To say nothing of your own chance, Jack thought as he finished his drink. ‘OK, I’ll go and have a look around her flat. Talk to the neighbours. See what the story is.’
He remembered the way her room had looked that day he had come to ask her about Judith. Everything so neat and tidy and clean. The huge sash window was pushed right up, so a strong easterly breeze blew in off the sea, lifting the curtains and making the paper lampshade whirl around on its central flex. She had told him she liked it like that, even though it was cold.
There’s no wind in prison, she had said. There’s nothing like that inside. Even outside in the yard, you’re still inside.
Today it was just the same, neat and tidy, everything in its place. Except the window was tightly closed. The room smelled stuffy, airless. He stood in the middle of the floor and looked around him. There was a bunch of flowers, wilted, in a glass vase in the middle of the small kitchen table, and a smell of decay that came from the cupboard beneath the sink. He pulled it open and lifted out a plastic rubbish bag. Tea leaves and vegetable peelings that had all gone mouldy. He poked gingerly around. Scraps of bread, some apple cores. Nothing much. He opened the fridge. There was a small carton of milk, sour, solid, and a couple of cartons of natural yoghurt and some cheese. He dumped them all in the plastic bag and opened each of the small cupboards. A pile of plates and bowls, a couple of mugs. And in the drawer next to the sink some cheap cutlery. He walked across the room and opened the wardrobe. Not much here either. A couple of dresses and skirts, two pairs of trousers and a suede jacket, which looked new and expensive, all hanging from wire hangers. On the row of shelves there were piles of underwear, T-shirts, some blouses and sweaters, all folded neatly. Nothing looked new, apart from the jacket and a pair of sandals, still in their cardboard box, in the bottom of the cupboard. He reached up to the shelf at the top. His fingers felt something hard. He pulled it out. It was a small brown leather suitcase. The remains of a tattered label were glued to its scratched lid. He sat down on the bed and opened it. Inside was a pile of old photographs. He flicked through them. A small child, an older couple. He recognized them all. Daughter and parents. There were a number of official-looking letters all on Department of Justice headed notepaper. And beneath them lay a large brown envelope. He lifted it up. It was heavy. He turned it upside down and tipped the contents out beside him. It was money. Wads and wads of notes, in different denominations, fastened together with thick elastic bands. He did a quick count. There must be a few thousand here. Five thousand at least. And crumpled in the bottom of the envelope a note, in faded handwriting:
From your mother. She wanted you to have this. Something to help you get back on your feet.
He stood up then and stripped the bed, pulling away the mattress. There was nothing to find. He lifted the rug from the floor, sliding it away, but again nothing but dust. He opened the door to the small bathroom. It smelt of damp. He tugged at the mirrored front of the cupboard above the sink. Inside was a packet of Anadin, a new tube of toothpaste, a couple of bars of soap. Some jars of face cleanser and moisturizer. A toothbrush lay on the sink, and a face cloth was folded over the edge of the bath. That was all. In the corner next to the bath was a wicker basket. He lifted the lid. A towel, a sheet, a pair of jeans, a pair of trousers made from something like linen, a blouse, a bra and a couple of pairs of pants lay crumpled in a heap. He pulled them out and threw them on the floor, and saw immediately, on the sheet, a smear of something that looked like dried blood. He picked it up and walked back into the bedroom, into the light. There was blood, that was sure, and something else. An opaque stain, sticking in a small ridge to the material. He stood by the window and looked around him. What of value had she brought to this room? What of value was still here? He looked down at the photographs, scattered now on the floor. The child with the straight brown hair looked back at him. He sat down on the bed again and noticed the large map on the wall. It was a map of the city, different areas outlined in different colours. He remembered he had commented on it that day.
It’s my memory map, she had said. I needed it when I was in prison, when I began to forget what was outside. I’m keeping it for old times’ sake.
