Pointlessly, because she could have stepped right through the window Bridget unlocked the door, reached in and turned off the alarm. There was a smell of urine. She felt Matt come in after her, more than heard him. Heard him sigh, bewildered.
Saying nothing she walked quickly across the shop floor into the stockroom, turned on the light. Matt didn’t follow her: she heard him sigh, bewildered, on the shop floor. She scanned the room: it didn’t look as if anyone had been in here, either. The desk with its papers: how to tell if this was new disarray, or how she’d left it? But she couldn’t see it. Couldn’t see it. She pulled open a drawer in the desk where she would have put it. Peered under the rails, between shoeboxes.
No laptop, anywhere. Behind her in the shop she heard Matt move, the crunch of glass, and she emerged. He looked at her, distraught in the light from the stockroom, nonplussed.
‘I don’t think anything’s gone,’ she mumbled. Matt looked at her a second then he walked away, slowly, circling the room.
‘Just vandalism, then,’ he said, thoughtfully. He didn’t sound convinced. But the smell of piss was unignorable and in the next moment he stepped back, wrinkling his nose. ‘I’ll get the boarding.’
While he was gone – five minutes, less – she ran around, opening shoe cupboards, there was a secret shelf she’d forgotten behind some shelving in the old chimney breast – but there was nothing but dust in it.
They put up the boarding between them: Matt had done it before, he said, when someone smashed a window in the student bar, and he’d brought everything with him; two minutes in the garage as she waited in the van and he’d been equipped, but then that was Matt. All the same Bridget winced as he drove a nail into the window frame and he gave her a sideways glance. An apologetic shrug.
The boarding done, he stood in the doorway, peering in as she re-set the alarm. For a moment she thought he might go back in, exploring. Typical Matt, wanting to gather evidence, to know the reason for things.
‘I’ll deal with it in the morning,’ she said quickly, a hand on his shoulder. ‘Don’t touch anything, not now.’ She didn’t have to pretend to be dead tired, her head hurting. He looked at her a second, then nodded.
Bridget was silent in the van as Matt drove home and he seemed suddenly too worn out to ask questions, his face pale and strained. The roads were empty, except one jostling group of lads swaying outside a dark pub, two girls in heels clinging to each other for support. It must be three in the morning, the sky darker than ink. It was impossible to believe summer would ever come back
They wouldn’t find who smashed the window. She knew they wouldn’t. And if they did – who, though? Who? Just coincidence?
Who might want that laptop? Her head hurt, the booze all gone from her system, the hangover set like concrete.
Who? Matt glanced sideways, said nothing.
She didn’t want the police anywhere near her, or the shop. How would she clear that with Matt? The rain had stopped, and the same police would be dragging the reservoir. Too close, too close for comfort.
She climbed out of the van and wearily they made their way up to bed, Matt behind her on the stairs, his hand resting a minute on her hip, patting. He always used to do that, following her up to bed, as if to say, I’m here.
Undressing she found the long T-shirt she slept in and went into the bathroom to clean her teeth. She looked at herself in the mirror, white as a sheet, haunted.
They would find her. They would. They would find his body and then they would find her. She was seen there. His car thirty miles from his body? How stupid. How stupid. And the chance was there, right in front of her, she could spill it all out, confess, the police would be right there in the shop, she only had to pick up the phone.
She laid down the toothbrush, pushed her hair out of her face, stared. Don’t you dare. She heard Carrie’s voice in her head. Don’t you fucking dare.
Behind her in the bedroom Matt turned out the light. Were they coming for her? Then let them come.
The hideous lavender light was beginning to look like home.
Gill didn’t need to turn her head on the pillow to know she was on her own. She had wanted nothing more than to crash out face down in clean sheets, last night. She wondered – and it was a thought almost as depressing as finding a purple hotel bedroom a decent substitute for home – if this was down to her age.
Sometimes Gill did still want sex so badly that she felt like flinging open her bedroom window and shouting down into the street for it. But more and more the thought of it only made her feel sad and tired. It had been one in the morning when she walked back into the lobby last night, a handful of men still drinking under the dim mauve downlighting above the bar and for a second she had thought she saw the engineer reading a newspaper in one of the leatherette armchairs and stopped, her first instinct to go into reverse, back out on to the street, back into the taxi, to some other bar, some other town.
