Cold Hearts

by Malcolm Richards

  “Perhaps this will help.”

  Emily placed the albums in front of Diane, who regarded them through wary eyes. The next few minutes were spent with Emily pointing at various men and Diane attempting to recall their names. By the time Emily had turned the final page, they had identified four people that could possibly fit the description the night porter had given. Diane hadn’t seen any of them for years and didn’t know where they could be found.

  Emily went to close the album, but Diane held up a hand. She continued to stare at the photographs on the page, at her husband’s happy, defiant face.

  “That girl,” she said, without looking up. “Anya. She and Max worked together?”

  “That’s right.” Emily could see the muscles in Diane’s face growing taut. She waited for her to ask more, but her silence was a clear indicator of her suspicions. Had there been other indiscretions during their marriage? Emily decided that it was not her business to ask. She did have one more question, however.

  “After Max passed away, did you receive anything from him in the mail? A package perhaps?”

  Diane squeezed her eyes shut. She shook her head. “No, I didn’t. Emily, what’s this all about?”

  Emily put a hand on her arm. “I’ll explain everything soon. I just need a little more time.”

  “Lucky then,” Diane said, placing a hand over Emily’s, “that time is all I have.”

  ***

  Late afternoon rain was coming down in heavy drifts as Emily left Diane and made her way towards the bus stop. Diane had not permitted her to take photographs from the album, so Emily had taken copies using her phone camera. She thought about sending the pictures to the night porter, Andy Bartlett, then decided twenty-year-old images weren’t going to help refresh the young man’s memory.

  As Emily hurried along the pavement, she saw just two other people braving the bad weather: a young mother on the opposite side of the street, who was getting soaked as she rolled a pram in front of her, and a man walking behind Emily, who was dressed in a navy blue raincoat, his face obscured by an umbrella.

  As the bus pulled up and Emily boarded, she briefly thought about asking for Helen’s help to locate the men on Diane’s list. She decided to leave her as a last result. All Helen had achieved yesterday was to prove she could not be trusted. Her agenda served only her gain. Emily had been wrong to involve her in the investigation. Now, she would have to live with any repercussions.

  Heading to the back of the bus, Emily sat down in a window seat. The driver pulled away, then jolted to a halt. The doors opened again and the man in the navy blue raincoat stepped on board. Water dripped from his shaved head. Emily watched him thank the driver, before returning her gaze to the window. Her mind wandered back to her conversation with Kristen Dewar. Once life had returned to normal, she would have a serious think about her future. Until then, her focus had to stay glued on Max Edwards. Everything else—her apartment, her career, her finances, Carter, even Jerome—would be tackled when she was ready.

  Two hours later, when Emily stepped out of Farringdon rail station, the rain was still coming down hard. Hopping onto the crowded bus that would take her back to The Holmeswood, she wedged herself in between the other standing passengers. Water dripped from raincoats and folded umbrellas. A young couple stood inches in front of Emily’s face, their lips locked in a passionate kiss. She looked away. Then caught her breath.

  In between the bodies, she saw a flash of blue raincoat and the back of a shaved head. Was it the same man she had seen outside of Diane Edwards’ home? The same man who had then jumped onto the bus, just as it had pulled away? She stared at the back of his head. What were the chances that he would be taking the exact same journey?

  Panicking, Emily pushed her way further towards the back of the bus, until she had positioned herself behind two tall men.

  The bus ground to a halt and the doors opened. People got out. More climbed in, pushing the passengers closer together. Emily stared through the gaps. She could no longer see the man in the blue raincoat. Was she being paranoid? After all, how many men wearing blue raincoats were milling about the city right now? Hundreds, if not thousands.

