I jolt awake to the sound of a loud voice, a man’s, talking about traffic. The radio. I’m in a car I don’t recognise, with grey leather seats and a small tree hanging down from the rear-view mirror, like in a cab. Slowly, my brain puts the pieces together: this is the taxi Mary ordered to take me to the station.
‘Why are we on the motorway?’ I ask the driver. Through the gap between his seat and his headrest, I can see a patch of pink neck, white hair so neat and even it looks like a carpet, ending in a perfect straight line at the base of his skull. All three lanes of traffic are stationary. We’re in the middle one. Ahead, a few people have climbed out of their cars and are stretching, or leaning in through open windows to talk to other drivers. I wonder how long we’ve been here, how long I was asleep. It’s getting dark outside.
‘You want Spilling, don’t you?’
‘I was going to get the train,’ I tell him. ‘I thought you were taking me to a station.’
‘I was told to take you all the way, miss.’
‘No.’ I push away the desire to drift back into sleep’s comforting oblivion. ‘I haven’t got enough money for…’
‘You won’t be needing any,’ he says, twisting the mirror so that we can see one another. His eyes are grey, with pouches of skin above and below them, and heavy white eyebrows that sprout forward instead of lying flat against his skin. ‘It’s on the account. All I’ll need from you’s a signature when we get there. If we get there,’ he adds cheerfully.
‘The account?’
‘Villiers.’
‘There’s been a misunderstanding,’ I tell him.
‘No misunderstanding, miss. I was told to take you to Spilling. Looks like we might be in for a long haul, though. There’s been an accident two junctions ahead and they’ve closed traffic down to one lane. Are you thirsty? There’s some water in the freezer-bag back there. I’d have told you before, but you were out for the count.’
To my right, in the footwell, there’s a squat blue case. I undo my seat belt, lean down and unzip it. There are eight unopened bottles of mineral water in its chilled interior.
‘Help yourself,’ says the driver. ‘They’re for you, not for me.’
I’m confused. How can they be for me? Why would I need eight bottles of water? ‘I’m fine, thanks,’ I say, uncomfortable with him watching me. ‘Really, I’d prefer it if you dropped me at a station.’ There’s a leather pocket attached to the back of his seat, with the top of a glossy, red-covered magazine sticking out of it: The Insider.
‘New to Villiers, are you? You look too young to have a daughter there. Job interview, was it?’
‘I was visiting someone.’
‘First time? That explains why you’re not used to the Rolls-Royce treatment. If you were a parent or a teacher, or even one of the girls, you’d expect nothing less. Between me, you and Barney McGrew, it’s nice to meet someone who doesn’t take too much for granted once in a while. Not a Villiers girl yourself, are you?’
‘No.’
‘I can tell you’re not. Villiers is our main account-we’re the only firm they use, and that’s why: for the service we provide. Would you like the radio on now that you’re awake? Sorry if it disturbed you before. I was keeping it on to hear the traffic bulletins. ’
‘I don’t mind.’ Talking is using up energy I can’t spare. I need to think about what I’ll say to Saul. Having refused to face him in person for so long, I have no right to turn up without warning and fire questions at him. Knowing he’ll be delighted to see me, that he’ll answer them willingly, only makes it harder.
I thought Saul had shown me all the art he owned. Why didn’t he show me Aidan’s picture? Before the day Mary attacked me at the gallery, we used to have dinner together from time to time, either at Saul’s house, with his family, or at mine, where it would be only me and him; I felt bad about that, but Blantyre Lodge is too small for a proper dinner party. The main point of those evenings was to show each other new paintings we’d bought. We joked about our ‘collections’. Saul used to say, ‘You and I are the taste-makers of the future, Ruth. Once all the pickled baby skeletons and diamond-studded skulls and unmade beds have been seen for the shams they are, you and I will be there to lead the way. True art will once again reign supreme.’
Does Saul know where Aidan is? Does he know why Aidan called one of his paintings The Murder of Mary Trelease?
‘Radio Two all right for you, miss?’ asks the driver. ‘Or would you prefer a ditty or two? I’ve got some CDs.’
The word ‘ditty’ makes me think of It’s a long way to Tipperary and Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag-songs I was forced to learn at school and hated. ‘The radio’s okay,’ I tell him.
‘There’s a copy of the school magazine in the pocket behind me,’ he says. ‘Latest issue. You’re welcome to have a decco if you get bored. Get a glimpse of how the other half lives.’
One half dies. The other half lives.
I pull The Insider out of the leather pouch and start to flick through the pages. There are photographs of schoolgirls in yellow blouses and maroon blazers, standing in lines, smiling. Each picture represents an achievement-money raised for charity, a victory in an independent schools’ public-speaking competition. On the next page there are more pictures of Villiers girls, this time in yellow tracksuits and swimwear, holding up trophies. I see Claire Draisey, the woman I met last night, also in a yellow tracksuit, and find out from reading the caption that as well as being Director of Boarding, she coaches the netball and synchronised swimming teams.
