This Girl, That Girl, page 10
She opened her medicine drawer. ‘Take your pick.’
‘Fucking hell, Scar! You could open a pharmacy with this lot.’
She watched as he washed a couple of ibuprofen down with a glass of water.
‘Listen, I’ve got to get on with some work. Why don’t you have a quick kip on the sofa? You look as if you could do with one. Shaz can hold the fort for a bit, can’t she?’
He rubbed his face with both hands and exhaled wearily.
Maybe she would do it now – tell him about the connection she’d discovered between Rebecca and Gina Caplin, see what he made of it. But he was already flinging himself down on her sofa. Knowing Ollie, he’d probably had a bit too much to drink last night. She’d finish dealing with her emails, then make them both some lunch. They could talk about it then.
But when Scarlett came back into the kitchen a little while later, Ollie had already gone. She put the blister pack of tablets he’d left out on the counter back in the drawer. Maybe he’d just needed that hug. That was the thing with Ollie. All those girlfriends, but no one he could turn to when he needed a bit of comfort. A bit of unconditional love. It was Rebecca who’d provided him with that.
She picked up the local paper from where it had been lying by the coffee machine for the past two weeks. It was still folded over on the page about Gina Caplin’s ten-year-anniversary event. Scarlett looked at the familiar photo – the pretty, smiling face, tanned and make-up free, her shoulder-length wavy blonde hair. She reminded Scarlett of someone, but she couldn’t for the life of her think who. Or maybe it was because she’d seen this same photo so many times before. Yes, that must be the reason. It was the one that always appeared in papers and on the TV.
It unnerved Scarlett to think that Gina Caplin might have visited this very house. Maybe more than once. She raised her eyes to the ceiling. ‘Why didn’t you talk to me, Rebecca?’ she said aloud. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about her?’
For a few seconds she waited, half expecting a reply. But if her aunt hadn’t spoken to her about it when she was alive, she was hardly going to answer her now that she was dead.
Scarlett opened the drawer that housed her recycling bins and dropped the paper into its designated compartment. Something had certainly been troubling Rebecca during the course of the last year, something that Scarlett, Clive and the rest of the family had put down to her deteriorating mental health. Might it have been something to do with Gina?
There’d been an incident not so long ago, at the school where she used to work. Rebecca had never told Scarlett exactly what happened. All she’d said was that she had got very confused one day, thought one of the pupils was somebody else. Whatever it was she’d said or done, it had unnerved the girl in question and been enough for the head to insist she take sick leave. Scarlett had a hunch it was the opportunity the school had been looking for. Rebecca hadn’t been herself for some considerable time.
Whenever Scarlett tried to get to the bottom of what had actually happened, Rebecca became agitated and she’d had to give up. ‘I don’t know,’ her aunt had said. ‘This girl, that girl. There’s always some girl. Don’t keep asking me these questions, Scarlett!’
Scarlett looked out of the window in the back door. Something didn’t feel right.
Maybe she’d find an answer in Rebecca’s fiction. Isn’t that what novelists did? Stole snippets from their own lives and hid them in their stories? And even if she didn’t find an answer, it would be a comfort to read her aunt’s words, to hear her voice again.
But it was still raining far too heavily for her to go out and fetch the manuscript. She’d have to wait until tomorrow.
20
It had been a week since her meeting with the Quilter family, but it didn’t surprise Dee that Scarlett hadn’t come back to her yet to confirm dates. The bureaucracy of death could be a nightmare at the best of times, but when that death had been a murder … Dee made a note to give her a call later that day. Then she threw herself into her admin. When the door buzzer went, it made her jump.
She walked through to the reception area and there, outside the door, stood a youngish man with a crash helmet under his arm. She hesitated before opening up. Only two kinds of visitors usually came to this door without a prior appointment: people delivering packages that wouldn’t fit through the letterbox or which needed a signature or, rarely, the recently bereaved who hadn’t thought to ring first. They also got the odd enquiry about self-arranged funerals, but, generally, people tended to phone ahead or use the contact form on the website.
