Bridget could tell him all of it now, it was after all what she had wanted to do so many times, but she hesitated. Once he knew, she wouldn’t be able to protect him any more.
And then from the sitting room came the sound of the phone ringing.
Matt made a move to go to it but stopped himself, and quickly Bridget moved.
The phone was beside the sofa: the room was dim, indistinct. The sky beyond the sitting-room window was layered grey cloud, purple and black and the sun low behind it somewhere.
It was the policeman. He said his name but it didn’t register, just as it hadn’t that afternoon, but it was the same man. ‘Mrs Webster?’ he said, sounding upbeat, energised. ‘We got an immediate result on the print,’ he said. ‘He’s on the system, and recently too, eighteen months back.’
Timpson was on the police system? She felt a surge of something, panic and excitement together, at the thought that someone else knew. ‘Is it—’ she almost said his name, but stopped herself. Matt was one thing, the police were something else. ‘It’s someone with a criminal record, then?’
‘It’s a man called Nicholas Barnwell,’ said the officer and for a moment Bridget drew a complete blank. Nicholas? Then she realised.
‘Oh,’ she said, numb. ‘That’s Nick,’ she said, ‘he’s married to my assistant, Laura.’
‘We’ve got an address for him,’ said the man. ‘I can’t give it you – but does your assistant live in Mason Street?’
‘Yes, but he’s gone AWOL, Laura phoned me this morning, she was worried about him – I didn’t make the connection.’
Stupid. Nick? Nick? Pissing on the shop floor, that made sense, that would be Nick. ‘He’s got a criminal record?’ said Bridget. ‘What’s he done?’
‘His ex-wife has an injunction out against him,’ said the policeman, and some wariness had crept into his voice. ‘It’s a matter of record so you can know that. And a conviction for actual bodily harm. Against a girlfriend.’
Shit. Shit, shit, shit. So stupid.
‘She didn’t come,’ said Bridget urgently, almost to herself. Then: ‘Look, please would you get someone to her house? She’s pregnant. She’s nearly due, she’s—’
She heard his hand go over the receiver before she’d even finished, she could hear him shouting something across a room. Then he was back. ‘It’s in hand, Mrs Webster, as a matter of urgency, thank you for your cooperation, that’s—’ But she was barely listening, and when he’d finished she hung up in a daze.
Matt was standing in the doorway. There was no sign of the CCTV monitor. ‘It wasn’t Timpson,’ she said to him blankly. ‘It was Nick.’
Immediately he said, ‘Would he have taken the laptop?’
She frowned hard, trying to think. ‘I don’t think so. I don’t know. Why would he? He must have found out I gave her a number for a helpline. A crisis centre, maybe the laptop—’
She thought about when he came for Laura, the way he had looked at Bridget then. The laptop hadn’t been behind the till, had it? She tried to arrange things in her head, times, faces – then something else came to her. Laura, apologetic, Laura panicking, something Laura hadn’t really wanted to say. She had said she couldn’t find the laptop, after the woman had come in asking questions. The woman who’d bought a white shirt, who’d asked about CCTV.
Who had said she was a journalist. She turned and Matt was sitting beside her on the sofa now. He took her hand, he lifted it and pressed it against his cheek. It was a gesture so unlike him it almost made her head spin, as if she was standing on the edge of a cliff.
‘If I retrieved that hard drive from the monitor,’ Matt said, so gentle. ‘What would I see?’
She couldn’t speak, but he didn’t move, he was going nowhere. He still had her hand, between his now. ‘Did he hurt you?’ he said. ‘Did they hurt you?’
And there was no safe way to fall. Matt was just another man, Matt was a stranger who wanted to pry through her secrets. Her hand in his felt hot, sweating. Only a pervert would have had her, therefore Matt must be one too. All the details of the room around them – the framed poster above the fireplace, the bowl of fruit, the photographs – seemed to belong to strangers, or someone had come in and put them there for a stage set.
Then the light outside the window changed, the low grey sky split close to the horizon and the sun was there, almost gone but not quite, pale lemon between layers of cloud. And the world shifted, it all spread out below her. Bridget looked past Matt towards the light and in her head she saw Carrie, on her bicycle, riding across the town to Timpson’s house, a tiny figure climbing the smooth green hill in the last of the lemon light, towards the towers.
