Don’t Trust Me

by Joss Stirling

  Now, sitting in the National Portrait Gallery café, I have to ask myself if his anger was a smokescreen. What if it hadn’t been about me? What if he had been rattled that someone was on to him? Had he blown up at me as a handy target and then spent those brooding last few days planning how to silence Jacob? And what about his alibi? Did I know for a fact that he had gone to Berlin? He’d been very eager to get away on our return, but from other trips I know that he hates staying in airport hotels. Perhaps he hadn’t. Perhaps he’d used the time to hunt down and kill Jacob. I’d found my ex-employer after a morning of asking the right questions. Michael was perfectly capable of doing the same.

  Horrible pieces of this new puzzle keep slipping into place. Oh my God, had he even planted the evidence on Jacob and trashed the room himself? Maybe Jacob had never had a chance to break in? What time exactly had Jacob died?

  My phone jigs again. The waitress has been hovering for a while now to clear my cup but the beauty of a pot of tea is that you can always squeeze out just a dribble more as a server approaches, forcing them to swerve off in another direction.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Miss Bridges, it’s Detective Inspector Randall again. I apologise for disturbing you a second time.’

  My heart races. Has someone mentioned that I walked out with a bag that I did not have on arrival? ‘That’s fine. Anything to help.’

  ‘We’re concerned that Mr West might have a dependant who should be informed of his death. There are pictures of a child around the house, also an unidentified woman, and it appears the Kaitlin I mentioned to you is the girl’s name, so I’m thinking now that it wasn’t a case he was going to raise with you.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘There are no photographs of her after the age of about a year or eighteen months, but his kitchen calendar claims she recently had an eighth birthday. Can you cast any light on this for us?’

  I don’t know a Kaitlin but I would find out more if I read further in these files. Kaitlin – Katy? It could be. The explosive entry in Emma’s diary when she decides to leave Jacob suggests this is the case. That means Kaitlin was likely to be that child in the photo right here on the computer desktop. I decide playing ignorant is the best holding strategy while I sort through this jumble of facts and speculations. ‘I’m sorry, Inspector, but I can’t help you there. Jacob never talked about his family at work. He was an extremely private man, as I’ve already mentioned.’

  ‘So why did he write down that message – the one asking if he should talk to you about her?’

  ‘Maybe he thought he could trust me? I’ve been working for him for three months now. Perhaps there’s some tragedy or a failed relationship in the past that makes, made it painful for him to talk about her? Sorry, I’m just guessing here.’

  ‘That’s fine – in fact, it’s helpful. One more thing.’

  Uh-oh.

  ‘We found two glasses of Scotch on the kitchen table, one with a generous serving still in it, the other drained. There’s also a bottle of single malt. Are you sure you didn’t go into the kitchen at any point?’

  ‘Yes, and I don’t drink Scotch.’

  ‘It would be very helpful, then, if you would come to Lewisham police station and be fingerprinted for elimination purposes.’ I sense he’s waiting for me to hesitate.

  ‘No problem. When?’

  ‘As soon as possible. I’d like to understand what happened in Mr West’s house and at the moment it’s not telling a consistent story. Can you come by tomorrow morning?’ Randall leaves me with the address before ending the call.

  My mind is whirling. Michael’s refusal to allow his fingerprints to be taken at our house suddenly takes on a new meaning. Had he known that he could be linked to other crimes if he got fed into the police computer? Has he always been wearing a mask – one that Jacob believed he had detected, a fake persona hiding such terrible acts? Have I been living with a monster and not known? I think through the parts of the diary I’ve read so far. Even when Emma catches him chatting up the young blonde at the swimming pool but calls him on it before he takes it any further. He charms her out of her complaints and distracts her by taking her to bed. Is he a sexual predator when away from his current partner?

  And what about the child whom I had wrongly assumed was Biff’s? I seek out mentions of Kaitlin in Jacob’s files. ‘I wish I’d had a chance to warn Ali about Harrison. When she took Kaitlin and went to live with him, I had no idea of her peril.’ This is seriously twisted stuff. He is calling Emma ‘Ali’ and claims she stole their child away. Skimming over the next part, it looks like Jacob was a back-to-nature kind of guy working on a Forestry Commission plantation and living in a little cottage. That ties in with Emma’s diary. He and Ali fell out over living a carbon-neutral life. Having a kid and washing cloth nappies can test anyone’s principles. That was Emma’s take on the issue too.

