Don’t Trust Me

by Joss Stirling

  ‘Yes, you are.’

  ‘So when Jacob decides to go public – hey, this woman stole my child from me and she went to live with a murdering bastard who killed all these girls and possibly my daughter too – Michael can just produce three living women and say “no, I didn’t”. He couldn’t have predicted that the fourth was depressed and would take her own life, but still that’s not on him. No one has put him at the station when it happened. His reputation would stand. Jacob’s would nose-dive. No one would listen to Jacob after that.’

  ‘How does that fit with the way Jacob died? I feel like we’ve got some of the right pieces but they don’t fit easily together and it’s no good forcing them.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s not quite working, is it?’

  ‘It still must be to do with Jacob finding out somehow that, for once, he was right, that he had been the victim of a conspiracy, Emma had been undercover. What then?’

  ‘That’s where it gets a bit shaky. Maybe he threatened to blackmail Michael and they argued? Michael went over to Jacob’s house on his way to Berlin to sort it out. Push came to shove – I meant that literally – and Jacob died.’

  ‘But the drugged whisky?’

  ‘I told you it was a shaky theory.’

  Something is bugging me. I can’t lie in bed any longer until I get this niggle out of my brain. ‘I hope you’ve got plenty of ink for your printer because I want to print out Emma’s diary – all of it. I’ve been dipping in, mainly reading it backwards in the order I took the photos, but it’s time I put it all together chronologically.’

  Drew groans. ‘I was hoping I could persuade you to stay under the duvet with me a little longer.’

  ‘Tempting, but from the glint in your eye, I don’t think it would be just a little while.’

  ‘I can be quick.’

  I dance away from his outstretched arms. ‘Later. There’s something I want to check.’

  I set the printer going while I get dressed. Drew shows he’s a good sport by solving a couple of paper jams caused by the recycled paper I’m using. By the time I’m dressed I have a complete set of Emma’s entries. I carry them to the kitchen bar.

  ‘Got a couple of highlighters?’

  Drew opens a drawer and chucks me two in rapid succession. I obviously drop them both because I’m a klutz. ‘What are you planning to do with them?’

  I scrabble on the floor to retrieve the pens. ‘You can help if you like. I’m a great believer in highlighters. I want you to underline in yellow every mention of Jacob, and then in orange, Emma’s best friend, Biff.’

  ‘Biff?’

  ‘Yeah, I think she’d been there all along.’

  ‘Your mind is a fascinating place.’

  ‘Sherlock has a mind palace; I have a mind jumble sale. Eventually, if I rummage around enough, I’ll spot a bargain.’

  ‘And right there’s the slogan for your T-shirt.’

  I grin. ‘It was my mistake that I didn’t see it earlier. I’ve always thought of Lizzy as Michael’s friend because I never saw her with Emma. Michael doesn’t have photos of Emma out on display, no group shots, no party selfies, and Biff doesn’t appear in the wedding album – that was obviously because Michael and Emma went alone to Vegas. I’ll bet “Biff”, or Lizzy, who I think are one and the same, stayed home looking after Kaitlin for them.’

  ‘There must be more images, something that puts them together if they were that close.’

  ‘I’m sure there are. Michael will have more photos but in cloud storage or on a device somewhere. I’ve never thought to check. Anyway, it would all be pass-coded. He never liked me to see that part of his life.’ Speed reading, I find the first mention of Biff and highlight it. Drew, who is starting at the other end of the diary, grabs the pen from me and makes several marks. ‘Yesterday, as he was leaving, Inspector Randall mentioned that Lizzy had been on the job.’

  ‘I noticed. It was an odd moment.’

  ‘She admitted it – she could hardly deny it to a serving officer if he’s got the records. I’ve been wondering why she has never told me, in all the years I’ve known her, that she had a career before primary teaching?’

  ‘Playing devil’s advocate here: maybe she just didn’t like to be reminded that she washed out?’

