Trust Me

by T. M. Logan

  I drive through the centre and I’m heading out the other side before I even realise it, out into open country again. I do a U-turn in the driveway of a large manor house and drive back into the village, more slowly this time. Little Missenden is chocolate-box cute, old houses and ivy-clad cottages clustered around a well-kept village green. An old parish church with the flag of St George fluttering against the cold autumn sky. There are two pubs but the Red Lion is nearer, a whitewashed country inn with big brick chimneys at each end near the centre of the village. I park up next to an old red phone box, grab the handbag from the passenger seat and head inside.

  The pub is quiet and dark, a low ceiling, thick wooden tables and chairs, padded benches lining the walls. A smell of roast dinners, real ale and open fires. Only a few other patrons, an older couple in Gore-Tex jackets and walking boots, a few middle-aged men watching horse-racing on the TV. A log fire burning low in the grate with a large dog sprawled in front of it, chin on its paws. There are two staff behind the bar. One is barely out of her teens, elbows on the till, thumb-typing on her phone. The other is an older man, early fifties, hair thinning back to almost nothing, writing in careful capitals on a specials board. I order a Diet Coke and wait until he’s poured it before setting it down on the bar in front of me.

  ‘One-sixty please, darlin’.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I say brightly, reaching for my purse. ‘Actually, I don’t know if you can help me with something?’

  ‘I’ll do my very best, love.’ He indicates the thick gold wedding ring on his left hand. ‘But just to let you know, I’m spoken for.’

  I nod and smile as if this is the funniest thing I’ve heard all week. ‘That is a shame.’

  He cracks a crooked smile. ‘Just teasing, young lady.’

  ‘I’m actually looking for someone, was wondering if you might know where I can find her?’ I hold out my debit card and he gives me the card machine to tap it against. ‘I got chatting to someone on the train yesterday, going into London, but when she got off she left her handbag behind. I was going to just stick it in lost property at Marylebone but then I remembered she’d said she lived in Little Missenden and since I’ve got a lunch meeting in Amersham today, I thought I’d just drop it off on my drive through.’

  The lie feels unconvincing on my tongue, even though it contains shards of truth. I put the handbag down next to my drink and the landlord gives me a blank look, his belly straining against a grey Lacoste polo shirt.

  ‘What was her name, this woman?’

  ‘Kathryn.’

  He leans on folded arms against the varnished wood of the bar.

  ‘Kathryn what?’

  I start to wonder if this was the wrong place to start. I’ll try the other pub next, The Crown, then the post office, if there is one.

  ‘She’s probably early twenties?’ I say. ‘Blonde, maybe five foot five? Could have sworn she said she lived here in the village.’

  He starts shaking his head and is about to speak again when the young barmaid cuts him off.

  ‘D’you mean Kathryn Clifton?’ she says. ‘Skinny, pretty?’

  ‘That sounds like her. Don’t suppose you’ve got her number, have you? I could give her a ring, drop the bag over to her on the way to my meeting.’

  The girl shakes her head. ‘Haven’t got her number.’

  ‘Is there someone who might—’

  ‘But she only lives around the corner.’ She gestures with a thumb.

  My pulse ticks up a notch. The barmaid is about to say more, then sees the landlord giving her daggers and the words die on her lips.

  ‘I can drop the bag around to her,’ I say. ‘I don’t mind, honestly. If you just point me in the right direction, I can go.’ I give him a smile. ‘Do my good deed for the day.’

  ‘We’ll make sure it gets back to her,’ the landlord grunts. ‘It’s no bother.’

  ‘Really, I don’t mind. I’ve got time before—’

  ‘You a journalist?’ he says suddenly, his expression darkening.

  ‘What? No.’ I try to adjust to this sudden change of direction. ‘I’m just . . . someone she met on the train.’

  ‘Because that family’s had more than enough with journalists spreading their shit around trying to sell papers, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘I don’t really read a lot of papers,’ I say. ‘And I promise you, I’m not a journalist.’

