Little Face (40 page)

In that instant, I know. I know where it is. I open my mouth, then
close it again before any loud exclamations have a chance to escape.
I would love to push open the door, run to Simon and tell him everything, but I can't. The first thing he will do, if I reveal myself, is take
Little Face away. He believes me now, and I'm not yet ready to let go
of her. I have to prepare myself, mentally.

I tiptoe over to the kitchen table, pick up a biro and write a short
note on the dog-eared pad. Then I take the car keys that are dangling
from a hook on the wall and put them in my pocket. I lift Little Face
out of her bouncy chair as gently as I can, taking care not to wake her.
It occurs to me that I will need to take some milk with me and there
is none made up. I can't make any without washing up a bottle, which
will involve turning on the hot tap. I can't risk it. The boiler here is so
noisy, Simon would hear me.

I lower Little Face into the Moses basket on the floor. She is still
sleeping soundly. I cannot take her with me. She's better off here. Even
if Simon were to leave now, or soon, it would surely take him hours to
get a search warrant, and he won't come back until he's got one. I can
be back before him with the proof he needs, with Laura's bag. And I'll
have had time to think, by then, of what I am going to say to him, how
I am going to explain my actions.

`So why don't you tell me about the detective work you've been
doing? Or should I say the acting? Pretending to be a detective.'

It is nearly impossible to drag myself away, but I must. I have to
know if I am right about the handbag.

I kiss Little Face on the cheek and she rubs her lips together in her
sleep, as if she is having a leisurely chew on something tasty. I hate to
leave her. `I'll be back very soon,' I whisper in her ear. Then I unlock
the back door, slip out, and lock it again behind me. I walk down the
path at the side of the house and out on to the road. The wind and light assault my senses. So this is what outside smells and tastes like. I do not
hurry. I know I should, but I want to savour the experience of walking down a normal residential street like an ordinary person. I feel
giddy, unreal.

No-one watches me climb into the black VW Golf and pull away
from the kerb. My whole body buzzes with fear, impatience, adrenaline. It is my turn to do a bit of detective work.

Friday, October 10, 2003, 11.10 AM

`WHAT'S THAT?' SIMON grimaced as a shrill, mechanical, juddering
noise assaulted his ears. The whole room seemed to vibrate.

`The sodding boiler!' Briony Morris raised her eyebrows and sighed
heavily. `Apparently there's some sludge trapped in the pipes somewhere. Every time the heating comes on, this is what happens. It's never
been as bad as this before, though. I'll have to get on to British Gas
again. Anyway. You were saying. About me playing detective.' She
crossed and uncrossed her legs.

`You admit it?'

`No point denying it, if you know.'

`Detective Sergeant Briony Morris.'

`All right, don't embarrass me. Who told you? The school secretary,
presumably.'

`Sally Hunt. She was surprised I was asking, said she'd had the exact
same conversation with a detective sergeant who'd phoned in early
July. She remembered your name. It's not every day they get a call from
CID. Or people impersonating CID.' Simon paused. `She was surprised, but I wasn't. To find out that you'd been in touch.'

`You weren't?' Briony looked puzzled, perhaps even a little
disappointed.

`I knew Alice knew. About Vivienne. At first I didn't. At first I
thought I was ahead of the game, the only one who'd worked it out.' Simon's voice was full of scorn for himself. `I just put together something Laura Cryer's father said about Vivienne starting Felix at Stanley Sidgwick as soon as Laura had died with something Alice had let
slip about long waiting lists. Let slip deliberately, as it turned out.'

It had come to Simon, eventually, why he'd felt uneasy, in that
interview with Vinny Lowe, staring at the photograph of Alice, David,
Vivienne and Felix in the garden at The Elms. It wasn't the photo itself
that had bothered him, it was where he'd first seen it: in Alice's desk
at work. As soon as he remembered what else had been in the desk,
everything clicked; the picture was complete.

`There was a Stanley Sidgwick brochure in Alice's desk drawer, in
her office,' he told Briony. `It had a post-it stuck to it. Alice had written on it, "Find out about F-when name down? How long waiting
list?" When I first read that, I assumed F stood for Florence, dickhead
that I am. Alice had told me exactly what she thought of Stanley
Sidgwick Ladies' College. It was Vivienne who wanted Florence to go
there, not Alice. No, F stood for Felix. Alice and David only chose the
name Florence once she was born, anyway. I checked with Cheryl
Dixon, Alice's midwife. And Alice hadn't been back into work since the
birth, so F had to be Felix. That's when I realised: that note was a message for me, for the police. Alice knew Vivienne had killed Laura, and
she wanted us to know too.'

Simon had expected resistance, but Briony nodded. `It was Alice's
idea to ring the school,' she said. `I just did the acting because she was
too shy. During her pregnancy-seeing the way Vivienne's behaviour
changed towards her, her obsession with getting control over the
grandchild-she became convinced that Vivienne had murdered Laura.
I thought she was just being hormonal at first, even though I'd always
hated Vivienne. And Alice had always loved her-what an irony!
Anyway, I just took the piss. And then one day Alice said, "Vivienne's
always talking about the years-long waiting lists at Stanley Sidgwick.
How come Felix was able to start the minute Laura died?" That's when
I rang up, and . . . ' Briony shook her head. `It's pretty scary to realise someone you've met is a cold-blooded murderer. I tried to persuade
Alice to go to the police, but she wouldn't. She said Vivienne'd just lie
her way out of it, say she'd put Felix's name down to start when he
started with Laura's full knowledge and permission. And with Laura
dead, who could prove otherwise?'

