‘No. The man had gone to ground.’
‘How hard did you look, once Damien was in the frame?’
The pause went on longer. I wondered if I’d overstepped the mark.
‘It wasn’t deemed to be a productive use of resources. I’d say that’s still the case,’ he said crisply.
My mind went back to the car. Charlie driving out there, too fast. He always broke the speed limit. His one flaw, according to Libby. A new idea came to me. Could he have upset someone with his speed? An encounter with another motorist turning to road rage. The other driver following him to the cottage. An altercation, a knife on the counter. I clutched at my head trying to concentrate, grasp the whole picture.
‘What if,’ I said to Sinclair, ‘and this is off the top of my head, Charlie had cut someone up on his way out there. He always drove too fast…’
‘Sounds like a fairy tale.’ He was dismissive. ‘An imaginary traffic incident, an imaginary unknown attacker. We work with facts, we follow the evidence.’
‘Who else had any motive?’ I asked. ‘Heather Carter, but she was with Valerie Mayhew all afternoon – unless she got Valerie to lie for her. They are friends. Valerie is… formidable,’ I chose the word with care ‘… but she’s straight as a die. I can’t see her flouting the law at all – not even a parking ticket. She’d risk her whole reputation.’
‘We could corroborate their accounts,’ Geoff Sinclair said flatly. ‘Phone records. There were calls made from the Carter house that afternoon. Third parties who could confirm that they spoke with Heather.’
‘Could she have hired someone?’
‘A hit man?’ he scoffed. ‘There were no financial irregularities, no lump sum payments to suggest anything like that, and no phone traffic between Heather Carter and persons known to the police. All these things were checked. We did our homework.’ Which put me in my place?
‘But maybe not on Nick Dryden,’ I countered.
‘I wish you luck,’ he said dryly and hung up.
I was in the drive, emptying the rubbish into the wheelie bin when Ray arrived back. I saw him first, head lowered so his black curls hung over his face obscuring his expression, hands shoved in his pockets.
I froze. He sensed me and looked up, his face bleaching. He walked down the drive and I stopped breathing, felt the blood slow in my veins.
‘Jamie’s not Laura’s,’ he said quietly, his face looking tired, old.
My heart bucked with elation. I gasped with relief. Why wasn’t he smiling? ‘So, it was all a mix-up?’ I asked him. ‘She never was pregnant?’
He blinked and stretched his head back, his Adam’s apple prominent against the column of his neck. ‘She was,’ he said and ran a hand through his hair. I glimpsed the paler skin on his wrist, the tracery of veins.
‘She was?’ I echoed, my voice wavering.
Ray looked down at the ground, nudged his shoe against a piece of loose concrete there.
‘Ray?’
A magpie screeched high in the eucalyptus tree, then I heard the clatter of its flight.
‘She has a boy,’ he said. He glanced up briefly; a look of sadness shadowed his features. ‘My son, Oscar.’ He swung his head away and I saw his nose redden.
‘Ray.’ I moved in towards him, releasing my hold on the bin bag but he shook his head. ‘Later. OK?’ He walked away.
I stared at the black bag at my feet, the stew of eggshells and packaging and scraps, the rubbish of our lives blurring in my eyes.
Waiting for the computer to boot up, I picked over Ray’s news, still astounded at the very fact of it. How could we not have heard? Manchester may be the country’s second city but it’s more an urban village than an anonymous metropolis. People talk, natter, gossip. Circles overlap. Everyone knows someone in common; six degrees of separation becomes three. Laura only lived a couple of miles away. How long did she think she could keep it a secret from Ray? Why did she?
His withdrawal from me, his retreat into dealing with this on his own rather than us tackling it together filled me with resentment. What prospect was there for us as a couple if when the going got tough he shut me out? Yes, it was his bombshell; he’d suddenly acquired a child he never knew about. It was huge news to try and absorb but it affected me, too. I wanted us to share the shock and upheaval, support each other in coping with it. And there was the other big issue to address: if Jamie was not Laura’s child, then who was she?
Online, I began to search for Nick Dryden, setting off several search engines and trying variations like Nicholas, too. I concentrated on any hits that linked to business. I felt sure he’d keep operating in the field he knew. In his comfort zone. A Nick Dryden came up twice in the north east, once linked to an insolvency hearing ten years ago. Before he’d conned the Carters. The same old scams. Spain had been mentioned so I tried that and found a link to a newspaper report from Benidorm in the Costa Blanca. Nicholas Dryden was wanted by the Spanish authorities for fraud: selling non-existent land plots and bogus timeshares. It was believed he had left Spain and may have returned to the UK. That was last summer. I couldn’t find any more recent reference to him online.
Was it likely, really, that after seven years Dryden would seek out Charlie in his weekend cottage, stab him and slip away? Revenge is best eaten cold but assuming it was Dryden something must have been a catalyst for him to act then. Had his misfortunes in Spain triggered fresh antagonism against the Carters? His abusive calls had stopped around the time of Charlie’s murder. Was there a connection?
There was no listing on Yell.com or similar sites, and nothing on People Finder. I tried another tack: his ex-wife. A recorded announcement told me Darville’s dentist surgery in Whitby was closed at weekends but there were three Darvilles listed in the local phone directory. I hit the jackpot first time.
Selina Darville was reluctant to talk to me and I had to push hard and think fast to stop her hanging up. Just the mention of Nick Dryden was obviously an unwelcome intrusion for her.
‘I’m trying to trace him,’ I hadn’t gone into any details why, ‘and all I need to know is if he’s any family he would keep in touch with.’
She sighed. ‘Only when he was after something.’
‘Who?’
‘His mother. If she’s still there.’
‘Where does she live?’
‘I don’t know if I should give out the details. It’s not like you’re the police or anything.’
I pleaded my case, gave her assurances and got an address. When I found a phone number to match and rang it, I learnt Mrs Kemp (she’d remarried later in life) had moved to sheltered accommodation in South Shields. The number there was busy but on my third try I got some sort of switchboard: they took my details and put me through.
I apologized to Mrs Kemp for ringing her out of the blue, and told her I wanted to get in touch with Nick Dryden. She hung up on me. Some people just don’t want to help.
Frustrated, I switched my attention to the other details of the case: rereading my notes on Damien’s story and attempting to draw a sketch of events. How far was it from the bus stop to the cottage? Although I’d seen pictures of the house and the village on news coverage I’d no accurate grasp of the location and the geography. Now, it seemed vital that I understood it. I should visit.
My phone went. ‘Sal Kilkenny,’ I answered.
There was a crackle of static, silence then faint breath sounds on the end of the line.
‘Hello?’ I said. ‘Can you hear me?’ Was it someone in trouble?
The breath came louder, not hurried – measured, ominous. The silence was deliberate. My heartbeat picked up. I held my own breath, straining to listen to see if I could discern anything about the person on the other end. It was impossible. Just the steady intake and exhalation of air. So close, so intimate it made my flesh crawl. Slamming down the receiver, I got to my feet. Paced up and down, trying to shake off the shiver of fear that had spread down my back and tugged at my guts. I dialled 1471 but of course they’d withheld the number. Was it coincidence that the call had come so soon after my attempts to track down Nick Dryden?