Paternoster (29 page)

It means ‘Our Father’. The Lord’s Prayer.

I didn’t know you were a Catholic.

I’m very, very lapsed.

Paternoster. He’d heard that before. Where?

The words swirled and connected and the pattern resolved before his eyes. Foraging a pen out of his bedside cabinet, he scrawled a note on a sheet of paper, then collapsed. Words were gone, only pain remained. Agony behind his eyes and crushing his skull. Even to rest on the pillow was torture.

He closed his eyes and resigned himself to the migraine’s power.

Kaz was in her usual haunt, her bony shoulders hunched into a ratty fur coat of such a dubious orange hue it must’ve originally been a large ginger cat. As Eden pulled up, Kaz was bending to speak to a punter in a battered yellow Vauxhall. He scarpered the moment Eden got out of her car, his tyres squealing as he turned the corner.

‘What d’you do that for?’ Kaz spat, her hands on her hips. ‘Lost me good money!’

Eden ignored this. ‘You rang and said you’d seen the missing girl.’

‘Yeah, well, I don’t know whether I did now.’ Kaz sniffed and ground her fist against her nose. ‘I might have been mistaken.’

Eden bit back her irritation. Saturday mornings were for lazing in bed, browsing second-hand bookshops and reading the newspapers in coffeeshops. Not dodging vomit pancakes in the Gloucester red-light district and being smart-mouthed by a raddled tart.

‘Course, I might remember, if I had some incentive,’ Kaz said, a sly look shivering her face.

Eden walked back to her car and unlocked the door. ‘See you, Kaz!’

She climbed in and started the engine, tugging the seat belt around her. Kaz scuttled round to the driver’s door, rapping on the window. Eden didn’t lower the window, just let Kaz shout through it.

‘I did see her! I remember now. It’s just with being a bit peckish and everything I’d forgotten.’

‘Peckish?’

‘No milk for me tea this morning.’ Kaz’s Bristol accent thickened. ‘Or me cornflakes.’

‘You should’ve had toast.’

Kaz scowled. ‘Funny. Maybe I didn’t see that girl after all.’

‘That’s what I thought.’ Eden let out the clutch and the car jerked forwards. Kaz banged on the roof.

‘Stop! I saw a girl who looked just like that missing girl last night. Very pretty she is.’

Eden leaned over and swung open the passenger door. ‘Get in.’

‘I’m not going anywhere with you. You could be anyone.’

At that, Eden lost her temper. ‘You get in and out of strangers’ cars all day long, Kaz. The risks are part of your job description. I’m not going to rape you, beat you or kill you. I’m not going to give you any money, either, but if you want some breakfast then get in the fucking car because I’m not leaving it here while we find somewhere to eat. OK?’

Kaz got in and silently fastened the seat belt.

A greasy breakfast and a gallon of sugary tea later and Eden was little the wiser. She’d learned that Kaz fancied a bacon sandwich, that she wanted one with so much red sauce it dripped down her top, and that she had a punter coming later who always treated her right. As to Chelsea, the missing schoolgirl, she was less forthcoming. She’d seen a girl about the right age and with the same hair in a club the night before.

Big deal. It could have been Chelsea or any one of her friends and schoolmates: for all their asserted individuality they all had the same hair and wore the same clothes. For a brief moment, Eden wished that Chelsea was a Goth or into vintage clothes, or always wore lace gloves. Anything to mark her out as different from all the other teenage girls.

‘So, I saw her in Rodrigo’s last night,’ Kaz said, licking ketchup from her fingers. ‘That must be worth something, eh?’

‘Who was she with?’

‘A group of girls about the same age?’ Kaz’s inflection betrayed what Eden already suspected: she hadn’t seen her and was making up what she thought Eden would buy. Time for a bit of fun.

‘That’s great, Kaz. About four of them were there?’

Kaz nodded enthusiastically. ‘Yep, four, that was it. I definitely saw four.’

‘Did one of the girls have ginger hair? Lots of ginger hair?’

‘Right down her back it was.’

‘And one with a big nose, and one with sticky out ears?’

Kaz stared into space as if she was shuffling the girls round in her memory. ‘Now you mention it, they weren’t oil paintings, no. Your girl, she was the best looking by a long way.’

‘Did one of the girls have scales all over her face and three eyes and boobs down to her knees?’ Eden asked, leaning forwards. ‘And Chelsea, was she wearing a Guantanamo Bay jumpsuit and a spaceman’s helmet?’

