The Bad Things: A gripping crime thriller full of twists and turns

Jackie Wood waved her arms. ‘No, no, what I meant was the children in the library. I miss seeing them, reading to them, story time. You know.’ She stubbed out her cigarette. ‘Anyway, I expect you’ve got better things to do than spend all day with me. What did you want to know?’

A loaded question, but Alex restrained herself. She smoothed back her hair. ‘You agreed to see me because you wanted to do the interview?’

‘’Course I did.’ Jackie Wood blinked at her. ‘Why else? It’s a good chance to put my side of the story, to tell the world what really happened.’ She leaned forward on her chair, put her elbows on her knees, and it was all Alex could do not to recoil. ‘It’ll be a good scoop for you as well. Don’t think I haven’t thought of that.’

Alex ignored the jibe. ‘Your side of the story?’

She blinked again. ‘That’s what you told Jonny. That it’d be an opportunity for me to tell everyone what really happened. How I was only trying to help.’

‘Trying to help?’ Why was she echoing everything?

Jackie Wood put her mug down, leaned back again. ‘Look, I hardly knew him, before, before the…you know.’ There were tears in her eyes.

Alex tried not to move a muscle; if she did she would hit her. How dare she cry. How dare she.

Jackie Wood blinked harder than ever. ‘Sorry.’ She gathered herself. ‘He – Martin Jessop – just came to my door and asked if I wanted to help, organize searches and stuff. Well, there was no question about it. I knew little Harry and Millie from the library. Sash – your sister – used to bring them to story time.’ She gave a sad smile at a memory. ‘They used to love the stories.’

Alex had a prickling sensation in her nose and was finding it hard to swallow. She hated hearing Jackie Wood say their names. Sasha’s names, the children’s names, all of it.

‘But I want to start at the beginning. Can I do that, Alex? I can call you Alex, can’t I? Even if I can’t call your sister by her first name?’

She nodded, but she still didn’t want to call her Jackie.

So Jackie Wood told Alex about her childhood – middle class, ordinary, lonely, brought up in Great Yarmouth by parents who were both teachers. She liked books, didn’t want to go to university so she thought she would enjoy working in a library.

‘You know, I was quite happy, in my own world. I even had a boyfriend.’

Alex must have looked startled. ‘Surprised you, haven’t I?’ she said. ‘And it wasn’t Martin Jessop, whatever the papers might have said.’

‘Who was it?’

Jackie Wood looked out of the window. ‘I didn’t say anything about him then, and I’m not going to now.’

‘Come on, Jackie. It’s been fifteen years.’ Alex could scent a good story here. A different story. She didn’t think she’d read anything about her having a boyfriend before.

She shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter who he was. He wasn’t involved, wasn’t around when it was all happening.’ She gave a harsh laugh. ‘Certainly didn’t want to know when I was arrested.’

Alex sensed she would not open up about this mysterious boyfriend. Yet. It was a case of gaining her trust and confidence, and to do that she really had to put any negative feelings aside. ‘And then?’ She tried the gentle probing, concerned face, furrowed brow.

‘And then I was alone.’

Jackie Wood stubbed out one cigarette, but not before lighting another from its stub. ‘When the children disappeared it was a dreadful day.’

A dreadful day. Alex shuddered inwardly and wanted to tell the woman how her sister’s life had been destroyed that afternoon. How she had waited, not knowing what to do with herself while Jez hunted for the children, dreading Sasha’s return. Then, after what seemed like days but was only hours, a police car picked her up and took her to Sasha’s house. Jez white-faced, holding Sasha’s hand saying over and over again: ‘they’ll be back soon, Sash, they’ll be back soon.’ Sasha crying. At first great screams that tore the air to shreds, then silent gulps, her face running with tears and snot and saliva. More police turning up, wanting a picture of the twins. Sasha scrabbling in her bag. Finding that picture taken on a sunny day in a clearing in the woods. They were having a picnic: Sasha, and her, Millie and Harry. Who took the picture? Must have been Jez. Then a policeman asking questions while a young woman police officer sat by, her notebook out, pen poised. She didn’t take one note as far as Alex could tell. Endless questions. Questions she couldn’t answer. Alex, not looking at Jez, keeping her arm around Sasha, comforting her, telling her it would all be all right. Their parents driving over from Mundburgh to stay. Then the endless searches, the false sightings, the weirdos who wanted a piece of the grief. How, as the days went on and there was no news, Sasha grew thinner and smaller. Insubstantial. When they found Harry it was a sort of tortured relief.

