by Karen Cole
On our way home, we stop at the kiosk near the gate and I buy Dylan some sweets and a packet of fudge for me. I’ve already broken my diet today, so I might as well pig out, make the most of it and start again tomorrow. We munch in happy silence on the way home, fingers sticky and lips grainy with sugar. Life is too short to worry about calories all the time, I think. We need a treat after the past few days. The sun is shining, and I feel refreshed and buoyed by my conversation with Gaby. In the sunshine it’s easy to feel more optimistic. Gaby’s right, this whole thing will all blow over; people will soon forget and move on to the next scandal. I hold Dylan’s warm, sticky hand in mine, and he smiles up at me. We’ll be all right together, I think. I need to get my priorities straight. So long as I’ve got Dylan and he’s got me and he is well and happy, I don’t need anything else.
‘What’s that?’ Dylan asks as we turn into our street. He points towards our house at something written on the front wall in large red letters.
‘I don’t know,’ I say. I can’t read it from here. Bloody kids, I think with annoyance. How dare they? Because our house is on the end and is near to the pub it occasionally gets vandalised by drunks. Sometimes the fence gets kicked in or the flowerpots tipped over at night. But no one has ever written graffiti on it before. Besides, it’s the middle of the day. That surely wasn’t there when I left the house.
As we get closer and the letters come into clearer focus, my heart plummets. The paint has dripped in places, making it look as if the words have been daubed on in blood, but the message is still abundantly clear. Shockingly, heart-stoppingly clear.
‘What does that say?’ Dylan pesters me as I hurry him up the path to the front door. ‘Wait –’ he tugs at my hand and tries to sound out the letters the way he’s been taught at school – ‘m . . . u—’
‘Never mind. Come on inside,’ I say, trying to cover his eyes and bundling him through the door as quickly as I can, my heart racing. ‘Someone naughty has written a bad word, that’s all.’
This is bad. Very bad.
‘Ow, Mummy, you’re hurting me,’ he complains as I drag him through to the living room. I want to read the word. I can read really well now.’
‘I’m sure you can,’ I say through gritted teeth. But I need you to just sit tight in here for a bit while Mummy takes care of something.’
I switch on cartoons and plonk him on the sofa. ‘Don’t move,’ I say firmly. Then I head outside to the shed and find a large paintbrush and a half-full tin of paint. It’s Magnolia – not the same colour as the wall, but it will have to do. I lug the tin around to the front of the house and splash paint on the wall in broad brushstrokes. I haven’t bothered changing. I paint in what I’m wearing – my new summer dress. I don’t care if I ruin it. I just want to obliterate that hateful writing. As quickly as I can, I cover the letters, layering on several coats of paint until you can no longer read the word underneath, painted in red:
MURDERER.
In the toilet, I wash the paint off my shaking hands with turpentine, scraping off the bits that have already dried with my nails. Then I head downstairs to check that Dylan is okay.
‘Will the naughty man be in trouble?’ he asks, round-eyed, looking up from his cartoons.
‘Big, big trouble,’ I say, kissing him on the head. ‘Just a sec. Wait here. I’m going to pop round next door to see if Eileen or Bob saw anything.’
I leave the front door open so that I can hear Dylan if he needs me and hop over the low wall to the neighbours. Outside their front door, I take a deep breath and try to steady my shaking hands. I don’t want Eileen to see how agitated I am.
Eileen answers, but only opens the door halfway.
‘Yes?’ she says warily.
What does she think? I’m going to barge in and hack her to death? Not such a bad idea, come to think of it. ‘Um, I was wondering if you saw anything earlier today. Someone wrote some graffiti on my house and I thought maybe you might have seen who did it?’
She purses her lips and shakes her head. ‘No, I didn’t see anyone,’ she says.
Like hell, you didn’t, I think. Like you’re not always nosing into the coming and goings in the neighbourhood.
‘Are you sure? What about Bob? Maybe he—’ I say.
‘Bob didn’t see anything either. I’m absolutely sure,’ she says and slams the door in my face.