  Was Ali a nickname? I can see her not hacking the lifestyle and going back to the city after maternity leave but not letting Jacob know where she went with the kid after she was safely established in her own home? That sounds low. I know she said Jacob was uninterested in the child, but surely that didn’t mean she intended never to let him see Kaitlin again. That’s way harsh, unfair to the child and the man who had been the only father she had known for the first year. It’s not like the woman I’d met in her diary. So why? I can only think that she must have had a very good reason. Was Jacob abusive? But she never said that and I feel she would’ve said something in the diary.

  And what kind of ‘peril’ did Jacob have in mind?

  My mind is full of questions. Possibly the two most pressing are – and it is incredible that I even have to think this way – have I been living with a murderer? And the second: where is Kaitlin? Michael has never, ever mentioned her. Isn’t that at the very least suspicious? I need to read the rest of Emma’s diary and Jacob’s files to find out.

  I’m so shaky with this download of so much information that I don’t think I can navigate public transport back to Feltham. I put in a call to Drew, blurting out words such as ‘dead body’ and ‘police’. Overhearing this, the encroaching waitress swerves away again without so much as a glance at my empty cup.

  ‘Jessica, stay where you are. I’ll text you when I’m outside,’ says Drew.

  ‘You don’t have to drop everything for me.’

  ‘I think I do.’

  Waiting for him to make the half-hour journey into town, I finger my box of pills, wondering if I should take another. I’ve had two already today but they do help me think. I need that boost to my focus.

  But they also make me agitated and I know I need to calm down. I shove them to the bottom of my bag and suck on a mint instead. I can silently hear Charles commending me for my restraint. I don’t like him much but in my psyche he does act as a brake on my more reckless moments – must be the grey-haired-guy authority he oozes. One a day, Jessica. These pills aren’t addictive in the traditional sense but people get hooked on the way they make them feel. I really need to make an appointment with my GP to ask for a repeat prescription; I’m getting through my last one twice as fast as I should.

  Receiving Drew’s message that he’s outside, I bundle everything back into the bag and run. He doesn’t immediately drive off but makes me sit down on a step by the porticoed entrance of St Martins-in-the-Fields.

  ‘OK, deep breath, Jess, and tell me what it is that’s happened. You found a body, did I get that right? And not one of mine.’ He gives me a wry look.

  I nod and try to organise my thoughts so that I can recount my story in some semblance of order. I think I manage to get across the main points. I hide nothing, including the fact that I walked out with Jacob’s laptop without permission.

  ‘Jesus, Jessica, you realise you’ve put yourself in a really bad position?’ he asks at the end.

  ‘I know, but what about that stuff implicating Michael?’

  ‘You’re taking that seriously? Jacob also described you
as some kind of Myra Hindley figure and you were able to dismiss that out of hand.’

  ‘So… So you think it’s all lies? But there’s Emma – or Ali – whoever she was. And then Kaitlin or Katy. I’ve seen the photographs. I know they exist.’

  ‘Anyone can have a picture Photoshopped.’

  ‘But it looked real – a selfie of the three of them in the woods, natural. It would’ve been incredibly difficult to fake. And why would he have it at home where no one but he would see it?’

  ‘OK, how about this theory: maybe Ali changed her name to get away from a guy who wouldn’t let her go? He sounds obsessed with her.’

  ‘And in this scenario, Kaitlin just, what, vanished when her mother died?’

  Drew sighs. ‘Look, I don’t know the details – neither of us were there, were we? But Jacob’s theory just seems so complicated. Wouldn’t it be better not to jump to conclusions and go for the simplest, most normal explanation?’

  ‘Occam’s razor,’ I mutter.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Old theory about making the least assumptions. Right, OK, but the facts don’t all fit a “normal”-world answer. Jacob is dead. So is Ali, or Emma, for that matter. Four girls are missing. Michael must know the truth but he’s never mentioned a Kaitlin, or told me much about Emma’s background, even after five years. Don’t you find that strange? Why the silence?’

