the… before she became who she was; her sister…
Her sister. She tried not to think about her sister. Ever. She still missed her. They used to be close. But she was gone now. Long gone.
Hester stood up, knocked her fists against her temples to clear her mind, to stop her thoughts from wandering down that path again. Grunted with each punch. She needed to do something to take her mind off… off… off that.
She opened the side door, went outside into the yard. It was as she had left it. The axe lay next to the chopping block. Wood was piled by the side of the house, a tarpaulin stretched over it. Rusting engine and body parts from several old cars sat on the hard red earth, flaking away. Two old fridges, a magazine rack, a waterlogged sofa, some plastic crates, a pile of bricks. Scavenged items to be cannibalised and put to use. In their wired enclosure at the side by the fields, the chickens pecked. Further along, fenced off from the yard, were the pigs. She breathed deep, the scents mingling in her lungs. That was what home smelled like.
The day was cold and sharp, the wind like a shower of ice needles against her face. She stood at the back of the house, looked across the river. She saw the familiar sights of the port where the ships came from Europe and disgorged their cargo. Huge they were, the containers. She didn’t know what was in them, had never given it a thought. Just watched them pull in, unload, pull out again. Back home to another country. Hester had never been to another country. She had never even been across to the port. Anywhere that wasn’t her home was like a foreign land. But then a woman’s place was in the home. It was her husband who went out and about.
She looked across the beach. The tide had gone out, leaving stones, mud and moss along the waterline. Small boats were left anchored and landlocked in the silt, their chains dripping seaweed and debris, their hulls mildewed and algaed.
Hester knew the beach. Knew where it was safe to walk, knew the spots where you could be pulled under. She had seen it happen. Someone walking a dog, throwing a stick. The dog, too fat, too slow, had run too far out, wouldn’t listen. The mud and sand and water got hold of it, wouldn’t let it go. By the time its owner turned up, there was nothing left of it. Hardly a mark to show it had ever been there. Just a muddy stick lying on the ground.
The beach had secrets. And it held them. Hester liked that. Because she had secrets too. And she knew how to hold on to them.
The houses that edged the marsh grass and sand looked sad and lonely. Made of wood and built on stilts, they looked like they had been left stranded when the tide went out. Like it had promised to come back for them but never had. So they stayed there, gently rotting.
Along from the beach houses, reached by a muddy dirt track, was the small caravan park. The vans were stationary, unchanged for at least the last thirty years. There had been houses there before, big old ones, but they had been knocked down, their foundations and outlines still visible where the grass had grown over them. Hester hadn’t seen many people come to the park, whatever time of year it was.
The beach was bleak. And depressing. In weather like this it was windswept and cold. But to Hester it was home. The only home she had ever known. Ever would know.
She started to feel the cold then, creeping into her bones. She didn’t mind it that much, was used to it really. But she still went back inside.
Because there was something she had to do. Before her husband appeared, before the baby arrived. Something she had to do alone.
She closed the door behind her and crossed to the stairs.
Unbuttoning her clothes as she went.
36
The rain had started while they were on the A120 on the way to Braintree. Freezing and pounding. Phil was pleased to be in the car and not doing door-to-door legwork like the uniforms were still engaged in. That was something. Next to him, Clayton was unusually quiet. Phil didn’t think anything of it. He had enough to worry about. He didn’t even play any music.
‘D’you think,’ said Clayton as they approached the Braintree roundabout, ‘that what Marina said was right?’
‘What about?’
‘What Brotherton did to Claire Fielding, he’s been doin’ that to Sophie?’
‘Perhaps,’ said Phil. ‘Might not have started yet. But she works for him and lives with him, so it sounds like he’s well on the way.’ He turned, looked at Clayton. ‘Why are you so bothered?’
Clayton shrugged. ‘M’not. Just wondered.’
Phil smiled. ‘Got a little thing for her, have you?’
‘Shut up,’ said Clayton, not laughing. He looked out of the window, said nothing more.
The rest of the journey passed in silence.
The scrap metal yard looked just the same but the pounding rain lent it the air of a black and white photo. Something grim and depressing from a sixties documentary, thought Phil as he drove the Audi through the gates. He was expecting the place to be deserted because of the weather, but men were still working out in the yard, unloading trucks and lorries, filling containers with metal.
Phil looked up at the cab of the grab. Brotherton was again inside it, swinging the huge arm from one of the bays, taking handfuls of twisted metal and transferring them to the open container on the back of an articulated lorry. Phil pulled the car up at the side of the office, facing the grab. He knew Brotherton had seen him; now he wanted to see if he would make eye contact. Brotherton ignored him, continued with his work.
‘Come on,’ said Phil, ‘let’s go and give the happy couple the good news.’
He got out of the car, Clayton following silently, and made his way to the office. He knocked on the door and, without waiting for a reply, went straight in. Sophie Gale was sitting at her desk, talking to a middle-aged man who was standing next to her wearing a pair of filthy overalls. She was laughing at something the man had said while he was watching her prominently displayed breasts for any sign of a reaction. They both looked up as Phil and Clayton entered, the man reluctantly dragging his attention upwards.
‘I’ll be with you in a-’ Sophie stopped mid-sentence. ‘Oh. It’s you. I’m busy, you’ll have to wait.’
‘Sorry to barge in,’ said Phil with a smile. ‘Hope you don’t mind, but it’s pouring out there.’ He gestured to her with his hand. ‘Please, don’t mind us. Pretend we’re not here.’
The man in the overalls looked between the two new arrivals and Sophie and picked up the undercurrent of tension in the room. Phil reckoned he had clocked them both for police straight away. He was used to that kind of reaction. He just stood waiting patiently.
Clayton on the other hand seemed decidedly fidgety. Nervous, even, Phil might have said.
Sophie paid out several twenty-pound notes to the man, gave him a receipt. All thoughts of her breasts gone, he couldn’t get out of the door quick enough. Once he had closed it behind him, she turned to the two of them, keeping her eyes on Phil as she did so.
‘So what is it this time?’ Her expression as hard as her cleavage was soft.
‘We need to talk to your boyfriend,’ said Phil, keeping his eyes on her face. He glanced to the window as a figure made its way towards the door of the office. ‘And here he comes now.’
The door slammed open. ‘What the fuck is it now?’ Brotherton’s voice was more irritated than angry, although there was enough in it to demonstrate that it could reach anger levels very quickly.
Phil looked at the big man, wearing just a T-shirt despite the cold and rain, and wondered how best to proceed. Take it easy, he thought. Come in fast and hard and the results might not be pretty.
‘We just need a word, Mr Brotherton.’
Brotherton opened his arms expansively. ‘Then have one. And make it fuckin’ quick.’
‘Not here,’ said Phil, his voice quiet but authoritative. ‘Down at the station, if you don’t mind.’
The anger that Brotherton had barely concealed suddenly surfaced. ‘Don’t mind? Don’t fuckin’ mind? Well I do fuckin’ mind. So say what you want now and get out, or I’m callin’ my brief.’
‘We want to talk to you down at the station, please.’ Phil kept his eyes on Brotherton. Made them calm and
