CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE #2
‘There is,’ Cristy replied. ‘I’d like to know if Mia had been in touch with him in the last couple of weeks about her will.’
‘Sure. What are you thinking?’
‘All kinds of things right now, but getting an answer to that might explain a lot and help us decide how to respond to the video you’re about to watch.’
*
‘Hey, team,’ Jacks sang out, going to drop his backpack on his chair and fishing out various objects.
‘You need to see the little gift of a video we’ve received from Sadie and family,’ Clove told him.
‘OK, cool. Here’s your old phone, Cristy. Like I said last night, highly recommended that you abandon it from hereon, but there’s something that came in while it was being worked on that I think you’ll want to hear.’
‘Who’s it from?’ Cristy asked, taking the mobile as if it might burn her. ‘Please tell me it’s not the creep who’s been texting …’
‘No more from him,’ Jacks assured her. ‘I mean, I think there were a couple, but Clyde – he’s the one who’s been checking it out – assured me he’s been shut down.
Apparently there was some sort of spyware on it that’s gone now, but he doesn’t think it’s worth going with that phone again in case there was something he missed. ’
‘OK, fine. We’ll get into how it got there later. Where’s this something you want me to listen to?’
‘Regular voicemail. First one. Is that coffee still hot?’
As he went to fill a mug for himself, Cristy called up the message and put the phone to her ear. Moments later, as she registered what was happening, she felt herself turning faintly dizzy.
‘What is it?’ Connor wanted to know.
Hitting the playback again, and putting it on speaker, she set the phone on her desk so everyone could hear what was happening at the other end of the line.
It began with distant, indecipherable voices, and the sound of someone moving around, footsteps, items being shifted.
There was some talk, Mia saying she hadn’t been sure Sadie would come, and Sadie asking why she’d think that.
Sadie again, ‘Come along, it has to be …’ There was more movement followed by Mia saying, ‘We shouldn’t be in here, Lottie won’t like it. ’
The gentle rasp of Mia breathing filled the next few minutes and a faint noise that wasn’t possible to decipher. Sadie spoke, but her voice was too far away, too faint for them to make out what she was saying.
Cristy rewound and replayed, but it did no good. She let the message run, and Mia’s voice was suddenly and briefly clear as she said, ‘What are you doing?’
After that only the occasional words were audible ‘… waiting,’ ‘mother,’ ‘afraid’. Mostly it was like a background mumble; they couldn’t even tell who was speaking, only that a lot was being said.
Filled with frustration Cristy held the phone out to Jacks.
Taking it, he said, ‘I’ll do my best, but don’t hold your breath.’
*
Almost an hour passed as Cristy, Connor and Clove walked the harbourside, giving Jacks the space to download, enhance, remove, audio-cleanse, test, search for more software, even make a couple of calls for additional expert advice.
No one spoke, they were too tense, almost too afraid to share what was going on in their minds, to state what they were expecting, or hoping for.
Cristy wasn’t even sure she knew, and guessed it was the same for the others.
It was best simply to try not to think about it, not to let their imaginations run wild, although of course it was impossible not to.
Finally, Jacks texted to summon them back and as soon as they entered the office he gave them a thumbs up.
The unravelling of relief was almost palpable, as they sank into their chairs and Jacks hit play.
Cristy’s eyes widened with amazement and awe as both Mia’s and Sadie’s voices came through, stripped of the stifling muffle of background sound.
It was the audible version of a film being processed, first nothing, then something, then a perfectly intact image.
Yes, a few flaws here and there, some words missing …
‘Stop! Stop!’ Cristy cried, as the recording went past the last they’d heard. ‘Go back a few seconds.’
Jacks hit the keys and the message picked up where they’d left off.
‘We shouldn’t be in here, Lottie won’t like it,’ Mia said.
‘Lottie’s gone, Mia,’ Sadie responded.
A few moments passed. Mia said, ‘What are you doing?’
Sadie’s voice was further away, but clear enough. ‘Waiting for you to tell me why I’m here.’
Mia’s next words were lost, until she said, ‘… so please don’t go, Sadie …’
Long moments of nothing until Sadie spoke, almost inaudibly, ‘… can’t ignore what’s happened … did to my mother. And it was you, wasn’t it?’
Tearfully, Mia said, ‘Lottie made me. I didn’t want to …’ She either leaned onto the phone, or perhaps her hand covered it for a few moments, before she could be heard saying, ‘… past. Can’t we put it behind us?’
