Thomasine is out of the door within minutes, at long last, there may be a chance of finding out the truth.
36
I need caffeine.
He limps into Sophie’s Café, rubbing the base of his spine. It’s newly renovated, or so it says in the window. Unplastered walls painted white, heavy oak tables on iron legs, chairs right out of a schoolroom, flooring torn up from a long-abandoned factory, stripped and cleaned. He orders a double shot cappuccino from the counter. Fakes an apologetic face, as he hands the teenage girl a fifty-pound note. She gives him a withering look, runs some sort of pen over it before putting it in the till. Without a flicker of a smile, she counts his change into the palm of his hand.
The place is half full, morning commuters on flexitime. He spots a vacant table by the window, ambles toward it, slips off his backpack, pulls out the seat. Winces as the base of the seat nudges at his bruised coccyx.
He checks his watch; it’s just gone quarter to ten. He’d gone into Norwich to get money from the bank. The thousand pounds he’s withdrawn from his account lays thick in the inside pocket of his coat. All in fifties. All new. He’d not been brave enough to ask for used notes. Then he’d dropped into the local computer supplies shop, a Chinese boy with a large waist and splayed feet wandered out from the back, the sides of his head shaved, a long black lock of hair hanging over his right eye. Another unsmiling teenager, the high street seemed to be full of them. He’d proved surprisingly helpful, recommended something called a dongle, preloaded. Told him he’d be able to use it wherever there was an internet signal.
He pulls his MacBook out of his backpack, places it on the table, slips the dongle into the USB port, logs on. Without comment, the girl places his cappuccino on the table beside it. He waits for the northwest news service to load.
Missing Woman Found. Woman? He almost skims over it.
A reliable source stated that a woman, missing since 1973 had been discovered in a local hospital. The victim of a hit and run accident, she was now recovering in intensive care. Could it be her? No, it couldn’t be her, how could it be? He searches for a name, there isn’t one.
Surely there should be one? Why hadn’t they given a name?
His stomach cramps. The chair legs make a high-pitched scraping noise as he shoves himself back from the table. His eyes scan the room in a panic. The teenage girl points to the door behind the counter, the engaged sign on red. He hunches over in his seat, counts the seconds down one by one. His sore back now the least of his worries. Jimmy Fairfax is now top of the list, if he talks, they’ll both be screwed. Through the door, he hears the loud hum of the hand dryer, a teenage girl with braided hair slinks out. He manages to his backside on the toilet just as his bowels loose.
37
Rosie stands rigidly at the end of the bed while the work of the Neurological High Dependency Unit goes on around her. Her fingers wrap tight around the cold metal frame. High-pitched electronic beeps, the trill of phones, the scurry of feet, the doors swishing to and fro, all skim over her consciousness like blades on an ice rink. Her whole attention consumed by the woman lying in the bed before her – a tube down her throat, lines coming out of her arms, her fingers cramped into a fist. Three monitors above her head glow with jagged lines that move with the beat of her heart, a thin grey stubble covers the right side of her head, a thick line of black stitches curves over her scalp from her left ear to the crown of her skull. Her face is covered in bruises that have gone from a swollen deep purple to an olive green. Beneath the blanket, both shins are wrapped in a thick white plaster.
She could be anyone. Anyone.
A ventilator helps her to breathe, a catheter measures how much liquid is taken in, how much urine passes out. There’s a tube inserted into her scalp that measures the pressures in her brain. Then a feeding tube into stomach.
The statistics aren’t good. She’d looked them up. Of the ten patients on the Unit, probably only two will make a good recovery. Two might die, six will likely be disabled for the rest of their lives. This isn’t the homecoming she’d imagined for her sister. If this woman is her sister at all. She seats herself by the bed, looks at every curve of the woman’s face. A hand taps her on the shoulder, she jumps.
‘Sorry to scare you. There’s someone outside to see you.’ The nurse frowns, ‘Only family allowed in, I’m afraid.’
Thomasine waves at her through the glass window in the door, Rosie goes out into the corridor.
‘Are you okay?’ Thomasine puts her arm around her. ‘Shall I get us a coffee?’
Rosie nods, wordlessly they walk down the corridor, both caught in their own thoughts.