This man had no obvious letter or parcel in his hands so Dee assumed it must be an enquiry. She unlocked the door, hoping the expression on her face – compassionate, interested – betrayed nothing of the slight apprehension she felt inside. The same apprehension she always felt when opening the door to a lone man when she was on her own.
Not that she was on her own. Lindsay was downstairs in the prep room, doing a stocktake. But she would have her music on loud, knowing her.
‘Morning,’ she said. ‘Can I help you?’
The man cleared his throat. ‘I hope so. I wanted to talk to you about a funeral.’
Dee felt herself relax. ‘Of course.’ Yes, Dee, you idiot, she thought. Why else would he be here? She stepped aside and gestured for him to come in and sit down. ‘I can take some preliminary details now if you’d like, and then if you decide to go ahead with us, we can make an appointment.’
He perched on the edge of the sofa and put his crash helmet down next to him. The layout of the reception area mirrored that of a sitting room: a sofa and two easy chairs with a coffee table in the middle. Dee sat on one of the easy chairs and gave him a small, encouraging smile.
He stared at his knees. ‘I’m not quite sure where to start,’ he said, a slight wobble in his voice.
Dee moistened her lips. ‘Please, take your time.’
He nodded, still not meeting her eyes.
‘It’s about my friend,’ he said. ‘He died in a road accident.’
‘I’m very sorry to hear that,’ Dee said. ‘Very sorry indeed.’
He looked up then, met her eyes. ‘We grew up together,’ he said. ‘Best mates since nursery school.’
Dee inclined her head to let him know she was listening. This part of the job was a little like being a counsellor. Giving people space and time. Not rushing in to ask questions straight away but letting the details unspool gently. The apprehension she’d felt earlier was gone. Here was a man steeped in grief for his friend, a man who clearly wasn’t used to showing his emotions. She waited for him to go on.
‘I still can’t fully believe he’s gone.’
Dee leaned forwards slightly, her hands loosely clasped in her lap. ‘It’s always very difficult when someone dies young,’ she said.
He was back to looking at his knees again. Dee watched his shoulders rise and fall with his breath.
‘Has the family asked you to help them arrange the funeral?’ she said.
He shook his head. ‘He’s already been buried.’
Dee tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Whatever she’d anticipated him saying, it hadn’t been that.
‘I see,’ she said, her apprehension seeping back. ‘Then may I ask how Fond Farewells can help you today?’
He reached into his jacket pocket and brought out a photo of a twenty-something black man with his arm loosely hanging around the shoulders of a similarly aged white man. They were both grinning widely and wore identical red T-shirts with some kind of logo on the front. Dee soon worked out that the white man in the photo was a younger version of the man now sitting in front of her. The T-shirt looked familiar, and so did his friend.
Then she remembered. It was one of the first jobs she and Lindsay had taken on when they started the company, just a few weeks after Gina went missing. She’d thought about it only recently. The young man whose funeral took place in a bowling alley. But that had been almost ten years ago.
Dee shifted in her seat. ‘Would you like me to give you the name of a bereavement counsellor? It’s never too late to start processing your grief.’
He shook his head. ‘We supported each other, me and the rest of the lads in the team. We still talk about him, have a drink on his birthday. We even changed the name of our team in his honour. We’re Gabe’s Gang now. Always will be.’
Gabe. That’s right. His name had been Gabriel Abiodun. Knocked down by a van on Eltham High Street while riding his motorbike. Dee remembered his mother and girlfriend sitting on this very sofa.
His friend was looking directly at her now, holding her gaze. His face had darkened. What the hell was going on here? What did he want after all this time?
‘I wasn’t happy with how things were done,’ he said.
Dee’s palms began to sweat. What was he talking about? Admittedly, it had been an unusual service. Not really a service at all; the members of his team had gone bowling at their local alley, cheered on by his family and friends. That’s probably why it had stuck in her mind. But everything had gone off exactly as the family wanted. Dee probably still had the thank-you card from the mother pinned on the massive noticeboard in her office. She never threw thank-you cards away.
