This Girl, That Girl, page 22
‘Sorry, what did you say?’
‘I said your garden’s going to be out of—’
‘No, no, before that. Something about being taken away. I didn’t catch what you said.’
‘He’ll be taken away soon, I said. To the mortuary.’
Scarlett stared at him in shock. ‘He?’
DI Guyver narrowed his eyes.
Just then, her dad returned with supplies from the corner shop. The two men acknowledged each other, then Guyver continued speaking. ‘The body we’ve discovered is that of a male. Possibly in his forties or fifties, although of course that hasn’t been confirmed yet.’ The plastic bag her dad had been holding slipped out of his hands and on to the floor.
DI Guyver paused briefly. ‘I’m not sure what arrangements you’ve made for your aunt’s funeral, but I’m afraid this will delay the release of her body.’
He peered at them from under his eyebrows. ‘The investigation into Rebecca’s and Clive’s deaths will need to be reopened in the light of this latest … discovery, and in light of what you’ve already told us.’
Scarlett blinked at him in confusion. ‘So, it’s not Gina Caplin?’
‘No, Ms Quilter. It isn’t Gina.’
A female police officer appeared at the back door. DI Guyver beckoned her in. ‘Ms Quilter – Scarlett – this is DI Mel Gartside, one of our investigating officers. She’ll be your family liaison officer, so if you have any queries about anything, she’ll be your main contact, okay?’
‘But … but what about the connection to Gina? What about …’
‘We’ll obviously need to talk to you all again. Mel will go through the next stages with you.’
When Guyver had left and Mel Gartside was making them some tea and talking to her dad, Scarlett locked herself in the bathroom. With shaky fingers, she pulled out her phone and called Ollie back, keeping her voice low.
‘Who is it?’ she said. ‘Who is the man buried in the garden?’
She heard the rush of air expelled from Ollie’s lungs. ‘Andrew Pulteney,’ he said at last.
Her brain struggled to make sense of what he’d said. ‘Oh my God, the guy Rebecca was going to marry? The one who was cheating on her? But how … why?’
‘It wasn’t meant to happen, I swear it. I just wanted to give him a piece of my mind, for humiliating Rebecca. But he was such an arrogant bastard. Came out with a load of abuse about her. Lies, all of it. And he started mouthing off about me too. Telling me I was a loser. That was the trigger. I swung for him. Hard.’
Scarlett heard his ragged breath on the other end of the line. ‘I think I knew then that he wasn’t going to get up, but Mickey was there too and he kept on kicking him in the head. I had to pull him off. In the end, we didn’t know …’
There was a long silence, then: ‘We didn’t know which of us had killed him. All we knew was that he was dead. You should have seen the state of him, Scar. We’d have gone down for it.’
Scarlett heard him taking one deep breath after another, trying to calm himself down. ‘The business was just taking off. Thanks to Mickey, I was making some real money. That’s what Dad’s never understood. I don’t have a head for business. Never have done.’ He gave a loud sniff. ‘The answer was staring us in the face. The garden was a building site. The foundations for the summer house had already been dug out.’
‘So you buried him.’
‘Yeah. Then we got rid of all his stuff. All except his phone. We started posting stuff on his Facebook page, made it look like he was travelling.’
Scarlett shook her head in disbelief. And she and Rebecca had believed it. It’s what he’d always talked about doing. Taking early retirement. Buying himself a yacht.
‘But what about his family? Didn’t you think they had a right to know what happened? Didn’t anyone miss him?’
‘He didn’t have any family to speak of, only his mum, and she was in a nursing home. He was a loner. A chancer. You must remember what he was like. You met him, didn’t you?’
There was a knock on the door. ‘You okay in there, Scarlett?’ It was Mel Gartside.
‘Yeah, I’m okay. I’ll be out in a sec.’ She flushed the chain. ‘So where does Gina fit into this?’ She was whispering now. ‘How come Rebecca kept quiet about knowing her? I don’t understand.’
Ollie gave the longest, deepest sigh. ‘This was never about Gina.’
‘But … but Rebecca did know Gina. You knew her too. You must have done.’
