Then She Vanishes Page 12

  ‘I – I didn’t want to pry.’

  ‘But,’ I begin tentatively, ‘it might explain her state of mind.’

  She suddenly looks unsure. ‘Yes. That’s true.’

  There’s something not quite right here. Is she scared of Adam? If not, why wouldn’t she ask him?

  For now I change tack. ‘So when Adam called you, did he know that Heather had shot the Wilsons?’

  She shakes her head. ‘Not at that stage. All he knew was that it looked as though Heather had tried to take her own life and was in hospital. In a coma. So Pam drove me straight to the hospital. On the way Adam called me again to say he’d heard from the police. That’s when he told me what she had done. He was waiting for me in the atrium when I arrived, and he was devastated. As you can imagine …’ she leans forwards and places her teacup on the side table with a trembling hand.

  The room falls silent as we take in her words. Out of the corner of my eye I can see Jack moving the frozen peas back to his eye with a grimace.

  ‘Did they have proof?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes. The gun. It was the same one that was used to kill the Wilsons.’

  ‘And you’ve never heard her mention Clive or Deirdre Wilson? She’s never had any dealings with them that you know of?’

  She swallows, playing with the rings on her hands. She has two on her wedding finger and a signet ring that I recognize on the little finger of her right hand. Heather and Flora used to wear them too. Family rings, Heather called them. ‘I didn’t think she knew them. And it might be a coincidence. But Deirdre stayed here in one of the caravans. About five weeks ago. I saw it written in the register …’ she glances up at me, pain etched on her face ‘… in Heather’s handwriting.’

  So Heather had met Deirdre Wilson. What happened between them? Did she do or say something to make Heather kill her?

  ‘But she’d never mentioned her to you?’

  ‘Never,’ she says firmly. Margot uncrosses her legs and reaches for her tea.

  I wait for her to settle back into her chair before asking, ‘Can you explain what Heather was like as a child? I know I became friends with her when we were twelve, but before that, when you lived in Kent.’

  Margot looks wistful, her gaze going to the French windows as though a child version of Heather is out there, playing on the lawn. ‘She was sensitive. A born worrier. My mother, when she was alive, said that Heather lived close to the well. She cried easily.’

  I don’t remember ever seeing Heather cry. Even after Flora went missing. But I keep quiet.

  Margot chews her lip thoughtfully. ‘Flora was more fanciful, I suppose. Heather … Well, Heather was practical. She looked after Flora, even though she was the youngest. And she was always so self-contained, even as a child, content in her own company, sketching or writing or playing alone with her stuffed animals. But she loved being with Flora too. They didn’t seem to need anyone else.’ She sighs. ‘I shouldn’t be talking about her in the past tense. Heather’s still here, still with us.’

  I remember how honoured I’d felt when I was finally accepted into their little group. How Heather had cared for me when I was ill once with a tummy bug, holding my hair back as I was sick and looking after me until my mum got home from work.

  ‘The waters run deep with Heather,’ she says. ‘You never really knew what she was thinking. She never wanted to be any trouble. After Ethan was born she suffered post-natal depression but she didn’t tell anyone for ages that she was feeling so awful. It was only when she couldn’t hide it any more that she admitted it. She didn’t want to make a fuss.’ She closes her eyes as if the memory is too painful, and my heart hurts for her.

  When she looks up there is a different expression on her face, as though she’s contemplating telling me something she isn’t sure she should.

  ‘What is it?’ I ask gently. This is one of my strengths as a journalist: knowing when to speak and when to keep quiet. I’m good at reading people and I know, right now, there’s something important she wants to say.

  Jack, who has been silent until now, suddenly sits forward in his seat. He can sense it too. I will him to remain quiet. I don’t want to interrupt Margot’s flow.

  Margot sighs. ‘Detective Ruthgow was here yesterday. About what happened to Heather’s dad. My husband, Keith.’

  I’m holding my breath.

  ‘I don’t know if Heather ever told you, Jessica, what happened to her father but I doubt it. She never spoke of it. She was so closed about it all and I think it was her way of coping. We probably didn’t handle it right, in hindsight.’

