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  Rodney glanced uneasily at the wall. ‘Making rather a din, aren’t they?’

  Rachel smiled as if it were no matter. She’d heard worse. They’d be done soon, anyway. What she had here now was a young man of pleasing countenance and pretty manners, all set to make his fortune. She glided up to him and eased him out of his coat.

  ‘Let’s make you more comfortable, sir,’ she said.

  ‘Please call me Rodney. Sir sounds so impersonal, considering what we’re about to …er … become to one another.’

  ‘As you wish, Rodney.’ Her breath fanned against his cheek as she said his name.

  ‘That’s much better.’ His fingers fumbled with his shirt, and she stepped up to help him ease it off over his head.

  ‘Skin a rabbit,’ she murmured.

  ‘My nurse used to say that.’ He blushed. Rachel hid a smirk: what would nurse say if she could see him now, in a Cheltenham cat house. No wonder the poor boy was trembling.

  She helped him to undress. Naked, he was pale and vulnerable, as though only half formed, like a newborn mouse. His legs bowed and he was pigeon chested with just a tuft of sandy fluff on his breast and another at his groin.

  Rachel draped herself over the bed and urged him to join her. As they lay together, the boys in the next room started to roar and thump on the wall. Roseanne’s voice bellowed out, admonishing them, and there was more sniggering. Rachel glanced at Rodney. His face was sheened with sweat and his eyes darted about the room.

  ‘Not used to us bad girls, sir? Rodney, I mean?’

  ‘No. That is, you’re not bad. I’m not used to girls at all. One of seven boys.’ He glugged his wine. ‘I just want to make sure that everything is … pleasurable … for you. Hem. Not just me.’

  ‘Don’t you worry about that, Rodney. My pleasure is your pleasure.’ She reached over and took the wine glass from his hands. ‘Now, follow me.’

  ‘You will tell me if I do anything wrong, won’t you? Or if you don’t like it?’

  She looked at him properly for the first time. His eyes pleaded with her. He was so anxious to please, her heart melted a little. How many men had paid for their transaction and done the business, never casting a thought to her? Yet here was Rodney Paige, begging her to tell him how to please her.

  She nuzzled his neck, her teeth nipping lightly at his skin. ‘Tell me, Rodney,’ she murmured, ‘how you propose to make your fortune here in Cheltenham?’

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  Thursday, 26 February 2015

  08:17 hours

  Eden drummed her fingers on the steering wheel as she drew up in a long line of cars at a red light. At this rate the police would have identified Donna and searched her house before she even got there. The clock was ticking. The pathologist would already have alerted the police to Paul’s suspicious death; it wouldn’t be long before they made the connection between Paul and Donna, and then she’d be muscled out of the investigation altogether.

  The lights changed and she accelerated, turning towards the imposing circular building that housed GCHQ, the spy base. It was known locally as the doughnut because it was built in a ring, the middle part of grass and shrubs visible from the air. Myths abounded about the place: it was haunted by spies who’d committed suicide, that there was an underground train connecting it to Downing Street, that Cheltenham was riddled with spy escape tunnels.

  She’d been inside once, years ago, when she was Jackie, and had quickly become muddled by the building’s layout, glad she was escorted everywhere otherwise she was convinced that she would have spent the rest of her natural life wandering in circles, trying to find her way out.

  Rather than standing in isolation, new housing estates had sprung up alongside GCHQ. Strange thing to wake up to a view of the tinted curved windows and razor wire, Eden thought. This, though, was where Donna chose to live. Eden skirted a line of cars queuing to get into the GCHQ car park, and turned right into Donna’s street, crawling along, hunting for the right number. She spotted it, and parked further up the street and walked back.

  Donna’s house was tall and narrow with a Scandinavian twang to it, overlooking a tiny front garden and a collection of wheelie bins. The grass verge outside was piled with cardboard boxes of recycling. One had tipped over, spewing plastic cartons across the tarmac.

  Eden looked up at the house and its neighbours, walked to the end of the street, and slowly made her way back, her phone clamped to the side of her face as if she was making a call. No one worried about a dawdler on the phone.

