Killing Rachel (16 page)

‘This door had a padlock but it just came apart when I fiddled with it, like it was only there for show.’

He pushed the door open and they walked into a big dark space. It had a musty damp smell. Up against the back wall was a boat. It was covered in tarpaulin and sat up high on wooden struts. Rose could see its hull curving down underneath the rubber covering and for a second she was reminded of the violin she owned that sat in her drawer at Anna’s house, unused for months.

Joshua was at the door. ‘Look at the house.’

He walked up to the front of the cottage. The door was solid wood and had two padlocks, one at the top and one three-quarters of the way down.

‘One of these is newer than the other,’ he said.

He cupped the lower padlock in his hand. It was brassy and looked as if it had been recently attached. Rose looked away, behind the plot. She could see fields and a copse. The sound of a car could be heard in the distance but she couldn’t see any movement. It was a private place not overlooked by any other buildings. But so what?

‘How can you be sure this has anything to do with Brendan? There are probably dozens of buildings like this all along this coastline.’

‘I knew you wouldn’t believe me.’

‘Aren’t you just grasping at straws?’

He shook his head.

‘I just know. This place was marked on Dad’s map. It
feels
like the right place. In any case . . .’

She sighed and turned away. The breeze pulled her hair this way and that. What was she doing here? In the middle of nowhere? It was like no coastline she had ever visited and as far as she could tell she had never been anywhere like this with her mother or with Brendan and Joshua when they had lived together.

‘I knew you would be like this,’ Joshua said. ‘I wouldn’t have brought you here unless I was sure. Look.’

He took something out of his jacket pocket. It was the key ring he had got from the file of his dad’s belongings. He held it out to her. It hung in the air between them.

‘What?’

‘Take it,’ he said.

She took it from him, looking puzzled.

‘Open the top padlock.’

She looked round at the door.

‘It opens the lock? You’ve already done it?’

‘Just open it, Rosie. Just to satisfy yourself,’ he said, more sternly.

She walked to the door and reached up to the silver padlock, tarnished and grimy-looking. The key in contrast was bright and shiny. She slid it into the lock and tried to turn it. It wouldn’t budge so she went on tiptoes and tried again and it turned, the padlock opening like the claw of a crab.

‘Oh.’

‘This is it, Rosie. This place is something to do with Dad and Kathy and what happened to them. If I had a crowbar I could get the other padlock off and look inside.’

‘Break in?’

‘Not today, no. But I’m seeing Colin Crabtree again this morning so I should be able to get some more information on it. I’m also going to contact our solicitors. If this place is Dad’s, then it should belong to me now. Then I can get into it legally.’

If this place is Dad’s
. Whenever Joshua got excited about finding something out he always assigned it to Brendan. He seemed to forget that her
mother
went missing as well.

‘We should get back,’ she said, shivering.

‘Can’t you at least pretend to be interested?’

‘In what? Some derelict building? Maybe it is your dad’s. Maybe he did own it but
look
, no one’s been here for years. It doesn’t tell us anything!’

Joshua blew through his teeth and walked off back in the direction of the coastal path. He was annoyed with her. What had he expected? She followed him and thought back some weeks to when they’d first found out startling things about their parents’ disappearance. She had been sceptical but he had drawn her into it and she had hoped that something would emerge from their search.

Then he had been right to push her.

‘Josh,’ she called after him but he didn’t turn round.

She hurried after him.

She was sceptical. The cottage felt like nothing to do with anything. This seemed like something of Joshua and Brendan’s. Possibly some holiday home that Brendan had bought and tried to renovate for a while. Maybe it was when Joshua was a baby or toddler and he had some deep memories of it. So what if the key was in Brendan’s stuff next to a place marked on a map. Wouldn’t Brendan necessarily have a key to it if it was his holiday home?

But geographically this place didn’t feel important at all. Her mother and Brendan went missing after having a meal in a restaurant in Islington, in the heart of London. Rose and Joshua now knew that they had taken a plane to Warsaw. After that there was no further information.

Except for the notebooks and the picture of Viktor Baranski, the Russian man who had been found dead off the North Norfolk coast. But Rose had no idea if the notebooks had anything to do with her mother and Brendan or if they were just some weird possession of Frank Richards, the man who had told them that their parents were alive.

Frank Richards. She’d thought about him just the previous evening. She pictured him weeks before as he’d walked out of his flat, pulling a suitcase on wheels behind him. He’d put his arm out to hail a taxi, then gave her the phone number. It was his job, Frank Richards told her, to look after her while her mother was out of her life.

Was it true? Or just some fantasy of a deranged man? He had certainly shown, by other things that he had done, that he was dangerous and unpredictable. But Rose had kept the phone number, anyway. She’d tapped it into her mobile with the name Frank Richards as if he was just like any other contact she had. Now and then she’d taken her phone out and accessed the number and just stared at it. The numerals sat solidly on the tiny screen and yet to her the letters were indistinct and fragile.

‘Come on, Rose.’

Joshua was calling her
Rose
. This almost always meant that he was upset. The car was up ahead and she was glad to get in out of the chilly breeze.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said when they were sitting in the car. ‘I should have been more positive. I just don’t seem to be able to take this seriously.’

‘Because of what I told you about my dad’s jumper? The idea of anything
supernatural
?’

She shrugged. She thought of Juliet Baker supposedly appearing in the school almost two years after she committed suicide.

