‘I’m sure.’
‘She wasn’t easy.’
The wind is picking up – one of the racquets leaning against the shed clatters over onto the patio. The rain cover on the barbecue looks as if it might fly away.
‘This man who’s been arrested,’ John says. I see his fingers twist into fists. ‘Do you know him?’
I nod. ‘I do know him,’ I say.
John takes a deep breath. ‘Could he have done something to Rachel? Could he have hurt her?’
I think about Rory when he was a little boy, bullying Charlie, throwing firecrackers at Helen, even though he knew she was scared. But then I think about him at his wedding, when Serena walked down the aisle. How he couldn’t resist turning round to look at her walking towards him. How his eyes had filled with tears when he saw her in her dress. I can think of times when I have disliked Rory intensely: the way he lords it at his parties, sneers at my job, belittles Charlie. But then I can think of moments when he has been kind to Helen, or when his love for his wife has been plain for all to see. I have known Rory most of my life. But do I know him, really?
‘I don’t think so,’ I say carefully. ‘But … I honestly don’t know for sure.’
John stands up, starts pacing up and down the conservatory. The wind rattles at the frame of it, as if determined to get in.
‘John,’ I say, ‘Rachel didn’t tell us the truth about who she was. Where she lived, what she wanted. She must have gone to some lengths. She told us she was pregnant, and she looked … So if she wasn’t, she must have been wearing some sort of prosthetic …’
I trail off. He has heard this already from the police. He is screwing up his eyes, as if the words cause him physical pain. I lower my voice.
‘I think Rachel must have had a good reason for doing all that. For coming to Greenwich. I think there was something she wanted from one of us. I can’t work out what it is.’ I pause. ‘I think that if … if we figure out what that was, it might help us find out what has happened to her.’
John looks at me, his eyes blank.
‘Is there anything you can think of that might help me work out what it was? Was there something she was angry about? Or someone? Something from her past, maybe?’
John doesn’t say anything for a long time. He turns his back to me, stares out of his conservatory at his little square of lawn. After a few minutes, I see his shoulders start to shake, his fists opening and closing at his sides. Then without a word, he walks out of the room and up the stairs.
For a while I wonder if he is going to come down again. When he finally returns, he is holding a cardboard box.
‘I saved it all,’ he said. ‘In case the police ever came back to it, you know? In case something turned up.’ There is a wobble in his voice. ‘I thought it might be useful to have it.’
He sets the box down in front of me. I take the lid off. It is full of old newspaper cuttings. I take the pile from the top and start to read.
TEN YEARS EARLIER
CAMBRIDGE
They couldn’t have known it would be something like that. They didn’t know. Really, they didn’t.
She didn’t touch him again, after that. They had walked home, fast, instinctively. When they finally got back to college, he’d said, fuck, fuck, fuck. We need to tell the police.
She had looked at him, then, as if he was mad. Don’t be stupid, she’d said. People can’t know we were there. What we were doing.
What? What are you talking about? He had stared at her. Didn’t you see what I saw?
We don’t know what that was, she’d said carefully, not meeting his eye. Not for sure. We don’t know that she hadn’t … that she wasn’t …
We do, he had said.
I mean, she was quite pissed, I could see it wasn’t the best, but …
Wasn’t the best?
We couldn’t see what was going on. Her voice had snapped like a branch in the woods. And what are we going to tell people when they ask why we were there? Alone? Together?
He had shaken his head. No. No, come on. We need to go to the police.
But she said nothing. They said nothing.
And that was their first mistake.
41 WEEKS
HELEN
I push open the cellar door and flick the light on. It takes a moment before the bulb responds. There’s a fizzing sound, then brightness, a pool of yellow light. The crack in the cement is longer now, inching towards the stairs like a lightning bolt.
The cellar smells of paint, glue, damp wood, and it is cold, really cold, as if I’ve stepped outside. Either side of the stairs are exposed copper pipes, piles of paint cans. The cat carrier from the other day is crammed into a gap on top of a pile of sandpaper and tubes of filler.