  When she reached Donna’s house, she ducked down a side passage and tried the back gate. Unlocked. Careless, but lucky for her: she disliked scrambling over fences. She slipped inside and closed the gate firmly. The tiny garden consisted of a square of turf and a few patio slabs. Evidently Donna didn’t have green fingers.

  She glanced up at the windows – blank patio doors facing the garden; upstairs the curtains were still closed. No movement inside the house, no sound of a toilet flushing, a washing machine running, or a shower. No radio or TV. It seemed the house was empty.

  Drawing a set of pick locks from her bag, Eden set about opening the back door. She felt a pang of nostalgia for the old days when she could open a locked door in seconds using a credit card. These days it took patience and specialist tools, or an enforcer wielded by a beefy plod, but eventually she got the door open.

  She wasn’t the first one to get there. The place had been turned over. Not police: even they wouldn’t make this mess. Eden stepped into the kitchen over shards of glass and china. Broken plates and mugs, cupboard doors hanging askew, packets of flour and sugar burst open on the tiles. Pots of herbs had been flung to the floor and trampled, releasing a scent of basil and mint over the chaos.

  Feeling in her backpack, Eden drew out a pair of latex gloves and slipped them on as she moved into the living room. Here, the sofa was tipped upside down, the webbing underneath ripped open. Drawers hung drunkenly, their contents spilling on to the floor. A handful of romcoms had been swept from the shelves and lay with their pages crumpled on the carpet.

  A sideboard held a number of toppled photo frames. She righted one, seeing a photo of Donna with a teenaged boy. Other photos of the two of them, and lots of just the boy, growing steadily older and moodier in successive snaps. Where was he? A nasty feeling crawled in her stomach. Donna dead, her son missing, their house turned over: she didn’t like it at all.

  An expanding file lay open, the compartments plundered, the contents slewing across the carpet. Gathering up a handful of papers, Eden flicked through them. Bank statements. Donna’s salary going in every month, plus a monthly deposit of a couple of hundred pounds from a B. Small. Her ex-husband, presumably. Gas bills, water bills, credit card statements. Donna spent up to her credit limit on every card, and paid all of them off in full each month. Eden looked down the list of purchases: beauty parlours, hair salons, manicures, clothes, shoes, skin preparations, botox injections.

  Lawyers’ letters and a decree nisi dissolving the marriage between Donna and Barry Small. Birth certificates for Donna and Wayne Small – presumably the arsey-looking teenager in the photos – indicating he was now fifteen. Wayne’s school reports from the Cheltenham Park School, where he was a day pupil. Eden skim read them. Wayne Small was not a model pupil: problems with his attitude, poor attendance, a few detentions for answering back to staff and fighting with other boys. His grades were low and he was expected to get three Cs for his GCSEs and fail the rest. The starchy headmistress wouldn’t like that: she seemed the sort to expect all her pupils to achieve A grades in about two hundred subjects.

  A photo album had been tossed across the room. There were a few photos of a younger Donna with a man, the toddler Wayne cuddled between them, all of them gurning into the camera. The family in happier times. The man disappeared from the photos and there were several of Donna with female friends on what was evidently a singles holiday, lounging by a pool swigging drinks laden w
ith fruit.

  Eden turned the page. Donna, topless on a sun lounger, holding a cocktail. There was a man next to her, tanned and grinning. There were more photos of them together somewhere tropical, judging by the white sand and achingly blue sky. Eden blinked. She knew the man in the pictures: he was Donna’s boss in the planning department, Greg Barker.

  Eden whistled and dropped the photo album back on the floor, and carried on her search upstairs. A messy bathroom with a cabinet crammed with toiletries. A narrow bedroom reeking with the musty cheese odour of teenage boy. It was furnished with a single bed with a Spiderman duvet cover that he’d surely grown out of by now, a desk, laptop computer, and walls covered with photos of glamour models cut out of lads’ mags. Under the bed was a stash of pornography, well thumbed. Eden blessed her rubber gloves as she shoved the hoard back under the bed.

