Paternoster (32 page)

The hair across the door, the drawer pushed right in instead of being left partly ajar, the dust disturbed on the shelf. The sensation that the air had shifted and settled back in a different form to how she’d left it. The terror these things had evoked.

Aidan was speaking. From his tone it was excuses, reasons, apologies. She didn’t hear a word.

She’d thought it was Hammond. Him, or one of his goons, in her flat, trying to frighten her. She’d barely slept, waiting for the door to come crashing down, for the strangler to step out of the shadows. Hammond’s hallmark. She’d be fish food, minced into bloody gobs, before he’d let her die.

But it wasn’t Hammond. The fear, the anticipation of violence were for nothing. It was Aidan, who was still blabbing.

‘Shut up!’ she shouted. ‘You violated my home. You made me think someone had broken in.’

‘I locked up. I was careful. There’s no way you knew I’d been there.’

Her tone a deadly quiet, she said, ‘My life is in danger. I leave traps in my flat so I know if someone’s been in there. For the past few days I thought the gang had caught up with me. How do you think that’s been, Aidan? And all along it was you, with your ridiculous need to know what I was christened.’

‘That’s not it. I want to know
you
. Everything about you.’

She twisted and reached into the cupboard. Twelve mugs, three lines of four, their handles all pointing south-east. She grabbed one and smashed it on the floor.

‘Oh dear, now you’ve only got eleven,’ she said. Eleven would torment him. He couldn’t get eleven into any sort of pattern; it would drive him mad, counting them over and over. Good, let him know a fraction of what she’d suffered in the past few days, thinking Hammond had infiltrated her home.

She snatched up her things and stormed out of his flat.

She flew home, sobbing with anger and relief. How could he? How could he break into her flat and search her belongings, determined to know everything about her as though he had a right to it? Dismay lurked beneath her fury. She’d dared to start thinking that their relationship wasn’t a short-term thing, that they might even – eventually – have a future together.

She pushed inside her flat, sniffing the air, her senses on hyper-alert. Instinct told her the air hadn’t shifted to accommodate someone else and she sighed with relief. Years before, when she was training – learning how to enter premises, hide a listening device, and get out again – she’d learned the science of intuition. People can sense when someone has been in their home. Nothing needed to be touched, nothing moved, but they knew. It reminded her of a time as a postgraduate student when she was sure her landlord let himself into her house to check up on the place. She never had proof, but she’d return and find the air subtly loosened, and just know.

They’d taught her to not to wear perfume or deodorant, not to shower immediately before accessing premises as even shower gel leaves a delicate trace. Someone returning to the place hours later could still detect a ghost of it. An atavistic instinct that their sanctuary had been breached.

Hammond probably knew these things, too. Knew them well enough to manipulate them to unsettle his enemies. Go in, stir the air, leave a waft of unfamiliar washing powder and leave without touching a thing. It freaked people out. It had freaked her out, thinking Hammond’s men had been in her flat. But it wasn’t them, it was Aidan.

She glugged down a glass of white wine, gazing out over the rooftops to the Gothic church on the square by her flat. It had long ago been turned into a restaurant. Maybe she’d take herself there for a meal, a consolation, wrap herself round a bottle of wine. Flirt with the waiters, just to piss Aidan off, even if he wasn’t there to witness it. She toyed with the idea of ringing Judy, spilling to her how hurt and angry she was. And say what? That she’d been forced to tell Aidan that she wasn’t really Eden Grey, that she had a new identity to protect her from the people she helped to put in prison, that Aidan had searched her flat to find out who she really was? That she was hurt by his lack of trust in her? She groaned and wrapped her arms around her head. What a bloody mess.

The phone rang. She let the machine pick it up. Aidan’s voice filled the flat.

‘Eden, if you’re there, please pick up. I’m so sorry. I’m an absolute shit, and I know it. But I did it because I’m falling for you. Dammit, I hate these things. I’d rather tell you this to your face. It doesn’t seem right telling your answering machine that I think I’ve fallen in love with you. Look, I’ll call later. Talk to me. Please.’

She deleted the message. Love. They’d never even played at saying the L word together; was glad it hadn’t ever raised its complicated, bitter-sweet head. Love was too difficult: it made demands as much as promises.

The phone rang again. Aidan.

