‘I’m sorry for bringing all this back.’ Carrigan reached his hand out, then, thinking better of it, pulled it back.
‘Don’t be,’ Donna replied. ‘They might be bad memories, but they’re still memories.’
He could see a deep sadness settle behind her eyes and he changed tack. ‘Did you know any of her friends? Boyfriends? Anyone she was especially close to?’
Donna shrugged as she watched a squirrel lean and quiver in the wind. ‘I tried to avoid them when I could. They were not the kind of people I liked socialising with. Always so angry and bitter about the world and so full of unrealistic expectations and empty slogans. They just depressed me. Besides, people came and went all the time, found other things to get angry about. The only constant was Geoff.’
‘Geoff?’
‘Geoff Shorter. He was Emily’s first proper boyfriend. They met in her second year at Leeds and moved in together during her finals. They broke up last year. She told me he was acting all weird about it.’
Carrigan leaned forward, the chair legs scraping against the gravel. ‘Weird in what way?’
‘She didn’t say. But it doesn’t surprise me. When I first met Geoff I thought he would be good for her, drag her out of the swamp she’d sunk herself into, but if anything he only made her worse.’
‘How?’
Donna sighed and crossed her legs. ‘Geoff’s one of those identikit guilty rich white boys. His parents own some massive castle in Herefordshire, been in the family for centuries and all that, and he dabbles in all this activism and protest as a way to get back at his parents and his upbringing and to convince himself he isn’t exactly like them.’ She snuffled and finished the remains of her drink. ‘They never realise that for other people it’s a matter of life and death.’
‘I take it you’re not his biggest fan?’
‘He was a bad influence on Emily. He encouraged all her craziness and rage, I think it even turned him on. You should talk to him,’ Donna said, facing Carrigan. ‘He spent much more time with her in London than I did, he’d know who she hung out with, what she was up to . . .’ She looked down at the green water and hung her head. ‘Whatever trouble Emily got herself into, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Geoff was behind it.’
29
She’d always hated this pub, which, of course, was why he chose it.
He was late and that wasn’t anything new either. Geneva waited, a White Russian cooling her palms, the day’s notes and typed reports spread out in front of her. Before talking to Father Spaulding she was almost ready to be convinced that Carrigan was right, but the monk’s story had changed that.
All she knew for certain was that Holden had lied.
He’d told her the dispute between the convent and diocese was nothing important and yet Spaulding had said that the nuns were on the verge of being excommunicated. What could have led to such an extreme measure? She thought about the bank transfers, the trips to Lima, the missing nun, ignoring the swelling noise and merriment surrounding her. She reread interview transcripts as people laughed and kissed and bought each other drinks, their faces red and bright, clothes smeared wet and shiny with snow. She closed her notebook and pulled out her phone.
‘We know about Chiapeltec,’ she said, and heard Holden inhaling sharply on the other end of the line. ‘We know that the nuns weren’t travelling to Peru for conferences and we know about Sister Rose’s disappearance. We need to talk to Father McCarthy. He was a regular visitor and can tell us what the convent was up to. He was also the last person to be seen leaving the building.’
‘I’m afraid that’s impossible,’ Holden replied.
‘There are other ways to find him,’ Geneva said. ‘Ways you may not like.’ There was a pause, a staticky silence which made her think he’d hung up. ‘Why do I get the impression you’re not dying to know who killed your nuns?’
‘Your impressions are of no concern to me,’ Holden replied. ‘And Father McCarthy is on retreat and therefore cannot be disturbed. This is something we take very seriously in the church.’
‘And we take the murder of eleven people very seriously, Mr Holden. Why has he suddenly decided to go on retreat? What kind of retreat are we talking about?’
There was a measured silence, thick with hum and crackle. ‘It’s a delicate matter,’ Holden finally said, and his voice now seemed to be coming from further away.
‘So is the case of a missing nun which the diocese refuses to acknowledge.’
‘Damn it,’ Holden snapped. ‘You won’t give up, will you?’ She could hear him sigh and tap something against his desk. ‘Father McCarthy has taken time off to face up to certain issues.’
She was about to answer, then stopped, realising what Holden was saying between the words. ‘Are you telling me he’s in rehab, not on retreat? That he just decided to check in the day after the fire?’
‘I’m not saying anything, Miss Miller, I’m just explaining the situation . . .’
‘Then why can’t we just speak to him?’
‘These facilities are private, and can only function if they remain so. Now, if you . . .’
Geneva was no longer listening. A date caught her eye in one of the files, a date she’d not paid attention to before. Something tripped, some switch in her brain, and she ended the call and pulled out the papers from her files until she found the one detailing the nuns’ recent trips to Peru. She checked the dates against the travel documents.
