‘Do I know you?’ she asked, not wanting to sound rude but at the same time not wanting to be over-friendly to someone whose name she didn’t recognize.

  ‘I’m your grandson.’

  The writer of the letter! The one that had said how glad he was to have found her. The one who’d signed off With love from your grandson.

  Not only had this stalker got hold of her address but he’d also found her number.

  Vanessa began to feel angry now. She didn’t usually do anger. She was a forgiver, unlike Jack, who had always held grudges. But right now, this anger bubbled up through her, twisting and turning her guts because it wasn’t just anger. It was disappointment that it wasn’t her husband after all, along with fear.

  Jack used to say that fear and anger were what drove him to do his job, especially the time when a bank robber shot him in the leg. The man had got twenty years for murder because Jack’s partner hadn’t been so lucky. He’d died the next day, leaving a widow and four children under ten. (Vanessa still sent them a Christmas card every year.)

  ‘Stop playing games with me,’ she shouted down the phone now. ‘I don’t know who you really are. But I’m going to tell you something. I don’t have children. So I can’t have grandchildren. I’m an elderly widow and I’m going to report you for harassment and causing great distress.’

  There was a knock on the door then. ‘Everything all right?’ asked the assistant.

  ‘Yes, thanks,’ she said quickly.

  ‘Are you still there, Vanessa?’ asked the voice at the other end.

  He spoke as if he knew her. Damned cheek.

  She should switch off the phone. Block this unknown number, if only she could work out how to do it.

  ‘Yes, I am still here,’ she snapped. ‘But not for much longer. You should be ashamed of intimidating an old lady.’

  Usually, Vanessa refused to see herself as old. But recently she’d found herself playing the age card.

  ‘I’m not intimidating you,’ said Lewis, if that’s what his name really was. In her experience from her shop detective days, anyone who was up to no good rarely gave their own name. ‘In fact,’ he added, dropping his voice, ‘my mum would kill me if she knew I was talking to you.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Vanessa. This last comment sounded – and she hated to admit this – quite genuine. Was it possible that this wasn’t a prankster or a con man after all?

  ‘Because she’s your daughter.’

  That hadn’t been in the letter. It was too much. This Lewis had gone too far this time. Now she knew he was lying.

  ‘She can’t be,’ said Vanessa. ‘I’ve already told you. I don’t have any children.’

  His voice was slow and steady. ‘My mum was born forty-nine years ago on 12 October. It was a home birth.’

  Vanessa went cold.

  ‘What did you say?’ she whispered.

  He repeated it.

  Vanessa’s eyes flooded with tears. She could see the midwife’s face when she’d asked why the baby wasn’t crying. Feel Jack’s arms around her. ‘Vanessa, love, I’m sorry.’ She could picture the empty cot that Jack had made. She could feel – as if it was yesterday – the cracking of her heart, which, despite all her jollity on the outside, had remained broken ever since.

  ‘You gave your own daughter away for adoption,’ he said quietly.

  ‘I did NOT,’ spluttered Vanessa. ‘My baby died. She was too premature to live.’

  ‘The thing is, Vanessa, I’ve got Mum’s birth certificate, right here in my hand. It says that her father was Jack Grossmith and that he was a policeman.’

  Did he think she was born yesterday? ‘You can get birth certificates off the internet,’ she scoffed. ‘I’ve read about it.’

  ‘Her mother was Vanessa June.’ He continued. ‘Her occupation is listed as “housewife”.’

  ‘Again, you could have got my name from the internet.’

  ‘I know this is a bit of a shock.’ His voice was softer now. Apologetic. It reminded her of Jack’s when he came home late from work. ‘It’s why I couldn’t put it in the letter I sent. I knew you wouldn’t believe me but, at the same time, I wanted to prepare you.’

  This didn’t sound like stalker talk. Maybe the caller was mentally unwell. Perhaps he’d got her birth details from Google.

  ‘What does this certificate say your mother is called?’ she demanded.

  ‘Molly.’

