The Moment She Left (34 page)

‘Yes, they are, but apparently Jessica’s body has already been taken to the mortuary. Did Blake know that by the time you left him?’

‘Yes, he did, but neither he nor Jenny want it to be the last time they see her. They’d prefer to remember her how she was before it happened.’

‘A wise decision. Did Jenny come back with Blake and Matt?’

‘Yes. She was very quiet during the journey, but unless I’m mistaken I think finally knowing what happened, terrible though it is, is better than what they’ve been going through these past two years.’

Certain it would be, Andee said, ‘What time did you get back?’

‘Around six. Jenny’s parents followed in their car. They’re staying at my place until after the funeral.’

Able to imagine how well they’d be taken care of, she said, ‘We need to make sure the family has all the help they need during the arrangements.’

‘I believe my sisters are on it, but obviously we should find out from Blake and Jenny if they actually want any help.’

‘I don’t expect they have much idea what they want at the moment.’

‘Apart from Charles’s head on a spike?’

‘They’ll no doubt have the rest of the nation behind them on that, once the news breaks about his involvement.’ She watched him signal to the waiter for the bill, and found herself wishing it weren’t quite so late so the evening could go on a while longer. ‘How’s Rowzee after the discovery?’ she asked as he paid.

Frowning, he said, ‘She didn’t seem too bad when I left to come here, but apparently there was an episode earlier when she appeared to lose contact with what was happening.’

‘Shock can do that. I’ve seen it many times.’

He nodded slowly. ‘But something’s not right with her, that’s for sure. She keeps saying it’s nothing, and that if the doctor’s not worried then there’s no need for us to be, but like Pamela, I have to wonder if she’s telling the doctor the whole story.’

Carefully, Andee said, ‘Maybe she is and it’s you she’s holding back on?’

The way his eyes came to hers told her she’d just voiced his main fear. ‘We’ll get to the bottom of it,’ he assured her, ‘whether she wants us to or not.’

Certain he would, Andee went ahead of him out into the night and liked the way he took her hand as they walked to her car.

As she recalled those moments now, on her way up in the lift to Gould’s office, she could only feel thankful that tiredness hadn’t made her blurt out something inappropriate, such as asking him to help get Martin out of her flat, or find a way to make him accept that she wasn’t going to respond to pleading or bullying.

‘Andee, there you are,’ Gould declared as she entered his office with its half-glass walls and endless performance charts. ‘How are you?’

Always pleased to see him now he was no longer ruling her world with his ferocious bark and even fiercer bite, she said, ‘I’m OK, considering. How are things this end?’

‘I’m afraid our main focus has switched from your case to a fatal stabbing during the early hours. Three kids and their mother, the father’s in custody, still high as a kite.’

‘So he did it?’

‘Not according to him, but the evidence isn’t in his favour. However, it’s not why you’re here. I’ve got the information you asked for, though I’m not sure how much good it’s going to do you.’

Going to look at his computer screen, she quickly scanned the report he’d displayed, and for a bewildering
moment she thought he’d either made a mistake, or misunderstood her request.

‘Not what you were expecting?’ he asked, knowing very well that it wasn’t.

She shook her head. No, this wasn’t what she’d been expecting at all; however there was no getting away from the fact that the date and time on the accident report checked out exactly, as did the location. It was the victim’s name that had completely thrown her.

Quickly thanking Gould, she took out her phone as she headed back to the lift. ‘Hi, it’s me,’ she said, when Graeme picked up, ‘can you meet me at Rowzee and Pamela’s in half an hour? I’ve just found out who Charles and Jessica hit before the car went off the road.’

As Rowzee listened to what Andee was telling them about Charles she was aware of a memory trying to stage a breakthrough, like a tentative ray of light being blocked by clouds. She remembered the first time this memory had tried to claim her attention; it was when she and Andee had been driving back from Devon in the car. It had proved too elusive for her to capture then, but here it was again, like a nervous player peeking shyly from the wings, wanting to make itself heard and understood, but still not quite able to summon all its lines.

What was it?

She glanced down as Pamela’s hand reached for hers and squeezed it hard. Andee’s words were registering again; she could feel Graeme’s eyes watching her. It seemed that Charles Stamfield, their dear friend
and erstwhile MP, had been having an affair with nineteen-year-old Jessica Leonard. Now the shock of it was passing, Rowzee realised that the truth was not so very hard to comprehend; she could see why they’d find one another attractive, in spite of the difference in their ages.