  When she exited the bus a few minutes later, her shoulders heaved with relief. A handful of other passengers had stepped off with her, but there were no men in blue coats. As the bus waited to reinsert itself into the traffic, Emily turned to walk the last stretch of the journey home. She froze. Someone was watching her. She could feel their eyes. Turning to look back at the bus, she saw a man’s face peering at her through one of the lower deck windows. It was just for a second. Then he was gone. But a second had been long enough to send slivers of ice sliding down the back of Emily’s neck.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The rest of the evening was spent at home, with the door locked and bolted, and all of the lights switched on. The rain grew heavier until it sounded like it would smash through the windows. Then, it stopped abruptly. Emily watched the street below, looking for conspicuous figures. She stared across the street at the steamy glass front of Il Cuore, then retreated to the kitchen. Throwing together a quick pasta dinner, she sat down at the table and ate while she searched online for the names and faces of Max’s old friends.

  Now that Emily was warm and dry and had a full belly, she wondered if the man in blue really had been following her. Perhaps she had imagined that face at the window. After all, paranoia could make you see things that weren’t there. And it wouldn’t be the first time that she’d succumbed to paranoia. Then again, she reminded herself, it wouldn’t be the first time she’d caught the attention of the wrong people either.

  She returned her attention to the four names that Diane had given her: Ben Adams, Callum O’Brien, Jason Dobbs, and Lucas Meyer. She approached each one systematically, scouring social media websites to gradually produce four groups of identically named people. She then went through each group, eliminating those men who did not fit the blond man’s description. Next, she whittled the groups down by analysing Facebook and Twitter profiles for mentions of environmental causes or political activism. It was a long and tedious task. So, when Emily came to Jason Dobbs, she decided to attempt a different tactic by Googling the name, along with the keyword environmentalist.

  The second result down stopped Emily in her tracks. She clicked on it and was taken to an obituary notice.

  Jason Henry Dobbs, 47, from Crystal Palace, London, passed away on Friday, 29th May. Mr Dobbs, who was a passionate environmentalist involved in a number of green causes, leaves behind his wife, Lucy, and his two daughters. A non-religious funeral will be held at Crystal Palace crematorium on Wednesday, June 10th at 3.45 p.m. No flowers at request of family.

  There was no photograph, but Emily knew she’d found something. Jason Dobbs had died the day after the Clean Water Project launch. The same day that Max Edwards had been discovered missing.

  If Emily had had any doubt that Max Edwards’ death had not been an accident, it was now gone. Whatever Max had discovered about Valence Industries had ended his life. Jason’s as well.

  Emily jumped up from the table and immediately went and double-checked the door locks. Then, she moved from room to room, making sure she was quite alone. She had to tell someone. Evan wouldn’t be back for another few days, and she didn’t trust Helen with this new, revelatory information before his return. She read over the obituary notice once more. There was a slim chance that this was not the Jason Dobbs whom she was looking for; that the date of his death and his passion for the environment were pure coincidence. Right. And there’s a chance Jerome might actually talk to me again, too.

  She would need to confirm Jason Dobbs’ identity. Perhaps tracking down his wife would reveal new information. For now, she closed the laptop, switched off the living room lights, and returned to the windows. People milled up and down the street, but fewer in number now. Across the road, Il Cuore was shrouded in darkness, the last of its customers ejected for the night. Again, Emily wonder
ed about the man in the blue raincoat.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Crystal Palace was a peaceful and leafy suburb surrounding a triangle of cafes, restaurants, and antique dealers, with panoramic views of the city. Lucy Dobbs lived on a quiet lane just off Church Road, in the ground floor flat of a large Victorian conversion. It was a nice home, Emily thought; welcoming and comfortable.

  She sat with Lucy in the living room, where a tortoiseshell cat lay, stretched out in front of the window, bathing in the sunlight. The steep climb up Anerley Hill from the train station had burned more than a few calories, leaving Emily hot and sticky. Now, she sipped iced water while she listened to Lucy speak.

  “We hadn’t seen Max for years,” Lucy said, brushing auburn hair from blue eyes. “It was his drinking, I suppose. It became more important to him than his friends. So you could say it was a bit of a surprise when he showed up out of the blue last year. I thought Jason would tell him to get lost—they’d been close back in the day, and Jase had been pretty hurt when Max had just up and disappeared. But he was always too soft. He forgave him straight away. Then, it was like they’d seen each other yesterday, not twelve years before.”

