Before I Say I Do Page 25

  ‘Dzie˛ki,’ he said to her.

  ‘Nie ma za co,’ she said and lingered a little longer before moving off.

  ‘Thanks for meeting me,’ Loxton said. ‘I know what you’re risking.’

  ‘Sorry it turned out like it did.’ He stirred his coffee. ‘Winter has partnered Kanwar with me, so I have to put up with him gloating. It’s like he’s the only officer working these cases.’

  The waitress bought over Kowalski’s food and he tucked into it hungrily.

  ‘I called you here because I have some new information,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure how relevant it is though.’

  ‘Go on.’ Kowalski managed through his mouthful of pork stew.

  Loxton put the photograph of Rachel Hughes on the table. ‘I know this is going to sound crazy, but just look at this photo.’

  Rachel was smiling at the camera, her blue-and-white polka-dot bunny dangling from her hand. Loxton had seen that pattern before. ‘Retired Superintendent Fraser, the lead investigator back then, told me that Rachel had the toy in the woods the day she died but that they never found it.’

  ‘And? That case has been solved, Alana.’ Kowalski had briefly glanced at the image before continuing to eat. She guessed this was the first thing he’d eaten all day.

  ‘When we went to Lucy Webb’s house, she had a quilt on her bed.’

  Kowalski looked dubious.

  ‘It was green and white, but one patch stood out. It was this exact shade of blue with white polka dots.’ She tapped the rabbit in the photograph.

  ‘That’s weird.’ Kowalski frowned. ‘Maybe Webb got it to remember Rachel by?’

  ‘Or maybe the patch came from the rabbit.’

  ‘You think Talbot killed Rachel and kept the rabbit? And she gave a piece of the material to Webb for her quilt? Why?’ Kowalski frowned at her.

  ‘I don’t know. What I do know is that I don’t think Jonathan Cane killed Rachel. Neither does Fraser.’

  ‘You’re right. You do sound crazy.’ He shovelled more food into his mouth.

  ‘Please, just humour me. I can’t get hold of Webb to ask her about it. I contacted Bailey’s Accountants to speak to her, thinking she might be at work, but they told me they don’t have a Lucy Webb working for them – never have. And they told me a Julia Talbot turned up a few hours before I called looking a state and asking for Lucy Webb.’

  ‘I’m not sure about this whole rabbit thing, Alana.’

  ‘DC Fraser now suspects Julia killed Rachel, and he was the lead investigator at the time. He’s had a long time to mull over this case. I could be wrong. Maybe the patch is just a way for Webb to remember Rachel Hughes. But maybe Talbot gave it to Webb, some twisted way to keep a souvenir, but not have it too close?’ She could tell she was losing Kowalski.

  ‘But what’s any of that got to do with now?’ Kowalski stopped eating and was looking at her like she was crazy.

  ‘Maybe Steele didn’t kill Rowthorn. Maybe Talbot confessed to Rowthorn the night before they were getting married and he didn’t react the way she wanted. Maybe he called the whole thing off, threatened to go to the police. Or maybe Talbot discovered the affair and she’s decided Lucy Webb is the mistress. I don’t know, but we need to find Webb before Talbot does.’

  ‘I should head back to the station for when Steele’s arrested and to lead the arrest enquiries for Talbot.’

  Kowalski didn’t believe her. He thought she was going mad.

  ‘I just thought I should tell you what I found.’ She felt silly now, but she couldn’t let it go. It was so frustrating being suspended. ‘I know I’m not making much sense here, but something’s not adding up. I know it.’

  Kowalski studied her for a moment. Finally, he said, ‘You couldn’t get hold of Webb. All right, I’ll admit, that’s worrying. If Talbot’s dangerous, as you say, we’d better find Webb and warn her before Talbot gets to her.’ Kowalski pushed his half-eaten food away and stood up.

  ‘But . . . Winter. I’m suspended.’

  ‘Winter isn’t here, is he? You are, and I’m not going looking for Webb on my own. You coming or what?’

  Chapter 43

  Julia Talbot

  Friday

  My knuckles ached from knocking at Lucy’s front door for what felt like hours. I’d called my landline from a pay phone and there was still no answer from Lucy. She clearly wasn’t at work. She had to be here.

