It’s eerily quiet as I come up the drive, just the patter of rain in the bushes around me and the hushed whisper of my shoes on the gravel. My eyes dart everywhere, looking for something or nothing. A threat unseen. She won’t kill you straight away, I tell myself. She wants to talk. She has catching up to do. This is my advantage. I know it. If I can rush her, get my knife in her, weaken her, then I have a chance.
There are three pale steps to the bright white front door and I take a deep breath and reach forward to push it open. I tentatively cross the threshold, leaving the door open behind me. It’s cold inside and although the wooden floorboards are polished and sleek, the empty, abandoned scent of the building takes me straight back to the house on Coombs Street. A few pictures, some abstract modern art, are still hanging, and a dresser is pushed up against one wall, but they are forgotten items, uncared for. More expensive than the debris of the ruined house on Coombs Street, but the same. Time is folding in on itself. No, I correct myself. Time is always folded in on itself, the past like shadows we can’t shake off, and now I feel them surrounding me, wraiths drawing in to choke me. Katie, Daniel, Tony, Ma.
It’s a large open hallway, a room of its own, made more vast by the lack of furniture. Up ahead, a staircase climbs into darkness. The windows are shuttered, only splinters of grey light coming in from outside. I can hear my own breath. What now?
I take a step forward, and then another. No figures lurking in the corners. No one here with me. Should I go upstairs? Where’s the next clue, Katie? What are you expecting from me here?
She appears so suddenly, a shimmering figure in front of me, that I gasp and stumble backwards. Katie, but as she was as a child. A ghost of my Katie there on the bottom step. What is this? is all I have time to think before the floor somehow disappears beneath me.
A magician’s house, remember? Katie’s voice whispers in my head. Full of tricks.
I walked straight into it. Dumb, stupid Charlotte. I feel a web around me and then a sickening thud as my head hits concrete and the world goes black.
68
MARILYN
They’ve kept my phone but at least I’m out.
‘Thank you,’ I say. Simon Manning is there, waiting with the car. I wonder how much this afternoon has cost him for the lawyer. I could cry with gratitude. ‘They still may charge me, but for now, I’m a free woman. I’ve told them I’m staying at the hotel. That’s all right, isn’t it?’
‘Of course. Get in.’ He looks past me at Bray, who’s come outside and lit a cigarette. ‘Don’t worry. She won’t be absconding.’
‘I’m sure she won’t. We’ve got people going through CCTV from Elleston train and bus stations looking for Charlotte. Hopefully we’ll find something in it and this fiasco won’t cost any more lives.’
I can hear them, but I’m not listening. Something else has got my attention. Another car, parked discreetly across the road, a figure in the shadow behind the wheel. Richard.
‘All I want is a long shower and to sleep,’ I mutter, turning back to them. ‘So can we go?’
Richard. This is all I need. How did he know I was here? He doesn’t get out of his car, but as we pull away, so does he.
‘Does anyone know the police took me in?’ I try and make it sound nonchalant.
‘Everyone, I’m afraid.’ He glances over at me. ‘It was on the news.’
I groan and lean back in the seat. ‘How?’
‘It wasn’t Bray. She wanted it kept quiet in case Lisa got in touch. I think it was Karen Walsh, that stuck-up bitch. Don’t worry, she’s all but fired already.’
‘Thanks for this,’ I say. In the side mirror I see Richard’s car weaving along behind, staying close but not too close.
‘I’ve been busy too,’ Simon says. ‘I’ve got a team of forensic accountants, lawyers and private detectives working at digging into the Batten family and specifically what Katie did with their assets. Turns out there is a mess of paperwork. Identities hiding behind a maze of offshore companies and accounts. They were pretty well off, but not so much anything like that was necessary. Anyway, one thing this amount of paper trail tells me – someone is hiding something.’
