“Sorry to bother you,” she said.
“No, please, not at all,” said Kate. Bev looked exhausted and wore a long black Lurex skirt and a black roll-neck pullover. There was an inch of gray in the roots of her dark hair. “Do you want to come in?”
“No. No. I just want to apologize to you both . . . I was in denial about Bill . . . And I never thanked you properly for finding Jo . . . I’m ashamed at how I reacted. I was in shock. I now get to bury her and put her at rest,” she said.
Kate and Tristan nodded. Shortly after forensic officers confirmed the skeleton on the beach was Joanna, Bev had collapsed and had to be taken to the hospital with severe shock. They hadn’t had any contact with her since, but Bev had transferred the remaining money owed for solving the case.
“This is a silly question, but how are you? You scared us back on the beach,” said Tristan.
Bev shifted on her feet and hitched her handbag over her shoulder and shrugged.
“I don’t know how I feel . . . He’s pleading guilty. Bill, Nick, or whatever his bloody name is. Which is right and proper. There’s so much evidence against him . . . for killing Jo. And those poor young men. Oh God, you must think I’m so stupid. I spent all those years with him, and I didn’t know about any of it . . . I suppose you heard. The cyber-forensics team were given Joanna’s laptop and a USB key the police found in her bag in the car.”
“Yes,” said Kate. “The laptop had been destroyed by the salt water, but they managed to recover some data from the USB drive. There was a copy of the photo that helped us crack the case—one of Bill with Max and a man called Jorge Tomassini at the commune.”
“Please,” said Bev, holding up her hand. “Please don’t say their names. I’ve had to hear from the police about everything they found . . .” She put her hand up to her mouth, and her bottom lip began to tremble. “That they found DNA for that lad, Hayden . . . Bill was only ever a gentleman to me, which makes it even more difficult to hear about the things he did. The things Nick did. I’ve been seeing a shrink. She told me I probably saved a lot of young men’s lives. I grounded that side of him. The side of him that wanted to be Bill, the heterosexual man. That’s just expensive talk for what I was: I was his beard. I used to accompany him to work stuff, to show them he was a straight man. Settled down. All good and proper . . .”
“Please, Bev. Don’t do this to yourself,” said Kate. “Are you sure you don’t want to come inside and have a drink of something?”
Bev took a tissue from her bag and wiped her eyes.
“No. Thank you. I’m not much company, as you must imagine. I had a long phone call with that Max Jesper today. It turns out, he was just as in the dark as me . . . I’m going to meet him tomorrow. That’s crazy, isn’t it?”
“No,” said Tristan. “He lost someone too. You have that in common.”
“God, I feel sick all day long. I don’t want to have to deal with Bill and everything. I just want to mourn for my Jo . . .” Bev rummaged around in her handbag and pulled out a tiny square of folded-over tissue paper.
“Listen. I want you both to have this, to remind yourselves to keep doing what you do. I know it’s tough out there.” She handed the square of tissue to Kate, and when she opened it out, nestled inside was a tiny silver charm in the shape of a magnifying glass. “Jo had a charm bracelet. I bought it for her eighteenth, and she always wore it. They found it in the car, with her remains, when they pulled it out of the sand. I had it cleaned up.”
“We couldn’t take this,” started Kate.
“No. I want you to have it. Please. A piece of Jo to remind you both that you did an incredible thing, solving this case and returning her to me.”
“Thank you,” said Tristan. Bev gave them both a hug.
“God bless you both,” she said, and with a small wave, she left. A moment later, they heard her close the front door behind her.
Kate stared at the charm for a moment.
“It just breaks my heart, this case. To think how long she lay there, trapped in that car, deep under the sand,” she said.
“You should be proud, Kate. You did in a month what the police couldn’t do in thirteen years.”
“We both should be proud. I couldn’t have done it without you.”
There was another moment as they stared at the small silver charm. Kate placed it on the counter and wiped her eyes. She thought of how the charm had been on Joanna’s wrist for all those years, waiting to be found.