32
She leaned against an old tree outside Vanessa’s house, feeling shivery, took her mobile from her pocket, scrolled down to find Chas’s number, pressed it and waited for him to reply.
‘Hello?’
‘It’s Frieda. Are you busy at the moment?’
‘Yes. I’m at work. You’re not, I take it?
‘I’d like to meet you.’
‘How nice.’
‘What time do you finish?’
‘I said I was busy, but that doesn’t mean I can’t fit you in.’ Frieda grimaced at the phrase. ‘Can you come to my office?’
‘Where is it?’
‘About two hundred metres from my house, on the esplanade. Number thirty-seven. You can’t miss it – it’s the old customs house, all spruced up. Why don’t you come at –’ There was a pause and an ostentatious rustle of paper and Frieda knew she was meant to be imagining Chas looking through his crowded appointments diary. ‘Three o’clock any good?’
‘Fine. What’s the name of your company?’ For it occurred to Frieda that she had no idea what Chas actually did, just that he made lots of money from doing it. Had Eva said something about head-hunting?
‘Just Latimer’s,’ he said airily. ‘Ask for me at Reception and my assistant will come and collect you. Do you want to tell me what this is about – apart from the pleasure of my company, of course?’
‘Not really. Not over the phone.’
They ended the conversation but for a few minutes Frieda stayed where she was, feeling the cold wind against her face, carrying spots of rain. She welcomed the anger that was hardening inside her; her heart was a clenched fist.
Josef said, of course, that he would take Frieda to Chas’s house. They arranged to meet in an hour outside the little café where she had met Lewis. She didn’t really feel like going back to Eva’s house. She didn’t know what to make of the affair that had sprung up between Eva and Josef, but she certainly didn’t want to spend her time watching it.
So she sat at a small table near the window and ordered a bowl of butternut squash soup and a roll. Today she felt cold to her bones, in spite of her thick coat. She drank the soup and gazed out at the street, where people were now running for cover as the rain thickened then turned to a spiteful hail. The sky looked purple and swollen.
She thought about Greg Hollesley, who had known that Becky was going to the police. Then she thought about Chas Latimer: his blue eyes with their small pupils; his habitual air of ironic humour; his love of power. When he was a teenager, he had tried to control everyone around him, even the teachers, and now he did the same. He manipulated people, then watched to see how they would react. Vanessa had said Chas was stoned when he kissed her, but Frieda felt sure it had been a deliberate act of sabotage: as soon as Vanessa had got involved with Ewan, Chas would have wanted to take her away; it would have amused him. And he had told Vanessa that Frieda was a virgin. The desperate lie Frieda had told her rapist when she was sixteen had found its way to Eva’s kitchen table twenty-three years later and been traced back to him.
She finished her soup and pushed the bowl away. Chas Latimer. If he was her rapist, he was also Becky’s and Sarah May’s rapist, and their killer. She tried to connect him in her mind with the man who climbed into the rooms of vulnerable girls, called them ‘sweetheart’, violated them and ended their lives. She analysed her thoughts and she analysed her feelings. It was a sort of syllogism. The rapist was an awful man. Chas was an awful man. That didn’t mean they were the same awful man. And it didn’t mean that they weren’t.
Josef’s van pulled up and she went out into the gleaming street.
Josef’s normally stubbly face was newly shaven and his hair was clean. He was wearing a shirt that Frieda didn’t recognize. She wasn’t going to say anything to him about Eva, it was no business of hers, but Josef had no such inhibitions.
‘Eva was your good friend, yes?’
Frieda remembered Eva as she had been all those years ago, a red-headed tomboy, clumsy and straight-speaking and loyal to a fault. ‘We were friends.’
‘And now?’
‘I don’t know. It’s been such a long time. It’s hard to return to a lost friendship.’
‘She likes you,’ he said. ‘Very, very much. She tells me she never had a friend like you, when you were gone from here.’
‘That’s sad,’ said Frieda.
