by Sibel Hodge
I leaned forward, watching her scooping up the crumbs with trembling, mechanical actions, trying to stop my own tears from falling. ‘Why would he do it?’ I asked again. ‘I need to understand this. I need to know what happened.’
She shook her head. ‘He didn’t do it. Someone else must’ve put her body there.’
‘But you have to admit he obviously knew about it, otherwise he never would’ve known where she was buried. Maybe she did steal something and wouldn’t give it back.’ I swallowed a mouthful of coffee to lubricate my dry throat. ‘You know that last day I saw her in the shop and asked her to come out with us? I told her who was going and she said about having something he wanted and she’d make him pay, and she said about fucking him again. I thought she was talking about Chris, but Chris says he never slept with her after they split up. What if she was really talking about Tom? What if they really were having a secret relationship?’
‘He wouldn’t have.’ She shook her head adamantly. ‘Dad didn’t like her that much. He was glad when Chris finished with her. And he was old enough to be her father! There’s no way he would’ve been involved like that with her.’
‘Yes, but she was young and attractive and wasn’t shy about having sex. What if he was tempted? What older man isn’t going to find that tempting?’
‘No way. Not Dad.’
‘He kept Georgia a secret from everyone. What if he kept Katie a secret, too? I know none of us wants to imagine our parents having sex, but it’s not that unlikely when you think about it.’
‘Even supposing they were in a relationship, why kill her?’ Nadia shook her head solemnly, wringing her shaking hands together.
‘Don’t they say most people are murdered by people they know?’ I paused, trying to ignore the pulse thumping in my forehead. ‘When Katie said that she had something he wanted, she must’ve been talking about something she stole from him that he wanted back. Maybe Tom arranged to meet her at the house to get it from her before she left the village and they argued about it. Maybe she’d already sold whatever it was she stole to get money to run away with. That’s the most likely explanation, isn’t it? I don’t think she was walking towards Abbotsbury at all. She was walking towards the barn.’
Nadia stared at me blankly. ‘How do we even know it’s her body?’
‘Who else would it be? How many other people do you think he’s murdered?’ I hissed the word, glancing around me to make sure none of the other customers could hear us. ‘It’s got to be her.’ I chewed on my lip. ‘But I think I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve ever seen Tom lose his temper in all the time I’ve known him. I know sometimes Tom and Lucas don’t see eye to eye about things, but Tom never gets angry with him, does he? Whatever happened, it must’ve been pretty bad for him to have killed her.’
‘He only ever used to get angry with things, not people. Frustrated, more like – if the vacuum didn’t work, or some tool or other went wrong, or he was fixing the car and it wasn’t going right. But he was never angry with us or anyone else.’
‘Yes, but he did hit that man once in that car park in Weymouth, didn’t he?’
‘That was different! The man had already punched his wife in the middle of the street and was going to do it again if Dad hadn’t intervened. He was just protecting her.’
I looked at my watch. ‘We need to get back home. I want to be back in time to meet Anna off the school bus in case the crime scene people are still there. I’ll have to explain something to her at least.’
Nadia stood, squaring her shoulders. ‘We’ll have to be strong for the girls. I think it will be best if I bring Charlotte back to yours and we can tell them together. That will be easier. At least it’s the last day of term and they won’t have to go back to school while this is all still fresh in people’s minds.’
As we headed out the door, my mobile phone rang.
‘It’s Chris,’ I said to her, looking at the name on the display.
‘What the hell is going on?’ he said when I answered. ‘I’ve just had the police up at work to talk to me, saying Dad killed someone and buried them under your garage!’
‘It’s true. It’s unbelievable, but it’s true.’
‘And he just confessed this to you?’ he asked dubiously.
‘Yes. I don’t know why, but, yes. I wish he hadn’t.’
‘I just don’t believe it.’ He sounded exactly like Ethan and Nadia.
‘Look, Nadia and I are going back to the house. I’m hoping the police have finished there by now. But we need to say something to Charlotte and Anna. Why don’t you meet us there?’