  ‘Still, probably best if you don’t go knocking on doors,’ he says, all traces of warmth gone from his voice now. ‘Not after what happened to her sister.’

  ‘OK, thanks.’ I hand the bag over the bar to him. ‘Who’s her sister?’

  Without asking, he reaches out, snatches the handbag and stows it away under the bar, out of sight. He ignores my question.

  ‘And your name is?’

  ‘Ellen,’ I say. ‘Ellen Devlin. Tell Kathryn I said hello.’

  I take my Diet Coke to a side table by the door and sit with it for ten minutes, pretending to be absorbed in my phone. If they’re going to return the bag to her, now would be the time, before the lunch-time rush kicks off. If they have a lunch-time rush. But neither the landlord nor the barmaid are going anywhere, although the landlord catches my eye a couple of times as if he’s still trying to get the measure of me.

  My drink finished, I walk out of the Red Lion and back to my car. I’m parked on the street with a good view of the front of the pub, next to an old-style red phone box. A tractor passes, huge tyres thick with mud, squeezing between parked cars and the pavement in a rumble of diesel. Five minutes later, the barmaid appears with the garish purple-and-black handbag slung over her shoulder, thumbs moving over the screen of her phone. I slide down further in the driving seat but she doesn’t even look up, just turns towards the centre of the village and sets off down the footpath. I watch her progress as she walks away. I could follow her on foot but it would be conspicuous in this sleepy Buckinghamshire village on a Thursday morning. The car is a marginally better option.

  Little Missenden has two main streets that meet at a staggered crossroads. I turn the car’s ignition and wait to see which way the barmaid will turn, watching her amble down the path, still absorbed in her phone. Once away from the pub she stops, checks over her shoulder and then casually unzips the bag, fingering quickly through the contents, taking things out and putting them back again. She takes out the purse and unzips it, checks up and down the street again, opens all its pockets and flaps. Frowns, drops it back in the bag and zips it shut again. Keeps on walking.

  She reaches the crossroads and turns left, disappearing from sight. I put the car in gear and pull out to follow her.

  25

  Leon

  When he was out, Leon wore two pairs of gloves: long fingerless gloves over translucent skin-tight latex underneath. It was hard to see the latex pair unless someone was really close up, and Leon didn’t let people get too close. At his own place he just wore the latex but it was better to disguise them when he was out – and in any case he preferred to leave no trace of himself behind. Better to move through the world like a ghost.

  He washed his hands, snapped on a new pair of gloves and dimmed the lights a little. Sat back in the leather desk chair to study his victim board, covering most of the wall in front of his desk. Four unlucky women. Two blondes now, two brunettes. Leon liked to know about the victims – to really know about them – that was what set him apart, made him different from the rest. Not just who they were before they died, but who they loved, how far the ripples of their murder spread. To really appreciate the true impact on their families and friends, on their colleagues, on society. Especially when the cases remained unsolved, when the guy responsible was still out walking the streets, continuing with life as if nothing had happened. Continuing to hunt.

  Leon smiled.

  His eyes moved from one victim to the next, over the words and numbers beneath each picture. Dates of birth, of death. Place of discovery. Name. Age. Address. Occupation. An
exclusive club with only four members. The third victim was special though, different – there was something about her that he couldn’t put his finger on.

  So he did what he had always done, in time-honoured tradition. Maybe not time-honoured, exactly, but an updated version: emails and texts to family members from multiple sources – a refund, an invitation, a letter, an apology – messages on WhatsApp, direct messages on social media, all looking reasonably genuine and carrying the same link with the same payload. All the parents had to do was click on that link once, on any of their devices. It didn’t matter if they ignored, blocked, deleted most of them, because sooner or later they would click on one in a moment of distraction, or tiredness, or boredom – and then he was in. The payload delivered a small piece of malware giving him remote access to that device, and from that point on he was no longer on the outside looking in.

