Where the Memories Lie (19 page)

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me you’ve been burgled.’ She carried on before I could say anything.

‘Is that why you wanted Anna to stay? You should’ve just said!’

I stared at the garage again. ‘Not quite.’ Although I did feel

the same as if we’d been burgled − violated, angry, stressed, upset, vulnerable.

‘What’s going on? You sound weird.’ Her voice became

suspicious. ‘I’m coming round when I’ve dropped off some paper-

work to the office, OK?’

Before I could protest, she’d hung up.

Great. Now Ethan would blame me for shooting my mouth

off to Nadia, too. I worked my neck from side to side, trying to

get rid of the painful knots of tension forming, gaze firmly back on the garage.

DI Spencer emerged first, followed by DS Khan. Spencer was

older than Khan, who appeared to be in her mid-thirties. If I had

to hazard a guess, based on the grey at the temples of his fair hair, the paunch around his stomach and the bags underneath his eyes,

I’d say he was in his early fifties. I watched them strip off their white suits, walk up the part of the driveway I could still see at this angle and then disappear. A few seconds later there was a knock at

the front door. I’d been expecting it, but it still made my stomach jump into my throat and my heart beat in an irregular pattern for a fraction of a second before settling back into rhythm again.

I wiped my clammy palms on my denim cut-off shorts and

walked towards the door.

‘Can we come in?’ DI Spencer said with an expressionless face.

Close up, the bags were more pronounced and his eyes were red.

I wondered briefly if he suffered from hay fever. The rape seed had been terrible this year.

It sounded like a question but it really wasn’t. I didn’t have

a choice in the matter, so I held the door open and waved them

through into the hallway, and they followed me into the kitchen.

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Where the Memories Lie

‘Um . . . do you want a coffee or . . . something?’ I leaned my

hip on the island to keep me upright.

‘No, thanks.’ DS Khan smiled but it was practised and

sympathetic. A smile I often used at work when I had to give a

patient some bad news.

There was banging at the front door then.

‘Sorry, hang on.’ I walked down the corridor and felt them

watching my back, their eyes assessing me.

As soon as I saw Nadia there I burst into tears. I couldn’t contain it any longer. I knew from their sombre expressions and their air of quiet seriousness exactly what they were going to tell me.

Katie Quinn really was buried under my garage.

Nadia took one look at my face and, without saying any-

thing, she enveloped me in her arms, my head resting on her

shoulder.

‘What’s going on? Did they take much? Did they do a lot of

damage?’ She asked.

‘It wasn’t a burglary.’ I took a big sniff and wiped my eyes with

the heel of my hands. ‘Come into the kitchen.’ I gripped her hand

and pulled her behind me, introducing the new addition to the

dig-up-my-best-friend party. ‘This is my sister-in-law, Nadia, Tom’s daughter. This is DI Spencer and DS Khan.’

Nadia looked at me, eyes wide with worry. ‘Has something

happened to Ethan? Or Dad?’

‘Maybe you’d both like to sit down?’ DI Spencer indicated

the oak dining room table in front of the French doors that led

to the courtyard garden.

Nadia sat. I stood.

‘You found something, didn’t you?’ I asked.

DI Spencer and DS Khan exchanged a stern look.

‘Found what?’ Nadia frowned – just from between the eye-

brows, mind you. ‘I don’t understand.’

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‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘Whatever you’re going to tell me you can say

in front of Nadia.’

‘I’m afraid we discovered bones consistent with a young woman

buried underneath the concrete floor of your garage, Mrs Tate, just like you suspected,’ DI Spencer said, and the room swam in front

of my eyes.

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Chapter Sixteen

I put my hands over my face, as if to shield myself from the

reality of it. The floor seemed to wobble underneath my feet.

‘What?’ Nadia shrieked. ‘What do you mean?’

I dropped my hands limply to my sides. ‘It’s Katie,’ I told her.

‘Katie Quinn.’

‘Katie?’ She looked between Spencer, Khan and I, head going

back and forth. ‘What the . . . How can she be under there?

