Dead Secret (3 page)

Ava nodded, thinking again of her own family, and how awful it would be if either of her parents ever showed an interest in her life. Neal was right; you can’t revisit the past, but in her case, that wasn’t such a bad thing. She was doing just fine without their input. Still, she couldn’t help feeling a thrill of pleasure at this rare glimpse into her boss’s inner life. If they were going to work together successfully, she wanted to know him as a person as well as a colleague.

* * *

After work, Ava didn’t feel like going straight home. Often in the evenings, she would run around the south common or swim laps at the pool, or visit the gym for a workout. Keeping her body in peak condition was an interest that bordered on obsession with Ava Merry.

If anyone asked her why she needed to run five miles or work up a sweat at the gym, or clock up eighty or more lengths of the pool every day, before she could let herself relax, she would claim that she was an athlete, and besides physical fitness was important for the job. The fact that she was no longer a competing athlete, and had never had to chase a crook on foot was neither here nor there. The real reason why she kept pushing herself was that she simply couldn’t stop.

Missing a session at the gym or a visit to the pool caused Ava to feel uneasy, and she had never asked herself why. Exercise was anathema to her studious younger brother, Oliver, and he liked to tease her about her OCD tendencies. Running was out of the question today with her aching foot, so Ava took off for the pool, where she churned up and down, emptying her mind of the events of the day for an hour, her arms splicing the yielding water.

Images of Amy Hill’s lifeless form returned to her as she stood under the shower, enjoying the massage of hot water that beat on her neck and shoulders. Absurdly, it was the memory of the mud that bothered her most; the dirty streaks on the girl’s legs and arms, and her soiled clothing. She was supposed to have been at the spa, being pampered and perfumed, and clean, not left to rot in the muck.

The sight of the girl’s pinched face and staring eyes had eradicated any satisfaction she might have felt about being right about her disappearance.

Ava had stared at death before, of course, and it was always the same; bewilderment at the loss of that mysterious sense of presence living beings had. And it was especially so when, as in Amy’s case, the victim had been so young.

* * *

Energised by the physical activity (another justification for her exercise addiction) Ava was reluctant to go home. Her car was parked at the station half a mile distant and after collecting it, she drove to the Long Hill area of town and parked in the side street where she had left her car that morning when she and Neal had visited Nancy’s shop to deliver the news of Amy’s death.

She found herself walking past Nancy Hill’s shop. On any day it would be closed at this time of the evening, but today the darkness that lay beyond its locked door made Ava shudder involuntarily. She wasn’t sure why she had come here instead of driving straight home. It was already dark and the rain, which had dried up in the afternoon, could be felt at the back of a moist wind that was whipping up the usual sounds of the night on the empty hill, a mingling of squeaking shop signs, and water running from downpipes and gutters into waiting drains.

Looking down the hill, Ava was surprised to see Anna Foster, standing on the pavement near her property, coat collar pulled up against the wind. She was not alone. A tall young man was waiting by her side. He was dark-haired with downy whiskers on his chin and upper lip and he was wearing the geeky black-rimmed specs that seemed to be all the rage these days.

“Good evening, Detective Sergeant,” Anna said as Ava approached. “This is my son, Simon. Simon, Detective Sergeant Ava Merry.”

Ava and Simon Foster exchanged polite nods. He seemed to be shy.

“How was Nancy when you left her?” Ava enquired. It didn’t escape her attention that Simon Foster stiffened at the mention of Nancy’s name.

“I’m afraid she broke down badly,” Anna answered.

“She was very brave this morning, answering our questions. A lot of people can’t, you know, because of the shock. For others, the full impact hits them a little while afterwards,” said Ava.

“Yes, I think that’s what happened with Nancy.”

“Is anyone with her now?”

“Her partner, Richard Turner. He was out of town this morning but was due to return this afternoon. I called him and stayed with Nancy until he arrived.”

“Did you know Nancy or Amy?” Ava asked Simon.

“I met Nancy once or twice at my mother’s book group. I knew Amy by sight, but that’s all.” On her coffee table at home, Ava had a book about how to spot when someone is lying to you, but she’d only opened it twice and both times she had fallen asleep without getting past the first chapter, which debunked all the usual myths about fidgeting and avoiding eye contact. She therefore had to trust her gut instinct, and at that moment she would have bet money that Simon wasn’t being truthful.