‘He lives in the warden’s house,’ she said. ‘Did you tell me that? I can’t remember.’
‘Timpson?’ said Matt, alert, not understanding. His hands were on her shoulders now and she had to look at him, though her eyes seemed reluctant to focus.
‘Carrie went to Alan Timpson’s house because she thought he had the laptop,’ she said. ‘He’ll hurt her.’ And then she saw Matt in sharp focus at last: she saw the mole on his cheek, the Sunday afternoon stubble with a bit of white in it, the clear, anxious blue eyes.
And Carrie, inside her head, the small fierce Carrie she’d held there for twenty years, her little sister.
‘I know he’ll hurt her,’ she said.
The gatehouse sat surrounded by high hedges, a gate between them, a stone path. It was a little island on the smooth green slope, left behind by the march of progress. If you could call it progress. Gill marched straight up to the front door, her backpack slung from her shoulder and her footsteps loud on the path, and rang the bell. She waited in the silence that followed.
Leaning back to look at the upstairs windows, it seemed to her that the house wasn’t empty, though she couldn’t have pinned down exactly why. Gill hadn’t done much door-stepping but she’d done enough. Downstairs curtains drawn, was a sign. She’d had the impression of movement somewhere upstairs, although it could have been the clouds scudding, reflected in the glass. The light was uncertain, everything dimming to grey, with the occasional low glimpse of sunset from the horizon. She rang again.
Was there a sound, a scuffle from somewhere inside? She peered through the letterbox and saw a dark hallway, light shifting somewhere. ‘Hello?’ she called. ‘Mr Timpson? Dr Timpson?’ Nothing. What could you do, bar breaking in? You could do a bit of a recce. She set off across the cut grass, everything neatly kept, at the taxpayers’ expense. Wasn’t the warden supposed to be available, wasn’t that why he got this place, rent-free? She could quite imagine Timpson scorning that idea. He was a first-class mind, a superior talent, he and his friend, Carmichael.
The curtains were drawn at the back windows, too, and a blind down in what she took to be the kitchen. She tried to be quiet, tiptoeing, listening, but someone in there knew. Were they both in there? Is this where Carmichael was hiding out?
Carmichael had been to see Bridget Webster, she was sure of that. Been to see her in the shop. Bridget Webster hadn’t called back, had she? And Gill was fairly sure, from what she knew of Carmichael’s victims in general, and Bridget’s face that peered out of that yellowing newspaper cutting, frozen, frightened, that she wouldn’t talk to any journalist. So subterfuge was maybe in order. Gill stopped, sighed, the voice in her head insisting but how hard have you even tried? It was theft, not subterfuge.
She’d give it back. She would. She wouldn’t use anything she found. Unless – well.
She had to know what had happened. And then, there, standing between the neatly labelled wheelie bins in Timpson’s backyard, just beyond his kitchen window, although Gill Lawson was the last, the very last person to admit to believing in vibes or ghosts or superstition, she had the most horrible feeling – a feeling so overwhelming she stepped back suddenly. And tripped, and went sprawling on the wet concrete. A bottle skittered, she swore. Too loudly.
Shit. She picked herself up in a hurr
y, wincing at the grazes on her palms. She’d landed on the bag, and her heart was hammering. Hobbling – her knee was grazed too, she got back to the gate, closed it carefully behind her. One last look over her shoulder, but the windows stared back blankly, opaque now, not a twitching curtain.
Making her way painfully back up the hill Gill looked out for the couple, either one of them if they’d gone their separate ways, but saw no one. The light was almost gone. She focused on the student cafeteria, open to all in the money-saving initiatives the universities all seemed to be going in for, as if daytrippers might come out here to eat ham rolls under Rose Hill.
