by Roberta Kray
‘Well?’ Jean said. ‘What are you waiting for? Get a move on.’ She made a flapping gesture with her hands. ‘Sort yourself out and get back down here. Five minutes, yeah. Don’t take any longer or he may change his mind.’
Lucy gave a small shake of her head; she knew he wasn’t going anywhere. Once Vasser set his mind to something, he didn’t give up until he got it. She was the prize and he intended to have it. A feeling of dread enveloped her. Her chance of escape had gone. If only she’d had the nerve to get on a train, a bus, to run away from it all… but it was too late for regrets now. She limped out of the kitchen, glad at least to be free of Jean’s scrutiny. Had she suspected anything? It was hard to tell.
As Lucy passed through the narrow hallway, she gazed hard at the phone as if by sheer effort of will she could force it to ring, but it remained silent. Naturally it did. The phone had been cut off months ago when the bill hadn’t been paid. The rent was overdue too. Other final demands were piled up on the table, gas and electricity and water, all of them unopened.
Male laughter drifted from the front room, a harsh, dirty sound that set her teeth on edge. What kind of man pimped out his own daughter? She glanced at the front door, tempted to open it, to step outside and keep on walking. But she couldn’t find the strength. Instead she climbed slowly up the stairs, resigned to her fate and too tired to fight it.
Jean leaned back against the sink, a self-satisfied smile playing around her lips. She lit a fag and breathed out the smoke in a long, narrow stream of relief. She’d been on pins all day, worried that something would go wrong, but one look at the girl’s face had been enough to put her mind at rest. He hadn’t shown up and that was all that mattered. He was out of the picture and that was the end of it.
She reached for her handbag and pulled out the letter that had come a week ago. It had been typed and sent to her anonymously from a ‘well-wisher’. I think you should be aware that your stepdaughter is planning to elope. A hot flush of rage burned across her cheeks as she read the man’s name, address, telephone number and the date that the two of them were intending to leave.
‘Ungrateful bitch,’ she muttered. All the years she’d skivvied for her, washed her clothes, cooked her meals and this was the bloody thanks she got. The slut had got herself a fancy man and had been planning on running off, leaving her and Charlie high and dry. It was all there on the page in black and white.
A thin hiss escaped from her lips. The dirty little tart deserved a slap. Still, she’d managed to scupper their plans good and proper. It had taken her a whole morning to construct the brief note, but when it was done, she’d been well pleased with the result: I’m so sorry but I can’t go through with it. It’s over. Please don’t try and see me. I won’t change my mind.
The writing had been perfect, an immaculate forgery, but Jean had still been worried that the man might ignore the response and turn up as arranged. That had been the big problem, the fact that she’d known when but not where they were meeting.
Jean shoved the letter she’d received back in the envelope – she would burn it later tonight – and returned it to the bottom of her bag. She took one last drag on her cigarette before jabbing the butt into the ashtray. Then she painted a smile on her face, picked up the pot of tea and carried it through to the front room.
‘Sorry about the wait, Brendan. She won’t be long now. She’s just powdering her nose.’
Lucy stood in the bedroom, gazing at her reflection in the dressing-table mirror. The person who looked back felt like a stranger, someone she had never seen before. She studied the oval face, the wide blue eyes, the bloodless lips that were slightly parted. Was this really her? An odd kind of numbness was spreading through her body, a sense of dislocation that she couldn’t shake off.
‘Lucy Rivers,’ she murmured.
She ran a brush through her wet fair hair and listened to the sound of the rain against the window. It had been raining the last time she had seen him. They had decided not to meet again until this evening – no unnecessary risks, no chance of anyone seeing them together – but perhaps that had given him time to reconsider. She wondered at what precise moment he had stopped loving her, or at least stopped loving her enough. And why hadn’t he let her know? It had been cowardly and cruel to leave her waiting there. She had not believed him capable of either of those things.
‘Why?’ she whispered, her lips barely moving.
