Into the Water(83)

She fell silent. Her fingers stopped moving and then it came from her, a whisper, a hiss. ‘Why would Nickie imagine I wanted to hear that your mother was murdered?’





Lena


THERE WAS NO room for guilt. All the space was taken up with relief, grief, that weird feeling of lightness you get when you wake up from a nightmare and realize it isn’t real. But that – that wasn’t even true, because the nightmare was still real. Mum was no less gone. But at least she didn’t choose to go. She didn’t choose to leave me. Someone took her – and that was something, because it meant there was something I could do about it, for her and for me. I could do whatever it took to make sure Helen Townsend paid.

I was running along the coastal path, clasping Mum’s bracelet to my wrist. I was terrified that it was going to drop off and go sliding down the cliff into the sea. I wanted to put it in my mouth for safe-keeping, like crocodiles do with their babies.

Running on the slippery path felt dangerous, because I could have fallen, but safe at the same time – you can see a really long way in either direction, so I knew there was no one behind me. Of course there was no one behind me. No one was coming.

No one was coming for me – not to get me, not to help me. And I didn’t have my phone, and I had no fucking idea whether it was in Mark’s house or in his car or whether he’d taken it and thrown it away, and it wasn’t like I could ask him now, was it?

I’d no room for guilt. I had to focus. Who could I turn to? Who was going to help me?

I could see buildings a little way up ahead, and I started to run harder, as fast as I could. I let myself imagine that someone there would know what to do, that someone there would have all the answers.





Sean


MY PHONE BUZZED in its holder, snapping me back to the present.

‘Sir?’ It was Erin. ‘Where are you?’

‘On my way to the coast. Where are you? Did Louise have anything to say?’

There was a long pause, so long I thought she perhaps hadn’t heard me.

‘Did Louise have anything to say about Lena?’

‘Er … no.’ She didn’t sound convinced.

‘What’s going on?’

‘Look, I need to talk to you, but I don’t want to do this on the phone …’

‘What? Is it Lena? Tell me now, Erin, don’t mess about.’

‘It’s not urgent. It’s not Lena. It’s—’

‘For Christ’s sake, if it’s not urgent why are you ringing me?’

‘I need to talk to you the second you’re back in Beckford,’ she said. She sounded cold and angry. ‘You got that?’ She cut the call.

The downpour abating, I accelerated, snaking down narrow roads flanked by high hedges. I had that dizzied sense again, like going too fast on a rollercoaster, light-headed with adrenaline. I whipped through a narrow stone arch and down a slope, then up again as the road climbed over the brow of a hill, and there it was: a little harbour, fishing boats rising and falling on the impatient tide.

The village was quiet, presumably thanks to the awful weather. So this was Craster. The car slowed without my even registering I was braking. A few hardy walkers draped in tent-like anoraks trudged through puddles as I pulled over to park. I followed a young couple running to take refuge, and found a group of pensioners huddled over mugs of tea in the café. I showed them pictures of Lena and Mark, but they hadn’t seen them. They said they’d already been asked not half an hour earlier by a copper in uniform.

As I walked back to the car, I passed the very smokehouse where my mother had promised to take me for kippers. I tried to picture her face, as I did sometimes, but I never succeeded. I think I wanted to relive her disappointment when I told her I didn’t want to come here. I wanted to feel the pain, her pain then, my pain now. But the memory was too muddied.

I drove on the half-mile or so to Howick. The house was easy enough to find – it was the only one there, perched precariously on a clifftop, looking out to sea. As expected, a red Vauxhall was parked out back. Its boot was open.

As I dragged myself out of the car, my feet heavy with dread, one of the PCs came over to give me an update – where they were looking, what they’d found. They were talking to the coastguard. ‘Sea’s quite rough, so if either of them was in there, they could have been washed quite some way in a short space of time,’ he said. ‘Of course, we don’t know when they got here, or …’ He led me over to the car and I peered into the boot. ‘You can see,’ he said, ‘it looks as though someone’s been in there.’ He pointed to the smear of blood on the carpet, another on the rear window. A strand of blonde hair was caught on the lock mechanism, just like the one found in the kitchen.

He showed me the rest of the scene: smears of blood on the garden table, on the wall, on a rusty nail. I had failed her, like I had failed my mother. No – her mother. I’d failed her like I’d failed her mother. I could feel myself drifting again, the sense that I was losing my grip, and then: ‘Sir? We’ve got a call. A shopkeeper in the next village up the coast. Says he’s got a girl in there, soaked through and a bit bashed up, no idea where she is, asking him to call the police.’

There was a bench outside the shop and she was sitting on it, her head tilted back, her eyes closed. She was draped in a dark-green jacket which was too big for her. As the car pulled up, she opened her eyes.