I clutch my belly as I inch onto a step. I never come down here – what if the wood is rotten? I am so enormous now. The step could give way any moment.
It’s only when I get to the third step that I can see what Vilmos is talking about. A smudge of dark red, almost black, at forehead height, on one of the low beams over the stairs. It could be a blob of paint, I think at first. It could be dirt. But then I look closer.
Vilmos hears me gasp, topple forwards. Sees me clutching at the rickety banister.
‘Please, I help you.’ Two strong arms reach out, pull me back up gently, but firmly. My heart is pounding. My stomach upside down. I feel faint.
Vilmos has pulled me up against his chest. He smells of tobacco, his jumper surprisingly soft. He leads me back into the kitchen.
‘Please, Helen, come and sit.’ I do as he says. He fetches me a glass of water.
‘I’m so sorry.’
I take a sip of water. Vilmos stands in the kitchen, hands on his hips. I see him glance at the clock.
‘Thanks, Vilmos,’ I say. ‘I’m better now.’ I force a laugh. ‘I just don’t like to see blood. Makes me feel sick!’ I pause. ‘I think it must have been Daniel who hit his head.’
Vilmos nods. He looks awkward. ‘Anyway – I see you tomorrow, Helen. Ten o’clock OK for you?’
‘Sure.’
When I hear the door close behind him, I put out a hand to steady myself against the hallway wall. My heart is pounding. Surely not, I think. It can’t be. It can’t be. And then I think about what Katie said. About seeing Rachel go down into the cellar.
KATIE
When he turns up at the pub, DCI Carter is in another one of his golf jumpers. I try to suppress a smile at its purple-and-green diamond pattern. He still has his bag of clubs over one shoulder. He looks like he’s gained a couple of pounds since I last saw him, the bags gone from his eyes.
‘I got you a coffee,’ I say. ‘It might be a bit cold.’
He sits down heavily in the leather booth, swinging his bag down next to him so that the clubs clatter together.
‘I wondered how long it would be before you dragged me out of my comfortable semi-retirement for something or other,’ he mutters. ‘I thought I might at least get a whole round of golf in.’
‘Sorry.’ I laugh nervously. ‘I didn’t know.’
‘Yep, I’m a part-timer these days,’ he grins, stretching his arms. ‘Friday is my golf day.’
‘Apologies. Isn’t it a bit cold on the course today anyway?’ I had forgotten how it gets in Cambridge, the icy wind from the fens threatening to blow you over. Even inside, I am sitting on my hands to warm them up. Every time the pub door opens, a blast of freezing air rushes in.
‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Spit it out.’ He is looking at me with a mixture of annoyance and amusement, but his face changes when I begin.
‘It’s about Rachel Wells,’ I say. I unfold the old article and slide it across the table towards him. ‘I’m sure you remember her.’
It had been her all along. The victim in the boathouse rape. Just fifteen years old. I’d traced my fingers over the cuttings. The summer Helen, Rory and Daniel left. Then I thought again about what Helen had said. About Daniel not liking to talk about it.
Even she had lied to me about it, at first. It couldn’t be just a coincidence. There must have been some connection, something that made Rachel seek them out. But what? What had she wanted from them, after all these years?
I’d stuffed the articles into my pocket, gone into the kitchen to find John. He had poured himself a whisky and was staring out at the garden. He hadn’t even replied when I said goodbye, thanked him for his time.
I had called Carter as I started the car. The icy roads had been dead, flurries of snow starting. It hadn’t taken me long to reach the pub.
DCI Carter looks at me, then the article, then to me again. ‘Look,’ he says, ‘you know I can’t discuss who this is. Doesn’t matter how long ago it was – it’s a section 18. Lifetime anonymity.’ He lowers his voice. ‘Come on, Katie. What are you playing at? You could get me into serious trouble.’
‘Did you not know she’s gone missing?’
