Shallow Be Thy Grave (14 page)

“Then,” Jo flicked to another page in the diary where she’d turned the corner of the page down. “‘August 9
th
, Madame and Monsieur Davenport came for dinner. Everyone was drunk. PS followed me to the bathroom and called me a tease. Sounds so much more exotic in French. If I hadn’t run out, I’m sure he was going to try and kiss me.’”

“The man has a wife and three children,” said Stuart.

“Don’t tell me you’re surprised,” said Jo. “It’s the oldest story in the world. Personally, I’m always more surprised when I meet a man who hasn’t cheated.”

Lily didn’t look at Stuart.

“Anyway,” said Jo, seemingly unperturbed by the awkward silence that had filled the kitchen. “Moving on. August 18
th
. ‘I am having an affair with a married man!!! I know that makes me sound terrible. I feel well bad, but he’s so sure, so certain about everything, it’s impossible to resist. He says he wants me, he whispers to me in French and my legs turn to jelly. He’s gorgeous, so manly (I know that sounds pathetic, but it’s the best word to describe him. His body is so different compared to Stu.)’”

“We don’t need to know all the details,” said Stuart. He stopped pacing and stood instead in the doorway, leaning against the wooden frame.

“’I feel like a woman, for the first time in my life,’” Jo read aloud.

“Shit,” said Lily. She still wasn’t sure she’d ever felt like a woman. “What happens next?”

“Well, basically she falls for him. Sounds totally loved up, until Christmas. That’s why she didn’t come back to England, by the way. He promised her a skiing trip but it didn’t happen. Instead he ends up going away with the wife and kids. Fiona was mega pissed off.”

“He’d just got back from that holiday when I was there,” said Stuart. “Bet he was well pissed off I was there.”

“She tells Brigitte about it, and Brigitte tells her she’s being stupid. Listen.” Jo turned to another page in the diary. “‘Brigitte’s right. What if he does leave? I’d feel bad for the rest of my life. And so would he. Our relationship will always feel like it’s at someone else’s expense. And besides, B’s right - he isn’t going to leave. He doesn’t love me. If he did, he wouldn’t have suggested that I get myself a boyfriend so no one’s suspicious. I still can’t believe he said that.’”

“So she moves out and breaks off the affair?”

“Well, she keeps saying she’s going to. This is the last entry ‘January 22nd. It’s like giving up chocolate for Lent. Every time you cheat, you just feel worse. I feel strong when I’m on my own but as soon as I’m with him I just crumble. I’ve got to leave. I need to talk to Brigitte. She’s been amazing. The closest thing I’ve come to a sister...’”

Lily flinched and lit a second cigarette from the stub of her first.

“Sorry, said Jo, “just reading what it says.” Her eyes flickered down the page, skipping over paragraphs.

“No,” said Lily, “read it all.”

“You sure?” asked Jo.

Lily nodded and started biting the skin on the side of her thumb.

“Ok.” Jo drew a deep breath, like she was steeling herself for an unpleasant task. “‘Being friends with Brigitte has made me see that Lily isn’t being a sister to me. She isn’t looking out for me, never has done really. She was really only interested in Dad. Dad says he doesn’t see her any more. I wish they would. I wish they’d all go off together and leave me alone. It’s time for me to forget about them and concentrate on finding myself. I honestly think I’m better off without the lot of them. Dad’s still carping on about me doing my A levels. I tried pointing out he doesn’t even have a job, and he said-’”

“Doesn’t have a job?” said Lily. “What’s she on about?”

Stuart stared at her. “He lost his job. Didn’t you know?”

Lily didn’t need to reply.

“Pressure of the divorce, I think.”

Jo pressed on. “‘Like I’m here to rectify his messed up life. He doesn’t care about me, as a person. In fact, Brigitte is the first person I’ve met who cares for me without having her own agenda. I thought PS cared for me too, but I’m just fooling myself. He’s just looking to get laid, like all men, B says. And she should know. It’s the end of a diary, always makes me take stock. It’s time, Fiona Lucy Winterbottom, to take care of yourself for a change.’” Jo looked up. “That’s it.”

“Monsieur Beaumont wants her back,” said Lily, glossing over Fiona’s comments about her abilities as a sister, or lack of. “He says he loves her. He wants to help us find her.”

“Well, he can forget it,” said Stuart. “If I ever see him, I’ll-”

“It might be a bluff,” said Jo.

