Charlie (59 page)

‘You poor loves,’ Rita said as Charlie and Andrew came into her flat, their faces grey with exhaustion. Rita was in her nightclothes, but she’d sat up waiting for their return. ‘What can I get you? Tea, food?’

‘Nothing, thank you,’ Charlie said. ‘You go to bed. Andrew just needs a bath and sleep, that’s all. We’ll talk about it all tomorrow.’

‘Take my bed.’ Rita’s small pale face was furrowed with lines of anxiety. She felt she would never sleep again until Daphne Dexter was behind bars. ‘I’ll sleep in yours.’

While Charlie was being questioned by the Kent police, she had been told that her friend had given their colleagues in London a great deal of information about the Dexters. Charlie knew just how tough that must have been for Rita to relive her ordeal again. She so much wanted to talk to her now, console her and reassure her that she and her son would be protected until Daphne was convicted, but Andrew’s needs were greater right now.

‘We’re safe now, all of us,’ was all she could say, and she took a step forward to hug her friend. ‘The local police are keeping an eye out here. But she wouldn’t dare try and hurt any of us again, not now.’

Rita stepped back and smiled bravely at both of them. ‘I’ll run the bath for Andrew,’ she said. ‘Sleep tight, both of you. If you need anything, just call me.’

Charlie lay awake for a very long time, curving her body round Andrew’s protectively. He had fallen asleep the moment he’d got into Rita’s bed, long before Charlie got in beside him. She thought that tomorrow they would laugh about how ironic it was that on their first time ever in a double bed they weren’t even capable of kissing.

But her mind just wouldn’t switch off. Her thoughts flitted from all the people who had to be informed Andrew was safe, how they would get some clothes for him, to thinking about how soon she would have to go back to work. Yet above all those relatively unimportant things were all the unanswered questions. Had Daphne Dexter killed her father, was it definitely her brothers who hurt her mother? And how long would it take for the police to catch them and find out for certain?

Charlie woke to hear Rita in the kitchen. She looked at the clock and saw it was seven in the morning. Andrew was still sound asleep, he didn’t look as if he’d even turned over in the night. She got out of bed and crept out to the kitchen to find Rita sitting at the table smoking a cigarette. She looked as if she hadn’t slept at all, her eyes were puffy with black circles beneath them.

‘I didn’t bring you any tea because I didn’t want to wake you,’ Rita said, looking up with a wan smile. ‘But there’s some in the pot.’

Charlie poured a cup and sat down beside her. ‘I’m so sorry I dragged you into all this. I bet you wish you’d never met me.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ Rita retorted. ‘I don’t wish any such thing. I was frantic with worry of course, but because I care about you, and I suppose I still am because it’s not all resolved yet.’

Charlie remained unconvinced. She could see a haunted look in her friend’s eyes. ‘Was it awful talking to Hughes?’ she asked.

‘Not as bad as I expected.’ Rita shrugged. ‘He’s a decent bloke, shame all coppers aren’t like him. But of course that was the easy bit, the worst will be giving evidence in court.’

Charlie hadn’t thought that far ahead yet. ‘You don’t have to. They’ll get enough on her to send her down without you getting involved,’ she said.

Rita grimaced. ‘I do, Charlie. Hughes pointed out that so far they have only Andrew’s abduction to charge them with. Unless there is a more serious charge they wouldn’t even be able to hold the three of them long enough to get evidence into your dad’s disappearance. Hughes is convinced they killed him, Charlie.’

‘He is?’ Every hair on Charlie’s head stood on end at hearing this. Hughes had seemed so nonchalant about everything she’d said to him, and even after all she and Andrew had been through yesterday, not one of the police down in Kent had actually agreed they thought the Dexters had intended to kill them. ‘Then why didn’t he say so?’

Rita put her hand over Charlie’s, her face soft with sympathy. ‘I’m sure you can see why. He saw, just as I did when I first met you, that you were hoping against hope that Jin would turn up some day. Now I’ve promised to give evidence it means he can return to people who were questioned two years ago, and try and persuade them to tell him more too.’

Charlie began to cry.

‘Now, come on!’ Rita shook her shoulder. ‘You should be glad about this! You must relish that bitch getting her come-uppance. I know I do.’

