by Anne Cassidy
‘You know about Skeggsie?’
‘The boy? Josh’s friend? It was a terrible mistake. James Munroe was very upset by what happened. It’s what happens when outsiders are involved.’
‘I saw Margaret Spicer. She seemed less sure that Munroe hadn’t intended Skeggsie to die.’
‘You saw Margaret?’
‘She came to see me. She wanted to explain.’
‘Well, she and James are splitting up. She is very upset. Very bitter. But we trust James Munroe. He is a good man.’
Rose didn’t know what to say. Her mum sounded so certain, so positive about what they were doing. It wasn’t what she’d wanted to hear. She watched as her mother rearranged her scarf, tucking the fringed end into her jacket.
‘Did you have a miscarriage?’ Rose blurted out.
Her mother looked startled. ‘How did you know about that?’
‘I found some of Brendan’s letters to you. It sounded as though you weren’t happy.’
‘For a while we weren’t. We were under a lot of pressure from the German situation. It wouldn’t have been right for me to have another baby but I was so sad when I lost it. It meant that Brendan and I had differences for a while. At one time I even thought . . .’
Rose waited.
‘I even thought we might separate. But we didn’t.’
‘And now there is this dead girl in the back garden. Daisy Lincoln. You know the press have linked her death with your disappearance?’
‘I did see some press about it . . .’
‘Did you know her? Did Brendan know her?’
Her mother looked puzzled. ‘I don’t think we did know her. I might have passed her in the street and known her by sight but I couldn’t have put a name to her face.’
‘The detective I spoke to said that her hands were tied behind her back. Then she was killed and buried.’
‘It’s awful. An innocent girl with her life ahead of her.’
‘Mum, her hands were tied behind her back with Brendan’s tie.’
Her mother’s face dropped. Her eyes crinkled, the deep line between her eyebrows darkening. She looked as though she was about to speak but didn’t say anything.
‘Why do you think that was?’ Rose said nervously.
‘Are you sure that’s what they said? A tie like one that Brendan had? Wasn’t that what they meant?’
‘They have his DNA.’
‘I don’t understand. Wait . . . Something is making sense to me now. Something that happened that summer. In August Brendan and I went away for a long weekend. We went on the Thursday night and came back on the Tuesday. You and Josh stayed with friends. I don’t remember the exact date but when we got back the back door was unlocked. I thought someone had been in the house. Brendan said I was overwrought. I even thought it might have been the Germans but . . .’
It wasn’t a believable explanation. Rose slumped back in the chair.
‘You think someone might have broken into the house and used Brendan’s tie.’
‘Rose, I don’t know. But it wasn’t Brendan or me. Whatever happened to this poor Daisy girl is nothing to do with our mission.’
The pendant. How did Daisy get the pendant? Rose thought.
Rose didn’t ask the question. It would only have elicited the same answer. If the police were right about it being Brendan’s tie then the person to ask was Brendan.
‘Now I really must go.’
Rose stood up. Her mother hugged her.
‘You wait to hear from us,’ she whispered.
And then she was gone. She slipped out of the cafe and Rose watched her go down the stairs until she merged into the crowds, only her pink scarf visible, and then after a few moments she couldn’t even see that. Behind her the young couple were talking about Berlin.
‘It’s a great place for nightlife, so we’ll spend a few days there!’ the young man was saying.
Rose couldn’t listen any more. She left the cafe and headed out of the station.
TWENTY
Rose went back to college. She stayed in the library after her classes to finish an essay that had to be in. Sarah and Maggie were also there, further along the table. From time to time she looked at the screen of her phone to see if she had a message. Sarah and Maggie gave each other knowing looks.
‘You waiting for a text from Jamie?’ Sarah whispered loudly.
‘He really likes you,’ Maggie said, smiling.
Rose shook her head and they both nudged each other.
What was she looking for? A message from her mother?
The librarian looked up and gave them a glare. Rose put her phone away and carried on with the essay. A while later she printed it off.
‘See you tomorrow,’ she said to Sarah and Maggie.
‘You catching the train?’ Sarah called after her.
‘Jamie catches that train!’ Maggie called.
Rose ignored them and dropped the essay in the teacher’s pigeonhole outside the staff room. Then she walked off towards the station. She was relieved to see that Jamie was not on the platform.
She caught the twenty-two minutes past five train and sat at a window seat. She was tired. It had been a long and emotional day. Disappointment hung around her. She had built up a story in her head which had her mother as some kind of passive follower, sucked into this mission through her love for Brendan. And yet it was not true. Her mother was committed. She was not making excuses or trying to shift blame. She did not even seem to accept blame. It was as though this had become part of her role as a policewoman. She was no longer employed as a police officer but her heart was still firmly wedded to the job only with a view of sentencing and retribution far beyond what was allowed.
And yet the people they had killed were rotten to the core.
Did they deserve to be sentenced to death as they had surely sentenced other people to death? She thought of Simon Lister, The Butterfly Killer. He had been a builder, a man who had easy access to people’s houses. He had watched ten-year-old Judy Greaves weeks before he took her. She had been alive for five days before he killed her. All the time he knew what he was going to do, maybe even from the first moment he set eyes on her. Did this man deserve to live?
