Elle
PAST
Over the next few days, I couldn’t stop checking my news apps, expecting to hear that a man had been arrested, or at least taken in for questioning, in connection to Bryony’s murder.
It was Jaz who first pricked my bubble of euphoria.
“I know you probably don’t want to hear this but I don’t think he’s your man,” he said, coming to find me in the bedroom one evening where I was watching a true crime series while he worked on his new app.
“They just said on the news that the car found on Wimbledon Common was a hire car. Nobody would hire a car the same model as the one sitting in their drive and use it to kidnap and murder someone.”
“Well, he must have,” I said stubbornly.
“Then why hasn’t he been arrested?”
“Maybe he has and we don’t know about it yet.”
But the lack of news frustrated me, so a week later I called DC Moss.
“Our inquiries are still ongoing,” she told me. “These things take time.”
I wanted to ask her how much time but instead I took my frustration out on my phone, throwing it onto the sofa in disgust.
“Even if he is the man you saw driving the car, it doesn’t mean he murdered Bryony,” Jaz pointed out.
His remark gave me a new angle to consider.
What if Jaz was right? What if the man in the car had done exactly as he’d said he’d do and had chased after the moped with Bryony beside him?
And then had dropped Bryony off at a tube station, or in the street, whether they’d been successful or not?
But then Bryony had been murdered and when the man saw her photograph, he recognized her as the young woman he’d given a lift to and had panicked.
Had the police thought about that possibility?
Had they considered that the man hadn’t admitted to giving Bryony a lift because he was afraid of being arrested for a crime he hadn’t committed?
The man. I wished I knew his name. I hadn’t asked DC Moss because she wouldn’t have told me.
But the more he remained an enigma, the more frustrated I became.
“I need to know who he is,” I told Jaz.
He looked up from his laptop. “Who?”
“The man who picked up Bryony in his car,” I said, careful not to call him the man who’d murdered Bryony.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I just need to know his name.” I’d been pacing the floor but now I stopped in front of the old, battered desk where he was working. “If I go to his house, will you come with me? Help me find out who he is?”
“Whoa.” Jaz looked alarmed. “You’re going to speak to him?”
“No, nothing like that. Maybe his name will be on the letterbox or something.”
Jaz leaned back in his chair and I knew from the look on his face that he was analyzing the situation.
In the days following the discovery of Bryony’s body, he’d been my rock.
He’d held me tight in his arms when I wept that I should have done more to save Bryony, that I should have run faster and pulled her from the car, that I should have called 999 instead of 101.
He’d comforted me when I told him of my fear that Bryony was alive when the car had been set alight, something I hadn’t dared ask DC Moss in case I was told I was right.
I hoped that despite Jaz’s obvious misgivings about going to the man’s house, he wouldn’t abandon me now.
“If you promise that’s all you’re going to do,” he said. “Look for his name on the letterbox.”
“I promise.”
“When do you want to go?”
“Now. While he’s still at work. Yes, I know, I’m presuming he works but it looked as if he was with work colleagues the day I saw him in the pub.”
Jaz eyed me suspiciously. “Is that why you came home early?”
“Maybe.”
The truth was, I hadn’t been able to relax all week and had left the office at lunchtime, pleading the migraine I could feel coming on.
I’d managed to stave it off by taking a couple of paracetamols and a long walk in the fresh air, but I knew it was due to the stress of waiting to hear back from DC Moss.
I was on the cusp of something major, a breakthrough in my quest to find Bryony’s killer.
Being told by the police that their inquiries were still ongoing was a huge blow and I felt I would explode if I didn’t do something.
Sighing, Jaz closed his laptop. “Okay.”
I wound my arms around his neck. “Thank you, thank you. I love you, I hope you know that.”
Less than an hour later, we were in St. John’s Wood.
“Wow, I didn’t know it was so swanky here,” Jaz said, as we emerged from the underground station. “You’d feel safe here, even late at night.”
“Maybe we’ll live here one day,” I said.
He smiled and took my hand in his. “Maybe we will.”
We crossed over the road and walked for about a hundred meters.
“It’s that one,” I said to Jaz, keeping my voice low. “The house on the opposite side of the road with the monkey puzzle tree in the garden.”
Jaz turned his head to look. “The one with the black car in the driveway?”
“Yes.”
“If there’s a car, the chances are that someone is home. We should leave.”
But I was already crossing the road.
There wasn’t a name on the letterbox but as I went back to Jaz, I turned to look back at the house and saw a face at an upstairs window. If the face had belonged to an adult, I might have thought twice. But the person was wearing a hoodie, so I guessed they were probably a teenager.
“You’re not serious?” Jaz asked, when he realized what I was doing. He grabbed hold of my arm. “Come on, babe. You said you were just going to look.”
“It’ll be fine,” I said, disentangling myself, and before he could say anything else I ran across the road.
I rang the bell, thinking about how I would play it if I was let in.
After a short pause, there was a buzz and the gate clicked open.
Slipping though, I walked up the path that led to the front door.
It opened, but only part of the way, as if whoever was there was having second thoughts about having let me in.
Through the gap I saw a teenage boy, tall and gangly, dark hair just visible under the hood of his sweatshirt.
“Hello, is your dad in?” I asked.
The boy shook his head. “He’s still at work.” He seemed to be around sixteen years of age.
“At work?” I pretended confusion. “He told me to meet him here.” I took my phone from my bag and brought up a message. “This is his cell phone, isn’t it?” I reeled off Jaz’s number, which I knew by heart.
“Dunno.” The boy pulled a phone from his pocket and scrolled down his list of contacts. “This is Dad’s.” He read out the number and I surreptitiously added it to my contacts.
“That’s not what I have,” I said, frowning. “Your dad is Andy Taylor, isn’t he?” I added, plucking the name of one of my previous foster parents from the air.
“No, my dad’s Brett Parker.”
I deepened my frown. “I don’t understand. This is number forty-two, isn’t it?”
“Twenty-four.”
I clapped a hand to my mouth in a parody of an apology. “Oh I’m sorry! I must have taken it down wrong. It’s number forty-two I want. Sorry to have disturbed you.”
The boy was already closing the door. “No worries.”
I walked down the driveway and crossed over to where Jaz was waiting.
“For God’s sake, Elle!”
“It’s okay, I didn’t see him, it was his son that I spoke to.” I took his arm and steered him away, buzzing with excitement. “His name is Brett Parker, so I’m even more certain that it’s him. How many British people do you know with the name Brett? It’s typically American.”
“I suppose,” Jaz said.
“I just need to work out what to do next.”
Jaz looked at me in alarm. “I thought you only wanted to know his name?”
“I did. But I’d be letting Bryony down, and her mum, if I didn’t pursue it. I’m not saying Brett Parker murdered Bryony, but he’s definitely the man who was driving the car that she got into. Everything fits, his voice, his name, even his car.”
Jaz looked at me curiously. “Would you stand up in court and testify that it was him you saw driving the car?”
“Yes,” I said firmly. “I would.”