My Husband's Son: A dark and gripping psychological thriller (19 page)

I got to the office half an hour earlier than usual. I was glad. Hopefully, my being there before everyone else would go some way to compensate for the fact I’d had to leave so suddenly yesterday.

I swiped my fob against the square plastic reader and, hearing the click, pushed my way through the swing-doors. Stopping to turn on the lights, I was about to make my way over to my desk when I saw that Yvonne and Nick were already in. Standing in the small alcove that housed the office kettle, fridge and microwave, they both blinked and looked to the ceiling in surprise as the lights creaked and flickered into fluorescence.

‘Morning,’ I said, the word coming out as more of a question than a greeting.

‘Heidi,’ said Yvonne, fiddling with the tie on her wrap dress, ‘did you manage to sort out your …’ – she paused, searching for the right level of disdain – ‘family emergency?’

‘Kind of.’ I made my way over to where they stood. ‘Apologies again for disappearing on you like that.’

The last part of my sentence was drowned out by Nick slurping loudly from a giant coffee mug. White with a black copperplate ‘N’ printed on the front; he’d brought it in from home.

‘You said you were going to come back,’ said Yvonne.

‘It took longer than I thought. It was complicated …’ I faltered.

Again, Nick took another slurp of coffee.

‘You couldn’t have let me know?’ said Yvonne. ‘After you left I had an email from an old colleague who works at Caulfield and Co. They tried and failed to win the Griffiths account last year. She gave me some great pointers. I wanted the team to work them into our pitch. I got everyone together. We waited for you.’ She let the implication of her words hang in the air. ‘But then I decided to stop waiting.’

‘I’m so sorry, really.’

I thought of my formal warning letter. My name printed on the envelope in thick black capitals. I knew I was being too vague, that I needed to find a way to get across the seriousness of the situation, but I couldn’t tell them what had happened. I wouldn’t. I didn’t want the events of yesterday to be traded around the office like a piece of juicy gossip, or worse, with some journalist. But more than that, I didn’t want to tell them because to do so would feel like a betrayal, of Jason and our bond.

‘It was tricky – there was nothing I could do …’ I said, trying and failing to come up with an alternative explanation.

‘As it turned out, we were fine,’ she snipped. ‘More than fine, actually.’ She gave Nick a wink. ‘Nick stepped up. He’d been working on some new ideas in his own time and they turned out to be exactly what we needed.’

‘Sounds great,’ I said, trying to sound enthusiastic. I gave Nick a smile that didn’t match the rest of my face.

Thinking we were done, I went to leave them to it. It had been an hour and a half since I’d left Jason asleep in bed and I wanted to make sure he was OK. I might not have been able to stay home and keep an eye on him, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t keep checking in by phone. However, as soon as I went to make a move, Nick put down his giant mug and cleared his throat.

‘You’re too kind, Yvonne,’ he said. ‘I ran through a few random thoughts I’d had,’ he said, turning to me. ‘That was all.’

Flexing his shoulders so that the fabric of his shirt strained and pulled against his chest, he waited until there was a click from his spine before continuing.

‘You keep telling us we need to pull out all the stops and so I thought, if we’re going to hit our end-of-year targets then we all have to go the extra mile.’

‘You are so right,’ I said, stepping away from the kitchenette. I let my bag fall to my desk with a thump. ‘A good point, well made.’ I reached down and turned on my computer. ‘Better get to it.’

Determined not to let Nick’s blatant attempts at one-upmanship rattle me, I spent the rest of the morning – apart from a couple of brief calls to Jason – with my head down. The inside steer Yvonne had gleaned from her friend was brilliant, but it meant our entire pitch now needed tweaking. It was fiddly work but it had to be done. I knew I’d probably spend most of the coming weekend getting it perfect for Monday, but that was OK. Nick wasn’t wrong when he said that winning the Griffiths account was critical to our sales targets. What he didn’t realise was how much I personally also had riding on the whole thing. If it were to go well then it would almost certainly help keep any further warning letters at bay.

I finished adding text to one of the new presentation slides Yvonne had requested and hit
save
. I’d decided to hold off calling Martin until lunchtime. Hopefully he’d persuaded Vicky to see a doctor. Jason had said that, in the past, Vicky had taken tablets: first for postnatal depression and then, later, to help her cope with Barney’s disappearance. Judging by what I’d seen this morning, it seemed she’d stopped taking them or that her medication needed to be reviewed.

It was coming up to two o’clock when Yvonne announced that she was popping out to grab a sandwich. As soon as she was gone, I grabbed my phone and got up from my desk. Pushing my way through the swing-doors, I took a left down the corridor and headed for the stairwell at the side of the building. Secluded and rarely used (the other people in the building tended to take the lift), it would give me all the privacy I needed.

After tucking myself into the corner, I dialled the detective’s mobile.

‘Martin,’ I said, when he picked up. ‘It’s Heidi. Jason’s wife.’

He didn’t respond. In the background I could hear muffled chatter and ringing phones. I let a few more seconds pass and then, when he still hadn’t said anything, I tried again.

‘Is now a good time to talk?’

‘Of course. How can I help?’

