Ayesha sees I’m upset as soon as I walk in. She and Lori are watching TV, my kids sound asleep upstairs. I thank God for Lori’s presence, which is all that prevents Ayesha from pushing me to tell her what is wrong. I promise we’ll speak in the morning, thank them for the last-minute babysitting then send them home.
I try Harry’s phone again, this time with a feeling of hopelessness. I clean my teeth and put on a sweatshirt.
Perhaps I should tell someone he’s not answering . . . but who?
I don’t have any contact details for his mum or sister. There’s DS Smart, of course. His number is logged in my mobile. But what would I tell him? My heart sinks. That a man who has previously lied to me about his name, his job and his intentions is not answering his phone?
I would have to tell DS Smart about the kill list in Dad’s summer house. Should I tell him about that?
I know I should. But right now, as I sit shivering, looking out of the window, it seems impossible.
The night passes agonisingly slowly. I’m too strung out to sleep for more than a few snatched minutes at a time. At least today is one of my non-working days. Ruby is up at seven thirty as usual, bounding in to demand I plait her hair. I have to drag Rufus out of bed at seven forty-five and force breakfast down him. He grumbles, oblivious to my pale face and strained eyes, as he heads out of the door to catch his bus. Ruby chats about her art project as I walk with her to school but I’m barely listening. I’ve already tried Harry’s number twice since I woke from my last fitful doze. As before, there’s no reply. Maybe he’s choosing not to answer me and in no danger at all. In the cold light of day it seems more likely that he has run off and simply blocked my number.
Which means that he must have found something significant in that storage locker and is planning to write a story about it after all.
Another betrayal.
Another mark of Dad’s guilt.
As I return home from dropping Ruby and make myself a cup of coffee I try Harry’s mobile yet again. This time the number goes to a continuous tone, as if the phone no longer exists. As if he has taken out the SIM and stamped it to smithereens.
I sink into a chair, my head in my hands.
My mind careers about: on the one hand, Harry’s grand gesture in leaving me his stuff could, now I think about it, easily be a clever bluff; he could have backed up everything on his laptop and given me a fake bunch of keys. He might even be prepared to ditch the backpack, the computer, the tablet, the wallet and all their contents for a good enough story.
And yet, on the other hand, I can’t quite believe it. My instincts told me Harry genuinely wanted to make up with me. And surely it’s too much of a coincidence that he vanishes just at the moment when I know for a fact that his life is under threat?
I sit at the kitchen table until my coffee turns cold.
What do I do now?
At two minutes past ten my phone rings. It’s Ayesha. I ignore the call and a few minutes later she’s here, knocking on my front door.
‘I’ve called in sick at work. What the hell is going on?’ she demands, shucking off her pink coat and tossing it over the bannister. ‘You looked last night like you did when . . . like you’d just been whacked around the head.’ She steps back, appraising me. ‘And you look the same now. Did you sleep?’
I shake my head.
Ayesha takes my hand. ‘I’m not going until you tell me what’s wrong. Is it Harry? Being lied to like that, just after you’d opened up after Caspian?’
I take a deep breath. I can’t possibly tell her about Dad. I can’t tell anyone. Not yet.
‘It is Harry, partly,’ I say. ‘But not like you think.’
‘Like how, then?’
Squirming, I attempt a partial version of the truth.
‘I’m worried about him. He came to see me – well, you saw him, he called here first, didn’t he? Asking where I was?’
Ayesha nods, a frown creeping across her forehead.
‘Well, he tracked me down and said that . . . that he was very sorry about tricking me over who he was.’
‘Only very sorry because he got caught,’ Ayesha said with a snort.
‘Maybe, but he said he was dropping the whole story and that he wanted to make up with me . . . and at the time I believed he meant it.’ The words burble out of me, a superficially truthful version of events. ‘I met him yesterday evening, just briefly, then later he promised he’d call but he didn’t and I tried him over and over but it was like his phone had gone dead . . . and still this morning, nothing. I can’t reach him and I’ve got this feeling he’s had . . . er, been in an accident or something.’