She ran away.’

‘We can’t say who the remains belong to at this stage,’ DS Khan

said. ‘Although, given Mr Tate’s confession to you, it seems most

likely.’

‘Confession?’ Nadia said.

‘Who else could it be?’ I kept my eyes on DS Khan as I sat

down before my legs gave out completely. Tears burned in my eyes.

‘The scene of crime officers and a forensic anthropologist are

recovering the remains at the moment, along with any evidence

they find,’ DI Spencer said.

The front door opened and Poppy bounded down the hallway,

first coming up to me and wiggling with excitement, then turning

her attention to Nadia and finally DI Spencer and DS Khan, who

Sibel Hodge

gave a tight smile but ignored her. I called her to me absentmind-

edly and stroked her head as she lay on the floor, panting.

My gaze met Ethan’s as he stood in the kitchen doorway. He

could tell from my expression what was going on.

He uttered one single word loudly. ‘No!’

I nodded, allowing the tears to fall now, not caring. ‘Yes. She’s

really there.’

‘How did you know?’ Nadia’s jaw dropped open.

‘Tom told me.’ I squeezed her hand as Ethan shook his head,

his features dissolving into blankness.

‘He told you?’ Nadia asked again, her own eyes welling up. ‘Are

you saying . . . that stuff with Georgia was just where he was getting mixed up?’

‘Georgia? Who’s Georgia?’ DI Spencer asked.

DS Khan retrieved a notebook and pen from the pocket of

her mac and started taking notes. Why did she even have a mac

on when it was about twenty-six degrees? Surely that alone would

make her unable to judge things properly. How could she be a

proper policewoman if she couldn’t even dress herself according

to the weather?

‘Do you want to sit down?’ I said to Ethan, who glared at me

in response.

‘So, who’s Georgia?’ DS Khan repeated.

Through the sniffs and tears, I started at the beginning, telling

them how Tom had become agitated lately, having bad dreams, fix-

ating on someone called Georgia Walker who he said was missing

and that he’d killed. I said how Sergeant Downing had actually

traced her to the next village of Abbotsbury and she was very much

alive and well, and how we’d thought that was the end of it.

‘But then I went to see Tom again and he told me he wasn’t

talking about killing Georgia: he was talking about Katie.’

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‘And he actually mentioned Katie Quinn?’ DS Khan asked.

‘The young woman who apparently ran away from home twenty-

five years ago?’

I nodded.

Ethan ran his hands through his hair again. It would all fall out

at this rate.

Nadia wiped her eyes with a tissue from her pocket; her cheeks

were devoid of their usual rosiness.

‘Shouldn’t we get Chris here?’ I said. ‘This is going to involve

him, too.’

‘Who’s Chris?’ DI Spencer asked.

‘Our brother,’ Ethan spoke his first words since his ‘No!’ out-

burst and sat down, too. ‘He’s at a building site in Weymouth.’

‘We can speak to him later,’ DS Khan said. ‘For now, we need to

get some more background information from all of you since you’re

here.’ She locked her gaze on me. ‘Go on, please. What exactly did

Mr Tate tell you?’

‘That he wasn’t talking about Georgia. And that he’d killed

Katie. Um . . . he was rambling a lot, like he does these days, but he said it was an accident, that she wasn’t supposed to be there.

And then he said something about how he had to do it. I tried to

get more out of him but he became very distressed and suffered a

minor heart attack.’

‘You mentioned on the phone when you reported this that he

was alive but very frail.’

‘Yes, the Alzheimer’s is taking its toll on his heart and lungs,’

I said. ‘He signed a DNR order when he was diagnosed and still in

control of his mind, so they just gave him medication and made

him comfortable after the heart attack.’

‘He’s not up to being questioned by you lot,’ Ethan said

brusquely.

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DI Spencer studied him for a moment. ‘I know this is very dif-

ficult and upsetting for you all.’

Ethan snorted. ‘That’s an understatement.’

I reached out and squeezed his hand but he snatched it away.