‘OK. I’m on my way back. Where’s Ethan? I’ve been trying to get hold of him but his phone’s turned off.’
‘Maybe it’s run out of battery, or sometimes the signal at Durdle Door is not that strong.’
‘Has he taken Dad up there?’
‘Yes.’
‘What, in the middle of all this shit?’
‘Look, just come to ours, OK? We can talk more then.’
‘All right. I’ll see you soon.’
I held my breath as Nadia’s car approached my house. The gates were shut now, which was hopefully a good sign that the police had finished collecting whatever evidence they needed. I didn’t exhale until I got out of the car to swing them open.
The garage doors were closed, too, and there was no sign that anything untoward had even happened inside them earlier that day. No white suits. No crime scene tape. No officer stationed at the entrance. Thank goodness for that. I didn’t want Anna to see it.
Nadia pulled in behind my Mini as I walked to the front door. I was opening it just as Chris swung in behind her.
He jerked his pick-up truck to a stop and shot out of the car, his face pale, eyes wild. ‘What is this? It’s got to be some kind of joke. The Georgia thing wasn’t true. This can’t be, either.’
I tried to hug him but he stepped away.
‘Come inside.’ Nadia tugged his arm.
In the kitchen, the only telltale sign of what had been discovered earlier was DI Spencer’s business card on the oak table. I picked it up and shoved it in a drawer, wanting it out of my sight.
‘Do you want a drink?’ Nadia took charge, filling the kettle with water and turning it on to boil.
‘When’s Ethan coming back?’ Chris ignored her.
‘Probably soon.’ I explained what had happened when the police questioned Tom earlier and how upset he’d become. ‘I don’t know how long it would’ve taken to get Tom dressed after we left. Mary was going to make him a cup of tea. Maybe Tom and Ethan are still on their way to Durdle Door.’
‘Christ. He’s going to die soon, anyway. Why do the police have to harass him?’
I sat at the table, feet up on the edge of the chair, arms wrapped around my knees. ‘They have to find out what happened. They have to ask questions.’
Nadia pulled her mobile out her bag. ‘I’m going to call Lucas and get him to come over, too.’ She dialled his number and walked out into the hallway with it pressed to her ear. I heard her mumbled voice as Chris sat down so hard on the chair I thought it would collapse beneath him.
‘I bet they think I had something to do with it.’ His knee jigged up and down.
‘What? Why?’
‘Because I was the last one to see her.’
‘Is that what they said?’
‘No, not in so many words. But they didn’t sound like they believed me.’
‘Why shouldn’t they believe you? Tom’s confessed to it.’
He shook his head. ‘Have you got any whisky?’
I pointed to one of the cupboards. ‘Help yourself.’
He grabbed a cut glass tumbler and poured himself a hefty couple of inches. Staring out of the kitchen window at the garage, he swallowed half of it in one go. ‘This is bloody men
tal. She was really under the garage this whole time?’
Nadia came back in and grabbed some mugs, filled them with coffee granules. ‘Apparently, yes.’
‘I thought she was leaving. She was supposed to be leaving.’ He threw his head back and drained the remains of the glass, then winced and coughed.
‘Do you want tea or coffee?’ Nadia asked him.
He wiggled the glass in the air. ‘No, I’ll stick to this.’ He poured himself some more whisky. ‘Dad couldn’t even kill a spider. Don’t you remember, when you were a kid and you were scared of them all the time?’ His gaze darted in Nadia’s direction. ‘He never killed them. He always captured them between a glass and a bit of cardboard. Said that everything deserved a chance to live.’ He threw a hand in the air wildly. ‘So how could he kill her?’
‘People can snap,’ I said. ‘Lose their temper and do things they regret. It must’ve been an accident. That’s what Tom told me, that it was an accident.’ It’s what I kept trying to tell myself, although exactly what kind of accident, I couldn’t even imagine. And if it was, why hadn’t he told the police at the time? Why cover it up?
‘What did the police ask you?’ Nadia poured boiling water into the mugs and stirred them with a spoon.