‘I’m not sure when you last spoke to Jason but he’s been having a hard time of it these past few days.’ I had planned on telling the detective how Jason had sneaked his way up to the top of the power station. I’d thought that it would help him understand why, despite what I’d said in the past, I was once more asking for his help. But now, when it came down to it, I found myself unable to say the words out loud. ‘I keep thinking about that boy,’ I said, getting straight to the point. ‘The one I told you about. From the off-licence.’

‘I remember.’ His voice was low and steady. It gave me the confidence to continue.

‘I’ve changed my mind. I want you to investigate.’

‘And Jason?’ he asked gently. ‘Does he know about this change of heart?’

‘Not yet.’

He paused and for a moment I had a terrible fear he was going to tell me that he couldn’t help.

‘I’ll need you to come in.’

‘I know.’ I thought of the leasehold sign above the shop. ‘How long do you think it will take before the team can start looking into it?’

‘Once you’ve made a statement? Not long.’ I heard a rustling noise, like paper being moved across a desk. ‘We can start the background and sex-offender checks immediately and we should be able to get someone out to the off-licence in the next few days.’ He stopped and I heard the sound of footsteps and a door opening and shutting. When he spoke again his voice had dropped to a whisper. ‘We can hold off on getting Jason to make a statement for a day or so, but we will need to talk to him eventually. Do you understand?’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll make sure I’m the first he hears from.’

We arranged that I’d come down to the station later that day and then we were done. Giddy with relief, I headed out of the stairwell and back through the corridor, towards the office. The wheels had been set in motion. Whether my suspicions turned out to be right or wrong, at least I’d done everything I could.

It didn’t take long to give my statement. Sitting across from the senior investigating officer, I recounted the first time I’d seen the boy, when he appeared behind the shop’s metal cage, and then detailed the subsequent two occasions on which I’d managed to get a look at him. I also told him about the search I’d done on my work database and the name of the school I thought the boy attended. The whole process was surprisingly simple. The officer took notes and then, once I’d checked and signed the document, I was done.

I returned home smiling. The burden was gone. As soon as the police started asking questions it wouldn’t matter what Keith said to try and put them off the scent. If anything was amiss, if the child was Barney, they’d soon smell a rat.

I spent the rest of the weekend trying to find a good moment to tell Jason, but it never seemed like the right time. While I sat at the dining table, tapping at my laptop and frowning at dense, numbered printouts, Jason lay mute on the sofa, drifting in and out of sleep. I knew I was delaying the inevitable, but seeing him like this continued to unnerve me, and every time I tried to broach the topic he feigned tiredness or found a way to leave the room. Then, late on Saturday, he took himself off to Vicky’s. It was almost her turn with Barney’s fire engine and, even though I remembered the truck as being his for another few days at least, I didn’t say anything. Instead, I let his need to be near her flicker and flap at the edge of my vision, like a bird I knew was there but couldn’t quite see.

Monday morning rolled around all too soon and, even though the Griffiths pitch wasn’t until three, I made sure to be at my desk by seven. Armoured for the day in my metal-heeled stilettos, a red jersey dress and fitted black jacket, I was thinking about making the first of many coffees when an email popped up in the corner of the screen. Planning to read it and the rest of my inbox once I’d loaded up on caffeine, I gave it a quick glance and was heading for the kitchen when something about the sender made me look again. Sharon Hannah. The name was familiar, but why?

Intrigued, I clicked on the envelope icon. The message was written in a turquoise copperplate font I realised I’d seen once before. I dropped my gaze to the bottom of the page. And there it was, her email signature: Mrs Sharon Walsh (née Hannah). Sharon Hannah. The Tyneside rep I’d contacted the night after I’d first seen the boy. She was back from honeymoon.

‘Hi Heidi. I was so thrilled to get your message,’ she wrote. ‘I don’t think we reach out enough to our sister-company colleagues over here in retail! Regarding your Wine City query, I’m afraid I don’t remember much of the visit itself and certainly nothing about counterfeit alcohol. My schedule is mega hectic; sometimes I can visit eight shops in a single day!’

Any excitement I’d felt dissolved. I wasn’t too disappointed. I’d always known my contacting her had been a long shot.

‘Anyways, if they are selling bootleg products they won’t be for much longer,’ she continued. ‘Word on the grapevine is that the Wine City has been taken over by Costcutter. As I hear it, the shopfitters are due to go in there any day now. Best wishes, Sharon Walsh (Mrs).’

Trying not to panic, I called Martin.

‘You must have read my mind,’ he said, answering on the first ring. ‘I was about to phone you.’

‘You were?’

‘A couple of officers went out to that shop yesterday.’

My centre of gravity seemed to tilt.

‘What happened?’

‘Nothing. The place was closed up.’ His voice was flat, matter of fact. ‘They asked around. Seemed the bloke –’ He stopped, and I heard the notebook rasp of a page being turned. ‘This Keith Veitch. He moved on just over a week ago.’

I felt sick.

‘Did you look into him? Keith?’

‘We did.’ The detective answered brightly, as if he’d just secured the correct answer on a quiz. ‘He’s not on the sex-offenders’ register and he doesn’t have a record. Not so much as a parking ticket.’

