First One Missing (4 page)

Whoever he was, he was getting greedier.

To take her mind off her nicotine cravings, and off the image of Simon Hewitt that had suddenly lodged itself, unwelcome, in her brain, Sally went back into the folder marked ‘Purvis’ and double-clicked on a different file, ‘Botsfordinterview1’. This was a much shorter piece, illustrated with an old family photo of a smiling young couple showing off their frilly-hatted baby. She remembered how much wheedling it had taken before Fiona Botsford agreed to meet her for a coffee – in the end she’d had to lean on Helen Purvis to talk her into it. But Fiona was a very different kettle of fish to Helen. A very prickly character – although, if one was being charitable, it
was
only four months after her daughter’s death.

They’d arranged to meet in a pergola at one of the outer edges of the Heath. It had been Helen’s idea to do it there. She said it was a peaceful place that she came to when she wanted to feel closer to Megan. By that stage they all knew they were dealing with a serial killer with a thing about north-west London. Two years after Megan’s body had been found in the heart of the Heath, the second body had been discovered on the West Heath, a separate enclave, not far from where they gathered for the interview, divided from the main Heath by a busy intersection. That was Tilly Reid who’d disappeared while walking alone to the local shop for the first time. And then, just over a year later had come Leila Botsford, who had been found on an offshoot of the Heath that bordered a quiet side road to the east. It was Sally herself who’d coined the term Kenwood Killer initially, and then Kenwood Killings. Even though none of the girls had technically been found near the former stately home to the north of the Heath that now housed a museum and a café and staged summer concerts on its sloping lawns, there was always something satisfying about alliteration, Sally couldn’t help feeling, and most of the
Chronicle
’s readers couldn’t care less about the precise geography.

Sally had found the pergola, apparently hailed as one of London’s hidden gems, to be rather gloomy. Creepy even. Fiona had arrived late, already looking at her watch, which was never a good sign.

Sally had already been worrying about this interview because of Helen Purvis’s insistence on being there in person to ‘facilitate’, as she put it. Now she began to have serious doubts.

‘If sorrow wears a face, that face surely belongs to Fiona Botsford,’ was how she’d started the feature. She’d actually written that first line before even meeting Fiona, and though she could tell immediately that it didn’t really fit, she refused to change it. She liked the flow of the words. Rereading it now, she still liked them.

Three months ago, this loving mother from North London dropped her only child Leila off at school, just half a mile from the £1.1m family home. Like all the parents in this area, she was horribly aware that there could be a serial killer at large, preying on young girls just like 10-year-old Leila, so she made sure to drive her car as near to the school gates as possible, so she could watch Leila going through. She could have had no clue, as her happy, outgoing daughter turned to wave, that this would be the last time she’d see Leila alive.

Over the course of that day, she went about her normal business – going to the supermarket, the gym, the charity where she works as a fundraiser – but it was only when she went to call her husband, Mark, a £400 per hour lawyer, that she realized her phone was missing. Irritated but not unduly worried, she went off to pick up Leila from school at the usual time, 3.45.

As always, the main school gates were awash with children streaming in and out of school, meeting parents, going back inside for forgotten coats and books, loitering to say goodbye to friends. But as the hordes cleared, Fiona started to grow concerned. Normally Leila was one of the first through the gates, bursting to share with her mum some little piece of news from her day, but today there was no sign of her.

Anxiously, Fiona entered the school and looked through corridors that were eerily silent. The school secretary joined her in her search, but Leila was nowhere to be seen.

‘It’s the worst feeling in the world,’ shudders Fiona, 34. ‘When every avenue is closing to you.’

Trying not to panic, Fiona and a few lingering staff members called Leila’s classmates, hoping that maybe the normally conscientious little girl had decided to get a lift back with a friend, but nobody had seen her. Then Leila’s friend Natalie remembered something that sent a chill down Fiona’s spine. Leila had received a text on her mobile phone as they were getting ready to leave school, Natalie told her. It was from her mum saying she was to meet her by the back entrance to the school rather than the front where she normally went.

Fiona’s nightmare was about to begin.