‘Like the fact they’re not dead?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Skegness,’ I say. ‘Katie’s family had a house in Skegness. I think that’s where Lisa’s gone. I didn’t tell the police. I didn’t want them to get there and find Lisa before she got to the house. I know it’s stupid but they don’t—’
‘It’s okay. I believe you. I believe her. I’ll find …’ He pauses, glancing sideways, catching my eyes straying nervously to the mirrors.
‘What is it?’ He frowns. ‘The police?’
I shake my head. ‘Worse. My husband.’
He says nothing but his jaw tightens as he slows the car, turning off the main road.
‘What are you doing? Ignore him.’ I’m panicking and I don’t know why. Ignore him. Like it’s that easy. Simon’s still slowing and as soon as a lay-by appears, he pulls into it.
‘Don’t,’ I say, my voice a nervous whine I detest. ‘Let’s just go to the hotel. Come on.’ I don’t want Richard to hurt him. Richard’s done enough damage.
‘Wait here.’ He doesn’t look at me as he gets out of the car.
I want to shrivel into my seat, but I have to look, opening the window and twisting around to peer out. Richard’s out of the car, a bundle of rage. I know the stance of his body, I know the look on his face when the mask falls away.
‘Are you fucking my wife?’ His words are clear and I cringe as he squares up to Simon, who’s walking casually towards him. His fists are balled tight. He’s going to lose it completely. ‘I said, are you fucking my fat bitch of a wife?’ My stomach turns to water and I want to throw up. He’s going to kill Simon and then he’s going to drag me out of this car by my hair and kill me.
Simon moves so fast, I can’t register what’s happening. He doesn’t speak but suddenly his hands are out of his pockets. Richard barely has time to look surprised as the precise blows to his ribs and gut hit him, short and sharp and powerful. He crumples, gasping for breath. Without saying a word, Simon turns and returns to the car at the same steady pace.
I stare at him, almost as breathless as my husband lying on the tarmac a few feet behind us.
‘Now he knows how it feels to have a few broken ribs,’ he says calmly, the car purring away beneath us.
‘Where did you learn to do that?’ I ask. And can I have lessons?
I look at his hands properly for the first time. Rough skin. Toughened over years.
‘I never went to prison,’ he says, turning back on to the main road. ‘But I should have done. How do you think I know how to find people? The best people to know how to find people are those who’ve learned to distance themselves from their pasts. Who’ve learned to hide the source of their income. We know the tricks.’
‘We’ve got to find Katie,’ I say. ‘The police won’t.’ I look out at the gathering clouds overhead. ‘And we have to be quick.’
69
LISA
I almost laugh when I open my eyes and see her. Of course. I should have known. Stupid Charlotte, always one step behind. A wave of nausea hits me and my head thumps as I try to stand.
‘You fell badly and hit your head,’ she says, smiling. ‘Trapdoor. One of Grandfather’s little tricks. How to make a person disappear. Slightly cruder than my methods, but effective. You only half-landed in the net and then dropped. I forgot how clumsy you are.’
How did I not see it before? Her smile. That delicate movement as she tucks hair behind her ears. All my wariness of the world but I thought the threat would be from strangers. The newspapers. My guard was up the wrong way and the serpent slipped right into my nest.
My throat feels raw and my body is like lead. She’s given me something, a pill forced down my gullet while I was out. I can feel it lodged somewhere in my chest. It’s dark and I’m squinting in the gloom whe
n she turns a small desk lamp on. ‘That’s better.’
A whimper comes from the far corner and now, although my vision is blurring, I can see her. My baby. My Ava. She’s lying on a dirty mattress on the floor, hands and feet tied, her mouth gagged. Her eyes are wide and full of tears and I want to run and hug her. I gaze at her and I want to tell her everything will be all right, but I won’t give Katie the satisfaction. I have to stay strong. The only slim chance I have of beating her is being Charlotte again. And Charlotte was tough. She didn’t let people touch her heart.
‘You said you’d let her go.’ My words are slurred, a jumble, whatever clarity they have in my head losing form by the time they reach my mouth. What the fuck has she given me? I try to move my sluggish body and only then notice the fluffy cuffs she tied me to the chair with. Like something from a sex shop. I wonder if I’m tripping out but she laughs. The curious Alice in Wonderland tinkle of sound I used to be fascinated by. Now I want to punch her in the throat and kill it dead.
