When She Was Good

by Robotham, Michael

  ‘What are you looking for?’

  ‘A pub.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Angie was a publican’s daughter. Maybe they still own the pub.’

  The Lord Nelson is a timber-framed building a block from the Ipswich waterfront. Built in the Tudor style, it has glazed bricks on the lower floor and lead-lined windows etched in black. The bell tower of St Clement’s Church is visible above the slate-tiled roof, which seems to sag in the centre.

  The main bar is full of character, but not people. It’s still too early for the evening crowd, but some of the lunchtime drinkers are lingering. A woman is setting tables in the restaurant. She’s about the right age, with a dense shock of dyed brown hair and a no-nonsense set to her movements, soft and hard at the same time.

  ‘Angie?’ I ask.

  She turns. Smiling. ‘Won’t be a tick.’ Another set of knives and forks are lined up. ‘What can I get you?’

  ‘We need to talk about Terry.’

  Her smile disappears. She drops her head. ‘I’m busy.’

  ‘It won’t take long.’

  ‘I haven’t talked to anyone,’ she says, clearly agitated. ‘I did what you said. I kept my mouth shut.’

  ‘Who told you to do that?’

  ‘What?’ She realises her mistake. ‘You have to leave. I’m not going to talk.’

  ‘I’ll have a pint of bitter,’ I say, taking a stool. Sacha follows my lead. ‘A white wine, please. Something dry. What do you recommend?’ We’re sitting side by side at the bar.

  ‘I’m Cyrus Haven,’ I say. ‘This is Sacha Hopewell.’

  ‘I don’t care who you are – I’m not talking to you.’ She aggressively pulls me a beer, gripping the wooden handle like it’s the lever of a trapdoor that can send us plunging through the floor.

  Opening the fridge, she retrieves a bottle of wine and pours a glass, spilling some. Cursing. She puts it in front of Sacha and pauses, recognising her.

  ‘You’re the one who found her,’ she says. ‘The little girl.’

  Sacha nods.

  The realisation changes something in Angie.

  ‘Do you know where she is? Did they find her family?’

  ‘Yes and no,’ says Sacha.

  Angie frowns. ‘At least you have some idea. I keep getting asked what happened to that girl and I haven’t a clue.’

  ‘Who asks you?’

  Angie sighs as though it’s a stupid question. ‘I don’t know their names. They come in here, sit at the bar and watch me. They follow me home. They park outside the house.’

  ‘How often?’ I ask.

  ‘It used to be every day, then it was every week. Less now. When I don’t see them, I keep thinking they’re still there, hiding in doorways, or watching from cars. Sometimes it’s one guy. Sometimes it’s two.’

  ‘Did one of them have a scar on his forehead like a new moon?’ I ask, pointing to a spot above my right eye.

  Even as I ask the question, I hear Sacha snatch a breath. Angie doesn’t notice.

  ‘Yeah, he’s a real sharp dresser. Expensive suit and tie. And he has these cold blue eyes, you know, like you’re looking into the centre of an iceberg.’

  ‘When was the last time you saw him?’

  ‘About a month ago.’ She is wiping the bar as she talks. ‘I told him the same thing as I told the police – Terry and I split up years ago, when our boys were still in short trousers. Yeah, we stayed in touch, but I didn’t know anything about his work, or Angel Face. I’m certain of one thing – Terry was no kiddy-fiddler. He was a shitty husband, but he never laid a finger on our boys. He wouldn’t even smack them when they did something wrong. It was odd because Terry would quite happily take some drunk out back and give him a slap for being a dickhead, but he wouldn’t lay a finger on a child. That’s why I didn’t believe any of that stuff they wrote about him after he was dead. People said they found child porn in the house; and that Terry kidnapped that girl and kept her as a sex slave. That’s not him. He’d never …’ She doesn’t finish.

  ‘Why did you divorce?’ asks Sacha.

  Angie tosses her head. ‘Same old story. Terry started dipping his wick. Slept with my best friend. My former best friend. I kicked him out. Tossed his gear out the upstairs window with all the neighbours watching. Some of them cheered.’

  ‘When did you last hear from him?’ I ask.

