White Light (5 page)

chapter four

Saturday, 4 April 2015: 19.36

I drove the car onto the gravel drive and stopped the engine. Keith Flint's spitting vocals cut out abruptly and in the sudden quiet I sat and rotated the afternoon's events in my mind - not thinking about them, because by any measure they made absolutely no sense.

After I'd found the unbibium back in the safe I'd dashed back into the corridor to see if I could spot whoever had replaced it, but despite racing to the stairwell and rattling the door handles of locked and empty offices, I'd seen no-one. Somebody must have been watching, waiting for me to step out... After much fruitless rushing about I'd eventually given up and gone back into my own office to look again at the note and the 122 sample, before locking them both up in the safe and driving home.

I popped the cassette out of the player and put it in my pocket, then clambered out of the car. As I went through the motions of feeding Fergus and picking up yet more post from the doormat I thought glumly that my vague idea of moving my research to the States might really need to happen now: Gilbert wasn't a man known for his patience and I'd really done a number on him this afternoon. And frankly the whole mystery business had freaked me out. I couldn't shake the feeling that someone had been in the house. I checked the obvious things - telly, passports – everything was where it should be. I looked at the cat: he was relaxed and sleepy, not bristling with alarm as I knew he would be if there'd been an intruder. In the end I found myself checking the door was locked and the windows closed about three times before I got a grip.

I forced myself to eat a microwave meal and then wash up. As I stacked the plate onto the draining board I wondered whether Levi would have any news about transferring to Harvard and how soon I could politely prod him about it, and then I suddenly remembered a conversation I had had with a professor from CalTech on the first night of the Den Haag conference - he'd pretty much offered to fund me a research job there. The memory had been all but obliterated by the events of the following day, getting the phone call saying that Sarah...

I bit off the train of thought and focused hard on the details of the Californian academic. John Williamson, yes, that was his name. Maybe I should just drop him an email. Two chances to leave Oxford would be better than one.

Looking around, I realised that I hadn't actually opened my laptop since the day of the funeral. It took a few minutes of searching to uncover it, hidden under stratified layers of post and trashy fliers about pizza and double glazing. The battery was completely dead, so I rooted around a bit more to find the power cable and then had to leave it for a few minutes to let it charge up sufficiently to be able to switch on.

My inbox was filled with messages from friends, colleagues and people I couldn't even place. I just didn't want to read all their kind words so blitzed down the screen, deleting everything. Then I clicked open my junk folder and started to do the same. As my hands went through the click and delete routine on autopilot my mind was already starting to compose the email to CalTech... suddenly my eyes rooted themselves to an email header on a message about two thirds down the screen:

From Sarah Kitchener to Adam Kitchener, 12 April, 20:22pm.

Sarah had sent me an email, the night she died. It had been sitting here in the junk folder all that time. I hardly ever checked that folder and my skin ran cold thinking I could have just deleted everything without ever knowing it was there. I gulped and clicked open the email. It contained a video file - this must have been why the email system had marked it out as potential spam.

I felt tears gathering in my eyes as I clicked again and the video began to play.

Sarah sat back in the chair, having switched on the web cam. She looked uncertainly at the screen for a second, checking it was recording, then looked straight at the camera.

Her eyes were red and her face showed she'd been crying. As she began to speak, her voice quavered and she had to swallow hard before trying to talk again.

'Adam, it's me.' She smiled a little, 'well, obviously. I know you won't see this video until later but I just wanted to speak to you. I miss you so much and I know you'd know what to do.'

I put my hand over my mouth to sob. On screen, Sarah closed her eyes for a second and composed herself.

'Best start at the beginning. The other day I got a tax demand relating to a property that I own.' What? 'I thought it must be a mistake, so I phoned the tax office and they said no, it was right - I'd apparently owned a house in Oxford since 1974.' She took a breath. 'So I checked the land registry and yes, it is true. A house in Headington, can you believe it? Number 3 Beechcroft Drive.'

My mind was racing - we'd tried to buy a house in that pricey Oxford suburb a couple of years ago but couldn't afford it. And how come we didn't know about this house that was allegedly in her name?

'It was totally crazy, and I still thought it was some admin mistake so I asked my Dad, and you know what he said?' Her voice was shaking, with sadness or anger, I couldn't tell which. 'He said,' she swallowed, 'he said that yes of course I owned this house, but that he and Mum had been renting it out for me all these years. Can you believe that?!'

I could fucking believe it, that bastard man not saying a word and watching as we scraped to afford our crippling mortgage. My hands clenched compulsively.

'He was very dismissive, you know what he's like.' Suddenly she dropped the pitch of her voice and did an impersonation of Richard Holland. 'Don't make a fuss, Sarah, of course your mother and I had your best interests at heart. There was no need to tell you.'

She took another deep breath and wiped her eyes. 'I got the address from the land registry and went to see it.' Her lip trembled and tears streaked down her face. 'There's something I never told you, love, about what happened to my sister, Helen. She didn't just run away, she wasn't at home.' Sarah's face became a twisted mask of pain and despair, and I thought my heart would break watching it. 'There was a place that we used to be taken, a house... me and Helen. People would be there... men would be there...' She broke down and held her face in her hands and sobbed. My mind just turned to ice and I stopped breathing. 'I can't talk about that, I can't. But the day she went missing we were supposed to be there, both of us, but I was sick... I got food poisoning from something, and so I couldn't go. I was at home, asleep, and in the morning there were policemen in the house and Mum was telling me that Helen had run away, into a storm, and she was lost. I never saw her again, I never saw my sister again.'

