The Valley (9 page)

‘Okay,’ she said gingerly.

She turned up wearing a simple green polo neck and black jeans with a leather belt that had an oversized silver buckle. From her ankles to her neck and down to her wrists she was fully covered, and she wore no earrings or make-up. But it made no difference. The clothes seemed to cling to her, making her appear lithe and graceful. I noticed also how her hair had grown and how it suited her. And then I realised that it did not matter what she did with her clothes or hair: just seeing her made me feel happy.

I led her out through to my makeshift patio. I had tidied it up as best I could, packing all my children’s toys away in one bag and sweeping away the litter that had fallen from the street above.

She followed me around the L bend to where I had put up a trestle table and two garden chairs, beneath the Fire Escape sign. It was the sunniest part of the patio, but it was an overcast day and the only real evidence that it received any sunlight were the overgrown pot plants by the wall.

‘Do you want a drink?’ I said, pointing to the bottle of white wine immersed in a Bob the Builder Engine bucket that I had filled with ice.

She looked at the bucket and laughed. ‘Does Tom know you borrow his toys when you invite strange women to dinner?’

‘You’re not strange to him: you’re a pilot. Nothing’s cooler than that, except being a fireman.’

She smiled. ‘I’ll ask for a transfer to the fire brigade immediately. But in the meantime, I’m afraid I can’t drink. I’ll be airborne in twenty-four hours. Even one glass would be enough to get me sacked.’

I went inside to find her some orange juice. When I returned, she was standing on the Fire Escape ladder, peering up and down the street above. For a while, I just looked at her, admiring her long, jean-clad legs.

She turned around. ‘Do your children climb up this?’

‘All the time. I used to worry that they would break their legs jumping off, but they seem to have survived.’

Angela looked at me and then jumped, twisting around in mid-air, so she landed facing me, with her knees bent and arms outstretched like a gymnast.

‘Ta-rah,’ she said. ‘How do I compare?’

‘Better than Tom but not as good as Jack. He can do a twist and a half before he lands.’

‘That’s showing off,’ she said.

For a while we chatted about my children. I told her how that once the summer holidays started, I had enlisted both of them on a course at the tennis club, and she told me how she had once taught children of Jack’s age how to play hockey.

‘When was that?’ I asked.

‘Oh ages ago,’ she said. ‘Another lifetime really.’

I was about to press her for more details, when she suggested we go inside, because she was getting cold.

As she walked into the kitchen, she spotted a framed photo I had of Karen and me on our wedding day. It was the only one I had kept. It showed her looking across at me and smiling.

Angela picked it up, studied it and then turned around. ‘Is that Max Grainger standing up in the background?’

I nodded. ‘He was my bestman. The photo was taken when he was giving his speech.’

‘Do you see a lot of him now he’s invested in PropFace?’

‘No, I hardly hear from him. I send him a copy of the management accounts each month, and occasionally I get an email back, but that’s about it.’

‘PropFace must be doing well then?’

‘We’re surviving.’

I opened the oven to see if our food was ready. I was just prodding the meat with my fork, when my doorbell buzzed. I waited in case it was a guest of one of my neighbours who had accidentally pressed the wrong button, but it buzzed again and again, until I was forced to use the intercom to ask who was outside.

‘Detective Sergeant Joy Clarke – can I come in, please?’

I stood completely still.

‘It’s important,’ Joy continued, her voice ringing out through the intercom speaker. ‘There have been some developments in the Lucy Grainger case.’

‘Do you want me to go?’ Angela whispered. She looked even more worried than I was.

‘No,’ I said. I did not want her to go at all. I wanted Joy Clarke to go instead. But I knew Joy would not leave without making a scene, and I did not want to appear callous or evasive in front of Angela.

Reluctantly, I buzzed Joy in. As I waited for her to walk down the stairs, I hovered around my door. Angela stayed silent.

Joy arrived all by herself. When she saw Angela, her eyes lit up. ‘John, I’m sorry,’ she said without a hint of real remorse. ‘I didn’t realise you had company. I did try to come around earlier but you were out.’

‘And you never thought of calling me at work?’

‘I thought it required a personal visit. Would you prefer if we spoke in private?’

‘We might as well talk here,’ I said. ‘I’ve told Angela everything. I’ve nothing to hide.’