Since when did age ever dictate to love?

Did Gina know, she wondered.

Andee was telling them now how Charles had bought Jessica a car, and how Jessica had driven them from London the day she’d disappeared.

Quite suddenly Rowzee blurted, ‘Yoder is an Amish name.’

Andee’s eyes narrowed curiously. ‘Yes, it is,’ she confirmed. ‘Why do you mention that?’

‘Gina’s great-grandmother was Amish,’ Rowzee explained, though she wasn’t entirely sure of the point she was trying to make. Hadn’t the name Yoder come up during the investigation?

Andee said, ‘Charles used the name when he registered a phone to call Jessica. And when he rented the house.’

‘So the police already know that it’s Amish?’ Rowzee asked.

‘Yes, they do,’ Andee replied.

Relieved that her muddle over vital information wasn’t hampering things, Rowzee said, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt. You were telling us that Charles bought Jessica a new car. That was very generous of him, I must say.’

‘Which is hardly the point,’ Pamela murmured.

Realising it wasn’t, Rowzee fixed Andee with attentive eyes and over the next few minutes, as the full story unfolded of that fateful day, she felt her heart starting slowly to break at the horror of the journey’s end. What a dreadful, cruel thing to happen. She hardly knew what to say, or do. She wanted to rush to Blake and Jenny to try and console them, or to Charles in spite of the terrible thing he’d done. Had he really just left Jessica there? Gina must be devastated, and how was poor Lydia taking it? Did she even know yet? Andee had said that Charles had lost his memory after the accident and that surely had to be true, because Rowzee couldn’t imagine the man she knew and admired, even considered family in a way, consciously abandoning dear Jessica and leaving her parents to suffer the way they had.

‘Are you listening, Rowzee?’ Graeme asked gently.

Rowzee’s eyes went to his as she nodded.

Pamela’s grip tightened on her hand.

‘We’ve just found out,’ Andee told her, ‘the identity of the person the car hit before going off the road.’

‘You said it was a woman,’ Pamela reminded her.

Andee nodded, her eyes travelling between the sisters, her expression troubled and grave.

Rowzee was watching her carefully. Her lips were moving, forming words that seemed to be causing shock and alarm, but Rowzee wasn’t sure what they were. Pamela had clasped her hands to her face; Graeme was coming to sit with Rowzee, putting an arm around her. ‘Did you hear what Andee said?’ he prompted kindly.

Rowzee nodded. Yes, the words had reached her now, but she couldn’t make any sense of them.

She looked up as Pamela began saying something angrily to Andee. Then suddenly Pamela was shouting at Rowzee. ‘I told you not to trust them,’ she cried, ‘what were they doing . . .’

‘Pamela, stop!’ Graeme cut in firmly. To Rowzee he said, ‘What do you want to do?’

Rowzee looked at him and touched a hand to his handsome face. ‘We have to go and see Norma,’ she said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and leaving Pamela to go and meet Blake and his family at the church this morning, she went to get into the back of Graeme’s car.

A little over two hours later Andee and Graeme were listening to Rowzee explaining to Norma what the police now knew about Jessica Leonard and Charles Stamfield. Considering how distracted Rowzee had seemed at home earlier, and how long she’d slept during the journey to Devon, it was surprising Andee, though pleasing her, to see that she was experiencing no memory lapses now, nor was she wandering from the point.

As she listened Norma was appearing puzzled and concerned, clearly grasping the importance of what she was being told though as yet unable to work out how it was relevant to her. Beside her, slumped in his wheelchair, head on one shoulder, hands bunched loosely in his lap, Sean apparently had no understanding of what was going on, while Jason, listening as attentively as
his grandmother, seemed to be growing paler by the minute.

In the end, when Rowzee had finished telling how Charles had thought he and Jessica had hit a woman that fateful night, but Andee had now discovered that it wasn’t a woman at all, Norma looked from her, to Andee and then to Graeme, with such bewildered eyes that Andee could see she needed to step in.

‘It was Sean that they hit,’ she said gently.

‘Yes, Sean,’ Rowzee echoed.

Norma looked as though she’d been struck.

