‘When she saw me she burst into tears. “I knew you’d come,” she said, and begged me to take them both away. I could see how desperate she was. I thought at first that Armstrong had been abusing either her or the child, but it wasn’t that — not physical abuse, anyway. He was just simply paranoic, insanely jealous if she so much as looked at another man, which was unfortunate, the sort of work she did, meeting different people all the time. I wondered why in God’s name she’d ever married the man. Then I realized she’d never had the chance to find out what he was really like — they’d been married within a few weeks of his arriving in Ascomb. That staggered me. A bit quick off the mark, wasn’t it? I said, but she just shrugged and said well, he could charm the birds off the tree when he wanted.’
A bitter pill that had been to swallow, after his own rejections, one he hadn’t quite managed to down even yet.
‘Even if she’d suspected he was out for the main chance, her mother had left a will that stopped anyone but Bibi getting their hands on the hotel. If she sold it, she’d only get half the proceeds, the rest would go to some charity or other. And anyway, he was a great ideas man, she said, and she believed him when he told her she was sitting on a little gold mine, that he could help her put the place back on the map, if she’d give him his head.’
Chip looked down at his shoes. ‘Later, I came to think she’d actually been under no illusions, she understood he was offering his services in return for marriage. I suppose she thought she could do worse, it was a fair enough exchange. But she couldn’t have had any idea what her life would be from then on. She became pregnant straight away which gave him the excuse to take complete charge of everything to do with the hotel, and maybe it would have worked out OK, except that gradually, her personal life became hell. She swore she’d tried to make the marriage work — Jasie needed a father — but it was no use and in the end, she found courage enough to sell the hotel over his head, sue for a divorce and walk away from the situation. It didn’t stop him from pestering her, though. He followed her everywhere she went, besieged her with telephone calls and threats. He tried to get possession of Jasie, but he was refused, and ordered to stop persecuting her, which of course he didn’t. She applied for a court order, a whatyoumaycallit -’
‘Restraining order.’
‘Whatever. Fat lot of notice he took of it. Well, anyway, she got desperate, and that was when she rang me for help, when I went up there. I went to the cottage several times, walked her home after she’d finished work at the hotel … and he must have seen us, or found out. That last night, the bastard set fire to her house — with her and Jasie in it. It was sheer bloody good luck I happened to be there and saw the smoke … it was off the beaten track, along a lane that led to nowhere, not a place anyone actually had reason to pass. Minutes after they got out, it went up like a torch.’
It was some time before he was able to resume. ‘Two lives nearly sacrificed — and what did he get for it? Pleaded diminished responsibility and was sent down for a mere seven years — one of those bleeding heart judges who believed him when he said he hadn’t known they were in the house at the time, that he’d been provoked by being denied access to his child. Despite the fact that he’d said at the trial that he’d intended if he couldn’t have Jasie, nobody would.’
There was a long silence.
‘He’s admitted the offence, addressed his problems and showed contrition. A psychiatric assessment has judged him no longer a danger. If he really wants the child,’ Kate said, ‘he won’t harm him.’
‘Psychiatric my backside … I’ve no time for that sort of claptrap! She’d tried to take her own life, you know, and afterwards … well, that was why she asked me for help, she was just so all out desperate, I’d no illusions about that. It was a long shot, God knows, after all those years. But she’d nobody else to turn to and I’d always sworn … Anyway, I took her away, brought her down here. The whole thing had knocked her absolutely sideways, ruined her life — and not just hers …’ He shifted on his seat, reddened. ‘You know how it is, this sort of thing has a knock-on effect, it’s not only the victim that suffers.’
‘Yes,’ said Kate, ‘that’s true, it damages a woman’s self-esteem and -’
‘If that means she wanted nothing more to do with men, that’s it!’ He looked sorry he’d said that, and stopped abruptly. ‘Where is he now? If I get my hands on the bugger …’
‘That’s the trouble,’ said Crouch, ‘we don’t rightly know. Not yet. He hasn’t reported to his probation office for two weeks and he seems to have disappeared.’
