Val McDermid - The Vanishing Point

A second beer in the bar produced nothing else of significance. It was clear to Stephanie that Leanne had made a life here then promptly burned her bridges behind her. But Nick saw a different set of possibilities.

They weren’t the sort of possibilities that would fill anyone’s heart with joy.

3

They walked back to the car in silence, both lost in their own thoughts. Nick didn’t start the engine immediately. Instead, he said, ‘You have Leanne’s phone number, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’ Stephanie dug out her phone and thumbed through her contacts. ‘There it is. A Spanish mobile.’

‘I’d like you to send her a text.’

‘Saying what?’

‘Saying you’re planning to bring Jimmy out to Spain for a holiday soon and you’d love to get together. And then we’ll sit back and see what happens.’

Stephanie gave him an odd look. ‘What do you think will happen? Jimmy being abducted has been in all the British papers. They do get them out here, you know. And it’s been all over the Internet. If she wanted to get in touch with me, she would have done it by now.’

‘Maybe. But I think you’ll get an enthusiastic text back saying something like, “What a great idea, when are you coming?” And when you give her dates, oh bugger, that’ll be exactly the week she’s booked to go to Thailand with friends.’

She wasn’t stupid. She understood what he was saying. The realisation sat like a lump in her chest. This was the last thing she’d expected to discover on this trip. ‘You think someone else has her phone. You think she’s dead.’

He reached for her hand. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t see any other explanation. We know she left to spend time with Scarlett before she died. Then they had a row and she walked out. She’d built a life here. This was the obvious place for her to come back to. But she didn’t. She walked out of a house in Essex and she was never seen again.’

‘But Simon spoke to her when Scarlett died. To ask her to come to the funeral.’

‘Did he? Did he actually speak to her? Or did he text her? We know her phone was live for some time after she disappeared. Paco left voicemail messages. If someone killed her, it would make sense to keep the phone live, to confuse the issue of where Leanne was. It would be easy enough to impersonate her in a text.’ Nick’s voice was gentle, but there was no sugar-coating his words.

Unbidden, the tears started, fat and heavy on her cheeks. Stephanie began to shake, her teeth chattering. Nick pulled her close, waiting out the storm. When the first shock passed, her eyes and nose were swollen and sore. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she said. She put her hand on his chest and looked up into his troubled face. ‘You suspected this before we came here, didn’t you?’

He sighed. ‘It did cross my mind. Bad things sometimes happen to women who storm out into the night.’

‘You think some evil bastard picked her up? Took her somewhere and killed her?’

Nick nodded. ‘Something like that. I think I need to talk to Essex police when we get home. The trail’s pretty cold by now, but they need to set up a murder inquiry. If the phone’s still live, it might give them a starting point for a search.’

‘Poor Leanne. She wasn’t the sharpest knife in the box, but she was a decent person.’ Then suddenly Stephanie sat bolt upright. ