by Cohen, Tammy
A cursory look through the flimsy free-standing wardrobe produced a similar lack of results.
She crossed to the window and looked out. A back yard full of stacked crates and rubbish surrounded by other back yards full of the same. The window of the building straight across was half covered by a purple sheet. Leanne’s heart stopped as a child’s face appeared in the bottom right-hand corner. The child raised its hand to wave and Leanne ducked away.
In the kitchen she could hear the sound of Pete talking to someone from IT on the phone.
‘No, I’ve done that,’ he was saying. ‘It’s not working.’
She knew they’d have to get going soon to take the laptop in for testing. She turned and her eyes swept again over the bed. Then, more from habit than hope, she bent to take a quick look underneath it – and saw a single piece of A4 paper, folded in half. As she picked it up, she saw it was a printout of a webpage. On closer inspection it looked to be from a dating website. Leanne’s heart started pounding. There was a profile from someone calling themselves ButterfliesInMyTummy and a photograph of a chubby orange-skinned woman with curly blonde hair and comfy sheepskin boots sitting in an armchair. Leanne frowned. This didn’t fit with the man who lived in this room and whose DNA had been found on the body of a murdered child. She stared down at the woman while her heart continued to hammer, and then slowly she turned over the paper at its razor-sharp crease and now there was a coldness in her head like her brain was freezing from the inside out as she saw that there was another part to the photograph. Now she saw the young girl with wavy blonde hair and blue eyes laughing into the camera. And she knew. She knew.
41
When Emily appeared in the living room accompanied by the others, she was wearing a cardigan over her pyjamas and wouldn’t meet anyone’s eyes.
‘Jason says he’ll drive you home. That’s kind of him, isn’t it?’ Suzy was smiling, but there was a faint edge to her voice. ‘Emily can be a bit of a baby sometimes,’ she’d complained to him after Bethany had gone back upstairs. ‘You can understand why – I mean, she never gets the chance to be babied at home, not with all those smaller brothers and sisters, but she’s got to understand sometimes it isn’t all about her. This should be Bethany’s day.’
Now the girl stood uncomfortably in the doorway playing with her bag. ‘But I thought you were taking me,’ she said to Suzy.
‘Sorry, sweetheart. I’ve had too much to drink, and I’m not someone who would ever drink and drive.’ Jason guessed she was saying that for his benefit. Could she really not see the sweat breaking out on his forehead or the way his fingers were trembling in his lap? He remembered when he’d felt like this before and his stomach twisted.
But now the girl, Emily, was looking nervous, darting looks at her friends as if wanting them to step in.
‘Actually, I’m feeling a bit better,’ she said in a soft voice that he struggled to hear. ‘Maybe I’ll stay here with you guys.’
Jason froze, then he felt the anger pierce him like a bullet, exploding inside him into sharp shards of shrapnel. He was so close, so close. Was he really going to be thwarted now, after everything he’d done? Emily was his reward for these past weeks of laughing at Suzy’s feeble jokes, and pretending to be interested in her petty arguments with people at work, and going to bed with her and imagining she was someone else. And now, after all that, it was all going to be snatched away?
‘Er, no. Sorry, Emily. I’m afraid it’s too late to change your mind.’ Jason could hardly believe that Suzy had chosen now to grow a backbone. He could have kissed her. ‘You said you didn’t feel well. Jason’s all ready to take you now and I’ve already called your mum.’
Emily looked as if she was about to cry, and Suzy visibly softened.
‘The thing is, lovey, you do look peaky and I’ve got to think about the others, haven’t I? I can’t have you giving germs to Katie and Tara. So Jason’s going to run you back home and, tell you what, if you’re feeling better tomorrow your mum can pop you back again in the morning. OK?’
Emily nodded, but the look she shot in his direction was one of fear, which both thrilled and angered him. Could she really not see what he’d done for her, how he’d picked her out as the special one?
He tried to speak but his mouth was suddenly bone dry. He cleared his throat and swallowed, then tried again. ‘Right then. Are you ready, Emily?’