Jason could only stare at them as though they’d suddenly turned into strangers.

Rowzee reached for Norma’s hand as Andee said, ‘It would have happened very fast, and I’m guessing that Sean’s hair back then . . .’

‘Was quite wild and long,’ Norma finished for her. ‘Very bushy, like his father’s, though I think Victor always kept his short.’

‘Usually,’ Rowzee confirmed.

Breaking out of his silence, Jason said, ‘So it wasn’t those gangsters who hit him and drove off?’

Andee shook her head. ‘Apparently not.’

He seemed unable to take it in.

‘It was still a hit and run,’ Norma mumbled, ‘but just not the kind we thought.’ Her hand was trembling as it went to her mouth. ‘Oh my goodness, that poor girl. To think that the whole time the police and ambulance services were seeing to Sean, she was right there . . . Didn’t they realise a car had gone off the road?’

Andee said, ‘Charles thinks the shock made Jessica hit the accelerator instead of the brake, so there wouldn’t have been any signs of a car leaving the road.’

Clearly still flummoxed by the news, Norma started to shake her head, needing more time to assimilate.

Continuing the story, Andee said, ‘A passing driver spotted Sean in his headlights, lying on the side of the road. He called the police and they found Sean’s car close by.’

‘He’d stopped to relieve himself,’ Norma explained. ‘That’s what they told us at the time. They said his urine was all over a bush. That was why he was out of the car.’

After a while, Graeme said, carefully, ‘The accident spot is only a few miles from where Rowzee lives, so we were wondering if Sean might have been to see Victor that day? Or perhaps he was on his way there?’

Norma blinked as she looked at him. ‘I’ve no idea,’ she replied, appearing as mystified as they did. To Rowzee she said, ‘I hadn’t realised it was so close to you. I mean, I knew it was on the edge of Exmoor, but Sean had friends up around that way. Not anyone I knew, but he’d go there sometimes . . . Oh my goodness,’ she suddenly gasped, ‘you think he saw Victor and something awful happened between them to cause Victor’s heart attack.’

‘No, that’s not what I think,’ Rowzee quickly assured her, though Andee knew it must have crossed her mind. ‘If Victor had seen him again he would have told me,’ Rowzee asserted, ‘and the heart attack didn’t happen until at least three days after the accident. Maybe it was even longer than that.’

‘You remember the accident?’ Andee asked curiously.

Rowzee was frowning. ‘Only vaguely. We knew something had happened on one of the back roads, but then Victor collapsed . . .’ Suddenly surprising them, she left that subject and said to Norma, ‘Did they tell you which direction Sean’s car was pointing in when they found it?’

Norma shook her head apologetically.

Realising where Rowzee was probably going with this, Andee said, ‘I’m sure we can find out,’ and after sending a quick message to Leo Johnson, she asked Norma, ‘Did the police at the time never make the connection between Sean and Victor?’

‘There wouldn’t have been any reason for them to,’ Norma replied. ‘He has a different name, and when they asked me what he was doing up around that way I’m not sure what I told them . . . Probably about his friends . . . It had just happened and we had no idea if he was going to live or die . . .’

‘But later,’ Graeme put in, ‘when you realised how close he was to Kesterly . . .’

Meeting his eyes, Norma said, ‘I remember wanting to contact Victor when I knew how serious things were for Sean, not to ask for anything, just to tell him . . .’ She broke off as Andee’s phone received a text.

After reading it, Andee said, ‘The car was on the left-hand side of the road, pointing west, towards Kesterly.’ She watched Norma and Rowzee look at one another, apparently making their own deductions and coming to the same conclusion.

‘He might have been on his way to see Victor,’ Rowzee said softly.

‘But he never got there,’ Norma added.

Jason watched them, seeming lost and a little afraid.

After a while Rowzee said, ‘I’d like to think Sean was coming to try and make things up with his father.’

Norma regarded her uncertainly.

Andee said nothing, nor did Graeme.

‘Why shouldn’t we think that?’ Rowzee demanded. ‘We have no reason to think anything else, unless we want to torture ourselves.’

The shadows of angst in Norma’s lovely eyes started to fade as she said, ‘I often tell people in situations like this, I mean where there are no clear answers, that it’s OK to create your own truth, just as long as no one can be harmed by it.’