  Molly? She and Jack had fixed on Sandra as a name for a girl and George if it was a boy. But the name didn’t matter. The fact was that this Lewis was playing a cruel joke. He had to be.

  ‘I’ve only just found out that Mum was adopted, you see,’ he continued.

  This wasn’t possible. Was it?

  ‘How did you get hold of my phone number and my address?’ she asked.

  ‘It wasn’t difficult.’ He almost sounded pleased with himself, the way Jack had when he’d solved a case. ‘I went through the electoral roll to check out anyone with your name in the right sort of age group.’

  ‘How many were there?’

  ‘A few.’

  ‘Then you’d better try the others, hadn’t you?’

  ‘There’s no need. You’re my grandmother.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’ she whispered.

  ‘I can sense it. Feel it. I also found your picture on the net. You were at some award dinner.’

  She had certainly gone to enough of those with Jack, so it was possible.

  ‘It gave your name and my grandad’s. You were sitting next to him. He looks a bit like me.’

  ‘You sound like him too,’ Vanessa heard herself say. Her throat tightened with emotion. ‘But none of this explains how you got my number.’

  ‘If you’ve got someone’s address, you can find their phone number on the internet if you know what to do.’

  ‘That doesn’t seem right.’

  ‘Please,’ he went on, ignoring her comment. ‘I’d love to meet you. But if you don’t want to, I’ll respect that. I’ll just have to go through the rest of my life not knowing my own grandmother.’

  Vanessa hesitated. If this was true, of course she wanted to meet him too. But if it wasn’t, she needed to change her number. Did that mean moving house as well? How did you escape someone like this?

  ‘I can tell from your silence, that’s a no,’ said the voice. He sounded genuinely despondent.

  ‘Wait,’ she said. ‘You haven’t asked about your grandfather.’

  ‘But he’s dead.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘You said just now that you were a widow.’

  Of course she had. How stupid of her. She could hear Jack’s voice again. ‘You need to be more careful, Vanessa.’

  She could also feel herself getting more and more muddled.

  ‘So why are you contacting me?’

  ‘I don’t know, really. To find my roots, I suppose. Look, maybe this is a mistake. Let’s just leave it. Like I said, Mum would go nuts if she knew I was talking to you. When I suggested trying to find you, she went berserk and said you were nothing to us.’

  Nothing?

  She couldn’t help feeling hurt even though Lewis’s mother couldn’t possibly be her daughter. Could she?

  ‘I’ll go now,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t blame you for not believing me. I could be a nutter for all you know.’

  ‘Wait,’ she heard herself saying. ‘Yes. I mean yes, I’d like to meet you.’

  Well, she had to, didn’t she, Vanessa told herself. If only to rule out the remote possibility that any of this was true.

  His voice lifts. ‘Oh, I’m so glad. Are you free on Friday? One o’clock?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, trying to think of her court diary.

  ‘I’ll be outside Marks & Spencer in Exeter.’

  ‘You live near me?’ she said in surprise.

  ‘Not that far. I didn’t know either until I tracked you down. Ironic, isn’t it? Or maybe it’s fate.’

  Fate? Was that possible? It all seemed a little bit too convenient. Vanessa didn’t know whether to feel terrified or excited, but Jack was roaring in her head now, hurting her ears, ‘Put the phone down now.’

  So she did.

  25

  Robbie

  Bruce is a very pale, thin man. He doesn’t look like a murderer. He merely nods at Robbie when he comes in and then gesticulates towards the bottom bunk.

  Robbie isn’t sure if his new cellmate means he wants Robbie to sleep there or whether the bottom bed is Bruce’s.

  He looks at the guard for guidance but the door has slammed behind him.

  Bruce stands and stares, as though appraising him from top to bottom. Robbie wants to wee. He is more scared than when he had performed in front of a certain head of state at the Royal Albert Hall. He has a sudden, urgent need for Irena to hold him. To say it will be all right. But it won’t. It can’t be.

  His legs are wobbling so much that he feels as if he might keel over. He staggers towards the chair in the corner of the room and sits down.

  Bruce shakes his head. ‘Mine,’ he says firmly.

