The Bad Things: A gripping crime thriller full of twists and turns
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But at least they were able to bury Harry; not knowing Millie’s fate was unbearable.
And now Alex was on a mission to get to Sasha before she hurt herself again. Her sister had stayed in the house she had lived in with Jez and the twins. Couldn’t bear to leave it, she said. Alex thought it was unhealthy, but despite her attempts to get her sister to either move in with her or find somewhere that wasn’t jam-packed full of memories, Sasha refused. ‘What if Millie comes back?’ she said. ‘What if she came back and I wasn’t there?’ And Alex wanted to say to her that Millie was only four when she went missing so she wouldn’t even remember where to come back to, even if she was still alive. Naturally, she didn’t say any of that to her. No one could say anything like that to her. At least, though, Alex was in the town and could look out for her sister, and, on a good day, she could run there in eight minutes.
This was not a good day – lack of sleep and not much food – but adrenalin would add wings to her feet.
‘I have to go, Gus,’ she said, running to the door. ‘You finish your toast. There’s a new jar of peanut butter in the cupboard.’
‘But Mum – what’s up?’
‘I’ll tell you later.’ Alex felt breathless as she pulled on her coat and fumbled with the buttons. ‘I have to go and see Aunty Sasha. Okay?’
He shrugged. ‘Whatever.’
The radio carried on in the background.
The pavements were damp but thankfully not slippery. She ran, weaving through the people who blocked her way. Where was the family liaison officer? He’d said there wouldn’t be a decision this early. She’d have time to prepare Sasha for the possibility of Wood getting off. What had happened?
Two old women pulling shopping trolleys were chatting, taking up the whole pavement. Trolleys with loud red and green spots, the sort that tripped up the unwary pedestrian. She hated them. She had to leap into the road to get round them; a car hooting as it just missed her. Then a woman with one of those pushchairs that could be used to haul babies up mountain ranges suddenly stopped, almost making her fall. A crowd of school kids laughing, pushing each other, appeared in front of her. Inside her head she screamed at them, wanted to shove them out of the way. She barged through.
Not too far now.
She skittered around the corner into Sasha’s road.
She needed to stop, lean up against a wall and catch her breath, but didn’t dare.
She weaved passed two black wheelie bins, noticing that one of them was overflowing with rubbish – cartons, cereal packets, chicken bones – that littered the pavement. She crossed the road, passed the public toilets, to Sasha’s waist-high wrought iron gate. Alex wiggled the catch until it finally gave way, thinking she must get Jez to do something about that, then finally the five steps up the path to the front door.
She slipped her key into the lock, turned it, and pushed the door open all in one movement, almost falling into the hallway.
Sasha was in what passed for the sitting room; a room that had once been light and full of laughter, but with its faded blue and white striped wallpaper and cream carpet that had seen better days, was now oppressive. A two-bar electric fire in the fireplace pumped out a desultory amount of heat. There was a television in one corner, and a sofa pulled up in front of it. The curtains were half drawn and the place smelled fetid and unkempt: all a sure sign that Sasha was in one of her downward spirals. Some thirty pictures of the twins, in various stages of development, right up to the day they went missing, were arranged on every surface. One photograph had been taken in the clearing in the woods, the tartan blanket laid out, picnic basket ready to disgorge its lunch of dainty crustless ham sandwiches, slices of banana, apple, segments of tangerine. And the treat of lemonade to drink, with iced biscuits and little strawberry yoghurts to finish. A perfect day out. A few days later they were gone.
The television was tuned to BBC News, its red logo adding a bit of colour to the room. The breaking news strapline screamed out at Alex from the crawler across the bottom: Jackie Wood wins High Court appeal – conviction quashed. Pictures flashed up: Jackie Wood on the steps of the High Court smiling and waving, her solicitor by her side about to read out a statement. The words washed over her and around her.
‘Held for fifteen years…an innocent woman…rebuild my life…’
She heard the viper’s tongue in every word.
And the shouted questions from reporters: ‘How did you cope with life inside?’
‘What will you do now?’
‘Are you going to try and get some compensation?’
The sound of the traffic and blaring horns obliterating some of the syllables.