‘I’m glad to see you’re finally going through the papers.’
She snapped her head up and was startled to see Oliver peering down at her, a smile that was all teeth spread across his face. She quickly cleared the pages off the table, almost spilling her drink, Oliver catching it just in time, grinning, saying, ‘What would you do without me, Geneva?’
She was about to answer but there was no point. Everything she said Oliver would use as further ammunition against her. Three years of marriage had taught her that if nothing else. ‘It’s work,’ she snapped, not making eye contact, shuffling the papers back into her bag, wishing she was anywhere but here.
Oliver sat down and took a long sip of his bitter, the foam covering his top lip, his perfect fingernails tapping against the glass. Just looking at him made her feel queasy, the eroded years and restless nights coming back to her – the time they’d spent up north, her thinking this was the thing she’d been waiting for all these years, and then seeing him for what he really was and knowing she’d made the worst decision of her life. That long year of fretting and plotting and getting the nerve up. Telling him one night, her bags already packed, a friend outside waiting to collect her.
And, yes, that night – the screaming, fists and hurled accusations. Then came the threats and ravaged pleas, running out of the house and into her friend’s car, Oliver’s voice receding as they wound through the narrow streets of the spa town towards the train station where she hid in a photo booth, hoodie covering her face, until the train arrived, then the slow stifled journey south and the final humiliation, asking her mother if she could stay with her for a while.
‘You’re looking good,’ Oliver said, tearing her from the onrushing past. ‘Not easy for a woman to keep up with the years.’
Like all his compliments, even when they were still in love, this one came with hooks and barbs attached. ‘Can’t say the same for you,’ she replied, and though she’d said it to spite him, she realised that he really had aged, his good looks forming a hard shell over his bones, the youthful glimmer of danger in his eyes now sublimated to something feral and cunning, something you know to get away from as soon as you see it.
‘Always the charmer, Geneva. Good to see you haven’t changed.’ He had a packet of cheese and onion crisps ripped open in front of him. He stuffed a handful into his mouth and continued talking. ‘You remember the last time we met like this?’
Geneva nodded, hoping it would end this part of the conversation, but Oliver wasn’t prepared to let it go. ‘I think you said you loved me and we’d be together forever.’
‘That was a long time ago.’
Oliver crunched some more crisps and his voice turned hard and cold. ‘You left me, Geneva. Jesus. You left me. You don’t know how much that hurt.’
‘This is what you called me up for?’ She splashed the glass down, the liquid sloshing and spilling all over the table but she didn’t care. She was certain everyone in the room was looking at them, all these happy celebrating couples watching her and Oliver bicker and blame across a pub table. ‘Look, Oliver, I’m busy. You called me up, said you wanted to sort this thing out, just you and me, no lawyers or any of that, and all you’re doing is fucking reminiscing.’
‘Being a cop hasn’t exactly made you into a nice person.’
‘Who the fuck wants a nice person, Oliver? I am what I always was. You call me up out of the blue last year, tell me you’re taking the house away from me, what the fuck do you expect?’
He took a folded sheet of paper from a leather briefcase by his feet. He carefully smoothed it out on the table. ‘I expect you to sign this, is what I expect. It’s the best deal you’re going to get.’
She took the paper from him, scanned it quickly and saw that nothing had changed, his lawyer suing for the proceeds of the house even though they’d bought it together. Oliver had paid the deposit and she’d paid the monthly repayments. The divorce had finally come through a couple of months ago, the house sold, but the money was still locked in litigation.
‘I need that money, Oliver,’ she said, immediately hating herself for having revealed so much to him.
‘I know you do,’ he smiled, flecks of crisps dancing across his teeth. ‘Sign now and you’ll get ten thousand pounds.’
‘You’re joking?’ She stared up at him and saw that he wasn’t. ‘The house sold for half a million.’
She glanced back down at the contract, reading through the dense technical language, feeling her face burning up with each word. She wanted to be through with this, to never see or hear from Oliver again, but her equity in the house was the only savings she had. Without it she’d never be able to buy another flat. She looked up at him and saw that he was enjoying this, a gleeful spark animating his face.
‘You should do it for your mother, Geneva, if not for me.’
The sudden change in topic threw her off balance and she wrapped her fingers tightly round her empty glass. ‘What’s Katrina got to do with it?’
‘How much money do you have in your savings? How long do you think it’ll last?’ Oliver asked. ‘I can drag this through the courts for months and if I win, which I will, you’ll be liable for all costs and, since your mother was your guarantor on the house, what you can’t pay will be taken from her.’
She stared at him, stunned. ‘You looked into our finances?’
‘It’s what I do, Geneva, remember? It’s my job.’ He leaned forward across the table and she could smell his breath and see the curl of satisfaction on his top lip.