  Robbie stands up quickly. There’s nowhere else to sit.

  There isn’t a basin or a toilet either, as far as he can see. As if reading his mind, Bruce points at a stained brown bowl under the bottom bunk.

  ‘Have to share,’ he says.

  Is he kidding? This shouldn’t be allowed. Robbie thinks of the various articles about prisons he’d seen, always turning the pages quickly to move on to lighter features.

  ‘You should read that,’ Irena had once said, noticing. ‘It’s interesting.’

  But he couldn’t because at the back of his mind was the fear that he might end up behind bars himself.

  And now he has.

  ‘You’re the famous pop star,’ says Bruce.

  It’s a statement. Not a fact.

  ‘Yes,’ says Robbie.

  ‘Pretty girl,’ says Bruce.

  Robbie doesn’t know if his victim was pretty; after the accident, he hadn’t been able to bring himself to look at her picture. Now he can only imagine the publicity in the papers and online. At least here he can’t see it even if he wanted to. Phones and computers are banned. Some prisoners have newspapers delivered but he hasn’t got permission for this yet. If someone is reading at mealtimes, he deliberately looks away from the headlines.

  ‘Not pretty now,’ says Bruce. ‘You should see the pictures in today’s Express.’

  He frowns and takes a step towards Robbie. Then he puts his hand in his pocket. Robbie begins to shake.

  What’s he going to produce? A knife? A razor?

  It’s a pencil.

  ‘Sign,’ he says.

  ‘Sign?’

  He nods. ‘Sign your name.’

  Robbie has been asked for his autograph countless times over the years. But this feels different.

  ‘What do you want me to sign?’ he asks.

  ‘The wall,’ says Bruce, as if it’s obvious. He indicates the section by the bottom bunk.

  There are several names there already with dates next to them.

  ‘Who are these people?’ he asks.

  He doesn’t really want to make polite conversation but if he’s going to be stuck in a cell with this man, he might as well try to get on with him.

  ‘People I got rid of,’ says Bruce solemnly.

  Robbie feels his chest tightening. ‘You killed them?’

  ‘Not these ones. These are people who were in my cell until I made it so unpleasant for them that they had to be moved.’

  ‘You hurt them?’ croaks Robbie.

  ‘Not physically.’ He taps his head. ‘Only in here. I talk a lot, you see. Drives people mad. You’ll go crazy too.’

  Robbie is already feeling that way.

  ‘Sign,’ says Bruce. His voice is louder now.

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘Sign.’

  Robbie looks for an alarm bell. There isn’t one.

  He could refuse again but if he does, this man might attack him, even murder him. Robbie can’t see a weapon, but anything seems possible right now.

  Reluctantly, he squiggles a signature that might or might not be read as his name for posterity.

  Bruce peers at it. ‘Cool. Now write a message under it.’

  Robbie feels his heart sink. ‘What kind of message?’

  Bruce grins again. ‘How about this: “From one bad man to another”?’

  So Robbie kneels down and does as he’s told. Because it’s true.

  ‘What’s with the scar, man?’

  Bruce – who towers over him at six foot plus – is staring at the top of Robbie’s head. It wasn’t until his bald patch appeared in his early thirties that the scar from the accident – where he’d hit his head against the steering wheel – was exposed.

  Robbie touches it awkwardly. ‘Just something that happened to me as a child.’

  But he hadn’t been a child. He’d been eighteen. Old enough to know better. Another lie to add to all the others.

  Then there’s the sound of footsteps outside and something slides under the door. It’s a scrap of paper addressed to him.

  Remember, Robbie. We are watching you. And your family.

  26

  Vanessa

  Somehow Vanessa managed to get herself dressed again and leave the changing room, even though she was shaking with nerves after the phone call from this Lewis.

  ‘Any good?’ asked the assistant.

  Vanessa stared at her. ‘Is what any good?’

  ‘The dress.’

  ‘Oh, no, thanks.’ Then she looked down and realized it was hanging out of her bag. She must have stuffed it in there with her phone in her confusion.

  ‘Goodness. I’m so sorry.’