  Drew can sense I am getting myself worked up again. He puts a hand on my knee. ‘Jessica, just press pause a moment. You know what happens when people leap to conclusions, add one and one and make fifty-two. Your experience at Eastfields must have taught you that.’

  I rub the back of my neck. ‘Yeah, well, it wasn’t so much one and one equalling fifty-two as one and one equalling about four.’

  He removes his hand. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Look, I wasn’t blameless, so maybe Michael isn’t either? He might not be innocent. I’ve never claimed I was, have I?’ I probably had but I would never stick to that if someone asked for details. I’m not above bending the truth now and again but I wouldn’t tell an out-and-out lie.

  Drew looks at me. God, his expression is so… so disapproving, this from my slightly feral, happy-go-lucky friend whom I thought could understand and accept anything.

  ‘Geez, this is difficult. Drew, that boy who accused me…’

  ‘You said his name was Kyle Parkinson, that he said you molested him, but you hadn’t.’

  ‘Yes, his name was Kyle. And no, I didn’t molest him against his will. You have to understand he was eighteen, a grown-up-looking guy. In fact, he looked more like twenty-two.’

  ‘But he wasn’t.’

  ‘No.’ I gulp. ‘Right, well, it all started as a joke. You know, C’mere miss and give us a kiss. To embarrass me in front of the class. It was a kind of flirtation, I suppose. And then one day he caught me in the classroom when I was on my own. He said the same thing again and I thought I’d call him on it to, you know, stop him doing it again? So I said, All right, and laid one on him – a silly lip smacker, nothing serious. But then he grabbed me and we had a kind of… a moment. The bell went and he left. God, I felt so stupid. How was I going to face him?’

  ‘OK, I understand that. And that was it?’ I can tell from his tone, Drew would really prefer the story to stop there but I feel I owe him honesty.

  ‘Er, no, Kyle sort of stalked me. I’d worked out by now that he really did fancy me. He kept arriving when I was on my own. We got into the habit of having these little fumbling sessions. It got quite… quite heated on a couple of occasions.’ I didn’t want to admit even to Drew that I got a charge from the illicit nature of the encounters, another of my less-than-worthy sexual fantasies. It’s hard to explain to someone whose urges don’t work that way that Kyle was the dominant one and took the lead, despite the age difference between us. ‘School broke up for Christmas and thankfully I had time to get my head straight. When we came back in January I told him firmly that I wasn’t going to do that anymore with him, that I should never have started down this road, that I was sorry. But that just annoyed him. He got angry, called me several very unflattering names. Next thing I know, he’s gone to his head of year, who went to the headteacher, and the whole ice bucket of disapproval got dumped on me. He said I’d started it all, groomed him, and no one believed me when I said he’d been the one who’d pursued me.’

  ‘You know that you’re to blame, right? That you were the adult.’

  ‘He was an adult too.’

  ‘Jessica! You had sex with a fucking teenager!’

  ‘Yes, sorry. No excuses. I was the teacher, he was the student. And I shouldn’t have even put a toe over the line, as I was in a relationship already. Don’t you think I know that I’m bad?’ I pick at the fraying strap on my handbag. ‘I guess I was just feeling like dirt, thanks to Michael’s treatment of me; he’d already begun sneering at me and my less-than-toned body. I went to the wrong person for comfort.’

  Drew is ominously silent. It takes a lot of courage to carry on with this confession but I have to get it all off my chest or it’ll be worse later.

  ‘I resigned before they could boot me out. I deserved that, I suppose, but Lizzy, you know what? She took my side. She’s a teacher so she knows what it’s like, how unforgiving the classroom is, how easily things get twisted. She said my union would probably help me as Kyle was of age and we’d only had, you know, sex a couple of times? I should’ve been suspended, she thought, pending an investigation to get a more even appraisal of what had gone on in the stationery cupboard.’

  ‘You’re joking? A cupboard?’

