by Cohen, Tammy
‘Emma. Yes.’
Fiona Botsford had a very distinctive way of talking, her words coming out in staccato phrases like the clacking of an old-fashioned typewriter. Emma knew some people – Guy for instance – found her abrasive. ‘Spiky’ is how he’d described her when they first met. But Emma liked the way she didn’t ever try to be anything she was not. She didn’t pretend to like people or to be having a good time. She was unapologetically herself. And obviously they had never known her Before, just as none of the others had known Guy and her Before. They had no idea that once Emma and Guy had been so close he would call her from his car on the way to work in the morning. ‘I just wanted to hear your voice,’ he’d say as though it had been ten days, not ten minutes, since he’d left the house.
‘How are you, Fiona? Have you been coping with it all?’
She didn’t need to explain what she meant by ‘it all’.
‘Not really. I’m worried about Helen. She’s taken it very badly, our move to Australia.’
‘We’ll all miss you. It won’t be the same without you.’
Only now did Emma grasp the truth of this. Fiona and Mark weren’t part of her day-to-day life, but their not being around would leave a huge gap. Who else was there who understood? Only Helen and Simon, and this new family when they finally emerged from the pit they were in right now. If they emerged.
‘I know. And we’ll miss you too. But we need to get away. Find a new way of living. Here we’ll always feel like parents. Parents without a child. Maybe somewhere else we can just be people again. I hope Helen can understand that.’
‘Fiona, was there anything weird about Leila’s hair? After she was found, I mean. Was it tied back?’
If Fiona thought this an off-the-wall question, she didn’t show it. ‘No. It was loose. She always wore it loose. She used to say she liked the swishing noise it made when she turned her head from side to side. Why?’
For a moment Emma considered telling her about the hair bands, but the thought of explaining it all over again and being met once more with that blank, unspoken ‘And?’ stopped her.
‘No reason. Just forget I mentioned it.’
25
The dog had its nose in the crotch of Sally’s newly purchased crisp white linen trousers and was making a snuffling noise.
‘Oh, he likes you,’ said the woman at the next table, who was holding the end of the dog’s lead but making not the slightest effort to rein it in. ‘You should be honoured. Normally he growls at people he doesn’t know.’
Sally nudged the dog away and turned to the side so that her back was now to the table with the dog-owning woman. So what if it was rude? Really, as far as she was concerned, allowing your pets to attempt oral sex with random strangers was the greater social transgression. She snatched up her phone from the wooden table and tried Simon’s number. Again. Beep beep beep beep.
Crossly she looked around. It had been her idea to meet at the Kenwood House café on the northern edge of Hampstead Heath. She’d thought the setting – near where all the girls had been found – might make Simon more forthcoming. She’d imagined the two of them enjoying a quiet tête-à-tête in the sunshine, Simon unfurling like a flower under the blaze of her gentle but expert probing, revealing the secret that would unlock the case and reignite her flagging career. She hadn’t reckoned on the Active Retired cluttering up the place with their lightweight jackets and baseball caps and hiking sticks, nor the Scandinavian nannies giggling over cappuccinos while their charges munched their way through family-size bags of artisan crisps, nor all these bloody dogs, and of course, being Hampstead, they weren’t any old dogs, they were designer crossbreeds with those ridiculous names like cockerpoos and cavapoos and labradoodles. The place was jam-packed. She’d only managed to get a table by standing next to a middle-aged man and staring pointedly at his empty tea cup and crumb-strewn plate until he finally got up and moved away. And now Simon wasn’t even bloody well here. It was too much.
‘Sorry, sorry.’ He’d walked up from behind so she hadn’t noticed him. ‘There was nowhere to park. I’ve been driving round and round like a complete dick. Saturdays are a nightmare around here.’
