I Could Be You Page 4

  ‘She’s on the other side of this glass,’ he said.

  Dee stepped forward, her heart thudding so loudly she was sure the other two must be able to hear it. She held her breath, dreading the moment she would reach the glass. But when she did, all she could see was darkness on the other side. No gurney with a body lying on top of it, nothing.

  She looked at Peter, frowning.

  ‘When you’re ready,’ he said, ‘I turn the light on. The switch is here, see? There’s no rush. Sometimes people like to wait a few moments.’

  ‘I don’t want to wait,’ Dee said.

  Peter flicked the switch, and the room on the other side of the glass exploded in a flash of light so bright Dee couldn’t see anything at first. Then, gradually, as her eyes adjusted, the details became clear.

  Off-white walls, a single strip light along the ceiling. And directly beneath the light, a dead woman lying on a gurney. The woman’s body was covered with a white sheet, all the way up to her neck, hiding the damage from the car and whatever further butchery the baby-faced pathologist had inflicted on her.

  She was beautiful. That was the first thing Dee thought when she saw her. Rich blue-black hair that spread out from her face like a blanket of silk. Her skin was white and unblemished; eyes closed so that her long dark lashes rested on her white skin like strokes from a delicate paintbrush.

  ‘Dee?’ Ed Mitchell’s voice, sounding as if he was speaking to her from somewhere far away.

  Dee shook her head, unable to answer him, unable to drag her eyes away from the body. Trying to work it out.

  The dead woman on the road. She’d been pushing Jake’s buggy, wearing Katie’s clothes. And yet…

  ‘It’s not her,’ she whispered. ‘It’s not Katie. I have no idea who this woman is. I’ve never seen her before.’

  Five

  Dee

  Louise was already seated in the restaurant when Dee got there. Even though Dee had arrived five minutes early, hoping to order a glass of wine and relax before her cousin turned up.

  ‘Darling!’ Louise rushed towards her, grabbing her in a hug that felt too powerful for her tiny body. ‘Sooooo good to see you. Wow. You look great. Love your hair like that. Come and sit down. I’ve ordered you a glass of Pinot. You’re not driving, I assume?’

  ‘No,’ Dee said, extricating herself from her cousin’s grip. ‘Not driving. You smell lovely, by the way. Jo Malone?’

  ‘Martin keeps me well stocked.’ Louise sat down and gestured for Dee to do the same. ‘He gets it at the airport, of course. Although I don’t think it’s any cheaper there than anywhere else.’

  ‘How is he?’ Dee asked, not really caring. Martin, Louise’s husband, was a pilot with BA. As far as Dee was concerned, his job was the single interesting thing about him.

  ‘He’s good,’ Louise said. ‘Has his ups and downs, you know what they’re like.’

  ‘Men?’ Dee thought of Alex, flirting with her one second then retreating like a hunted hound when she dared to suggest taking things a step further. ‘Not sure I do know what they’re like, to be honest,’ she said. ‘Did you speak to him about helping out a bit more?’

  ‘I didn’t say anything in the end,’ Louise said. ‘It’s not his fault really. I mean, he’s a pilot. Of course he’s going to be away a lot. I knew that when I married him.’

  Dee chose not to point out that the problem with Martin wasn’t just when he was away for his job. From what she could see, he spent more time on the golf course when he wasn’t flying than he did with his family. But she was tired of telling Louise that her husband needed to do more to help with the kids and the house. Besides, it wasn’t as if Louise seemed to struggle with any of it. In fact, she seemed to be able to juggle a full-time job with full-time parenting without ever finding it all too much.

  ‘Tell me about the kids,’ Dee said instead. ‘How are they?’

  ‘They’re great,’ Louise said. ‘Daisy said hi, by the way. Asked if she can come and see you soon. I said maybe we’d pop over at the weekend. What do you think? We could have a picnic on the beach. She’d love it. They both would. You know how much Ben loves being at yours. They could play together and we could chat. Sorry. I didn’t mean… It was only an idea, that’s all.’ She trailed off, looking crestfallen.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Dee said.

