She finished with the email address Jitesh had set up for her and then, after a quick trail for episode two, the recording ended.
Jitesh sat back in his chair and considered the audio file on the screen in front of him. It was a little rough around the edges – next time he’d suggest they do the main recording in a smaller, less echoey part of her flat – but the content was great. He cut and pasted the link into the white text box on the iTunes site and hit ‘submit’. Went/Gone was now live. He sent Jessamine a text to let her know, then reopened Meera’s Facebook. He’d check on her one more time, just to be sure.
Monday 9 January
Present day
Jessamine
Jessamine navigated the car carefully down the narrow drive. The tarmac looked recently gritted but she wasn’t taking any chances. Her journey had been full of country lanes covered with black ice.
She parked and peered out at the bed-and-breakfast’s grand Georgian façade. It was three storeys high, with a low, snow-covered hedge, a window peacocked above the front door, and a sign cut into the brick announcing the B-and-B’s name – Wolsy Lodge – in a tasteful font.
Room rates started at £110 a night. Not cheap. But that was hardly surprising. The nearby village and surrounding area were drowning in cash, populated by those who wanted their second home picture-postcard perfect.
She looked up to see someone opening the curtains in one of the first-floor rooms. This was the address that corresponded with the postcode she’d found on the scrap of paper in the back of Cassie’s diary. Had Cassie once stayed there?
The people who ran the place thought not. Jessamine had finally got through to them yesterday. They’d been away for Christmas, to the Maldives for some winter sun. She’d explained the nature of her interest and waited on the phone while they’d checked their records but they’d been unable to find any evidence of Cassie having been a guest. Jessamine had been disappointed but undeterred. Just because Cassie hadn’t turned up in their log didn’t mean she hadn’t been there. She could have stayed under a different name, or maybe the room had been registered to whomever she had been with at the time. O’Brien’s friend had said that Cassie had been caught soliciting. If she was working as a prostitute, perhaps she’d been brought here by a client.
Jessamine asked the guys who ran the place if she could pay them a visit. She said it was to show them Cassie’s photo and see if her face jogged any memories. In truth that was a task easily accomplished over email, but she knew that, when it came to getting to the bottom of a story, there was no substitute for going somewhere in person.
They’d been more than willing to oblige.
Her phone beeped with a text from Jitesh: Forty-two and counting!
She smiled. The podcast had appeared on iTunes last night and, as expected, had yet to make much of a splash. Still, Jitesh was obsessed with monitoring the paltry numbers and every time there was a tiny spike he’d messaged her to let her know. She wondered how long it would take her BBC colleagues to pick up on her new endeavour. Would they think it interesting or amateurish? She didn’t care. For the first time in years she’d created something new. She felt proud.
She zipped up her coat and stepped out into the cold. The change in temperature made her wince. Studying the ground so that she didn’t slip on the rogue patches of ice, she made her way to the front door, rang the bell and waited. The smell of breakfast, bacon and coffee, hung thick on the air.
The door opened and she was greeted by a tanned man wearing a V-neck jumper over a shirt and tie. A checked pinny was tied around his waist.
‘Mr Honeybourne?’
‘That’s my other half,’ said the man, and shouted down the hall. ‘Hugh. There’s someone here to see you.’
An older man appeared. Wearing burgundy cords and a green polo-neck, his face was also lightly tanned. ‘Yes?’ He lowered his glasses and searched the ground near her feet for suitcases.
‘We spoke on the phone.’ She offered her hand. ‘Jessamine Gooch.’
‘The missing woman.’ He stepped back. ‘Come in. You must be freezing.’
Jessamine followed the men into a side room, their reception area. A mahogany desk and chair sat next to a fireplace, a leather-bound visitors’ book and piles of leaflets advertising local attractions arranged next to the computer.
‘I won’t take up much of your time.’ She passed Hugh Honeybourne a photocopy of the newspaper report. ‘This is Cassie Scolari. Nearly two months ago she disappeared. In her diary was a sketch. Printed at the top of the paper on which she drew the sketch, it’s possible to make out a partial letterhead. That letterhead contained your postcode.’
They studied Cassie’s picture carefully, the man in the apron peering over his partner’s shoulder.
‘Never seen her before.’ Hugh passed the picture to the man in the pinny. ‘Malcolm?’
‘Sorry.’ He shook his head. ‘We’ve been here for over ten years.’ He gave the photocopy back. ‘We don’t remember every single person who comes through our doors.’
‘Does Wolsy Lodge have branded stationery?’
‘We do.’ Malcolm reached into one of the desk drawers and presented her with a piece of A4. In the top right was the B-and-B’s logo, a tiny line drawing that depicted the front of the house. The address and phone number sat alongside it and ran the top width of the page. ‘The design has remained the same the whole time.’
Jessie compared it with the close-up photo she’d taken of the paper from Cassie’s diary. Postcode aside, it in no way matched the font.
‘It seems like you came here for nothing,’ said Malcolm. ‘Cup of tea before you go?’
Jessamine declined – the roads were treacherous enough as it was and she didn’t want to risk the temperature dropping any lower – and headed back outside. She was almost at her car when she heard a crunch on the grit.
