Dark Waters Page 11

  ‘Nothing wrong with me that a couple of years in a funny farm hasn’t cured.’

  ‘Oh, Sash.’ Something like pity washed over Alex and she enveloped her sister in a hug.

  ‘I know you don’t really want me here.’ Her shoulders were stiff beneath Alex’s arms.

  ‘Don’t be daft.’

  ‘I had nowhere else to go. Mum’s got enough on her plate and I didn’t want to go back to my house. Not yet. Not until I can redecorate it. It’s so …’ She sniffed. ‘So sad in there. All those pictures stuck to the wall.’

  Alex knew the pictures she meant. Pictures of the twins torn out of newspapers on the days following their disappearance. Blurry pictures of Sasha, crying on Jez’s shoulder. Pictures of police officers fingertip searching the lay-by where Harry’s body was found. Endless pictures. Endless photographs.

  ‘No, and you shouldn’t be on your own. I’m happy to have you.’ She kissed the top of Sasha’s head. ‘I’m your sister.’

  Sasha lifted one arm to rub Alex’s shoulder. Alex tried not to look at the silvery traces of scars on her skin – memories of the time when Sasha was self-harming, when Alex had to bathe her wounds, bandage them, occasionally take her to hospital. Suddenly Alex’s throat was thick with tears.

  She swallowed the tears down. ‘Where have you been since you were released?’

  Sasha gave a crooked smile. ‘Isn’t the word discharged? Or is that only from a hospital? Anyway. Whatever. Where have I been? Nowhere. Stayed with a friend. Needed to get my head together, think about life, before I actually came and lived it.’

  ‘A friend? Really?’

  ‘What?’ Her eyes flashed. ‘You think I haven’t got any friends, is that it? Do you think you were the only one visiting me in that godforsaken place where all they did was pump me full of drugs?’

  Alex was taken aback by Sasha’s vehemence. ‘Okay. So you stayed with friends.’

  Sasha jumped up out of her chair. ‘How many times do I have to tell you? Yes, yes, yes. Now will you drop it?’

  ‘I should have come to collect you.’

  Sasha glared at her. ‘You see, Alex, that’s just it. You stifle me. You want me to be something I’m not. You want me to be good and docile and to do whatever you say. You always try to manipulate me. You always have.’

  Alex didn’t open her mouth. She had to think before she spoke or she might say something she would regret.

  Sasha sat down again, pushed her plate away and took a packet of cigarettes out of her pocket. ‘What?’ she said to Alex, as she unwrapped the cellophane and pushed one out of the packet. ‘I’m not allowed to smoke now?’

  ‘It’s up to you. I didn’t know you smoked though.’ She kept herself calm; she didn’t want to be lashed by Sasha’s tongue again.

  ‘Not much else to do sitting in a chair all day.’

  ‘You never did when I came to see you.’

  Sasha shrugged. ‘I do now. Besides, we weren’t allowed to indoors.’ She drew smoke deep into her lungs, as if to make a point.

  ‘But when I took you outside you—’

  ‘Leave it, Alex, will you.’ She stubbed her hardly smoked cigarette out in the saucer Alex had put in front of her as an ashtray and immediately lit another. She poured some coffee for them both. ‘Look. You want to know where I was. Why I didn’t come to you straightaway. It was because I was worried some tabloid had got wind of the fact I was leaving Leacher’s House and they would be camping out on your doorstep.’ Her voice was soft. ‘Have you heard from any journalists?’

  ‘Just the one. Someone called Penny. Not sure where she was from, I didn’t give her a chance to speak.’

  ‘So what are you working on at the moment? The latest wedding fashions for celebrities? Or have you moved on to covering their actual weddings? I mean, you haven’t done anything worthwhile for ages. That’s what you told me in hospital.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Her sister waved her cigarette around. Ash floated to the floor. ‘You used to talk to me about all sorts of things when I was incarcerated in that place. You went on about our childhood, about how much you loved me, how you wanted to help me. Blah blah blah. How sorry you were you hadn’t helped me when I needed it. You told me how dissatisfied you were with what you were doing – that you wanted to do something useful, write stories that would make a difference.’ She looked at Alex and laughed. ‘What, you thought I wasn’t listening to you?’