When you write a lot about people being murdered, as Sally did, certain words tend to be overused and ‘nightmare’ was one of those. It was convenient shorthand for anything catastrophic (although, to be fair, she’d also used it when describing a minor cosmetic-surgery glitch and a dispute over a leylandii hedge).

Fiona Botsford had one of those faces that was born middle-aged. She was in her mid-thirties when Sally met her but her face had that pinched quality that hardens with age like slowly setting concrete. Naturally Sally made excuses for grief, but she nevertheless suspected that Fiona was not, even in the best of circumstances, one of life’s sunnier characters. She had been wearing skinny jeans that accentuated her pipe-cleaner legs, giving them the appearance of twigs that could snap at any moment.

It was a mild autumn day, as Sally remembered, but Fiona Botsford was wearing layers and layers of clothes, a short-sleeved T-shirt over a long-sleeved one, a padded down gilet over a fleecy zip-up top. It had been as if she was trying to bulk herself up to give the illusion of substance. Because Fiona Botsford was horribly thin. Of course Sally was perfectly well aware she’d only just been through this nightmare (there she went again), but even by the standards of the famous Grief Diet, she was minuscule.

Helen Purvis was up off the bench she’d been sitting on like a bloody rocket. She was one of those laying-on-of-hands type of women who have to touch you when they look at you, so she’d been positively pawing at Fiona Botsford as she sat down. The two of them had obviously been in quite close contact in the lead-up to the meeting and had sat huddled together with Helen’s hand even resting protectively over Fiona’s as the younger woman spoke.

‘There’s a phrase for people like Mark and myself,’ Fiona told me. ‘Childless parents, that’s what we’re called. After Leila was born, people always asked us when we were going to have another child, but the truth is we didn’t feel the need to. To us, our family was complete. She was such a special child, so vibrant and energetic. And now she’s gone, we still have all those feelings. Yet there is no child to lavish those feelings on. Instead they’re just building and building inside us, without an outlet. One day they’ll surely explode.’

Written down, it looked like Fiona Botsford had just come right out with this eloquent, impassioned little speech, but in reality it was built up of false starts and little prompting questions. The truth was, Fiona Botsford was guarded and as spiky as the hair clip that held her fine, mousy hair out of her eyes.

It didn’t stop Helen Purvis from being overcome with emotion though. Throughout the interview, her eyes welled up regularly and she’d nod fervently and make this sort of humming noise of agreement. When Sally had transcribed the conversation from her recording, she’d wondered at first just what that sound was.

During the course of the very awkward interview, Sally asked Fiona whether she’d bonded with Emma Reid, the mother of the second victim. Emma was the one Sally was most interested in – mostly because she flat out refused to have anything to do with her, but also because she was, not to beat about the bush, the looker in the group. Obviously one wasn’t supposed to think about that in situations like this, though everyone did. Only Sally actually dared put that thought into words. Not that she’d ever say those words out loud.

Helen had tried to put in a good word for Sally with Emma Reid. Sorry,
facilitate
. But nothing doing. ‘She’s a very private person,’ she’d explained. Even better, thought Sally. Private people always have the most secrets.

But Fiona Botsford had looked at her like she was bonkers when she’d mentioned Emma Reid.

‘It’s not exactly a social club,’ she’d said in her dry, curt voice.

Gathering all her things together as the train drew into Victoria Station, Sally noticed that the man opposite her had a packet of Marlboro Lights clasped in his hand, ready to light up as soon as he stepped out of the station.

I choose not to be a smoker. I am a person who doesn’t smoke.

It wasn’t working.

4

‘I don’t know why you don’t just go into work. It’s not as if you’re
helping
anything, just lurking around the place.’

Emma Reid turned away and busied herself filling the kettle, so Guy couldn’t see her sudden confusion. Until the words tumbled out, she hadn’t been aware of feeling resentful. Until a split second ago, it hadn’t occurred to her to question her husband’s decision to stay at home. Any bereaved parent would do the same in the circumstances. But then she’d opened her mouth and a lump of undigested bitterness had fallen out.

