Dead and Buried (20 page)

‘Rose.’

She looked up. Her mother was there.

Her face broke into a smile. She stood up and her arms moved upwards as if to hug her as her mother had done in the car park of the pub in Great Dunmow. Her mother stepped back, though, glancing from side to side. She looked stiff as if standing to attention. She was wearing a dark jacket and trousers and had a pink silk scarf wound around her neck a number of times. It had fringes at the end and looked out of place against her sober suit.

‘I’m getting a coffee. Do you want one?’

Rose shook her head. Dismayed, she watched as her mother went up to the counter and waited to be served. She wasn’t wearing any glasses and she was scrabbling about in her purse for money to pay. The barista must have made a joke because he laughed and handed her a tall cup. Her mother gave a weak smile and walked back towards her then sat in the seat beside Rose.

‘I haven’t got long,’ she said, placing a hand on the table.

Rose saw her nails then. Long and manicured, painted a pearlised white. It reminded her of Anna, who spent many hours having her nails shaped and coloured. Rose frowned. This was not something her mother had ever done before.

‘Why aren’t you wearing your glasses?’

‘Contact lenses.’

Her mother’s words were spare as though she was paying a bill and had just the right money. She seemed angry that Rose had called her there so soon. The phone number she’d given her was possibly just a gesture, a token which Rose had used up. She felt like she was on the brink of crying but then her mother placed her hand lightly on top of hers. It was warm and firm.

‘Rose, I’m getting the two o’clock train back. There are things I need to tell you but first you have to promise you will not try to contact us again and you will not come out to the house.’

The house
. She meant the mansion owned by Macon Parker, the man who stole people’s organs.

‘Ben and I work there. He manages the grounds and the cars and I am the housekeeper. We’ve been there for over a year now and are trusted.’

‘How can you call him
Ben
?’

‘That is his name just as mine is Kate Markham. We are different people now, you have to respect that. We have a job to do. It’s our last one and although it is unpalatable and hard for you to understand we must do it to the best of our ability. All I would say to you is that you have not seen the things that Brend– Ben and I have seen. You have not walked in our shoes. You cannot know what made us do this.’

Rose looked down at the table. A couple had just come into the cafe and sat next to them. They were young with giant rucksacks which they struggled out of, laughing. The rucksacks sat on the floor, discarded shells, as the couple went up for their drinks. Rose looked and saw labels on them. They were heading off on a journey, carefree. No doubt their parents were at home doing
normal
things.

She turned back to her mum. She should ask her about the last summer and Daisy Lincoln, how she and Brendan had been getting on, about the miscarriage. Then she could mention Brendan’s tie and the pendant. The words were there, in her mouth, practised frequently over the last twenty-four hours. Is it possible that Brendan was having a relationship with Daisy Lincoln? This is what she would say.

Instead she said something quite different.

‘How could you leave me?’

Her mother’s eyebrows crinkled. Rose noticed deep lines between her brows. Worry lines.

‘I thought . . . Ben explained this yesterday?’

‘I want to hear it from you.’

The white nails tapped on the table and her mother picked her cup up and drank from it. When she put it back down again her face had reddened.

‘It started with Judy Greaves.’

The Butterfly Murder. Rose nodded.

‘I knew nothing about it until a year after Stuart killed Simon Lister. That was when Brendan told me everything. He showed me the things that had been on the man’s computer. The pictures, the plans to kill another girl. Judy Greaves was ten. You were ten. I just looked at it all and thought of you and it seemed as though some sort of rough justice had taken place and that was just the beginning.’

‘But to kill someone . . .’

‘We worked in cold cases,’ her mother said, lowering her voice, looking carefully round the cafe. ‘We saw lots of killing that went unpunished. We decided on two things, we would only pass judgement on killers if there was no chance that they would ever be caught by the authorities. And we would only pass judgement if it seemed that they might do it again. That way we were saving lives.’

Pass judgement
. Rose had heard Brendan use these words. She’d seen the word
judgement
in the back of the notebooks. She wondered if they did it in a formal way, a group of people sitting round saying ‘Guilty?’ or ‘Not Guilty?’

Her mother was holding her hand now. Her scarf had come undone, the end of it slithering on to the table. Rose was afraid for a moment that it might dip into some coffee that had been spilled.

‘This is our last case. We want to move on and have a new life. We can do that. There’s a place in British Columbia where we can go.’

Rose sat back and pulled her hand away.

‘You’re going to leave again?’

‘We have to. There’s no life for us here. We will get settled. Then send for you and Josh. That was always the plan. To start a new life.’

‘We have a life here. We all had a life here, in Brewster Road.’

Brewster Road
. Hadn’t Rose called her mother here to talk about precisely that? To ask her about what might have happened to Daisy Lincoln?

‘We did,’ her mother said. ‘But we had to leave. We had serious gangsters after us. The judgement on Baranski was carried out in 2006. In May 2007 one of our group, a man called Jason Butler, went missing. He was never found but things started to happen through that summer and we had to assume that he had given information about us to the Germans who were looking for the money that Baranski owed them. Whether this information was given for money or whether it was forced from him we will never know but it became clear that they knew who had killed Baranski and they were coming for us. Leaving you? It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. The other stuff? The killings?’ Her mother shook her head. ‘These things are distasteful, brutal, but nothing ever clawed at me like leaving you.’

‘But Munroe told us that those German gangsters had been arrested. Weeks, months, after you went away. Why didn’t you come home then?’

