Maybe Lauren hadn’t made her throw that garden fork back at school. Eva had never blamed anyone but herself. But what if she did, using the same powerful influence Eva had noticed ever since her reappearance? Eva wanted to know and she needed the truth, not the haze. And laying aside the school incident, the falling out, the cold shoulder, the awful feelings of abandonment… she still had the new Lauren as first-hand evidence. The more she had got to know the new Lauren, the more questions she had. All those methods of influence, manipulation and persuasion… Eva recalled all her wily ways.
Whatever it takes… I read up on you… I know what you’re capable of…
She recalled Blane’s apartment, the moment when she had almost plunged a knife deep into the man’s heart to become a murderer on someone else’s behalf. She had burned to do it. Maybe the bastard deserved it, but never before had she felt so compelled to kill. The hate… where did it all come from? Then there was the evidence against Blane, so much of which turned out to be fabricated. The hints, the nudges, the winks. Lauren had played her part in all of it – and primed her like a bomb. Perhaps Adam Boothroyd had been lucky to survive Romford, but then his luck ran out on Two Tree Island, when Eva’s rage took over. The rage of injustice against all the needless suffering. But the suffering had never been hers in the first place. It was Lauren’s, it had always been Lauren’s. Eva had always prided herself on her cool logic, but in the white heat of the moment she had utterly lost it.
What was the common denominator in those moments?
Her companion. The driving force, reminding Eva of her obligations and her ability to do the unthinkable.
“Lauren,” said Eva. The psych report had spoken of their broken friendship as the causal factor of her mental breakdown. But was there a chance Lauren had been able to manipulate the psychologist as much as she had been able to influence Eva? If so, Lauren may as well have written the report herself… She was giving the younger Lauren too much credit, surely. But what if…? The one thing the woman could not have changed were the facts of her personal history.
And Eva wanted the truth like nothing else. The truth was freedom from Lauren’s spells.
Eva picked up her mobile phone and looked out of the slatted blind to the street below their apartment. Joanne picked up after three rings. Eva heard music on in the background. Something smooth and classical. How very un-Joanne. In the next moment Eva heard a man talking in the background but was unable to make out his words. Eva held her phone away to check the time on screen. It was 9:07pm
“Eva? What is it? Are you okay?” said Joanne.
“I’m getting better. Look. I just want to apologise.”
“Apologise? For what?”
“You know what,” said Eva. “For not listening to you. You were right, Joanne. Lately I’ve been listening to all the noise in my head, all the guilt for the part I might have played in what happened to Lauren. That was because of Lauren. I can see that now. And I can see there’s a way to get her out of my head for good.”
“Who are you talking to?” said a man’s voice at Joanne’s end of the line.
“A friend,” said Joanne. It was Falk, thought Eva. She was at his place.
“I’ll try to be quick,” said Eva.
“It’s okay. And you needn’t be sorry, Eva.”
“But I am, and now I need your help. Listen, you mentioned Mrs Gernahue earlier. My old schoolteacher. You said you spoke to her. I don’t suppose you happen to have her number?”
Joanne hesitated before murmuring quietly, “I can find it for you… but Toby doesn’t know that I’ve been working on this, I have to be discreet.”
“More secrets, eh?” said Eva with a smile.
“You needed someone to watch your back. Lauren Jaeger had blindsided you,” she said. “Here’s the number. Got a pen?”
Eva scrambled around the dining room to find one. “Yes…” she said. She tore a scrap of paper from the latest put-off letter from The Renton Trust, which seemed to simultaneously both promise and postpone the Uber case. Eva had the feeling the case might never happen. She wrote down Gernahue’s number as Joanne gave it out.
“Come on, Joanne,” called the man’s voice. “It’s getting late.”
“Thanks, Joanne,” said Eva. “Just one word of advice. Don’t let yourself get too close too soon. And don’t let him boss you around too much.”
“Boss me around?” Joanne whispered back. “You should know by now, you don’t need to worry on that score. What are you going to do, Eva? I think you should end it and move on, full stop.”
