by Kate Simants
‘Roller derby.’ No one had mentioned it to him, but then again that sounded about right. Not that he minded. ‘Talking of which, what size are Bear’s feet? About a thirteen?’
‘Ye-es,’ Nadia said suspiciously. ‘Why?’
A little circle spun on the screen, telling him the algorithm was running. ‘DC … Kit wanted to know. Getting her some skates.’
Now it was Nadia’s turn to laugh. ‘So she’s just a colleague, but she spends a whole evening sitting outside your daughter’s hospital room and wants to buy her skates? You sure you’re not her type?’
The website processed his request and the result pinged onto the screen. Two adults, long weekend trip to Florida. He turned the corners of his mouth down.
Not cheap. But not eye-watering.
‘I guess it’s not impossible.’
Nadia laughed again, and they said goodbye. Mae flipped the laptop shut and headed to McCulloch’s.
He knocked on the frame of her open door and went in.
‘Ah. Man of the hour. Take a seat, Ben.’
She took her glasses off and waved him into the chair opposite hers, then remembering something, she swivelled her seat all the way around and ducked, opening what he guessed was a box or a drawer behind her. When she twisted back again, half a smile on her face, she placed a glass bottle and two plastic cups on the desk. Champagne, and not a brand he recognized from the supermarket, either.
After popping the bottle open, she poured and passed him a cup, and raised hers to toast. ‘To your solve. However grisly.’ She took a sip. ‘I have to admit,’ she said, blinking as the bubbles went up her nose, ‘I was actually about to pull you off this one.’
‘I wouldn’t have blamed you,’ he lied, feeling the comfortable blur of the alcohol as it spread through his blood.
She eyed him over the rim of her cup. ‘I don’t know about that, Mae.’
He shrugged, put the cup down, and opened his folder for the update. ‘Data Forensics came back with the IP address, so we can see where the laptop was when the rest of the images were accessed.’
‘Where the laptop was? But not Corsham himself?’
‘It was in the hospital. Corsham’s debit card was used in a café ten minutes away as it was happening.’
‘Someone else use his card?’
Mae took a sip, swallowed. ‘Nope. Coffee shop has CCTV. It’s definitely him using his card: cappuccino and a muffin, and he stayed in the café for the whole time the download took place. No way he accessed those images himself.’
DCI McCulloch leaned back. ‘You’re going to tell me Christine was on shift though, right?’
‘That’s exactly what I’m going to tell you, yes. Tip-off to HR was made before Matthew was back in the building. The missing meds had already been clocked by the pharmacy manager, so that ship had sailed. But Helen Williams paid Matt off anyway. Wanted him to go quietly: she didn’t want to risk the images coming to light because it was down to her that he’d got away with those forged DBS documents for Ellie.’
She smoothed her forehead with her fingertips, unconvinced. ‘But why, Mae? Why did he do that with Ellie?’
Draining his cup, Mae said, ‘There’s no evidence there was anything else to it: she just wanted to work there, and he wanted to help. Kit’s gone over the whole ward – CCTV, interviewing the nurses, kids – no one’s got anything remotely alarming to say about him. Ellie swears blind he never showed an interest in her work there beyond what you’d expect; he wasn’t unduly keen on the kids, anything like that. There was a girl he’d bumped into when he’d gone to meet Ellie after her shift once, a teenager who seemed to have taken a shine to him, but apart from that, nothing at all.’
‘And the bag? Is Cox coughing for that?’
‘Nope. Traffic picked up an ANPR ping on Christine’s car out in Surrey yesterday. East Molesey. Forensics think they have a partial on a shoeprint of hers at Cox’s mother’s yoga place, meaning—’
‘She planted it.’
‘Yeah. Knew we were looking at Cox, thought she’d throw us a bone and put us off the scent.’
‘And let me guess – it was her who paid his rent?’
‘Took it straight out of the twenty grand,’ he confirmed.
‘Slippery old cow.’ She turned down the corners of her mouth and drank. ‘Ironic really, considering how we’re relying on his recordings for prosecution.’