  Heather hardly ever mentioned her dad, apart from that time in our art lesson when she blurted out that he was dead. She’d also once said he’d been a bit of a tyrant. I wait. I can sense Jack crossing his legs and out of the corner of my eye I notice he rests the bag of peas in his lap.

  I shake my head, my pen poised, adrenalin pumping through my veins.

  ‘She killed him. With a gun. By accident.’

  I stare at her in shock. Of all the things I’d thought she might say I’d never expected this.

  ‘Oh, God. Poor Heather. And your husband. I’m so sorry,’ I manage.

  The image I’ve always held of my one-time best friend is warping and distorting in my mind, like a perfect photograph that has been damaged by water.

  She blinks. ‘Yes,’ she adds curtly. ‘Well, Heather was only ten. She couldn’t have known what she was doing. It was an accident.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I’m only telling you because it’s bound to come out. And I’d rather you – well, the public – heard it from me first. I don’t want there to be rumours flying, people filling in the blanks. Do you know what I mean?’

  I nod vigorously, my heart racing. ‘I do.’ I pause. ‘Can you explain what happened?’

  My shorthand can hardly keep up – and I’m fast at 120 words per minute – as Margot explains what happened on that April day back in 1990 at their farm in Kent. When she’s finished there’s a stunned silence.

  Oh, Heather. I can’t believe she never told me. We were so close. I’d thought we told each other everything but there was this huge secret between us. I can’t believe Heather shot and killed her father. Something as traumatic as that must have changed her. Who is Heather?

  I’m still trying to process all this when I hear a door slam. I glance at Margot, who’s looking towards the hallway. I follow her gaze. Adam is leaning against the door jamb, even surlier than before, and I’m glad that Jack has accompanied me. But he barely acknowledges us. His face, under all that facial hair, is deathly white.

  Margot stands up. A woman who’s accustomed to hearing bad news, she senses straight away that something’s wrong. ‘What? What is it?’ she says, her eyes darting about frantically, searching his face for clues, I imagine. ‘Is it Heather?’

  He shakes his head. ‘No. No. I’ve had a call. From the police. They’ve found …’ He turns to us. ‘This is off the bloody record, all right?’

  I nod, although Jack’s face is impassive.

  ‘They’ve found what?’ asks Margot, her voice rising.

  ‘Another set of fingerprints on the gun.’

  21

  Margot

  The air smells stale in the police station and Margot’s sure somebody has recently been eating egg sandwiches. She sits in the waiting room, her bag on her lap, trying not to make eye contact with some of the undesirables, her gaze trained on the posters with local helplines stuck to the wall opposite. A youth in the corner with a nose-ring has already bared his teeth at her. He’s waiting with an extremely skinny young woman, who, she’s sure, must be a drug addict, judging by her greasy hair and marked arms. It’s mid-March but the woman is in a vest top and sweatpants, although it’s unbearably hot in there. Margot can feel sweat breaking out on her back. She shouldn’t have put on her padded coat but she doesn’t want to take it off and draw attention to herself.

  She shuffles in the uncomfo
rtable plastic chair. How long is Adam going to take? The horrible blue walls are beginning to close in on her.

  Adam was quiet in the car on the drive over while Margot had found it hard to suppress her excitement. Another set of fingerprints found. Which means it might not have been Heather who killed those people after all. She’s always known, deep down, that Heather wouldn’t do this. Not in cold blood. Keith was different. Keith was an unfortunate tragic accident.

  Jess had been understanding when their interview had had to be cut short. She’d asked if she could go over to the caravan park and talk to Colin. Margot had agreed. She can’t imagine Colin would know anything, and she wanted to appease Jess after running out on her like that. Adam hadn’t looked particularly thrilled by the prospect of Jess and that nice boy, Jack, entering the caravan park, but he rarely looked thrilled about anything so Margot told herself not to dwell on it.

  She checks her watch. It’s almost two. She wanted to go back and see Heather. What if she wakes up and nobody’s there? She’s agitated by the thought.

  The drug-addict woman approaches the duty officer behind the desk and starts arguing with him. Margot shrinks in her seat, wanting to make herself even smaller. Just when she thinks she can stand it no longer and will have to get some fresh air, Adam emerges, grim-faced.

