Fakes and Lies Read online

  ‘Yes, I have. And I don’t think he’s a private detective in the way you mean. Like Annie said, he’s an investigator. Not your common or garden sort; corporate and probably government work, I’d guess.’

  ‘Well, I look forward to meeting him.’ Vin rubbed his eyes and Alec was reminded that he’d probably got his ex-colleague out of bed when he’d called him at two in the morning. It was now almost seven and Alec really wanted his sleep.

  ‘Give my best to Naomi. Tess will be sorry to have missed you but she is away on a course. And we’ve just had a phone call from DI Karen Morgan saying that she’ll be coming up from Mallingham. Now it looks as though all investigations really do cross over. She said she knows the pair of you.’

  ‘Yes, Naomi and Karen used to be very close.’

  ‘Quite a reunion this is going to turn out to be,’ Vin said.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Bee had been taken back to the room and it had been Sian’s turn to mother her, wrapping the towel round her hand and trying to comfort her.

  ‘What did they want?’ Sian’s voice shook.

  Bee, sobbing now but fighting for control, told her everything that had happened. All she’d said.

  ‘Who’s Bob Taylor?’

  ‘An artist friend of Dad’s. He said he’d seen the painting on the easel so Dad must have been working on it, but he told me it had disappeared. He doesn’t know where it went. That’s what he said, anyway.’

  ‘But you don’t believe him?’

  ‘I don’t know what to believe. Bob and Annie – that’s his wife – Bob and Annie were trying to put me off when I said I thought Dad had been killed. I think they wanted to keep me out of trouble. So Bob might have lied about the painting going missing. He might have done what I told that man he’d done and taken the picture back to his place. My dad meant a lot to Bob so maybe he wanted to look after it.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Sian shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘But I shouldn’t have done it, should I? I’ve sent them to Bob and Annie’s place and if anything happens to them it’s going to be my fault, isn’t it?’

  Sian wasn’t sure what to say. She couldn’t deny the truth of that and if she tried Bee would know she was lying. It wouldn’t make her feel any better.

  ‘You couldn’t help it,’ she said, hugging Bee close. ‘You had to think fast. He broke your finger, for fuck’s sake; who knows what he’d have done if you’d said nothing?’

  ‘But I could have made something up. I should just have made something up. It was just the first thing that came into my head.’

  She dissolved into tears again and Sian released her long enough to go and get more tissue from the cloakroom. Outside it was getting light again. She could just about see the brick wall. Neither girl had a watch but Sian guessed it must be after six. She sort of remembered it being this kind of light around then. Sian hadn’t slept well lately and she’d often seen the dawn these past few weeks. She wondered if anyone was going to bring them food. They’d drunk water from the tap in the cloakroom but that was all. Apart from when Binnie had come for Bee and then brought her back, they’d not heard another sound from the rest of the house.

  What now? Sian thought.

  ‘How long have you known this Binnie?’ Bee asked her.

  Sian sighed. She didn’t want to go into that right now, but she supposed Bee had a right to ask. ‘Since junior school,’ she said. ‘We moved into a house about a mile away. Binnie was ten and I was nine. His little brother had just died. He’d drowned in the garden pond. Binnie seemed kind of lonely and Binnie’s mum was really nice, though losing her other little boy seemed to have made her a bit dippy. We both went to the same village school.

  ‘Binnie went up to big school ahead of me and when I went … well, I got bullied that first term. Then Binnie found out and he did something to the bullies. I don’t know what. I just know they left me alone after that and I was grateful, you know. We started to spend time together, and because we lived so close I saw him in the holidays as well. There were ponies in the field next to Binnie’s house and the farmer let us ride them. We’d help out at the farm, that sort of thing. He taught Binnie to drive the tractor.’

  ‘So how did he turn out to be like this? Like he is now?’

  Sian shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I went away to uni and when I came back, he’d changed.’ Or maybe, she thought, I started seeing him like he really was all along.

