Bella gripped the stick with both hands and dug in her heels to pull Callie back. She followed the dog’s gaze downward, and that’s when she saw the hand protruding from the dark, wet earth. Above it were an arm and the side of a face with its eyes closed. The rain had washed away some of the dirt, and the skin was pale and gray.
“Come on; back, Callie, back!” cried Bella, managing to pull Callie clear from the edge of the hole. The hair on the back of her neck stood up in the cold.
Bella didn’t scare easily, but she had to take deep breaths and fight the urge to be sick as she found her mobile phone in the folds of her coat and called the police.
22
The Moor Side housing estate was a grotty place with an air of menace. Kate parked her car on the edge of the estate and walked the last two streets to the high-rise tower block where Marnie lived. There were two burned-out cars in the car park and a group of young guys hanging around, sitting on a low wall, smoking. The lift was broken, but there was no one on the stairwell up to the second floor.
A tiny woman answered the door. She was barely five feet tall. She was painfully thin and leaning on a crutch. Her hair was bright red and styled poker straight in a bob with a blunt fringe. She wore a long multicolored tie-dyed skirt and a white long-sleeved T-shirt. She had pale hazel eyes, and her skin was bloodless, but her welcome and her smile were very warm.
“Really good to meet you,” she said with enthusiasm. She led Kate through a narrow hallway filled with laundry drying on clothes racks, past a closed living room door, into the kitchen.
“I’ve got a couple of hours before I’ve got to pick the kids up from school,” she said. Like Bev, Marnie had a strong West Country accent. “Tha’s them both,” she added, indicating a photo on the fridge of a boy and a girl sitting on the swings of a park with Marnie in between them. It was a bright, sunny day, and they were all wearing baseball caps.
“They’re so cute at that age,” said Kate.
“I know. They think everything you do is wonderful . . . I’m waiting for that to wear off. How old is your son now?”
“How did you know I had a son?” she asked.
“I’ve read all about you,” said Marnie.
“He’s nineteen,” said Kate, wondering what Marnie had read. “Just back from uni.”
“What’s he studying?”
“English.”
“Do you have a photo?” she asked, a little too eagerly.
“I don’t, I’m afraid,” she said. Marnie looked disappointed as she put a cup of tea in front of Kate. She propped her crutch up against the radiator and sat down in the chair opposite. It was a warm, cozy little kitchen, with fogged-up windows from condensation.
“Thank you,” said Kate, taking a sip of her tea.
“Is Bill paying for it, the investigation?” asked Marnie. She’d quickly assumed a familiarity, like they were close friends.
“I can’t say. That’s confidential.”
Marnie nodded and tapped the side of her nose. “Course; mum’s the word. He’s been there for years, having Bev cry on his shoulder, paying the bills,” said Marnie. “They never got married or even lived together. He was in and out at Bev’s evenings and weekends, and she used to accompany him for work dinners.”
“When you were growing up, Bev and Joanna lived here on the estate?”
“Yes. In Florence House, the tower opposite,” said Marnie, tipping her head at the window. There was a pile of shoeboxes on the table. Marnie opened the top one and took out a couple of small photo albums. She picked up the first and opened it.
“Here. That’s Jo and Fred’s wedding,” she said, flicking through photos of Joanna in a beautiful, simple silk bridal gown with Fred outside a church in a vintage Daimler. “That’s Jo and Fred at the top table. Fred’s parents to the left, and Bev with Bill on the right. This was 2000. Bill was Bev’s guest at the wedding, but he stumped up for most of the wedding too. It’s one of the only photos I’ve got of him. Hates having his photo taken . . .”
She pulled out another photo album and opened it.
“Me and Jo were friends from when we were small. Our mums got to know each other cleaning the same office block. We were in the same class at primary school. My mum passed away eight years ago now . . . Here . . .” Marnie twisted the photo album around to face Kate and flicked through pages of photos of when Joanna and Marnie were small: trips out to the zoo, first days at school, fancy-dress parties, Christmases. She came to a photo that Kate had seen before, of Joanna, aged eleven, the Christmas that she’d got the mini typewriter, and then turned the page to another of her and Jo sitting on a brick wall in the car park of the tower block, wearing stonewashed blue jeans and white blouses.