  She leaps to her feet. ‘All done?’

  He nods.

  ‘Can we go?’

  ‘Yep. Let’s get out of here.’

  As soon as Margot steps outside she gasps for air. Oh, how she hates being cooped up inside. It makes her feel like she can’t breathe. Heather’s always been the same. They share the love of the countryside, the open spaces, the lush greenery, the hills. Some mornings, before breakfast, they’d saddle their horses and ride across a stretch of land they called the Gallops. It was when Heather said she’d felt the most free – free of the constraints of being a wife and a mother. How would she cope in prison?

  She wouldn’t. That’s the truth of it. For the first time Margot wonders if it would be better for her daughter if she never woke up.

  ‘So, what did they say? The police.’

  Adam shrugs. ‘Not much. But it’s nothing to get excited about, Marg. I’ve used the gun in the past and so have you. Our fingerprints are bound to be on it.’

  Her heart falls. Of course. That’s all this is. Nothing to get her hopes up about. It was Heather who killed those people. She was seen, for crying out loud. There are witnesses.

  She feels despondent as she gets back into the car. Adam turns the radio on. It’s still tuned to Absolute 90s and Margot has to swallow the lump in her throat when Sinéad O’Connor’s ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ comes on. An image pops into her head of her daughters belting out this song into hairbrushes in Flora’s bedroom. It had been a few months after Keith had died and she remembers being thankful that they’d seemed like their old selves. She’d been terrified their lives would be defined – ruined even – by the one idiotic moment that had cost Keith his life. But there they’d been, singing into their hairbrushes like any other normal ten- and twelve-year-old.

  But they weren’t normal, were they? A thing like that was bound to have left its grubby mark on their once-clean souls.

  ‘Are you okay, Marg?’

  Adam’s voice brings her out of the past and she realizes she has tears on her cheeks.

  It’s not until much later, following an afternoon spent sitting beside Heather, brushing her lovely long hair and talking to her about the horses, her husband and son, that Margot gets the phone call. Adam’s gone to his mum’s, promising to bring Ethan back to spend the night. He’d popped in to see Heather, too, but he didn’t stay long. She’s noticed his visits are getting shorter. Margot had to get the bus back. She wasn’t a fan of public transport. Too enclosed with not enough air, and she always seemed to end up squashed against the window with the person next to her invading her space with their pointy elbows.

  She’d walked into a dark, empty house – it’s at times like these that she misses a dog to greet her – to the phone ringing.

  It’s Ruthgow, who informs Margot that Adam’s fingerprints are on the gun. As well as her own. But there is another set that doesn’t match those of anybody they have on record. Someone else, other than Heather, held the gun that day.

  22

  Jess

  Jack and I stand in the porch and watch as Adam speeds out of the driveway in his blue estate. Jack is still clutching the bag of peas Margot gave him. He holds them up to me: the bag is melting and water drips at our feet. ‘Forgot to give them back. I’ll just leave them here.’ He bends over and dumps them by a pair of dirty wellies.

  In the distance a dog barks but there are no other sounds. The sun is struggling to come out from behind a grey cloud. ‘I forgot how quiet it is in the country,’ I say. ‘Come on, it’s this way.’

  We trudge through the long grass, the dew darkening the hem of Jack’s trouser legs. ‘I’m not decked out for this,’ he observes, as he almost slips on the grass and clutches my arm, panic written all over his face. ‘Isn’t there a main path?’

  I stifle a giggle. ‘I’m afraid not. Sorry, Jack, you’re going to have to get your posh designer shoes a little bit dirty.’

  He grins, which gives him a sinister look with his swollen lip and black eye.

  We pass the fountain where Heather and I would spend hours sprawled on the lawn, sketching, and walk until we get to a thick hedge with a large arch in the middle.

  ‘It’s through here?’ Jack asks, as though he expects to be walking into a pit full of tigers.

  ‘Yes. It’s clever, isn’t it? It means the main house has privacy away from the caravan park.’ It’s neater than it was in 1994, now pruned and shaped. I imagine, in the summer, the arch is filled with flowers.

