by Beth Thomas
‘Great.’
‘Yes. We’re also examining CCTV footage of the airport, on the day of the flight, in case he took an alternative flight and used the Ecuador ticket to distract attention.’
‘Right. Good.’
‘It’s a basic error, you see. To use a credit card. If you’re, you know, trying not to be found.’
‘Oh, right, yes, I see.’ Sounds like a hell of a lot of work to me, for not much result. Although, from their point of view, they probably have to pursue it, in case there’s something criminal going on, I suppose. ‘Thanks for telling me.’ Although I’m frowning as I say it. Can’t understand why I need to be kept informed of police business.
‘Of course, Grace. No problem at all. I just wanted to reassure you that we will find the person. I guarantee you of that.’
‘Well, thanks.’
‘Believe me. At the very least, it’s credit card fraud. At worst it’s …’ She tails off.
And suddenly I feel a wave of realisation break over me. Oh God, of course. They are letting me know about this because they have assumed, as anyone would, that I am desperate for justice, desperate for a person who may have been involved in my husband’s disappearance to be found and face the consequences. And as I sit there on my bed looking at the contents of Adam’s safe strewn around me, I realise that actually finding that person and making him – or her – face justice is not my top priority right now. Far from it. Helping him go, or at the very least using his credit card, doesn’t change anything. I am more interested in finding out what Adam worked so hard to keep secret from me all the time I knew him; and why he did it. How he disappeared and who helped him rank somewhere around ‘move out of my parents’ place’ and ‘get new deodorant’ in my priorities.
‘Well that’s a relief,’ I say, cleverly hiding my disinterest under a thick layer of pretend relief. ‘I’ll sleep easier knowing the perpetrator is behind bars.’
There’s a surprised silence and I wonder for a moment if I’ve accidentally sounded like an American gangster movie. ‘Yes,’ Linda says eventually. ‘That’s what we are aiming to do.’
‘Good. Thank you.’ Pleased with that, sounds from the heart.
‘No need to thank me, it’s what we’re paid for.’
God, now I feel stupid. ‘No, no, of course I realise that. I just wanted to let you know that I appreciate it …’
‘OK. Well. Anyway, did you have anything you wanted to ask me? Or … tell me?’
I feel a lurch of panic. She knows about the safe. And the money. And already she’s chalking them up in her ‘Motive’ column. I almost blurt it all out, but then realise that of course she doesn’t know about them. The only people who know about the safe are my parents and Matt and Ginger, and they won’t say anything. And no one except Matt knows about the money. ‘No, nothing,’ I say, maybe a bit too quickly. ‘I mean, what sort of thing are you thinking about?’
‘Nothing specific, just wondered if anything had occurred to you, or if you’d heard anything from anyone? Maybe friends of Adam, or business associates, that kind of thing?’
Apparently she still doesn’t understand my relationship with Adam. ‘No, no, nothing. Sorry.’
‘Well, do let me know if anything turns up.’
‘Will do.’ But I had my fingers crossed when I said that, Your Honour.
As soon as she’s gone, I ring Matt back and open up my laptop while it’s ringing.
‘Matthew Blake Detective Agency, on the hunt. How may I help you?’
I giggle. ‘Wow, you have a high opinion of your detection skills, don’t you?’
‘Hey, I never said the MBDA was any good.’
‘Ah, no, you’re right, you didn’t, did you? So anyway, what am I Googling?’
‘Hold on a minute there, Miss Speedy. What did Linda Patterson say?’
‘Oh, yeah. Nothing much.’
‘No shit.’
I shrug. ‘No, seriously. I’ll have to apologise to Mum for accusing her of forgetfulness. But luckily she won’t remember what I was talking about.’
His laugh rumbles down the line, making my tummy vibrate. ‘Forgetfulness: the blessing of the old.’
‘Ah yes, the foggy bliss of poor recollection. Truly their greatest joy.’
‘That and SAGA holidays.’
We laugh together and again I get that sensation of ‘right’, of fitting in properly and slotting in smoothly with a satisfying ‘clunk’. This is how it should be.
