Dying for Christmas (38 page)

It’s Grace Gold.

* * *

Discovering that Natalie won’t, after all, be getting rich, puts me in the best mood I’ve been in since before this whole thing started. She thought she could use me to get what she wanted, just like her husband. And now it’s all been for nothing. I pour myself a large glass of wine, even though it’s not yet midday and, feeling buoyant, I decide to be productive for a change and open some of the mail that’s been stacking up on our dining table. The reporters and news crews have largely disappeared now, but Travis and my parents have diligently collected all the envelopes they stuffed through the letterbox during the giddy days following my release, and still the odd letter arrives, plopping into our communal hall along with the flyers from pizza outlets and cab companies and charity bags for unwanted clothes.

After looking in on Travis, who is curled up on his side in bed facing away from the door so I can’t tell if he’s awake or not, I take the pile of post to the sofa and rip open the envelope on the top.

* * *

All this time Kim has been convinced Jessica Gold was hiding something and now she has the evidence. This photograph of Dominic Lacey, with Jessica Gold’s niece in the background, can’t be a coincidence and it proves there’s a link between them that predates Christmas Eve. She goes back through the photos, paying special attention to the backgrounds. Finally she finds it, another selfie in a park somewhere. Dominic is in the foreground and there in the background on a bench are two girls in school ties and short skirts with the waistbands rolled up in that way they all wear them. The one on the left is Grace Gold.

Now there can be no doubting that there was absolutely nothing random about Jessica Gold being in Dominic Lacey’s apartment. In both images the girl seems completely unaware of Lacey’s presence, as if he’s a total stranger, which leads Kim to believe the pictures must be a warning. She takes a deep breath in, trying to calm her racing nerves. And then she gets a piece of printer paper and writes down everything she now knows about Jessica Gold.

* * *

Dear Jessica

I hope you’re recovering after your traumatic ordeal.

You might be aware that the
Chronicle
newspaper has been a constant champion of yours over the days of your imprisonment. We have kept the story in the public eye and canvassed tirelessly for information that might lead to your release.

Now that you’re thankfully free, we’d love to build our relationship further by inviting you to collaborate with a series of exclusives telling your story in your own words. I don’t need to tell you that our newspaper has a readership of millions throughout the world and this would be your chance to share your experience with a wide global audience. It goes without saying that we would handle the whole story with our trademark sensitivity and tact.

I understand that after what you’ve been through you might be reluctant to trust anyone, but, having worked with other victims in similar situations to yours, I would strongly advise you not to bottle up your feelings. Many of the victims I have worked with in the past have said they felt a tremendous release through sharing what happened to them and have ended up grateful for the opportunity.

I should point out that there is a tremendous amount of public interest in your story, Jessica, so the press will be focusing on it whether or not you give your cooperation. How much better then to have your story told accurately and in a way that you can control? Though I completely understand that no amount of money can mitigate for the nightmare you’ve endured, we would of course recompense you for your time. In return for a series of exclusive interviews with photographs plus global syndication rights we would be prepared to offer you £175,000. For that we would expect you to sign an immediate and exclusive contract and commit to spending at least three days with me at a secret location.

I know this might sound extreme, but we have a lot of experience of dealing with cases like yours and this is the only way to guarantee that your story is told fully and without factual errors that might add to your distress.

Please reply at your earliest convenience and be assured of our continuing good wishes.

* * *

The letters all have different wording, and different numbers after the pound sign, but they are all essentially saying the same thing. My story, or my ‘ordeal’, as most of them prefer to call it, is a valuable commodity. I sit back against the sofa cushions, surrounded by paper. I’ve been offered serializations in the biggest newspapers in the country. Someone wants me to write a book. A Hollywood A-lister wants to play me in a film. She’s very beautiful and at least a foot taller than me, but that doesn’t seem to matter. All in all the various letters on the cushions around me add up to millions of pounds. Even just one of the bigger offers would mean I could quit my job in the archive and move out of my flat.

It means Dominic and Natalie, even Travis, won’t have won.

It means I can pay to get rid of that tattoo Natalie did on my hip.

It means I can start to live.

* * *

Now that Kim is calmer, the full importance of what she has found is starting to sink in. The photographs linking Dominic to Jessica mean she is vindicated in believing Jessica didn’t fit his pattern. There’s no doubt he was a very dangerous man, Kim is sure of that. Sometimes at night in Heather’s uncomfortable spare bed, she imagines a pair of blue eyes burning at her through the darkness and she has to switch the reading light on. Without question he has caused people to die – his sister, Cesca, Sam. But kidnap? Murder? That wasn’t his style.

The two photographs will change the whole direction of the case. The photographs of him with Jessica’s niece must be part of some kind of blackmail. Instinctively she thinks of the other photograph on the fake Facebook page, and how she’d been shocked at Jessica’s lack of anger against the man who’d taken advantage of her in this way. Now an explanation is occurring to her. What if that man was Dominic Lacey? What if that’s why she wasn’t more outraged – because she’d already dealt with him? What if that was why Lacey picked her in the first place, despite her being about as far from ‘his type’ as possible – because they already knew each other?

Later, after she’s had time to assimilate the facts, her conviction grows. She believes Jessica Gold was involved with Lacey – perhaps only briefly – but long enough for him to take photographs which he could then use to blackmail her into coming back for more. A private person like Jessica, coming from a protective family, would have gone to extreme lengths to keep those kinds of photographs from being exposed.

And when the blackmail stopped working, perhaps he threatened to attack her niece. Kim tries to think herself into Jessica Gold’s shoes, backed into a corner by a depraved psychopath and now finding out that her niece, to whom she is clearly very close, is in danger too. By this stage she might have learned what had happened to his first wife and would have known that once he had you, he would never, ever let you go.