Who was she to say?
She stared out at the urban landscape – the backs of houses, garages, building yards and apartments that sided on to the railway line. Her eyes flicked around the carriage to see a number of students lolling across the seats, some of them with their feet up daring any of the other travellers to say something. Rose looked away. There was a man sitting across the aisle. She hadn’t noticed him before. He was wearing jeans and boots and had a holdall on the floor. It was red and had a chequered flag on it.
The sight of it startled her.
She looked harder and saw it was definitely there, in the shadow of the seat in front of the man. She glanced at the man’s face. He was wearing a hoodie and because he was older it seemed wrong. She recognised him immediately.
He turned round.
‘Hello, Rose,’ he said.
He picked up his bag and shuffled across the seat and then he was sitting next to her. It was Frank Richards. She’d seen him in Wickby, the ex-policeman who had been sacked from the force. And months before he had killed a boy that she had known. In cold blood.
‘What are you doing here?’ she said. ‘Have you been following me?’
‘Just looking out for you, Rose, making sure you’re all right. I thought you looked a little strained last week.’
The train stopped and most of the students got out. A woman with a pushchair got on and sat down a few seats away. Rose stared at the window. Had he followed her? Did he know she’d been with her mother just hours before? She was disconcerted by his presence. He seemed to hang around the edges of The Butterfly Project like a disconnected ghost. What was his part in it? What was he doing here? Days before he’d sent the remaining notebooks to Joshua.
‘Why did you send the notebooks? Did Munroe tell
you to?’
‘My records? They have nothing to do with Munroe or anyone else.’
‘But why send them to Joshua? What’s the point?’
‘He saw the others – stole them from me. Now that it’s all coming to an end he might as well have those. It’s all there. Everything we did. I was a good policeman. I made notes. I recorded every move.’
‘In code.’
‘Easy to break,’ he said, lowering his voice. ‘It’s up to Joshua if he wants to or not. I thought that as he was Brendan’s son he would be the best person to have them. They are evidence of why we came to our judgements and what we did. I’m not ashamed of my actions and neither is anyone else. Joshua can get rid of them if he wants to or he can keep them for posterity.’
‘Aren’t you concerned that he will give them to the authorities?’
‘His father is there on every page.’
That was the reason for Frank Richards’ confidence. He wanted Joshua to have the information as a record but he knew for sure that Joshua wouldn’t reveal it because it meant his father would get into trouble. She remembered then how disdainful Munroe had been about Frank Richards. He’s a loose cannon, a maverick. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
‘Aren’t you worried that Munroe will be angry?’
Frank Richards’ voice rose and he made a dismissive gesture with his hand. ‘Munroe is not in charge of me. I don’t have a boss in all this and if I did it would be Brendan not Munroe.’
The woman with the pushchair looked up. She frowned at Frank Richards. The train was approaching Rose’s stop, Parkway East.
‘I have to go,’ she said.
She stood up and walked away towards the doors, holding on to the seat handles to keep her balance. Even though she didn’t look back she felt Frank Richards coming after her. It made her feel anxious. When the train stopped she got out and began to walk along the platform but seconds later felt a hand on her arm.
‘Just five minutes, Rose. I just want you to sit with me for five minutes.’
Her instinct was to walk away. Although Frank Richards was involved in The Butterfly Project and worked with her mum and Brendan there was something creepy about him. She headed for a bench, though, and sat down, her feet tightly together, her rucksack on her knees. She leant forward and stared down the railway line.
‘What do you want, Frank?’
‘I want to talk to you about the boy.’
Frank Richards looked up at the bridge over the tracks. She followed his gaze. There were some people coming across it. She could hear them talking in loud voices and laughing and then they appeared at the top of the stairs, two teenage boys and a girl. They came down heavily, clattering on the steps. She remembered the night last autumn when she had been here on this very platform. She’d met up with a boy from her college. He’d been unpleasant to her. Then he’d changed his mind about using the train and walked off up the stairs and come face to face with Frank Richards.
He’d died on that bridge of a single stab wound. Rose didn’t particularly want to hear about that night again. She sat still, though, and listened as he talked.
‘The boy said things about you, Rose. Disgusting things and I couldn’t ignore it. I tried to talk to him. I told him that if he didn’t wash his mouth out with soap and water that I’d do it for him. He was a nasty piece of work. No one liked him much. You knew that, Rose. You knew what he was like at college. Kathy had asked me to look out for you and here was this filthy-mouthed boy running you down. Then he pulled his knife out. He thought he was acting like a man. When I took it off him he had this babyish expression like I’d just taken his rattle.’
Rose closed her eyes. She didn’t want to be reminded about what happened. A boy murdered because of her.
‘His expression changed when I put the knife in . . .’
She stood up. She began to walk away and heard Frank Richards coming after her. There was noise from the bridge, footsteps, heavy and slow. She looked up. It was a police officer. He peered over the side at her.
‘Everything all right there, miss?’