  “How long was that before your husband passed away?”

  Lucy flinched at the words. “About a month. Max wanted Jason to help with something. I thought it was a bloody cheek, showing up after all that time just to ask for help. I mean, not even a phone call to ask how Jase was doing. I don’t understand it.”

  “What did he need help with?”

  “Jason said he wanted help building a website.”

  Emily noted the scepticism in her words. “Your husband was a designer?”

  “Computer programmer, but he did some web stuff on the side.” Lucy leaned back and glanced over at the framed photographs sitting on the mantelpiece. Two girls in their late teens stared back. “I thought that was weird, you know. I mean, there are thousands of web designers out there. Why go to the trouble of showing up on the doorstep of someone you haven’t seen for twelve years just to ask them to do your website? I assumed it was a flimsy excuse for Max to get in touch with Jason again. You know what men are like—can’t actually have emotions about anything, have to turn them into something practical. Well, that’s what I believed at first.”

  Emily followed her gaze to the mantelpiece. “Your daughters?”

  “They’re both at university. Neither of them wanted to stay in London. I thought with all the universities in this big city, why go anywhere else? But they’re both like their dad. Last year wasn’t easy for them. For a while, I thought Ellie was going to pack everything in. She was closest to him. But she struggled through. She gets her stubbornness from her mum.”

  Emily returned her gaze to Lucy Dobbs and asked her next question. “I know this is not an easy conversation for you, but the obituary didn’t say how Jason passed away.”

  The motherly love in Lucy’s eyes was swallowed up by darkness. “They say he jumped from Hornsey Lane Bridge. Died on impact.”

  “I’m sorry. It must have been a terrible shock.”

  “It’s funny, people had been campaigning for years to get a safety fence put up on that bridge. People seemed to like jumping off it. That fence went up five months after Jason died. Five months.”

  The pain was still evident on Lucy’s face. And no wonder. Setting her glass on the table, Emily silently compared the circumstances of both deaths. Max Edwards had died from an alcohol-induced fall into the Thames. Jason Dobbs had died by jumping off a known suicide bridge. Even if they hadn’t died at around the same time, the friends’ deaths mirrored each other in uncanny ways.

  “Did Jason ever...” How did she put this? “Had Jason ever displayed suicidal tendencies before?”

  A long sigh escaped Lucy’s lips. “Jason suffered from depression. Had done since he was a kid. The doctors said it was a chemical imbalance, something he couldn’t help. But he’d been taking antidepressants for years. His depression was well-managed. Yes, he had bouts here and there, that’s to be expected, but he would talk to me and we’d work through it together. The girls didn’t always quite understand it, but still... Jason had been doing really well for a long time. Until Max showed up.” She said his name through clenched teeth. “All that bullshit about designing websites. Max was involved in something and he came to Jason because he needed help.”

  “Help with what?”

  “I don’t know. Jase kept saying he was helping with the damn website, even when I accused him of lying. They’d go off somewhere together, or disappear into Jason’s study for hours on end. It was obvious they were up to something, just like the old days. Back then, they were always plotting, always scheming ideas for this protest and that demo. There’d been one time years ago, the two of them had fallen in with a group who were pretty radical. I didn’t like them. Then, I found out they’d been planning to break into this pharmaceutical facility, to free all the animals that were kept for testing. I lost my mind. The girls were barely toddlers. I told Jason: if you want to risk having your arse thrown in jail then you go ahead, but you’ll be doing it as a single man with restricted access to your kids. Needless to say, that little venture didn’t get off the ground.” Lucy paused, shook her head. “No, they were up to something. But Jason wouldn’t tell me what. He kept saying not to worry, everything’s fine. Then he was dead. They were both were. On the same damned day.” She turned to Emily, her face fraught with desperation. “Do you know what it was? What they were doing to get themselves killed?”

