The Deadline Series Boxset

by Wendy Soliman

Tyler pulled his car up in front of the Seaton residence and cut the engine. Seaton’s car was nowhere in sight.

  ‘Ready?’ he asked, reaching across to squeeze Alexi’s hand.

  ‘As I ever will be.’

  They rang the bell but no one answered.

  ‘Don’t say she’s out, too.’ Alexi had psyched herself up for the interview and wanted to get it over with.

  ‘Let’s go round the back.’

  Fay was down the end of the large garden, pruning something. She looked up when she heard them approach and smiled.

  ‘Oh, hello again.’ Alexi noticed hope flare in her eyes and hated what they were about to do to her. ‘Do you have more news? About Natalie, I mean. Let’s go into the house. It will be more comfortable talking there…oh my goodness!’ Fay clasped a hand over her mouth. ‘Whatever happened to you?’

  ‘I had an accident, but I’m okay.’

  ‘You don’t look it, my dear. Is there anything I can get you?’

  This lady had a natural motherly instinct, Alexi thought. It seemed grossly unfair that she hadn’t been able to have children of her own when other women bred like rabbits and then burdened the state with responsibility for their offspring.

  ‘I’m fine, thanks.’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure.’

  She led them through the patio doors directly into the lounge and asked them if they would like tea. They declined. They had agreed in the car that Alexi would break the news, woman to woman. Now she remembered all the reasons why it was better not to volunteer for anything and wished herself miles away. Fay sat upright in an armchair, her expression a combination of anticipation and resignation, as though a part of her sensed what she was about to hear but the rest of her wasn’t ready to deal with it.

  ‘It’s bad news, isn’t it?’ she said softly. ‘I call tell from your expression.’

  ‘The very worst, I’m afraid.’ Alexi crouched beside her, ignoring the protest from her injured knee as she took the older lady’s hand. ‘I’m so very sorry.’

  ‘I think I’ve always known she must be dead.’ Tears flowed freely down Fay’s cheeks. ‘It’s a relief to know, in a way. How, when, did she die?’

  ‘She was murdered.’

  ‘Oh my!’ Fay lifted a trembling hand to her mouth. ‘You hear about child abductions but you never think—’

  ‘This didn’t happen when she was a child, Fay. It was just a few days ago.’

  Fay shook her head, looking lost and bewildered. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Up until a week ago Natalie was living in Lambourn.’

  ‘Lambourn? Why does that sound…just a minute, that famous trainer? It was all over the news this morning. That’s why the name of the village sounded familiar. My husband was quite put out about it, which struck me as odd. He’s never taken an interest in horseracing. He was arrested in connection with the disappearance of a local woman; the trainer, that is. Was the woman…was she my Natalie?’

  Alexi squeezed her hand and nodded. ‘I’m so very sorry.’

  ‘But she might not actually be dead.’ Hope flared in her eyes. ‘They said they haven’t found a body.’

  ‘She’s dead, I’m afraid,’ Alexi replied. ‘These bruises…you asked me how I got them. Well, Fuller tried to kill me yesterday. I was in Natalie’s cottage, looking for more clues about her disappearance because we couldn’t get the police to take it seriously, and he caught me there.’

  ‘What’s going on? What did Natalie get caught up in?’ Fay looked as though she was holding on by a whisker. But she had willpower that she probably seldom allowed to show, as evidenced in her determination to adopt a child against the wishes of a strong-willed husband whom she never normally crossed. She was going to need all that strength of character to see her through this nightmare. ‘Please tell me.’

  Alexi did, explaining about Natalie’s birth mother and the actions Natalie had subsequently taken.

  ‘She must have been devastated, but blackmail…’ Fay produced a handkerchief and mopped her eyes. ‘And that doesn’t explain why she left here when she was fourteen. I need to know what I did to drive her away.’

  It was typical of the woman’s self-effacing attitude that she automatically assumed the blame was hers. Alexi shared a brief glance with Tyler, guessing he felt as determined as she did to set her straight on that score.

  ‘About that, Fay.’

  ‘You know, don’t you? Please, tell me.’ She sat forward. ‘Nothing can be worse than the various scenarios I’ve envisaged over the years.’

  Don’t bet the farm on that. ‘Do you remember that award do Natalie went to with your husband?’

