by Louise Voss
‘Careful,’ Bob said, as Declan disappeared from view.
Twisting his body, Declan shone the torch downwards but couldn’t see the bottom. The air inside the cesspit was as fetid as he’d imagined, but at least all of the effluent had become almost fossilized. If the body had been found in an active cesspit, he wouldn’t be volunteering to go inside. But he imagined he was descending into a cave. A nice clean cave. As a former Goth, he wasn’t afraid of bats.
Declan descended another couple of rungs, then one more, sweeping the torch beneath him.
And there it was, lying on top of a solidified layer of waste.
Declan dropped a little closer. The skeleton stared at him from empty sockets and the bones were twisted at odd, jagged angles, one arm bent over its chest. The left leg at first looked cut off at the knee, until Declan realized the lower leg was folded beneath the femur.
He descended further into the darkness to get a closer look.
The skeleton didn’t make him feel scared or repulsed, just sad. Imagine ending up in a place like this. But stronger even than the feelings of sympathy were questions, bubbling up so fast that he couldn’t keep up with them. Had this person died in here? Who were they? How long had they been here? What had happened to them?
Did they fall or were they dumped? All his training and experience told him this had not been an accident.
Murder scenes were usually fresh, bullets or knives, ripped-open wounds or crushed throats, thickening pools of blood and the creeping stench of death. The buzzing of flies come to feast. This was very different. In this sealed chamber, years after death, the scene was curiously peaceful. Declan wasn’t a religious man but he had an image of this person’s soul being trapped down here, escaping when the cesspit cover had been removed, leaving behind a quiet calm.
He swept his torch around the area surrounding the human remains. There was no sign of any other objects. No jewellery glinted in the torchlight. No sign of a murder weapon. Just the body, alone in its tomb.
Shivering, he ascended the ladder and clambered onto solid ground, the skeletal face of the man or woman beneath fixed in his mind, staring at him – and asking him to find out what had happened to them.
11
Amy
Monday, 22 July
‘Hang on, tell me again?’
‘The message from Becky wasn’t there when I went back to re-read it.’
They were in Gary’s kitchen, talking loudly to be heard over the top of a washing machine on the spin cycle, whose drum was banging as if it was in a marching band. The window was open because the day was growing hotter, the thermostat edging towards 30 degrees. Gary was wearing shorts, flip-flops and a Star Wars T-shirt. He handed Amy a beer, so cold it gave her a shock as she tipped and swallowed. But it tasted good. She noticed Gary watching her as she licked her lips.
‘Weren’t copies of the messages emailed to you?’ he asked. ‘When I get replies or messages on Twitter, they’re usually emailed to me.’
‘No. I have too many emails to deal with as it is. I turned that setting—’
‘Off.’
She smiled to herself. His annoying habit was becoming more endearing. Clearly, she’d been out in the sun too much.
‘And what about this guy, the one you sent the message to on CupidsWeb?’
‘Daniel.’
‘Yeah. Has he got back to you yet?’
She shook her head and took another sip of the beer. She watched Gary lift his bottle and found herself thinking what nice arms he had. He must work out. She wondered what gym he … She stopped herself. She had definitely had too much sun.
‘So … if he does contact you, what are you going to do? Go on a date with him?’
She shrugged. ‘That’s the idea. Find out what he knows about Becky. If anything. Probably clutching at straws, but—’
From nowhere, she was hit by a wave of emotion that rolled up from inside her. Tears sprung into her eyes and she felt herself wobble, having to put a hand on the worktop to hold herself up.
‘Are you OK?’ Gary said, stepping towards her.
His soothing voice opened something inside her and suddenly she was sobbing, her body shaking, unable to stop, the emotions of the last two days seizing control of her body. What if Becky was dead, or hurt? Her beautiful, stroppy, vivacious sister. She was the only person Amy really had in the world. She thought, ‘Don’t cry, don’t cry,’ but she couldn’t stop. She dropped the beer bottle and heard, as if from a great distance, the shattering glass, and then Gary’s arms were around her, pulling her face against his solid shoulder, stroking her back.