I should have known Eileen wouldn’t be any help. For all I know, she wrote the message herself, I think angrily, as I clamber back over the wall and shut myself in my house. I feel a wave of frustration, rage and despair. Just when I thought things were going to be okay, this happens.
I manage to hold it together long enough to feed Dylan and put him to bed. Fortunately, he hasn’t learned to tell the time yet, so I’m able to convince him it’s an hour later than it is. But once Dylan is safely in bed, all the fear and anger I’ve been bottling up for the past few days surge out of me and I curl up on my bed, finally giving in to tears. I cry like I haven’t cried in years – big sobs that shake my body and leave me breathless. I cry until I’m all cried out and then I sit up and wipe my eyes, fetch some toilet paper from the bathroom and blow my nose. I feel as if I’m under siege. It’s so unfair. What did I do to deserve this?
This isn’t going to stop until the police find the real killer. But when will that be? I could be waiting for ever. They’ve made no progress as far as I can tell and they are wasting their time interviewing people like Gaby, Luke and me.
Staring in the mirror at my red, swollen eyes, I experience a sudden clarity. I can’t afford to wallow in self-pity and wait for Littlewood to ride in on her white charger and rescue me. If I want this to go away, I’m going to have to do something about it myself. I need to find out who gave the police the photofit and who murdered Charlie for myself.
I ignore the discouraging voice inside my head that says, Who are you kidding? What makes you think you would find anything the police have missed? But I have something the police don’t have, and that’s motivation. Clearing my name; it doesn’t get much more motivating that that. Where should I start though? I brush my teeth, get undressed and climb into bed, thinking all the time. Of course, the answer is obvious. There’s really only one place.
Twelve
It’s Friday – a week since Charlie was murdered and I am standing on the pavement in front of her house. From the outside Cecily House hasn’t changed much since I was last here. It’s is a large, elegant Georgian building perched at the top of the hill on the edge of the Bathurst estate – or the big park, as we used to call it. You would never guess from the old stone façade that it’s been divided up into flats inside. The only changes are subtle and in keeping with the historic character of the house: a small extension has been added, blending discreetly with the stonework and there’s a ramp curving around the stairs up to the front door, but otherwise it seems much as I remember it from when Charlie and I were kids.
I do a one-eighty, taking in my surroundings. There’s a large, black wrought-iron gate to the park and a wide footpath leading up to the monument. Opposite Cecily House is a row of smaller houses. They have a clear view of the entrance. Anyone in those houses could have provided the police with that photofit or it could have been someone walking up the hill into the park, or someone in Cecily House itself . . .
Bathed in September sunshine, the house looks pretty, not menacing at all, but even so, I suppress a shiver as I approach the entrance and the nightmare I had the other night comes back to me in vivid detail. Images of Charlie dead and dying crowd into my mind. Charlie’s eyes bulging as she begs for mercy. The blood on her shirt spreading like an ink blot.
Quashing the voice inside my head telling me this is a bad idea, I press the buzzer for number one, Adam and Charlie’s flat. After a couple of seconds, the intercom crackles.
‘Who is it?’ asks Adam.
I cl
ear my throat nervously. ‘It’s Catherine Bayntun. We spoke on the phone the other day? I have an appointment for a consultation.’
He hesitates for just a second. ‘Sure, yes, come on in,’ he says and buzzes me in. I push my way through the heavy door, and it swings firmly shut behind me. Finding myself suddenly enclosed in a dark, windowless corridor, I fight a wave of panic. What if Adam recognises me from the photofit? Or what if my mother is right and he killed Charlie? What kind of danger am I getting myself into?
‘Hi, Catherine, come on in,’ Adam says, opening the door to his flat and making me jump. He looks a little older and scruffier than the photograph on his LinkedIn profile. Less put together and handsome, and paradoxically less like a serial killer. And he looks taller than in the pictures on TV. Of course, Charlie had that effect – of shrinking a person; most people seemed diminished in her presence. She was always so bright and so vibrant.
