7
Lesley struggled to catch her breath as she paced around the dining room. With Sarah gone at Maggie’s behest, it felt like the walls were closing in on her and the air was being sucked out of the room. She tried to take deep breaths but her chest constricted as though crushed by the weight of her fear and when she spoke all she could manage was a ragged gasp.
‘Why hasn’t Maggie come back? Why is she taking so long?’ she asked Belmar, who stood by the French doors as if he was guarding them.
‘I’m sure she’ll be back soon.’
‘That’s what you said a minute ago.’
Belmar didn’t answer but glanced at the door leading to the hall. He’s doing it again, Lesley thought. Every time she asked him what was going on, he looked to the door. Was something happening out there, was that why he kept checking?
‘Is there something you’re not telling me?’ she croaked as panic forced the breath from her lungs again. ‘Is that why Maggie hasn’t come back yet? Can you please find out where she is?’
‘I think I should stay here until she gets back.’
Lesley had never struck another person in her life but Belmar’s refusal to act made her want to slap his face so hard she had to clench her fists to stop herself. As she did, an intense heat surged through her body and she swayed on the spot.
‘Oh—’
‘Are you okay, Mrs Kinnock?’
‘I think I’m going to faint.’
Belmar darted forward and grabbed her arm. ‘Come and sit down.’
‘Please find out what’s going on,’ she said as he lowered her into a chair.
‘If you’re not well I should stay—’
‘Please,’ she implored him again. ‘I’m going mad not knowing.’
He caved. ‘Okay, but can you stay put until I get back?’
Too weary to argue, she nodded.
As he left the room, Lesley slumped over and put her face in her hands. Her skin felt clammy because it was warm inside the house and she was so exhausted she imagined she could fall asleep just sitting there like that. But her mind wouldn’t let her rest and she began to cry again as it confronted her with image after image of Rosie looking terrified and calling for help that wouldn’t come. The idea of someone causing suffering to her child was more than she could bear. For months she’d worried about the attention Rosie received because of their win and that something like this might happen. She should’ve listened to her instinct and been there to protect her. That was her job as her mum, the only job that mattered, and she’d failed her.
There was a knock on the door. Belmar entered first, clutching a glass of water. Behind him followed Maggie with a tall, striking man in a black suit who she’d spoken to earlier. He introduced himself again as Detective Chief Inspector Will Umpire, the officer in charge.
He took a seat at the dining-room table next to hers. Maggie and Belmar also sat.
‘I want to thank you for your cooperation so far,’ he began. ‘I know it can’t be easy—’
Lesley held her hand up to stop him. She didn’t want to hear any more platitudes or apologies. Already she was sick of them skirting around what needed to be said.
‘Just tell me what’s going on. Is it Rosie’s blood?’
Umpire echoed what Maggie had said about more tests needing to be carried out. Lesley nodded but she wasn’t actually listening. The question about the blood wasn’t the one she really wanted to ask. It was a prelude while she summoned the courage to articulate the question that had been swirling around her head like a maelstrom for the past few hours. The question no parent ever wanted to ask. But she had to, needed to. This man was in charge of finding Rosie and she had to know what he was thinking.
‘Mr Umpire, do you think Rosie’s dead?’
The room went still and Lesley became aware of two sounds – a pulse pumping wildly in her ears and someone shouting outside, although she couldn’t make out exactly what through the double-glazing. She saw Umpire exchange a brief glance with Maggie before he cleared his throat to speak.
‘At this stage I have no reason to believe she is.’
‘But what if the blood does turn out to be hers?’
‘We can assume she’s been injured in some way. But while that’s serious, it doesn’t necessarily mean we should be looking for a body yet.’
‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ Lesley moaned.
Belmar passed her the glass of water but the tiny sip she took made her feel even more nauseous. She set it down on the table with a shaky hand.
