Blood Sisters(91)

Clearly he can’t bring himself to say the word ‘rape’.

He rubs his face as if exhausted. ‘Once you’d taken the job at the prison I did everything I could think of to tip you off balance.’

‘Tip me off balance?’

He looks ashamed. ‘It was my idea that Crispin should use his contacts to put up those messages in the prison. Crispin had had a friend in Durham who had been transferred to Archville and owed him a few favours. We thought that if we spooked you out enough, you’d be more likely to spill the beans to me once I’d cultivated our relationship. Crispin also “buttered you up”, as he put it, to lull you into trusting him.’

A voice resounds in my head. I love your classes, miss.

‘And it was you who posted the advert so that I took the job in the first place,’ I say slowly. I knew he’d said as much in court but I wanted to check.

He nods. ‘I had to pretend to be surprised when you told me about it.’

I shiver at the way he outlines his cold, calculated approach. Then again, hadn’t I been guilty of something similar?

‘This friend of Crispin’s,’ I question. ‘What was his name?’

‘Kurt …’

‘Kurt?’ Another name to add to the long line of people I’d trusted who were really against me.

‘Actually, I was going to say Kurt’s cellmate. He picked up stuff from Kurt, who was always talking about you. It was “Alison this” and “Alison that”, apparently. And Kurt’s cellmate used the information – which days you would be working and so on – to leave threatening messages.’

‘What about the Christmas card?’

He rubs his chin ruefully. ‘I followed you home one night after the college class. Saw where you lived. During the college Christmas dinner, I paid someone to drop it round.’

How cunning. How controlling.

‘That time I bumped into you on the Embankment …’ he starts to say. Then he stops, as though the words are too painful.

‘When you’d been running?’

‘Actually, I hadn’t. I’d been following you.’

A cold sickness crawls through me.

‘And the phone calls?’ I whisper.

He bites his lip again. ‘You spilt your drink over me at the college Christmas party? I used the confusion to grab your phone from your bag and make a note of the number. I passed it to Kurt’s cellmate in a coded letter. He was the one who rang you from D hut.’

It’s coming back to me now. For a minute, I’m back there.

I’m so embarrassed that I knock over my glass of elderflower and it spills all over him. How awful! He has to go to the Gents to dry off his jeans.

‘But then I changed my number.’

He shakes his head as if remonstrating with himself. ‘Remember when I left the message with the college asking them to get you to contact me?’

‘But I withheld my number.’

He looks down at the table. ‘There are ways of tracking that down if you know how.’

I feel disgust. And anger. Not just with Lead Man but with myself. How could I have been so stupid?

‘What about all your buying trips abroad?’ I blurt out. ‘When you couldn’t see me?’

A deep flush crawls up his neck. ‘An investigator has more than one case on at a time. I have a regular client who is in the Far East.’

‘Go.’ I scrape my chair back. ‘I want you to go. Now.’

‘Please. Wait. I haven’t finished. By then, I’d got to know you.’ He runs his hands through his hair. ‘I broke one of my own rules. The more I got to know you, the more I genuinely learned to care for you.’

I scrape my chair back even further. ‘Yeah, right.’

‘No. Really.’ He leans forward. His face is as close to mine as my position will allow. ‘I couldn’t believe that you would do such a thing as push your sister. Why else do you think I took you back to my place? I’d never done that before. But then – the last time, at your flat – you confessed. I was thrown. Part of me thought that Crispin deserved to be punished. But the other part …’

‘Wanted justice for your brother.’

He looks relieved. ‘Exactly.’

‘Well, you’ve got it,’ I say crisply. ‘What more do you want?’

‘The thing is,’ says Lead Man softly, ‘that I can’t get you out of my mind. I’ve never met anyone else like you. And I can’t help thinking that –’

‘Officer!’ I raise my voice. ‘Can you escort this gentleman out, please? I don’t want him here any more.’

Lead Man stands up. ‘You’re making a mistake, Alison.’

I put my hands over my ears as if I am a child again. And when I look up, he is gone. Instead, there’s a roomful of eyes on me.

And a pain so deep in my chest that I can barely breathe.





71


November 2017


Kitty


‘Look, Kitty!’ Your sister has sent you a card.’

She was awake but pretending to be asleep. It was easier that way. All the other mothers around her in the maternity unit would stare or ask questions she couldn’t answer. They didn’t stay long. Not like her. The new ones were always the same. Looking. Whispering when people came to visit. ‘There’s something wrong with her. But the baby seems normal. Sad, isn’t it?’