Wood smiled, and Alex saw the smug look in her eyes. She could imagine the triumph the woman was feeling and she wanted to reach into the box and grab her round her scrawny neck. At least she didn’t look great on prison life or food – she was alabaster pale and thinner than Alex remembered. Her skirt and jacket looked chain-shop cheap. She quite fancied strangling the solicitor too, though his neck was much less scrawny. In fact, the feeling was so visceral she could almost taste the air being squeezed from the man’s body. How much of any compensation was the woman going to get? Alex looked at Wood again. Three appeals and finally she’d managed to get off. Three appeals, a campaigning television producer, and a discredited expert witness and there was finally enough evidence to make two out of three High Court judges feel her conviction for the abduction and murder of Alex’s niece and nephew was unsafe. She was a free woman. At least, Martin Jessop, her accomplice, was dead and gone. Hanged himself in the first three months of his sentence.
‘I have nothing more to say, thank you.’ Wood turned and went back into the building. The newsreader moved on, unaware of the effect the news was having on both her and Sasha.
The telephone started to ring, making both of them jump.
Alex thought quickly, then picked it up.
‘’Allo?’ she said in a bad imitation of a French accent.
‘Is that Sasha Clements?’ The slightly breathless, high-pitched voice of a journalist hoping to get the first interview.
‘Non.’
‘Is Sasha Clements there, please?’
‘Non. She moved from ’ere three years ago.’ She winced, unsure her days of am-dram had stood her in good stead after all.
‘Oh.’ Disappointment in the voice. ‘I don’t suppose you have a number for her, do you?’
‘Non, sorry.’
‘Do you know where she went?’
‘I think she went to Spain.’
‘Spain?’
‘Spain.’
‘Oh. I see. Well thank you for your time.’
‘Plaisir.’
Alex cut the call and then put the receiver down on the table, wanting to laugh at the sheer absurdity of it all, and wondering if she’d done enough to delay the feeding frenzy. Only time would tell.
She turned off the television and looked at her sister properly. Sasha hadn’t noticed her, hadn’t realized there was no sound or picture coming from the television. She was sitting staring at the now blank screen, tears rolling down her cheeks and her arms hugged around her body, hands tucked in the sleeves of her shirt. The material was stained red. Alex wanted to cry.
She sat beside her sister and put her arm around her, trying to ignore the fact that she flinched. Alex didn’t say anything for a moment, attempting to breathe evenly to get some saliva into her dry mouth. Then Sasha leaned her head on her shoulder and let out a shuddering sigh.
‘Alex.’ She said her name softly, like a small puff of wind. ‘I didn’t think they’d let her out. They told me the appeal would fail. They told me.’
Alex kissed the top of her head. ‘I know, my love, I know.’
‘I thought I was dealing with it, you know; living with the fact that Millie was gone, buried somewhere and we’d never find out where.’
Alex tightened her arm around Sasha. And me, and me, she thought.
‘But now—’
‘We will find Millie, you know, one day. I promise.’ And she felt the burden of that promise settle on her shoulders.
‘I don’t want you here,’ Sasha said suddenly. ‘Not you.’
Alex closed her eyes, briefly, trying not to be hurt, telling herself that her sister was like that, had been for the past fifteen years; that Sasha couldn’t hate her any more than Alex hated herself. That Sasha didn’t mean what she was saying. She didn’t answer.
They sat quietly for some minutes. ‘Sash?’ Alex said. ‘Can I look at your arm?’
A shrug.
Gently, Alex lifted Sasha’s head off her shoulder and took her arm, pushing up the sleeve of her sister’s shirt. The gash down the side of her forearm glistened wetly, but she judged it didn’t need stitches this time. She got up and went into the kitchen, finding a bowl and some kitchen roll. She filled the bowl with warm water, poured in some salt and went back to sit beside Sasha. She wiped the cut, thankful to see it had stopped oozing blood. Her movements were mechanical – if she thought too hard about what she was doing, about what Sasha had done, she wouldn’t have been able to clean up the wound.
‘Don’t take me to hospital, Alex. Please. Otherwise, I won’t be able to feel.’ She rubbed her face with her other sleeve. ‘I need to feel.’
Alex nodded. ‘Okay, but you must take care of yourself.’ She bit her lip. What she was saying was nonsense. She could never stop Sasha from self-harming. God knows, she’d tried. Their parents wouldn’t believe it was going on, not even when Sasha had to stay in hospital because she’d cut herself so badly, and not even when the local doctor had her sectioned after she’d cut her wrists – not self-harming, not a cry for help, but a real suicide attempt. But she hadn’t hurt herself this badly for months and Alex had been beginning to hope she might be on some sort of road to recovery.
