“Yes.”
“When did he tell you?”
Her gaze drops to the table. “Please don’t judge me.”
“I won’t.” I decide to hear whatever it is she has to say, but remind myself to remain wary of what she’s telling me. Part of me wants to believe her, but at the same time, I know I can’t always trust my own judgement. Perhaps I’m jaded after dealing with the Isabel’s of this world, but much of what she says and does feels like attention seeking.
“It was in bed,” she says. “He was on coke, completely out of it. We’d just finished…” she glances at her wrist, which is exposed again, and she tugs down her top. Her face flushes red. This time, she comes across as real. A young girl caught up in a tangled web.
“He did that to you, didn’t he?”
“It’s a game, that’s all. A kinda kinky game” She gestures with her hands, giving a no big deal shrug of her shoulders. Yet again she reminds me of Dominic, passing off domestic abuse by making it all seem like a game.
“I’m confused,” I say. “How did you and Neal become a couple? You seemed so convinced that he was a bad person. You met me and told me that he may have killed your best friend. I’m sorry, Cassie, but I don’t see why I should believe you. First you say the bruise is makeup, then you say it’s real, but it’s from rough sex.”
“I know it sounds bad. Please, please don’t dismiss me.” She reaches across and takes my hand, moving so quickly that I instinctively move away from her. “I want the same thing you want. I want to get the movie shut down, because I don’t believe in it anymore. All these people are hurt because of the movie, because of Isabel escaping from prison.”
“How are you going to get it shut down?”
“If Neal is arrested then the film will have to stop,” she says. Her eyes plead with me. Big and round, like puppy dog eyes. She’s a perfect fit for Isabel’s character, with the same kind of open face that you instinctively trust. Cassie is so pretty that the effect is quite alarming.
I sigh. “I want to help you, but I can’t trust you. These meetings where you tell me Neal is responsible, don’t match up with your relationship with him. None of it makes sense and Isabel is out there murdering people. She just strangled…” I tail off, remembering that DCI Murphy gave me early access to this information.
“What? Who?” Cassie prompts.
“Her mother,” I finish. “Anna Fielding.”
Her hand flies to her mouth, fingers trembling. “Oh no. Moira will be so upset.”
“Who’s Moira?”
“The actress playing Isabel’s mother. They met and Moira felt so sorry for her.”
“Isabel’s mother wasn’t a saint,” I say. “I’m not saying she deserved to die, but she was neglectful and turned a blind eye to what went on in that house.”
“You don’t think that a husband can trick a wife?” Cassie asks, wrapping her hands around her tea. “Isn’t that what your father did to your mother?”
Someone opens the café door and the bell rings. I start, and then exhale. I don’t know how to respond to that. I don’t want to respond to it.
“Sorry,” Cassie says. “I’m so sorry, that was completely tactless.”
“It’s true though. I’ve known too many women, including myself, who have been tricked by narcissists and sociopaths.” As I say the words, I wonder whether I’ve been too harsh on Cassie’s relationship with her director. She’s so young, she could have easily been seduced by him. By the promises he made to her. “Tell me more about Neal. How did your relationship with him begin?”
“It was so stupid.” She bites her lip, in that childish way I remembered from last time. “We were drunk. He kept telling me all about how I was talented, and he’d make me a star. I had a few glasses of champagne and I felt totally lit. Which isn’t like me. I guess I hadn’t eaten enough. We went to a club and then we got a taxi and I remember him kissing me. The rest is a bit blurry. But the next day we stayed in his hotel room talking about the future and the kind of roles he’ll write for me.”
“You don’t remember if you had sex?”
She frowns. “No. All I know is that I woke up in his bed.”
“What? In your clothes?”
She shakes her head.
“Do you think he could have drugged you?”
“I didn’t at the time,” she says. “But I don’t know now.”
“Cassie, do you have your phone with you?”
“It’s at home,” she says. “I forgot it.”