On a corner table by the window with a mug of tea, Gill set the backpack in front of her. All her stuff still in the purple bedroom: she hadn’t even thought about which credit card she could use to pay the bill because no matter how pleased Steve was with the Queen’s butcher he wasn’t going to pay five nights in that place. And as for the mini-bar – well, maybe best not to think about that. Extortionate warm gin and tonic was better than no gin and tonic at all, or so it had seemed at one thirty in the morning and no sign of sleep.
Yatter, yatter, yatter: Gill couldn’t seem to control the noise in her head sometimes, the excuses, the arguments. It felt like this was it: her and Carmichael. Like a toxic relationship that dragged you lower and lower but you couldn’t seem to kill it. She needed to stop. She got out Bridget Webster’s laptop and set it down. Check if she’d smashed it up – but it looked OK.
Gill had seen it there, on its shelf under the till, the girl had gone off into the stockroom for the white shirt Gill couldn’t afford and there it had been, with its secrets. The girl had just told her, the CCTV gets downloaded and in that instant it hadn’t been just investigative instinct that had put Gill’s hand out to touch it, it had been something more. Her and her schoolfriends, nicking from Boots, laughing together, running hysterical for the bus. Did those girls he abused get to do that? Loss and anger and that old reckless streak. Back in trouble again.
It came on: twenty per cent charge. User password.
It was hopeless. Hopeless. A child’s name, a husband’s, their dates of birth? If she had all the time in the world, maybe. She searched the pregnant girl’s friendly chatter for a clue, any clue, the chatter that had got progressively less friendly the harder Gill had pushed. That was Gill’s life, wasn’t it? It would be nice to just talk to someone, without pushing. Wouldn’t it? Would she even know how to do that?
Outside it was almost dark now. From where she sat she could see the gatehouse, where Alan Timpson lived, down at the foot of the grassy hill that looked black in this light.
User password. How many lives did she have left? And then she remembered something, something she’d heard on the radio a while ago, an earnest computer guy just like Bridget’s husband saying that some crazy percentage of computer users kept their password just as password, the one the thing came with. Even people who should know better, people whose husbands did tech. She typed, password.
Bingo.
Chapter Thirty
Matt was next to her as she called, his shoulder not touching but so close she could feel his warmth. She could feel him listening.
Carrie answered on the first ring: ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘Sorry Bridge, honest, I—’
‘Are you there? Are you at Timpson’s house?’
A sigh. ‘The place was locked up, no answer at the door, I couldn’t get in.’
‘You tried?’
‘Thought about smashing a window but then I got your message and I came back.’ Bridget breathed out. Done something right for once. In time, for once. But Carrie was still talking. ‘Your girl was there on the doorstep, on your doorstep, I mean. The pregnant one? I couldn’t get in the house so I took her for a coffee, she told me about her husband. What a fucker, hey? She’s well out of that. Are you back home?’
‘Yes,’ said Bridget. ‘Is she still with you? Laura? Has she left him?’
Matt stood up and was pacing, anxious.
‘We went back to her place,’ Carrie said. ‘I’ve just left her there.’
There was traffic noise behind her, and it sounded like she was walking: if Bridget knew Carrie she’d be off to find Magdalena, or the pub. She sounded pumped, breezy. ‘She said she’d be OK. We called a locksmith, to change the locks on her house.’
‘No, said Bridget immediately, and Matt stopped, a hand in his hair. He just wanted to get out, to do something practical, she could tell. ‘Go back after her. It was Nick threw a brick through the window, he’s angry, the police – he’s violent. He might hurt her.’
A silence. Then Carrie said, ‘Shit. Right, I’ll go back round there.’
‘Please,’ said Bridget. ‘Tell her to get out of there.’
‘I’ll go get and her and bring her back over, right now.’
‘No, don’t bring her—’ but Carrie had gone.
Matt was sitting on the sofa beside her looking down at his hands, loose between his knees. ‘There was a box,’ he said quietly, not looking up. Bridget could still feel her breath out of control, and somewhere inside her a trembling.
‘What was in the box?’ Matt said, and then he did look up, at her. ‘There are so many things, Bridge,’ he said, and he sounded bone-weary, close to giving up. ‘So many things you aren’t telling me. The box you had in your bike basket, the one you had on your knees all the way home from his house last night. You ran upstairs with it the minute you got home. Do you think I don’t see things?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I know you do see.’
