33 Women: A gripping new thriller about the power of women, and the lengths they will go to when pushed...

by Isabel Ashdown

  ‘She left me a list of instructions when she went,’ Celine says, recalling aloud. ‘A bank card and pin number, and a dashed-out note telling us to knock on your door if we had any problems.’ She looks at Una. ‘Did she run it past you first?’

  Una scoffs. ‘Course not. I didn’t have a clue where she was until she sent you that first postcard from Italy a few weeks later.’

  There’d followed a handful of brief messages from Delilah over those first couple of years, and then, after six months of silence, a final postcard had arrived, breezily announcing her return to England, along with a new address in Arundel. Hello, girls! Back in the UK (without Gordon). Living in Sussex now. Hope all is well with you, much love, Mummy. God, how it had sickened Celine, seeing her mother’s use of the word Mummy. She’d long ago given up that role. By then the sisters had falteringly forged new lives for themselves, without Delilah’s help – Celine had been twenty and studying law, Vanessa had just started her first job, and Pip was in the middle of her GCSEs. They had each other; they were fine. And so, by some unspoken agreement, they’d decided that they were doing just fine by themselves; that not one of them needed or wanted Delilah back in their world. It was only after Vanessa’s death that Celine had met up with her for lunch, making contact once a year or so thereafter, until that last meeting in the tea shop ten years ago, when she knew she couldn’t do it any more.

  ‘It’s kind of good to think Vanessa reached out to Mum, after all those years, isn’t it?’ she says to Una, who nods sadly and pats her hand. ‘I think perhaps she was trying to tie up some unfinished business, don’t you? She was always more forgiving than me. Maybe she would’ve done it sooner, if it hadn’t been for me and Pip not wanting to.’

  ‘You don’t know that,’ Una replies with a stern shake of the head. ‘None of this is your doing, Celine. It’d do you good to remember that every now and again.’

  At the sound of a taxi arriving on the gravel behind them, they turn to see a man they recognise as Adam Siegle getting out of a cab. While he’s occupied paying the fare, Celine talks quickly. ‘So, if Aston says we’re off the case, what are we doing here today?’

  ‘A favour. Dave promised his family a weekend away, but he didn’t want Adam Siegle arriving in Arundel without some kind of a welcome. He’s insistent about coming down to the river to see where his daughter was found, so I volunteered. I said we’d meet him for lunch, unofficially, reassure him that the police are following up all the leads. Apparently he’s been making a lot of noise about the fact the police haven’t been inside Two Cross Farm yet—’ She stands, raising a hand to wave at Mr Siegle. ‘We’ve just got to smooth the waters really. Shh. Hello, Mr Siegle!’ She strides towards him, arm extended, straight into copper mode.

  ‘Ms Powell?’ he replies, and he offers up his hand to shake hers, before joining them at their bench table. His grief is writ large across his features, in the slump of his posture, in the slack skin around his clean-shaven jaw. He’s a lean man, but Celine suspects he’s lost pounds in the past fortnight, that he’s a man robbed of sleep.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ Una asks after the introductions. ‘We were going to order some sandwiches.’

  ‘I should eat,’ he replies, in a soft New England accent. ‘I’ll have whatever you two are having.’

  When the lad from the bar stops by, they order three cheese and ham sandwiches and a half of local ale for Mr Siegle.

  ‘How’s your hotel?’ Celine asks.

  ‘It’s, um, quaint.’ He looks out over the water, surely contemplating his daughter’s last moments. ‘Actually, I’ve stayed there before. I taught at the New England College in Ford. It was just down the road from here – closed now.’

  ‘Really?’ says Una, clearly surprised. ‘DI Aston mentioned that Robyn was doing some research, but I thought it was related to family history?’

  ‘Well, kind of,’ he says, taking a slow sip from his half pint. ‘Robyn was born here.’

  It’s obvious to Celine that Una is somewhat thrown by this new revelation, because she offers no more than ‘I see,’ in response, and so Celine steps in.

  ‘Do you know, Mr Siegle – Adam – why Robyn separated from her husband, Archie?’

  ‘They married too young,’ he replies evenly. ‘I tried to get them to wait, but they were in love – in a rush to do everything the moment they thought of it.’