  ‘You frowned,’ Louise said. ‘When I suggested coming over at the weekend. Don’t worry. We wouldn’t like to put you out.’

  ‘Oh Lou.’ Dee reached out and took her cousin’s perfectly manicured hand in hers. ‘It wasn’t because I don’t want you to come over. When you mentioned Daisy, I thought of Jake, that’s all.’

  ‘Of course,’ Louise said. ‘How insensitive of me. The police have released details of the car, by the way. A red Peugeot 208. Isn’t it amazing what they can work out from a few flakes of paint and some tyre marks?’

  Dee went back over the last few days, trying to remember if she’d seen a red car anywhere near Katie’s house, but her mind drew a blank. She wanted desperately to talk about the dead woman, tell Louise what she’d discovered today. But Ed had made it very clear she wasn’t to tell a single soul about it.

  ‘I need to work out what this means for the investigation,’ he’d said, after they’d left the morgue and he was driving her home. ‘And how it impacts on our search for Jake. If the victim isn’t Katie, then we have to consider the possibility that it was Katie driving the car that killed that poor girl.’

  ‘Katie doesn’t have a car,’ Dee said. ‘And she wouldn’t… She’s a lovely young woman, Ed. There’s no way she could have done something like that.’

  ‘Your mother took a copy of her driver’s licence,’ Ed said. ‘Just because she doesn’t have a car doesn’t mean she can’t drive.’

  Before he’d dropped her off, Ed had repeated his warning to keep quiet about the dead woman.

  ‘Finding Jake is still our number one priority,’ he said. ‘Until we do that, I want to make sure we are in complete control of what information we release to the public and what we keep to ourselves. You understand that, don’t you?’

  Dee got out of the car without answering, slamming the door as hard as she could. She hated him for thinking he could tell her what she could and couldn’t do. Hated him even more for his easy assumption that she might do something that would hinder the search for Jake.

  She’d spent the rest of the afternoon stewing inside the house, trying, and failing, to make sense of what she’d learned that afternoon. Trying to picture Katie – sweet, smiley Katie – pressing her foot on the accelerator and driving into the woman with the blue-black hair.

  ‘Dee?’ Louise’s voice dragged her back. ‘If you want to talk…’

  ‘Let’s order first,’ Dee said, pulling her hand away so she could pick up her menu. ‘I’m starving.’

  They chose their food and talked about inconsequential things until it arrived. As soon as their plates were laid in front of them, Louise got started.

  ‘How are you holding up?’ she said. ‘I know this must be horrendous for you. What can I do to help?’

  ‘I don’t know, Lou,’ Dee said. ‘This isn’t just some story to get an exclusive on. Katie’s my… Katie was my friend. And you know how much I care about Jake. It doesn’t feel right talking to you about it. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Listen to me,’ Louise said. ‘I’m not here to pump you for information. I wouldn’t do that. I’m here as your friend. Of course the paper has to cover the story. That’s my job and I’ll make sure we get every detail right before we report it. But this conversation right now? This is strictly off the record. I swear.’

  Dee had ordered sushi, which she’d barely touched. The raw fish was a mistake. Something about the texture reminded her of the dead woman’s face under the too-bright strip light.

  ‘What do you know about it?’ she asked.

  ‘I know it’s being treated as a hit and run,’ Louise said. ‘And the police don’t know w
ho did it, or where Jake is.’

  Dee nodded, relieved that her cousin’s resourcefulness hadn’t stretched to working out that the dead woman wasn’t Katie.

  ‘The police have coordinated a huge search party,’ Louise continued. ‘They’re going back out tomorrow. Further east along the beach this time. The investigation’s being led by Ed Mitchell. Remember him?’

  Dee shook her head.

  ‘Oh. My. God.’ Louise’s eyes widened. ‘Eddie Mitchell. I had the craziest crush on him for years. How could you not remember?’

