I email the desk, tell them I am checking out a tip, that I’ll be on my mobile if they need me. I slip out before anyone can ask questions. I look at my watch as I hurry through the glass doors. 17.55. The roads will be jammed. I’ll have to catch the Tube.
It takes a while to get from west to east. I hurtle through darkness, pressed against strangers, staring up at the long white lights in the ceiling of the Tube carriages, like dashes from here to there. None of us speak. There is only the shudder of the train, the anonymous whistle of air and metal. My eyes flit between the adverts. A sign says we should report any suspicious activity. A new lot of people crowd on at Oxford Circus, their hair soaking wet. Puddles start to form on the ground, umbrellas dripping, coats and backpacks splattered with water.
The address turns out to be a tower block, one of the few left on this side of town. After Grenfell we’d done a big investigation into these blocks, tried to find out how many more were death traps, coated in dangerous cladding, at risk of infernos. I’d been haunted by thoughts of fire for a long time after covering Grenfell. I couldn’t stop thinking about all those people, trapped like animals on the upper floors.
This must have been one of the death trap blocks, because it looks like they are starting to strip it. The outside is covered in scaffolding, billowing tarpaulins hitched to it like ragged sails. It looks as grim as ever.
These blocks are all the same inside. The same piss smell in the lift, the same blokes eyeballing you on the staircases, the same blood-red scrawls of graffiti on the peeling grey walls, the same stagnant, overflowing wheelie bins. As the lift creeps up to the fourteenth floor, I think how it must have felt for people living in these buildings, when Grenfell happened. To read about how, on the upper floors, the windows only opened an inch. All the families trapped there had to huddle around them, take turns to breathe. Everything else was choking, suffocating blackness. The windows in these flats are like that too. Not for the first time, I think how lucky I am to own my tiny one-bed in Dartmouth Park, to have dodged the rental trap so many graduates like me have fallen into. Paying hundreds of pounds a month just to live somewhere like this. Somewhere where the windows only open up an inch.
When I knock on the door of the flat, it sounds hollow. I hear the pad of slippered feet approach the door, then, finally, it opens.
‘Hi,’ I say. ‘I’m Katie. I’m a friend of Rachel’s.’ I’m not sure this is quite true, but it feels necessary.
The girl looks at me. She is wearing fluffy pink slippers over a pair of black tights, a cheap polyester work dress. She has a large forehead, her hair scraped back.
‘Jane,’ she sighs. ‘You’d better come in.’
HELEN
The new detectives turn up a few days later. It’s a freezing night. Daniel and I have been to the cinema. When we get back, they are waiting in a car parked right outside our doorstep.
The female one is tall, boyish-looking, a thick scarf right up to her chin, tucked into a long Puffa jacket. ‘I’m DCI Betsky and this is DI Hughes,’ she says. Her words turn into clouds of steam in front of her face. Bits of sleet are settling in DI Hughes’s trendy beard.
Daniel opens the front door, gestures for them to come in, pushes the pram out of their way. The detectives wipe their shoes carefully. Blackened slush melts into puddles on the floor. We lead them into the kitchen. I offer to take their coats. They both decline. I decide not to bother with coffees this time.
‘I assume this is about Rachel,’ I say. ‘Is there any news?’
DCI Betsky looks at me. ‘I’m afraid not, Mrs Thorpe,’ she says. ‘Rachel is still missing.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I say. ‘I have been trying to call your colleagues – the ones I spoke to before.’
The two detectives glance at one another.
‘Just to see if they’d found her or anything.’
‘The detectives you met before were from Greenwich CID,’ DCI Betsky says, slowly. ‘The investigation has now been passed over to specialist crime. We’ll be leading things from now on.’
There is a pause.
DI Hughes clears his throat. ‘Is it all right if we take a look around her room?’
‘Her room?’
‘The room where Rachel was staying prior to her disappearance. Just to see if there’s anything there which might help us.’
Daniel and I glance at each other.
‘We’ve actually just repainted it,’ Daniel says.
The detectives stare at us.
‘You have repainted the room she was staying in,’ DCI Betsky repeats.