‘I do relish it,’ Charlie sobbed. ‘It’s just so awful that Mum died believing Dad had run out on her. And what about you? A court case will be terrible for you. I hate to think that through me you have to go through all that pain.’

‘It is awful about your mum,’ Rita agreed. ‘Terrible too to think that your childhood was suddenly ended by that woman’s viciousness. But that’s why I have to do it, Charlie. I can’t hide my head in the sand any longer. Besides, Hughes said that if the Dexters are convicted I could make a claim for compensation against them. It might mean a nice little house for me, and security at last.’

Charlie was even more touched by her friend’s show of bravado. She knew perfectly well Rita hadn’t been swayed by the possibility of compensation.

‘Money won’t make up for everyone knowing about you,’ Charlie retorted. She looked right into her friend’s eyes and dared her to claim it would.

Rita laughed. ‘Oh yes it will,’ she said flippantly. ‘Money soothes all hurts.’

Charlie had to smile. She somehow knew Rita would stick with that reason until the bitter end. She had more guts than anyone she’d ever met.

‘It’s a good job I know what you really are, Rita Tutthill,’ she said, wagging a finger at her. ‘If you get any trouble from your parents and son when it all comes out, I shall personally go and visit them and tell them a few home truths about you.’

Rita smiled. ‘I believe you would too. But now I’d better get ready for work.’

Charlie’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Work! You can’t go in, you look exhausted.’

Rita laughed. ‘Exhausted I may be, but apart from the fact the Hag will stop my money if I don’t, work is the best way I know to get through difficult times.’

To Charlie that encapsulated everything she admired about her friend. She didn’t lie down and feel sorry for herself when things were tough, but got on with her life with courage and fortitude. Charlie thought she must take a leaf out of her book.

‘Tell the Hag I’ll be in tomorrow,’ she said. ‘That’s if she hasn’t had the impudence to sack me already.’

‘Charlie, even you couldn’t be that lucky,’ Rita rolled her eyes comically. ‘Now, go easy on poor Andrew today. He’s had a tough time and needs to recover before you start feasting on his emaciated body.’

Charlie laughed. She had a feeling Andrew would have made a complete recovery by the time he woke.

She was right. Rita had hardly closed the front door behind her when Andrew woke and immediately pulled her into his arms. ‘This was what I thought of most of the time I was in the cellar,’ he said. ‘Holding you, loving you. I think if I hadn’t had that I might have flipped.’

He was savage the first time, so rough and forceful that it took her breath away. Yet her own need was as great as his and she responded with equal savagery, clawing at his back and biting his shoulders. To have him in her arms was all that mattered. They had been granted a reprieve.

An hour or so later they made love again, but this time it was slow, tender and loving. They kissed, stroked and licked at every inch of each other, two minds with the same goal, to wipe out the hurt and misery, to begin on a new road.

‘Saying I love you isn’t enough,’ Andrew said, his face pressed deeply into her breasts. ‘I adore you, I worship you, but that sounds like something out of a church service. I wish I could find the right words to explain just how I feel.’

‘ “I love you” is enough for me,’ she whispered, tears of joy flowing down her face. ‘I never want to be parted from you again.’

‘That’s a tall order,’ he laughed, and moved back on to one elbow to look at her. ‘Am I supposed to take you with me to college?’

‘You know what I mean. To spend every night with you. For yours to be the face I wake up to.’

‘We can’t have that straight away,’ he sighed, flicking his hair from his eyes and looking very apprehensive. ‘I’ll have to go home to my parents for a few days. I phoned them last night from the police station, Mum was in a terrible state. Dad said she’d been distraught right from when they first heard I’d gone missing.’

‘I suppose they’ll be against me,’ Charlie said in a small voice. ‘I mean, it’s all my fault, isn’t it?’

‘They aren’t that kind of people,’ Andrew reprimanded her. ‘Mum is Beryl’s sister, remember, and in many ways they are very alike. Aunt Beryl has always spoken so highly of you, Mum feels she knows you already. I just wish I’d taken you to meet them before all this happened though. Still, never mind, I’ll ask if you can come up at the weekend to meet them.’

Charlie didn’t think his mother would welcome her with open arms after what had happened. Would any mother really want a half-Chinese girl with a tainted background for her only son? But she didn’t say this, time would tell if she was right.