‘Eden, me again. Still talking to your machine. I love you, OK? Please let me tell you to your face.’

I love you. The last person who’d said that to her was Nick. As he was leaving, his suitcase in his hand, he’d turned at the door, looked her full in the face, and said, ‘I love you. I don’t think you realise how much.’

‘Then don’t leave,’ she’d said, her heart breaking.

‘I have to. I can’t deal with who you’ve become.’

‘I’m still me.’

He shook his head. ‘You’re not,’ he’d said, gently. ‘The tragedy is you can’t see it.’

She was no one now. A woman with a temporary name, a transient existence, buffeted and blown on the whims of a thug she thought she’d put away forever. She’d never feel safe again. Madness to even flirt with the idea of being with Aidan long term. Hammond’s web could catch up with her eventually, and she’d be off. New place, new life, new identity. As she refilled her wine glass she realised what hurt her most was the loss of what might have been. That tantalising glimpse of normality, a regular life with a decent guy, had seduced her. She’d dared to dream, and it was all gone now.

‘Mummy? Mummy, wake up.’

She was underwater. The murky Thames sucked her under, filling her mouth with foulness. She kicked and struggled, desperate for breath.

‘Mummy. Mummy, help me!’

‘Molly!’ Her lungs screamed with pain. The water dragged her under, the weight of her clothes sending her to the bottom.

Molly’s face materialised in front of her, a ghostly oval. Her mouth worked a long silent scream.

‘Molly, I’m coming to get you.’

She fought the water, unable to get closer. The water drew Molly further away, always out of reach. She lunged for her, saw her hands in front of her and it was a moment before she realised what was wrong. A white fan of bones, her flesh all nibbled away. She swung them uselessly, clutching at water, feeling it slip between her fingers.

Molly shrank, her legs kicking and her hair billowing around her as the water carried her off. Her scream echoed long after she’d vanished from sight.

‘Molly!’

Eden jolted awake, panting, and switched on the bedside light. Three o’clock. Flopping back on the pillows, she listened to her heart thumping. Just a dream. A horrible nightmare, that’s all. Nothing to be afraid of. But she didn’t switch the light off when she settled back down to sleep, and it was a long time before her eyes closed again.

When she woke, groping for her alarm clock, a thin light was creeping through the curtains. Groaning, she crawled out of bed and into the shower, and ate her breakfast standing at the window, gazing out over grey, wet rooftops and the rain-blackened skeletons of trees. She switched on her mobile phone, expecting a slew of messages from Aidan. There wasn’t a single one, and she was unsure whether to be relieved or annoyed. All she felt was a terrible hollow loss.

The local television breakfast news had a short feature on missing schoolgirl Chelsea. Eden heard the news report start while she was brushing her teeth, and ran into the sitting room to catch it, toothbrush in hand, her mouth full of peppermint froth. It seemed the police were at least going through the motions of launching a missing person case, even if they believed she was just a mardy runaway. The screen flashed up Chelsea’s school photo. She looked young and impressionable and very, very vulnerable. A sicko’s wet dream.

‘Police ask anyone who’s seen Chelsea to call this number,’ the news reporter stated.

‘Pity they didn’t show a photo of her as she was that night,’ Eden said aloud. In school uniform, her hair sedately fastened with a barrette, Chelsea was completely different from the photos her friends had posted up on Facebook. No one who saw her the evening she disappeared, with false eyelashes, shocking pink top and hair backcombed into a nest would equate her with the schoolgirl in the photo.

The news item changed to a report on local hospitals, and she went to rinse her mouth. There was an unpleasant metallic taste on her tongue; the taste of fear.

Her threat to Chris Wilde had paid dividends. Every trace of the graffiti was gone and her office door was now a smart shiny blue, flanked by terracotta planters filled with narcissi and hyacinths. Just as she’d ordered. The heady scent of the hyacinths wafted over her, lifting her mood. After a weekend left to its own devices, though, her office ponged of damp and she left the door ajar to air it out.

Bent over her desk, working on her accounts and trying not to despair at the dwindling amount in the bank, she didn’t hear them come in. When there was a cough, she jerked so violently she jarred her elbow on the desk. Excruciating pain shot down her arm to her fingertips.