He piled the money into a heap and began to count. Carefully, taking his time. All together there was six thousand, seven hundred and fifty-five pounds there. A lot of money for someone like Rachel Beckett.
He thought about the conversation that he had had that morning with the woman called Sheila Lynch. Someone else who Clare Bowen had told her husband about.
‘Yes,’ Mrs Lynch said to him, ‘I know Rachel and I’m worried about her. I can’t understand where she could have got to. I drop in on her from time to time. But the last time I called to the shopping centre to see her, they told me they didn’t know where she was. I’ve bought her a few things, you know, given her a few presents. She has nothing, the poor girl. Absolutely nothing. And it’s so difficult for her. She’s not like the rest of those people who go to prison, you know. She comes from a good family. She was well brought up. It was so hard for her, for all those years. And now she’s trying to make it right again, and she was so upset that her daughter wouldn’t see her. I counselled patience. I told her how volatile teenagers can be. But I am worried. I can’t imagine where she’s got to.’
‘What do you reckon?’ he asked Alison that night as they lay together in her bed. ‘You’ve met her. What do you think of her?’
‘She’s extremely vulnerable. You should have seen her that day she came to meet Amy. She was so nervous she could barely stand. And afterwards, after Amy blew her out, I actually felt like going after her, to see if she was all right. I wouldn’t have been surprised if we’d had to fish her out of the river, she looked so shattered.’
‘So do you think this disappearance could be suicide?’
Alison shook her head. She turned and kissed him on the shoulder, resting her lips against his skin for a moment. ‘No, not really. Rachel must by now be what we call a hope addict. Hope has sustained her through her years in prison. Hope is all she has left.’
‘Is that hope or fantasy?’
‘Does it make any difference at this stage? I doubt it,’ she replied, and lay back on the pillow, curling her body around his. He turned towards her. She looked very pretty, her eyes closed, her hair falling forward over her face. He kissed her gently on the forehead and pulled her closer. He reached out and switched off the lamp. He closed his eyes. He slept.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
IT WAS A trap. Daniel Beckett could see that clearly now. She had set it, baited it, sat back and waited. And he had sprung it. Without even knowing what he was doing. Without a struggle, an ounce of resistance. He had accepted all the lures and temptations. And now he was paying for it. Hand over fist.
The police had been very polite when they had come to the door early that morning. He had heard the bell ringing somewhere far off, deep in the dream that was carrying him towards wakefulness. But he didn’t want to open his eyes. There was something wrong. He knew it. There had been something wrong for the last couple of weeks. Ever since the Sunday that he had taken Rachel out on his boat, when Ursula and the kids had gone to the States for a couple of weeks to see her family, and he had stayed behind in the house by himself. Well, not quite by himself, because Rachel had been there with him.
They had been very polite when they saw him standing on the doorstep, clutching his dressing gown, his feet bare, his eyes filled with sleep, his mouth dry and arid. The politeness had lasted while they drove him up the hill to Killiney village, then down the winding road to the town below. It even lasted until they had put him first of all into a cell, then, after half an hour or so, brought him into what they called an interview room. Then the politeness had ended.
He had met them all before, the men who came and went throughout the day, asking him the same questions over and over again. The inspector, Jack Donnelly, was the one who was in charge. It was he who had turned up at th
e house and had spoken to Ursula the day after she came back, when she was still jet-lagged. Half asleep. Shown her Rachel’s photograph. Asked her if she knew her. When she had last seen her. Then come back again, sometime later, when it all began to get much more complicated and difficult, and said casually, ‘It must have been hard for you when you realized who she was and what her relationship had been with your husband.’ Feigned innocence of the consequences of his question.
It was Donnelly too who had come to see him in the office that first time. Led him gently along. Allowed him to say that, yes, of course he remembered her. And, no, of course he hadn’t seen her for years.
‘Oh,’ Donnelly had said, ‘that’s strange because your wife has told us that this woman, who she recognized from a photograph although she said she knew her by a different name, was at your house. At a party for your wedding anniversary, in fact. And that you definitely met her that night. Isn’t that so?’