  ‘Of course. She was so excited. She had a new dress. Cornflower blue. She looked lovely in it, but she was very off with me because she thought I should have put Gerry’s interests ahead of my own and gone to the do as well. She was too young to understand…I wasn’t good in those sorts of situations. I was more of a hindrance than a help really. Gerry was better off without me cramping his style.’

  Ah, Alexi thought, so she knew, or suspected, that her husband played away from home and didn’t mind. But she couldn’t possibly be aware of the depths of his depravity. As gently as she could, Alexi explained what had happened.

  ‘No!’ All colour drained from Fay’s face and she looked on the point of passing out. ‘Don’t say such wicked things. I refuse to listen. I don’t believe a word of it.’

  ‘Get her some water, Tyler.’

  He returned from the kitchen with a glass and Alexi held it to Fay’s lips. ‘Take deep breaths and try to stay calm. Drink some water, it will help.’

  ‘My husband is far from perfect,’ she managed to splutter, anger overcoming shock. ‘But he loved Natalie and would never do something so terrible.’

  ‘We can prove it,’ Alexi said softly.

  ‘If he had, she would have told me. We talked about everything.’

  ‘She was lost and confused, unsure—’

  ‘If you think she was afraid to tell me then you’ve got it all wrong.’

  ‘See for yourself.’ Tyler handed her the incriminating diary, opened to the appropriate page.

  She gasped when she saw the pink cover decorated with pictures of ponies. ‘That’s Natalie’s! Where did you get it?’

  ‘I found it in her cottage in Lambourn,’ Alexi replied. ‘Read those pages and tell me if you think a fourteen-year-old could possibly make something like that up.’

  Fay reached for a pair of glasses and started to read. Sobs racked her body before she was halfway down the page. The diary fell from her fingers, which is when Alexi knew she had accepted the terrible truth. She enfolded the older woman in her arms and simply let her cry.

  ‘I’ve lived with that monster all these years and didn’t have a clue. How could I not have known? How could Natalie not have told me? Surely she knew I would do anything for her.’

  They allowed Fay to rant and ask questions to which they had no answers. Eventually she asked one they could reply to—one which they would much prefer not to answer since it would cause Fay more pain.

  ‘I can understand now why she ran away again, after they brought her back that first time. What I don’t know is how she managed to support herself. She was only just fifteen.’

  Alexi told her the brutal truth. Fay had stopped crying and took it with surprising calm.

  ‘She lost all respect for herself, I suppose, discovered that men liked her and so used that to her advantage.’ She sighed. ‘She was the sweetest little girl, but Gerry’s actions made her grow up overnight and become hard.’ She glowered at the opposite wall. ‘I shall never forgive him for that. Never.’ Her voice softened, and Alexi struggled to hear what she said next. ‘And I shall never forgive myself for failing her when she needed me the most. For not noticing. I knew something was wrong but when she pushed me away and became evasive I gave her some space, thinking it was a simple case of teenage angst.’ She shook her head, self-disgust
evident in her expression. ‘I took the easy way out and cost our daughter her life.’

  ‘It is not your fault,’ Alexi replied. ‘Never think that.’

  ‘We needed to tell you all this,’ Tyler said, ‘because the police will discover who she was sooner or later and will want to talk to you. We didn’t want it to come as a complete shock.’

  ‘Thank you for that, anyway.’ She straightened her spine, a determined expression pushing aside her bewilderment. ‘I know now what I must do.’

  Before Alexi could ask what she meant by that, Tyler spoke. ‘Natalie contacted your husband a while back and extracted money from him as well, just after she gave up working at the agency and moved to Lambourn. We think it was her way of expunging her past and gaining a modicum of revenge.’

  ‘I hope she took the bastard for every spare penny he had,’ she replied aggressively, her jaw trembling with emotion.

  ‘Will you be all right?’ Alexi asked. ‘Is there anyone we can call to be with you?’

  She looked at Alexi as though she’d grown a second head. ‘Do you honestly think I intend to spend another moment beneath this roof with that pervert?’

  ‘But your life, your garden—’

  ‘Is just a garden. I want to see where Natalie lived these past few years, and what sort of a life she’d made for herself. I…I also want to be close by if her body’s found. I failed her in life. I don’t aim to fail her in death as well. Will you take me back with you? There must be a hotel I can put up at.’