I feel suddenly sick. ‘It’s going to be the nursery, for our new baby,’ I explain. ‘No one said … no one said …’
‘I see,’ says DI Hughes. ‘All the same. If you don’t mind.’
Daniel leads them up the stairs. I prepare to follow, but DCI Betsky raises a palm in protest. ‘Please,’ she says, looking down at my belly, ‘there’s no need, Mrs Thorpe. I’m sure your husband knows the way.’ She doesn’t smile.
I perch on a stool, a blast of heartburn flaring in my chest. I lean forward a little, listen to the floorboards creaking, the muffled sound of them asking Daniel questions. They are up there for what seems like a long time. I try to flick through a magazine on the sideboard, but I can’t seem to focus on anything in it.
When they come back down the stairs, DI Hughes speaks first.
‘We need you to come to the station. Now, please. We’ll need a recorded statement. From both of you.’
I look at him, then to Daniel, then back again.
‘But we already spoke to your colleagues,’ I say. ‘The, um, the ones from Greenwich –’
‘The detectives from Greenwich CID, yes,’ DCI Betsky interrupts. She looks impatient now, clicking the lid onto her pen, pushing it into the breast pocket of her long jacket. She is speaking to us differently, this detective. Why does she not smile? Why doesn’t it feel like she is on our side?
‘I’m sure you can appreciate it’s been a couple of weeks now, Mrs Thorpe. We are very keen to exclude the possibility that Miss Wells could have come to any harm.’
Daniel picks up our car keys.
‘Don’t worry,’ DCI Betsky tells him, ‘you can come with us.’
‘I’ll drive,’ Daniel says. ‘I’m sure this won’t take long, and my wife is tired. We will need to get home.’ He sounds furious. The detective gives him a look, but doesn’t disagree.
When we get to the station, we are led into separate rooms, opposite sides of a narrow corridor with laminate floors peeling at the edges. It goes on for what feels like hours. None of the questions seem to have satisfactory answers, or at least not ones I am able to provide. There are a lot of silences.
Most weirdly of all, they don’t appear to have known that Rachel was pregnant.
‘You’re absolutely sure about that, Mrs Thorpe?’
‘Look, I didn’t see her without her clothes on, if that’s what you mean.’ I’m almost laughing, but the detectives are deadly serious. ‘I mean, if she wasn’t pregnant, then she was going to antenatal classes and wandering around Greenwich with a fake baby bump. Are you seriously suggesting that’s what’s happened?’
When they finally let me go, my head is spinning.
‘Thank you, Mrs Thorpe.’ DCI Betsky presses a card into my hand as I pull on my coat. ‘You haven’t got any long trips planned, I presume?’
I stare at her. ‘I’m about to have a baby,’ I say.
She looks at me for a moment longer. It is late. I ache for my own bed, for pillows, sheets, oblivion.
‘We’ll be in touch,’ she says. Then she walks away.
Unsure what to do, I ask at reception. They say Daniel was let out ages ago. He is waiting for me in the car.
‘Helen,’ I see him say, although I can’t hear through the glass. He opens the passenger door, holds his arm out to ease me in. His eyes are wide. ‘For God’s sake. What on earth were they doing, keeping you so lat
e?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say, my voice wavering. He takes my hand.
‘What did they ask you?’
I try to answer him, but it already feels like a blur. I have the sense of having failed, having botched an important test. I think about the look on DCI Betsky’s face and the way she played with her blue ballpoint pen, twisting it between her fingers as she leaned forward.
‘Mrs Thorpe, forgive me for asking again. But we’re still not entirely clear. What exactly happened between yourself and Rachel Wells on the night she disappeared?’
KATIE
Jane waves me through to the kitchen. Her slippers stick slightly to the laminate floor as she walks. There are dirty pans and dishes in the sink, and the whole flat smells faintly of unwiped surfaces and cheap tomato sauce. The view from the window is blank and featureless, London’s landmarks too distant to make out, the city a scribbled line on the horizon.
‘The police came already,’ she says, opening the fridge. ‘I told them. I’ve got no idea where she is. She left here a few weeks ago and she hasn’t come back.’
