Butterfly Grave (Murder Notebooks) (2 page)

‘Maybe that explains why he didn’t ring anyone.’

‘No, that’s not why he didn’t make a call. They found his mobile on the cliff path. As though he dropped it while walking. They also found an empty half bottle of Scotch in his car.’

Rose didn’t know what to say. She caught Skeggsie’s eye in the rear-view mirror. He’d probably already heard this.

‘So I’m not clear in my head now what happened. I’ve been thinking that he lost Poppy and went after her and fell over the cliff. On weekdays he normally took her to the local recreation ground but for some reason he went up to the cliff path. That’s odd because it’s a drive to get there and it’s pitch dark and pretty dangerous. It’s the sort of walk we did at weekends or summer nights, not in December. Now it looks like he might have been drunk and lost his way.’

‘Perhaps he’d had a bad day in school.’

‘Maybe.’

Joshua’s voice had a tinge of anger to it.

‘We’ll probably find out more when we get up there,’ she said.

Joshua turned back to the front. Skeggsie put the radio on. It was a talk show and they drove along quietly listening to it. After a short while Joshua started to fidget and Rose saw him struggling to get something out of his pocket. It was a small notebook and pen. He flipped the pages over a couple of times.

‘Can we pull over soon?’ he said. ‘There’s a black Mercedes that’s been behind us ever since we left Rose’s road.’

Rose felt her neck tense.

‘I want to see if it’s following us.’

‘Sure,’ Skeggsie said. ‘Let’s get through the next lights then I’ll park.’

Rose turned round and saw a black car behind them. The driver was a grey-haired man and next to him was a woman of the same age. She frowned. They looked like a married couple. Why on earth would they be following the Mini?

She heard the indicator going and saw Skeggsie move out of the traffic and into an empty parking space. The Mercedes went past and Rose saw to her dismay that Joshua was writing down the registration number in the notebook. He closed it and put it on the dashboard. Skeggsie started the car up again but Joshua put his hand out.

‘Hang on, let’s give it a few minutes. When we get going again we should keep an eye out, see if it turns up further along.’

As they drove off Rose tried to stretch her legs but the seat and the footwell was full up with Skeggsie’s plain brown boxes. On top of them was a small brown suitcase, old-fashioned and battered. It had hard edges so she couldn’t lean against it.

She tutted silently and looked out of the window at the road, to the side and behind. The Mercedes was nowhere to be seen.

They were not being followed at all. It was just Joshua’s anxiety.

TWO

A hundred miles later they were nearing the services. There was music playing in the car. It was a new band that Skeggsie had started playing since he’d hooked up with Eddie, a boy at university, who was on his course. It wasn’t a sound that Rose particularly liked but still she was glad of it because she had been struggling to find things to talk about.

They had hot drinks and doughnuts in the services cafe and then Rose went to the toilet. Washing her hands, she dabbed some water on to her face to wake herself up. Then she stood back and looked in the mirror.

The glass was grainy and had smears across it. Her face was oval and her skin was pale. Her brown hair was jaw-length and she had a half fringe. Today she was wearing earrings, brilliant blue discs; the exact colour of the Blue Morpho butterfly that she had tattooed on her arm. They stood out against her black polo neck jumper. Joshua had bought the earrings for her as a Christmas present in Camden Market.
Put a bit of colour into your life, Rosie!
he’d said giving them to her unwrapped and in advance of the festivities. They’d hung from her ears and seemed to move about in mid-air like flying creatures. He’d smiled when she put them on. Then he’d said,
You know what? You look just like Kathy
.

The comment had surprised her. Kathy, her mother, who had disappeared from her life five years before. She’d gone out for a meal with Joshua’s father, Brendan, and neither of them had come back. They’d not seen them since.

Did she look like her mother?

She took a tiny pot of lipsalve from her coat pocket and smeared it across her lips and found herself looking at the mirror through a blur of tears. She pulled a tissue out of her pocket and dabbed at the corner of her eyes, not wanting to smear the make-up. Then she blew her nose and went outside.

Out at the car Skeggsie had his hand on Joshua’s shoulder and Joshua was staring at his phone, looking pained. The traffic was thundering past, a torrent of noise.

‘What’s up?’ she said.

‘Josh’s looking on the net at the local newspaper.’

‘What’s it say?’

‘Read it,’ Joshua said, pushing his mobile at her.

She looked at the small screen and saw a headline.

Mystery of Schoolteacher’s Fall

Stuart Johnson, forty-five, a teacher at Kirbymoore Academy had a fall on Cullercoats Cliffs on the evening of Wednesday 19 December. Police sources say that he lay on a ledge for over eight hours before he was spotted by a man walking his dog on Thursday morning. Friends of the teacher say that he was depressed after splitting up with his girlfriend and had taken to drinking heavily.

Rose scrolled down but there was no more, just adverts.

‘I don’t understand. Who are these
friends
? Who would say that? In any case I thought he and his girlfriend were all right,’ said Rose.

‘Maybe the police gave the story to the newspaper.’

‘This is terrible. He’s a teacher. This won’t do his career any good.’

‘Let’s get going,’ Skeggsie said. ‘Sooner we get there, sooner you can talk to him. You know what that local rag is like – it’ll print any old rubbish . . .’

Joshua nodded and put his mobile away. Skeggsie moved to the driver’s door as Joshua pulled out his notepad and began to flick through the pages, looking at the nearby cars and vans.

‘Just checking some car registrations.’

Rose stared at his bowed head, hoping he’d look up at her and smile, maybe even make a joke out of it. But he didn’t. He continued thumbing the pages, looking cagily around at the lines of cars.

She caught Skeggsie’s eye and gave a half shrug.

Joshua stared at both of them.

