The Waiting Game (31 page)

Bridget was annoyed. Ellen just didn’t think sometimes. It was obvious to anyone with half a brain that the children needed to spend time with their mother. Bridget tried her best never to comment on the choices her daughter made. Sometimes that was difficult.

She stood at the sink, watching the children playing outside in the small back garden. Michael was in the sitting room reading the papers and watching Cork play Tipperary in the Munster semis. A recording of a match first played in July. The fact he was watching it now told Bridget as much as she needed to know about the mood he was in. Sulking again over that business with his garden. She thought they’d put that behind them.

She was sorry about the garden, of course she was. Had told
him plenty of times. She knew how upset he was and that hurt her because she loved her husband, even when that was no easy task. But it was only a garden. The longer this dragged out, the harder it was to sustain the sympathy she’d first felt. After everything they’d gone through, to waste all this time feeling sorry about a piece of land, it wasn’t right. Everywhere in the world people were dying and suffering. Michael’s time would be far better spent worrying about those poor souls.

Outside, Pat shouted something and Eilish started to cry. Bridget braced herself. Sure enough, seconds later the back door flew open and Eilish ran across the kitchen, bawling.

‘Pat hit me.’ She was weeping loudly, too loud for the tears to be genuine. Bridget grabbed her granddaughter in a hug and looked over her head at Pat. He stood in the doorway scowling, face flushed, ready for a telling-off. She could practically see him getting his story straight, finding a way to show her it was Eilish who’d started it.

She wasn’t in the mood for any of that today.

Gently, she unwound herself from Eilish, took the girl’s little hand and led her into the sitting room. There were two adults in the house and she didn’t see why it had to be down to her to do all the looking after and the refereeing of the endless fighting that seemed to go on between them these days.

‘Michael.’

He looked up, face guilty, like she’d caught him doing something he shouldn’t.

‘Will you watch a film with Eilish? She’s tired and I think she needs a bit of time with her grand-daddy.’

Eilish started to protest but Bridget crouched down and whispered in her ear.

‘Your granddad is in a bad mood about his garden, Eilish. You know you’re the only person in the world who can cheer him up when he’s like this, don’t you?’

She watched Eilish consider this. Knew she was trying to work out whether the compliment outweighed the injustice of being accused of tiredness when she clearly was not. After a moment, Eilish smiled.

‘Can we watch
Frozen
, Granddad? Please? It’s my favourite movie ever and you like it too, don’t you?’

Bridget backed out of the room before either of them had a chance to change their minds. Closing the door behind her, she allowed herself a small smile. Typical Eilish. Her father’s daughter, for sure. Unable to sustain a bad mood for longer than a few minutes. Unlike her brother.

Back in the kitchen, Pat was still standing by the door. Still scowling.

‘Oh Pat.’

The scowl wobbled, his chin crumpled and his eyes watered. She crossed the small space and hugged him, whispering soft words, telling him it would be okay, everything was going to be okay.

‘I want to go home,’ he said, voice muffled in the soft wool of
her M&S cardigan.

‘Your mum will be back soon,’ Bridget said.

She checked the clock on the wall. Five past three. Ellen had promised to be home by three at the latest.

‘I’ll call her,’ she said.

Except when she called Ellen’s mobile she got the recorded message, asking her to leave her name and number. She hung up.

‘We’ll go across,’ she said. ‘Eilish can stay here with Michael and we’ll wait for your mum at your house. How about that?’

He smiled. ‘Thanks, Gran.’

She didn’t answer, distracted by the smile. His mother’s smile. A pity neither of them could find it in them to smile a bit more often. If they could manage that, they might find life a whole lot easier for themselves.

Traffic stalls on Kidbrooke Park Road. Wind the window down, take another pull of puff and slam my hand down. At the same moment the blow hits. My head lifts, spins and little red dots skitter-scatter across the front of my eyes.

The horn’s loud. Keep my hand pressed down until I’m drowning in the noise. Other cars start up and it’s like an orchestra, a great big fucking orchestra of rage.

Spliff’s finished. Flick it out the window and the car in front of me starts moving. Handbrake off and away we go. Slow going, but at least we’re moving.

A woman standing by a broken-down car. Long dark hair. Heart jumps, stomach does a dance. And then everything settles again. When I look again, she’s gone. I think maybe she was never there at all.

Ellen Kelly.