Simon nodded miserably. `The case against Vivienne Fancourt is
going to be almost impossible to prove. Darryl Beer's still saying he did
it, and there's the DNA evidence. We can't prove Vivienne Fancourt
framed him. It's all circumstantial.'

`Alice was terrified of Vivienne knowing she knew. She said Vivienne'd kill her. Otherwise I think she'd have risked going to the police.
But she didn't dare, in case Vivienne was questioned and someone
revealed where this suspicion had come from.'

`Where's Alice?' Simon said suddenly. `She's somewhere in this
house, right? Persuade her to come and talk to me. I won't let Vivienne
Fancourt touch her.C

Briony looked away. `What about Florence?' she said. `Alice said
you didn't believe her, that you refused to look for Florence. Vivienne's
obviously behind all that, you must realise that now.'

'Where did Vivienne get the other baby from?'

`I don't know! Honestly. Neither does Alice.' They stared at one
another in silence. Then Briony sighed and said, `Look, please just find
Florence, okay? This is all a bit too weird for me. Alice and I had
planned everything. We knew there wasn't a snowball's chance in
hell of Vivienne being locked up for Laura's murder, so Alice and Florence were going to escape. I was going to hide them for a while, until
they found somewhere more secure. I'm not a bad actor-as you
know. I could have convinced David, Vivienne, anyone that I had no
idea where they were. And then, middle of last week, I get a frantic
phone call from Alice saying Florence is missing, that someone's
swapped her with another baby! I feel as if I'm living in some kind of
surreal parallel universe. What's going on?'

`But you still helped them escape, didn't you? Alice and the baby?'

`Any baby-any adult, for that matter-is better off out of that
house of horrors.' Briony shuddered. `Answer my question. You seem
to know everything. Do you know where Florence is?'

Simon considered it. Did he? Just because he was often right didn't
mean he was incapable of being wrong. You're hardly the most objective judge, are you? `I think so.'

`Is she safe?'

`If I'm right, then yes. She's safe.'

A loud series of clanking noises came from down the hall. It sounded
as if someone was playing dominoes with sheets of metal. Then there
was a whooshing sound that stopped as suddenly as it had started.
`Fuck!' said Briony. `Sorry. Sounds like my boiler's exploded.'

A faint mewing began, growing steadily louder until it was a plaintive wail. At first Simon took it to be a cat. But not for long, not once
he saw the trapped look on Briony Morris's face.

He stood up and walked in the direction that the crying was coming from, ignoring Briony's shouts for him to wait. He pushed open the
white wooden door at the end of the hall and found himself in the
kitchen. In front of him was the malfunctioning boiler. In front of him,
also, was a Moses basket with a baby in it. The baby from The Elms.
She stopped crying when she saw him looking down at her. Simon had
never held or spoken to a baby, so he turned away. There was a note
on the kitchen table. It was short, but it told him enough.

Briony ran into the room after him. `Well,' she said. `Here we all are,
then. Fuck!'

Simon pulled his mobile out of his pocket and phoned Charlie. `I've
found them,' he said, as soon as she answered. `The baby's right here
in front of me. Send some uniforms to collect her. And then meet me
at Waterfront as soon as you can. Sooner.'

Friday, October 10, 2003

A NUMB CALM descends on me as I enter the ladies' changing room.
The swimming pool is closed today because one of the boilers has broken and the water is too cold. In here it is also colder than usual, and
quieter because the televisions are off. So are the lights, apart from the
dim, square emergency lights in the corners.

I hold the key to locker 131 in my hand. Ross, the man with the
South African accent who showed me round a fortnight ago, gave it to
me. He remembered me, from my first visit, remembered I was Vivienne's daughter-in-law. He believed my lie about being sent by her. I
noticed he was wearing a manager's badge. Last time I saw him he was
a membership adviser. At some point during my two weeks of torture,
Ross has been promoted. It strikes me that we are more separate
from our fellow human beings than we like to think. We all must walk
past people every day whose outer skins hide raw, churning agonies
that nobody could imagine.

I am nervous, excited, almost giggly, knowing how close I am to
finding something, finally, that I can use to prove what I have known
for some time. But as I cross the room, my euphoria dissolves and I
have a sense of my brain drifting out of and above my physical self. I
feel detached as I open Vivienne's locker, as if someone is pulling
unseen strings to make me move. Seconds later, I find myself staring at
a big white holdall, so bulky it barely fits the space.

I pull it out, throw it down on one of the wooden benches and unzip
it. A strong citrusy smell emerges, probably washing powder, and a
faint trace of Vivienne's favourite perfume, Madame Rochas. One by
one, I remove from the bag a pair of trousers, a shirt, a pair of tights.
Underwear, brilliant white. Beneath these I find a dry swimming costume and a make-up bag. Slowly, disappointment seeps into my mind,
starting at the edges of my consciousness and moving inward. I cannot accept that I might be wrong. I turn the bag upside down and
shake it out, more vigorously than I need to. I shake and shake, panting, beginning to panic. Nothing falls out.

I hear a groan and realise it has come from my own mouth. My
movements are out of control. I am crying. I hurl the eviscerated bag
down on to the bench and collapse in a defeated heap on top of it. I feel
a jab of sharp pain in my upper thigh, as if I have sat on something
with a hard corner. And yet Vivienne's holdall is empty. It is not possible that I missed anything.