Human Remains (34 page)

Irene helped me get ready. She let me borrow a black skirt and a nice cashmere sweater; I didn’t think it would fit me, but to my surprise it was quite loose.

‘What about a bit of make-up?’ she asked me. ‘Brighten up that beautiful face of yours? Hmm?’

‘I don’t usually bother,’ I said.

‘Come with me.’

I was starting to realise that there was no point arguing with Irene. She took me into the bedroom at the front of the house, sat me on the edge of the double bed and fussed around with my face while I kept my eyes closed.

‘Always makes me feel better when I’ve got my lippy on,’ she said.

Whenever I’d worn make-up in the past it had made me feel grubby, but I didn’t tell her that. It was easier to just let her do whatever she wanted to.

‘You’re very kind,’ I said, ‘taking me in like this. What did you think, when Sam told you I was coming to stay?’

She laughed. ‘I wasn’t surprised. He talked about you a lot. He was really worried when you were in the hospital, you know.’

‘Was he?’

‘Of course.’

‘I don’t understand why he takes such trouble.’

Irene was rattling through her make-up bag. I looked at it curiously – how could one person need so much make-up? What was it all even for?

‘I think he sees a lot of himself in you, Annabel. He was very depressed when his mum died, you know. He loved her very much. It took him a long, long time to get over losing her.’

‘I thought he just wanted to get to the bottom of the story.’

A frown creased her forehead. She was pretty, I thought. Younger than Brian. I wondered how old she was.

‘No, that’s not our Sam at all. He’s a good journalist but he’s also a very moral person. He thinks he can help you, so that’s what he’s decided he’s going to do. He’s one in a million, Sam is.’

She moved out of the way and let me see myself in the mirror. I looked very different. Not like me at all. I smiled at myself experimentally.

When I went back into my room I found a small white feather on the floor by the bed. It was from my mum, a message to say that she was there, she was with me. Maybe she even liked the fact that Irene was taking care of me. I felt a sense of relief. There had been moments when I wasn’t sure if I still believed in angels, and perhaps I’d been hoping for a sign without expecting it. And here it was.

A couple of people from the Social Club came to the funeral; Len from next door, without his wife. To my surprise Kate came along, and told me that, although Frosty had said he was going to try to make it too, something had come up at the last minute. Sam was there, of course. He’d turned into my shadow, and if it went on for much longer he was going to start to get on my nerves.

Even so, the crematorium was horribly empty. She’d isolated herself so much after Aunty Bet left, there was scarcely anyone who knew her, let alone who would call her a friend. This came as a nasty shock, and it led to a worse one – the realisation that I was heading in exactly the same direction. If they held my funeral, how many people would be there? Probably not that many more than this. And I was trying, every minute, to come to terms with how close I’d been to that day being right now.

Sam held my hand when the service started in the crematorium, three minutes late. They were meticulous timekeepers but I think they were holding out for a few more people. As it was, there wasn’t much to say. I wasn’t up to speaking in public – even in front of just a few people – so the celebrant read out the eulogy I’d written, with a lot of help from Sam.

I stared ahead at the coffin while the words faded away, and tried to remember Mum as she had been years ago. How much I’d disrespected her when I was a teenager. She must have hated me then.

They played Jim Reeves. After that Sam got up and read out a poem that he’d found online. He read clearly, his voice strong, although he was blushing. He addressed the clock at the back of the room, above the double doors through which we’d entered.

I tried to think of my mother in a brighter place, as the words of the poem suggested, but all I could think of was how much she would hate it if it was crowded.

When Sam sat down again I whispered to him, ‘Thanks.’

He took hold of my hand again and squeezed it by way of a reply. When this was over we were going to go back to the house in Keats Road and have a dinner that Irene was cooking on the unspoken premise that I would need food to cheer me up. In the past few days she’d cooked me healthy, nutritious dinners that I’d done my best to eat. It still felt strange, unnecessary; I think if it had not been for their cautious monitoring of me I wouldn’t have bothered to eat at all.

The celebrant brought the service to a close and we all got to our feet. The doors opened at the front of the room and we filed out into the drizzle. We looked at the three floral tributes outside, and after that there was nothing to hang around for. I said thank you to Len, all previous awkwardness between us forgotten, and shook his hand before he turned up his collar against the rain and headed back to the car park, hunched into his coat.

‘Annabel? I’m off now.’

It was Kate. I had to focus on her hard to remember who she was, even though I’d sat opposite her every day at work for the past three years.

‘Oh, right. Thank you for coming. It was… kind of you.’

‘That’s alright. I was really glad to get the invite.’

‘I didn’t do the invitations,’ I said automatically. ‘That was Sam.’

‘Oh! I see. Well…’ Her cheeks were flushed.

‘I mean – sorry. That was rude. I’m just surprised to see you.’

She frowned at me. ‘Why should you be surprised? We’ve all been worried about you, you know. I know you think – God, this is awkward – it always feels like you don’t want to be in the office with us. I wish you’d join in a bit more sometimes.’

Now it was my turn to be shocked. ‘Really?’

‘Of course.’ She smiled at me and for once I was almost sure it wasn’t all an act. After all, there was just us. Nobody she was trying to impress, nobody she was showing off for.

‘So… who’s this Sam?’ she asked. ‘New boyfriend?’

For a moment I was so taken aback I couldn’t reply – how could someone possibly think…? But then she went on, ‘He’s a cutie. Where did you meet?’

She was looking over my shoulder. I turned to see Sam talking to one of the ladies who had come from the social club. He was smiling at her, his head inclined towards her so she could hear him, dark hair falling over his eyes.

‘He’s not my boyfriend,’ I said, shocked.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘He seems very nice, anyway.’

‘He is – he’s lovely.’

‘But not…?’