‘So. I’ve got my laptop at the ready,’ I say, turning to the keyboard. ‘What do I need to Google?’
‘OK, right. So put in Mistvale Lettings and Didcot and Ryan Moorfield. But be prepared, Gracie. It’s pretty shocking.’
‘Shocking?’ I say, blasé, typing. I hit return and the page fills instantly with links. Links to Wikipedia, links to newspapers, local rags, national press, BBC news stories, blogs, articles, photographs. Links to Didcot Community Hospital, to gas consumption comparison websites, to plumbers, electricians, gas fitters. I blink as I try to take it all in, try to understand the connection between all these different sites. ‘Whaaat …?’
‘I know,’ Matt’s voice says quietly in my ear. ‘What are you reading?’
I don’t answer. I’ve clicked on one of the links to images, and it takes me to a black and white photo, apparently from a newspaper somewhere, of a woman lying in a hospital bed. The writing next to the image is too small to read, so I close it and go back to the results page. My eyes flick over the page incomprehensibly, not knowing which one to go for.
‘What … is this?’ I’m not really asking Matt; more thinking out loud.
‘Try one of the newspaper articles,’ a far-off voice says, but I’m already on Wikipedia, reading about the dangers to a foetus based on what the mother ingests. Most things are passed across the placenta directly into the baby’s bloodstream and a relatively low level of toxin for the mother can prove fatal for a foetus.
‘Look at the Didcot Herald,’ Matt’s voice says, ‘from November four years ago.’ So I come back to the links and scan down. It’s not too far from the top, and as I read the partial headline on the results page, I recoil in horror. ‘Baby dies in …’ I stare at those words for a long time without moving.
‘Gracie?’ Matt says very softly. ‘Have you read it?’
I shake my head. Not just to reply; also to shake off the horror, to make it not be happening, to take me back to the time before I had read those three words. ‘Oh God, I don’t want to.’
He breathes deeply a moment. ‘I think you should. I think it’s important.’
I stare at the words for a few more seconds, hoping that when the entire headline is visible, it won’t be what it looks like. Then I move the mouse pointer to the link, and click it.
BABY DIES IN HOME FROM CARBON
MONOXIDE POISONING
A Didcot landlord has been handed a suspended prison sentence and ordered to pay costs totalling over £20,000 after an unborn baby girl died in the womb when her mother inhaled dangerous levels of carbon monoxide last July. Ryan Moorfield, 27 of Derwent Avenue, pleaded guilty to charges of failing to maintain gas appliances adequately under the gas safety laws, which directly led to the stillbirth of the baby of tenant Marie Parker.
On the evening of 23rd July, Ms Parker’s partner Leon Grainger arrived home from a weekend away to find Ms. Parker unconscious in bed. Although Ms Parker recovered fully following treatment in hospital, the 33-week-old foetus she was carrying later died. An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive found that a gas boiler at the premises had not been …
I can’t read any more. ‘Oh my God.’
‘Yeah.’
‘What do you think this means?’
‘I don’t know. But Ryan Moorfield was responsible, and his bank statements and birth certificate were in Adam’s safe.’
‘Oh God. What … do you …?’
‘I don’t know, Gracie. It looks like Adam may have been in
volved somehow. Maybe he helped Ryan in some way, I don’t know.’
‘Do you think they were in business together? Do you think Mistvale Lettings was their business, jointly?’
‘It’s possible. Although Adam isn’t mentioned in this article at all.’ He falls silent and I imagine at his end he’s doing exactly what I’m doing – clicking rapidly through the other links looking for Adam’s name. I don’t find it. I try a search of Adam Littleton with Mistvale Lettings and Didcot, but there’s nothing, apart from what I’ve already seen relating to Mistvale and Didcot, but not Adam.
‘He’s not there,’ Matt says to me at the same time as I reach the same conclusion. ‘Maybe he wasn’t involved.’
‘But then why is he holding these documents for Ryan?’
‘I don’t know.’
Neither of us speaks for a few moments. Then Matt says, ‘I wonder where Ryan is now.’
