‘So was the product code written down then?’
‘Yes, he had it on a piece of paper.’
Becky thought for a minute.
‘Could you see if it was written, or was it typed in an email, or printed from the website – do you have any idea?’ she asked.
‘It was written in blue pen,’ the assistant said. ‘I know because he asked me to hold the paper while he checked out the knife. That wasn’t the only item on the list, but it was the only one from our department. I’m afraid I did take a peek at what else was on there. Only to see if there was anything else I could help with, of course.’
‘And…’ Becky said.
‘The only other item I can remember was in bedding, I think, but nothing else in the kitchen department.’
‘So somebody had written a list for him then,’ Becky said.
‘I don’t think so. I think he must have written the list himself, because he seemed concerned to check that he hadn’t transposed any of the numbers. There was one number that he couldn’t read, and he said he’d been trying to balance the paper on his knee as he wrote. I got the impression that somebody had dictated it to him.’
Becky wasn’t sure at all where this got them, but she thanked the shop assistant and wrote up her notes.
Tom appeared to be waiting for her to finish.
‘Becky,’ he said, a frown of concentration adding years to his usual relaxed expression. ‘Can I run something by you please?’
‘Course. Anything that gets my mind moving because frankly it feels like it’s sunk in the mire at the moment. Please – some light relief.’
‘Hah. I’m not sure I can offer that, but there’s something that’s puzzling me, and I would really like your take on it. It’s about the death of Olivia Brookes’ parents – Mr and Mrs Hunt. It’s nearly nine years ago, but at the time there was something about it that felt wrong. I couldn’t get a handle on it, but I think I have now. I just don’t know if I’m fantasising for all the wrong reasons.’
Becky leaned back in her chair and picked up the mug of cold tea that she had meant to drink half an hour ago. She took a sip and shuddered, but it was better than nothing. ‘Go on, I’m all ears.’
‘We were called to the Hunts’ home at about two o’clock in the afternoon on the day of their death. I’ve told you how they died and how Olivia found them. But for some reason, I was never entirely convinced it was an accident. We couldn’t find anything to prove otherwise, and I wasn’t sufficiently confident back then to go with my gut, plus there was absolutely nothing to go on. Until I read through the transcripts last night.’
Tom closed the file and put it back on his desk. ‘I’ve read through it so many times, but there are a few things I remember too. While I was talking – or trying to talk – to Olivia, who was practically hysterical, her phone rang. It was Robert Brookes. She was pretty much incapable of speaking, so I took the phone from her and explained what had happened. He said he’d be right there.’
‘Wow. That’s impressive for somebody who’s just buying a house,’ Becky said, slightly in awe of Robert’s dependability in the face of adversity. ‘Most people would just have said, “Let me know when it’s sorted,” I’d have thought.’
‘Well, he turned up about half an hour later and I spoke to him. He seemed very concerned for Olivia. Even though it was still hot in the house, she was shivering, and he took off his jacket and put it round her. When the policewoman who had been looking after Jasmine brought her back to hand her over to Olivia, she just ignored her baby so Robert took her. We were quite impressed. Anyway, I asked him if he had been in the house previously so we could rule out his fingerprints. He said he’d never been there before.’
‘And?’ Becky said, looking at Tom but not having a clue where this was going.
‘I was the one who spoke to him on Olivia’s phone, and I just gave him the bare facts about the parents. Nothing more.’
Becky waited. Tom’s eyes were boring intently into hers. He was obviously expecting her to make some connection, but whatever he was thinking was eluding her. She waited.
‘If he’d never been there before, how the hell did he know where they lived, Becky?’
*
Tom couldn’t think how he’d missed this the first time round. It could have been the fact that Olivia was in such a terrible state, alternating between screaming that something wasn’t right and collapsing, sobbing to the ground. Not that it was surprising. She was weak and bewildered by everything that had already happened to her, so this must have left her reeling.
It was no good berating himself now, though, and he was sure that if he’d asked, Robert would have had an answer. More than likely he would have said that Olivia had left some papers in the flat with her parents’ address on, or that she’d mentioned in passing where they lived. There would have been an excuse – and one that would have been entirely plausible.
But why would Brookes harm the Hunts? How would he have got in, because the towel in the air inlet was definitely one from the house, and if somebody had removed those batteries it had to have been after the parents had gone to bed.
For a while, the investigation had centred on Olivia. First her boyfriend had gone missing, and then her parents had died. If she had done anything to hurt them, though, hers would have been an Oscar winning performance of monumental quality when she found their bodies.
Robert had been discounted. He was just the guy buying the house. Why would they have even looked twice at him?
The fact is that they didn’t.
But maybe they should have.
48
Finally, Robert thought as he stepped off the boat in Alderney harbour. What a pig of a journey. He had never intended to spend a night on Guernsey, but by the time he had arrived there was little choice. He wished he had just taken the risk and flown, but the police must be looking for him by now. This way he could slip on to the island relatively unnoticed.
Then all he had to do was to find Olivia. He smiled at the thought.
