Little Black Lies (41 page)

What is she doing? Skye reaches out to take my hand again. Josh clears his throat. ‘I don’t think so. We need to get Rachel back to her family. Catrin, are you OK to stay here until we can get all this stuff processed?’

Catrin is looking at me now. ‘Trust me,’ she says. ‘Rach, trust me.’

I nod. It feels like the least I can do, and she faces Callum again. ‘What did you see on the beach?’

Callum looks at me, as if for permission.

‘Go on,’ I tell him.

‘I found the blanket pretty quickly,’ he says. ‘It was caught by a rock, just out of reach of the tide. I couldn’t see anything else at first, but as I got closer – I’m sorry, Rachel – I saw his body.’

I want to be brave. I want to trust Catrin, but the thought of my baby lying at the bottom of a cliff …

‘No!’ Catrin slaps her hand down on the table. ‘Tell us what you saw. Not what you think you saw. What did you see?’

‘For God’s sake, Catrin!’

In response, she gets up, strides to him before either officer can stop her, and leans across the table. ‘Did you see clothes? Peter was wearing blue shorts and a yellow-and-white-striped T-shirt when I picked him up. Did you see those?’

Somehow he holds it together and shakes his head. ‘The clothes weren’t there. I think they must have been ripped off. Catrin, he’s been on a beach in spring for two days. You know what will have happened to him.’

My baby’s body, at the mercy of every creature flying or crawling or swimming around these islands. I feel a cry building at the base of my throat. There’ll be no holding back, once it reaches the point where I let it go.

‘Did you see shoes?’ Catrin is relentless. ‘I’m pretty certain I remember buckled sandals. They wouldn’t have come off his feet easily.’

He seems to be thinking about it. Did he see brown leather sandals on tiny plump feet?

‘What about hair? Peter is blond. His hair looked quite long to me. He looked like he needed a haircut. Did you see hair?’

‘I saw enough! I wasn’t about to carry out a frigging autopsy!’

I’ve pulled away from Skye, wrapped my arms around myself. I’m starting to rock, forwards and backwards, the time-old physical response to grief. Is this her punishment, then? To put me through this?

She’s kneeling down by Callum’s side, has reached up to take his face between her hands. I think he’s trying to pull away. She won’t let him.

‘Tell me what you saw. Rachel can deal with it. She’s tougher than she looks.’

I doubt that. I’m hanging on by a thread here.

‘Ribs, a skull, a spine. What looked like fingers. That’s all I could bear to look at. I saw those and I came away.’

‘Skeletonized, or still with flesh attached?’

He’s almost sobbing now. She’s tormenting him, as well as me. ‘Mainly skeletonized. Some flesh, but there were birds feeding on it as I approached. There was very little left.’

Catrin gives a heavy sigh, then stretches up, bends over and drops a kiss on his forehead. I can’t believe what I’m seeing. I knew she hated me but …

‘You saw a seal, you idiot,’ she says.

‘What?’ say Josh and Skye simultaneously.

She straightens up. ‘South American fur seal, at a guess. The young adults are a very similar size to small human children.’ She looks round, towards the door. ‘I can show you. Let me fire up the computer and I’ll show you a seal skeleton.’

Josh and Skye are staring at each other. Callum can’t take his eyes off Catrin. I simply can’t allow myself to think. Without waiting for permission, Catrin leaves the room. Josh motions for Skye to follow her. I go too. Behind us Callum and Josh bring up the rear.

Everything seems to be happening in slow motion now. For me, anyway. I focus on the back of Catrin’s head. She’s switched on a desktop computer and entered log-in details and password.

‘You did drive up to Port Pleasant that day.’ She raises her voice so that Callum will hear her. ‘Early evening, around six thirty p.m. I heard your engine first, then I saw you.’

We form a semicircle around Catrin. All eyes are on the screen, but Josh and Skye make sure to keep between Callum and me.

‘Around six thirty on third November, you can confirm that Mr Murray drove up to the cliff above Port Pleasant?’ Josh says.

‘About that time, yes.’ She’s distracted, searching through databases. She enters something into the search engine but types too quickly for me to read it. ‘He stayed for around thirty minutes. Most of the time he was in his vehicle, but he got out and walked to the clifftop at one point.’ She turns to Callum. ‘You had me worried for a second. You came very close to the edge.’

