‘Yes,’ Georgie managed through dry lips, thinking of the home phone, her lifting the receiver and Tim watching her. Cleared her throat. ‘Sure. Of course.’
The man didn’t look up as they left but she heard the sound of his chair as the door closed. As DS Andrea Mills escorted her back out – letting Georgie go ahead of her through the door, on the stairs – she didn’t say anything more. But Georgie felt her watching.
Past the reception desk and the plastic chairs, past the ragged man still pacing and scratching and the big glass doors opened, letting her out, into the cold polluted air. Halfway down the steps she turned and the doors had closed but there was the policewoman, still watching.
Tim had always been scornful of the police: bottom-feeders, he called them; chavs, kids who left school without qualifications, the boneheaded and the violent and the stupid. Georgie, who had never knowingly spoken to one before, didn’t think Andrea Mills was stupid. Turning back into the blinding sunlight she nearly walked into a passing car and stopped, feeling her heart pound.
The possibilities jumped, sprang. If it was him. Him. She didn’t know him at all, this Mark, after all, she didn’t know one thing about him. You made it all up, didn’t you, when you were infatuated, in love, maybe Holly had been the same, maybe she had trusted someone. This secret life built itself in your head and you thought there was no harm in it, but you built it around another human being and there was your unknown quantity. You never knew, did you, what was going on in another human being’s head? You never knew.
And then in her pocket her phone came back to life, it pinged, once, twice, three times.
Two missed calls from Tim. And a message, but this one wasn’t from Tim. Georgie raised a hand to her forehead to shade her eyes, so she knew what she was looking at. Although her mobile refused to recognise his number, she already knew it by heart.
And he had sent her a picture.
No more than mid-afternoon, but the traffic was heavy, how the fuck, how the fuck was going round and round in Frank’s head as he drove, his hands sweating on the Jag’s leather steering wheel. He shouldn’t be here.
Slow and stupid in everything he did. He stood there behind the bar fancying himself as Frank Sinatra or the head barman at the Savoy but he was a trained gorilla in a sharp suit, he was thick as pigshit.
They were in north London, Tottenham, edging uphill between terraces with dirty windows, their paintwork dingy with the fumes.
The traffic had ground to a halt again.
Holly, on the floor of a rented bedsit, call it an Airbnb but they were all bedsits. With damp under the window sills showing through a hasty coat of magnolia, with scale in the toilet, with curtains too thin to keep out the light. Holly raped and strangled. Strangled then raped. Did it matter which way round that happened? It mattered. It mattered to Frank.
‘I thought we’d just head back to my place,’ Eddie had said, watching him as if he knew what he was looking down at, while he waited at the flat’s door. ‘If that’s all right with you?’
Before he’d put the phone away he’d seen that the text was to tell him he’d missed a call, from Matteo.
Why would you block someone? To stop messages coming in. If Matteo had been with Eddie, Eddie reaching for his phone like it was his own property? Funny, that Frank was more worried about Teo than Lucy. The big bloke just wanted a quiet life.
And in that second Frank had unclenched, he’d seen his chance, right or wrong. He’d nodded. ‘You’re the boss,’ he said. And even as he said it, a suspicion crept up on him. What if? Matteo was from Sicily, he was strong enough to strangle a woman one-handed. He might have been given no choice. The idea was ridiculous. Outlandish. Not strangle and rape. Not Teo.
The satnav said another twenty-five minutes, a red line of traffic. Behind him Frank could hear Eddie laboriously typing in a message to someone. He’d never got the hang of using thumbs, Frank had seen him, jabbing at the screen with a forefinger. He could hear Eddie’s breath, heavy and fast.
It was possible that Eddie was in the shit, and needed Frank’s help. It might start with a dead girl in a building that could be traced back to him. And that was what this was about? The boxes moved out of his house, then disappearing from the Cinq. About money and dodging taxes – was that how Holly had ended up dead or was that just an unforeseen consequence? It occurred to Frank that he should go to the police. The thought was so impossible he almost laughed.
