by Kim Fleet
The phone rang. She let the machine pick it up. Aidan’s voice filled the flat.
‘Eden, if you’re there, please pick up. I’m so sorry. I’m an absolute shit, and I know it. But I did it because I’m falling for you. Dammit, I hate these things. I’d rather tell you this to your face. It doesn’t seem right telling your answering machine that I think I’ve fallen in love with you. Look, I’ll call later. Talk to me. Please.’
She deleted the message. Love. They’d never even played at saying the L word together; was glad it hadn’t ever raised its complicated, bitter-sweet head. Love was too difficult: it made demands as much as promises.
The phone rang again. Aidan.
‘Eden, me again. Still talking to your machine. I love you, OK? Please let me tell you to your face.’
I love you. The last person who’d said that to her was Nick. As he was leaving, his suitcase in his hand, he’d turned at the door, looked her full in the face, and said, ‘I love you. I don’t think you realise how much.’
‘Then don’t leave,’ she’d said, her heart breaking.
‘I have to. I can’t deal with who you’ve become.’
‘I’m still me.’
He shook his head. ‘You’re not,’ he’d said, gently. ‘The tragedy is you can’t see it.’
She was no one now. A woman with a temporary name, a transient existence, buffeted and blown on the whims of a thug she thought she’d put away forever. She’d never feel safe again. Madness to even flirt with the idea of being with Aidan long term. Hammond’s web could catch up with her eventually, and she’d be off. New place, new life, new identity. As she refilled her wine glass she realised what hurt her most was the loss of what might have been. That tantalising glimpse of normality, a regular life with a decent guy, had seduced her. She’d dared to dream, and it was all gone now.
‘Mummy? Mummy, wake up.’
She was underwater. The murky Thames sucked her under, filling her mouth with foulness. She kicked and struggled, desperate for breath.
‘Mummy. Mummy, help me!’
‘Molly!’ Her lungs screamed with pain. The water dragged her under, the weight of her clothes sending her to the bottom.
Molly’s face materialised in front of her, a ghostly oval. Her mouth worked a long silent scream.
‘Molly, I’m coming to get you.’
She fought the water, unable to get closer. The water drew Molly further away, always out of reach. She lunged for her, saw her hands in front of her and it was a moment before she realised what was wrong. A white fan of bones, her flesh all nibbled away. She swung them uselessly, clutching at water, feeling it slip between her fingers.
Molly shrank, her legs kicking and her hair billowing around her as the water carried her off. Her scream echoed long after she’d vanished from sight.
‘Molly!’
Eden jolted awake, panting, and switched on the bedside light. Three o’clock. Flopping back on the pillows, she listened to her heart thumping. Just a dream. A horrible nightmare, that’s all. Nothing to be afraid of. But she didn’t switch the light off when she settled back down to sleep, and it was a long time before her eyes closed again.
When she woke, groping for her alarm clock, a thin light was creeping through the curtains. Groaning, she crawled out of bed and into the shower, and ate her breakfast standing at the window, gazing out over grey, wet rooftops and the rain-blackened skeletons of trees. She switched on her mobile phone, expecting a slew of messages from Aidan. There wasn’t a single one, and she was unsure whether to be relieved or annoyed. All she felt was a terrible hollow loss.
The local television breakfast news had a short feature on missing schoolgirl Chelsea. Eden heard the news report start while she was brushing her teeth, and ran into the sitting room to catch it, toothbrush in hand, her mouth full of peppermint froth. It seemed the police were at least going through the motions of launching a missing person case, even if they believed she was just a mardy runaway. The screen flashed up Chelsea’s school photo. She looked young and impressionable and very, very vulnerable. A sicko’s wet dream.
‘Police ask anyone who’s seen Chelsea to call this number,’ the news reporter stated.