Petrol sloshing around inside the can. The van sick with the smell of it. Sticks to the inside of my nose and the taste of it coats my mouth and throat.

I pat my shirt pocket, check again for the lighter, even though I know it’s there. Beside the pack of tobacco and the little hard lump of dope.

Traffic speeds up.

The electric guitar starts. Keyboard. The beat grows faster. Louder. He comes in slow and low. Then he’s speeding up, other voices joining in. And I swear you can feel the heat in the front of the van.

I’m shouting the words out now, hot city streets and steaming pavements. Hand beating out the rhythm on the steering wheel.

A2 up ahead. Cars flying past. I swing a left, join them. Press my foot down. The van jumps once then lurches forward.

Time to burn.

Maybe it was nothing. A coincidence. He heard Ellen’s voice, the mantra she’d drummed into him.

No stone unturned. No coincidence too small.

Raj dialled her number. Again. It went to voicemail. Again. He hung up, unsure what to do next. Monica and Chloe. From the news reports, Raj knew Monica’s mother was called Annie. The same name, more or less, Monica had called herself with Chloe. Raj worked with an Irish bloke once, Patrick Stewart Maguire. Everyone called him Stewart, even though his warrant card clearly showed his first name was Patrick. When Raj asked about it, Maguire told him he’d been called Stewart for as long as he could remember. He’d been named Patrick, after his father. To avoid the confusion of two Patricks in the same household, he’d
always been referred to by his middle name.

Raj wanted to think maybe the explanation was that simple. Even though he knew it wasn’t. If she was known as Anne, why tell Ellen and everyone else her name was Monica? More importantly, why did she lie about not knowing Chloe?

He was sitting in his car, parked across the road from The Ravensbourne. Jenkins was still inside the pub, onto his third pint. Raj had left him to it. Come out here, smoked two cigarettes while he called Ellen’s voicemail. Then got into the car and realised he didn’t know where he was going.

There were too many conflicting ideas knocking around inside his head. He’d lost sight of where this was going. And underlying that uncertainty, a feeling that he was missing something. They all were.

Chloe’s stalker wasn’t her killer. Nathan Collier. He was in love with Chloe. Obsessively in love. When Chloe started dating Carl, Nathan lost it and killed her. Except he didn’t kill her. Monica Telford. She knew Chloe. She lied to Chloe about who she was. She lied to the police about knowing Chloe. Conclusion: she killed Chloe. Why?

Raj punched Abby’s number into his phone, hoping he’d get a real person this time, not another recording asking him to leave a message.

Pat’s mood improved in direct proportion to the distance put
between himself and his sister. By the time they reached his house on Annandale Road, he was positively ebullient.

They walked slowly, holding hands while he chatted about Minecraft. Bridget didn’t understand what it was and didn’t care, either. She was perfectly content, strolling along, his hand in hers, listening to his excited chatter.

As they approached the house, it started to rain and they moved faster, hurrying past the white van parked outside, along the driveway to the front door. Under the porch, Bridget looked around for Ellen’s car, hoping maybe her daughter had popped home first. But there was no car. Bridget’s mood plummeted as she rummaged around in her bag for the key.

By the time she’d found it and got it into the lock, she had already planned the talking-to Ellen was going to get when she finally turned up. The key turned, she pushed the door and they were inside. As she shut the door, she thought she heard a noise from further inside the house. When she listened again, there was nothing.

The hall was darker than usual. She couldn’t work out why, at first. Then she realised the kitchen door was closed. Ellen always left it open, enjoying the way the light from the French windows flooded into the hallway, making it appear bigger and brighter.

Pat was already gone, running upstairs into his bedroom. His sanctuary. Recently, she’d noticed he was spending more and more time up there on his own. It wasn’t healthy for a child that young to choose solitude over activity and company. Although
when she thought about it, Ellen had always been a solitary child, introverted and independent, rarely seeming to need anyone’s company. The one exception was Sean, who she always had time for.

Bridget listened to Pat as he moved around in his room above her. The pitter-patter of his footsteps, the click-clatter of plastic falling down as he pulled pieces of Lego from his box and prepared to add bits onto the spaceship he’d spent the last two weeks creating. All this followed by total silence.

She smiled, picturing him crouched down on the bedroom floor, face crunched up in concentration as he put the tiny pieces of plastic together, constructing something magnificent out of random bits of Lego. She would go up to him in a minute, check he was okay and maybe help him a bit. If he let her.