‘Yeah, I met her a couple of times. Asked her out once, but she had someone else on the go.’
‘So why didn’t Rebecca ever tell me she knew her? Why didn’t you?’
There was a long pause.
‘I was with Rebecca the day the news broke about Gina going missing. She wanted to call the police. She’d only seen her recently. But I knew the police would question me. I’d have been a suspect. I’d even given her a lift to some bloke’s place in Welling a couple of times. Her DNA would have been in my car.’
The fog in Scarlett’s head began to clear. ‘Oh, Ollie, that bloke could have been the one who abducted her!’
‘Yeah, he could have been. But don’t you see, the garden was a building site. When you’ve just buried a body, you don’t want the police sniffing round after some missing girl, do you?’
‘So how did you stop Rebecca going to the police?’
Ollie was sobbing now. His words came out in fits and starts. ‘I told her what we’d done. I told her everything.’
Scarlett gasped. Once again, she thought of how she and Rebecca had stalked Pulteney on Facebook. But Rebecca had known he was dead the whole time!
‘She was horrified,’ Ollie said. ‘Disgusted. But I think she also felt partly responsible because it was her we’d been defending. She wasn’t stupid. She knew how things might pan out for me if she went to the police. So she agreed to keep quiet.’
‘You mean you made her keep quiet. Like Mickey tried to make me.’
‘No, that’s not what happened. I promise you. We discussed it, the three of us, and that’s what we decided.’
Once again, Scarlett heard her aunt’s voice saying ‘Family comes first’ and shuddered at the memory, now tainted for ever by Ollie’s revelation.
Mel Gartside was knocking on the door again. ‘Scarlett, are you sure you’re all right in there?’
Scarlett ran the taps. ‘Just coming.’
Ollie was still talking in her ear. ‘She promised to get rid of anything related to Gina. Any messages. Meetings she’d recorded in her diaries. But when you told me you’d found her old novel and that card in the summer house I realized she couldn’t have got rid of everything.’
Scarlett closed her eyes. Rebecca probably hadn’t even realized the card had been caught up in the manuscript.
Ollie was still talking. ‘Then she started losing it. Kept talking about the “secret” she wasn’t allowed to tell, kept staring at the summer house with that strange look in her eyes and going on about “contaminated soil” and “this girl, that girl”. All that stuff about Clive cheating on her … he wasn’t. She was getting confused. She was remembering what happened with Pulteney. Don’t you see? It was only a matter of time before she blurted something out.’
Scarlett’s blood ran cold. Surely he didn’t mean what she thought he meant. And yet, it all made sense now. When Mickey had fallen down the stairs and Ollie had stopped her from going down to see if he was all right by saying the words ‘he killed her’, she’d assumed he’d been talking about Gina Caplin. But what he’d really meant was, he killed Rebecca! And if Mickey had killed Rebecca, then he must have killed Clive too. And Ollie was part of it. Ollie had let it happen!
She drew back the bolt on the bathroom door and walked out into the hallway like a zombie. Mel Gartside was standing right outside. Her dad was behind her, an anxious look on his face. Scarlett turned the loudspeaker on and Ollie’s voice filled the hallway.
‘She was becoming a liability. She had to be stopped, don’t you see?’
Her dad’s eyes flared in shock and he gesticulated frantically behind Mel’s back for Scarlett to cut the call. She ignored him and ducked away as he stepped forward to grab the phone out of her hand, noticing as she did so that Mel had taken out her phone and pressed record.
As Ollie continued to speak, her dad went very still. He looked as if he’d aged ten years. ‘She had to be stopped or the whole fucking thing would come out.’
‘So you made sure I was out of the way at that party, and then you let Mickey kill her. You let him beat Rebecca to death and make it look like it was Clive!’
‘No! It was going to be a gentle death. A kind death. We were going to give her an overdose of pills, make it look like she’d forgotten how many she’d taken. I managed to convince myself it was a sort of mercy killing.’
‘Don’t you dare try to justify it! Don’t you fucking dare! Just because she had dementia didn’t give you the right to—’
‘I know it didn’t. But we were desperate, don’t you see? She’d forgotten it was a secret. They would have found Pulteney’s body.’
