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

She shook her head. ‘We didn’t kill them.’ She put two fingers either side of her temples and pressed hard. ‘At least, I didn’t kill them. Can you go now? Come back another time.’

Alex stared at her. She wanted to shout at her. Demand to know what Martin Jessop did, how he did it. Why did he put Harry into the suitcase – what was the point of that? Why they let Harry be found but not Millie. She wanted to grab Jackie Wood around her neck and shake the answers out of her. Shake the whereabouts of Millie right out of that horrible, thin, lying mouth.

But she didn’t do any of that. She merely leaned forward and pressed the off button on the recorder, trying to stop her hand from shaking. She was going to have to be patient. ‘So who do you think did kill them?’ she asked quietly.

Jackie Wood leaned back, eyes closed, fingers still on her temples. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore. Sometimes I wonder what’s real and what I’ve imagined.’ She opened her eyes, looked into Alex’s. ‘But it’s a long time. Fifteen years. You know?’

Depression washed over Alex. Was she ever going to get anywhere? Any nearer to finding out about Millie?

‘I understand,’ she said, getting up and putting her coat on. ‘I’ll come about the same time tomorrow, is that all right?’

‘Yes. It’s been good talking to you, actually. Cathartic. Maybe,’ Jackie Wood hesitated, ‘maybe we could go out tomorrow as well, have a coffee or something? There’s a really good pastry shop in the town. They do lovely doughnuts and things. At least, they look nice in the window. I haven’t dared go in. You know.’ She sounded pathetic. ‘Do you know, I don’t even know how to use a smartphone?’

For a second Alex got an insight into what her life must be like. Not being able to do, or being used to doing, the things she took for granted. Just simple things like having a coffee. How the world had passed her by. ‘Do you worry that people will recognize you?’

Her mouth twisted. ‘You don’t think the hair dye does much, then? You think people would know who I am?’

‘Why did you come here?’ asked Alex. ‘Why not Scotland or somewhere really far away?’

Jackie Wood shrugged. ‘Why not? It’s where I grew up. I don’t know anywhere else. Besides, I’m innocent aren’t I? I haven’t got anything to fear.’

‘And the caravan?’

‘Worried the taxpayers are footing the bill? Don’t be. My parents died some years ago, one after the other. I think the shame got to them in the end. They’d bought this caravan so they could stay in it when they visited me. They loved this town. After they sold their house to pay for my legal bills they had to live in it. When they died it came to me. It was all they had left to show for forty years of marriage. They wanted me to have the best, but the best wasn’t good enough, was it?’ Alex could almost reach out and curl her hand around the bitterness in Jackie Wood’s voice. ‘They were hounded every day by people wanting to talk to them about me, about Martin.’

‘That’s the trouble though, isn’t it? The families always suffer.’

She looked at Alex, obviously trying to gauge if she was being made fun of. But Alex was deadly serious and sidled along the bench, standing and putting on her coat. Jackie Wood sat very still, looking at her.

‘I could tell you things.’

Alex stopped, mid shrug. ‘Oh?’

This time the look on Jackie Wood’s face was sly. Mercurial; she had changed from someone pathetic to a woman with a secret.

‘What things?’ Alex’s heart was beating fast. ‘What things?’ Her voice was louder.

A quick smile and Alex saw in her face the reason she had survived prison for all those years. She had a shell; a toughness to her.

She rubbed her scar with her finger, up and down, up and down. At that moment Alex hated her so much that she wanted to slap her, hit her, rake her nails down her face; make her bleed. She had to clench her jaw and her fists to stop herself from launching at her across the bench.

‘Things that might make you change your mind about me. Things that happened that you know nothing about.’

‘The diary? Is it in the diary?’

‘Come tomorrow,’ she said, ‘and maybe I’ll tell you more then.’

‘Tomorrow,’ echoed Alex. How could she wait a whole twenty-four hours?

‘My scar,’ said Jackie Wood suddenly. ‘Do you know how I got it?’ That slow blinking again. She traced it with her finger. ‘Someone took a shank to me a couple of years ago.’ She shrugged. ‘Probably one of the worst things that happened. I had the usual spit or piss in my tea. Punches here and there. Things stolen. People not talking to me. Even when you’re on Rule 45 other prisoners try to get on it purely to do you. They don’t like child killers in prison. Even ones who are innocent.’ She smiled. ‘Goodbye, Alex.’

