Two For Joy (Isabel Fielding Book 2)

by Sarah A. Denzil

  I tell Murphy some of the details about Abigail and the fire. Even about the photograph of “Mary” that turned up years later.

  “Cold cases like this don’t always turn anything up,” he says. “But I’ll have an officer take a look.” For the first time, there’s a little hope in his voice, and I realise how obligated he feels about Isabel’s case, and how determined he is to help me in any way possible. This is a man who has been crucified by the press for being incompetent. But I know the truth. Isabel is just that good. It’s not DCI Murphy who’s the problem, it’s her.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  ISABEL

  Hello, Leah. I have a story to tell you today, and I think you’ll enjoy it.

  Chloe and I have been continuing on our road trip for a few days now. It’s proving to be quite an experience, with lots of highs and lows. The highs, for instance, involve a white substance we snort up our noses every now and then. Chloe likes to do it much more frequently than I do, because I like to remain in control. However, I did decide to have a go. One never knows when one might return to one’s secure hospital facility, after all. The lows include waking up in the morning with Chloe’s dirty feet shoved in my face. Her hygiene leaves something to be desired. But I can handle it. After all, I did use the showers at Crowmont Hospital. I’m no clean freak.

  But I digress.

  We were heading south, dear Leah, and I said to Chloe that I had a friend who used to live in the south. Being from the north, I wasn’t too sure how to get to this place via car, seeing as the last time I went was on public transport; a train journey in a baseball cap, like something out of a spy thriller. So Chloe bought an A-Z road map because we didn’t have a smartphone for sat nav. We briefly considered stealing one, but I decided that was too risky.

  It should be noted here that Chloe has no idea who I am and why I’m homeless. I’ve avoided answering her questions, and I think she assumes that I’m the victim of some terrible crime. Bless her damaged little soul.

  We continued on our little road trip to the south, reaching our destination after a few petrol station stops, after selling small bags of white powder, after snorting a few lines and eating McDonald’s out of paper bags. We reached our destination relatively quickly.

  Do you know where we went?

  We went to a place close to your heart. Your home town! We went to Hackney, Leah, because there was someone I wanted to visit.

  But the visitation was tricky. Firstly, I couldn’t tell Chloe what I was going to do. I also needed to check that it was safe to visit. That involved us staying at the town for a few days before I made the visit, and Chloe complained about this the whole time. While the whinging and whining was getting to me, I decided to allow her some grace, owing to her difficult past. You have to make allowances for some people, don’t you? And Chloe has been good to me. She follows me like a little puppy dog, my willing slave. Hanging on my every word.

  It was nice. You used to be like that, Leah.

  Anyway, there we were in Hackney, waiting for some sort of sign that the coast was clear, as they say in Scooby-Doo. My appearance is quite different now compared to when all the trouble began, meaning I was hopeful that I could slip away without being noticed.

  And I was right.

  There was no one there, Leah. I expected at least one dark car parked in the vicinity. At least one dodgy-looking vehicle clearly monitoring the place. But there was no one.

  I slipped in through a side entrance. You know the ones. Every cemetery has a side entrance and a path that leads through the graves to another road. They are locked at night, and I had to make sure there wasn’t a CCTV camera attached to a streetlight or something first. I got Chloe to drop me off close to the entrance because I was carrying various pieces of equipment needed for my task. She was certainly spooked to see what I was taking to the cemetery, but I assured her that it wasn’t nefarious. It was business.

  Though it was a little nefarious.

  The last time we saw each other, Leah, I told you about how I visited your mother’s grave. Well, I created a mental map of that cemetery. I know, I know, I’m a genius with an extraordinary memory. We both know that.

