Dead and Buried (2 page)

‘Near the rear of the garden, I believe. I’ve not been to the crime scene myself . . .’

Rose pictured the back garden at Brewster Road. The end of it was overgrown, she remembered, big shrubs, some trees, long grass. She never went down there.

‘I don’t get this,’ Rose said. ‘It happened while we were living there? Someone came into our garden and dug a hole and buried a girl? It’s mad. Why are you asking me about it? How would I know? Or my family, come to that?’

‘This is standard procedure, Rose. If human remains are found in a garden then we have to speak to the people who lived in that house at that time. I’m here to let you know that the detectives who are following up the case might want to speak to you to see if you remember anything about the month of August 2007?’

‘Why that month? I thought you said that the dates were approximate?’

‘Dating human remains is approximate but in this case the body may be that of a girl who left home on 20 August 2007 and was never seen again.’

‘Oh.’

‘Anyway, I’m just here as a courtesy really. I think you’ve got my phone number? And I’ve got yours from last autumn. It hasn’t changed?’

Rose shook her head. Her number was the same.

‘So if there’s anything you remember . . .’

Rose could hear footsteps coming down the stairs. Henry stood up and moments later Anna was at the kitchen door.

‘Oh, hello,’ Anna said, looking at Henry’s uniform, a flicker of concern crossing her face.

‘Mrs Christie. Police Constable Henry Thompson. We met last autumn . . .’

‘Actually Henry was just leaving,’ Rose said, standing up. ‘Thanks for coming. It’s good of you to let me know.’

‘Is there a problem?’ Anna said.

‘Well . . .’ Henry started.

‘I’ll explain to Anna after you go,’ she said.

She chivvied him along the hallway. He started to ask about her college courses and she gave mumbled answers. When they got to the front door she stepped outside with him, closing the door behind her. She walked with him on to the street.

‘I’ll let you know if the officers from East London want to speak to you. Oh, one other thing . . .’

Rose waited.

‘There might be some press interest in this case.’

‘The press?’

‘You know how the papers are. A body buried in a garden. It’s big news.’

‘What about Joshua? Are you going to see him?’

‘Going there now. Camden, right? No doubt you’ll be getting together. That might be a good thing. If the two of you talk it through, it might bring back some relevant memories.’

He walked off and she stood on the pavement, disconcerted. Part of her had wanted to say, ‘I’ll come with you!’ But she hadn’t and as she walked back up the garden path she imagined Henry standing next to Lettuce and Stuff, a cafe on Camden High Street, and knocking on Joshua’s door. She saw Joshua come dashing down the stairs and frowning when he saw a policeman there. He would be guarded and surly because he had had his fill of policemen. Still, though, he would invite him upstairs and they would stand or sit in the small narrow kitchen and Henry would tell him about the body under the garden in Brewster Road.

How would he react? She couldn’t imagine that part of the scene.

Indoors her grandmother was hovering uneasily.

‘What was that about, Rose?’ she said.

‘It’s just that house I lived in with Mum and Brendan and Joshua? There’s been a report of a crime there. Years ago. Henry wanted to let me know. In case it upset me.’

‘That’s nice of him to think about you. It’s got nothing to do with Katherine?’

‘Oh no. Nothing at all.’

‘He’s a pleasant young man. Very well spoken. I liked him when I met him last autumn. If only more police constables were like that.’

Anna went into the kitchen and Rose drifted upstairs. Back in her room she slipped off her mother’s silk blouse and placed it on the hanger. She put her shirt on and thought about Brewster Road. The thought of a girl’s body under the soil, under the rocks and grass, made her shiver.

But this murder had nothing to do with her or Joshua. Neither did it have anything to do with her mother or Joshua’s father, Brendan.

No, the murders
they
were involved in were quite different.

TWO

Rose spent time in the afternoon helping Anna sort out her mother’s old bedroom. Anna called it the Blue Room and it hadn’t been used since her mother quarrelled with Anna and left her house over twenty years before. As well as her mother’s childhood and teenage things there were her belongings from the house at Brewster Road. Anna had kept these in case Rose wanted them. Rose added them to the things that were already in her room. While she was doing it she thought about Joshua and wondered how he had reacted to Henry’s news. After a while she opened her laptop and glanced at her email hoping that Joshua had tried to contact her but it simply said:
No New Messages
.

She picked up her packet of chewing gum and took a stick out. She chewed as she looked up Google and typed in the words
Brewster Road
and
Body
. Several articles came up. Some of the headlines startled her.

Body of Missing Teenager Found in Back Garden of Police House; Mystery House Gives Up New Victim; Vanishing Police Officers New Twist; Girl’s Body Found in Garden of Missing Police Officers.

She sat stiffly, her eyes flicking back and forth across the print. She found herself holding her breath. The press were linking the two things: the body in the garden and their parents’ disappearance. Should she be surprised? A dead teenager buried in August and months later, the two adults who lived in that very same house vanished.

This was why Henry had been so concerned. Why he had taken the time to come and see her. It wasn’t only the press who had linked these two things but the police as well. The only reason it hadn’t occurred to her was because she
knew
what happened to their parents five years ago and it had nothing to do with a body under the garden. From the police’s point of view their parents’ disappearance was unsolved but they were presumed dead. To them it was a ‘cold case’. Rose almost smiled. Her mother and Brendan had been serving police officers themselves, working on a unit that dealt with cold cases. Now
they
were a cold case that would be opened up again, linked to some dead teenager buried under the garden of the Brewster Road house.