He didn’t know if he would have to find somewhere to stay. It all depended on how quickly he could track her down. He tried to drag the picture of the beach she had shown him into his head, but as they had sailed into Alderney he had seen plenty of beautiful beaches, and it could have been any one of them.
Asking one of his fellow passengers on board the tiny ten-person ferry for an idea of where he might stay, he was pointed in the direction of the town. As he set off with the sea on his left, there was a smart-looking hotel, but his funds wouldn’t run to that without using his credit card. He was sure there would be some cheap rooms somewhere on the island. He could start asking around about Olivia too. He couldn’t risk leaving it too long, but on the other hand he had to have a plan of what to do when he found her.
Because he was going to find her.
During his journey south he had tried to think of all the reasons Olivia might have for choosing this island, but it wasn’t until he arrived that he finally understood the biggest attraction. Lack of fast and easy access. A lack of escape. She had thought he would never find her, but just in case, she had chosen somewhere that would make it difficult for him to carry out his plan and get clean away. But that was okay. He was adaptable. He would find somewhere locally that would fit the bill just as well.
His plan had always been that if the time ever came when he had to hurt Olivia in the way he had promised, he would maximise the period of threat – the time when her pain came somewhere close to his own. And it would all lead to the final act, the denouement guaranteed to leave her in agony for the rest of her life as she realised she could have avoided it all. All she’d ever had to do was love him. That was all he had asked. He knew that he could never live without her and if he couldn’t have her, he had to make sure that until the day she died she would regret not returning his love.
It would be more difficult to fulfil his plan here, but he would formulate a new one. He needed a route and a final place to st
age the scene. He closed his eyes, and he imagined it in glorious Technicolor.
Maybe he should make it a little different. It would be so much better if Olivia were an unwilling witness to the whole event.
He laughed out loud. Arriving by sea had been a good idea, because one thing he had noticed was that this island didn’t lack suitable locations for what he had in mind: a finale that would be imprinted on Olivia’s mind for the rest of her life.
But first, he had to find her.
As he passed the hotel he saw just what he was looking for – a pub. It was time to get to know the locals.
He pushed the door open and stepped inside, eager to begin putting his plan into action.
49
It took me a long time to fully understand the depths of Robert’s obsession with me. To begin with, it felt as if he was simply the most thoughtful, caring and considerate man, and although nothing about him thrilled me, I had convinced myself that safety and security were the two most important features in a relationship. And Robert offered those in spades.
He had done everything any man could do to take care of me. Losing Dan and then my parents had drained the lifeblood out of me. Robert married an empty husk and yet he tried to give me a life that would in some way compensate for my losses.
What he failed to offer was excitement and passion. I persuaded myself that what we had was normal. Perhaps if Dan had still been with me, we too would have settled into a rut of twice-monthly sex with nothing more intimate than a peck on the cheek on the other nights.
This wasn’t Robert’s preference, though. He wanted to touch me all the time. When he came home from work and drew me into a hug I would try to reciprocate, but I always found an excuse to pull away – the children needed something, the dinner was burning.
How could I be married and yet recoil from my husband?
At night, when I turned away from him in bed, Robert liked to stroke my back. I hated it, and I knew he could feel my body tighten as I silently urged him to stop. I used to hear a small sigh as he drew his hand away. For the last two years, though – ever since the night he took my children and had stood silently in the doorway of Jasmine’s bedroom, listening to me saying goodnight to my daughter – he no longer sighed. Instead he whispered softly against my neck, ‘sleep tight, my darling’. Four harmless words of love that were a reminder; a threat.
And he watched me.
If he was in the room with me and I glanced up, he would be looking at me. Sometimes I would be working in the kitchen – cooking a meal or doing the ironing – and Robert would be outside in the garden, but still I would feel those eyes penetrating like cold darts. And if I quickly turned my head, his face would be at the window, just looking in. Watching. He would smile, give me a small wave, and turn away. As if it were normal.
I hated it.
I felt as if I was wrapped in a cocoon, or maybe a straightjacket – arms pinned to my sides, feeling sweat pour down my arms and my inner thighs. But the sweat was cold and clammy, and I knew if I tried to escape, the ties would be tightened inch by sticky inch.
I don’t know what made me realise that I couldn’t live like this, but I think it began when I was listening to some other mothers waiting to pick their children up from school. They laughed and joked, made rude remarks about their husbands being lazy sods or football mad or untidy pigs. But the love was shining in their eyes as they spoke. I couldn’t join in. I couldn’t think of a single thing to say, other than, ‘He watches me,’ and I knew how that would sound.
I decided I had to talk to Robert, to tell him that I was just a cold fish, and he deserved somebody better. He needed somebody to love and cherish him the way he loved and cherished me. I remember he asked me about the children. If I was devoid of feeling, did that mean I felt nothing for them?
This was a stupid question. My children are my life and I adore every single cell of their bodies. How could he ask that?
He pointed out that this meant I wasn’t incapable of love, so was I saying that I was incapable of loving him? Was that the problem?
