First One Missing (10 page)

‘She’ll be organizing another meeting, then?’

The way Leanne said it was hardly a question, more like a statement of fact.

Emma nodded. ‘It helps, you know?’

She was appealing directly to Leanne, and trying not to look at Guy. She knew what he felt about the meetings and about the whole ‘Megan’s Angels’ label.

Leanne reached out a hand and placed her fingers gently on Emma’s arm.

‘Of course the meetings help now, but there might come a time when you don’t need them any more, Emma,’ she said softly. ‘Just bear that in mind.’

Emma knew what she was saying. She was saying there might come a time when they’d moved on.

But what Leanne didn’t know was how little Emma wanted her life to move on. Moving on would mean leaving Tilly behind. What Leanne didn’t know was that Emma wanted time to go backwards, not forwards. And if that wasn’t possible, she would stop it dead in its tracks.

9

What the hell was the use of nicotine gum if one ended up with lockjaw? In the back of the black cab, passing through the sun-splashed streets of North London, Sally Freeland dug around in her bag for a packet of tissues and discreetly spat the grey gum into one and folded it up inside her palm. Her mouth muscles ached and her tongue tasted furry. She still craved a cigarette.

Nothing, not a single damn thing was going to plan. Sally was fed up with it. She was doing this new routine where you stood in front of the mirror in the mornings and spoke out loud five things you were grateful for. It was supposed to make you very calm and Zen. That morning she’d told her reflection that she was grateful for:

1) Her modernist house set just back from the seafront in Hove with its white floorboards and (oblique) sea view and Japanese herb garden (sans functioning water feature).

2) Her size 10, well all right, 12, figure (although she bloody well ought to be grateful to herself for that, because it didn’t come without massive sacrifice. The 5:2 diet, the Atkins, the bloody Dukan. All that protein – it’d played havoc with her bowel habits. Not to mention the endless trekking to the gym, rain or shine, sleet or snow).

3) Not being with Noel any more. Although technically speaking, that was more of a negative than a positive, but really, what an escape she’d had, thinking about it. The final straw had been when they’d talked about sharing their fantasies, and Sally, who’d read that
Fifty Shades
for her book group (so they could know what they were dismissing, everyone said, although that didn’t stop most of them reading all three volumes), had got in a pair of furry handcuffs and a very soft bristled brush that cost nearly a hundred quid from a specialist chemist, and prepared to submit to Noel’s will, only for him to drop his trousers and reveal he was wearing her knickers. That was his fantasy! Not only that, but they were the brand-new ones from Agent Provocateur. Now, she was as broad-minded as the next woman, but everyone has a line, don’t they? A tipping point?

4) Her family – her nieces and nephews and her beloved mother, ensconced now in a nursing home, and a few cards short of a full deck. The last time Sally visited, she’d called out a hello from the doorway of the residents’ lounge, and a hush had fallen as her mother peered at her over the top of her glasses before asking her neighbour, sotto voce, ‘Who, or should I say
what
, is that?’

5) Her Burmese cat Binky who treated everyone apart from Sally herself with utter and not displeasing disdain.

So she’d been suitably grateful, she’d tossed her good karma out into the universe and given thanks for all her blessings. And what had she got in return? Just a whole heap of problems. Sally thought she might ditch the blessings business. It was starting to feel just too much like when she’d taken up Buddhism on the advice of a friend who swore that she could chant for a parking space in Portobello Road and lo, one would open right up. Sally had chanted for loads of things – not just selfish things either, she’d made sure to ask for peace in Syria on a regular basis – but none of them had come to pass. Well, apart from the red-wine stain coming out of the living-room rug.

The taxi pulled up at the entrance to the private mews running behind the railway line in Holloway, where the Botsfords lived. It had cost thirteen pounds to go two miles down the road. Sally would claim it on expenses, but still she resented paying it. She had a pang of regret for her champagne-coloured VW Beetle, shut away in a garage in Hove that she rented at vast cost. Such a drag she couldn’t drive it. Not couldn’t, wasn’t allowed to. Not with all those points on her licence. She’d assumed she could simply pay to go on another one of those speed-awareness courses, but the bastards had told her the limit was one every three years. It wouldn’t be so bad if she had a man who could drive her around, but when you were on your own … well, it was just so unfair.