Jane starts reheating sloppy leftover pasta from a cling-filmed bowl in the fridge. A grubby extractor fan whirrs in the wall above her head; little cobwebs of clotted grime quiver in its wake, like streamers.
‘Do you know much about the father of her baby?’
The microwave beeps and Jane yanks the door open, tips her steaming pasta onto a chipped plate.
‘I’ve been through this with the police. If Rachel was pregnant, that is news to me,’ she says, slumping into a chair diagonally opposite me.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I saw her a few weeks ago. Just before she moved into your friend’s. And OK, it was cold, she was wearing a big coat, but she didn’t look pregnant to me. She was no different. Strange as ever.’ She rolls her eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says to me, through a mouthful of pasta. ‘I know she was your friend. But she was driving us mad, to be honest. We had quite a few problems with her, and basically, she needed to move out.’
I smile as warmly as I can. I don’t want her clamming up.
‘Sorry, it’s just – I don’t know if police told you this, but she had actually been attending antenatal classes, in Greenwich.’
Jane considers this. ‘Well, that’s weird,’ she agrees. ‘And she looked pregnant, did she?’
I nod. ‘That’s how she met my friend Helen, how we got to know her. I mean – she looked pregnant to us.’
‘Well, I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe she was, maybe she wasn’t.’
I walk over to the window, try to think logically. Could Rachel really have faked being pregnant? And if she wasn’t pregnant, and she didn’t live in Greenwich, what reason could she possibly have had to be at that antenatal class? There must have been something. Some reason she would want to get close to Helen. To us. I change tack.
‘Before she moved out – had Rachel been seeing anyone?’
Jane shakes her head. ‘I mean, she had blokes back here, I’m pretty sure of that. They didn’t exactly stay around for breakfast, though, if you know what I mean.’
‘Do you know who?’
She shakes her head. ‘I assumed it was just guys she picked up at the club.’
‘The club?’
‘Yeah. The club. Where she worked. What’s it called – the X?’ Her eyes narrow. ‘Hang on, I thought you said you were her friend. Didn’t you even know where she worked?’
‘She wasn’t working anywhere when we got to know her,’ I stutter. ‘Are you sure it’s that club? The X?’
‘Sure,’ Jane says. ‘I went there once. Didn’t care for it. Full of smackheads.’
I take a deep breath, try to smile. ‘OK,’ I say. ‘I guess I’m just a bit surprised that … she would work there. That she would pick up guys at a club. I didn’t think she was like that.’
Jane snorts with laughter. ‘Well, think again. Sorry, but she was a nutcase.’
I try to smile again, though I’m definitely not warming to Jane. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sure the police have already asked. But, well, we’re all so worried. Do you have any idea where she might have gone?’
‘Nope.’ Jane shakes her head, wipes a smudge of pasta sauce from the side of her mouth with her hand. ‘We had a row when she left. About the rent. She was late with it. And then I saw she had all these fifty-pound notes in her purse. Must have been at least a grand in there. I was livid. But she refused to hand it over. It was six hundred pounds she owed us. Still does.’
Jane picks her fork up again.
‘I told her if she wasn’t going to pay rent, she needed to go. My dad’s a solicitor. I told her we’d take her to court. I know it sounds harsh, but me and my flatmates – we’d had enough. It wasn’t just the drinking, the smoking, the blokes, the mess. She was just so weird, and rude. And – ugh, she was just mental.’ She shivers at the memory. ‘Sorry. Maybe she was going through a bad time, I don’t know. Anyway, she left then. Didn’t say a word. She packed up her things, took her suitcase, and left. She said we could keep her desk.’ Jane motions to Rachel’s old room with her dirty fork, gives a hollow laugh. ‘As if an old desk makes up for the £600. It’s a piece of shit from Ikea! I don’t know what she even used it for. It’s not as if she was studying or anything. But she would sit there for hours, playing her annoying music. She used to say she was doing some project. She had all these newspaper cuttings up on that wall at one point. She left about a thousand Blu-Tack marks. We’ll probably lose our deposit.’