  ‘Was he ever violent?’ she asks as Una quietly riffles through her papers.

  ‘Good God, no. Have you met Archie? He’s as nice a fella as you’ll ever meet. I loved him – all the family did. When they separated, I think we always held out hope that they’d get back together, but Robyn didn’t see it that way.’

  ‘How’s that?’ Una looks up from her papers, interested.

  ‘She – well, she didn’t take to parenting in the way we thought she might. She found it hard; really hard. I should have seen the signs, you know? I think it was postnatal depression, but I’m no good at all that – Robyn’s mother died when she was only very young. She’s missed out on a woman’s touch, I suppose.’

  ‘Had you any idea she and Archie were planning a reconciliation?’

  ‘None whatsoever,’ Adam replies. He picks up his sandwich, brings it to his mouth and appears to think better of it. ‘He hadn’t visited Amelia – their daughter – for a few months. You know she lives with me now? I only knew he’d got himself work in London when all this terrible – when …’ He’s struggling.

  ‘When Robyn was discovered?’ Una offers.

  He nods, takes a controlled bite of his sandwich and uses the few seconds to compose himself. Celine and Una follow his lead, eating their sandwiches, offering him another drink, allowing him to set the pace.

  ‘But you know it wasn’t him, don’t you?’ he says. ‘The police let Archie go without charge. Your DI Aston told me as much.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Una says. ‘His alibi is watertight – he couldn’t have done it.’

  Adam Siegle eyes Una’s file of papers. ‘You’re a civilian consultant, you say? How much access do they give you to the case files?’

  ‘Limited,’ she replies. ‘I’m an ex-detective, and in this case it was useful for the police to call on me because they wanted a woman who could get inside Two Cross Farm, and I happened to be staying nearby when Robyn was found. We had a family bereavement recently.’ She looks at Celine, who nods.

  ‘Oh, you’re related?’ he says, surprised.

  ‘Yes,’ Celine answers, ‘though not directly, as you might have guessed.’ She nudges Una’s hand with hers, so that their contrasting forearms lie side by side, and it breaks the grave atmosphere. Adam rewards them with a smile.

  ‘Jem Falmer is a name I’ve heard bandied about,’ he says. ‘I’ve been reading about another case in London fifteen years ago – very similar, but in that case the boyfriend, Falmer, was the main suspect. He went on the run, so I believe.’

  Celine’s heart races. She knows the link has been plastered all over the newspapers in the past few days, but it’s still a shock to hear someone outside of their circle talking about Vanessa’s case. She tries to keep her expression impassive: they’d agreed not to let on that she’s related to Vanessa, or that they have any vested interest in this case other than professional.

  ‘Falmer is still the main suspect for Vanessa Murphy’s death,’ Una confirms.

  ‘Is he a suspect for Robyn too? Aston told me Falmer has some local connections. The similarities between the two deaths can’t be ignored, can they?’

  ‘I believe he is being treated as a suspect – or at least as someone the police want to speak with. But finding him is another matter.’ Una sighs. ‘And the fifteen-year gap between the crimes is a problem, Mr Siegle. It’s unlikely that someone like Falmer would kill back then, in a very personal way, and then wait fifteen years to kill again so randomly. There’s absolutely nothing to suggest Robyn had come into contact with Falmer.’

  ‘What if it’
s not random? What if there isn’t actually a fifteen-year gap – if he’s been busy killing other women in the meantime? If he’s been travelling around, he could have killed any number of women without local authorities making a connection. Have you considered that you might have a serial killer on your hands?’

  ‘We really don’t think that’s the case,’ Celine says, though she’d be lying if she said the thought hadn’t occurred to her. Feeling Una’s weight shift uncomfortably on the bench, she moves the conversation on. ‘What we really want to ask you about is Robyn’s relationship with Seed, prior to her becoming a resident at Two Cross Farm.’

  ‘You say she’d been in contact with Seed over the months leading up to her stay? By mail?’ Una flips over to a fresh page in her notebook.

  ‘Yes, that’s right. When she was working in London, we’d talk every couple of weeks, and she was quite excited by the prospect of visiting the place. She had been doing some research into the community there.’

