by A J McDine
Her fingers trembled as she replaced the cheque in the envelope. ‘Thank you, I will.’
Summer slipped into autumn, and Niamh started to show. There were maternity clothes to buy and antenatal appointments to attend. At the twenty-week scan we found out she was expecting a girl and told Nate he was going to have a baby sister. He was beyond excited.
We also told our families, who were surprisingly open-minded about our unconventional adoption. Melanie and Bill were harder to convince. Melanie told us in no uncertain terms that she thought we were making a terrible mistake. Bill remained uncharacteristically silent. I put their reactions down to their own hang-ups about having children and I ignored them, knowing they’d come around to our way of thinking sooner or later.
As Niamh’s mid-March due date drew near, I allowed myself to get excited about the birth. We decorated the nursery in palest pink and spent hours discussing names, settling on Imogen, Immy for short.
I re-registered with a couple of nanny agencies and was scrolling through CVs one day when Stuart sidled into the room.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said.
‘Always dangerous,’ I joked.
‘How would you feel if I gave up work to be a stay-at-home dad when the baby’s born?’
‘But you love your job.’
‘You love yours more,’ he said. Which was true. I’d never had the slightest desire to be a full-time mum. ‘What’s brought this on?’
‘I don’t want another Astrid in the house, telling me off for having my feet on the coffee table and nagging me to wash my hands before tea. Imagine how nice it would be to have the place to ourselves.’
I had to agree. Niamh was so quiet she virtually faded into the wallpaper, but you could never truly relax when she was around. And money wasn’t an issue. Stuart made thirty-five grand a year as a senior ecologist, counting dormice and surveying bats. FoodWrapped made ten times his annual income every quarter. I was happy to be the sole breadwinner and Stuart would make a great house husband. We’d both be playing to our strengths. It made perfect sense.
‘OK,’ I said, holding out my hand for him to shake. ‘It’s a deal.’
Niamh gave birth to Immy in the maternity unit at Kent and Canterbury Hospital two days after her due date. A month later she left us to start work as an au pair for a family in Rochester, a job she’d applied for because it would fit around a part-time degree in nursing.
As we waved her goodbye, I congratulated myself on a job well done. We were now a perfect family of four. Symmetrical, whole. Complete.
Until the day Immy disappeared off the face of the earth. That’s when I realised I had built my flawless life on foundations of sand.
Chapter Thirty-Five
THURSDAY 17 JUNE
DI Jones looked as knackered as I felt. Dark circles ringed his eyes and his skin had a grey pallor that hinted at long hours spent under artificial lights at the police station, solving crimes, bringing criminals to justice, and reuniting lost children with their families.
‘Have you found Immy?’ I demanded.
‘I’m afraid not, Mrs Cooper,’ he said, stifling a yawn. ‘But there’s been a… development. Shall we sit down?’
Stuart and I followed him into the front room in silence. He sank into the armchair with a grateful grunt.
‘I tasked both late turn and night duty to carry out passing checks on the old FoodWrapped warehouse last night, hoping we could locate your former au pair and Immy’s biological mother, Niamh O’Sullivan.’
Something about the formal way he spoke made the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention and I glanced at Stuart, looking for reassurance. But his eyes were fixed on the detective’s face. I clasped my hands together and breathed deeply.
‘At twenty past one this morning, a patrol swung by the warehouse. It was the same two officers who attended the previous night and found Niamh’s belongings. Good lads, very thorough, and while some might have carried out a cursory check, they parked up and had a good look around.’
‘Did they find Niamh?’ Stuart asked.
DI Jones nodded grimly. ‘I’m afraid they did. Around the back of the warehouse.’ He paused. ‘There’s no easy way to say this. I’m sorry to tell you she was dead.’
The ground seemed to pitch beneath my feet, and I clutched the arm of the sofa to steady myself. ‘Dead?’
‘Dead,’ he confirmed.
Beside me, Stuart shuddered.
‘But how?’ I asked.