‘Ridiculous, aren’t they? But I don’t want anything to leave a mark. Can’t have all this to end up with you looking like you might have been in trouble.’
My mind is too spacey to acknowledge the panic somewhere deep in my system, and instead I wonder where my knife is. Eventually I see it, over on a long bench with something that looks like a coffin on it. A coffin? Is that what she’s planning for me? To bury me alive? Katie, Katie, what is your game? I look around. There are no windows. Underground, we’re underground. A strange clock stands in the corner, the numbers in the wrong order. Some contraption with a camera in another. A glass box, man height.
‘This is where my grandfather worked on his illusions,’ Katie says, leaning back on the table, her narrow hip by my knife. ‘A hidden place. He was nothing if not paranoid about someone stealing his ideas. He made a fortune designing illusions for the showmen to take on stage. Totally soundproofed, obviously. I had to gag Ava, though. She wouldn’t stop yelling and screaming for help. It was giving me a headache and I doubt it was doing her any good.’
I’m mesmerised by her. Katie. After all this time. I’d never have recognised her, but I guess that was the point. She’s had work done. A lot of work. Her nose is much smaller, button-like. I’d never have told her, but when we were kids her nose was too big for her face. It took her from beauty to simple prettiness. Maybe that helped her when we went to court. No one wants to believe in beautiful girls, but pretty ones are harmless.
‘Let her go,’ I mumble again. ‘You said you’d let her go.’
‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.’ She smiles, her eyes bright and sparkling. Katie in full game mode. She pushes the table she’s sitting on and it slides in half, the coffin cut through the middle. Not a coffin at all. An illusionist’s trick.
‘I never liked him, if you remember. God, he was dull. An old desiccated dying man. But I can respect his meticulous mind now. I’ve learned to have an eye for detail myself. It was hard work persuading my mother not to sell this house. But then I had years to stay on top of her, didn’t I?’ She looks at me, something like fondness in her eyes. Regret? ‘We were going to come here,’ she says softly. ‘Weren’t we?’ Her voice hardens: ‘If you hadn’t ruined everything.’ She takes a deep breath. A controlling breath. ‘But we’re here now. I can hardly believe it. I’ve waited such a long time for this.’
The world is spinning again. Is it the concussion, or the pill she gave me? As the darkness closes in again, I realise it’s irrelevant. Whichever it is, I’m going to pass out. My head, too heavy to hold, drops forward. Katie starts to fade.
‘Charlotte?’ Her words come at me from under water. ‘Charlotte? Oh goddammit, you used to be better than this.’
And then I’m gone again.
70
MARILYN
‘Thank you. That’s great.’ He hangs up the phone. ‘We’ve got it.’
I sit up straight, all tiredness and frustration falling away. ‘You’re shitting me.’
‘Grandfather on her mother’s side. Harold Arthur Mickleson.’ He slides the piece of paper he’s scribbled the address down on across the desk as proof. ‘Skegness.’
‘Bloody hell.’ I pick it up and stare at it. ‘Your people are good.’
‘My people are the best, but it’s time to call the police in.’ It’s hot in his office where the two of us have been holed up waiting for calls since getting back from the station, and I can see sweat at the edge of his hairline. It’s been two long hours. It feels like forever. My whole body aches with tension.
‘Lisa’s in trouble and we both know it,’ he says. ‘If this Katie woman has gone to these lengths to track her down, she’s no match for her.’
‘I agree. I’ll call Bray.’ I reach for the mobile phone he’s given me while the police have mine, but he shakes his head.
‘It can’t be you. They won’t listen to you.’
‘Fine. You do it.’ I don’t care who makes the call as long as they pay attention. He dials and my foot taps under the table as I listen in.