She closed her eyes and felt her stomach lurch. She thought of her mother fleeing from Czechoslovakia, working nights behind the counter of a cheap hotel to save for a flat. She picked up the contract and ripped it in half. Then ripped it in half again. ‘Good enough for you?’ She threw the shredded paper across the table, oblivious to the stares and startled looks she was receiving from the other drinkers. ‘Take me to court if you want,’ she said. ‘Bring as many lawyers as you can, but I’m telling you now, watch your back.’
‘Are you threatening me?’ Oliver said in mock outrage, the tone he’d increasingly used in those final months of their marriage.
Geneva smiled a thin pale smile. ‘Yes. Yes I am. You do one thing wrong, you slip up in any conceivable way, and I’ll make sure you’ll go down for it. I may not have your money or connections but I have friends up there in North Yorks as well as the Met. They’ll be watching you, remember that.’
The wet slap and pound of her shoes on the pavement beat in time with her heart. She’d come to the meeting prepared and unwilling to lose her composure and yet five minutes with Oliver could undo all her best intentions. She felt a rippling fury running through her body, as if a layer of skin had been stripped off. She stopped at the corner of the high street, pulled out her cigarettes and lit one. She dragged hard and felt her heart rate slow, the buzzing in her brain begin to settle. She watched the clasped forms of couples drifting in and out of pubs or huddling in freezing bus stops, their arms wrapped tightly around each other, and she looked away. She had no one she could turn to for advice, no one she could tell.
There was a dive bar a few streets away and it made a whole lot more sense than going back to her empty living room and falling asleep on the sofa again. She walked past the swarming pubs and all-night grocery shops, then cut down an alley which connected the two high streets, thinking about the case so that she wouldn’t keep thinking about Oliver. She knew Carrigan had been right when he’d said that the intersection of the nuns and Emily would prove to be the key. How had they made contact? Geneva couldn’t even begin to imagine. They came from such different backgrounds but at some particular moment in time they had met and that meeting had resulted in eleven dead bodies. She was still thinking about this when she looked up and there he was.
Fifty feet ahead of her, motionless, blocking the alley.
She squinted against the bright streetlights but could make out only his shadow. She should have known Oliver wouldn’t let her get away so easily, that had never been his style, but this was something else, an escalation she’d glimpsed in his face earlier – sending letters, bombarding her phone, and now following her out here.
She stopped and waited for him to move but he did not move. She waited for him to speak, to light a cigarette, pull out his phone, anything that might explain why he was standing still in the middle of an alleyway, but there was no tell-tale flicker of light or comforting series of digital beeps. Sirens wailed and faded into the night behind her. She felt for her belt but there was nothing there, she’d checked in her truncheon and mace when she’d signed off for the day. ‘Oliver?’ she said, trying to keep her voice steady. ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’
She took a couple of steps forward. The angle of the streetlights shifted. The man standing in the alley wasn’t Oliver.
She stood struck and still as his shadow emerged from the blinding glare and she saw that he was both shorter and wider than her ex-husband. Her heart started beating in her ears, a loud tidal pulse she tried to drown out. The man hadn’t moved but he was looking directly at her, a faint smile on his face. She turned around, ready to retreat, and saw that another man was blocking her exit. He was much taller than the first man and he was coming towards her.
She spun around and froze and looked at the short man, the eagle tattoo spreading down his neck. He returned her look, grinned and took a step forward. She glanced up at the fences bordering the alley, topped with glass or razor wire, impossible to scale, and knew that her only chance was in making the first move.
The men were getting steadily closer, taking their time, teasing it out, knowing she had nowhere to run. Eagle-neck looked fast and vicious but the other man looked slow and clumsy despite his height. There was no time to reach for her phone. No one to hear her screams.
She tensed her legs and fists and ran at the tall man, seeing a gap to his side, her feet slipping on the pavement as she faked right and ducked left, but the man had anticipated her and he twisted and shuffled and blocked her run. She felt as if she’d slammed into a brick wall, all the air exploding from her lungs in one crushed breath. She swung uselessly with her fist but the tall man effortlessly trapped it in his palm, gently crushing all the resistance out of her.
Eagle-neck’s breathing turned erratic and heavy as he approached, the hot animal smell of his presence making it all seem suddenly very real. Geneva looked in his eyes and could tell that her life didn’t mean anything to him and that he would just as soon snuff it out as he would a burning match and she realised she was scared, scared as she’d never been before in the job, knowing she was looking at a new kind of adversary.
The tall man let go of her fist and secured her arms, making it impossible for her to move. Eagle-neck came to a stop beside her and lit a cigarette, the smoke curling through his dark stubble and disappearing into the night.