She took a wavering breath. 'You're going to ask me why I didn't do anything, why I didn't tell the policeman,' I shook my head, she was a child for God's sake, what could she have done? On screen, Sarah's face was pinched with guilt. 'But Mum and Dad were always there, always watching, and I couldn't. And I knew she was dead. I just knew. We were twins, so I knew... And then the years went on and everybody said Helen had run away and I was never,' she gulped, 'sent back to that house again and I started to think that maybe I'd just made it all up, that it was just some disgusting fantasy and that I was mad or twisted...'

Oh God, oh my poor, poor Sarah. I felt my brain begin to fill with a kind of white noise of horror.

'But today I went to the house, the house I apparently own, and it was
that
house, Adam, the house that me and Helen used to be taken to. I couldn't get inside but I recognised it from the street, God, I recognised it alright.' She leaned closer to the webcam, her tortured face filling the whole screen, 'so it must all be true, all of it, and Helen must have been killed there, and maybe she's still there, buried in the garden or something...' she sobbed, 'so I am going to confront them now, Mum and Dad,' she spat the words, 'and tell them that I'm going to the police and that I will have justice for Helen, even after all these years.'

She sat back again and heaved a huge sigh. 'And I know you're not here but I know you'd be supporting me,' No! No! No! I was thinking, it isn't safe! 'And I've done this message so I can't bottle out.' She smiled, kissed her fingers and then touched them to the camera. 'I'll see you soon, my darling, I love you.'

Her hand reached out and turned off the webcam and the message ended.

I slowly put my hands up to my head and gripped my hair until my scalp burned. The screaming in my mind got louder and louder as I imagined what my Sarah had been through, the terror and the pain, those disgusting men who had abused two eight year olds, her shame, still evident now, nearly thirty years later... it all roiled together like smoke, foul and clinging with soot and death and disgust, clouding my brain and choking me and everything went dark round the edges of my vision like I was sinking
into Hell...

I took a huge gasp of air and found I had rolled off the chair and onto the floor. Uncurling myself, I lay flat on the carpet and looked blindly at the ceiling, not wanting to think, not wanting to imagine. It was too much, I couldn't deal with it.

But Sarah had had to deal with it every day, on her own, never telling me.  I pushed the heels of my hands into my eyes until I saw stars but the tears still leaked out. Why had she never told me? With dread I wondered if she'd worried I would somehow judge her, or blame her, or be disgusted? And how come I had never realised how far Richard Holland's repulsive behaviour actually went? For all I'd loathed him, for all I'd found his off-colour comments appalling and disgraceful, I'd never thought for a moment that he could be as horrendous as this. Now it was all too clear. He'd been hiding in plain sight all this time. I sobbed until I felt numb, just thinking about Sarah, and then I felt a fierce pride that despite everything, she'd got up every day and smiled and loved and made a difference.

I climbed back onto the chair and flopped down, staring at the screensaver on the laptop screen, and another thought struck me: it couldn't be a coincidence that Sarah had died just after confronting fucking Richard and Maggie Holland. Not a coincidence.

I scrambled to my feet and raced over to my jacket, which I'd slung on a kitchen chair when I'd got in. I fumbled out my phone and scrolled to find Darren Underwood's number. I could start with him.

I rang the number and was surprised that Darren picked up, it being now late on a Saturday night.

'Yes? Adam?'

In the background I could hear the sounds of laughter and music – a pub. I felt jolted, as if Sarah's video and people enjoying themselves couldn't co-exist in the same universe. Underwood sounded wary, his initial friendliness missing. I took a steadying breath and tried to think about how not to sound as frantic as I felt.

'I've found a video file, from Sarah. It explains why she was at her parents' house that night.'

'Look, Adam, the investigation is closed –'

'I know that, for fuck's sake!' He fell icily silent on the end of the line, and I could distinctly hear someone saying 'just bloody well hang up'. I gritted my teeth and went on. 'Sorry, but you will want to see this video. It impacts on many things other than Sarah's death, it's really important, Darren. Please!'

I heard him sigh. 'Fine. Email it to me and I'll take a look.'

'But –'

'Email it to me. If it's not worth pursuing then it won't have wasted any more of – our time then it needs to.'

I sat at the laptop and sent the file to the personal email address he gave me, trying not to think about how he'd really just been interested in whether he'd be having his time wasted. Well, God forbid that, I thought, but then my phone rang. It was him.

'Can you bring that laptop into the station now, please?' His voice was brighter, and I cynically thought he might be seeing how well this could play out for him. I agreed, grabbed the computer and ran to the car.

Thirty minutes later I had parked the car at the bottom of the Abingdon Road and was walking up to the door of Oxford's police headquarters when Darren cut across to fall into step with me. He was looking excited, and was carrying long black case.

He saw me looking at it, and shrugged: 'Saturday night pool competition at the Jolly Postboys.' He pushed open the glass door and ushered me through the foyer into a confusion of identical corridors. 'I'm not rostered on tonight but I thought it was important to come in for this,' he said, holding open another heavy door for me to go through into a small interview room. A heavy, older man with a lined face and shrewd eyes was waiting inside. Underwood introduced him Detective Inspector Nick Walters from the Greenland Enquiry – the unit that had taken over from the city's investigation into historical child abuse cases, Operation Bullfinch. I put the laptop on the table, and pressed play.

A couple of minutes later, Walters leant back in his chair, having just seen Sarah's terrible video. I stood in the corner, trying to get my face right, the two men tactfully pretending not to notice that I was crying, Darren eventually going out and bringing me back a cup of coffee.

'Thanks, Underwood. I can take it from here,' DI Walters dismissed him with half a smile. I could see Darren's frustration as he had no choice but to leave the room.