So she came up with this elaborate kidnap story to get rid of him once and for all. Maybe she even had help. Natalie Lacey also had a lot to gain from seeing Dominic dead. Kim can’t help wondering at the coincidence of her miraculous return to life at this particular point in time.

And someone finished Lacey off in the hospital. Could Jessica have been behind that too?

Kim knows this is largely conjecture, but she’s convinced she is on to something. The photograph of Dominic Lacey with Jessica Gold’s niece is the jigsaw piece that will start slotting everything together.

This is the kind of discovery that doesn’t come along often in a detective’s life. She will get that promotion. She is sure of it. For a moment she allows herself to imagine the sweet moment of triumph as she’s called into the boss’s office to be told the news.

Then she forces herself to imagine going home at the end of that day to an empty house. No one to celebrate with. Sean will fight her for custody, she knows it, just as she knows that the erratic hours she’d be working would mean he’d have a good chance of success. And even if he didn’t and she had the children half the time or even full-time, would it be fair to leave them with a nanny or an au pair when they could be with a father who loved them? For the first time, Kim allows herself to acknowledge the truth she’s been trying to ignore – that being part of a family again means taking a step back, renouncing her ambition.

She takes another look at the two photographs on the screen in front of her. None of the other officers would have spotted Grace Gold. Only she and Martin have ever come across her and she very much doubts Martin even registered the girl’s presence. He certainly wouldn’t be able to pick her out in a crowd. It’s only by fluke that Kim herself noticed her. She scrolls down the contacts list in her phone until she finds Robertson’s home number and writes it down on the paper in front of her.

Jessica will be arrested, Kim supposes. And charged either with murder or attempted murder. Either way she will go to prison.

An image of Liz and Edward Gold pops into Kim’s mind. That close-knit family will be torn apart. She imagines them visiting Jessica in prison, shocked at the change in their daughter. Kim knows how tough it is in there for people who are different, for those who don’t understand how to fit in.

It goes round and round in her head – the kids, the promotion, Jessica Gold, Grace Gold, Dominic Lacey and the trail of devastation he’s left in his wake – until she feels like she’s going to explode with it all. She wishes she could speak to Sean. He has a way of calming her down when cases are getting on top of her. Impulsively she brings up his name on her phone, only to remember just in time that she can’t call him up for a chat, not unless she’s willing to do what he’s asked.

She sits at her desk with her head in her hands and her eyes flick between the paper in front of her where Robertson’s number is scrawled in blue biro and to her phone where the screen reads simply
My Sean
(to differentiate him from Sean the Plumber a few entries down).

Robertson, Sean, Robertson, Sean. Back and forth until her eyes can no longer focus.

Then she picks up her phone and dials.

EPILOGUE

The new studio is everything the Wood Green flat wasn’t. Generous proportions, floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on to a peaceful, leafy Hampstead street. Just one room but full of light and space. Everything in the studio is white – walls, sofa, wide wooden floorboards, rug. Everything is pure and uncontaminated.

It’s mid-December and outside, even in this smart area of London, reminders of Christmas are everywhere, from the silver fairy lights threaded through the trees in the front gardens to the heavy wreaths, studded with dried fruit, hanging from wide stained-glass-panelled doors. But here in my flat, there is no trace of the festive season. No cards lined up on the mantelpiece of the white marble fireplace, no pervasive smell of Norwegian spruce. I don’t even own a television through which to be bombarded by advertisements for perfume and gold-wrapped chocolates.

I lie back against the sofa cushions and lift my face to the direct winter sunlight that pours through the huge windows. Taking a deep breath in, I close my eyes, giving myself permission to relax completely. And that’s when I hear it.

‘Hello, sweetheart,’ he says, before I can stop him, his voice smooth like treacle. ‘You didn’t think I’d leave you on your own for Christmas, did you? After everything we went through together?

‘
Silly
old Jessica Gold.’

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I’d like to thank my wonderful editor Jane Lawson for a) indulging me when I said I’d like to try writing a crime book, b) coming up with the suggestion of setting it at Christmas and c) wielding her scary red pen to such brutal but brilliant effect. I feel so lucky to continue to be published by Transworld and thanks go out to the whole team there, especially Larry Finlay, Leanne Oliver, Marianne Velmans, Kate Samano and, of course, the unsung heroes of the sales team, without whom none of this would be possible.

Massive thanks also to Felicity Blunt, agent extraordinaire, in whose office many of the twists and turns of
Dying for Christmas
were thrashed out, and to her wonderfully calm and kind assistant, Emma Herdman. Thanks also to the brilliant Sophie Harris in the Curtis Brown foreign rights department, and to Deborah Schneider in New York.

As usualy my first reader, Rikki Finegold, gave generously of her time and kept her ‘what kind of sick mind …’ comments to a minimum, for which I am hugely grateful. I’m grateful also to Fraser Macnaught, whose raised eyebrows at synopsis stage made me realize how much work I still had left to do. Still more gratitude goes to Roma Cartwright, Mel Amos, Juliet Brown, Fiona Godfrey, Ben Clarke, Maria Trkulja, Mark Heholt, Helen Bates, Cathy Hood, Dill Hammond, Stephen Griffiths, Jo Lockwood and Ed Needham for being the kind of friends everyone should have.

I’ve had a lot of support from fellow writers while agonizing over
Dying for Christmas
, especially Louise Millar, Amanda Jennings and Lisa Jewell. I’d also like to thank all the book bloggers who’ve got behind me and my books – too many to name individually but you’re all brilliant.