The woman detective, Gemma, texted Meredith that afternoon asking if she could come over and see her at Minstead.
Now what? thought Meredith, but she texted obediently back to say yes, of course, and to remind Gemma that she was at home in the cottage, having taken a few days compassionate leave. She couldn’t face being in the shop, knowing that Ralph wasn’t upstairs in his office, or around for coffee, or to have a laugh with in staff meetings.
She had been in the front garden, ostensibly weeding, but also trying to make sure that none of Ralph’s shirt buttons were visible after she’d thrown them into the flowerbed in panic the previous week. The weather had changed, banks of dark grey clouds rolling across the hills, heavy with threatened rain, casting a pall over the grounds. Her mood felt as dark as the sky and wasn’t helped by Paula, who rang her as she was wrestling with the root of a stubborn bramble.
‘Why did you ring the police to tell them about the lion?’ Paula demanded as soon as Meredith answered. ‘I told you I’d let them know! Now they’re all suspicious, like I’m hiding something!’
Meredith wiped her free hand across her sweaty forehead. She wasn’t sure what to say – she didn’t want to freak her out any more than she already was. ‘Oh Paula,’ she began carefully. She’d been going to say something like, we have to tell the police everything, no matter how inconsequential it seems, but then realised how massively hypocritical that would be.
A robin hopped along the crazy-paving path, stopping with its head on one side to regard her. They stared at each other for a long while. Meredith couldn’t shake the sensation that it was judging her.
‘Look,’ she continued to Paula, and the robin. ‘I’m sorry if you thought I was interfering, but I’m worried. It’s not just the lion. You said the door was left open. I really don’t want to freak you out, and I’m not saying there’s any connection to any of it, but with … what happened to Ralph and Andrea, unless the post-mortems show that they both died accidentally, I just think we can’t be too careful.’
She tailed off, rubbing a burgeoning blister on her thumb made by the spade’s handle. She had decided not to burden Paula with all the other weird stuff that had been going on with her. And neither Paula nor Ralph ever knew the truth about who she used to be, nor how she really got the scar on her hand.
‘DS Davis is coming over to see me today,’ Paula said. ‘It might be with the results of the post-mortem. I asked him, but he wouldn’t tell me on the phone. Which means it’s not good news.’
It was as if she was refusing to accept Meredith’s fears that someone might be targeting them.
‘That Gemma woman, the detective, is coming over to see me as well,’ said Meredith.
‘Why would she do that?’ Paula sounded almost outraged. ‘Why would they need to tell you?’
Meredith immediately wished she hadn’t mentioned it. ‘Because I knew both Ralph and Andrea, I suppose.’
‘I’m going to go to Norfolk to stay with my sister for a bit,’ Paula said. ‘Jackson’s going away with his girlfriend for a couple of weeks, some last-minute package holiday. We can’t have a funeral till the police release Ralph’s body anyway. DS Davis said it was OK as long as he knows where we are. I’ve cancelled all my clients indefinitely.’
The rain began to fall, fat drops on the parched earth. Meredith retreated inside the cottage, leaving piles of weeds on the path and the robin’s reproachful stare. She felt inordinately relieved at the news that Paula was taking herself out of harm’s way, and that she was doing it without Meredith having to spell out her fears. Even before all this, she and Ralph had expressed concerns about Paula’s potential vulnerability, seeing mentally unstable clients in the detached summerhouse that was her consulting room.
It was raining heavily when Gemma arrived, soaked just from the short walk down the steps from the car park. Meredith heard the click of the gate and watched her come up the path, stepping over the uprooted weeds, her normally pleasant face set in a grimace of something that was either discomfort at the rain, or knowledge of the news she had to deliver.
‘Come in, come in,’ Meredith said, opening the door and forcing a smile. ‘I’ll get you a towel.’
‘Thanks. I didn’t think to bring an umbrella.’
After a bit of fussing around with tea and towels, Gemma finally delivered the news Meredith had been dreading.
‘Meredith, I’m so sorry, but the post-mortems showed that both Ralph and Andrea were murdered. Ralph was strangled, and Andrea was hit on the head before she fell into the water. It could be the work of two separate killers, but we really don’t think that’s likely.’
Meredith stared down at the jagged hole in the back of her hand.
Black boots, thumping across a van floor.
Black boots, kicking her in the face.
The flash of a blade, plunging down towards her.
Her own screams, amplified by the van’s metal sides…
They sat in silence for a few moments, then Gemma leaned forwards and said, her voice barely audible over the noise of the rain drumming at the window, ‘I think there’s something you haven’t told us about all this. Am I right?’
Meredith was going to tell her. She opened her mouth to speak, but the words just wouldn’t come. She couldn’t say it. If she said it; if she said, I think it’s me he’s after, then it made it real. And as for, I had sex with Ralph right before he died; shame mingled with the terror and stilled her tongue.
In the end, all she said was, ‘You don’t think I did it, do you?’
Gemma met her eyes. ‘Personally, no I don’t. But I think you have something to do with it, whether you’re aware of it or not.’
Another long pause.
‘Meredith, I know what happened to you; the abduction. I found the details on our system. I’m sorry – that must have been unspeakably traumatic. I know they never found the perpetrator. Which is what makes me concerned that these murders of your friends are new warnings to you. I know it seems unlikely, since so much time has passed – but we can’t rule it out. Perhaps your attacker has been out of the country, or has only just tracked you down…’
Meredith felt the room tip and sway. She sank back against the sofa cushions and waited for the nausea to pass.
‘Surely this has occurred to you as well?’
They knew. It was real; she couldn’t keep denying it any longer. All she could do was nod, her eyes closed.
‘Please help me,’ she said.
Gemma came and sat beside her, and even though the girl was half her age, Meredith had an urge to collapse into her arms.
‘I will. I promise,’ Gemma said. ‘But you have to help us too. I’m reopening your case. We’re going to look again at all the evidence you gave last time, see if we can make any sort of connection. And…’ She hesitated.
‘What?’ Meredith braced herself, but Gemma’s next words, when they came, were a relief.
‘…I’ve asked my boss if I could base myself here with you for a few days, in my role as Family Liaison Officer. We wouldn’t normally stay overnight, but given how remote you are out here, I think it’s a good idea. Partly for your own safety, and partly so we can have a proper chance to talk. Just you and me. Anything you can tell me, about Ralph or Andrea as well as about you, could help catch this guy, Meredith.’
Meredith could tell that Gemma was expecting her to refuse immediately, and under any other circumstances, the idea of someone other than Pete staying in her cottage was anathema, but all she could do was nod again.
‘OK.’