I Trust You (16 page)

Chapter 30

D
espite the warm sunshine, Marisa had a silk scarf tied loosely around her neck, to hide the bruising. She’d found it on sale at one of the department stores in Portsmouth, when she was killing a couple of hours whilst Lee bought a cheap second hand car from a place he knew by the docks.

              They’d left Eliot’s hatchback on an industrial estate on the outskirts of the city, catching a bus the rest of the way.

              Marisa leant against the railings of the ferry and gazed out across the Solent to the gentle outline of the island. It felt like a relief to be back here again, as if they were sailing away from the dangers and threats they faced.

              She felt a presence beside her. Lee stood shoulder-to-shoulder with her and handed over one of the takeaway coffee cups he was holding.

              ‘Thanks.’              

              ‘Nice view.’

              ‘Yeah, it certainly is.’ She sipped from the cup and turned to face him. ‘Tell me again what you found at the house?’

              ‘Once I’d got in through the back door and headed up the stairs, I went straight into what looked like Gerry’s study. The drawers and safe were all locked. I had to make do with what was on his desk and shelves, which wasn’t a huge amount. There were a few legal documents in his in-box and a desk diary. I scanned through everything I could find. There was a bank statement in which a name recurred each month.’

              ‘This was someone Gerald was sending money to?’

              ‘Yes, in regular amounts. I then came across the name again in the contacts section of his diary along with an address. Rita Haydon, Lilybank Cottage, Ventnor. Isle of Wight.’ Lee took a mouthful of coffee. ‘We suspected Coleman must have contacts on the island, judging by how quickly his thugs got to dad. It made me think it was a lead we should chase up.’

              ‘Especially in the absence of any other leads.’

              ‘True.’ Lee slipped an arm around her shoulders. ‘I’m sorry I left you in that house. When I got back down the stairs you were deep in conversation with the housekeeper. It didn’t occur to me you were in any danger.’

              ‘Please don’t beat yourself up. I’m fine now. In fact, I think it was worth it for what I discovered from Sylvie.’

              ‘Gerry was seeing Gaia
before
his wife died.’

              ‘I always wondered how they met. Eliot was cagey about the subject. Gaia’s ex-husband owned several luxury cruisers in the 80s and 90s, they may have come into contact with the Colemans that way. She must have always been on the scene.’

              ‘His mistress.’

              ‘Which gave Gerald all the more reason to want his wife dead.’

              ‘But Sylvie told you Gerald was with Gaia during the evening of the accident. He couldn’t have been driving the dark sports car the hotel manager saw running Celia off the road.’

              ‘No,’ Marisa added cautiously. ‘Unless Gaia provided him with an alibi. It was brave of Gerald to admit he was with his mistress at the time of his wife’s tragic death.’

              ‘Unless the alternative was worse. Gerald was, in fact, out driving a sports car too fast on the icy road between White Bay and Charmouth.’

              ‘Gerald is a very accomplished driver. He’s taken lessons at Brands Hatch. It’s one of his many expensive hobbies. I’m sure he would have been perfectly confident he’d be able to keep control of the vehicle in those conditions. Celia, on the other hand…’

              ‘Would Gaia have lied for him about something so terrible?’

              Marisa looked out at the gentle swell of the sea. ‘I’m sure she never imagined Gerald had a hand in killing Celia. He probably told her that it was easier for him to have an alibi. It would prevent the police from asking unnecessary questions. Besides, with Celia gone, Gerald would be free to make an honest woman of Gaia. Perhaps that’s what he promised her in return for lying to the police.’

              Lee shuddered. ‘What a creepy way to start a marriage.’

              ‘I think it sounds entirely plausible. That couple have always given me the creeps.’

*

The little Renault appeared to be running well. It carried them safely from the ferry terminal and due south, to the coastal town of Ventnor.

              The summer season was in full swing. It was difficult to find a parking space. Eventually, they pulled up at the kerb of a quiet residential street, continuing the rest of the way on foot. Lee had the directions he’d printed off Google Maps in his hand.  

              The beach was packed with families. It was a beautiful sunny day. Marisa recalled what Amy Buckley had said to her in Fordham Park. She tried not to avert her eyes from the sight of all the young children playing in the sand, mums rubbing down their little ones with a towel after they’d been swimming in the sea. She smiled instead, thinking how lovely it was. How lucky she was to be alive and able to witness it.

