by Kate Medina
But Marilyn had already tuned him out. Rescue Remedy. An image had risen in his mind. An image, a feeling, a soft kiss on his cheek, a pale hand fumbling inside a jacket pocket.
Take a lot more than this to rescue me, DI Simmons, but I gotta start somewhere.
87
As she stood in the kitchen watching Carolynn pour two glasses of wine, Jessie discerned that low, rumbling sound again. A vision of Ahmose, folded, bruised and bloodied, into the tiny space under the stairs rose in her mind.
‘Did you meet Ahmose when you arrived?’ she asked, as casually as she could manage.
‘Ahmose?’
‘My next-door neighbour.’
A dissatisfied frown moved across Carolynn’s brow. ‘Oh, the old man. Yes, he popped over.’
‘And?’ She couldn’t risk riling Carolynn, not until she knew where Ahmose was, if he was safe.
‘I asked him to leave.’
‘OK.’
Carolynn banged the wine bottle back on to the work surface, her mouth twisting with irritation. ‘He wouldn’t though. He kept asking me what I was doing here. He behaved as if he owned the place, owned your cottage.’
Jessie nodded calmly, though her insides were churning. ‘Did he leave eventually?’
Though she kept her gaze fixed on Carolynn’s, something about her body language must have betrayed her thoughts, because Carolynn’s eyes broke from hers and moved past her shoulder to focus on the door to the understairs cupboard in the sitting room.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Jessie. You don’t honestly think I’d shove an old man into an understairs cupboard, do you?’ She tilted her head, a hard look, half-disappointment, half-anger flitting across her face. ‘What on earth do you take me for?’
Jessie breathed out, trying to calm the swollen knocking of her heart. She needed to be the woman that Carolynn had met two months ago, the woman she respected, the woman she wanted to befriend; cool, edgy, fun, in control.
When did we swap places? When did Carolynn shed Laura’s skin and I slip into it?
The moment that Roger asked me where I lived.
She smiled. ‘So where is he?’
Carolynn waved a dismissive hand. ‘Oh, don’t worry. I dealt with him.’
‘Carolynn—’
‘What?’ Her tone one of fraying patience.
‘I’d like to see him.’
‘He left, Jessie. I told him that we’re good friends and that you’d invited me to stay for a few days. He said he was going for a walk to ease his back as he’d been sitting reading all day.’ She tilted her head, the look of dissatisfaction mixed with anger, lingering for longer on her face this time. ‘Jessie, I came here because I wanted to spend time with you.’ Stepping forward she held out the Happy Birthday, Princess glass Jessie’s dad had given her one birthday, full of wine, brushing Jessie’s fingers lingeringly with her own as took the glass. ‘You not your next-door neighbour.’
Stepping back, expanding the space between them, Jessie took a sip of wine, knowing that it was tension, adrenalin, fight-or-flight that had parched her mouth. Ahmose would have spent most of a sunny day like this gardening, not sitting and reading. He never walked alone at night, because the lane was potholed and he was worried about tripping in the dark.
‘You won’t be offended if I give you a little bit of advice, will you?’ Carolynn’s voice was soft, her dark eyes locked on Jessie’s. ‘I used to give all my friends make-up and style advice, before—’
A shake of her head was all that Jessie could manage.
‘You should try a little harder, put on some make-up, wear nicer clothes. You’re very pretty, but you could look stunning if you tried. You don’t want that gorgeous military policeman’s eye to start wandering.’
Jessie roused herself. ‘Callan? You saw him?’
‘Only the photograph of the two of you upstairs.’ She smiled. ‘You’re right, I don’t think this dress does look as good on you as it does on me. You need to be a blonde to carry off a dress this colour.’ Carolynn clinked her wine glass against Jessie’s. ‘It’s so nice to drink without being judged. Roger hated me drinking.’
Jessie took another sip of wine, her mind working feverishly, spinning through the options, assessing, rejecting, knowing that a mistake in how she dealt with Carolynn now might cost Ahmose his life. God, I’ve been so unutterably, arrogantly stupid.