  ‘About four months before I saw his picture in the paper.’ She pours me another beer without me asking. ‘He called me from some roadside café. I could hear trucks going past. Later, I wondered if maybe that girl was with him, Angel Face. Was she waiting while he made the phone call?’

  ‘What did he talk about?’

  ‘That was the strange thing. He asked about the boys, wanting to speak to them, but they were both at school. I sensed something was wrong and asked if he was OK. He laughed and said, “You know me. Always ducking and diving.”’

  The pub door opens. Angie’s head snaps around fearfully. A couple enters. Locals. She relaxes and gets them a drink, swapping small talk about the weather and a church fete that day.

  Reluctantly she returns to us.

  ‘If Terry was in trouble – or needed money – where would he go?’ I ask.

  ‘He’d probably boost a car, or do something equally stupid.’

  ‘Did he have family?’

  ‘His parents died when he was eight. A traffic accident. Terry and his sister were put into foster care. She was younger. A family in Felixstowe wanted to adopt a little girl, but they didn’t want Terry.’

  ‘Where is his sister now?’

  ‘She came to Terry’s funeral. Could have knocked me over with a feather.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She was so different. Terry didn’t have a pot to piss in, but Louise turned up wearing a power suit and high heels. She finished up being a hot-shot lawyer. Works in Cambridge.’

  ‘Do you have a number for her?’

  Angie collects her purse from behind the bar. She looks through the compartments until she finds a business card. Embossed. Expensive.

  ‘She gave me that. I don’t know why. I could never afford a lawyer like her.’

  Sacha has been quiet most of this time, but now she asks about the man with the scar.

  ‘When did he first show up?’

  ‘Not long after Terry called me. I saw this expensive motor parked out front of the pub. He sat over there.’ She points to a corner table. ‘He was here for hours, nursing the same drink. Watching. Eventually, he came up to me and started making small talk. He said a friend had told him about The Lord Nelson and he mentioned Terry’s name; asked if I’d seen him. I told him no. Then he started spouting this cock-and-bull story about how he owed Terry money and didn’t know how to find him. I didn’t believe a word of it.’

  ‘He showed up again,’ says Sacha.

  ‘All the time.’

  ‘What about after Terry died?’

  ‘Yeah. That’s when he’d ask me about Angel Face. If it wasn’t him it was someone else.’

  ‘Did you tell the police?’

  ‘They weren’t interested. It’s not as if they were breaking any laws.’

  The bar has been slowly getting busy. Angie has customers to serve. She comes back to us with one last comment.

  ‘I know I kicked Terry out and divorced him, but I never thought I’d lose him. He was like one of those rubber ducks you put in the bath. Unsinkable. You could hold him under for a while, but he’d always come bobbing up to the surface … until the day he didn’t.’

  We’re back at my car, eating fish and chips from waxed paper, looking across Neptune Marina where yachts and launches are moored along floating pontoons and navigation lights blink on the open water.

  Around us, early-evening diners are wandering along the cobblestoned street, heading for restaurants and bars. Four youngsters pass the car, laughing and jostling. They pause and pose for a selfie, putting their heads together, as one of them holds her
phone at arm’s length. The boys grin. The girl pouts. She studies the image afterwards, unhappy, wanting it taken again, but the boys have moved on.

  ‘You didn’t tell me about the man with the scar on his forehead,’ says Sacha. Hair has fallen over one side of her face, covering her eyes.

  ‘You’ve seen him,’ I say.

  She nods and I fight the urge to question her because I know how much she hates me prying into her past.

  When I first began looking for Sacha, I tracked down her parents to an address in north London. At first, they wouldn’t talk to me and accused me of hounding Sacha, forcing her to flee. Grudgingly, they agreed to cooperate and told me how Sacha had been stalked by reporters and true-crime obsessives and internet trolls seeking information about Angel Face.

  That’s the reason she fled London and abandoned her dreams of joining the police force. I thought PTSD might also have been a factor. I have treated a lot of officers who suffer emotional turmoil after witnessing terrible events. Often a small, almost incidental detail will be the trigger – the age of a victim, the clothes they were wearing or a remembered conversation.

