Dead and Buried (18 page)

This morning she was holding it again as the teacher went through the main points of an essay they had to do. She wondered, for the hundredth time, if the card was an invitation or a
prompt
for her to get in touch. Did Brendan know that she’d given it to her? Was it some kind of secret plea? Was her mother doing something behind Brendan’s back?

She thought of the moment in the pub when Brendan said
You should go and see your mother, Rose.
She had in fact walked slowly across the bar and looked tentatively around the car park. In her head, though, she wished she had dashed across the room and burst out of the pub door. Once there she pictured herself seeing her mother and her face breaking into a glorious smile as she ran across to the Mercedes.

But she hadn’t done these things. She’d acted like a guilty schoolgirl heading for the headteacher’s office.

What must her mother have thought?

That she didn’t care? That she had no feelings for her?

The classroom door opened and a young woman came into the room and went to speak to the teacher. She wasn’t much older than Rose but she was wearing a skirt suit and white shirt and had on high heels which made her walk a little unsteadily. Rose didn’t recognise her but she must have been a member of staff because she had an identity tag hanging round her neck. After she spoke the teacher nodded and looked up at the class. The woman left and the lesson went on. When the buzzer went and people started to move out the teacher came across to Rose.

‘Someone is waiting to see you in reception,’ she said.

‘Oh?’

Her first thought was that it was Joshua, having come straight from the police station with something important to tell her.

‘A woman. A family friend, she said. The college don’t really like it but just this once. It’s recess anyway.’

‘Thanks,’ Rose said.

She went off, weaving through the slow-moving stream of students changing classes. She headed for the reception area where the hard flooring turned to carpet. When she got there she was surprised to see a blonde woman sitting on one of the soft chairs, flicking through a college prospectus. The woman saw her and stood up. Her hair was more white than blonde and she had on a smart trouser suit with a silk scarf at her neck.

It was Margaret Spicer, Munroe’s wife.

‘Hello, Rose. Could we talk?’

Rose stiffened. ‘What do you want?’

‘About thirty minutes of your time. A few private words. My car is parked in the street outside.’

‘I don’t want to speak to you.’

‘I’m going away and there are things I need to say to you and Joshua.’

‘Joshua came to see you.’

‘I can’t talk to Joshua. He is too angry.’

‘You think I’m not angry?’

‘Darren Skeggs was his friend.’

‘He was my friend too.’

‘I thought you might be prepared to listen for a while. If not to
understand
what happened in Newcastle to at least know the full facts of it.’

Margaret Spicer took a step towards the doors. Rose gave the slightest nod of her head and followed. They walked out of the college and headed for a silver SUV that was parked further down the road on a meter. The sight of the car gave Rose a jolt. The two silver SUVs she’d had associations with over the last months had brought only unhappiness and pain. She came to a stop a few metres away.

‘We can just sit inside for privacy,’ Margaret said.

‘What happened to the dog?’

‘The dog has been rehomed.’

‘Is that a euphemism for “put down”?’

‘Get in, Rose.’

Rose got into the front seat of the SUV. There was enough room to put her rucksack down by her feet. The car smelled heavily of scent. An air freshener hung from the mirror in the shape of a lemon. Margaret’s car keys lay on the dashboard. The key ring was in the shape of a small dog, its tail in the air.

‘I’m leaving. I won’t be known by the name Margaret Spicer any more. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.’

‘You mean you’re relocating. Like my mother and Brendan.’

‘Yes. It has to be done. Some of the people we’ve been involved with are very dangerous.’

‘Some of the people you’ve killed.’

‘I’m here to talk to you about Newcastle,’ Margaret went on, ignoring Rose’s remark, ‘because I wanted you to be clear about happened there. You are Kathy’s daughter. Kathy and I became friends, close. At least as close as people can be who are involved in this kind of enterprise.’

Rose didn’t speak. She was making it sound like a start-up business.

‘James and I went to Newcastle to spend Christmas near my family. Well, my elderly mother, who is in a nursing home. She has Alzheimer’s and will not last much longer I’m afraid. It was to be our last Christmas in the UK so it seemed the right thing to do. James and I had plans to relocate together, like all of the people in the project. Once the job was done we were all going to have new lives.’

‘You’re divorcing, though?’

She nodded, looking suddenly fragile. She picked up her car keys and toyed with them. Rose turned away. She wasn’t going to feel sorry for her.

‘When we got to Newcastle James found out about Stuart Johnson’s accident and of course Stuart was always a worry for the project.’

‘He started it off.’

Rose thought of the documents that she, Joshua and Skeggsie had found hidden in Brendan’s brother’s house. His confession to the murder of Simon Lister, the man who killed Judy Greaves. The Butterfly Murder
.

‘He did something that gave birth to our project. His action in killing Lister stopped other deaths.
The Butterfly Project
we called it.’

There was quiet in the car. Rose looked out of the window at the college buildings. Some students were in a huddle chatting. A couple of boys were looking intently at each other’s phones and a girl was leaning against the wall reading a copy of
Death of a Salesman.

‘I was the first officer on scene. I saw Judy Greaves,’ Margaret said, replacing her keys on the dashboard.

‘I know.’

‘An estate agent had an appointment to go and make a valuation of the property. The owner, Timothy Lucas, was in a care home and his house was to be sold to pay for the care. The agent, a man called David Miller, went round to the house. He had keys and he went in and saw the girl’s body. He came straight out and phoned the police but as luck would have it I was walking through that street after making a couple of house calls.’