‘You get a seat, I’ll get them in.’ She returns a few minutes later, a plastic cup of coffee in each hand. ‘How is she?’ She takes a seat beside her.
Rosie shrugs her shoulders, the lines on her forehead deepen. ‘A bit difficult to know really – alive, asleep. No idea of how it will all turn out.’ She takes a coffee off Thomasine, her hands tremble, the coffee ripples in the cup. ‘It’s been a shock.’ Her eyes glaze with tears, she goes to get to her feet. ‘Sorry I need to get back in there.’
‘Give yourself a little break,’ Thomasine rests her hand gently on Rosie’s knee. ‘A few minutes won’t hurt. Drink your coffee. Besides, I’ve found out a bit more, if that helps.
Rosie’s eyes widen, ‘Go ahead, tell me.’
‘I’ve been talking with DCI Phillips, the woman heading both investigations, she’s on her way now. Veronica’s been living the other side of Manchester for years, under the name of Lily Probisher. She was some form of psychotherapist. No one’s been caught yet for the hit and run. It could have been an accident; it was snowing heavily that night.’
‘A psychotherapist?’ Rosie frowns, ‘I’d never have—’ Her chest heaves with a sob, ‘I’m sorry, really sorry, that I’ve not been able to be there for—’
Thomasine puts her arm around her friend’s shoulder. ‘Honestly, I’m fine, I can cope. It’s you I’m worried about.’ She gives her a hug. The wail of an alarm interrupts them, she disentangles herself. ‘Go on, go back in, I’ll be fine, I’ll get in touch in a couple of days. I promise.’
As Rosie makes her way along the corridor, a woman catches her eye. There’s something familiar about her. The dark curly hair, the narrow waist, the way she moved. Her upper body seemingly static, the legs taking long strides. The woman reminded her of Thomasine, that was it.
She presses the buzzer with her thumb, gives her name. The door clicks. Barely a few steps in a male nurse yanks the curtain around Veronica’s bed. She rushes over, grabs the edge of the curtain, a woman in blue scrubs appears in front of her, blocks her way.
‘I’m sorry you can’t come in here right now.’
‘What’s happening?’ Her mouth is dry; her fingers squeeze the plastic cup in her hand.
The nurse’s dark brown eyes soften. ‘I’m sorry,’ With a gentle force, she guides Rosie away from the bed. ‘She’s not very well, we need you to stay calm. I need you to go out into the corridor while we deal with it.’
Rosie backs her way out of the room, her heart slamming against her breastbone.
Behind the curtain, a voice pulses out with urgency. ‘One, two, three…’
The door opens just as Rosie’s legs give way, the coffee showers the floor, Thomasine and DCI Philips just manage to break her fall.
38
Someone is sitting on my chest. It’s her.
You killed me.
It’s not her fault, I tell her that. She doesn’t believe me. She hits me in the chest with her fist.
I couldn’t breathe. I was weak. She was heavy. I tried to save her. I tell her that.
She shakes her head. You killed me. You killed me. You crushed the life out of me.
I must have.
I tried to wake her up. I tell her that. It didn’t work. Nothing worked. Her eyes turned into pools of thick white jelly.
She hits me again. My ribs cra
ck. I beg her to stop. I didn’t mean for her to die. I tell her that. I’d pulled her out. Held her hand in mine. Wiped the soil off her face. Ran my fingers through her hair. Kissed her on the cheek.
He buried us both, I try to tell her that.
She doesn’t believe me, she scratches at my clothes with dirty fingernails.
I tell her again, ‘I tried to save you.’
She looks away. You didn’t try hard enough. Her head swivels. Her eyes slice into me. Then you put me back where no one could find me.
Her fingers wrap around my wrist.
My heart stutters. A high-pitched noise bursts my ears.
‘STAND BACK! HANDS OFF! STAND CLEAR!’
The pain wracks through her. Her back arches, her eyes flip back in her head.
Then silence. She counts the beats of her own heart. One, two, three. Someone coughs. She tries to prise open her eyelids, move her hands, speak. Nothing responds. She’s caught in a river of pain. It drags her under. Takes her with it.