  She couldn’t quite believe that. Binnie had always been nice to her. There’d been a time when she’d wanted them to be proper girlfriend and boyfriend but Binnie had said he didn’t have time for that sort of thing. What he really meant was that he saw her as a kid, she’d realized soon afterwards, when he’d started seeing a girl several years older than himself.

  She was glad now; that would have been one more thing to regret.

  ‘I guess it was always there. This other side,’ she said at last. She remembered the rumours that had gone around, about Binnie’s kid brother. She recalled that the farmer had told them they were not welcome when one of the horses had gone lame after they’d ridden her. She’d not understood, they’d always been so careful. Her mother had told her sternly not to go anywhere near the farmer again. But she’d never really explained why. Two weeks later the man’s barn had burned to the ground with twenty of his milk herd, newly calved, inside.

  It had never occurred to her that this had anything to do with Kevin Binns.

  He was fun once, Sian thought. A bit wild, but he’d just been Binnie, and both of them had lived so far from their other friends – or, at least, Sian’s other friends; looking back she couldn’t really recall Binnie having that many – that they’d naturally gravitated towards one another.

  ‘Mum never liked him,’ she said. ‘Dad worked away most of the week so he didn’t really have much of an opinion. But Mum always felt that he was bad.’

  ‘Got to agree with her,’ Bee said.

  It was light enough now for them to take a proper look at her hand. Bee unwound it carefully. Her little finger was black with bruising and stuck out at an odd angle. The bone between the joints was obviously broken and the finger slightly twisted. At the base of the finger, the joint seemed out of alignment. It hurt more than the break.

  ‘I think it’s dislocated,’ Sian said, ‘as well as broken. If we can get that joint back in place, it might not hurt so much.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I don’t. Not for sure.’

  Bee studied her hand and then nodded. ‘OK, we’ll give it a go.’

  ‘What! Really? Look, I mean, I don’t know.’

  ‘You going to help me or what? OK, you pull on that bottom bone and I’ll press.’

  Sian looked sick at the thought of it and Bee surveyed her green-tinged pallor with a mix of exasperation and sympathy. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘I’ll try it on my own.’

  ‘No, I’ll do what I can.’

  It hurt beyond the level it had when Binnie had broken her finger, but something in Bee made her determined that she was going to undo what he had done. She felt immensely resentful that he’d made her give in so easily; immensely pissed off that the man had been right when he’d said that one finger would be enough because she wasn’t that tough. She wanted to prove them wrong, if only for her own satisfaction.

  In the end, the joint relocated with a click that seemed to resonate throughout Bee’s entire arm – though she decided that the sound was probably just in her head. She felt faint and sick, a red mist almost blinding her as she tried not to pass out. With Sian’s help, she staggered to the toilet and heaved, but her stomach was empty of everything apart from a little water and, her whole body in spasm, she brought up only bile.

  Bee sat down hard next to the toilet and leaned back against the wall, a sheen of sweat on her face. Sian wet the towel again and wiped her forehead, then looked at her hand.

  ‘It looks a bit straighter,’ she said.

  Bee could hardly be
ar to look. She squinted at the offending hand and decided that Sian was right, then she allowed the hand to be rewrapped in the cold, damp towel.

  ‘I want to kill him,’ she said. ‘I really want him to die.’

  Monday, dawn. Sian had not come home, her mother was sure of that. Usually she heard doors opening or saw a light go on in the annexe.

  She generally tried to respect her daughter’s privacy but worry caused her to go through to the annexe, via the door from the main house. She stood in the tiny kitchen-cum-living room and called Sian’s name. No reply.

  She went through to the bedroom. Sian had always been tidy and the only thing out of place was a cardigan, lying on the end of the bed. The bed itself was not slept in. She’d not been home all night.

  Tracey Price went and woke her husband.

  ‘She’s an adult; she probably stayed over at a friend’s place.’

  ‘And didn’t tell us? Anyway, what friend? She was supposed to work at the pub last night, it’s not likely she went over to a friend after that, is it?’