His eyes are slightly bloodshot, I notice, as he ushers me into the living room, and he smells strongly of aftershave.
‘You look familiar,’ he says, doing a double take as I step into the light from the living-room window. ‘Have we met before?’
‘I don’t think so,’ I say cautiously, putting a self-conscious hand up to my face. I should have done more to disguise myself. What if he works out where he’s seen me before? I hold my breath. Then sigh with relief as he shrugs.
‘Maybe not.’
‘I’ve got that kind of face,’ I say lightly. ‘I’m always being mistaken for other people.’
‘Take a seat,’ he says politely. ‘Would you like a drink? I have a selection of herbal teas or coffee.’
‘Do you have peppermint?’
While he’s making drinks in the kitchen, I perch nervously on the edge of the sofa and look around the room. It’s exactly the kind of place I would have expected Charlie to live in. There are brightly coloured rugs on the floor, battered old books on a bookshelf, a tree painted on one wall, a guitar flung on the armchair and a keyboard dominating one corner of the room. They must be Adam’s, unless Charlie learned an instrument after she left school. That explains the attraction, I think. Charlie was always a sucker for a musician. I remember when we were thirteen, she was obsessed with the drummer in the school band. Despite the artful, cosy chaos, the place is scrupulously clean and there’s a faint odour of bleach. Of course, I think with a flicker of fear. They would have had to clean up all the blood.
On the wall, there’s a photo of Charlie and Adam; the same one that the press released. She’s smiling down at me with an expression I remember – that flirtatious smile she gave everyone, half mocking, half challenging. I stare at it feeling uneasy. When she smiled at me like that, I always felt as if she knew exactly what I was thinking.
‘So,’ Adam says as he comes back into the living room carrying two steaming mugs, plonking them on the coffee table and making me jump.
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,’ he says pleasantly. He sits down opposite me and glances at the notes in front of him and then at me. ‘You want to lose weight, right?’ He looks at me appraisingly. ‘I wouldn’t say you need to lose too much.’
‘I’ve already lost quite a bit, but I can’t seem to shift the last couple of stone,’ I say. Not surprising, I suppose, considering all the packets of fudge and chocolate biscuits I’ve eaten lately, but he doesn’t need to know about that.
He clears his throat. ‘The first thing I should say is that diets don’t always work – not long term. People who diet might lose it at first but tend to gain weight over time. The best thing you can do is aim to lead a healthy lifestyle, increasing the amount of protein and vegetables you eat, cutting down on refined sugar and carbohydrates.’
‘That sucks,’ I pout. ‘Sugar and carbohydrates are two of my favourite things.’
He smiles wanly. ‘Why don’t you start off by telling me what you eat on a typical day?’
Hmm, I think. Yesterday, a slice of toast for breakfast, a salad for lunch, then a cinnamon bun, a whole bag of fudge, a whole pizza and a packet of ginger biscuits and half a large tub of strawberry ice cream.
‘I don’t really have a typical day,’ I say.
‘Well, that could be part of the problem.’
He goes on to discuss the different types of proteins, carbohydrates and fats for a while. He talks in such a natural, easy way and seems so normal that I forget to be afraid of him. Instead, I start feeling sorry for him. I notice his nails, which have been bitten to the quick and the dark shadows under his eyes. This is a man clearly struggling to come to terms with the death of his wife and bravely trying to carry on with his life. But I mustn’t forget the purpose of my visit. I didn’t come here just to chat about nutrition. I came here to find out more about Charlie’s death, and during a pause in the conversation I decide to broach the subject directly.
‘I’m so sorry about Charlie,’ I say. ‘I can’t imagine what you must be going through.’
He frowns and blinks at me with dark, startled eyes. ‘You knew Charlie?’
‘We were friends at school.’ I wonder if he will find it weird that I’ve decided to consult the husband of my recently murdered school friend, but on balance I decide it’s worth the risk of telling him I know her, so that I can get him to talk about her death. I rummage in my bag and pull out the photograph Mum gave me. ‘I found this the other day. I thought you might be interested,’ I say. ‘That’s me and Charlie when we were about thirteen.’
