The Bones of You (14 page)

19

February

A
s the first daffodils push their heads aboveground, as I ask Rachael over for a gossipy catch-up, several things happen at once.

Jo calls me, a call that leaves me mystified. It’s cryptic, to say the least.

“I have that software you asked for. I can bring it over this morning, if it’s convenient?”

“What are you talking about, Jo?” She sounds like she’s talking to a stranger. And it’s the first I’ve heard about any software.

“Perfect,” she says brightly. “Would twelve work for you? I know you wanted it installed as soon as possible. . . .”

“Are you okay, Jo?”

She ignores me. “Don’t worry. It shouldn’t take long. I’ll see you later.”

“That was peculiar,” I tell Rachael. “It was Jo—only she sounded very odd.”

“Hardly surprising. If it were one of my own kids and the murderer was still on the loose . . .” She shakes her head. “It would do my head in. On the subject of murderers . . .” She looks at me expectantly.

“You mean Alex? Unless they find more evidence, I guess he’s in the clear. And walking around like anyone else. It all takes so long, doesn’t it?”

Rachael slurps her coffee thoughtfully. “I know. Sometimes I wonder whether life will ever get back to normal. Talking of normal, how’s Angus?”

“He’s quite happy, I think. Too happy.” Happier than I am. Making me wonder if he’s putting down roots.

“Oh well,” says Rachael. “I bet you don’t miss the extra washing and cooking. And if you do, I’ll give you some of mine.” She glances at the clock, then frowns. “Oh, fuck. I forgot.” Looking horrified, she leaps up. “I was supposed to be at school ten minutes ago. Milo’s teacher wants to see me. I am already
so
in the shit with that woman, you wouldn’t believe. . . .”

She dashes for the door, blowing me a kiss. “So sorry to run like this. Give Jo my love.”

 

But she’s barely gone when Jo arrives, early, in a fluster of cold air and confusion.

“I’m sorry about earlier, Kate. . . . Neal was listening. He does that now—he listens. To everything.” She’s nervous, on edge, can’t keep still.

“I’m not with you, Jo. Why shouldn’t he know you’re coming here?”

“He knows I talk to you. And he’s been hiding something, Kate. Something he doesn’t want anyone, even me, to know about.”

Oh God.
My mouth is dry. Has she found out about what nearly happened between us?

She runs her fingers through her hair, her face fraught, speaking in fragments, as she pulls out a chair. “Can I just have a minute? I will tell you. . . . God, Kate. It’s too much to take in. I can’t think straight. . . .”

“I’ll make some coffee. Are you all right, Jo?”

But she doesn’t answer, just sits, staring ahead. I fill the kettle, worried about her, but before long, she’s talking again.

“You know I said how useless I was on computers? I hardly ever touched the things. But obviously now, since the course . . . Anyway, yesterday I was trying to find a document I’d saved, but . . .” She breaks off.

I place the mugs on the table and sit down.

“Go on.”

She picks up a mug, and her hands are shaking, slopping the coffee over the sides. She puts it down again, then fixes her eyes on mine.

“I’ve been using this laptop of Neal’s. An old one I didn’t even know he had. I found it buried in the bottom of his wardrobe, of all places. . . .” She pauses. “I was looking for something I saved on it. I found these files, Kate.” Her voice is deathly quiet.

“Oh God!” She runs her hands through her hair. “I’m not sure I can do this.”

“Jo . . . what is it? Tell me.”

She stares past me, then takes a deep breath. “They’re awful, Kate. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

A sick feeling fills my stomach as I start to wonder where she’s going with this.

“He’s into porn. The worst kind. Horrible, violent sex, rape . . . killing people.”

The “killing people” comes in a whisper, a wild, terrified look in her eyes, like those of a rabbit frozen in headlights, before she continues.

“There’s more. Links to all these Web sites. I can’t begin to tell you. . . .” She breaks off, and her hand goes to her mouth. “I couldn’t look at them. . . .”

Jesus.
My mind goes crazy with possibilities. Then I shake my head. For all his faults, I can’t imagine in a million years that Neal would be doing this.

Then her eyes are dead as she says, as if in a trance, “You see, Neal’s always taken care of things.”

My blood turns to ice. What does she mean?

Jo’s face is white. “It’s all there, Kate. There are dates. Even an idiot like me can tell when it was last opened or looked at, or whatever. All the dates, Kate, they’re all
before.
”

Her eyes are huge.

“What if he killed her?”

There’s silence as the words hang between us. As I stare at her, appalled, trying to work out what she’s telling me.

Fleetingly, I think of the night he was here. Did I share supper with a murderer? Did the hand that touched mine kill Rosie? Then common sense kicks in.

“That’s ridiculous,” I tell her. “No way could Neal have committed a murder. Certainly not his own daughter’s.”

