When the Dead Speak

by Sheila Bugler

  ‘Okay,’ Louise said. ‘But let me go first. You’re hurting me.’

  He looked down, frowning, and took his hand off her arm. Louise started to ask again if he was all right but he held his hand up.

  ‘Shut up,’ he said. ‘Just shut up and listen. I know about you and Derek.’

  Ice ran through her veins. This couldn’t be happening. Nigel was a friend of Martin’s. They played golf together. Nigel’s wife, Maxine, and Louise did Zumba classes together. Oh Jesus, Louise thought, you stupid, stupid cow.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ She brushed her hair back from her face and looked him straight in the eye.

  Nigel shook his head, the disgust in his face mirroring the disgust Louise felt at herself for being such a bloody idiot.

  ‘The Sussex Ox,’ he said.

  She could have tried denying it, but there was no point. Derek had taken her there for dinner last month. It was midweek and they’d checked the place carefully first, making sure there was no one they recognised. They’d drunk two bottles of wine and by the time the meal was finished, they were drunk and more than a little amorous.

  ‘I was meeting a colleague from Brighton,’ Nigel said. ‘You were already drunk when I got there. I doubt you even noticed I was there, did you?’

  Louise shook her head.

  ‘I thought maybe it was a one-off,’ Nigel said. ‘But then Maxine bumped into you a few weeks later, remember?’

  Louise remembered all right. She’d been coming out of the lift in the Aldrington after being with Derek. She was alone. They were clever enough not to be seen together in the hotel, but, clearly, not nearly as clever as they’d thought. Maxine had been having coffee with a friend in the lobby. She’d spotted Louise coming out of the lift and had waved her over, asking where on earth Louise had been coming from.

  ‘I didn’t think there were any public areas upstairs,’ Maxine had said, her voice booming around the lobby.

  ‘You told her you’d been interviewing one of the guests for a special piece you were writing,’ Nigel said. ‘She believed you, of course. But when she told me about bumping into you, I knew right away why you were really there.’

  ‘Oh God.’ She couldn’t believe her own selfishness and stupidity. If only she’d stopped for a single second and thought about the consequences of what she was doing; but she hadn’t done that. For the first time in her life, she’d given in to temptation. And look where it had landed her. In a whole load of trouble.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘After my mother died, Lauren found a letter in her belongings. I’m sure she meant to give it to me, but she didn’t get a chance. I need you to help me find it.’

  ‘I can’t do that. I didn’t even know Lauren.’

  ‘You know Derek,’ Nigel said. ‘Which means you have access to Kyle. He was her boyfriend. If anyone knows where Lauren put that letter, he does.’

  ‘So ask Kyle about it,’ Louise said. ‘Not me.’

  ‘He won’t tell me,’ Nigel said. ‘Pretends he doesn’t know, but of course he does. He thinks he’s being loyal to Lauren by not telling me, but she wanted me to have it. She told me that before she died.’

  ‘Have you told all this to the police?’

  ‘The contents of that letter are private. I don’t want anyone else reading what’s in there.’

  ‘Not even if it helps the police find out who killed your daughter?’

  ‘The letter’s got nothing to do with what happened to Lauren.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’ Louise asked.

  ‘Because that’s impossible. For Christ’s sake, Louise. Just help me find the bloody thing, would you? Get Derek to speak to Kyle and tell him where the letter is. Kyle is scared of his parents. He’ll tell his father, even if he won’t tell me or the police. Do this for me, and I’ll keep quiet about your affair. If you don’t, I’ll tell Martin what you’ve been up to behind his back.’

  Louise was quiet for a moment, pretending to think about it.

  ‘Give me a few days,’ she said eventually. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  She already knew she wasn’t going to do what he wanted. She’d behaved appallingly and didn’t deserve to get away with what she’d done. Besides, no matter how stupid she’d been, even she had the sense not to interfere with a murder investigation. But she owed it to Martin to sort this out. It was inevitable he would find out what she’d been up to – she could see that now. If he had to find out, she would make sure he heard it from her. Not anyone else.

