An engagement ring was visible in the photograph, glinting like a piece of treasure among earthquake debris. Except that the debris in the photo was treasure, too, in a way, the treasure of other people’s lives: a set of keys on a dolphin-shaped key-ring; a treble clef cuff link; a red Prada glasses case. And the silver pillbox, which had been the first thing to tumble out of the glove box that day, into Freya’s lap.
What’s with all the stuff in here? she’d said as Chris had frozen, watching her sift through.
He’d just managed to think of an excuse—they’d been having a clear-out at home, he was taking these things to a charity shop—when she’d recognized the pillbox. It belonged to Jess’s cousin, whom Chris also taught. Apparently she’d recently lost it and had been asking all her friends if they’d seen it because it was a christening present that meant a lot to her. Then Chris had been able to see Freya making connections, reading his own panic, understanding she’d discovered a stash of strangely personal loot.
Now Chris avoided his solicitor’s bewildered gaze, the expectant eyes of the detectives. He stared down at his own hands on the desk. His veins seemed bluer than usual, as though his skin was thinning as he sat there.
“Freya hasn’t paid for any driving lessons since December,” he said.
Ford’s eyes narrowed. Johnson’s fingers twitched as if she was ready to slap handcuffs on Chris.
“Why?” Ford asked.
Chris said nothing for a moment. Her one-word question hovered.
“Are you—or were you—having a relationship with her?”
“No.”
“Then why wasn’t she paying you?”
Chris swallowed. “She . . . Well, I suppose you’d call it blackmail.”
“Blackmailing you?”
The scorn in Johnson’s tone made Chris stiffen. A grown man let himself be blackmailed by a seventeen-year-old girl? Chris kept his gaze on Ford: She clearly didn’t like him, but at least she never seemed to be laughing at him from behind her hand.
“She had something over me,” Chris said, praying they’d somehow let him skirt around the details. “She threatened to give me away unless I let her keep her lesson money. She said she needed it to buy her own car. I was sure her parents would buy her one, but she acted so urgent about it.”
“Do you think she wanted to go somewhere? Did she ever mention a trip, or a plan to run away?”
He shook his head.
“Do you think the money might actually have been for something else?”
Chris jerked his shoulders. “I just know she went to some lengths to get it.”
He thought of the little comments she would throw in as they drove the streets, reminding him of what she knew, how she could ruin him. The folded notes she’d leave on his windshield. Picked up anything nice lately? . . . Still got the photos. Sometimes she’d acted like a vigilante, doing a public service by keeping him in check. But really she was just a child who’d stumbled across an adult’s secret and realized she could wield it like a weapon.
Up until the day she’d flipped open his glove box and its contents had spilled into her lap, he’d actually liked her, despite her overconfidence in the driver’s seat, despite his innate mistrust of glossy people. She had an edge, sure: She wasn’t meek or straitlaced, but she was funny and interesting. And maybe the change had begun before she’d made her discovery about him. He recalled a distracted sullenness that had developed over a matter of weeks. Then, as she’d sifted through the items, it was as if something had clicked and she’d understood she could turn knowledge into power.
Chris shot a glance at Ford’s iPad, his gaze lingering on the pillbox. It was the one thing Freya had managed to smuggle from his car after that day. Her leverage, she’d called it.
“What’s the significance of these things?” Ford asked.
Ms. Beaumont turned her upper body toward him as though hinged at the waist. “Chris, we need to talk before you answer any further questions.”
“Just tell us why Freya took this picture,” Ford said, ignoring his solicitor. “Why she was blackmailing you. Why you were driving away from Kingston with her on the day she disappeared.”
Chris felt a surge of pure terror. Was he actually going to be charged? Ms. Beaumont tried one more time to convince him to consult, but Chris just wanted to get this over with now. He could only hope they wouldn’t equate his confession with a motive to harm Freya.
“I steal things,” he said dispassionately. “I take little tokens from my learners, whenever I can.”
Johnson was smirking again. Chris had never felt so pathetic. Ford was pushing up her sleeves. “Do you sell them? Is business not exactly booming?”
It won’t be after this. Perhaps it was crazy to think about his livelihood when he was on the verge of being charged with a crime, but he couldn’t help envisaging the kind of future he’d have even if he did get out of there.
“It’s not for the money,” he said. “I s’pose it’s a compulsion. Like I want a piece of their lives.”
They both stared at him. They didn’t get it, and he hadn’t expected them to. Didn’t need them to, really. Only to believe him.
“So . . . you were stealing from your clients, and Freya found out?”
He gave a reluctant nod. “She threatened to tell unless I let her off paying for her lessons. It was a small price to pay to keep my business and my reputation.”
“But soon you got fed up,” Ford said, her voice steely. “Being blackmailed by a teenage girl just galled you a little too much. Maybe Freya started asking for more money, making bigger and bigger threats.”
“That’s not—”
“What happened on March the fifteenth?”
Chris imagined he was looking down a long tunnel, with that afternoon at its end. He had become fed up. And nervous. His lessons with Freya would soon have to end: She couldn’t drag them out indefinitely, and what was to stop her telling people his “little secret” then? It was gossip to everybody else but it could destroy Chris. Worse: It could destroy Vicky, and he couldn’t let that happen, not when she’d struggled so hard to make something of her life.
Chris set his jaw. “I said I couldn’t keep giving her money. And I needed to know she wouldn’t blab about my . . . habit.”
“Did you threaten her?”
“No. But we argued. Anger just seemed to burst out of her and, to be honest, I wasn’t sure it was all aimed at me.”
“What do you mean?”
“After a while it was like she was just venting. It didn’t seem to be about the money anymore, or my stealing. She seemed furious with life in general. She was driving erratically, not following my directions . . . That was why we ended up heading in the wrong direction when we should’ve been going back to her school. Eventually I persuaded her to let me drive.”
“Did you try to stop her making a scene?”
“I tried to calm her down.”
Ford leaned forward. “How?”
“Not with any force.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Yes.”
“So what happened after you swapped places?”
“She got out of the car.”
Ford wasn’t blinking. “Where was this?”
“Portsmouth Road. Out toward the river. I tried to call after her but she ran off. I assumed she’d make her own way back to school. I . . .” His words caught on the lump in his throat. “I never thought that might be the last I saw of her.”
“Why didn’t you come forward about this before?” Ford’s face had turned thunderous, but Chris couldn’t work out if she believed him and was angry he’d withheld information, or whether she still considered him their prime suspect. Johnson wasn’t bothering to disguise his scorn. Ms. Beaumont had the air of somebody who’d been excluded from a conversation and was silently raging.
“Because I would’ve had to admit the thefts,” Chris said. “And I knew it would look bad—I was the last person to see Freya, she’d been blackmailing me, we argued . . .”
Ford trailed her fingertips across the darkened surface of the iPad. “You’re right,” she said. “It does look bad.”