  ‘Of course,’ Alexi replied, giving her shoulders a gentle squeeze, ‘if that’s what you’d like. You can stay in my friends’ hotel. It was Cheryl who asked me to look for Natalie. She was Natalie’s friend and will be able to tell you a lot more about her than I can.’

  ‘She set up a business in floral design,’ Tyler added.

  Fay managed a watery smile. ‘She had green fingers, even as a small child. I encouraged that. I’m glad I did something to influence her choices in later life.’

  ‘Shall I help you pack?’ Alexi asked. ‘We need to do it now. We don’t want your husband to come home and find us here.’

  ‘Whereas I would welcome the confrontation,’ Fay replied. ‘Although one of us probably wouldn’t survive it, and that someone is not me.’

  Twenty minutes later Tyler carried a suitcase down the stairs for Fay and Alexi toted the only other bag she intended to take.

  ‘You can always pop back for more things if you decide to prolong your absence,’ Tyler said.

  Fay shot him a disparaging look. ‘Do you seriously imagine I intend to ever set foot in this house again?’ Her resolute expression was, Alexi thought, a graphic demonstration of the extent of her love for her adoptive child. ‘Let him move one of his bimbos in. She can wash his socks and put up with his sour moods.’

  Fay scribbled a note that said gone away for a few days and left it in the centre of the kitchen table.

  ‘That’ll shake him,’ she said, a flash of defiance temporarily pushing aside the despair in her eyes. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever gone anywhere before without his prior knowledge and consent.’

  ‘He’ll suspect you know about Natalie,’ Tyler warned her. ‘Because, excuse me, as far as I can tell, Natalie is the only thing you’ve ever defied him over.’

  ‘So far.’

  They went out to the car, which is when Alexi remembered about Cosmo. Before she could remind Tyler, he’d unlocked the car and opened the rear door for Fay. Cosmo, curled up asleep, opened his eyes wide as Fay slid onto the seat beside him. He blinked at her in his customary lazy, contemplative fashion, as though sizing her up.

  ‘Oh, a cat. How nice. I love cats but Gerry would never let me have one. He’s allergic.’

  ‘Be careful,’ Alexi warned, smiling when she thought about Seaton’s confrontation with Cosmo the previous day. He would be even more allergic now. ‘He’s not very sociable.’

  ‘Of course he is.’

  Cosmo proved her point by climbing onto her lap and purring up a storm.

  ‘Remarkable,’ Alexi muttered, sharing a glance with Tyler. ‘He’s in danger of becoming socially acceptable.’

  ‘Nah,’ Tyler replied as he opened the passenger door for Alexi. ‘He has a highly developed sense of territory and knows Fay is no threat to his cushy existence. He’s also just the distraction she needs right now.’

  ‘Distractions are Cosmo’s speciality,’ Alexi said, again thinking of how he’d kept Seaton pinned to the spot by hissing at him.

  She turned sideways in her seat and watched Fay for the duration of the trip back to Lambourn. She didn’t speak at all, focusing her attention upon Cosmo, stroking him almost aggressively. Occasionally tears pooled her eyes, but Alexi detected steely resolve emerging through the lady’s grief. She had mourned her daughter’s loss for almost thirty years, so the pain wasn’t as raw as it might otherwise have been. In fact, she seemed relieved to finally know the truth. We never really know what we’re made of until faced with the ultimate challenge, Alexi thought, reminded of how often that had proved to be the case with the victims she’d interviewed during the course of her career.

  ‘Do you think Natalie was Gerry’s only victim or does he make a habit out of under-age girls?’ Fay asked pensively as they reached the outskirts of Lambourn.

  ‘Men with those sorts of persuasions seldom stop at one,’ Tyler replied.

  ‘Then we must make the police aware of what he did to our daughter. That might encourage others to come forward.’

  ‘I wouldn’t recommend it,’ Tyler said. ‘Quite apart from anything else, the CPS would be reluctant to prosecute because, unfortunately, Natalie is no longer alive to accuse him. Her written word wouldn’t be enough to secure a prosecution.’

