Sweet Little Lies (Cat Kinsella #1)(114)

When I’m not schmoozing with Interpol, I’m trawling through the death records of every Kristen who passed away in late 2000. Assuming her death was actually registered is stupidly optimistic of me, given it’s likely she was disposed of in a rather more unofficial fashion, but someone’s got to try, you know. A young girl’s life has to be worth at least a brief wild goose-chase.

When it proves to be exactly that, I run a search for every Kristen reported missing in the UK and Ireland in the early Noughties and there’s one that looks interesting – a Kristen McCloud, reported missing by her mother in February 2001, after moving to London in May 2000 from County Kerry. Kristen regularly phoned home, her mother tells me, although she hadn’t been back to visit, however the last time she called had been the first week of December 2000 and she recalls her daughter did sound a bit down that day. She never heard from her only child ever again. Saskia French takes a look at her photo, pitifully insists it’s not her while her chin wobbles and her eyes bulge with tears. Gina Hicks struggles to even glance at it. Both women haunted in their own way by the reality of what happened to Kristen. Both still wanting to believe that maybe she was out there, living a great life with an army of children and just a couple of faint scars on her wrists to remind her that her life wasn’t always so wonderful.

We’re still waiting on sentencing. While in theory a guilty plea should be straightforward, there’s always a bit of sniping that has to happen between prosecution and defence around what the agreed facts are, and in this case, the point of sending a terminally ill man to prison. With any luck though, Patrick Mackie will die inside. Which means he’ll serve a maximum of twelve months for murder.

I can’t dwell on that for too long, my insides start to itch.

My guess is Gina will get five years for assault – we now know it was assault, the location of the bloodstains suggests a push, not a fall. I’m not sure they’ll bother too much with an assisting an offender charge, not when there’s a host of historic trafficking charges gathering pace but we’ll see. It’s fair to say, prison isn’t suiting her. In the four weeks since she was charged, her honey-blonde hair has gone grey at the roots and stripped of her make-up and all her Wandsworth-set props, she looks ordinary. Almost featureless. She doesn’t get many visitors either. All the people who drank her posh wine and ate her Christmas canapés appear to be staying well away. It’s only really Felix Whiteley and occasionally me or Parnell who grace her presence, scavenging for more information that she refuses to give. The only time she speaks is to ask after the twins, who she doesn’t want visiting, and the occasional abrupt enquiry as to her Dad’s health. There’s not a word about Nate, and poor Amber – ‘Leo’s mine, Amber’s Nate’s’ – hardly gets a look in either. When the chips are down, Gina Hicks obviously feels that blood is unequivocally thicker than water.

Something I understand only too well.

*

In a reversal of fortune that I know she just loves, it’s me who stalks Jacqui in the busy weeks that follow. It’s me who leaves the voicemails and begs for her time. We finally meet one lunchtime in a café by St Paul’s. I order a panini and a large cappuccino. Jacqui says she doesn’t want anything and then bursts into tears.

I’ve had easier meetings, that’s for sure. I’ve certainly had more truthful meetings.

In an effort to diffuse the bombshell I’d dropped about Maryanne being in the boot of Dad’s car, I go big and I go broad, throwing everything but the kitchen sink at Jacqui. First, I claim I was drunk when I said it. On medication and drunk. Having man-trouble. Over-tired. Later I hint towards drug use, trying to suggest that I’d entered some kind of hyper-reality, brought on by excessive weed use, that genuinely made me believe that Dad had been stashing dead women in the boot of his car. For good measure, I detail a few other crazy hallucinations I’d been having. Some other bonkers accusations that I’d made (‘I’ve cut the weed out now, honestly .?.?. learned my lesson there, I promise .?.?.’) I even end up confessing that I’ve been seeing a counsellor at work and I now realise that there’s a possibility I might have been transferring my feelings towards Alana-Jane’s murdering father onto my entirely innocent one. Transference is very common when you’re mentally fragile, I say.

I should be offended that she believes it all so easily, but I’m far too busy just being grateful that she forgives me. Not to mention hugely relieved that she never did mention anything to Dad.

Thank the Lord for Jacqui’s easy readiness to sweep anything unpleasant under the carpet.

Dad and I haven’t met up yet. We’re letting the feelings lie fallow, just occasionally speaking on the phone. One night he mentions going to Ireland in the summer, maybe just the two of us. He pitches it as an opportunity to lay flowers on Gran’s grave, the least he can do after all this time avoiding the place, but I know he hopes we’ll lay some ghosts to rest too. That atonement might be found strolling idly past Duffy’s field or walking side by side up the Long Road.

I say I’ll think about it to avoid the awkwardness but I know it won’t happen. To me, it feels wrong.

*

It feels right to go back to where Maryanne was found though.

It’s a mild day, freakish for January. ‘Hotter than Madrid!’ so I’m told by just about everyone. However, it certainly isn’t drier than Madrid. Swollen grey clouds have been spewing torrents of rain for the past hour but if anything, it feels beautiful. Oddly fitting for what I’m about to do.