‘And it is admissible? The stuff Cox recorded from the van?’ It had been playing on his mind: the rules could be a bitch about covert recording.
McCulloch raised an eyebrow. ‘There’ll be a way. Crown should be amenable. They’re looking at the charges for him at the moment too. It’s a toss-up though, considering how it turned out.’
‘Perverting the course of justice?’
‘Yep.’
Mae wasn’t sure. ‘I don’t know if I’d trust a jury to convict. Considering motive, you know?’
‘I guess we’ll hear soon,’ she said, chasing a bead of condensation from the bottle with a fingertip. ‘Which brings us to the issue of the girl who came back from the dead. Or, presumed dead, let’s say.’ She meant Jodie Arden. ‘Your views? CPS liaison says we’ve got a decent chance on a PCJ charge as well, but …’ she tailed off, weighing it with her hands.
Mae dipped the corners of his mouth in an approximation of apathy, like it was just another case to him. ‘I guess we’ll have to consult, but I can’t see a public interest in prosecuting either of them,’ he said. ‘They’ve been through enough.’
He’d already spoken to Lucy and told her what he could, but it had been a short conversation. She’d pretty much burst into tears with relief.
McCulloch knocked back the last inch of her champagne. ‘DC Heath’ll be turning in his grave,’ she observed, before crumpling the cup, and tossing it over Mae’s head for a perfect shot on the bin in the back corner.
Mae agreed, closed his file and stood. Before he got to the door, McCulloch said, ‘It’s a shitty old thing, this one.’
‘Yep,’ he said. ‘It is.’
‘But I’m glad you could help her.’
He tapped the doorframe a few times, nodded, and headed to the lifts.
‘You did help her, Ben,’ she called out behind him.
And walking away, Mae raised a hand to acknowledge it, thinking, actually: yes.
I did.
76.
Ellie
That first night after they arrested Christine, Detective Ziegler booked me into a hotel. Our flat and Matt’s boat were both still being ‘processed’, as she put it, but she got me a bag of my things and saw me to my room.
‘You’ve got my number,’ she said when she’d laid the suitcase on my bed and checked I had money for a meal. ‘You sure you’ll be OK?’
‘I’ll be fine.’
I closed the door behind her, then put my hands on it. As well as the electronic keycard box that locked automatically, there was a double lock I could twist to lock it from the inside, and a chain bolt higher up. I looked at them both. Touched my fingers to the smooth metal shapes of them.
And I left them as they were.
Sleep came like sand in a sieve, catching for a moment then slipping away, and by 5 a.m. I gave up. I sat in the wicker chair by the window, scrolling through pictures of Matt and waiting for dawn.
I’d had the wounds on my hands looked at by the police doctor; she’d given me new dressings plus antibiotics to deal with what had become a low-level infection, and then drawn the blood they needed for the tests. The results would take a few days, but we all knew what they were going to find. The aches and nausea that came as side-effects of the sedatives she’d stockpiled from the pharmacy exactly matched what I’d been suffering for years whenever I woke up after a fugue.
Except there was never any fugue. Maybe Matt knew that, too.
I would probably never know why he hadn’t told me what he’d found. On the screen, I stretched an image of him with my fingertip
s, zooming in on his eyes. Maybe he wanted to protect me from the worry, or maybe he’d wanted to have it all absolutely straight before he told me. What I did know was that he did what he did, all that research, all those phone calls, to try to help me find a way to the truth, because he believed in me. He knew I could be better than the person Christine had turned me into.
Or, more accurately, who she’d tried to turn me into. I let my eyes close for a moment. I felt myself in my body, from the roots of my hair to the soles of my feet. Just me. The psychotherapist I’d spoken to the day before said that I wasn’t going to be better straight away, that what I had – aspects of post-traumatic stress, atypical dissociation, identity issues – they were all things that would take time. Christine had been so comprehensive in her creation of Siggy as a myth that, even though I knew the truth about my past now, shaking her wouldn’t be a simple process. But what I did know was that I was more than my fear. I was more than any of the weak things she wanted me to be. And it was up to me to prove it.