And then abruptly as the traffic eased the houses thinned out, old brick semis fronted with shrubs and cherry trees and tidy hedges. Then the roundabout so big it looked like a park, and beyond it the wide roads disappearing into the woodland. Here they were again.
As Frank took the roundabout from behind him Eddie’s phone rang: he left it two, three, four rings, then answered. Frank tried not to move his head, not to show he was straining to hear. Whoever it was, was worked up: Frank couldn’t hear the words but the voice was animated, insistent. It wasn’t Lucy. A man’s voice.
Turning his head slightly Frank could see beads of sweat at Eddie’s glossy hairline, under the silver curls. Eddie wasn’t so laidback, after all.
‘No,’ Eddie kept saying, keeping his voice low but Frank could hear the warning edge to it. ‘No, no, that wasn’t the idea, no. Don’t go off on one, no. I told you. I didn’t know, did I? How was I supposed to know she’d come down here? No, don’t do that. I wouldn’t do that, mate.’
She. Who? Georgie had come to London on Saturday, holding her little girl’s hand.
All in a level voice, at one point even catching Frank’s eye in the rear-view mirror before he could look away, smiling, shrugging, as if to say, what can you do? Then with finality, ‘Look mate, I’ve done my part. I’ve done what you asked me to do. Maybe best if we don’t talk for a bit, right? Radio silence. I think that’s best.’
Almost inaudible to the human ear, but Frank was tuned in: the sound of Eddie close to losing it. The jab of a finger, his breathing heavy then the soft hydraulic whine of the Jag’s rear window and Frank couldn’t stop himself looking, turning to look at the phone flying out, a tiny flash and gone. A small cheap thing. Then abruptly, Eddie said: ‘Turn off here.’
They were beyond the houses, beyond the suburbs: they had just driven past a little church and there was a turning, a narrow road but tarmacked at least.
Automatically Frank did what he was told: of course he did, it was what he was used to. He felt it creep against him: despair. The sign was low down, Private Road, low down, seen too late, like the tarmac, unmaintained, crumbling at the verge.
The road surface was poor almost immediately, the low-slung Jag bumped and crunched. All around him the hazy green of trees, one after the other like reflections in double mirrors, nothing to see but trees. The church behind him, the road, civilisation: they were all out of sight. He peered across the steering wheel, searching for something that would indicate there was an end to it, to the dusty woodland, the silent trees.
‘Here,’ said Eddie and there was a turning, a track that Frank hadn’t seen coming.
There was someone there. Was it Matteo? Big Matteo sorrowful, who’d tried to warn him.
And his foot went down on the brake, sharp.
‘Hey,’ said Eddie into his neck, thrown forward by the abrupt stop, nettled at last.
But it wasn’t Matteo, stepping out from behind a tree into a space that – from the untidy trampled aspect to it, a dirty bottle, baby wipes, the glint of silver from a blister pack – had been used before.
It wasn’t Matteo but it was a man Frank had seen before. A black backpack rested at the foot of the tree.
He could turn here, he could drive away. He wrenched the car into reverse, turning to look over his shoulder, for trees, for the space to do it, always too cautious and then Eddie was there, and Frank could smell the sweat on him now, never mind see it. Eddie’s big body, taking him by surprise, barrelling between the seats with a grunt and reaching past him, p
ast the steering wheel before Frank knew what was going on.
Too slow, Frank, too slow.
Eddie plucked the keys from the ignition. And as Frank, galvanised at last, reached to grab them back off him, the door beside him opened.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Tim sounded completely reasonable, completely calm. But he was asking where she was.
She was home.
Standing there on the pavement, with the police station at her back, Georgie hadn’t opened the picture message. She had stuffed the phone down into her pocket, deep down and she had walked stiff-legged to the tube station. Down, down, down, into the bowels. The escalator rattled, faces turned to look at her but Georgie stared straight down at her feet. As she descended, into the warm breath of the underground, between the tiled walls, she felt as though she might not come back up again. Standing on the platform, climbing into the carriage: it all felt like something from a horror movie, people peering at her, every face shadowed unpleasantly.