‘Sorry, the door was open,’ the man said. He had black hair cut short, and was wearing jeans and a khaki polo shirt under a tan leather jacket. ‘I did knock, but you didn’t hear.’

Eden grimaced through the pain and peered past the man to the youth lurking behind him. ‘Hello again, Wayne.’

Wayne Small nodded at her. His hands were stuck in his pockets and his mouth was set in a line.

‘What can I do for you?’ Eden asked.

‘I’m Wayne’s dad,’ the man said. ‘Barry.’ He stuck out a meaty paw to shake.

‘Pleased to meet you. Have a seat.’ She rose and closed the door. ‘Bit more private.’

As he installed himself in her client’s chair, Barry continued. ‘Wayne’s upset about something he saw at the school last Monday. It’s taken me all weekend to get it out of him, and the only person he’s prepared to talk to is you.’

Barry raised his eyebrows at Eden and spread his hands as if to say ‘teenagers, eh?’

She glowered at the boy, altogether out of patience with the vagaries of men and their moods. ‘What happened, Wayne?’

He dropped his chin and examined his hands, giving her a view of his greasy parting. His voice came out as a mumble and she strained to hear him. ‘I was mucking around with a mate. Someone from my old school.’

‘What were you doing?’ She spoke sharply. The shifty way he wouldn’t meet her eye told its own story.

There was a swift glance at his dad before he answered her in a reluctant drone. ‘We were nicking stuff.’

‘You little …’ Barry started. She held up her hand to warn him to let Wayne continue. There’d be time for rows later.

‘We’d grabbed a couple of mobile phones and an iPad. Those kids have so much money they don’t know what to do with it! It’s not like we were nicking from kids whose parents saved up for things.’

‘A latter-day Robin Hood,’ she remarked. ‘Then what?’

‘Someone came, so we hid in one of the staff rooms. There was no one in there.’

‘What time was it?’

He shrugged. ‘About midnight.’

‘Midnight!’ Barry cried. ‘What did your mum think you were doing?’

‘I tried to tell her what happened,’ Wayne said, grinding his fist into his nose. ‘She never listened.’

Barry looked ready to launch a bollocking. Eden stalled him with a stare and he huffed back in his seat.

‘How did you get in, Wayne?’ she asked.

‘Bogs window.’

So much for Rosalind Mortimer’s state-of-the-art security, Eden thought. ‘What happened?’

His eyes swivelled sideways to his father for a second, then Wayne continued. ‘This bloke came in, with a group of girls, five of them. They were all in school uniform, like, the school’s uniform, but I didn’t recognise none of them.’

‘How old were they?’

‘Sixteen, seventeen maybe.’

‘Who was the man with them?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘A teacher at the school?’

‘Never seen him before, either. The girls, they were crying and upset. All of them. And they looked weird.’

‘Weird? How?’

He shook his head. ‘I can’t explain. Just, they looked out of it, like sleepwalking or something, but not that.’

‘Drunk? Drugged?’

Wayne’s eyes were dark with misery. ‘I don’t know, just, they weren’t happy. Definitely weren’t happy.’

‘What happened?’ Eden asked.

‘They came across the room, and we ducked down and hid. I heard them go past, and a door opened, and it went quiet, and when we came out the room was empty.’

‘They went back out of the room?’

‘No, they came into the room, and vanished.’

Wayne’s dad rubbed his eyes and shared a glance with Eden.

‘Five girls, upset, aged about sixteen,’ she mused, tapping her pencil on her notebook. ‘The man who was with them, can you describe him?’

Wayne shrugged again. Her temper flared. The boy was as much use as a narcoleptic guide dog.

‘Very helpful,’ she snapped. ‘How old was he? Thirty? Forty?’

‘More like twenty-five.’

‘Tall? Short?’ When Wayne didn’t answer, she asked, ‘Was he taller than the girls?’

‘Not much.’ Wayne scratched a scab on his knuckle for a moment, then volunteered, ‘He had dark hair. And dark skin, like he was Asian or something.’

‘Just a moment.’ An idea suddenly came to her, the slotting together of several pieces of the puzzle. It was a long shot, and didn’t make much sense, but it was worth a try. She clicked through the folders on her laptop and pulled up a photograph. Twisting the laptop round so Wayne could see, she asked, ‘Is this the man?’