‘May I ask what your name is?’ she said.
‘Trevor. Trevor James Cooper.’ Dee’s heart missed a beat. His earlier awkwardness had been replaced by a look of defiance. Even his voice sounded stronger. ‘You asked me to contact you directly.’
21
Dee straightened her spine and took a deep breath. She needed to get Lindsay up here fast. She didn’t want to have to deal with this on her own. Whatever this turned out to be.
‘Would you mind waiting here a moment, Mr Cooper?’ she said. ‘I just need to find the relevant file from the office.’
She’d barely stood up when he started speaking again. This time, his words tumbled out in an indignant rush.
‘Gabe’s mum and girlfriend wanted him buried with his crash helmet and leather jacket. They bought one of those big American-style caskets, remember? Cost a fortune, but that’s what they wanted.’
Dee did remember that. They’d had to order it from a supplier they hadn’t intended using. Their preference, and that of most of their clients, was for simple coffins made out of plain wood or other environmentally friendly materials like willow, wool or cardboard, but Gabriel Abiodun had been a very large young man and, what with the crash helmet and all the biker gear the family wanted him buried in – his bulky leather jacket and boots – not to mention the ten-pin-bowling trophies his girlfriend had insisted on putting in there with him, they’d needed something bigger.
‘We all clubbed together to help them pay for it. They’d never have been able to afford it otherwise.’
‘Mr Cooper, can you give me a moment? Would you like a cup of coffee or something?’
‘I haven’t come here to sit around drinking coffee,’ he said. ‘I’ve come here to find out why you didn’t respect their wishes. Why you stole Gabe’s helmet, and probably his jacket too.’
Dee stared at him in disbelief. In horror.
He sneered at her. ‘Except I know the reason already. Because you worked out the value. It was a top-quality lid. Composite carbon shell. Worth about seven hundred quid.’
‘What on earth are you talking about? We would never, ever—’
‘What happened after the family came to view the body? You thought you’d help yourself, did you?’
‘I can assure you, Mr Cooper, we carried out the wishes of Gabriel’s family to the letter. What makes you think we didn’t?’
‘Because I found it on eBay a couple of weeks ago. The exact same helmet.’
Dee stared at him crossly. This was some kind of elaborate wind-up, it had to be. ‘How do you know it was the exact same one?’
Trevor Cooper took his phone out of his back pocket and after a few seconds searching for something held it out for her to see. ‘Gabe had it customized. Got his initials engraved on it. And a picture of an angel’s wings. Same as the tattoo he had on his arm.’
Dee stared at the initials G.A. and the set of white wings next to them. She remembered that tattoo. Remembered seeing him laid out in the prep room.
‘I thought that’s what I could see when I first looked at the photo, but I wasn’t a hundred per cent sure so I asked the seller to zoom in and take another picture. It’s Gabe’s lid. No doubt about it. I drew out some of my savings and bought it myself. It’s in my hallway at home. You can come round and check for yourself, if you want.’
Dee sat back down again, still holding Trevor Cooper’s phone and staring at the photo. This wasn’t possible. There had to be some mistake. She should go downstairs and speak to Lindsay about it right now. But if the helmet in this picture was Gabriel Abiodun’s – the same one his girlfriend had brought into reception – then Trevor Cooper must be right. How else to explain Gabriel’s initials and wing design turning up on a motorcycle helmet on eBay almost ten years later?
She looked up to see him studying her from the sofa. ‘Does the name Polly Beardsley mean anything to you?’ she said.
He looked away. ‘It’s a fake account. It wouldn’t let me leave a second review.’
Dee chewed the inside of her bottom lip while she considered what to do. ‘May I take your contact details, please? I need to speak to my business partner and see if I can get to the bottom of this. Trust me, Mr Cooper, if it turns out that the crash helmet in your possession really is the one your friend should have been buried with, this will have repercussions. Not just for us as a business, but for Gabriel’s family, too.’