It was, and I knew it. But how could I tell him I wanted to leave him? I couldn’t. We laughed it off in the end, deciding that I was premenstrual – the only excuse that men seem to accept without question, not having a clue what it really means.
Nothing else was said for a few days, but Robert started to talk about our next holiday. He said he would like to pay another visit to South Stack lighthouse on Anglesey, and he reminded me of the time we had been previously. I didn’t understand what he meant, until from somewhere came a memory – a memory of standing at the edge of a cliff and Robert telling me that some man had jumped off to his death. He had called it ‘a perfect place to die’. As I remembered that day, I felt a chill, as if a cold wind had whipped through the room.
We struggled on for a few weeks, but then Robert gave his virtuoso performance and took my children away. Those hours when I thought I had lost them were truly terrible, and somehow I felt it was all my fault.
As I should have expected, Robert told the police that I’d known he was taking them away and must have forgotten, but this was merely the start of his campaign to undermine my sanity. The school, the other mothers, the need for a regularly updated schedule to let him know exactly what I had been doing – which he didn’t hesitate to mention to people like my doctor, the teachers, the children’s health visitor, the social worker. I began to realise that if I filed for divorce, there was a chance that he would be able to keep my children from me due to my apparent unpredictability and instability. He was amassing evidence, and he was so clever. He was painting me into a corner, and ensuring that I would never be allowed to keep my children if I left him.
I was trapped. I felt totally impotent. All my inheritance had been invested in our home, and I had no access to money – no means of escape. I was frozen, paralysed. Inertia set in, and for weeks I felt the weight of lethargy dragging me down.
And if I had thought he was watching me before, I now felt like an amoeba under a microscope. The weird thing about being watched is that you don’t always know it’s happening.
But somehow, you can feel it.
50
Tom’s phone was ringing as he walked into the incident room carrying two cups of coffee. Becky was hunched over her desk, her dark hair swinging down to cover her face, but Tom could tell from the tension in her body that something had happened. She was on the phone, and it was only as he juggled with the cups and pulled his mobile out of his pocket that he realised he was the person she was trying to reach.
‘Becky – I’m here,’ he said, without bothering to answer the call.
Her head jerked up, and her eyes were dark with concern.
‘What’s up?’ he asked, grabbing a seat and facing her across the desk, pushing one of the coffee cups towards her. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘I’ve just had a call from a man who runs a boat company in Guernsey. They operate a ferry service around the Channel Islands, including runs to Alderney. He called me because he saw an extract on the news about Olivia and the children, with the added news that the husband is also missing.’
Tom felt an unusual sense of impending disaster.
Becky nodded her head at what she undoubtedly recognised as Tom’s immediate grasp of the implication.
‘He dropped Robert Brookes in Alderney Harbour this morning.’
Tom was instantly on his feet. Fuck, he’s found her, he thought. Gulping down a hasty mouthful of coffee, he signalled Becky to follow him as he snatched keys and phone from his desk and spun on his heel towards the door.
‘Grab your things, Becky. Make sure you’ve got photo ID. We’ll sort everything out on the way.’
He knew Becky wouldn’t waste time asking questions, and she picked up her briefcase from the floor by the side of her desk, opened it and shovelled in a few files and her mobile, at the same time shouting over her shoulder.
‘Nic, sort ou
t two flights for us from Manchester to Alderney. Fastest way possible. Call me.’
Having no idea of flight times, they started to run. It would be beyond frustrating if they missed a flight by minutes.
As they jogged towards Tom’s car – the closer of the two in the car park – he asked if the team had heard anything from the Alderney police.
‘Yes and no. They haven’t managed to track Olivia down, but if Robert’s on Alderney we can be pretty sure she’s there. If she’s renting somewhere it must be a private rental. Nobody appears to recognise the description or the names; but she’s a smart cookie – she’ll have changed them.’
Tom knew this was right. If he’d been Olivia, he would have made a point of being seen around the place in April when nobody was looking for her, and now be keeping a relatively low profile. Doing nothing to stand out, and making sure the children didn’t resemble any description. Of course, photos would have made all the difference – a fact she had clearly grasped when she destroyed every single one of them before she left.
The Alderney police would do their best, but they didn’t know Robert Brookes like Tom was beginning to, and he was certain Olivia was in danger.
Tom clicked his remote twice at the car to open both sides, and they leaped in, attaching seat belts as they raced out of the car park.
‘Becky, get on the phone to Sophie Duncan. Tell her that now is not the time for being loyal to her friend. We need to find Olivia, because she’s potentially in danger. If she doesn’t know where Olivia is, you can bet your life she knows how to contact her. Get Sophie to speak to her. We’re not pissing about now. This is bloody serious and she needs to understand that.’
Becky ran her finger down the page of contacts from her file, and dialled a number. Tom could only hear one side of the conversation as Becky spoke to Sophie. She explained that they believed Olivia could be on Alderney, and they wanted to know where.
‘Come on, Sophie. This isn’t a game. If you know where she is, tell us. We want to help her, and you more than anybody should recognise that Robert Brookes is dangerous.’
Tom Douglas Box Set Page 105