How I Lost You (37 page)

63

Jack: 23 July 2009

‘I can’t help it if you keep employing snitches, Tony. What the fuck am I supposed to do, screen your payroll for informants? I’m a lawyer, not a recruitment consultant. What do you pay that prick Donaldson for?’

The phone beeped in his ear, interrupting his rant. He pulled it away to look at the screen, could still hear Tony Wood bleating at the other end.

Jenny. Oh great, what the fuck did she want?

‘Tony, I have to go. I’ll call tomorrow to make an appointment to visit. Look, there’s no need for that kind of language. Wear something that’ll make the other inmates jealous.’

He ended the call, ignoring the furious protests of the man on the other end of the line.

‘Jennifer, my beautiful cousin, apple of Lucifer’s eye, what do you want from me?’

‘You need to get over to Webster’s house. Now.’

Well, there was a name he hadn’t heard in a while.

‘What’s going on, Jennifer? Are you at Webster’s house now? What have you done?’

There was silence at the other end of the line. Then, ‘I told his wife.’

Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

‘What did you tell her? What did she say?’ He did not have time for this mess right now. He was busy enough with the firm as it was without cleaning up his psychotic cousin’s fuck-ups.

‘She wouldn’t listen, Jack! She tried to fight me. I pushed her. She’s dead, and just to be sure, I pumped her full of ket.’

Jack swore loudly. ‘Well, I can put you in touch with a good lawyer,’ he offered sardonically.

Jennifer laughed, a sound that made the hairs on his arms prickle. ‘I don’t need a lawyer, Jack. I need you to come and sort this out for me. I’m leaving, I’m driving away right now, and you’re going to come here and fix this whole mess.’

‘And what makes you think I’ll get involved in your little screw-up?’ He indicated left and pulled sharply into a side street, making a swift turn in the direction of Mark’s house.

‘Oh you will,’ Jennifer replied. ‘And you know you will. Because if you don’t, I’m gonna make sure I take you, and your little band of brothers down. How is it going to look, one of the most esteemed lawyers in the country on trial for murder?’

Jack sighed. ‘Sorry, Jen, you lost your leverage on that one a long time ago. You have no proof; it’ll be your word against mine, and my word means a lot more than yours these days. You’re on your own with this one.’ He punched Mark Webster’s home postcode into his built-in sat nav. Thirteen miles and counting.

The line broke for a second and Jack struggled to hear Jennifer’s next words, but when he did, he felt the blood leave his face.

‘Do you hear me, Jack? I said I was there. I have proof, I have pictures. And I went back, after you’d finished. I have some, let’s say, trophies. So you can come and clear this mess up for me, or you can see me in court. And this time you won’t be on the defence team. But not to worry, you know some good lawyers, right?’

Jack sighed. ‘Fine. Fine, Jen, I’ll sort this for you. But that’s it then – we’re done. You’ll have your evidence and I’ll have mine. I don’t want to hear from you again.’

‘Fine by me. But there’s something you need to know before you get here.’

‘What? What else could there possibly be?’

More silence.

‘I have the boy. Mark Webster’s son. And I’m keeping him.’

It took Jack less than twenty minutes to get to where Mark Webster had been living for the last six years. Even though Mark had been trying to avoid him ever since they left Durham, he’d ended up living in pissing distance from Jack’s office. How ironic.

He’d used ten minutes of his journey calling around to get this whole mess sorted out. It amused him a little that that had been all it had taken. He’d spent longer ordering Chinese takeaway for dinner last night.

Pulling up at Mark Webster’s home, he was struck by how well his former friend had done for himself. True, he’d kept an eye on him from a distance, followed his appointments in the papers, seen his wedding in the Durham alumni memorandum, but he’d never actually been to his house. And he’d missed the fact that he’d had a son, something that obviously hadn’t escaped Jen. She must have been so pissed off, turning up here and seeing Mark’s perfect life, especially when her own situation had deteriorated significantly over the last few years. His parents had let slip, at one of their many drunken dinners with Jack and his wife, that Jennifer had been mentally unstable for years. She’d broken up with her fiancé after finding out she couldn’t have children and had gone back to Durham, choosing to live in a crapheap of a flat rather than accept any money from his auntie and uncle. This must have tipped the scales.