‘Right.’ The word shot, bullet-like, from Guy’s mouth. ‘So it’s fine for the mother to sit around all day glued to the news reports – not that this particular mother has done very much else for the last two years, mind. But if the father decides, just for once, it would be too
fucking
painful to drag himself into work and face all the oh-so-tactful questions and the
fucking
sympathetic looks, that’s
fucking lurking
, is it?’

Guy was getting slightly better at this swearing thing, Emma decided. He’d stopped tossing the expletives out gingerly like a small child with a new ball.

This was the point where she ought to apologize. She was fully aware of it. She knew she had been inexcusably unreasonable, cruel even. The apology was inside her, fully formed, but it couldn’t fight its way through that backed-up bitterness in her throat. Instead she countered affront with affront, fixing on the one point where she felt sure of the moral high ground.

‘Any excuse to throw in a dig about me not working, hey? Our daughter’s killer strikes again, but let’s not lose sight of what’s
really
important here, that your wife sits around painting her nails all day.’

Guy glared at her without speaking, and she noticed suddenly how sorrow had dulled his once green eyes to the colour of sludge. When, finally, he turned away in disgust, she claimed it as a victory. Of sorts.

Guy went upstairs to his study. Emma heard his heavy, accusing footsteps on every step. Dead man walking. She had no idea what he did in his study. Certainly she never heard any signs of activity from there whenever she crept past, padding softly from room to room in search of what was no longer there.

One time, she’d entered his study while he was at work and had sat in his black leather swivel chair, trying to imagine what it was like to be him, to inhabit this room in his own right. She imagined his hand on the computer keyboard, the hand whose strong, blunt fingers she’d once adored, whose plain gold ring she once awkwardly slipped on in front of eighty-five of their closest family and friends. She’d slid open the drawers of his oak desk, imagining how it would feel to be this man, trying to experience his grief from the inside – as if sorrow were a woolly jumper that could be tried on for size.

The top two drawers held papers and stationery, the usual detritus of a purposeful life. The bottom drawer was deeper, its contents less orderly. On top of the heap of assorted letters, bills, invoices and receipts was a loose pile of photos, edges slightly worn away through over-handling. She’d spread them out in front of her on the desk.

Tilly had looked up at her, taunting, teasing, from all the shiny surfaces. There she was wearing a yellow and white ski suit, her red-brown hair, so much straighter than either of her sisters’, hanging down in fat, gleaming plaits beneath her white woolly hat. Now, she was in a witch’s costume, standing sandwiched between her identically dressed sisters, in a simulation of the natural family order. Her left hand, with its black-painted fingernails, was outstretched, and her black-lipped mouth contorted in what she clearly intended as an evil rictus.

In a third she was sitting at the blond-wood kitchen table, with her painting overall on, and a pristine sheet of white paper in front of her. She had a plump brush in her hand, its tip slicked thick with crimson paint, but it was her expression that held Emma’s attention. Her lips were opened in an ‘O’ shape as though caught mid-sentence, her eyes burned with purpose, intent on whatever she was saying. Emma gazed at the photo mesmerized, as if by keeping sufficiently still, she might be able to hear whatever it was her daughter was trying to say.

In the months after Tilly died, Emma had struggled to keep her daughter’s voice alive in her head, holding conversations with her in which she’d answer in that clear, deliberate way she had, her ‘o’s particularly over-emphasized as if there was a ‘w’ at the end of them. Then one day Emma had forced herself to watch, for the first time, one of the hundreds of home videos she and Guy had taken of the girls over the years. The short footage showed the aftermath of Caitlin’s fifth-birthday party, and the wide oak floorboards of the living room were strewn with the remains of pink streamers, party poppers and spent balloons. Caitlin, completely overwrought, was hunched in a corner of the pewter-coloured L-shaped sofa, her still-babyish face blotchy with tears, a plastic tiara perched lopsidedly on her clammy curls, her plump hands clutching the new doll that either she didn’t like, or which didn’t make the sound she wanted it to, or which was too much like the one she already had (how easily one forgets the details of childhood). Tilly, sitting next to her in protective older-sister mode (although at only seven, she was barely past such tantrums of over-tiredness herself), was doing her best to cheer Caitlin up.