  From the diary of Emma Reed

  30 April 1966

  It turns out Miriam is more intelligent than I’ve given her credit for. She called over this morning, full of opinions on the only topic anyone is talking about these days: Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. The horror of their crimes has shocked the nation. And when people are shocked, there’s nothing they like better than endless conversation about the thing that’s shocked them.

  Unsurprisingly, all of Miriam’s conversation was focused on Hindley. Hatred for the woman has reached near-fever pitch. Despite all the talk of women being equal to men, when it comes to committing murder – especially the murder of children – none of us are willing to view men and women in the same way. The simple truth is, we cannot bear to think of a woman carrying out those heinous acts. So Hindley is vilified, in the press and down the pub and anywhere people are talking about it, in a way that Brady is not.

  I haven’t got a problem with people hating Hindley. It’s hard not to, especially when you see that photo of her face. I have gazed at it daily ever since the story came to light, and I am unable to see anything but pure evil in those eyes. But now, Miriam has challenged my thinking on this matter.

  ‘Why should we be so surprised?’ she asked, as she sipped her third cup of tea and finished off the last of the biscuits I’d put out for her.

  ‘Because it’s not natural,’ I told her. ‘It goes against a woman’s natural instinct to kill.’

  Miriam told me she disagreed, that women are every bit as capable of evil as men and she was surprised a forward-thinking woman like myself could hold such outdated views. At the time, I dismissed this in the same way I tend to dismiss most things she says. It was only later this evening, after James and Nicola were in bed and I was sitting here preparing to write, that her words came back to me. She’s right, of course. If we believe – as I do – that women are men’s equal in every way, then why shouldn’t we believe they can be equally bad, as well as equally good?

  I’ve been searching for the answer to who killed Mary, and all the time it was right there in front of me. I’d assumed it was Richard, and Annabelle had covered up for him because she was in love with him. Just as I’d assumed, when I first read about the Moors murders, that Hindley had killed because she was in love with Brady. But turn those misconceptions around and you get a very different picture.

  What if it’s Annabelle, not Richard, who is the killer?

  It makes sense. Annabelle was jealous of Mary and the fortune she would inherit. With Mary out of the way, Annabelle got all her brother’s money. I’d believed she was nothing more than a silly woman, in love with a man who didn’t care for her.

  I was wrong.

  Annabelle Palmer (now Shaw) killed her niece.

  Seeing the words written down like this turns the idea from a mere thought into something else. It becomes closer to fact.

  It makes perfect sense.

  I spent so long focusing on Richard. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I tried to convince myself that Richard was in love with Mary. But Richard isn’t capable of love. I’ve spoken to everyone I can possibly think of and not once has anyone confirmed my theory that he loved Mary. Yet I persisted, despite the lack of evidence. I saw his fiancée and I made too many assumptions.

  Richard never loved Mary. The only person Richard has ever loved, or ever will love, is himself.

  Annabelle is the same, and I suspect that money is the basi
s to their ‘friendship’. I doubt she could have killed Mary by herself. So she paid Richard to help her. Soon after Mary’s death, Richard moved to London and started a new life for himself. His brother enrolled in a university. They were only able to afford this with Annabelle’s money. I still don’t understand what David’s role has been in all of this, or what is the basis of the rift between the two brothers. But I know David is somehow involved. He’s working as a doctor in east London. It won’t be difficult to find out where he is and pay him a visit.

  I should go to bed, but I won’t sleep. There are too many emotions racing through my body; too many thoughts raging through my mind.

  I’m getting closer. I can feel it.

  Thirty

  It had started raining mid-afternoon, and hadn’t stopped since. Dee was at the mobile home, babysitting. She’d offered to have Jake at hers for the night, but Ella was taking him to a playgroup early the next morning and asked if Dee would come to the mobile home instead. The rain thundered off the flat roof in a deafening downpour that, somehow, Jake was managing to sleep through. Dee checked him regularly, listening to the steady in-out sound of his breathing, marvelling at the simple fact of his presence in her life.

