Lock Me In
Page 20
‘Ellie.’ On his feet, hands up, eyes wide. ‘Calm down.’
‘You told me those photos you took were for my benefit—’
‘They were.’
‘But all the time,’ I said, my voice trembling with the rage and the effort of holding everything in, ‘all the time you were just thinking what you could do with them. Who you could sell them to.’
‘OK. You need some deep breaths now.’ Cox came towards me, hands out as if to take mine but I pushed him roughly away.
‘Don’t touch me,’ I snapped, whipping myself away out of his grasp. ‘Don’t you dare.’ I wiped my face angrily with the heels of my hands. What was I supposed to do? Leave? I knew I should leave but I couldn’t.
‘I just want Matt back. I just want him back.’
‘OK,’ he said. ‘OK.’ He gave me an appraising look, and then appeared to make a decision. He went back around his desk, and slipped his arms into the jacket on the back of the chair. ‘I’m going to get us some tea, and then we can talk.’
‘I don’t need tea. I need you to tell me the truth.’
‘I need some. Just … just wait here.’
He left me alone in the room, his silhouette dissolving behind the frosted glass window. A moment later, Samira came in.
She said nothing for a moment then let out a long sigh. ‘Dr Cox told me he’s gone missing, Your Matthew.’
‘Looks that way.’
‘He seemed lovely,’ she went on. Clasped her hands together to emphasize it. ‘People are so much nicer when you meet them in person, sometimes.’
‘He— you’ve met him?’
She nodded. ‘Good few times he’s been up.’
I opened my mouth. Closed it again.
‘He’s very sweet. Very concerned, I gather,’ she said, before dropping her head into a sympathetic tilt. She went to the window to retrieve a stray scrap of paper, then stopped, frowning back at me and then peering down through the glass.
‘Had you finished up here, then?’ she said.
I crossed the room and followed her eyeline, down to the road below. The sound of the heavy door hitting its frame reverberated through the building and, at street level, a blond head emerged.
Cox wasn’t getting tea.
I shot out of the office and down to the front door taking the steps two at a time, but I wasn’t fast enough. By the time I got the door open, he was gone. At the bottom of the stone steps, my heart was tripping heavily over itself. The last I saw of him was a flash of grey-blond hair in the driver’s seat of a battered, cherry-red three-door.
44.
Mae
Mae stood in a patch of sunlight in the living room of Lucy Arden’s maisonette, while the whistle of a stovetop kettle sounded over the gentle voices of a radio drama in her kitchen. He’d left Kit to get to the bottom of how Matthew’s laptop had found its way back to the hospital, leaving strict instructions to call with any developments.
‘Milk?’ Lucy called from the kitchen. ‘Sugar?’
‘Yes, and no. Thank you.’
He’d realized in the taxi from Brighton station that over a year had passed since he’d last been to the coast. There were still a handful of friends down here of course, and to start with he’d kept in touch, made visits. But after he’d changed forces, and Nadia had made the move up to London as well, their gravitational pull had dwindled into nothing. Little had changed in the town, but inside Lucy’s home, everything was different.
He cast his eyes over the room, trying to reconcile the place with the way it had been. After Jodie disappeared, Lucy Arden’s neighbourhood had rallied. They’d made sure there was enough food to fill both fridges in her kosher kitchen, with the surplus stacked across the worktops. Last time he’d been there, Mae had filled a couple of bin bags with some of the forgotten casseroles and foil-wrapped cakes, for the sake of her health. Mould crept unchecked across the Pyrex dishes, and there were ants. The sort of thing he was used to seeing in the homes of addicts.
The rest of the flat had been worse. She hadn’t been able to stand the void her daughter had left behind, so she’d got everything from Jodie’s childhood out of storage and brought it into the living spaces again. The whole place had exuded a pulsing sense of chaos, the kind of disorder that worms into your head and breaks your sentences in half. Belongings were piled everywhere, games and cartoon DVDs and books, school projects, dressing-up things, soft toys, building up and spilling out like a panic attack.
