First One Missing (14 page)

Daniel’s voice dried up and he seemed to be struggling to finish his sentence.

‘Could be what, Daniel?’

‘Dangerous.’

‘What?’

‘To children. Do you think he could be dangerous to children.’

Sally very nearly spat out her mouthful of gin and tonic.
Dangerous to children.
It was absurd.

‘Look, I know you’ll think this is just sour grapes because he’s married to my ex, but, really, they’re welcome to each other. I’ve a good life now, thank you very much. Peaceful.’

‘So what’s brought this on then?’

‘I found a letter. From him to Megan. Hidden in one of Megan’s magazines at my place. She used to collect these comics. I’d give her one every time she came to stay. You know the kind of thing, with free gifts on the front – plastic bracelets and so on. It was our thing that we did together. Anyway, the other day I decided it was time I started clearing out her room. I picked up the stack of comics and noticed there was one where she’d filled in a wordsearch on the back. So that made me stop and start leafing through it to see if she’d written anything else. You can’t imagine what it feels like to find a new connection with your child, even if it’s only some words they scribbled in felt pen.

‘That’s when I found the letter, tucked inside one of the comics.’

‘But the police must have searched your house.’

‘Flat. Helen took the house after the divorce. I had to accept a slight drop in living standards.’

Aha, so there was bitterness under the supposedly peaceful, civilized surface.

‘Of course they searched the place, but they can’t have done it that thoroughly.’

‘So what did the letter say?’

Daniel began turning the cardboard coaster over and over between his fingers. Sally saw his eyes dart towards his nylon bag.

‘It’s in there, isn’t it? Can I see?’

Excitement fizzed in the bottom of her stomach, as it always did when a story threatened to catch light.

Her companion looked uncomfortable and placed a protective hand on the bag.

‘I don’t think that would be … appropriate. It’s private and you’re, well, you’re a journalist. I don’t want to get the police involved because chances are it’s all completely innocent, and much as Simon Hewitt isn’t exactly my best mate, he is my son’s stepfather and it’s taken us a long time to get to some sort of
entente
.’

Entente?
And he’d used a proper French accent as well. Daniel Purvis was like a parody of a middle-aged academic, she decided, with his too-long hair and his crumpled shirt, tossing foreign words into the conversation so casually. And he was clearly cautious by nature.

‘So what exactly were you hoping for from me, Daniel?’

She leaned forward so he had no option but to meet her eyes and see how frank and open and positively pulsating with intelligence she was. The sort of person you could trust with family secrets. Also it gave him a good view of her cleavage, which couldn’t hurt.

He looked away, finding something suddenly fascinating in his drink.

‘I thought someone outside the family, a third party so to speak, might be able to give an impartial opinion as to whether he might be capable of …’

Daniel’s voice tailed off wretchedly, and Sally found herself losing patience. Still, she had to play this game carefully.

She ran a finger absently around the rim of her gin and tonic, as if lost in thought.

‘Are you asking whether in my opinion Simon Hewitt is a normal, red-blooded male?’

Daniel nodded eagerly, relieved not to have to spell out what he was implying.

Sally pretended to consider this carefully.

‘I’m more than happy to tell you whatever I know, obviously. I’ll do anything that might shed some light on this terrible case and bring us closer to finding the killer. However, I would need to have a quick glimpse of the letter afterwards, just to reassure myself there’s nothing that ought to be shown to the police. I could never forgive myself if I made their job even harder.’

Sally was quite pleased with herself for how this sounded, but one look at Daniel Purvis’s sceptical face left her in no doubt as to his interpretation of what she’d just said.

‘Fine. I’ll show it to you. To satisfy your
conscience
.’