Chapter Eleven
At some point, just about when Chip began sweating his way through his story to Crouch, the shrilling of the telephone drags Fran from the submerged depths of the violently disturbed dreams and half-waking terrors which have passed for sleep. Her hand gropes for the phone as she struggles out from under the damp tangled sheet. She forces her eyelids open, feeling as though she’s been drugged, not knowing where she is, totally disorientated. And then, in the space of a heartbeat, she’s awake. Jasie! They’ve found Jasie!
Filled with a mixture of hope and dread, her hand hovers over the receiver, unwilling to pick it up, petrified by the thought of what she might hear. At last she forces herself to move, and speak, her throat dry, her heart still pounding.
‘Fran?’
‘Mark!’ For a panicky moment she’s back in the dark shadows of her dreams, chasing a man she knows to be her husband — who, every time she catches him, turns a featureless face towards her, and then slips like water from her grasp again. But then her mind clears and everything comes back, the awful day yesterday, the worst day of her life, and the discovery in which it culminated. ‘Oh, Mark!’
‘Something tells me you haven’t surfaced properly yet, love. Hope I haven’t woken you up, but I thought you might have decided to go out, seeing I’ve abandoned you for the weekend, and I wanted to catch you before you did.’
‘Mark, I’ve been trying to get you for two days! You forgot to leave me a contact number.’ Her voice isn’t her own. Like a mother who’s been out of her mind with worry over a child who’s run off and been lost for half an hour, she wants to shake him, shout at him, hug him and cry over him, all at once. She pulls herself together, indulging in such emotions is just pathetic, in the circumstances - though she doesn’t draw the line at adding, sharply, ‘You might have rung.’
‘Sorry about that,’ he says, briefly apologetic. ‘You just wouldn’t believe how hectic things have been here.’
‘They haven’t been exactly slow at this end, either.’
‘What’s happening? Everything’s all right, isn’t it? You sound upset.’
‘No, Mark, everything’s all wrong.’
‘Everything? That sounds pretty ominous!’ Teasing, prepared to humour her. Over-hearty, quite unlike his usual ironic self. Not really believing in anything disastrous, real or imagined.
‘It’s Bibi.’
‘Bibi?’ The change in tone is palpable. Sharp, peremptory almost. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Prepare yourself for a shock, Mark. She’s — dead. She’s - I’m afraid she’s been murdered.’
The long, fraught silence at the other end is worse, much worse, than anything he could have said. Oh my God, Fran tells herself, I was right, oh God. Then he says, quite calmly, ‘Tell me about it.’
‘She was stabbed and thrown into the stream, on Thursday evening. I — I was the one who found her, in the pool.’
‘In the — you found her?’
‘And there’s m-more. Jasie’s disappeared.’ She rarely cries, but tears are very near the surface now. The phone is slippery in her grasp. She transfers it to her other hand and wipes her sweaty palm on the bed-sheet, then transfers it back. ‘The police are out looking for him but there’s been no trace … Mark, I can’t tell you how awful it’s been!’
There was another, even longer silence. ‘Hell’s teeth, what a mess!’
; She can see, in her mind’s eye, his hands, typically, running through his hair as he concentrates his thinking. After a few moments, he says, ‘Look, can you bear with me while I get things sorted this end? I’ll be home by tonight, latest. This guy here, Duchene … he’s difficult, to put it mildly, but that said, he’s given me every facility to work with here. He wants to see the plans as soon as possible at least in rough draft, and I’ve been working all hours to have something to show him. The thing is, it’s actually turning out to be the most bloody marvellous commission, and I don’t want to blow it. You know how it is.’
No, actually, she isn’t at all sure she does know how it is, but having wanted nothing more than to fly into Mark’s arms ever since the moment she’d first seen Bibi’s body floating in the pool, now her only wish is for him to stay in Brussels and make a success of this commission. He sounds quick and excited about it. She knows Mark in that mood. When he’s caught up with an idea, he’s a glutton for work, overflowing with ideas. How can she ever live with herself if she encourages him to upset his new patron and he loses the biggest chance he’s had for ages?