DI Jones steepled his fingers and closed his eyes, as if he was reaching a decision. They snapped open again. ‘She was found hidden in the undergrowth with a ligature around her neck,’ he said. ‘She’d been strangled.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ Stuart groaned.
‘Forensic teams have been on site since just after two o’clock. We’ve already identified the murder weapon. It was a length of raffia string.’
I was still reeling with the news that Niamh was dead and it took a moment for his words to sink in. Niamh had been strangled with a piece of raffia. We used raffia, imported direct from Madagascar, to tie our meal kit boxes. It was perfect for the job because it was rustic, pliable and naturally strong and fitted with our organic, sustainable ethos.
I flushed under the heat of the detective’s gaze. A quick check of the FoodWrapped website would show him we used it. Better if he heard it from me.
‘We use raffia at work,’ I said. ‘To tie the meal kits.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Do you indeed?’ He glanced up at the ceiling, then looked back at me. ‘You knew Niamh had been sleeping rough in the warehouse, and you suspected her of snatching your daughter. You have access to raffia. I need to ask if you know anything about Niamh O’Sullivan’s death?’
I felt Stuart’s gaze on me, as piercing as a laser. ‘You need to tell him,’ he said.
DI Jones watched me like a hawk, his head tilted to one side. The air in the room felt heavy, oppressive, and I tugged at the neck of my top.
‘Cleo!’ Stuart cried. ‘Just tell him!’
I swallowed. ‘I went to the warehouse last night.’
DI Jones reached into his jacket pocket for his notebook and a pen. He licked his thumb and flicked through the pages. ‘What time?’
‘About half nine.’
‘What was the purpose of your visit?’
‘I wanted to find Niamh, to see if she knew where Immy was.’
‘And was she there?’
‘The back door was open, and I went in through that,’ I hedged. Then something occurred to me. ‘Your forensic people will find traces of my blood on the door.’ I held out the palm of my hand, showing where the splinter had cut into my skin. ‘I found Niamh’s stuff in the staff room, all packed up as if she was about to leave. I was going to go, too, because she obviously wasn’t there, but then I heard a car drive up.’
DI Jones leaned forwards. ‘Did you see the make? Model?’
I couldn’t tell him it was Bill’s Range Rover, not until I had a chance to talk to Bill myself and find out what the fuck was going on. I stole a glance at Stuart, who was still staring at the detective with a look of incomprehension on his face.
‘No,’ I said. ‘It was pitch black, and it didn’t have any lights on. The driver got out and Niamh appeared from nowhere. They had some kind of argument and the driver got back in the car and drove off. I couldn’t hear what they were saying.’ That was true, at least. ‘Niamh came into the warehouse through the back door and saw me. I asked her if she’d taken Immy, and she claimed she didn’t even know she was missing. She was lying, she must have been. The whole bloody county knows Immy’s missing.’ A hard lump formed in my throat.
‘What happened then?’
‘I came home and told Stuart. End of story.’
The detective looked to Stuart for confirmation and he nodded. ‘She was home just after ten o’clock. We spent the rest of the night in here.’ The detective raised an eyebrow and Stuart shrugged. ‘Neither of us can
sleep at the moment. It didn’t seem worth going up to bed.’
‘Can anyone else vouch for your whereabouts?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’
‘Did either of you go out again?’ DI Jones asked.
We both shook our heads.
‘According to the pathologist’s initial findings, Niamh had only been dead for a couple of hours.’ The detective shifted in his seat. ‘You see my difficulty here, Mrs Cooper. I have you at the scene until just before ten and, according to your account, I have a mystery driver in a vehicle you can’t describe. I have a body, and I have a murder weapon that looks suspiciously like the string you use for your food parcels.’
‘Meal kits,’ I said. I looked him straight in the eye. ‘I had nothing to do with Niamh’s death. You have to believe me.’
‘Then who did?’
‘Her dealer? Her pimp?’ Stuart said. ‘She must have mixed with a few shady characters when she lived in Chatham.’