‘And then what happened after the heart attack?’ DI Spencer

asked.

‘I went to see him a few days later and that’s when he told me

that he’d . . . Oh, God!’ I shook my head. ‘That he’d . . . that he’d buried her under the floor in the garage.’

‘It’s been two days since then. Why didn’t you call us immedi-

ately?’ DS Khan asked.

I glanced at Ethan. The agitation, disbelief and stress coming

off him were almost tangible.

‘Don’t look at me. I didn’t even know until last night,’ he said.

‘I didn’t know until just now,’ Nadia said, gulping back a sob.

‘It’s . . . I just can’t . . .’ She replaced the balled-up, soggy tissue with a fresh one from a pocket-sized packet in her bag.

‘I didn’t want to believe it,’ I said. ‘And after the last time, when we’d just wasted everyone’s time with the Georgia business, I wanted to make sure.’

‘And what made you suddenly sure?’ DI Spencer asked.

‘Well, it was the medical records that made me suspect it was

really true.’

‘Medical records?’ DI Spencer frowned.

‘I’d thought about her over the years, and always wondered

what happened to her. You know, I thought it was weird when she

didn’t get in touch again. But plenty of people run away and never

contact the people they know, plus she’d left that letter to Rose and Jack, so I never thought to look at her medical records before. Not until Tom said what he did. And, it wasn’t strictly ethical for me to check them. Data protection and all that.’

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Where the Memories Lie

‘Right. But you checked after Tom told you this, and what did

you find?’ DS Khan wrote something down.

‘That no one had ever requested a copy of her medical

records in the last twenty-five years since she’d disappeared. She

would’ve had to have regular smear tests, plus she was on the pill, so some doctor’s surgery or clinic would’ve got in touch with the

surgery.’

DS Khan exchanged another look with DI Spencer.

‘She could’ve changed her name,’ Ethan said weakly.

‘Of course she didn’t change her name!’ It was my turn to

snap as I pointed towards the garage. ‘She didn’t change her name

because she was buried under the garage!’

‘We don’t know it’s her!’ He gave me a brittle stare.

‘OK, OK, let’s all try to calm down.’ DI Spencer waved his

hands in what he thought was a calming gesture but only seemed to

inflame Ethan even more.

‘Calm down?’ Ethan said. ‘
Calm down?
You’re accusing my dad of murdering someone and you want me to be calm?’

‘Ethan! They’re just doing their job.’ Nadia laid a hand on

his arm.

His shoulders heaved up and down as he breathed hard.

‘We’re just trying to establish the facts, Mr Tate,’ DS Khan

said gently.

‘How do we know the facts? Who’s going to remember any-

thing after twenty-five years?’ Ethan shook his head but at least he sat back down.

For some reason, I wanted to slap him. Pretending it wasn’t

happening wasn’t going to solve anything. Yes, he was upset by this, but we all were. We had to deal with it whether we liked it or not.

It wasn’t like we could brush it under the carpet − or concrete − and forget all about it. Not now.

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‘It’s true that most people won’t remember what they were

doing twenty-five years ago, but we still have to ask,’ DI Spencer

said. ‘This is a murder enquiry now, and if you remember any-

thing, no matter how small, it could help us piece together what

happened.’ He turned to me. ‘What did you do after you checked

her medical records?’

‘I went to see Chris next, because I remembered we’d talked a

lot about Katie running away when it happened. I thought maybe

he might remember something I’d forgotten.’

‘Chris, your brother-in-law?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can we have his contact details?’ DS Khan asked.

I gave them his full name, address, landline and mobile phone

number.

‘And did he remember anything?’ DI Spencer asked.

‘Well, mostly. He was going out with Katie for about nine

months, you see, and he’d broken things off with her about seven

months before she . . . um . . . went.’

‘Why did they break up?’ DS Khan again.

‘Well, he was still in love with her, but she was pressuring him

to settle down and move in together and get married and he wasn’t

ready for it.’ I glanced down the table, trying to recall what he’d said the other night. ‘Apparently, he was the last person to see her.