Authors: Alex Marwood
She’s already on the phone. Her voice sounds high and weak; different from when he last heard it. As though she’s had a shock.
As though she’s filled with panic and doing her ineffective best to control it.
‘Hi, Minty,’ she says. ‘It’s Kirsty Lindsay. Is there any chance Jack’s out of conference yet? Damn. OK. Can you get him to
call
me the minute he is? Yes, my mobile. I’m down in Whitmouth. Yup, OK. Thanks.’
She puts the phone on the seat and resumes her rocking. Wraps her arms round her body as though she’s cold, though the sun
is bright enough to show up the peeling paint on the façades in vivid detail. She gets up and moves to another bench – Martin
has to shadow her movements, as quietly as he can, to keep himself behind his cover – in the shade of a stately beech tree.
Sits back and closes her eyes, covers them with her palm as though she has a headache.
The sound of her ringtone shatters the quiet. She snatches it up. ‘Hello? Oh, hi, Jack. Thanks for calling back. Yes, not
yet, but I think it’ll definitely happen today. He’s still only charged with the stuff from Saturday right now, but I’d say
it was ninety-nine per cent they’re going to do him for the murders. Name? Yes. Victor Cantrell. Yup. Same guy as last week.
Works the dodgems at the theme park. No, not officially, yet. They’re holding off till they do the other charges. But half
the town seems to know it’s him, and the wife just turned up to visit. So yes, I’m pretty sure. I’ll write it so you can drop
the name in later if they announce it. Yeah. Look, the thing is, I’ve got to go home. Sorry. I don’t think I’ll be late filing,
but I … can’t stay here …’
He hears her pause. She’s rethinking what she’s just said, he thinks. Didn’t mean it to come out like that. ‘I mean, I’ve
got to get home. Childcare, I’m afraid. Yeah, sorry. Jim’s working in town this week and Soph’s gone down with something.
Looks like flu. She’s really ill. Yuh, her school just called. No. Like I said, he’s in town. It’s got to be me. I’m sorry.’
She’s lying through her teeth. He can tell because she wrings her hands, the phone tucked between her shoulder and her ear,
as she speaks. ‘Yeah, I know. But it’s not even noon yet. It won’t take me more than an hour to file once I’m back. But I
don’t have any alternative. I’m sorry. And Dave’s on the case tomorrow anyway.’
She goes quiet, and listens. When she speaks, it’s in a small voice. ‘I know. Yes, I know, Jack. I’ve got a couple of contacts
down at the scene and I know they’ll call me if anything happens. And it’ll turn up on AP in seconds anyway. I know it’s not
ideal, but it’s the best I can do. I can’t just leave her in the sick bay. And Jack? I don’t think I’m going to be able to
get out for the rest of the week. If you’ve got any pieces I can do on the phone, maybe …? No, OK. I understand. I’ll call
Features. Hopefully they’ll have something. Yes, I know. But you’ve got kids yourself, haven’t you?’
Another silence as Jack speaks. Martin sees her blush, sees a look of exquisite pain cross her face. ‘Yes,’ she says, ‘I understand.
No later than four. And I’ll give you a call next week when—’
She pulls the phone away from her head and looks at it. Jack has clearly hung up. She opens her bag to put it away, then sits
up, alert, and looks towards town.
Martin looks too. He’s been so engrossed in Kirsty’s conversation that he’s not noticed an approaching hubbub. But it’s unmistakable
now. Voices, calling, and many scuffling feet. He turns within his cover and looks towards the top gate. Hears a name separate
itself from the cacophony, then hears it over and over. ‘Amber! Amber! This way, Amber!’
She’s half walking, half running as she enters the park, preceded by a dozen men in waxed jackets who run backwards, bump
into each other and shout her name. Every now and then one breaks loose and scurries a few yards forwards, stops and holds
his camera high in the air above his head, pointing down at the approaching mob. Behind, another knot of followers, all calling
her name. ‘Amber! Amber! Amber!’
Amber Gordon is white and shaking, and holds her handbag up in front of her face like a shield. Stumbles forward like someone
who has suddenly lost her sight. She doesn’t speak. Just staggers on, moving the bag from side to side in a futile attempt
to block the cameras. She too has a phone clamped to her ear, though Martin can’t make out who she might be talking to.