  Donna’s room was decorated in pink and smelled strongly of heavy scent. The whole of one wall was given over to built-in wardrobes. Eden cracked open the doors and clothes bloomed out. Stacked at the bottom of the wardrobes were at least fifty transparent plastic boxes containing shoes. Her bed had a red satin cover and all the pillows heaped up on one side of the bed, a frilly heart-shaped cushion perched on the top. The bed looked as though it hadn’t been slept in.

  Eden slid open the drawer in the bedside cabinet. Headache pills, antidepressants, tissues, a small appointments diary. Eden fanned the pages and a photo tumbled out. She tucked the diary into her pocket while she retrieved it and smoothed it out on her knee – Donna and Paul Nelson, heads together, beaming into the camera.

  But what was most interesting was the fracture lines across their faces. At some point, the photo had been ripped into little pieces, and then sellotaped back together again. Pieced back together with some care, Eden noted, the edges carefully aligned and the picture taped on the back to save the image. She’d love to know when it was ripped up and then so tenderly repaired.

  As she was squinting at the picture, trying to make out where it was taken, the front door banged. There was no time to hide; footsteps already thumped up the stairs. Better brazen it out.

  She stepped out of Donna’s bedroom just as a boy rounded the top of the stairs. He jumped and let out a cry.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I’m Eden Grey, I’m a detective. Are you Wayne?’

  ‘What’s happened? That mess downstairs …’ He had black hair about four days overdue for a wash that hung past his collar. His clothes were rumpled, his trousers drooping low off his backside, and the high rank stink of alcohol came off him in waves. ‘Are you from the school?’

  ‘Where have you been, Wayne?’ Eden asked, stepping towards him.

  The boy looked round wildly. ‘What’s going on? Where’s Mum?’

  ‘I’m trying to find out what happened,’ Eden began. ‘Here.’ She fished a business card out of her backpack and handed it to Wayne.

  ‘A detective?’ Fear chased across his face. Suddenly he turned and bolted past her, down the stairs to the front door.

  Eden hurtled after him, calling, ‘Wayne! Wait! What is it?’

  Wayne didn’t answer. He had the front door open and was sprinting up the street before she reached the bottom step.

  ‘Wait!’ she called after his receding heels. He didn’t stop.

  Eden was back at her flat before she remembered she’d slipped Donna’s diary into her pocket. Damn! She couldn’t get it back to Donna’s house now: the police would be there any minute and she’d have to fess up to breaking in. That would inevitably lead to awkward questions about how she knew who the victim was, and that would get Aidan into trouble, too.

  She squared it with her conscience by deciding she’d see what was in the diary, and if there was anything that could help the police, she’d get it to them somehow, even if it backfired on her.

  The hair was in place across her door as she ferreted her key out of her backpack. Inside, the flat was undisturbed, but a light blinked on the answering machine. Eden pressed the play button and wandered into the kitchen, hunting for paracetamol. The morning’s stress had brought on a thumping headache. As she riffled through the cupboard, the answering machine beeped and a disembodied voice echoed across the room.

  ‘Hello there. Long time no see. Still, what with me being stuck here inside, and you being on the outside, that’s no surprise.’

  Eden froze, her hand in mid-air. She knew that voice, knew it all too well. Even now, the sound of it sent a sickening fear rippling through her.

  Hammond. His voice in her flat, her home.

  ‘Anyway,’ he continued, in that sing-song tone that was more menacing than any overt threat, ‘I just wanted to catch up with you. See how you’re doing.’

  She swallowed. Her throat was dry and her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth.

  ‘And I will catch up with you, Jackie, or whatever you’re calling yourself now. I will catch up with you.’ A noise in the background, a scrote swearing at the screws, something about his fucking human rights. Hammond paused. Maybe he was eyeballing the shit who’d interrupted his phone call. His voice was breathy when he spoke again, as if his mouth was very close to the receiver. ‘I will catch up with you, and when I do, then we’ll see how you’re doing. Bye bye.’

  A clunk as he hung up. Hammond ringing her here. His voice poisoning her home. How the hell had he found her? She gripped the sink and ran cold water, splashing it on to her face and into her mouth. It tasted metallic. She rinsed her mouth and spat into the sink. Just hearing Hammond’s voice again had sent her pulse into overdrive.

