CHAPTER 27
Pat later heard that Marcus Ellis was arrested just an hour after she and Prichard had left the police station, having completed their witness statements following that morning’s breaking and entering and threatened violence – which was tantamount to a prison sentence all on its own.
He had been found cowering in the waiting room of Polegate train station with a half-packed suitcase, a one-way ticket to London and a terrible black eye.
He was dragged kicking, screaming and spitting along the platform in full view of some terrified passengers and a small group of tourists (who naturally filmed the whole episode to put on TikTok), into the police van and straight into custody.
When the police went through his case, they found a key with an orange fob labelled Cabin Room.
Detective Sergeant Stevens had taken all the credit for catching her man.
She’d appeared on the local news wearing pearly lip gloss and speaking with the authority of someone who’d spent the day rehearsing in front of a mirror.
She reminded viewers how important it was for the public to stay vigilant, and added, ‘If you see something that doesn’t look quite right, report it.
See it, say it, and we’ll sort it.’ She nodded solemnly, as if quoting from scripture rather than adapting the words from a train station poster.
Marcus had indeed emptied Henry’s bank accounts, and all the money was found in Guernsey.
Not that that was much consolation to Henry’s devastated family.
The police picked up Derek a week later.
All they could charge him with was fraud by false representation for gaining Henry’s trust under false pretences, and as it was a first offence he got a six-month suspended sentence and a community order.
He’d rapidly abandoned his grooming of Mal and Fi in the wake of Marcus’s arrest, but old habits, it appeared, died hard and he was back online within a week, looking for the lonely, vulnerable and hopelessly romantic.
He was also frequenting Hotel du Cocktail to see if there were any more hungry cougars good for a bob or two.
Mal and Fi decided their marriage had been spiced up quite enough and decided not to go there again.
They also drained the hot tub and asked Caroline to see if she could plant something in it.
Even with Marcus in custody, on remand with bail refused, Pat found it hard to settle.
Sleep came late, and when it did, it was shallow and broken.
She’d wake suddenly, heart racing, certain she’d heard something.
Her thoughts no longer obeyed her. They arrived without warning: flashes of his face, the precise way his jaw tightened before he smiled, the cold weight of his voice.
Sometimes she found herself right back in that moment, as if no time had passed at all.
She would blink, breathe, remind herself it was over, but her body stayed coiled, alert, as if waiting for the danger to return.
Her own mind had become a room she couldn’t quite leave.
She realised that she was the one needing help now.
She booked six sessions with a psychotherapist specialising in trauma and went to the therapy centre above the pub in Vauxhall once a week to work through the recurring fears that had descended on her since the incident with Marcus.
She found a better place for her house key than under the plant pot, and obeyed her governing body’s code of ethics to the letter when it came to keeping the records of her clients.
One Tuesday in the middle of June, Pat woke horribly early.
It was hot. Sweaty hot. But she felt different than she had these past few weeks, like she could breathe again.
She was lighter, energised, alive. She rolled over and tried to go back to sleep.
But sunlight had already broken over the horizon and it seemed pointless, a waste, to stay in bed.
She went downstairs and made herself a strong cup of coffee, then sat at the kitchen table with Dave, who was trying to convince her with meows and rubbing her legs that he hadn’t just been fed, which he had.
It was just gone 5 a.m. She grabbed her elderly bathing suit off the radiator and changed in the kitchen, put on her dryrobe and stepped out to greet the morning.
She walked out of the house and over the cattle grid, and was about to turn right and march up over the Downs when she heard something, she wasn’t quite sure what. She stopped, her ears straining.
‘Viking … North Utsire … South Utsire … Forth … Tyne … Dogger …’
She carried on up the path, and the closer she got to the lay-by, the louder it became. Someone was listening to the Shipping Forecast, at quite a volume.
‘Fisher … German Bight … Humber …’
There was a car. The engine was running, a low, throaty growl, a plume of pollution wending its way towards her.
‘Lundy … Fastnet … Irish Sea …’
Pat felt her heart beat faster as she approached. Could it be, finally, after all this time? Red-handed? But as she drew closer, she realised that the car was very familiar. Golden. Expensive. An Aston Martin. She came round to the driver’s side.
‘Malcolm! What are you up to?’ she barked through the open window.
‘Jesus Christ!’ There was a mad fumbling inside the car. ‘Pat!’ he squealed, pulling at his clothes, his shirt, as he tried to rearrange himself. ‘It’s not what you think!’
‘You have no idea what I’m thinking!’ she said.
‘I promise you, it’s not what it looks like. It really isn’t what it looks like.’ His face was puce, his skin sweaty, and his eyes were spherical with terror. ‘I’m not … I’m not doing what you think I’m doing.’
‘You’re a man on his own, at dawn, with his engine running in a lay-by; what else am I supposed to think?
’ she replied, placing her hands on her hips and peering through the open window.
The interior of the Aston Martin was immaculate, all cream leather and walnut, which made the presence of a half-eaten Mars bar on the passenger seat all the more bizarre. ‘What’s that?’ She nodded.
‘OK, you’ve got me,’ he said. ‘But please, please don’t tell Fi. Mars bars are banned from our house. I’m not allowed chocolate or anything like that, so every morning I come up here early and listen to the Shipping Forecast and eat a Mars bar. Old habits, I suppose.’
‘What do you mean, old habits?’
‘My commute to work. I used to leave just after five. A Mars bar and the Shipping Forecast. God, I miss it now I’m retired. I’d slowly nibble the chocolate one shipping area at a time. The combination of the two is heaven.’ He closed his eyes for a second.
‘ASMR,’ said Pat. ‘Autonomous sensory meridian response. Interesting. Tell me, does the Mars bar taste better when you’re listening to the Shipping Forecast than when you’re not?’
‘Oh yes!’ He looked at her, slightly amazed.
‘How did you know? It’s the only time I eat one.
Sometimes I’m lucky and the weather is good, but most of the time it’s dark and it’s just me and the radio.
’ He looked up at her, his eyes clouded with self-pity.
‘Please don’t tell Fiona,’ he implored. ‘She wouldn’t understand. ’
‘Fine. I won’t. On one condition.’
‘Anything. Absolutely anything.’
‘When you’ve finished your Mars bar and you know what’s happening in Rockall, or whatever the last one is …’
‘Southeast Iceland.’
‘… when that’s finished, you get out of your car and you carefully put your wrapper in the bin.’
‘Is that it?’
‘That’s it.’
‘And you won’t tell Fi?’
‘I won’t tell Fi.’
‘OK,’ he agreed. ‘Absolutely.’
‘Finish up. And bin it!’ and turning on her heel, she pulled her dryrobe tightly around her and marched up over the Downs, heading for her early-morning swim.