Sally got to her feet to kiss him on each cheek. She got a whiff of cologne and couldn’t help feeling flattered he’d made an effort for her. But then she remembered about the letter and what he might be capable of and she felt angry with herself for even noticing. When Simon sat himself down opposite her and she got a proper look at him, she felt a jolt of shock. He’d really let himself go. There were pillows of flesh where his neck emerged from his just-too-tight yellow T-shirt, and his face was puffy, the cheeks stained deep red from what she guessed was a combination of careless exposure to the sun plus a serious wine habit.
‘It’s wonderful to see you again, Sally. You look great. Really great.’
‘How kind of you to say so. Even though I know I look like shit. Never could sleep well in a hotel.’
Why had she mentioned hotels? Now the memory of that hotel by Swiss Cottage with the white, clinical-looking lobby and the heating you couldn’t turn down was looming large between the two of them.
‘I have thought about you, you know?’
His pale eyes were sunken and Sally felt a wave of revulsion, remembering again the letter and what it implied. She looked at his broad, meaty fingers resting on the table and had a sudden awful memory of him thrusting one of those fingers into her mouth. She jumped to her feet.
‘Oh really? How nice. Now what shall I get you from the café? Tea? Coffee? There’s a yummy-looking carrot cake I could tempt you with.’
‘Yummy’. She hadn’t used that word in years.
By the time she re-emerged, balancing two Earl Greys and a slab of orangey-brown cake topped with thick white icing, she’d given herself a strict talking-to. She’d made a mistake with Simon Hewitt. But people were allowed mistakes. It didn’t make them bad people. She would get Mina to do some work with her on self-forgiveness. But in the meantime she needed to focus on getting Simon to talk – in whatever way possible.
‘How have things been?’ She reached out her hand and rested her fingertips briefly on his pudgy arm.
He glanced at her and then concentrated on adding two lumps of brown sugar to his tea, and stirring vigorously.
‘It’s not exactly a barrel of laughs at home. But what can you do? We make the best of it.’
‘Of course. Of course.’
‘I hope it goes without saying this meeting is completely off the record, Sally.’
Simon narrowed his already narrow eyes, and Sally could hear in his voice how much he enjoyed saying the phrase ‘off the record’. She had noticed that about him before, that propensity towards the pompous.
‘I don’t think Helen would be jumping up and down with joy if she knew I was meeting you.’
‘She knows about us then? How the fuck did she find out?’
Sally had guessed as much but it was uncomfortable having her suspicions confirmed.
‘She found the hotel receipt.’
Now Sally remembered how he’d insisted on paying for the room in that swaggering manner some men adopt when they’re trying to be macho, even though she’d told him she could put it on expenses.
‘I told her I was helping you with an article. That we needed somewhere quiet to talk.’
‘Ha! Bet she bought that one!’
‘Not really. But I stuck to it, and she didn’t push. Helen doesn’t push on anything. It’s not her style.’
No wonder Helen had seemed frosty at Fiona’s interview. It was all so tawdry in hindsight.
Simon picked up his fork and shovelled a wodge of cake into his mouth. A large ginger crumb fixed itself to his lower cheek.
‘Come on, Sally,’ he said through his mouthful of cake. ‘Don’t look so pissed off. You weren’t exactly an unwilling party as I remember rightly. It takes two to tango, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Whatever. Anyway, that’s not why I wanted to se
e you. Actually, there’s something I need to ask you. Something that’s come to my attention.’
A loud Latin samba suddenly cut across the table and Sally cursed herself for not having turned her phone to silent before sitting down.
‘Excuse me a moment,’ she said, clocking the name that had popped up on the screen. Clutching her phone to her chest like a newborn baby, she threaded her way through the tables and out on to the main path. To the right, the magnificent cream façade of Kenwood House rose up stark against a cobalt sky, its regiment of vast windows gazing out on to manicured lawns sloping down to the glittering lake at the bottom. Finding an unoccupied bench, she sat with her back to the building.
‘Sorry,’ she said at last. ‘I had to go somewhere a little more private. How are you? How have you been?’
The voice that came back was so soft she had to jab at the volume button on the side of her phone to hear it.
‘Yes. Can’t complain,’ it said. ‘Work takes up most of my time. Kids are growing up far too fast. What can you do?’