              Lee led the way. They walked right across town until reaching a small row of cottages beyond the old harbour. Lilybank Cottage was the final dwelling in the row. It wasn’t quite as pretty as the name suggested. The whitewash on the stone walls was peeling away and the front garden overgrown with weeds. Marisa’s heart sank. She wondered if anyone actually still lived there.

              Marisa peered through the murky front window whilst Lee knocked on the door. There was no response from inside. Then they heard the sound of a side gate being opened.

              Lee stepped over the low wall to intercept whoever was attempting to leave the house. A woman in her fifties, with mid-length dark hair and wearing a tatty summer dress and sandals was standing on the stony path, a wicker shopping basket hooked over her arm.

             
‘Mum
?’ Lee exclaimed in disbelief.

              The woman looked startled. She didn’t reply but dropped the basket and attempted to retreat rapidly through the gate.

Chapter 31

L
ee was too quick for her. He caught her elbow and barred the way.

              ‘Get your hands off me! I’ll call the police!’ Her face was full of fear and panic.

              Lee looked her up and down. It had been nearly thirty five years since he’d last set eyes on her, but he was strangely certain. ‘Your name is Sandra Powell. You were married to Bill Powell.’ A realisation seemed to hit him. ‘Did you still see Dad? Is that why he moved here, to the island?’

              The woman edged backwards, shaking off his grip. ‘I’m Rita Haydon, have been for a long time. You must be mistaken, love.’ But her voice lacked conviction.

              Marisa stepped forward, her arms outstretched. ‘We don’t want to cause any trouble Rita. We only want answers to some of our questions. Did you know that Bill was dead?’              The woman didn’t reply, but Marisa could tell from her frightened eyes that she did. ‘Then you must realise you are in danger too. Gerald Coleman is getting rid of anyone connected to his past. Do you really believe he’s going to keep on paying you now? You’ve become a liability.’

              ‘He stopped paying me a couple of months back. That’s when I knew I wasn’t safe any longer.’ Rita ducked past Lee and disappeared through the gate. But she’d left it open for them to follow.

The cottage was dark and smelt of damp. Rita filled a kettle and placed it on the gas hob. Lee perched on the edge of an armchair, looking shell-shocked.

              Marisa thought she’d better take the lead. ‘When did you change your name to Rita Haydon?’

              The woman stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the light. ‘As soon as I started working for Gerald Coleman. It must have been in ’81 or ‘82. He knew I’d been having problems with Bill. He was never at home. When he was he was pissed up and violent. I couldn’t have taken much more. Gerry came to see me one afternoon. He worked with Bill at the docks. He said he had some other jobs going on the side, he wasn’t planning to be working for Southern Seaways forever. Gerry asked me if I wanted to make some cash.’

The kettle began whistling. Rita spent a while making a pot of tea. She carried it out into the dingy sitting room, setting it down on the table in front of Lee, deliberately avoiding his hurt gaze.

‘I did some admin work for Gerry at first, he’d started up his own export and import business, nothing to do with his day job.’

Lee snorted. ‘All perfectly legitimate, of course.’

‘If you wanted to make it out of the life we had back then, you needed to take some risks.’

Marisa cut in, ‘tell us more about the jobs you did for Gerry.’ She wanted to delay the inevitable showdown for as long as possible.

‘It worked out well for a while. I had some extra money to buy things for me and my little boy.’ She cleared her throat, not quite ready yet to face the fact that her little boy was now a grown man, seated on the chair in front of her. ‘Bill started to notice the stuff I’d bought and became suspicious. One night he confronted me about it. He bashed me about until I told him where it’d come from. Bill went ballistic, he hated Gerry. So I had to go back to Coleman and tell him the arrangement was off. Bill had found out and that was the end of it.’

‘But it wasn’t really the end?’ Marisa added.

Rita shook her head. ‘No. Coleman told me he had a much bigger job coming, this one would set me up for life, and Bill could be in on it too. The money he was offering we just couldn’t refuse.’

‘What about me! Was the money so important you could dump me like a bag of old rubbish?’ Lee’s face was red with rage.

Rita’s head dropped. ‘When I first started working for Coleman it was
all
for you. I wanted to give you a better life, get you away from your deadbeat old man. But what we got into next took us way out of our depth. After that, you were safer with the social than you were with us.’  

Marisa tried to ignore the waves of anger and hurt she could sense were pulsating through Lee’s body. The effect was almost electric. She was determined not to alienate this woman. They needed answers. ‘What was the job that Coleman wanted you and Bill for?’

Rita got up and moved towards a dresser in the darkest corner of the room. She opened a drawer and pulled out a bulging file. ‘You’d probably better look at these first. Then it will make more sense to you.’