Trevor Cooper turned to face her. ‘Believe me,’ he said, ‘the last thing I want to do is cause any more grief to Gabe’s family. Especially his mum.’
Dee locked eyes with him for a moment. ‘I’m very glad to hear that. Something like this would be so upsetting for her. For all of them.’
‘It’s very upsetting for me too,’ he said.
Dee nodded. ‘Yes, yes, I can see that.’
He leaned over for the clipboard and paper on the table, the one Dee had picked up intending to make notes on, and wrote his details on it. He stood up and handed it to her.
‘I look forward to hearing from you,’ he said.
He took hold of his own crash helmet and walked towards the door.
‘What do you want me to do if it turns out your allegation is correct?’ Dee asked.
He was almost at the door now and turned around so that he was looking directly at her. Dee didn’t like the look in his eyes. ‘It’s not an allegation. That lid is Gabe’s. I’d stake my life on it. I don’t know what I want you to do, but maybe you should have a long, hard think about those repercussions you mentioned and what you can do to prevent this going any further.’
And with that, he left, leaving Dee standing in reception clutching the clipboard and staring after him.
22
It had stopped raining at last. Scarlett pulled on her wellies, but when she straightened up and reached for the key to the summer house she saw that it wasn’t on its hook. That was odd, although, now she came to think of it, she couldn’t actually remember locking the door the last time she’d been out there. She’d been so worn out after hanging out the washing and then pulling up all those beetroots she’d just wanted to get back inside as soon as possible.
She plodded up the garden. There wasn’t anything valuable in there, so it didn’t really matter. But as she approached, she could see that the key wasn’t in the lock. She tried the handle, thinking she might have left it inside, but the door was locked. Damn. She must have dropped the key somewhere on the grass then.
She followed her normal route back to the house, her eyes sweeping from side to side as she walked, but there was nothing glinting up at her from the boggy grass. Back in the kitchen, she stared at the empty hook and sighed in frustration. She wasn’t normally so careless with keys, and what made it even more annoying was that there wasn’t another one. Rebecca had mislaid hers some while back. Scarlett’s key had been the spare. The ‘one and only’, Rebecca used to call it.
She stood in the kitchen, unsure what to do next. No doubt she could get another lock fitted, but that would take time. Or she could phone Ollie – he’d be able to sort it – but she didn’t like to bother him when he was so busy. And she didn’t want to be the type of woman who always called on a man to help her out, even if that man was her brother.
She thought of the crack running through the window. Presumably, it would be fairly easy to push the glass through and, if she stood on a chair, she’d be able to climb in easily enough. It was a bit risky, but if she went straight inside afterwards and had a rest, she’d be fine.
You won’t. You know you won’t. It’s too much for you. The sensible side of herself tried in vain to dissuade her, but as usual, she ignored it. She really did want to read Rebecca’s novel.
Fifteen minutes later, having watched a YouTube video on how to break a window safely, she grabbed a roll of black bin bags from the cupboard under the sink, two pairs of rubber gloves, the dustpan and brush, a roll of duct tape and some kitchen scissors. She put the whole lot into a carrier bag and fetched her walking cane from its holder by the door. Her legs felt strong today, but it was going to come in very useful in a moment.
Once she was outside the summer house again, she looked over her shoulder at the upstairs windows of the neighbouring houses. Trees obscured her view on both sides, so she figured if she couldn’t see them, they probably couldn’t see her and, even if they could, so what? This was her property. If she wanted to smash a window, she bloody well would. The glass had to be taken out anyway or sooner or later it might shatter and do her an injury.
She spread the bin bags over the decked platform in front of the double doors and went to get a brick from behind the raised beds. Then she pulled on both pairs of rubber gloves, cut strips of duct tape off and criss-crossed them all over the glass. The window was much larger than the one in the YouTube video, but if this was what it took to ensure the glass didn’t fly off in all directions, then so be it.
