Try Not to Breathe (32 page)

“I
’m going on paternity leave soon so I don’t have much time,” Matt said as Alex’s hand shook slightly, holding the phone to her ear.

Paternity leave. It was all so very proper for him this time, so real. Matt announced his upcoming leave in the same police tones that he’d told her about Paul Wheeler’s alibi.

When Matt’s name had popped up on her phone’s screen, she’d almost sent the call to voicemail, embarrassed that she was no further along. But to see that he was calling, to know his fingers had found her name on his phone, that he’d found a place to hide while he spoke to her, had carved a sliver of time just for her, she had to answer.

“Alex, I know the Paul Wheeler idea was a non-starter but I remembered you’d asked me to look into similar cases, do
you
remember?”

“Of course I do.”
I remember everything, Matt. I review our conversations over and over in my head until I feel sick.

“I’ve finally passed over some of my cases so I had a chance to look into this yesterday. And I found something that could be relevant.”

“Oh?” Alex sat down heavily on her sofa, wet running clothes leaving an instant dark patch. The rain whipped at the old kitchen window, an angry wind whistled down the chimney and knocked at the grate to get in. Could there really be something new, some gift from Matt to kick things up a notch?

“Don’t get your hopes up but it’s safer if we talk in person.”

Alex sat up straight. “I’d love to. How about today? How soon can you meet?”

She had two hours to get ready, drive to the train station, park and buy a ticket. Two hours in which to stay out of the kitchen, two hours in which to avoid Dutch courage. She looked down, she was still shivering in her wet running tights and hoodie. Her hair was ridged with sweat, and her cheeks were mottled.

She scrambled into the shower, rinsing shampoo into her eyes in haste and nicking her leg with the razor.

It was lucky that time was so short. Any longer and she may have sat paralyzed, barely able to breathe at the thought of seeing him again. Now for the first time in years, she would be so close to his skin that she’d smell his aftershave. Perhaps he was gray now. Gray would suit him.

Had she had days to worry and panic, she might have ordered ten or so outfits to try on and discard in tears, sinking more and more red wine to quell the panic and blur the mirror. With half of her clothes in the wash and a quarter of them drying in the warmest corner of the kitchen, she had little choice.

She pulled on matching underwear, embarrassed while she selected it. She chose her cleanest jeans and a close-fitting Ralph Lauren jumper that she hoped was a little more flattering than her other options. She blasted her hair on the highest setting of the hair dryer. Her hands shook as she applied makeup clumsily, and then washed it all off again. She would do it on the train when her heart rate was a little closer to the normal range.

“You look well,” Matt lied.

“You look great,” Alex replied.

He really did look great. And he smelled great too. Musky, woody and luxurious. For a moment, she just stood and drank him in. Matt was wearing his thirties well, relaxed laughter lines around the eyes, the lightest of silver touches to his stubble, he looked well-worn and expensive, like a prized leather Chesterfield.

Alex displayed the accoutrements of a good thirty. A great bag, expensive makeup. A decent mask.

On the plus side, she reasoned, she probably did look markedly better than the last time he saw her. How could she not?

“I don’t have long.” Matt clearly didn’t feel the need to explain. “So let’s get down to it.”

“Sure.”

“You first.” Matt pointed.

“Me? Oh okay…well, Amy’s boyfriend from the time has been helping me.”

“Whoa, that’s great!”

The positive shock on Matt’s face was a little too much.
Yes, Matt, I’m not completely useless
.
I do finish some of the things I start. The important things. Well, y’know, some of them.

“How did you find him?”

He broke into my house.

“Journalistic excellence.”

Matt smiled.

The Greenwich coffee shop was surprisingly quiet. Perhaps the clouds had chased the crowds away, or perhaps Matt knew this place as a particularly private rendezvous point.

In the corner, a handful of overdressed students tried too hard and laughed too loud, mocking the plastic menus and tomato-shaped sauce bottle—which would have been considered kitsch and cool when Alex and Matt were their age.

By the door, a father in crumpled clothes gave up trying to read the ketchup-splattered paper as his twin toddlers rocked back and forth, toast soldiers pulverized by their pudgy palms.

Alex told Matt about Jacob. She mentioned Jenny and her rebuttal, that Jacob was talking to her as they spoke. She described the eyestrain from combing through hundreds of articles. She whizzed through the field trip to see where Amy was found, the conversations with Becky and the mad dash to Devon to accost Bob.

“I’ve got to be honest, you’ve done more than I thought you would. No offense.”

“That is slightly offensive, Matt.” Alex rolled her eyes. It was hard to know if he was being playful, or genuinely thought she was useless.

Then Matt smiled. Oh God, that smile. The one where the deepest dimples opened up from cheekbone to chin, ready for her to fall in and float away. That smile that used to be hers whenever she took the time to tease it out. Now it belonged to Jane, who was “thirty-eight weeks and four days, not long now!” and thought he was “doing overtime and I feel shitty about it, so…”

“Look, like I said, I don’t want to get your hopes up but there is something I found and it doesn’t sit easily with me. It’s just too close to ignore.”

“What is it, Matt?” Alex felt her heart race and she tried not to look too eager.

“In early July of 1995, a very drunk sixteen-year-old girl was chatted up on a late bus in Edenbridge. The young guy talking to her convinced her to get off at the edge of town and, well, you and I would say he raped her.”

“Who wouldn’t say that?”