‘… No, this has nothing to do with Marilyn. She’s taken a pill and gone to bed. I’ve been digging into Katie Batten to satisfy my own curiosity. Yes, it is an advantage of being rich, but I’m now sharing what I’ve found so I’ve saved your resources. You should at least check the house out. It’s empty. It was going to be turned into a museum, apparently – he was some kind of famous illusionist – but it never happened. Just like the new owner never materialised. Someone’s hiding behind a lot of paperwork, Detective Bray, and whether that’s Katie or not, I think there’s a good chance Lisa will have gone there, to Skegness. It’s somewhere she and Katie would have talked about, surely? Katie’s grandfather died earlier that year and if they’d been planning to run off together, an empty house might be a good place to hide out for a day or so? What’s it going to hurt to send a couple of officers to check it out? On a case like this you could have people there in ten minutes, surely?’
There’s a long pause and our eyes meet. Finally, he nods, triumphant. ‘Thank you. Yes I will. And thank you again.’
It’s a long wait and we sit in silence, tension humming between us. I wonder if he realises he’s in love with Lisa. He thinks he’s doing all this to vindicate his own judgement, to make his attraction and flirting and dating her slightly less bad than it’s made him feel, but this is more. This is driven by something deeper, even if he doesn’t know it yet. I love Lisa too, even knowing everything about her past. That’s a truth I’m going to have to learn to reconcile too. Someone can do a terrible unforgivable thing, and yet you forgive them if you love them. The heart is such a strange thing.
Finally, Bray calls back. Simon listens, and then, after a few perfunctory minutes, the call is over. I can tell it’s not good news from the slump in his shoulders.
‘There’s no one there. The place is deserted. The only oddity was that the front door was unlocked. They’re going to try to contact the owner to get a locksmith out in the morning, but there’s no sign of anyone having been hiding there, and no sign of Ava.’
‘They’re missing something,’ I say. She has to be there. I can feel it in my gut.
‘They’re looking for a killer.’ He slumps down into his chair. ‘They’ll have been thorough. They can’t be there. We’re back to square one. Let’s hope the searches into Amelia Cousins come back with something. Until then, there’s nothing we can do. Running around like headless chickens without information isn’t doing us any good.’
I stare down at the paper I’m still holding with the address on it. I don’t care what he says, they’ve missed something. A clue at the very least. Katie drew Lisa to that house. It wouldn’t be for no reason.
‘You look exhausted. Maybe you should go upstairs and have a shower and a rest. Some food, if you can manage it. If Bray decides to show up here to ask me what I’m up to, it probably wouldn’t look too great to find you with me.’
I’m still looking at the pap
er. ‘You’re right,’ I say, with a wan smile. ‘It’s late and this headache is killing me. Maybe a lie down for an hour will do me good.’
I pick up the mobile from the table. ‘Your number’s in here, right? I’ll text you if I think of anything that might be useful.’
He nods and tells me everything is going to be all right in the way men do to women, as if we’re all children, as if we don’t know for ourselves how very often things don’t turn out right, as if they can somehow protect us from all the wickedness in the world, so much of which we suffer at their hands. He’s right, I am tired. I’m tired of a lot of things. I’m tired of being a victim. I’m tired of being reliant on men. I’m tired of waiting.
‘I think I’ll be out like a light,’ I say, as I reach the door. ‘But call me if you find anything useful.’
‘I will,’ he answers. I wait until he turns away, and quickly take something else from the desk by his coffee cup before leaving.
Minutes later, I’m in his car, punching Katie’s grandfather’s address into his top-of-the-range satnav. I’m not stupid, I knew the police had someone watching my car, parked out at the front of the hotel, so I went out through the back, past the kitchens, to the staff car park. No one was watching Simon’s car. How long before he realises I took his car keys from his desk? An hour maybe? More, if I’m lucky. I’m not going to let Lisa down. Skegness is only an hour or so’s drive away, less at this time of night. I’m not going to wait around for a man to save the day. Fuck. That. Shit.
71
LISA
My throat is bone-dry and it hurts to open my eyes despite how little light there is in the room.