Gemma sat on the faded velvet sofa in Meredith’s front room, propped herself up with cushions and opened her laptop.
‘Can I have your wifi code, please, Meredith?’ she called. If she was honest, it was kind of nice to be neither at home nor in the strip-lit office, which was always redolent of poor aftershave choices and testosterone. This room smelled of lavender and summer.
‘Here you go,’ Meredith said, returning with a small sticker on which were printed the relevant details.
Gemma thanked her, typed them in, then Googled Merry Heather + Cohen. While she had already found Meredith in the system, she knew little about her career as a popstar, nor about her fellow band members.
There was a Wikipedia entry about the band, which Gemma read through – a long list of chart singles and albums, the various changes of line-up after Meredith left suddenly in 1995, links to articles endlessly discussing the reasons why she might have quit so abruptly, statements from a spokesperson from her record company saying that she had left the country indefinitely for ‘personal reasons’. There were also a lot of photos and reports of an incident in which Meredith had had paint thrown over her; Gemma made a mental note to speak to her about it. Nobody seemed to have made a connection between this and the abduction, three years later. She clicked back to the Google search results, and something caught her eye – a link from a site called TMZ, which Gemma knew was a celebrity gossip site: ‘The Mystery of Merry Heather – Solved at Last?’
Her breath caught in her throat. How had nobody spotted this? Clicking on the article, she saw an old photo of Meredith, much younger and thinner, and in full stage make-up, accepting a BRIT Award, with an inset video still of a smarmy-looking man. The banner underneath read: ‘Breaking News – Record Company Exec Iain McKinnon Speaks Out.’ She clicked on the video.
‘I can’t say much,’ said this Iain bloke self-importantly, looking like he was dying to say everything. ‘Just that I have exclusive information that Merry Heather has been back in the UK for some time, living a very different life in rural Surrey, and currently considering a summer reunion with Cohen. Obviously this is most exciting, but I’m not at liberty to disclose the details until contracts have been finalised. It would be Cohen’s first performance in twenty years, and their first with the original line-up in over twenty-five. I’m sure Merry is dying to get back in the spotlight again! Working in a gift shop in a stately home is very far from what she does best.’
A brief shadow crossed his face as if he knew he’d said too much, and the interviewer, off-camera, pounced, demanding, ‘She works in a shop? In a stately home? Merry Heather? Which stately home? Has she said why she left the band so suddenly all those years ago?’
Iain McKinnon smirked guiltily and gave a dismissive wave of his hand. ‘As I’m sure you appreciate, I can’t divulge that information. Merry’s privacy is very important to us.’
The video ended abruptly, and Gemma sat back on her pillows, bewildered. A reunion? That couldn’t be right, surely. The thought of Meredith on stage again was almost laughable. The woman couldn’t even bear to mention the band, let alone want to rejoin it.
She peered at the date on the article – last August, almost a year ago. If someone had really wanted to discover Meredith’s whereabouts and go about making her life a misery, it wouldn’t be that difficult. How many stately homes – with gift shops – were there in Surrey? Quite a few, but not so many that it would be difficult to figure out which one she ran. A handful of phonecalls would probably do it; or a lot of visits to country piles.
Gemma hadn’t realised there had been a big mystery around why Meredith dropped out of the band all those years ago. But why would she? She’d been five years old in 1995. She barely even remembered Kurt Cobain.
Her thoughts returned to the scar on Meredith’s hand, the hooded expression in her eyes whenever anybody asked her any questions about the past. Gemma had just sort of assumed that the woman had got fed up with being in the public eye, as she herself would very quickly. Gemma couldn’t imagine anything worse than being hassled wherever she went, photographers lurking in corners to leap out at her, longlensed, capturing her least flattering angles. She imagined being in the Daily Mail’s Sidebar of Shame, pictured all sweaty leaving the gym, or caught having a row with her ex, Rich, shouting puce-faced in a park at him, under the caption: ‘Gemma McMeekin in Screaming Argument with Boyfriend!’
She shuddered, closed the laptop and wandered through to the kitchen in socked feet, delicious smells of lamb and rosemary wafting through to her from the Aga. Meredith was laying a tiny table with knives and forks. A jam jar of fresh bright-blue cornflowers had been placed in the middle and an uncorked bottle of red sat on the counter with two empty glasses next to it.
Meredith looked up and caught Gemma looking longingly at it. ‘Hi. I know you said you didn’t want to drink as you’re on duty, but it’s there if you want to. I’m going to have one. At least one.’
‘It smells delicious.’
‘It’s just a lamb stew. You do eat meat, don’t you?’ Meredith said it in a way that implied tough shit if you don’t.
‘Yeah.’ Gemma had already told her this, just a few minutes ago.
‘Good. I’ll dish up then. Have a seat.’
Gemma sat down, mentally rehearsing the questions she wanted to ask. ‘Um, Meredith, I didn’t know you were planning a reunion with your band?’ Perhaps a bit abrupt to kick off with, she thought, but she wanted to see what reaction it got.
Meredith had just turned to stir the stew with a ladle, ready to spoon it onto plates, but she froze; her back to Gemma, so Gemma couldn’t see the expression on her face.
‘I’m fucking well not. Not in a million years. What makes you think that?’
Gemma felt alarmed at the vehemence of her tone. That was a reaction all right.