Now she had promised to talk, Sally struggled to think of what she to say. Had Simon Hewitt shown any signs of deviant behaviour? Had he suggested she might dress up as a schoolgirl or call him Daddy? Her memory wasn’t perfect, but as far as she could remember Simon had been very much a ‘meat and two veg’ kind of lover. Nothing unexpected, nothing out of the ordinary. Both occasions had taken place in the hotel where she’d stayed while she was covering the Tilly Reid murder. Naturally one didn’t catalogue these things, but she was fairly sure it had just been the usual ten minutes of hot and heavy foreplay followed by the same length of anti-climax. Twenty minutes in bed and then suddenly you’re standing side by side in the bathroom unable to meet each other’s eyes in the mirror. It was the depressing reality of most of her romantic encounters.

For a few seconds, she thought about telling Daniel Purvis a slightly different story. Not lying, but just leaving some things open to misinterpretation. There always was that temptation, wasn’t there, to big up one’s own part in a news story. She came across it all the time. But she wanted to win this man’s trust. Who knew what other information he could be holding? Plus after her seriously misjudged
thing
with Simon Hewitt, she didn’t want to give Helen Purvis any more reason to hate her, as she would if it should come out that Sally had slandered her husband as well as bedded him. And there was that nagging shred of loyalty. One didn’t sleep with a man and then feel absolutely nothing for him afterwards. One had standards, even if sometimes it was hard to remember what they were.

So, after extracting from him a promise of secrecy, she explained to a clearly uncomfortable Daniel more or less how things had been between her and Simon, without getting either graphic or emotional. In fact, if anyone had been eavesdropping they might have imagined a different subject of conversation entirely, so obliquely did she describe what had taken place – some kind of sporting activity perhaps, a hobby that, luckily, hadn’t taken too extreme a turn.

The man in the creased linen shirt listened with his head to one side, as if half hoping the sound of her voice would travel clear over his shoulder without ever properly entering his ears. Finally he sighed deeply.

‘In that case,’ he said, ‘I think it best not to make waves by contacting the police. My situation vis-à-vis my ex-wife is still rather delicate. I wouldn’t like to jeopardize it by starting scurrilous rumours.’

‘Very sensible.’ If Sally nodded any more fervently her head was in danger of coming loose. ‘However, I’d feel much better if I could just reassure myself by having a quick peek at the letter.’

Daniel reached for his bag, spending what Sally considered to be an unnecessarily long time struggling with the zip. She stifled her impatience watching him rifle through the papers in his manbag. What did he have in there anyway? Finally he withdrew a piece of paper – A4, unlined. But even now he was reluctant to hand it over.

‘Do I have your word that this is absolutely one hundred per cent off the record?’

‘Of course. If that’s what you want.’

If there was one phrase in the English language that Sally would ban it would be ‘off the record’. People imagined it gave them all sorts of power, whereas in reality it was as meaningless as the right to make a citizen’s arrest. Fine in theory, but just try putting it to the test.

The letter was written in a fine blue felt-tipped pen, in cramped, messy writing that struggled to stay in straight lines. There was a date at the top: 10 March 2010. Sally did a brief mental calculation before working out this would have been two months before Megan was killed. She started reading:

Dear Megan
,

I know we had a rocky start, but I like to think that we’ve become mates, and mates look out for each other, don’t they? Which is why I’m asking you to keep our secret, just like I’d keep a secret of yours. You know how unhappy your mum was before I came along and I know you wouldn’t want her to be sad again, would you? Not for something that was a mistake. Sometimes people do silly things when they’re drunk. Let’s put it behind us and focus on good things – like that pony you’re desperate for! Something tells me that particular dream might come true sooner than you think!

Lots of love
,

Your mate Simon

Foreboding prickled at the back of Sally’s neck as she finished the letter. She read it through a second time, hoping she might see an innocent explanation, but she felt even grubbier than before. Not that it proved anything about Simon and Megan, but he’d obviously done something seriously awful to warrant the blatant bribe at the end. She shuddered. She’d been a pretty lamentable judge of character when it came to men, but this could take the biscuit.

‘Well?’ Daniel wanted to know. ‘Do you think there’s anything sinister in it? Do I risk involving the police?’