  ‘Of course.’ Dee smiled, relieved. She’d felt a tug of familiarity with Ed Mitchell that she hadn’t been entirely comfortable about. Now she understood why. It was nothing to do with being attracted to him, and everything to do with the fact that they’d known each other when they were younger. She remembered him singing the song in the car earlier, and realised now he’d already worked out that they were in school together. Although it was difficult to reconcile the man she’d been with earlier with the rugby-playing jock Louise had wasted two years of her teenage years mooning over.

  ‘Is it true that Katie was hit on purpose?’ Louise said.

  ‘Looks that way,’ Dee said. ‘You know that road, Louise. Who the hell drives out there?’

  ‘Could be joy-riders,’ Louise said. ‘That’s a growing problem at the moment.’

  Dee rolled her eyes. Her cousin’s ongoing attempts to make out that the town’s morals were in a downward decline never impressed her.

  ‘Do you want me to continue or not?’ Louise said.

  ‘Sorry.’ Dee waved her fork, indicating that she should carry on.

  ‘My guess is the father,’ Louise said. ‘She’s been hiding from him ever since she had the boy. Probably why she moved here in the first place. She was running away from him. He’s found her and killed her and taken his son.’

  Dee pierced a piece of raw tuna with her fork and put it in her mouth. But the taste of the fish made her gag and she had to spit it into her napkin.

  Louise’s nose wrinkled. ‘Are you okay, Dee?’

  Dee nodded, although she wasn’t okay. Images churned around inside her head: Katie and Jake; the dead woman, the black imprint of a car tyre across the pale flesh of her leg. The underlying, pervasive sense of guilt. Knowing that if she hadn’t got so drunk the night before, she might have left the house earlier and been able to prevent what had happened.

  ‘I feel so helpless,’ she said. ‘Like I need to be doing something to find them.’

  ‘Them?’ Louise said.

  ‘Sorry,’ Dee said, realising her mistake. Ever since discovering that the dead woman wasn’t Katie, she knew in her heart of hearts that Jake was with his mum. And that was good, because whatever else Katie might have done, Dee knew she’d never harm her son.

  ‘I meant Jake,’ she said. ‘And whoever’s taken him.’

  ‘What can you do that the police aren’t already doing?’ Louise asked.

  ‘Do you remember the phone-hacking scandal?’ Dee said. In 2011, one of the UK’s most successful weekly papers had closed down when it was revealed that some of its journalists had been hacking people’s phones for information. The scandal was a huge story. As well as big-name celebrities, the victims had included a missing teenage girl. A journalist had hacked into her mobile phone, deleting her voicemail messages once he’d listened to them. The deleted messages gave the family hope that their daughter was still alive and listening to them herself. The sense of false hope seemed unbearably cruel when the family later discovered that she had been murdered on the day she disappeared.

  ‘I remember how angry you were about it,’ Louise said.

  ‘I still am,’ Dee said. ‘But the thing is, Louise, I know so many other journalists who did that and got away with it. And if it helps find Jake, why not do it?’

  ‘You cannot be thinking of hacking into Katie’s phone,’ Louise said. She leaned forward, lowering her voice as if she was scared of being overheard. ‘Even if she’s dead, I’m pretty sure it’s still illegal. You could get into real trouble for doing something like that.’

  Except Katie wasn’t dead. Which meant hacking her phone might actually give Dee something useful. Something that would help her find Katie and Jake. She’d called Katie’s phone several times earlier. Ed Mitchell hadn’t told her she couldn’t do that. But each call went directly to voicemail. Dee had left a few messages, but so far Katie hadn’t called her back.

  ‘What else am I meant to do?’ she said. ‘Just sit around waiting for Jake to turn up safe and sound?’

  ‘There’s lots you can do. Volunteer to join the search, help with the social media stuff. We’re setting up a Facebook page and pushing for information on Twitter.’

  ‘It’s not enough.’

  ‘Listen to me,’ Louise said. ‘I know how awful this must be. I’ve seen how much happiness Katie and Jake brought you over the last few months. I can’t begin to imagine what you’re going through at the moment.’

  A pain in Dee’s throat prevented her from saying anything. Even if she could speak, what would she say? Louise was right. After the break-up of her marriage and the deaths of both her parents, Dee had slipped into a dark depression that had seemed impossible to shake off. Until she’d let Katie and Jake into her life.