‘Miss Gooch.’ It was Malcolm, the one in the pinny. He was clutching a piece of paper.
‘We don’t live here on site at the B-and-B, we’re next door.’ He gestured to the right but all Jessamine could see were trees. ‘It occurred to us as soon as you left. The two properties share the same postcode.’ He handed her the scrap of paper. ‘This is the forwarding address of the people who lived in our house before us.’ He shivered and hugged himself against the cold. ‘We never got their name and it’s been over a decade but they might be worth a try.’
Jessamine studied the piece of paper. It was a central London address. Kensington. ‘Thank you. Really, I appreciate it.’ She put the paper into her bag and strode the last two steps to her car. As she reached for the driver’s door her foot made contact with a sheet of black ice and her boot went out from under her. She scrambled for traction, but it was no good. She hit the ground with a thud and lay there, trying to catch her breath. Above, the pale winter sky sailed by, oblivious.
Jitesh
Monday night. The open-air skating rink at Somerset House. Jitesh edged onto the ice and then, keeping hold of the barrier, moved to a spot by the Christmas tree where the crowds were biggest. Five minutes later Meera and Kishor skated past. Smiling and holding hands, their cheeks were pink with cold. It was unlikely they could see him, but as they got close he turned away, to the tree and the grand façade of the house beyond.
His continued vigilance of Meera and her various social-media platforms had finally paid off. Checking her Facebook page this morning, he’d seen a post in which she described how much she was looking forward to going out that night and had tagged Somerset House and Kishor. Again, Jitesh had considered trying to warn her off. Again, he had discarded the idea. In the end he’d decided that the next best thing would be for him to go along and keep an eye on her. He hadn’t accounted for how hard it would be to see her and Kishor together having fun.
Jitesh watched as they performed lap after lap of the ice. Then the music changed and Kishor let go of Meera’s hand. He wove in front of and behind her in an elaborate figure-of-eig
ht loop, his arms crossed in a pose of faux-relaxation. Then he tried to do it again but this time he misjudged it, or maybe he did it on purpose, and cut in front of her at such high speed he almost knocked her off balance. Meera let out a high-pitched scream, delight mixed with fear.
Jitesh shuddered.
That night at the party, after the incident with the frog, Jitesh had gone home. He’d been upset and humiliated, and every time he thought about the fate of that poor creature he’d felt sick but what was he supposed to do? Kishor was obviously a lot more weird and nastier than he’d thought. He told himself it was good to have found that out now, before they got to Cambridge.
Then he went into school on Monday morning.
It started at break time: looking at phones followed by glances his way. The laughing. It seemed Kishor had shown the video of Jitesh and the frog to his friends. Terrified it was all over the internet, Jitesh checked Kishor’s social media, but it turned out he was too smart to share something like that publicly. It would infringe the school’s anti-bullying policy and might even jeopardise Kishor’s place at Cambridge. That left one other possibility. Kishor was sharing the video privately, by email or WhatsApp.
Meera and Kishor rejoined hands, and after completing another few loops together, Kishor motioned to the drinks cabin. Meera nodded, and at the next juncture, he left the rink. The next time she skated by, Jitesh forgot to hide his face. She did a double-take and slowed her pace. Jitesh panicked. She’d seen him, he was sure of it. He was right. She broke away from the throng and skated over to where he stood.
‘I thought it was you.’ Her ruby nose stud twinkled in the light. ‘Here by yourself?’
‘I’m m-m-meeting s-s-someone. Y-you?’
‘I’m on a date.’ She grinned. ‘Kishor, your friend from school. We decided to meet up before we both go back to uni in a few days’ time. He’s gone to get us hot chocolate.’
She took in Jitesh’s grip on the barrier.
‘Come on,’ she said, offering him a gloved hand. ‘We’ll do a lap while you wait for your friend.’ Jitesh shook his head. The thought of being able to touch her was tempting but it was far outweighed by his fear of landing flat on his face.
‘Trust me.’ Slowly, she removed his hand from the barrier, slid her fingers through his and led him forward into the fray. ‘Push your feet out to the side,’ she said, demonstrating for him. ‘One two, one two.’
He tried not to look down. The ice rink was covered with giant blue snowflakes, beautiful but disorienting light projections that moved and shifted in time to the music.
‘There you go,’ said Meera, ‘you’re doing it.’
He didn’t dare turn to look at her for fear of losing his flow, but it didn’t matter, he could hear the smile in her voice.
They completed their first circuit and Jitesh was just starting to relax when he saw Kishor emerging from the cabin clutching two cups heavy with whipped cream. He was suddenly conscious of how his feet felt inside his skates. The blade seemed to be hitting the ice all wrong and the more he thought about the mechanics of the action, the harder it became.
‘You okay?’ said Meera, sensing his discomfort.