  ‘Or maybe she was hiding it because I would know that Emma was also in the force and start to ask questions. And the name – Lizzy – Elizabeth – Biff – it’s not so much of a stretch to think Emma might’ve called her best friend that.’

  ‘I bet it was useful – something Emma would use naturally without giving Lizzy’s real name away while they were on the job.’ Drew has found more mentions of Biff than me. I can see from a glance that she had greater involvement in Emma’s life towards the end than at the beginning of the diary.

  ‘It’s a shame Emma’s notes don’t go further back. They start when Emma is already living with Jacob. The decision to do that must be in another book somewhere, that’s if she risked writing it down at all. She must have known she was going far outside procedure.’

  ‘I’m more cynical. I can imagine the two women officers were given unofficial sanction to use a honey trap, if their bosses really thought Jacob’s group was planning an attack.’

  ‘OK, I can work with that. So imagine the pair of them sashaying into a protest march and sticking around for the pub. Those eco-guys must’ve thought their luck had changed when two good-looking girls flattered them into thinking living in the wild with them was their idea of fun.’

  ‘I imagine their dicks rather than their brains were involved in the decision to let them into the inner circle.’

  ‘You men are so predictable.’

  ‘It’s a burden we all just have to bear. Women are obviously the only rational sex. Never think emotionally.’

  I snort. I move to yellow, highlighting Jacob’s name. There are lots of entries in this early part of the diary that I haven’t got to yet in my read-through. ‘What would be really helpful is if we could find a place where Emma doesn’t call Biff by her nickname. Just once, then I’ll know that I’m correct that they were friends before she met Michael.’

  ‘But you think you’re on the right track, I can tell.’

  ‘It would be good to have evidence to show Randall.’

  ‘But can you trust the police with this? Aren’t they involved? You know, you’re selling this theory of yours to me, so I’ve got to think the worst.’

  ‘Which theory?’

  ‘The undercover-cop one. I thought it was a little out there when you first mentioned it.’

  ‘It is – it’s mad. That’s why it’s not been anyone’s first explanation of what’s going on in Emma’s diary.’

  ‘But people do mad things every day.’

  ‘Like shack up with me.’ I hip-bump him.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘When I first read the diary, I thought it was a young woman thinking she’s saving the planet, falling out of love with the idea once she has her own kid, then trying to hide from an obsessive lover. Please rein me in if you think I’m getting carried away with my spy story.’

  ‘I will, but so far you are carrying me along with you. But I’ve another question. If Biff-slash-Lizzy was so involved in Kaitlin’s early days, why isn’t Kaitlin with her now? Michael’s not the fatherly sort. She could’ve put in for adoption if Emma agreed.’

  ‘Would she agree?’

  ‘Emma had warning that she was dying. Wouldn’t her first concern be for her baby girl?’

  ‘Yes, I think it would.’

  ‘So what happened? Why not entrust her to her oldest friend?’

  I highlight another string of mentions of Biff. ‘I think only Lizzy and Michael know, and somehow I get the feeling neither of them want to say.’

  Chapter 45

  Michael

  So cold. Ice.

  The pain.

  Emma’s here. I can smell her.

  Even Kaitlin, that little-girl scent that scared me
senseless. God, Kaitlin, sorry, sorry, sorry. You, so lost after she went, so demanding. And me, so unable to be what you needed.

  I’m sorry I couldn’t…

  How much time has passed now? It feels like forever. I don’t know how long but I know I’m fucking dying. My rage is monumental, like I’ve got an alien trying to burst out of my stomach. I have howled myself hoarse but no one came. No one has ever fucking come to help me. I have nobody – that’s a bloody depressing truth.

  I swig the last of the bottle of Spanish red. I’ve given up trying to piss into the empties. I threw one at her last time she came, but got doused with the splash-back. I’ve had enough humiliation without that. At least it kept her away, fucking rabid bitch.

  I can hear her coming.

  ‘Ten green bottles, hanging on the wall.’

  ‘Singing now are you, Michael?’ She hovers at the top of the stairs.

