It was a pleasant view at any time of day, but now, after sunset, when dusk shrouded the plastic rubbish bins and the litter along the high-tide mark and the blockwork walls, it was beautiful. The sky seemed to go on forever, streaked with orange and purple and a deep indigo it seemed to take from the sea, although of course it was the other way round. The waves lapping at the beach shimmered silver, and the two stacks of rock out to sea loomed up like sentinels, as if guarding the little cove with its jetty and solitary rowing boat bobbing on the swell.
But if she turned her head to look left from her window instead of right, the scene was just like any other along this coast: streetlights illuminating two more ugly high-rise hotels, some dusty cafés and tavernas and shops, and then a line of run-down orange and yellow apartments with railed balconies, metal-shuttered windows and satellite dishes. The beach, such as it was, on the other side of the road was a tumbled mass of rocks and a little strip of flat grey sand disappearing into a darkened sea. Between the apartments and the junction with the main coast road were half a dozen white, red-roofed ‘executive’ villas that looked like MacDonald’s restaurants, and a few dispirited palm trees.
Fuerte Blanco, the place was called, although there was no sign now of the fort that had presumably given it its name. The original fisherfolk’s houses had gone too, with the one exception of a little boarded-up stone building behind one of the cafés. Flora had never seen anyone use the boat that was tied to the jetty.
She got up from her chair and stretched.
Time to call it a day.
They wouldn’t come now.
She lay down on the bed and shut her eyes.
Maybe tomorrow.
Maybe tomorrow would be the day Caroline – she couldn’t stop thinking of her as Caroline – brought Beckie here.
It had taken Brian just three days to find the place, after Flora had described to him the scene Caroline had as her desktop wallpaper – the photograph of the beach and the little harbour and the two tall stacks of rock.
Fuerte Blanco, five miles along the coast from Malaga.
It had been a long shot, but the only one they had. Brian had come straight out here armed with photographs of them all – Jed and Lorraine Johnson and their offspring – and a bar owner had recognised Travis Johnson as the bastardo who’d punched him in the nose a couple of years ago. He wasn’t likely to forget the face of that matón.
Brian had distributed the photographs around the bars and hotels and cafés, impressing on the staff the importance of keeping them hidden from the view of customers, with the promise of a substantial reward for information. Then he’d staked the place out and hired three local PIs to help with the enquiry. On the day Flora had been released from prison she’d joined him here.
He’d been the most animated she’d ever seen him as they’d sat across from each other at a table outside Café Victor, piecing together the puzzle of Lorraine Johnson’s masquerade. ‘Incredible,’ he kept saying. ‘Bloody incredible.’
He’d discovered that the previous occupant of Caroline’s flat on Gardens Terrace had been beaten up and told to leave – thus enabling new tenant ‘Caroline’ to move in. ‘She played it cool,’ Brian had said in admiration. ‘Waited a whole three months before making your acquaintance at that party; let you get used to seeing her around. Smart. Very smart.’
And of course it had been Lorraine who had drugged Flora; who had stolen her old phone so that when, on the way to school, she had run out of petrol – presumably siphoned off by one of the Johnson boys – she hadn’t been able to call for help, presenting Travis with the perfect harassment opportunity; who had unlocked and then relocked the window through which Ryan had entered the house; who had memorised the password for the CCTV system, and borrowed Flora’s new phone to allow Ryan to log in using it, and switch the cameras off and on. Afterwards, Ryan must have left the phone somewhere – in Caroline’s flat, maybe – and Caroline had returned it to the kitchen table while Flora had been in the study checking the CCTV footage.
‘Inside job,’ Brian had nodded, draining his espresso and gazing out to sea, a little smile on his lips.
For six weeks Flora had spent all day every day in Fuerte Blanco, while the PIs expanded the search in either direction along the coast and inland, and Brian returned to the UK to follow up other potential leads.
Every day she walked along the beach in a floppy hat and sunglasses, scrutinising everyone she saw. She sat in the shade of the awning at Victor’s pretending to read books and magazines, an empty coffee cup at her elbow. But mostly she sat up here, at the window of her hotel room, scanning the beach and the road below with a pair of binoculars.
The hotel staff had been great, bringing meals and drinks to her room. They had even enlisted their friends and families in the search for Beckie. Her picture was all over the press and social media, both in the UK and in Spain, although Flora had tried to make sure the name Fuerte Blanco wasn’t mentioned – she didn’t want the Johnsons warned off coming here. She had been touched to see a batch of homemade laminated notices tied to lampposts and in windows of local houses, with Beckie’s photograph and a plea to ‘Encuentre Beckie’. It had turned out to be lovely Sofia, the maid who cleaned her room, who was responsible, and Flora had felt awful asking her to take them down, explaining that if the Johnsons did turn up here, she didn’t want them to see the notices and be scared off.
‘But maybe they never come,’ Sofia had said.
Flora wasn’t even going to contemplate that possibility.
They would come, and when they did, she’d be ready.
The local police were primed to expect her call. She was paying Victor, café owner and former member of the Guardia Civil, and his two brothers a retainer of £300 a week each to be on hand in case of trouble, their phones always turned on, ready to receive her SOS.
Money wasn’t an issue. She’d sold the Gardens Terrace house for three-quarters of its valuation, which had still netted her an obscene amount of money, and she had Alec’s life insurance payout now too. Plus there would be the compensation, eventually, from the police for their incompetence and from the press for their slanderous coverage of the case leading up to her conviction.
She sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed, drawn back, as always, to the view. Standing at the window, she trained the binoculars on the line of little cafés and bars strung out along the beach; on the people on the pavement; on two shadowy figures on the beach… Her breath caught in her throat, but a car turning in the hotel car park briefly illuminated two dark heads and slim figures in bikini tops and cut-off jeans. It was Sofia’s teenage daughters, heads bent together over a match as they lit illicit cigarettes.
If Alec were here, he’d be down there presenting to them the evidence of how many people who smoked as teenagers ended up in an early grave.
She hadn’t been able to think about Alec at all in prison – and when she had had to talk about him, to Charles, to Brian, to the court, she had always referred to him as Neil. But now, for some reason, he was ever-present in her head. She kept thinking how he’d react to this or that, and what he would say; she kept imagining his smile, his touch on her back, her face, her hand; she kept hearing him telling her that the Johnsons, despite everything, loved Beckie and wouldn’t harm her.
How desperately he would want to be here.
How he would hate having had to abandon them.
Only, he hadn’t. He was with her, as he would always be with her, as she was sure he was with Beckie, not just in her thoughts and her memories but in the very fabric of her being. In how she looked at the world.