‘If it’s not OK, I stop.’
‘You mean, with Eva?’
‘I stop. Like that.’ He lifted his hand from the steering wheel and snapped his thumb and middle finger. ‘Say the word.’
‘I don’t want to say the word. It’s nothing to do with me. But I would hate it if anyone got hurt.’
Josef stopped in the small deserted car park overlooking the deserted beach – just one young man and his barrel-chested dog on the wet sands – and Frieda climbed out of the van. ‘I don’t suppose I’ll be long.’
‘Long, short. All good.’
She walked along the road in the rain, feeling the salt stinging her skin. Chas’s office was easy to find – it was an old wooden building, beautifully modernized. There were only two small windows in its front fa?ade, but when Frieda was buzzed through the double doors she saw that the back, looking on to the sea, was almost all glass. It was as though the rooms were full of liquid light. She could see the man with his dog from here, and now she could also see Josef, who was smoking a cigarette at the water’s edge, stepping back occasionally to avoid the small waves that curled at his feet.
A tiny woman with a helmet of platinum blonde hair showed her up to Chas’s office on the first floor. It was a large room that was empty, except for a huge curved desk with three chairs ranged round it and, in the corner, an equally huge terracotta pot containing very tall dried flowers. It was more like a stage set than a workplace.
Chas stood up and spread his hands, as if he owned not only the room but the sea outside as well. ‘Welcome.’
‘I won’t be long.’
He took off his thick-framed glasses, then arched his eyebrows. ‘Oh dear,’ he said. ‘You’d better tell me.’
‘Many years ago, you told Vanessa that I was a virgin.’
His smile froze. ‘I’m sorry?’
Frieda repeated her statement.
‘I’m beginning to think you have a problem.’ He put his glasses back on, tapping them into position. ‘I know what happened with your father. That would be enough to send anyone off the rails. I couldn’t be more sympathetic.’
‘Why did you say I was a virgin?’
‘I don’t have a clue what you’re going on about. But you do realize that you sound insane?’
‘You told Vanessa, when you and she kissed.’
‘When we kissed? I’m sorry, am I trapped in some kind of teenage girl story? Are you going to start talking about prom dresses?’
‘Don’t you remember?’
‘Remember kissing Vanessa? For f*ck’s sake, Frieda, I’m nearly forty. I might have kissed Vanessa – I kissed lots of girls. I don’t know what I said to her. And, anyway, this isn’t a Jane Austen novel. Nobody cares if you were or weren’t a virgin when you were sixteen. Not me. I didn’t care then and I certainly don’t now.’ He came round from behind his desk and stood in front of her. His glasses gleamed. ‘What I do think is that you’re in danger of becoming irritating.’
‘Something happened here twenty-three years ago.’
‘So I gather.’
‘And it happened on the night of the concert. Thursday’s Children.’
‘This is clearly some kind of personal psychodrama.’
‘I don’t care what you think. But I don’t give up and I won’t go away. Something terrible just happened in Braxton and you went to the funeral. I believe it started back in 1989 and you need to tell me about that evening. I know you were there at the start of the concert, but you weren’t at the end. Where were you?’ Frieda stepped forward. ‘And do not f*ck me around the way you f*ck everyone else around.’
For a moment he looked uncertain. Then he took a step backwards. ‘I went to hospital,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘You heard.’
‘I don’t believe you. You didn’t say that to the police when they interviewed you. I’ve read the transcripts.’
‘You can believe me or not.’
‘Why did you go to hospital?’
‘Why? Why do you think?’
‘I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.’
‘I was drunk. Not just drunk. Paralytic. Vomiting. Yes. That’s why I didn’t tell the police. I was embarrassed. If they’d pressed me, I’d have told them but they never got back to me.’ He bounced slightly on the balls of his feet, as if testing the springiness of the pale carpet. ‘I had my image to protect, after all. Very important for a sixteen-year-old boy.’
‘How did you get to the hospital?’