On the opposite page there’s a picture of a modern-looking building, a white-walled hexagon with large windows on every side. I’m about to pass over it when the name ‘Cecily Wyers’ catches my attention. The building has been named after her. I read the paragraph beneath the photo. It quotes Martha Wyers’ mother, an old Villiers girl, as saying she’s always been passionate about the arts, which is why she and her husband donated most of the money that turned the school’s dream of its own dedicated theatre and drama studio space into a reality. I stare at these five lines of text long after I’ve finished reading them, as if they might tell me something about Martha that I don’t already know.
Odd that Cecily didn’t think to name the building after Martha instead of herself.
I’m about to close the magazine and put it back in the pocket behind the driver’s seat when my eye is drawn to another name, at the bottom of the last page. No. It can’t be. I look at it, half expecting it to disappear, but it doesn’t. Goundry. The name is there, but the context makes no sense. A prickly sensation starts to creep along my arms, up my back and neck and behind my knees, as if I’ve got pins and needles in my skin.
I re-read the paragraph. Goundry’s not a common name. If it were Wilson or Smith, I wouldn’t have noticed. I drop the magazine, open my bag and pull out the sales list Mary gave me. There’s the name again: Mrs C. A. Goundry. An address in Wiltshire. My heart judders an irregular, drawn-out beat as something else leaps out at me from the page. I didn’t read the addresses before; I was too stunned by the nine names being there, looking so innocent and not at all mysterious-the people who bought paintings from Aidan’s 2000 exhibition.
The address given for Ruth Margerison, who bought a painting called Who’s the Fairest?, is Garstead Cottage, The Avenue, Wrecclesham. Mary’s cottage. I stare at the handwritten list. I know that writing, the curly ‘M’ of Margerison…
Disorientated and panicky, I clear my throat. ‘Excuse me?’
The driver turns off the radio. ‘Yes, miss?’
‘There’s something here about a talent contest. In the magazine. ’
‘That’s right. They have it every year, first Saturday after Valentine’s Day. There’s a lot of pressure on Villiers to go co-ed, but the head and the board are determined not to. All the statistics show that it’s easier to educate girls when there are no boys around, but try telling the girls that. And some of the parents-a lot of them take the attitude, if their daughter wants boys, they expect boys to be provided, like good school lunches and private bedrooms in the dorms.’ He laughs. ‘I reckon I get to hear more of their complaints than the head does. Not a lot I can do to help them-I’m only a cabbie. Most of them assume they can buy anything, and normally they can, but the board have dug their heels in over the single sex issue. They know who’d get an earful the minute the results took a dive.’
I want to scream at him to get to the point.
‘Valentine’s Day tends to bring the bad feeling to the fore, as you can imagine,’ he says, scratching the back of his neck. ‘The contest’s a bit of fun, designed to make the girls forget about the cards that never arrive because hardly any boys know they exist, tucked away in the middle of the countryside. It’s a shame, really. But they all love the contest-it’s the only one where the boarding houses go up against each other, you see. Usually the competitions are against other schools and the girls have to present a united front. They have that drummed into them from their first day: Villiers is one big happy family, and it demands absolute loyalty. And it is happy, to be fair. I wouldn’t have minded sending my daughters. Not much chance of that.’
The boarding houses. I read the paragraph again: ‘This year, for the first time since our Valentine’s Day Talent Contest was launched in 2001, Goundry was the winning house, with a massive total of 379 points. Well done, Goundry! The traditional slap-up victory breakfast will take place on Saturday 1 March in Goundry’s dining hall, and we’ll have no girls (or house mistresses or masters) from other houses trying to sneak in, thank you very much-we know that’s gone on in previous years and this time we’re cracking down!’
It’s crazy, but I’m going to ask him. ‘You don’t happen to know how many boarding houses there are, do you?’
‘Course I do. There’s not a lot about Villiers I don’t know. I’ve been-’
‘How many?’ I focus on his pink neck, try not to think beyond it.
‘Let’s see, now.’ He starts to tap the steering-wheel. I count the taps, feel a numb disbelief take hold of me when they stop at nine. ‘Nine in total.’
‘What are they called?’
Amiably, as if reeling off his children’s names-the daughters he couldn’t afford to send to Villiers-he begins to list them, unaware of the horror that burrows deeper into my mind with each one. ‘Abberton, Blandford, Darville, Elstow, Goundry-that’s the house that won this year’s talent contest. Caused an uproar, that result. Goundry’s a sporty house. Darville and Margerison are more intellectual. Winduss is your drama and your singing, so of course they expect to win every year.’
Knowing what was coming did nothing to prepare me. New sweat sticks my shirt to my back. I don’t know who they were. They never told us. Isn’t that funny? I’d forgotten Mary saying that until now. ‘Us’: the pupils. The girls weren’t told who the nine boarding houses were named after. Real people, presumably.
‘Where did I get to?’ says the driver. ‘Oh, yes. Goundry. Then there’s Heathcote. Margerison, which I mentioned-one of the more academic houses. Rodwell and Winduss-or Luvvies, as it’s known unofficially-those are the last two.’
The traffic has started to move, slowly but picking up speed all the time. The gaps between the cars are growing wider. ‘Looks like we’re on our way,’ he says.
