by Anne Cassidy
Bridges. It was the one firm thing she knew about his engineering degree. He planned to design them. She could always cheer him up by talking about them.
‘So you and Clara are together?’
‘We’re friends. A bit like you and me are friends.’
Rose stared at him. What did he mean? The friendship they built up in the months after he came to London? Or did he mean the physical stuff; the hugs and the touching and the hand holding and the kisses. Or the nights, after Skeggsie was murdered, when they slept tightly together in the same bed? She wanted to ask him but couldn’t.
‘I’m sorry about the email . . .’
‘It’s all right. You needed some time. I understand. How are things at college?’
‘Good. My grades are up and I’m looking at the prospectus for Cambridge.’
‘You won’t have any trouble. And Cambridge is close to London so I’ll still see you a lot. That’s if you want.’
‘I do. I really do.’
Her hand moved across the table. Her fingers were splayed out on the wood centimetres from Joshua’s. He moved his hand so that their nails touched.
‘I sent Skeggsie’s stuff back to his dad,’ he said.
‘Oh.’
It seemed like the end of something. Another line drawn under the past. The belongings of Joshua’s closest friend in boxes. Would his father actually unpack them? Or just leave them to moulder and collect dust?
It seemed every bit of Skeggsie was now in Newcastle.
‘I’d like to go back to Brewster Road,’ Rose said.
‘Why?’
‘I’d like to look at the house . . .’
‘The police will have it taped off.’
‘My policeman friend, Henry, might be able to arrange it. He told me that you and I should talk about those days. Try and jog our memories. Going back to the house might do that.’
‘You want to see the grave?’
‘No! Yes . . . Maybe. If we went back, we might remember some things about that summer before they went missing.’
‘What difference does that make? We know what happened that summer.’
‘I mean things that led up to it. Maybe we might even remember some more about Daisy Lincoln. I don’t know. I’d go on my own but I think it would be better if we went there together.’
Joshua looked thoughtful.
‘I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll come to Brewster Road if you’ll come to Wickby with me next Sunday, tomorrow week.’
Rose shook her head.
‘Hear me out. There’s an antiques and collectables fair in the market square. It’s apparently quite an event. People come from miles around. Kathy loved that sort of thing.’
She found herself looking straight at him. His eyes were soft and dark like they’d always been. Just because his haircut was brutal it didn’t mean he had changed.
‘She might be there, Rose,’ he said softly. ‘We might see her. And Dad maybe.’
‘After the things they’ve done? You still want to see them?’
‘None of it is clear-cut. They’re still our parents.’
She didn’t speak but had an image her of mother, Kathy, walking along a row of stalls her hand drifting from one item to the next; an art deco brooch, a Victorian shawl, a piece of Clarice Cliff pottery. The stallholders would look up hopefully as she passed. She only bought inexpensive things, though – a silver ring or a cup and saucer or a bag.
‘Come on, Rosie. We’re a team, you and me.’
She nodded. When she looked round the man behind the counter was singing quietly, cutting up slices of cake from a large slab. Now he just looked happy, the piercing on his mouth simply decorative. When she turned back to Joshua her eyes focused on the tatty old jumper he was wearing. She remembered that it was his dad’s. He used to sleep with it, he’d told her once. Now he was wearing it.
‘You’ll come to Brewster Road first?’ she said.
Joshua nodded and she gave a tiny smile.
FOUR
When Rose got back to Anna’s she could hear voices from the drawing room. She was about to make her way upstairs when the door opened and Anna stood there smiling at her.
‘Rose, we have a visitor. Chief Inspector Munroe has called by.’
Rose walked towards the drawing room. Sitting on the sofa was James Munroe. She stared at him, hardly able to believe her eyes. His face looked tanned. She had a flash of memory of the first time she’d seen him over five years before. He’d been in full police uniform then and looked as though he’d just come back from a foreign holiday, his skin bronzed. Now he was in plain clothes but still looked tanned as if he’d recently been lying on a sun lounger somewhere hot.
‘Hello, Rose. And please, Mrs Christie, I’m not in the police any more.’
‘So sorry! Mr Munroe has been telling me about the awful business in East London where Katherine used to live with you. I had no idea . . .’
‘Why is Mr Munroe telling you this if he’s no longer in the police?’ Rose said sharply.
‘Rose!’ Anna said.
‘No, Rose is quite right to ask. When I saw the story in the newspapers I rang an old colleague of mine. He knows some officers from Bethnal Green and he was able to give me the details of what they’d found. I knew, well, I felt sure, you would be concerned as soon as you saw it in the press. What with it being Kathy’s old house. So I thought I’d call in.’
‘That’s really kind of you.’
‘And Rose is here too,’ he said, standing up. ‘That’s double the pleasure.’
He plucked a jacket off the back of a chair and walked towards her.
‘But you don’t have to go so soon? Surely not?’ Anna said.
‘I’m afraid so, Mrs Christie. I’m visiting some friends in the area, which is why I was able to drop by and see you.’
Rose kept her eye on him.