Sasha looked at her with dead eyes. ‘How can I take care of myself,’ she whispered, ‘when I couldn’t take care of my children? When the woman who murdered my babies is out there again?’
There was nothing Alex could say to that.
4
It was mid afternoon and the light was already leaching out of the day when Alex left Sasha, having bandaged her arm and made her lunch, which she picked at. Alex also tried to persuade Jez to go round and stay, at least for one night. That was hard work. She knew that statistics for a couple splitting up after the death of a child were higher than average – she wasn’t sure what they were when two children were dead. But Sasha and Jez had disintegrated pretty quickly after Harry was buried, and not even the thought that Millie might come home one day was enough to keep them together. Anyway, Alex had always thought he ought to give his ex-wife more support, so she steeled herself and rang him.
‘Yes,’ he said to her, whispering fiercely down his phone, ‘I do know about the court’s decision. I am in the right place, you know.’
‘And you hadn’t thought to go round to Sasha’s?’
There was silence. ‘I couldn’t, Alex. I thought you—’
‘Yes, well, I’d been told nothing would happen before midday, but they were wrong there, weren’t they? So you can imagine what she was like when I got to the flat and she’d been watching it over and over again on bloody 24-hour news.’ She found she was whispering, too.
He sighed, and Alex imagined him raking his hair with his free hand, making it all stand up on end. ‘Look, it’s difficult enough for me to process this right now, and I’m in the middle of another case.’
‘I’d have thought you would have been there. At court, I mean.’ Alex couldn’t help herself.
‘Why weren’t you?’
‘They weren’t my children.’ No, they weren’t her children, but they were her sister’s children, and if it wasn’t for her they might still be alive. But she had to stop thinking that or it would send her mad. ‘Couldn’t the police give you compassionate leave or something? Look,’ Alex went for a more conciliatory tone, ‘I’m not asking you to drop everything now. I just want you to go over later. Stay there for the night. I would if I could but I’ve got Gus to think about.’
Silence. ‘I can’t, Alex. I can’t do it.’
‘Why not? Don’t you owe her something?’
‘Owe her?’
‘You were married to her.’
‘And now I’m not, okay? I wish things could have been different, God how I wish it. I still—’
‘Still what?’
There was more silence. ‘Never mind. It doesn’t matter. Besides, it’s too late now.’
‘Jez, I know—’
‘No.’ His voice was sharp. ‘You don’t know anything. I’m trying Alex, really trying to get over her; to deal with what happened all those years ago, but the pain is still so near the surface, you know? Even after all this time. Christ, it’s even hard to go out with other women, even though I try. God, how I try.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘And I never thought I’d say that.’ He paused. ‘And I bet she’s been cutting herself.’
Alex said nothing. Two could play the silence game.
‘I’m right, aren’t I? And I know I’m partly to blame. Look, Alex, I don’t expect you to understand, but me and Sasha—’
‘You and Sasha what?’
‘Nothing. Me and Sasha are nothing.’
‘If you can’t go round, could you send another plod round just to, I don’t know, stand outside the flat or something. I don’t want her besieged by journalists.’ She knew her play-acting on the phone wouldn’t fool a determined hack for very long.
‘I will ask,’ he said finally.
She had to hope it was enough.
It was cold and damp and Alex hunched her shoulders as she put the key in the front door. Suddenly a pair of arms encircled her waist.
‘Honey, you’re home.’
She rolled her eyes and felt her depression lift just a little. ‘Malone, you are so predictable.’ She opened the door. ‘And what are you doing? Waiting to ambush me?’
‘And how else am I supposed to get into your house? You haven’t given me a key yet.’
‘Too soon, Malone, too soon.’
‘It’s not too soon for me.’ Malone pushed the door shut behind them, grabbed hold of her hair each side of her face, and kissed her deeply. He smelled of whisky and smoke.
She pushed him away, trying to smile. ‘Down boy.’
‘Come on, sweetheart. And haven’t I just given you all of myself so you can keep yourself in handbags and shoes?’ He laid his slight Irish accent on thickly.