‘Was he carrying anything?’ Josh demands. ‘Did he have anything with him?’

She’s flicking from one image to the next. ‘Not a thing. He was wearing a faded denim jacket and jeans. Blue and brown scarf around his neck. Not what he’d been wearing earlier in the day. I remember wondering why he’d changed.’

‘Did I see you?’ Callum asks her.

She shakes her head. ‘I was below, watching you through the hatch. I didn’t take my eyes off you, though, all the time you were there. I was just about to come on deck and wave when you turned round, got into your car and drove away.’

‘I did it later then.’

‘You did come back later.’ She nods sharply in agreement. ‘Much later. The next morning. I watched you park, get out and walk to the edge again. This time you had that blanket wrapped around your shoulders. I don’t blame you. It was a very cold dawn. You watched me get arrested and taken on to the other boat.’

He’s nodding. ‘I remember that. The flashback was over by then. Had been for several hours. I’d been up all night.’

‘You did look a bit rough. Before the police boat arrived, I was watching you through the binoculars.’

‘Did anyone else see him?’ Josh asks. ‘Any of the arresting officers?’

‘Possibly, but I think their attention was mainly on me. I tell you what I did see, though, just before they made me go below deck on the police boat.’

‘What?’

‘I saw you turn round and walk back towards your car. And I saw the blanket blow away from you, up into the air, and then down towards the bottom of the cliff.’

He’s shaking his head, not daring to believe what she’s telling him.

‘You didn’t even notice, did you? All you were thinking about was me. There you go.’

She enlarges the image on the screen. We are all staring at the skeleton of a South American fur seal. About a hundred centimetres long, unmistakably a seal.

‘Catrin, I really don’t—’ Josh begins.

‘It wouldn’t be whole and complete, like this one.’ She raises her voice to make her point, keep our attention. ‘It will have been mauled by scavengers. Callum, on the beach today, you saw the blanket and that confirmed your worst fears. Then you saw a ribcage, very similar to that of a human child. You saw parts of the spine, again virtually indistinguishable, maybe part of the skull. Even the bones of the flippers could look like those of a human hand to someone not quite in his right mind. But now you know you didn’t throw the blanket, there’s no reason to think you threw the child.’

Faces around me look far from convinced. I want to be convinced, but …

Catrin has turned away from the computer now, is looking directly at Callum. ‘All the time you were on that clifftop, I was watching. You didn’t throw Peter off. You didn’t kill Peter.’

‘So who the hell did?’

They both look at me. I shake my head. I didn’t kill him. I don’t know who did. Three of us looking at each other now. It is as though the two police officers have ceased to exist. Callum speaks first.

‘He disappeared in what – fifteen minutes? Both Catrin and I were outside your house then. Three cars on that road in that time? Not possible.’

‘I didn’t see him,’ I say. ‘When I ran outside, he wasn’t there.’

‘Exactly, it must have been me. I’m sorry, Cat, but I’m the only one with time unaccounted for. I’m the only one of us with an established psychiatric condition. I’m the only one with a history of violence against other people.’

She shakes her head. ‘No.’

‘There wasn’t anyone else there.’

‘Except his two brothers,’ says Skye in a small voice.

38

I’d thought I was numb. How wrong I’d been. I can see my own shock mirrored on the face of my friend. ‘No,’ she says again.

Callum isn’t going to hand over guilt easily. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Skye.’

‘Five people were on or near the property when Peter vanished.’ Skye is quiet but insistent.

‘When you came down to the garden, Rachel, were your two older boys there?’ asks Josh.

I pretend to think about it. ‘No,’ I say, after a few seconds. ‘They were down on the beach somewhere. They’d talked about going down there to watch the eclipse. They came back up when they heard me calling. They helped me search for Peter.’

‘Did you stay together?’

We didn’t. The second I knew Peter was missing, I went into panic mode, stopped thinking straight. ‘They went back down to the beach, I think,’ I say. ‘I searched the house and the stables. We were separated for about twenty minutes. Then I called the police.’

Silence. I can’t deal with what I’m seeing on the faces in front of me. ‘They love their brother. They take better care of him than I do. They wouldn’t hurt him.’

‘I’m sure they wouldn’t, Rachel.’ Skye takes my hand again. ‘But there could have been an accident. Maybe they felt responsible. Couldn’t bring themselves to tell you.’