‘No, Mia, we can’t. I’m sorry …’ Some muffling and echoey distortion until she said, ‘… Why are you afraid? I took out the injunction to make sure you were protected from what you’d done.’
‘Yes, that was very good of you, but if you leave … I’ve already told Victor that I want to see him …’
Sadie’s laugh had no humour. ‘Are you about to pull a Lottie on me?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘If I don’t do as you ask – if I don’t stay – you’ll cut me out of the will? You think it’s all about money, don’t you, Mia… always have. Lottie … same… had enough.’
There was another long silence before Mia said again, ‘What are you doing?’
Sadie’s voice was more distant as she replied, ‘We need some air in here.’
There was the sound of doors unlocking and what was surely wind whooshing into the room.
Mia cried, ‘Sadie! Everything’s blowing around …’
Closer now, Sadie said, ‘I thought you understood that if you changed your will, I would get the injunction lifted, and then everyone would know what you did. I thought you wanted to avoid that, to get away with what you did. And now you’re threatening me …’
‘Let me go. You’re hurting my arm.’
‘You could go to prison for what you did to my mother. Maybe you should.’
‘Please, Sadie, stop. I don’t want … Don’t make me go out there.’
There were the unmistakable sounds of a struggle, Mia sobbing in terror, shouting for Lottie, Sadie grunting with effort, saying, ‘It’s for the best, Mia.
You know it is …’ Then, ‘I don’t want you threatening me any more …
You did it to my mother. Now see how you like it,’ and then the terrible, heart-wrenching sound of Mia screaming before the call ended in an abrupt and deadly silence.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Cristy murmured, clasping her hands to her cheeks. Suspecting was one thing, being proved right another altogether.
‘I’ve never heard anything like that before,’ Clove practically wailed. ‘It was awful. Shit! I feel like I was there.’
Clearly still shaken, Connor said, ‘Maybe there is a God.’
Cristy looked at him.
‘I think we have the response to Sadie’s video,’ he explained.
See how you like it. The words kept going round in Cristy’s head, along with the horrific image of Mia’s final moments. That poor, demented woman, trapped for so many years in the guilt of what she’d done to an innocent girl; she was a murderer herself, but had she really deserved to die like that?
Had Janina?
It was making Cristy feel sick, and strangely exhausted, weighted by all the lies and deceit, the tragedy and the terrible, inexplicable fate that had bound them all together.
The note Janina had tucked into her little girl’s pocket all those years ago …
I know you are good people. Please take care of her until I can come back for her.
It was too tragic, too awful to think of what had happened when she had come back.
Janina and Sadie, Lottie and Mia. In a sane world they’d never have known one another; in that same sane world Sadie would never have been born.
Lottie might have made a life with Robert.
Mia might have found someone to love her in the end, and she, Cristy, might not be feeling so wretchedly, painfully mixed up about her own feelings for the girl who had never had the chance to know her mother.
Being so close to her own daughter, and in no doubt about how much Janina had loved Sadie, it was tormenting Cristy to think of what Sadie had missed out on – and what was likely to happen to her now.
‘Cristy?’ Connor said quietly.
She looked up, saw his concern, and for one crazy moment she almost told Jacks to erase the call. In the end, because she had to, she made herself say, ‘We don’t have a choice, we need to send it to the police.’ She nodded to Jacks, an instruction for him to do the honours.
Out of nowhere she thought of Gabe and Lukas and found herself close to tears. This was going to be so devastating for them that she was already regretting bringing Sadie into their lives.
‘Why did she do it?’ she asked, barely above a whisper. ‘She had the journals … She was already using them to stop Mia changing her will, and yet she pushed her over anyway. Why? I don’t understand it.’
‘Because she’d had enough,’ Connor replied. ‘I’m sure that’s what she said. And if there was no more Mia, there would be no more threats, no more anything to stop her from getting – and doing – exactly what she wanted.’
Looking up from his computer, Jacks said, ‘It’s ready,’ and they all fell silent as they waited for Cristy to give the final instruction to press send.
She gave it and closed her eyes. Mia’s final moments, and Sadie’s fate, were now in the hands of Guernsey’s law enforcement officers – there was no going back.
*
Oddly, unnervingly, thirty or more hours passed with no word from anyone. The silence seemed to have a power all of its own, making them feel as though they were holding their breath, hardly daring to move, as they waited for something to happen.