“What do you mean?” asked Lily

“Well,” said Jo, standing up and shaking crumbs off her leggings. “What if she threatened to expose him to his wife?”

The other two stared at her blankly.

“That would give him a reason to get rid of her,” said Jo.

“You mean he might have killed her?” asked Stuart.

“She’s not dead,” Lily blurted the words, wanted to stop the conversation in its tracks.

“Then why would he come here?” asked Stuart, like he hadn’t even heard what Lily had said.

“Because he knows we’re on to him. He knows he’s the last person to see her alive, and he knows his wife told us that. He’s come round to see what we’re thinking, whether we’ve pieced it together. Maybe,” said Jo, sitting up straighter, “Maybe he’s watching us, maybe he planned to kill us too, but then he saw you turn up, and it put the dampers on.”

Lily could see Stuart thinking about this, considering it like it could contain some truth. She wanted to force the words from his brain, wanting to rub them out, like they’d never been said. She wanted to slap Jo across the face and force her to take them back. A rage she hadn’t felt for a long time reared up inside her. “My sister isn’t dead,” she said. “I’d know if something bad had happened to her.” She tried not to think about the queasy uneasiness that she hadn’t been able to shake for the last two days. “I would,” she said with certainty. She looked at the others, lost her nerve and a trace of begging crept into her voice, “Wouldn’t I?”

The atmosphere in the room went cold, like someone had opened a catering-sized freezer door and sucked all the air out. Jo didn’t even light the spliff, kept it between her fingers, like some fat white cigar.

“Let’s not get carried away,” said Stuart. “I’m sure there’s a simple explanation for this.”

“Why would he come here, if he’d killed her?” said Lily. “Doesn’t make sense.”

“Remember what Andy said? About criminals returning to the scene of the crime.”

“I’m going to ring David,” said Stuart. “We need to know more about that last phone call.”

“The phone’s disconnected,” said Jo.

“I’ll go to the phone box.” He patted down his jacket pocket for coins. “If she spoke to him on that Thursday night, she might have said something about Beaumont.”

“Remember how upset she was, on the answer machine?” said Jo. “Maybe that was why. Maybe he’d threatened to kill her.”

“He said she was breaking up with him,” said Lily.

“Maybe he killed her because of that,” said Jo. “A crime of passion. They have those in France.”

“But she rang Lily after she’d seen him,” said Stuart. “That puts him in the clear.”

“Not necessarily,” said Jo. “He could have come round and killed her the next day.”

Stuart almost ran from the room. Lily realised she had an urgent need to go to the bathroom. She hadn’t been able to go the whole time she’d been in this foreign country, with its unfamiliar tea brands and strange foods. Now it felt like her insides had turned to liquid cement. She ran to the toilet.

Some minutes later she heard Jo, standing outside the bathroom door asking if she was alright, but Lily told her to go away. Jo shouted that she was going to go and ring Andy again but Lily didn’t respond. She didn’t leave the bathroom, instead sat on floor, her cheek pressed against the cool tiles, until she heard the front door and knew from their voices they were both back. Lily stood up, tried to steel herself by hanging on to the sink and staring at herself in the mirror. She looked like shit.

“Well?” asked Lily, opening the bathroom door and meeting Stuart half way down the hall.

“He can’t remember exactly, but he thinks it was the Tuesday or Wednesday he spoke to her last. He said it definitely wasn’t the Friday because he was out. Went to the cinema with your grandmother.” They went through to the kitchen together, where Jo was already putting the kettle on. “I think I woke him up.”

Jo had heard the conversation from the kitchen. “So far Beaumont is the last person to see her, or speak to her.” Jo didn’t look at them as she scribbled something in her notebook.

“Apart from the answer machine message,” said Lily.

“It’s eleven o’clock over there,” said Stuart, still concentrating on his telephone call.

“Did you ask him if she mentioned Beaumont?” asked Jo.

“I asked him if she’d mentioned collecting her wages.”

Jo looked at Stuart and frowned.

“I couldn’t say ‘did she mention she was having an affair with the father of the children she’s being paid to look after’, could I?” Stuart took off his jacket and sat down at the table.

“What did he say?”

“Not a lot. It’s difficult to believe he’s the same man. When I was going out with Fiona-”

“Beaumont’s got to be our prime suspect,” said Jo, excitement in her voice. “He was the last to see her, he’s got opportunity, motive…”

“Did you speak to Andy?” asked Lily.