‘Not everything can be explained by science,’ he said.

‘That’s the last thing I ever thought I’d hear you say.’

‘Years ago people said that schizophrenics were possessed by the devil. Now they understand the disease and know that people really
hear
voices. There’s nothing supernatural about it.’

‘So?’

‘So maybe that feeling I had isn’t anything to do with ghosts, maybe it’s some sort of psychic energy. We don’t understand it now but in years to come . . .’

Rose couldn’t stop shaking her head.

‘Right,’ Joshua said in a clipped voice, starting the car, doing a rapid reverse up the tiny car park. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything.’

He drove out of the car park and down the lane. Once on the road he speeded up and they sat in silence the whole way back to the school. When they arrived at the gate she noticed, with surprise, that it was almost 10.30.

‘I’ve got to get my stuff from the pub, see Colin Crabtree and then I’ll come and pick you up. Shall I say one o’clock? Here or up at the school?’ he said in a flat voice.

‘At the school,’ she said.

She got out of the car. He drove off without waving. She huffed. She was cross with herself. Why couldn’t she have pretended she believed it? What difference would it have made? Crossing the road to the school entrance she was reminded of Tania Miller getting into Tim Baker’s BMW. She wondered if it was significant or just another random fact that had nothing to do with anything else.

SIXTEEN

Back at Mary Linton there was over an hour to go until she was due to meet Rachel’s parents. She decided to get a coffee and a sandwich from the refectory. She saw Molly sitting on her own and after she’d paid she walked across and sat down opposite her.

‘Hi,’ she said.

‘Hello, Rose.’

‘How are you feeling?’

‘All right.’

‘Where’s Amanda?’

‘Not sure.’

There was an uneasy silence. Rose spoke.

‘So you and Rachel became friends,’ she said softly, undoing the cellophane on her sandwich.

‘Yes.’

‘How did that happen? I mean, how did you hook up together?’

‘We were in some of the same classes. She was kind of fed up with the kids in the common room and so we spent a lot of time in her room.’

Rose didn’t comment. It sounded like Rachel.

‘I know Amanda didn’t rate Rachel and I know you fell out with her but I liked her.’

‘Did you know that Rachel thought she’d seen a ghost?’

Molly nodded.

‘She wrote and told me about it. She was quite upset . . .’

‘Wrote to you?’

‘Three letters. I brought them with me and gave them to the police.’

‘She didn’t say.’

‘She was obviously going through a bad time. It was good that she had you here.’

Molly seemed ill at ease. She was fiddling with a slide in her hair, taking it off, putting it back on again.

‘Rachel made me swear not to tell anyone about the ghost. She was afraid people would think she had gone mad. She saw it once in her room and then at night down by the car park. She said it looked like Juliet Baker.’

‘Was she was just making it up?’

‘No. It really seemed as though she
believed
it.’

‘But with Rachel it was often difficult to tell when she was telling the truth. She was a strange girl.’

Molly looked thoughtful.

‘She did get depressed. When it started, this ghost stuff, I asked her if she thought that it might have something to do with guilt feelings about Juliet Baker’s death. You know how they say that when people commit suicide their family and friends suffer with guilt. Because they think they should have done something? Then she got
really
upset.
What have I got to feel guilty about?
she said.
I’ve got nothing to feel guilty about. Juliet Baker killed herself because of her father. Nothing to do with me!
’

‘Her father?’

‘He was a gardener here, in the school. He lost his job. He wasn’t here long and then he was made redundant.’

‘That’s right. He was a gardener. I remember Rachel telling me when I first knew her,’ Rose said, trying to picture the various men who had pottered around the gardens over the years.

‘Anyhow, getting made redundant upset him badly, that’s what Rachel told me.’

‘What’s that got to do with Juliet’s suicide?’

‘It wasn’t long after that she died.’

Rose bit her lip. The second half of her sandwich sat uneaten.

‘Here’s Amanda,’ Molly said.

Molly waved and Rose looked over to the swing doors and saw Amanda walking into the refectory. She came straight across to them. She had her laptop under her arm and some books in her hand. She got to the table and laid them all down. She looked fed up.

‘Finished the essay?’ Molly asked.

‘First draft. Hi, Rose!’

She began to pat her pockets and tutted.

‘What’s up?’ Molly said.

‘I must have left my phone in the library!’

‘I’ll get it,’ Molly said, getting straight up. ‘You sit there. You look tired out. Where were you sitting?’

‘In the carrel by the stained-glass window.’

‘Back in a mo!’

Rose watched Molly walk off across the refectory, sidestepping tables and darting out of the door. She wanted to roll her eyes at Amanda, but Amanda was looking after Molly with concern.

‘One minute she’s OK, the next she’s in floods of tears. I think she should go home for a break.’

‘She seems genuinely upset about it.’

‘She liked Rachel. One of the few who did. I think Rachel just used her. She needed someone to let her back into the building when she was bunking off with Tim Baker.’

‘When they went out in the BMW?’

‘Not just that,’ Amanda said, looking round and lowering her voice. ‘Molly told me they used to go into the boathouse. His father had a key from when he worked in the school. Tim used it whenever he wanted to . . .’

‘The boathouse?’ she said, picturing Tim Baker with his smart clothes and good looks through the dusty windows of the boathouse. The only thing she had ever seen in there were boats and spiders’ webs.