The Couple at No. 9(53)

She gets to her feet. Her legs are like jelly and there is a hole in the knee of her jeans, blood and grit darkening the edges. She hobbles out of the lane and turns left, stopping to pick up her broken heel on the way. She’s trembling all over. The bushes and hedges that obscure the other properties would also hide crime, she thinks, as she limps home. She could have been raped and murdered right here on this street and nobody would have seen a thing.

She’s relieved when she spots number nine, the light in the living room still on, seeping through the ill-fitting curtains at the window. She hobbles over the drive, her unheeled shoe sinking into the gravel. Before she’s even got to the door it’s thrown open, her daughter standing there, a mixture of horror and relief on her face.

‘Mum!’ she cries, throwing herself at her. ‘Oh, my God, we’ve been so worried. Are you okay? What’s happened?’

She manages to nod as Saffy ushers her into the house and on to the sofa. Tom is standing by the fireplace and the look on his face when he sees her is so horrified that she fights the urge to laugh hysterically.

‘He … he grabbed me,’ she says. ‘This fucking bastard grabbed me. He must have been waiting … I lost my phone. I’m so sorry I didn’t call.’

‘Oh, my God! Don’t worry about that now,’ says Saffy, sitting next to her and taking her hand. ‘Your knee is bleeding. Are you okay? Who grabbed you?’

‘I think it was the same guy from yesterday. Glen, he said his name was.’

Saffy frowns. ‘From yesterday?’

She swallows tears. She can’t cry. She has to be strong for her daughter, who looks petrified. ‘He stopped me when I was taking Snowy for a walk. Seemed pleasant enough … but as I was walking away I heard him say something about your gran. I thought I’d misheard him but …’

Tom starts pacing. ‘This is fucking unbelievable. We need to call the police. Saffy, what’s the number for DS Barnes?’ He’s already got his mobile in his hand.

‘No!’ cries Lorna, standing up. She wobbles on her one heel and has to sit down again. Her nail varnish has chipped, and her feet are dirty. ‘We can’t contact the police. He said he’ll know. He said … he said he knows where your gran is living.’

Lorna tells them everything – almost everything anyway. She omits the part where he threatened to hurt Saffy. She doesn’t want to scare her any more than she needs to: all this stress and worry can’t be good for the baby. ‘He said something about Gran burying the evidence. And that he wanted to know where.’

‘The evidence?’ Saffy’s face pales. ‘Is that what he said? Paperwork that Gran has?’

‘I … I don’t know. I don’t think he mentioned paperwork but I can’t remember. He wanted me to ask your gran. He mentioned a card,’ says Lorna. ‘I didn’t know what he was talking about.’

Saffy inhales sharply. ‘That wanker. It’s the same guy.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I met someone earlier. He said he was a private detective and he’d been hired by someone to find a file or paperwork or something that Gran has. He tried to be all nice at first but I was feeling increasingly uneasy as the conversation progressed. He …’ She shudders. ‘He was quite intense. I felt afraid by the end. As he was leaving he gave me his card. It said G. E. Davies … Glen. It’s got to be the same man.’ She goes to the coffee-table and picks something up. ‘Here,’ she says, handing it to Lorna.

‘He can’t be a legitimate private detective,’ says Tom, still pacing. ‘Not if he’s grabbing women in the street.’

Lorna takes the card from her daughter. It looks crude and unprofessionally done. She hands it back. ‘He specifically said evidence …’

Saffy pulls at her hair, looking stressed. ‘The police came today,’ she says, and Lorna listens as her daughter tells her about their visit. ‘When they were leaving I gave them Davies’s number and they said they’d check him out. We should tell them about this too.’

Lorna can’t take it all in. Finding out her mother lived here when at least one of the murders took place, and now this. It must be connected somehow. She bends over and takes off her shoes. She’ll have to see if she can glue the heel back on.

‘What the hell was Rose mixed up in?’ Tom stops pacing, his arms folded, fixing Lorna with a furious gaze, like it’s her fault. She’s the parent here: she needs to take charge.

‘Let’s all go to bed,’ she says, standing up. ‘I’ll come with you to the care home tomorrow, honey. See what we can find out.’

‘Mum …’

Lorna holds up her hand, looking from Saffy’s anxious face to Tom’s angry one. ‘You both need to get some rest,’ she says, in her most authoritarian voice. ‘We’ll talk about it tomorrow.’ She limps out of the room and climbs the stairs, her knee aching with the movement. Fury builds inside her. How dare this man threaten her family. Tomorrow, she thinks, she’ll buy some panic alarms and some pepper spray. If that man comes anywhere near her daughter again she’ll kill him.





28


Rose



February 1980


The day after I ran into Joel in the village square the snow came.