There was still a chance, she thought, that someone or something had prevented him from coming, but the idea was a stale one now. No, if he had wanted to contact her, he would have found a way. She threw the brush on to the bed, went over to the window and looked down at the street. She wrapped her arms around her chest and rocked gently back and forth. The gaping emptiness of her heart was suddenly shot through with rage and bitterness. She wished that he was dead! Better that than he’d betrayed her. She would rather grieve for him than suffer this kind of pain.
Outside, the street lamps cast a soft orange glow. A middle-aged couple walked by, the man holding an umbrella protectively above the woman’s head. Abruptly she pulled the curtains across and turned away. She went back to the mirror and stared at herself again. The simple blue dress was creased, but she wasn’t going to get changed – she had nothing to get changed into. All her decent clothes were in the suitcase, and the suitcase was out in the yard. Anyway, it didn’t matter what she looked like. She didn’t care. She didn’t give a damn.
Slowly she limped down the stairs, her hand gripping the banister. She paused for a moment when she came to the bottom of the flight, took a couple of deep breaths and then walked into the front room with her head held high.
‘There you are,’ said Jean, as if she’d been gone for hours rather than minutes.
Lucy glanced from Jean to her father to the monster that was Brendan Vasser. He was sitting in the armchair by the fire with his legs splayed and his hands resting on his heavy thighs. She knew what he was feeling without him having to say a word. She could see it in his cold reptilian eyes, in the way he stared at her. It wasn’t love – brutes like Vasser didn’t understand the meaning of the word – but it was obsession. He wanted to possess her, to own her body and soul. And she suddenly thought, What difference does it make? She had already lost everything. Lucy Rivers was dead. Whatever happened next was irrelevant.
Her stomach flipped over, but her voice remained calm. ‘Here I am.’
1
Maddie Layne shifted the rucksack on to her other shoulder as she passed through the tall wrought-iron gates. It was half past eight and a thin morning haze still blurred the outlines of the graves. She liked this time of day best, when everything was fresh and new. The constant burdens of her life, the responsibilities, the worries and financial difficulties, seemed to weigh less heavily in the peace of the cemetery.
Dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt, she strolled along the main thoroughfare before turning left by the weeping willows and heading down a narrower path. It was almost a year now since she had placed the advert in the Kellston Gazette offering her services as a grave tender. It didn’t bring in a fortune, but every little helped.
She had twelve clients on her books, and most of them lived away from the area, making it difficult to visit the cemetery on a regular basis. Her duties involved washing down and polishing the headstones, tidying the plots and putting fresh flowers in the urns. To prove that the work had been done, she would then send a photo from her mobile. Once a month was the most common arrangement, but sometimes it was quarterly, and in one unusual case it was every week.
It was this latter client who interested Maddie the most. The man, Mr Cato, had contacted her six months ago, and the cheques came regular as clockwork. The voice on the phone had been neither young nor old, but it had been terse, gruff even, with the merest hint of a London accent. He had provided the name on the grave and the number of the plot, given her instructions, taken her address and then hung up without saying goodbye – all in the
space of a couple of minutes.
The grave, which she was now approaching, was situated on the edge of the older, wilder part of the cemetery. Here, nature had reclaimed the land, with weeds and wild flowers establishing themselves in every nook and cranny. Deeper into the undergrowth lay weathered tombstones and crumbling mausoleums covered in ivy. Grey stone angels rose from the foliage with their hands clasped in prayer.
The grass, still damp from the morning dew, brushed against her ankles as she walked. She could hear the birds in the trees and from across the other side of the graveyard the low rumbling sound of a mower. She checked her watch – she had to be at the garden centre for her shift at ten o’clock – before coming to a halt beside the white marble headstone.
‘Hey, Lucy,’ she said, softly patting the top of the stone with the palm of her hand.