Maggie leaned across the table. ‘Lesley, if the blood does turn out to be Rosie’s there may be another explanation for how it got there. Have you ever noticed any unusual marks on her skin, any cuts or grazes?’
Lesley frowned. ‘Marks?’
‘Yes, like her skin’s been cut.’
Lesley felt her own blood drain from her face.
‘You think someone’s been cutting Rosie?’
‘Not exactly—’
Maggie had no time to elaborate, as there was another shout outside, this time louder and clearer. A male voice shouted for DCI Umpire.
The four of them shot to their feet but Lesley was closest to the French doors and reached them first to yank the curtains open.
‘Oh God, no. No, no, no . . .’
A man in a white jumpsuit with cropped silver hair was standing on the terrace holding a large, clear plastic bag. He looked furious. Beside him was a very young-looking officer in uniform who was puce and panting, as though he’d just run from somewhere.
Lesley heard Maggie behind her.
‘Mrs Kinnock, please come away from the window.’
But it was too late. She had already seen it.
Inside the bag was a miniskirt. Made from a synthetic silver fabric, it was covered in a layer of tulle embellished with dozens of silver sequin stars – and blood.
It was one of Rosie’s skirts.
Lesley smashed her fists against the glass. A deep, guttural moan like an injured animal might make filled the room. The noise grew louder and louder until she realized it was coming from her. She hit the window again but her body was weak from shock and the noise barely resonated. Then she felt hands grip her shoulders and pull her away. Lesley heard the urgency in Maggie’s voice.
‘Please come away from the window.’
Her body went slack as she allowed Maggie to lead her across the room. She felt numb, like she’d been given a general anaesthetic and woken up before it’d had time to wear off. Lesley tried to open her mouth to speak, but her throat had also seized up. She couldn’t seem to make anything function.
‘For God’s sake, shut the curtains,’ Umpire snapped. Belmar yanked them closed.
‘I’m very sorry, Mrs Kinnock,’ said the DCI with obvious contrition. ‘You shouldn’t have seen that.’
‘The blood—’ she rasped.
‘Is it Rosie’s skirt?’ asked Maggie.
‘Yes, but I don’t understand how you’ve found it covered in blood,’ she stammered. ‘She wasn’t wearing it when I went out this morning. She had her shorts on, a navy pair.’
‘Is the skirt a particular favourite of hers?’ said Belmar.
‘Yes, I guess.’
‘Is there any reason why she might be a bit secretive about wearing it?’ he pressed. ‘You know, changing into it when she knows you aren’t around?’
‘Let’s give her a minute,’ Maggie cautioned, and she made her sit down in a chair.
It was a few moments before Lesley was able to answer Belmar’s question. She roughly wiped her wet cheeks with her palms.
‘I bought it for her about a month ago. Mack doesn’t know she has it. He wouldn’t like her wearing something so short. It wasn’t expensive,’ she felt obliged to point out. ‘It’s from Topshop.’
‘So she only wears it when he’s not around?’ said Maggie.
‘I suppose so,’ said Lesley warily. She didn’t like the way the conversation wa
s going. It felt like they were ganging up on her. ‘But I can’t see her changing into it just to revise in.’
‘When would she normally wear it?’ said Maggie.
‘Well, it’s for going out.’
Maggie shot her an odd look.
‘You told me earlier that Rosie wasn’t allowed out with her friends in the evenings. Your husband’s strict about that kind of thing, isn’t he? If she doesn’t go out and it’s not for just wearing around the house, what occasion did you buy it for?’
Lesley bit her lip. She’d said too much.
8
He didn’t bother to shower or even change out of his shorts and singlet before heading home. Perversely, he wanted people to smell the sex on him. Would they be scared if they knew what he was capable of? They should be.