39
Mel walks through the office in a daze, her mind still not made up. It had been the last thing she’d expected from Thomasine Albright. Offering up what she’d found without a murmur of discontent. From the look of her, the case was clearly taking its toll. Greasy hair, dirty blue jeans, an old grey cardigan frayed at the elbows. The manicured fingernails now bitten down to the quick. Hollow circles under her eyes – the crust of a cold sore at the edge of her lips. Her life a concertina of events collapsing in on her. And living up at that place wasn’t helping, up there without a soul around her.
Or was she manipulating them all, going behind their back?
The second cardiac arrest had caught them all by surprise. Thomasine had stayed with Rosie, she was in shock. If they’d not been so near she would have hit the floor like a brick. At least Veronica was stable at present.
A day later, Thomasine had given her the key to the farmhouse, told her where the diary was. She’d gone up there at first light, met Sam there and right now he was going over the loft along with a forensic team.
The diary lies open on her desk. She turns the pages, one by one. In the first six months, there is nothing of great interest but the humdrum life of a fourteen-year-old in 1972. Going to school, swimming, the youth club, the dilemma of choosing subjects for GCE. Coming sixth in the school cross-country race. The fallings out. The makings up. How the father refused her pleas to go on a school trip to the Lakes. How everyone else was going, how she was the only one who’d miss out. How she hated him because of it. How he wouldn’t give in. How Thomasine had been using her pale pink nail varnish and matching lipstick. How she’d put on her clothes, tramped around the bedroom pretending to be her.
That had made Mel smile, brought back memories of her own childhood in Manchester, her mother’s clothes, her high-heeled shoes.
Karen’s writing flickers between easy to read to almost indecipherable. She talks about asking her father for money, about her mother picking her clothes, about Thomasine not behaving, about her being a pain. Still no change there.
Badger shoves open the door. In one hand a coffee and in the other a bacon sarnie from the canteen.
‘Thanks, you’re a life-saver.’
He smiles then disappears back into the office.
Things change in July, Karen writes about walks through the fields to the village, about how boring the boys in the village are, about how they kept trying to touch her, their fumbling hands trying to flick her bra strap.
Mel remembers being fourteen – the spouting breasts, the periods that brought her pain and foul moods. The acne blemish on her cheeks that disappeared six months later.
August brings gossip about school friends, how Judith had a boyfriend, how Judith was boring, how Judith never had time for her anymore. How she was lonely and couldn’t wait to get out of the village, away from the moor. Karen complains about the sun and the rain and everything in between as though the weather was purposefully trying to thwart her.
The bacon sarnie disappears, as does the coffee. Mel’s eyes ache from trying to decipher Karen’s scrawls.
Then the tone changes, she writes about a boy she meets. The hair behind her neck bristles, she picks up her pen in readiness.
‘I could see him looking at me, so I slowed down, looked the other way. I pretended I was shy. He’s sooo good looking, long brown hair, grown up. He took me in his car up over to Belmont, he took me over to Rivington. I told him I’m sixteen, everyone says I look sixteen anyway.’
She has an uneasy feeling in her gut that tells her this is the beginning. From that date, there are no missed entries, no negative talk. No name either. One mention of long brown curly hair. But that’s it.
Twice a week she meets him on the moor road or up in one of the abandoned cattle barns on someone else’s land. He starts buying her gifts, perfume, make-up; lipsticks, mascara. Then he moves onto buying her clothes; maxi-skirts, loons, T-shirts. He asks her to put them on. He asks her to change in front of him, she refuses. Mel’s pen scratches across the lines in the notebook, more questions.
Surely, her parents should have noticed something going on.
It’s balling up in her stomach, the anger. A teenager being groomed by an older boy. She knows that back then, with that sort of money, he would have been older than eighteen.
Something big happens in November, on the twelfth. It had to be big, it was written in code. Time for a team task. Mel gets to her feet, goes into the Incident Room.
‘Game time, whoever gets this right wins a bottle of prosecco.’
‘I don’t really like prosecco, boss.’ Badger’s voice complains over the rattle of the photocopier as it churns out copies of the medical report.
A voice pipes up, ‘I wouldn’t worry about winning if I were you.’ There’s a smattering of laughter amongst the team.
Mel holds up the diary. ‘Here it is, twelfth of November 1972. She’s had a boyfriend for a few months, older, probably in his early twenties. She writes the code up on the whiteboard.
Gd’r oqnlhrdc sn szjd ld sn z mhfgsbkta.