  I knelt near her front door, checking the plant pots under her front window. There were a few tired-looking geraniums dropping in the heat. It had to be here somewhere, and as my fingers dug into the soil, I found it. The spare key her aunt used to leave when we were children, in case we arrived early and needed to let ourselves in. It was caked in dirt and rusty, but I scraped off the worst of it.

  I slipped the old key into the lock, praying that Lucy hadn’t changed them in all these years. It was stiff and it wouldn’t budge, so I forced it to turn, hoping it wouldn’t break in the lock.

  Click.

  The key turned. I froze for a moment. I hadn’t come here in years. It had always been easier to meet centrally or at my flat in Southwark. When I crossed that threshold, I’d be betraying my best friend’s trust. But then a horrible image of Lucy and Mark’s naked bodies tangled together filled my head, and I forced my guilt away.

  Paranoia was setting in, the doctor had said the sleeping pills could do that. I felt like I was losing my mind. Lucy had always been there for me and she’d dropped everything when Mark went missing. I didn’t deserve her. I had to get this out of my head now.

  I crept inside, pulling the door shut behind me.

  I was hit by the familiar smell of cinnamon. Lucy’s favourite. She adored the cinnamon cookies my gran used to make, and we’d baked hundreds together after she had died. I spotted a large candle squatted on a stand by the front entrance, the cinnamon smell overpowering.

  The place hadn’t changed since Lucy’s aunt had lived here. In the living room the collection of hideous pale porcelain children stared out at me from behind their glass prison. Lucy used to joke about them when we were kids. She used to say that we should set them free.

  In the cramped kitchen, still shoved in the corner was the small kitchen table with the single chair. The ancient cooker dominated the space. Old-fashioned flowery plates still hung on the walls.

  I tried to remember when I’d last been here. It must have been years, but it hadn’t changed a bit.

  I thought we’d grown up. Clearly, I was wrong. There wasn’t a single photo of her as an adult, but it was festooned everywhere with photographs of us as children. Lucy riding her silver bike, her long red hair trailing behind her, and me running after her. Lucy and me outside the cinema on her tenth birthday.

  I peeked out of the front windows but there was no sign of her. The sky had darkened and a single star twinkled back at me. She’d said she had to work late tonight, but where was she? I was starting to feel like I didn’t know anything about her.

  Upstairs in the small bathroom was a single toothbrush, strawberry shampoo and conditioner. No sign of a man, but James was supposed to be back from his work trip and staying here.

  I padded into Lucy’s bedroom. Her old single bed stood in the centre, meticulously made with a quilt pulled taut. Had Mark and Lucy been in there together? A wave of sickness hit me and I turned away. I couldn’t bear to look at the bed. It couldn’t be true. I was going insane.

  In the wardrobe were row after row of beautiful women’s suits, all inside laundry bags with the pink raffle tickets still attached to the outside of them. On the far left, there were a few plain black polyester skirts and some dark blue shirts with Spring Fresh Dry Cleaners sewn in canary yellow on the right breast pocket.

  This was a uniform. Lucy worked at a dry cleaner’s.

  I was rooted to the spot, my fingertips touching the coarse fabric of her shirts. She’d been wearing other women’s expensive clothes to pass herself off as a successful accountant. But for how lo
ng?

  I wasn’t sure how long I’d been stood there, holding the cuff of her sleeve, but suddenly I needed to get away. Panic threatened to tear me apart. I couldn’t breathe in the room. In the house.

  As I turned to leave, James’s photo on her bedside table caught my eye. He looked like a model, smiling into the lens with his bright white teeth. I tried hard to think of the photos she’d shown me of him on her phone and on Facebook. Looking back, I didn’t think there had ever been a single one of the two of them together. She’d been seeing him for six months and I’d never met him, never even be allowed to speak to him on the phone, but she said he was ‘the one’. Her excuse was always that he worked abroad a lot, was busy and in a different time zone, but she would tell me all the stories about him, their romantic dinners and lazy weekends in bed together.