Marisa leant over and switched on a dusty table lamp. She saw Rita wince, as if the idea of the cost of the electricity caused her pain. She didn’t much care. In the lever arch file were dozens of newspaper clippings, some recent and others going back to the 1980s. ‘These are all reports about the Montgomery case.’

Lee dragged his chair closer, his curiosity temporarily overcoming his indignation. ‘What case?’

Marisa glanced at him in surprise, amazed he’d not heard about it. The Montgomery case was as significant to her generation as the disappearance of Lord Lucan was in the 1970s or the murder of the Lindbergh baby in the 1920s. ‘It was a major case in America in the early eighties. It dominated the newspapers for months. Ronald Reagan even got involved in the incident. There have been articles written and television programmes made about it ever since.’

‘Well, I didn’t exactly have the kind of childhood where we sat around watching the six o’clock news at teatime. There’s plenty I don’t know about.’ He shot his mother a dirty look.

Rita was remaining very quiet.

Marisa slipped an original copy of The Washington Post out of a plastic sleeve. ‘Here’s the front page coverage from the week it happened, starting from the 16
th
July 1982:

Society beauty Jessica Montgomery (24) and her husband, Nate (27); the heir to Montgomery Construction Incorporated, desperately await news of their two small children, missing after a car-jacking a few miles outside of Boston on Monday evening.

The couple were heading to a fundraising auction being held in the Metropolitan Gallery of Art, Cambridge, Massachusetts. For a charity of which Mrs Montgomery is a patron. It was the first time the children had accompanied their parents to such an event.

The couple had just crossed the Charles Bridge, when their Lincoln Continental was forced to the side of the road by a large black van. The Montgomery’s driver was hauled from the car at gunpoint by two men in balaclavas, before Mr and Mrs Montgomery were dragged from the rear. The three adults were pushed down the steep banking at the side of the highway. Mrs Montgomery received a mild head injury. The children; two year old Shannon and eight month old Max, were sleeping in their child seats in the back of the Lincoln. One of the armed men then jumped behind the wheel and sped away, with the infants still on board.

Initially, Boston police detectives considered the possibility that the car-jacking was botched. The taking of the children had been a mistake. Now, sources tell us the kidnapping of the infants is being treated as financially motivated. Nate Montgomery’s father owns Montgomery Construction Inc. Arthur Montgomery is a well-known figure in Boston for being behind some of the most extensive building projects the city has ever seen. The man is estimated to be worth over fifty million dollars. But Montgomery’s career has not been without controversy. His company has been involved in bitter disputes with the construction unions over pay, hours and conditions.

Several commentators have pointed out the possible significance of the children being kidnapped from one of the highways that Montgomery’s company had itself constructed. Neither the Lincoln nor the van have so far been located. As yet, the family await a ransom demand. The police are appealing for any witnesses who may have seen the abduction take place or know where the children have been taken, to come forward immediately.’

‘Did they receive a ransom demand? Did the family ever get the kids back?’ Lee tipped up the file and scanned through more of the articles, as if trying to make up for lost time.

‘The first and only demand came through by telephone on the 19
th
July to the south Boston home of Arthur Montgomery, Nate’s father,’ Rita added weakly. ‘The kidnappers played a tape of the little girl’s voice. The boy was only a baby. This resulted in the Montgomery family transferring seven million dollars into a bank account in South Africa.’

‘I didn’t know that,’ Marisa added. ‘I thought nobody ever heard from the kidnappers again. The children disappeared and everyone assumed they were dead. The level of international publicity was so incredible that the people who took the Montgomery infants had no choice but to get rid of them, as quickly as possible. The most compelling theory was that they ended up in the Charles River. There was a strong suspicion that the men who took the children wanted to put pressure on Montgomery to work with the unions to improve pay and conditions on his sites. But once the kidnapping took place they realised they were way out of their depth.’

‘The part about the media frenzy was certainly true. The publicity was phenomenal. Those babies’ faces were on every TV news bulletin and the front of every newspaper across the world for months. But it isn’t correct that the kidnappers never asked for money. Arthur Montgomery just didn’t inform the police, like he was told not to. He transferred the money and waited all night on a piece of waste ground near Logan Airport for his grandchildren to be returned to him. They never came.’

The room was deadly quiet.

‘How do you know this Rita?’ Marisa watched her expression carefully.

‘Because it was mine and Bill’s job to look after them.’

‘Who?’ Lee’s voice was dripping with incredulity.

‘The children, of course. We had to take care of Shannon and Max.’