Callan’s words rose in her mind:
The woman could be a killer. You could be putting yourself in danger meeting with her …
Her response:
If you had met her, you wouldn’t be saying that. She’s a frightened, timid, traumatized, middle-aged woman who is so thin she could play hide-and-seek behind a broom handle. She’s not a threat to anyone.
Stupid, unprofessional arrogance that could cause the death of one of the people she loved most in the world. If he wasn’t dead already.
‘Why don’t we take our wine up to the bathroom and you can give me a makeover. I don’t wear make-up because I don’t know how to apply it properly. I’d love you to teach me.’
A plan had coalesced in her mind. She just hoped that she could pull it off quickly enough to find Ahmose and save him. If he isn’t dead already.
88
Ruby must have been waiting by the window, because she opened the front door to her flat before Marilyn was even halfway down the front path, and came out, leaving the door gaping open behind her. She was wearing the same clothes she had been wearing when he and Workman had interviewed her: that low-cut, thin silver jumper and skin-tight black jeggings. Watching her clack down the pathway towards him in her silver stilettos, he experienced a similar heaviness in his stomach to that he’d felt when she had given him that quick, soft peck on the cheek and tottered away across the car park. But now the feeling was a ton weight that threatened to take the bottom out of his gut. She looked cheap and beautiful, defiant and sad, but mainly just broken. Utterly, irretrievably broken.
As she approached, Marilyn noticed that she was clutching something to her chest.
A doll.
But not just a doll. It was the doll. Identical to the one left by Zoe and Jodie’s bodies, but this one ragged, well-loved, showing its age.
‘It’s my daughter’s,’ she murmured.
As she held it out to show him, the rays from the overhead streetlight caught the doll’s tatty pink nylon ballerina dress, sending rosy sparkles around the tiny cul-de-sac, skittering them across the pale faces of the crowd of neighbours who had emerged from their flats when they saw the two marked cars and the van of the forensic investigation team pulling up outside.
‘It’s the doll that I bought for my baby girl.’
‘It has blue eyes,’ Marilyn said, thinking of the doll Roger had found hidden at the back of Carolynn’s wardrobe. Perhaps someone sent it to her, Jessie had said.
‘All white babies have blue eyes. I wanted its eyes to match my baby’s – the colour they were when she was born, at least. I don’t know what colour they’ve turned now, cos I never got the chance to find out, did I? I wanted that fucking bitch cow woman to take it, give it to my baby’s adoptive parents, so she’d have something to remember me by. But the bitch just tossed it in the bin without even looking at it. Right in front of me, she threw it in the bin, like it was worthless. Like I was worthless.’
‘Did you send Carolynn a doll?’
‘Yeah. When I saw her on Witterings beach, six or seven months ago, and recognized her. I followed her home. I bought a doll and laid it on her doorstep one night. I wanted to frighten her, let her know that her daughter’s murderer was watching her.’
She jutted her chin and gave Marilyn her best Teflon smile, but her heart wasn’t in it because her soft, violet-blue eyes remained fathomlessly sad.
He didn’t know what he had expected to see in them: hardness, defiance, satisfaction, rage that she had been caught. But there was none of that.
A few years ago, he’d been called to the s
ite of an accident on the A27, a lorryload of lambs destined for the slaughterhouse that had run off the road and overturned. The sound of the trapped lambs bleating for help had been horrendous. But worse was the look in the eyes of the lambs who were still alive when, hours later, they were finally cut free from the mangled lorry and herded straight into an identical lorry bound for the same slaughterhouse. He could have sworn then that they were fully sentient beings who knew that all they had survived was for nothing. He’d never been able to eat lamb since. Ruby had that same look in her eyes. That same hunted, haunted, hopeless surrender.
And yet there was no excuse for what she had done. The hurt and devastation that she had caused. The lives she had destroyed. She had murdered two little girls, cut short two innocent lives, and there could never be any excuse for that.
Pulling handcuffs from his suit pocket, Marilyn stepped forward.
