Chapter 28
Happy would be the wrong word to use, but Bella definitely felt heartened as she left Adele’s house later that afternoon.
She now knew what she had to do: she had to find Jamie Clarke.
Bella knew this wasn’t quite what Adele had meant when she’d said that it was ‘within her power to find out the truth’, but she couldn’t get the idea out of her mind, and what other choice did she have?
She couldn’t involve her VLO or the police or anyone else from MAPPA, the multidisciplinary team who would be monitoring Jamie, and there was no public access to the sex offenders register.
Nobody would tell her where he was, and Kathy, her VLO, had already been clear that a prearranged meeting was out of the question.
Restorative justice was only available to those who admitted their crimes, and he never had.
Finding him was going to be tricky, though. Her internet searches had revealed nothing useful, and even if there was a way to find out which hostel he had been released to, he would in all likelihood have moved on by now.
She made an excuse to Justin about a friend from her first year at uni who was unexpectedly in town the following Saturday and wanted to meet up.
When Saturday arrived, she drove her Fiat Panda out of London.
On the motorway, she rehearsed the conversation she might have with the neighbours.
Bella knew from her own experience of being a minor celebrity for all the wrong reasons that people felt strongly about Jamie Clarke, and that even in a new neighbourhood, twenty years on, there was a good chance someone would remember his arrest and conviction, or would know about it second hand, and might have some information about the family and where they were now.
It was late March and the weather was warm.
Woking town centre was busy with shoppers strolling around the streets.
Bella followed Google Maps along the dual carriageway to an estate bordered by grassy knolls on the outskirts of the town.
She drove past a builders’ merchant, a row of shops and a pub, through a number of identical-looking streets with identical-looking 1980s red-brick houses, then turned into a side street, and there it was: Morely Crescent.
She parked in a lay-by and got out. Number eight was near the end of the row.
She stood outside for a moment before pushing her bag onto her shoulder and walking up the front path.
She could feel her heart beginning to race as she stepped up to the front door and pressed the bell.
She waited, but there was no answer. It didn’t look as though anyone was home.
She stood there for a moment longer, trying to decide her next move, when the next-door neighbour’s front door opened and a woman stepped out holding a trike in one hand and a toddler’s chubby fist in the other.
Bella seized the opportunity. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I’m looking for someone who I think used to live here. Her name’s Dorothy Clarke. She would be in her seventies.’
The woman nodded. ‘She’ll be at work. She always works Saturday mornings.’
‘She still lives here?’ Bella stepped back, speechless for a moment, and her heart raced harder.
The woman let go of the toddler’s hand and set the trike down on the path. ‘Are you from the press?’ she asked, narrowing her eyes.
Bella shook her head. ‘I’m Dorothy’s niece,’ she lied. ‘Great-niece, in fact. I haven’t seen her since I was a child, what with … you know. Everything that happened.’
‘Oh. Yes. Well—’ The woman stopped to call after the toddler, who was climbing onto the trike and taking off down the path, then turned back to Bella.
‘We’ve only been here a couple of years, so I don’t know too much about it all, but I think she lost a lot of family when it happened.
Friends, too. So now she keeps herself to herself. ’
‘Understandable,’ Bella said.
The woman’s eyes widened and Bella saw another question forming, so she cut in quickly with, ‘It’s fine. I can see you’re busy. I’ll just wait for her. Thank you.’
She walked quickly back over to the lay-by and sat in her car with her head down, making herself as inconspicuous as possible and only glancing up from time to time at the sound of a front door opening and closing, or a car stopping or starting.
Every time she heard footsteps on the path beside her, her heart rate would go up.
If anyone saw her here and worked out who she really was, she could be in trouble.
Half an hour went by, and then an hour. Eventually, Bella caught sight in her rear-view mirror of a woman who walked past her car and turned onto the path to number eight.
Her heart racing, Bella got out of the car.
She shut the door gently, but with the instincts of someone who had no doubt spent twenty years being alert to trouble, the woman turned round.
For a moment, they looked directly into each other’s faces.
