Mine

by J. L. Butler

  ‘I don’t know, Martin. I don’t know.’

  I ended the call with a simple touch of a button. I put my phone back in my pocket and looked at the necklace, curled up in the palm of my other hand.

  I took a moment to look at it and then struggling slightly with the clasp, I put it on and somehow I felt bolder as if it wasn’t a necklace, but a shield.

  I returned to the car and drove back into town. At this time, it would still be a ninety minute drive back to London and I needed some food and the bathroom before I even thought about it.

  As I approached the café on the high street I noticed that it was shut. There were two pubs on either side of the road. One of them had been where I had stopped for a drink with Martin when we were waiting for the storm to pass, but I had no desire to go back in there. The other pub was more modern looking with a chalkboard sign on the pavement that said there was a restaurant and vacant rooms, both of which sounded appealing.

  I pulled into the car park and went inside.

  I hovered by the bar and looked around. There were a few couples eating and the steaming piles of sausages and mash that were being brought out of the kitchen looked and smelt good.

  I picked up a menu from the bar.

  ‘That’s just for bar snacks,’ said a girl pulling a pint she looked barely old enough to drink. ‘If you want food, grab a table and we’ll be with you in a minute.’

  ‘How much are the rooms?’

  ‘Seventy-five pounds a night.’

  Another member of staff, a boy a little older than the barmaid, came up to her and made a quip. The girl laughed and flirted with him before handing him the pint.

  ‘I’ll take one,’ I said, trying to catch her eye.

  She wiped her hands on her jeans and looked ruffled.

  ‘OK. I’ll go and get you a key.’

  ‘And could you send some food upstairs?’

  My room was in the eaves and had painted black beams that I suspected were fake but designed to make the place look olde worlde. There was no minibar, but there was a small sugar bowl filled with Lotus biscuits next to the kettle.

  I grabbed all three packets, sat cross-legged on the bed and ate the lot, not caring if it might spoil my appetite for the burger I had ordered from room service.

  Laying back on the pillow, I stared up at the ceiling, at those fake black beams, stark lines against the white paintwork. For a moment I was back in Gil’s office, letting the ribbons of light help me remember the night that Donna disappeared. No further memories had dislodged; I wasn’t sure I wanted them to any more.

  Had I really seen Martin leave the house, or had that memory been jumbled up with something else? I thought I had seen Martin and Donna; Martin in the street, Donna in her upstairs bedroom, but perhaps they had left together. Was it possible that Martin had somehow lured her out to Essex? I had no idea how he would have managed that after midnight, but I decided to let my mind run with the idea to see where it would take me.

  You’re dealing with a charming, brilliant and manipulative man who will stop at nothing to keep his money.

  It was impossible to shake Jemma’s words from my head. I felt a thickness in my throat as I wondered if she was right, and I had been so wrong to trust Martin Joy and let him into my life?

  Of course there had been warning signs, glimpses of his dark corners, and I had ignored them, mistaking them for passion and intensity.

  My mobile phone was still in my hand and I lifted it closer to my face, tapping the words charming and manipulative into a web search. Was it my lawyer’s brain kicking in?

  The entire first pages were stories about psychopaths and sociopaths and I remembered something Clare had joked about at the art gallery. How out of all careers, bankers and CEOs tend to demonstrate the highest psychopathic personality traits.

  I was led to a feature about psychopaths in the workplace, another about sociopaths being great in bed.

  Psychopathy, I discovered, was a psychological condition based on diagnostic evaluations. They appeared to be intelligent and sincere, powerful, charming and often manipulative to the extent that not even those closest to them ever suspected their true nature. Common traits included a tendency to display violent behaviour and difficulty in forming emotional attachments. They showed a readiness to take risks, displayed a lack of empathy and remorse, and low tolerance of others. A raft of psychologists had suggested that the recent financial crisis was a direct result of corporate psychopathy and the prevalence of psychopaths on Wall Street. Journalists, police officers and psychiatrists also had some of the highest proportions of psychopaths comparative to the population. So too did lawyers, a thought I didn’t want to dwell on much more.