Jackie Wood was in control; Alex had no option but to go.

She felt weightless, dizzy with Jackie Wood’s words. She tied her scarf around her neck and opened the door. Breathed in the cold fresh air that smelled like freedom. Tomorrow.

But Jackie Wood wasn’t finished. Alex heard her clear her throat behind her. Then she spoke.

‘By the way—’

‘Yes?’

‘All those years ago, what were you doing with Martin Jessop?’

Alex pretended not to hear.

9 (#ulink_8ec51d77-c07c-54f7-ad09-9fa4c1dadb25)

He’d held her hand a little longer than necessary when they first met, but Alex hadn’t minded that. He was tall, with dirty blond hair just touching his collar. The sleeves of his white shirt were rolled up to his elbows, showing strong, tanned forearms.

They met, about six months before the murders, at a talk being given by a couple of well-known authors at the college in Ipswich. She asked a question – she couldn’t for the life of her now remember what it was – but it must have ignited a spark of interest because at the toe-curling have-a-glass-of-warm-Chardonnay-and-meet-the-author event after the talk, he approached her.

‘My name’s Martin,’ he said.

They chatted for a while, he asked her to go for a drink with him and she did, realizing that the attraction was mutual. He was clever and witty, and made her laugh. The drink led to dinner, dinner led to a hotel and a clandestine relationship. Oh, she knew there was a wife somewhere but she fell for the classic ‘my wife doesn’t understand me’ line and that there was a ‘messy divorce’ going on, which was why he’d prefer to keep their relationship quiet for a while. It was Alex who found him the flat in Sole Bay, who was careful not to be seen when she visited, and was convinced no one knew about the two of them.

When she looked back and wondered why she had been drawn in, she realized it was because she’d been lonely. She was struggling to get her freelance career off the ground and look after a lively baby boy on her own. She was young, and having a clandestine lover made her life more exciting, which was why she never questioned Martin closely about his personal life.

It wasn’t until after he’d been arrested that she found out he was spinning her one great lie. Several lies. There was a wife, but very much married to Martin (no ‘messy divorce’ in the foreground or background), and two teenage children living in a small village in Cambridgeshire. He stayed in Sole Bay two or three nights a week, sometimes weekends because of his job at the college. Not because of her. She didn’t figure at all. She read all the details in the papers and knew she had been well and truly duped. The classic woman who believed everything her cheating lover told her.

At the time, it was all she could do not to fall apart. Something she had started for fun had been destroyed. She had brought a murderer into the family. The only reason she kept on living, kept herself together, was Gus. If it hadn’t been for him, she wouldn’t have been able to get out of bed in the morning. She also had to put on a show. No one had known about her affair with Martin and she wanted to keep it that way. How she managed to get through each day, putting one leaden foot in front of another, was now a blur. But she had done it.

Alex saw Martin’s wife in court, not unexpectedly. Tall, blonde, always well turned out – well groomed, well dressed. She never said anything or displayed any emotion, not, that is, until Martin was sentenced to life in prison. Then Alex watched as a solitary tear rolled down her cheek. She didn’t wait for him to be taken down.

The only emotion Alex felt when he was sentenced was thankfulness. He would be out of her life forever. Throughout the hearing she was terrified he would bring her into it, but he never did. Perhaps he thought she had suffered enough.

The last thing she could do was confess to anybody that she knew Martin Jessop.

But it was worse than that.

She walked quickly out of the caravan park and went to sit on a bench overlooking the sea. In its seeming infinity, the water always made her feel as though nothing was as bad as it seemed. And she sat there, hunched over, watching the grey waters dash against the harbour wall and feeling the wind tug at her clothes while the salt air scrubbed her skin, making it sore.

How did Jackie Wood know?

The question gnawed at her. She must have seen them at some point. Same block of flats. But why didn’t she say anything at the trial? Why didn’t she stand up and shout, ‘the sister knew the murderer too!’

Why?

Alex arrived home to hear the grunting speak of teenage boys and the drone of the Playstation in the sitting room, and no sign of Malone.