As I rang off, the baby thudded her head into the crook of my elbow and suddenly, deeply, slept. I should have been used to her off-switch but I marvelled each time. I had to glide into her little bedroom, careful to maintain her stillness as perfectly as I could, and lay her down in her cot. I wriggled out of my leggings into a pair of pre-pregnancy trousers as best I could.
“Morris’s investigation?” Dan asked, leaning against the door frame.
I nodded, and held a finger to my lips. I cast about through the clothes heaped on the chair.
Dan pulled open a drawer and handed me a folded jumper. “I put away the clean clothes,” he said in a not-whisper as we left the room and shut the door behind us.
“Can you please wait until the door is fully closed?” I snapped, still whispering, almost spitting.
“It’s really not your problem, since I’m the one who’s going to be picking her up when she wakes.” But he said it in a whisper.
“Sorry,” I whispered back, getting away from the bedroom. I changed my T-shirt spattered with baby-sick for the warm fleece. “Thanks,” I added at a normal volume.
“You think this case is going somewhere after all these years?” Dan asked.
“Looks like.”
“Everything all right now? Between you and Morris?” he asked.
“Of course. Everything was done the way it had to be done. He knew that, always.”
Dan shrugged.
“Morris and I have worked together a long time.”
“It was his daughter,” Dan said, doubting there was enough time in the world for Morris to get over it.
I rifled through the sock basket by the front door and defended myself in my mind: She’s not in jail. She’s not charged. It was a mistake and it’s over. But I admitted, “If it had been me doing the arresting, he would never forgive me. Never. But that’s all at Spencer’s feet.” My new partner, though whether we’ll be assigned to work together again when I return is still open.
“Spencer did it with your approval.”
“Without my interference.” The basket was full but had no pairs, literally none at all that I could find. Frustration popped out of my eyes in two perfectly symmetrical tears. Tears happened at the most random times since the birth—not crying, not sadness, just tears.
Dan knelt beside me and magicked two woolly red socks together. He put them in my hands.
“Are you up for this?” he asked, meaning interviewing Cathy.
I answered, meaning that and everything else, every other thing that there is: “No. But I want to do it more than I’m not ready for it. I want to do it so I’m doing it.”
He helped me put the socks on, something he’d had to do when I was late-stage pregnant, and which he did now sometimes out of affection. He pulled them up under the hem of my trousers.
“Boots?” he asked.
“The brown shoes,” I decided.
He slipped them on my feet.
“Dan,” I said, not asked, but there was an upwards inflection. “You can call her anything you want. Robin’s fine. Dan Junior is fine. Stephen Fry. Whatever you want.”
“‘Stephen Fry’?” he asked, laughing. I like making him smile. Maybe I should have said ‘Hugh Laurie.’ We used to watch old Jeeves and Woosters when we were first dating.
“I’m serious. Well, not about Stephen Fry. But you decide. Not right now; tell me tonight.”
“All right,” he said, but he sounded hesitant.
“It’s not a trick! I won’t be mad! I won’t hate it! Really, anything. Anything.” Except Chloe, I thought. Except Margaret, his mother’s name. But I didn’t say either of those things. “Anything,” I repeated.
Out in the car, I wondered if Rosalie, the receptionist and mother-of-twins, had ever hesitated for a moment. She had probably picked out names before they popped out. She had probably had multiple combinations ready in case of unexpected genders. I bet myself that I would learn their names before I would learn whether Cathy was in.
I plopped my handbag on top of the breast pump in the footwell of the passenger seat. I had decided yesterday that I was done. I didn’t mind the sucking at home but I wasn’t going to feed the machine again. I hated that bloody thing. Dan had formula in the cupboard for this afternoon. The only machine I wanted to feel at one with was my car. It felt good to drive. This had better come to something, I thought, because the other friends Charlie had mentioned were, respectively, in Australia, dead from cancer, and, as far as I could tell, dropped off the face of the earth. Cathy was all we had.