‘Just . . .’ He sniffed. ‘Just what had happened between me and Katie. I told them about me finishing with her about seven months before she left, and that I hadn’t really seen her until that day when I was waiting at the bus stop and she was leaving home.’
‘Are you sure you never slept with her after you’d split up?’ I asked.
‘Of course I’m sure! I think I’d know that. Why?’
‘It’s just that she said something weird the last time I saw her. At the time I thought she meant you but maybe she really meant Tom. She said, “If he thinks I’m going to fuck him again, he can fuck off”.’
Chris looked at me as if I’d punched him. ‘She wasn’t sleeping with Dad. That’s just . . . sick.’
Nadia handed me a mug of steaming coffee and sat opposite. My hands shook as I took it. I’d probably had far too much caffeine for one day.
I told them what Ethan had said about Katie trying it on with him. ‘Maybe she was sleeping with Tom to get you back for dumping her. She could’ve been doing it out of spite, planning to tell you so she could rub your face in it, or she’d set her sights on Tom when you broke up with her so he could support her.’
‘Oh, come on, she wouldn’t have done that,’ Chris said. ‘She wasn’t spiteful.’
But trying to sleep with Ethan was pretty spiteful, wasn’t it? What was she planning on doing if he’d slept with her that night? Rub my face in it? Try to split us up because she wasn’t with Chris anymore so she thought I didn’t deserve to be happy, either? And it got me thinking about something that happened one day at school when we were coming out of science block after a lesson. There were these heavy metal and reinforced glass doors with wire mesh inside, and I’d opened the door first with Katie behind me. The next thing I knew, one of the annoying, mouthy girls in our class was screaming and crying behind us, her nose pouring with blood. She’d told everyone Katie had slammed the door in her face on purpose, but Katie had denied it, saying it was an accident and the wind had banged it shut after her, but she had this amused glint in her eyes when she said it. Months later she told me the girl had called her a slag and no one got away with calling her names. I knew then for certain it hadn’t been an accident.
‘If she was going to say something to hurt me she could’ve done it on that last day I saw her, but she never said a word.’ Chris shook his head and stared out of the window again. ‘And what about the letter she wrote, then?’
‘She must’ve written the letter intending to run away but then Tom killed her before she actually left the village,’ I said. ‘Maybe she saw him when she was walking past the barn, or she could’ve already arranged to meet him here to get money or something. Maybe she was blackmailing him about something she’d found out or had stolen something from him. Or maybe it started off as something innocent where he saw her walking along the road and picked her up, offering her a lift somewhere. Whatever happened, she paid an awful price for it.’
‘It’s my fault, isn’t it?’ he muttered. ‘If I’d stopped her that day . . . if—’
‘You can’t play “what ifs”,’ Nadia said. ‘It’s too late for that now. There’s no point looking back and trying to think of things you should’ve done differently. It’s happened and we can’t change it. Now we have to concentrate on getting through this.’
There was a knock at the door and Nadia got up to open it. ‘That’s probably Lucas.’
Lucas took one look round the room at our faces and said, ‘So, it’s really true, then? What Nadia’s just told me about Tom and Katie?’
‘Apparently so.’ Nadia hovered beside him, her hand touching his arm. ‘Do you want a drink, darling?’
‘Have one of these.’ Chris tilted the bottle of whisky in Lucas’s direction. ‘Or are you flying later?’
‘No, I’ve got a couple of rest days. I definitely feel a Scotch coming on.’ He poured himself a large one and sat down opposite me. ‘I can’t get my head round this.’
‘You and me both,’ Chris muttered, clutching the worktop so hard his hand shook with the force.
‘He really killed Katie?’ Lucas asked.
‘It looks like it,’ I said as Nadia sat next to him, sliding her hand through his.
‘And it was my fault!’ Chris cried.
‘It wasn’t your fault. Don’t be ridiculous!’ Nadia sighed impatiently, her shock being replaced with anger. ‘Stop being so full of self-pity all the time. No wonder Abby left you.’