  Again, I was wary of cameras. I knew you would have mentioned my visit to your mother to the police when you escaped from me. I knew they would observe this spot in case I decided to come back. That’s why I was surprised. I was prepared to call it off, just like I called off my visit to your farm-boy and to my mother. But this was free and easy. There was nothing. No camera on the gravestone. Nothing. Perhaps it’s illegal to whack a CCTV camera on a gravestone; I don’t know. It was dark enough that if there were any others in the area, they wouldn’t pick up my face. I just had to hope that they weren’t manned 24/7.

  I had one chance to visit. This was it.

  It shames me to admit it, but I’m not a physically strong person. As you know, I had help from my father when we taught James Gorden to stay out of our business. Digging, for instance, is not a pastime I’ve done particularly often. Not since I dug a hole on Blackpool Beach. But I’m a determined little sod when I want to be. No pun intended.

  And trust me, Leah, I wanted to be.

  I wanted to see the worms, feel the earth, see the bones and the decaying flesh, smell the mould, the rot, see the structure of her, the structure of you. I wanted to see where you came from.

  As the soil came away from that most sacred of places, I lay down in it. Rubbed it on my skin. Spread it up my arms. The farther down I got, the damper it became. And then, after blistering my hands, sweating through my shirt, and almost crying tears of frustration, I reached wood.

  Leah, I met your mother. And she’s beautiful.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I meet Mark on the steps of the library with my laptop bag slung over my shoulder, already sweating through my long-sleeved shirt. Spring feels as though it is around the corner now, and I haven’t dressed appropriately. On the other hand, he appears thoroughly ready for summer in a t-shirt and light trousers.

  “Hey,” he says, crinkling his bright blue eyes, just like his grandad’s.

  “Thanks for meeting me.” I extend a hand, not sure if this is a handshake moment, but feeling like I need to do something to acknowledge it. He takes it, and we quickly shake.

  “No, I should be thanking you. You’ve cheered my grandad a great deal by helping him like this. He told me that he showed you the picture of ‘Mary’.”

  “Yeah.”

  We make our way into the library, Mark leading the way.

  “When he first showed me that photograph, I felt like my mind had been blown. I mean, I never believed Grandad’s crazy theories about Abigail until that point. But she looks like him. And it can’t be another female relative, because she’s dressed in sixties clothes, you know? She’s the right age to be Abigail, and she has some of my grandad’s features.” He shakes his head. “It’s weird. But I didn’t know where to start tracking down people who might be her. I wish we could afford a private detective, but we can’t. I know this isn’t even close to your job, but I think Grandad is getting desperate. He’s asked everyone who’s walked into his room. You were the first to say yes!”

  I laugh. “Really? But he’s such a charmer.”

  “He is.” Mark leads us over to a library computer and places his bag down on a chair. “And a good man. He deserves to find out what happened to her. I think it would give him some peace after all these years. He doesn’t want to die before finding out.”

  We boot up the computer and begin to check the archived newspaper clippings that have been scanned and saved. Fire in Clifton. Two dead in house fire. House fire deemed to be arson.

  “We’ve always known it was arson,” Mark says. “Grandad told us what the police found out. There were scraps of bedding covered in gasoline that had been fed through the letterbox. The arsonist dropped several matches on the bedding, and the entire house caught fire. It’s a miracle any of them survived.”

&
nbsp; “Why would someone do that?”

  Mark shakes his head. “We don’t know. As far as I’m aware, Grandad and the rest of his family were friendly with everyone. His mother volunteered at the local school as a dinner lady. My father was popular in the local pub. Grandad and Abigail had friends at school. They struggled a bit with money, but not to the point of poverty. No one would be jealous of them. They were regular people.”

  Quietly, we read through more articles about the fire.

  It began in the early hours of Thursday morning. Claire and Anthony Hawker woke to find their house on fire. Anthony recalled hearing his ten-year-old son, George, crying and rushed to his children’s bedroom. But at this point, his twelve-year-old daughter, Abigail, was missing from the children’s room. Anthony told police that he thought little Abigail might have wakened in the night to get a glass of water or go to the toilet. Anthony took George in his arms, and they hurried downstairs. It was then that they realised Abigail wasn’t downstairs either, and Claire rushed back up the stairs to find her daughter. Anthony recounted to the police how he had attempted to stop his wife from going back, but Claire wanted to rescue her only daughter. Anthony then managed to fight his way through the blaze to rescue his son through the back of the house. With his son safe in the garden with a neighbour, Anthony attempted to re-enter the house but was unable to due to the flames.