Sally wasn’t looking forward to becoming reacquainted with Fiona Botsford. There are some people in life who are kindred spirits, she was a big believer in that. So it would stand to reason, she supposed, that there are other people who are the precise opposite of kindred spirits. Hostile spirits, maybe. Well, Fiona Botsford was one of those.

If only Emma Reid had been a bit more forthcoming. The problem was she’d pre-judged her. She didn’t realize that Sally was on her side. If the situation had been reversed and something happened to her daughter, were she to have one, she wouldn’t want to go sharing it with a national newspaper either, but the thing was, Emma had been around long enough now to know how the whole thing worked. You didn’t get to be left alone. It was harsh, but there it was. Sally didn’t invent the system, but given that it existed, it was her job to help people navigate it, and Emma didn’t do herself any favours by being so stubborn. The Reids’ stand-offishness had counted against them. Sally had seen online forums where people had openly challenged their story, implying they might know more about their daughter’s death than they were letting on. There would always be conspiracy theorists, Sally was well aware of that, and the fact was, Emma’s refusal to talk to the press was fuelling ill feeling, even two years on.

Emma didn’t seem to get that there were certain unwritten rules about how you behaved after a tragedy. Firstly, you had to be seen to cry. Sally could not over-emphasize the need for tears. You had to look on it as a kind of transaction. You want to find out what’s happened to your kid, so as the grieving parent there are certain things you’re expected to give – and one of those is grief. But Emma Reid hadn’t cried even at the funeral. Sally hadn’t been there, but she’d had reports. And, of course, it hadn’t gone unnoticed. Emma had been ‘stoic’ in the face of tragedy, the
Mail
said, which everyone knew meant ‘hard’.

And, secondly, you had to maintain a presence. Just be in evidence from time to time – drop in on the school your child used to go to, lay a few flowers at the spot where the body was found, open the odd charity auction. It didn’t take much, but people needed
something
in return for their investment of time or money or empathy. But Emma Reid had never seemed to grasp that it was a two-way street.

Helen Purvis. Now, she was different. She had an innate understanding of what was expected of her. Sally tried to ignore the pang of guilt that flared up at the thought of Helen Purvis. Mina, her life coach, had told her guilt was a wasted emotion. And she was absolutely right, but on the topic of Helen Purvis, Sally’s no-guilt resolve wavered.

She hadn’t wanted anything to happen with Simon Hewitt. He wasn’t at all her type. But she had been going through a particularly fallow period romantically. Plus she’d just had a rather big horrible birthday. So she was vulnerable. And Simon Hewitt took advantage of that. She’d first met him at the time of Megan’s murder, and he’d been in a terrible state. She’d got a couple of comments from him but that was about it. She didn’t even think he’d registered her existence, to be quite frank. But when she went back to do her in-depth catch-up interview with Helen nine months after Megan’s death, he’d known exactly who she was, and by the time of the next murder, the Reid girl … well …

She still couldn’t say what she’d found attractive about him. He’d been a good deal thinner back then than he was now. In fact she’d been quite shocked the last time she’d seen him. One read about chickens being pumped full of water so they weighed more – Simon Hewitt looked like it’d been done to him. You could almost see liquid moving under the skin at his wrists like the mattress of a water bed.

She’d been shocked when he made a pass. She knew she hadn’t exactly been blameless, but then she wasn’t the one breaking her marriage vows. They’d only slept together twice, and the sex hadn’t been much to write home about. And then there’d been that awkward scene that last time they went to bed. They’d been about to do it and he’d suddenly started convulsing on top of her and had rolled off her and curled up in a ball, sobbing. She hadn’t known what to do. She’d comforted him as best she could, but there had been no coming back from that. The next time he’d got in touch she’d told him she could no longer cope with the moral ambiguity of the situation. She’d always considered herself a good person. And now she couldn’t face herself in the mirror. That was one good thing about having affairs with married men, Sally found, there was always a ready-made get-out clause.

With men like Simon, though, you never knew if they were going to have an attack of conscience and confess everything. Several times since their short-lived affair, she’d had the definite suspicion that Helen knew something, though she’d always been, if not friendly, at least cordial. Sally had to admire her. She was a pro. She would do whatever it took to keep her daughter’s death in the news – even if it meant being civil to her husband’s ex-lover.