His encounter with the woman at the gym had been perfunctory but satisfying. She hadn’t taken too kindly to his handling of her and got upset when he’d pushed her face-forward over a stack of boxes filled with leaflets advertising the gym and fucked her from behind. What was she expecting, he laughed afterwards when she slapped him across the face and complained he’d hurt her. Foreplay? They were in a store cupboard at a municipal gym, not a suite at the Ritz. Close to tears, she slapped him again. He walked out then, leaving her alone to struggle back into her pink Lycra.
Women like her were all the same, he justified. Rich and arrogant, she’d batted her eyelashes at him, made it clear she was up for some fun then took offence when it was on his terms, not hers. She wouldn’t tell anyone what had happened, though, of that he was certain. She wouldn’t risk her husband finding out, whoever the idiot was. He also doubted he’d see her at the gym again.
It was gone three when he got home. On a whim he’d taken a detour, just to make sure he hadn’t left anything incriminating behind linking him to the girl, but the police were everywhere and he couldn’t get near the place. He’d try again tomorrow.
Unlocking his front door and pushing it open, the first thing he saw was the overnight bag he’d packed and left at the bottom of the stairs, ready for his departure. His passport was lying on top so he wouldn’t forget it. He wouldn’t need either of them now, nor did he have any use for the freshly laundered shirt, suit and tie on the coat hanger dangling from the door frame between the hall and the kitchen. He grabbed the hanger and tossed the whole lot onto the floor in a crumpled heap.
In the kitchen, he ran the cold tap for a minute before filling a pint glass with water. As he glugged it down, he peered through the kitchen window to make sure the burner that still cradled the ashes of his and the girl’s garments was in the garden where he’d left it. He knew there was no reason why it wouldn’t be, but months of taking steroids had heightened his sense of paranoia as well as his sex drive and he was no longer trustful of anything or anyone.
Draining the glass, he set it down on the side and went back into the hall. His phone was in a side pocket of his gym bag. He’d already worked out in his head what he was going to say and within seconds he’d typed and sent the text:
Had 2 cancel trip. Boss sending me to Basingstoke 2mw 4 client mtg. Let’s talk 2nite.
He spent the next ten minutes in a state of agitation, worried she’d call straight back to demand a fuller explanation when he needed more time to get his story straight. There was no client meeting – no boss, even – but she didn’t know that. She thought he was an accountant, that he lived in south London and his name was Simon. All lies, carefully constructed to reel her in.
After twenty minutes he began to relax and took himself upstairs for a shower. She was probably at their meeting point already and unable to talk for fear of being overheard. He imagined she’d be going nuts at the change of plan, but he knew exactly how to placate her. The only concern he had was that she’d want to try a different approach now. He just had to bide his time until the events of that morning caught up with them.
He came downstairs wrapped in only a towel, idly fingering the fresh scratch that marked the right side of his chest just above his heart. It wasn’t deep but it was sore – for someone so slight the girl had been surprisingly tough to overcome. She’d clawed at him like a cornered tomcat until he’d managed to render her unconscious.
He padded barefoot across the living-room floorboards and sat down on the edge of the sofa. His laptop was on the coffee table, opened on Twitter. He refreshed the page and was mollified to see no mention of the girl’s disappearance on his feed yet, which he’d purposely curated to include the local newspaper, the Mansell Echo, the police and a few townspeople who seemed to know everything that went on before anyone else. When the story broke, he wanted to be ready.
That meant making contact with the parents. His previous messages had clearly been far too vague for them to bother responding to, so this time he would make his intention clear. Simple. To the point. If he was quick, he could make the last post of the day and it should arrive first thing.
How, he wondered, would they get the money to him? He couldn’t just ask them to transfer it to his bank account and give them the sort code. But the idea of so much cash being left somewhere for him to pick up seemed equally risky. He decided not to issue any directions for payment until he’d googled what people did in a situation like his. It was all new to him.