They come nearer. He can make out more of the words now. ‘How are you feeling, Amber?’ ‘Do you have anything to say to the
families?’ ‘How was Victor when you saw him? What did he say to you?’ ‘What does this mean to you, Amber? Did you have any
idea?’ ‘Has it come as a shock? What are you going to do now?’
So it
is
. It’s Vic Cantrell. He’s heard the name half a dozen times, in the shops, on the Corniche, in the café where he bought his
breakfast, as well as from Lindsay’s lips just now. And if ever there was proof, the sight of Amber Gordon and her sea of
followers is it. He thrills at the sight. How are the mighty fallen, he thinks. That’s all you have to do, isn’t it? Wait
for long enough and they all come tumbling down, one by one by one.
He glances over at Kirsty Lindsay and sees that she’s left the bench. But she’s not done what he would have expected. She
should be running up to join her colleagues, but instead she’s doing something very strange. She’s clambering into the earthy
flowerbed, over the roots of the beech tree, crushing the leaves of left-to-rest bluebells as she goes. She reaches the trunk
of the tree and puts her hands on it. Works her way round it and hides herself behind, in the shadow of the hedge. Martin
frowns. What the hell is she up to?
The front-running photographers are almost parallel with him now, their faces lit up with the thrill of the chase. It’s like
watching a fox at bay. Amber’s hair is wild and her lips are pulled back in a snarl – rage? Fear? – that shows her teeth all
the way to the molars. For a second he almost feels sorry for her, but then he remembers the humiliation, the cold way she
saw him off when he called Jackie, the shock when he uncovered her link with Kirsty Lindsay, and the pity vanishes. She’s
getting what she deserves.
She stops stock-still and tries to appeal to their better natures. ‘Please!’ she cries. ‘Please! Leave me alone! I don’t know
anything! I don’t have anything to say!’
Silence hangs in the air for one, two, three seconds, then the baying begins anew. ‘Where are you off to, Amber?’ ‘How did
you find out?’ ‘Tell us how you’re feeling!’ ‘Are you standing by him?’
Amber takes a deep breath and lets out a scream. ‘Leave me alone!’
She breaks into a faltering run. Looks like there is little strength left in her legs. The chase continues, past Martin’s
hiding place, past Kirsty Lindsay concealed in the shadows, past benches and bins and flowerbeds. She comes to the side gate
and shoves her way through, staggers up Park Road towards the seafront. I’ll bet she’s going to Funnland, thinks Martin. That’s
where I’d go. At least they’ve got security of sorts there.
Kirsty steps back out on to the path and stands for a moment staring after her bloodhound colleagues, her mouth taut, her
face unreadable. Then she wheels on her heel and starts to walk, quickly, in the direction of the town gate. She’s up to something,
thinks Martin. Anybody would think she’s trying to keep away from Amber. That she’s scared of something.
He waits till he’s sure she’s not going to look back, then comes out from behind the rhododendrons to follow her.
Home. Sanctuary. Walls that enfold and protect. A barrier against the world outside, the place you long for in the storm.
Kirsty sits in her quiet dining room, the
Sun
spread out on the table before her and sunlight falling through the window to her right. Wonders about Amber. Wonders if
she’s home too, or if she’s been driven out to some anonymous motel room, some friend’s spare bedroom, some safe-house for
the relatives of the loathed.
The
Sun
’s gone front-page with Whitmouth. A huge, grainy colour photo – in the absence of a court appearance by the man himself –
of Amber in the park, dark glasses covering the upper half of her face, a cream mac tightly belted. A phone clamped to her
ear and her teeth bared in the age-old primate expression of distress. But that’s not how the paper interprets it. Or chooses
to, anyway. There’s not an editor in the world too green to tell the difference, but that doesn’t mean they’ll go with the
truth when there’s righteous outrage to be drummed up.
NOT A CARE IN THE WORLD
, says the headline.
Kirsty scans on. Heartless Amber Gordon takes a seaside stroll, chatting and laughing on her mobile phone, mindless of the
pain of victims’ families.
Shit, she thinks. They’ve turned her into Sonia Sutcliffe.
She reads on.
The cleaner, wife of Seaside Strangler suspect Victor Cantrell, dropped off a bag of treats for her husband at Whitmouth Police
Station yesterday morning and spent some time closeted away with him before emerging. Amazingly, she then walked on through
the town to spend the day at the Funnland theme park on the beach. Families riding the famous rollercoaster unawares would
have been shocked to know that they had such a notorious figure in their midst.