‘Ha. As if. And you know I’m very grateful. But, to be honest, it’s been a shit of a day.’
He stroked her cheek. ‘Did they not like the piece?’
‘I don’t know yet, I haven’t looked.’ Alex rolled her shoulders and rubbed the back of her neck.
‘So?’
‘Sasha.’
‘Ah.’ Such a wealth of meaning in such a little word.
Alex hadn’t known Malone that long. In fact, she met him while researching her latest article; he was the article – the mad man who’d worked undercover most of his adult life. He had posed as a member of a far-right group. His work had included exposing would-be terrorists. It had been a dirty job and his life had been in danger. Then there had been the infiltration of environmental protest groups of the flat sandals and vegan persuasion. Lord, he told her with his lopsided grin, he never wanted to see a lentil again.
‘How close did you have to get to the protestors?’ she’d asked him.
He’d shrugged at that. ‘As close as I had to.’
‘Sex?’
‘As close as I had to.’
It had been a hard slog, but she had eventually been able to tease out more details from him, and her admiration for him had grown. It helped he was amusing, too, and made her forget herself.
And she told him about Sasha and her babies and how her marriage fell apart and how her sister needed her. She’d told him all that, but she hadn’t told him what really kept her awake at night.
‘Tea?’ He picked up the kettle.
‘Yes please,’ she said.
‘So what about Sasha?’
Alex shook her head, amused. It was what she liked about Malone. He might have thwarted terrorists and saved the world, but he had no interest in the news of the moment.
‘Jackie Wood got out on appeal.’ Alex thought if she just said the words in a matter-of-fact way it would be easier. She was wrong. There was a familiar stinging behind her eyes.
‘Ah,’ he said again. He put down the kettle and put his arms round her, holding her tight.
‘Sasha was in a bad way.’ Her voice was muffled by his jumper. ‘I tried to get Jez to go and stay the night, but I don’t know if he will.’
‘He’ll go.’ He kissed the top of her head. ‘I’m sure he’ll go.’
‘I hope so. Though there’s no reason why he should. Although sometimes I wonder—’
‘What?’
‘I don’t know. Yes I do. I wonder if he still loves her in some way.’
‘Well, you can go back in the morning and see how she is, or later, if you want to. I can stay here with Gus.’
She pushed herself gently out of his arms, dashing the tears off her cheeks. ‘Thank you. Now I know why I like you.’
‘And it explains why the telephone wouldn’t stop ringing.’
‘How do you know it was ringing?’
‘I could hear it during the long and lonely wait for you outside the door.’
‘Bugger.’
And on cue, it rang.
‘Alex Devlin?’
‘Yes,’ she said. She could try and protect her sister but when it came to herself it wasn’t so easy.
‘Hi, I’m Ed Killingback from The Post and I wondered if I could have a few minutes of your time to talk about Jackie Wood and her winning her appeal today?’
‘Do you know what, Ed, I really am not up to it.’ She made her voice as cold as she could.
‘It won’t take long, and if you give me your story as an exclusive then you won’t have to worry about the others, will you?’ His young, eager tone wearied her. ‘We could put you up in a hotel so you’re not bothered by any of the red tops and—’
‘Look,’ she cut in, ‘I know how it goes and I’m not interested. Please leave me alone.’ She put down the phone with a satisfying clunk.
Her mobile began to belt out some grungy piece of music she didn’t know, but it had been set by Gus as her ringtone. She looked at the screen. Unknown number. She sighed and turned it off.
Malone switched on the kettle.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘This is exactly what you don’t want.’
‘What do you mean?’
She gave what she thought was a wry smile but probably looked more like a grimace. ‘You’re trying to avoid publicity now you’ve done your bit, and here I am, bringing it right back to your door.’
‘Hmm,’ he said, the kettle starting to boil. ‘I reckon I’m used to the parasites knocking on the door, don’t you think?’
‘I guess. But I don’t want you bothered by it.’ What she meant was she didn’t want him so spooked that he would leave her just as she was getting used to him in her life.
‘I won’t be.’ He poured water onto the two teabags. ‘How’s Gus?’
Bringing her into the real world. She looked at the clock. Football practice tonight. ‘He’s okay, I think.’ And yes, Malone knew about Gus’s patchy history. ‘Wants to go skiing with the school.’
Malone raised his eyebrows. ‘Expensive stuff.’