She stood and studied the inscription for a moment. Lucy May Rivers had died over thirty years ago when she was only nineteen. So young, too young. Maddie drew in a breath and released it in a sigh. She found herself wondering, not for the first time, what had happened to the poor girl. Her gaze travelled over the brief and by now familiar words – there was only the name, the dates of her birth and her death, and then Rest in Peace.
Maddie swung the rucksack off her shoulder and dropped it on the ground. She crouched down, took out a bunch of red roses and placed them on the grass. The flowers had come from her back garden, and before leaving the house, she had cut down the stems and wrapped the ends in wet cotton wool and cellophane. Next she removed a bottle of water from the rucksack and a couple of cloths. She dampened one of the cloths and stood up again, leaning over the stone to wipe away the film of summer dust before giving the surface a polish.
As she worked, she pondered on Cato’s connection to Lucy. Who was he? A relative? A friend or lover? But if this was the case, she didn’t understand why the grave had been neglected for so long. When she’d first started tending the plot, it had been clear that no one had visited for years. Or if they had, they’d made no attempt to tidy it. At the start, it had taken her half an hour just to clear away the tangle of weeds.
‘So what’s the deal?’ she asked softly. ‘Who is this guy, then?’
Maddie didn’t even know his Christian name. The monthly cheques, sent by a local firm of solicitors called Crosby, Link & Chatham, only added to the mystery. Why didn’t he send them himself? Perhaps he was living abroad. But the mobile number she had was for the UK. She thought of that voice again, gruff and insistent, but still couldn’t attach an accurate age to it.
‘Cato,’ she said, rolling the name on her tongue.
She tugged the old flowers out of the urn, discarded the water, refilled it with fresh and then set about arranging the roses. She always took extra care with this plot, and it wasn’t just because of the money. Lucy Rivers had died at the same age as her own sister, Greta, and she felt an emotional attachment to the grave that she didn’t feel towards the others.
Maddie paused for a second, her fingers hovering over the smooth red petals of the flowers. She couldn’t visit Greta’s resting place because there wasn’t one. Her sister had been murdered – there was little doubt about that – but her body had never been found. The police reckoned that it had probably been swept out on the tide from the Thames to the sea. It was six years now since she’d gone missing and Maddie was still struggling to come to terms with it.
She gave a shake of her head, trying to free her mind of the horror of what had happened.
It was no good dwelling on it – that wouldn’t change anything – but the lack of closure, of not being able to bury her, to properly grieve for her, meant that it all felt unfinished. Greta’s life was like a book with the last few pages torn out.
She finished arranging the roses and stood back, inclining her head to view the effect. ‘Not bad,’ she murmured. The different shades of red looked striking against the cool white of the marble. She took a photo and checked her watch again before sitting down on the rucksack. The sun was getting stronger and she could feel its rays warming her bare arms. She would stay for a while and have a few minutes to herself. Time alone was a precious commodity these days.
There was a kind of solace in tending Lucy’s grave. Maddie was able to do for her what she wasn’t able to do for Greta. It might not be much, but it went some way towards filling the void. In front of the headstone was a small oblong marble kerb filled with white quartz chips and she began to pick out the pieces of twig and leaf that had gathered there. As her fingers worked, her thoughts revolved around her sister. Where had it all gone wrong?
As kids, they’d been close, allies in the face of their mum’s manic restlessness. Never staying in one place for more than a year had been a strange, nomadic way to live, but Kim Layne had always believed that the grass was greener someplace else. They’d travelled the length and breadth of the country, settling in cities, towns and country villages only to be quickly uprooted again.
Maddie had soon learned that there was little point in making new friends and she and her sister had relied on each other for company. With Greta being four years younger, she had always felt protective towards her. They’d rarely disagreed, shared the same sense of humour and had a common understanding. They even looked the same, with their long, glossy chestnut hair – an inheritance from their frequently absent father, Conrad – and the slender frame and hazel eyes of their mother.