Sally wasn’t proud of sleeping with Simon Hewitt. In fact she was cross with herself for muddying the waters, and she’d never have done it if she’d known there would be two more murders that would bring her back here to the scene of the crime, so to speak. Still, she didn’t believe in self-flagellation. Learn by your mistakes and move on. And now she was once again feeling that fluttering in her belly she always got when she was on the scent of a story. A new victim meant a fresh opportunity to build a connection and win a family over. That’s what Sally loved about her job. Each assignment was a new challenge, another chance for her to do what she did best.

She wasn’t holding out much hope for this visit to the Botsfords, though. That Fiona Botsford was a cold fish. And her husband – well, there was something very abrasive about the man, Sally thought, and something almost creepy about the way they were together, always standing so close as if they were conjoined. Still, she had to call in to try to get a comment, more of a courtesy call than anything else, just so she could say she’d tried. Then she could move on to this new family, the Glovers, where there was no unfortunate history and she was starting with a clean slate. Maybe they’d gel straight away. It happened sometimes – people respond to someone who’s seen it all before and isn’t shockable, someone with a warm voice and a comforting manner. And it didn’t hurt that the newspaper paid the best rates going. Not that bereaved parents were interested in money, of course, but they almost always came round to the idea of a charitable foundation set up in their dead child’s name so they could feel something good might yet come out of all this pain.

And there was always that minuscule possibility, that journalist’s holy grail, that she’d find herself in the right place at the right time to crack the case open. It sounded unlikely but it did happen. People tell journalists things they don’t tell the police. They let things slip and give themselves away in a thousand little ways. Or you might be interviewing them when the phone call comes to say a suspect’s been arrested. You’re right there where you always want to be as a journalist. On the inside.

The mews where the Botsfords lived was accessed from the road via an electronic gate hidden at the top of a discreet cobbled driveway. When Sally couldn’t get any answer from their house, she tried a neighbour.

‘Hello.’ She used her best estuary accent. ‘I’m a friend of Fiona Botsford at number five. I’ve a card for her. Can you buzz me in so I can pop it through the letterbox?’

The voice was apologetic but firm: ‘I’m afraid the Botsfords are very protective of their privacy. They’ve asked everyone in the road not to let in people they don’t know.’

‘Yes, but—’

The intercom clicked off. Sally’s annoyance was tempered by her relief that she’d told the taxi driver to wait. She could hear the engine thrumming reassuringly behind her. Just for the hell of it, she tried the Botsfords’ bell again and walked to the far right-hand side of the gate from where she could see down the mews. It was one of those trendy places where every house was painted a different colour with contrasting metalwork around the roof terraces and first-floor balconies. The Botsfords’ was pale blue with burgundy trim – she recognized it from the last time she’d been here. As Sally peered through the railings, something moved at a first-floor window. She pressed her nose to the metal bars to get a better look, just in time to catch the pale disc of a face. But it was gone before she had a chance to work out who it was.

Back in the taxi, Sally tried to dispel the disquieting image of that face by logging into her emails on her phone. Damn. Another one from the gas company reminding her of her unpaid bill. She slid her phone back into its sleeve and stared out of the window. The stop–start traffic gave her plenty of time to absorb the view of the grimy Archway Road. Up ahead, local landmark Suicide Bridge arched high over the gridlocked cars, its wrought-iron railings topped with black spikes in an effort to deter jumpers. Sally fought off a momentary flashback to a hospital ward and a burning pain in the back of her throat where they’d rammed in the tube to pump her stomach. She was glad when the taxi turned off to the left, cutting the bridge off from view.

The Glovers lived in a ground-floor flat in an unassuming road full of modest terraced Victorian houses. By the time she’d paid the taxi driver, making sure to ask for a receipt, there was already a knot of reporters outside number 17, with its neglected front garden and the printed ‘No junk mail’ notice taped to the utilitarian front door. She clocked a few familiar faces. That young guy with the trousers halfway down his hips revealing electric-blue underpants with BENCH emblazoned across the waistband, who looked like he should still be at school, was from one of the local news agencies.