“I just might do that. But until then, all I’m going to do is keep an open mind.”
“Good for you, Eva. I better go.”
“Do you like him, Joanne?”
The blunt question made Joanne pause.
“No need to answer. Just make sure you do – before it gets any deeper.”
For a change it was Joanne’s turn to sound like the recipient of unwanted advice. The call ended with a sigh and a goodbye.. Eva looked at her old teacher’s number. The painkiller had not yet fully wiped away her headache, but Eva couldn’t wait, as if the haze of Lauren’s words could cloud her thinking once again. It was getting late and Mrs Gernahue had to be in her seventies. If she left it much later the woman would likely ignore the call. Eva dialled the number.
She let the call ring for a while, knowing the old lady would need some time to get to the phone. Eva waited and, just as she was about to give up, her call was finally answered. A breathless and wheezy elderly voice came on the line. The first few words were mangled by a splutter, but the next few revealed an Irish brogue Eva would never forget. High-pitched, sonorous, and warm as any voice she’d ever heard in her life.
“Now you people should know you are not allowed to call anyone at this time of night, do you know that now? But let me guess. You’re calling from the Philippines or Bangladesh or the People’s Republic of Whatever. Well, whoever you are, you might as well hang up right now because—”
“Mrs Gernahue,” said Eva, smiling at the woman’s bombast.
“Yes?” The old woman was stopped in her tracks. “You’re not calling from Bangladesh… are you?”
“No, I’m calling from Southend. This is Eva Roberts, Mrs Gernahue. Do you remember me? Back from schooldays.”
“Eva Roberts? Is that you? Well how could I ever forget such a scholar and a fine young girl as you… I only spoke of you and that awful friend of yours earlier today to another sweet girl. A friend of yours. She was asking me about Lauren Jaeger, did you know? You, Eva, were always a fine little student, but that Lauren girl turned out to be nothing but bad news. Ah, she was the worst. Turned into a bully and a shocking floozie before she left the school, so she did.”
“Yes, my friend told me she’d called you. And unfortunately, it’s Lauren I’m calling about.”
“Your friend did sound concerned about you. And you’re calling about Lauren now? Well, that’s a real shame. I think I’d rather talk to you about anything else in the whole world. Tell me, are you married yet, Eva? Fine thing like you, I’d wager you would be?”
“Not yet… but I do have a long term partner.
“Away wij you, partner indeed! Has the man not put a ring on your finger? What, is he mad? But, it’s the modern way, I suppose.”
Eva grinned to herself. “Yes, I think it is,” she said.
“Okay then,” said Mrs Gernahue, finding her bearings. “So you’re calling about Miss Jaeger. What is it now? Has something bad happened?”
“A fair few things, to be honest, but I’m calling because I’m more interested in preventing disasters than burdening you with current problems.”
“Ahh, dear. Current problems you say? And I hoped we were all shot of that girl a long time back. You especially, my dear, after she left you in the lurch so she did.”
“You knew about that?”
“Of course I did. I recall us teachers speaking of it in the staffroom. I
t was plain as day to all who knew you. In your lessons, in your tutor group, in the playground, that wicked girl cut you off. Now I know we all make mistakes as children but have to hope to make fewer as we get older. From what I saw, that girl only ever got worse.”
Eva reminded herself the old woman was biased after her own experience with Lauren and decided she didn’t want one haze replaced with another. The truth was all that mattered.
“I know you had your disagreements with her too, Mrs Gernahue.”
“Disagreements, you say. Please don’t call them that. They were nothing of the kind. Eva, what age are you? Thirty-four, thirty-five?”
“Something like that.”