‘Pity they didn’t show a photo of her as she was that night,’ Eden said aloud. In school uniform, her hair sedately fastened with a barrette, Chelsea was completely different from the photos her friends had posted up on Facebook. No one who saw her the evening she disappeared, with false eyelashes, shocking pink top and hair backcombed into a nest would equate her with the schoolgirl in the photo.
The news item changed to a report on local hospitals, and she went to rinse her mouth. There was an unpleasant metallic taste on her tongue; the taste of fear.
Monday, 2 March 2015
09:36 hours
Her threat to Chris Wilde had paid dividends. Every trace of the graffiti was gone and her office door was now a smart shiny blue, flanked by terracotta planters filled with narcissi and hyacinths. Just as she’d ordered. The heady scent of the hyacinths wafted over her, lifting her mood. After a weekend left to its own devices, though, her office ponged of damp and she left the door ajar to air it out.
Bent over her desk, working on her accounts and trying not to despair at the dwindling amount in the bank, she didn’t hear them come in. When there was a cough, she jerked so violently she jarred her elbow on the desk. Excruciating pain shot down her arm to her fingertips.
‘Sorry, the door was open,’ the man said. He had black hair cut short, and was wearing jeans and a khaki polo shirt under a tan leather jacket. ‘I did knock, but you didn’t hear.’
Eden grimaced through the pain and peered past the man to the youth lurking behind him. ‘Hello again, Wayne.’
Wayne Small nodded at her. His hands were stuck in his pockets and his mouth was set in a line.
‘What can I do for you?’ Eden asked.
‘I’m Wayne’s dad,’ the man said. ‘Barry.’ He stuck out a meaty paw to shake.
‘Pleased to meet you. Have a seat.’ She rose and closed the door. ‘Bit more private.’
As he installed himself in her client’s chair, Barry continued. ‘Wayne’s upset about something he saw at the school last Monday. It’s taken me all weekend to get it out of him, and the only person he’s prepared to talk to is you.’
Barry raised his eyebrows at Eden and spread his hands as if to say ‘teenagers, eh?’
She glowered at the boy, altogether out of patience with the vagaries of men and their moods. ‘What happened, Wayne?’
He dropped his chin and examined his hands, giving her a view of his greasy parting. His voice came out as a mumble and she strained to hear him. ‘I was mucking around with a mate. Someone from my old school.’
‘What were you doing?’ She spoke sharply. The shifty way he wouldn’t meet her eye told its own story.
There was a swift glance at his dad before he answered her in a reluctant drone. ‘We were nicking stuff.’
‘You little …’ Barry started. She held up her hand to warn him to let Wayne continue. There’d be time for rows later.
‘We’d grabbed a couple of mobile phones and an iPad. Those kids have so much money they don’t know what to do with it! It’s not like we were nicking from kids whose parents saved up for things.’
‘A latter-day Robin Hood,’ she remarked. ‘Then what?’
‘Someone came, so we hid in one of the staff rooms. There was no one in there.’
‘What time was it?’
He shrugged. ‘About midnight.’
‘Midnight!’ Barry cried. ‘What did your mum think you were doing?’
‘I tried to tell her what happened,’ Wayne said, grinding his fist into his nose. ‘She never listened.’
Barry looked ready to launch a bollocking. Eden stalled him with a stare and he huffed back in his seat.
‘How did you get in, Wayne?’ she asked.
‘Bogs window.’
So much for Ro
salind Mortimer’s state-of-the-art security, Eden thought. ‘What happened?’
His eyes swivelled sideways to his father for a second, then Wayne continued. ‘This bloke came in, with a group of girls, five of them. They were all in school uniform, like, the school’s uniform, but I didn’t recognise none of them.’
‘How old were they?’
‘Sixteen, seventeen maybe.’
‘Who was the man with them?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘A teacher at the school?’
‘Never seen him before, either. The girls, they were crying and upset. All of them. And they looked weird.’
‘Weird? How?’
He shook his head. ‘I can’t explain. Just, they looked out of it, like sleepwalking or something, but not that.’
