The Life I Left Behind

by Colette McBeth

  ‘I thought you might be interested to know we’ve just followed up a call from a woman who said her friend wore exactly the same chain.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘She committed suicide – the friend, not the caller, obviously.’

  Victoria looks across the room at Rollings. He has the same expectant expression that the contestants on MasterChef wear – Doug’s choice, not hers – when the judges are tasting their food. She feels a spark of interest, only for him to throw water on it in the next sentence.

  ‘She died twenty-six years ago.’

  Victoria picks a bit of chicken out from the sandwich and shoves it into her mouth. She skipped breakfast again; her stomach moans in protest.

  ‘More than quarter of a century ago,’ she says. It’s a statement that DC Rollings is savvy enough to interpret as a question. Where the hell is this going to take us?

  ‘What’s interesting is that it was the woman’s son found her body. She was wearing the chain at the time; it had been a birthday present from him. Apparently he had been with her alone for hours before anyone found him.’

  ‘Do we know what happened to the boy after she died?’

  ‘He was looked after by his father apparently; our caller moved away from the village a few years after it happened. She said he was ten or thereabouts at the time, so he’d be in his late thirties now.’

  ‘Have you got names?’

  ‘The woman’s name was Rosemary Crighton. Her son was called Charlie.’

  ‘Whereabouts did this happen?’

  ‘Sussex. It was a holiday home apparently; they didn’t live in the village. Ever heard of a place called Climping?’

  ‘As a matter of fact I have,’ Victoria said. ‘I went there on holiday as a kid. Try and locate all the Charles Crightons of that age, will you, and come back to me? And find the address of the house too.’

  ‘I’ll get on to it.’

  Oliver is almost ten. What would that do to a boy, coming home and finding his mother’s body? Did he sit by her, talking, asking her to wake up, alone in the silence, waiting for help to come?

  She slaps herself down. It might not even be true. Even if it is, the chances are there won’t be a link to Eve’s murder. It appeals to her because she likes to understand the stories behind the cases she solves, to trace the narrative from beginning to end. Usually, though not always, that’s where she finds the motivation for the crime. Random murders happen, but in her experience they’re rare. She’s happier if they have a reason, however warped it might be.

  She’s still thinking about the boy when she turns back to Eve’s file. They’ve spoken to Sam Chapman, and Melody’s friend Patrick Carling has come forward too, but in the absence of a call from Honor Flannigan, they will have to pay her a visit themselves.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Eve

  I HAD THICK skin, like rhinoceros hide, so Nat reminded everyone at my funeral. Far from provoking an outcry, he had pretty much the whole room nodding and giggling in agreement. ‘Nearly all of us have our own stories about Eve. It was impossible to embarrass her, she wasn’t big on subtlety. I’d go so far as to say she lacked a certain amount of social awareness. Like the time we treated ourselves to one night in a posh hotel in France and drank too much wine. Eve got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, only she opened the wrong door and went out into the hallway instead, completely nude, and locked herself out. What did she do? She borrowed two cushions from the armchair in the hall and took the lift down to reception, where she asked in her loud voice’ – cue laughter – ‘if someone could kindly let her back into her room.

  ‘The next day when the receptionist remarked that it was lovely to see her with her clothes on, she planted a kiss on his lips and handed him a fat tip without so much as a blush.

  ‘Looking back on my friendship with Eve, I see all the things she made me do: going on to a club because she refused to let the night end, running a marathon just because she didn’t fancy doing it alone. I’ve climbed the Old Man of Coniston with a hangover, watched her haggle with a man in Egypt, not over the price of a camel ride but how long we could spend on it – two hours in the end; I swore I’d never forgive her. I’ve done all this because Eve wouldn’t take no for an answer. She was a force that made my life bigger and more exciting … and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do without her.’

  Nat was being kind. In truth, friendships are about balance. Yin and yang. He supported me as much in his own inimitable way as I pushed him. Like the time in the summer when I hit a wall with the investigation. I’d spoken to Sam and Patrick and others but Honor Flannigan was blanking me. Three emails – no reply. Two voicemails left at her place of work – unreturned. When a handwritten letter failed to elicit a response it was abundantly clear, even to someone with a rhinoceros hide, that she didn’t want to talk to me. I would have to go to her.