  Breathing fast, she went to the answering machine and replayed the message another three times, straining to pick up any clue from his voice or the noises in the background. He was definitely calling from inside prison; the sound quality suggested he was using the public phone. Yet surely Hammond would have got a mobile smuggled in somehow? The thought he was saving a mobile for something special didn’t comfort her. Neither did the thought that he felt so untouchable he was confident to make a threatening phone call with a prison officer in earshot.

  Her hand hovered over the phone. She should call Miranda, then the police. Hammond had found her somehow, like he’d found Little Jimmy. Bragging, that’s what Miranda had said. Hammond was in prison yet he’d got someone to kill Little Jimmy for him. He was snubbing his nose at them. Probably pissing himself laughing.

  She didn’t call Miranda and she didn’t call the police. It was pointless. She was on her own. No one stood in Hammond’s way.

  Her flat was polluted by his call. His voice lurked in the corners and made her jumpy. She had to get out. She checked the windows and fixed the hair in place across the front door as she left, taking her notebook and Donna’s diary with her. The hallway was empty as she checked and double-checked the door. No one in the stairwell. No one watching her as she got into her car and drove away.

  No one that she could see, anyway.

  As far as she could tell, no one followed her to her office. She parked up and walked to the sandwich shop, craving normal human company and a large mocha. Tony was in there, slicing tomatoes, his hands wrinkly in protective food-handling gloves. He grinned when she came in.

  ‘You’re early,’ he said. ‘Hungry?’

  The initial rush of adrenaline had subsided leaving her suddenly starving. ‘A bacon bap, please. Lots of sauce.’

  ‘Red or brown?’

  ‘Surprise me.’

  She leaned against the counter as Tony fried two rashers of bacon and sliced a bun.

  ‘You hear about that woman?’ Tony said.

  ‘Woman?’

  ‘Found dead in Cheltenham this morning. It was on the news.’

  The press were on to it quickly. ‘They say who she was?’

  ‘No, don’t think so. Bet you wish you’d found her, eh?’

  ‘Oh yeah, I love starting off the day stumbling over a corpse or two,’ she said, drily. ‘It beats chasing round after cheating h
usbands.’

  Tony selected a bottle and squirted sauce on to the bap. ‘I think you’re in a brown sauce mood.’

  Eden smiled and handed over a five-pound note. ‘Thanks, Tony.’

  ‘Laters.’

  Still no one lurking in the car park. She allowed herself to feel safe for a moment before reminding herself that Hammond wasn’t subtle. If he wanted her dead he wouldn’t waste time conducting a pattern of life analysis, he’d just pay two thugs to snatch her off the street and drive her somewhere no one would ever find her. Not until it was way too late, anyway.

  She fumbled getting her office door open. She kicked it hard, imagining Hammond’s face, and the door bounced back against her toe. The red graffiti, BITCH, confronted her, suddenly sinister. She’d assumed it was glued-up kids, but was it Hammond, letting her know he’d found her?

  Once inside, she slammed the door shut and locked it, and flopped down in her chair. A waft of bacon fumes made her stomach rumble and she bit into the bap, licking brown sauce where it squidged on to her hand. While she chewed, she cracked open Donna’s diary at that day’s date.

  Donna had an appointment at the school scheduled for later that day. Was that why Wayne was jumpy, because his mum had been hauled in to discuss his appalling school reports? Then again, how did Donna afford the fees at a place like the Park School? Eden had seen her salary going in every month on the bank statements, and almost all of it going straight out on the mortgage, food and bills. All Donna’s luxuries were on plastic. Goodness knew how she paid the credit cards, either.

  Eden did a quick internet search for the Park School’s number and rang the admissions team.

  ‘Good morning, I’m enquiring about your fees.’

  ‘Day pupil or boarding?’

  ‘Day pupil.’

  The woman in admissions quoted a price that made Eden rock back in astonishment. For a moment, she couldn’t speak; there was no way Donna could afford that. The fees were more than her annual salary.