“I think you should call your parents and stay with them for a while. Get out of this film, go to the police about Neal and most of all be safe. How old are you?”
“Twenty,” she says.
“Do you have someone with you? A friend? A relative?”
She shakes her head. “I’m fine, I’m over eighteen.”
“You’re still a child.”
“I’m over eighteen!”
“You know what I mean. This man is taking advantage of you. Even though you suspect him of all these crimes you’re still with him because he made you believe you were wrong. He spun you promises and platitudes. Now you have a bruise on your wrist, and you’re afraid of him. Isn’t that true?”
She bends her head. “Yes, it’s all true. I’ll call my mum and go home. I thought I could do this. I think playing Isabel has messed with my head. Some days I don’t know what’s real and what isn’t.”
I hand her a tissue and she blows her nose. “You’re not the first person to be tricked by a person like Neal, you know. And you certainly won’t be the last.” I reach over and rub her arm, feeling responsible for her, but at the same time completely overwhelmed by the situation. I can’t take on another person’s problems when I have several of my own. And yet I can’t leave her here like this. “Do you want help getting home?”
“No, I’ll be fine,” she says. She lifts her head, mops up her tears and clears her throat. “Thank you for everything. Sorry I keep bothering you.”
“It’s not a problem. But promise me you’ll go back to your parents.”
She makes that promise and leaves shortly after. I stay to finish my coffee before heading off to my car. If Cassie wasn’t so all over the place emotionally, I would suspect that she was trying to distract or manipulate me. But I think that her role as Isabel is making me view her in a different light. She even admitted that the role is affecting her psyche.
On top of that, I don’t know what to make of her strange relationship with Neal. I know that creatives sometime live within a different set of morals, putting their art above everything else, but even still, the whole thing is odd. I want to believe her, but I suspect her to be a fantasist. Even so, I make a mental note to check in with her from time to time to make sure she’s doing okay. Whether she’s lying or not, she seems vulnerable, especially with Isabel out there. A narcissist might be particularly tempted to kill their own doppelganger.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Seb
The dirt is frozen beneath the snow. No matter how hard I hit the soil with the shovel, nothing is getting through. Fucking snow. Fucking farm. What’s the point of having land with bad soil? Dad could never get any crops to take. We relied on beef farming back then, but it stopped making money. Then the climate changed and now the summers are too hot, and the autumn too wet. The world is changing, and like Josh always told me, I’m being left behind. If there was a stick in this ground, that would be me, a cold rod in frozen ground. Immovable. I’m the one holding back progress, complaining about everything. What happened to me? How did I end up here?
The dead fox looks at me with glassy eyes, a tongue lolling out of the side of its mouth. What possessed me to pick it up off the road and decide to dig a grave? What’s the point? Someone ran over this creature and now I feel compelled to lay it to rest. Foxes are beautiful creatures on the outside, but unpleasant on the inside. One of the few animals that kill for pleasure. The entire Fielding family are foxes, and we’
re the sitting ducks waiting for them.
Eventually, the ground breaks, and I manage to go deep enough for an animal grave. A moment after I toss the animal in, my phone rings and I yank it out of my pocket, dirty fingers spreading soil on my jeans pocket.
“Yeah.”
“Mr Braithwaite?”
“Speaking.”
“It’s Patterson Lester from Lester Investigation. I have some information for you about the person you wanted to find. Do you have a pen?”
“I’ll have to call you back. I’m outside at the moment. I’ll go to the house. It’ll be five or ten minutes if that’s all right?”
“No problem, I’m in the office all day.”
I throw down the shovel without even bothering to cover the fox first and make my way to the house to find a pen, bracing myself against the cold wind. One week away from Christmas and the weather is about to turn. We’ll be getting deep snow soon. Despite being a thick farmer who never bested a C at school, I know one thing for sure, we need to find Josh now.