  ‘Ten green bottles, come and take them all.

  Cause if you do, then you’ll accidentally fall

  And there’ll be one bitch less to torment us all.’

  I laugh manically.

  ‘And to think the great Dr Harrison is reduced to spending his last hours making up playground taunts.’

  ‘I’m a fucking dying swan, I am, singing out my heart. Recognise yourself, babe?’

  The door closes, shutting out the light. I open the freezer and scrabble around until I find another carton of ice-cream. I stretch – and the pain is blinding.

  I must’ve lost consciousness again because when I wake the ice-cream is in a puddle on the floor. I scoop up what I can and cram it in my mouth.

  ‘You’re not going to fucking beat me, bitch.’

  Chapter 46

  Jessica

  I pull together all the diary pages and flick through them, getting a sense of the pattern.

  ‘OK, here’s how I read it. Emma goes undercover with Biff, working the same group, but they pretend not to know each other. That means the first year or so they only meet in passing when Jacob’s around and save their big get-togethers for reporting to the bosses in London.’

  ‘That goes with the idea that their managers knew what they were doing.’

  ‘Or preferred not to ask questions as to how they got their information. Then in November 2009, when Kaitlin is about eighteen months old, Emma’s priorities are shifting from her career to finding a decent place to raise her child. She expresses it as too much nappy washing by hand but I think the double life is tearing her apart. She’s had a kid with a guy she doesn’t like very much, after all.’

  ‘Would screw anyone up.’

  ‘So she bolts back to her secret life in London, leaving Jacob high and dry. Biff extricates herself shortly after and helps support Emma. Maybe that was when she quit the police, to do childminding. She probably combined it with teacher training.’

  ‘Noble of her.’

  ‘Agreed. I don’t think there was much she wouldn’t do for her BFF. OK, so Emma moves over to a training role in the police, drawing a veil over her own mistakes by not making a song and dance that she has a kid now. She might even have inferred it was Lizzy’s kid if colleagues asked. Biff was no longer in the police, so what would they care? The two conspirators – that’s Emma and

  Biff—’

  ‘Yeah, I am keeping up, Poirot.’

  ‘I prefer Sherlock – he’s sexier.’

  ‘Only because you’re in love with Benedict Cumberbatch.’

  ‘Who isn’t?’ I kiss Drew. ‘Moving on. They seemed to have treated the arrangements for Kaitlin as a joint operation. Anyway, Emma meets Michael while she’s on a training course and, thunderbolt moment, they fall in love. That wasn’t in the plan and would have put Lizzy’s nose well out of joint. Whirlwind romance, marriage, and the rest. Emma’s hardly going to hide the fact she’s got a daughter from Michael, so Lizzy finds she’s being relegated there too.’

  ‘To what?’

  ‘An auntie-type figure. Not a co-mother.’

  ‘Did the house originally belong to Michael or Emma?’ asks Drew.

  ‘I don’t know. Good question.’

  ‘I bet Emma and Lizzy bought properties conveniently situated for playing pass-the-kid some time before. Emma’s property would’ve become Michael’s when she died.’

  ‘Makes sense, Watson. Everything goes up in the air at that point. Lizzy has no legal right to Kaitlin. There’s no father on the birth certificate. Michael’s not the most involved step-parent. So what happened to Kaitlin?’

  Drew brushes the hair back from my face. ‘Maybe Emma had distant relatives you don’t know about? They might’ve swooped in and claimed her.’

  ‘That would’ve really pissed Lizzy off. She’s given up her career to help with the kid and now it’s as if she were no more important than an au pair.’

  ‘So we’ve got a picture of how that went, but what about Michael? Why’s he run for it now? You know him best: why would he do that?’

  ‘I can believe he came to blows with Lizzy, but do you know something, I’ve realised the one thing that’s been bothering me. Emma’s cat. Colette.’

  Drew shakes his head. ‘A cat? We’re talking domestic abuse, possibly murder, and you circle back to animal welfare.’