Jo nodded. “He was on his way out. I said I’d ring him back later. But he did say always start a murder investigation with the husband, lover whatever.”

“Jesus,” said Stuart, focusing on Jo for the first time, thoughts of David forgotten, “I think we’re in over our heads.”

“If she’s lying on a beach in the South of France right now, laughing and having a great time, I’m going to kill her,” said Lily.

Jo switched the kettle off and turned to face them both. “She hasn’t rung anyone for over a week. That’s a long time, especially when you know people, like Grace, are going to be worrying about you.”

“So what are we going to do?” asked Lily, wincing at the onset of another set of stomach cramps. “We can’t just sit here. We’ve got to do something.”

“I can’t believe Monsieur Beaumont has harmed her,” said Stuart. “I mean, the man’s a lawyer for one thing.”

“Oh, that makes him a bastion of respectability,” said Jo, the sarcasm in her tone impossible to miss. “He was having an affair with a sixteen year old. That makes him pretty dammed close to a paedophile in my book.”

“What about the bloke in Amsterdam? Two blokes. We can’t forget them,” said Lily.

“We don’t know for sure they were looking for Brigitte,” said Jo. “Dee’s hardly a reliable witness.”

“If this is something to do with Brigitte’s family,” said Stuart, giving the impression of a man clutching at straws, “then at least Fiona will be ok. Brigitte’s family problems have got nothing to do with Fi.”

“Unless Brigitte’s told her what happened,” said Jo. “As an insurance policy.”

“Families don’t kill their own children,” said Stuart.

Jo looked at him like he’d just been beamed down from another planet. “Are you stupid?”

“Well, I know, some families do.” Stuart sank his head into his hands. “Oh, God.”

“We need to find out whether Brigitte was working as a prostitute here in Paris,” said Jo. “Because if she was, then there’s a whole heap of suspects. Men who pay for sex, they’re already involved in the criminal world. She might have got into something she couldn’t handle.  Maybe Fiona got involved too.”

Lily sat down at the kitchen table. Her whole body felt violated, fragile.  She was half afraid that the rest of her insides were going to seep out of her arse as she sat there. “You really think she might have been murdered?”

Stuart looked at her and she saw the sympathy in his eyes. He got up from his seat and crouched by her side, his hand on her arm. “No,” said Stuart, like he was talking to a moron. “Chances are they’re hiding out.”

“Mmm,” said Jo, in a tone that suggested nothing could be further from the truth.

“We need to go to the police,” said Stuart.

“We haven’t got any evidence,” said Jo. “And whatever’s going on, it’s clear Fiona and Brigitte intended to make it look like they’d disappeared. They’re never going to take us seriously.”

“So what are we going to do?” Lily slapped the palm of her hand down on the table so hard it stung.

“We need a plan,” said Jo. She carried the notebook over to the table and sat down. “The way I see it, we’ve got three lines of enquiry.”

Lily screwed up her face, like she didn’t recognise any of the words that were coming out of Jo’s mouth.

Jo shrugged. “Says Andy.” She took a deep breath and started again.

“If Fiona’s been...” her voice tailed off as she caught the look on Lily’s face. She tried again. “If Fiona’s disappeared against her will, then there’s three possible explanations. Suspects. Whatever. There’s Beaumont. There’s Brigitte’s family. And there’s Brigitte’s clients.”

“That really narrows it down,” said Stuart.

Jo ignored him. “So we have three possible suspects and three of us.”

She let the sentence hang in the air until Stuart asked, “What are you suggesting?”

“We need to find out more about Beaumont, see what he’s getting up to. Whether he’s behaving like a man who’s just committed murder.”

“How do men who’ve just committed murder behave?” asked Stuart, his bewilderment so obvious Lily felt sorry for him.

“We need to find Bruno,” Jo continued. “For starters, we need that diary back. We need to know where the rest of Brigitte’s family are-”

“How are we going to do that?” asked Lily.

Jo held up her hand, like a policeman stopping traffic. “And we need to find out whether Brigitte’s working here. Or whether Beaumont made it up to throw everyone off the scent.”

“If he did make it up, that means he’s got something to hide,” said Stuart. “It would prove he was a liar, for one thing.”

“We know she was turning tricks in Amsterdam,” said Jo. “It’s not like it’s totally out of character.”