“Are we under investigation, Sergeant?” Anna Foster asked, her tone suggesting mild amusement even though her look was guarded. “How exciting.”

“I’m off duty,” Ava replied. Then, because Anna’s tone had irritated her ever so slightly, she added, “Still, I suppose there’s no harm in asking what you were doing last Saturday evening?”

“We were at home, sorting through some books from the library sale I mentioned to you earlier today.”

“We?”

“Simon and I.”

Not a lot of point in pursuing that one, thought Ava.

Instead she said, “I’ve often thought of joining a book group. I quite enjoy reading; but as I said before, Stephen King’s about as intellectual as I get, although I did read, ‘Lord of the Flies’ at school. Cracking book. What about you, Simon? You a reader?”

“Yes,” Simon answered guardedly.

Ava waited but he didn’t elaborate.

“All those little boys running wild on that island. It’s not surprising it ended in tragedy,” she went on. “I wonder what would have happened if they’d been girls instead?”

Anna Foster smiled, indulgently. “You’re welcome to come along to my book group, Sergeant. I’m sure my members would love to debate that topic.”

Ava looked at Simon and was surprised to see that he looked as if he was almost on the point of tears. He couldn’t be crying for Nancy’s loss, surely. For whom, then? Amy?

“I might just do that,” she said. “You guys have a good evening.”

Anna Foster smiled and wished Ava the same. Simon nodded, politely.

Ava returned to her car and headed home. She cooked a light supper and curled up with her fat tortoiseshell cat, Camden, to watch TV for an hour. Before going to bed she did fifty press-ups and set her alarm for five thirty just in case her ankle was feeling up to a run in the morning.

Chapter 3

Nancy Hill’s cottage was located in a quiet village only twenty minutes’ drive from the centre of town. Making the move from London all those years ago had been a wrench, and it was a long time before she was able to appreciate the pleasures that village life had to offer. Several times in those early days Nancy had asked herself whether the anonymity of city life might not have suited her needs better than the intrusive closeness of the community she had entered unprepared, as a single mother, with a secret that was sometimes too oppressive to bear.

She had expected to be judged and found guilty of the sin of single motherhood. In reality she had found that Shelton, an expanding commuter village with a rapidly changing population, was not the kind of closed-minded community that she had feared it might be. For every member of the old guard there was a new type of villager who hailed, typically, from an urban area, attracted by Shelton’s relatively rural character and its proximity to a city that was enjoying a renaissance in jobs and culture that had culminated in the building of the country’s first new university in many years. Far from being the only stranger in their midst, Nancy had found herself simply one among many.

With a young child to care for, it would have been impractical to keep herself entirely to herself, though this was exactly what Nancy had hoped for when she moved into the small cottage on the outskirts of the village, which she had first rented, then bought when her landlord put it up for sale.

Babies, they say, open doors, and this had certainly been the case for Nancy, not least because Amy had been such a beautiful child. People would stop Nancy in the street and exclaim at her daughter’s cornflower blue eyes, her fair hair and delicate features.

“You must be so proud,” they would comment, and Nancy could hear the words they left unsaid: ‘she must take after her father,’ for nothing of Amy’s Nordic beauty was evident in her mother.

At first she had been afraid to talk to people, for fear of letting her guard down, of letting too much slip out. She was careful never to elaborate on her basic story, never to reveal anything or invent anything that would not stand up to scrutiny, or that could be shown conclusively to be false.

Along with others’ acceptance of her back-story came some sense of security; if others could believe in it, then so could she. As time passed, invention and reality seemed to merge, to the point where she could barely distinguish where one ended and the other began.

For Amy’s sake Nancy suppressed her impulse to live a reclusive existence. As long as she did not deviate from the half-invented past she had fabricated for herself and her daughter out of a painstaking mix of fact and fiction, she could feel, on certain good days, that she had nothing to fear, either from the past or in what the future might hold.

Over the years, Nancy had made friends and settled into a way of life, which, even if it was not the one she had planned, had its own compensations, not the least of which was her love for Amy. No sacrifice was too great where her daughter was concerned.