  ‘What happened after you found Evie?’ I ask.

  ‘I’ve told you.’

  ‘Not the whole story.’

  She pulls her feet on to the seat and hugs her knees, looking out of the windscreen. Her eyes glaze over.

  ‘I was famous for a while,’ she whispers. ‘Reporters wanted to interview me. I had requests to go on TV talk shows. An agent approached me about writing a book about Evie. He talked about film rights. This caused some issues at the station. I had people saying stuff behind my back, accusing me of grandstanding. It didn’t help that I’d embarrassed them.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘People were asking why it took a special constable to find Angel Face. Without even trying, I made the investigation team look incompetent.’

  She takes a deep breath and pauses, holding it inside. I give her time to choose her words.

  ‘When Angel Face, I mean Evie, left the hospital, she was taken to a safe house. Somewhere out of London. I walked away, but that didn’t stop the phone calls and visits. People would knock on my parents’ door at all hours. Some of them were reporters, but not all of them. They got hold of our phone number and began calling. If my mum or dad answered the caller usually hung up. If it was me, they’d stay on the line, heavy breathing, or counting down to ten, or saying, “tick-tock, tick-tock”. I changed our number and closed down my Facebook account. I started sneaking out of the house over the back fence so they wouldn’t follow me.’

  ‘The man with the scar?’

  ‘Mum called him Blue Eyes. He was like one of those White Walkers in Game of Thrones. Blond hair. Pale skin. Blue eyes.’

  ‘Did you ever speak to him?’

  ‘One day I stopped in the middle of a supermarket and screamed at the top of my lungs, telling him to leave me alone. A security guard came. I said I was being stalked and he told Blue Eyes to leave. As he walked away, he looked over his shoulder and smiled, saying, “tick-tock, tick-tock”.’

  ‘You told the police.’

  ‘Of course. I took down number plates and ran them through the DVLA. They were company leases or hire cars that couldn’t be traced back to a name or an address, except for some shelf company with a post office box in the Isle of Man.’

  ‘But with the resources of the police, surely—’

  ‘My sergeant accused me of being paranoid. My co-workers thought it was more of my attention-seeking.’ She uses her fingers to make inverted commas around the last phrase. ‘That’s why I ran away. I thought if I went missing for a few weeks, until the story died down, they might leave me alone, but things only got worse. My dad’s car was vandalised, and somebody broke into the house and stole their computers and phones. Their letters were opened. They were followed.’

  She falls silent again, biting her bottom lip. ‘I was right to be scared, wasn’t I?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who is she? Evie, I mean. Why do they want her so badly?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  The windscreen has slowly fogged up, hiding the water and the yachts.

  ‘You’re going to look for his sister, aren’t you?’ she asks.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tomorrow is Sunday. You only have an office address.’

  ‘I’ll visit her on Monday. You could come with me,’ I say, hopefully. ‘Or I could drive you back to Cornwall tomorrow.’

  Sacha seems to weigh up this information. ‘What about tonight?’

  ‘We could find somewhere to stay.’

  ‘I can’t afford a hotel.’

  ‘I’ll pay,’ I say, adding clumsily, ‘for separate rooms, of course.’ This makes it sound worse – as though I’ve been thinking about sharing a bed with her.

  Sacha suppresses a laugh and I feel even more foolish.

  On the way into Ipswich, we had driven past a budget hotel offering rooms for twenty-five quid a night. I offer to find somewhere nicer, but Sacha insists it’s perfect. ‘I could sleep anywhere, I’m so tired.’

  Our rooms are side by side. Standing in the corridor, I’m not sure of the protocol, whether we know each other well enough to hug, or kiss cheeks, or shake hands, or wave. We settle for a simple ‘goodnight’.

  Once inside, I toss my coat on the bed and realise that I don’t have a toothbrush or toiletries because I didn’t expect to be away from home. Going out again, I ask the hotel receptionist for directions to a supermarket, or pharmacy. Two blocks later, I’m walking the brightly lit aisles of a Tesco Express, picking up supplies. There is a public phone near the main doors. I call Lenny, who mutes a TV when she answers.