When Georgie did emerge with the flow of the crowd, out into the vaulted din of the mainline station, the mobile was dead. Of course it was: she hadn’t charged it up before leaving. For a brief breathless moment, though, it felt as though something had intervened, to stop all this. If she dropped the phone into a bin, flushed down the train toilet, threw it on to the tracks, would it all go away?
She didn’t throw the phone away, though. It sat in her pocket all the way home, but she hadn’t dared even put her hand in, to touch it. She didn’t know what he would be sending her a picture of. Him. Mark.
In the part of her brain that opened and closed her mouth and communicated with police officers, the part that got on to trains and off them again and found her car in the station car park – Georgie didn’t know what picture Mark would be sending to her. But there was another part of her brain, where memory blinked and pulsed.
The car had been where she left it. Georgie stood there, at the rear left side, looking at the dent. More of the white paint had flaked off, and it looked ugly.
She put both her hands in her pockets as she looked and there was the phone. It felt warm, from being against her body. She hadn’t pranged the car, therefore someone else had done it. That realisation ticked down in her conscious mind, her rational sensible mind, as she found the key, started the car. Drove home, plugged in her phone to charge.
Had he, Mark, had he been here, had he been watching her? He wanted her to know he’d been there.
She put on the kettle. It was after five o’clock, and getting dark but she didn’t turn on the lights, she stood there quite still, in the kitchen. She thought she should call Sue and get Tabs back but something told her, leave her where she is. Just for a bit longer. Waiting for the phone to charge.
Using the landline would have meant whoever she phoned would know where she was.
But they seemed to know, anyway. Mark did. How could he have known? This morning Georgie hadn’t known herself where she was going to go.
How long had he been here, in his Airbnb? How long had he been here, following her? Up to town and back again. Had he been watching when she got the flowers, when she raced to the florist’s? In the supermarket with Tabs’ hand in hers?
Georgie walked softly into the sitting room: it was darker inside than out, as the light faded beyond the wide wall of glass, so she didn’t close the curtains. She paced the house out, metre by metre, going up the stairs carefully, on bare feet, standing beside each of the windows, theirs, Tabs’, the bathroom window that looked out to the side, the fence that protected the back garden. She couldn’t see anyone.
Only then did she come back down, pick up the mobile and call Tim.
‘Where are you?’ he said, without any preamble.
‘Tim—’ she couldn’t help it, she heard the voice she used to placate him. But she didn’t want to tell him. She hesitated.
‘When you didn’t answer the phone, I called the school,’ he said, just a hint of puzzlement in his voice. ‘Sue told me you’d gone home sick.’
‘I know,’ said Georgie.
‘But you didn’t go home?’ The puzzlement more pronounced, not quite disguising something else. He wanted to know what she knew. She let the silence lengthen.
‘No,’ she said, ‘I lied.’ She was in that moment completely calm. Her knowledge of what Tim had done – was doing, with Lydia – sat there in her head but she said nothing about it.
‘You what?’ There was something new in his voice.
Or not quite new, it had always been there. Georgie knew him so well, she realised in that moment. Obviously not well enough to see he’d been fucking his secretary but come to think of it, she’d probably even known that, deep down. She’d always known he kept his life secret from her, she wasn’t allowed to see inside his office, that was why he didn’t want her working there. When he opened his computer he would always turn it so she couldn’t see the screen; when he looked down at his phone he tilted it away from her.
She knew his every intonation, she knew when he was lying, when he was angry, when he was hiding something. He never admitted he was wrong.
And now she calculated, the old calculating Georgie, so sharp at school and at work. She knew that Tim had come downstairs and seen the lasagne out on the side in the kitchen and he had wondered if it had been there before. When he let them in, himself and Lydia.