Rose knew all this but she let Margaret talk.

‘He came running up to me. He was virtually incoherent and he tugged at my arm and I went into the property and found her in the living room. I’ll never forget walking into that room and seeing that little girl on the floor.’

Rose looked down at her lap and saw that she’d woven her fingers together.

‘She was clothed and lying flat on her back. She had on an old-fashioned dress, something with frills and flowers like a doll might wear. Her eyes were open and she seemed to be staring at the ceiling. I remember walking across to her, my feet barely touching the ground. I had to make sure she wasn’t alive. I
knew
she wasn’t but I had to make absolutely sure and I knelt down beside her and placed my fingers on her neck. There was no pulse. She was still warm. She didn’t have a mark on her that I could see but her skin was blanched of colour. Then I stepped away and stood at the door of the room. It was a crime scene and I had to make it safe, make sure no one went in there. That was the hardest thing. Standing, looking at her from a distance, waiting for Scene of Crime Officers to arrive. Someone should have been there beside her, so that she wasn’t alone.’

Rose heard the muted sound of the college buzzer for the end of recess. Margaret seemed to wait until it had finished and then continued.

‘Just as I heard the car sirens nearby I noticed the pictures on the wall. Except they weren’t pictures, they were frames full of mounted butterflies. Timothy Lucas had been a prolific collector. By this time most of his furniture and belongings had been moved from the house but these hadn’t gone anywhere yet. I don’t suppose anybody wanted them. Ghoulish things. Perhaps collectors think they are beautiful but I just saw a lot of dead insects. The beauty is when they’re
alive
.’

‘Is that when you met James Munroe?’

‘It was. But I must get back to the point. When we heard that Stuart Johnson had had a fall we were worried. We were always worried that he might say something and involve Brendan and possibly James and myself. But for five years he didn’t. Then the fall. When Joshua and his friend and you came to Newcastle James was concerned that Stuart would say something to him or you. We were just keeping an eye on things and then your friend, Darren Skeggs, was trying to find my registration number.’

‘You had his computer cloned?’

‘James thought it best to keep an eye on what he was doing. The lad had some powerful equipment and spent hours every day trying to research relevant data. We knew that it was Joshua who wanted to know these things but without his friend’s help he wouldn’t have got very far.’

‘So Munroe decided to get rid of him?’

‘No. He just wanted him to stop. James arranged for a local petty criminal to speak to the boy and threaten him. But that was all.’

‘You took that thug to the alley,’ Rose said bluntly.

‘I did. And I deeply regret it. James absolutely assured me that it was just to be a verbal warning. At no point was I informed that anything else was planned.’

‘And when Skeggsie came along you said something to him, you prompted him to go into the alley.’

Margaret nodded. She was gripping the steering wheel.

‘Then you left.’

‘I had no idea what had happened until much later. What I’m trying to tell you is that it was never my intention for the boy to be killed. Never.’

’But it was Munroe’s?’

’I can’t say. I thought I could but I really don’t know any more.’

There was quiet as Rose thought about the things Margaret had said. Was she trying to excuse herself? Or was it true that all the plans had been made by Munroe and she had been used. In the end it didn’t really matter. Joshua and she knew who was responsible for Skeggsie’s death.

‘Is that why you are getting divorced from Munroe?’

‘Nothing to do with any of this. James and I . . . have some differences. He has . . . He wants a different kind of marriage than I do . . . Of course it’s our business. No one else’s.’

Rose didn’t say anything. Margaret Spicer’s love life was not her problem.

‘When are you going away?’

‘In a couple of days after the Macon Parker judgement. I intend to start again, somewhere else.’

‘What about the project? I’m sure there are still lots of guilty people out there you can punish.’

‘We feel we’ve done enough. Macon Parker was always going to be the last one. That was decided long before your friend was killed. Doing this kind of thing changes a person. We don’t want our lives defined by it.’

It is a pity that Skeggsie’s life was defined by it
, Rose thought
.

‘How do you get the new identity?’

‘James handles that sort of thing. He was a senior policeman. A civil servant. He has contacts in all sorts of places. He sees himself as a kind of enabler. He has never personally been involved in any of the
hands-on
work.’

‘You make him sound like a scout leader.’

‘If anyone was the leader it was Brendan. It was his passion and sense of moral outrage that got this thing going. He was one of the officers involved in the discovery of the girls in the container lorry in 2003. It was before he went into cold case work. It was the
reason
he went into cold case work.’

Rose hadn’t known that.

‘Don’t judge us too harshly. I know your friend is dead and I know that can never be put right but we did what we did for the right reasons.’

Rose looked at Margaret. Her white-blonde hair wasn’t natural, Rose knew that. Would she change it again, go back to brown? Start wearing a different style of clothes and call herself Alice or Sophia or Emily?

Rose opened the passenger door.

‘Do you want me to say it’s all right? That I accept that Skeggsie’s death was an accident and that you are forgiven? I’m not going to do it.’

She closed the door and stepped back from the car as Margaret drove off.

She looked at her phone. It was eleven thirty. She also saw that she had a message from Joshua.
Interview over. No problems. See you at your gran’s.

Now she had her appointment to keep at the Bethnal Green Police Station.

EIGHTEEN

‘Sorry I’ve made you wait.’

Rose looked up to see Wendy Clarke standing smiling at her. The police officer was wearing a long skirt over boots. Her hair was loose. It looked fluffy and flyaway as though she’d just washed it. Rose stood up and managed a weak smile.