‘We’ve got to be careful. Don’t forget what happened when the Russian followed me a few weeks ago. I haven’t forgotten it.’

Skeggsie nodded rapidly and got into the car. Rose followed.

She dozed on and off during the rest of the drive. From time to time she heard mumbled voices from the front of the car when Joshua and Skeggsie talked between music tracks. Then, just after Washington, they stopped for petrol. Joshua went to pay but Rose stayed in the car. She turned and extricated her small bag from the back and put it by her feet. She got out a wet wipe and patted it on her skin. She was feeling hemmed in by the car and fed up with the journey. She wanted to say, ‘How long till we get there?’ But that sort of comment was childlike. When the car finally moved off Joshua tuned in to a talk radio station. The presenter had a Newcastle accent and Rose wondered whether he was expecting to hear something about his uncle’s accident. He had his arms crossed and seemed tense, staring straight ahead.

Rose worried about him.

In the last weeks, even without this recent drama, Joshua had begun to change. Instead of being confident he was now edgy and nervous. The easy-going attitude he had had when they first met up in September, after their five-year separation, had been chipped away by the things that had happened to them.

She remembered that first night. Then she’d been bursting with excitement about seeing him. She’d left her boarding school months before and become a student at a college in Camden. He’d started university in East London and although they’d been in touch for months via email they hadn’t come face to face. Heading out to see him that night she’d been like some jittery girl on a first date. She’d seen photos of him but had no idea what it would be like to stand next to him, no longer a tall awkward boy who she had once lived with. Now he was flesh and blood, all grown up.

She hadn’t been disappointed.

In the months since then a lot had happened, grim things alongside startling discoveries about what had happened to their parents. Throughout it all an odd thing had begun to happen to Rose. She developed a growing attraction towards Joshua. She had come to think of him as her stepbrother but in reality he was not related to her. Their parents were never married and there was no blood link between them. But the four of them had lived as a unit and Rose thought of him as the only family she had left in the world. And then when she finally met him some completely new and disturbing feelings began to grow. Every hug Joshua gave her, every time he touched her arm or grabbed her hand, she felt a powerful longing for him and wanted to kiss him. More than once she’d felt her lips drawn to his. She’d always stopped herself, though, pulled back, stepped away.

She had fallen in love with him.

She hid her feelings and tried to pretend that things were normal between them. Common law stepbrother and sister; that’s what they were. It didn’t explain the nights that she couldn’t sleep or the thrill that went through her chest when he touched her hair or her neck or her fingers.

There had been times when she’d considered telling him.
I know we’ve always thought of ourselves as stepbrother and sister
, she might say,
but really there’s nothing to stop us getting closer to each other
. And what if she had said it? She’d imagined the world stopping for a moment as he tried to work out what she meant. He might look at her with blank incomprehension. Or he might be shocked, angry even.

It might spoil everything.

After the shopping trip to Camden and the gift of the blue earrings, she’d given him the present she’d bought for him for Christmas: a book about world-famous bridges. He’d been pleased with it and began turning the pages immediately. Then he’d hugged her, the hug lasting longer than she’d expected.
I’ll miss you
, he’d whispered,
when I’m up in Newcastle
and his hand had rubbed up and down her back and caused her spine to weaken and her skin to tingle. After what seemed like a long time he’d pulled away from her and looked, for a second, as if he wanted to say something.

That had been the time for her to speak. But she hadn’t been able to say anything. Then the front door had slammed and Rose had stepped back, startled, aware that Anna had come home. The moment had gone.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, they were off the motorway and back on normal roads with traffic lights and pedestrian crossings. They were passing streets of houses, parades of shops, garages and warehouses. As they went on she saw more people walking along, some with pushchairs, dogs on leads, and shopping trolleys. There was noise as well: the beeping of car horns, the screeching of brakes and scraps of music coming from other cars.

The car had stopped in a queue.

‘Tyne Tunnel,’ Joshua said. ‘We need to go under the river.’

They moved forward and in minutes were going underground, the car close to one in front, all heading in the same direction, a strange quiet descending, cut off from the noise and life out on the street. Then with a burst of daylight they emerged on the other side. Back on to suburban roads, heading towards Joshua’s home. Rose opened her window slightly and noticed a tang of something in the air. She realised it was the smell of the sea.

Then the car turned into a street, slowed down and parked.

‘Here we are,’ Joshua said.

The houses were brick-built, semi-detached with front gardens. She was surprised. They reminded her of the house she and Joshua had lived in in East London, with her mum and Brendan, in Brewster Road.

‘This is Newcastle?’ she said.

‘It’s Whitley Bay. About twenty minutes from the city centre.’

They unpacked the car and Skeggsie went off to his own house. After he’d gone the bags sat in the hallway while Joshua opened the pile of letters that had built up.

Rose looked around.

The inside of the house was very similar to the one they’d lived in before. She walked along and peeked into the living room. There was a bay window just like the old house and a fireplace with decorative tiles down each side. Their tiles had had yellow flowers and she remembered the bottom one had been cracked. Here there were pink chrysanthemums, the tiles all intact. She walked further along the hallway. The door opened on to a big kitchen-diner, previously two rooms that had been knocked into one. It was all exactly the same as Brewster Road. Rose wondered if upstairs would have three bedrooms, one of them tiny and a bathroom at the back of the house.

Had Joshua ever noticed the similarities?

‘Shall I make a hot drink?’ she said.

Joshua nodded, distracted by the letters.

She went into the kitchen and filled up the kettle, found some cups in the cupboard and some coffee. While it was boiling she looked at the table in the middle of the room. It was dark shiny wood with matching chairs, each one neatly slotted into place. Their table in Brewster Road had not been so smart. It was wooden and square and had four odd chairs around it. One of its legs had been shorter than the others so that it was unsteady and seesaw-like.