The garden gate. The one Mum has nagged and nagged me about. The cliff path could have been in shadow. ‘I have to get home. I have to talk to them.’

‘Are they there? I thought they were with their grandparents.’

‘Sander is back. He’ll have taken them home.’ I look at Josh. ‘I have to talk to them.’

‘We can’t go charging over there now. We haven’t enough officers.’

Callum shrugs his shoulders to indicate he’s still handcuffed. ‘I shouldn’t be much of a threat.’

I watch Josh decide that, having bent or broken so many rules tonight, he might as well toss the book out of the window. We run outside and pile back into the minibus. Skye drives, Josh sits in the back, keeping an eye on the rest of us. He needn’t worry. All we are focusing on is the road ahead, all we are interested in is getting to the house faster.

Skye heads out of Stanley, swinging her way around people in the road. It’s not far off midnight.

Every time I think it can’t possibly get any worse, it does. If my son has to be dead, I would a million times rather he’d been killed by Catrin for revenge, or Callum in a trauma-induced flashback, than by his own brothers.

I remember Ralph asking me if my boys had been hanging round the old wreck. He must have seen something, footprints leading to it, one of them climbing on board. Is that where they put him? How will I ever convince them it wasn’t their fault? That it was mine. My job to take care of him. My failure, not theirs.

We reach the house and I’m first out of the bus. I hear Josh call at me to slow down but I’m through the gate, running across the garden and in through the front door before the rest of them have left the vehicle.

I’m expecting the boys to be in bed, but I can hear the TV playing softly in the living room. Sander looks up at me from the sofa, his blue eyes paler than usual, dimmed by grief. On either side of him, their heads resting on his lap, are the boys. Both have blankets covering them. Both are asleep.

Skye has caught up with me. She puts one hand on my shoulder. ‘Steady, Rachel,’ she whispers.

‘I need to talk to them.’ I look from Chris to Michael, both still so young, so beautiful, when they’re asleep. ‘Wake them up.’ I’m whispering too, talking about waking them up in a voice low enough to keep them asleep.

Sander’s hands stretch out to shield each child, protect them from me. I see in his face that he believes me to be the killer of his youngest son. ‘What are you doing?’ he says. ‘Get out of here.’

‘Mr Grimwood, we need to talk to Christopher and Michael.’ Skye steps in front of me. Behind us, Josh, Catrin and Callum have arrived.

Something, either the noise or the colder air, has roused Chris. He rubs his eyes and opens them. ‘Mummy.’

He springs up, as only the young can after being asleep, and as I run forward his arms wrap around my neck. Over his shoulder I address Sander. ‘Did you tell them?’

Chris stiffens. ‘Tell us what? Mummy, tell us what?’

I hold his head in my hands. I don’t think I’ve ever loved a face more than I love his. ‘Chris, I need you to tell me the truth now. Daddy and I love you and Michael more than anything else in the world and whatever happens we will always love you and always take care of you, but you have to tell us the truth.’

I see it in his face. The start of his features, the dark light in his eyes. He doesn’t need to ask what I’m talking about.

Oh, God no.

‘Rachel, what is going on?’

I can’t go on. I don’t want to hear it. Chris’s mouth is trembling. His eyes are starting to gleam. ‘I’m sorry, Mummy.’ He starts to sob. I pull him close. I’ve lost one son, I will not lose another.

‘It’s OK, my angel. Whatever happened it’s OK. I love you.’

He’s sobbing hard now, against my shoulder. Every time he takes a breath, I hear the word sorry and I think one more might just break my heart.

‘Rachel.’ Sander, still on the sofa to avoid disturbing Michael, is pleading with me now.

‘There was an accident,’ I say, because it’s all become so clear to me now. ‘That day Peter disappeared. It was my fault completely, I wasn’t watching him. He tried to follow the boys down to the beach and fell. They saw what had happened, saw that he was dead and thought it was their fault. But it wasn’t, my darling, it really wasn’t.’ I’m rocking Christopher. I think he’s trying to pull away from me but I’m not ready to let him go just yet.

‘They panicked and they hid his body somewhere. Probably on the old wreck. They thought I’d be angry. They thought I’d blame them, but I never would have done, my angel. You must never think it was your fault.’

Behind me, I hear Skye sniff.

‘You must tell us now though, my love. You have to tell us where he is.’