Despite the superficial chattiness, the underlying tone was one of suspicion. There was a hesitation there, a betraying tightness. Sally knew she had to get her questions in quickly, before he found an excuse to ring off.
‘Thank you so much for calling back. I’m really just after a bit of information. All totally anonymous of course.’ Silence. ‘And obviously I’d be happy to reimburse you for your time, in the same way as before.’
The last time Sally had dealings with the man she knew only as ‘Serge’ there’d been a complicated arrangement of payment involving Western Union, and it had all been a great big faff. Actually, it had caused a bit of a hoo-ha with the features editor who’d commissioned the piece and who’d questioned the ethics of paying a self-confessed would-be paedophile, but then Sally had pointed out that he’d never, as far as they knew, committed an actual crime. His transgressions were all in his head. If they were all to be judged on their private fantasies, the world would come to an abrupt halt, she’d argued. So the feature had come out: INSIDE THE MIND OF A PAEDOPHILE. And as they’d all thought, it had generated a huge reaction, with thousands of people writing in to express their outrage at a national paper devoting column inches to perverts and deviants. It had been one of the high points of her career.
She’d never met Serge in real life – she’d been introduced to him via a network of contacts and their communications had remained purely via telephone – but she’d often thought about him, almost fondly. He’d seemed so genuinely ashamed of his impulses, so eloquent about the struggle of living a lie – on the surface a happy family man, but underneath tormented by urges he knew to be wrong. Afterwards people had accused her of making him up. There was that jealous git Jeremy who worked for the weekend paper, who’d told her a ‘real paedophile’ would never admit to being wrong, as they thought their feelings were perfectly natural. ‘And you became the official Paedophile Spokesperson when exactly?’ Sally had asked him.
‘What kind of information?’ Again that hesitancy, as if he suspected her of trying to catch him out. Sally had never discovered what ‘Serge’ did for a living, but she imagined him as some kind of middle manager – cautious and thorough. She knew he had a wife who suspected nothing and three children he adored.
‘I’m digging around into the Hampstead Heath murders in North London. I’ve been told by a source that there might be a paedophile group involved. I just wondered if you’d heard anything. Not that I’m suggesting for a minute you yourself might be …’
‘It’s all right. I understand.’
‘And? Is that something you’ve heard too?’
Sitting on her bench, Sally found herself stiffening with anticipation as she always did when she felt she might be on the verge of a breakthrough. Just in front of her, a little boy was running down the sloping lawn on chubby legs, the handle of a kite clutched in his hand, but without a breeze, the neon diamond just trailed disconsolately in the grass behind him. ‘I told you,’ his mother could be heard to say. ‘I said it wouldn’t work.’
‘Before we get into anything, I’d just need to check about the, um, reimbursement. Would that be at the same rate as before?’
Sally opened her mouth to argue and then closed it again. She needed this information. If the paper baulked at the four-figure tip-off fee, she’d just pay it herself.
‘I’ll probably get into trouble, but yes, fine. So what have you got?’
Sally glanced over to her left, conscious of the man she’d left sitting at the café table. Might she be about to hear something that linked Simon Hewitt to this whole grisly business? The thought both horrified and excited her. That she might yet find herself once again at the very heart of an international news story.
‘Well. I have heard rumours.’ Pause.
Sally dug her fingernails into the skin of her arm to stop herself from crying out with frustration.
‘There is this online group. It’s called Nemo.’
‘As in the cartoon fish?’
‘One would presume so.’
‘And?’
‘The rumours are that they’re involved somehow.’
‘But who are they?’
‘Come on, Sally. You know better than that. I haven’t a clue who they are. We don’t exactly sign in with all our personal information. Everything is scrambled through a series of relays so there’s no chance of tracing IPs.’
‘Yes, but you said there were rumours. Someone must know something.’
‘Not really. The only things I’ve heard about it are that there are only four members and that a couple of them are very high-profile. A radio presenter of some sort, I heard.’