Kaz glared at her. ‘I was trying to be helpful.’

‘You were trying to help yourself, Kaz.’ Eden scraped her chair back. ‘Goodbye.’

She left Kaz to finish the mound of toast and went back to her car. She’d try Rodrigo’s anyway, just in case Kaz had by accident seen the girl. No joy: the club had been closed for a private function the night before: someone’s fiftieth birthday party. Unlikely that Chelsea would have been there, but she left a photo and her contact number just in case.

Driving back to Cheltenham, she had the distinct impression that she was being followed. A red Skoda Octavia drew up behind her as she left Gloucester, and clung tight to her bumper down the Golden Valley bypass. It indicated at the turn off for Tewkesbury, then at the last minute swerved back into the lane again. Time to see whether this joker was really following her.

Moving into the outside lane, she cut round the roundabout as if she was heading for the supermarket referred to locally as the ‘new’ Asda. The red car followed. She went into the supermarket’s car park, drove round, parked, waited, and then drove off again. Thinking she’d lost him, she cut around the back of Benhall and headed towards Aidan’s flat in Lansdown. When she stopped at traffic lights and looked in her rear view mirror, the red Skoda was three cars behind her. She was being tailed.

Dodging across the traffic just as the lights changed, she cut away towards the university. Hurtling through the maze of streets around Tivoli, she managed to shake off the red Skoda by dashing down a rutted lane behind a terrace of houses, but it was a close call.

She’d got a partial view of the driver: square head, possibly late thirties, hair clipped very short. He knew how to handle a car, that was for sure.

She reversed back up the lane and out on to the street. No sign of the red Skoda. She was pretty sure there wasn’t a second car: it would have tailed her from when she went into the supermarket car park if so, but she still needed to be careful. Checking the road was clear, she drove away, parking her car several streets away from her flat and walking the rest of the way. There was nothing like a vehicle parked outside a block of flats to announce that’s where the owner lived.

The hair was in place across her door and there was no sign that anyone had been in the flat. She let out a long, pent-up breath and her muscles sagged. The message light was blinking on her answering machine. Hitting the play button, it was a while before she could identify the voice, and had only just worked it out when the message ended with, ‘Oh, it’s Sally Barker, by the way.’

Eden called her back. A puffy-sounding Sally answered after two rings, as if she’d galloped to pick up the phone.

‘Hello, thanks for calling me back.’ Her voice was low, as if she didn’t want to be overheard. It was soon apparent why. ‘Listen, I’ve been thinking about what you said, about Greg and Donna. I’ve had enough. I want to tell you everything.’

‘Is he there?’ Eden asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Does he know you’re on the phone?’

‘Yes, but he doesn’t know I’m talking to you.’

‘Speak normally, and pretend I’m a friend who’s having some sort of relationship breakdown. Say I’m in a state and you’re popping out to see me.’

‘Where should I meet you?’

Eden named a coffeeshop in the town centre and arranged to meet Sally there in twenty minutes’ time. She prayed that Sally would be able to keep a straight face in front of her husband.

She found a corner table and waited for Sally to arrive. By the time she bustled in, she was red-faced and flustered, harassed because she’d had trouble finding a parking space, and then didn’t have change for the ticket machine.

‘It’s all right,’ Eden said. ‘Stay here and I’ll buy you a drink. Coffee?’

‘Tea, please.’ Sally unwound a long scarf from around her neck. She slipped her arms out of her coat and adjusted the sleeves of her sweater so her black and red bead bracelet hung free.

‘What is it you want to tell me?’ Eden asked, when she returned with the tea.

‘You said you’d seen a photo of Greg and that Donna Small together on holiday?’ Sally started. Eden winced. She shouldn’t have been so brutal. Before she could explain, Sally ran on, ‘I confronted him about it. He’s had affairs the whole time we’ve been married, and I’ve had enough. I
knew
there was something between him and Donna. I challenged him about it hundreds of times and he denied it. I started to think I was paranoid, seeing things that weren’t there. Only I wasn’t, was I? He was a lying, cheating scumbag, and he’s been found out.’

Sally sipped her tea and took another breath. Years of pent-up anger, frustration and jealousy poured out of her.

