Butterfly Grave (Murder Notebooks) (27 page)

‘Have they seen the Skype?’

‘They have. Which is probably why they’re both so quiet.’

Margaret Spicer looked ill at ease. Rose pictured her on Christmas Eve, walking past the alley while someone was in there waiting for Skeggsie. Maybe Skeggsie passed her and she said to him something like
Was that a noise there? Is someone hurt?
in the same way that she, Rose, had said it to Joshua. Skeggsie would have gone straight to see who was there. He wouldn’t have linked this woman to the car that had been following them. In any case he wouldn’t have thought for a second that his life was in any danger. Perhaps it had happened differently. Margaret Spicer may have been walking
after
Skeggsie and may have signalled to the associate who was waiting to warn him off. If only they’d known Skeggsie a little bit. They might have understood then that they could never have warned him off.

The woman was an unlikely assassin and yet she had been the intermediary. She was as guilty as James Munroe.

‘Now we go?’ Margaret Spicer said to Munroe.

Munroe nodded.

‘Don’t you care?’ Rose said. ‘Don’t you
care
that our friend is dead?’

Margaret Spicer looked startled at being spoken to.

Munroe spoke. ‘Margaret was patrolling Primrose Crescent when a young male estate agent ran out of a house screaming. He was hysterical and Margaret tried to calm him down. He kept pulling her arm and in the end she followed him into Number Six. She saw Judy Greaves’s body. Five days the girl was missing. When she found her the girl was still
warm
. Lister had her for five days. He killed her an hour or so before he’d arranged to meet the estate agent in the house. The estate agent was hysterical but Margaret sat with the girl until the authorities came. Margaret knows how important this project is. She doesn’t want to see guilty people get away.’

‘Can’t she speak for herself?’

The woman was holding clothes that she’d taken out of a drawer. Rose noticed then an open suitcase on the floor. They were leaving. It seemed as though as soon as she and Joshua sniffed these people out they packed a suitcase and left.

‘You found Judy. We found Skeggsie. How does that make you feel?’

‘This is about the bigger picture, Rose,’ Munroe said. ‘It was a mistake and we must move on.’

Margaret Spicer continued to pack. Munroe stared at Joshua uneasily.

‘The Skype recording was made on Christmas Eve, right?’ Joshua said. ‘A few hours after Rose spoke to my dad when he rang my uncle. Midday.’

Munroe nodded.

‘So my dad knows nothing about Skeggsie’s murder.’

‘What makes you think that? There are no secrets in our organisation.’

‘My dad couldn’t have spoken to me like that if he’d known that my best friend was dead, killed by you. He couldn’t have looked me in the eye with that knowledge in his head.’

Rose thought of Brendan looking Joshua in the eye. In reality it had been the tiny lens of a camera embedded into the screen of a laptop. Had Brendan seen through that? Had he, in his mind, looked into the eyes of the son he hadn’t seen for so long?

‘Your father has gone through a lot. He’s not the same man you knew.’

‘He’s still my dad. He would never hurt me knowingly. He didn’t know about Skeggsie’s murder, did he?’

‘We should go,’ Margaret Spicer said.

James Munroe stood up, placing the laptop in its carrying case. He stacked it next to the case that they were packing on the floor. Then he picked up the brown suitcase. Rose looked at it with concern. It was Skeggsie’s and full of the things that he’d thought were important about the Murder Notebooks. It held the very things that had got him killed. Now Munroe had it.

‘You haven’t told him. My dad’s not any part of Skeggsie’s murder.’

‘I don’t call it a murder. I call it an accident.’

‘What makes you think we’re not going to go straight to the police as soon as you’ve gone?’ Joshua said.

‘You can of course. But I tell you this, Joshua. If the police come for me or Margaret I will reveal everything that has happened in the last five years and your father and your mother will be exposed. And don’t for a minute think that I mean they will be
arrested
. No, no. They have upset a number of people and if I expose their whereabouts then they will most certainly endure a horrible death.’

‘Come on,’ Margaret Spicer said. ‘Let’s go.’

‘In the last five years six evil men have been removed from our society. That is a good thing. I’m very sorry about your friend.’

He stood at the door. In moments they would be gone.

‘What about Joshua?’ Rose said, pointing to the cuff attached to the leg of the bed.

‘I fear if I free Joshua now he will make some dramatic stand and there will be unpleasantness. Rose, you come down to the car with us. As we’re about to leave I will give you the key to the handcuffs.’

Unpleasantness
. Such a polite word. Did Munroe think that Skeggsie’s murder was
unpleasant
, she wondered.

Margaret Spicer was walking round the room, opening drawers. Then she opened the bathroom door. The small dog walked out, wagging its tail. It hadn’t made a sound the whole time they’d been there. Perhaps it was well trained. Margaret hooked a lead on to its neck, picked up a bag, and went out without a backwards glance.

James Munroe followed her with the rest of the bags.

‘I’ll be back as soon as I can,’ Rose said to Joshua, going out of the door.

Rose stood by the silver SUV as Margaret Spicer put her case on to the back seat of the car. In the passenger seat the dog stood on his hind legs and looked out of the window. Its tail was wagging and its eyes were following Margaret as she walked round to the driver’s seat and got into the car.

Munroe put his laptop on top of Skeggsie’s brown suitcase.

‘Why do you have to take that stuff? It’s important to us.’

‘This is what got you into trouble. Forget about all this. Your parents will contact you when they are ready. Here are the keys to the handcuffs. Goodbye, Rose.’