And then the man in the chair had shifted, and it was someone else. Getting paranoid, or too convinced of her own charms. Not all men are stalkers.
She had quite liked him, though: that was the thought she woke with, that propelled her out of bed to put on the hotel kettle. Which made a change. She frowned down at the tiny capsule of fake milk.
Today felt different. Like a day when it would all turn around and she could pack the overnight bag back up – the overnight bag that had overnighted three nights now, or was it four, and everything in it grubby – and go home. She could even buy real milk and put it in her own fridge.
Hell, she could clean her own fridge, and then retrain as a butcher. Honest work.
Black tea, that would be the start. Turning with the cup in her hand she looked across at her briefcase leaning casually on the purple velvet chair – too low to sit on, unless you were five years old, or an Edwardian prostitute – and crossed to it. She set the mug down carefully on the desk and pulled the laptop out of the bag.
Gill Lawson had long since known that following her instincts could get her into trouble, but even by her standards, this was madness. And criminal madness into the bargain. She opened the computer and it asked for a password. Low battery, it said. Shit: she hadn’t thought of that. No charger cable. She closed it again and sat there with her eyes closed.
She wanted to see her. Needed to see little Bridget O’Neill, know how she’d turned out …
Was it for Steve? It would help, of course – if she could get Bridget O’Neill to talk. She had a good husband. A decent bloke, and more importantly, a bloke who knew more about Carmichael than most, a bloke who wouldn’t doubt her, not for a minute. Gill’d bet anything you like he knew already, somewhere, deep down. People did. They didn’t say it out loud, though. Maybe that was what Bridget needed: to say it out loud. Maybe. To her husband – and then to Gill. On the record.
Jittery, nauseated, Gill opened her eyes. Was it late nights and booze giving her this sour feeling in her gut? Or all the lies she was telling herself? She closed her eyes again.
To be a fly on the wall. Did computers hold everyone’s secrets, these days? Some of them. She wanted more than anything to stand in front of her, talk to her, tell her – tell her what? That she understood? That she was there to help? Gill knew how those conversations went: shutters coming down. Are you all right, Bridget O’Neill?
The surface of the laptop was smooth under her palms. She didn’t know how that girl would have turned out, the prodigy who hanged herself, whose mother, Gill remembered from all that time ago, had said she wanted to be a doctor. A clever girl but that was a long road, wasn’t it? Life was a long road. A struggle to keep at it, job, kids, no kids, love, no love. A long road. And all clever had got that girl was as far as the woods with a length of rope and half a bottle of cheap vodka inside her.
Gill heard herself sigh, opened her eyes again and sat up. Set the laptop aside.
Looking through the front window of Anthony Carmichael’s house last night as the rain poured relent
lessly, she had seen something unexpected. There had been two women inside the music room, with its oil painting of his wife and a vase on the mantelpiece and the big polished piano.
They had been looking at a computer too, cheek to cheek, the cropped head and the one with long, shiny hair, shoulder to shoulder. Time to close the computers, girls. Time to close your eyes, work it out.
One of the women was his cleaner, though she hadn’t looked like she was working, six o’clock on a Saturday evening sitting at his shiny mahogany table and making herself at home. The woman with her she’d seen before: pale and angry and with hair so short you could see her scalp through it, she’d got off the same train from London as Gill had taken. That small, white, pointy-chinned face that had seemed somehow familiar then and more familiar now. Gill had to jump back from the window in the dark as the small woman sprang to her feet and began pacing. Talking.
She knew the voice, too. It had answered the phone to her. Not Bridget Webster – but Bridget Webster had had a sister, too. Mentioned in that little local rag piece about her skill as a violinist, sitting in the front row at school prize-giving, next to her mum. Their mum. Aged about ten and the hair a tangled cloud, but the same pointy little chin, the same fierce, dark eyes.
Gill had done her time on local press. Prize-givings, funerals, am dram. Concerts in village halls, charity recitals. Carmichael’s bread and butter.