‘They have found Pulteney’s body!’
‘Yeah, they have now.’
He didn’t need to say thanks to you, but Scarlett heard it anyway. ‘So what went wrong with your mercy killing?’ She spat the words out.
‘I was in the kitchen getting the pills ready. Mickey was in the bedroom talking to her. All of a sudden, I heard her shouting. Like I said, she was getting her stories all mixed up, accusing him of leading me astray, of murdering some girl and burying her under the summer house. Mickey says she started attacking him with the baseball bat, so he grabbed it and hit her across the head. When I got in there …’ His voice broke. ‘I saw the bloody footprints first. He was wearing Clive’s slippers. Then I saw—’
Her dad, who’d started pacing up and down the hallway, stopped and looked directly at Mel Gartside as he spoke. ‘But it was Mickey who actually killed her, not you. Is that what you’re saying?’
Scarlett knew he was clutching at straws, trying to stop his son from incriminating himself still further. But it was useless. Nothing could help him now. And by Ollie’s silence on the other end of the line, it was obvious he knew that too.
‘So who killed Clive?’ Scarlett said.
When Ollie spoke again it was hard to make out exactly what he was saying, he was crying so hard, but they got the gist all right. She watched the hope in her father’s eyes fade as the full story emerged. Clive had been out drinking that night. When he came home pissed, Ollie had manoeuvred him into the bathroom and slit his wrists. Mickey had told him what to do, how to make sure he positioned himself behind Clive and sliced from the right angle.
‘Mickey said it worked out better this way. Like a crime of passion, he said. He knows things, Scar. Things about the business. I’m up to my ears in shit.’
‘You are now, son,’ their dad said, looking at Mel Gartside, who was still holding up her phone to record it all. ‘You are now.’
52
Dee sat at the table in her dad’s kitchen and stared at the headline in the paper: ‘GINA CAPLIN: POLICE EXCAVATE GARDEN IN HOUSE IN CHARLTON LINKED TO POTENTIAL SUSPECT.’ It had been two days since Dee had made the decision to contact the police. Scarlett Quilter had given her her word that she would do it, but how well did Dee really know her? She’d only met the woman a couple of times, and it couldn’t be easy when it was your own brother you suspected, maybe even your own father. It couldn’t be easy at all.
Her phone rang. Sue Caplin’s name flashed up on the screen, but it was Alan who spoke to her. Dee held her breath. The last time he’d called had been two days ago, to warn her of the breaking news. Not that she’d needed any warning. This time, she had no idea what he was going to tell her. But whatever it was, she knew it wasn’t going to be good.
‘It wasn’t her,’ he said, his voice hoarse from crying. ‘It wasn’t her.’
Dee kept it together the whole time Alan was on the phone, but as soon as the call ended the disappointment that had opened inside her like a valve welled up until she thought she would burst.
It wasn’t Gina.
Dee folded her arms on the table in front of her and rested her forehead on her wrists. She wanted to sit with the knowledge a little while longer before she told her dad. It was a man’s body, Alan had told her. ‘At least someone, somewhere, will soon know what’s become of their loved one,’ he’d said. That was typical of Alan. Always trying to find the positive.
But for him and Sue, and the rest of Gina’s family, and for Dee and Lindsay and all her other friends, the not knowing would continue. Maybe for ever. It was too much to bear and yet bear it they must, for there was nothing else they could do. It wasn’t a question of ‘being strong’ or ‘keeping faith’, or any of the other meaningless platitudes people came out with. They had to get up each morning and drag the dull weight of frustration and sorrow around with them like a ball and chain. Whoever was responsible for Gina’s disappearance had made prisoners of them all.
She was about to go and give her dad the heart-breaking news when her phone rang again. She saw the name Scarlett Quilter and almost didn’t answer it, but something made her accept the call, some instinct that it was the right thing to do.
‘I wanted you to know that I didn’t go back on what we agreed,’ Scarlett said. Her voice was quiet and shaky. ‘I had every intention of calling the police after you left, but … I was interrupted and then it was too late.’
