I’m still talking when the door opens. We both look up and I see my surprise shining back from Simon’s face.
It’s the policewoman, Bray. Why is she here? Her anger is like a haze around her brisk efficient body as she and the two men with her sweep into the room. She takes my phone from me before I’ve had a chance to speak.
‘Bag it,’ she says, passing it back to a constable. ‘We need to talk to you at the station, and if you refuse, I’ll have no option but to arrest you—’
‘Arrest her? She hasn’t done anything wrong!’
‘Where shall I start?’ Bray snaps. ‘Accessory after the fact? Aiding and abetting?’ She turns to me. ‘Where is she, Marilyn? I can’t believe you’d put that girl’s life at risk. You told me you’d let me know if you heard from Lisa and I put my trust in you.’
How does she know all this? How does she know I’ve spoken to – and then I see her, Karen Walsh, standing further back outside the open door. The bitch rang the police.
‘No, it’s not like that,’ I say. I see a flash of black plastic in Bray’s hands and realise in horror what she’s holding. Are they really going to handcuff me and lead me out of here like a common criminal? What do they think I’m going to do? ‘It’s not Lisa. She didn’t kill Jon. Jodie – from Ava’s swim club – her mother is Katie Batten! Lisa found out and she’s gone to find her.’
‘She’s conned you,’ Bray is almost growling at me, looking at me as if I’m the world’s biggest fool, the beaten woman once again duped by someone. ‘We’ve found Lisa’s hair and other DNA in both Jon’s flat and the cottage where his body was found. Even her fingerprints are there.’
‘How do you know it wasn’t planted?’ Simon stands alongside me.
‘Jesus Christ, this isn’t an episode of Morse. Are you buying into this bullshit too?’ She glares at him. ‘We spoke to all of Ava’s friends and their parents when she went missing. There was nothing suspicious about any of them, and for the last time, Katie Batten is dead. Marilyn, you’re coming with us to the station. We’ve wasted enough time and I need to know everything. You could have placed two further people at risk with this craziness: Amelia and Jodie Cousins.’
I look at Simon, helpless.
‘I’ll send a lawyer down straight away. Don’t worry.’
I hug him, a sudden movement too fast for anyone to stop, and before he breaks away, I whisper in his ear, ‘Find Katie.’
‘Now, Mrs Hussey.’ Bray takes my arm but Simon gives me a tiny nod as they lead me to the door.
‘Can you tell me one thing?’ he asks. ‘When you spoke to this woman, Jodie’s mother, and her daughter, was it face to face?’
‘No,’ Bray says, after a pause. ‘It was on the phone. Amelia Cousins is in France and Jodie is on holiday in Spain.’
And then I’m gone, my face burning as she leads me out through the building, sending men up to search my room as we go, and I feel naked and exposed and humiliated and I’m once again in the back of a police car. Simon. All my hope now rests on Simon. It’s only as the car moves away that I remember where Katie and Charlotte were running away to. The seaside. Her grandfather’s house. Skegness.
63
LISA
It’s grey and raining in Skegness, the kind of fine drizzle that comes at an angle and gets in every pore. It suits me fine. No one is looking up, all either head down against the water or hunched under an umbrella. The sea churns a dirty blue to my left as I walk briskly along the seafront and the air is filled with salty spray. I dreamed of this as a child, being here with Katie. And now here we finally are.
The Crabstick Cafe isn’t on the main strip and I have to turn down three side streets before I reach Brown Beach Street, having flipped through an A–Z at the train station to find it, imprinting the directions on my lazy brain so used to having technology do this stuff for me. I sit at a table by the window and order a coffee. It’s the height of summer and the place should be busier, but the Formica tables are tired and chipped and the few customers look like broken, lonely people, reading papers and drinking tea because they can’t face the four walls at home any more. Residents, not tourists. No one looks my way.
There’s a TV on, up on the wall in the corner, a portable that must have been there for years, and behind the counter is a large hot-water urn. Further over, beside a noticeboard, is a pay phone. This is like a cafe from decades ago. Did Katie choose this place on purpose because it’s so old-fashioned? Is this part of her bringing us back to that moment in the past? And I’m here, so what now?
The waitress, a thickset woman in her mid-fifties wearing a housecoat, brings me over my mug of coffee and I stare out through the window. There’s a games arcade over the road, with a small group of teenagers huddled, bored, outside. Where is Katie? Is she in there watching me? Where is the next clue?
I feel sick with nerves. I need to find out where she’s got Ava and then call Marilyn. She can tell the police where to find me to get them. I don’t care if they shoot me on sight as long as they get Ava out safely. She’s the only good thing I’ve ever done with my life. They can do what they want with me.
I’ve drunk half my coffee, my impatience with Katie rising with every sip, when the noticeboard catches my eye again. It’s the kind that used to be in every supermarket before the Internet took over, little cards pinned on them advertising everything from second-hand cots to gardening services. I stare at it. A message board. Of course. I get up and go over to it, mug in hand to try to look casual.
‘Turn that up, love,’ a man grunts somewhere from a table behind me, and the waitress duly raises the volume on the TV. I’m not listening, but scanning the rows and rows of carefully printed adverts. The fragile care in some of the handwriting makes me think of old people and my heart squeezes with an emotion I don’t understand. Lost people. I know how they feel.
Finally I see it. Black ink on a blue card. My heart leaps to my mouth as I take it down.
Clyde! Call Bonnie! Let’s catch up! And underneath, a mobile number. My hands tremble. I’m so close. Katie is a phone call away. Ava is a phone call away. I scrabble in my pocket for some change for the phone. I need to call—
‘… is believed to be Marilyn Hussey, a co-worker of Charlotte Nevill’s … ’
Marilyn?
I look up at the TV.
‘ … the police have made no statement at this time but our source tells us Ms Hussey was taken in for questioning from her place of work and has been harbouring the missing child murderer Charlotte Nevill, although it appears no arrest has been made there.’
A humming starts up in my ears as my heart races. Oh God, Marilyn. My lifeline. And now in trouble because of me. Will she tell them where I am? Will she even have figured out where I’ve gone from my message? As I stare at the screen and feel the blue card softening in my hand as I squeeze it, a calm settles over me. I have only me to rely on now. I could still phone the police. Once I’ve spoken to Katie and got some idea of where she and Ava are, I could ring them and they’d come so fast thinking they were going to arrest me. But how can I be sure of where they are until I’ve seen my baby? What if the police go charging in looking for me and she’s not there? Katie will kill her. I know it. One betrayal too many.