‘What was in that box?’ Matt said, and there it was, impalpable, invisible, the barrier. They’d gone along together for years, decades, this way, not saying, not looking. Not asking. Respecting each other’s right to privacy, is that how they’d have put it? She couldn’t have lived otherwise.
‘But I can’t tell you,’ said Bridget and she heard something, behind her head, insistent, and not sure if it was inside or out. ‘I can’t show you,’ she said. And she looked into his face, frightened of seeing the end of it all there. But he was looking away, over her shoulder.
The sound hadn’t been in her head: someone was at the kitchen door. Someone was tapping, tentative but insistent. Matt was on his feet.
‘No’ Bridget said, out of some understanding that she was going to have to manage without him. ‘I’ll go.’ He followed her, all the same. She could see a shape through the opaque glass, narrow-shouldered, fair-haired. Matt was at her shoulder when she opened the door.
Isabel stood on the step, her bike leaning against the side of the house. Her hair was limp and damp, her blue eyes looked enormous and frightened.
‘Isabel?’ said Bridget and all she could think of was him. Carmichael, an image so vivid, walking towards her, that she almost stepped back. ‘What’s – what’s happened?’
‘I don’t know what to do,’ she said, her big eyes pleading. ‘I think there’s something really wrong, I think Finn might be going to do something stupid, I mean something dangerous. I told him you should never arrange to meet people you don’t know and he just laughed. People you’ve met on the internet.’
‘What?’ Matt’s voice was a register higher than usual, but Isabel wasn’t looking at him, she was looking at Bridget.
‘I lied to you,’ she said miserably. ‘I lied about knowing her. About knowing Phoebe. I’ve never met Phoebe.’
Critical battery.
A piece of luck, was what it was, though luck didn’t feel like the right word to Gill, at this stage of the game. A kid walking into the bar and hauling the same laptop as Bridget Webster’s – bottom end of the market, four years old at least – out of his bag. On the next table, no less. Pudding basin haircut and an uncertain smile and jeans certainly bought for him by his mum. Nice kid. Lovely kid.
She leaned towards him, over the screen hovering between life and death. Tapped the laptop and grimaced. ‘You haven’t got your charger cable on you, have you?’
Maybe she reminded him of his mum, or something because the kid brightened, wanting to be helpful. And hauled it out of his bag.
Was that luck? If it was, Gill’s whole life was built on it, her career. And she’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time often enough, Christ knew. ‘Lifesaver,’ she murmured, smiling at him so broadly he had to smile back. There was even a plug, though she had to shift a bit to not attract attention from the woman behind the cakes, the university’s electricity supply being almost certainly not intended for the likes of her.
Bridget Webster’s screensaver was of two figures in rain-jackets standing on a hilltop in a damp green landscape, their backs to the camera. A tallish, spare man and a boy of about eight, his thick dark hair escaping his hood. Holding hands. It took her ten minutes to locate the CCTV feed on the laptop: the kid whose cable she was using would have managed it in thirty seconds, no doubt. When the jerky images came up she wriggled a bit further round, because she didn’t want the boy seeing any of it. Whatever it turned out to be.
She had to fast forward through about two weeks’ worth of it, monitoring the date and time along the bottom of the screen, to get to the week before Carmichael disappeared. Stop start, stop, start. Pause, then fast forward.
She saw Bridget Webster. Saw her arriving early, saw her careful, hardworking, kind. She was always busy, on her feet, Gill saw her on hands and knees cleaning, saw her making tea for her pregnant assistant, the way she stood, the way she talked to customers. Bridget Webster was patient, she was considerate, she was thoughtful: was she relaxed? No. Almost never – but she had her strategies. She moved to and fro. Sometimes when she was alone she sat, she looked at her hands.
Gill sat back for a moment, both hands on the edge of the melamine table, holding herself distant from the screen because she had this feeling that if she wasn’t careful it would pull her right out of this world and into that strange grey room with its rails of clothes, where Bridget Webster paced the floor.
What We Did_A gripping, compelling psychological thriller with a nail-biting twist Page 30