So he had to agree, said that it was an awkward situation. Of course he had been surprised to see her, shocked if the truth be told. And he had asked her to leave, thrown her out in fact.
‘And your wife really didn’t know who she was? Who she really was?’
‘Well.’ He had paused and thought how best to answer this. ‘To be honest, no, she didn’t. Rachel had given her some story about how her husband had dumped her for a younger woman. The kind of thing that drives women mad, you know?’ He had tried to laugh. ‘And Ursula had felt sorry for her, and befriended her. There’s no reason to upset her, surely, is there? You say that Rachel hasn’t been seen for a few days. She’s missed work. She didn’t show up for her meeting with her probation officer. Well, I don’t know much about these things, but it seems to me that that’s a violation of the terms of her probation. I can’t see that it has anything to do with me.’
But somehow he could see that this was a problem that wasn’t going to go away that easily. He watched Donnelly and the man with him, a sergeant he supposed, called Sweeney, settle themselves down on the leather sofa in his office, the one Ursula had convinced him to buy. They looked comfortable there, he thought. Too bloody comfortable. They didn’t look as if they were in a hurry to leave. And Donnelly even had the nerve to ask him if he would hold all his calls for a while. Just until they’d finished with their business.
‘It’s easier,’ Donnelly said, after the third interruption. ‘It’s much easier and quicker for us all if you wouldn’t mind just concentrating on the issue at hand.’
‘And,’ he had asked, ‘what exactly is that?’
Donnelly had said they were worried about Rachel Beckett’s safety. They were concerned about her state of mind. Apparently, she had had a very difficult meeting with her daughter some weeks ago, and there was some fear that she may have wanted to hurt herself. Do herself some kind of damage. So they were trying to find out as much as they could about her behaviour recently. Hence their visit to him.
‘But surely this isn’t a matter for the guards, is it?’ He had tried to make his voice as neutral as possible.
‘Well,’ Donnelly rubbed the palm of his hand over the soft black leather of the couch, ‘strictly speaking it isn’t, but our colleagues in the probation service are very concerned, and of course if she has done a runner or something like that then it’s a matter for us. So we’re trying to narrow down the possibilities. Anyway . . .’ Again the hand gently caressing, the fingers pressing into the fine-grained skin. ‘Anyway, according to the other tenants in the house in Clarinda Park, a man answering your description visited her in her flat there on a number of occasions. And on one occasion, apparently . . .’ And here he consulted his notebook. ‘Yes, that’s right. The kid from the flat below said that he heard what he described as one hell of a row, so noisy that he actually went upstairs to intervene. Would he be right about that?’
He felt suddenly nervous, the skin in his armpits began to prickle with apprehension. He cleared his throat. ‘Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, I’d say. I was kind of upset about her being at the party, and I was very upset that she’d lied to my wife about who she was. I just thought it would have been better if she’d been straight with Ursula. I didn’t like the feeling that she’d made a fool of her. After all, Ursula was just trying to be kind.’
‘So you had words?’
He shrugged and took a sip of water from the glass on his desk. ‘I suppose I was a bit louder than I needed to be. That was all.’
‘I see.’ Again the palm slid over the smooth black leather. ‘And then there was at least one occasion after that when one of the other tenants, who’s on the same floor as Rachel and has the bedsit at the front, looking out over the square, said that she heard sounds that were distinctly those of what could be called “love-making”. What do you say to that?’
Daniel shrugged again and again sipped from the glass.
‘What’s it got to do with me? Who’s to know what Rachel’s been getting up to since she left prison?’
‘So.’ A pause, and the hand again, pale against the dark leather. ‘So the fact that the tenant in the bedsit at the front of the house says she saw a van parked outside, with the words Beckett Securities painted on the side, that wouldn’t be significant. No?’