Rose felt her throat drying, her voice thinning.

‘That was part of the story he fabricated about our bodies being found in a submerged car. It was an attempt to persuade you and Joshua that we were dead. The Germans in question were killed just months ago actually. This was nothing to do with us, it’s just a fact of life for these people. They live by violence. Sometimes they die by it. This is why we are able to finish our work now. Move on with our lives. We have rid the world of some very nasty people, Rose.’

Rose sat back in her chair. She folded her arms across her chest. She wasn’t hearing what she’d wanted to hear.

‘I always thought that maybe you’d just gone along with it all because of Brendan,’ she said. ‘I never thought, for one minute, that you left voluntarily. You left me clues – the glasses case in the restaurant, your signature in the B and B. You wanted me to find you . . .’

‘Oh, Rosie . . .’

Her mother moved her chair around the small table. She put an arm around Rose’s shoulder and pulled her close. Rose felt the silky scarf rub against her face. Her mother spoke in her ear.

‘I was a willing participant. Brendan didn’t force me. At least he didn’t force me to go along with the judgements. I agreed to those. He had to force me to leave you behind. I admit to that.’

‘But have you . . . Have you actually
killed
someone?’

‘That’s something that none of us will talk about. How it’s done, who does it. Those things are drawn randomly.’

‘Viktor Baranski?’

‘I can’t say. It doesn’t matter
who
did it. We are all responsible. The judgement is the
deed
and we all make that. The act is inconsequential.’

‘You know about Skeggsie?’

‘The boy? Josh’s friend? It was a terrible mistake. James Munroe was very upset by what happened. It’s what happens when outsiders are involved.’

‘I saw Margaret Spicer. She seemed less sure that Munroe hadn’t intended Skeggsie to die.’

‘You saw Margaret?’

‘She came to see me. She wanted to explain.’

‘Well, she and James are splitting up. She is very upset. Very bitter. But we trust James Munroe. He is a good man.’

Rose didn’t know what to say. Her mum sounded so certain, so positive about what they were doing. It wasn’t what she’d wanted to hear. She watched as her mother rearranged her scarf, tucking the fringed end into her jacket.

‘Did you have a miscarriage?’ Rose blurted out.

Her mother looked startled. ‘How did you know about that?’

‘I found some of Brendan’s letters to you. It sounded as though you weren’t happy.’

‘For a while we weren’t. We were under a lot of pressure from the German situation. It wouldn’t have been right for me to have another baby but I was so sad when I lost it. It meant that Brendan and I had differences for a while. At one time I even thought . . .’

Rose waited.

‘I even thought we might separate. But we didn’t.’

‘And now there is this dead girl in the back garden. Daisy Lincoln. You know the press have linked her death with your disappearance?’

‘I did see some press about it . . .’

‘Did you know her? Did Brendan know her?’

Her mother looked puzzled. ‘I don’t think we did know her. I might have passed her in the street and known her by sight but I couldn’t have put a name to her face.’

‘The detective I spoke to said that her hands were tied behind her back. Then she was killed and buried.’

‘It’s awful. An innocent girl with her life ahead of her.’

‘Mum, her hands were tied behind her back with Brendan’s tie.’

Her mother’s face dropped. Her eyes crinkled, the deep line between her eyebrows darkening. She looked as though she was about to speak but didn’t say anything.

‘Why do you think that was?’ Rose said nervously.

‘Are you sure that’s what they said? A tie
like
one that Brendan had? Wasn’t that what they meant?’

‘They have his DNA.’

‘I don’t understand. Wait . . . Something is making sense to me now. Something that happened that summer. In August Brendan and I went away for a long weekend. We went on the Thursday night and came back on the Tuesday. You and Josh stayed with friends. I don’t remember the exact date but when we got back the back door was unlocked. I thought someone had been in the house. Brendan said I was overwrought. I even thought it might have been the Germans but . . .’

It wasn’t a believable explanation. Rose slumped back in the chair.

‘You think someone
might
have broken into the house and used Brendan’s tie.’

‘Rose, I don’t know. But it wasn’t Brendan or me. Whatever happened to this poor Daisy girl is nothing to do with our mission.’

The pendant. How did Daisy get the pendant?
Rose thought.

Rose didn’t ask the question. It would only have elicited the same answer. If the police were right about it being Brendan’s tie then the person to ask was
Brendan
.

‘Now I really must go.’

Rose stood up. Her mother hugged her.

‘You wait to hear from us,’ she whispered.

And then she was gone. She slipped out of the cafe and Rose watched her go down the stairs until she merged into the crowds, only her pink scarf visible, and then after a few moments she couldn’t even see that. Behind her the young couple were talking about Berlin.

‘It’s a great place for nightlife, so we’ll spend a few days there!’ the young man was saying.

Rose couldn’t listen any more. She left the cafe and headed out of the station.

TWENTY

Rose went back to college. She stayed in the library after her classes to finish an essay that had to be in. Sarah and Maggie were also there, further along the table. From time to time she looked at the screen of her phone to see if she had a message. Sarah and Maggie gave each other knowing looks.

‘You waiting for a text from Jamie?’ Sarah whispered loudly.

‘He really likes you,’ Maggie said, smiling.

Rose shook her head and they both nudged each other.

What
was
she looking for? A message from her mother?

The librarian looked up and gave them a glare. Rose put her phone away and carried on with the essay. A while later she printed it off.