Nine Elms (Kate Marshall #1)(17)

She rummaged in her bag and pulled out a twenty-pound note. He took it, and she picked her way through the broken glass and out the door.

She didn’t look back and hurried across the road, narrowly missing a van, which honked its horn. When she reached her car, she got inside, locking the doors. Her hands were shaking, and she could smell the whiskey on her shoes, and the wetness on her legs. A part of her wanted to suck it out of the material. She took a deep breath and opened the window, feeling the cold air circulate in the car, dampening the whiskey smell. She took out her mobile phone and sent a text message to Myra, her sponsor in Alcoholics Anonymous.

ARE YOU UP? ALMOST DRANK.



She was relieved to receive a reply immediately.

YOU’RE IN LUCK, KIDDO. I’M UP AND I HAVE CAKE. I’LL PUT THE KETTLE ON.





Myra lived next door to Kate, in a small flat above the surf shop, which she owned and ran. The surf shop was closed up for the winter, and the small car park at the front was empty apart from a cash machine strapped to the wall and a two-sided roto sign with ridged edges. It was spinning fast in the wind, flicking between COLD DRINKS and ICE CREAM. Kate went to the side door and knocked. She looked over at the cash machine, which was glowing in the corner. In the summer months, it was used by the surfers, but off-season, Kate was one of the only people who used it, and only then because she was too lazy to go into town.

Myra answered the door carrying two steaming mugs of tea.

“Hold these,” she said, handing them to Kate. “Let’s go down and get some air.”

She pulled on a long, dark winter coat and stepped into a pair of Wellington boots. Her face was heavily lined, but she had clear skin and a head of white hair, which glowed luminously under the light in her hallway. Kate had never asked Myra’s age, nor had it been offered up. Myra was a private person, but Kate figured she must be in her late fifties or sixties. She must have been born before 1965, which was the year Myra Hindley and Ian Brady were captured for the Moors Murders—not many people wanted to name their daughters Myra after that.

They came out the door and past the terrace overlooking the sea, where three rows of empty picnic tables sat in the shadows.

A crumbling set of concrete steps led down to the beach, and Kate followed slowly after Myra, concentrating on not spilling the tea.

The sound of the wind and the waves grew louder as they reached the bottom of the steps, where there were a couple of rusting deck chairs nestled in the dunes. The chairs creaked in unison as they sat. Kate sipped gratefully at the hot, sweet tea. Myra took a box of Mr Kipling’s mini Battenberg cakes from her coat pocket.

“Why did you want to drink?” she asked, her face serious. There was no judgment coming from her, but she was stern, and rightly so; six years of sobriety was not to be taken lightly. Over cake, Kate told her about the day’s triple whammy: the Peter Conway lecture, the email she’d received, and then the postmortem.

“I feel responsible, Myra. The father of this girl, Caitlyn. He’s got no one else to turn to.”

“You don’t know if she was abducted by Peter Conway. What if it’s a coincidence?” said Myra.

“And then this young woman tonight . . . Jesus, the way she was lying there, like a beaten-up piece of meat . . . And the thought that it’s all starting again.”

“What do you want to do?”

“I want to help. I want to stop it from happening again.”

“You can help by talking and sharing what you know, but remember that recovery never ends, Kate. You have a son who needs his mother. You have yourself to think of. Nothing is more important than your sobriety. What happens if you go back to a liquor store and you don’t drop that bottle of whiskey? And you go to the counter, and you buy it, and then you relapse?”

Kate wiped a tear from her eye. Myra reached out and took her hand.

“Peter Conway is locked away. You put him there. Think of how many lives you saved, Kate. He would have kept on going. Let the police deal with this. Let Alan do his job. And as for this missing girl. What do you think you can do to find her? And how can her parents be sure she was killed by Conway?”

Kate looked down at the sand, and she smoothed it under her feet with the edges of her boots. Speaking to Myra had calmed her. The adrenaline was no longer surging through her body, and she felt exhausted. She checked her watch. It was almost eleven p.m. She turned and looked out to sea, at the row of lights from Ashdean twinkling in the darkness.

“I need to get some rest and get myself out of these jeans. They stink of booze.”

Kate could see Myra’s concern, but she didn’t want to have to promise she would leave the cases alone.

“I’ll come with you and help you put them in the washing machine,” said Myra. Kate was about to protest but nodded. She’d done some crazy things when she was drinking, and the smell of stale booze had tipped her over the edge in the past. “And we’re going to the early meeting tomorrow,” she added sternly.

“Yes,” said Kate. “And thank you.”





7

Peter Conway walked down the long corridor at Great Barwell Psychiatric Hospital flanked by two orderlies, Winston and Terrell.

The long years of incarceration and limited activity had given Peter a paunch and skinny, underdeveloped legs, which poked out of his slightly too short bathrobe. His hands were cuffed behind him, and he wore a spit hood. It was made of a thin metal mesh and covered his whole head. A thick reinforced panel of plastic at the front moved in and out as he breathed. His gray hair was wet from the shower, and it poked out from under the hood, hanging over his shoulders.