‘That was bracing,’ says Joyce. ‘I can’t believe you missed the whole thing.’
Ron puts his arm around his friend, and sees Pauline do the same with Mike.
86
For years she has had Google Alerts on her phone. If anyone anywhere mentioned the name ‘Bethany Waites’, she would know about it. She would take a quick look, assess any risks, and then continue on with her new life. Around the anniversary of her death, there would usually be a few mentions, but every year there had been fewer and fewer, until they eventually dried up altogether. To all intents and purposes, Bethany Waites had ceased to exist.
Until three days ago, when Bethany Waites suddenly became one of the most famous people in the world for a whole afternoon. Bethany Waites had seen all the fuss, of course she had, how could you miss it, even in Dubai.
She had stayed indoors, cancelled her appointments. There was no real need though, she knew that. Bethany has been Alice Cooper for many years now. People laughed at her name, but it serves a purpose.
Back when she was investigating the VAT fraud, Bethany had been learning everything she could about money-laundering. Taking professors and criminals out for lunch. Bothering all the experts. A German police investigator had told her that the best alias for a fraudster was that of a famous person. ‘It makes you impossible to Google,’ he had said. And he was quite right. Google ‘Alice Cooper’ now, and you will have to scroll through an awful lot of pages before you get to her ‘Media Training and PR Solutions’ company on the eighth floor of an office building in the Dubai Marina.
She learned an awful lot more than that little trick too. Learned so much, in fact, that not only could she follow the trail of the VAT money, but also access it herself.
And then Andrew Everton sent her the bullet. The bullet with the name scratched, crudely, into its side.
That’s when she knew she was in danger. Knew Andrew Everton had discovered she was on his tail. Knew that he meant her harm. He must have been bugging her phone. Seen the ‘absolute dynamite’ message to Mike.
So she had a choice. Keep digging, keep investigating, be brave. Or find a way out?
Was she ever going to be able to beat Andrew Everton? A high-ranking police officer. Someone with the resources to access her messages, someone with a heart cold enough to send her a bullet.
Really she had no choice at all.
So she did the next best thing. Over the next few weeks, using what she’d learned, she started to channel Andrew Everton’s money into new accounts. She didn’t take any out, that’s the real danger time, but she diverted it. She hid it.
After her death, poor Andrew Everton and Jack Mason had spent so long trying to retrieve their money, but the web they had devised was so opaque, and so clever, that they had no way of seeing that the money had already gone.
She had her plan in place. Her murder, her disappearance, the new passport with the new hair and make-up, taking her own blood with home-testing kits to smear in the car. She had picked up all sorts of tricks. But she didn’t believe she would really go through with it. Until the night she had received the email from Andrew Everton. ‘Come and meet me. I just want to talk.’
Bethany knew it was time to say goodbye. To her life, to her story, to Mike. And hello to Dubai, to a new life, and to ten million.
Bethany had waited a year or so before she started collecting her money. She’d siphoned off a hundred thousand from an obscure account in Panama, just to see her through, and to pay for the surgery. She’d reported, many years before, about a woman from Faversham who had made her fortune in plastic surgery, and the woman was only too glad to help, for a hefty cut. You could get pretty much anything you wanted in Dubai if you had ten million pounds in your pocket. And what Bethany Waites bought was anonymity.
She got away with it, sure. But got away with what?
She had regrets, certainly. Before she disappeared, she had received a couple of knockbacks from the BBC. Her confidence had been dented. Bethany had begun to think she would never make it, would never get out. That made the ten million, the new life, even more tempting. But maybe she should have stuck it out? Look at what happened with Fiona Clemence. But Bethany didn’t have Fiona’s confidence. Didn’t have Fiona’s looks either, although she resembles her a little bit more since the surgery. She could have toughed it out, but an opportunity came her way and she chose to take it. Mike had told her to keep fighting, told her she would make it, but she was too young to know that was true.
And Mike is the worst of all. The regret that still wakes her in the night. It would kill Mike to know she had left him voluntarily. She knows that, and she knew Pauline would know that too. She could have stuck around, been brave. She could have brought Andrew Everton to justice, could have risen through the ranks, enjoyed her career, popped in to visit Mike for a drink whenever she was in the area. That’s what she could have done.
But her mind keeps coming back to the bullet. The bullet, with the name scratched into the side, sent by Andrew Everton. Designed to scare her, no doubt, but a bullet that ultimately cost him ten million pounds.
After that Bethany really had no choice. She has the bullet in front of her now. She weighs it in her hand, just as she had done that night many years ago. Beware the bullet with your name on it.
And the name is what had finally made her mind up. Because the name scratched into the bullet was not ‘Bethany Waites’. She could have handled that.
The name was ‘Mike Waghorn’.
87
Mike Waghorn scrolls back through his emails. Every year, on the anniversary of Bethany’s death, viewers send him their condolences. Not many, and fewer and fewer as the years ticked by, but enough to make a difference.
This year, there had been just four. Three from regular correspondents, and one from an account he had never identified. With a ‘no-reply’ email address. It got lost among the throng for the first few years, but it is very visible now. The message would always comprise just a single red rose. Mike had never really thought anything of it.
They had never found Bethany’s body. All sorts of people had told him why, tides and so on, and Mike had accepted what he was told. There were plenty of similar cases if you looked into it, and Mike had looked into it.
Then they were told that Bethany had been buried in Heather Garbutt’s garden. But, despite the digging, the body has not been found there either. Andrew Everton continues to protest his innocence.
So what if? Mike has begun to think. What if?
Mike looks at the email with the red rose. He searches back. Same email every year. All from the same no-reply email address.
What could the red rose signify? Love, for one. Lancashire? That was a stretch. But Bethany liked to stretch things. Liked to tease him. ‘Absolute dynamite’ indeed. As if he were ever going to be the one to work that out.
Of course, the emails are not from Bethany, of course they’re not. They are just roses from a well-wisher. But it’s a nice fantasy. The idea that Bethany wasn’t dead, but living it up somewhere, perhaps on the proceeds of the VAT fraud? No one else seemed to have the money, and even Henrik has said that at some point the money seemed to just vanish. Had it vanished with her?
Would Bethany really have left him without saying goodbye?
For ten million, why not? It was foolish, and it was greedy, but who hasn’t been foolish and greedy in their life? Mike had been foolish his whole life, until Bethany had shown him the truth. He wishes Bethany could have hung around long enough for him to return the favour.