  Alex blinked. That’s exactly what she’d thought. She had been talking to a Sasha who sat mute in her chair looking out of the window most of the time.

  ‘I took a lot in, you know. I liked to think about what you’d said when you’d gone. It made a change from my thoughts I can tell you.’ She smoked quietly for a few minutes. Alex busied herself tidying things up that didn’t need tidying.

  ‘I’m sorry for what I said earlier. About Gus.’ She spoke quietly.

  ‘That’s all right.’

  ‘No, it’s not, it was unfair. He’s a good boy. Not so much of a boy now, though, I guess. All grown up.’ She gave a harsh laugh. ‘For what it’s worth, I think you’ve done a good job with him.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’m probably jealous.’

  There was nothing Alex could say to that to make it better.

  Sasha drank the rest of her coffee, then sprang out of the chair and prowled around the kitchen, taking cups out of the cupboard, putting them back again. Rearranging tins, moving the toaster to the left, the salt pig to the right. ‘I’m going out,’ she said suddenly.

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘Why do you want to know?’ She looked defiant.

  ‘Sasha. Please.’

  ‘You’re not my mother,’ she said, as she flounced out of the kitchen, slamming the door behind her.

  ‘No, but you’re acting like a little kid,’ muttered Alex, clearing away plates and mugs. This was why she had been dreading Sasha coming to live with her: her mercurial moods, her vituperative tongue. Normal behaviour was resumed.

  ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ blasted out again. Heath.

  ‘So,’ he said without preamble, ‘according to the post-mortem, Daley and Fleet had both drunk a glassful of barbiturates. That, according to my source, would have been enough to kill them without the old barbecue trick. They really went for belt and braces.’ He sounded gloomy.

  ‘So?’

  ‘So I’m not sure this is going to be the explosive story I had hoped. But—’

  ‘No sign of foul play then?’

  ‘“Foul play”. You sound like someone in an Agatha Christie novel. Hang on a minute.’ There was a pause. Alex heard a clicking sound. He must be in a car on speakerphone. It explained the rather odd quality to his voice.

  ‘Come on, you know what I mean.’

  He laughed. ‘No, no foul play. Evidence they’d been in touch through a suicide forum, but that’s about it. Just two lonely old guys who didn’t want to die alone, I guess.’

  Alex frowned. ‘No, Heath, I’m convinced there’s more to it than that. I’ve got this feeling—’

  ‘Journalist’s intuition?’

  ‘If you like. And you can keep that mocking tone out of your voice. Look at the bigger picture. We still don’t know why they did it, so there’s definitely a story in that. Magazine editor – possibly dodgy – a lapsed priest, come on, where’s your journo nose?’

  ‘Stuck up the business unit’s arse.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Alex, I may have to leave it with you for a while.’

  ‘You’re not bailing out on me already?’ God, he was such a lightweight.

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘I’m on my way back to London now. Doing a stint on the business desk.’

  ‘“The business desk”? But last night—’

  ‘Things change. Redeployment.’

  ‘Bloody quickly. What do you know about business?’

  ‘Enough. I st
arted as a business reporter, low level of course. I got out of it as soon as I could, but now the experience has come back to bite me in the arse.’ He sounded gloomy. ‘Dull as bloody ditchwater. Where talent goes to die. Unless you’re Robert Peston, I suppose. Or Evan Davis.’

  ‘Hang on, let’s rewind here. Why are you going to the business desk at all?’

  ‘In a word: Bud.’

  ‘Bud?’

  ‘He doesn’t think there’s any more to this story, Alex. He said it was good riddance that Daley was dead, but he’d topped himself and that was that.’

  ‘You pitched him the idea of raising awareness of these suicide forums? Told him it could be a campaign for the newspaper, could get more readers? Told him we – you – wanted to find a connection between Daley and Fleet?’