Rigg and Loft, Attorneys-at-Law, occupied what had once been a large home just outside of Lilling. I pulled into one of three visitor parking spaces. The fourth space had a sign reserving it for Mr. Rigg, Cathy’s husband. I had no idea where Mr. or Ms. Loft parked, nor Rosalie. Perhaps there were more spaces around the back.
Rosalie was on the phone when I entered. She was very grateful for someone’s understanding and promised that Livvy and Bayley (I’m only guessing that it must be spelled with two y’s; dear God, what if Dan chooses a name spelled with extraneous y’s?) will never be late to football practise again. I mentally awarded myself a point for being right and said hello.
“Ms. Frohmann, is it?” Rosalie asked warmly, using the civilian title even though I had made it clear on the phone that I’m a detective inspector. She winked and slid her glance to the right. Someone was waiting in a little seating area next to a pitcher of water with a lemon in it. Likely a potential legal client and I supposed Rosalie didn’t want to give away that I’m police. I allowed it; being in her good graces could come in handy later.
“Is Cathy Rigg in?” I asked, and added to ingratiate myself, “Your daughters are gorgeous!” There were two separately framed photos of what appeared to be the same person. It didn’t help that they were in identical school uniforms.
Rosalie beamed and nearly wriggled with pleasure. “Thank you! Livvy cut herself a fringe the night before, so they’d look different in their photos this year. Bayley cried so hard she missed the bus and ended up cutting herself a fringe in the loo at school. They’re both left-handed and so they both cut it with the same accidental slant.” She said all this with adoration, as if her daughters’ identity crises weren’t, at the least, worrying.
“My daughter looks almost exactly like me,” I fabricated, for something to say. “Some days I think she’d shave her head to make the difference more clear.” I grinned, not sure if I sounded like a normal doting mother of a tween, or like half of a deeply dysfunctional relationship. “Is Cathy in?”
“Mrs. Rigg isn’t back yet. You’re welcome to help yourself to some lemon water. She shouldn’t be long.”
“Thank you, Rosalie,” I said, grateful that she hadn’t asked my child’s name. “I’ll find out tonight!” would have been an odd answer, especially since I’d implied that she’s about eight, or whatever the age is that mothers and daughters start fighting. Why am I picturing us at odds? I asked myself. Maybe steeling myself, just in case. I’d hate to assume that it’s all going to be, well, licking cake batter off the spatula and good grades—for heaven’s sake, baking? grades?—and then be blindsided.
The stylish potential client in the seat beside me, the lemon water, and Rosalie’s cheerful deference seemed together to aspire to a city skyscraper instead of a converted village house, however grand it once had been. In truth this old mansion was now tatty. I could see where two rooms had been connected to make this lobby, and where a toilet had been shoehorned in down the hall. It had been done well, about ten years ago. Maybe fifteen.
A woman pushed open the grand front door by hefting a large cardboard box against it. Rosalie jumped up to relieve her of it. “So sorry, Mrs. Rigg!” she apologised as she did so, as if she could have done anything about it before that moment. I noticed the careful “Mrs.,” not “Ms.” That difference usually wafts by unnoticed but Rosalie had emphasised it.
“Papers for Nigel,” the woman said, r
eferring to the box Rosalie had thudded onto her desk, and also I assume referring to Nigel Rigg, her husband. This would be Cathy, Charlie’s ex, certainly doing her best to live a very thorough distance from him in lifestyle if not in actual miles. “Why are people waiting?”
Rosalie explained, “Ms. Sunden is here to give her signature, and Ms. Frohmann would like to ask you a few questions.”
Just then Nigel Rigg jogged down the centrepiece staircase. “Amanda!” he said, holding out both hands in apology for the wait to the woman beside me. An international phone call, he said, was the culprit. Rosalie had the client’s papers ready and a pen uncapped. Nigel Rigg smoothly took them without a thank-you and swept the client through a piece of the wooden panelling that I hadn’t realised was an office door.