But Jo stares, a ghostly stare that makes my skin prickle.

“You don’t know him,” she says. “You don’t want to, either. You probably won’t believe me when I tell you. Nobody does.... But there’s another side to him.” All the time her eyes glued on mine, imploring, begging me to believe her. “He’s damaged, Kate. He has a twisted, brutal, cruel side. Whatever he may have said to you, he enjoys hurting me, enjoys telling me how ugly I am. Oh, not just that once that you saw—so, so many times. How it would be better for all of them if I was dead . . . He’s said that, too.”

A sob erupts from her.

“I’ve tried so hard, Kate, to be the woman he wants me to be. To be his wife, a mother. To be beautiful, to make him proud. But nothing I do is ever enough.”

Her eyes are spilling over with tears, with hurt and defeat, and she slumps, the fight visibly draining out of her.

When she starts talking again, her voice is full of sadness.

“He’s always been like this, all the time we’ve been together. In the beginning, he was just rough. Sexually. I thought it was normal, Kate. That he felt so passionately about me, he just got carried away . . . And then, other times, he could be so gentle and thoughtful, treating me, always buying me such beautiful things. . . .” She hesitates, and I see her looking back, dredging up more painful memories.

“Over the years he’s got worse. I’ve always known he can be violent. He hits me, Kate. . . . After, he hates himself, but he can’t help it.”

I watch, sickened but unable to look away, as Jo slowly unwinds one of her huge, soft scarves to reveal fresh red bruising on her neck. My hand goes to my mouth.

“He strangles me, Kate. Even when I beg him not to. During sex. Until I pass out. It excites him. That’s the kind of man he really is.”

She speaks slowly, detached, as though she’s talking about someone else. I’m utterly shocked. I’ve heard about this going on between consenting partners, but against her will, that’s assault. It’s why she wears those scarves, no matter how warm it is. Because her husband gets his kicks by throttling her. How can the revered, exalted, saintly Neal Anderson be such a monster?

“The last time he did it, when I came round, he said he’d been planning where to bury me,” she gabbles. “He laughed, but he wasn’t joking, Kate. It’s a big enough garden, isn’t it? He’d just tell people his crazy wife had left him, and they’d sympathize, wouldn’t they? Everyone always believes him. No one would ever know. . . .”

She’s shaking, her hands clasped so tight that her knuckles are white, her eyes begging me to believe her.

Then she continues in a low voice, “I saw him hit Rosanna. I don’t know what else he did to her. I know it’s wrong, and I’m weak and pathetic, but I couldn’t ask. He bullied her, Kate. Didn’t let her do anything, have friends, have a social life. And when he got angry . . . I know you don’t believe me, but truly, he’s evil.”

As she speaks, though, there are other words echoing in my head. Words I’ve heard so many times.
Amazing man . . . He’s an amazing man. . . .

“And this has been going on how long, Jo?” I know she’s just told me, but it’s too much to take in, that she needed him so much, she’d forgive him anything, even this.

She stares back. “Years.”

I stare at her, horrified. “How could you put up with it? That long? What about the girls?” Doesn’t a mother’s every instinct scream at her to protect her precious children?

She hesitates. “I don’t expect you to understand, but when you’ve seen that darkness, that vulnerable side of him, you want to help him. It’s not right, but I’ve made excuses for him. He can do such good things, too. You know that. Look at the orphanage.... And I always believed he needed me. I know he did. Only . . . I never dreamed he was capable of this.”

By “this” she means killing Rosie. I try my hardest to understand how the amazing man is so suddenly an evil monster. How the truth can be so twisted. So invisible. How all this time Jo has deceived herself and everyone else, and only now, presented with unmistakable evidence, has forced herself to face up to what he is.

Then she leaps up, agitated. “Oh God. What if he knows I’ve got it? If he comes here?”

My heart misses a beat; then I remember. “He won’t, Jo. He doesn’t know where you are.”

I notice her hands shaking.

“Where is it? The laptop?”

“I brought it with me in my bag.”

She lifts it onto the table and opens it.

Then what she shows me, I’ll never forget.

“What do I do?
What do I do?
” Her voice drops to a whisper again as I look at the screen, appalled.

“Jo, I really don’t know.”

I say it because the cogs of my brain have seized up as I try to imagine the truth as anything, anything at all, other than the awful, shocking reality she’s painting. But however I turn it round, whichever angle I look at it from, double-checking, just in case, the answer’s the same.

20

A
fter Jo’s call to the police, I hear, don’t see, how it happens from different sources, but the village comes to life, whispering with rumors that Neal Anderson has been arrested and questioned, then held for further questioning. That the Andersons’ house has been searched again, and the laptop taken and fingers are pointed.