‘No, Mark, listen, there’s no need -’
She suddenly realizes she’s talking into a dead telephone. She jiggles it about a bit but there’s no response. She waits for him to re-establish the connection, but when he doesn’t, she gives it time then dials the Brussels number, by now indelibly engraved on her memory. The ringing tone goes on in a way that has grown nastily familiar. What sixth sense tells you that a phone is ringing into a vacuum? Clearly, he’s been calling her from somewhere else — perhaps this place he’s been given to work in — and unless he rings again, she still has no idea what number that is. Oh, sod it!
Never mind, he’ll ring back, Mark isn’t the sort to leave unresolved conversations hanging in the air. If nothing else, he likes to know just where he stands. It’s just bad luck that they’ve been cut off like that … isn’t it? All her doubts come rolling back, as she drags herself downstairs to make some coffee. She takes it outside and sits huddled on the bench that overlooks the clearing. The sun is hot on her face, though her fingers wrapped around the mug feel icy cold. She wants nothing more than to curl up and sleep under a tree, hide away from what’s happening to her, invading her life, but she knows she’ll have to face up to what she saw in that drawer last night in Mark’s study, sooner or later. Face that, and what else?
The air is heavy, oppressive and humid. Unlike yesterday’s cool, clear morning, even this early it’s stifling hot, in the shade or out of it. A breathlessness that betokens a storm later hangs like a blanket. Not a thing stirs, but for the occasional tree leaf trembling in the thermals. She swipes the back of her hand across her damp forehead. After only a few minutes out here, she’s sweating, she can feel it trickling down between her shoulder blades, under the cotton wrap.
From somewhere out in the forest comes a tremendous crash. She jumps a mile, the hot coffee splashing over her wrist, but then she knows what it is, only the limb of a tree falling to the ground. Sometimes, in this sort of heat, a big tree will inexplicably shed one of its heavy branches. At first, it used to frighten her, that this could occur so randomly, so dangerously, but Mark was used to it. ‘It happens. There’s a scientific explanation for it which I can’t remember, offhand, something about transpiration.’ He gave one of his lopsided grins. ‘But I don’t believe it. I think they’ve just had enough, poor devils, standing there with their arms everlastingly above their heads. Imagine it, year after year, centuries maybe. I’ve always felt sorry for them ever since I was cast as a tree in a kindergarten play.’
‘You are a fool,’ she’d said, laughing.
Oh, Mark, what fun we used to have, she thinks now, when we first came to live here, in this magical place. It had been a kind of enchantment. But magic wears off. Not for her, but yes — perhaps — for Mark …
That bundle of letters, last night, in the desk. Well, three, to be precise. But enough to shatter a dream. Or to feed your fantasies, whatever. If you let it. She pulls herself up sharply. There’s probably some quite rational explanation why Bibi gave those letters to Mark, of all people, though at the moment what that might be is totally beyond the scope of her imagination. They’d never been particularly close — in fact, Fran has always been aware that Mark didn’t particularly like Bibi. He’d tolerated her because of Chip, but made no secret of his scepticism of her weird New Age philosophies, he laughed at her credulity in believing the heavens could tell her how to live her life when sometimes she didn’t know Tuesday from Sunday. He raised his eyebrows and made caustic remarks about the style of dress she favoured (except when on duty at the country club, Bibi always knew which side her bread was buttered), the layers of ethnic clothing, and the silver rings and chandelier ear-rings that dragged down the lobes of her ears like some African tribeswoman. And Fran had always suspected that what he disliked most of all was the way her own friendship with Bibi had developed. Why, then, had Bibi trusted him, and no one else, with the letters?
She doesn’t like any of the explanations that come to her.
Last night, she’d sat for over an hour, just looking at them lying in the drawer, held together by a rubber band, unable at first to believe what she was seeing, though the top envelope left no room for doubt that here were the missing letters — rough, greyish, recycled paper with a shadowy pattern of trees printed on it, a Save the Trees logo, Bibi’s name and address typed in what space was left. For an hour she’d been unable to touch them, telling herself there was no way she was going to take out the contents of those envelopes, this business was absolutely nothing to do with her. But in the end, as she’d known from the first she would, obeying some inner compulsion, she’d read all three.