  The more I read about the workplace psychopath the more I thought that Martin fitted the stereotype. Charming at work. Charming in life. Charming in love. I had been seduced from the very beginning. The smile that always held something back, a something that made me want to please him more. There were the grand gestures – the handbag after our first meeting, the casual ‘I’ll buy you a car’ . . . I couldn’t deny that I had been flattered and drawn in by that extravagance.

  I felt sure that was what had happened to Donna too. So socially ambitious that she had seduced him, and overlooked all the faults in her marriage until a battering put her over the edge.

  A knock on the door disturbed me from my thoughts. I went to answer it and took a room service tray from the barmaid I had met twenty minutes earlier. She peered over my shoulder, no doubt wondering what had brought me to Dorsea Island, all alone on a Monday night. It struck me that perhaps I was the subject of local gossip. Dorsea Island felt like the end of the earth, but its residents would be as plugged in to the news as someone in Canary Wharf. Martin Joy owned the biggest house on the island; that would have got him talked about even before the disappearance of his wife. The manager of the neighbouring pub had told the police that he had seen Martin with me, and I didn’t doubt he’d told friends and neighbours the same story, embellished and dramatized every time.

  I went to sit down at the small desk by the window, and put my food tray in front of me. I took the silver cloche off the plate to reveal a slightly soggy burger. Relish fell off a fold of lettuce on to the plate as I pressed my hand on the damp bun. It was too big to fit into my mouth, so I cut it with the steak knife that was glistening on the tray.

  When my phone rang, I was tempted to leave it, but part of me hoped that it was Martin, calling back with an explanation about the necklace, calling back to explain everything away.

  ‘It’s Tom. I’ve been looking for you, where are you?’

  Not who I was expecting, although I was still happy to hear from him.

  ‘Have you read the Post online?’

  It took me a minute to realize he was talking about the digital edition of Jenny’s paper.

  ‘No, why?’ I said, not wanting to admit I had just been on the internet but had been researching sociopaths.

  ‘The Post has run a story on you, Fran.’

  ‘Oh God,’ I whispered, feeling the panic rising inside.

  ‘They’re not quite accusing you of a relationship with Martin Joy, but it’s running close.’

  Shit.

  ‘Have you spoken to Vivienne or Paul?’ I asked him.

  ‘I’ve only read it this minute. Looks like the story was posted a few minutes ago, so maybe you can speak to them about it before they have a chance to call you.’

  If I had a paper bag I would have started breathing into it.

  ‘Also . . .’

  Don’t tell me, I wanted to scream. I wasn’t sure that I could handle anything else.

  ‘Inspector Doyle wants to see you tomorrow.’

  ‘What does he want?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly. But he mentioned that Pete Carroll contacted him again. Apparently, you threatened him at the flat this morning.’

  ‘Threatened him? I might have sworn at him, but that was about it.’
/>
  ‘Fran, we need to report what he did to you last week. Officially. We can go down to the station tonight. There’s a great team at Islington.’

  ‘I can’t,’ I croaked.

  ‘I’ve dealt with members of their Sapphire Unit before – they’re incredibly supportive.’

  ‘I meant I can’t make it tonight.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I’m in Essex.’

  ‘What the hell are you doing there?’

  ‘I went to Martin’s house.’

  ‘You’re kidding me.’

  ‘Don’t worry. He’s not here.’

  ‘But you were supposed to stay local. Fran, you can’t put a foot wrong right now—’

  ‘What time should we meet tomorrow?’ I replied.

  ‘Fran, you’ve got to come back to London.’

  ‘What time should I see you?’

  He sighed with resignation.

  ‘We’re meeting him at eleven.’

  ‘Then I’ll see you at ten thirty,’ I said, and rang off.

  I bit into my burger but I wasn’t hungry any more. I pushed the plate away and drew a knee up to my chest, perching my heel on the edge of the chair.