  Emily avoided eye contact and said, “I’m still trying to find out.”

  It seemed senseless to cause Lucy further upset when there was still no definitive proof. Besides, wouldn’t telling her put her at risk? Emily thought about the man in the blue coat again. No, it was safer to keep what she knew to herself for now.

  “I went to the police, you know,” Lucy said, as she pulled at the hem of her skirt. “As soon as I found out Max was dead too, I went straight to the police station and demanded to speak to someone. Sergeant Wallis agreed it was strange the two of them died within hours of each other. He suggested that maybe it was a suicide pact. He said there was no evidence to suggest otherwise, even when I insisted they’d been involved in something. I gave him Jason’s computer, demanded that he take a look to see what he could find.” Lucy’s skin grew pale. She threw her hands into the air. “There was nothing. The whole computer had been wiped clean. And that was the end of it—the police stopped listening.”

  As Lucy dabbed her eyes with a tissue, Emily got up and crossed the room. First, Max Edwards’ computer is stolen. Now, Jason Dobbs’ computer has its hard drive erased. Valence Industries were nothing if not thorough. Growing increasingly troubled, Emily turned her attention to the family photographs on the mantelpiece. One in particular caught her eye.

  “Is this recent?”

  Lucy came up beside her. She nodded. “It’s from a couple of years ago. We went camping in the Lake District.”

  In the photograph, Jason Dobbs stood in front of a khaki-coloured tent, dressed in shorts and a t-shirt with a wind turbine printed on the front, along with the slogan, Blow Me! His blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Days of stubble sprouted from his chin. He was smiling, white teeth on show, wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, as he flexed his biceps for the camera.

  Pulling out her phone, Emily asked if she could take a copy. Suddenly lost for words, Lucy nodded. Then she reached out and grasped Emily’s hand.

  “That stupid bastard should have closed the door in Max’s face,” she said. Tears were forming in her eyes. “He would still be here right now. My girls would still have a father.”

  Emily squeezed her hand. “When was the last time you spoke to Diane?”

  “Years ago. We only really knew each through our husbands.”

  “Perhaps when this is all over, you should get in touch. Perhaps you could help each other.”

  She tried to move her hand
away, but Lucy held on.

  “Promise me,” she said, eyes locked on Emily’s. “Promise me you’ll find out the truth. If someone did this to Jason, I need to know. They need to be punished.”

  Emily stared back. She could feel Lucy’s pain seeping through her fingers and into her veins. “The only promise I can make is that I’ll do my best to find out the truth.”

  “Then I hope your best will be enough.”

  After Emily had said goodbye, she immediately sent a text message to the Riverside Hotel night porter, Andy Bartlett—Is this the man you saw with Max Edwards?—along with the picture she’d taken of Jason Dobbs.

  A deep knot of anxiety twisted in her stomach. Diane Edwards and now Lucy Dobbs were relying on her to restore justice. To prove to the world that their husbands were good men. More than that, the women were depending on Emily to set them free. Somehow, Diane and Lucy had become her responsibility. Their futures now depended on her.

  Her legs feeling stiff and heavy, Emily journeyed back towards the station. Every five metres or so, she turned to look over her shoulder or to glance at passing cars, and wondered if she was being followed. This is no way to live, she thought. She wasn’t sure if she’d been thinking about Diane and Lucy, or herself.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Evening was settling in when Emily entered The Holmeswood and headed straight for the lift doors. As she hit the call button, her phone buzzed once in her hand. Andy Bartlett had replied: Pretty certain that’s him. Do I win a cash prize? Or how about a date? Lol.

  Emily felt a surge of excitement. She quickly replied to the night porter’s text message: How about my gratitude and respect? Thank you! As soon as she’d sent the message, her phone began to ring.

  “Well, hello stranger,” Helen said. “You’ve been awfully quiet of late.”

  “I’ve been busy. Speaking of which, have you had any luck with Anya?”