Works there, thinks Kirsty. She works there, for God’s sake. And you know it. You all know it. You were all making up quotes
from her ten days ago when she found that body.
Cantrell is awaiting charges over a series of murders in the town. For Gordon, though, it’s business as usual. See
page 5
.
Kirsty opens the paper, finds the rest of the story, accompanied by a smaller, older picture of Amber and Victor together
on the beach. ‘Said a neighbour, Shaunagh Betts, 21,’ it continues:
‘It’s amazing. You’d have thought she’d have some shame. She’s always been weird – a snob, always interfering in other people’s
business as though she was better than the rest of us – but the way she goes on, you would have thought she was completely
innocent.’ Holding her daughter, Tiffany, 2, tightly, she continued: ‘If it was me, I’d be on my knees apologising to the
people round here, but she behaves like she’s done nothing wrong. I can’t believe I’ve been bringing my kids up next door
to people like that all this time. What if something had happened? I would never have forgiven myself.’
Another neighbour, Janelle Boxer, 67, said: ‘She always treated him really badly. They kept themselves to themselves most
of the time, but sometimes you’d hear her having a go at him, really belittling him. I heard her doing it only the other day,
right out in the garden where anyone
could hear. It’s hard to believe she didn’t know anything. She must have noticed something. Some of those girls fought back,
and there must have been marks on him. I know no one wants to believe they’re living with a monster, but there must have been
more to it than that.’
Cantrell is expected in front of Whitmouth magistrates tomorrow, charged with the murders of Nicole Ponsonby, Keisha Brown,
Hannah Hardy and Stacey Plummer, and the attempted murder of a young woman, whose identity we are protecting out of concern
for her recovery, on Friday night. The women’s bodies were found dumped heartlessly in spots around the south-coast resort
after being attacked and violated. More charges, related to unsolved murders in the town in previous seasons, are expected
later in the week.
Gordon (pictured with Cantrell, above, at a seaside barbecue earlier this year), meanwhile, is unrepentant. ‘I’ve not done
anything,’ she told our reporter yesterday. ‘Why can’t you just leave me alone?’
In bold type beneath the story, a puff for another: My nights in strangler’s lair: centre pages.
Kirsty stares at the picture and recognises Victor Cantrell as the man who rescued, then abused, her that night in DanceAttack.
God, she thinks. Was it him all along? Did I finger Rat Man in the
Trib
when I really
was
being followed by the genuine article?
She feels sick: ashamed of her colleagues and their ability to use words to throw any light they choose to on a situation.
Innuendo, allusion and false connection: the staples of a media that’s still awaiting facts. She feels ashamed of herself
for having indulged the same faults in her own piece on Sunday. It’s hardly the first time she’s done it – you can’t avoid
it when an editor’s had an idea and is paying you to establish it as fact – but she doesn’t think she’s done it by mistake
before.
God, we’re all such liars, she thinks. Is that what made me decide to do this for a living, because I’m the biggest liar of
all?
I lie to my husband, lie to my children, every single day, and it’s only going to get worse. Even after a quarter of a century,
Bel and I are linked by an unbreakable thread, and I can no more forget about it than I can tell the truth.
She looks down at the paper. Wonders what other delights it has in store.
Blessed turns up with food and a copy of the paper, her face solemn with sympathy. Amber almost doesn’t let her in, but she
knocks and shouts for so long that eventually she peeps through the curtains and sees her there among the crowd. She opens
the door and a photographer immediately slips a foot into the gap, hoping to prise it open long enough to get an interior
shot. Maybe a picture of Amber looking dishevelled: the woman who spent so much time in her dressing gown she drove her man
to murder.
There’s a scuffle, and Blessed starts haranguing the man in ringing evangelical tones. And then she’s inside, and stabbing
at the foot with an umbrella, shouting, ‘You will not pass! You will not
pass
!’ Mary-Kate and Ashley yap furiously by her ankles as she slams the door and turns to Amber, brushing herself off as though
she’s just emerged from a sandstorm. ‘There,’ she says. ‘That was easy.’
Amber bursts into tears.
Blessed puts down her shopping bags and gives her a hug. The first hug Amber can remember receiving in years. Vic was never
a hugger: too keen, she understands now, on carrying his embraces through to death. It makes her cry harder.