And now he was moving towards her, and she was peeling herself slowly off the wall as if she was a frightened animal being led off to slaughter and he just wanted to shake her because she was being so ungrateful and had almost ruined the whole thing – and why did all of them have to spoil things? There was a burning feeling in his chest and his lungs weren’t working properly. She was still wavering, fixing her pale eyes on Bethany like she was asking to be rescued or something. He put his hand on her arm and he felt her flinch.
He forced his fingers to remain resting gently on her arm, resisting the urge to grip hold of her and drag her through the door. He was so close he could smell on her breath the sickly Haribo sweets they’d been scoffing from a big tub up in Bethany’s room.
‘The car’s just outside.’
He tried to make the words come out casual but his voice sounded false and high-pitched even to his own ears. Now the burning had reached his throat and he just needed to be out of there. He was so close, and this time he wouldn’t blow it. He felt her shrinking under his touch, but still she allowed herself to be guided out of the living-room door, and she wouldn’t do that if she didn’t want to, right? Because underneath it all, underneath the shyness and fearfulness, she wanted this as much as he did.
‘Wait,’ Suzy called just as they reached the hallway. ‘Maybe I’ll come with you, just for the ride. Let me get my shoes.’
Jason stopped, his hand searing where it touched Emily’s skin. The bitch. She was doing it on purpose. Playing with him.
The ball of anger ignited into a flame inside him. ‘I don’t believe you!’ he snapped. ‘You’d actually go out and leave three ten-year-olds on their own?’
‘Oi, I’m eleven now!’ yelled Bethany, but Jason paid her no attention.
‘Do you realize you could be arrested for that?’
He’d swung around to face Suzy who had one foot strapped into its sandal, one still bare, and was gaping at him uncertainly.
‘We’ll only be gone a few minutes.’
‘Yeah, well, how many minutes does it take for a fire to start or a nutter to break in? How many?’
He knew he should lower his voice but he couldn’t.
‘Fine,’ she said, and started unbuckling the shoe. ‘I’ll wait here.’
She looked upset.
‘I just think you need to be a bit more careful. That’s all.’
‘I said I’ll wait.’
She was glaring at him now and he had to get out of there. He had his hand on the small of Emily’s back, guiding her out. He could feel the little nubs of her vertebrae through her thin cotton cardigan. His breath was coming out in short gasps and he steered her towards the front door before anyone else could notice.
‘Nearly there,’ he said in his new gruff voice. He thought she might reward him with one of her shy smiles, but instead she arched her back, pulling away from him. Another savage bolt of anger shot through him.
The burning feeling was no longer just in his chest but had now taken over the whole of him – face, head, even the soles of his feet were on fire, so were the palms of his hands and his scalp under his gelled hair. He’d tried, he really had, but it was getting to the point where he couldn’t be held responsible any more. Not when she was being so ungrateful, and he could feel Suzy and Bethany and the others behind him watching them. Well, it was nearly over. Another minute and they’d be in the car.
He paused in the hallway and reached out for the front-door latch.
42
There were lights on in all the rooms, but no way of knowing what was happening inside. Th
e wheelie bins in the concrete front yard obscured the window of what must surely be the living room and the upstairs curtains were drawn. As the car screeched to a halt, Leanne pressed her hands briefly to her eyes like she did when there was a horror film on the television she couldn’t bear to watch. Perhaps Pete recognized the gesture because he turned to her. ‘You OK?’ he whispered. She had no time to do anything but nod because now they were getting ready to jump out.
But were they too late? That was the question that had been ricocheting around Leanne’s head ever since she’d picked up the paper from the floor of Jason Shields’ bedroom and seen the photograph of the child. Of course they’d got straight on to the dating website and it had been the work of minutes to find an address for ButterfliesInMyTummy, but who knew how long he had been going round to the house, in all likelihood grooming the daughter. From the messages they’d sent each other through the website, it had been weeks since their first date.