  ‘What have you been you up to, Cyrus?’ she asks, sounding suspicious rather than curious.

  ‘Am I needed?’

  ‘I had a call from the Chief Constable’s office. I’ve been told to have a word in your shell-like.’

  ‘About?’

  ‘Somebody with your log-in code has been accessing the PNC looking for details about the unsolved murder of Terry Boland.’

  ‘Would that be a problem?’

  ‘Only if that somebody was trying to find Angel Face – the girl who was hiding in the house when he died. There are court orders protecting her identity.’

  ‘I’m aware of that,’ I say.

  There is a moment of dead air. I can picture Lenny pushing reading glasses up to the bridge of her nose, something she does when she’s thinking.

  ‘What are you chasing, Cyrus?’

  ‘I’m looking for a link between Terry Boland and Eugene Green.’

  ‘Because of Hamish Whitmore?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Promise me you’re not looking for Angel Face.’

  ‘I’m not. Scout’s honour.’

  20

  Evie

  Monday morning and Adam Guthrie, my social worker, wants to see me. I’m waiting outside his office while he finishes a counselling session. Bored, I flick through his out-of-date magazines and use a ballpoint pen to deface the photographs. A penis here. A moustache there.

  Guthrie is a fat man with double chins and a boozer’s nose. He recently separated from his wife, who was shagging her boss at the Lloyds Bank call centre. Guthrie blames me because he’d rather shoot the messenger than look in the mirror.

  How did I know about the affair? I guessed. I planted the seed in his mind. I fucked with his head. Mrs Guthrie is Ukrainian and looks like a model, or a porn star. She has two university degrees and speaks four languages, so sooner or later she was either going to pack her bags or poison Guthrie’s porridge.

  When it’s my turn, I’m ushered into his office and asked to take a seat. Guthrie hitches up his corduroy trousers, which are baggy because he doesn’t have an arse. He perches on the edge of his desk.

  ‘So, Evie, two police interviews in a week – that must be a record.’

  ‘I was attacked in the street.’
<
br />   ‘I heard you provoked it.’

  ‘Boys aren’t supposed to hit girls.’

  Guthrie sighs tiredly. ‘This could be the final straw.’

  What does that mean – the final straw? Is it the straw you grasp at, or the one you draw, or the one that breaks the camel’s back? The short straw or the long one?

  Guthrie has kept talking.

  ‘The management have convened a review panel. They’re going to decide if you should be moved to a young offender institution.’

  He means a prison.

  ‘I’ve done nothing wrong.’

  ‘You’re out of control.’

  ‘I was punched.’

  ‘You told him he was gay.’

  ‘That’s not an insult.’

  Guthrie pauses, not willing to argue. He doesn’t like me because he knows I can tell when he’s lying. It’s my super-power and my curse. I can’t remember the first time it happened – the first lie I detected, the original sin – but it’s the reason so many foster families sent me back, and why nobody wants to be my friend except for Ruby. Deep-as-a-puddle Ruby; thick-as-a-plank Ruby; a damaged little duck in a pond full of duck-hunters.

  Guthrie looks at his watch. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘To decide your fate.’

  They’re meeting in Mrs McCarthy’s office. She’s the centre manager, or the headmistress, or the commandant, one of those smiling, gushing women who talk to people like they’re in pre-school. Everybody calls her Madge, but only behind her back.

  Guthrie escorts me through the corridors and points to a bench outside Madge’s office. I’m to wait. Meanwhile, he goes in through the painted green door, which doesn’t fully close. I hear somebody say, ‘We shouldn’t be sending her away. She needs our help.’

  I shift along the bench so I can hear more clearly.

  ‘We have to think about the welfare of the other children,’ says Guthrie. ‘She’s disruptive, dangerous and vengeful.’

  ‘It wasn’t Evie’s fault,’ argues Davina.

  ‘You said she goaded those boys,’ says Guthrie.

  ‘They vandalised our property.’

  ‘Allegedly.’

  Davina doesn’t give up. ‘If we abandon Evie now, if we wash our hands of her, she will fall further through the cracks. That girl is special.’