This, though, this was like being in a different flat, with a different person. Either mental health prescriptions had got a whole lot better since he’d needed them, or she’d found peace some other way. It was clean, hoovered, warm, orderly but lived-in. He touched an ornate branch of the traditional menorah sitting in the centre of the windowsill, its five candle spaces polished and ready for the Shabbat candles. It was something he’d seen many times in the homes of victims of serious crime: where some lost their faith, others immersed themselves in it with renewed vigour. Maybe her religion had been the ladder out of the hole: and who was he to judge? Things got bad, people needed to cling, just like boats needed anchors. What he wouldn’t have given for some faith when Nadia left. God only knew what he’d turn to if something like that happened to Bear, if someone took her—
Lucy returned with the coffee, plus slices of a fruit cake on a tray. She sat, passed him a mug, wrapped her hands around her own.
‘So what’s this about?’
He settled in an armchair. ‘I understand you were in touch with Matthew Corsham. You sent him something? A diary.’
Her smile solidified, and she touched her throat, where a thin silver chain caught in a slip of sunlight.
‘He asked me not to tell Ellie,’ she said after a pause. ‘He said he was trying to work something out about her, but she was still very – what was the word he used? Fragile. He wanted to find out everything he could about her.’
‘Like what? About Jodie?’
She shrugged, and the thing that had been bothering him suddenly came into focus, named itself. Acceptance. Lucy Arden was no longer at the mercy of grief.
‘About all of it. How the girls had gone to see—’ she paused, swallowed tightly before saying just the surname, ‘Cox, without us knowing. He wanted to ask about the terrible thing with-with what Ellie did. After. She’s better now, though? He said she was thinking of moving in with him.’
Mae bounced the rubber end of his pencil on the hard cover of his notebook a few times before he spoke again, watching her face.
‘Last time I saw you, you told me you’d found some things out about Cox. What he’d been doing since.’
She sighed, looked out of the window. ‘That was a long time ago. I was still very angry about everything. I haven’t been following him again, if that’s what you came here about.’
‘I’m not here to accuse you of anything, Lucy.’
A look of shame, embarrassment, clenched her features. ‘I’ve put it behind me now. I’ve got a different job, I’ve moved on. Why are you asking about him?’
Pause. Phrasing. He needed to get this right. ‘It seems Matthew and Cox were in contact.’
‘Were they really,’ she said, shaking her head with a look of disgust. ‘Well. If I had known that—’
‘And Matthew Corsham appears to be missing.’
‘Oh, no.’ She leaned forwards. ‘Is he … do you think he’s … all right?’
Mae spread his hands. ‘I don’t know. But anything you can tell us about Matthew might be helpful.’
She stood up and went to the window. Through the glass, above the flat skyline, a haemorrhage of dark pink and purple clouds, lit by the sinking sun.
She pressed her lips together. ‘OK. Two weeks ago I got a call from him, wanting to know what I knew about Ellie.’
‘Tell me about that.’
‘We only spoke for half an hour. I had to get to work. We were going to meet up for a coffee, but I said I’d send him the diary.
But he wanted to know everything, how we met Ellie, her relationship with Charles Cox, everything.’
‘And what did you tell him, about Cox?’
She flashed a wire-tight smile that hardly even touched her cheeks and said, ‘I told him he was a paedophilic bastard who I’d gladly see hang.’ She finished her coffee and stared at the empty mug.
‘I’m sorry to drag this all back up, Lucy. But if there’s anything else you can tell me—’
‘I followed him, before. Charles. Back when it was raw, you know?’ She looked up, her eyes suddenly shining. ‘I followed him a lot. Pretty much every day.’ She shook her head. ‘And he knew I was there; I didn’t try to hide it. Obviously, he didn’t do anything incriminating with me there, but I didn’t care. I wanted him to be scared of me. The way I saw it, he’d ruined my life. But if it hadn’t been for me, he’d have never met her. Can you imagine how that feels to know that someone you’d been—’ she winced as she said it, ‘sleeping with, was grooming your baby? Worse? He’d just … razed everything.’