  She went bright pink. The sales assistant looked at her. Her expression hardened. ‘It was an accident,’ Vanessa said. ‘I used to be a store detective myself. I’d never dream of taking anything.’

  ‘Sure.’

  As she left, she heard the girl say to a colleague, ‘You never can tell, can you? Funny. She seemed so genuine when she came in.’

  Vanessa would usually have been mortified, but right now her head was whirling. How could she possibly have a living daughter? Her mind went back, as it so often did, to that terrible night and Jack’s words. ‘Vanessa love, I’m sorry. But … but the little mite was so premature that she couldn’t breathe.’

  Then her phone rang.

  ‘Is something up?’ asked Judge’s voice. ‘I had a missed call from you.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I wondered if I could run something past you.’

  ‘Can you meet me in my chambers at around six o’clock?’ He had his work voice on.

  ‘Thanks,’ she replied, relieved that he could fit her in. She had to tell someone, and Judge was the only person she could trust.

  Then she caught the bus back to Exeter and made her way home towards the bungalow that she and Jack had bought fifty years ago. As she turned into their road, though, something made her turn back. Round the corner. Up another road. Into the graveyard of the church where she and Jack had been married. Where his ashes had been buried.

  She knew the wording off by heart: Jack Grossmith. Loving husband. Always missed, never forgotten.

  ‘We don’t really have a grown-up daughter, do we, Jack? We couldn’t have. Our daughter was stillborn because she was so premature. That’s what you said.’

  Tears blurred her eyes. ‘You told me not to look at her because it would upset me too much. I was in such a state that I thought you were right. Remember how I told you later that I wished I had? But you said that the midwife had “disposed” of her.’

  They did that in those days. Nowadays babies have proper funerals, even if they’re premature. (She’d read a feature about that recently in a magazine. It had made her feel sad and envious.)

  Right now, Vanessa’s body was wracked with such emotion that she could barely draw breath. She just wept and wept, her hand against Jack’s headstone as if he was squeezing hers back; assuring her that of course he hadn’t misled her so cruelly.

  ‘I don’t believe you lied,’ she whispered when she finally made the tears stop, ‘because I love you. But if you did lie to me, Jack, we’re over. I swear it on your stone. And you can yell at me all you like but I won’t change my mind.’

  He didn’t answer.

  If someone or something annoyed him, Jack sometimes went into a sulk. Usually, she would jolly him out of it so that he spoke to her again. But not today.

  So she turned and left him.

  Judge was ready for her, even though she was early. Vanessa hadn’t been able to wait any longer.

  ‘Would you mind shutting the door behind you?’ he said.

  He sounded very formal. Then again, he had to. They couldn’t afford any gossip. Not that there was anything to gossip about, of course. But, as he said, a platonic relationship is sometimes the hardest one to explain.

  You could say that again. Vanessa had often wondered what on earth it was that made Judge want to be friends with her. An ex-store detective. A witness service volunteer. A widow without the education that he must have had. It didn’t add up.

  ‘It’s partly because you say what you think,’ he’d said when she’d asked him. ‘In my position, people usually tell me what they assume I want to hear.’

  She could talk so easily to him too, and now out it came: the letter signed With love from your grandson; the phone call from Lewis and how he’d got her number. And then his claim that his mother was her daughter and that she was still alive.

  ‘Did you see the child when she was born?’ asked Judge.

  ‘No,’ she gulped. Then she told him about her fall on the cliff; how she went into labour early and how Jack had called the midwife for help.

  ‘Can you give me the date of the birth?’

  It was engraved on her heart.

  Judge put on his glasses (a new pair, she noticed, in a fetching pale brown tortoiseshell), and switched on his computer. ‘There are some things I can access that aren’t available to the general public,’ he said slowly. ‘It’s one of the perks of the job. Let’s see …’

  Vanessa sat opposite him, on the edge of the big black leather visitor’s chair with studs round the front (which wasn’t particularly comfortable, if she was honest), waiting. Butterflies fluttered in her stomach. What was he searching for?

 

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