  Tom was right. What was I doing here? Entire police forces hadn’t been able to solve some of the most famous missing persons cases of our time so what hope did I have over Inspector Doyle and his team?

  There was 10 per cent battery left on my phone but I had to check out the Post story.

  LAWYER GETS CLOSE TO MARTIN JOY

  Story by Jenny Morris

  I knew what had happened immediately. Knew that I had been stitched up.

  The news item was thin, to say the least. If Jenny was after her Watergate scandal, then this was hardly it.

  Ms Day wouldn’t comment on the exact nature of her relationship with the husband of missing beauty Donna Joy, but did admit ‘it’s complicated’.

  As I continued reading, I was struck by the fact that I wasn’t even disappointed by Jenny’s betrayal. Deep down, I had expected it.

  She’d known that getting exclusive access to Martin Joy was unlikely and she had just wanted to save her own skin. That’s what it was about for everyone these days, wasn’t it? Scrambling up the ladder, striving, achieving, possessing, getting on, no matter what the cost.

  I nibbled at a chip, wondering if I should put in a call to Vivienne. I owed her that much. On its own, having a relationship with a client was probably not enough to get me expelled from chambers, but when you put it alongside everything else – admitting to being at Donna’s house that night, harassing Pete Carroll – I knew I was finished.

  Unless Donna turned up. Or unless her body was found and the suspect was someone other than me or Martin.

  I knew right then that I had two choices. I could either turn the necklace over to Inspector Doyle and rely on him to clear my name. Or I could believe Martin and try to prove the link between Alex Cole and Donna’s disappearance.

  Martin had pleaded with me to trust him. Was now the moment I took that chance?

  I forced myself to think but it was hard, anxiety and fear clogging every cog and wheel in my brain.

  My thoughts circled past Martin and Donna, and back to Tom.

  Something my friend had said about a previous case, made my thoughts stop.

  When Tom had defended Nathan Adams, he had argued that even though his client had a reputation as a thug, it didn’t necessarily mean that he’d harmed his wife. But it remained a source of deep shame for Tom Briscoe that he had been successful in that line of defence and Suzie was subsequently murdered.

  Tom’s words resonated hard.

  ‘Suzie’s lawyer was devastated. She told me, ‘We’ll just have to wait until next time.’

  I thought about the significance of what Suzie’s lawyer had said. Everyone had known that Nathan Adams was an abusive psychopath but Tom’s brilliance in court and a lack of concrete evidence, had meant he had avoided conviction.

  But Nathan Adams was now in jail, serving a life sentence for murder. The police and the CPS had eventually got him because Adams had been violent a second time.

  I felt giddy with the beginnings of an idea and let it collect speed. I picked up the steak knife from my plate and wiped it with the napkin. Slowly, I changed my grip, so that I was not holding it like cutlery, but like a weapon.

  And then, without thinking any more about the danger of the plan that my mind was suggesting, I put on my coat, put the knife in my coat pocket, picked up my phone and started walking back to Dorsea House.

  Chapter 45

  I knew I had to make the call as soon as I left the pub otherwise I might never make it.

  I hesitated as I scrolled through my contacts list and puffed out my cheeks.

  He answered almost immediately.

  ‘I wasn’t sure you’d ever speak to me again,’ he said in a voice that suggested he was surprised to hear from me. ‘Where are you? It sounds as if you’re in a wind tunnel.’

  ‘I’m just walking,’ I said, pressing the phone closer to my face so that he could hear me.

  ‘I need to tell you something,’ I said. ‘I need to tell you everything.’

  There was a long pause – a pause that gave me time to reconsider and back out of what I had decided to do.

  ‘Go on,’ said Alex Cole.

  I wished I had a cigarette. I needed nicotine or alcohol and had neither to calm my nerves. Instead I put my index finger to my mouth and nibbled at my nail until I spoke again.

  ‘I know we’re all still hoping that Donna is safe and well somewhere. And I’ll be honest, part of that is because I don’t think that Martin had anything to do with her disappearance.’