She moved towards the kitchen, thinking she’d make a cup of tea first, steal a moment for herself. Pushing open the kitchen door, the first thing she noticed was the mess. She couldn’t understand it at first. Ellen was always so tidy. Even if she’d been in a hurry, she’d never leave the place like this. Drawers pulled open, the contents spilled onto the floor, a chair overturned, lying like a dead person, its four legs sticking up.

Something wasn’t right. Bridget stepped back, mind jumping through all the possibilities, reaching the only logical conclusion. A break-in. An image flashed in front of her. Michael’s garden, the flowers ripped out at the roots, petals drifting in the breeze like bits of confetti.

Pat.

Upstairs on his own.

She swung around, opened her mouth to call his name. Nothing happened. She couldn’t speak. A man stood in front of her. Knife in his hand. Vincent’s knife. The man reached out, grabbed her wrist and dragged her until her body was pressed up against his.

A flash of light on steel as he lifted the knife in the air.

Fear like she’d never known before. Legs went but she was still standing, because he was holding her tight as he sent the knife slicing down through the air to kill her.

Traffic was slow on the way back and by the time she’d reached London’s outer suburbs, Ellen was almost an hour late. Her phone had rung several times but each time she’d let it go to voicemail. The caller was Raj and whatever he wanted, it could wait until after she’d picked up her children.

As she approached Greenwich, Ellen called ahead to let her parents know she was nearly there. When her father answered and told her where Pat and her mother were, she decided to detour past her own house first and pick them up.

A white van was parked outside her house, blocking the entrance to her driveway. Irritated, Ellen reversed back and found another space further away.

She’d just locked the car when her phone rang again. Thinking
it was Raj again, Ellen answered without checking the caller ID.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I was driving earlier. Couldn’t pick up. You okay?’

‘Ellen?’

Not Raj. Abby.

‘Raj has been trying to call you,’ Abby said. ‘Monica knew Chloe. Raj thinks she killed Chloe as well.’

Ellen knew that already. What she didn’t know was why.

‘Raj thinks Monica used Chloe to get at you,’ Abby said. ‘Because of Jim. She made up the story about having a stalker. When we didn’t take her seriously enough, she killed Chloe. She knew if she did that, she’d have our full attention.’

It made a sick sort of sense. Some of the detail was missing, but they could fill that in later. Their priority now was finding Monica.

‘Speak to Alastair,’ Ellen said. ‘Get him to check with all the main train stations, airports and ferry terminals. We’ve already circulated Monica’s picture. Tell them to check all CCTV from the last twenty-four hours. Someone must have seen her. Malcolm’s already liaising with other forces. Find out where he’s got to.’

When she’d finished with Abby, Ellen dialled Raj’s number and put her phone to her ear as she walked the last few metres to her front door. Then she changed her mind and cut the call before he had time to answer. She’d call him later. Right now, all she wanted was to see her family.

The air near her ear whistled as the knife came down. For a split second, she thought he’d cut her ear off. Her free hand shot up. Felt the ear, experienced a moment of sharp relief. He wasn’t going to kill her. He was just a kid, disturbed during a burglary.

‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘I won’t tell anyone. I promise. Just go and we can forget all about this.’

‘Shut up.’ He shouted the words and she jerked, stumbled against him. Instinctively, she tried to pull away. Wrong thing to do. The knife came up again. He pressed it against her face, cold steel on her cheek, the sharp tip close to her eye. He was going to cut her eyes out. So she couldn’t recognise him if she saw him again.

‘No. Please, no.’

Not begging for herself. Too late for that. Begging for the little boy upstairs. A child who’d already lost his father. The man’s grip on her wrist tightened, hurting her. Her bones were weak, the doctor had told her that. Not enough calcium. If he didn’t let go, the wrist would break. He stank. Sweat and tobacco and something else, a rich, grassy stink that reminded her – oddly – of the city in summertime.

Up close like this, pressed against his damp shirt, she couldn’t see his face. The only bits of him she knew were the smell and the heart and the breathing. He could go now and she wouldn’t even be able to tell the police what he looked like.

‘Where is she?’

‘Who?’

He twisted her wrist. The bone cracked and she cried out from the pain of it.