She stood and watched as the car swung out of the car park and on to the Promenade. When it was gone she turned and quickly went back into the hotel. Michelle looked up from the reception desk but Rose waved her question away and rushed past. When she got back to Room 213 Joshua moved impatiently around, holding out his hand for her to undo the lock on the cuffs. She squatted down as quickly as she could and undid the lock. The cuff fell apart and Joshua held his wrist. There was a red ring where the skin had rubbed. As soon as he was free he stood up, his fists clenched and walked to the window. If he was looking for the SUV it was long gone.

‘Where’s my phone?’ he said.

It was over by the bathroom door. She picked it up and held it out to him. He didn’t take it, though. His back was to her and he was staring out of the window. She stayed away from him. His anger had been boiling up while he’d been stuck in one place and she didn’t want to be near him if it erupted now. She looked at the screen of his phone. He had a new message. She didn’t know whether to tell him or not.

Her mother’s face came back into her head, the black glasses were new, the frames heavier than she usually wore. Perhaps that was part of her disguise. Brendan said they were on their last mission. It meant that they were planning to kill some gangster, someone who deserved to die. Would her mother actually take part in that act?

Joshua was looking at her. His haggard expression seemed to reflect everything they’d learned and heard over the last hours. They were bewildered. Abandoned children who thought they’d lost everything five years ago. How little they’d known then.

Then he was beside her. He took his phone and then hooked his other arm around her neck and pulled her towards him. She felt as if he was overheating, the back of his jumper damp. She rubbed her face against the wool and put her arms around him. He was staring at his phone.

‘Look at this,’ he said, his voice soft in her ear.

She looked at the screen of his phone. There was a message.
We only just found out about your friend’s death. We’re more sorry than we can say. We would never have let this happen but some things seem to have got out of hand. We love you both and talk about you every day. One day we will be together again. XXXX Dad (and Mum).

‘They didn’t know,’ Joshua said, the thinnest of smiles on his lips. ‘They knew nothing about Skeggsie’s death.’

Rose nodded staring at the word
Mum
. In brackets.

‘I was right. Dad and Kathy were innocent of that,’ Joshua said.

But guilty of other things
, Rose thought.
Guilty of murder
.

THIRTY

The house was straight by the time Stuart Johnson came out of hospital. Everything had been cleaned and tidied. The pay as you go mobile phone had been placed back into the small money box, locked and put among Stuart’s things from his school locker. The other steel box had been refilled with all the paperwork from the Butterfly Murder, locked and wrapped in a tea towel. They then placed it in the engine of the MG. Joshua fastened the spare wheel in place again and then they covered the old car with tarpaulin and locked the garage door.

Joshua replaced Stuart’s confession in the envelope and glued the opening together. Then he put it back into the Last Will and Testament package and put it in his bedside cabinet drawer.

Everything was as it had been before they’d arrived there.

Now Stuart would have no idea that his secret had been discovered.

He was smiling as he got out of the taxi and looked up at the house with some relief. No doubt, during that long night on the ledge of the cliff, he may have thought he would never see it again. Rose felt an unexpected wash of pity for him. He didn’t look like Brendan at all. He was younger and shorter and his skin was florid. He leant on Joshua as he came up the path. Joshua’s face was unreadable. At one point he gave a little laugh and Rose wondered how he could pretend.

Just for a day, Rosie. Just pretend none of it ever happened just for a day. Then we’ll get off back to London
, Joshua had said.

Part of Stuart’s leg was in a cast and he was still a bit bruised and ill-looking. He moved awkwardly along the hallway and then into the living room and sat down with a thump on a chair. Rose stayed with him while Joshua made some drinks. He grabbed her hand and held it tightly and told her how sorry he was about her friend. She kept a smile on her face and asked him about his injuries. Then they talked about the hospital and how long it would be before he got back to work.

Joshua brought the bomber jacket and gave it to him. Stuart liked it, Rose could tell. He was smiling and looked it over, remarking on all the pocket space and well worn leather. He said he couldn’t wait to wear it.

They kept the pretence up.

Nothing difficult was mentioned.

In the afternoon there was a knock on the door and when Rose opened it Susie Tyler was standing there. Beside her was a large holdall. Rose brought her in and she rushed into the living room and sat down by Stuart and hugged him. Her ponytail bobbed up and down as she burst into tears and said how glad she was that he was alive and how much she loved him.

She’d been seeing him in the hospital for a few days and told him that she’d left Greg for good and was coming to live with him so that they could have their baby together. Joshua and Rose had looked with disbelief at the pair.

She left him to die
, Rose thought as Susie rushed upstairs to unpack her bag. But Stuart was beaming and humming tunes all evening.

The next day the Mini sat under the shadow of the Angel of the North. It was New Year’s Day and the sun was a dazzling globe hanging in a flat blue sky. The Angel’s wings threw a shaft of darkness across the fields and the car park. Rose cricked her neck to look out of the car window to see the very top, the faceless creature that she’d seen in the poster in Skeggsie’s bedroom.

They were on their way back to London.

Everything was packed into the back of the Mini.

Joshua was looking at his mobile phone. Rose wondered if they were going to get out or sit there. She didn’t ask – she just let the silence hang in the air. This was how things had worked over the last few days. They were together and yet there was this great unspoken mass of stuff between them.

There were groups of people making their way across the fields and from the road towards the great statue. In the distance she could see a train going past. No doubt there were people there looking out of the window, pointing at this monolith. Skeggsie had wanted to take Joshua to see it. Rose imagined the two of them looking up at the metal giant, Skeggsie giving Joshua as much information as he had.
Wings the width of those of a jumbo jet!
Maybe Joshua would talk about the engineering aspect of the statue, how many men it had taken to make it, the erection of it, the welding.
Not so different from a bridge
, she imagined Skeggsie saying, just to please Joshua.