‘Ruby Lovatt, I’m arresting you for the murders of Zoe Reynolds and Jodie Trigg. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something that you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence …’
89
‘It means so much to me that you want to be my friend, Jessie. You’re the only person who hasn’t shied away, betrayed me,’ Carolynn said, as Jessie led her upstairs.
The photograph of her and Callan was missing from her bedside table Jessie noticed when she entered her bedroom, and the duvet was flattened on her side of the bed, a head-shaped indent on her pillow. It made her sick to think of Carolynn lying there, imagining – what? Imagining being friends with her, or of being her. Stepping seamlessly into her life, living in her house, wearing her clothes and make-up, sharing a bed with Callan.
A hand on her arm and she jumped. ‘You’re the only person who understands me, Jessie.’
I don’t understand you at all, she wanted to scream, even though it’s my job to do so. I failed miserably. Instead, she smiled and nodded, going through the motions, buying time, feeling like a bit-part actor in a bizarre horror film trying to second-guess the insane vagaries of the lead.
In the bathroom, she pulled open the cabinet. Her make-up bag, little more than wallet-sized, was where she’d left it, but the zip wasn’t fully fastened. Next to the make-up bag was her nail kit. She glanced quickly over her shoulder. Carolynn was looking in the mirror, rubbing a fingertip under her eye to erase a smudge of mascara. Shifting so that her back blocked Carolynn’s view, Jessie palmed her nail scissors into the pocket of her dress. It made her feel infinitesimally more secure to be armed, even with blades so tiny and blunt. Turning, she handed Carolynn her make-up bag.
‘There’s not much in it.’
‘I know. Remember, I’ve already used it. I put it back as you left it though.’ She tilted her head and smiled. ‘Because I understand you, Jessie, and I know that it matters.’
Jessie couldn’t force a smile in response. She was feeling sick again – sick and dizzy. The baby. She hadn’t eaten today, she realized, would have to start being more sensible, taking care of herself and her tiny charge. Sitting down on the edge of the bath, she watched Carolynn arranging the contents of her make-up bag on to the white quartz countertop by the sink. A couple of tubes of foundation in medium-beige and natural-tan – bought on a whim after she’d decided that she was sick of spending 365 days of the year resembling a ghost, but never used – and an eyeshadow palette in five shades of blue; black mascara, pink blusher and a few lipsticks. She knew she should engage Carolynn in conversation, disarm her, but she felt almost as if she was floating above herself, watching this crazy charade from somewhere otherworldly, no sentient body, no mind, no voice.
‘You’re beautiful, Carolynn,’ she managed. ‘If you could make me look as good as you, I’d be happy.’
The harsh overhead bathroom lights stripped the gloss from everything, lighting the downy hair on Carolynn’s face – a symptom of malnutrition – and accentuating the bony hips jutting through the floaty material of the dress Callan had bought, highlighting the muscles and tendons that coiled like ropes underneath her virtually translucent skin, a skeleton with skin stretched over the bones, emphasizing the cold, calculating light in her eyes.
‘Thank you. I feel so much better now I’m away from that house, from Roger, from that pretence of a life. I feel as if anything is possible. Do you know what I mean?’
Jessie nodded. ‘What happened with Zoe, Carolynn?’ she murmured, her voice neutral, knowing that Carolynn would be hyper-attuned to every nuance of her tone.
‘Let’s not talk about that now. We’re having such fun.’
‘Friends talk to each other, share stuff.’
Carolynn didn’t reply. She reached to smooth Jessie’s hair back from her face, tuck it behind her ears. Jessie dug her incisor into the delicate inside of her lip to stop herself from slapping Carolynn’s hand away.
‘I didn’t like her,’ Carolynn said suddenly.
‘Huh?’
‘My daughter. Zoe. I didn’t like her.’
‘Not every parent likes their child,’ Jessie murmured.
‘She wasn’t ours, actually. Roger and I adopted her. We couldn’t have children of our own, not even with IVF.’
I know, Jessie wanted to yell, right into Carolynn’s face. So she’d been right. Had Marilyn checked the DNA database yet, confirmed what she’d told him? What was he doing now? Thinking now? Where was he?
