Dead and Buried (19 page)

‘Come through,’ Wendy Clarke said brightly, as though she was taking her for a wash and blow dry instead of a formal interview.

Wendy Clarke took her along a narrow corridor then up a flight of stairs. People spoke to her as she went past. ‘Morning, Mam!’ ‘Hello, Wendy.’ ‘Good day, Mzzz Clarke
.
’ When they got to the interview room Wendy Clarke pulled out a chair out for Rose to sit on. Then she sat down herself and looked expectantly at her. There was a table between them and on it was a file. It had no label but looked ominous. Rose couldn’t help frowning at the sight of it.

‘Aren’t you going to tape the interview?’ Rose said, glancing at the recording equipment.

‘No, I don’t think that will be necessary. I think a chat is what I’d like. Unless you want it to be more formal?’

Rose shook her head. She just wanted to get it over with.

‘OK. On Saturday evening we spoke at Joshua Johnson’s flat and I was straight with you. I also said it seemed to me as though you and he were hiding something. Keeping something to yourselves. You both have the look of someone who has a good hand of cards and is not playing it yet. If I wanted to lay a wager I’d say that whatever is in that hand of cards might have something to do with my Daisy.’

‘
Your
Daisy?’ Rose said, shifting about on her seat.

‘Daisy Lincoln. Yes, Rose. I think of her as mine. I have to do that, you see, because then this crime is personal to me. Actually I think every crime is personal. Have you heard the line
never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee
?’

‘John Donne.’

‘Be honest. You didn’t think police officers read poetry,’ Wendy said.

Rose shook her head.

‘John Donne. That’s the one. The point is strong. Every time a crime is committed it’s a crime against all of us. When someone tied Daisy’s hands up, killed her and buried her in your back garden I took it personally as if she was my own daughter. That’s why I have to find her killer.’

Rose thought of her conversation with Margaret Spicer an hour or so before.
We did what we did for the right reasons.
What would Wendy Clarke think of this? Wendy Clarke wanted to
own
Daisy Lincoln. She wanted to take personal responsibility for finding her killer. Wasn’t that what her mother and Brendan and the others were doing? Owning the victims of murder? They were treating these victims as though they were their own children. The difference between them and Wendy Clarke was that they decided on what constituted
justice
.

‘I understand. When someone is killed we are all touched,’ Rose said quietly.

‘If only that were true. Most people walk by on the other side of the road. It hasn’t happened to someone they loved so why should they care?’

‘I care about Daisy,’ Rose said, her voice barely making it out of her lips.

‘Do you, Rose?’

Rose nodded.

‘So tell me,’ she said, ‘what is it that you and Joshua Johnson have up your sleeve?’

Rose shook her head. Had Wendy Clarke asked Joshua this very same question hours before? How had he answered?

‘OK, I’ll rephrase my question. Does this thing, this knowledge you have, have anything to do with Daisy Lincoln? Just answer that honestly and I’ll leave you alone.’

Rose stared at Wendy Clarke. Her hair stood out, wisps of it flying around. Rose half expected to
hear
the electricity coming off it.

‘It doesn’t,’ Rose whispered.

‘You do have something, though, some secret? But it’s not linked to this? To Daisy?’

‘It’s not linked to Daisy.’

Rose put her hand in her pocket and felt the card that was there. Her mother’s phone number. She ran the tip of her finger along the edge.

‘Well, you’ve said more than your stepbrother did,’ Wendy Clarke said, picking up the folder in front of her and holding it to her chest. ‘In any case you and Joshua Johnson’s secrets are your own affair.’

‘Can I go now?’ Rose said, standing up.

‘Sure. Oh! While you’re here, though, I would like you to take a look at these. These are things we found on or around Daisy’s body and we’re trying to link them to her or rule them out. Maybe items belonging to your family that were lost in the garden at some stage. It won’t take you a second to have a look.’

Wendy Clarke laid photos on the table as if she was playing Patience. Rose sat down again, only half on the chair, most of her body turned to the door. There were four items all placed on white backgrounds. The first was a ring. The second were some metal buttons, three in a triangle. The third was a watch face with no strap. The fourth was a picture of a part of a chain and a pendant. The pendant was a silver heart shape and in the middle of it was a red stone. A ruby. Rose’s eyes only stayed on it a second. She flicked her glance away but her throat had fired up and her thoughts were running ahead of her. Then she pulled each photograph back taking time to look in detail, her fingers tracing the items.

‘No, none of them ring a bell,’ Rose said, her voice thickening.

Wendy Clarke gathered the pictures up.

‘OK,’ she said. ‘And I don’t need to tell you to contact me if anything comes up.’

Rose stood up and walked to the door.

‘I’ll take you back to reception,’ Wendy Clarke said.

Rose went home. The Ford was parked in the street so she knew that Joshua was in. She went in and up to her rooms hearing the distant sound of music coming from the attic. She put her rucksack down and pulled a packet of gum from the front compartment and took a piece. Chewing gently, she went across to her pinboard and looked at the picture of her mother that she’d put there a couple of weeks before when the clearing out of the Blue Room started. She pulled the tack out of the corner of the photo and held the picture in her hands. Her mother’s smile beamed out and around her neck was the pendant. The silver heart sat on her breastbone, the ruby coloured gem in the centre. The same one that was in the photo which Wendy Clarke showed her.

Rose felt a crushing feeling in her chest.

She thought of that last summer when they were together as a family. In her mind those days had been perfect, halcyon. But now she had learned other stuff about that time: her mother and Brendan at odds, a miscarriage, time spent apart. Then there were the other factors: Daisy Lincoln’s older boyfriend, her hands tied up with Brendan’s tie.