‘Fucking hell, Scar! You could open a pharmacy with this lot.’
She watched as he washed a couple of ibuprofen down with a glass of water.
‘Listen, I’ve got to get on with some work. Why don’t you have a quick kip on the sofa? You look as if you could do with one. Shaz can hold the fort for a bit, can’t she?’
He rubbed his face with both hands and exhaled wearily.
Maybe she would do it now – tell him about the connection she’d discovered between Rebecca and Gina Caplin, see what he made of it. But he was already flinging himself down on her sofa. Knowing Ollie, he’d probably had a bit too much to drink last night. She’d finish dealing with her emails, then make them both some lunch. They could talk about it then.
But when Scarlett came back into the kitchen a little while later, Ollie had already gone. She put the blister pack of tablets he’d left out on the counter back in the drawer. Maybe he’d just needed that hug. That was the thing with Ollie. All those girlfriends, but no one he could turn to when he needed a bit of comfort. A bit of unconditional love. It was Rebecca who’d provided him with that.
She picked up the local paper from where it had been lying by the coffee machine for the past two weeks. It was still folded over on the page about Gina Caplin’s ten-year-anniversary event. Scarlett looked at the familiar photo – the pretty, smiling face, tanned and make-up free, her shoulder-length wavy blonde hair. She reminded Scarlett of someone, but she couldn’t for the life of her think who. Or maybe it was because she’d seen this same photo so many times before. Yes, that must be the reason. It was the one that always appeared in papers and on the TV.
It unnerved Scarlett to think that Gina Caplin might have visited this very house. Maybe more than once. She raised her eyes to the ceiling. ‘Why didn’t you talk to me, Rebecca?’ she said aloud. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about her?’
For a few seconds she waited, half expecting a reply. But if her aunt hadn’t spoken to her about it when she was alive, she was hardly going to answer her now that she was dead.
Scarlett opened the drawer that housed her recycling bins and dropped the paper into its designated compartment. Something had certainly been troubling Rebecca during the course of the last year, something that Scarlett, Clive and the rest of the family had put down to her deteriorating mental health. Might it have been something to do with Gina?
There’d been an incident not so long ago, at the school where she used to work. Rebecca had never told Scarlett exactly what happened. All she’d said was that she had got very confused one day, thought one of the pupils was somebody else. Whatever it was she’d said or done, it had unnerved the girl in question and been enough for the head to insist she take sick leave. Scarlett had a hunch it was the opportunity the school had been looking for. Rebecca hadn’t been herself for some considerable time.
Whenever Scarlett tried to get to the bottom of what had actually happened, Rebecca became agitated and she’d had to give up. ‘I don’t know,’ her aunt had said. ‘This girl, that girl. There’s always some girl. Don’t keep asking me these questions, Scarlett!’
Scarlett looked out of the window in the back door. Something didn’t feel right.
Maybe she’d find an answer in Rebecca’s fiction. Isn’t that what novelists did? Stole snippets from their own lives and hid them in their stories? And even if she didn’t find an answer, it would be a comfort to read her aunt’s words, to hear her voice again.
But it was still raining far too heavily for her to go out and fetch the manuscript. She’d have to wait until tomorrow.
20
It had been a week since her meeting with the Quilter family, but it didn’t surprise Dee that Scarlett hadn’t come back to her yet to confirm dates. The bureaucracy of death could be a nightmare at the best of times, but when that death had been a murder … Dee made a note to give her a call later that day. Then she threw herself into her admin. When the door buzzer went, it made her jump.
She walked through to the reception area and there, outside the door, stood a youngish man with a crash helmet under his arm. She hesitated before opening up. Only two kinds of visitors usually came to this door without a prior appointment: people delivering packages that wouldn’t fit through the letterbox or which needed a signature or, rarely, the recently bereaved who hadn’t thought to ring first. They also got the odd enquiry about self-arranged funerals, but, generally, people tended to phone ahead or use the contact form on the website.