‘Then I must compare notes with Angela sometime,’ Joy said, staring straight at Angela who turned away, looking embarrassed.

‘What exactly do you want, Joy?’ I demanded.

‘We’d like you to take part in a filmed reconstruction of Lucy’s last hours. Will you agree to that?’

This caught me by surprise. ‘Okay,’ I said, after a short pause.

‘Of course we’ll need lots of details about exactly where you went and when. More details than you were willing to give us in your previous statement.’

‘I told you everything I could remember.’

‘But that wasn’t very much was it, John?’

‘I was drunk, Joy.’

‘I know. But sometimes people recollect more details over time. In fact we thought you might like to undergo hypnosis, as that can sometimes help.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I stuttered. ‘Hypnosis freaks me out. I’m not sure I could do that.’

Joy said nothing. I tried to catch Angela’s eye but she was looking down at the table.

‘John, we can’t force you to help,’ Joy said at last. ‘But would you at least let us question you again without hypnosis? There are some new bits and pieces that we have discovered that might jog your memory.’

‘Like what?’ I demanded.

‘Oh, just bits and pieces,’ she said. ‘I’m sure we could arrange a date that would be convenient for you to come in.’

‘Without a lawyer?’

‘We were hoping you would help us voluntarily.’

I glanced at Angela but she was still avoiding my eyes.

‘Joy, if you write down your questions in an email, I will send you back my answers.’

‘So you’re not willing to be re-questioned – even if it might help track down Lucy Grainger’s abductors?’

‘I will answer all your questions if you email them to me.’

‘But not face to face? You don’t even want to look at your diary and see whether there is a date when –’

‘Send me an email, Joy. Right now, I have a guest and we’d like to get on with our supper. So if you’re not going to arrest me, please leave.’

I said this as calmly as I could but I was almost shaking with anger as I escorted her to the door. And on its threshold she turned around to deliver one final blow.

‘Oh, by the way John, we’ve found your taxi driver.’

‘What?’ I said, genuinely perplexed.

‘The taxi driver who drove you back to Balham on the night Lucy Grainger disappeared. Or at least that’s what you told us he did.’

I knew Angela would be listening as eagerly as I was. And Joy made certain she heard every word.

‘You hailed him a lot later than you told us: well after midnight.’

‘I only said I left the Graingers’ house before midnight, Joy. It took some time to find a cab. It was Valentine’s night, remember.’

‘And you didn’t tell the cabbie your address. Instead you asked to be dropped off over a quarter of a mile away in Clapham.’

‘I can’t remember that but it’s possible. I’d had a lot to drink, so I might have needed some fresh air.’

‘Maybe,’ Angela said. ‘But these are all things you forgot to tell us when we questioned you. And they’re all things we could clear up if only you’d come to the station. Just think about it, that’s all.’

Without waiting for me to reply, she turned around and walked up the stairs.

I slammed the door shut behind her. ‘The bitch!’ I said.

Angela opened her mouth but then closed it again.

I tried to explain. ‘I bet she knew I had company. She probably stationed someone by the stairs. You didn’t see anyone did you?’

‘John, why won’t you let her re-question you?’

Her question took me by surprise. ‘Angela, the last time I offered to help the police, they locked me up for nearly two days. And right now, I don’t have two days to spare.’

‘So tell them you can only spend two hours then.’

I started to shout: ‘That’s what I did last time and they still arrested me. Look, this is all bullshit. If Joy really wanted to check some details with me, she would email me her questions as I suggested. She just wants to trick me into saying something she can twist into a fake confession.’

‘I don’t believe that,’ she said.

‘You weren’t there. They even leaked stuff to the papers.’

Angela raised her voice: ‘Well, couldn’t you at least try the hypnosis, then? I’ll come with you if you want.’

‘No, I bloody can’t. I want to be fully awake, when they try to trick me. And anyway, why the hell should I help them after what they did to me?’

‘Because you might find out what happened to your friend.’

‘It’s bollocks. They’re just playing mind games. They just –’

‘And you also look guilty if you don’t help them.’

We both fell silent after she said that.

‘I’m sorry,’ Angela eventually said, ‘I didn’t mean to say that.’

‘But you did. And you know what: you’re right, I do feel guilty. A friend of mine was killed because she was alone in her house on a particular night. And why was she there? Me. I even got her drunk, for God’s sake. So I don’t need the police to tell me I contributed to her death. And I don’t need you to tell me that either.’