“There was always something about him. . . .”

“Poor Jo . . . To think all this time, she didn’t know. . . .”

“How could she not know . . . ?”

“She must have guessed, surely. . . .”

Idle talk that only makes it worse, while understandably, Jo goes away for a few days, and yet again, Rosie’s murder is everyone’s business. In the middle of it all, my thoughts turn to Delphine. I assume Jo takes her with her, but she doesn’t answer my calls, and I worry about both of them. How much more can they go through?

Angus is speechless when I tell him, relieved that this isn’t a weekend I spend alone, that he’s here.
“Jesus.”
He shakes his head. “The guy was in our house. I liked him.”

Both of us questioning our judgment.

“I know. It doesn’t seem possible that someone could do that. And poor Jo . . .”

Angus sighs. “How do you ever come to terms with that? I mean, her
husband
. . .”

I curl my arms round his neck, leaning close against him, feel the thump of his heart against mine.

“It makes everything else seem so small.”

He nods into my hair. Not knowing what I’m not saying. How I’m trying to cast out the memory of cooking for this man, of his company, his touch, his lips. I pull away; I can’t help it.

“I’ll open some wine.”

 

Laura can’t take it in, either.

“Bloody unbelievable, isn’t it?” She puts down two mugs of tea in front of us. She is in boyfriend jeans and a huge sweatshirt, her hair twisted up under a cerise hair slide, and looks more like a student than the glamorous reporter from New York.

She hunts around for a pen, then comes and sits back down. “Some of it I already know, but I’d really like to hear your version of what happened.”

“I had this cryptic call from Jo about some mythical software I hadn’t ordered. It was a smoke screen, because she didn’t want Neal following her. Anyway, she came round and said she was using an old laptop of his when she found these files. Horrible, violent sexual images, links to Web sites . . . She didn’t say much more. She was too upset.”

Laura stops scribbling for a moment. “I can’t imagine how she must feel. And she thinks he killed Rosie.”

I nod. “If she hadn’t been in that IT course, she’d never have found any of it. She was useless with computers. And he’d still be walking around, and none of us would be any the wiser.”

It really did come down to that. To Jo’s course and some lost files she stumbled upon on a computer she shouldn’t have been using. Coincidences, flimsily strung together by twists of fate, a conclusion that’s somehow startling.

“Well, for five whole months, no one has known,” Laura says. “But we do now. Did she say anything else?”

Just for a moment, it crosses my mind to mention Neal’s advances, but I decide not to. I shrug. “I don’t think so. Do you know he abused her?”

Laura nods. Not for the first time, I wonder where her information comes from. “I had heard. You’d never have guessed, would you? I mean, he really has something, doesn’t he? Like George Clooney. Women the world over are besotted with him. If only they knew.”

“And then there’s the orphanage,” I remind her. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“I know, but look at it this way. It was the perfect cover,” she says. “Everything about him, the public face of Neal Anderson he’s so painstakingly constructed, completely hides what he really is.” She frowns slightly. “My contact happened to get talking to his lawyer—a bloody expensive one, I might add. And not discreet at all. Kate, do you know where the Andersons’ money comes from?”

I frown. “No idea. They obviously have plenty, though, if you look at the cars, the house.... And Jo doesn’t work. Yet the girls were at the same school as Grace.... I just assumed it was his salary.”

Laura shrugs. “Maybe.”

A shiver runs down my spine. “I still can’t believe it.”

“I know. He’s a talented liar, as we know. It’s a pity the police didn’t find the murder weapon. Still, when they examine the laptop, hopefully things will be clearer.”

 

Since Rosie’s body was found, the worst moment is yet to come. Another shock, piled on shock, when Laura calls to tell me that Neal has been released on bail—in spite of Jo’s testimony and the files she found on his computer.

“I don’t understand.” I can’t believe he can be free.

“The police have charged him with assault, but there isn’t enough evidence to charge him with murder,” Laura explains. “They can’t hold him indefinitely.”

“God, what about Jo?”

“There are post-bail conditions. He’ll have to stay away from her, Kate. If he has any sense, he’ll keep to it. It’s a serious charge. We just have to hope the police find more evidence.”

Suddenly, no matter the conditions attached to Neal’s bail, I’m frightened for Jo.

 

With Jo still away, her phone apparently switched off, I watch her house for signs of life. A week passes before I drive past and notice lights back on and her car parked outside. As I’m in a hurry, I don’t stop, just text her quickly, wondering how it is being in the house, knowing Neal has been released, before hurrying home to feed the horses before it’s dark.

Then, that evening, as I’m washing up in the kitchen, something flutters through my letter box. Seeing an envelope lying on the floor, I guess a neighbor’s put it through, but when I open the door, no one’s there.

And it gets more curious still when I open the note.