“It’s Howard. Gaby’s dad.”
“What? Has he been taken ill?”
“No. He’s disappeared.”
“What do you mean, Stephen?”
“A car was ordered to take him back after the party last night. He got into it, and that’s the last anyone saw of him. He never made it home.”
Twelve
“Have you rung them?” asked Jude, as soon as she walked in from shopping.
“No.”
Gita spoke with defiant truculence. She was stretched over one of the draped sofas in the Woodside Cottage sitting room, but not in an attitude of relaxation. Her body was taut. She couldn’t get comfortable. The television was on, some lunchtime soap, but she didn’t seem able to concentrate on the screen.
“It’s a good idea.”
“I don’t know…”
“Yes, you do. You’re a professional journalist. You told me at breakfast that it was a good idea.”
“I know, but…”
“You woke up with the idea, you were full of it, you said it was the kind of feature you could write standing on your head, and there were at least half a dozen magazine editors who would snap it up.”
“Mm.”
“So why haven’t you rung any of them?”
“Because…” Gita leant forward and clasped her arms round her shins, making herself into a bundle ofmisery. “Because…I know I could have done it. I know the old me could have done it. I just don’t think – now all my confidence has gone – I don’t think I can do anything.”
She sounded so low, too abject even for tears. Instinctively Jude sat down on the sofa and enveloped her friend in a large hug. Gita’s body stayed tense. She sighed hopelessly. “I don’t think I am getting any better, you know, Jude.”
“You are, love. You are. You had the idea for the feature. That’s the first one you’ve had since you were ill.”
“Yes, but I still can’t follow it through.”
“You will. In time. Come on, you’ve just got to make one phone call.”
“I can’t. Oh, I’m sorry, Jude.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry for.”
“There is. I know how sickeningly spineless I’m being. I know how infuriating I am. God, I bore myself the way I keep moaning on about the same things, round and round.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“And you have to keep saying the same things back at me.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry for.”
“You must be sick to death of me.”
“I’m not, Gita. Because, you see, I have the advantage of you.”
“In what way?”
“I know you’re going to get better.”
Gita broke out into a little, despairing laugh. And then the tears came. Jude continued to hold her, as the body in her arms shook with the regular unloading of grief. It was all she could do, but probably also the most valuable thing she could do.
Calmly, over Gita’s heaving shoulders, Jude watched the lunchtime television news.
A man’s body had been found in a burnt-out car on the outskirts of Harlow in Essex.
Harlow, thought Jude. That’s where Carole’s just been. But it can’t have anything to do with her.
In her neat white Renault, driving down the M23 towards the South Coast, Carole heard the same news on the radio. And she had an awful feeling it might have something to do with her.
As soon as she got back to High Tor, she found a television news bulletin. Little was added to the information she already had. The body of a man had been found in a burnt-out car driven some way into Epping Forest off the B1393 road near Harlow. That was it. To Carole, in spite of the horror, it seemed appropriate, confirming her image of Epping Forest as a depository for the bodies of murder victims.
She rang Stephen on his mobile. He was still in Harlow. “I’m at the hotel. Gaby’s with her mother, but they didn’t want me there. Marie’s in a very nervous state.”
Even in the circumstances, Carole couldn’t help thinking, Marie’s always in a very nervous state. “Has there been any sign of Howard?”
“Well…” At the other end of the phone, Carole could hear her son swallow. “Mum, I think it’s going to be bad news.”
In her fever of anticipation she didn’t notice his use of ‘Mum’. “I heard something on the radio about a body in a burnt-out car in Epping Forest. Surely that wasn’t…?”
“It looks horribly as if it was. The police have been round to the flat. They haven’t got a positive identification yet, but they’ve said we should prepare ourselves for the worst.”
“Oh, God…”
“The body’s burnt beyond recognition, but apparently it’s the right sort of age. They’re going to have to check dental records, or perhaps even DNA – though that may not be easy, because, just to add to the confusion, Phil seems to have disappeared.”
“What?”
“Apparently he didn’t turn up for work this morning.”
“Stephen, what on earth’s going on?”
“If I knew that, I’d tell you. It just all seems extremely nasty.”
“But what were the circumstances? When was Howard last seen alive – I mean, assuming he’s not alive now?”
“Gaby and I didn’t actually see him leave, because we were saying goodbye to some other people, but, according to Robert, a car had been ordered for Howard; it arrived at the hotel, and he went off in it. That’s the last time he was seen. Then early this morning somebody reported this burnt-out car off the B1393.”
“Was it the same car Howard left the hotel in?”
“Can’t be certain, because nobody can remember exactly what kind of car came to collect him, but the police think it’s possible.”
“So…what? Did the car crash into a tree and burst into flames?”
“No. According to the police, except for the fire, the car appeared to be undamaged.”
“And” – Carole pieced the known facts together – “there was only one body in the car?”
“Yes.”
“So what happened to the driver?”
“That, I would imagine, is the number-one question the police are currently asking. Who was driving the car.”
“And where is he now?”
The next day the police confirmed that the body found in the Essex lay-by was that of seventy-nine-year-old Howard Martin from Harlow. And he hadn’t been killed by the fire; he had been strangled before the car was set alight.
Thirteen
When Carole received that news from Stephen, she knew she had to talk to Jude. On her own. But with Gita in residence at Woodside Cottage, dropping round unannounced was not as simple as usual. So she telephoned.
The timing was good. Gita had an appointment that day with her doctor in London. Jude had initially been reluctant to let her go on her own, but Gita had insisted. Jude, welcoming this new resolution in her friend, had not argued further. Though determined to be supportive, she could not deny that the task of continuously bolstering Gita’s seesawing confidence was an exhausting one.
Carole and Jude met at High Tor, and Carole was so full of her story that she forgot her normal rules for the protocol of hospitality and served coffee at the kitchen table. The salient facts didn’t take long to spell out.
“Poor kid.” Jude sighed at the end of the narration. “Gaby. She’s a very emotional girl. This is going to hit her hard.”
“It is. I mean, having an older father, she must always have been preparing herself for his death, but for that death to come so suddenly and like this – as you say, poor kid.”