On the dot of eight, a text from DC Ziegler. Call me when you’re up.
I called straight back, and she answered immediately.
‘Ellie. How’re you feeling?’
‘I’m OK,’ I told her. ‘I’m feeling OK.’
‘Good. That’s good, that’s-that’s great. Listen, there’s someone who wants to see you.’
‘OK, when?’
‘Well, whenever you’re ready. We’re at the station now but I just need permission from you to bring them over,’ she said.
She didn’t need to tell me who she meant. I told her to come straight away, and I started getting dressed. Daylight diffused through the gauzy curtain and I was warm.
And half an hour later, DC Ziegler arrived at my door with Lucy Arden, her eyes red but smiling.
Lucy held out her arms, and I went to her. I was fourteen again, dissolving into her. Not letting go, she stroked my hair, said my name. Then eventually disengaging, she held me by the shoulders, and told me she had something to tell me. She glanced at DC Ziegler for reassurance, then drew a long breath.
‘I want you to know that none of this is your fault. OK? None of it.’
I glanced at DC Ziegler and back to her. It hadn’t even occurred to me until that moment that there could be more bad news.
‘She’s alive, sweetheart.’ Lucy’s voice choked, but the look on her face was one of joy. ‘I didn’t know. Not at the time. I want you to understand that, because I would never, never have let you believe that you had done what you thought you did.’
I opened my mouth, but found that nothing would come out.
‘I know this is a lot to take in, Ellie,’ DC Ziegler said, reminding me she was there. ‘But while we were investigating Matt’s disappearance we discovered what had really happened back in Brighton. It turns out that when Charles Cox came back from the Balkans he shared a few things with Jodie that made her suspicious of your m— of Christine.’
Lucy cleared her throat. ‘And Christine had a lot riding on you not finding out the truth. So she followed her, looking for something she could use against her. It was her bad luck that Christine discovered, even before she had a chance to tell you, that Jodie was pregnant.’
My heart contracted, readying itself. There had to be a line somewhere that Christine would not cross, but I had no idea where it might be.
‘She cornered Jodie outside the hospital where she’d just gone for her first scan. She didn’t even wait until she’d got home.’
‘What … what did she do?’ I asked, haltingly.
Tears broke over Lucy’s cheeks and she pressed a flat hand to her mouth, still trying to smile, but unable to speak.
‘She offered Jodie ten grand to disappear,’ DC Ziegler said softly. ‘She said that if Jodie didn’t take it, she’d tell everyone that she was sleeping with Cox, and that Lucy would never speak to her again.’
I looked back to Lucy, who nodded her confirmation.
‘But – disappear? How?’ Jodie was resourceful, certainly, and determined: but she was also seventeen.
‘She paid a lorry driver to hide her and went to Spain. Worked in bars and clubs ever since, she’s just been scraping around. I’ve been going out there to see her whenever I can. I wanted to tell you, love, because I knew you were devastated about losing her. But I just couldn’t.’
‘Obviously, it all came out about Cox anyway,’ DC Ziegler continued, ‘in the investigation. Not about the pregnancy but about Jodie being with Cox. And she could have come back in theory, but by then she realized she’d basically conspired against Cox by taking the money and failing to come forward when the police were looking for her. Christine got messages to her telling her she’d be prosecuted for all kinds of things, so she just ended up staying where she was.’
‘I tried to talk her into just going to the police to explain, hope for the best,’ Lucy said. ‘She wasn’t having it: she was too afraid she’d be arrested. She didn’t want to risk her child being taken away.’
DC Ziegler spread her hands. ‘DS Mae and I are very much against bringing any charges. We’re fairly confident it’s not going to happen.’
Lucy wiped her eyes. ‘I tried to find you, put the record straight for you, but even then … I don’t know, I was too afraid what would happen if I did tell you. But when Matt contacted me, I took legal advice about what would happen if we just came clean, and I really was going to—’
I held my hands up, stopping her, incredulous. ‘So you’re telling me … you’re saying there’s—’ I started, but a noise from the corridor answered my question. A laugh – a high, full-bodied hoot. A sound that belonged to a child.