‘I think I’d better leave,’ Angela said, rising to her feet.

I called her on her mobile the next day, but there was no reply. I emailed and texted her but she did not respond. It was a full three days before I heard from her. She called me at the PropFace office late in the afternoon.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘So am I.’

There was a long pause. I looked up. The door to my office was open but no one was hovering around outside it. I whispered into the phone: ‘I didn’t kill Lucy Grainger.’

‘I know that,’ she said.

‘Still friends?’

‘Yes.’

Joy never sent me an email with a list of questions or contacted me again about a filmed reconstruction. Under a deluge of work at PropFace, I soon forgot about it, or at least I did until one day at the start of August, I received a surprise phone call from Max. He said he was in town on his way between the Caymans and Scotland and wanted to meet for a business lunch near the office. I suggested the local branch of Pret a Manger. He said he would prefer Le Pont De la Tour. When I googled it, an article came up saying it was one of London’s most expensive restaurants.

I arrived, clutching my laptop and armed with lots of print-outs showing the progress we had made only to find Max already seated at the table, with a bottle of wine open. He asked me a few general questions about PropFace, but seemed more interested in the menu than any of my answers. When I told him that there was a possibility that if we kept expanding, we could have a cashflow problem in the run up to Christmas, he said I should talk to Ian about it. For a while, I wondered whether he had dragged me out to tell me that he had changed his mind and would not be paying the next cash instalment, but instead he mentioned that he had seen an old friend from Bristol, and before we knew it we were reminiscing about university, and summers in Glen Avon. Soon another bottle of wine was open, and I was laughing so much that I almost forgot to find out why Max was in the UK.

‘Are you going up to Glen Avon?’ I asked eventually.

‘No, it’s all let out. One day I’ll live there, but not now.’

‘So what brings you over here then?’

‘It’s my father’s funeral tomorrow.’

For a moment I was completely speechless. Eventually I managed to ask when his father had died.

‘Last Friday,’ Max said, between mouthfuls of food.

‘You must be devastated.’

He briefly looked up. ‘We all have to die, John.’

He said it with such coldness that I had to react.

‘Max! He was your father. He brought you up single-handed.’

He slowly put down his knife and fork. ‘I didn’t say I wouldn’t miss him.’

‘But he still –’

‘It’s not like Lucy,’ he said, slowly and quietly. ‘My father was nearly seventy and had been diagnosed with early stage Parkinsons, She wasn’t old or ill. And she doesn’t even have a fucking grave. If I was sad about my father, what should I be feeling about her?’

We were both silent for some time.

‘I’m sorry,’ I finally said.

‘Don’t be. My father always liked you.’

‘Where’s his funeral?’

‘In the kirk at Glen Avon, at the end of the valley,’ he said, a smile slowly returning to his face. ‘He’s going to be buried there as well. It’s a lovely view. You can see the mountains and the loch. One of the few regrets I have about my marriage to Lucy is that we didn’t get married there.’

Then he turned to me, his eyes gleaming. ‘I’ve been thinking about Lucy quite a lot recently. I can’t bury because we don’t know where she is. But I would like to organise some kind of service to give people a chance to say goodbye to her, even if it’s unclear whether it’s Adieu or Au Revoir.’

I told him I would help in any way I could, and the conversation moved on. Soon we were chatting about old times again, recalling the early days of PropFace when Max and I had shared not just an office, but a desk and a phone, in a dingy office that George had rented, which prompted me to ask whether he had seen George at all.

‘No,’ Max said, ‘I’ve heard he’s back at Ferreston, running the family estate.’

‘Did he know Lucy?

‘He introduced us,’ Max said, before quickly changing the subject.

Max never ate dessert. After our main course, he ordered tea for him and coffee for me, then announced that he had to set off for Chelsea, and the last I saw of him was him striding across Tower Bridge in the rain, oblivious to the buses and taxis that passed. I slunk back to the office in an alcoholic stupor, reflecting that our business lunch had actually been much more like a private two man dinner party given by an old friend, which had just happened to start at one o’clock in the afternoon.

Lucy’s memorial service was held in Chelsea on a rainy Monday afternoon in September. I had hoped Angela might attend with me because she was the only person I really talked to about Lucy, and I also thought it might put the disastrous supper at my flat into a better perspective. But she could not come over to the UK at all that month. Then Karen heard about the service, and said she wanted to pay her respects to Lucy and see Max again, and so in the end we went together.