He made hushing noises until the sobs subsided. It had only been a minute but she felt exhausted. Gary continued to hold her and they stayed like that for a short while longer until Amy started to wriggle, feeling uncomfortable.
Gary stepped back and smiled at her. There was a damp patch on the shoulder of his T-shirt and he was standing in a puddle of beer and glass.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I’ll clean up the mess.’
She expected him to tell her not to worry, that he would do it, but instead, he said, ‘I’ll get you the mop … Actually, I don’t have a mop. I think there’s a dustpan and brush. Somewhere.’
She laughed, and sniffed. ‘I’ll get one from Becky’s.’
After she’d cleaned up the beer and glass, Gary said, ‘You need a break from all this worry. Let’s go out for a drink.’
‘I don’t—’
‘Come on. It will do you good, honestly. You can’t do anything right now to help Becky, can you? Let’s go to the pub, have a drink, just try to forget about it for a little while.’
‘I can’t forget about it, Gary.’
‘I didn’t mean it like that. I meant, stop thinking about it. And yeah, I know you’re going to say you can’t – but you really do need a break. OK?’
She sighed and smiled at the same time. ‘OK. I give in.’
‘Cool. But you’d better sort your face out first.’ He grinned. ‘You’ve got mascara all over it.’
‘Busy in here tonight, for a Monday.’
Gary looked around for an empty table outside the Crown, but they were all full, crowded with smokers enjoying the evening sunshine. Inside, the queue at the bar was two bodies deep. ‘I think there’s a gig on tonight. Do you want to try somewhere else?’
‘It’s OK. Everywhere’s going to be rammed on a night like this.’
It was one of the things she loved about London – in the summer, when the pubs and the pavements outside would fill up with drinkers, the city buzzing with pheromones, the smells of sex and money in the air, the promise that something, anything could happen. Becky loved nights like this too … Amy stamped on the thought before it took hold and made her cry again.
‘Do you want to find a spot while I get the drinks in?’
Fortunately, just as she went outside, two guys stood up and left, so she nabbed the table, swabbing ineffectually at the spilled lager on its top with the flat of her palm. Her meeting with Ross earlier was still fresh in her mind – but, more than that, the disappearing tweet. She wiped her hand on the side of her skirt, dug out her phone and checked TweetDeck for the fiftieth time. More retweets of her appeal, but no useful replies, and no more messages from Becky. She checked her email. Nothing from Daniel either.
Why had Becky deleted the message? It made no sense.
Since receiving the original email from Becky, Amy had been vacillating between two possible explanations. The first was that the email was genuinely from Becky, but that something awful had happened to make her act so out of character. This was bad enough, but the second possibility was far worse – that someone else was pretending to be Becky.
If this second awful scenario was true, that meant the Twitter message was from the impostor too. And if that was right, that meant this person was watching her tweets, probably stalking her on Facebook, too.
And who knew how else they were watch
ing her …
Her hands began to tremble and her phone shot out of her grip like a fish leaping from a net, landing face down on the hard pavement.
‘Oh, fuck.’
‘What is it?’ Gary stood over her, holding two pints. She liked the fact that he’d bought her a pint unasked.
She held up her phone to show him. The screen was shattered, cracks zigzagging across its fragile surface.
‘Oops,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, you can get a kit off eBay to fix it. I’ll do it for you, if you like.’
‘You’re so nice, Gary,’ Amy said, half serious, half wistful, as she accepted one of the pints. ‘I wish I had a neighbour like you. My neighbours are horrible. I went away for two days once and they complained to the council because I forgot to turn off my clock alarm. It only beeps for ten minutes! What’s it like, having Becky as a neighbour?’