  She’d flown out to Dubai for a week recently to be with him. The more I thought about it, the more I came to realize – I’d never met a single one of her boyfriends. In our twenties it had been a joke between us. That men didn’t like funny women and Lucy was the best comic I’d known. After I met Mark, she’d started to mention boyfriends, but they never lasted long enough for me to meet them.

  I staggered down the stairs, my vision blurring, and collapsed onto the bottom step. This was where we used to huddle as children to dream up the day’s mischief when we stayed here in the summer. I sobbed, long and hard. My throat was constricted and my eyes stung with tears. I was losing everyone I loved.

  I heard a muffled voice nearby; moaning. It sounded like children next door, mocking me. I didn’t care. The Lucy I loved didn’t exist. The successful accountant, making her mark in a man’s world, was all fabrication. Her handsome boyfriend she was sure was the one, and couldn’t wait to introduce me to, probably wasn’t even real. Instead Lucy was alone and lost. How had I not noticed before? I’d been wrapped up in my own life – Mark, the wedding – never paying much attention to Lucy’s world.

  But that didn’t mean she had anything to do with Mark going missing. A heaviness filled my chest as I thought of her, alone and depressed, frightened to tell me the truth about her life. I’d been neglecting her and she’d got herself caught up in lies, trying to hide her pain from me, from everyone. If anyone could relate to that it was me. I would help her, once all of this was over.

  When had Lucy started to lie about her life? I tried to pinpoint the moment. Which boyfriends had been real, which ones imagined?

  A muffled noise. I waited. Then there it was again. The smallest noise, like someone groaning as they lifted a heavy weight. It wasn’t the neighbours. It was coming from deep within the house.

  The cupboard under the stairs.

  Lucy’s father would sometimes lock her under the stairs when she was a child and wouldn’t let her out for hours. But that had been years ago, when she’d lived near Ashurst Wood in her father’s old house, before she’d inherited this place.

  She’d always kept the cupboard locked. I tried to open the door, but it didn’t budge. I put my ear to it. The noise was louder, clearer. It was human, all right. Someone grunting. There was someone down there.

  I used a breadknife from the kitchen, wriggling it into the gap by the lock, and jemmied it in hard. The wood splintered and the old lock gave way.

  Darkness and silence.

  I stepped inside and fumbled for a light switch. It took for ever to find, and when I did, light filled the cramped space. Steep stone steps led downwards. Lucy had never told me she had a cellar. I crept down, wishing I could run away.

  I shivered as the temperature dropped. I was under the earth and it was cold, like a cave. The concrete walls all around me reminded me of a prison cell. There were wooden support beams holding the ceiling up and a stone floor covered in a thick layer of grey dust. Fresh footprints in the dust led deeper inside, but I couldn’t see where they went. It was too black down here. The light from the top of the steps barely reached down. My eyes adjusted but it was still impossible to see anything more than a few steps in front of me.

  It smelt like an old garage. Paint and something else. I fumbled for my lighter, desperate to see something. My breathing was ragged in the dark. What was in there? I clicked the lighter on and a weak flame flickered in the dark. I swept the dim light across the room, hardly illuminating anything. I thought I could see something in the corner – a figure, huddled. I squinted my eyes, but it remained a dark formless mound.

  My breathing quickened and my legs trembled. I inched toward it slowly. As I peered at the shape it mumbled. I was too frightened to go nearer. One lunge and it could grab me. What the hell was someone doing down here, anyway? I finally plucked up the courage and spoke.

  ‘Hello . . . Who’s down here?’

  Nothing. I found myself creeping slowly backwards.

  A voice I knew almost as well as my own moaned in the darkness and my heart stopped.

  ‘Mark?’ More silence. ‘Mark, it’s me.’

  The figure jerked painfully and its face spun towards me. The features were ghoulish in the weak orange light. It took me a moment to recognize him. Mark had the beginnings of a beard and his face was gaunt. His hair was matted.

  He was sitting on the floor, his legs stretched out in front of him. His shirt and jeans were tattered and torn. His eyes were dull and he squinted towards me and into the light as if I wasn’t even there. His hands were wrenched backwards, tied together around a concrete pillar. A filthy rag gagged him.

  I rushed over to him, crouching next to him. ‘It’s me.’ No response. ‘Julia.’