‘Drunk? Drugged?’
Wayne’s eyes were dark with misery. ‘I don’t know, just, they weren’t happy. Definitely weren’t happy.’
‘What happened?’ Eden asked.
‘They came across the room, and we ducked down and hid. I heard them go past, and a door opened, and it went quiet, and when we came out the room was empty.’
‘They went back out of the room?’
‘No, they came into the room, and vanished.’
Wayne’s dad rubbed his eyes and shared a glance with Eden.
‘Five girls, upset, aged about sixteen,’ she mused, tapping her pencil on her notebook. ‘The man who was with them, can you describe him?’
Wayne shrugged again. Her temper flared. The boy was as much use as a narcoleptic guide dog.
‘Very helpful,’ she snapped. ‘How old was he? Thirty? Forty?’
‘More like twenty-five.’
‘Tall? Short?’ When Wayne didn’t answer, she asked, ‘Was he taller than the girls?’
‘Not much.’ Wayne scratched a scab on his knuckle for a moment, then volunteered, ‘He had dark hair. And dark skin, like he was Asian or something.’
‘Just a moment.’ An idea suddenly came to her, the slotting together of several pieces of the puzzle. It was a long shot, and didn’t make much sense, but it was worth a try. She clicked through the folders on her laptop and pulled up a photograph. Twisting the laptop round so Wayne could see, she asked, ‘Is this the man?’
Wayne screwed up his face and tilted his head from one side to the other while the cogs clunked round. ‘Could be,’ he said, finally.
Aidan rearranged the pens on his desk into size order and counted them. Then he found the middle pen, and counted the pens each side. Put them in pairs, then threes, then bundled them all together and started over again.
‘All right, Aidan?’ Trev asked. A blob of tomato sauce clung to the edge of his lip and there was a smear of grease on his sleeve. The office stank of the bacon butties the team had brought in to kick the week off to a good start. Aidan had barely managed a bite of his; his stomach was sour after the emotional weekend. He bagged the remains of the butty ready for the bin; revolted when Trev snaffled it and scoffed it.
Aidan scooped the pens together in his fist. ‘Just thinking about something.’
‘You going to the coroner’s court this morning?’
‘I’d better get over there.’ He gathered his papers together and bundled them into a document case.
‘Will that Lisa be there?’ Trev asked. ‘Bit of all right, isn’t she? I wouldn’t mind being stuck in a trench with her.’
‘She’s all yours, Trev, and good luck to you,’ Aidan muttered.
He stewed as he drove to Gloucester for the coroner’s inquest into the skeletons they’d unearthed the week before. Of course Lisa would be there, keen for a day out of the lab and a chance to wind him up. And knowing him, he’d fall for it. Again. He was thirty-six, he should be better with women by now, understand them more, but no. He was a complete twat who didn’t have a clue how their minds worked and managed to fall foul of every single trap they set him.
Eden didn’t set traps, a small voice at the back of his mind told him. She never lied, she just didn’t give you the whole truth in a bucket when she first met you. It was Lisa who stirred it up, and you let her.
He thumped the steering wheel. He was a total loser. Lisa had insinuated herself into his life, dropping poison just as she had years ago when they were a couple. She’d gone to work on his insecurities. How well do you know Eden? Where did she go to university? Has she got brothers and sisters? She knew just how to get to him. It was the same when they were students. Going away on a dig in Italy, her cunning remarks about how handsome and attentive the Italian men were, worming away at his jealousy until he saw rivals everywhere. Totally toxic.
Now she wanted him back. Or if not him, then his child, and she’d quickly realised that Eden stood in the way. So she chipped away at him, undermining his relationship with Eden. No doubt hoping his imagination would do the rest and before long he and Eden would be history. It had bloody well worked.
Aidan groaned, certain that if he’d told Trev what Lisa had said, he’d have laughed heartily, clapped him on the shoulder and announced, ‘The cunning bitch! She’s trying to split you up. Tell her to fuck off, mate. I would.’