All through her childhood, Amy was seldom out of Nancy’s sight. For the two years that her daughter attended the local playgroup, Nancy volunteered as a playgroup assistant, thereby delaying the separation she knew would come when Amy started school.

Then, by a stroke of good luck, a vacancy arose for a classroom assistant at the local school, and on Amy’s first day in reception class, Nancy walked through the door holding her daughter’s hand, and went to work in the classroom next door, where she remained for the following six years, never further than a few doors away from Amy. Nancy had begun to panic whenever Amy was out of her sight for too long.

For that reason, even brief separations, such as school trips, (onto which Nancy usually managed to wangle her way), and later, sleepovers at friends’ houses, were planned with meticulous care, and unavoidably, some of Nancy’s anxiety communicated itself to her daughter.

“You never let me go anywhere!” became the recurrent refrain of Amy’s teenage years as she battled for her independence in the face of her mother’s stifling over-protectiveness. Nancy reached a point when she began to accept that things could not go on as they were. Nevertheless, the split, when it came, all but broke her heart.

* * *

A couple of days after Amy’s murder, Nancy was roused from a feverish mid-morning sleep by the sound of soft but persistent knocking on her door. With a gargantuan effort she heaved herself upright and walked like a zombie to the door. It was most likely another well-wisher come to offer condolences, thought Nancy, wishing they would just leave her alone.

“Thank you,” she said, accepting the card proffered by the nervous young woman on her doorstep, whom she recognised as one of her daughter’s former classmates, one who had not gone to university, but had taken a job as an apprentice receptionist at the village health centre — and stayed alive.

“I’d just like to say how sorry I am. Amy was a mate.”

Nancy nodded, taking in the girl’s pretty face and despising herself for wishing that this girl, any girl, could take her daughter’s place. She did not encourage her to linger, and closed the door before she had even turned her back.

The house was bursting with cards and flowers. Some of the cards had been opened and arranged along the mantelpiece, on windowsills, and the polished surface of a heavy oak merchant’s chest standing in an alcove. The rest lay in a heap on the coffee table where Nancy tossed this latest offering, not bothering to open it. It landed on the pile, then slid to the carpet. Nancy walked over it as she went back to the sofa where she had been lying most of the night and all of the morning until the girl’s timid knocking disturbed her.

She had lost all sense of time since Anna Foster and DS Merry had driven her home from that horrid place where they had taken her to identify her daughter’s body. Afterwards, at her insistence, they had left her alone to come to terms with her loss. As if she ever could. Anna had promised to visit the following day. The young sergeant had said that she would be in touch. Nancy did not want visitors, and besides, aren’t people secretly relieved when a bereaved person reassures them that there is nothing they can do?

From her prone position on the sofa, Nancy heard a key turning in the back door.
Oh dear God, not Richard
.

“Nancy! Love, why didn’t you call me?”

Though she had dreaded him coming, Nancy suddenly realised that his familiar face was all she wanted to see. Speechless, she turned to him, her eyes brimming with tears. Of course she had wanted to call him. In the eight years that she had known Richard Turner, there had been scores of times when she had wanted to call him and blurt out the truth about her past, why she would not marry and settle down with him like normal people do. Any other man would have given up on her by now, but not Richard.

A little older than Nancy, divorced, with two teenage children of his own, rarely seen when they were small, Richard had no doubt harboured hopes of starting a new family with her, but she had made it clear from the beginning that marriage and children were not on her agenda.

Over the years, he had come to accept the terms of their relationship, but her unwillingness to share was, she knew, a constant source of frustration for him. Above all, he could not understand why she still refused to live with him.

“Amy’s dead,” she heard herself wailing.

“I know.”

“Who would do such a thing?”

“You know I loved her like a daughter, don’t you?” Richard asked. There were tears in his eyes too, she realised. Nancy sniffed. It was true. She looked at Richard, thinking that he deserved to know the truth at last, and fearing that once he did, she would lose him forever.

“Sit down,” she said. Richard, who had been kneeling on the floor beside her, heaved himself tiredly onto the sofa. “There’s something you should know.”

Richard regarded her quizzically. At that moment, Nancy had been sure she would tell him, but when she spoke, her words were a shock to them both.

“When all this is over, when they’ve found Amy’s killer and he’s safely behind bars, then we’ll get married.”