  He was on the inside.

  He hadn’t even been looking for it, not exactly. He just wanted to get inside their heads after their daughter had been taken. Get the inside track.

  That was how he had found out. They’d used coded terms at first, even with each other, but over time it became clear that there was something in their family that no one else knew about. Something they had kept hidden.

  A terrible, dangerous secret.

  A baby.

  The shiver of excitement was still fresh. The thrill of discovery, of knowing before anyone else, being in the unique position to do something about it. The knowledge of the danger she represented, the danger she would be in.

  The baby is the answer, the thing around which all the rest of us are in orbit.

  She was the key to all of it.

  And that was why her picture was destined to end up on his wall.

  26

  I drive slowly, the engine grumbling in third gear. The staggered junction is little more than a trim triangle of grass, a carved wooden signpost across the way pointing to nearby villages, a black-painted barn on the left and a high stone wall facing me on the far side. I steer through the slow turn and catch sight of the barmaid further up the road. Beamond End Lane. The road is narrower here and the footpath has disappeared so she’s walking along the road, beside a neatly-clipped hedge. Still on her phone. I brake and pull in again behind a Mercedes estate parked on the left.

  If she’s spotted me, she gives no sign of it. About a hundred metres up she crosses the road and walks into a driveway, disappearing from view. I pull out again and drive closer, slowing to a crawl as I pass a row of ivy-covered cottages that ends in an open wooden gate, a sign for Silverdale Barn. The drive leads into a courtyard where a couple of cars are parked, a two-storey barn conversion on the far side. Two front doors on the ground floor. Flats? The barmaid is trotting up a wooden staircase at the end of the barn, to another door on the first floor.

  There. She knocks on the door and I pull away again in case she turns and sees me.

  Another barn conversion stands opposite, with another large courtyard. No cars, no animals, no signs of life in the windows. Hopefully they are at work, at whatever City hedge fund or investment bank that means they can afford to live in this little corner of home counties paradise. I pull into the courtyard, gravel crunching noisily under my car tyres, and kill the engine. Grab the AA map book from the back seat of my car and open it across the steering wheel to give the impression of a wayward traveller, angling the rearview mirror so I can see the barmaid at the top of the wooden staircase. She’s talking to someone, but she’s side-on to me so I can’t see who’s answered the door. I say a little prayer that it’s Kathryn, that she’s standing on the doorstep bouncing Mia on her hip, that she’ll look at the handbag and shake her head, wondering what’s going on. Nope, sorry, the bag’s not mine, never seen it before.

  The barmaid hands over the bag, gives a little wave to whoever’s at the door and makes her way down the staircase again. I watch in the mirror as she ambles across the courtyard towards the road, towards me, before turning left to retrace her steps to the Red Lion. She’s back on her phone again, head down, thumbs flying over the screen.

  I give her a minute to get to the crossroads before unclipping my seatbelt. I’m about to get out of the car when there is more movement in the mirror. The front door to Kathryn’s flat opens and a man steps out, moves back to talk for a moment, hands over a card to someone in the doorway. He is wearing a dark suit and tie. He turns to go and I feel a cold wash of unease as I recognise him: slim build, sharp haircut, strong jaw.

  Detective Sergeant Holt.

  That can’t be good news. I look past him, expecting to see DI Gilbourne emerge from the flat behind his partner and follow him down the steps. But he doesn’t. Holt is alone. The door shuts behind him and he hurries down the wooden staircase. He takes out his mobile and puts it to his ear, pulling open the door of a black Ford Focus parked in the courtyard. The arrogance of our last meeting is gone – today he looks shifty, almost surreptitious in the speed of his walk and the hunch of his shoulders. He gets into the car, still talking on the phone. Did he hear the exchange at the front door just now? Did the barmaid mention my name when she handed over the bag, or was Holt the one she actually talked to? It could mean more trouble for me, if he was. I slide down a little lower in the driver’s seat, hoping the young detective hasn’t seen me. Holt guns the Ford’s engine and turns out of the courtyard in a spray of gravel, disappearing down the road.

