First One Missing (34 page)

But Emma was not looking forward to the afternoon. She couldn’t stand Sally Freeland. She understood why Leanne had put forward Sally’s request for an interview, and to give her credit, she hadn’t put pressure on her. She’d made it clear it was completely Emma’s own choice. But obviously Emma wanted to do anything she could to help the investigation, which had seemed at that point to have stalled – even if she privately thought this smacked of blackmail. Emma couldn’t see why they didn’t just threaten to charge Sally with withholding information, but Leanne had tried to explain how useful it would be to keep Freeland ‘on side’, as she called it. And Emma had been really grateful when Helen had volunteered to act as go-between, offering up her home as neutral territory.

When Helen came to the door, she looked taken aback to see Emma had brought an entourage.

‘Sorry to arrive en masse,’ said Emma, observing that Helen had that strained, over-bright look she sometimes got, as if she was trying that little bit too hard.

‘Oh, no problem at all. Welcome, Reids! Actually I’m not long home myself. I always go to the crematorium on a Sunday morning. Megan and I always spent Sunday mornings together. It was our girly time.’

Emma couldn’t imagine Helen having ‘girly time’ but then other people’s families always were unfathomable, weren’t they?

‘Sally is here already,’ Helen said in a low voice as she led them into the hallway.

‘You don’t mind then?’

Emma had never talked to Helen directly about what was rumoured to have happened between Simon and the blonde journalist, but she felt she had to say something.

‘This isn’t about me and what I mind and don’t mind. This is about Megan and what’s good for Megan and what I can do to help find the person who took her.’ Helen always said ‘took her’ rather than ‘killed her’.

‘But they’ve already got someone. Didn’t Jo ring you?’

Helen turned her gaze to Emma and once again the younger woman had a sense of something not right about her friend’s mood.

‘Yes, of course, but you know how it is. Mistakes can happen. Simon? Simon!’ She was standing at the bottom of the stairs, shouting up to the floor above. ‘The Reids are here. Come and say hello.’

‘There’s no need.’ Guy looked uncomfortable. Emma tried to remember if she’d told him about the rumours.

Simon Hewitt appeared at the top of the stairs looking cloudy-eyed and puffy.

‘Sorry. Had a heavy night last night, out celebrating a mate’s birthday. Only been home an hour, so still trying to digest the news. An arrest! Have you any more information?’

Emma shook her head. He looked shocking. And please let him not come any closer – he absolutely reeked of alcohol. Next to him Guy was a picture of clean-living and health.

‘I thought we could all go out in the garden. Sally is out there already.’

There was something pointed about the way Helen said ‘Sally’. Emma could only guess how much it was costing her to remain polite.

‘Actually,’ Helen continued in that bright, varnished voice, ‘the Botsfords are on their way over too. They’ve also had that call from the police about the arrest. No doubt they want to see if any of us know anything more.’

Emma wasn’t sure she was in the mood for Fiona Botsford’s prickliness but she didn’t blame her for wanting to come over.

‘And don’t forget Leanne’s coming as well,’ she added. ‘Maybe she’ll have something more to tell us.’

But when Leanne finally stepped out into Helen Purvis’s overgrown jungle of a garden twenty-five minutes later, pausing a few feet from the back doorstep to brush a couple of wayward honeysuckle petals from her wrinkled purple top, Emma could tell straight away there wasn’t any good news. By this stage the village fête atmosphere they’d all been trying to cultivate for the sake of the children was starting to implode. Fiona and Mark Botsford, as usual, had been intense and unsmiling since they’d arrived, while it wouldn’t even have taken a knife to cut the atmosphere between Sally Freeland and Simon Hewitt and Helen Purvis.

‘Can you tell us anything more? Is it definitely the right guy? Has he confessed?’

Fiona Botsford hadn’t even let Leanne sit down in the folding canvas chair Simon had fetched from the shed before bombarding her with questions.

Leanne looked exhausted, but not exhausted in that exhilarated way Emma would have expected if she’d been up all night getting a confession out of whoever they had locked up in their cells. There was a sag to her shoulders and her normally rose-flushed cheeks looked grey and sallow. But it was her eyes that most gave her away. Leanne was one of those rare people who look right at you, really at you, when they talk to you, but this afternoon her gaze slid off everyone as if they were coated in oil.