  I walk through the gap first and stop in surprise. It’s much smarter than I remember, with a row of static caravans in one area of the field and in the other a smattering of pod tents. Behind that is the old coach house where Heather and Adam now live. In 1994 it was more or less a shell and was used for storage. Once we saw her uncle Leo and his girlfriend Hayley sneaking out of it with sheepish expressions, Leo adjusting the belt of his jeans and Hayley pulling at the hem of her micro-mini skirt. We had been in one of the caravans and we’d fallen about laughing so much that Heather nearly wet herself.

  ‘It’s quite nice,’ says Jack, nodding in approval.

  ‘Not that you’ve ever camped in your life,’ I acknowledge, remembering that Jack had turned down a lads’ weekend ‘glamping’ because he didn’t want to ‘rough it’.

  ‘I’m camp in other ways,’ he says, winking at me.

  I roll my eyes. ‘Right. I wonder which caravan Colin’s staying in.’

  ‘Maybe the one with the light on.’

  I shove him playfully but he winces and holds his arm. At first I think he’s mucking about, but from the pain that flashes across his face I realize he’s serious. ‘Oh, Jack! Are you okay?’

  ‘Bruises. From the mugging.’

  ‘Shit, I forgot.’ I rub his upper arm tenderly. ‘I’m really sorry.’

  ‘Don’t worry. Come on.’ He moves away from me and strides towards the caravan with the light on. There are little gingham curtains at the window and I imagine it’s cosy inside. Jack’s already rapping on the door before I’ve even reached him. ‘Eager beaver,’ I tease, when I catch up with him.

  Before he can reply the door opens and a short, balding man with a large stomach stands blinking at us. He has glasses perched on his pointed nose and he reminds me of a mole. He frowns. ‘Yes?’

  Jack opens his mouth to speak but I interrupt him, by introducing myself. ‘Margot said it was okay for us to talk to you.’

  He hesitates. ‘I don’t have anything to say.’

  ‘It’s just about Heather.’

  His eyes widen and he leans closer to me. He smells of beef stew. ‘What about Heather? Is she okay?’

  ‘The
re’s no change, I’m afraid. But the morning she shot herself, were you here?’

  His face closes up. ‘I don’t know anything. I’ve told the police this already. I was in bed. Asleep. I heard nothing. I saw nothing.’ He retreats back into his caravan.

  ‘Please, Colin. It could help Heather.’

  ‘No. It won’t.’ And he shuts the door in our faces before I can ask what he means.

  The rest of the afternoon goes slowly. Jack is sent out on another job with Ellie and I’m left in the newsroom to type up my unfinished interview with Margot. Ted slopes off to the pub early and, as soon as he’s gone, I escape, too, so that I don’t have to walk home in the dark, with the now ever-present fear that I’m being followed. Plus, I’d promised Rory I’d cook dinner tonight.

  It’s twilight as I make my way through Queen Square after a detour to Tesco to pick up ingredients. Even so, as I head across the square I sense I’m being followed again and the back of my neck prickles, as though someone’s eyes are boring into me. I turn quickly, while still walking, hoping to catch whoever it is off guard. A man is walking several paces behind me with a baseball cap pulled over his eyes. In the fading light it’s hard to make out who it is, but my stomach drops. Is it Wayne Walker? Has he been following me all this time? I squint, trying to get a better look, but the peak of the cap has cast shadows over his face so I can’t make out his features. He’s tall. Too tall for Wayne, I think. There’s something about his gait that reminds me of Adam. I know he went to the police station with Margot earlier, but it’s possible she went back to Tilby on her own and he stayed behind to spy on me. What does he want? How can – Oomph! I walk straight into a bin, banging my leg in the process. I swear under my breath, rubbing my leg, hoping I haven’t bruised myself. When I turn around the man is walking in the opposite direction.

  I’m surrounded by mess: chopped vegetables on the counter, noodles spilling out of an opened bag, the carcass of a waxy pepper and its core. The wok is too hot and some beansprouts and chicken strips are sticking to the base, already burned, but I dump the noodles in regardless. A stir-fry. How hard can that be? Bloody hard as it turns out.