I see the concern on his face instantly.
‘I heard something on the radio – didn’t catch the name – it’s not – the same Rachel …?’
‘Same one.’
DCI Carter puts his head in his hands.
‘I didn’t make the connection,’ he says quietly.
I take out the rest of the cuttings I took from John’s box, unfold them, place them on the table in front of us.
‘Look, I’m not asking you to disclose that she was the victim in this case – I know it was her already. Her dad told me, all right?’
He eyes me as if I am a dangerous animal that needs to be handled carefully.
‘This is more important than that, anyway. Homicide are on the case. They think she’s been murdered.’ Anonymity isn’t much good to her if she’s dead, I feel like saying. But I stop myself. I sense I’ve said enough.
He takes a deep breath in, then out. Starts to massage his forehead.
‘It’s to do with what happened to her before, in Cambridge. I know it is,’ I say. ‘I just don’t know how.’
DCI Carter looks up.
‘I need your help,’ I tell him. ‘Please.’
‘All right,’ he says eventually. He starts to pull his jacket off, one sleeve, then another. Sets it on the back of his chair. ‘But we’re talking completely off the record, here, Katie. Understood?’
I nod.
‘OK,’ he says. ‘You start. Tell me what you know about how she went missing.’
HELEN
I need to find my phone, to call the police. This could be important. Where is my phone? I used it to call Brian earlier. I rush over to the armchair, find it down the side of a cushion. I pick it up, dial DCI Betsky’s number, but then I remember the battery. Before the call connects, the phone dies, and the screen goes black.
I haul myself upstairs, the nagging pain in my back sharpening into something more, starting to move around to my front, like a belt tightening. I hold my bump to stop it weighing on my hips. The charger is at the top of the house, but halfway up, I find I need to stop and catch my breath. I collapse into the chair in the spare room, the one we were supposed to have made into a nursery by now. I look down at my hands and see that they are still shaking.
A smudge of blood, a nick of something else. Maybe hair. Maybe skin. Every cell of my being is trying hard not to think about what it could mean. I don’t want to think about it at all, in fact. I don’t want to be involved in the thinking. The finding, the analysing. I just want to hand it over, to give it to someone else. I can’t bear it pressing down on me any more.
I notice there is a charger plugged in by the door. It must be left over from when Rachel was here. As soon as the phone flashes back to life, I call Daniel. But it goes straight to voicemail. I hold my phone tight against my ear to stop the trembling. I wait for the beep.
‘Daniel? It’s me. Listen – you need to come home. I’ve found something, in the cellar – a mark. It looks … it looks like blood. I’m about to call the police. But please – come home.’ I feel a sob rising in my throat. ‘Please, I need you here. Be as quick as you can.’
As soon as I hang up, I dial DCI Betsky’s number again. It goes straight to voicemail too. I try once more, but after a couple of rings, the phone dies again. The ache is coming harder now.
I stumble back to the chair, try to slow my breathing, calm my thoughts. I remember a meditation exercise I learned once, something about focusing on fixed points, objects in the room. I look from one to another. The chest of drawers, with the changing top. The blinds, the books. The glass vase on the shelf.
When my gaze moves to the vase, something shifts in my mind. I walk over to take it down. As my hands close around its thick glass rim, it is as if a fog is lifting. I remember holding this. I remember turning round. And there it all was. It wasn’t just Daniel’s laptop. There were other things too – a note, money, boarding passes. Boarding passes – for who? And a passport. My passport, with my face cut out of it. But why?
But before I can even think about what it means, a new wave of pain drowns out the other sensations in my body. That’s when I realise. This is different. These aren’t just aches. The pains are radiating out, around from my belly and back and into the deepest parts of my abdomen. A tightening, squeezing pain. A pain that feels bright red. My bump is hardening. This is it, I know. It’s starting.