  ‘Did she say anything to suggest Seed was a love interest?’ Celine asks.

  ‘For Robyn?’ he replies. He turns side-on, so that he can follow the line of the river, deep in thought. ‘I don’t know. But the exchange was full-on, and whenever I spoke to Robyn she talked of little else. Apparently, this Seed woman said she couldn’t wait to meet Robyn in person. She told Robyn she knew she was special. Was it romantic? Even if Robyn didn’t think of it that way, I did warn her that I thought Seed probably did. She shrugged it off, and then of course she was offered a job as their cook, and the rest is history.’

  ‘Do you think the police should suspect Seed as a potential killer?’ Celine asks.

  ‘I think they should suspect everyone who lives there,’ Adam replies, draining his drink. ‘And everyone who doesn’t.’

  After lunch Adam says he’d like to walk along the riverbank to see the spot where Robyn was found. The cloud cover has rolled away with the gentle breeze, and as swans and their young glide along the sun-kissed water you could be forgiven for thinking the trio were just a group of friends enjoying a post-lunch Sunday stroll. On the far bank, ramblers are picnicking, and a little further on they pass a mother and her small daughter, who lean out over the wooden rails as the toddler crumbles stale bread between her fingers, dropping it clumsily into the water, to feed a mallard and her ducklings below.

  Adam stops momentarily, to gaze at the little girl. ‘I would have come sooner, but I had to sort out childcare for Amelia.’ He blinks hard. ‘At least she died in a beautiful place. Robyn loved nature, you know? I used to bring her here as a child.’ He gestures towards the toddler. ‘We used to feed the ducks, just like that.’

  Una glances at Celine, curious, before stopping at a point where the river narrows and becomes thick with bulrushes and weed. A moorhen bombs out of the foliage, chased by another, as Una indicates towards a dent in the bank where a mooring post stands at the edge of a small pontoon, the cut end of a rope fraying limply from its rusted ring.

  ‘This is the spot,’ Una says. She lays a hand on Adam’s shoulder, pointing with the other towards a sunlit wooden bench a little further along the path. ‘Celine and I will be over there when you’re ready.’

  They leave Robyn’s father at the water’s edge, where he stands, stoop-shouldered, his back to them. For a long time, he barely moves, and Celine watches as he reaches into his pocket for a handkerchief, gently mopping his face. So much has happened in these past two weeks, not just in terms of events, but in her own thoughts and emotions. She constantly senses she might cry at the drop of a hat, not just at her own feelings but at the emotional responses of others, something she’s previously thought herself immune to. She thinks of herself as a person who lacks empathy, and she’s cool at best with most new people. But this past week she experienced such a strong connection with Seed, and such intensity of feeling when it came to Pip’s situation with Stefan, that it all seemed to catch up with her when she put Olive and Beebee to bed last night. Una had caught her in the hallway, swiping away her tears, and, when she’d asked what was up, Celine had replied, ‘Hormones,’ when the truth was simply that little Beebee had just told her, ‘I lub you.’

  ‘I had no idea about Robyn’s Arundel connection,’ Una whispers now, flipping back through her notes. ‘And, judging by the file copies I’ve got, I don’t think Dave Aston realises either.’

  ‘Surely that would’ve come up?’ Celine says.

  ‘Not necessarily. Robyn is American, last known address in London, temporarily at a women’s retreat in Arundel. Most women at Two Cross Farm are from other places – not local.’

  Adam Siegle stuffs his hanky in his pocket and starts towards them.

  ‘You say you lived in Arundel before,’ Una says gently as he takes a seat. ‘Tell us about that.’

  He stretches his legs out before him, crossing his ankles and turning his face to the sun. ‘I first came here in the early ’90s, when I got a post as a teacher, working alongside my English wife at the New England college nearby. It’s closed now – shut down the same year that Robyn came along in ’96 – but my wife and I had several happy years working there together. This is such a beautiful part of the world.’

  ‘Happy days?’ Celine says.

  ‘Very happy. After the college closed, I was lucky enough to get work at a local primary school. Janey had her hands full with Robyn, and life never felt better. I’d always wanted children, and for a while it looked a little doubtful whether we’d have kids at all, so we felt doubly blessed to have her in our lives. Then … well, things changed dramatically in 1998, when Janey found a lump. She went straight to the doctor but it was already too late – she went downhill fast and died within a month of that first appointment.’