He takes the photo but doesn’t really look at it. He seems distracted. His hand is trembling a little and I wonder why. It could just be natural emotion on seeing the image of his murdered wife or it could be something more sinister.
‘I don’t know if she ever mentioned me?’ I ask tentatively.
‘Catherine? Catherine Bayntun? I don’t think so.’ He shakes his head slowly.
‘Bayntun is my married name. I was called Hawkins at school. Cat Hawkins.’
‘Cat Hawkins,’ he murmurs. ‘Yes, now I come to think of it. She did mention you.’ His eyes narrow and I feel a twinge of unease. How much exactly did she tell him?
‘What did she say about me?’ I ask.
‘Um . . .’ He frowns. ‘Just that you were a good friend at school. Some of the scrapes you got into – like the time you were arrested for trespassing.’
‘So, she told you all our deep, dark secrets?’ I say lightly, as if it’s a joke.
He doesn’t answer. There’s a long pause. He shifts uncomfortably and clears his throat. ‘Listen Catherine, this is all a bit strange, don’t you think? I didn’t know you were a friend of Charlie’s. I don’t mean to be rude but why exactly are you here? You didn’t come here to talk about nutrition, did you?’
He stands up and I’m worried that he’s going to show me to the door.
‘I know it must seem odd,’ I say rapidly, ‘but I honestly didn’t know you were Charlie’s husband until you gave me your address, and when I realised who you were, I did consider cancelling the appointment, but then I changed my mind. I thought you might welcome the chance to talk about Charlie to someone else who knew her well and who loved her too.’
My voice breaks a little on that last part and it seems to have the desired effect because he hesitates and then sits down again with a heavy sigh.
‘How did you two meet?’ I ask, trying to turn the conversation down a less dangerous path.
He rubs his forehead and eyes. ‘At uni. We met at a gig. I used to play in a band.’ He smiles – a sad, lopsided smile – and looks suddenly sweet. ‘She was very drunk, and she got up on stage and tried to grab my guitar to sing happy birthday to one of her mates.’
‘Yep, that sounds like Charlie.’
‘I wasn’t impressed at first, but later I got to know her sober and – well, you know what she was like.’
I know what he means.
He fell under her spell. Everyone who ever met Charlie fell under her spell.
‘Whenever you were with her life was an adventure,’ I say.
‘Yes, that’s it exactly,’ he exclaims, surprised. His eyes light up and he looks at me – really looks at me for the first time. Then a cloud passes over, and for a second, I think he’s going to cry.
‘Well, it’s good to meet a friend of Charlie’s.’ He stands up again. It’s a cue for me to go, I realise. But I’m not ready yet. I need him to keep talking.
‘I still can’t believe she’s dead,’ I say, not shifting from the sofa. ‘I mean, why would anyone want to kill Charlie? She was such a lovely person.’ This is not entirely true. Charlie always tended to provoke strong emotions in people, both good and bad. There was that boy at school who was so obsessed with her he attempted suicide when she broke up with him; and she once had a full-on fist fight with Amelia Blake by the school gates.
Adam’s face blackens. ‘I don’t know,’ he says, looking at his feet.
I can tell he doesn’t really want to talk about this, but I press on regardless. ‘Was it a break-in? Was anything stolen?’
‘No. The police think it was someone she knew. There was no sign of forced entry. She must have let them in.’
‘It was somebody she knew?’ I say, my breath catching in my throat.
‘I suppose so.’ He sits back down looking winded. ‘I keep thinking who would she have let in at that time of night? Who did she trust that she shouldn’t have? Do I know them? Do you know what that feels like – to look at everyone you know and think, could you have done this horrible thing? Could you have killed my wife?’ He squeezes his eyes shut, as if there’s a piece of grit in them – a bid to ward off intense pain or an attempt at fake emotion? It’s hard to tell.