But later it had all changed. Maddie frowned, her brows bunching together. When was that exactly? After she had gone to university, she thought, when Greta was left on her own. At Christmas everything had been fine, at Easter too, but on returning for the summer holidays, Maddie had found a sister she barely recognised. She hadn’t just become sullen and argumentative, but downright hostile.
‘It’s just a phase,’ her mother had said dismissively. ‘Teenage hormones. She’ll grow out of it.’
But Maddie hadn’t been so sure. There was something reckless, something hard and brittle about Greta that hadn’t been there before. She had a sudden image of her leaning against the kitchen sink with her arms folded across her chest, her chin jutting out, her eyes flashing with contempt.
‘Archaeology,’ she’d said sneeringly. ‘I mean, why are you even doing that? What’s the point? It’s just old bones and dirt and bits of pot and stuff.’
‘It’s more than that.’
Greta had curled her lip. ‘Oh yeah? Who cares about all those dead people? It’s boring.’
‘It’s not boring.’
‘You’re boring.’ And with those words, delivered as smartly as a blow, Greta had given a snort and flounced out of the room.
Maddie winced at the memory, wondering why that particular moment had stuck so vividly in her mind. Perhaps it was because it marked the beginning of the end of their closeness. Old bones, she thought, raising her face to look around the cemetery. Well, there was certainly no shortage of those around here.
It was a year or so later that their mother had made the ultimate mistake of moving to London and, more specifically, the East End. Why had she chosen Kellston? Maddie still didn’t know. Something to do with one of her causes, probably. She was keen on causes – feminism, human rights, animal rights, anti-racism, anti-war, global warming – but her enthusiasms were as changeable as her postcode.
It wasn’t long after the move that Greta started bunking off school, smoking and drinking and hanging with the other local drop-outs from the Mansfield estate. Then, when she was sixteen, she’d had the misfortune to meet Bo Vale. He was twenty-three, a tall, black, handsome, cocky guy who liked to flash the cash. Anyone could see that he was trouble, but maybe that was what Greta was looking for. It wasn’t long before she fell pregnant, and nine months later she gave birth to a son.
Maddie smiled as she thought about Zac. He was the one good thing, the only good thing to have come out of the relationship. She had no idea if the pregnancy had been planned or not – Greta was barely talking to her
by then – but the child had probably been conceived in the same careless way in which her sister appeared to do everything else. Anyway, Greta had moved in with Bo on the Mansfield estate and two years later she was dead.
Maddie’s smile quickly faded. Not just dead but murdered. And whose fault was that? A gangland killing, the cops reckoned, but she placed the blame firmly at Bo’s door. He’d worked for the Streets, a local family of villains that by all accounts pretty much ran Kellston.
She’d never liked him. What was there to like? They say never judge a book by its cover, but that’s all there was to him – a man who lived outside the law, who was all show and no substance, a man who had managed to get Greta murdered.
Angrily she pushed deeper into the white quartz chips, churning them up. She wanted to shake him, scream at him, make him tell her what had happened, but it was too late for that. He was dead too, shot through the head, his corpse rolled into the Thames. He had died on the same night as Greta. His body had snagged on the tow rope of a boat, but hers had never been found. There was blood, though, her blood as well as his, on the path where they must have been standing.
Maddie didn’t like to think about those last few seconds of her sister’s life, of the terror she must have felt. It made her feel sick inside. What had Greta got involved in? What was she even doing there that night? The police had found out nothing. The investigation had dragged on for months, but no one had been arrested. There was, she knew, little chance of the truth ever coming out now.
She took a few deep breaths. As her anger subsided, she withdrew her hand, sighed and began to smooth out the chips. It was then, in the far left corner of the kerb, that she noticed a tiny glint in the sunlight. A piece of foil or shiny paper, she presumed, as she casually reached across to retrieve it. But what she pulled out was something quite different. For a moment she stared at it, astonished. It was a gold ring, a wedding band, and judging from the size, it was a woman’s.