“Then we’re both grown-ups these days. So let’s call a spade a spade. No teacher can put up with what I put up with from that girl. That Lauren, once she dumped you off, you’ll know she got in with the very worst of the worst. I mean she got in with the hussies who slept with any boy they clapped eyes on, went out every school night, smoked the wacky baccy, took all kinds of tablets, and drank so you could smell it on their breath the next morning. Thing is, I saw her out one night, down my own street, when she was looking for trouble. The girl and her wee banshee friends were giving Joan, my dear old neighbour, a really hard time. Joan was an awful alcoholic, so she was. Poor thing used to get drunk as a skunk and come out ranting at anyone who walked by her driveway. She used to hurl the empty bottles down and smash them in the gutter. A very sad tale, was dear old Joan. But that night I watched young Lauren Jaeger and her friends make that poor woman’s life a misery. They were relentless. They ridiculed her until she broke down in tears and dropped down to her knees there on the driveway. I couldn’t stand it. You can bet your life I had stern words for all of them, but particularly Lauren.”
“Oh, let me guess,” said Eva. “Lauren and her bad girl crew didn’t take too kindly to being told off outside school.”
“You could say that, Eva. The payback started within days, and God awful it was too. First off they paid me a little visit when I was alone in my classroom. You know, veiled threats and all that kind of thing. But within days it really wasn’t so veiled. It was vicious. My textbooks were vandalised, as was all my personal stationery, and my car got scratched up and my tyres slashed to ribbons. Within a month, those little horrors had thrown one of old Joan’s vodka bottles right through the front window of my house. My dear husband Derek, God rest his soul, it must have missed him by an inch. I knew right away that it wasn’t old Joan who threw that bottle. I saw one of those horrible girls running away down the street right after. It was Lauren. And the next day at school, Lauren came to see me – to see me, would you credit it? To let me know she was the one who did it. She was a terrible smart girl with her ways. She never admitted it outright, she never used words, but she made it dead clear she was the one, and she laughed in my face, because she knew I could never prove it. I couldn’t do a thing about it. And by then I found that girl terrifying because I knew she was capable of anything. I was sure they were going to attack me next. I became afraid of my own shadow – even at the school, so after a few weeks I went off with stress. Inevitable, really. And even after Lauren left St Cecil’s, I was never the same. She ruined my career, that girl.”
“Mrs Gernahue. I’m so sorry. I never knew about any of that.”
“Nobody did but a select few. It was hardly something I wanted broadcast around. Stressed soft-headed teachers aren’t likely get a job in any school, so I had to keep it under wraps.”
“The girl who contacted you before, my friend, Joanne… she said you think Lauren manipulated me the day I threw the fork at Jake Ellis.”
“Eva, I saw it all, my dear. I saw Lauren Jaeger whispering in your ear not long before you threw it. As soon as I understood the gravity of what you’d done, I knew it was her. Forgive me for saying but you could have killed the boy that day.”
Eva swallowed. “I know, Mrs Gernahue. It still mortifies me to think of it.”
“But it wasn’t your fault, my dear. It was hers… it was all her.”
The old woman sounded so certain it was difficult to argue. She seemed so convinced Eva wondered if she was right. The facts seemed to be realigning, the past changing as she listened but still the haze remained. But now she had the old teacher’s story to add to her understanding of Lauren. And Eva sensed there was still a chance to get the whole truth, to blow the whole haze around Lauren’s hidden past clean away.
“Mr Carlton told my friend about some kind of incident involving Lauren, Mrs Gernahue. An incident that happened to Lauren just a year or two after she left school. I know she went to France… perhaps something happened there? Apparently, Mr Carlton couldn’t say what it was.”
“Probably not, he’s a good man, but still on the school payroll, you see. But I’m under no such obligation now, am I? I don’t know the full story mind, because once she left school, that was supposed to be the end of it. But I know Miss Jaeger appeared and disappeared from the school radar according to the scale of her misdeeds. She turned wild in those last years and she only got worse after she left.”
“I happened to see part of her psychiatric assessment from a mental hospital in France. I think the assessment was carried out in the early 2000s. The report said Lauren felt a regret about her past, especially her childhood. It also said Lauren blamed her problems on her falling out with me. …. Perhaps including this so-called incident. I think she was full of remorse for how she’d behaved towards me, perhaps to you as well.”
“You give the girl too much credit, Eva. You think she has the capacity for remorse?”