Daniel shifted in his seat, crossing one leg over the other, resting his right ankle on his left knee. His brown leather shoes were dusty. They needed polishing. They were too good to wear to work, he thought. All the mucky places he had to visit every day. The building sites, the factory premises, the industrial estates on the outskirts of the city. Ursula was right. She was always telling him he should stick to runners, that he’d ruin his good shoes like this. But he liked to wear leather on his feet. There was something about the look of rubber and canvas that made him feel stupid, inadequate, helpless, that reminded him of his teenage years, when he was always in trouble and at a loss, always out of control.
‘Look, this is all a bit “so what” really, isn’t it? So I gave her a bit of affection, a bit of comfort. She wanted it. She asked me. And I could hardly refuse her. I could see how lonely she was.’
Donnelly stood up. ‘Right, Mr Beckett, I see. She’s the woman who had been convicted of murdering your brother. You have just discovered that she has told lies to your wife about her identity, and yet you felt like doing her a favour, being nice to her. I have to say it seems a bit odd to me. But then,’ he put his notebook away in his jacket pocket and gestured to the younger man, Sweeney, who was still lolling back into the cushions on the sofa, ‘as I always say, there’s nowt as odd as you know what.’
Sweeney stood up, a wide grin on his face, and together they walked towards the door. Donnelly paused and turned back towards him. ‘It was terrible that whole business, wasn’t it? I remember your brother well. He was a great guy. You were questioned too, about the murder, I seem to remember. She tried to lay the blame on you, didn’t she? You must have been very angry about that, very, very angry. Anyway, not to worry, I’m sure she’ll show up somewhere. We’ll let you know what happens. We’ll keep in touch.’
He had brought Rachel here too. She had lain on the sofa where the two guards had been sitting, while he finished off some work at his desk. They had drunk cold beers that she had fetched from the small fridge in his secretary’s office. She had fallen asleep and he had watched her, remembering as he read through the invoices and signed the pile of letters that his secretary had left how she had helped him that summer all those years ago to make sense of everything that until then had been senseless. How she talked to him about books, ideas. Asked him questions, made him think. Argued with him, challenged him. Told him he should go back to school and pick up where he had left off when he got into trouble. Told him he was as clever as everyone else. That he could make something of his life, that he didn’t have to spend it any longer in his brother’s shadow. If I had you all to myself I could, he had thought then. And when she had thrown him away, gone back to Martin, he had felt that new world she had sho
wn him fade and die. Until that night when Martin had lain bleeding on the floor and he had felt the gun in his hands.
He watched her as she slept, lifting his head from the paperwork and files spread over the desktop. Checking the computer screen, analysing flow charts and spreadsheets. Still fascinated that it was he, the stupid one of the family, who was running the show, calling the shots, the boss. She was beautiful, he thought, more so when her eyes were closed, when he didn’t have to look at her expression, always guarded, watchful, ill at ease. And when he had put the last letter in its envelope and dropped it into the out-tray, he went over and lay down beside her, cradling her in his arms, waiting until she woke.
The politeness. He remembered it from the time before. When he had been asked to come into the station, ‘Just to make a statement, you understand?’ And his father had come with him. On first-name terms with every single guard he met, from the newest recruit to the chief superintendent, who came out of his office to exchange pleasantries, to compare golf scores. Then the politeness had stayed. They had believed him and the alibi that his mother had given him.
‘It’s a messy business,’ the chief super had said to his father. ‘I’m sure you understand we have to check this out. She’s made accusations, allegations about the lad. We have to follow them up.’ And his father had allowed himself to be reassured, then offered to meet for a pint, later on that day, or perhaps a game of golf at the weekend.
That time, he seemed to remember, he had been taken into a room which was close to the front desk. With windows and posters about neighbourhood watch and crime prevention on the walls. This time the room where they brought him was at the far end of the building. It stank. It had no windows or posters. And there was no politeness there either.
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