  ‘And besides,’ Alexi added. ‘If Fuller doesn’t confess to killing Natalie his lawyer will try and find another person with a reason to silence her. She did blackmail your husband and threaten to tell the world what he did to her. That’s a pretty powerful motive and might fill a jury’s mind with enough doubt to acquit Fuller.’

  ‘Possibly, but it infuriates me that Gerry should continue to get away with it.’

  ‘We’ll find another way to make him pay,’ Tyler assured her.

  ‘Natalie’s cottage is down that lane,’ Alexi said, indicating the turning as they passed it. ‘We’ll show you it as soon as we can. At the moment it’s still a crime scene and we wouldn’t be allowed inside.’

  ‘Thank you. You’re being very kind.’

  Tyler’s mobile rang. He used the hands-free device to take the call. ‘Fuller’s talking,’ a voice said.

  ‘A sergeant friend of mine at Reading nick,’ Tyler mouthed to Alexi. ‘Right,’ he said in a normal voice into the phone, ‘is he putting his hand up?’

  Alexi sensed Fay’s tension and reached between the seats to take her hand as they both listened.

  ‘There’s been a right to-do,’ the sergeant replied, chuckling. ‘His wife’s disowned him and is legging back to the States, refusing to foot his legal bills. His brief heard that and disappeared faster than a fiver staked on a hundred-to-one outsider. Our boys took the opportunity to explain a few facts of life to Fuller while he was between lawyers and made him understand he’s going down for a long stretch, even if we never find Natalie’s body. We’ve got him banged to rights for trying to throttle Ms Ellis and having underage sex with Natalie’s mum.’ Alexi’s free hand instinctively touched the bruises circling her throat. ‘The media would crucify him.’

  ‘Count on it,’ Alexi muttered.

  ‘Anyway, he’s admitted to killing her.’ There was a collective release of breath within the car. ‘He says it was an accident. They were talking, got into an argument, he struck her, she fell and hit her head and…well, you know the score.’

  ‘Did he say where she is?’

  ‘Yeah, he says he panicked, like they all do, and instead of calling us to the scene of a fatal accident, he put her on his
quad bike and took her up to Membury Woods. She’s in a shallow grave. There’s a team up there now.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Tyler said grimly, cutting the connection.

  ‘It’s over, Fay,’ Alexi said softly as they turned into Hopgood House.

  ‘I wish…I wish I could do something,’ Fay replied, choking on a sob. ‘But I can’t even offer to identify my own daughter.’

  ‘Drew will probably do that,’ Alexi replied, deeply moved.

  ‘I haven’t seen her in so many years that I wouldn’t know her if we passed on the street. I did that for a long time, you know. Looked at strangers with her build and colouring who were about the age she would have been at the time, and wondered if it could be her. In a strange sort of way, it helped me to cope.’

  ‘We’ll help you to cope now,’ Alexi replied. ‘For as long as you need us to.’

  ‘Does this mean I don’t have to tread on eggshells around Gerry anymore?’ she asked as Tyler opened the car door for her and Cosmo streaked out of it ahead of her.

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘What do you intend to do?’ Alexi asked.

  ‘Divorce the bastard, of course,’ she replied simply. ‘I shall follow Natalie’s example and hit him where it hurts the most. There are only two things that Gerry likes more than himself and they are money and his reputation. I shall take half of the first by threatening to destroy the second.’

  ‘Atagirl!’

  ‘Believe it or not, I have considered divorcing him more than once, but I never found the courage. My life was okay because as long as I ran the house he left me to pursue my own interests. I didn’t ask him where he was, or what he was doing, which suited us both. Besides, I would never have got a fair deal. He would have bullied me into accepting a fraction of what was due to me.’ She closed her eyes and allowed tears to seep from beneath her lowered lids. ‘But now, thanks to Natalie, I can take what’s mine.’

  Chapter Twenty

  There was a media frenzy in Lambourn once Natalie’s body was found and identified. Fuller was charged with murder, rape of a minor and the attempted murder of Alexi—although her name as the victim hadn’t yet been released. All the hotels within a ten-mile radius were booked out and the pubs struggled to keep up with demand. Television trucks blocked the lanes and locals brave enough to venture out of doors had microphones shoved beneath their noses wherever they went. If you were a villager, it followed you had to know something newsworthy. A sound bite for the six-o’clock bulletin. How hard could it be to get one?