Sally sat up straighter, trying not to get over-excited. The case was already massive, but a celebrity would send it into the stratosphere.
‘Who? Any idea?’
‘I need to go now, Sally, I’m afraid. I’ll see what else I can find out.’
And then he was gone, just a soft click betraying that he was ever there at all.
Sally’s heart was racing as she made her way back to the café. Of course there was nothing to say there was any truth in any of this. But she had a gut feeling about ‘Serge’. She’d felt it right from the start, and if there was one thing Sally had learned by now it was to trust her gut. At least when it came to a story. When it came to men, her gut should frankly be sent packing.
‘Oh, you’ve come back, have you? Thought you might have done a runner.’
Simon was tapping his car keys on the table.
‘Sorry!’ Sally made an exaggeratedly apologetic face. ‘The bloody office always manage to pick the worst possible moment.’
She smiled at him as she slid back into her chair. The conversation with ‘Serge’ had focused her mind. She needed to find out what Simon Hewitt was really all about without coming out and telling him about the letter. She wanted to hold that particular card back.
‘I do sometimes think about it,’ she said, casting her eyes down so that they fixed on the knotty grain of the table. ‘Those afternoons at the hotel, I mean. I’m guessing it wasn’t a one-off scenario for you. I got the impression you were a bit of an old pro.’
She knew she needed to feed his ego. Even so, she felt whatever muscle was linked to her internal moral compass contract in protest.
Predictably, he looked pleased, his fleshy cheeks, already deeply coloured, flushing claret. ‘I wouldn’t say that. But you’re right, there have been others. Not many, mind. I wouldn’t want you to think I was some kind of player.’
It occurred to Sally that that’s exactly what Simon Hewitt would want her to think. But now he was looking at her again with suspicion.
‘This is completely private, this chat, yeah? Don’t forget, I’m not the only one who’d lose out if anything about what happened between us got into the public domain. I can’t imagine your boss would look kindly at you fraternizing with your interviewees.’
Sally suspected
her boss would probably sign her up for a three-part exclusive on the spot, but she kept quiet about that.
‘I’ve told you. It’s totally off the record. Go on, you were talking about your chequered past. So I wasn’t the one who tempted you away from the straight and narrow. And there was I thinking I was special.’
‘You were. Are. I just meant …’
‘I’m teasing. Tell me a bit more about the others. Bet you have a type.’
Was she really expecting him to say, yes, underage?
‘The type that would go for a fat old git like me?’
Simon was smiling and Sally suddenly remembered what it was she’d liked about him. They’d had fun. She’d forgotten that.
‘Yes, but there must be a common factor. Blonde? Solvent? Young?’
She deliberately left the last word hanging, but Simon didn’t pick up the bait.
‘To be honest, Sally’ – his shoulders slumped now and he looked defeated – ‘there were only one or two. I’m not a complete shit, you know. I love Helen, in my way. In fact before you, there hadn’t been anyone in ages.’
‘I suppose having a murdered stepdaughter can play havoc with your love life.’
She hadn’t meant to sound so arch. Simon made a face.
‘Even before that I’d stopped. The thing was that Megan … God, this is pretty embarrassing.’
Sally felt a tingling at the base of her spine.
‘Come on, Simon. As if I’m one to judge.’
‘Well, Megan saw me. Us, rather. The woman was one of the mums at her school. Divorced. Kind of came on to me, if you know what I mean. Anyway. There was a Christmas party at her house, kids and parents, and much vino was drunk, and Megan walked in on us in the summerhouse. She didn’t say anything to Helen in the end. I wrote her a letter practically begging her not to. Even offered to buy her a bloody pony. But it was a massive reality check. That was the only time it happened, really. Apart from you. Blimey, there’s no need to look so disappointed. What were you hoping for? Some kind of salacious history of serial womanizing?’
Sally didn’t answer. What had she been hoping for? That Simon’s letter to Megan would solve the case – even while at the same time exposing the huge void that lived at the heart of her where her sense of judgement should be?