Ayesha studies me, a sceptical expression on her face. ‘I don’t know why you’d be worried about that douchebag,’ she sighs. ‘I’m sure he’s fine.’
I meet her gaze. ‘I’m sure he’s not. He knows some . . . some dodgy people.’
Ayesha sighs again. ‘Okay, well, if it will put your mind at rest let’s call some hospitals, see if he’s been brought in?’
We get on our mobiles and make call after call. At least it’s something to do. As I wait on the line for yet another hospital switchboard to put me through to the right department, my thoughts turn to Dad again. He’s always had a forceful personality, a fiery one even, but I’ve never known him be violent and I’ve never seen him approach an argument without logic.
I simply cannot imagine a world in which Dad could order Caspian’s death. Family is every bit as important to him as his faith, and Caspian was his son-in-law. Not a blood relative, of course – but to Dad marriage made Caspian part of his close family. Anyway, for all Dad’s passion he’s a deeply rational man.
Unless that rationality is actually a manifestation of a cold detachment he keeps hidden most of the time, covering up his lack of feeling with a show of intensity.
I see a vision of Dad’s face, crumpled with misery as he realised I suspected him. Was all that grief and concern really an act?
The little I know about violent psychopaths tells me that they are likely to come across as charming and intelligent and acutely able to manipulate others; definitely capable of faking emotions to get what they want.
Could Dad be a psychopath, keeping the kill list papers and the locker card as mementoes of his triumphs?
It’s surely unthinkable.
My mind whirls with fear and doubt as Ayesha and I stay on our phones. It takes us two hours to call every A&E in the South East of England. I have Harry’s ID of course, so we’re asking about John Does as well as both Harry Dunbar and Harry Elliot. Nobody has been brought in who bears any resemblance to him. What does this mean? It could mean anything. I veer from fear that he’s been murdered like the other men on the kill list to conviction that he has done a bunk and is hiding from me. How stupid was I to trust him? I should never have let him take the key card. I should have stopped him from going to that industrial estate.
‘Franny?’ Ayesha squats down in front of me, her feet flat on the floor. I remember the first time I saw her do this and exclaimed at how flexible her hips were and she told me how she had sat like this as a child with her grandmother, who spoke no English, mixing powders for dyeing cloth. ‘Franny?’
I meet her gaze.
‘Is there something else? Something you’re not telling me? Because I know you and Harry had a thing, but you seem . . . I don’t know, not just sad that he’s gone but troubled, really troubled.’ She hesitates. ‘Is it bringing back Caspian being mugged before he was . . .’ She trails off and I stare at her blankly.
I still can’t tell her what I’ve found out, that I believe my father killed my husband and other doctors, and has now ordered Harry’s death on the grounds that he is close to uncovering the truth about these murders.
‘I guess it does make me think about Caspian,’ I say, which is true, if not the whole truth.
‘Oh, sweetheart.’ Ayesha leans in and pulls me into a big hug. I stare over her shoulder into the corner of
the room. Harry’s backpack stares back at me, his laptop poking out of the top.
At some point soon I will have to tell the police about the key card and the kill list. It has to be done, whatever the cost to Dad. I owe that much to Caspian. Not to mention the other doctors who have died.
And though I’m sure the police will insist Harry has gone to ground on his own initiative, after using me to get a story, maybe I can persuade them to look for him and warn him.
I remember Harry’s face as he apologised last night: his expression of shame and misery, then the intense look of sincerity as he promised to contact me the second he managed to access the storage locker that the key card opened. Well, that was a lie. He didn’t text and he didn’t call. The very last thing he said was that he promised to send me a picture of whatever he found. And I’ve received nothing. I’ve checked my phone a million times. I disentangle myself from Ayesha who sits back with a sigh.
The backpack and edge of Harry’s laptop is still in my line of sight. Would he really have left that and all the other things behind just for the sake of his story? What if Dad ordered his henchmen to follow Harry before he even reached Ed Evans Storage? Or what if they caught up with him as he left? What if they killed Harry and took whatever he found in the storage locker? It’s surely possible that Harry’s body just hasn’t been found yet.