Knowing – or not knowing – about Eden’s background hadn’t been an issue until Lisa waltzed in with her questions and arch disbelief. He simply enjoyed Eden’s company. She didn’t think he was weird, she teased him affectionately about his obsessions and seemed interested in the myriad odd facts he’d squirrelled away over the years. Eden didn’t mind walking over a field with a set of dowsing rods, hunting for deserted mediaeval villages. Or rummaging through second-hand book shops searching for a particular translation of Pliny that he’d set his heart on.
And he’d lost her. She was bright and intelligent and fiercely independent. She never questioned him about his friends or where he went when he wasn’t with her. She didn’t cling or nag or insist their weekends were spent in shoe shops or looking at clothes. She didn’t expect him to spend all his free time with her, nor did she see a daily phone call as her due. She never gazed meaningfully into jewellers’ windows, as Lisa had, urging him with her eyes to propose marriage, simply, he now suspected, so she could have the triumph of refusing him. No, Eden was above all that, she led her own life, and let his dovetail with hers just sufficiently that neither was stifled. And yet it was her independence, the thing he respected the most about her, that had curdled the whole relationship.
He had to get her back. Had to prove she was special to him, that he was sorry and would never, ever, do anything so crass again. He had to earn her trust.
Lisa was waiting in the reception area at the coroner’s court. He bid her a brisk good morning and strode past. She let him go, but when he bought a coffee from the vending machine, she materialised at his elbow, peppering him with questions about his weekend and what he and Eden had got up to.
‘You’d think they’d do these things by video link-up,’ he said, not even bothering to face her. ‘Save everyone a lot of time.’
He slid the cup of grey sludge from the machine and went to talk to the site foreman. When they were called in, he gave his evidence clearly, describing how he’d received a call to give an initial assessment of the skeleton that had been found, and how another skeleton had been uncovered during its retrieval. The coroner asked a few questions, then Lisa was called.
He barely heard her evidence, though he was aware that she cast a glance in his direction and simpered every so often. He was thinking about Ezekiel Proudfoot’s diary, about the research he’d done in the records office, and about the Paternoster Club. When the coroner stood and dismissed them, he sprinted from the court and drove straight to the records office. Suddenly he knew how to win Eden back.
‘Can I have another look at those plans you showed me last week?’ he asked the archivist. ‘Plans of Greville House.’
‘I remember. It was the plans for the pleasure gardens, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, but also the plans for the house itsel
f, please.’
‘Take a seat, I’ll have to dig them out.’
When she brought them, in a huge roll, he wished his older brother was there. Patrick was an architect, and he could read these plans effortlessly. Aidan squinted and peered at them, trying to orientate the interior plans with the exterior drafts of the pleasure gardens. He stared until he saw what he was searching for.
A quick scout round the room to check he wasn’t observed. The other researchers were absorbed in their reading. He drew his phone out of his jacket pocket and quickly photographed the sets of plans. He checked the photos captured what he needed, then thanked the archivist and headed back to Cheltenham with his heart quickening.
He had something that Eden would kill for.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE
Monday, 2 March 2015
23:40 hours
The streets were empty this late in the evening, not even a solitary dog walker. Eden parked her car away from the arc of the street lamps, zipped up her dark jacket, and stuffed a torch in her pocket. The pavement sparkled with frost and a halo glowed around the moon. She was glad to wriggle her fingers into thermal gloves and tug on a woollen hat.
She hunched her shoulders against the cold and hurried to the Park School. The stagnant JCBs loomed as denser patches against the black. She skirted them, sprinting up the driveway to the school. The upper windows were lit but the ground floor skulked in darkness apart from a single lamp burning by the front portico. None of the pupils lived in the main house, she’d found out, but a couple of the teachers had bedsits there. It must be them, burning the lights in the upper storey.