‘But you didn’t find anything, or you would have said.’
Lucy Arden stretched her head back, let out a long sigh above her. ‘Every day for a year, I went to his house. It was like he’d turned into this robot, did everything the same as the day before, like he was on a schedule. Although I know he lost a lot of work. No one wanted to tell him all their dirty secrets, after what happened.’ A short, dry laugh. ‘So his mum has this yoga retreat place, out in East Molesey. I left a load of one-star reviews on her website.’
‘His mum’s website?’
‘Yeah. I know,’ she said, looking up at him and cringing. ‘Disgusting behaviour. His mum might be lovely, for all I know. Not her fault.’ She sighed heavily. ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you this.’
Mae shrugged. ‘You went through a lot, Lucy. Not a lot of people understand what it’s like, losing someone like that.’
‘No.’
She held his gaze. For a few stretched seconds, it was as if his secret, his own loss, shifted and began to climb out of him. He could almost feel it, the sharp claws of it gaining traction in his throat, rising. But he forced himself to look away. He stood, he smiled his professional smile and made to leave.
His wasn’t a grief to be shared. Certainly not with her, a victim. Not with anyone.
There was a smell of oranges cooking, layered with a little choke of burnt sugar, as he stepped out into the mosaicked hallway. He sniffed the air, and Lucy Arden laughed. It was a sound he had never heard before.
‘Marmalade. I don’t know if it’ll work.’
It wouldn’t, from the smell of it, but he wasn’t going to ruin her fun. Though he’d certainly been the bearer of much worse news, he thought, as he tied the laces of the boots he’d respectfully left by the front door.
He stood and held out his hand to shake hers, but something behind Lucy’s head caught his eye. He sidestepped her, peered at it. A painted portrait. Oils, faintly impressionistic, but he knew the face in seconds. He looked at Lucy.
‘Is this …?’
‘It’s a lot like her, isn’t it,’ she replied quietly, picking at a fingernail.
He got up close to it. ‘What is that, like an age progression thing?’
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Like Madelaine McCann.’
‘But it’s painted,’ he said, not taking his eyes off the young woman.
‘Yes.’ Lucy was at the door now, slipping the chain out of the latch. ‘They did a good job.’
She wasn’t kidding. All there had been back then were photos, a scrap or two of amateur video. Jodie sitting primly in her school uniform or drama-class costumes. Lady Macbeth, Blanche DuBois. He’d never seen the missing girl in the flesh. But, if Jodie had aged half a decade like the rest of them, she’d be in her early twenties by now. And she’d look a lot like that young woman wearing the cowl-neck grey sweater in the painting: the subtle nobility of her features; her thick, bark-brown hair twisted into a rope and tossed over the milk white of her clavicle.
‘Where did you get that done?’
She glanced at it. ‘Uh – online, somewhere,’ she said vaguely, before pulling the front door open. ‘Company went bust though, I think.’
Mae slipped his phone out of his pocket and framed the painting up for a photo, making sure he got the signature in the bottom right. Maybe that was someone Mae could use on his team.
She agreed to call him if anything else came to mind, and they said goodbye.
All the way back to London Victoria, something about that picture was bothering Mae, like a tick in his ear. When he stepped off the train onto the windy platform, Kit rang, telling him something fast and urgent.
‘Say it again?’ he shouted down the line, a palm pressed over his free ear.
‘Hold on.’ She was outside somewhere, having to shout over the beep of a heavy vehicle reversing. Then all of a sudden the line cleared, and he could hear her. ‘I said, I’ve just finished at the hospital. They’ve got pretty good CCTV review, as it happens. I’m sending over a clip of when the laptop got delivered to reception. It’s not a courier, I don’t think, and it’s not Matt.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Yeah. It’s a woman. Dark hair, middle-aged, from the looks of it.’