Now her mother’s pendant had been found
on
or
near
Daisy’s body. Brendan had given this to her mother as a gift, she was sure. She had a picture in her mind of her mum opening a box and taking it out. Had Brendan been there? She couldn’t quite remember. She knew her mother hadn’t liked it much.

From upstairs she heard Joshua’s footsteps cross the ceiling.

She felt a cloying anxiety. She’d told Joshua none of this. She’d kept the story about the miscarriage and Brendan’s letters from him. Then the card with the phone number. Now the pendant. Why was she doing this? Hadn’t he a right to know about these developments?

She went out of her room and up the stairs. She was holding the photo flat against her chest.

She would make a clean breast of it. Tell him everything.

She knocked on the attic door and he shouted, ‘Come in!’

She went in.

He was standing facing the wall opposite his bed. He had papered the surface of the wall with articles and pictures. The images were all of one girl. Rose remembered her from Joshua’s explanation of Macon Parker’s activities. Polina Bokun, a nineteen year old from Belarus. She’d come to England as a student, part of some deal for the removal of an organ, Joshua had said. Then she’d disappeared, her body turning up weeks later in the Thames estuary minus her liver and kidneys.

‘How was it?’ she said.

‘What?’

‘At the police station.’

‘Oh, she kept going on about how well had I known Daisy,’ Joshua said. ‘If I’d seen her with Brendan. Whether Kathy was away a lot. Stuff like that.’

‘They’re trying to link Daisy to Brendan.’

‘She asked me if Daisy and
I
had spent time together. I laughed at her.
In my dreams
, I said. How about you?’

‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about partly . . .’

‘But look at all this,’ he said, not seeming to register what she’d said. ‘I printed this stuff off the internet. It’s important to know this story. It’s important to read the detail behind the headlines.’

Rose walked across to the wall. There were newspaper articles pinned side by side. One said
Belarus Teenager Wanted to Be a Nurse
. Another said
Polina’s Mother Suffering From Breast Cancer
.
Another, a magazine article, showed a small photo of Polina with a male friend.
She Was My Soulmate
, the heading said.
Poverty forces the young to flee abroad,
was a subheading further down the page.

In the middle of it all was the police photo of Polina.

In some way it reminded her of the photo of Daisy that had been in the newspapers. The hair was dark although not as long, the expression blank. They were passport photos, maybe. She focused a little longer so that the girl’s facial features seemed to dissolve. Polina and Daisy. Now she was on first-name terms with two dead girls.

‘This is a girl’s life that has been snuffed out. That’s why they’re going after Macon Parker!’

Rose turned to him. He was moving about, looking from one article to another. He was like an enthusiastic teacher in front of a classroom display, pleased with his work.

He stepped across and put his hand on her shoulder.

‘We have to keep this clear in our minds. So that when it happens we know why they did it.’

He meant the
execution
of Macon Parker.

‘What’s that?’ he said, pointing to the photograph of her mother wearing the pendant.

‘Nothing,’ she said, folding it in half and half again.

He turned back to the display. He was building up a case for murder. On the wall were pictures of a girl whose life had been taken. He was amassing evidence of waste, of loss and despair. She couldn’t tell him about the pendant or the other stuff about her mother and Brendan’s relationship. None of that would be important to him. All he was interested in was this. In his head this murder would balance whatever their parents were going to do to Macon Parker.

Oh,’ she said, tucking the photo in her pocket. ‘Margaret Spicer came to my college today. She wanted to speak to me, to tell me that Skeggsie’s death really was nothing to do with her. She seemed to be distancing herself from Munroe.’

‘Yes?’

‘And she’s leaving. Getting a new identity. Starting a new life.’

Joshua’s face hardened. ‘Right. Pity Skeggsie will never be able to do that.’

‘You know what she called it?
The Butterfly Project
.’

‘Yeah, well, I’ve moved on from Margaret Spicer. I’m not interested in her any more.’

Rose stood for a moment and watched him tidying up his wall display.

‘I’ll go. I’ve got some work to do.’

She left him in the attic and went back down to her room.

She sat on the edge of her bed, the wrinkled photo of her mother on the bedside table. In her hand was the card with the telephone number.

She composed a text.
I need to see you urgently. Let’s meet. Just you and I. No one else needs to know. xxxx

She pressed
Send
.

After a short while came a reply.
Liverpool Street Station Cafe Black Tuesday 1 p.m.

She had just under twenty-four hours to wait.

NINETEEN

At ten to one Liverpool Street Station was busy. A rush of faces passed her by, moving in different directions. Coming off the tube escalator, she sidestepped travellers who were heading for different platforms, their shoulders down, their faces pinched with determination. Rose felt herself being pulled here and there with the flow. After searching round for several moments she saw Cafe Black on a mezzanine floor. She headed for the stairs and went up. Inside the cafe it seemed soundproofed. The announcements and collective noise of the station were hushed. One wall had screens which were full of listings of departing and arriving trains. There was a counter and also a self-service area packed with rolls and sandwiches. There were circular tables, most of which were occupied. Rose bought a coffee and found an empty seat by the window and waited.

At one thirty she’d long finished her drink and was wondering what to do.

Could something have happened to detain her mother?

She looked out of the window at the people below heading for the platforms. Many of the men had on suits and overcoats, carrying computer bags. She was reminded of James Munroe in his Crombie overcoat. He always looked so respectable. An ex-policeman, now a civil servant, who had a sideline in assassination. She thought about him hurting her hand and warning her off. Margaret Spicer said that it was he who organised all the new identities. He had contacts so he was able to get hold of new papers, passports and so on. He would be doing this for her mother and Brendan, which meant that he would know where they would relocate and their new names. They would always be dependent on him.