‘Goodness, Rose, don’t look so unfriendly,’ Anna said, looking embarrassed.
‘Not to worry, Mrs Christie. I’m sure Rose is just surprised to see me. Perhaps she’ll walk me out to my car? We can have a chat along the way.’
‘Sure,’ Rose said, giving a wooden smile.
She walked ahead of Munroe out of the door, on to the garden path. She waited while her grandmother said goodbye to him and then turned towards the street. Munroe came alongside her.
‘I had to park up a bit.’
‘Why are you really here?’ Rose said.
James Munroe was walking swiftly. He put his jacket on as he went along.
‘You’ve got no right to come here, to my home.’
She was half running to keep up with him. He stopped at a parked car, fiddled in his pockets and pulled out a key.
‘I came to reassure your grandmother about the unpleasant events in Brewster Road.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
He pointed his keys and the lights of the car flashed on and off.
‘Of course I’m pleased to see you and it does give me an opportunity to reiterate some of the things I said after the disagreeable business in Newcastle. I wanted to make sure that you’d understood me clearly then.’
He was staring straight at her and she felt herself falter.
‘How was your holiday?’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Was it a winter break? The Canary Islands? North Africa?’
‘It was Florida actually,’ he said, leaning on the car, looking around the street, his eyes darting here and there. ‘And it was very pleasant.’
He was so relaxed, so smooth.
‘You’re just a killer,’ Rose said.
‘No more so than your mother and her partner.’
‘You’re worse. You took our friend’s life and Josh and I will never forget that.’
‘No, no, no,’ he said, grabbing Rose’s hand and holding it tightly. ‘That’s exactly why I passed by today. Just to remind you of what I said in Newcastle. If you go to the police then I will make sure that cert
ain parties know where your mother and Brendan Johnson are. They will not last long and I can assure you their death will be particularly ugly.’
Rose tried to pull her hand away but Munroe had it clamped, her fingers bent back from her palm.
‘On the other hand you could just leave this. Get on with your own lives. Then one day, in the not too far away future, they will contact you. Believe me, Rose, this was always the plan.’
He let her hand go and she backed away from him.
‘Goodbye, Rose,’ he said and got into the car.
She turned to walk back to the house, hearing the car accelerating away from the kerb. She didn’t look round. All the time she was gripping her hand where Munroe had hurt her.
When she got back inside Anna was watching the television. She sat on the arm of a chair. The report of the body found in East London was on the local news. It showed a photograph of Daisy Lincoln whose identity had been confirmed by dental records. No cause of death had as yet been found. The reporter, a woman whose hair kept blowing across her face, spoke to camera about the background of the case.
‘What I can tell you,’ she said, ‘is that in 2007 this property was occupied by two serving police officers, Katherine Smith and Brendan Johnson. In November, just three months after Daisy Lincoln’s disappearance, these officers went missing, leaving their children behind. Since 2007 nothing has been heard of them. The police are denying any link between these two cases.’
The screen was then filled with a large picture of Daisy Lincoln and underneath two small photos of her mother and Brendan.
‘This is awful,’ Anna said, looking pained. ‘Mr Munroe said that Katherine and Brendan Johnson’s death had had to be hushed up because of other cases they were working on. These police, involved in this business in East London, won’t know any of this. Mr Munroe says they’ll be told and then their names will disappear from the story.’
Rose didn’t answer. It was best to let Anna believe Munroe. Anna had put the remote down and was now staring at the screen and gripping the gold chain that she always wore round her neck. An odd feeling was swirling round in Rose’s chest. She felt a spurt of affection for this stiff woman who was her grandmother. It made her feel bad about not telling her the truth about Katherine, her own daughter. What would Anna say if she knew that Katherine was alive, living in hiding, spending her life on a personal mission to right the wrongs of society. What would Anna think of her daughter then?
It was better to let her think of her as dead.
‘I’m going up to my room for a while,’ Rose said and Anna nodded distractedly.
Rose walked upstairs agitated. She was already on edge but Munroe’s appearance had further shaken her. She plucked out a stick of chewing gum from her pocket and put it on her tongue. Now, it seemed, was as good a time as any to work on her statement. She went to her study and opened the bottom drawer of her desk. At the back, in a file labelled Solicitors, she pulled out an envelope. On the outside, in her neatest writing, were the names Myers and Goodwood and an address in Finchley. It was the firm that her mother and Brendan had used for their affairs. Underneath the name was a paragraph that she had taken a long time composing. It was addressed to her grandmother. She closed her study door before sitting down on the armchair to read it over.
Dear Anna, if anything ever happens to me or Joshua or both of us please take this book to our solicitors. DON’T give it to the police or ANYONE else, just our solicitors. This is very important. Rose Smith.
Inside the envelope was a notebook that she had already written in. It was a deep red colour and had an art deco border. It was the size of a school exercise book and she must have been aware, when she was buying it, of how it differed from those other two notebooks that they had once had in their possession. She turned the pages. She’d filled up about six and she still had a lot to write. She opened the first page and read her message.