DC Ziegler and Lucy exchanged a look and Lucy said, ‘We understand if it’s too much for you, Ellie, but if you feel ready …’
I didn’t let her finish the sentence. I was at the door, and then the door was open, and then Jodie was there.
She held my shoulders, then her arms were around me, saying my name, laughing with tears on her cheeks. A child, her daughter, pulling happily at her clothes.
It would take time. But what I did know was that Christine Power, who was not my mother, was wrong.
I wasn’t broken. I could be fixed.
Epilogue
Weeks passed before everything was in place for the dig. When presented with the evidence – from Ellie, from Christine’s sister Bernadette, from Cox and the Ardens and the people she’d been in contact with in Bosnia – Christine had offered little resistance, and had told them what they wanted to know. She insisted she’d do whatever was asked of her, only would they please, please try to bring Ellie again. They had to let her apologize, she said: they had to let her explain.
So far, Ellie was refusing, but she wasn’t ruling it out forever. Things were going to be on her terms. Not even Christine could begrudge her that.
But the investigation was a long way from over. On the second Saturday in December, Mae and Kit were on site at six in the morning, helping to lay the trackway down from the base plant where the team were assembled, all the way down to the spot beside the river where Christine had been arrested.
When all the track was laid, the machinery went down. And afterwards, the team did what they could to save the cherry tree, so it could be replanted.
Because underneath the roots, they found the body of a child. It would be a few days before the tests came back, but they would only confirm what was already known. That the bones were all that remained of Christine’s daughter, who had died sixteen years before, two weeks past her third birthday.
High above the dig, at the moment that the tiny skull was being lifted from the earth by the lead forensic officer, three women and a little girl were ascending to a cruising altitude of 32,000 feet. Along with three dozen other passengers, they were on their way to Sarajevo. Two of the women, Jodie and Lucy Arden, sat portside, with Jodie’s daughter between them. The little girl, whose pink tongue poked out of the corner of her mouth as she concentra
ted on the sticker book she’d been bought at the airport, had been named Eleanor, after her mother’s best friend.
The third woman in the party sat apart from the others. She rested her head against the thick plexiglass, watching for the first sign of the land of her birth as it expanded into focus beneath her.
In her hands was her new passport, held open at the thickest page, the one with her photo. It was a good thing she had allies now, people with clout fighting her corner, because this had not been an easy document to get hold of. Everything had to be changed: her place of birth, her nationality. Her next of kin. Even her age. A week ago, she had thought she was nineteen years old, but today, as she watched the fractals of ice form on the outside of the window, she was closer to twenty-one.
For a brief day, she had thought she’d found an aunt and a father, but the girl they’d been looking for was long, long gone now. But she was making this journey to find her own family, and to mourn the death of those who’d been claimed by the war that had started before she was born. Her father, Faruk, who had been killed in the first months of the conflict; her infant brother Huso, whose murder had to this day gone unpunished.
She tucked the passport away in her bag, next to the folder full of information collected about her by the man she had loved. They’d let her print all of it out, and although he was gone, she would be forever grateful to him for every word of it.
It was an almost unbearable injustice that he would never know what he had done for her. But she would be forever grateful to him for trying to show her the truth: her past, and with it a path forward to her future. He had helped her find her way to who she really was, right down to her name.
Because she wasn’t Ellie Power. She never had been.
Her name was Mubina Idrizovic. And thirteen hundred miles away, in a village rebuilt over time but still healing from the horror of what had befallen it, her mother was waiting for her.
Acknowledgements
Some considerable years ago, when I was filming officers at Oldham Police cut a dead man down from a tree, it occurred to me that my career in TV wasn’t quite turning out the way I’d hoped. So I did what only a few of us on this planet are lucky enough to do, and phoned Charlotte Cox, who told me I should be a writer instead. So that’s what I did. Thanks, Auntie Charles.