  ‘Yep. All that and more. Phoned him this morning. Told him all that. He said it was merely a suicide. I said yes, but Daley was a big name. He said we would treat it as any other suicide story, but with an obituary for Daley. Then he said they needed an extra journalist in business and I was best placed to go. I couldn’t argue with him. I need the job, and with all the uncertainty at the paper, well, you know. Bud doesn’t let sentiment get in the way. Not that he thinks much of me anyway. We have to face it, he doesn’t want to know, Alex.’

  ‘Bloody hell, Heath.’ Disappointment crashed over her. ‘We’ve hardly started.’

  ‘I know. I’m not sure I understand what’s going on.’

  ‘You thought it was worth going after, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’ The answer came back without any hesitation. ‘Truly. It was interesting and in the public interest.’

  ‘So help me? Please?’

  There was a silence, then a sigh. ‘I don’t know. There’s the job and Mimi—’

  ‘Mimi?’ What sort of a name was that?

  ‘Mimi is the mother of my child.’ He sounded weary.

  ‘Oh yes, of course.’

  ‘Alex, if you need help, I’ll do it.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘There’s something else.’

  There was a note in his voice that made her stand still, her heart thumping in her chest. ‘Go on.’

  ‘I heard something on the grapevine about your Malone.’

  ‘He’s not my Malone.’

  ‘Alex, I’m trying to help you here.’

  ‘Sorry, sorry.’ Her hand was slippery on the phone.

  ‘Okay, so I asked a couple of mates in the police, pretty high up mates and they wouldn’t have been able to say anything—’

  ‘Heath, please.’ She hated the pleading in her voice.

  ‘I’m trying to tell you – these mates of mine wouldn’t have been able to say anything if he still worked for them.’

  ‘“Worked for them”?’

  ‘Undercover, you know.’

  She thought back. Malone had been talking of leaving the force, telling them to stick their undercover jobs where, as he put it, ‘the sun don’t shine’, but she had never thought he would go through with it – it was too much part of his life. So, she was surprised at what Heath had told her.

  ‘You’re trying to tell me he doesn’t work undercover for the force any more?’

  ‘Not undercover, not anything. He left, hung up his gun, his boots, whatever they do in that situation. But since then he’s been under the radar. No one knows where he is.’

  ‘No one?’

  ‘Well—’

  ‘What is it, Heath?’ Alex sensed his reluctance.

  ‘There is a rumour he was on the run from a child-trafficking gang whose boss he helped put away.’

  Nothing about being on the run from his wife’s family. It had been heartbreaking to find out that Malone was married, even if it was only one of convenience: a marriage forged to get close to a woman who had terrorist tendencies, whose whole family operated on the wrong side of the law. Despite knowing all this, Alex had trusted him with her life and heart. What a fool she had turned out to be.

  ‘And?’

  ‘They think he’s abroad somewhere. Europe, most likely, but the trail is cold at the moment. I will keep digging, though, when I can.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She would think about all that later. ‘Look, Heath, going back to the Broads, I still think this is a great story.’ Something within her told her she shouldn’t let it go, that there was more to the whole Broads deaths thing than met the eye. She could do it with or without Heath, though she would rather have him with her. ‘I know you’ll be busy and all that, but I will keep on it and I may run stuff past you, if you’re not too involved with interest rates and the FTSE.’

  ‘Fair enough. And Alex?’

  ‘Yes?’

  She heard him hesitate. ‘Take care, won’t you? There are some nasty people out there.’

  He sounded genuinely concerned, thought Alex. He was all heart. But now what? She was at a dead end. What was the point in her going on with the story if Bud didn’t want it? True, she could sell it elsewhere, but part of the fun, she had to admit to herself, had been the idea of working with Heath. So what now? She sat up straight. She could do it on her own, why not? What was stopping her? If she could put something together, she would find someone to buy it. She might even make a few calls later. She didn’t need Heath Maitland or Bud Evans.

  15

  Cambridge 1976

  After what I thought of as ‘the incident’ (it was the only way I could cope with the betrayal) with Willem and Rachel at the party, I threw myself into my work. I didn’t want to talk to anybody. I hid in my room, emerging only to go to lectures or to forage for food. I ignored everybody as I nursed my hurt feelings. I tried to forget about both of them. On the days when I did venture out, I occasionally saw them around and about Cambridge: Rachel with another male student in tow; Willem with his arm flung around the shoulder of a girl one time, a boy another. I was civilized if our paths crossed, but any feelings I’d had for Rachel had gone as quickly as they had come.