This man had no obvious letter or parcel in his hands so Dee assumed it must be an enquiry. She unlocked the door, hoping the expression on her face – compassionate, interested – betrayed nothing of the slight apprehension she felt inside. The same apprehension she always felt when opening the door to a lone man when she was on her own.
Not that she was on her own. Lindsay was downstairs in the prep room, doing a stocktake. But she would have her music on loud, knowing her.
‘Morning,’ she said. ‘Can I help you?’
The man cleared his throat. ‘I hope so. I wanted to talk to you about a funeral.’
Dee felt herself relax. ‘Of course.’ Yes, Dee, you idiot, she thought. Why else would he be here? She stepped aside and gestured for him to come in and sit down. ‘I can take some preliminary details now if you’d like, and then if you decide to go ahead with us, we can make an appointment.’
He perched on the edge of the sofa and put his crash helmet down next to him. The layout of the reception area mirrored that of a sitting room: a sofa and two easy chairs with a coffee table in the middle. Dee sat on one of the easy chairs and gave him a small, encouraging smile.
He stared at his knees. ‘I’m not quite sure where to start,’ he said, a slight wobble in his voice.
Dee moistened her lips. ‘Please, take your time.’
He nodded, still not meeting her eyes.
‘It’s about my friend,’ he said. ‘He died in a road accident.’
‘I’m very sorry to hear that,’ Dee said. ‘Very sorry indeed.’
He looked up then, met her eyes. ‘We grew up together,’ he said. ‘Best mates since nursery school.’
Dee inclined her head to let him know she was listening. This part of the job was a little like being a counsellor. Giving people space and time. Not rushing in to ask questions straight away but letting the details unspool gently. The apprehension she’d felt earlier was gone. Here was a man steeped in grief for his friend, a man who clearly wasn’t used to showing his emotions. She waited for him to go on.
‘I still can’t fully believe he’s gone.’
Dee leaned forwards slightly, her hands loosely clasped in her lap. ‘It’s always very difficult when someone dies young,’ she said.
He was back to looking at his knees again. Dee watched his shoulders rise and fall with his breath.
‘Has the family asked you to help them arrange the funeral?’ she said.
He shook his head. ‘He’s already been buried.’
Dee tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Whatever she’d anticipated him saying, it hadn’t been that.
‘I see,’ she said, her apprehension seeping back. ‘Then may I ask how Fond Farewells can help you today?’
He reached into his jacket pocket and brought out a photo of a twenty-something black man with his arm loosely hanging around the shoulders of a similarly aged white man. They were both grinning widely and wore identical red T-shirts with some kind of logo on the front. Dee soon worked out that the white man in the photo was a younger version of the man now sitting in front of her. The T-shirt looked familiar, and so did his friend.
Then she remembered. It was one of the first jobs she and Lindsay had taken on when they started the company, just a few weeks after Gina went missing. She’d thought about it only recently. The young man whose funeral took place in a bowling alley. But that had been almost ten years ago.
Dee shifted in her seat. ‘Would you like me to give you the name of a bereavement counsellor? It’s never too late to start processing your grief.’
He shook his head. ‘We supported each other, me and the rest of the lads in the team. We still talk about him, have a drink on his birthday. We even changed the name of our team in his honour. We’re Gabe’s Gang now. Always will be.’
Gabe. That’s right. His name had been Gabriel Abiodun. Knocked down by a van on Eltham High Street while riding his motorbike. Dee remembered his mother and girlfriend sitting on this very sofa.
His friend was looking directly at her now, holding her gaze. His face had darkened. What the hell was going on here? What did he want after all this time?
‘I wasn’t happy with how things were done,’ he said.
Dee’s palms began to sweat. What was he talking about? Admittedly, it had been an unusual service. Not really a service at all; the members of his team had gone bowling at their local alley, cheered on by his family and friends. That’s probably why it had stuck in her mind. But everything had gone off exactly as the family wanted. Dee probably still had the thank-you card from the mother pinned on the massive noticeboard in her office. She never threw thank-you cards away.