This failed to reassure me.

‘Don’t you think it’s suspicious he just upped and left? Can’t you try and find where he went?’

‘Actually, it’s neither suspicious nor sudden. We talked to the estate agent and it seemed the guy had the leasehold on the market for a while. It was all planned and above-board. Normal, in other words.’

‘What about the school the boy went to?’ I was starting to feel desperate. ‘Did you check with them?’

‘Yes, but we didn’t have much joy. The officers went to see the head teacher this morning.’ Again he stopped, apparently consulting his notes. ‘Mikey, the boy you saw, gave notice to the school last week. It seems like he and his mum have left town too. Most likely with Keith.’

‘Did the school have any paperwork on them?’

‘You’ve seen the area. Kids in that school come and go all the time. The local authority has one goal: to get people to put and then keep their kids in education. They never push families to produce birth certificates or that kind of thing.’

‘What did they know about the family?’

‘Mikey’s mum did pick-ups on occasion and there was an older sister, too. But it was usually his uncle. His mum stacks shelves at the Aldi, does a lot of shift work. There was also another brother, Jake, but he was in the senior school.’ He lowered his voice and I realised I was being handled. ‘The mum worked and the uncle helped with childcare.’

Slipping my hand inside my bag, I felt around until my fingers came across the smooth, heavy weight of Lauren’s compass. I worried the disc around my palm and tried to steady my thoughts.

‘What about neighbouring businesses? Keith was friends with a guy who runs the greasy spoon a few doors down.’ I hadn’t included the various meetings with Tommy in my original statement. ‘He might know where they’ve gone.’

‘We canvassed the nearby area. Everyone said the same thing. Keith had been trying to offload the shop for some time. Mikey was his nephew. Keith babysat him after school. They would see his mum come and go. End of story.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Sorry, Heidi. I know you think you saw some kind of resemblance, but everything checks out.’

I released Lauren’s compass back into the depths of my bag.

‘It must unsettle you, the fact he’s gone, but hopefully we’ve managed to put your mind at rest.’

We said goodbye and I sat staring at my desk, struggling to absorb everything Martin had said. Behind me, the swing-doors creak-swooshed. It was Nick.

‘Oh,’ he said, when he clocked me. ‘You’re already here.’

Wearing a sky-blue shirt tucked into his trousers, he’d cinched his waist with a black leather belt. After pouring coffee into his personalised mug, he came over to where I sat, his fingers obscuring the ‘N’.

‘I worked up a couple of extra pie charts over the weekend,’ he said, taking a sip. ‘Yvonne said they might come in useful.’

‘Thank you.’ I pretended to study my computer screen. I needed to organise my thoughts and to do that I needed to be alone, but when I looked up a minute later I saw he was still there.

‘Is there something else?’

He didn’t respond. I followed his gaze to the framed picture of Lauren on my desk. Taken by my dad, it showed her in a yellow mac and red wellington boots. Standing slap bang in the middle of a muddy puddle, she was sticking out her tongue and waggling her hands by her ears. Every time I looked at it I remembered how, when we’d got home, she’d peeled off her sodden socks and jeans and snuggled under a blanket on the sofa. Mum had the gas fire on full and the living room was warm, dusk just starting to settle. Lauren had accepted a mug of hot chocolate, burrowed a little further under the blanket and taken a long, loud slurp of the warm drink. Then she’d turned to me and, with all the world-weariness of a little old lady, had said, ‘That’s better.’

‘Nick,’ I said again, louder this time, ‘I asked if there was anything else?’

‘What? Yes, actually.’ I realised he was blushing. ‘I wanted to say how much I admire your husband. For never giving up hope.’

It felt like something had caught in my throat. Like Yvonne, my colleagues never mentioned Lauren or Barney. In fact, most of them seemed to find it confusing I was even at work. This wasn’t unusual. Many people find it odd that Jason and I have to earn money; that we still have to do things like pay the mortgage and council tax. This simple fact embarrasses them. They actually go red in the face when they realise. It’s as though, when they imagine some awful tragedy befalling them, they also assume someone somewhere will make sure they don’t ever have to go back to the real world, to grubbing around for overtime to cover that month’s electricity bill. They seem to think they’ll be able to retire from life and all its obligations to grieve in peace.

‘We have to keep looking,’ I said, repeating Jason’s mantra. ‘No stone unturned. Barney is out there somewhere.’

Nick nodded, his brow furrowed in empathy.

I realised I was nodding along with him. I got to my feet and Nick took a step back, confused.

‘I’ve left my USB stick at home,’ I said, putting on my jacket. This was a lie. The USB was in my bag, under my desk. ‘I need it for the presentation this afternoon.’

I had to talk to Tommy. I was sure I could get more out of him than the police. Maybe I could get him to let slip where Keith and his sister had taken Mikey and the kids. It was still early. I could go and make it back in time for the pitch with hours to spare.

‘If Yvonne asks, will you make sure to tell her I won’t be long?’ I said, heading for the door.

‘Don’t worry,’ smiled Nick. ‘You can count on me.’