‘You asked where Greg was on Monday and Wednesday nights. I lied.’ Sally tucked her mousy hair back behind her ears and looked Eden straight in the eye. ‘He was home at the usual time on Monday night, but it’s not nine thirty, closer to one in the morning. And on Wednesday he wasn’t home with me. I don’t know what time he came in.’

‘What time did you go to bed?’

‘About ten, then I read for about an hour and he still hadn’t come in. In the morning he was asleep in the spare room.’

‘Did you ask him where he was?’

‘No.’ Sally’s eyes dropped, and she twisted her wedding ring round her finger. ‘When he’s late like that, without telling me, it’s because he’s off with some other woman. It’s better not to ask, he only lies to me.’ Sally reached into a large bag on the chair next to her. ‘On Thursday morning, he gave me this. A present – no reason, he said, just thought I’d like it. Guilt, I think.’

She lifted out a jewelled evening bag. Eden gawked at it. The last time she’d seen it, it was hanging off Donna Small’s shoulder at the singles club. She took the bag from Sally’s hands and examined it. The bag looked new: there were no makeup stains or rips in the lining to suggest it was second-hand, and there was nothing to show it was Donna’s bag. Maybe it was a purely tasteless present: giving his wife a bag identical to the one his mistress had.

Her mind whirling, Eden asked, ‘Where was Greg on Monday night?’

‘He always goes to some sort of club on Mondays. After the planning meeting.’

‘Which club?’

Sally smothered a sob. ‘He won’t tell me. He says it’s private. I think it’s the sort of club where women are the entertainment, the way he smells, his clothes smell, when he gets in.’

It could all be a bluff. The bag, Greg not coming home on Wednesday night. It left Sally without an alibi that evening, unless her eight-year-old twins could vouch for her. Maybe Sally killed Donna out of pure jealousy and was trying to cover her tracks and implicate Greg into the bargain. But watching Sally weeping, fragile and broken as a bird, with her mousy hair and cheap bracelet, Eden didn’t think so. She was a wronged wife, as devastating and quotidian as that.

‘You know that what you’ve said could get Greg into trouble?’ she asked Sally. ‘He doesn’t have an alibi now for Wednesday night.’

‘I know.’ Sally’s lip wobbled.

‘So why …?’

‘Revenge,’ Sally said, simply.

‘I’m sorry to just turn up like this,’ Eden said, ‘but I thought I’d update you.’

Susan Portman inched away from the front door, moving her walking frame aside so Eden could come in. Her skirt hung lower at the front than at the back, and her petticoat flashed when she turned. Eden followed her into the sitting room.

A bearded man sat in an armchair, the TV remote propped on the arm. His head swivelled to Eden when she came in.

‘My husband, Ian,’ Susan said. ‘Ian, this is the detective I asked to find Chelsea.’

‘How are you coping?’ Eden asked, taking a seat on the end of the settee. Neither of them answered, just met Eden with blank stares.

‘Have the police contacted you?’

‘Police?’ Ian huffed. ‘Fat lot of use they’ve been.’

‘Chelsea has been missing for over twenty-four hours now,’ Eden said. There was something wrong here. She intercepted a look that shivered between Ian and Susan. Ian pressed the mute button on the TV remote, but his gaze never wavered from the screen. ‘Mrs Portman?’

Susan arranged her skirt over her knees, stalling for time. When she spoke, her voice squeaked with emotion. ‘They’re not interested. Because she’s eighteen, and because …’ She choked and halted.

‘What haven’t you told me?’ Eden said, quietly. ‘Why aren’t the police treating this as a missing person’s case?’

‘They say she’s run away before and she’ll be back soon,’ Susan said, her words tumbling out in a rush. ‘But it was all years ago, she’s been a different girl since then.’

Eden slumped back against the cushions. ‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’

‘Because I know something’s wrong!’ Susan cried. She wriggled a tissue out of her sleeve and patted at her eyes. ‘I just know it.’

‘All right,’ Eden said, her mind whirring. ‘Chelsea’s run away from home before? When was this?’

‘About a year ago. She didn’t come home after school. We found out she’d never gone to school, but had taken a bus to Bristol. She came back after a few days.’

‘Where did she stay in Bristol?’

‘A bus shelter. I think it frightened her and she came home.’

‘Was that the first time she’d run away?’

Susan twisted the tissue round her finger. Her hands were swollen, the skin shiny over the knuckles, her finger joints lumpy marbles. ‘No, she ran away when she was fifteen, up to Scotland to stay with her cousin.’