  Unfortunately, Claire perished in the fire before firefighters could reach her. Her remains were found in the upstairs hallway, where she must have been rushing in total chaos to find her daughter.

  The remains of Abigail Hawker were not recovered.

  There were also more recent articles about the case where amateur sleuths had attempted to piece together the mystery.

  Did the police fail to find twelve-year-old Abigail Hawker’s remains, or was she kidnapped from her own home? On the 14th of April 1944, the Hawker residence went up in flames, killing thirty-two-year-old Claire Hawker and possibly her daughter, Abigail.

  I scanned over the information I’d already read in previous articles. Abigail’s remains were not found. The perpetrators of the arson were not found. Then…

  Shortly after the house fire, a family moved away from Clifton-on-Sea after living there almost all of their lives. Clive and Marie Pierce moved suddenly away from the town, abandoning a job, renting out their property before selling it, and telling only a few people that they were moving. I spoke to Clifton resident Maud Stevens about the Pierces, and she felt that the situation was odd.

  I glance across at Mark. “Have you read this? It’s an opinion piece, but it’s very interesting.”

  Mark leans over my shoulder to read the article. “No, I’ve never seen this one before. I mostly read the clippings from the time of the fire. I never thought to keep going. And I’ve never heard of the Pierce family, either. I wonder if Grandad remembers them.”

  Maud Stevens, described as ninety-two at the time of the article in 2005, claimed that Clive Pierce was an “oddity” and his wife “quiet”. The person interviewing Maud prodded for more information, aiming at juicy gossip, but there aren’t any clear details about who the Pierce family were or where they moved. Still, it’s certainly an avenue to investigate further. The timing was definitely suspicious.

  *

  I think about the strange Pierce family disappearance on my way home. The farther away from the library I travel, the more I wonder if both the article writer and dear old Maud were reaching for something that wasn’t there. Perhaps it’s nothing more than a coincidence. But then, after listening to James Gorden talk about Isabel, I’m not as quick to dismiss conspiracy theories anymore. I wanted to stay and continue the search, but Mark had to leave shortly after we found the article, and we didn’t have time to go to Ivy Lodge and ask George about the Pierces.

  Back home, I do a little more research, seeing if I can find out anything else about Clive and Marie Pierce in Clifton, but Facebook doesn’t bring up any results, and I’m unsure where else to search. Without knowing where they moved, it’s impossible to guess.

  The house is quiet, warm, scented by the sea breeze. Everything smells faintly of salt here, from the wind coming off the sea to the fish-and-chip shops along the pier. There’s something comforting about it, reminding me of one nice memory with my family, a holiday to Scarborough before my father’s drinking grew out of control.

  But Isabel ruined the comfort of this place. The silence is tinged with a foreboding sense of unease. The breeze lifts the hair on the back of my neck and makes me feel as though I’m being watched. Where is she right now? What is she doing? When I am alone like this, I wonder if we are connected in some way, that if I closed my eyes, I’d see through hers. Perhaps if I were hypnotised, I’d reveal her dastardly plans, like Mina Harker and Dracula.

  I long for a glass of wine to calm my jangling nerves, but I daren’t do it. Instead, I check the house, verifying that nothing has been moved. Since moving to Clifton, I haven’t done this as often, but now I feel the need to examine the doors for evidence of tampering, to inspect every room. I even check the cutlery drawers and the plates in the cupboard. I’m not sure why she’d move my plates, but I have to know. Isabel is good at mind games. If she wanted to frighten me, she’d know exactly how to do it. Then I check the cameras and zoom through the footage to check that no one suspicious has come to the house.