I noticed that he hadn’t acknowledged Cathy.
“How may I help you?” the ignored spouse asked me.
“It’s about Charlie.”
“Excuse me?”
“Charlie Bennet. We—”
She grasped my upper arm and steered me into what had once been a dining room. Old paintings on the walls looked darkened by years of atmospheric candlelight, from before a bright run of LEDs had been hung from a metal wire strung across the ceiling. The enormous table could have been original to the house, only now used for meetings instead of dinner. “Who are you?” she demanded, while shutting the door.
I identified myself and showed my warrant card; she touched her fingertips to her forehead and pinched her lips together. “Charlie …” she muttered. I noticed her dark hair, now chin-length but perhaps once long. She was slim. She had a pretty face. She would have been Charlie’s type back in the day. And, back in the day, they hadn’t yet known what they’d all become. Maybe he was supposed to be a rock star by now. Maybe his attention had been flattering then.
“I’m sorry to bother you, Mrs. Rigg,” I said, following Rosalie’s lead. If Cathy Rigg liked her marital status emphasised, I could do that all day long. Or perhaps the emphasis should be on Rigg, in contrast to the previous Bennet. Keeping track of women’s various names was always a pain in every investigation. Jesus, I’m glad I didn’t change my name.
“What’s he done now?” She flung herself into a swivel chair.
I remained standing. I could sit next to her if I needed to persuade something out of her; for now I started with authority.
“Your school in Bishop’s Stortford had a French exchange programme when you were there, is that correct?” I was avoiding mentioning Annalise, though I didn’t know how long that could last. I just wanted to keep off the deeply ingrained tracks of that old investigation as long as I could.
“What? France?” Cathy shook her head.
“Are you saying that there wasn’t a French exchange?”
“No. Yes! Yes, there was. But why are you asking me? I’m saying that, no, I don’t understand why you want to know …”
“Do you know if Charlie Bennet ever participated in said programme?”
“Charlie?”
“Yes.”
She laughed. “Charlie! Yes! He did. It was … it was the year after I went.”
“Can you confirm the year for me, please?”
“He was there in 1976.”
Neither of us was saying the name that both of us knew defined that year.
“And the name of the programme?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Something French. Well, obviously. Sorry, no. It was a long time ago.”
“That’s fine. I can ask at the school. Do you remember the name of the teacher who ran it?”
“I’m sure she’s retired.”
“Most likely. But her name?”
Cathy nibbled at the tip of one long finger. “It was a long time ago.”
“Yearbooks?”
“I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to leave. If you want to ask me anything else, I’d like a solicitor present.”
“We can ask your husband to join us,” I suggested.
She straightened up. “I wouldn’t dream of interrupting his work. And, actually, you know what? I divorced Charlie seventeen years ago. No, wait, eighteen years now. Eighteen years! Our divorce is now old enough to vote, or buy a drink at the pub. I have nothing to do with him any more. If you have any further questions about Charlie you can ask his parents. Or his whores. It’s up to you, really. But don’t ask me.” She rose and manoeuvred me towards the door.
I could have argued, but chose to acquiesce for now. She escorted me past Rosalie and out the grand door. She watched through a decorative stained-glass window to check that I’d driven away.
I pulled over around the corner and jotted notes. I had wanted to ask her about Charlie’s story of visiting with Annalise’s parents and the accessibility and state of Annalise’s old bedroom, but Cathy had mentioned something potentially more interesting. She said that Charlie had gone on the French exchange the year after she herself had gone. As I recall the gossip around the case, there had been some talk of Annalise and a French boyfriend from the year before she disappeared. It sounded like Cathy and Annalise may have been in France together. And Cathy certainly didn’t want to talk about it. I needed to do some research before talking with her again.
And research wasn’t too far away. I drove a mile or so onward to find a proper place to leave the car. I ended up pulling off onto some grass at the side of the road. This wasn’t pavement territory, with shops and pubs and old unused phone boxes. This was nowhere.