‘Her associates in Medway will form part of our inquiries.’ DI Jones jotted something in his notebook, then looked at me. ‘We’ll need you to come to the station to make a formal statement, but in the meantime is there anything else you can think of that might help us find Niamh’s killer?’
I shook my head. ‘Sorry.’
‘We’ve not released anything to the press, but it won’t be long before someone clocks all the police activity and tips off the local paper. We won’t mention the link between Niamh and your daughter, and I urge you both to do the same.’
‘What about Immy?’ I asked. ‘Do you think Niamh took her?’
He slid his notebook into his pocket. ‘It may not be a coincidence that Niamh turned up at your old warehouse a couple of days after Immy went missing. But I don’t have a shred of evidence that she had anything to do with Immy’s disappearance.’
‘What do you think happened to her?’ I said.
It was the detective’s turn to pull at the collar of his shirt. ‘The longer this goes on, the more I’m inclined to think that uniform’s favoured hypothesis is right.’
‘And what do uniform think?’ I asked, although I already knew the answer.
‘That Immy wandered through the water gate and fell into the river.’
Chapter Thirty-Six
‘Fuck,’ Stuart said, once DI Jones had driven away. ‘Poor Niamh. I can’t believe it.’
Niamh was dead. Not just dead. Murdered. I rubbed my face. My skin felt dry and flaky.
Niamh. The pretty girl from County Cork who’d looked after Nate, who’d given birth to Immy, whose short life was so intrinsically linked with ours, was gone. It was beyond comprehension, and I felt numb, one step removed, as if I’d read about her death in a book or heard it on the radio. As if it wasn’t really her, just someone with her name.
‘Strangled.’ Stuart shook his head. He looked at me. ‘You don’t think Bill would have…’
‘Of course not,’ I said, ‘It must have been someone from Niamh’s past catching up with her, like you said.’
‘D’you think we ought to call him, warn him what’s happened?’
I nodded, but before Stuart reached for his phone, Nate bounded into the room, as bouncy as Tigger in Star Wars pyjamas. I pasted a smile on my face.
‘Hey buddy, want a bacon sandwich?’
‘With ketchup?’
‘I’m sure I can run to some.’ I reached out for him and he wound his arms around my legs and squeezed me tight. I ruffled his hair. ‘Tell you what, why don’t you get dressed while I rustle up breakfast?’
He nodded and disappeared, his skinny arms and legs a blur. Stuart followed me into the kitchen, staring at his phone as if he’d never seen one before.
‘For Christ’s sake, just call him,’ I said.
‘Are you sure it was Bill you saw?’
‘I’ve known him for half my life, Stu. Of course I’m sure.’
Once again, the phone went straight to voicemail. Stuart cleared his throat and said. ‘Mate. You need to call me. Now.’
‘Try Melanie,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘I’ll take it outside. I need some air.’
I busied myself finding bacon and the tomato ketchup, pouring Nate a glass of milk and turning on the grill. Before I’d popped two slices of bread in the toaster, Stuart was back.
‘He’s not been home.’
I stopped, my hand resting on the loaf of bread. ‘What?’
‘He usually passes out on the sofa in front of the TV when he comes home pissed, so Mel thought nothing of it when he didn’t come to bed. But when she came down this morning and realised he hadn’t been home, she panicked. She was about to ring the police when I phoned.’
‘The police?’
‘She thinks he’s driven home half-cut, has totalled the car and is lying in a ditch somewhere between their house and the pub.’
‘Christ.’
‘I told her not to call the police. I said it would be wrong to take resources away from the search for Immy if the silly sod had dossed on one of his drinking pal’s sofas.’ Stuart’s words came thick and fast, as if by saying them quickly they wouldn’t seem so calculated.
‘What did she say to that?’
His gaze darted towards me. ‘She agreed it made sense. I told her we’d help her find him. She’s on her way round now.’
‘What are we going to tell her?’
‘Everything. We have to, don’t we?’
An intense weariness swept over me. Didn’t we have enough to deal with, without worrying where Bill might or might not be? What he might or might not have done? All I cared about was finding Immy.