He scrawled his note on a piece of paper torn from a spiral notebook, careful to disguise his usually neat handwriting. In the middle drawer of the kitchen dresser he found the crayons he’d used to address his more recent letters to the Kinnocks. They were the ones he’d written anonymously and had filled with expletives and threats after the parents failed to acknowledge any of the polite letters he’d sent with his details, asking them to get in touch. He fumbled open the packet – a souvenir from a previous relationship with a woman who had a son – and selected the red crayon. Yes, that would look nice. Keeping his hand steady, he wrote out the Kinnocks’ address in plain capital letters. Sitting back, he admired his handiwork. Perfect.
On the coffee table next to his laptop were three more mobile phones, which he’d bought when he’d stepped up his surveillance on the girl and her parents. Like his usual phone, they were all pay-as-you-go, all untraceable.
He picked up the Samsung first. There were only two numbers stored in the contacts and he dialled the first one while simultaneously opening his Gmail account on his laptop. He clicked through the automated options until a woman’s voice came on the line.
‘You’ve reached customer service. I’m Ruth. How can I help today?’
‘I need to cancel my flight.’
‘Do you have a reference number, sir?’
He rattled it off from the email open in front of him. He could hear Ruth tap-tapping on a keyboard.
‘That flight’s for eleven p.m. this evening, sir.’
‘I know. I can’t go now because of work. I’d like my money back.’
Ruth spoke briskly. ‘Your ticket is non-refundable, sir. However, if you want to change the date of your flight, I can do that for a fee.’
‘No, I want my money back now.’
‘I’m sorry, sir, but we are a non-refundable airline. Our terms are very clear on our website.’
‘I don’t give a fuck how clear they are, I want my money back.’
Ruth paused. ‘I’m sorry, sir, but that is the airline’s policy. Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to re-book the flight on another day?’
‘What the fuck for?’ he snarled. ‘I don’t need to go up there now.’
‘Then I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do.’
He clenched his fists to his temples. He needed to think but the white noise whooshing in his ears was making it impossible.
‘I can’t afford to lose that fucking kind of money,’ he said. ‘With all the stupid extras you charge it’s nearly two hundred fucking quid.’
There was no reply from Ruth but he could hear the chatter of other operators in the background, so he knew she hadn’t cut him off.
‘Seriously, what the fuck am I meant to do?’
‘If you want, I can put you through to our complaints department, but they will tell you the same thing, I’m afraid,’ said Ruth.
Incensed, he called her a fucking bitch and slammed the phone down. He was about to dial the other number stored in the Samsung’s contacts when he suddenly noticed it was nearly 4 p.m. His next jab was overdue.
Returning to the hallway, he extracted a small vial of clear liquid from the front pocket of his gym bag. There was a description on the label written in a language he couldn’t read, Arabic or something, but he had been assured it was Deca, the steroid he relied on to ease joint stiffness. From his bag he also retrieved a black leather oblong box, the kind an expensive pen or necklace might come in. Flipping it open, he pulled a syringe out of its velvet bed and attached a new needle popped from a blister packet. Deftly, he filled the syringe with liquid from the vial, unwrapped the towel from his waist and let it drop to the floor, then injected himself on the right side of his groin. He didn’t even have to look where he was doing it, barely noticed the sting as the needle pricked his flesh, and the whole process was over in thirty seconds. He put the used needle in the bin under the kitchen sink and returned the syringe to its velvet bed, snapping the box shut.
Still naked, he went back into the living room and picked up the Samsung mobile to make his second call. The woman who answered sounded much nicer than Ruth. Her voice was soft and melodic and soothing.
‘I need to cancel my reservation,’ he said.
‘Of course, sir. Do you have your booking reference?’
‘Sorry, not to hand.’ He gave her the fake name he’d booked under, Simon Morgan. ‘I’m afraid work is keeping me down south now.’
‘You were due to arrive tonight?’ she queried.
‘Yes, but not until after midnight. I was meant to stay until Saturday, but, as I said, exceptional circumstances have forced me to change my plans.’ He grinned to himself. Exceptional indeed.
Gone Astray Page 6
