Jane Renshaw - Watch Over Me

Wee Bekki’s shaking her head. ‘No. No way.’

‘Now that mad bitch is getting out and who knows what she’s gonnae do – who knows if she’s gonnae come after you because she’s telt you she killed him and she’s feart you’re gonnae shoot your mouth off. But you dinnae have to worry, right, cos we’re disappearing, and we’re doing it right. We’re off to Spain! Off to Sunny Spain. It’s gonnae be a magic adventure, and you’ve got a magic new name.’

‘I’m not going.’

‘Oh aye hen, you’re going all right. Don’t you wannae know what your new name is?’

She folds her arms. ‘What?’

‘Madison. Bonnie, eh?’

‘That’s a chav name.’ And she huffs out the room and slams the toilet door.

Bairns! Christ sakes, as if I’ve no got enough on my plate without Bekki playing up. We’re outta here, and when we get to Spain that lazy fuckwit Travis is fucking dead so he is for landing us in this fucking mess.

Wendy tossed Flora another towel from the clean laundry basket, and Flora folded it and placed it on the pile. That was another thing she would be glad to see the back of – the awful orangey-beige towels, the colour presumably chosen to hide a multitude.

And laundry duty – the airless, humid little room, the smell of sickly sweet washing powder and sweat.

‘Reckon Shannon-Rose must be in this gaff,’ Wendy said. ‘You’d think she’d be in Carstairs, seeing how she’s a fucking loony-tune. You’d better watch yourself, doll. Dinnae go telling folk nothing about your pal that’s looking after Beckie. Nothing , aye? If her name or that gets back to Shannon-Rose, the Johnsons’ll be on it like flies on shite.’

‘But as far as I know, Shannon-Rose is in Carstairs.’ Flora caught the next towel. ‘What makes you think she’s here?’

‘Yesterday, right, I’m at the Rec Room windae and the visitors are coming out the Family Hub making for Reception, and one of them, I’ve seen her before visiting, right, but I didnae recognise the bitch – but that was before you telt me all the shite that’s gone on with the Johnsons, you know? She’s gone brunette and she’s been to Weight Watchers or that, and she’s had herself a fucking makeover. Thinks she’s all that but she’s still just a fucking Haghill slag. It’s Lorraine fucking Johnson. She’s got her arse in this navy trouser suit out Hobbs or shite and a wee flowery scarf, but she’s putting the beef back on and I reckon that’s how come I –’

And Flora was somehow sitting down on one of the hard chairs, and Wendy was saying, ‘Flora? What’s up, hen? Flora?’

And Flora was on her feet, she was dropping the towel on the floor, she was saying, ‘I have to – I have to make a phone call – I have to call Charles right now .’

‘Aye, okay, but –’

‘ She’s got Beckie! Lorraine Johnson’s got Beckie !’

Two hours later Flora was on the edge of her chair, both legs jiggling, as Charles swept into the room and dropped onto the chair opposite. His hair was standing up on one side where the wind had dishevelled it and he hadn’t bothered to smooth it. His face was white.

‘They’ve gone,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry, Flora. The police went to the house in Bearsden, but they’ve gone.’

It was a pleasant view at any time of day, but now, after sunset, when dusk shrouded the plastic rubbish bins and the litter along the high-tide mark and the blockwork walls, it was beautiful. The sky seemed to go on forever, streaked with orange and purple and a deep indigo it seemed to take from the sea, although of course it was the other way round. The waves lapping at the beach shimmered silver, and the two stacks of rock out to sea loomed up like sentinels, as if guarding the little cove with its jetty and solitary rowing boat bobbing on the swell.

But if she turned her head to look left from her window instead of right, the scene was just like any other along this coast: streetlights illuminating two more ugly high-rise hotels, some dusty cafés and tavernas and shops, and then a line of run-down orange and yellow apartments with railed balconies, metal-shuttered windows and satellite dishes. The beach, such as it was, on the other side of the road was a tumbled mass of rocks and a little strip of flat grey sand disappearing into a darkened sea. Between the apartments and the junction with the main coast road were half a dozen white, red-roofed ‘executive’ villas that looked like MacDonald’s restaurants, and a few dispirited palm trees.

Fuerte Blanco, the place was called, although there was no sign now of the fort that had presumably given it its name. The original fisherfolk’s houses had gone too, with the one exception of a little boarded-up stone building behind one of the cafés. Flora had never seen anyone use the boat that was tied to the jetty.

She got up from her chair and stretched.

Time to call it a day.

They wouldn’t come now.

She lay down on the bed and shut her eyes.

Maybe tomorrow.

Maybe tomorrow would be the day Caroline – she couldn’t stop thinking of her as Caroline – brought Beckie here.

It had taken Brian just three days to find the place, after Flora had described to him the scene Caroline had as her desktop wallpaper – the photograph of the beach and the little harbour and the two tall stacks of rock.

Fuerte Blanco, five miles along the coast from Malaga.

It had been a long shot, but the only one they had. Brian had come straight out here armed with photographs of them all – Jed and Lorraine Johnson and their offspring – and a bar owner had recognised Travis Johnson as the bastardo who’d punched him in the nose a couple of years ago. He wasn’t likely to forget the face of that matón .

Brian had distributed the photographs around the bars and hotels and cafés, impressing on the staff the importance of keeping them hidden from the view of customers, with the promise of a substantial reward for information. Then he’d staked the place out and hired three local PIs to help with the enquiry. On the day Flora had been released from prison she’d joined him here.

He’d been the most animated she’d ever seen him as they’d sat across from each other at a table outside Café Victor, piecing together the puzzle of Lorraine Johnson’s masquerade. ‘Incredible,’ he kept saying. ‘Bloody incredible.’

He’d discovered that the previous occupant of Caroline’s flat on Gardens Terrace had been beaten up and told to leave – thus enabling new tenant ‘Caroline’ to move in. ‘She played it cool,’ Brian had said in admiration. ‘Waited a whole three months before making your acquaintance at that party; let you get used to seeing her around. Smart. Very smart.’

And of course it had been Lorraine who had drugged Flora; who had stolen her old phone so that when, on the way to school, she had run out of petrol – presumably siphoned off by one of the Johnson boys – she hadn’t been able to call for help, presenting Travis with the perfect harassment opportunity; who had unlocked and then relocked the window through which Ryan had entered the house; who had memorised the password for the CCTV system, and borrowed Flora’s new phone to allow Ryan to log in using it, and switch the cameras off and on. Afterwards, Ryan must have left the phone somewhere – in Caroline’s flat, maybe – and Caroline had returned it to the kitchen table while Flora had been in the study checking the CCTV footage.

‘Inside job,’ Brian had nodded, draining his espresso and gazing out to sea, a little smile on his lips.

For six weeks Flora had spent all day every day in Fuerte Blanco, while the PIs expanded the search in either direction along the coast and inland, and Brian returned to the UK to follow up other potential leads.