  At least that was what I’d been telling myself for three weeks. The trouble was I couldn’t muster the enthusiasm, the courage, the energy, whatever it was that I needed to make me drive to Dorset to use all my powers of persuasion on a woman who had no intention of talking to me. My day job was getting increasingly demanding. I had worked three fifteen-hour days in the past week, staking out a takeaway outlet that had been closed down after rat faeces were found in a curry only to open again with the same management in the same location. All they had done was paint over the name on the door. Every night I returned to my flat and stared hopelessly at the mountain of paperwork, the chart marked with highlighter about which leads to follow, which pieces of evidence to question. It looked like the workings of an unstable mind. Was it? Was I going round the twist? What had made me so confident I could do this? When was I going to find the time? I doubted myself and my own judgement, hated the way investigating a case made me question everything, see lies when people may well have been telling the truth. I wanted a break from my head.

  I invited Nat around for dinner.

  The fact that I invited him was clear evidence that I wasn’t thinking straight. I had plenty of friends who would have consoled me, sympathised and assured me that no, I wasn’t ruining their Friday night with my endless moaning. Nat was not one of them.

  He stood sipping a glass of white wine of his own choosing and plucked an olive from the bowl on the coffee table. He held it up to the light to examine it.

  ‘Where did you buy these?’ he asked.

  ‘There’s a deli round the corner …’

  ‘Liar.’

  ‘OK, they’re from Sainsbury’s but they’re good, try them.’

  He screwed his face up before popping one into his mouth and pretending to gag. Not only was Nat a wine snob, he was an olive snob too.

  ‘I’ll sort the music,’ he said, picking up my iPod. This was another long-standing area of conflict. He would never trust me to choose. ‘So what have you been listening to this week?’ he asked, shuffling through my playlist before turning to me in mock horror. ‘Fucking hell, Eve, you’ve been listening to REM? Why didn’t you call me? I had no idea it was that bad.’

  ‘Get lost.’ I felt the tears rise in my throat.

  ‘Oh God, don’t get upset. You’ve always had terrible taste in music.’ He came over to me, put his arm around me. ‘Come on then, tell me about it.’

  I spewed it out, everything that had been stewing in my head in one monologue.

  ‘I know I’ve done it before, but this is different. I always had a team around me, people to bounce ideas off. We’d scoop each other up after a setback. There was support. Do you know what I’m saying? Now there’s only me. Me. One person. No one else. There isn’t even anyone to come home to. I talk to myself, Nat, honestly, you’d think I was mad. Yes, I know you already think I’m mad. But I argue and reason with myself about this investigation because there is no one to talk to. I’ve jumped on this train and I have no idea when and where it’s going to end and I’m scared I’ve promised too much and I don’t have
any hope of delivering it.’

  He manoeuvred me across the room to the sofa and sat down next to me.

  ‘So give up.’

  ‘What? Just like that? I’m supposed to call David and Annie and say, sorry, I’ve changed my mind, it’s too much like hard work? You can’t mess around with people’s lives like that, Nat. You can’t give them hope and then tear it away because you can’t be arsed any more.’

  He smiled, amused by my angst. ‘So what are you moaning about, then?’

  ‘I’m not moaning. I’m just saying it’s hard.’

  ‘Of course it’s hard. He would have done it himself if it was easy. But you knew that, so why moan now?’

  ‘Jesus, Nat, I just want …’

  ‘Me to feel sorry for you? Well I don’t, because since you lost that job you’ve been banging on about missing the purpose it gave you. We both know you’re made for this kind of stuff. It requires someone who is pigheaded and stubborn, which makes you perfect for it. Anyone else and I would say drop it, you must be out of your mind. But the thing is, Eve, you’re not anyone, are you? If one person can do this, it’s you. Come here and give me a hug.’

  I leant in to him and cried some more. ‘Please don’t snot on my shirt,’ he said. ‘It’s new.’