  I’m pacing with excitement; it’s all falling into place. ‘Michael loves that animal. He would not walk away without making sure she was taken care of – or he’ll sneak back to do so himself.’

  Drew takes my shoulders and forces me to face him. ‘Oh God, I know what you are going to say. Jess, stop. This is one of your impulses. You’re coming off your meds and you’re going to be up and down, reckless one moment, zonked out the next.’

  I’m so revved, I’m bouncing. ‘Faint heart never won fair lady. Time for some cat-napping.’

  ‘You don’t mean going to sleep, do you?’

  ‘No, I mean revisiting the scene of the crime to see if Colette is still waiting at the back door.’

  ‘If she’s there?’

  ‘Michael’s in trouble.’

  ‘If she’s not there?’

  ‘He’s in even more trouble but at least he has company.’

  ‘Just to think my life was normal before I met you.’

  ‘Yeah, so normal, dealing with all those dead people in fridges at the end of the garden.’

  He bats me overhead with a seat cushion. ‘Fairly normal. So we’re going back?’

  ‘Yes. This time we’re breaking in for real. I’ve been accused of it enough times so I might as well have a go.’

  ‘And what’s the excuse you’re going to offer the police when we inevitably get caught?’

  ‘That we mean well.’

  ‘Yeah, like that’s going to work.’

  I spend the journey to Michael’s house plotting our way inside. The thing about a house where you’ve lived for five years is that you know it like no one else does. I know, for example, that anal Michael keeps a special key box in his small tool shed, screwed under the workbench, and that is pass-coded. This is after I lost or forgot my keys several times and he had to come out of work to rescue me. Inside is a back-door key. I also know, because Randall was so kind as to announce it in my hearing, that the police patrol is only on the front of the house. They won’t be watching the side passage. You can sneak into that through the bush in the neighbour’s garden and then there’s another push-button gate lock to which I have the combination. Unless the police are being particularly vigilant, no one should see us.

  We park around the corner. Drew locks our helmets in his seat compartment.

  ‘OK, what do we do now?’ he asks.

  ‘First, we stroll along on the opposite side of the road as if we’re just on our way somewhere. I want to see what, if anything, is going on at Lizzy’s and in Michael’s house.’

  ‘OK.’ He puts an arm round me. ‘Where are we pretending we are going? I like to have a visual.’

  ‘Cinema?’

  ‘Brain-dead comedy or raun
chy love film with handcuffs and whips?’

  ‘One where stuff blows up,’ I say repressively. I don’t want to be reminded of Max, not now. ‘Superheroes.’

  ‘Ugh. OK. I’m imagining that.’

  ‘Would it have made a difference if I’d picked one of the others?’

  ‘I’ll show you later.’

  Carrying on our banter, we stroll past the houses. There are lights on at Lizzy’s but I can’t see any movement behind the curtains. Michael’s is dark apart from the alarm on the front wall glowing blue in set mode. Incident tape wraps around the gate but there is no one standing guard on the doorstep.

  ‘Do you think they’ve gone home?’ I ask Drew in a low voice.

  ‘No, black car, across the road.’

  Two men are sitting drinking coffee. One flicks through a copy of the Evening Standard while the other is talking on his phone. He might be reporting in, of course, but I imagine he’s just phoning home.

  ‘I guess it must be tedious, watching nothing happening,’ I comment as we carry on past then circle back again. Our luck is in because the police have parked so they look across at the front door. They shouldn’t see us heading into the neighbour’s unless they turn around. We get into the shelter of the privet. It’s not been cut for years as Mrs Jessop has rather lost interest in the world outside. She tends to live at the back so I’m not worried about being spotted. The foliage hides us completely. Drew doesn’t say anything but does roll his eyes as I start to force my way through what I had generously called a gap when I explained my idea back at his house. It’s more of a slot where it meets a fence. We get into the alley without mishap, unless you count ripping Drew’s T-shirt and my leggings. I enter the combination and we’re through to the back garden.