‘I’m afraid I really can’t tell you anything more than you already know.’

Emma felt herself slump with disappointment.

Sally Freeland, who’d been sitting to attention (in the best chair, the one with the faded floral cushions on it), couldn’t hold herself back any more.

‘Come on, Leanne. There must be something you can tell us. Have a heart – these poor people are in agony waiting to find out what’s going on.’

Leanne shrank back into the chair.

‘I’m really sorry, folks. I know this is hard for you all but you just have to bear with us. All I can tell you is that we have someone in police custody who is helping us with our inquiries. This person has been able to give us certain information relating to the case.’

‘Leanne, can’t you be more specific? Look what you’re doing to us! It’s torture.’

Simon Hewitt put his hand on his wife’s shoulder as he spoke and Emma saw that Helen did indeed look as if she was going through hell. Her face was pale and her shoulder was shaking under his fingers. Emma’s own heart dissolved in sympathy.

Leanne shrugged. ‘I’d love to be able to tell you more. Believe me, nothing will give me more pleasure than when I can stand in front of you and tell you it’s all over. We’ve got them. But—’

‘Them!’ Sally almost barked the word. ‘You said “them”. Does that mean there’s more than one? A gang?’

‘No. No.’

Leanne was shaking her head, her eyes closed. ‘I didn’t say that. Please, please don’t jump the gun.’

Her voice cracked.

51

Voices wafted in from the garden through Rory’s open window. Sounded like they were all there. The whole merry gang. He’d heard Jemima Reid’s voice a while ago asking for an orange juice. Now they were all getting agitated about something. Simon’s booming voice clearly said the word ‘torture’. Rory wished the windows of his room weren’t Velux which meant he couldn’t see anything unless he stood on his chair, which tended to swivel around precariously. He wouldn’t mind knowing what they were all getting so worked up about. Once he’d sorted out the mobile he’d go outside.

Rory had the new SIM ready, but thought he’d better test the phone out first with the one already in there. No point going through the hassle of changing the SIM without being sure the phone definitely worked.

When he switched the mobile on, his heart sank. This thing must be ancient. The graphics were so bad. He could have done better himself. How long had his mum had this thing anyway? He clicked on the address-book icon looking for clues. Not one name he recognized. Was this even his mum’s phone? He went back to the menu and found the messages icon. The inbox didn’t shed any more light. A message from a plumber it looked like, giving a quote on some new radiator. Another message from someone called Mel saying could they make it 8 instead of 7.30. Puzzled, he clicked on the sent folder and suddenly everything in the room started spinning.

52

All Leanne wanted to do was lie down in her bed with the curtains drawn and close her eyes and try not to think. Not about Will or Pete or Jason Shields or any of it. She couldn’t remember ever being this tired. Her phone, stuffed into the side pocket of her handbag, was buzzing almost non-stop. She hadn’t checked it since arriving at Helen Purvis’s house, but she guessed it would be Will. She’d had twenty-eight missed calls from him the last time she’d looked. She didn’t have the energy for it – neither for his remorse nor for the effort it would take to forgive him and move on.

‘Can you at least tell us if the suspect you have in custody is someone known to us.’ That was how Guy Reid spoke – measured yet imperious. At least that’s how he’d spoken when she’d first met him. After Tilly’s death, he’d been different, defeated. But today some of that old arrogance was back. She scrutinized him more closely – he was perched awkwardly on the arm of the teak garden chair Jemima and Caitlin were both squeezed into, nursing a mug of coffee. There was definitely something different about him today.

‘I can’t give you any more details, Guy. I’m really sorry.’

And the thing was, she really was sorry. She was more sorry than any of them could know. She couldn’t look at Helen in case she gave away the fact that she knew who’d killed her daughter. And she couldn’t look at the others in case she gave away the fact that she didn’t know who’d killed theirs. Instead, she kept her gaze fixed on the overgrown lawn like she was trying to mow it with her eyes.

‘Should we get on with the interview?’ she suggested.

She made the mistake of glancing at Emma who looked appalled.

‘Surely not here – in the middle of everyone?’