  ‘Oh, God, I’m so sorry,’ Celine says, blinking away her own tears. ‘Robyn was just two or three?’

  ‘Uh-huh. She doesn’t really remember much about—’ He stops talking, swallows. ‘She didn’t really remember her mother, because she was so small when we lost her. We stayed on for a couple more years, and I did my best, but in 2000 I went back to my home town in Vermont. My family was there – my mother, my sisters – support, you know?’

  Una hasn’t spoken for a while, but now she runs her pen down a printed document, and clears her throat. ‘Adam, you just said Robyn came along in 1996 – but I have her down as born in ’95. There’s a copy of her passport on file.’

  His brow wrinkles a little, and he says, ‘Sure – she was born in 1995, but we got her in ’96.’

  Una returns his frown.

  ‘We adopted her. She was an abandoned baby – found on the doorstep of the convent in Crossbush soon after she was born.’

  ‘Crossbush? That’s just a mile or two up the road from here …’

  ‘That’s the one. It felt like a miracle, because we’d been on the adoption waiting list for two years by then, and we were close to giving up. That little mite’s misfortune turned out to be our blessing.’

  This new information is unexpected and mind-bending. They’d hoped meeting Adam Siegle would shed some light on Robyn’s death, make things clearer, but instead the threads of this mystery seem to be knotting tighter and tighter. So when Robyn was looking into her mother’s stay at Two Cross Farm it was her birth mother, someone she’d never even met. Celine takes the case folder from Una, and thumbs through its pages, looking for a particular document.

  ‘So, that’s why she contacted Seed?’ she asks.

  ‘Yes. She wanted to find out more about her birth mother, and she suspected the Two Cross community might be able to help,’ he replies.

  Una leans on to her knees, focusing on the flow of the river, before she turns back to him, her expression shifting. ‘Adam, you don’t think Seed could be Robyn’s mother, do you?’

  He shakes his head firmly. ‘Definitely not. The adoption agency told us her mother died in childbirth—’ He’s about to continue when Celine interrupts.

  ‘1995? Robyn’s birth date
is December 12th.’

  ‘That’s right,’ he says.

  ‘December 12th, 1995!’ Celine repeats, thrusting a news cutting at Una. ‘That’s just one day before Susan’s body was found.’ She pauses, momentarily doubting herself and the madness of what she’s about to say. ‘Adam, I think Susan Green could be Robyn’s natural mother.’

  Adam Siegle’s frown deepens.

  ‘This article talks about “blood loss”,’ she goes on excitedly, ‘but there’s no mention of a baby. In the absence of her files, we’ve been assuming “blood loss” related to a suicide. But perhaps—’

  ‘Hang on, did you say Susan—’ Adam tries to say, but Una cuts across him, on automatic pilot.

  ‘I’ll call Aston first thing, find out if he’s managed to get hold of those files yet – the forensic report will tell us for certain if Susan had had a child before they found her.’ Una is animated, but then she looks at Adam and her expression freezes. ‘What is it?’ she asks.

  He has his palm to his forehead as though a great dawning is upon him. ‘That’s her! Robyn said she thought she’d managed to work out her mother’s name – Susan Green – via some old news archives, and that, if she was right, her mother was a homeless or missing woman who died in childbirth nearby. Of course, I couldn’t confirm that for her. The adoption agencies don’t really tell you much at all during the process.’

  ‘Do you remember this news story at all?’ Una asks, passing him the cutting.

  He takes it, reads it over, rubs a hand across his mouth. ‘I do, naturally, because it was local to us. But – but we would never have made the connection that this woman and Robyn’s mother were one and the same. I mean, we didn’t get to meet Robyn until a few months after this article was published.’ He scans the page, his finger following the lines of type. ‘The article doesn’t mention a child. Why would they conceal that?’

  ‘The police are very careful about how and when they disseminate information relating to a suspicious death. It’s possible the detail of her baby came out in later updates – or not at all, if there was concern about sparing the family. I guess the real answer is, I don’t know. We’re waiting to get our hands on the official police file.’