  Then Mark’s eyes locked onto mine.

  I heard another groan and saw a shape stirring further back from us. This figure lay sideways on the floor with its ankles and knees bound together, its hands tied in front of it. The head moved upwards to try to see me. The weak light illuminated a mass of auburn hair, covering a bloody face.

  Lucy.

  She whimpered.

  Then I saw that there was a figure stood behind her in the shadows. I raised myself up slowly.

  ‘Who’s there?’ I asked, my voice cracking with fear.

  The figure stepped backwards further into the gloom.

  I heard a scratching noise. A spark flashed and a tiny flame danced into life. I peered into the darkness, but I couldn’t even tell if it was a man or a woman. Then I realized the smell of paint was mixed with something else – petrol.

  ‘Wait!’ I thrust my hand forward.

  Before I could stop it, the lighted match was tossed into the air, spinning in slow motion until it struck the floor.

  Fire leapt up and roared along a thin trail, straight towards Lucy. Her whimpers turned into shrieks as she wrestled in vain to escape the fire. I rushed towards her as the fire raced me, suddenly splitting in two, one trail leading to Lucy and the other on its predetermined path towards Mark.

  The burning petrol was overpowering, scorching my throat and lungs, making me choke on the thick smoky air. As the fire reached Lucy, a red-hot heat knocked me off my feet and onto my back. The blaze towered above me. It was a dancing wall between me and Lucy. The roar of the fire sounded as if there was a dragon in the basement.

  The flames suddenly dropped as the petrol was eaten up and I could see Lucy behind the shroud of red and yellow that covered her. I could almost touch her, but the heat was too fierce, blistering my outstretched fingertips. Desperation and panic exploded in me and it felt like my heart was going to rupture.

  ‘Lucy!’ The crackle of the fire drowned out my voice. The heat of it made me dizzy.

  I could try to put her out with my jacket. Drag her to the stairs. But I wouldn’t be strong enough to get her out. The smoke would overcome me.

  I couldn’t risk helping her. My baby. The fire was too strong. Then her hair caught light and her screams pierced my ears.

  I turned away and got down on my hands and knees to escape the black smoke, her cries echoing in my ears.

  I crawled towards Mark, who was ba
thed in an eerie orange light. His eyes were panicked, and he was writhing about, trying to free his hands from the ropes. He had managed to scrabble backwards from the fire’s path, but it inched closer and closer to him.

  I had to save him for our baby.

  Terror swelled in my chest, threatening to rip me apart. The pain of hearing Lucy’s screams behind me made my vision blur. I should go back. Help her. But I knew it was already too late. I was aware of footsteps racing up the stairs and the bang as the cellar door closed.

  ‘I’m getting you out,’ I shouted to Mark. My hands shook as I tried to get a good grip on the tight loops of rope around his wrists, but they wouldn’t budge.

  Lucy’s screams turned to low, animalistic moans. I looked back as she clawed at her face and bits of skin slewed off, hissing as they dripped into the fire.

  Mark tried to shout at me, but the gag muffled his words. He jabbed his head towards the front of the cellar and a metal box. I scrabbled towards it. The fire was hungry, tearing shards off the wooden beams that threatened to split open, dropping the ceiling on top of us.

  Thick black smoke hung heavy above, wanting to smother me. The heat made my eyes water and the skin on my face prickle. The tool box was heavy. I dragged it over to Mark. My hands fumbled for the latch.

  Inside were screwdrivers, nails and bolts. Buried at the bottom was a hammer. I jammed the sharp claw part of the hammer head into the knots, but the rope stayed taut, defiant. The fire rolled towards us from all sides. We were surrounded.

  I dug deeper into the box. Bolt cutters. My hands were slippery with sweat as I groped for them, my fingertips screaming in agony. I fastened the cutters onto the thick rope and closed them with all my might. A few threads snapped. I tried again and again until my hands shook with pain. Finally, the rope tore.

  I lifted Mark up and he tried to head towards Lucy, but I pulled him back. It was useless. I dragged him towards the stairs. He ripped his gag off, shouting something at me, but the roar of the fire stole his words away. His legs shook with the effort of moving, wincing with every step we took.