The first time one of Kishor’s friends came up behind him at school and made a frog-like, ‘R-r-r-r-ribbit,’ noise in his ear, Jitesh had had to run to the toilet to be sick. The second time it happened he’d been in the lunch queue and had been so upset he’d dropped his entire tray of food on the floor. The taunts continued in class, in study time, on the bus. It went on for weeks. He thought they’d lose interest and that, given enough time, they’d find someone else to pick on, but it came to the end of term and the comments, the nicknames showed no sign of abating. He considered reporting it to the head-teacher, but what good would that do? Kishor would deny it and Jitesh had no proof. Besides, the thought of having to recount the incident to someone else made him cringe with shame. No, the only way he could put a stop to it was by destroying the video, removing it completely from existence.
Jitesh watched as Kishor scanned the ice for Meera.
‘I think my friend is here,’ he said, wanting to extricate himself. ‘I should go.’
Having located Meera, Kishor smiled. But then his gaze moved left, to Jitesh. He was confused at first and then his eyes narrowed.
Jitesh needed to get off the rink. He let go of Meera’s hand and tried to move back to the safety of the barrier but he couldn’t get through – there were too many people. After scrabbling around on the ice for a few seconds, he lost his footing. His skates flew out from underneath him and he fell. He slid across the rink on his back, surface water collecting inside his collar, until finally he came to rest against the barrier. A dull hard thump.
Jessamine
Jessamine sat at the kitchen table, fluorescent marker held aloft. Spread out in front of her were Cassie Scolari’s landline phone logs. She’d spent the last hour working her way through every call made to Cassie’s work extension in the two months leading up to her disappearance. So far there had been no great surprises. A mix of office-supply companies, theatres and HMRC, each had been connected to her job in some way. She processed the final three numbers on the list. The calls Cassie had taken during the day she disappeared. Just as the police had said, there was nothing from Matteo’s school or from anyone else of any note. All done, she gathered up the sheets of A4 and put them to one side. Now for the list of outgoing calls. The batch Cassie’s boss had sent to her by mistake.
There were far fewer, no more than two sheets’ worth. Jessamine was glad: her shoulders were still sore from the drive back from Oxfordshire, and hunching over the kitchen table wasn’t helping matters any.
Her laptop pinged. New email. She opened her inbox and saw three messages, all from Jitesh, all of them forwards from the Went/Gone inbox. In the last few days the number of people downloading the podcast had started to increase, so much so that yesterday, for the first time, it had charted in iTunes’ ‘Crime’ category. And with the downloads came the emails from listeners eager to help. Most were from well-meaning people who wanted to posit their own theories about what had happened to Cassie; others were from weirdos, who said all kinds of strange and unpleasant stuff. Still, she and Jitesh made sure to read them all. The latest lot seemed to be more of the same. One was from a woman in Cardiff, who was certain she’d seen Cassie in the dairy aisle while doing her weekly shop in Sainsburys; another came from a man claiming Cassie was actually an undercover Mossad agent, who had finished her mission and had now returned home to Israel; and a third from a guy who called himself Linus85 and had an image of Snoopy asleep on his kennel as his signature. He introduced himself as a builder from Norwich: although he had no theories or information to offer, he had wanted to get in touch to say how much he’d enjoyed the first episode and thought it a travesty Jessamine was no longer on Radio 4.
She brought up the iTunes app on her phone. It was hard not to keep checking all the time, but the constant feedback was addictive. She punched the air. In the last half-hour they’d climbed another two spots in the Crime chart. She returned her phone to her bag. The response to the podcast was exciting but she needed to focus.
Back to the outgoing phone logs. Looking at the list in front of her, she decided on a simple approach. Every time a new number appeared she would input it into her phone and dial. Then she’d ask the person at the other end who they were and where they worked.
The first people she spoke to were obviously connected to Cassie’s work for the ticketing company. Then Jessamine dialled the twelfth number. Cassie had called it twenty-five days before she had disappeared, at eleven fifteen a.m. The call had lasted one minute and fifty-four seconds.
‘Miguel Hampson’s office.’
Jessamine hesitated. ‘Is it possible to speak to Miguel?’
‘He’s in Shanghai on a project, back next week. I can take a message?’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Jessamine, already reaching for her laptop. She t
yped in the number she had just dialled, with Miguel Hampson’s name. The first hit was for a high-end architecture firm called Mai, Hampson & Oakes. Based in Shoreditch, it specialised in chi-chi office complexes and buildings of national or historical significance. Miguel Hampson was a partner.
She clicked on his thumbnail and was greeted with a picture of Miguel, handsome in a three-piece suit. In his late fifties or early sixties, he had white hair and eyebrows to match. His profile said he had been a partner at the firm for the last twenty years.
What reason had Cassie to call an architect, especially one like Miguel? Even if she and Luca had been thinking of having some work done to their maisonette, Mai, Hampson & Oakes was hardly the kind of company that dealt in loft conversions and side returns.
Jessamine moved onto the next number on the list. An office-supply company. She crossed it off and was about to move on when her eye caught on a number she recognised three entries down. Miguel Hampson’s. Cassie had called him again, the very next day. Jessamine did a quick skim through the remaining pages. Miguel’s number kept appearing. A rough tally had Cassie calling the man on at least ten different occasions over a twenty-day period.
The Dangerous Kind Page 20