‘Hmm.’
‘And?’
‘And what?’ Alex knew she sounded defensive, and it was none of his business anyway.
Malone drummed his fingers on the kitchen unit. ‘And are you able to pay for it?’
‘That, Malone,’ she said, ‘is nothing to do with you.’ He handed her a cup of tea: dark brown builders’; just how she liked it. ‘I’m going up to my study to see if Liz likes you.’
‘I hope you gave me a good write-up.’
Alex stopped, her hand on the doorknob. ‘Sympathetic, I think you’ll find.’
‘And anonymous?’
‘Malone. What do you take me for? It’s an “all names have been changed to protect their identities” article. As you well know.’
He grinned. ‘Just checking.’
She gave a wry smile. ‘I’ll be back in a minute, help yourself to a biscuit or something. Read the paper. Do relaxing things.’ Then a thought struck her. ‘What are you doing here, Malone? Shouldn’t you be going deep undercover into a brothel or something? Saving people, being a hero?’
He gave a slow, gentle smile. ‘Don’t be flippant. It’s important stuff. Anyway, I’ve told you already, I’ve done my bit. Rescued all I can. Thought I’d come and say hallo.’
‘And see if my piece about you is going to be published in the Saturday Magazine. Egotist.’
Malone shrugged his shoulders.
Alex sat down in her study, switched on the computer and waited for it to go through its warm-up routine. She thought about Malone, lounging on the sofa downstairs, reading the paper, all relaxed and smelling of his organic soap, and she thought of Sasha alone in her flat with only the television and a razor blade for company, and she knew where she would rather be. She couldn’t say she felt guilty. How could she when guilt was so much a part of her life? There is only so much of it one can feel.
She and Malone had hit it off as soon as they met. And meeting had been an exhausting task involving clandestine calls to men and women who she was sure wore balaclavas just to answer the phone. Eventually she was deemed worthy of meeting the Man Who Saved The World From Harm, and she presumed they’d also checked out her credentials and whether or not she really was a journalist and not an undercover member of the Russian mafia or a gangland boss. Anyway, they met in a spit and sawdust pub south of the River Wensum. It was down an alleyway in an unprepossessing part of Norwich, and she’d had to muster all her reserves to walk into it without feeling intimidated.
She didn’t know what she’d been expecting – someone in a beanie hat and Jesus sandals she thought was most likely – but sitting at the table in the corner underneath the portrait of the Queen (yes, they still exist in pubs, and yes, that’s where she’d been told he would be sitting) was a man in his early forties – dark jeans, light blue shirt with white polka dots, trainers – nursing a pint.
She held out her hand. ‘Hi, I’m Alex Devlin. You must be Malone.’ Another conceit: last name only. She had resisted the temptation to introduce herself as Devlin.
To his credit he stood up, shook her hand, and offered her a drink. She was impressed, and it only got better from then on. And when they finally got round to it, the interview went well too. He told her what motivated him, the chances he’d taken, like befriending one of the women who was the girlfriend of the leader of the group he was supposed to be a part of. By ‘befriending’ Alex understood that he meant more than having a chat over a cup of coffee. He told her how he kept a flock of geese in the garden as they were the best alarm against intruders, how he had infiltrated the whole subculture of gangs. Although she thought he was mad to have taken some of the chances he had, she ended up admiring him. Oh, and sleeping with him. Pillow talk was quite good for in-depth personality pieces.
Of course, being the good interviewer she tried to be, she let him talk about himself and said very little about herself. But she found it…what – interesting? amazing? – that the gentle, mild-mannered man she got to know had been responsible for some of the major high profile arrests in recent months, after years of work. When she ventured to ask why he was letting himself be interviewed, he said he wanted to publicize what was going on as much as possible while keeping himself in the background. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘We have to be lucky all the time. People who are trying to destroy us and our way of life have only got to get lucky once. That’s why I do it.’
He also, he said, hated to see exploitation of people, and was hoping to be able to play some part in the war against human trafficking. Organized crime. Too much of that was going on. Kids brought in to be held as sex slaves. ‘All driven by the drugs trade,’ he said. ‘This area is rife with drugs factories. Houses on urban streets, isolated farms, sheds, barns – whatever.’ But for the moment, he told her, he was resting, he thought he’d done enough. At least for now.