Leah doesn’t know anything about the private investigator I hired. But she couldn’t know, because I hired them to find out if Tom was involved. While she was out meeting that actress, someone from their office told me a few interesting facts about the case. According to Lester’s colleague, there were two sets of DNA evidence found at the scene of Jess Hopkins murder. One was a match for Tom Smith.
But it wasn’t conclusive. The DNA wasn’t found on the body, it was found at the scene. We all know that Tom discovered the body, which muddies the waters.
The second set of DNA turned out to be “inconclusive”. Whatever that means. According to the investigator, it doesn’t mean that the murderer wasn’t Isabel or her brother, it meant that they didn’t manage to find a match. This was the DNA found on the body. The DNA that matters.
I don’t know what I was expecting or hoping for. Anything more conclusive than what he found, I suppose. But it was better than nothing.
As soon as I walk into the kitchen, Patch whines at me, disappointed that Josh isn’t with me. I bend down by the mat and start removing my wellies.
“Mum, it’s me. Where are the pens?” I shout, half bent.
“Hi.”
I’d been so busy with my boots that I hadn’t noticed him. But there he is, bold as anything in my family home. “What are you doing here?”
“Leah invited me,” Tom says. He tucks his hands into the pockets of his jeans.
It feels like he’s smirking at me, like he can get away with anything he wants to get away with. Before I know what I’m doing I have him pressed up against the kitchen wall. “Where’s Josh you little prick? I know you’re working with her.”
“Get the fuck off me. What are you going on about?”
“Isabel. I bet you’ve been secretly writing to her, haven’t you? You know where she is, don’t you? Did you help her kidnap my brother? Or did you kill him together?”
“Stop being an idiot,” he says. “I didn’t do any of those things.”
He pushes back, and he’s stronger, until I tap into the frustration and grief. I lift my forearm until it’s underneath his chin. Tom lands a knee in my abdomen and I lose part of my grip. But I still have enough resolve to keep hold of him as he squirms beneath me. I keep hold of him until I hear movement upstairs. Mum’s still in the house, possibly listening to all of this, I drag him away from the wall by the collar of his jacket, and out of the kitchen door into the yard. It’s then I let him go and square up, ready to hit that smug face of his.
He lifts his hands. “You were kind to me once. Remember? We used to get on just fine. Look, I’m not going to fight you.” He dances away from me when I lurch towards him. He ducks to the left to avoid a punch. “Let me explain everything because you’re half right, Seb. And then you can do whatever you want. Go to the police, smash my face in, I don’t care. I’ve made a mess of everything.” His face scrunches up into a grimace. I don’t want to believe he’s in pain, so I turn away.
“Go on then,” I say. “Speak.”
“I didn’t kill Jess, but I did kill Alison Finlay.”
His words send a chill down my spine. I was right. I was living with a killer and I was too stupid to know it. But when I begin walking towards him, he backs away.
“I was in a dark place. I know it isn’t an excuse, but it started with my father. I don’t know why I did what I did. I guess killing David Fielding changed me. It made me someone I’m not. I… I haven’t hurt anyone since then. I swear. That’s why I go to the AA meetings. I told Leah all of this earlier today because she thought maybe I’d hurt Dominic. I didn’t. I loved him. I didn’t hurt Jess or your brother and I’ve never been in touch with Isabel.”
“Why should I believe a murderer?”
“You shouldn’t,” he says. “Call the police. I’ll confess everything.”
I consider it for a moment. “Did you make Leah think she’d killed Alison Findlay?”
“Yes,” he says. “I did.”
“And yet you claim you care for her?”
“I love her,” he says. “But I’d just found out that she’d lied to me my entire life. You’ve no idea how much that hurt. All I wanted to do was numb the pain until I couldn’t feel anything. I knew that if she remembered me coming home covered in blood, she’d know what I’d done. That’s why I tricked her.”
“And then you went on tricking her, with the birds.”
His eyes open wider in surprise. “No, that wasn’t to trick her. I got… I started to think I was like Isabel… They began to fascinate me. And then I met Dominic and I understood that it was all a lie. I wanted the pain to stop. That’s all. For it to stop.”