‘Stop. Please,’ I say shakily. Everything has changed in the time it took him to list nine names.
‘This is a motorway, miss. I can’t stop. Are you all right?’
‘Can you pull over?’
‘I can do, if you want me to.’ For the first time, he leans out of his seat and turns to look at me. The skin of his face is as pink as the back of his neck, puffy around his mottled cheeks. He has a white moustache that covers the whole space between his mouth and his nose, and a grey beard. His would be a good face to paint; it has more colours and textures than most.
My mind swings back to Mary’s portrait of Martha Wyers, to the different textures and colours death gave her face: the white-encrusted lips, the blotchy chin…
I pitch forward and grab the headrest in front of me, breathing fast and hard as certainty rushes in. The picture of Martha… oh, my God.
‘Are you all right, miss?’
‘Not really. Can you stop on the hard shoulder?’
‘It’s a bit dangerous, is that. There’s services coming up. I’ll stop there for you.’
The discoloured patches on Martha Wyers’ chin. I assumed they were bruises, or some kind of bodily fluid that had come from her mouth-vomit or blood. I shied away from the specifics because they were grotesque.
Maybe there was some blood or bruising, but there was something else as well: a pale brown smudge below Martha’s lower lip, shaped like a child’s drawing of a dog’s bone. A birthmark.
I think of the paint splashed over the pile of cut-up paintings, of the cows mooing in the fields beyond Garstead Cottage. Mary walking in a slow circle around the heap of debris in her dining room, letting out a low moan, an animal sound…
‘Do you have a mobile phone?’ I ask the driver. ‘I need to borrow it. I can give you some money.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ he says. ‘You’re welcome to it.’ He passes it through the gap between the driver and passenger seats. ‘Don’t you have one? I thought everyone had one these days.’
‘Not me,’ I say. Not Aidan either. It was one of the many things we found we had in common early on; both of us hated the idea of having our privacy invaded by ringing wherever we went.
I dial directory enquiries, and, lowering my voice, ask to be put through to Lincoln police station. I expect to hear a recorded greeting, but a woman answers. ‘Good evening, Lincolnshire police. How can we help?’
I ask for PC James Escritt, steeling myself for bad news: his shift ended an hour ago; he doesn’t work there any more; they have no idea where he is now.
I can only ask him, no one else. If he isn’t there…
‘Hold the line,’ says the woman, and a few seconds later I hear a voice I haven’t heard for years. He sounds no different.
‘It’s Ruth Bussey,’ I tell him, knowing he hasn’t forgotten me any more than I’ve forgotten him.
I wait for him to ask me how I am, make small talk. Instead, he says, ‘I’ve heard the news.’
‘News?’
‘Gemma Crowther’s death.’
‘I didn’t kill her,’ I tell him. The taxi swerves slightly to the left.
‘I know that,’ says Escritt.
‘I need to ask you a favour,’ I say. And then, not caring how odd it sounds, either to him or to the man whose phone I’m using, I ask if he’d be willing to check my gardens. Not all of them-there are too many for that. Only the ones that appeared in magazines, the ones I won awards for. There are three of them. I give him the addresses. After a short hesitation, I say, ‘And Cherub Cottage.’
Escritt doesn’t ask for a reason, or quibble about the strangeness of my request. ‘What am I looking for?’ he asks.
‘I want to know if any of them have been interfered with in any way. Destroyed.’
‘You mean by new owners?’ he says. ‘Ruth, you can’t expect-’
‘No, that’s not what I mean. I’m talking about attacks on the gardens. Have any of the owners reported any criminal damage last year or this year?’
There’s silence as Escritt wonders why I think anyone might want to vandalise work I did years ago. He knows my answering silence means I’d prefer not to explain.
‘I’d say no to most people,’ he says eventually.
‘Thank you.’
‘It might take me a while. Can I reach you on the number you’re calling from?’
‘For a bit. I’m not sure how long, but… yes. I know it’s a lot to ask, but can you try to be quick? If anything was reported…’
‘I’ll ring you,’ he says curtly.
I clutch the phone. The driver doesn’t ask for it back. He doesn’t say anything. I pull my diary out of my bag and find Charlie Zailer’s number. After my conversation with James Escritt, I want to talk to someone else who knows who I am, who will call me ‘Ruth’ instead of ‘Miss’.
There’s no ringing, only a recorded voicemail message. She must be talking to someone else, or have her phone switched off. ‘It’s Ruth Bussey,’ I say. ‘Ring me back as soon as you get this message. The number’s…’ I break off.
‘07968 442013,’ says the driver. His voice carries no trace of his former bonhomie. It’s full of apprehension, or disapproval; I can’t tell which.
I repeat the number and press the ‘end call’ button, then lean forward and drop the phone onto the passenger seat. ‘Thank you.’
‘Services coming up. Are we still stopping?’
Say no. Go back to Spilling. Go home. Let the police deal with it.
‘We’re going back,’ I say. ‘To Villiers. Drive along the hard shoulder if you have to-just get me there as quick as you can.’