  ‘When she was away at uni you’d not have known where she was,’ her husband, Richard, said reasonably. He stretched reluctantly. ‘I’d best get up, then. Get myself off to work.’

  Richard left on Monday mornings for a job a two-hour drive away. He usually stayed overnight on weekdays, coming back on the Friday evening. Tracey didn’t like the arrangement, but she had learnt to live with it. ‘Don’t go,’ she said. ‘Phone in and tell them you won’t be there today.’

  ‘Oh, for Pete’s sake.’ He looked impatiently at his wife but could see that she’d barely slept. ‘OK, I’ll tell them I’ll be a bit late. Will that do?’

  ‘I suppose it will have to,’ she snapped back.

  ‘Tracey—’ But she had already stalked out of the room.

  He’d had his shower and dressed before she came back. ‘She didn’t turn up for her shift at the pub. No one’s seen her since we did, yesterday morning. I’ve phoned all the friends I can think of. Now I’m going over there.’

  ‘Over where?’ He noticed she was wearing her coat and wellingtons. ‘Where are you off to?’

  ‘He’s got her. She’s gone somewhere with him. I just know it.’

  ‘Kevin,’ Richard said. ‘You think she’s with Binnie again?’

  ‘Where else is she? Ever? I warned her off, I told her he was bad news. She knows how I feel but does she take a blind bit of notice? Does she hell!’

  ‘OK, look. I’m coming with you. Let me get my coat.’

  He was dressed for work in his suit and tie, but he dragged on his wellingtons, tucking his suit trousers into his socks. He was still inclined to think his wife was making a fuss over nothing but a little niggle of panic was starting at the back of his own brain.

  They took the path across the field, over the stile and down the rough track towards the old farmhouse. It was, Tracey thought, a long time since she’d walked this way. She often took the footpath but she never came down to what, long ago, had been called Weston Farm. Actually only the house and a large garden remained, along with the orchard. The rest of the land had been sold to neighbours when the Westons had moved away and Binnie and his parents and little brother moved in. She was shocked at how dilapidated the place was. The lean-to conservatory no longer leaned but was falling to one side and the house didn’t look as though it had seen a coat of paint in years.

  The grass was soaking with dew and so long that it saturated her jeans above her wellingtons, right up to her knees, but Tracey paid no attention. She was looking for her child and that was her only focus.

  They went round to the back door (nobody used front doors around there apart from the postman) and she hammered on the rotting wood.

  ‘Keep that up and you’ll break it down,’ her husband observed.

  She seemed to take that as a challenge and hit the door even harder. It moved under the weight of her fists but no one came to answer it.

  Richard stepped back so he could get a better view of the upstairs windows. ‘I’d say there’s no one home. You sure he still lives here? The place looks like it’s been deserted.’

  He came back and peered in through the kitchen window. Here, there was at least some evidence of life. Plates on the draining board and a loaf of sliced bread on the kitchen table. ‘I can’t see Sian wanting to be in there, the place is filthy. You know how fastidious she is.’

  He realized he was trying hard to be reassuring, almost jokey, and his wife’s glare told him it wasn’t really working. ‘So what do you want to do?’

  She had a mobile in her hand. ‘I’m going to call the police.’

  Her finger was poised above the nine and he reached out and took it from her. ‘You can’t call this an emergency,’ he said. ‘She’s a grown woman, that’s what they’ll tell you. Let’s go back home; we’ll call the local police and report her missing.’

  She reached for the phone but he held it away. ‘Please, Tracey. Calling out the cavalry won’t get you anywhere. Sian will turn up and just be terribly embarrassed.’

  ‘I don’t care how embarrassed she is.’ She turned back to look at the kitchen door and then, before he could stop her, Tracey aimed a kick which burst the door open.

  ‘Tracey? What the hell?’