  Seven months earlier, she’d come close to losing him. Most of the time, she tried not to think about that terrible period in her life. But nights like tonight, when it was just the two of them, it was impossible not to remember the fear and dread that had increased with each day that passed without him.

  Ella had gone to the cinema with some of ‘the girls’. Dee and Jake had eaten dinner together – fish fingers, peas and mashed potatoes – and spent an hour building a railway track that wound all around the sitting room and down the hall. At bedtime, Dee sat on the floor beside Jake’s bed and read stories from the row of books on his bookcase. There were some new books that she didn’t recognise, but Jake had wanted her to read from the ones she already knew – Courtney, The Very Hungry Caterpillar and some old Dr Seuss stories that had belonged to Ella when she was a child.

  She read until Jake’s eyes started drooping shut. Then she’d sat beside his bed, holding his hand until he drifted off to sleep. Now here she was, alone in this little mobile home that she’d once lived in with her parents.

  In the forty-something years that had passed since Dee had lived here, the mobile home had barely changed. Like most mobile homes, it didn’t wear the signs of age well. Jake’s bedroom was the exception. When Ella had first moved in, she’d earned a living as a piano teacher. Since coming out of prison, she’d given up the lessons. Tom had decorated the second bedroom and Jake had moved in there.

  There was a shabbiness to the rest of the place that no amount of fresh paint could disguise. Damp was spreading from one corner of the ceiling, the windowpanes needed replacing, and the carpet that ran throughout the house that was so faded it was impossible to tell what colour it had been originally. It was no wonder that Tom and Ella were keen to move out of here into a place of their own.

  There was no TV, but at least Tom and Ella had a decent Wi-Fi signal. With the sound of the rain drumming overhead, Dee curled up on the sofa with her laptop. She checked the latest comments in the true crime group. Nothing further on Annabelle Shaw, but a whole load of opinions about Ed’s relationship with the dead women. One thread was dedicated to different theories on the different reasons Ed might have killed Lauren.

  Disgusted, Dee shut down Facebook and was thinking about what she could watch on Netflix when her phone started ringing. She didn’t recognise the number, but she answered anyway, welcoming the distraction.

  ‘Um, could I speak to Dee please?’

  ‘Speaking.’

  ‘Oh, hi. This is Charlie Steadman. You left a message asking me to call you?’

  Charlie Steadman. The guy Marcel had spoken to about Joana’s disappearance.

  ‘Thanks so much for calling,’ Dee said. ‘I’d started to think you were avoiding me.’

  She’d called him several times, leaving a message each time. She’d almost given up hope of hearing from him.

  ‘I wasn’t sure about speaking to you,’ he said. ‘But my girlfriend said I should call you.’

  Thank the Lord for sensible girlfriends, Dee thought.

  ‘I wanted to ask you some questions about Joana Helinski,’ Dee said. ‘Is now a good time?’

  ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I’m at work. I was thinking tomorrow morning, maybe?’

  ‘At the hotel?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk there,’ he said. ‘Do you know the Boardwalk?’

  ‘The place on the seafront? Yes, I know it.’

  ‘I’ll meet you there. Nine o’clock tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Nine’s perfect,’ Dee said. ‘See you then.’

  She’d barely hung up when someone started banging on the front door. The sound made her jump. She ran to see who was there, her heart pounding as different scenarios played through her head. None of them good. No one came out to this stretch of beach late at night. Especially not in rain like this. Whoever was banging on the door hadn’t come to deliver good news.

  When she opened the door and saw Louise standing there, her wet hair stuck to her head and her eyes red, Dee’s insides contracted. Her first thought was that something had happened to one of the children.

  ‘What is it?’ she said, grabbing Louise by the arm and dragging her inside. ‘What’s the matter, Lou?’

  ‘I’ve done something terrible,’ Louise said. Her voice was barely above a whisper, the words muffled beneath the rain that was louder since Dee had opened the door.

  ‘What did you say?’

  She shut the door and, this time, there was no mistaking what Louise was telling her.

  ‘I’ve messed up, Dee. Really badly messed up. I can’t go home. I’m sorry. I didn’t know where else to go.’