“There are some gray areas in the case file. She got off the bus with him willingly, she was intending to sleep with the guy. We’d deal with it very differently now.”

“Who was the guy?”

“He was never tracked down but going from her statement, he was somewhere between mid-teens and mid-thirties, which isn’t very helpful, but perhaps shows just how pissed she was. He was at least six foot, with dark hair and a deep voice. Hang on, is this off the record?”

“If it needs to be.”

“Don’t give this to your editor or anything, not yet.”

“I won’t, Matt, what is it?” She wanted to grab his jacket and shake him along.

“He said his name was Graham.”

“Graham.” Alex rolled the name around on her tongue and wrote it down in her notepad. It didn’t mean anything to her.

“So this ‘Graham’ chats the girl up and convinces her to get off the bus, share the bottle he had, have some fun on the common.”

“Okay. It all sounds very sleazy.”

“It was. Like I said, she was drunk and she changed her mind and asked him to walk her home instead. He didn’t let her go. He tied her hands up and had sex with her.”

“Raped her,” corrected Alex.

“Yeah. Her statement says he put his hands on her throat afterward and threatened to kill her.”

“That’s awful,” Alex said, angrily. “And no one’s ever been arrested for it?”

“There wasn’t a lot to go on,” Matt said, defensively.

“It definitely feels connected. What do you think?”

“Well, it’s not a million miles off what happened to Amy. Don’t get too excited though, Alex. At the time she was seen as a flaky witness due to her circumstances.”

“What circumstances?”

Matt exhaled. “She had a difficult background. And given how pissed she was at the time, the case probably wouldn’t have been brought by the Crown Prosecution Service
even
if they’d had a suspect.”

“So despite someone who was basically a kid being brave enough to come forward to give a statement, this guy was allowed to carry on, and probably get worse? Possibly go on to attack Amy?”

“Tread carefully, Alex. This isn’t a case of us letting a bad guy slip the net. The case wouldn’t have held up.”

“Matt, I’m not out for blue blood. I couldn’t give a crap about that. I’m just trying to look at anything that might help Amy.”

“Okay. But just remember that this is off the record, and you definitely didn’t get it from me.”

“How realistic is it to ask if I can talk to the girl that reported the rape?”

Matt cocked his head, raised his eyebrows and said nothing.

“Absolutely out of the question?” Alex helped.

“Yep. There is literally no way that I can pass a victim’s name on to a member of the press, for any reason.”

“And I guess you can’t get in touch with her?”

“I really can’t. Alex, I know that’s not what you want to hear, but how could I justify it?”

“Because I want you to?” They both smiled.

“Alex, if you bring me a reason to open this up again, then I can pass it on. But it would need to be really solid, more than just a hunch. I know it sounds uptight, but you remember how it is.”

“I remember everything, Matt.”

“I know.”

“I miss you,” she whispered.

“I have to go.”

“I know you do.”

Graham. It was a pseudonym, of course, no one who plans a sex attack blurts out their real name during the preamble.

This tall, dark and handsome man calling himself Graham
had
to be Amy’s attacker. From what little Matt had shared, the man sounded entirely in control. He must have planned things, or at least had a plan ready to go for whenever he spotted a potential victim. That must be something that takes years to work toward, thought Alex, there must have been some baby steps along the way. Or maybe he was guided by someone else.

Alex had been on the brink of giving up and sinking into a deep red several hours early, and several glasses too many, and now Matt of all people had placed her slap bang back on track.

She had a name.

She had a similar case. Just weeks before Amy was abducted.

She had a story. She really had a story.

She was so excited that until the train pulled into Tunbridge Wells station, she thought solely about Amy and didn’t dwell on the way Matt’s scent lingered on her clothes and how beautifully his eyes still danced over her face when she spoke.

A
lex came to see me again today and it wasn’t as nice as the other times.

I must have been dozing when she got here, and I missed the first part of what she was saying so all I heard was some pretty weird stuff. I don’t know if this was because she thought she was talking to a different Amy, an Amy who’s had a bit of a rough time, but I couldn’t really make sense of it.

She started saying something about dating older men and getting hurt by them. I mean, it felt inappropriate but maybe she doesn’t have anyone else to talk to about this stuff.

I’ve definitely noticed people open up to me more and more now. A woman the other day, I think she said she was a nurse, was talking about getting divorced because her husband had been sleeping with their neighbor. And then another one, who sounded pretty old, was talking about her boyfriend from when she was a teenager. How she still missed him and wondered what he was up to.

The woman who sings to me while she’s washing my hair is here. She’s telling me about someone who comes in and “sits,” whatever that means, about how he’s broken his leg and his wife is having a baby. And I’m like, okay, so? I don’t mean to be rude but I don’t know this man so I find it hard to care about his leg or his baby.

It feels like forever since I’ve spoken to Jenny or Becky or gotten any gossip from school. Screw broken legs and babies, what about the school disco and who’s snogging who? Has Jenny worn down Steve yet or is she still making desperate eyes at him across the bunsen burners? What about Becky, is she still having those dreams about Mr. Parker? Ha-ha, she never should have told us about that, what did she expect us to do?
Not
laugh about it relentlessly?

Anyway, Alex was going on and on and it started to freak me out a little bit. It was almost like I was being accused of something. I don’t know, I didn’t like it and I tried to tell her. I don’t know what happened, or if I offended her, but she just suddenly stopped talking.

I still hope she comes back.