  But his wife had already gone inside. Richard stood in the kitchen while Tracey went running around the house. He could hear her footsteps on the stairs and then in the bedrooms. He’d been certain there was no one else in the house, so had not bothered following her. The silence was too profound and there was that feeling of neglect and emptiness that spoke of only occasional and transient occupancy.

  He looked around the kitchen. The fridge was working, and there was milk and cheese and butter inside. And out-of-date steak. There were letters on the kitchen counter; they all looked like bills apart from one postcard. Richard picked it up, curious, and realized that it wasn’t addressed to Kevin Binns or any of his family. It was addressed to a girl called Bee and was from a friend who was staying in Venice.

  The sense that his wife was right to be afraid had been growing but there was no sign of his daughter ever having been in this house, or at least not recently. As a child, he knew, she had been in and out of the place. But not since Mrs Binns had left, he was pretty sure of that.

  He tried to remember whether Kevin’s mother had left a forwarding address. If she had, his wife would know. She’d left in a tearing hurry, he knew that. Binnie had gone off for a few days and when he came back his mother had gone. Tracey had said she’d gone to Spain but no one seemed to know that for certain and as far as Richard was aware, no one had heard from her since she had departed so precipitately.

  He remembered that she hadn’t been able to stand her son. He remembered too, vaguely, that there had been another boy. That he’d died when he was very small and that the father had left either just before or just after that. But even in those days he’d worked away a lot and Richard really couldn’t recall clearly.

  Tracey was back down the stairs and standing in the kitchen, staring at him. ‘She’s not here,’ he said.

  ‘No.’ She took a deep breath and then coughed as though the air in the kitchen was infectious and she wanted to get it out of her lungs. ‘I don’t think he uses much of the house. There’s one bedroom with a bed in it, the rest are just full of boxes.’

  ‘We should leave,’ he said. ‘Go home and call the local police and report her missing. I’ll phone her friends again, just in case. I’ll get in touch with work and tell them I won’t be in for a few days.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. She led the way out and Richard examined the door to see if there was any way of fastening it closed and then gave up. He was mildly worried in case Binnie realized it was they who broke his door down but he had the oddest feeling that Binnie would not be coming back to the house, a feeling he could not account for.

  His wife was striding ahead of him and he let her go, knowing she needed to work off her anger befor
e she reached home so that she could think more clearly. She waited for him at the stile that crossed into the last field, the one closest to their house. She was looking back across the valley towards another farm. ‘Do you remember the barn fire?’ she said.

  ‘Hmm, he lost a load of cows and calves, I believe. Switched from mixed farming to arable after that, didn’t he?’ Richard wasn’t sure where that memory was dredged up from. Tracey was the one who knew the neighbours; he knew them from occasional visits to the local pub and the summer barbecue which most of the village attended, but that was about all.

  ‘There were rumours, about Binnie.’

  ‘This is a small community; there are always rumours.’

  ‘There were rumours about his little brother as well. That he didn’t drown by accident. And no one really knows where his mother has gone.’

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Tracey. We know he’s a bad lot but you can’t blame everything on the boy.’

  Wrong thing to say, he realized as she strode off again. Richard followed on behind, keeping his distance, his wife’s fury trailing like a banner in her wake.

  They called the police when they got home and their details were taken but as Richard had predicted the police officer told Tracey that Sian was an adult and she’d not been missing yet for a full twenty-four hours. When Tracey objected that no one had seen her since the morning before, the police officer told her that she didn’t actually know that. Only that she hadn’t seen her daughter. He suggested that she call her daughter’s friends and try her workplace again, just in case there had been a misunderstanding.

  Tracey slammed down the phone and strode off to the annexe. Richard left her to it.

  He made them both some tea and toast, guessing that his wife would probably refuse to eat but feeling that he should make the option available to her at least. He definitely needed his food. He phoned his office and let them know what was going on and then called the pub. From the pub landlord he got a couple of other names and phone numbers and he called them too, and one of those was able to give him a few more possible contacts. Richard started to work his way through those.