The fields didn’t belong to any farm; instead they hosted a train track cutting through in the distance, somewhat parallel to the road. I’d known that Annalise’s body had been found near tracks, near Lilling, but I hadn’t known exactly where. Someone on the Internet had posted GPS coordinates, and I’d marked it on my mapping app. The spot was only twenty minutes from here, not a bad walk through tallish grass. Once I got close, I didn’t need the coordinates any more. There was a bouquet at the base of one of the two remaining poplar trees.
No card or explanation; just a handpicked bunch of wilting … purple I-don’t-know-whats. I’m terrible at flowers, but I know that they sometimes mean something. I snapped a picture.
How is it that some crimes capture so much public imagination that people—strangers, even—still grieve them decades later? It’s like historic ghost stories. Most deaths, even terrible ones, get let go of, but occasional ones, for being particularly surprising, ironic, iconic, or grisly, get remembered as spooky tales. If Annalise had been killed a hundred years ago, her death might be a ghost story now, and she a transparent, wispy figure wandering along the tracks, or riding her last bicycle journey on the way home from school over and over again. Or she might be just one of many deaths forgotten. She got remembered not just because of who she was or what happened, but because of a confluence of salacious media, well-chosen photographs, a superhot summer, and a panic that England might have gained its own Ted Bundy, whose trial had been at that time so much in the news across the pond. But this wasn’t a serial killer, not as far as we knew. He seemed to have killed only her.
Or she, I reminded myself. If Charlie’s semen got on the skirt the way he claimed it had, it wasn’t necessarily a man who had killed her, though that was still the more likely scenario.
I looked around. The road was in view. No cars visible at the moment, but that could change quickly.
Still, if a car did come along, and they bothered to look to the side instead of straight on, what could they see? Someone by the tracks. Even if they saw digging, they’d think “train works,” not “body dump.” The bigger worry would be a train going by. Not so much from being observed (though, depending on the speed and type of train, that could potentially be a problem) but from the whoosh of it passing. Gusts from a train’s motion are powerful. I wouldn’t want to be next to a pile of dirt shovelled out of a grave when a train bulleted by.
I made a list: find out what trains used to travel along this route, and what their speeds were. S
omething tugged at the back of my mind, from secondary school history lessons: train strikes. I added that to the list.
As I pushed my booted feet against the dry yellow grass, I imagined the journey with a body. I couldn’t think of an inconspicuous way to transport it. A wheelbarrow, perhaps? The walk would have been more of a danger of discovery than perhaps the burial itself. Dogs, I reminded myself. People walk dogs. That’s how it was found. Why take the chance? What was special about this place that made it worth it?
A train going north jolted me out of my wondering, and a car whooshing south on the road sandwiched me between their rushing speed as I headed back to my car.
The road into Lilling proper was easy to follow. Well, almost inevitable to follow; there weren’t other obvious options once on it, just occasional dirt tracks leading off.
I glanced at my watch when I arrived; perfect timing. An estate agent was waiting for me.
I wasn’t moving house; I had an appointment with a woman called Marnie from Showcase Homes! to show me Annalise’s old house, which was currently available to rent. Marnie was now nearing retirement age; she had been a newbie back in the eighties, being mentored by the agent who first sold the house after Annalise’s parents died. Now it was her turn to be in charge.
At first, the house had been treated as if it were cursed. No one wanted it. There was talk of whether it should be burned down or made into a museum, but the fact is, though it was Annalise’s house, the murder hadn’t (to anyone’s knowledge or even suspicion) happened there. So, eventually, there was buyer interest. The neighbours had banded together and petitioned the relevant forces on the city council to prevent ghoulish thrill-seekers from getting it. It had finally sold to a family who were aware of the history but wanted no details. Marnie herself had helped fix it up, she had told me on the phone, so that you couldn’t tell which room had belonged to Annalise. The buyers had explicitly asked not to know which room had been hers.
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