  I pushed him away, fished a tissue out from my pocket and blew my nose.

  ‘Attractive,’ he laughed.

  ‘Don’t,’ I said. ‘You’ll start me off again.’

  ‘Now can we have dinner? Those olives are rank.’

  Honor lived on a narrow pedestrianised street in Bridport, a market town on the Dorset coast a few hours from London. I circled the town centre looking for a space as close to her house as possible. After finding one and cobbling together the change for the meter, I walked back to her address. It was gone midday and the town was a busy hustle of markets and stalls, selling cheeses and breads and chutneys. What would I do if she wasn’t in? I couldn’t lurk in her street all day. And what would I say if she was in? I’d have less than a minute to convince her. I ran through my pitch in my head as I walked anxiously down to number 21, a green door. Taking a deep breath, I rang the bell. Waited. No answer. There was a café a little further down the street on the opposite side. I’d sit there and wait.

  I ordered lunch, a chicken salad, checked my emails on my phone for something to do, and when the window seat became free I moved places to get a better view of the street. Someone had left a copy of Dorset Life on the table. I read it cover to cover, peering at all the country properties and imagining myself playing on the tennis courts, taking a morning dip in the indoor heated swimming pools. By a quarter to five I was two coffees, a glass of water and a millionaire’s shortbread down. My bladder was complaining. The waitress started to clear up around me, spraying and wiping down the tables. I looked out across the street to see a figure walk up to number 21 and let herself in.

  ‘I’m Eve Elliot,’ I said, trying to make myself sound as friendly as possible. ‘I wanted …’

  ‘I have nothing to say to you.’ Her smile was fixed, as if someone had drawn it on to her face. She was a few years older than me, brown hair cut in a crop.

  ‘I haven’t come here to ask you anything. I have information for you.’ It was a tactic to wrong-foot her, make myself seem like less of a threat. It had worked for me in the past.

  She raised her eyebrows, snickered.

  Nice try.

  ‘I am going to close the door now,’ she said.

  ‘If you give me five minutes, I will show you why the wrong man was jailed for the attack. I will show you how David Alden couldn’t have done it. I don’t want to cause trouble, I am simply trying to get to the truth. Five minutes, that’s all, and then I’ll leave you alone.’

  ‘What makes you think I can help you with that?’ she asks.

  ‘I don’t know that you can, but I was hoping that as her friend you might think it was worth trying.’

  Honor regarded me for a moment, trying to size up the damage it would do to give me five minutes of her time. I could see she wasn’t convinced.

  ‘Look, I’ve been drinking coffee all day waiting for you and I’m about to pee myself. Even if you don’t want to talk to me, could you stretch to letting me use your loo?’ I crossed my legs to emphasise my point.

  She shook her head in annoyance before standing aside and allowing me to enter.

  We sat in the kitchen. Her hospitality stretched to a glass of water, which I accepted. It’s harder to kick someone out of your house when you’ve offered them refreshment.

  As she handed me the glass, I asked if it was OK to put it on the table. It was an old oak number, gnarled and worn but homely. ‘It’s seen worse than water,’ she said.

  The house was bigger than its exterior suggested. The wall between the kitchen and dining room had been knocked down to create a large but cosy space. Crammed bookshelves, photographs in an assortment of frames. A cat jumped up on to my chair. ‘Just bat her away, she’s a nosy creature, she wants to know what you’re doing here.’

  I took that as a cue, reached down to my bag and pulled out a map, which I unfolded.

  ‘All the points marked in highlighter are where David Alden was picked up on CCTV on the night Melody Pieterson was attacked. I’ve written the exact time he was recorded too.’ I laid it out on the table so she could see it.

  ‘Is this supposed to tell me something?’

  ‘It’s almost impossible to do this route in the window of time he had. I have driven it myself, four times, and only once did I make it, with three minutes to spare. And that was without attacking someone and lifting their body out of a car to dump in a secluded spot. It just isn’t feasible.’

  Honor stroked the cat, which had now settled on her lap.