What was Bridget Webster’s sister doing inside Carmichael’s house? Looking at his computer.
This was getting close to dangerous. This was getting into police territory. Tread carefully, Gill.
Was this the day? The day she nailed him, and all his dirty washing, the day she threw the lot out into the street for the world to see. For the first time in her life, Gill was afraid.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
A message pinged, two messages, three. Bridget’s phone on the table beside her head and she jerked awake, fumbling for the light switch.
It was light outside, but grey. Bridget felt hot and confused after no more than three hours’ sleep, her face felt flushed. The night rattled around in her head and she couldn’t tell what was real, it all seemed like a bad dream. The dummy hanging sideways out of the window, broken glass glittering in the street. A light on behind a dirty window, high up over the newsagent’s shop. The laptop.
She reached for the phone. The texts were from Laura, something about Nick being weird. Bridget couldn’t work out what she was talking about. As she pulled herself upright on the pillow her head began to hurt.
Beside her Matt had his chin propped on a hand, looking at her: she glanced at him then looked away quickly, back at the phone though she couldn’t focus on it.
‘Are you going to tell me what’s going on?’ he said quietly, and it was as if that hole had opened up, she was going to fall.
‘What?’ she said, the breath leaving her. ‘What do you mean? It’s just – it was vandalism—’
He shook his head just once, watching. ‘It’s not last night,’ he said. ‘Or not just that. Is it?’ She didn’t answer. He sighed. ‘This woman Gillian Lawson,’ he said. ‘This journalist who came here looking for Dr Carmichael. She has evidence that he has abused young women over a long period. Twenty, thirty years.’
Looking at her steadily, those kind, clever blue eyes that were always on her side. Even when she scraped the van, set the grill on fire, even when she nearly dropped Finn as a baby.
‘She thinks he’s gone online. She thinks – she is beginning to think he might even have come here because one of his victims, from a long time ago, also lives here.’ He paused. ‘She wants to talk to the woman.’
The way he was speaking was measured, thoughtful, just a shade of puzzlement. As if she knew more, he was asking her to tell him. He wasn’t taking his eyes off her. What was she supposed to say? He was laying it out so carefully, it was pointing in one direction. Was that her imagination?
Don’t jump the gun. Keep quiet.
‘Anthony Carmichael turns up here,’ he said, as if pondering. ‘He comes into your shop. He disappears. Do you know what he’s been doing? Him and his friend Timpson.’
‘Me?’ She couldn’t get more than the single syllable out.
‘He’s been on the dark web. You know what that is?’ He frowned.
She made a small movement with her head. She knew. She didn’t want to, but she did, it was in her head like the grainy occluded spot on a scan. Criminals used the dark web: it was where you found drugs, information, porn. It was where you sold them.
‘I know,’ she said.
And then he moved, raising himself up on the pillows and he was closer, but he wasn’t touching her. Making sure not to touch her. She had the sudden, terrible sense that he might never touch her again. Was this Matt? Was this her husband?
‘She thinks,’ and his voice was soft, ‘you might have known him, once upon a time. The journalist does. That you might have recognised him.’
She was frozen, now, mesmerised. Her mouth moved but she couldn’t answer.
‘Did you know him?’ he said. To someone else he might seem only puzzled, but she knew Matt, it was a strategy, it was a face he used, patient with students who’ve fucked up their network connections or downloaded a virus or crashed the server.
‘No, I – well—’ She couldn’t look at him. She had to change the subject somehow. What could she say? ‘I wasn’t sure—’
And then there was a sudden sharp sound from downstairs, a laugh, a machine-gun laugh, and then Finn talking.
‘Carrie’s back, then,’ Bridget said, wildly, breathless, swinging her legs out of the bed and grabbing clothes off the floor, but before she turned she saw the darkening look on Matt’s face, a shutter coming down.
She descended the stairs so quickly she almost slid and fell, recovering herself automatically, Keep on. Keep going. Matt didn’t follow her. She had to think.