The service was led by a priest who had known Lucy since she was a child. He gave a dignified address, asking the congregation to give thanks for what they knew about Lucy’s life rather than speculate about what they didn’t know about her possible death. Afterwards there was a mixture of drinks and tea in a nearby five-star hotel. Over a hundred people came. Among them were a few familiar faces from the old days in Bristol, but George Colebrook was nowhere to be seen.

I don’t like tea and I hate institutional coffee so I drank white wine. I had already downed a couple of glasses by the time I found Max to see how he was coping. He was in full meeting and greeting mode, clearly determined to make the best out of a wretched occasion. For a while, Karen and I hung around him, and he introduced us to friends of Lucy. But when Max peeled away our conversation quickly dried up. I think everyone wanted to ask the same question, but it was the one the priest had told us not to mention – what did we think had happened to her – and none of us was brave enough to utter it in front of strangers.

In a corner I spotted Ian Joseph. He was the only other person from PropFace who had come. I introduced Karen to him, then went to look for Lucy’s parents. I found them standing amid a throng of people I did not know. A waiter passed by, so I swapped my empty wine glass for a full one and introduced myself. As the others melted away, I tried to find the right condolences, but no sooner had I mentioned my full name than Lucy’s father abruptly cut me off, and walked swiftly away, making it plain that I should not follow. Lucy’s mother lingered around only a little longer, until she too made an excuse to join her husband. Feeling embarrassed, I turned around and saw Joy Clarke, observing me from the other side of the room.

I strode over to her.

‘What are you doing here?’ I demanded.

‘Paying our respects to the victim’s family.’

I laughed sarcastically. ‘How did your filmed reconstruction go?’

‘We decided it was best to wait.’

I shook my head. ‘It was all bullshit, wasn’t it?’

She ignored me. ‘I hear your company is doing very well. Apparently you’re now based in swish new premises. You’re probably a millionaire by now, aren’t you?’

‘Having an office near the City doesn’t make me a millionaire,’ I said. ‘Your police station is in Chelsea: does that make you rich?’

She smiled, her teeth gleaming: ‘You’re right, a posh new office doesn’t make you rich. But owning forty two percent of PropFace does. I’m not an accountant, but if Max Grainger paid one and a quarter million pounds for just over half the shares, your stake must be worth seven figures.’

Her percentages were off by a point or two but not by much. Someone had obviously spent time going through our accounts.

‘Admit it, John,’ she teased, ‘you’ve done well. You were in desperate straits six months ago. Now Max has waved his magic wand, and you’re a mini-tycoon. I wish I had friends like that.’

I changed the subject. ‘Have you found that skinhead you were looking for? The one you showed me a photo of – Charlie someone?’

‘No, we haven’t found him yet.’

I looked at her. ‘Why do you think he killed Lucy?’

I said this more loudly than I meant to. A couple near us backed away. Joy lowered her voice and moved closer, so only I could hear.

‘We found some DNA in Lucy’s bedroom. It was too badly degraded to establish an exact match, but it had a rare structure. We know it did not come from Lucy or Max, or their cleaning lady, or even you. Only about a hundred people on our database have DNA with the same structure. And one of them is Charlie Wall.’

‘How about the other ninety nine?’

‘We’re still checking them out. But Charlie is the obvious one. His record fits – assault, GBH, armed robbery. And it’s also interesting that he disappeared on the same night that Lucy Grainger disappeared.’

Joy paused, then leaned even closer so our bodies briefly touched as she whispered: ‘Or maybe it’s another complete coincidence – just like you and Lucy choosing to do your washing that night, and Max suddenly investing in your company, and you and Charlie Wall coming from the same country.’

For a second her eyes twinkled like a naughty schoolgirl, but then the smile faded from her face and she stepped back. I looked over my shoulder and saw Karen approaching us.

‘Karen, this is Detective Sergeant Joy Clarke. She’s –’

‘We’ve met,’ Karen said abruptly, ‘several times. On the first occasion DS Clarke was chiefly interested in your sexual habits, and whether you were rough in your foreplay. She wanted to know if you liked to indulge in rape fantasies.’

I went bright red. Joy looked away. But Karen was not finished yet. She spat out her words, enunciating each one precisely.