‘In an ambulance. Though I don’t remember that bit. I was told when I woke up. What I remember is the headache and the IV drip.’
‘Do you have proof?’
‘No, I do not have proof. If I’d been expecting you, I’d have got my mum to write me a note.’
‘I’m going to have to check this.’
‘Do what the hell you want as long as it means you get out of Braxton and never come back. We don’t want you here any more.’
Frieda left the building and walked out on to the beach. She gazed over the grey, wrinkling water for a while, her hair whipping against her face, then pulled out her phone and called Jack. It went to voicemail so she made her way back over the sand to where Josef was waiting. Just as she reached the van, her mobile rang.
‘Jack? Thanks for calling back.’
‘That’s fine. If this is because Chlo?’s told you that –’
‘It isn’t. I want you to do me a favour.’
‘All right,’ he said warily.
‘I want you to find some A&E discharge forms that would have been sent to Chas Latimer’s GP in Braxton, or nearby at least, twenty-three years ago, on February the eleventh.’
‘How am I going to go about that?’
‘I don’t know.’
Then she made another call. She gave her name and asked to be put through to Mr Hollesley.
His tone was polite but cool, the charm gone.
‘You knew about Becky’s rape.’
There was a pause before he spoke. ‘Maddie told me that Becky had claimed to have been raped, yes.’
‘She was raped. And you knew she intended to go to the police.’
‘I believe Maddie told me that, yes.’
‘You and Maddie were having an affair.’
‘I don’t have to answer to you.’
‘How well did you know Becky?’
‘Hardly at all. My thing with Maddie wasn’t really public.’
‘Were you in Braxton when Becky died?’
‘I was in London. With my family. I was very shocked and distressed to hear of Becky’s death and I don’t know why you’re intruding into Maddie’s grief. I’m surprised at you.’
Josef dropped Frieda outside Eva’s, then drove away to get some building materials. Frieda made her way round the back to her shed, hoping that Eva wasn’t in the kitchen to see her as she walked through the little garden. She needed to be alone. Tomorrow she would go home, and the thought of her little house, the open fire, the quiet rooms, even the tortoiseshell cat that she was the reluctant owner of, gave her relief.
She opened her computer. There were two emails from Sandy, one sent the previous evening and the other that morning, which she didn’t open. She knew that, very soon, she was going to have to face up to what she had done, let the pain flood in, but not today. There was also an email from Ewan, which she did open. Under a message that simply read, ‘See what you think’, there was an attachment. She clicked on it to find a display of lines and colours that at first made no sense to her. Then she saw that he’d done it: he’d assembled a timeline of the evening of the concert. And it wasn’t just one but a series of parallels: a line for each person whose movements he had tried to record, girls as well as boys – and there was a complicated colour code for time and for place. Frieda stared at it, trying to see the gaps and overlaps, trying to make a coherent picture out of fragments. It made her head hurt. She was almost pleased when there was a brisk knock at the door.
‘Come in,’ she called, but Eva already had. She was carrying a tray on which there were two mugs of tea and a plate of buttered crumpets.
‘I thought you might need something warm,’ she said. She looked warm herself, with her red hair, her flushed cheeks, her layers of bright clothing.
She’s happy, thought Frieda, with a stab of anxiety. ‘Thank you.’
‘What’s that?’ Eva was looking at Ewan’s timeline.
‘Just research.’ She hesitated for a moment. ‘I’m trying to establish where everyone was on the night of that concert. Thursday’s Children.’
Eva took a mug of tea and a crumpet and sat on Frieda’s bed. ‘Don’t you think you should tell me why?’
‘I said before, something happened that night and –’
‘I’m not a fool, Frieda. I know your mother’s dying, but that’s not really why you’re here, is it?’ Eva’s flushed cheeks had become even pinker. Her freckles stood out. Frieda couldn’t work out if she was angry or simply agitated. ‘You have to tell me. I’m your friend. I was.’