And she wondered, too, had she left it there on purpose? So he would know she knew. And it was then that sharp calculating Georgie faltered, uncertain. Her subconscious was evading her. She didn’t know herself what she was capable of any more. She took a step back against the kitchen counter, pressing herself against it so she couldn’t be seen through the kitchen door.
The picture he’d sent her was still there, unopened, on the phone that was pressed against her ear as she waited for what Tim would say next – what she would answer.
How do you say it, anyway? I heard you fucking Lydia upstairs. You don’t say it. Instead you make no effort to be quiet, instead you take the lasagne out of the freezer and leave it there.
‘Why did you call, anyway?’ she said; she heard her own voice, careless. He wouldn’t like that, her sounding casual and unworried when he must have been bricking it. A phrase he would have winced at if she’d said it out loud, unladylike, betraying her South London origins.
But when Tim had called the school and they told him she’d gone home, he must have been. Bricking it.
‘My mother phoned,’ he said. ‘She called me at the office. Why didn’t you tell me she’d phoned the house?’ Still reasonable.
‘You phoned to ask me that?’ Georgie realised she didn’t care that she’d forgotten to tell him: she remembered Jennifer’s tone with her. She felt as if she’d been cut loose, and she knew what the next step would be. She’d never had a row with Tim. Ever. Not one where she answered back.
‘She said she’d call you at the office, anyway,’ she said, not even defensive. ‘Obviously it was something she didn’t want me listening in to.’
‘Don’t be childish,’ Tim said harshly. He didn’t sound scared. ‘Where were you?’
Georgie didn’t know what Tim scared would sound like, though, because he didn’t do that. He went straight to angry. A near miss in the car one time on a slip road, Tim cut up by some bloke and Tim’s lips white with fury.
‘I went to London.’ He was waiting, so she went on. ‘I went to see the police.’
And then there was a silence, and she heard it bubbling up, eloquent. The anger: it could be there for all sorts of reasons. Because she had found him out, because she had got away from him, that she had done something unexpected. ‘The police?’
‘About Holly. You remember Holly?’ How had that note of sarcasm crept into her voice?
‘Holly.’ He spoke without comprehension, as if he really had forgotten who she was, and that she was dead.
‘Cat asked me—’ Georgie began trying to soften it, and then she thought, leave Cat o
ut of it. ‘I just wanted to tell the police about how Holly was, when we were with her. That she was happy, she had things to look forward to.’
She wished in that moment that Tim could understand: she knew he wouldn’t. He’d never had any time for it, what he called being sentimental. When she found herself talking about anything like that, about Cat being ill, or Tabs at school, or her dad, hearing her voice wobble, his jaw would set, he would look away, impatient.
‘Well, I’m sure they were very grateful.’ She heard him being careful not to meet her sarcasm with some of his own: he only sounded condescending, but that wasn’t what he was feeling. Georgie could hear that too, with her new sharpened senses. He was enraged, that she had gone to London to talk to the police, that she had involved them in this – mess. It would just look like a mess to him, that he wanted nothing to do with.
And then for some reason Georgie found herself thinking of the man in the camel-hair coat on the Soho pavement, blocking her path. He had stared at her as if she didn’t belong, as if she shouldn’t be there. As if he knew who she was.
‘Tim—’ she began uncertain, but he interrupted her.
‘Where’s Tabs?’ and his voice was mild, still giving nothing away, but Georgie’s hair stood on end at the sound of it, of danger. Of menace, that was the word. Softly she disconnected the mobile from its charger, and backed out of the kitchen into the hall.
It had got quite dark in the hall, with the only light from the misted pane in the front door but Georgie could see herself, a motionless outline in the metal-framed mirror. This was what it was all about, this new world, where she could see and hear everything so clearly, it was about making her space smaller and smaller. For all this time she had worked on the assumption that Tim was on her side, but he wasn’t. Never had been. They were his possessions, her and Tabs, in this house he built, for his own purposes. His garage, full of his things, his locked boxes, his clothes in the wardrobe.
‘Tabs?’ he repeated, patiently.
A Secret Life Page 23