  ‘I think we all agree with you there,’ said Alex in an encouraging tone.

  ‘As you know, I had a private investigator look into Donna’s affairs. That’s how I found out about your relationship.’

  ‘Jesus, Fran. How many times do I have to tell you? It wasn’t a relationship—’

  I cut in, not letting him finish.

  ‘My researcher also told me that Donna and Martin were still having sex. I knew they were meeting the night of her disappearance, and I followed them. They went to Donna’s house, but I saw Martin leave some time later.’

  ‘Have you told the police this?’ He sounded incredulous.

  ‘Yes, but I’m not sure they believe me. In fact, I’m certain they don’t. Yesterday, they almost arrested me.’

  ‘Arrested you? Shit.’

  ‘As you can imagine, it doesn’t look good for me, being involved with Martin, sneaking around, following him and Donna. If you were the police, you’d think I was an obsessive mistress. Dangerous even.’

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’

  I swallowed hard. I had to do this.

  ‘Because I’ve got evidence against Martin. And because I don’t know what to do with it.’

  ‘What evidence?’

  I told him about the necklace and Martin’s insistence that Donna had never been to Dorsea.

  ‘If I wanted to get rid of someone, that’s where I’d take them,’ Alex muttered. ‘My lonely old house by the sea.’

  ‘The police have obviously searched the place, but they didn’t find the necklace.’

  ‘Or a body, presumably.’

  ‘I doubt they found anything significant, otherwise the forensics team would still be there,’ I replied.

  I paused before I told him the rest of my plan. Although it was cold, I was lightly sweating. My palm was damp against the back of my phone, my breath was unsure and ragged in my chest.

  ‘I’m staying at Dorsea House tonight. Tomorrow I’m going to take the necklace to Inspector Doyle.’

  ‘Does Martin know all this?’

  ‘No,’ I said quickly. ‘And don’t tell him. I’m only telling you because you deserve to be prepared. If Martin’s arrested, if he’s charged this time, you’ll probably need time to deal with the fall-out
from the story.’

  ‘Thank you. I appreciate everything you’ve done for us.’

  My hands were shaking as the connection cut off. Now, I just had to wait.

  I paced around for a few moments before I picked up the phone again.

  ‘It’s Fran.’

  ‘Thank God,’ said Martin, sounding relieved.

  ‘When you cut me off earlier, I started to panic.’

  I steadied myself. ‘Can we meet tomorrow morning?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Martin, hopefully.

  ‘I’ve got an appointment with Inspector Doyle at eleven. Perhaps we can meet at nine thirty in Pimlico. If I’m late, wait for me. I’m staying at Dorsea this evening and the rush-hour traffic back into London might be bad.’

  ‘Can’t you come home tonight? We could get a hotel like last time.’

  ‘I’m here now. Besides, the weather’s so bad, I think I should stay put. You don’t mind if I stay at the house, do you? It might be too cold in the shed, but I noticed there were some beds on the first floor.’

  ‘Have you still got the necklace?’

  ‘I’m wearing it,’ I said, touching my throat.

  ‘Have you decided what you’re going to do with it?’

  ‘I don’t know, Martin. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.’ Holding the necklace tightly it felt as though it could strangle me. ‘We just need to find Donna, that’s the only thing that can help us now.’

  ‘Tom, it’s me.’

  ‘Tell me you’re driving back to London.’

  ‘Not tonight,’ I said, not allowing myself to be swayed.

  ‘I’ve just spoken to Doyle. He didn’t want to give much away about tomorrow’s meeting, but I think we have to prepare ourselves. They’ve found the mini-cab driver who brought you home. Apparently he picked you up on the King’s Road at one thirty and drove you back to Islington. The staff at the Walton Arms have confirmed that everyone had left the pub by eleven twenty. Doyle’s going to want to know what you were doing for two hours in Chelsea.’

  ‘You know I don’t have the answer to that, Tom.’

  ‘I’ve also spoken to Matthew Clarkson.’