I shook my head.
Not my type
, I thought, not having any clue what my type actually was, nor why Sam wasn’t it.

‘We miss you at work, you know that,’ she said. ‘I mean it. They all send their love.’

‘I’ll be back soon,’ I said. ‘Maybe Monday.’

‘Take as much time as you need,’ she said. ‘But it would be good to have you back.’ She turned to go, but hesitated and came back to me. ‘You know Frosty’s got a whole pile of billings? He’s pretending that he knows what to do with them, but you know…’

‘Billings? For the job?’

‘Yeah. I mean, I could look at them, but it’s your baby, isn’t it, this one? I don’t want to interfere with it.’

‘He never said.’

‘He’s probably trying not to put you under pressure to come back, but you know – if it was me – I’d want to be involved. You don’t mind me telling you?’

‘No, of course not. And you’re right – I do want to be involved. Thanks, Kate.’

She headed back towards the car park. I watched her go, feeling a buzz of excitement inside. I’d not been looking forward to going back to work, remembering that feeling of isolation, but actually speaking with Kate had made me feel a bit more cheerful about it. She hadn’t had to come to the funeral, but she’d made the effort, not just to be there but to speak to me afterwards. Maybe things would be better from now on. And now I had a real purpose, a task to do.

Back at Keats Road, Irene had cooked a roast lunch which I had to force down, even though it was delicious. I’d forgotten what hunger felt like. The atmosphere around the table was subdued, which must have been on my account. Every mealtime since I’d arrived had been conducted to the accompaniment of bright conversation and laughter. Brian was a joker, always starting off long anecdotes about friends, work colleagues, Irene or Sam, with a twinkle in his eye which I’d worked out meant that it was a complete fabrication and at the end of it would be some corny punchline. His method of delivery was always the funniest bit.

‘Don’t mind him,’ Irene had reassured me, the first time this happened. That particular story had taken twenty-three minutes to tell from one end to the other, partly because he’d been distracted part-way through it and had lost track, diverting on to a story about someone’s dog that had eaten a prawn sandwich containing a hidden anti-anxiety tablet and had to have its stomach pumped (apparently the stomach contents were also found to contain a mysterious diamond ring that nobody recognised, and a Roman coin), and then eventually picking up the thread of the original story about a friend of his who’d accidentally overdosed on his Valium and ended up asleep for five days. None of which was true. I listened to it all, rapt, mainly because it meant I didn’t have to say anything.

Irene and Sam seemed to deal with him by talking between themselves – they’d heard it all before, after all. Every once in a while he’d come up with a new one and then they would both listen with smiles on their faces, waiting for the joke.

When we sat down to eat the roast, Brian started off on a story of a funeral he’d been to, of a colleague whose hobby had been ventriloquism. Irene gave him a look across the table and brought the anecdote to an unexpectedly abrupt halt. After that we sat in silence.

‘I’m going to go out for a bit,’ I said after we’d eaten.

They all looked at me in surprise.

‘I’m coming with you,’ said Sam, standing.

‘No, it’s alright. I just need… um… a bit of fresh air.’

Before they could argue I was out of the door and unlocking my car.

The police station car park was mostly empty, which was unsurprising given that it was nearly four o’clock on a Friday afternoon. They were all in the pub, or on the way home, or playing snooker in the club across the road. I parked in one of the Intel bays.

I made my way up to the Incident Room and did not see anyone on the way, but when I opened the door there were three people in the office – all of them on the phone. I vaguely remembered being introduced to them all on that first day, but none of the names came back to me. I sat down at the desk Frosty had given me and logged on at the workstation. Once the system had granted me access, I opened my email and saw that there were four hundred and twenty-seven new messages. That wasn’t bad going. I sorted the emails by sender and concentrated on the ones from Frosty. There were five with the subject headings ‘Billings’, ‘More billings’, ‘Billings for 872 number’, ‘Billings for 481’ and ‘Sorry last lot I promise’.

I sighed with something that might have been pleasure. I’d worked on phone data before; other people might see it as endless lists of numbers, endless spreadsheets with no apparent meaning, but I loved it. It was the knowledge that somewhere, buried deep in tens of thousands of numbers, dates, times and durations, there was a pattern: useful information hidden inside, waiting for me to find it.

I opened the first email. There were several spreadsheets attached to them, identified by mobile phone numbers. The message read:

I started up a new spreadsheet to record all the information, listing the victims’ names, phone number, the date range of all the billings and the phone type. Most of the columns were blank but with a bit of luck I’d be able to fill them in as I went along. I opened all the emails and added the details from the remaining spreadsheets. There were billings for the phones found at all the most recent addresses, as well as a name that gave me a jolt – Shelley Burton.

After an hour or so everyone in the office had left and it was dark outside. It made it easier to concentrate and it wasn’t long before the pattern crystallised and began to make more sense.

There were some major differences between the billings of the victims. Judith Bingham, Noel Gardiner, someone I hadn’t heard of called George Armstrong who’d been discovered while I was away, some of the others – they all had phone billings that looked normal – they made and received several calls over a prolonged period of time. There were texts, missed calls and voicemails.

As soon as I looked at the others, though, the difference was sudden and acute. Rachelle Hudson’s billing was the first. It only had incoming calls, from one number. The calls started about two months before she was found and were regular – one call every evening, lasting a couple of minutes only. No texts. The last three lines of data showed unanswered calls on consecutive evenings towards the end of March. Rachelle had been found on April 21st.

I ran a search on the databases for the number that had called Rachelle’s mobile, but it was unknown.

I went back to the billings for Judith, Noel and George and searched for the unknown number in their calls, but it did not feature in any of them. I looked for a different number that showed a similar calling pattern, regular incoming calls each evening, but there was nothing like that. I was beginning to feel more certain that these three were not part of the series.