Gary frowned and sat down opposite her. ‘Becky’s a great girl,’ he said carefully. ‘Plays her music too loud at times, but doesn’t freak when I tell her to turn it down – which I’ve done a few times. This one time she was decorating her bedroom, and she played that Lana Del Ray album at full volume, on repeat, the whole frigging day, and by the evening I was ready to weep. I banged on the door and said, “For the love of God, Becky, PLEASE stop playing that album,” and she just laughed. She did turn it down though. It’s not all her fault – we share a living-room wall, and they’re pretty thin. She has a lot of—’ He stopped abruptly.
‘A lot of what?’
‘Visitors,’ he said, and his lips set in a hard line.
Amy affected misunderstanding. ‘What – parties, and people over for lunch, that sort of thing? She’s always had a really good social life, much better than mine.’
‘Yeah, that sort of thing …’
Amy hesitated, before deciding to park that particular piece of information. It was worth pursuing, definitely, but she didn’t feel robust enough to go there just now. Not with two beers inside her, the evening sun rosy on her sunglasses, music floating out from inside the pub, and too much else to extrapolate first.
‘How do you and Becky get along?’ Gary asked. He stretched his feet out under the table, and accidentally banged Amy’s ankle. She pulled her leg out of the way, and they both apologized, then laughed.
‘We’re really close,’ Amy said. ‘At least, I thought we were. We’ve always argued, usually about stupid stuff, almost always started by her – I love her to bits, but she can be so confrontational! Especially if she’s hormonal. She just can’t let anything lie; she nags and grumbles and makes snide digs about things that she perceives as having upset her. She definitely gets that from our mum. Goads me into a big row. Then we scream at each other, one of us storms off, then someone – almost always me – holds out an olive branch, and we kiss and—’
Gary grinned. ‘Make up. Well, if it’s any consolation, I don’t think it was just you that she acted like that with. I heard more tantrums coming through the walls than I thought strictly necessary from anyone out of their teens. I heard her argue with lots of people. Slamming doors, insults, tears … it could be a bit like living next door to—’
‘Naomi Campbell?’ Amy suggested, at the same time as he said, ‘John McEnroe,’ and they both laughed.
Then Gary looked worried. ‘I hope you don’t think I’m slagging her off or anything. I really like her, she’s such a laugh, and, you know – really kind.’
Tears pressed behind Amy’s eyes again. It had been easier when they’d been discussing her shortcomings.
Gary nudged her gently. ‘So, tell me to mind my own business, but when you came over the other day, you said you and her had fallen out, and you hadn’t seen her for a while … Was it a bad one?’
Amy twirled her pint glass round and round, watching its amber contents swish up the sides. ‘Hmm. Yeah. It was a pretty bad one, for us. It was one of those rows that just escalated, you know, like: And another thing …’
‘Thing …’ Gary agreed softly.
‘It started because my folks were over from Spain and wanted to take us out to dinner, but Becky said she couldn’t make it because she was going to a party, so she couldn’t have them to stay either – and she’s the one with the spare room. I always seem to get lumbered with them when they come over, even though they have to sleep in my bed and relegate me to the sofa bed ’cos I don’t have a second bedroom … Anyway, I think I just resented her ability to put her foot down – she never does anything she doesn’t want to do, whereas I’m such a bloody pushover, it’s not even funny – and we ended up in this big fight. I remember I told her that if she didn’t turn up at Carluccio’s by 9 p.m., I’d never speak to her again. And she wouldn’t tell me about where the party was, or whose party, or why it was so important – I started to think she was making it up. We were screaming at each other.’
‘Most people would think that being taken out to dinner by your parents would be a treat, not an ordeal,’ Gary said.
‘You clearly haven’t met our parents, then, have you? No, of course you haven’t – because they’re always staying at my place, that’s why. Not that they come over much any more.’ Amy waved her now-empty glass at him. ‘Another pint?’
‘Don’t mind if I do, thank you very much. And a packet of cheese-and-onion?’
‘Coming up,’ Amy said, noticing the way his stubble darkened in his dimples when he smiled.