Frieda closed her laptop lid. She looked out on to the soggy garden, full of brown leaves and withered shrubs. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘The night of the concert, I argued with Lewis. Remember?’ Eva nodded. ‘I couldn’t face it all and I went back home. I went to bed. Someone broke into our house that night and I want to find out who.’
Eva didn’t say anything, just went on staring at her and waiting. Frieda heard the phrase in her head, ‘I was raped.’ Why was it still so hard to say it out loud? This was what people who’d been raped confronted: not only the disgust and disbelief of others, but their own self-disgust, their own shame, so that they couldn’t even say the words.
‘I was raped,’ she said. ‘I was raped by someone who knew I was lying in my bed while everyone else was at the concert.’
‘Oh, my God, Frieda, I’m so sorry.’
She stood up and put her mug on the floor, then came over to Frieda and hugged her, bending down awkwardly and folding her in her arms. She smelt of baking and herbs and clay. Good, clean, strong. Her breasts squashed against Frieda’s body and her hair tickled her face. Frieda sat quite still, neither resisting nor responding.
‘You should have told me,’ she said, drawing away at last. ‘You should have told me then.’
‘Probably.’
‘That’s the reason you left.’
‘There were other reasons.’ She wondered how much she should say; how much she wanted to say to Eva, or to anyone. ‘I did tell my mother, but she didn’t believe me. It’s OK. It was a long time ago and it hasn’t ruined my life or defined who I am. But I need to know.’
She thought about Sarah May and about Becky. Should she tell Eva that they had been raped by the same man, then murdered? No. Eva could join up the dots if she chose.
‘So your timeline,’ said Eva. ‘That’s what it’s for – to work out who could have done it?’
‘There are people I can eliminate. They were there, had witnesses. But I can’t eliminate Lewis.’
‘But you were going out with him. It doesn’t make sense.’
‘We’d argued. He was angry with me. Really angry. And nobody seems to remember if he was actually there or not. I don’t think he was.’
There was a silence. Eva went and looked out of the window. With her back to Frieda she said, ‘He was there.’
‘But you said before that you couldn’t remember.’
‘I know. But I do.’
‘Eva?’
‘What was that awful phrase? Lewis and I got off with each other that night.’
‘You and Lewis?’
‘I felt awful. We both did, really rotten and treacherous.’
‘You said it was afterwards, after I’d gone.’
‘That as well. It never amounted to much. Frieda, can you ever forgive me?’
‘I haven’t got any business forgiving or not forgiving,’ said Frieda. ‘What matters is that Lewis was there.’
‘He was.’
Frieda nodded, took a gulp of her cooling tea. ‘I’m glad it wasn’t him,’ she said at last.
She called the Shaw number and Vanessa answered.
‘We’ve just been talking about you. I feel terrible we haven’t had you round for dinner yet.’
‘Could I speak to Ewan?’
‘All right.’ She sounded slightly crushed. ‘I’ll call him. He’s not long in from work but I think he’s on the computer. Surprise, surprise.’
Frieda could hear Vanessa calling his name and soon he picked up.
‘Did you get what I sent you?’
‘Thank you. You obviously put a great deal of time into it. How did you manage it?’
‘I do a lot of presentations for work.’
‘No, the actual information.’
‘Mainly Vanessa and I remembered what we could. I made a couple of calls. Braxton’s a small world.’
‘I’d like to go through it with you.’
‘When?’
‘How about now?’
Ten minutes later, he was sitting beside her at the table.
‘Some of it needs altering,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Chas wasn’t there throughout.’
‘I thought …’
‘He was taken to hospital. Didn’t you know?’
‘No.’ He looked sheepish. ‘My attention was on other things.’
‘And Lewis was there, after all. Can you put that in?’
He was busy typing, manipulating lines.
‘There you are.’
‘Does anyone know if Greg Hollesley was there?’
Ewan pulled a face. ‘Greg Hollesley? You mean …? I’ll ask around. Discreetly.’