He sat in the car on the corner of Mark’s road and waited until he saw the other car approach. It pulled up in front of him and the driver’s door swung open.

‘What’s this about, Bratbury?’ Even after all these years, hearing the voice was like going home. Jack felt a small sliver of regret at the way their lives had turned out, how they had all gone their separate ways.

‘Matty, good to see you again.’ He wound down his window and smiled. ‘How are you? How’s Krissy?’

‘Don’t you call her that,’ Matt Riley warned him between clenched teeth. ‘Don’t even speak my wife’s name. What do you think you’re playing at, dragging me here?’

‘We’ve got a small problem that only you and I can sort,’ Jack told him in a low voice. ‘Jen’s done something a bit stupid. She’s gone and told Mark’s wife about our little problem with Beth.’

‘What? What do you mean, told her? What did Susan say? Has she gone to the police?’

Jack raised his eyebrows. ‘Susan, eh? You and Krissy been round for Sunday lunch, then?’

‘Don’t be fucking stupid. I’ve never even met the woman, Mark’s so scared of anything coming out. We’ve had to meet in secret for the last ten years. What do you want me to do about this? Convince a woman I’ve never met not to go to the police?’

‘Susan’s dead, Matt.’

It took a few seconds for the words to register, but Jack hadn’t anticipated the response he was going to get when they did. Matt made a sound something between a strangled cry and a roar, threw himself at Jack’s window and tried to drag him through it.

‘Hey, cool it.’ Jack pulled away out of Matty’s reach. ‘I didn’t do it.’ The words
this time
remained unspoken. ‘She and Jen had a fight. It was an accident. But there’s something else. She said Susan went mad, tried to harm the baby. So she took him.’

Matty was speechless.

‘Say something, Matty. We have to sort this out before we call Mark, or he’s going to drop us all in the shit.’

His old friend’s face was red, his lips were tight. He closed his eyes, like something out of a crazy therapy session; Jack could practically hear the idiot meditating.

‘OK,’ Matt said eventually. ‘Do you know where she is? We need to get the boy back before Mark comes home. He never has to know we were here.’

Jack shook his head. ‘We can’t get the boy back, Matt. She’s keeping him.’

‘Oh no, oh fucking no way, Jack. We can’t do that to Mark. He loves that boy more than life. Do you think he’s just going to give him away to keep that crazy bitch happy?’

Jack sighed. He’d known this wasn’t going to be easy. ‘I don’t think you understand. She’s blackmailing us, she has photographs of that night in Durham. We are all in the shit if Mark goes to the police.’

‘I don’t think we’re going to have much say in that, do you? How exactly are we going to stop him? You going to kill him too?’

He had to admit, it had crossed his mind on the drive over to Mark’s place. Overall, though, it would be too messy. The way he was planning was much neater.

‘Not exactly. Look, Susan’s dead, and nothing we can do will change that. The only way Mark is going to let this go is if we tell him the boy is dead too. He can grieve, then get on with his life.’

‘And the small matter of the missing body? And who killed them both?’

‘I’ve taken care of the body. It’ll take a few hours, and that’s why I need your help. As for who did it, that’s simple. We tell Mark that Susan killed the boy and then blacked out, hit her head on the table or something. She’s overdosed on ketamine, so it already looks like attempted suicide.’

‘You’ve taken care of the body?’ Matty thumped the side of the car. ‘For fuck’s sake, Jack! What is this, some fucking gangster movie? How do you take care of a body in real life? How can you even be saying this?’

Jack laughed. ‘Oh come on! I know half the criminals in Yorkshire – hell, I work for half the criminals in Yorkshire! You don’t think this kind of thing is real life? You need to come out of your little bubble. That kid that went missing two months ago, the one whose body turned up in the river? You think that was the actual kid? The body was identified from dental records while that kid was halfway across Europe! That’s your real life, Matthew.’