Sally shook her head. Once the police knew about this letter, word would get out and she’d lose her head start. Obviously if there’d been the slightest bit of concrete evidence incriminating Simon Hewitt, she’d absolutely have told Daniel Purvis to hand over the letter. No one wanted to put any more little girls at risk. But this was so nebulous. It could mean anything. And she wanted to protect the Purvis family after all they’d been through. Far better for her to do some private digging and find out what had been going on.

‘You’re right to hold back,’ she told Daniel. ‘Whatever this secret was, I’m sure it was harmless – maybe he owed someone money and she found out, or he kissed someone at a party and Megan saw. You know how little girls can blow things out of proportion. Holding on to the letter is the right thing to do. Helen and Rory have been through enough.’

15

Desmond had on his Solemn Face today. It was one of Leanne’s least favourites.

‘Sir. If there’s been a leak, it hasn’t come from me.’

‘I wasn’t implying that it had, Leanne. I was merely pointing out that someone has been tipping off the press about aspects of this case that need to be kept confidential. Today’s
Chronicle
mentions a DNA sample taken from the spot where Poppy Glover’s body was found. How did they know that? The entire investigation could be compromised if this continues. I’m just asking you to be extra guarded in what you say, and to check that other people are being guarded too.’

Leanne could feel her cheeks flushing pink as if she really was guilty, and cursed her Irish heritage which had bequeathed her both the pale skin, which worked like litmus paper to broadcast her emotions, and her enhanced sense of Catholic guilt, which meant she felt responsible even for actions she’d had no part in.

‘Anyway, that wasn’t what I called you in here to talk about.’ Desmond leaned back in his chair and made a steeple out of his fingers before resting them on his mouth in a reflective pose. ‘I wanted to have this little catch-up to give you a heads-up before I tell the rest of the team. We’ve got a new lead.’

Now he had Leanne’s full attention. They’d had leads enough over the years – sex offenders who’d made dramatic confessions only for it to be revealed they were nowhere near North London when the murders took place, a convincing woman who swore it was her husband before retracting the accusation when he finally agreed to sign the divorce papers. But those had been nearer the beginning of the investigation. In recent months, there’d been very little credible new information.

‘Reliable intelligence has reached us of a paedophile ring with a particular fascination with the case.’

‘With all respect, sir, I imagine there are quite a few paedophile rings who are getting off on the details of this case.’ Leanne didn’t even try to disguise her disgust.

‘No. This ring’s interest is obsessive – to the extent of knowing things that haven’t yet been made public.’

Leanne raised her eyebrows.

‘We think there’s a chance these bastards might be directly involved in the crimes somehow, but so far it’s all secondhand information. This gang is like the Bilderberg Group – so clandestine none of our sources have managed to infiltrate it.’

Desmond smiled when he referred to the Bilderberg Group – the world’s most powerful secret society – and Leanne got the feeling this wasn’t the first time he’d used the analogy.

‘What kind of things do they know?’

‘How long the most recent body was there before the police arrived, what she had on. That sort of thing.’

Leanne closed her eyes. If this was the work of a group of men, not just a lone nutter, it was far worse than any of them had imagined. One loose cannon was bound to slip up sooner or later, but a sophisticated gang? Even if they caught one of them, there were still God knows how many more of them out there. Leanne had been to psychologists’ talks about paedophilia and the profile of a paedophile. She knew there were no monsters in real life, just people who’d been dealt shitty cards and had grown up believing that’s how life was. She knew that if you grew up feeling powerless sooner or later you’d seek out someone even more powerless than you to repeat the cycle. She knew all that and yet when she saw the damage adults did to children in the name of self-gratification, when she heard the testimony from young girls, their shoulders already hunched with self-loathing, or toddlers, still struggling with vocabulary for everyday objects, having to learn the words for things they shouldn’t even know existed, all this washed the logic and the teaching and the understanding clear from her mind so all that was left was hatred and revulsion and a primal desire for retribution.

Back at her desk, she glanced around before calling Will. Listening to the ringtone, she pictured him in his cramped central London office, his desk piled high with books and papers and invites to product launches and PR parties.