He was screaming at her and she needed him to stop. If Pat heard, he’d come to see what was going on and she couldn’t let that happen. She begged him to be quiet, but he wasn’t listening. Instead he was dragging her across the hall, towards the downstairs cloakroom.

When she realised what he was going to do, she tried again to fight him off, to stop him. But he was too strong and she couldn’t do anything except let him pull her to the cloakroom, let him open the door, take the key before he shoved her inside. She fell to the ground. Pain shot through both knees and up her legs. She scrabbled forward – away from the door, away from that man
– until she realised she was doing the wrong thing.

By the time she’d got up and ran to the door, it was too late. She heard the key turning in the lock and then his footsteps walking away, leaving her locked inside in the dark.

Outside, the footsteps stopped abruptly and she froze, thinking for a second he was going to come back.

‘Gran?’

Jesus, no. Dear God, please, no.

‘What the…?’ The man sounded confused. And angry.

She pictured the knife in his hand. Imagined what he might do with it. The footsteps started again, moving faster now, running up the stairs. She was screaming, begging him not to hurt her grandchild, pleading with him, telling him she’d pay him, give him whatever he wanted.

He was upstairs. Footsteps over her head. Pat screamed, called out for her, his voice cutting through her worse than any knife ever could. Screaming as the footsteps got faster. Both of them running. The man shouting over Pat’s voice, roaring at him to shut the fuck up. One more scream from Pat. The thump of something hitting the ground.

And then silence.

Ellen hadn’t expected Pat to come running to her with open arms, but some sort of reaction would have been nice. Instead, it was like they were deliberately ignoring her. Ellen stood in the hall,
listening to them moving around in the sitting room. Usually it was her father who played the games. Her mother preferred the more traditional role of mock-authority. Ellen had always secretly suspected her mother would enjoy the games as much as anyone. If she’d only let herself.

‘Hello?’

The attack came from behind. Completely off-guard, she fell forward, hands out to protect her face from the parquet flooring. Confused, she thought at first it was Pat. Thought he was playing some soldier game that had got out of hand.

Until a fist came from nowhere, smashed into her lower back, knocking all air from her body. Unable to breathe, she tried to crawl forward, her only thought to get away. Something fell on top of her, a heavy weight. She couldn’t move. Another punch to the back then a hand on her hair, head pulled back and slammed forward. An explosion of pain – bright, white, blinding.

Her arms and legs flailed around. Useless. Her fist connected with something. The weight on her body lifted, shifted. She jerked her back up, the person rolled off. The clatter of steel on wood. A knife hit the floor and slid across the hall.

Scrabbling to her hands and knees, Ellen went for the knife, grabbed it at the same time a hand wrapped around her ankle. She swung around, plunged the knife through a pair of dirty denims into the lower part of a leg.

Someone screamed. A man. Not Monica. Ellen tried to strike again, but he was too quick. Kicked her chest and she fell back
against the wall. She tried to get up. Still had the knife. Holding it in front of her, slicing the air between them. Trying to stop him getting too close.

White face wet with sweat. She knew the face but couldn’t place it. He moved closer, ducking out of the knife’s way. She was standing now. Only one thing for it. She dived forward, knife ready, aiming for his heart. Got his shoulder instead. Enough to knock him to the ground.

She threw herself on top of him, fists lashing out, landing punches to his face and solar plexus. She put a hand over his mouth, blocking his mouth and nose so he couldn’t breathe. Pressed hard. Beneath her, his body bucked and jerked. Ellen pressed down harder, grinding her palm into his face.

Saliva and snot smeared her hand. She saw panic in his eyes. Good.

‘Where are they?’ she said.

‘Ellen?’

Her mother’s voice. Ellen let go. Turned towards the voice. It was all the time he needed. His head jerked up and smashed into her already damaged face. She fell sideways and he kept hitting her. In the stomach, on the arms.

She rolled into a ball, trying to escape the worst of it. The blows kept coming. Something wet ran down her face into her eyes. She wiped it away. Saw blood on her hand. She crawled forward, hands clawing the ground for the knife.

His fists smashed down on her shoulders and across the back
of her head. Bright, white lights – thousands of them – exploded before her eyes.

The lights disappeared, darkness invading every part of her. She tried to fight it, knew she couldn’t give in. Pat. He was here in the house. She had to find him. But the pull was too strong. She felt herself slipping, down and away. There was nothing she could do.