  Willem was a different matter. I did miss his wit and knowledge and I missed his sense of fun. I had worked out why he had done that to me, cheated on me, made Rachel cheat on me – he couldn’t bear not being the main person in my life. I spent a few evenings and nights agonizing over whether Willem might actually fancy me, but then dismissed those thoughts. With Willem, it was all about him and what he wanted, and if you didn’t go along with that, he didn’t like it. He hadn’t liked not being the centre of my attention. But I was determined not to be caught in his web of control.

  I went home for Christmas at the end of the Michaelmas term.

  I spent Christmas Day with my family, enjoyed being with them even though I had to endure the usual ‘is that a girl or a boy?’ and ‘are there any actual words to this song’ remarks from Dad during Top of the Pops, which was followed by the Queen’s speech. Dad still stood up for the national anthem.

  I got together with old school friends, went to the local Chinese or to the pub, and to the squash club for New Year’s Eve, managing to get off with Molly Perrin under the shrivelled mistletoe. Molly Perrin – what was I thinking? And when I ignored her for the rest of the holidays I knew I had turned into a heel. Not nice behaviour. I had to do better.

  On the first day of Lent term I saw Stu at the porters’ lodge. This was my chance to do better and to put the events of last term well and truly behind me.

  ‘Hi,’ I said, smiling at him. ‘Did you have a good Christmas?’

  He looked taken aback, as well he might considering I’d ignored him most of last term.

  ‘Er, yes, thanks.’ He pushed his glasses back up his nose. ‘You?’

  ‘Good, yes.’ I nodded vigorously to underline the point. ‘Want to come up for a coffee? Have you got time?’

  ‘Yes. Great.’

  I kept up a constant stream of chat as we went up the stairs and as I unlocked my room and flung my rucksack on the bed. I told him about my family and my parents’ party and New Year. I even mentioned Moll
y Perrin.

  ‘Gosh. I didn’t think …’ He blushed a pillar-box red.

  ‘Didn’t think what?’

  He couldn’t look at me. ‘You know.’

  I stared at him, and then the penny dropped. ‘You thought I was—?’

  He shrugged. ‘Well, you were always hanging around with Willem Major.’

  I laughed, though it sounded false to my ears. ‘No. He was just a friend. Anyway, we’re no longer such good mates. He let me down. Big time. Look, do you like films?’ I didn’t let him answer. ‘Because there’s a good one on at film club – The Night Porter – have you heard of it? It stars Dirk Bogarde and Charlotte Rampling. I think you’d like it.’ How the hell did I know? I was merely trying to fill the air at this point, make him back into my friend, my ordinary from-the-Midlands friend. ‘Shall we go and see it?’ I finished.

  He narrowed his eyes. ‘You and me?’

  I laughed. ‘Yes. Don’t worry, I’m not asking you out on a date. I thought it might be something to do, that’s all.’

  ‘Okay.’ A smile spread across his face. ‘That’d be great, thanks.’

  ‘I’ve been told it’s really good.’ Willem had told me about it, weeks before, but I wasn’t about to tell Stu that.

  ‘Yeah, I can review it for the student rag too.’

  After the film (which was a bit, you know, in parts), we began to knock about a bit together and I grew to like him more. He was a bit needy, unsure of himself. He didn’t talk about family and didn’t seem to have many friends, apart from me. I introduced him to a couple of people from my seminar group and we’d go to the bar together. Life went on.

  Then I met Jen again.

  I was on my own for once, sitting in a fuggy café in a back street of Cambridge after having pulled an essay all-nighter, condensation streaking the windows, a plate of fried egg, bacon, beans, hash browns and mushrooms on the Formica table in front of me. No black pudding, but a cup of tea the colour of mahogany and a pile of bread and marge. All I needed was a bowl of porridge with brown sugar and cream and it would feel like Saturday breakfast at home.