Badger raises an eyebrow. ‘I hate stuff like this.’
Kinsi leans forward, ‘It’s basic teenage stuff.’ She picks up her pen and notepad, goes silent for a few moments as she scribbles a few notes. ‘This one is easy, it’s the alphabet, just moved on one.’
‘And?’ Badger’s voice has an edge of frustration to it, everyone in the team knows he’s dyslexic and finds any type of word puzzle infuriating.
She walks over to the board, crosses out each letter, puts one above it.
‘Da Da! “He’s promised to take me to a nightclub.”’
‘No name?’ Mel's voice cuts through the air.
‘No name.’ Kinsi answers back with a shake of her head.
Mel lets out a sigh, ‘Thanks, Kinsi. Right, everyone – noses to the grindstone, eyes peeled for any mention of a boyfriend.’ She goes back into the office, carries on reading the diary. She scribbles down a note of the code.
Karen Albright’s life reveals itself to her, how she’d run through the fields and meet him down on the road. He borrowed his brother’s car, that’s what he’d told her. It was – a Capri of some sort, white. He’s going to take her to a nightclub.
Then she mentions someone called Paul, that he’s spying on her. Who’s he? Another note, this time to ring Thomasine.
The final entry is on New Year’s Eve. Her father had banned her from going out. He’d said he didn’t want to go down into the village to get her. She writes that she hates him. Then a sentence in code again.
‘Gd vzr fnhmf sn szjd ld sn zlzkkmhfsdq’
“He was going to take me to an all-nighter.”
Mel rests her elbows on the desk.
Perhaps that’s where she was going the night she disappeared.
A young girl trying to grow up fast.
The passenger door swings open. Sam dips his head in, his thick black hair gelled back like a b
lackbird’s wing. His skin looks even paler than usual.
‘Morning, boss!’
Mel senses a hint of sarcasm. She hitches herself upright in her seat, rotates the stiffness out of her shoulders.
‘So, what did you find up at the farm, up in the loft?’
He eases himself into the passenger seat. His six foot five bulk seems to squash the air out of the car.
‘Not much, a right manky place, that. Wouldn’t want to spend much time up there.’
He hands her the plastic-wrapped sandwich he bought ten minutes ago from the canteen. ‘I got you the last one, sorry it’s only cheese and tomato.’
She takes it, gives him a weak smile. ‘Thanks, how much do I owe you?’
His smile twists into grin. ‘Ah, it’s alright, you bought me that curry last week, call it quits.’
She laughs out loud. ‘That curry cost me twenty quid!’
He sniggers, his dark blue eyes light up. ‘Yeah, well, you earn more money than me.’
She rips the wrapping off the sandwich and takes a mouthful of cheese and tomato. ‘So, what did you find?’
‘Not much, like I said.’ He takes his notebook out of his inside pocket, skims through the pages. ‘A bunch of comics, teenage girl stuff, stuck together in a clump, a hand torch and a small biscuit tin, both half eaten by rust. A pair of horn-rimmed NHS glasses so filthy they could be sunglasses. I can’t remember seeing anything about her wearing glasses, did you?’
Mel shakes her head.
‘Anyway, it must have been her hiding place, or someone hid her there. Who knows? And there was something else, a tin of crayons, completely covered in rust. I opened them up, showed Kinsi, they’re lip pencils apparently. I brought it all back, it’s with forensics now.’
‘And what did Badger find then?’ She takes another bite from the sandwich.
‘Well, he worked his wonders on the internet. He found a birth record for a Lily Probisher, same date of birth, born in Norwich in 1957. He checked the records for that person, in 1972 she seems to go off grid and resurfaces in 1975. He managed to trace her parents, both still together. I rang them – the mother picked up. At first, she said that she didn’t have a daughter.’ He raises an eyebrow. ‘No love lost there. She had one of those upper-class accents and I clearly was too Geordie for her. After I said I had a copy of the birth certificate in my hand, she fessed up that her daughter had run away from home when she was fourteen. Apparently, she’d had a drug habit, heroin, and was a bad influence on their son. She’d thrown her out. Told her to go live with her “druggie” friends. Clearly, she hadn’t run away after all.
She Lies Hidden: a spell-binding psychological suspense thriller Page 17