KATIE
I fill DCI Carter in as quickly as I can. He listens carefully, says nothing. He tips a little paper tube of sugar into the coffee I bought for him, then starts rolling the packet up very tightly with his thumbs and index fingers.
‘I think she came to Greenwich because she was after somebody,’ I say. ‘One of my friends. I’m sure it was something to do with what happened to her back then.’
I give him our names. Everybody. Me, Charlie, Rory and Serena, Daniel and Helen.
‘Can you think of any reason she’d have had to seek us out?’
He leans forward a little. ‘The names of the defendants in the previous case are a matter of public record,’ he says carefully, pointing to the article I’ve unfolded from my pocket. ‘Thomas Villar and Hector Montjoy. They both went abroad. Their parents got them jobs, you know how it is with that sort. One of them went to Hong Kong, went into banking. The other one to America – can’t remember what for. They managed to repair their so-called ruined lives, if you ask me.’
DCI Carter shakes his head. I sense he is starting to soften.
‘As for Rachel. I failed her, really. She was brave. Really brave.’ He stares out of the window. ‘She was drunk, of course. That was what did for her, in the eyes of the jury. But I never for one minute doubted she was telling the truth. She was completely consistent. Completely compelling. And her injuries … if we could have just found her witnesses, things would have been different.’
He takes the little ball of paper he has made between his forefinger and thumb and taps it on the table three times.
‘What do you mean? Were there witnesses?’
DCI Carter cringes, as if he regrets saying it. ‘Oh, I don’t know, Katie,’ he says. ‘Maybe not. A lot of my colleagues just thought it was her getting mixed up – with other faces she’d seen before, or at the hospital that night. It’s entirely possible there was no one there.’ He pauses. ‘But … yes, she thought there had been someone else there. Two people. A boy and a girl.’
He takes a sip of his coffee, sets it down neatly on the coaster, then centres it with his thumbs.
‘She gave us a detailed description. Said they’d seen her. She said they weren’t part of it. She said for a moment she’d thought they were going to help her. And then they disappeared.’
I think of Rachel, alone on the floor of the boathouse, looking up and seeing two faces, thinking she was going to be saved. How could anyone have done that? How could they have seen that, and done nothing? Said nothing? I shiver.
‘Did you ever find them?’
Carter gives me a sad smile, shakes his head.
‘I tried, believe me. We went through
all the club members, anyone who might have been there working, or cleaning, or training. All the boats were signed in and out, in a book. We went through the lot. Not one of them fitted the description. So then we looked at anyone who’d been seen on the river that day. Anyone who was even seen nearby. At one point, I thought I’d found them.’
He pauses.
‘A group of them who’d taken a boat without signing it out. They weren’t supposed to. A girl and a boy admitted returning the boat. But they denied seeing anything. Said they’d been at the boathouse, but earlier in the day. That it had been empty when they got there, empty when they left. That they couldn’t help.’ He looks up. ‘I thought they were lying. That they’d been up to something they shouldn’t have. But I couldn’t prove it, and you can’t force people to testify. My boss wanted me to keep going, put more pressure on them. I didn’t think we needed to. We’ve got the DNA evidence, I thought. Her internal injuries. What more do we need?’ He smiles sadly. ‘I was still a bit naive about sexual offence cases back then, only just made detective. My boss always said it wouldn’t be enough. He was sorry to be proven right.’ He sighs. ‘It was a lesson for me. Juries can be … well. Rape cases. You know the challenges.’
We sit in silence for a moment.
‘Do you remember their names?’
He blinks at me.
‘The boy and the girl,’ I prompt. ‘The ones you thought were lying. Do you remember their names?’
Carter wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘It was a long time ago, Katie.’
‘Was one of them called Rory?’
DCI Carter looks me in the eye. He is giving nothing away.
‘I’m not trying to get a story here,’ I say, trying to control my voice, even though I feel like shouting, slamming my hands down on the table. ‘I’m trying to work out why a girl has gone missing. Maybe even been killed. I’m trying to work out what … what might have happened to her.’
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