  ‘And this is what the police said proved his car was near Richmond Park late that night.’ I handed her an image grabbed from CCTV. She peered at it, held it at arm’s length to bring it into focus. ‘What do you see? Can you tell me what car that is?’

  ‘I can only see headlights,’ she said, ‘but surely the police have experts who deal with this kind of thing?’

  ‘They do, but even experts can’t reveal something within a picture that isn’t there. This was the image shown to the jury. It could be any car.’

  I waited as she distilled the information. It proved nothing, of course, but I hoped it would introduce the smallest seed of doubt into Honor’s mind. I studied her face and, once satisfied the seed had been planted, I posed the question I had wanted to ask since my meeting with Sam.

  ‘Are you still in touch with Melody?’

  She shook her head. ‘Not for a while now.’ She glanced down to the table, focusing on her finger as it moved in a small figure of eight. ‘It’s wasn’t easy … afterwards …’

  ‘These things must take their toll. I’ve spoken to a few others … Patrick Carling says Melody hasn’t worked for years. He says she’s scared to leave the house alone.’

  Honor lifted her eyes from the table and locked them on to mine. ‘Really? Patrick said that?’

  ‘Uh huh.’

  ‘Oh …’ she said, expelling breath. A sadness pulled at her face. ‘I knew it wasn’t easy for her … more than anything I think she struggled accepting that it was David who did it. I know that sounds stupid but she couldn’t remember the attack itself, very little before it. Being told that her friend had done it, that really knocked her, but the last I heard she had gone back to work.’

  ‘She’s getting married to Sam Chapman. Did you know?’

  Honor shook her head, dipped her eyes away from mine. ‘That’s all she needs,’ she said, her words barely audible.

  ‘You two were together?’

  ‘Six years. You’re probably wondering why I was such a crap friend, deserting her when she needed me most.’

  ‘I imagine you had your reasons.’

  At this she feigned a laugh. ‘It was difficult.’

  ‘Sam said they got toge
ther months after the attack,’ I said, watching her closely to see if her reaction gave anything away.

  ‘Of course he did,’ she said bitterly. ‘I did try. I visited her in hospital, at her parents’ house. I planned a trip to London, just the two of us, like old times. But it was a disaster. We were pretending we could just go back, but there’s a line and when it’s crossed there’s no going back, no matter how much you want to. It’s complicated. I didn’t want Sam but I couldn’t forgive her betrayal. There was all this guilt mixed up with it. I tried. She tried. Sometimes you have to accept that what was there has gone.’

  She stared at me for a second as if unpicking the significance of what she had told me. Sam had lied, Melody had lied, and so too had Honor. None of them had mentioned the affair in their statements.

  She stood up to shake herself out of the reverie.

  ‘I think your five minutes are up.’

  On the way out I noticed a framed photograph of two young women, tanned faces squashed together, grinning into the camera, the line of the sea and the horizon drawn behind them.

  ‘Tarifa, 2004. We learnt how to windsurf.’

  ‘You both look so happy.’

  ‘We were,’ she said. ‘We were.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Melody

  TARIFA, 2004; THE salt. She can taste it on her lips, feels it cracking on her hot sandy skin as they walk the path from the beach back to their apartment. Flip-flops click on the gravel, stones work their way between her toes. The wind, always wind, whipping up from the sea. Melody casts a look back. Foamy waves rise like meringue peaks from the ocean. Tomorrow, she thinks, they’ll master it tomorrow. Tonight is about bathing her aching body, a beer, then food. ‘An early night.’ Honor winks knowingly. They said that last night, and the night before too. But a cold bottle of San Miguel from the fridge always works the tiredness away. Two bottles and they’ll be heading into town, through the cobbled streets where the scent of jasmine hangs heavy, to their favourite tapas bar, loading up on boquerones and berenjenas con miel, clams and chorizo. Afterwards they will saunter back to the beach, where they’ll find others, surfers, smoking, drinking, strumming guitars as late night tumbles into early morning. Burrowing hot toes in cold, damp sand. Drinking more. No wonder they don’t have the head for windsurfing when ten o’clock comes around.