They all looked towards Helen who would usually be fussing about trying to organize everything, but she hadn’t moved from the rickety wrought-iron chair she was sitting on. This house must be worth a million, but Leanne couldn’t help thinking the garden looked like a junk shop.

‘We could go inside if you like, for a private chat.’ Sally had on her journalist voice, but now Leanne could see her close up, she noticed that she too looked totally wrecked. Her face was heavily made up as normal, but the skin looked clammy under the layers of foundation and the hand that clutched the strap of her leather bag was trembling.

Leanne was trying not to catch Emma’s eye because she knew if she did something would be required of her. She’d have to get up out of this chair and move somewhere else and doubtless be pestered with more questions that she couldn’t answer. Jason Shields was a rock in her gut, weighting her to the floor. She dropped her head into her hands as her phone buzzed again. She wasn’t supposed to switch her phone off, not in the middle of a live investigation, but she’d had just about all she could stand. Pulling it out of her bag, she glanced at the screen and frowned. Above the numerous missed calls from Will and one from Pete, there was a missed call and a voicemail from Desmond. She felt adrenalin beginning to kick in once again. Had Jason Shields changed his story?

While Sally Freeland outlined her vision for the interview, Leanne pressed her phone to her ear.

‘Leanne, there’s been a development you need to be brought up to speed on.’

She couldn’t be sure, but wasn’t there an edge of something in her boss’s voice?

‘Lucy Cromarty, the shoplifter with information about the Poppy Glover abduction, has finally come clean. Seems it was her who nicked a purse from a woman’s bag in the ice-cream queue the evening Poppy disappeared. Lucy had strolled off and was a few yards away when the woman started kicking off, which is when she noticed Poppy Glover being led away by—’

‘Rory. Dude. Come and sit down.’

Simon Hewitt’s artificially jolly shout cut across Leanne’s concentration, drowning out the message. Heart racing uncomfortably, she pressed the option to play the message again.

‘Rory? Mate? What’s up?’

Leanne looked up as the message started again: ‘Leanne, there’s been a development …’

Rory was standing on the back doorstep where she herself had stood earlier on. His face was whiter than the woodwork around the door. His arm was outstretched and he was holding something in his hand. A phone, she now realized.

Simon was heading towards his stepson, but the boy’s eyes were fixed on a point past Simon’s shoulder.

In her ear, Desmond droned on: ‘… Was a few yards away when the woman started kicking off …’

‘Mum?’

Rory was moving off the step towards Helen, ignoring Simon who stood awkwardly in the middle ground. Without his habitual cynical expression, Rory looked suddenly like a needy young child, and yet Helen didn’t make a move towards him. In fact she looked like she was frozen to the spot, staring not at her son but at the phone in his hand.

From Leanne’s own phone came the sound of Desmond’s voice repeating, ‘Which is when she noticed Poppy Glover being led away by …’

Leanne pressed the phone against her ear so she wouldn’t miss the next word, but even so it took her a while to process what he’d said. Her attention was distracted by Rory saying, ‘Mum, I found this phone in your drawer and the thing is, I don’t think it’s yours. I think it’s Mrs Botsford’s. I think it’s the phone she sent that last text to Leila on. The one telling her to go out the back exit not the front.’

Only now did it sink in. What Desmond had said. A woman. Poppy Glover had been led away from the ice-cream van by a
woman
.

There was a sharp cry to Leanne’s right and Fiona Botsford darted forward to grab the phone from Rory’s hand. ‘But this is mine!’ she said frantically, scrolling through something on the screen. ‘This is the phone that was stolen. I don’t understand.’

Leanne was up on her feet before her mind even caught up with her body.

‘Let’s go for a chat,’ she said, hauling Helen out of her chair and bundling her past Rory. Without stopping to think, she propelled her down the hallway and straight through the front door. Her heart was slamming against her ribs as she manoeuvred the strangely compliant woman into the passenger seat of her car and then threw herself behind the wheel and pulled away from the kerb. At the next corner she stopped, realizing she had to call in ahead to get officers round to the Purvis house and to alert Desmond to what was going on.

‘She just looked so lovely, you see,’ Helen said when Leanne had finished her call to the station. In contrast to her earlier tenseness, Helen was now sitting quite serenely, almost as if they were friends going out for a drive.