The thought sends a shiver down my spine.
I imagine the industrial estate as a deserted landscape, a wasteland, with Harry’s lifeless body lying behind a dilapidated shed. Maybe he did try to call me and there wasn’t a signal. Surely that’s just as likely as him not bothering to try and contact me at all.
A new thought threads its way through my brain and I stare at the laptop again, my heart racing.
I turn to Ayesha. ‘Thanks so much,’ I say, ‘but I’m feeling better now, you don’t need to stay.’
It takes a few minutes but Ayesha leaves at last, insisting that she will pop round later to check on me and offering to look after Ruby and Rufus after school if I need ‘a bit of time to myself’.
As soon as she’s gone I hurry over to Harry’s laptop. Using the password he gave me earlier I log on to the Gmail account saved on his browser bookmark bar.
There’s nothing in the sent emails.
Nothing in the outbox.
I sit back, doubting myself – and him – all over again. For a moment there I’d clung to the memory of the promise he made to send a picture of whatever he found at the industrial estate, hoping against hope that he would have tried to keep that promise, especially if he couldn’t make a call. My instincts shriek at me that he sincerely intended to contact me.
But, I reflect with a grimace, I can trust my instincts about as far as I can trust Harry himself.
I’m about to put the laptop away when I notice there’s an email in the draft folder.
Suppose he wrote something but didn’t have time to send it? My heartbeat quickens as I open the message. It is for me. My email address is at the top and it’s dated last night.
Found this in storage locker. Don’t know what to make of it. Any ideas?
Found what? My fingers tremble as I open the attachment. What on earth was Dad hiding? A weapon? Or maybe a recording of some kind? Possibly even a written confession?
I stare at the picture that pops onto the screen. It’s of a watch . . . broken and stained . . . inside a small plastic bag. The lighting in the photo isn’t great, it was obviously taken on Harry’s phone in the dark. I peer closer. It’s a man’s watch: a Breitling Navitimer. The glass on the front is cracked, which is where the stain has seeped in. I can see it clearly against the white rim, though I can’t tell what colour it is: brown or dark red.
My mind flashes back to the tiny stain I saw earlier on the lounger cushion in the summer house.
Blood.
The stain is blood.
A memory stirs inside me. I’ve seen this watch before, or one very like it. I close my eyes, grasping at the fleeting pictures that race through my head. And then my eyes snap open.
I’m sure this is Dad’s watch.
I frown, struggling to remember when I last saw it. I can’t recall. I certainly remember him wearing it when I was at uni. We fought constantly then – had done since my early teens – and I have a strong memory of him thumping his fist on our dining table, emphasising each point against my wayward liberal values as he made it. Once he even slammed the wall. That was when I was in my mid-twenties during our worst row ever, after he found out about Lucy’s abortion.
I can’t recall seeing the watch in the recent past, but I didn’t spend much time at home in my late twenties so that doesn’t help much. It’s so frustrating not being able to see the actual watch . . . just this badly taken picture of it through a plastic bag. I peer at the edges of the bag. It’s the same sort as the one that contained the kill list of names. Why would Dad have saved the names and the watch that way? In fact, I sigh, coming back to my earlier question, why on earth would he have saved them at all?
I close my eyes and lie back and think and think, trying to work out a way of answering all these questions and making sense of what I’ve found.
Frustrated, I turn back to the names. I study each piece of paper and then the envelope. There’s nothing on either the front or the back except the typed Jeremiah reference. Idly, I lift the flap.
There’s a logo on the inside of it: a cross with a halo and pair of angel wings in the centre. I didn’t notice it earlier because I didn’t pull the flap open before.
I stare at the logo, my heart hammering. I know this logo, it was part of a pack ordered online. I’d laughed, made some crack about how gauche and sentimental it was while still ‘shoving your religion down everyone’s throats’.