  The longer I check, the more tense I become, and when the phone rings, my heart leaps into action, banging against my ribs. My legs are like jelly as I reach for my phone. Before lifting the landline to my ear, I take a deep breath, because this could be yet another phone call to tell me something is wrong.

  “Hi, Lizzie. It’s DCI Murphy.”

  “Hi.” It sounds strange to utter a greeting as mundane as “hi” when I’m expecting terrible news. I can already tell from his voice that this isn’t a telephone conversation to inform me of Isabel’s capture.

  “I wanted to keep you informed,” he says. “We’ve been watching the cemetery where your mother is buried, and we haven’t seen any kind of disturbance. But forensics have confirmed that it was Isabel who opened the grave and that she did take your mother’s wedding ring.”

  I knew all this already, and yet my stomach still flips. I have to hold back the urge to vomit on the floor. If I didn’t expect Tom home at any moment, I think I might be sick, but I don’t want to alarm him. I certainly don’t want him to find out about this.

  “She dug up my mother,” I say, breathless. “I still can’t believe it.”

  “I’m sorry,” Murphy continues. “I’m so sorry this happened to you.”

  “Can my mother be laid to rest now?” I ask.

  “Yes,” he says. “But we think it’s best to bury her somewhere else.”

  I nod. I was thinking the same thing. And I’ve already thought of a place where we went together once, alone, without my dad. I was pregnant with Tom at the time, though I didn’t know it. Dad had just left for two months to work on a building site in the south of France. It was bliss. “The Cotswolds. We stayed at a B&B in Stow-on-the-Wold.”

  Murphy listens quietly as I give him instructions.

  “Do you want us to wait and see if we can… retrieve the ring?” he asks.

  “No.” Perhaps she was never meant to have it. Perhaps this is rectifying a wrong I made when we buried her. And perhaps the police will never find it anyway.

  There’s another pause where Murphy realises that I have little faith in his team finding Isabel in the foreseeable future.

  “I did a little digging about that disappearance for you,” he says. The way he says it makes me think that he did it personally, rather than asking another cop of lower ranking to do it for him. For some reason, that makes me feel sad. I’m using this as an escape from the stress of real life, and so is he. “There’s a possibility the police didn’t do a thorough search of the area and missed her body. It’s slim. Unlikely, even. The other options could include her being tak
en before or during the fire, or someone moved or hid her body. If the body was moved or hidden, the arson might have been designed to cover up her murder. And, I’m afraid, in that case, I would be considering family members suspicious. Now, it could have been an accidental murder. Or it could have been premeditated. Too much time may have passed to ever find out if that is the case. The thing is, if someone did move or hide the body, what would be the point? A fire would destroy evidence, especially back then. Which makes me think that she was abducted.”

  “I found out some more information,” I say. “There was a family who disappeared just after the fire. Clive and Marie Pierce. They didn’t have children.”

  “That’s interesting,” he replies. “I’ll do some more research. See if anything comes up.”

  I give him as much information as I can from the news article, though it isn’t much to go on. “I might know more after I’ve spoken to George.”

  “I have a number you can call me on.” He recites what appears to be a mobile phone number, and then we say our goodbyes.

  He also tells me that I can contact him if I’m ever worried or afraid.

  That leaves me little comfort. Isabel is clearly out there, and she wants to find me. She hasn’t given up, and even DCI Murphy is worried for me.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Tom leans against the bus window, feigning tiredness and a hangover. I know he just doesn’t want to talk to me. However, we have fifteen minutes to kill, and I’ll be damned if we’re going to do it in silence.

  “Are you going out later?” I ask.

  “Just to the pub.”

  “Oh, yeah? Who’s going?”

  “People from the chippy.”

  “Do they have names?”

  “Yes.” He turns his head towards me and rolls his eyes in a dramatic and completely teenager-ish way.

  “Good for them.”