‘In prison I hope.’
‘No, no, I doubt that. He was given a suspended sentence, that means he skips prison time.’
‘God, that’s terrible. That poor woman, suffering that, and knowing that he didn’t even go to prison.’
‘The law is an ass.’
‘Yes it is.’
‘We need to go to Didcot.’
‘We certainly do.’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘Definitely.’
EIGHTEEN
The drive to Didcot is quick and sombre. Matt is driving and although we chat the whole way about meaningless nonsense, the underlying tense atmosphere is not really penetrated by our half-hearted attempts at mirth.
‘Did you know that the fingerprints of a koala are virtually indistinguishable from those of a human being?’ he asks, joining the M25.
‘I didn’t know that. And more to the point, how does anyone know that?’
‘Good question.’
‘I mean, what possessed that person to take a koala’s fingerprints for the very first time ever?’
‘And, perhaps more importantly, why?’
I think for a moment. ‘To eliminate it from their enquiries?’
‘Ah, yes, of course. Maybe it didn’t have an alibi.’
‘Yes! Dabs everywhere, koala spotted nearby at the time of the incident …’
‘Asked to appear to give sample prints.’
‘Exactly!’ I turn and look wistfully out of the window. ‘I hope there are no koalas in the world languishing in prison for something they didn’t do.’
He snorts out a puff of laughter, and glances at me quickly. ‘You’re so funny.’
We both fall silent for a few moments while we each think about crime scenes. At least, that’s what I’m thinking about. I glance across at Matt. He has a small furrow between his eyebrows, in spite of our light-hearted conversation, so I imagine he’s thinking about bad things too.
‘How are your parents?’ he asks as we join the M4.
‘Oh, God, ridiculous as ever. Dad is descending in a spiral of one-upmanship with the new neighbours. Would you believe that he’s actually just bought a water feature made of resin that looks like stone made to look like a hollow log, which lights up at night so you can appreciate the sound of the water twenty-four hours a day? It’s called an oasis, apparently.’
‘No! I’m staggered! This from the man who wanted a low-maintenance, no-nonsense garden so he could sit in a deckchair and read the paper in peace?’
I look at him. ‘Wow, I can’t believe you remember that.’
He glances across at me with a smile. ‘Some things stay in your mind.’
‘I guess so.’
He nods. ‘Yes. He’d just arrived to pick you up from Annabel Whatsername’s fifteenth birthday party, and we were all in the back sitting in their hot tub, drinking Seven-Up out of plastic glasses.’
‘Ha, that’s right!’
‘You climbed out when he appeared on the patio, and wrapped yourself in a towel. It was a Disney towel, with a picture of Jasmine on it. And then I heard him mutter to you that it was pretentious and sleazy to have a Jacuzzi in your garden, and all he wanted was a nice quiet bit of sun to sit in and read the paper in peace.’
I’m grinning. ‘He really hated that hot tub. But I’m surprised you found my dad so memorable.’
‘It wasn’t him that was memorable,’ he says softly.
‘Oh!’ It makes me blush and I think back to that evening with the new realisation that nerdy Matt was watching me. Being silly with Ginger and the other girls, drinking too much, getting into the water. Getting back out again. Truthfully, I barely noticed him there, he was so quiet and in the background. I just have a vague memory of his little pale face floating on the water, white against the contrast of his dyed black hair, silent in the corner.
‘You know, maybe we should have had a chat with Ray before coming all this way,’ he says now. ‘I mean, he might have been able to enlighten us about what happened. And what Adam’s connection is to this Ryan Moorfield.’
I shake my head. ‘Matt, we went all the way to the Yorkshire Dales without consulting him!’
‘True. I was just thinking maybe we’re making the same mistake again …’
‘No, I don’t think we are. I think that if Ryan’s previous criminal history is linked in some way with Adam’s disappearance, Ray would have told us, or the police, or someone by now. So either they’re not linked, or Ray doesn’t know about it.’
‘There’s a third option.’
‘Is there?’
‘Yeah. They’re linked; Ray does know about it; but he’s keeping shtum.’