‘I saw something on line. A video interview with some record company guy – Iain McSomething – who claims you are. Or were, last year.’
Meredith dropped the ladle back into the pan, stew splattering with a sizzle over the Aga’s hotplates. When she turned round, her face was green with shock. ‘What? Show me.’
‘I’ll get my laptop. Hold on.’
Gemma galloped back into the front room and grabbed the laptop. When she re-entered the kitchen ten seconds later, Meredith had filled a glass of red to the brim and was sitting, legs splayed, on one of the kitchen chairs, swigging at it. Her eyes were pink and she was blinking furiously. ‘I’m not crying,’ she said. ‘I’m livid. How fucking dare he?’
Gemma navigated back to the TMZ clip. ‘I think he let it slip,’ she said as they watched in silence. ‘Look at his face when he says it. I’m sure he didn’t mean to.’
‘He hired a private detective to find me,’ Meredith said in a strained voice.
‘You knew?’
‘I knew he wanted me to do these stupid gigs, because he found my phone number and rang me up last year. I told him where to stick his offer, obviously. But I can’t believe he then let it go out on the internet as if it was actually a done deal! He’s the most arrogant dickhead I’ve ever met. He was, twenty-five years ago, and he still is. I just can’t believe it. Can I sue him? Let me see that again.’
They watched the clip a second time, Meredith’s face a mask as she stared intently at it. Gemma kept glancing at her. She was glad she was here with the woman. Meredith increasingly seemed like someone who really did need protecting.
‘I guess it’s lucky that other media outlets didn’t pick up on it,’ Gemma said gently. ‘It could have been worse. But … if someone has been looking for you for years and they’ve seen this, it might have given them the clue they’ve needed to track you down.’ The unspoken words ‘and start killing your friends’ seemed to hang between them like a miasma.
‘Do you remember anybody ringing the shop to ask if Merry Heather worked there, or anything like that? Anything out of the ordinary at all? Any of your staff mentioning that someone was asking questions or hanging around?’
Meredith shook her head. On the Aga the stew had begun to bubble ferociously. She stood up slowly, picked up the oven gloves and lifted the pot off the burner. ‘Don’t want it to stick,’ she said. ‘Do you mind if we eat a bit later? I’ve lost my appetite.’
‘That’s fine,’ said Gemma, ‘but please think hard. We can’t ignore this. I’ll need to let M— … Mark, I mean DI Davis, know.’
She stammered over his name, almost calling him Mavis.
‘I can’t remember anything like that happening, no. But if it was someone who found me based on this – why didn’t they kill me? Why kill Ralph and Andrea? Or…’ she swallowed, ‘…Pete, God forbid, if they’re after people close to me? And why now?’
The two women gazed at one another. Gemma wanted to reassure her, but found she couldn’t. ‘We don’t know that Pete isn’t in danger,’ she said, absolutely dying to pour herself a glass of the wine. Red stained her braces though, she reminded herself, but it didn’t stop the craving. ‘Or you. We have to work out who’s done this and stop them, before it escalates any further. There’s something else I’ve been meaning to ask you: the night Ralph went missing, Pete came to “pick you up” to go for a drink. But he doesn’t have a car, does he?’
‘He’s got a van, for his furniture deliveries,’ said Meredith slowly. ‘But yes, that night he was on his bike.’
‘So why did you say he was picking you up? Why not just meet him at the pub in the village, near his workshop?’
There was a long silence. Finally, Meredith raised her eyes to Gemma’s. ‘There’s something I have to tell you,’ Meredith blurted, leaning back against the kitchen counter. ‘I didn’t before, because … well, you’ll see why … but…’
‘What?’ Gemma was concerned that Meredith was going to pass out. Beads of sweat had popped onto her brow. ‘Sit down, Meredith. I’m worried about you. What is it?’
Meredith paused then spoke in a gabble, as if the faster she said the words, the less impact they’d have.
‘I had sex with Ralph on the evening he went missing. We were both pissed. I regretted it straight away and went home, but when I got back here I realised I’d lost my key – it had fallen out of my pocket. I went back for it and he was dead on the floor. I must have been the last person to see him alive … apart from whoever killed him.’
‘What?’
‘I did CPR on him for ages, but nothing. I panicked. I thought he’d had a heart attack. I knew it was too late to call an ambulance so I rang Pete instead, because I was in a state. He came over – on his bike because the van was in the garage. I took him to where it happened, and we were going to ring the police then, but when I got there, the body was gone. Someone took it, and they must have dumped it in the pond that night. Then I found him the following week. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I know I should’ve said something before, but Paula … Paula’s my friend. I just couldn’t risk her thinking I had anything to do with it, because I didn’t, at least not intentionally. I think the same person killed Andrea. And whoever it was might have found out where I live and work because of that twat Iain McKinnon, and now everything’s ruined and I’m scared and I don’t know what to do….’
Gemma just gaped at her for a moment. When she’d hoped that going in as a FLO would encourage Meredith to open up about stuff she might have been hiding, she never in a million years expected this.
This changed everything.
‘Meredith … I’m sorry … I’m going to have to arrest you for withholding vital evidence. It’s unlikely you’ll be charged, but … You do understand, don’t you?’
Meredith nodded, eyes downcast. She seemed almost relieved.