  I wait five minutes, to be sure that Holt and the barmaid are both clear and gone. While I wait, I take out my phone and google ‘Kathryn Clifton’. There’s only one bar of reception here and there’s a lag while the results page loads. She has accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest. Some links to posts for a university magazine from a couple of years ago. A few other hits, but nothing particularly controversial. I google ‘Kathryn Clifton sister’. No news stories, no obvious controversy, nothing out of the ordinary.

  I frown and put my phone away. If journalists have been causing trouble for her and her family, surely there would be evidence of it on the internet somewhere? Isn’t Google the place none of us can escape, where everything lives forever? The landlord’s words come back to me. Probably best if you don’t go knocking on doors, not after what happened to her sister. Maybe I’d be breaking some sort of rule about not contacting witnesses. The duty solicitor mentioned something about that on Tuesday night but I was so exhausted by that point that I can’t remember the details.

  And I’m here now. In for a penny, in for a pound.

  I get out of my car and walk across the road into the courtyard opposite, past the sign for Silverdale Barn. I climb the staircase quickly and knock twice on the smart wood-panelled front door, a large silver three at its centre. I hear the thudding of heavy footsteps from inside, quick and urgent, and the door is opened by a muscular young guy in tracksuit bottoms and a black vest. He’s somewhere in his mid-twenties, dark hair shaved close to his scalp and a full sleeve of tattoos up his left arm, patterns and skulls and Celtic swirls accentuating the swell of muscles. There is a scattering of stubble across his jaw, dark circles under his eyes.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘Hi,’ I say. ‘Is Kathryn home?’

  He frowns at me, leans out to look down the outside staircase. Checking if I’m alone.

  ‘If you’re looking for that other policeman, he just left.’ When I shake my head, he says abruptly, ‘What do you want then? Are you a journalist?’

  His voice is deep, confident, public school vowels smoothing off all the rough edges.

  ‘No.’ That question again, twice in the last twenty minutes. ‘I’m a friend of hers.’

  ‘Have you seen her?’ His red-rimmed eyes narrow, as if he’s trying to work out if he recognises me. ‘Do you know where she is?’

  ‘I was kind of hoping she’d be here.’ I gesture at him. ‘You’re her . . . flatmate?’

  ‘Boyfriend.’

  ‘Right.’ My memory flashes on an image of the dark b
ruises on Kathryn’s arm. ‘I’m Ellen, by the way. You must be . . . ?’

  ‘Max,’ he says reluctantly.

  ‘Nice to meet you, Max.’ I hold out my hand to shake, but he doesn’t reciprocate. ‘I’m a friend of hers, I was wondering if you’d seen her since Tuesday afternoon? That was when I was with her.’

  There’s a deep red blush rising up his throat.

  ‘I saw her last on Monday morning.’ He sniffs. ‘We didn’t exactly part on the best of terms.’

  ‘Has she been in touch at all since then?’

  ‘I’ve already told that cop all of this. Why should I tell it all again to some randomer who just turns up on my doorstep? Why do you want to get involved, anyway? I’ve never seen you before.’

  I throw a look down towards the road, where a pair of horses and riders are clip-clopping past.

  ‘Can I come in for a minute, to talk? I can explain.’

  He crosses his arms and leans against the doorframe, tattooed bicep bulging against his knuckles.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  He moves to close the door but I put a hand against it to stop it shutting all the way.

  ‘I want to help,’ I say quickly through the gap. ‘To find her. And I want to help the baby, too.’

  He stares at me, keeping his expression neutral. ‘What baby?’

  ‘Mia.’

  ‘Don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  But he says it too fast, his face betraying him, his blank expression slipping. Just for a second. A moment of surprise.