ she said, her shoulder against the passenger door and desperate to get out. ‘I hope there’s time for a shower before dinner.’ She heard Matt getting her bike out of the back as she ran.
The house was full of the smell of cooking. Passing Finn in the kitchen Bridget managed a smile but he was too busy in his apron, flour in his hair, to pay any attention and gratefully she was on the stairs. Taking them two at a time with her bag bumping against her side, the box tight in her arms. Because if it fell, spilled, the pictures slithering on the stairs – Her lungs burned with the effort, with not being able to breathe.
Once in the bedroom she shoved the box in the bottom of the wardrobe – and then shakily she could exhale at last, subsiding on to the bed. A sweat bloomed, from her armpits to the small of her back to behind her ears. Burn it.
She got her phone out of her pocket and put the battery back in and almost immediately a message pinged. It was from Carrie. Back tomorrow, be OK.
‘Mum?’ Finn was calling her. His face comically anguished at the foot of the stairs. ‘Something’s gone wrong with the gravy.’
The distraction saved her. Standing at the stove instructing him, ladling boiling water from the beans, telling him to get the gravy boat and asking him about salt. Behind her she heard Matt come into the room making cheerful sounds, a chair moving. Wine uncorked. Happy family.
Halfway through the meal, pushing roast pork and baked potato around her plate, Bridget thought about Matt and his bicycles, alone in the garage. Set her fork down. Was that his distraction? She’d never thought of him as needing it. Something to keep your hands busy.
How many glasses of wine had she drunk? Not too many, three, maybe. She poured herself some water and pushed the wineglass away a little.
‘This is lovely, Finn.’ He beamed, flour still in his hair. ‘So you’re seeing Phoebe tomorrow, then?’
They let him talk. Full of it, bubbling over. His Sunday plans: he was going to spend the whole day with Phoebe, her parents were away. A walk in the country park. The present was a bracelet, Isabel had found it in a shop she knew. Matt caught Bridget’s eye and smiled: everything felt blurrily good, it felt yielding, as though she was just resting a bit, in a feather bed. Her glass still seemed to have wine in it. Her cheeks were warm. She drank.
Standing at the washing up Bridget knew she’d had too much: she felt it in the way she leaned heavily against the sink, her back to them so they wouldn’t see. Just for Finn: this is all for Finn. Her thoughts were slowing to sludge. Clang, went the pans stacked on the draining board.
She turned and smiled uncertainly. ‘Just heading off now,’ she said, pretending to yawn. ‘’S been a long day.’ Upstairs she tried to do things properly, cleaning her teeth, folding her clothes but gave up. Once between the sheets she fell into sleep too suddenly, in a T-shirt, the light still on.
Dimly she was aware of Matt coming up later and turning it off, then moving around the room softly in the dark and as she lay still, drugged, she could see words behind her eyes, the after-image of a headline. They’re dragging the reservoir. They pulsed there, the wine still in her system dulling their meaning, and she fell asleep again. The sleep was dark but not restful, with pinpricks like electricity, signalling things she didn’t understand.
At one, the phone rang.
Bridget sat bolt upright in the dark, her head suddenly sharply painful and her heart racing as if it might kill her, finally.
Beside her Matt groaned, there was a clatter as he dislodged the receiver. ‘Yes?’ Groggy with sleep. ‘Whass—’
It was the police.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Sunday
The alarm had almost run out of juice by the time they got there, no more than a feeble squawk in the night. Matt stood beside her in the dark, wet street, surveying the scene. There was glass all over the cobbles, forty minutes since the phone call and Bridget still couldn’t seem to slow her heart down. She wondered, as if from a distance, how long it could go on running this fast.
She’d reached for the phone the moment Matt held it away from his ear. The moment she understood it wasn’t Carmichael, it wasn’t Carrie, they were phoning about the shop.
‘Let me talk to them.’ Matt lay back on the pillow, one hand to his forehead, as she leaned across him.
‘Mrs Webster.’ The policeman had sounded weary. ‘Your alarm’s going off, and according to your neighbour—’
Neighbour? What neighbour? They must mean the newsagent. ‘Someone’s chucked a brick at your shop window.’ He sounded reluctant. ‘We’re dealing with a major road traffic incident just now but we can get someone down there by—’
The CCTV.
Bridget was scrambling out of bed, registering the T-shirt she was wearing, the fact that she still had her bra on. ‘No, no,’ she said, groping for her jeans, ‘I mean, let me go and have a look first, I don’t want you to have to—’
The laptop. If someone had—
They agreed she’d call them back. When she hung up, beside her Matt was pulling on his trousers, uncomplaining.
‘No,’ he said, firmly when she protested. ‘I’m coming with you.’ She sat, suddenly irresolute beside him on the bed, wanting him with her, knowing she should go alone. Then his arm was round her shoulders and he pressed his lips quick and soft against her cheek and she couldn’t stop herself, her head dropped under its own weight to rest against his shoulder.
Across the landing in his room Finn was still up, talking softly to someone online in his room. Laughing. He pulled off his headphones when they appeared in the door: from the crowded split-screen she could see he was gaming. Not Phoebe, but the fuzzy, delayed image of some laughing teenager in Arizona. He was concerned, obedient, when she told him what had happened, but buzzing underneath it, impatient to get back to whatever it was.
Matt drove. They parked round the back. A dim light was on above the newsagent’s, under the eaves: she had hardly registered that he lived there, she realised. The windows always so dirty.
Matt had made her put on more clothes, warm socks, a fleece of his. And now standing in the cold dark Bridget was grateful for it: she felt as if something was draining everything out of her, warmth and energy, like her heart was a malfunctioning engine.
‘Well,’ said Matt mildly at her side. ‘Someone did a job on it.’ Peering closer. ‘Doesn’t look like you’ve been cleaned out, though.’
The jagged remains of a starburst at the edges was all that was left of what had once been the window and the rest of it was lying in shards on the cobbles and winking inside on the shop floor. Reluctantly Bridget peered in.
The dummy in the window had been knocked drunkenly sideways, its skirt rucked up. On the floor behind it there was a big lump of stone, not something you’d find in the street, big enough to have been hauled out of a rockery. The glass was almost completely gone but inside the clothes still hung on the rails, the handbags along the shelving. The jewellery cabinet was untouched.
What We Did_A gripping, compelling psychological thriller with a nail-biting twist Page 26