In the few online photos Bella had seen, Dorothy Clarke had been wearing glasses with light-blocking lenses or had been looking away from the camera, but Bella was now staring directly into her surprised, sad, sea-blue eyes.
‘I’m Bella,’ she said, under her breath, ‘I’m Christy Nicholls’ daughter. I’ve come to talk to you about Jamie. It’s important.’
Dorothy Clarke nodded, her eyes flitting towards the windows of the neighbouring houses. ‘You’d better come in, then,’ she said.
Bella followed her down the hall to the small kitchen.
‘I’m sorry for turning up unannounced,’ she said, standing in the doorway. ‘I didn’t know if you lived here.’
Dorothy looked worried. ‘Have they published my address?’
‘No,’ Bella said quickly. ‘I had to look hard to find it. And I know I shouldn’t be here. Your next-door neighbour’s the only person I’ve spoken to and I told her I was a relative.’
‘Which one?’ Dorothy asked, lifting her shopping bags onto the countertop.
Bella swallowed. ‘Erm. Your great-niece.’
Dorothy nodded, seemingly OK with the lie. She turned round to face Bella square on, inspecting her face, eyeing her clothes. ‘Please. Sit down.’
Bella pulled out a chair at the table, which had a PVC tablecloth with roses around the edge.
She waited while Dorothy put the kettle on, then took out a tin of biscuits, placing them down in front of her.
Bella felt movement beneath the table as a cat began to wind its way back and forth between her legs. She reached down and stroked it.
‘I’m very sorry about your mother,’ Dorothy said, placing two mugs and a pot of tea on the table. She leaned against the counter and her shoulders dropped a little. ‘But it wasn’t my son that did that to her. He loved her.’
Bella felt her gut tighten. ‘Did he tell you that? That he loved her?’
‘Yes. He’d not known her long. But he’d known her long enough to know that she was special. I didn’t have a chance to meet your mum, but I know I would have done. They would have been together, he was sure of it.’
Bella felt a rush of pain rise to her chest. ‘But how do you know?’ she asked, swallowing back tears. ‘How do you know it wasn’t him?’
Dorothy shook her head. ‘Love, I know my son. He wouldn’t hurt a woman.
The way he was with me, with his previous girlfriends …
I know you’re going to think the same as everyone else – I’m his mother.
Right? I would say that. But I know my son.
I’ve known him all his life, and it’s not in his nature to do a thing like that. ’
Bella gazed back at her, unable to speak, the uncertainty settling in the pit of her stomach.
‘Here.’ Dorothy opened the fridge and pulled out a carton of milk, placing it on the table. ‘Help yourself to tea. I’ll just …’ She nodded towards the bags on the countertop.
‘Of course.’
‘So, what brings you here?’ Dorothy asked, opening a cupboard.
‘I came because I want to talk to him,’ Bella found herself saying. ‘I want to know if he did it, if he killed my mum. I want to hear him saying it.’
‘He can’t talk to you,’ Dorothy said. ‘He has conditions—’
‘I won’t tell anyone, I promise. If you could just ask him to phone me, it might help us both. I have to talk to him because I’m stuck. I’m stuck in limbo. I know I picked him out as the man I saw in the kitchen the night it happened, but now I just … I just can’t be sure.’
Dorothy turned. ‘What are you saying?’
‘I’ve been having nightmares for years about a man in my hallway,’ Bella said, ‘and recently I’ve been having therapy and all sorts of memories are coming back and I just don’t know what’s real and what isn’t.
I can’t be sure about anything.’ Her legs were trembling, her knee jerking so hard she had to press a hand against it.
‘But someone raped and killed my mother,’ she continued, ‘and I need to be sure that the police got the right person. A few days ago, I thought I was being followed, and if it’s not Jamie, who can it be? ’
Dorothy got up and tugged at a few sheets of kitchen roll, handing them to Bella, then sat back down and let Bella cry, her expression soft. Finally, she reached out a hand, patting Bella’s gently, and said, ‘I’ll see what I can do.’