‘Hey, that’s not fair,’ I said to her. ‘Come on, we’re all upset. It doesn’t mean we have to go round attacking each other. That’s not going to get us anywhere.’
‘Sorry. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it.’ Nadia scrunched her face up. ‘This is really difficult.’ She looked at Lucas. ‘We’ve got to tell the girls something and I’m dreading it.’
‘Me, too,’ I said.
‘What shall we do?’ Lucas stroked his glass absentmindedly. ‘I’m all for delaying telling them but they’ll have to know some time. The police will be asking questions, looking for witnesses. It won’t take long to get round the village.’
‘That’s what I said,’ I agreed.
‘Do you want to come and stay at ours?’ Lucas asked. ‘I can’t imagine what Anna will think of living next door to where Katie was found.’ He jerked his head in the general direction of the garage.
‘Thanks. Nadia already offered. I think it’s probably a good idea for the moment, but I need to talk to Ethan.’ My gaze strayed to my watch again.
‘The police want to talk to you, too,’ Chris said to Lucas, picking up the whisky bottle and bringing it to the table before he slumped down on a chair.
‘Well, I won’t be able to tell them much. I can’t remember anything about the last time I saw Katie. It was years ago.’
Nadia’s hand strayed to Lucas’s arm again. He grabbed it and held on tight, giving her a loving and supportive smile. There was still no outward sign he was having an affair. He was obviously as good at hiding things as Nadia was. As Katie had been.
‘No, I didn’t remember much, either,’ Nadia said. ‘I’d forgotten all about us going to the pub that night until you mentioned it. How can we be expected to remember what happened twenty-five years ago?’
‘I remember some things because I thought about it a lot after she left.’ I cradled the mug. ‘I felt guilty that I hadn’t stopped her or done more for her. I feel even more guilty now, knowing what’s happened.’
‘Me, too,’ Chris said.
‘You had nothing to feel guilty about, mate.’ Lucas gave Chris one of those men slaps on the back.
�
�I still loved her and I let her walk off.’
‘You were too young,’ Nadia said. ‘It wouldn’t have worked out even if you’d got back together. There was a reason you split up with her.’
Chris looked up through hooded eyes at her. ‘You can be so cold sometimes.’
‘It’s not being cold. It’s being practical. I’m trying to help.’
‘Well, it’s not helping.’ Chris swallowed some more whisky.
‘OK, OK. Olivia’s right – there’s no point arguing amongst ourselves,’ Lucas said gently. ‘We should all be supporting each other instead. We’ve got to stick together and somehow get through this with as little damage to the family as possible.’
‘So what do you suggest we do, then?’ Chris said bitterly, his words beginning to slur. He muttered something else unintelligible.
I didn’t hear the rest of the conversation, though, because my mobile phone rang from somewhere in my handbag on the island. It was Ethan.
‘Hi, how is he? Has he calmed down now?’ I said before he could even say hello.
His next words came out of nowhere and blew me away.
Chapter Nineteen
Dad’s killed himself.’ Ethan’s voice sounded wrong. Far away and disjointed, as if he was in a long tunnel.
‘What?’ I gasped, hoping I’d heard him wrong.
‘He . . . he stepped off the cliff. He just . . . went over.’
‘What do you mean, “went over”?’
‘I don’t know if he meant to do it or if it was just an accident. I . . . I’m waiting here for the police.’
‘No.’ I shook my head, staring at the others with wide-eyed shock.
‘He was so agitated when you left, it took ages to get him dressed. When we finally got to the car park at Durdle Door he refused to go in the wheelchair – he wanted to walk. We were walking along the usual path and we got to near the bench we always sit on. And then . . . Christ, Olivia. It was just so . . . it was like everything happened in fast motion. We were talking, and then he got angry with me. He was confused. I didn’t really know what he was going on about and he wasn’t making any sense. We were standing near the edge of the cliff and he told me to leave him alone!’ Ethan’s voice rose to a shriek. ‘He pushed me away from him. He . . . he . . .’