Chapter 45
Dom keeps his voice low.
“Look, all I’m saying is that you only just met her. You don’t know anything about her; she could be a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic for all we know.”
“But why would she already know about it?”
He raises an eyebrow. “Like you said, she seemed to find that cemetery plot awfully fast.”
“Her son is some kind of computer whiz,” I say. “I suppose he can track things down.”
“If you say so, Adam.”
“Maybe I’m overthinking this.”
“Maybe you’re right to be careful around strangers.” He’s always doted on his nieces and nephew, and I can tell he’s still particularly bothered by the story of the car that had followed Leah home from school on Thursday. “Especially at the moment.”
Unfortunately, what I thought might be a straightforward internet search turns into a long, frustrating hour.
I already know there’s virtually nothing online about Elizabeth Makepeace apart from a listing on an obscure website recording her date and place of death, and the date of her burial.
I’d hoped there might be something more on Peter Flack, if only for the reason that he had died at a younger age and might have had slightly more of a digital footprint.
But searches under his name prove equally futile.
None of the search results relate to the woman who used to own my house, or her grandson.
The discovery that they had died on the same day, more than two decades ago, starts to feel less and less relevant the longer I spend searching for more information. Surely if it meant something, if it was significant, it would have made some kind of ripple on the world?
As I scroll pages of unhelpful results, I envisage possible scenarios—each one more outlandish than the last. A fire, flood, or family allergy that struck them both down within hours?
A car accident? A plane crash? An intruder in the night, a burglary turned violent?
Or even… a murder-suicide? No. As Maxine said, that would have conferred a level of notoriety that didn’t seem to be in evidence.
I sign up to the General Register Office portal and pay to have copies of both death certificates sent to me but it will be at least four days before they’re posted out—it will still be quicker if I can find local news coverage of what transpired on that December day, twenty-three years ago.
I email the city’s central library to ask how I might access local news archives for December 2001 and January 2002, and it takes me by surprise when a helpful response from a member of staff drops into my inbox barely twenty minutes later.
I find myself smiling as I read the message. There was a lot to love about a local librarian with so much deep knowledge, so keen to help. I reply with thanks and book in to look at the microfiche in the next available slot on Monday morning.
I take the Ziploc bag into the spare room I’ve started to use as a study, locking it into a bottom drawer beneath a pile of mortgage paperwork.
The little mobile phone, I notice, is almost out of battery so I plug it back in to charge on the desk.
Comparing the original photo on its tiny screen to the enhanced version that Charlie sent on WhatsApp, the difference is even more stark.
In some ways it’s almost like looking at two different pictures.
Studying the image again reminds me of something else I need to check.
I head upstairs and bump into Jess on the landing, dressed in her decorating clothes. It feels like we’ve barely seen each other all day and I give her a peck on the cheek, then pull her in for a hug.
“Dinner won’t be long,” she says. As if reading my mind, she adds: “So you best not lock yourself in your man cave again.”
“It’s not a man cave, it’s—”
“I’m only teasing,” she says. “Although I did hear about you interrogating Helena on the subject the other day.”
“I wasn’t interrogating her.”
“You were a bit, according to what I heard.”
“I just wondered if she knew anything about it, that’s all. She was being evasive.”
“She was probably trying to be polite. Not everyone is as obsessed as you are, love.”
I shrug. “I just want to know the truth. Don’t like mysteries, especially in my own house.”
“As long as it doesn’t end up with you getting hurt,” she says. “Like it did with MVI.”
“Ouch,” I say, wincing at the memory. “That was a bit of a low blow.”
She lays an apologetic palm flat on my chest. “But you know what I mean, love.”
MVI Limited had been several jobs ago, almost a decade ago, a company that had systematically inflated client invoices to cover coding work they didn’t need and that was never carried out.
A tribunal had eventually ruled in my favor but that was long after I’d been fired for asking the wrong questions—and the injustice still stung, all these years later.
“That was nothing like this,” I say. “And they were being overcharged.”
“And it was the first time I realized you had a tendency to get obsessed with things.”
She’s right, of course. And maybe I’d allowed myself to focus on the house because it was easier than thinking about my work situation.
“I just want our kids to be safe, for all of us to be safe.”
“I know.” She kisses my cheek, easing herself out of the embrace and turning toward the stairs. “Let’s talk things through with Dom later.”
Coco is curled into a sleepy circle at the top of the second-floor staircase, her tail wagging lethargically as I give her head a quick scratch on the way past. In the small bedroom where this had all started I open the wood-paneled door and then push it shut, doing it twice, admiring the flawless workmanship again even though I’ve been in and out of here a dozen times already this week.
The attention to detail that must have gone into hand-crafting this door means it’s still hard to make out, even though I know exactly where it is.
Inside the dusty hidden room, I click on the light and start opening drawers in the dresser in search of the wallet.
There were initials on it but I couldn’t remember if they were PF—perhaps Peter Flack?
—or something different. If they were PF then that was another link to another premature death from the same year that Adrian Parish had disappeared.
The same year he had died, I correct myself.
There didn’t seem any real possibility that Maxine’s husband was still alive. Not after all this time.
But when I find the wallet in a drawer and open it up again, I see my memory has played a trick on me. The faded silver initials are there but they don’t match: not a P, but a D. The initials are DF, not PF.
So it hadn’t belonged to Peter Flack. Perhaps a relative?
A faint, muffled voice reaches me through the closed door.
“Adam?”
I stand up from the armchair, banging my head on the swinging bulb above as I grope toward the door.
My brother-in-law’s voice comes again. “Adam? Are you in there?”
I take a step toward the door, catching my shin on the edge of the dresser.
“Hang on a second.”
My fingers find the handle and I pull it open, squinting into the brighter light.
“Jess said I’d probably find you here.” Dom looms into the low doorway, his jeans speckled with white paint. “So this is where you’re spending half your time nowadays—what are you even doing in there, with the door shut?”
“Just having another look at the wallet. And… I wanted to check if I could hear anything when the door was closed.”
He gives me a quizzical glance. “Obviously you couldn’t hear me shouting for you downstairs. Dinner’s ready. And I’m starving.” He turns to go.
I put the old wallet down on top of the dresser and pull the light cord, plunging the little room back into darkness.