Looking at the white front door with its mean diamond of faux leaded glass, Leanne had a terrible conviction that they were too late, that they’d failed the girl in the photo like they’d failed Megan and Tilly and Leila and Poppy. Yet how could they have known? Jason Shields was an outlier, an anomaly. No criminal record, except for the restraining order. Not on the Sexual Offenders Register. There were no clues they’d missed.
The driver turned off the engine and Leanne flung open her door, her eyes fixed on the house. She had one foot out of the car when the white front door suddenly flew open, revealing a very slight young girl wearing cut-off pyjamas, a cardigan and sandals. Right behind her, so close he must have been pressing on her back, was the man she recognized from his website profile as Jason Shields.
43
Emma replaced her phone gently on the bedside table and sat completely still, trying to absorb what Leanne had just told her. The light filtering in through the ivory curtains was grey and weak and she reckoned it must still be very early. Leanne had clearly been up all night. Her voice had that tightness to it as if it had been stretched to breaking point.
‘We’ve made an arrest,’ she’d said. ‘I didn’t want you to hear it from anyone else.’
It wasn’t anyone known to the police, at least not in that context, Leanne told her. He hadn’t confessed yet but the evidence against him was pretty conclusive.
Emma had listened to Leanne without saying a word, speaking only to thank her at the end. Guy hadn’t stirred throughout the whole thing. She always set her phone to silent overnight and she’d only woken up because she’d heard it vibrating against the glass of water on her bedside table.
It was over.
The words formed in her head, but still she couldn’t process them.
Tilly’s killer had been caught. They could get on with their lives.
So why didn’t she feel more euphoric? Surely she ought to be leaping around with joy, or at least waking Guy up to tell him the news.
She glanced over at him. He lay half under, half out of the duvet, one arm up at a right angle above his head, his face turned to the side so that his neck was long and straight.
How could she have thought he had anything to do with Tilly’s death? Her treachery made her feel giddy with shame. That she should have doubted this man who’d stroked her back and held back her hair when morning sickness sent her hunching over the toilet bowl, who’d sat on his own in his car outside strangers’ schools day after day to weep for his dead daughter because he still felt he had to be the strong one at home, the one who didn’t show weakness and protected them all, left her saturated with guilt.
She climbed back under the duvet and lay down. Guy looked so peaceful there, his arm flung up like a baby. Once she told him the news he’d want to be up making phone calls, doing things. And then the girls would be up and upset, just when Jemima had seemed in the last few days to be coming back to her at last, even allowing Emma to cuddle her the evening before as they sat watching television on the sofa. No, Emma wanted to leave him sleeping, just a little longer.
She turned over on to her side and shuffled carefully towards him, in small movements. There was a moment of hesitation when she wondered whether she had the right any longer to touch him. She was so out of practice, she could hardly remember what it felt like to have someone else’s skin against her own. Tentatively she reached an arm across Guy’s body and he shifted slightly in his sleep. She moved closer and then gently, hardly daring to breathe, she laid her head on his chest. Instantly his arm that had been flung up by his pillow came down and settled around her like a shawl.
44
Sally knew, before she was even fully awake, that she’d made a terrible mistake. Her mouth tasted like it had been coated with something sour and furry and there was a horrible fermenting smell in her nostrils. She opened her eyes and immediately shut them again, not wanting to believe what she now knew incontrovertibly to be the case. Self-loathing crawled all over her like a grubby hand.
Would she never learn?
She swung her legs over the side of the bed and slipped out of the bedcovers, disgustedly kicking off the knickers that were still hooked around one of her ankles. She was going to have to do some serious work on herself. Perhaps she’d take herself back to that luxury retreat on that island in Thailand. She hadn’t been sure about some of the stuff there. Who needed a breathing workshop, for goodness sake? Breathing was one of the very few life skills she’d managed to master. But she was sure the not-drinking had done her some good, and the meditation and the disgusting green juices. Slipping on the hotel dressing gown that was hanging over the chair and unhooking her handbag from the chair-back, she crept around the foot of the bed in which Simon Hewitt lay spreadeagled like a beached starfish.