Then they found the clothes in Jessop’s rubbish bin. More evidence in his flat. Evidence linking Martin Jessop and Jackie Wood. And the guilt that settled on her, suffocating her. So, yes, Alex wanted to tell her how her sister’s life had been destroyed that afternoon.

‘Why did you do it?’ Alex looked at her properly then, for the first time. She looked past the scar and noticed how her eyes were dull, her skin lifeless. She had lines around her eyes – not so much crow’s feet as bloody great emu feet – and there were smoker’s lines around her mouth. Her forefinger and middle finger were stained yellow and her nails bitten down to the quick.

She took out another cigarette from the squashed packet. Lit it. Inhaled deeply. ‘I told you, I didn’t kill anybody.’

‘You gave him an alibi.’

She smiled, the scar down the side of her face rippling. ‘He didn’t do it. Funnily enough, he was in the library that day, researching something or other, I can’t remember what now.’

‘Nobody else saw him.’

She laughed. ‘For one thing, hardly anybody came in that day, and for another, he was tucked away in a corner behind one of the book stacks. Unless you went round there, you wouldn’t see him. Anyway, I’ve been over that a hundred times. I was only telling the truth, and look what it got me. Accessory to murder.’ She stubbed out the half-smoked cigarette and grabbed Alex’s arm. ‘I didn’t do it. Nor did he. That’s what I want you to say.’ Her voice was earnest, a note of desperation.

Alex sat still for a moment, then shook her hand off. ‘You were both put in prison. The police didn’t believe you. Nor a judge and jury.’

Jackie Wood’s mouth twisted in a parody of a smile. ‘You think evidence can’t be manipulated? That the police can’t be corrupted? That a jury can’t be fooled? What are you? Stupid or something? Have you already forgotten that I got out because the evidence was suspect? The expert witness was discredited!’

Alex clenched her fists, tried to breathe evenly, not wanting to shout at Jackie Wood, not wanting to shake the truth out of her. She knew she had to be careful, treat her as though she were normal and that she thought she had a point. After what seemed like minutes but was probably only seconds, she got her breathing under control.

‘Jackie,’ she began gently, ‘signs of the twins were found both in Jessop’s flat and in yours. Items of their clothing were found in the rubbish bin. So much evidence.’ She wanted to pick up her coffee cup but knew her hands would be shaking.

‘I was acquitted.’

Alex thought she saw a sly look flash across Jackie Wood’s face, then it was gone.

‘The particles of dirt didn’t add up,’ she went on. ‘Professor Gordon Higgs was discredited.’ Professor Gordon Higgs. Such a competent name. One you would trust, don’t you think? But he was wrong. Or lying.’ She leaned forward. ‘I wasn’t involved.’

‘Jessop was.’

‘Jessop was what?’

‘Involved,’ said Alex, the lightness in her head threatening to come back.

Jackie Wood shook her head. ‘I told you. He had an alibi.’

‘No, the evidence was too strong.’

She shrugged. Silence opened up. ‘He kept a diary, you know.’

‘What?’

‘A diary.’

Alex tried to look uninterested, as if her words hadn’t made her heart beat faster, the palms of her hands sweat. ‘Oh?’ She hoped she’d hit a casual note. ‘And what happened to it?’

Another shrug. ‘Dunno.’

She was lying. Alex knew she was lying, she could feel it in her bones. ‘Why did he keep it?’

‘Said he’d always kept a diary, right from when he was young. Always told the truth in it, he said.’

‘So,’ said Alex, measuring her words, ‘it might contain details of where he buried Millie.’