‘Any one you recognize?’
‘I don’t think so, but it’s hard to tell. Sending it now. See what you think,’ she said.
‘Hold on,’ Mae said. ‘Before you hang up, I’ve got a job for you. If you get a chance before I get back, see if you can track down an artist for me.’ He enlarged the corner of the photo of Lucy’s painting with his finger and thumb on the screen and brought it close to his eyes. ‘Looks like the name is …’ he squinted, trying to make it out. ‘E. Shevah.’ He spelled it for her. ‘I’m sending you over a portrait.’
‘As in a painting kind of portrait?’ Amusement in her voice. ‘None of us like the pay freeze, Sarge, but I’m not sure art dealing’s the way forward.’
‘Yeah? Same goes for stand-up. Get a decent printout of the picture, see if you can track the artist down for a chat.’
‘Fine. Clip’s on its way.’
Mae hung up and moved with the crowd through the barriers, phone in hand. The video clip arrived, and he found a free seat as it downloaded.
He opened the picture. It was grainy, from too high, he thought, to distinguish the face on the person standing on the public side of the desk.
Then he stretched it with his fingers. Leaned in. He paused the footage, spooled back, spooled forwards, did it again, a third time, until he was absolutely sure.
‘Fuck,’ he began, hardly able to believe what he was seeing, ‘me.’
Because the face on the screen, the face of the person who had anonymously brought Matthew Corsham’s laptop back to where it belonged, was none other than the secretary of the man Mae believed had murdered Jodie Arden five years ago.
Samira Anand.
45.
Ellie
Hand on her throat, Samira met me at the top of the stairs as I came back up from the street. ‘Where did he go?’ she said, bafflement on her face. ‘What happened?’
I’d already decided how I was going to play it. ‘He said there was some dry cleaning he’d suddenly remembered.’
‘Really? But I only just picked his jackets up.’
I shrugged. ‘That’s what he said. He’ll be back in a minute, he told me to wait.’
Suspicion clouded her face. ‘I don’t know, I mean, he doesn’t usually—’
‘It’s only me, Samira,’ I said. ‘I’m not going to rob the place. He said he’ll be back in a bit.’
Visibly buoyed by the change in tone, she acquiesced. ‘I don’t see why not. I’ll make some tea.’
I closed the door behind me. She might have been a mug, but she wasn’t stupid, and I probably had just a few minutes until she called Cox and realized that wherever he’d gone in such a hurry, it wasn’t the laundrette.
Through the wall I heard an unseen kettle click off, footsteps, a cupboard door opening.
Fumbling with the keys, I opened the next drawers. Ryder to Thatcher, and Thebo to Young. There was nothing there at all. The thought struck me that he might have something on Matt, but there was no Corsham under the Cs.
Fuck.
Through the wall: ‘Sugar?’
I never took it, but it would buy me some time. ‘Do you have any honey?’ I called back. ‘Or sweetener?’
Carefully, I slid the drawers home, before spotting something right at the back of the last one. Past the end of the alphabet, to Misc.
Behind the divider was a single envelope. Brown, with a card back and an instruction printed in red: Do Not Bend. Cox’s name and address on the front in a delicate, curling, script and a foreign postmark beneath a shield decorated with stars.
And in big, felt-tip capitals: E.P.?
EP – Ellie Power, maybe? But why the question mark?
I turned it over and lifted the flap, the glue long since dried to a brown sheen and the paper soft with age. Inside was a single document.
From the kitchen, I heard the tap of a spoon on china. I slid the document out, one eye on the door.
It was off-white, thick and watermarked, the text in black with red curlicues around the edges, a line of rust in one corner a centimetre long. It was an official document, like a certificate but not in English. Some of the words were filled in, handwritten onto dotted lines, and there was a date in 1989, two years before I was born.
I slid it back into the envelope with the starry-shield stamp, and read the postmark: 22nd September 2006.