‘May I ask what your name is?’ she said.
‘Trevor. Trevor James Cooper.’ Dee’s heart missed a beat. His earlier awkwardness had been replaced by a look of defiance. Even his voice sounded stronger. ‘You asked me to contact you directly.’
21
Dee straightened her spine and took a deep breath. She needed to get Lindsay up here fast. She didn’t want to have to deal with this on her own. Whatever this turned out to be.
‘Would you mind waiting here a moment, Mr Cooper?’ she said. ‘I just need to find the relevant file from the office.’
She’d barely stood up when he started speaking again. This time, his words tumbled out in an indignant rush.
‘Gabe’s mum and girlfriend wanted him buried with his crash helmet and leather jacket. They bought one of those big American-style caskets, remember? Cost a fortune, but that’s what they wanted.’
Dee did remember that. They’d had to order it from a supplier they hadn’t intended using. Their preference, and that of most of their clients, was for simple coffins made out of plain wood or other environmentally friendly materials like willow, wool or cardboard, but Gabriel Abiodun had been a very large young man and, what with the crash helmet and all the biker gear the family wanted him buried in – his bulky leather jacket and boots – not to mention the ten-pin-bowling trophies his girlfriend had insisted on putting in there with him, they’d needed something bigger.
‘We all clubbed together to help them pay for it. They’d never have been able to afford it otherwise.’
‘Mr Cooper, can you give me a moment? Would you like a cup of coffee or something?’
‘I haven’t come here to sit around drinking coffee,’ he said. ‘I’ve come here to find out why you didn’t respect their wishes. Why you stole Gabe’s helmet, and probably his jacket too.’
Dee stared at him in disbelief. In horror.
He sneered at her. ‘Except I know the reason already. Because you worked out the value. It was a top-quality lid. Composite carbon shell. Worth about seven hundred quid.’
‘What on earth are you talking about? We would never, ever—’
‘What happened after the family came to view the body? You thought you’d help yourself, did you?’
‘I can assure you, Mr Cooper, we carried out the wishes of Gabriel’s family to the letter. What makes you think we didn’t?’
‘Because I found it on eBay a couple of weeks ago. The exact same helmet.’
Dee stared at him crossly. This was some kind of elaborate wind-up, it had to be. ‘How do you know it was the exact same one?’
Trevor Cooper took his phone out of his back pocket and after a few seconds searching for something held it out for her to see. ‘Gabe had it customized. Got his initials engraved on it. And a picture of an angel’s wings. Same as the tattoo he had on his arm.’
Dee stared at the initials G.A. and the set of white wings next to them. She remembered that tattoo. Remembered seeing him laid out in the prep room.
‘I thought that’s what I could see when I first looked at the photo, but I wasn’t a hundred per cent sure so I asked the seller to zoom in and take another picture. It’s Gabe’s lid. No doubt about it. I drew out some of my savings and bought it myself. It’s in my hallway at home. You can come round and check for yourself, if you want.’
Dee sat back down again, still holding Trevor Cooper’s phone and staring at the photo. This wasn’t possible. There had to be some mistake. She should go downstairs and speak to Lindsay about it right now. But if the helmet in this picture was Gabriel Abiodun’s – the same one his girlfriend had brought into reception – then Trevor Cooper must be right. How else to explain Gabriel’s initials and wing design turning up on a motorcycle helmet on eBay almost ten years later?
She looked up to see him studying her from the sofa. ‘Does the name Polly Beardsley mean anything to you?’ she said.
He looked away. ‘It’s a fake account. It wouldn’t let me leave a second review.’
Dee chewed the inside of her bottom lip while she considered what to do. ‘May I take your contact details, please? I need to speak to my business partner and see if I can get to the bottom of this. Trust me, Mr Cooper, if it turns out that the crash helmet in your possession really is the one your friend should have been buried with, this will have repercussions. Not just for us as a business, but for Gabriel’s family, too.’
