No Longer Safe(92)

Karen pulled up the chair next to her and put her arm around her. ‘Oh, dear,’ she said with a sigh.

Jodie buried her face into Karen’s neck and spoke in short bursts between blubs. ‘I’m scared…he’s cleaning me out…I’ve got nothing left…he doesn’t pay me back.’ She looked up in horror. ‘He’s even started stealing from my bag.’

At that moment, the door slammed and there were footsteps in the hall. Mark breezed in as if he was the long-awaited special guest at a party.

‘What’s happening, guys?’ he said.

‘Jodie’s upset,’ Karen said, giving him a stern look.

‘What’s wrong, Babe?’ he crouched down beside her, holding her hand. ‘Is it about losing your mum?’

She pulled away. ‘No, it’s not.’

I left them to it at that point, aware that Stuart had been sitting patiently in the other room.

‘Sorry,’ I said, joining him on the sofa.

‘That sounded melodramatic – are you okay?’

‘Yeah. Did you hear any of it?’

‘I got the gist,’ he whispered. ‘Karen claims she’s innocent.’

‘Come on – let’s get some fresh air,’ I said, pulling him up.

There was sleet in the breeze as we set out. Once again nature couldn’t decide whether to rain, thaw or snow. This apparent indecision matched my confused situation perfectly. We pulled up our hoods and walked in silence against the wind, linking arms, our free hands in our pockets.

‘There’s a brook down this way with a cute humpback bridge,’ he said. ‘Let’s go there. If we get too cold we can come back for the Land Rover.’

I made a brave attempt at a smile and merely followed him. I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t know what to believe.

It was the same spot I’d found before. I wanted to sit on the bridge but it was too wet. Stuart pulled a tangle of dead leaves from a branch above him. His thoughts must have been somewhere else, because his next words came out of the blue. ‘Has anything odd happened at the cottage?’

My stomach lurched to one side. I had to be selective about what I told him. I hated it; having to hide information from him about his own nephew, but I could see no alternative. Karen was right. How would Stuart react if he found out we’d covered up Charlie’s death and dropped his body in the lake?

My mind leapt to the police divers. I’d heard nothing on the local news about the search. Surely, they’d have given up looking by now. Or maybe they’d found him and were still trying to identify the body, before releasing any information.

Whatever the outcome, I still couldn’t believe I’d gone along with it – Karen had been so clever making me doubt myself – making me think it could have been me who killed him. She made it look like she was doing me a favour, when really it was the other way round.

‘I found ten thousand pounds,’ I said. ‘It was in Mark’s room and then it disappeared.’

He whistled. ‘What’s that all about?’

‘I’ve no idea. It went soon after I discovered it. Maybe you heard Jodie say just now, that Mark was heavily in debt.’

He frowned.

‘Do you think it could be connected to the boy who was abducted?’ I said, not looking at him.

‘According to the police, the boy was handed over to someone in a car near Craigleven on Monday evening,’ he said. ‘Where was Mark at around nine-fifteen that night?’

I thought about it. ‘Mark and Jodie had taken Karen’s car sometime after eight o’clock…’ I scanned my memories. ‘Karen was with me at the cottage. She went to bed early, before you picked me up to go for a drink, at around nine-thirty.’

‘So Mark and Jodie were out at nine-fifteen?’

‘Yeah…they said they went to a pub…although I didn’t see them at The Cart and Horses.’

‘Do you think Mark could have been hiding the boy somewhere?’

‘Bloody hell…’ I exhaled loudly at the idea of it. ‘I can’t believe Jodie would go along with something like that,’ I said, running my finger in the snow along the edge of the bridge, ‘but Mark does keep finding any excuse to leave the cottage.’

‘Maybe Jodie doesn’t know,’ he suggested.

It wouldn’t be the first time Mark had kept secrets from her, I mused.

The air was thick with a number of things that didn’t add up. ‘What about Karen?’ he said. ‘Now you know about her past, has anything struck you as suspicious?’

‘She’s barely left the cottage since we’ve been here – apart from going to the hospital – she’s been too busy with Mel.’