  I thump my forehead, wishing I could stop blurting things out. I want to confess but I don’t need to spill every single humiliating detail. ‘I know: it was part of the thrill. I’m sorry, but there it is – I get excited about taking risks and I think Kyle guessed that about me. It excited him too. I really don’t think I did any damage to him. We both found it kinda hot. He was just angry that I was able to reject him before he dumped me.’

  ‘You weren’t going out with him, Jessica. He was an eighteen-year-old student in your care.’

  ‘Sorry, bad choice of words. But there was definitely hurt pride in there when he shopped me. And as for going to my union, I had a type of collapse or breakdown so didn’t try to defend myself. The upshot is, now I can’t teach again.’

  ‘You’re lucky not to be on the sex-offenders register,’ says Drew shortly.

  ‘What?’ I’d thought he’d take the truth better than this.

  ‘You always presented yourself as innocent. I thought you’d been wrongly accused but you were actually going at it with a pupil in a school cupboard – Christ, Jessica, don’t you see how wrong that was?’

  ‘Of course I do. But I’m… stupid, OK? I give in to impulses when I shouldn’t. I know myself, blame myself, if that’s what you want to hear. I’m sorry.’ I stand up and shout at the pigeons. ‘Sorry, world, for breathing!’ They flutter off in protest.

  ‘I’m not a hundred per cent sure you are.’ Drew gets to his feet and hands me his spare helmet. ‘I’ll run you back.’

  ‘Is that it? That’s all you’re going to say?’ He is bearing an enormous grudge against me now. I can feel it like a sandwich board swaying between us, not advertising best exchange rates but the drastic decrease in his estimation of me. ‘Look, I know I’m a disaster area. I warned you!’

  ‘Don’t press me now, Jessica. I need some time to think about this.’ He drops the helmet in my hands, forcing me to catch it.

  My eyes are brimming but tears aren’t going to solve this. I don’t deserve pity. I’d offer to go to a hotel but I don’t have the money. I’d offer to crash on someone else’s sofa but I don’t have another friend I can go to. My God, I’m pathetic. ‘Do… do you want me to find somewhere else to stay?’ I could ring Mum and ask her to foot the bill for a Travelodge. Just the once wouldn’t be too bad, would it?

  ‘I said I wouldn’t throw you o
ut. I’m not Michael.’ Drew gets on the moped and waits for me to mount behind him. It’s about as inviting as getting on a bed of nails.

  I gingerly put my hands around his waist. ‘No, you’re not Michael.’ Except that Drew has joined the club of those who are disappointed in me. If even Drew despises me, why am I bothering? Why don’t I just give up now? No one would care and quite a few would be relieved.

  Except Mum. It makes me feel even more wretched that I’ve reached thirty and only have a mother who would miss me. That in itself is almost reason enough to top myself.

  Chapter 25

  12th August

  I wake up with a familiar feeling of hating myself. What is wrong with me? Well, I know what’s wrong with me, so the question really is: why can’t I handle myself better, knowing what my problem is? I remember this feeling from the sorry story of my learning to drive. I eventually passed on my fourth attempt but when I ventured onto the motorway for the first time, I was scared stiff of causing an accident. My life: knowing the theory but feeling a bit out of control of the vehicle.

  I don’t drive much now – another result of living with Michael, who wouldn’t dream of letting me behind the wheel of his car. He has a nice BMW 1 Series in midnight blue parked outside the house. Three-door sports hatchback, he says at dinner parties when guys ask him, three hundred and forty HP. When asked what my partner drives, I just say it’s blue. I do know the specs – he’s got the souped-up version – but, God, can you imagine a more boring conversation? In any case, with his academic friends, it’s usually the blind leading the blind. I expect most of them don’t look under the bonnet of their own cars, so why pretend interest in a vehicle when someone brags? Michael is fond of it, though, because he thinks it reflects well on him. He’s prepared for it to get keyed while parked on the street, but not to have me put a ding in it trying to park it at the supermarket. That’s a direct quote, by the way.

  Damn him.

  I get out of bed, anger surging. I don’t want to be the timid driver who doesn’t know how to overtake a lorry or judge the speed of approaching vehicles. I don’t want to pull over onto the hard shoulder to breathe through a panic attack.