Carolynn’s hand moved to cup Jessie’s chin, lifting her face to the overhead lights. The electric suit was hissing and snapping, tightening around her throat, making it hard to breathe. She bit harder into her lip, tasting copper, trying to anaesthetize the suit with self-inflicted pain.
‘Zoe was stupid and irritating. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised, given where she came from, but—’ Carolynn broke off, and gave a light laugh that made Jessie shiver. ‘But I came from the same background and look at me: I’m clever. I just expected that she would be the same, that I would be able to make her the same as me.’
‘Was it an accident?’
Carolynn looked confused. ‘An accident?’
‘On the beach, with Zoe. When she died.’
Carolynn straightened. She looked shocked. ‘No, no, no, you’ve got it all wrong, Jessie.’ There was a hard edge to her tone. ‘I wasn’t on the beach when Zoe died – I didn’t kill her. I found her, but I didn’t kill her.’
Jessie nodded. She didn’t believe a word the woman was saying, but she couldn’t afford to push further. Ahmose, not the truth, had to be her priority now. It was Marilyn’s job, not hers, to find out the truth. She had given him enough. She had to focus on what was important to her, and that was the people she loved. It was too late for Zoe, too late for Jodie.
‘Of course I believe you. It’s past history, anyway, and you’ve already been through too much.’ Her voice sounded like that of a robotic implant. ‘Let’s talk about something else.’
She still felt dizzy and sick – really sick. It was a struggle to concentrate, to form coherent thoughts. Leaning forward, she put her head in her hands.
‘Are you OK, Jessie?’ she heard Carolynn say. ‘You don’t look too good.’
‘I feel a bit sick. Silly of me not to have had any lunch.’ She swayed slightly as she stood and reached to the countertop to steady herself. ‘The edge of the bath is too low. You’re having to bend. Let me grab the chair from the bedroom.’
Holding on to the countertop, she shifted around Carolynn and walked slowly to the door. She wobbled, her shoulder banging against the doorjamb as she stepped into the bedroom.
When she returned with the chair, Carolynn had her back to the door, was painting eyeshadow colours on to her wrist, holding her arm up to the light to compare them. Jessie swayed as she planted the chair by the door, snatched at its back to stop herself from falling. She couldn’t focus properly as she reached for the bathroom door handle and began to ease the door closed, making no
sound, no sudden jerky movements that might snag Carolynn’s peripheral vision in the bathroom mirror. Tilting the chair, she jammed its back under the door handle, kicked the two back legs hard to wedge them securely into the thick pile carpet.
No sound from inside the bathroom, then a tentative, ‘Jessie?’
She didn’t answer. The chair was solid, the carpet anchoring it deep, but she had no idea how long it would hold. Reeling across the bedroom, she yanked open the cupboard and staggered backwards, almost losing her footing. No Ahmose. Lurching across the landing, she checked the spare bedroom. Empty also.
As she ducked back on to the landing and surged towards the stairs, she heard a roar of fury and something heavy slammed against the bathroom door. Her foot found space where she had been expecting solid floor – I must have misjudged the stair, she realized in the split second before she fell. Cartwheeling down the stairs, ricocheting off the wall, smashing her head against the banister, the snap audible as she put her arm out in a vain attempt to break her fall.
She lay at the bottom of the stairs creased up in agony and heard wood splinter.
90
Without making eye contact with the broken young woman in front of him, who would break so many more times over when she discovered exactly who she had murdered two years ago, Marilyn cuffed her wrists together in one swift, practised movement. Laying a firm hand on her back, feeling the tense, elevated beat of her heart against his palm, he shepherded her, as her heels clack-clacked down the path to the road. DC Cara was waiting in the driver’s seat of the first marked car, keeping the engine running as Marilyn had instructed him to, aware that the situation – this arrest for child murder in such an incendiary case – in this small, claustrophobic cul-de-sac of run-down council flats, just one narrow road in and out, could turn nasty very quickly. A quick glance at the faces of the assembled rubberneckers told him that they hadn’t yet worked out why Ruby was being arrested, but it wouldn’t take long for the collective penny to drop. He hoped, at least, that they’d be able to get her out of here before it did.