I think about that a moment. It’s almost impossible to think of my affable, cultured, unassuming father-in-law, bimbling around amongst Tchaikovsky LPs and leather-bound tomes of classic literature, as a sneaky and dishonest fraudster, hiding a sinister secret. Keeping something from everyone – the police; me; even Julia. No, actually, easy to imagine him keeping it from Julia. He probably keeps most things from her. Bank balance; magazine subscriptions; sharp knives. That kind of thing.
But let’s be honest here. If Ray was hiding something massive under his spectacles and smoking jacket, the last person in the world likely to notice it is me. I’m right at the bottom in the league table of spotting weirdness in the home. And Julia’s own particular brand of weirdness always eclipsed everything else, which made me even less observant – if that’s possible.
We arrive in Didcot just around lunch time, so stop in the first pub we come to for a prawn mayonnaise jacket potato and lemonade. I keep looking around me, as if I’m going to find answers in the large flowery dress of the woman serving the food, or the old black and white photos on the wall.
Back in the car, the sat nav directs us off the A34 onto Broadway, under the railway line and into an attractive housing estate. Derwent Avenue looks very pleasant, well-maintained, peaceful.
‘Wow,’ I breathe. ‘It’s quite nice, isn’t it?’
‘Why wouldn’t it be?’
‘I don’t know. Because of what he did. What he caused. The fucking terrible thing he let happen.’
‘What did you expect? Darkened skies? Withered trees? Cracks in the concrete leading straight to hell?’
I puff out a laugh. ‘No, of course not.’
No need for him to know that a large part of me was expecting exactly that.
The address on the tenancy agreement leads us to a low-rise block of flats, only three storeys. Matt parks the car and we get out and stand there for a few moments.
‘I don’t want to go,’ I say, staring towards the building.
‘We don’t have to …’
‘Yes we do. He knows Adam. He is literally the only person I have ever heard of who knows Adam. He also did something terrible. He must know why Adam … left.’
‘He may not …’
‘But he might. We have to at least ask, don’t we?’
He nods slowly, then turns to look at me. ‘Are you sure you want to come?’
I hesitate. My
distaste at speaking to this man is rising like acid in my throat and churning around in my stomach. My reluctance to leave the car and walk to his front door is so strong, it’s like a current, dragging against me, pulling me back in the opposite direction. He is no doubt an unpleasant, lazy, careless, disgusting oaf with no sense of public duty or responsibility, who recklessly lets out properties to innocent young mothers with no concern for their safety or well-being. The only thing on his mind is the cold hard cash he can get out of them each month for minimal effort or expense. I can feel my lip curling as I think about it and my breath comes more rapidly as I start to descend into a hot fury. The idea of approaching him and being civil to him repulses me in every possible way.
‘Hell yeah,’ I answer Matt. ‘I’m not missing this.’
Matt looks surprised for a moment. ‘Wow,’ he says, admiration in his voice. ‘You’ve really changed, you know.’ At least, I think it was admiration. Could have been disbelieving horror.
I dip my head and look at him, lowering my voice into a menacing, gangster growl. ‘In that flat is the man responsible for the end of an innocent life. It may not be exactly what I want to do right now, but I will not allow my disgust for him to deter me from finding the truth. Because then he gets to hide behind his despicable crime forever, and that repulses me even more than he does. Let’s do this.’
‘Oh hello there,’ a cheery old lady says when we knock on the front door. ‘Have you come to collect the parcel? Hold on, I’ll just get it for you.’ And she walks away into her home, leaving two strangers standing at her open, unguarded door.
‘And they say with age comes wisdom,’ Matt murmurs. ‘Hello?!’
‘Just coming,’ the voice comes back, and after a few moments she reappears holding a small box wrapped in brown paper. ‘I hope you can read my writing,’ she says, with a little smile. ‘Can’t hold a pen so well now, you see. It’s the arthritis.’ She holds the box out to Matt in swollen, distorted fingers.
‘No, no, we’re not here for the parcel,’ he says, pushing it gently back towards her. For the first time, she starts to look a bit discomfited.