She looked round at Frank Richards. His face had frozen. Maybe it wasn’t too late to give him up for killing Ricky Harris. She heard the sound of the policeman coming down the stairs. She could say, ‘Officer, I was a witness to a stabbing here in this station last autumn. This is the man who did it. I recognise him.’
‘Don’t do it, Rose,’ Frank Richards said, under his breath. ‘Don’t betray me.’
Betray him! He was living in some kind of fantasy world and saw her as part of this quest. She pictured him sitting in a room on his own, writing in the notebooks, night after night. Every letter had to be in code. Painstakingly he recorded what had happened like the policeman he had once been. He thought it was important. Amid all the murders he had principles. He was deluded. Maybe, for once, Munroe was right.
‘I don’t ever want to see you again.’
‘You won’t. I’m going abroad.’
She turned just as the policeman came on to the platform.
‘Everything OK, miss?’
‘Sure,’ Rose said. ‘No problem.’
She walked past him up on to the walkway. Halfway across she paused and looked back down. Frank was talking to the policeman. The tone was light-hearted, two men passing the time of day. Further along the platform the three teenagers were standing together, one of the boys whispering something in the girl’s ear.
It was the second time that she’d failed to give Frank Richards up to the police. Why hadn’t she done it? Because Frank Richards was part of the fabric of The Butterfly Project. He was a loose cannon and couldn’t be trusted. Once in police custody the whole thing may begin to unravel and how would that leave her mother and Brendan? No, Frank Richards, like James Munroe, was a compromise she had to make to keep her mum and Brendan safe.
TWENTY-ONE
Rose walked in the direction of Anna’s.
She wondered if her mother even knew about Ricky Harris.
She tried to push it out of her mind and headed along the road, sidestepping passers-by. Although it was getting dark the High Street was busy. Shop windows were illuminated and the traffic lights were bright. The cars were queuing and there was the sound of muffled music coming from inside stationary vehicles. It was cold, the air sharp against her face. She pulled her coat tighter as she turned the corner into Anna’s road. All at once there was a change. The road seemed darker and the sounds of the High Street receded as she walked further along.
Up ahead a figure stepped out from behind a car.
Rose continued walking although she felt a little apprehensive. The figure was a man and was standing very still. She sensed that he was looking at her but then he turned away as if to open the door of an adjacent car and she felt herself relax momentarily.
Then she felt hands gripping her arms from behind and she was pushed rapidly towards the hedge of a front garden, her face shoved roughly into the foliage. She closed her eyes, certain that the person behind her was Mikey. She felt one of his hands in her hair, grabbing it tightly and with the other he pulled her rucksack off her shoulder and let it drop on the ground. His front was sandwiched against her back. She could smell cigarettes and aftershave. Just then she heard Lev Baranski’s voice at her ear. He was calm, enunciating each word.
‘You tell the Johnson boy that we have your mother. You tell him to tell his father that.’
Her mother?
Rose struggled but Mikey held her tightly.
‘We have her and we will kill her if he does not give himself up to us. Tell him to be at London Eye tomorrow at midday. On his own. Then I will let her go. If he doesn’t come then I will take her in a boat out to sea, tie her hands behind her back and throw her in. Is only fair after all . . .’
Rose felt herself go weak. If Mikey hadn’t been holding her tightly she would have slid on to the ground.
‘If he doesn’t come, not only will I kill this woman, I w
ill also find him and kill him. This way only one of them dies.’
Mikey drove her head further into the hedge. Rose felt the twigs scratching the side of her face. Then he let go of her hair and wound something round her neck, pulling it tight, constricting her throat. He gave her a sideways push and she staggered but kept her footing. Her hands were free but she didn’t move. She stood rigid with her face in the foliage for a few seconds then turned round to see the two figures walking off toward the High Street. She was shaking. She put her fingers up to her neck and felt a soft silk scarf there. She pulled it, off knowing that it was the one her mother had worn when she met her earlier that day. She ruffled the fringes.
She felt nauseous. The pavement beneath her feet seemed to slope away from her, the parked cars at an angle. She bent over, feeling a gagging in her throat. Her blood was hammering in her ears. If only Frank Richards had been watching out for her then. After a few moments she straightened up, steadied herself, picked her rucksack up off the pavement and ran into the house.
Anna wasn’t at home. Rose went straight up to her room. All the time her thoughts were racing. Had they followed her? To the station? Seen her with her mother? Had she made it possible for them to snatch her mother when she was walking away, heading for the two o’clock train?
She threw her bag down and pulled her coat off.
She found herself crying.
They had her mother. They would tie her hands up and throw her out of a boat unless Brendan went to the London Eye and turned himself over to them and certain death.
And it was her fault.
She was walking up and down, hiccupping sobs, using her knuckles to wipe the tears from the corners of her eyes. She went to the door of her room and called out Joshua’s name. Her voice cracked, though, and the sound didn’t carry. She walked out on to the landing and called again. She thought she heard footsteps but then there was nothing. She stood at the bottom of the stairwell. She was crying loudly, her nose running, her shoulders shaking.
They had her mother.
‘Josh!’ she shouted. ‘Josh. JOSH.’