I don’t want to believe him, but I know the life he’s had. Fuck. This boy is pitiful. Strange and messed up, yes. But I feel sorry for him.
“Go on. Call the police, Seb,” he says. “It’s time I paid for what I did.”
I take the phone back out of my jeans and stare at it. “I have a better idea.”
He lifts his shoulders quickly, in a frustrated way, as though he wants this to be over once and for all.
“I hired a private investigator. The police are stretched, limited by budgets, but my guy has other methods. He thinks he’s found where Isabel is. I’m going to call him back and get the address, and then you and I are going to go to that address. We’re going to finish this once and for all.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Leah
I climb into my car and turn on the heater, leaving it running for a moment while I warm up. As I rub my hands together for warmth, it takes me back to my first day at Crowmont in my old car. Not yet acclimatised to the slight edge to the Northern weather, anxious about my first day at a new job, and still reeling from Mum’s death. It was the beginning of my illness.
After being diagnosed, I could never imagine voluntarily giving up my strongest medication, and yet I have, for my baby. It hasn’t been long, but I often find myself wondering whether I’m in the grip of paranoia. And with Dominic’s death, and Josh’s disappearance, I feel more on edge than ever. So much so, that when there’s a knock on the passenger window, I throw my hand up to my heart. But it’s just Cassie waving at me through the window. She gestures for me to open the door and I oblige. Without asking, she climbs into the passenger seat.
“Hi, sorry to bother you again,” she says. “I was about to walk back to my hotel, when I decided that I didn’t want to be alone. It was such an intense conversation and I’m sort of struggling to process what we talked about.”
Even though she talks like an actress, or at least there’s a definite generational gap between the way we talk, and it grates on me slightly, I feel for her. But at the same time, I don’t want to bring her into my life. I don’t need another wounded animal to care for. “Oh, well, I’m actually about to go home—”
She interrupts me by pushing her sleeve further down her arm, to reveal the red welts all the way up to her elbow. I
can’t help it, I gasp.
“It’s lucky that Isabel is always covered up,” she says. “Or I’d have to answer a lot of awkward questions.”
“Did you do this to yourself?” I ask.
Her eyes flood with tears and her face crumples into an emotional grimace. “Yeah. It was me. I’ve done it ever since taking this acting job. She’s infecting me, Leah. The longer I play Isabel, the more I want to hurt myself. I don’t know what to do.” She wipes her eyes with her sleeves and clears her throat. “All I know is I can’t be alone. Can I come back with you? To the cottage? I’d love to see it. I’ve heard so much about it.”
“On one condition. You’re not going to be playing Isabel anymore,” I say. “You’re going to quit this job and then go to the police about Neal. Whatever or whoever Neal is, he’s at least a domestic abuser. Okay? All of these stressors are contributing to this.”
She nods. “You’re right. I thought it’d be kinda interesting to see the cottage after all the research I did. We never got ‘round to filming the scene where Isabel hides in the attic. To be honest, it was one of the parts I was dreading the most. Being up in a dark, cramped space. I’m afraid of spiders.”
“Maybe going to the cottage isn’t such a good idea. Maybe I should drive you to a family member’s house? Or a friend’s place?”
Cassie leans back in the seat and sighs. “Honestly, Leah, I’m getting so tired of your trite bullshit.”
“Excuse me?”
There’s sudden sunlight in my eyes, a flash of metal comes out of Cassie’s sleeve, reflecting the light. I reach out to grab her wrist but she slashes my palm and then pushes the tip of the knife against my ribs.
“I learned a few other tricks from playing Isabel. I researched anatomy for one, so I know that my knife is now extremely close to your heart,” she says. “I can slide this thin blade between your ribs and kill you in an instant. You won’t suffer much, if that’s a concern of yours. But I don’t want to do that. I want you to drive back to the cottage so we can talk for a while.”
Three For A Girl (Isabel Fielding Book 3) Page 17