Chapter 65 Rosie – Day 16
A tannoy announcement calls for passengers waiting to board the flight to Manchester to head to the gate. Rosie shuffles forward in the queue, her boarding card clutched in her hand. It still hasn’t hit that she’s leaving Italy alone.
Before she left Laprezia she visited the church and lit a candle for Dani and her dad. In a way, walking the same streets and retracing his footsteps has brought her more comfort than she expected. She’s felt weirdly close to him here.
She hesitated holding the flame over a tealight candle for Theo. She came here hoping to find out the truth, and she got so much more than that.
After visiting the church, she walked to the house.
Villa Speranza. She put her engagement ring in a sealed padded envelope and posted it through the letterbox.
The CCTV cameras followed her every move.
She thought she saw a curtain move but perhaps she imagined it.
None of the Frasers have contacted her. She’s sent messages to Fenna on social media but they remain unread.
She took a long look at the house and walked away. Her chest heavy with pain and grief.
The sounds of the airport terminal bring her back to the present. She pulls her baseball cap low. Her phone rings. Newspapers have been trying to contact her, wanting her to tell her side of the story. But it’s not a journalist calling, it’s Giovanni.
She frowns. ‘Hello?’
‘Buongiorno, Rosie. I know your flight is leaving shortly but have you got a few minutes?’ It’s hard to hear him properly as a noisy group of pre-teens walk past, laughing and shoving one another.
She steps out of the snaking, stationary queue before her and presses her hand to her ear to hear him better. ‘Is everything ok?’
‘I’m afraid that Marianne Fraser has passed away. It happened suddenly, according to the doctors. Her heart was weak after the operation. She couldn’t take the shock of losing her son.’
Her stomach clenches. The vivacious, glamorous woman who welcomed her to her holiday home a fortnight or so ago, is dead. Rosie blinks the sudden rush of tears, taken aback by the conflicting emotion this news has stirred inside.
She doesn’t have time to dwell on how she feels as Giovanni is still talking. ‘. . . That means we didn’t get the chance to speak to her about your allegations about her part in Danielle’s disappearance.’
Her secrets will go with her to the grave. Rosie’s shoulders sink. The tears dry up.
‘Are you there?’ he checks.
‘Yes, I’m here.’ She swallows and steps to the side to let a young family pull their large matching suitcases past.
‘There’s more. We’ve arrested Richard Taylor-Warner for abducting Carla.’
‘Richard?’ she repeats.
‘Yes. When Carla was able to speak to our officers, she identified him as the man who took her.’
Rosie’s heart thrums in her chest.
‘He acted alone.’
She knows what this means. They were mistaken when they thought Theo was also involved. She turns her back on the hubbub of the airport and forces a breath from her quivering lips.
‘Has he told you why he abducted her?’ she asks after a pause.
‘Carla said that it was over Marianne’s journal.’
‘Sorry? What? I thought you said he abducted her over a journal?’ Rosie closes her eyes, sure she’s misheard him.
‘Yes. Apparently Marianne was overly protective with it, yelling at the staff if they touched it, so naturally Carla was intrigued at what was inside. She translated Marianne’s words and realised this wasn’t a diary, it was a confession.
Richard, Theo and Danielle were named. But instead of going to the police with this information, Carla blackmailed Richard.
Knowing how rich he is, she thought he would simply pay up. ’
Rosie darts her eyes around, searching for a spare seat. She needs to sit down. Her legs are shaking with every revelation.
‘. . . They arranged to meet in a remote field. But when she turned up without the journal, demanding more money, he got angry and hit her.’
The blood in the farmer’s field.
‘We believe that Richard panicked and put her in his lake house to buy himself some time to know what to do with her. She was kept there alone and scared. Tied up and gagged so she couldn’t scream.
On the night of your engagement party, she heard voices and managed to free herself, grabbing the closest thing she could to strike Richard from behind.
That’s when she realised she’d made a huge mistake.
She’d killed Theo instead. Petrified that she was going to get in trouble, she ran away, but luckily for you her conscience kicked in and she handed herself in.
Her injuries are consistent with her version of events.
So does the state of the bedroom that she was being held in for all that time. ’
That’s why the detectives asked Rosie about the bedroom. Things start slotting into place. She shakes her head in disbelief. The whole time she was with Theo in the lake house, Carla was tied up in the next room.
‘So where is the journal?’ she asks.
‘Fenna handed it in to me earlier today, her daughter discovered where Marianne had hidden it. It corroborates Carla’s story. This is the evidence we needed.’
Rosie’s heart clenches thinking of little Alba. She never got to say goodbye to the children. She itches to speak to Fenna but wouldn’t know where to start.
‘Clearly Marianne’s terminal cancer diagnosis made her want to write things down and make sense of their crimes.
She claims Danielle overdosed on drugs that night, possibly choked on her own vomit, but instead of calling for help, Richard and Marianne worked together to move Danielle’s body from the lake house, and they have kept it secret ever since. ’
‘So Theo was telling the truth? He didn’t know what happened to Danielle?’ Rosie gasps.
‘Who knows? We’ve only got Marianne’s journal and whatever Richard decides to admit, to go on.
He had an alibi for when Danielle went missing, but in hindsight it doesn’t stand up.
He slipped through the net. He paid an officer involved in the investigation to “lose” her phone. They will also be arrested.’
‘I can’t believe it.’ She staggers over to a spare seat, beside a man wearing over-sized headphones. She hopes he can’t hear a word of this conversation.
A tannoy announcement rings out.
‘Do you need to go?’ Giovanni asks.
‘Not yet.’ She swallows. ‘I’m in shock. I mean, how are you feeling?’ He has been working on cracking this case for years.
There’s a long pause. He sighs. ‘It was a slim chance that Danielle would still be alive, but I always had hope. It’s silly, really.
I pray we will find her body and give her a proper funeral.
Her family deserves that.’ Giovanni’s voice falters.
She can picture him trying to keep it together.
‘This will also bring justice for your dad. The rumours that he had anything to do with her disappearance can finally be put to bed.’
It’s a bittersweet victory. What happened that night changed the course of three families’ lives forever. Rosie swallows the lump in her dry throat. Her dad’s investigation led her to the truth.
Her flight is called out.
‘I need to go.’
‘Of course. Have a safe journey. When you come back to Italy, there’s another cold case you could help with,’ Giovanni says. She can hear the smile in his voice. ‘Thank you again for your help.’
She says goodbye and hangs up then joins the queue. It’s going to take a long time for everything he told her to sink in. She gets to the front and rummages in her backpack for her boarding pass, tucked inside her dad’s notebook.
She quickly pulls it out, along with her passport to show the member of airline staff. Everyone else has boarded. She is ready to go home and never return.