But it wasn’t Dad who’d ordered the envelopes.
It wasn’t Dad I’d been mocking.
And suddenly I see who has saved the names and the watch. It never really made sense that Dad would have done so. After all, why would anyone keep incriminating evidence against themselves? But someone else might well have a reason; someone who knows we have the summer house . . . someone who has gathered proof against Dad but who hasn’t had the courage to use it.
Someone, in short, who knows what he’s done, but can’t bring herself to denounce him.
It’s Lucy.
2
I pace around the house working it through: The names are a link to a series of murders that Dad has sanctioned. If the broken watch is his, perhaps the bloodstain is his too. Or maybe I was wrong about that. Maybe the watch isn’t Dad’s after all. Maybe it belonged to one of his victims.
Whatever, Lucy would only be keeping the watch and the papers if she knows what Dad has done. She was using two hiding places that I know of – the floorboard and the storage locker. Maybe there are other places . . . more pieces of potential evidence.
I have to speak to her and find out. I ask Ayesha to look after the kids again and head straight over to Dad’s house to confront Lucy.
I let myself in super-quietly. I don’t want to see Dad until I’m ready. I can hear him and Jacqueline in the kitchen talking about their upcoming refit.
‘What on earth is a proving drawer?’ Dad is asking.
‘Oh, Jayson.’ Jacqueline sounds like she’s rolling her eyes. ‘What do you think, Angie? I loved the one you put in for Stella Marbury.’
Jesus, they’ve got their interior designer with them. How bizarre. How can my father be a murderer and yet discuss remodelling his kitchen in that matter-of-fact way?
I hurry up to Lucy’s room. She answers the door with damp hair. Her unmade-up skin is pink from the shower. I grip her elbow. ‘Inside,’ I hiss, pushing her back into the room and shutting the door behind me.
Lucy sucks in her breath. ‘Francesca?’ She sounds fearful, wary. ‘What’s the matter?’
I hold out the plastic bag with the typed names.
‘I found these where you hid them. In the summer
house.’
Lucy’s eyes widen. She retreats to her bed, grabbing her rosary from the bedside table. She sits against the pillows, hunched over her knees. The gigantic wooden crucifix looms over her. I remember the horror I’d felt when I first saw it in here, the feeling that my sister was a person I didn’t . . . couldn’t . . . know any more. She told me the figure made her feel Jesus was taking care of her. To me it seemed she had finally and willingly let herself be subsumed by her faith, that she had given up taking responsibility for herself, that if God was watching over her, it was not in any tender, helpful way, but like a prison guard might keep a beady eye on a brainwashed prisoner.
Light from the window bounces off the paint on Christ’s feet and the wisps of stray hair that have escaped from Lucy’s ponytail. Her face is clouded with anxiety.
Downstairs I can hear two sets of heels – Jacqueline’s and the interior designer’s – tapping across the entrance hall. Their voices rise up the stairs.
‘Come up to the second floor,’ I urge. ‘I need to talk to you where we won’t be overheard.’
Lucy gulps, but follows me upstairs without a word.
There are just three rooms on the second floor: a spare bedroom, a bathroom and Mum’s old study, which Jacqueline now uses as an office. I head into the office. I haven’t been in here in years and the room is unrecognisable from the cluttered, cosy, paper-strewn space I remember. The only sheets of paper are neatly contained within a rack of black mesh in-trays while the photographs of Lucy and me that once festooned the walls and the bookshelves groaning with fiction have been replaced with a series of tasteful, abstract black-and-white prints.
The only item in the room that predates Jacqueline is the large oak desk. Mum had it specially made for her when she embarked on her failed attempt at novel-writing.
I run my hand over the polished wood as Lucy clears her throat. It’s a beautiful piece of furniture. I’m not surprised Jacqueline has adopted it, in spite of the fact it belonged to the first Mrs Carr. Dad once told me the thing had cost almost £20,000 and its value is reflected in the simplicity of the design. Which, in turn, fits well with Jacqueline’s own minimalist aesthetic.