Rose clicked and opened up one of the articles.

The body of a girl has been found buried in the back garden of a terraced house in Brewster Road, Bethnal Green. Police sources suggest that the body was placed there sometime in the summer of 2007. The house was recently sold. Neighbours say they are shocked and saddened by the news. Police sources confirm that the house was once lived in by two serving police officers, Katherine Smith and Brendan Johnson. These officers disappeared in 2007. Police have not yet released the identity of the dead girl and are making no comment on the link between these two cases.

She closed her laptop down. She could hear Anna walking up and down the landing, busying herself in the Blue Room. How long before she noticed some of this press coverage?

The sound of her ringtone interrupted her thoughts.

She picked up her mobile and saw the word
Josh
on the screen. Her chest tightened.

‘Hi,’ she said.

‘I’ve just been speaking to a policeman who you know.’

She was thrown by his abruptness. He didn’t say,
Hi
,
or
Hello, Rose
, or
Rosie.
She didn’t know how to answer.

‘Are you there?’

‘Yes.’

‘He said he’d been to see you.’

‘Yes, it’s Henry. I know him from last autumn.’

‘How come you didn’t let me know?’

‘He said he was going straight to see you . . .’

‘Maybe we should meet up. That’s if you want to.’

His voice was guarded, unfriendly. It made her feel bad.

‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Where?’

She could have asked him round to the house. She could have put the radiator on in her studio and then got some food for both of them. She had some new CDs she could have played but his tone of voice made her feel that he wouldn’t be happy with that.

‘The Dark Brew?’ he said, mentioning a cafe that they had used in the past.

‘Fine. When?’

‘Can you make it this evening, about six?’

‘OK.’

The call ended. Rose looked at the phone with consternation. It seemed impossible that she and Joshua should be distant and cool with each other. She sat back in her chair, pushing her laptop away and thought gloomily about the last time she’d seen Joshua and the row they’d had.

She’d been to the flat a lot since their friend Skeggsie had been killed. This time it was full of cardboard boxes. His things had been packed away and were ready to be shipped back to Newcastle where his father lived. Rose edged by the boxes and followed Joshua to his study. Before, when Skeggsie had been there she’d felt awkward, out of place, even unwelcome sometimes. Now she was just plain upset by his absence.

In the study her attention was taken by a huge Ordnance Survey map of East Essex that Joshua had placed on the wall behind his computers. Three towns were pinpointed with large labels beside them; Wickby, Southwood and Hensham. Between the three towns Joshua had fixed red tape with drawing pins. It made a red triangle. From somewhere within that triangle their parents had sent them a text message. It had happened just before the New Year and it was the only evidence they had of their recent whereabouts.

The previous two weekends she and Joshua had driven out to two of the towns and wandered aimlessly around all day long. Joshua hadn’t seen it like that, though. From his point of view they had been
familiarising
themselves with the
territory
. It was as if they were hunters looking for prey. They’d walked up and down every street and small turning. Then they’d got in the car and driven around the country lanes and paused at gated properties while Rose marked them on one of several large scale maps that Joshua had brought along with them. The days had been long and Rose had developed a headache from the stop-starting of the car, her shoulders tightening with the tension of Joshua’s demands:
Have you marked that one down? Write the name. Write the road, there, it’s on the map further along. Make sure you spell it right.
By the time they were on their way home Rose’s neck was aching.

Now Rose was staring at Joshua’s back as he typed on to a spreadsheet.

‘I’ll pick you up at about eight on Saturday,’ he said, without turning round. ‘We need to make an early start because Wickby is the biggest of the three towns and so there’s more ground to cover.’

There was quiet. Rose took a deep breath.

‘I’m not coming on Saturday,’ she said.

He stopped typing and let the chair swivel round so that he was facing her.

‘You got something on at college? We could go on Sunday?’

‘I’m not coming at all. I think it’s a waste of time.’

‘What?’

Joshua blew through his teeth.

‘It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack,’ she went on. ‘The area is too big. There are too many properties. We could go up to each town every weekend for a year and still not find them.’

‘They’re small towns, Rosie, not like London. When we’ve mapped it out then we’ll start going round, into shops, showing our pictures of them.’

Rose looked back to the wall and saw, at the bottom left-hand corner of the map, two computer-generated images of her mother and Brendan. They were taken from old photographs that they had. They had been enhanced; Brendan had less hair and his face was thinner; her mother had heavy-framed glasses on that made her look stern and cold.

‘Someone will recognise them.’

‘They don’t want to be found, Josh. We both know that. In any case I don’t know if I want to find them any more.’

‘Because of the murders?’

‘What else?’

Joshua stood up. ‘That’s what makes it so important to find them. To stop them . . .’

‘If this is what they’ve chosen to do why is it up to us to stop them? I’ve had enough. I’ve got no energy left. I want to move on with my life.’

Joshua huffed. He spoke under his breath. Rose didn’t quite catch the words.

‘What?’ she said, becoming angry. ‘WHAT?’

‘You’ve never really wanted to look for them. You’ve always had to be dragged along. Every single thing we’ve achieved over the last few months has been in spite of you not because of you.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘It is. You’ve always been half-hearted.’

‘Only because I thought we’d get hurt. I didn’t want to see me
or
you get hurt any more!’