As she waited at the bar, being jostled on all sides, she thought back to that evening, the horrendous row followed by the grim dinner with their mum and dad. Her parents had seemed to hold her entirely responsible for Becky’s absence that night, and the meal had seemed to drag on for hours, her mother moaning at her about why Becky wasn’t there – you’d have thought they would be happy that she, Amy, was there – and how Becky never kept in touch or returned her calls, and her dad banging endlessly on about the new filtration system in their pool at the villa in Ronda.
Amy had ended the night in a fury, tossing and turning on the thin foam mattress of the sofa bed with the metal struts underneath sticking into her whichever way she rolled. But it was herself she was most furious with, not her folks, or even Becky. Why did she do this to herself? She too could have said she had a prior arrangement. They could have stayed in a hotel, they had plenty of money – they were only in the UK to attend a friend’s seventieth the next day. She had decided that she’d had enough of people taking advantage of her. She was going to stick to her guns, and not contact Becky. Let Becky come crawling back to her, for once!
Only she hadn’t, had she? And now she was missing.
Amy finally got served and headed back outside, a pint in each hand and a bag of crisps held between her teeth. Gary shamelessly eyed her up as she sat down.
‘Can I ask you something? How come you don’t have a boyfriend? You’re so pretty.’
She shrugged her shoulders, trying to make her voice light, but fumbled as she opened the crisps. They spilled out onto the table.
‘Been there, done that, got the—’
‘T-shirt,’ Gary said, staring intently at her face, then frowning as he noticed the way her hands had suddenly started to shake. ‘Are you going to tell me about it?’
Amy looked back at him. She never told people about Nathan. Perhaps it was because she felt so vulnerable at that moment, or perhaps even just to take her mind off Becky’s disappearance, she didn’t know – but either way, she realized for the first time that she did want to talk about it. It was oddly liberating.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I am.’
12
Six years earlier
When Amy walked into the conference room at APW that day and saw Nathan sitting at the table ready for the weekly briefing, she understood the literal meaning of the word ‘swoon’. Her vision gave a wobble, her knees went weak and she felt a blush wash over her from top to toe. She had never seen a sexier man.
‘Everyone,’ announced Martin, the MD, when they had all taken
their coffees off the tray in the centre of the boardroom table, ‘this is our new recruit, Nathan Stott. He’ll be heading up the business development team and taking over the Randsome account.’
Nathan nodded politely at everyone present as Martin introduced them all, but when it was her turn, Amy saw his pupils dilate and the corners of his lips curl up into a wide smile. He held her gaze for so long that she had to drop hers first, and reach for a sachet of sugar for her coffee, even though she never took sugar, just for something to do to break the sexual tension. She thought afterwards that she never had been brilliant at spotting when someone fancied her, but there was nothing ambivalent about the immediate lightning bolt she and Nathan experienced when they first met. So it was no surprise at all when he emailed her from across the office right after the meeting, and asked her out for a drink that night.
Amy couldn’t get anything done that day for thinking about his sensual mouth and incredible hazel eyes. She counted down the hours, and had this fizzing, roiling feeling in her stomach at the thought of being able to stare at him unhindered across a pub table.
The date did not disappoint. She scrutinized him so much that she could straight away have told you how many little dark freckles he had scattered on his cheeks and down his neck (eleven), the length of his artful stubble (about three millimetres), the five silver hairs sprinkled around the crown of his thick silky black hair, the sort of hair that would have been described as ‘floppy’ in a Richard Curtis movie. He had Celtic patterns tattooed around his taut right bicep, which he showed her by unbuttoning and pushing his checked shirt off his shoulder, and peeling away the sleeve of the tight khaki T-shirt he was wearing underneath. Amy pointed out to him the flowery letters around her ankle, A&B, and he laughed.
‘Get us, showing each other our tats on the first date. I love a girl with tattoos, though. So who’s B, an ex?’
‘My sister Becky,’ she said. ‘We’re really close. You’ll meet her soon. She’ll love you.’
Then she blushed – how much presumption had been in those last two sentences? Nathan saw her embarrassment, reached across the table and grasped her forearm, gazing into her face with those amazingly long-lashed eyes.