Scarlett didn’t give Dee the chance to respond.
‘I want to let you know something before you hear it on the news. A body was found, but it wasn’t your friend.’
‘I already know,’ Dee said. ‘Gina’s dad just phoned me.’
Scarlett paused. ‘I’m so sorry for giving you all false hope.’ Dee sensed her trying to compose herself. ‘There’s been a rather dreadful development,’ she said. ‘My brother did something terrible.’
Dee held her breath, dreading what she was about to hear.
‘I probably shouldn’t be telling you this – in fact, I know I shouldn’t – but I must. Anyway, you’ll find out soon enough. Ollie did know your friend.’ Dee’s hand tightened around her phone. ‘But he had nothing to do with her disappearance. Absolutely nothing. I can assure you of that. What he did was unrelated to Gina. I can’t tell you any more than that right now. I’m sorry but I can’t.’
‘How well did he know her?’ Dee demanded.
‘He gave her a lift to a man’s house. That’s all he told me.’
‘What man?’
‘I don’t know. Some “bloke’s place in Welling” was all he said.’
If Dee hadn’t already been sitting down, she might well have fallen. The only person she knew who lived near Welling was Jake. His and Hayley’s house in Camdale Road was on the Plumstead-Welling borders. Her mouth filled with saliva. She felt sick to the stomach.
‘Whereabouts in Welling?’
‘I have no idea. Look, I’ve said too much already. The police will work it out. Ollie’s been arrested. I’m so sorry, Dee. I shouldn’t have phoned. I have to go. I’m truly, truly sorry.’
Her dad came into the kitchen just as Scarlett terminated the call. ‘Who was that, love?’
‘Scarlett Quilter,’ she said. ‘And before that it was Alan.’
Her dad sat at the table opposite her and reached for her hands.
‘There is a body, but it’s not Gina,’ she said. She didn’t recognize her own voice.
Her dad hung his head and sighed. ‘Oh, God.’
‘Scarlett Quilter has just told me that her brother did know her, but that he had nothing to do with her disappearance.’
‘Well, she would say that, wouldn’t she?’
‘He’s been arrested.’
‘There you go then.’
‘It was for something else though. But she said he’d admitted to giving her a lift to a man’s house in Welling.’
There was a knock on the front door. Her dad got up to see who it was. Dee heard a woman’s voice and looked up as her dad returned to the kitchen with two police officers. They introduced themselves as Sergeant Pam Dehal and Detective Inspector Martin Guyver and asked if she wouldn’t mind answering a few questions.
‘We won’t take up too much of your time,’ DI Guyver said. The two of them sat down at the kitchen table. DI Guyver cleared his throat. ‘First of all, I want to thank you for phoning us the other day. You’ll be hearing on the news shortly that a body has been found in the garden of the property.’
‘Yes,’ Dee said. ‘But not the one we thought.’
DI Guyver gave her a quizzical look.
‘Alan Caplin just phoned me,’ she said.
‘Ah, right. That new case is, of course, being investigated, but thanks to your call, we now have new information relating to the disappearance of Gina.’
53
‘You think the two cases are connected then?’ Dee said. Had Scarlett been lying to her just now?
‘I can’t answer that, I’m afraid. But we’ll be talking to all of Gina’s friends and family again. Hence this visit.’ He leaned forward. ‘Can you confirm what you told us on the phone, that you, Lindsay Morgan and Gina Caplin were once taught by the late Rebecca Quilter?’
‘Yes, that’s right. She was a supply teacher.’
DI Guyver nodded. ‘Did you know that Gina had kept in contact with Rebecca?’
Dee shook her head. ‘Not until Scarlett told me.’
‘Was Gina in the habit of keeping secrets from her friends?’
‘I don’t think so. I mean, she could be a little mysterious at times. I suppose I can understand why she might have kept their friendship to herself in the beginning. We’d given Miss Quilter a bit of a hard time. She was new to teaching and we were a bit – you know …’ Dee blushed. ‘We were seventeen-year-old girls. I don’t expect we were the easiest class to teach.’
DI Guyver and DS Dehal both gave small, knowing smiles.