  * * *

  ‘You’ve been what?’

  ‘Don’t make me say it again,’ Louise said. ‘Please.’

  They were sitting side by side on the sofa in the small sitting room. Dee had made mugs of tea while Louise dried herself with a towel from Ella’s bathroom. The rain was still drumming down outside, Jake was still sound asleep, and Dee’s world view was being ripped apart and rebuilt into a different, unfamiliar narrative.

  Louise was having an affair. Louise, her perfect cousin with her perfect family and her perfect life. Only it turned out she wasn’t perfect, after all. It turned out everything Dee had believed about her cousin was a lie.

  ‘How long?’ Dee said. ‘Come on, Lou, it’s not a difficult question.’

  ‘Three months.’

  Dee opened her mouth to speak, then changed her mind because she had so many things she wanted to say, she didn’t know where to start. Three months. Louise had been lying to her for three months. During that time, they’d gone for walks together, met for coffee and glasses of wine and shared happy times with Louise’s kids. And all the time, Louise had been having an affair.

  ‘I wanted to tell you,’ Louise said. ‘I nearly did a few times. But I always stopped because I knew how upset you were when Billy did it to you. The last thing I wanted to do was remind you of all that. Especially now when you’re so happy with Ed. And I kept telling myself I’d end it. Only, somehow, I never did.’

  Dee put her mug of tea on the floor and stood up.

  ‘I don’t know about you,’ she said. ‘But I need something stronger than tea if I’m going to have to listen to this.’

  She’d seen a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc in the fridge earlier. She took it out and poured some wine into two glasses that she carried back to the sofa. She handed one glass to Louise, took a long swig from the other and sat back down.

  ‘Is it serious?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’ Louise sighed. ‘I know that makes it worse. I mean, if I thought I was in love that might be an excuse. But I’m not.’ She took a sip of wine, then another. ‘I’m nothing more than a boring cliché, Dee. Middle-aged, mid
dle-class, middle-of-the-bloody-road. I was feeling old and bored and like I’d lost my edge. And he was right there. Flirty and charming and full on and I fell for it.’

  Dee thought of all the things Louise had in her life. A husband who, despite his faults, clearly adored her. A job she loved and was brilliant at. A big house in a beautiful part of town. Two happy, healthy children. A life. A lovely, big life full of love and friends and family.

  ‘You’d risk your marriage and your children’s happiness for a fling?’ she said. ‘I can’t believe you’ve been so stupid.’

  ‘I didn’t expect you to understand. The thing is, Dee, I’m not like you. I’m shallow. I’ve always relied on my face and my body to get me the things I want in life. And that worked great for me for a long time, but it’s changing. You know when women say they become invisible when they hit a certain age? I used to think that was self-indulgent nonsense, but it’s not, is it? Over the last few years, I’ve become one of those invisible women. And I hate it. I know it’s wrong and shallow and I should… I don’t know, I should be thankful I’ve still got all my faculties and I haven’t had a stroke or a heart attack or early-onset dementia. And I am grateful for all of that, of course I am. But it’s not enough. I miss being me. This affair made me feel like myself again. I know how pathetic that sounds, Dee. But if you want to understand why I did it, that’s why.’

  Unexpectedly, Dee started to laugh. She couldn’t help it. The idea of Louise – so gorgeous she literally turned heads wherever she went – feeling like she’d become invisible just because she’d turned fifty was preposterous.

  ‘It’s not funny,’ Louise muttered when Dee’s laughter finally subsided.

  ‘It is,’ Dee insisted. ‘Dear God, Lou. Haven’t you looked in a mirror recently? If you’re invisible what the hell does that make me?’

  ‘But you’re nothing like me,’ Louise said. ‘You’ve got bags of confidence and you don’t care what anyone thinks of you. I’d love to be more like you, but I’m not. I have tried, you know. One day last week, I even went to work without wearing any make-up. Just to prove to myself I could do it. But I hated it, Dee. I hated it so much I had to drive home mid-morning and sort myself out.’