The following is a statement made by me, Rose Smith, February 2013. It was written on various dates and it outlines the things that Joshua Johnson, Darren Skeggs (deceased) and I have found out about the disappearance of our parents in November 2007. I write this in case anything happens to me or Joshua. I write it in this form, on paper, because computers and the internet are not safe. Most of what I write is from memory. Any evidence we had is gone.
Underneath she had signed it in an official-looking way. Reading it over made her feel a little silly as though she was play-acting. But what she’d stated was true. All of the communications they’d had via the internet, including her personal blog, Morpho, had had to be stopped. This, pen and paper, hidden away, was the only thing she could use to detail what had taken place.
In case anything happened to them.
It was something she was doing alone. Joshua had no part in it.
She couldn’t help but read over the things she’d written on the first page.
On 4 Nov 2007 Kathy Smith and Brendan Johnson went out for a meal at the Tuscan Moon restaurant in Islington. They never returned to us. We found out what happened to them from a waitress who contacted us via the web. They left their car parked in a side street and took a taxi to a B and B in Twickenham. The next morning they went to Heathrow and took a flight to Warsaw. We do not know where they went after that.
We think that they may have come back to England and spent some time in a cottage at Stiffkey in North Norfolk.
The next sighting of them was in a photograph on Cromer Beach. This photograph was taken in June 2012.
Our most recent sighting of them was in a Skype recording. This recording was made in December 2012.
On 29 December they sent us a text from a place in Essex. Somewhere in the area between the following three villages: Wickby, Southwood and Hensham.
Up to that time we know that they were alive.
The word alive gave her a jolt. How important that had been when she and Joshua first found out that they were not dead. They had Frank Richards to thank for that. Rose flicked to the end of the pages she had written and found the section where she had described the meeting with Frank Richards. She’d given it a heading – The Notebooks.
Frank Richards was a friend of Brendan Johnson’s, a policeman who had been dismissed from the service. Joshua knew him by sight but I did not. In October 2012 we found him in a flat in Twickenham. He told us that my mother and Brendan were alive and he also said that my mother had asked him to look after me while she was away. He claimed he had done this over the five years that I’d lived with my grandmother, keeping an eye on what I was doing, checking that I wasn’t being followed. When we found him he was packing to leave England. He had a pile of notebooks and Joshua stole two of them. When we looked at them we found the strangest thing. Each had a photograph of someone and then the rest of the book was full of coded handwriting. These notebooks were ordinary exercise books and were both in the same handwriting. We believe the code was taken from an old hardback book called The Butterfly Project. We had a copy of this for a while but were unable to decode the books, just scraps of pages here and there. We think that each of these two notebooks outlined the killing of a person. We believe, from things we heard afterwards, that one of the notebooks belonged to a series (the remainder held by Frank Richards) which documented the killing of criminals.
Rose had stopped writing there because she hadn’t been able to find the words to go on. There was more to tell but she couldn’t really state the blunt awful truth about what her mother and Brendan had become without explaining the rest. The whole story of The Butterfly Murder had to be told. Other people involved had to be described. The story of Viktor Baranski and his son, Lev. There was much more to say.
She looked down at the notebook in her hand. She could have written her statement on sheets of paper but somehow she had decided that a notebook was the right thing to have. In the shop it had taken her a while to make up her mind. There had been other colours but she had chosen red. The colour of blood. Was she being too dramati
c? She closed it, flattening it with the palm of her hand. She had no stomach to write anything in it now. She slipped it into the envelope and then into the file and placed it back in the drawer.
Later she went to bed.
She was restless, turning her bedside light on and off, reading for a while, then listening to the radio. In the end she stopped trying to go to sleep. She heard Anna’s footsteps on the stairs and then the sound of her door opening and shutting. There was no knock on Rose’s door, no call of Goodnight! – just Anna, going about her day-to-day business as if she was living alone. Rose was used to it now but in the early days when she’d first been sent to live there after her mother and Brendan had gone missing it had been hard.
How long ago it seemed. Five years and four months.
She was twelve years old and felt wounded by the disappearance of her mother as if actual blood had been drawn from her. She spent a long time on her own in the rooms that Anna had set aside. Her frosty grandmother left her to her own devices and so she watched television and read and stared out of her bedroom window into the smart back garden. Each week that passed took her further from her old life. Joshua was in Newcastle, living with his uncle. There were some phone calls between them but they were always awkward. The easy intimacy they’d shared in the house on Brewster Road had disappeared and after she had asked him how school was she couldn’t think of anything else to say.
Those first weeks it seemed as though she was the one who had vanished. It was as if she’d been out walking and suddenly spirited away into this other life. Now she was in a strange room, in a large house where the sound of her own footsteps echoed up and down the stairs and along the hallways. She was living with her grandmother, Anna, a woman who hardly ever spoke to her, whose eyes seemed to follow her round the room. She had a sense sometimes that her old life in Brewster Road was going on without her. That all the stuff about her mother and Brendan going missing had been some bad dream. It was she who had been taken, not them.