Locking the door of the en suite bathroom, she looked at herself in the mirror and winced. She tried to piece together what had brought her to this dismal personal low, but piecing together the night before was like trying to work out a Sudoku – no sooner had she got one line of memory to fit than another burst right apart.
She knew she’d been feeling bad about Simon ever since she first found out about the existence of Nemo and realized for sure that he’d had nothing to do with the murders, and so when he called her yesterday afternoon to ask her if she wanted to go for a drink, she hadn’t declined, and besides she’d been lonely, with only the prospect of a Saturday evening on her own in the hotel bar. So she’d said yes, and they’d met for dinner and he’d made her laugh, and she’d remembered what she’d liked about him after all. And they’d shared a second bottle of wine, and then a third.
She slid down the tiled wall on to the bathmat she’d complained about on the first day after she’d slipped on it. She tried to guess how many hours she had until she had to present herself – all bright-eyed – at the house of the wife of the man in her bed, for the interview with Emma Reid that Leanne had managed to arrange in return for information. There was no doubt about it, she was a horrible person and she was going straight to hell. Unzipping her bag, she took her phone out of the inside pocket to check on the time, sliding it free from its smooth leather pouch. She saw she had a voicemail from Leanne Miller and cursed herself for having missed the call. Her lifecoach Mina had once accused her of self-sabotage. At the time Sally had been furious, but now she could see exactly what Mina meant.
‘Hello, Sally,’ came Leanne’s voice, sounding tired and slow. ‘I promised to keep you in the loop with developments on the Kenwood Killings case, so I’m calling to let you know we made an arrest last night. I thought you should know.’
An arrest. Sally sat up on her heels. She needed to be showered and out of there and down the police station before Ken Forbes and all the other arseholes got wind of it. She wished Leanne had been more forthcoming. An arrest could mean anyone.
All she knew for sure was that there was one person who could definitively be removed from the list of suspects, and that was because he was currently snoring away in her bed.
&nbs
p; 45
For the last few days, Rory had had a little residual glow thinking about the meeting with Jemima Reid in her Head’s office. But by Sunday morning, his good will had evaporated leaving just one thought in his head. Why? Why had he thought it was a good idea to throw his mobile into the pond? It had felt symbolic and life-affirming and liberating at the time, and it was just a crappy old thing, but still it was a phone.
What if Georgia Reynolds had rung him? She’d said she’d call him if she got stuck with the physics revision exercises they’d been set for homework. He couldn’t bear to think she might be imagining he was ignoring her. Getting a replacement phone was now a top priority. He knew he’d seen an old Nokia somewhere around the house. He ran through all the possibilities in his head. Basket on hallway dresser? No. Tray on the desk in Simon’s study? No. He’d gone through it just a couple of days ago looking for loose change that Simon wouldn’t miss. Got it! His mum’s bedside cabinet. That was where she kept her knickers and socks, but also where she kept the occasional ten-pack of cigarettes. She’d given up years before but still had the odd one, even though she thought no one else knew. He was sure there was a phone in there.
He crept down one flight of stairs and hovered uncertainly outside his mum and Simon’s room. He knew his mum wouldn’t be there. She always went to yoga on Sunday mornings, followed by a trip to the crematorium garden where there was a rosebush planted in Megan’s name. His mum insisted it calmed her to go there, although Rory had never noticed any evidence of this. She’d probably also call in to the supermarket to pick up cakes for this afternoon when that journalist was coming here to interview Emma Reid. Rory wondered whether Jemima would come too. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Simon’s whereabouts were another matter. Rory knew he’d gone out the previous evening. In fact, there had been a bit of a row about it, Rory now remembered. Simon was supposed to be at home but had called to say he was going out drinking with some old friends and didn’t know when he’d be back. His mum hadn’t been happy, but it happened pretty much all the time and she never seemed to get unhappy enough to do anything about it.