Tom felt the impact of the tree falling, and the trunk blocked his view through the windscreen. He sat for a moment, shaking, and then opened the car door.
He could smell fresh soil mingling with the rain. The fallen trunk was like a tall wall, blocking his path. The tree must have stood at fifty meters tall. It lay across the road and seemed to stretch far out across the moorland into the shadows. The colossal ball of roots at its base seemed to reach up as high as a three-story house.
Tom found his mobile phone in one of the pockets of his jacket and, using the dim light from the screen saver, walked through the pelting rain to the huge muddy hole where the tree had been. It was deep, rapidly filling with rainwater, and the runoff from the edges was taking the loose earth with it.
Tom had planned to drive deep into the moor to dump Hayden’s body, but with the Roman road now blocked with the tree, he didn’t want to risk driving off into the soft moorland where the car could get stuck.
Tom looked up at the sky as the lightning flashed again. Steam was rising from the exposed roots, and the fallen tree creaked and groaned as if it were in the last throes of death, ripped from the soil and unable to breathe. He always believed that a higher power had brought him this far, had allowed him to do what he did. Had this higher power given him the perfect place to hide the body?
Tom looked down into the depths of the hole, where the soil and rainwater were pouring in. He went to the back of the car and lifted out Hayden’s body. He cradled it in his arms and stood as close to the edge of the hole as felt safe, and then, like an offering to his helpful god, he tossed the body down into the depths. The noise of the storm was still loud, and he didn’t hear Hayden’s body hit, but a flash of lightning lit up the hole, and he saw the body was already half-submerged in the mud and filthy water.
Tom stepped back and looked up at the sky, enjoying the feeling of the cold rain on his face. Lightning flashed again, and he knew he wasn’t looking up at God. He was God.
20
“Did you hear the storm last night?” asked Jake.
“No,” said Kate. It was early the next morning, and she still felt bleary. They were walking down the cliff to the beach for a swim.
“It was like, raging. Thunder, lightning.”
“I must have slept through for a change,” she said. The sun was glinting golden off a bank of low clouds and scattering diamonds across the still water. Kate could see a tide line of rubbish on the beach thrown up by the storm. She was usually a light sleeper, so it was a refreshing change to feel rested.
Jake waded into the rolling surf and dove headfirst under a breaking wave. Kate waited for the next wave to break and dove in after him. The water enveloped her, and she kicked out lithely, moving through the growing swells, feeling her heart pumping and the zing on her skin from the salt water. The six-inch scar on her stomach tingled in the cold water, as it always did. It was an ever-present reminder of the night she’d learned that Peter Conway was the Nine Elms Cannibal and confronted him. She’d been unaware that she was pregnant with Jake at the time, and Peter’s sharp blade had missed him by millimeters. But having Jake here with her, now a grown man, swimming out strongly beside her, made her feel that there was good in the world.
Kate stopped a hundred meters out and floated on her back. She looked over at Jake, his head bobbing in the water, smiling up at the sun, which had just broken over the horizon.
“You know, you’re welcome to invite your friends to stay over,” she said. Jake turned and swam back to join her.
“Sam might come for a weekend, if that’s cool. He loves surfing,” said Jake.
“Sam is one of your housemates?” said Kate, trying to remember. Jake had mentioned a lot of new friends in his English lit classes.
“Yeah. The others are off working in Spain . . .” Jake bit his lip, and Kate could see he wanted to tell her something. “I’ve made another interesting friend,” he said.
Kate looked over at him and raised an eyebrow. “Oh yes?”
“Not like that. Her name’s Anna. Anna Tomlinson. I met her on Facebook last year . . . We’ve been messaging back and forth.”
“You kids are so lucky,” said Kate, moving her arms lazily back and forward in the water. “I had to write letters to my friends during the holidays.”
“Anna’s the daughter of Dennis Tomlinson . . . I don’t know if the name rings a bell?”
Kate sat up in the water. The name did ring a bell. Dennis Tomlinson had been one of the serial killers she’d lectured on in her Criminal Icons course at the university.
“Dennis Tomlinson who raped and killed eight women?” she said.
“Yeah.”
“Dennis Tomlinson serving eight life sentences?” asked Kate. She didn’t feel relaxed anymore.
“Yes. She contacted me, unexpectedly, asking if I wanted to talk to someone who knows what it’s like to have a father like . . . that.”
“Where does she live?”
“The north of Scotland. She lives on a farm in the middle of the mountains. She wrote a book fifteen years ago, and she used the money to buy the land.”
Kate shivered. The water no longer felt zingy, and her fingers were numb.
“I hope you’re not thinking of writing a book.”
“No. Why would you think that? I’m happy working here. I love doing the diving lessons, taking the boat out, being here with you.”
“Okay, I’m happy you’re happy,” said Kate.
“Did you think I wasn’t happy?”
“I worry that I screwed you up.”
“You didn’t screw me up. You made me appreciate life,” he said. Kate was surprised by this and didn’t know what to say. “Anna wasn’t lucky like me. She was all alone when her father was arrested. She was seventeen. Her mother died when she was sixteen . . . It’s been good to meet someone who’s had a similar experience . . .”
She looked at Jake treading water beside her. The sun glinting on his hair, shiny as a conker.
Why shouldn’t he talk to someone who’d had the same experience? Peter Conway would always be his father; Jake would always be his son. Kate would always be the link between them, and it was her actions, her affair with Peter Conway, when he was her boss in the police, that had led to all this.
“Has anyone mentioned your . . . mentioned Peter at uni?”
“Not really. I’ve told my mates, and they’ve been okay. It’s all right, Mum. I’m happy. Really happy. I just want to tell you everything. How are things with you? How’s the case going?”
Kate told him that she had to go over and meet Joanna’s childhood friend, Marnie, but she felt no closer to understanding the case.
“Just think. The longer it takes you to solve it, the longer they pay you!”
“That’s what Tristan’s sister said.”
“She’s not happy he’s gone part time at the uni?”
“No. And she’s having trouble with the whole caravan-site thing. She didn’t love the fact that me and Tris repainted the toilet block ourselves a couple of weeks back.”