Matt leaned in close to the window and Jack thought he was going to lash out again. ‘I will thank God every day that I don’t live in your world.’

‘Well in that case you’d better pray to your God that when we find Jennifer and bring that child home she doesn’t go to the police with everything she knows about you. Because if she does, it isn’t just going to be my world, it will be your world, Kristy’s world and your daughters’ world. Can you imagine how those prison officers are going to love frisking little Tori and Terri when they go to visit Daddy in prison?’

Matt’s eyes widened at hearing his daughter’s name. ‘What do you need me to do?’

Jack tried his best to hide his smirk. ‘I want you to go to the hospital and wait in the car park for Mark to turn up. You’ll have Susan and a bundle of Dylan’s blankets in the car. Let Mark carry
Susan into the hospital; you make sure you rush “Dylan” in. Get him straight through to theatre, where I’ll have someone waiting with the body you need. Do not hang around in the car park, do not let anyone ask any questions.’ He took satisfaction from seeing Matt cringe when he said the words ‘the body’. Fucking pussy.

‘What are you going to tell Mark to get him to meet me at the hospital?’

‘Just what we need him to know. That Jennifer turned up here and told Susan about Beth. Susan went mad and threatened the baby so Jen called me. By the time I got here they were both dead, and I called you because I knew you were a doctor. I’ll make sure he tells the police he found them and took them to the hospital – that way they won’t ask any questions about why Jen was here and what she said to make Susan react so badly. We were never here – you ran into Webster in the car park of the hospital and he begged you for help. Clear?’

Matt sighed, rubbed his face. ‘Clear. Make the call, I’ll go get Susan.’

64

My body heaves fiercely, retching up thick black bile on to the wet grass. My lungs pull in fresh air like a newborn baby, each breath sending my chest into violent spasms.

Grass?

I fight to open my eyes again and take in more of my surroundings but no part of my body is cooperating. Hands lift me upwards and something hard and cold is squashed over my mouth. My eyelids part halfway. I’m being slid into a metal box . . . no, wait, this must be an ambulance. There’s a woman standing next to me holding a mask over my face, and fresh air screams into my lungs. Doors slam, and then the ambulance is moving, sirens are screaming.

‘Mark?’ I say. ‘Where’s Mark?’

The woman ignores me, stroking my head and filling a syringe with a clear liquid.

‘Where’s Mark?’ On my second attempt I realise why she’s not answering. The words aren’t coming out as planned; in fact they’re not coming out at all. I don’t have the energy to keep my eyes open any longer and I feel them fall shut again.

The first face I see when I open my eyes is my father’s. The ground beneath me is no longer cold and wet but soft, and I know at once that I am in hospital and I am alive. My upper body feels as though it’s been hit repeatedly by a baseball bat, and my legs feel as useless as two pieces of cardboard, but here I am. ‘Dylan,’ I gasp. Fragments of the last time I was conscious flash through my mind like an action movie: Jennifer running towards us, Mark grabbing her by the hair and, desperate to save his own life, tossing our last hope into the flames.

‘Shush, sweetheart. You have to rest. The police are looking for Dylan, they’re looking everywhere Jennifer has been, speaking to everyone she contacted.’

‘Only Jennifer knows where,’ I manage. And she’s dead, I watched her burn.

Dad looks pained. ‘They haven’t found her yet, but they don’t think they’re going to find her alive.’

‘And Mark?’ I croak.

‘I’m so sorry, sweetheart, Mark was dead when they arrived. Your friend Josh said he hadn’t been able to get to him on time.’

He takes my hand and grasps it tightly. I squeeze my eyes shut to stop the tears that have started to form at the corners. As much as I want to hate Mark for what he’s done, I still remember what it was like to love him. He sacrificed himself to save my life – his final few minutes spent trying to undo a lifetime of cowardice.

‘Josh?’
Who’s Josh?

‘Thank God for him, Susan. He arrived at the same time as the police, before the fire brigade. They told him not to go in but he went in anyway and pulled you both out of the fire.’

Josh Connors. Beth’s big brother.
Nick.