“I believe she feels a lot of pain about what she’s done, Mrs Gernahue.”
“Regret and pain are two very different things, Eva. You can feel pain and blame the world for it, if you want to. You were never to blame for that girl’s actions, no matter what she felt, no matter what that report says. But hang on now, didn’t that report tell you any more than that?” said the old woman.
“No. It didn’t…” Eva frowned as she recalled the loose sheets scattered on the floor of Boothroyd’s ramshackle office. “Actually, I didn’t have time to read the rest.”
“Either way,” said the woman. “This is the limit of what I know. That girl ended up in France. She followed some wretched French lad home to Paris after they’d met in London. She got it into her head that he was too wonderful to let out of her sight. The girl was like that. She got fixated on boys and then she got all controlling. I heard about the French incident through the school grapevine – Mr Carlton had been contacted by the French police. There was some toing and froing – some soundings-out and information sharing. The police wanted to know all about Lauren’s character, her history. In their inquiries, they told Leonard Carlton a fair amount about what had happened. The gist of it is this: Lauren Jaeger pursued this poor young man all the way to his home town near Paris. For a while, the lad rebuffed her, but she stayed put, haunting the lad like a ghost. She lived on the streets. No one knew how she scraped through in that phase. Then, as men do, the young man gave in to her obsession and took her on as his girlfriend. But they weren’t together long before something happened. I heard he found another girlfriend. Maybe he cheated on her. Who knows? But whatever went on between them, it doesn’t really matter. One morning, when the young man set off for work, Lauren followed him. She found the young man and his new girlfriend kissing in the Paris Metro, and Lauren lost the plot. But unlike you or I – we might have had a shouting match and then moved on – Lauren wouldn’t accept what she’d seen. She went in for the kill!”
“I’m sorry. You said the kill?” The last of Eva’s smile faded away. “I suppose that was just a figure of speech…?”
“No, Eva. I’m afraid not. I didn’t tell your young friend all this. It wasn’t my place and I didn’t know the girl, though I tried to give her a hint. She’s twisted, Eva. Twisted and dangerous. The truth is Lauren Jaeger is as dangerous as they come.”
“But the report says all of that, her personality, her problems, stem from what happened when at school all those years ago. We were only girls, Mrs Gernahue. Children. It can’t have caused all that…”
“No, Eva. I saw what she did to you. The girl chose the life she wanted. She engineered your falling out, because she was cruel. She destroyed poor Joan, she engineered my downfall, and what happened in Paris that morning goes to prove it. The girl’s a cold-hearted killer, in mind and spirit.”
Eva felt herself chill inside. She thought of the Paris incident. Lauren on the streets in pursuit of a lover. Not giving up until she was in firm possession of what she wanted. The story wasn’t just familiar. Lauren was repeating herself.
“What exactly happened in Paris, Mrs Gernahue?”
“I told you. I don’t know the details. But I know this. It was bad enough to shut the Paris Metro in three stations. Bad enough that Lauren Jaeger ended up stuck in the French mental health system for good long time thereafter.”
“Ten years, Mrs Gernahue. We think she lost ten years inside those hospitals” said Eva. “The young Frenchman, her boyfriend. Do you have any idea what his name was? It might help me.”
“None at all, Eva. I’m sorry. But please listen to me, as a friend if not as your old teacher. Don’t play with fire, Eva. Keep away from her. Lauren Jaeger is wild, she always was. Ten years in a mental asylum doesn’t change a person. It would only set their problems in stone.”
Eva swallowed. “Would anybody else know this Frenchman’s name?”
“I couldn’t tell you. But I do remember one nugget about him. He worked at some French fashion magazine or other. I dare say that’s what attracted Lauren in the first place. The opportunity, the glamour.”
“Funny… Lauren told me she worked in the fashion press herself,” said Eva.
“No, no. That must have been another lie. From the day she left St Cecil’s, Lauren Jaeger did nothing but drift until she ended up in France. From what I heard there was no real job to speak of. And after France, well any kind of career choice was over.”
Play With Fire Page 29