Trevor Cooper turned to face her. ‘Believe me,’ he said, ‘the last thing I want to do is cause any more grief to Gabe’s family. Especially his mum.’
Dee locked eyes with him for a moment. ‘I’m very glad to hear that. Something like this would be so upsetting for her. For all of them.’
‘It’s very upsetting for me too,’ he said.
Dee nodded. ‘Yes, yes, I can see that.’
He leaned over for the clipboard and paper on the table, the one Dee had picked up intending to make notes on, and wrote his details on it. He stood up and handed it to her.
‘I look forward to hearing from you,’ he said.
He took hold of his own crash helmet and walked towards the door.
‘What do you want me to do if it turns out your allegation is correct?’ Dee asked.
He was almost at the door now and turned around so that he was looking directly at her. Dee didn’t like the look in his eyes. ‘It’s not an allegation. That lid is Gabe’s. I’d stake my life on it. I don’t know what I want you to do, but maybe you should have a long, hard think about those repercussions you mentioned and what you can do to prevent this going any further.’
And with that, he left, leaving Dee standing in reception clutching the clipboard and staring after him.
22
It had stopped raining at last. Scarlett pulled on her wellies, but when she straightened up and reached for the key to the summer house she saw that it wasn’t on its hook. That was odd, although, now she came to think of it, she couldn’t actually remember locking the door the last time she’d been out there. She’d been so worn out after hanging out the washing and then pulling up all those beetroots she’d just wanted to get back inside as soon as possible.
She plodded up the garden. There wasn’t anything valuable in there, so it didn’t really matter. But as she approached, she could see that the key wasn’t in the lock. She tried the handle, thinking she might have left it inside, but the door was locked. Damn. She must have dropped the key somewhere on the grass then.
She followed her normal route back to the house, her eyes sweeping from side to side as she walked, but there was nothing glinting up at her from the boggy grass. Back in the kitchen, she stared at the empty hook and sighed in frustration. She wasn’t normally so careless with keys, and what made it even more annoying was that there wasn’t another one. Rebecca had mislaid hers some while back. Scarlett’s key had been the spare. The ‘one and only’, Rebecca used to call it.
She stood in the kitchen, unsure what to do next. No doubt she could get another lock fitted, but that would take time. Or she could phone Ollie – he’d be able to sort it – but she didn’t like to bother him when he was so busy. And she didn’t want to be the type of woman who always called on a man to help her out, even if that man was her brother.
She thought of the crack running through the window. Presumably, it would be fairly easy to push the glass through and, if she stood on a chair, she’d be able to climb in easily enough. It was a bit risky, but if she went straight inside afterwards and had a rest, she’d be fine.
You won’t. You know you won’t. It’s too much for you. The sensible side of herself tried in vain to dissuade her, but as usual, she ignored it. She really did want to read Rebecca’s novel.
Fifteen minutes later, having watched a YouTube video on how to break a window safely, she grabbed a roll of black bin bags from the cupboard under the sink, two pairs of rubber gloves, the dustpan and brush, a roll of duct tape and some kitchen scissors. She put the whole lot into a carrier bag and fetched her walking cane from its holder by the door. Her legs felt strong today, but it was going to come in very useful in a moment.
Once she was outside the summer house again, she looked over her shoulder at the upstairs windows of the neighbouring houses. Trees obscured her view on both sides, so she figured if she couldn’t see them, they probably couldn’t see her and, even if they could, so what? This was her property. If she wanted to smash a window, she bloody well would. The glass had to be taken out anyway or sooner or later it might shatter and do her an injury.
She spread the bin bags over the decked platform in front of the double doors and went to get a brick from behind the raised beds. Then she pulled on both pairs of rubber gloves, cut strips of duct tape off and criss-crossed them all over the glass. The window was much larger than the one in the YouTube video, but if this was what it took to ensure the glass didn’t fly off in all directions, then so be it.