‘I think I’m a bit beyond discretion now.’
‘I’ll ask anyway.’
‘And Jeremy.’
He gave a little whistle. ‘This is all a bit close to home, Frieda.’ He paused a moment. ‘But I feel I saw him. At least, a great crowd from his school were there and I feel fairly certain he was among them. So,’ he said, staring at the coloured lines and the gaps, ‘Lewis was there, and Eva?’
‘Yes, Eva was there.’
‘Chas, but not all the way through.’
‘Right.’
‘I was there. Vanessa was there. Sarah was there.’
‘But I need to find out about Jeremy and Greg.’
He nodded several times.
‘Thank you.’ She hesitated. ‘You and Vanessa were there all the way through?’
‘Yes. I mean, we didn’t actually …’ He halted, his cheeks pink, and gave a small, embarrassed laugh. ‘I don’t need to go into the details of our first sexual encounter. But we were there until the very end. You can ask her if you want.’
‘All right.’
‘Can I ask you something? Do you remember me as a schoolboy?’
Frieda turned to look at him. ‘Of course I do.’
‘I feel I was always on the edge, never at the centre.’
‘Did you want to be in the centre?’ Frieda asked, thinking that what he had said was partly true.
‘Like Chas or Jeremy? That’s never been me. Maybe that was why Vanessa and I got together. She felt the same way about herself.’
‘And now?’
‘Now it’s different. I suppose that’s one of the good things about growing up, finding a partner. You don’t have the same need to be part of the group.’
‘We were an odd group, though, weren’t we?’ Frieda said.
‘Looking back, I can see we were. But you weren’t on the margins or at the centre.’
‘Wasn’t I?’ She smiled, although she was feeling obscurely sad.
‘No. You didn’t follow or lead. You were just yourself. I admire that. It’s like you always knew who you were.’
‘I don’t think that’s true.’
Later, she walked along the dark, wet streets towards her mother’s house. Her thoughts were slow and her legs felt heavy. Looking at Ewan’s timeline had been like being trapped in a crowd of clashing voices, speaking over each other. She felt a queasy anxiety.
When she pushed open the front door, she saw there was a pair of men’s shoes just inside. Stout brown brogues, polished but scuffed at the toes. They didn’t look like David’s style.
‘Hello?’ she called, walking into the kitchen. No one was there, but the teapot was warm and there was a large bunch of flowers in the sink, still wrapped in paper.
She put her head round the living-room door, then went up the stairs. The bedroom door was shut and she knocked before pushing it open. Her mother lay in bed, propped up by pillows. She seemed to have shrunk in the past few days; her features seem oversized and her face much older. But she was smiling.
She was smiling because a man was sitting on the chair beside her bed. He was, Frieda saw, holding her hand between both of his. The back of his head was familiar. He turned round, and it was Detective Chief Inspector Stuart Faulkner.
His soft expression faded and a slightly sullen one took its place. ‘I don’t think your mother was expecting you.’
‘No,’ said Juliet. ‘I wasn’t. You can’t just turn up, you know, and expect I’ll be lying here waiting for you.’
‘I’m heading back to London first thing in the morning, so I won’t see you for a few days.’
‘I think I’ll …’ Juliet’s face twisted as she made the effort to find the word, which came out slurred ‘… survive. Or maybe not.’ She gave a hoarse laugh, sounding drunk.
The two of them looked at her, plainly waiting for her to go.
‘Goodbye, then.’
‘Shut the door after you.’
As she did so, she could hear them laughing.
‘Frieda? It’s Jack.’
‘Any luck?’
‘I got what you needed. Chas Latimer did go to hospital late on February the eleventh, 1989. He was rehydrated and released the next morning.’
‘So he told me the truth. How did you find out?’
‘Do you really want to know? A friend of mine from medical school works in Colchester and his girlfriend –’
‘All right, all right, that’s fine. Thanks, Jack.’