‘You’d better phone them now,’ she said instead. ‘And Carol at the pub. We’ll have to arrange to get you some clothes too.’

‘You are a little worry-guts,’ he smiled. ‘Will you promise me that once we’re married you’ll leave all the worrying to me?’

‘Marry you!’ Charlie feigned astonishment. ‘Now, that’s going a bit far!’

‘It’s the only way I know of having you with me for ever,’ he said. ‘Not to mention being able to sleep with you anywhere and everywhere without raising eyebrows.’

‘I might have known sex was at the bottom of it,’ she laughed. ‘You get your degree first, sonny, then we’ll see!’

As Andrew was speaking first to his parents, then to Carol on the telephone, Detective Inspector Hughes and PC Farrow were checking out the queue of cars waiting to board the Harwich ferry.

It was a cold grey morning, with high winds whipping the sea over the harbour wall, and both men were tired and dispirited. A puncture halfway to the port delayed them for almost an hour, so Dexter could have turned off in some new direction for all they knew. But they’d continued to Harwich anyway and arrived here an hour or two ago only to discover that although the dock police had been notified to look out for and apprehend Daphne Dexter, for some reason they hadn’t received details of the car she was travelling in. To find such a major blunder was infuriating, but fortunately all the ferries had been delayed because of high winds, so there was still a chance she might be travelling under an assumed name and that she was in fact still here, trapped in the long line of cars waiting on the dock.

‘There she is!’ Ozzie exclaimed jubilantly as he spotted the red Mercedes tucked in between a grey Rover and a black Ford. ‘Thank fuck!’

‘Should we get some back-up?’ Farrow asked, looking around him nervously. He couldn’t see any dock police anywhere, just a few passengers stretching their legs before boarding.

Ozzie grinned. ‘Back-up! For one woman? She can’t move that car, and where’s she going to run to? She’s a smart cookie, but unless she’s sprouted wings during the night she’s got no chance. Nip through the line of cars now and be ready just in case she tries to get out that side.’

A shiver of expectancy ran down Ozzie’s spine, wiping out his tiredness. As he walked towards the car he could see she was alone and engrossed in putting on lipstick. She clearly thought she was almost home and dry.

Checking first that Farrow was in place, Ozzie tapped on the passenger door. The woman looked startled, then frowned, as if knowing the face looking in at her was familiar, but unable to place it. She opened the window and smiled, but her blue eyes were as cold as the North Sea. ‘Yes?’ she said.

Ozzie leaned his entire weight against the car door. With his right hand he reached in and withdrew her car keys from the ignition, with the left he held out his warrant card. ‘Detective Inspector Hughes. You are under arrest, Miss Dexter, for the abduction of Andrew Blake. You are not obliged to say anything, but anything you do say will be taken down and used in evidence against you.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ she said haughtily, the consummate actress right till the end. ‘My name is Sandra White. You clearly have the wrong person.’

‘Save all that,’ he said, flicking both his warrant card and the keys into his pocket, and bringing out his handcuffs. ‘I’ve had my eye on you for twenty years, right back from when you were a stripper. I probably know more about you than you do yourself.’ Opening the car door he grabbed her right wrist, clicked the handcuff round it, and attached the other to his own. ‘So get out! The game’s up.’

At half past two that same afternoon, six officers from the Sussex police raided a tiny isolated cottage on the South Downs three miles from Seaford and arrested Michael and Barrington Dexter.

The address had been passed on to them following Daphne Dexter’s arrest in Harwich. It had been found in her handbag, written on an old envelope, and although she wouldn’t admit what it was, the police had been certain it had earlier contained a set of keys to the property.

Convinced by the speed with which the police had found them that their sister had turned her brothers in to escape justice herself, once Mick was in custody, and separated from his twin, he began talking. He admitted his sister had ordered him to Tittmus Street to collect the unconscious Andrew in his van. He said he had no idea why she wanted the student locked up at The Manse, and that he and his brother had purposely let the boy get away because they wanted no part in whatever she was up to. He admitted that he had caught Charlie in the garden and questioned her, but he claimed there had never been any intention on their part to hurt her.

While searching The Manse, the Kent police found a large quantity of valuable imported goods. Both the twins denied knowing anything about the goods, or that they’d ever met Jin Weish. As for crippling Sylvia Weish, they claimed they didn’t even know where Dartmouth was.