Turning at her appearance in the kitchen door, Finn was standing at the table holding a giant pink stuffed toy, looking downcast. ‘Isabel loved it,’ he said, uncertain. Carrie had her hands on her hips. She and Bridget exchanged a glance, a tiny shake of Carrie’s head said, later. ‘I thought she found a bracelet,’ she said, hearing the little tremble in her voice and correcting it.
‘And this.’ Frowning, Finn looked comically anguished and Bridget just wanted to hug hum, grab hold of him. The one who believed in her innocence, without even knowing he was being asked. She patted him lightly instead. ‘What about a bit of breakfast?’
‘I’m making pancakes,’ he said. ‘Isabel gave me a recipe.’ Then Bridget saw the mixer had been pulled out, a bag of flour and the eggs were on the side.
Isabel and Finn together. It sounded so safe.
Carrie cleared her throat, jerking her head to the door. ‘Where’s the Tampax?’ she said, meaningfully. ‘I looked in the bathroom.’ Finn turned his back and reached for the jug of milk.
Matt was on the stairs coming down as they headed up: ‘They’re in the bedroom,’ said Bridget over her shoulder to Carrie but she had to look him in the eye as she edged past and his face made her heart sink.
Carrie closed the bedroom door behind her.
‘When did you get in?’ said Bridget, breathless.
‘God, I don’t know,’ said Carrie, impatient. ‘Eleven? Something like that. Matt said you’d gone to bed early. We stayed up talking—’
‘Didn’t you hear us go out? There was a break-in at the shop.’
Carrie didn’t seem to be listening. ‘I think you might be right about her, I don’t know. There’s something she’s not being upfront about.’
‘About who? Magdalena?’ Heart bumping again, almost wearisome now, the new normal. She was tired, and she was frightened.
‘She’s not telling the truth about something,’ said Carrie, her back to the door. ‘She’s had some involvement with him, Carmichael. And the other one, the one she said came to visit—’
‘Timpson.’
‘I’m pretty sure – well, she got funny when I asked about him. She knows him all right.’
‘Sex,’ said Bridget immediately.
Carrie frowned. ‘Maybe. I’m not sure.’
‘I mean, they don’t care about her – her sexual preferences, you know that, right?’
Carrie rubbed her arms, anxious. ‘I just don’t think we can trust her.’
‘What does she know? About – us.’ Carrie looked down and Bridget stepped closer, urgent. ‘Carrie?’
‘I didn’t tell her anything,’ said Carrie, panicked. ‘She showed me his computer – she knows his password.’ She chewed the inside of her mouth: when she was frightened she did that, used to do that, Bridget recognised the response. When she was little. ‘She showed me the stuff he looks at.’
She’d thought Carrie was unshockable, but her eyes said different.
‘I can imagine,’ she said and reached for her sister, pulling her roughly, pressing her lips into the soft fur of her head. The box of photographs was upstairs, dangerous. Anyone could look inside it. But it was evidence. It could be used in her defence. Or used against her? Carrie pulled back.
‘She hates him,’ she said quietly.
‘Why?’ said Bridget and Carrie stared.
‘I can’t believe you’re asking that,’ she said.
‘We need to know her motives,’ said Bridget, patient. ‘To know if we can trust her. We need to be sure it’s not just—’
‘It’s not money,’ said Carrie, swift and certain. ‘It’s—’ she hesitated. ‘He’s made her do things. She didn’t say what. She talks tough – she says she doesn’t care, she says worse things happen at home, worse things happen to other girls. But she does care. She cares about what he did to her. I haven’t told her – what we did. But she said to me, she doesn’t care if he’s dead. She said, if anyone killed him, I would give them a medal.’
A clatter came from the kitchen downstairs. Bridget sat on the bed abruptly.
‘I think Matt knows,’ she said, examining her hands. ‘Or knows something. There’s this journalist, the one we saw on the front porch talking to Magdalena.’ Looked up at Carrie. ‘And you heard about someone chucking a brick through the shop window?’ Carrie nodded. Bridget swallowed, trying to swallow the panic. Her mouth felt dry.
What We Did_A gripping, compelling psychological thriller with a nail-biting twist Page 27