‘The second time, DS Clarke wanted to know how often you washed your clothes. Maybe she thought you had a laundry fetish. And she was very interested in whether I thought you might have had a fling with Lucy Grainger.’

Joy tried to protest: ‘We have to investigate every angle, Mrs Flood.’

‘Come on, John. I’ve got to pick up the children,’ Karen interrupted. ‘I’m sure Ms Clarke knows where to find us if she needs to contact us again.’

She took hold of my arm and guided me out of the room. We did not even say goodbye to Max or anyone else, and it was only when we were walking through the hotel lobby that I noticed that I still had a wine glass in my hand, which I hurriedly placed on a table in the lobby.

I had parked on a meter about ten minutes walk away. As we approached my Volvo, I broke the silence. ‘You didn’t tell me you’d talked to that detective. What did you say about me?’

Karen stared at me. ‘You’re too drunk to drive. Give me the keys.’

I handed them over. Karen unlocked the doors and we both clambered in.

‘I didn’t talk to her,’ Karen said, as she adjusted her seat. ‘I made one oblique comment about you not being the tidiest human being on the planet and she seized on it and asked me a whole load of questions. So I told her to fuck off, just like I told her to fuck off when she asked me what you got up to in bed. And I’ve had the good sense not to talk to her since.’

Karen put the key in the ignition, and then turned towards me, her eyes red with anger.

‘John, you’re a bloody fool talking to her, when you’ve had so much to drink. She might smile and flirt with you, but she’s not playing games.’

‘Karen, you don’t think I – ‘

‘No, I don’t,’ Karen said. ‘But she does.’

She turned the key in the ignition, and pulled out into the traffic, her eyes glued to the road, never once looking at me.

After five minutes of silence I said. ‘Karen why don’t we go back to the house together? I could help you with the boys.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ll park near your flat. The walk will do me good. Anyway, we’re seeing you on Sunday, remember?’

It was Jack’s birthday party.

She turned towards me. ‘You can bring Angela if you want. She’s the pilot who tells them how to fly planes, isn’t she? They seem to like her.’

I had never talked to her about Angela.

‘She can’t come,’ I said.

‘She is your girlfriend isn’t she?’

‘We have a complicated relationship,’ I said, before upping the ante. ‘Is Nick coming?’

‘He’s away in Sweden, handling a pensions case.’

I kept silent. Before Karen had mentioned Angela, I had not even thought about running into Nick at my son’s birthday party and I was quite relieved that he was not going to be there.

‘Have you got Jack’s present yet?’ Karen asked.

I told her some of the things I was considering buying him – ranging from an England football shirt to a model airplane – but she did not think he would like any of them. Eventually, she said, ‘I’ll tell you what he needs: a good alarm clock. Getting him off to school is a nightmare. If you could find a clock he’d actually like, that would be a godsend.’

She smiled and I forced a smile back. She had tried to help me but she had ended up reminding me that despite all the weekends I spent with Jack and Tom, I was still only a part-time Dad. I had assumed they sprang out of bed at six o’clock every morning because that is what they had done when they I lived with them nearly three years ago. Nick already probably knew them better than I did.

She parked the car outside my flat and we both got out.

‘Are you sure you don’t want me to walk back with you,’ I said.

‘Quite sure,’ Karen said. She handed me the key and started walking away before suddenly spinning round.

‘Did I tell you that Max said he was going to come on Sunday?’ she shouted.

I looked at her in amazement.

‘I asked him when you were talking to that detective. He‘s Jack’s godfather, after all. He said he’d had a boozy lunch with you not so long ago so I thought you might have invited him. Anyway as you haven’t, I did, and he said he’d love to come.’

Back at my flat, I kept wondering why it seemed so wrong for Max to come. It felt like an invasion of privacy, as if my boss at work had suddenly insisted on meeting my wife and children – which in many ways was exactly how it was.

Later that evening, I called my mother in Australia and tried to explain it to her. She listened and then said, ‘What’s the problem, John?’

And the real problem was that I could not explain. I could talk about people and events to her but not about what I felt or what I feared. On finishing the call, I immediately dialled Angela’s number. It was almost an instinctive reaction now to call her whenever I needed to talk to someone. It was only after she answered in a sleepy voice, that I realised I might have miscalculated the time difference to Hong Kong.