  Katie had had a child in her twenties and to hell with the consequences. Doing it alone, without anyone to help her or tell her that she was doing a great job, or to share the simple joy of loving their child more than anything else in the world. Unlike Dee, who’d also fallen pregnant in her twenties and terminated it within a week of finding out, believing that a child would be nothing but a huge pain-in-the-arse inconvenience. Back then, she’d assumed there’d be plenty of time to become a mother.

  She had avoided them at first, certain that seeing Katie and Jake every day would only intensify her own feelings of loss and failure. As it turned out, the opposite was true. Finding a new friend and sharing the pure pleasure of watching a little boy grow up had brought her more joy than she could have imagined.

  ‘There’s something odd about the way the police are handling this,’ Louise said. ‘They keep saying they want to speak to anyone with information on Katie or Jake. Why won’t they simply come out with it and tell people that she’s the victim and her son is missing?’

  ‘They must have their reasons,’ Dee said. ‘But how would I know what they’re up to? I found the body. That’s it. There’s nothing else I can tell you.’

  ‘Of course,’ Louise said. ‘And I can see how much this has affected you. Is there anything I can do?’

  Dee shook her head. She knew the offer of help was genuine, but Ed’s warning to keep quiet was echoing round her head. For now, she must keep her cousin in the dark.

  * * *

  Dee walked home after dinner, refusing Louise’s offer of a lift. They might go back a long way, but Dee was old enough and wise enough to know that the differences in their personalities meant they should limit the time they spent together. After an extended session of hugging and air-kissing and promises to chat soon, she made her escape.

  She walked through the town, bars and restaurants buzzing with people and life, exaggerating her sense of being an outsider. There was no one, with the exception of Louise, that Dee could just call and ask to meet for a drink. Apart from Alex, of course, but after the other evening, she doubted she would see him any time soon. Which was just as well, given the fact that he was married and still living with his wife.

  Night was drawing in fast by the time she reached the seafront. Strings of lights had come on along the promenade, reminding her – as they always did – of Christmas. The pier, lit up too, stretched like an ocean liner into the black, empty sea. Lots of people were out and about. Couples walking hand in hand, groups of teenagers on the beach, smoking and drinking and God knew what else.

  Dee had always loved walking at night-time. In London, she’d never tired of the thrill of being out in the
city late; of the little slices of insight into other people’s lives, captured in the lit-up windows of their homes. But walking by the sea with the moon low over the water, the waves crashing on the shingle and the blinking and twinkling stars dotted across the sky, was special.

  Even the harbour didn’t seem so bad at night. The boats bobbing quietly on the water, the sounds of laughter and voices drifting out from the bars and restaurants, and – finally – the peace as she reached the empty stretch of beach between the end of the harbour and her house. Except tonight, for the first time since moving back, she didn’t feel safe here. The darkness swallowed her up as she left the bright lights of the harbour behind her. Her footsteps seemed too loud, echoing back to her across the stillness of the night, so that she kept thinking they belonged to someone coming up behind her.

  She walked fast, keen to get inside, lock the door and block out the memory of the dead woman lying on the road. Down on the beach, something moved. A dark flash streaking across the shingle. She stopped, heart thumping, breathing too fast, eyes scanning the beach. There it was again, coming towards her.

  ‘Who’s there?’ she called.

  No one answered, and as her eyes adjusted, she realised that what she’d seen was a pair of foxes. A mother and cub. The two animals stopped dead when she shouted, staring at her.

  Dee hurried towards the house, averting her eyes from the spot where the body had been. As she fumbled to get her keys out of her bag, she heard a noise behind her, making her jump. The keys fell from her hand, clattering too loudly as they hit the ground so she couldn’t hear who or what had made the sound that had startled her.

  ‘Hello?’

  When no one answered, she bent down to search for the keys, cursing herself for not replacing the bulb in the motion-sensitive light over the porch. She had to get down on her knees, patting the ground all around her with both hands, until she eventually found them. Breathing a sigh of relief, she stood up.