They had made her feel physically sick. Not that the language was abusive, or indecent. It was the quiet venom with which the writer had reiterated the same message, though differently phrased, in each one: that one day he would get Bibi, unless she returned what belonged to him - presumably Jasie. No matter how she tried, was the repetitive warning, she couldn’t hide from him for ever: he’d already found out where she was living, hadn’t he? She would have done better than to use her maiden name, but then, she never had been particularly bright, had she? Every time she went out, she should be looking over her shoulder, because he’d be there, somewhere around, and would be until he finally finished her. The letters had begun without preamble, and were, of course, unsigned — unless you counted the tiny horse’s head drawn at the end. No, not a horse, she’d seen as she looked closer, it was a unicorn’s head, complete with twisted horn.
She understands now why Bibi had begun to look so hag-ridden lately. A sharp word and she had been ready to burst into tears, as if all the world was on her shoulders. Difficult to please sometimes, Bibi, she’d thought. Manipulative. Up one minute, down the next. But it’s a source of amazement to Fran now, how she’d kept her sanity at all.
Common sense tells her she ought to take what she’s discovered straight to Crouch, but she finds herself oddly reluctant to do that, off her own bat. There has to be a reason why neither Bibi nor Mark took them to the police, and numbly, she refuses to consider why this should be so. But surely the circumstances now warrant it — even compel it?
A car swishes through the watersplash, then makes the sharp-angled turn into the drive of the house, the bark chippings scrunching beneath the wheels.
‘You’re a right berk, Gary Brooker,’ Becky Jameson said, preparing a big batch of Hydrangea petiolaris cuttings for the propagating frames. ‘You know that?’
‘Oh, I am, am I? Well, you don’t do so bad yourself sometimes,’ Gary retaliated. But he said it half-heartedly.
He’d known Becky all his life. They’d both lived in Middleton Thorpe for all of their eighteen years, after being born in the Felsborough Hospital maternity unit within a week of each other. They’d attended play school together and been in the same classes throughout their time in the
village school. When they were eleven, they’d both begun to attend the comprehensive in Felsborough, at which point they had ceased to tread life’s path together. This last wasn’t a circumstance that worried Gary unduly. Becky, in the A stream, and he in the C, rarely had cause, and at no time the desire, to meet, and only ever did so on the bus home, when he never actually acknowledged her presence. Well … heck. Gary didn’t want his mates to think he couldn’t pull anything better than this dragbag, did he? His sort of girls misbehaved as badly as he did, and looked as though they did, whereas Becky had a plain, scrubbed face, ginger hair and a figure that owed much to her mother’s home cooking. She did her homework on the bus.
Gary wasn’t thick. His exasperated teachers repeatedly told him so, in an effort to instil some sense into his head after all other methods had failed. If he’d put as much effort into working at his school subjects as he had at avoiding them, they said, he would no doubt have been in the position Becky was now, working here at the Membery gardens in the interim period before she went on to horticultural college — or somewhere else with some equivalent goal ahead of him. Bollocks to that, thought Gary.
‘Here, come on, get your finger out. We’ve got to get this lot finished before we can go home,’ Becky admonished sharply, though not unkindly. The gardens, though closed to the public until further notice, couldn’t be let go, and Becky and Gary were working Saturday morning to make up for the disruption of yesterday.
Listlessly, Gary picked up a cutting and began pulling the lower leaves off.
‘Not like that! Take them off with the knife. They’re liable to get fungus infection, else.’
It was steamy and humid at the end of the greenhouse where they were working. The bench in front of them was grainy with compost from the bin behind it, and stacked with three-inch flower pots. Becky’s face was beetroot red and damp, her ginger hair stuck to it. Her square, capable hands, ingrained with dirt, worked deftly and lightly, taking up handfuls of sweet-smelling compost from the bin and lovingly inserting the cuttings into the three-inch pots. They would all be sold for a profit in the garden shop next year. If there was a next year. Her mum, who worked in the entrance kiosk, taking the money and dishing out tickets as people came through the gates, was of the opinion that this murder would be the end of Membery Place Gardens. It had fair knocked the old girl sideways, she said, meaning Alyssa. You didn’t get over shocks like that at her age and besides, Becky’s mum had said, she’d thought for some time that Alyssa was losing interest.
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