Bring Me Back (B.A. Paris)(62)

When I next open my eyes, I think I’ve only slept for a few hours because it’s still light outside. Just as I’m wondering if Tony has arrived, I hear his voice coming from downstairs. I pull on some clothes and find Ruby and Harry sitting in the kitchen with him.

‘When did you get here?’ I ask, giving them both a hug, realising they’ve cut their holiday short.

‘A couple of hours ago. Tony let us in.’ Harry sees me trying to work it out. ‘I chartered a plane,’ he explains.

‘Even so,’ I say. ‘What time is it?’

‘Around seven, I guess.’ I look at him in bewilderment. ‘In the morning,’ he adds.

I can’t believe I slept the rest of yesterday afternoon and the night away. I look at the three of them, genuinely touched that they’ve rushed to be with me. ‘Thanks for coming, all of you.’

‘You might not be so grateful when you hear what we’ve got to say,’ Ruby says. My heart plummets and catching the look on my face, she hastens to reassure me. ‘No, nothing like that. All I mean is that the three of us have been discussing everything and seem to have come to the same conclusion.’

‘Give the man a chance to have a cup of coffee first,’ Harry protests.

I pull out a chair and sit down. ‘It’s OK, I’d rather know.’

Tony clears his throat. ‘Despite our best efforts, we haven’t found a single trace of Layla anywhere in Cheltenham. We’ve looked at the guest records from every single boarding house and hotel, we’ve shown both her old photo and a digital reconstruction of what she might look like now around in cafés and restaurants and have come up with nothing.’ He pauses. ‘And then there’s the chest full of wooden dolls you found in the attic – I went up to take a look, by the way.’

‘Yes, of course,’ I say, wondering what he’s getting at.

‘Logically, they can’t have got there without Ellen knowing about them,’ Ruby says. ‘I mean, how would Layla have got them past both of you?’

‘You think Ellen was helping Layla,’ I say dully. ‘Don’t worry, I’ve already thought of it.’ They exchange uneasy glances. ‘What?’ I ask.

‘We actually think it might be a bit simpler than that.’ This time it’s Harry.

‘What do you mean?’ I ask, wondering what they’re so reluctant to tell me.

‘That maybe Layla was never back. That maybe, there was only Ellen.’





FIFTY-SIX

Finn

I look around the table at them, thinking they’re having a joke. When I see that they’re deadly serious, I realise that Tony didn’t understand anything I told him. Irritated that I’m going to have to explain it all again, I cut to the best piece of evidence I have.

‘If you remember,’ I say, ‘Ellen saw Layla in Cheltenham.’

‘But you never actually saw her,’ Tony points out.

‘No, but Thomas did, outside the cottage at St Mary’s.’

‘Maybe it was Ellen he saw.’

I shake my head stubbornly. ‘Thomas wouldn’t have made that mistake.’

‘Ellen could just have pretended to see Layla in Cheltenham,’ Ruby says, almost apologetically.

I open my mouth, ready to protest, then close it again quickly. Ruby is right, it’s possible that Ellen only pretended to see Layla.

‘So how did the Russian doll get onto the car that day?’ I ask. ‘I dropped Ellen off at the hairdresser and she had only just finished having her hair done when I went back to pick her up.’

‘She could have nipped back after you left, pretended to the hairdresser that she’d forgotten to pay for the parking.’

I search my mind for something else. ‘Seriously, you expect me to believe that the emails I received, every single one of them, even the ones that told me to get rid of Ellen, came from Ellen herself?’

‘It’s possible,’ Harry says.

‘Don’t forget that she got a Russian doll in the post. She’d hardly have sent it to herself.’

‘Why not?’ Harry counters. ‘Surely it would be the sensible thing to do, to make it seem as if she was being targeted by Layla too.’

‘You’re mad,’ I tell them. ‘You’ve lost your minds. Of course Ellen isn’t behind this. And if what you say is true, how would she have got into the cottage? Only Layla and I had keys.’

‘Maybe Ellen found yours and had a copy made.’

‘Not possible – they were in a safe in the bank.’

‘Then maybe Layla had a copy made and sent them to Ellen before she disappeared.’

‘She would have asked me first.’ I look around the table at them. ‘Look, Ellen isn’t that kind of person. She’s not devious, or cruel. And she would have to be a bloody brilliant actress to pull it off.’ They still don’t seem convinced and because I trust their judgment, doubt begins to worm its way in. It would, after all, explain so much. It would explain how the dolls were left outside the house with such ease, without anybody seeing. The first doll that appeared, Ellen only needed to pretend that she found it on the wall for me to believe it, the second she could have put on the wall once I’d left to go to the village that morning. Ruby has already worked out how she could have got the third doll onto the car in Cheltenham. I continue onto the fourth, the one left in The Jackdaw. She could easily have slipped it on the plate before leaving for the toilet. The dolls that came in the post – she only had to walk down to the postbox in the village while I was in my office, a matter of ten minutes at the most. I wouldn’t have noticed that she was gone – hadn’t she reproached me for not noticing that she’d gone into Cheltenham those couple of times? And on the two Sundays, when there wasn’t any post, she had simply left dolls on the wall again, the first once I’d left to go to the village for bread, the second as we’d left together. She only had to lag behind me slightly and stretch out her arm. I wouldn’t have noticed a thing.