‘Newspaper cuttings? Of what? What was the project about?’
‘Oh God knows. I didn’t look, I didn’t care.’
‘Do you mind if I take a look? At her cuttings?’
‘She took them all with her,’ Jane gestures to the hallway. ‘It’s just mess in there. Just a pile of old rubbish.’
‘Still, can I see? Was it the room at the end?’
Jane finishes her plate of pasta, takes it to the sink. Then she turns around and glares at me.
‘Do you know what, actually, yes. I do mind. You shouldn’t even be here. I don’t know what you’re doing, digging around, but I don’t want to get involved. I don’t want anything to do with it.’
Jane turns back to the sink and turns the tap on full, as if to indicate our conversation is over. ‘I think you should probably go now.’
I nod. ‘OK,’ I say. ‘Thanks for talking to me.’
In the lift on the way down I think about Rachel, sitting at her desk late at night. Newspaper cuttings stuck on her wall. What was her project? What was she up to?
On the ground floor, through the dirty windows, I see the rain is still battering at the glass. I pull my hood up, head home. I can’t face it tonight. But I know what I need to do next. Where I need to go. To the club Jane mentioned. The X.
I know exactly where it is. I’ve been there plenty of times.
It’s the club where Charlie works.
HELEN
I am so huge now I can barely drive, but the vet’s is too far to walk. The bump presses into the bottom of the steering wheel. I have to push the driver’s seat right back on its sliders. It is icy now, but none of my coats fit. I’ve pulled on one of Daniel’s jumpers instead, the sleeves bunching at my wrists.
As I start the engine, the radio blasts on automatically. I quickly turn the volume down. Monty is staring miserably out of his cage on the passenger’s seat. When we drive over speed bumps, the baby presses down on my pelvis. I wince. Monty howls. I squeeze a tuna treat through the bars. It makes the car smell like fish. I feel a wave of nausea, press the button to open the window. The air is sharp and cold; it makes me gasp.
And then I hear something that makes me turn the radio back up.
‘Police have today launched a murder inquiry following the disappearance of Rachel Wells. The 25-year-old disappeared in Greenwich, south-east London, after attending a party a fortnight ago. Police have been appealing for any information about her disapp
earance, which they described as being out of character …’
I feel hot all over.
I flick on the indicator, veer left and pull over so I can listen properly, cutting up another car in the process. He honks loudly. Monty starts to howl. I shush him, shove another treat through the bars.
‘Detective Chief Inspector Lauren Betsky said the force were keeping an open mind about her disappearance but had become increasingly concerned for her welfare. It is understood Miss Wells has not had any contact with her family or friends since the night of November 5th.’
I can hear my own breathing. I can’t seem to process the words. Murder inquiry. They think she’s dead. They think someone’s killed her. So that’s why they turned up yesterday. That’s why the new detectives are involved. That’s why they searched her room. Asked us everything, all over again.
‘At a press conference earlier this morning, her family appealed for anyone with any information on her possible whereabouts to come forward.’
I frown. Her family? She never mentioned any family. Except her mother, who she said she was going to stay with.
‘If anyone knows anything about where my daughter is,’ a gravelly male voice on the radio is saying now, ‘I would ask them to please, please …’
My phone rings. I jump, turn the radio down.
‘Hello, Mrs Thorpe? It’s the Greenwich Veterinary Practice. Are you still coming in with Monty today?’
I take a deep breath. I apologise, tell them I’m on my way. I turn Rachel’s father off, start the engine. I can’t take it in. I can’t think about this now. I can’t keep letting it go round and round in my head, blocking out everything else.
When the vet sees Monty, he smiles. ‘It’s been a while, hasn’t it, old boy?’ I can tell he means it kindly, but a stab of guilt pierces my stomach.
With everything that had been going on, neither of us had really noticed how oddly Monty had been acting. But the morning after we got back from the police station, I saw that his food bowl had been left untouched, again. I looked at him properly. Was he always so skinny? I’d placed my hands either side of his body and his ribs had felt hard as curtain rings against the soft palms of my hands.
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