Four days had passed since she vanished off the face of the earth. Four days and four long, long nights. And the police still had no inkling where she was. What were they waiting for - her bloated body to fill with gases and bob up somewhere downstream? My stomach roiled, and I clamped my hand over my mouth as I retched. I turned it into a cough, hoping Stuart hadn’t noticed. I had to get a grip, because thinking like that would get me precisely nowhere.
But what should I think? I’d been wrong about Niamh. She hadn’t led me to Immy, after all. Even DI Jones, the only copper who agreed Immy could have been taken, now seemed to think she’d drowned. And every day she was missing, hopes of finding her alive were fading. We were running out of time.
‘Cleo?’ Stuart said.
I swallowed hard. ‘Yes. We’ll tell her everything.’
Melanie’s car was outside the house when I arrived home from dropping Nate at school. I pulled up behind it and sat for a moment, summoning the energy to go in.
Niamh’s death, shocking as it was, wasn’t what dominated my thoughts. Finding Bill wasn’t my priority. Yet the minute I walked in the front door, Stuart and Melanie would expect me to take charge. They might be screwing behind my back, but that wouldn’t stop them looking to me for answers. Their sheer bloody cheek was mind-blowing, if you thought about it. But I didn’t want to think about it. I wanted to think about Immy. She was what mattered.
I took a deep breath, let myself out of the car and headed for the house.
Stuart and Melanie were in the kitchen, sitting at right angles to each other at the island, their heads bowed together and their fingertips touching. As I walked in, they sprang apart like scalded cats, guilt etched on their faces.
It was the final straw. I’d had enough of their pathetic attempts at deception. I slammed my bag on the worktop and addressed the nearest kitchen cupboard.
‘Look, I know you’re having an affair, OK?’
Melanie gasped. Stuart was silent. I turned to face them. ‘I saw you in the churchyard the other day.’
‘It wasn’t what you think,’ Melanie pleaded. Stuart’s eyes widened, and I almost felt sorry for him. Almost.
‘Of course it was,’ I snapped. ‘I’m not stupid. How long has it been going on? A year? Two? More?’
They glanced at each other, a furtive look that was as easy to read as a
n open book, and in that moment I knew. ‘Jesus, it’s been years, hasn’t it?’ A memory of Stuart getting wasted and proposing to me out of the blue at Bill and Melanie’s wedding snuck into my head. My breathing quickened. ‘You were shagging at university.’ A statement, not a question, and Stuart nodded miserably.
All at once my past was being rewritten, and I was seeing every holiday, every Christmas, every celebration we’d spent with our best friends with fresh eyes. Stuart inviting Bill and Melanie over for supper, not because he wanted to see Bill, but because he wanted to be close to Melanie. Melanie persuading us to join them on holiday, not because she valued my friendship, but so she could steal time with my husband right under my nose.
‘Before or after we met?’ I asked him.
‘Before,’ he mumbled.
‘We split up just before Stu introduced me to Bill,’ Melanie said.
I turned on her, my eyes blazing. ‘I wasn’t asking you!’
She recoiled as if I’d slapped her. I found it strangely satisfying. ‘When did you start seeing her again?’ I asked Stuart.
He picked up an apple from the fruit bowl and twirled it in his fingers before replacing it. ‘After Nate was born. You were so caught up in him and work that you barely remembered I existed.’
‘What a fucking cliché.’ I barked with laughter. ‘I’m sorry I was too busy working my arse off to provide all this,’ I swept my hands in an arc, knocking over a tumbler by the draining board. We watched in silence as it rolled over and crashed into pieces on the flagstone floor. Melanie jumped up and retrieved the dustpan and brush from under the sink. As she swept up the broken glass, more memories crowded into my mind. Shattered glass on a stone terrace in Corfu. Bill scooping Niamh into his arms, his feet crunching on the shards. Bill giving Niamh money for a taxi and telling her to let her beautiful red hair down at the party on the beach. Niamh, dishevelled and tearful the next morning, admitting she’d been raped, but claiming her attacker was no one she knew.
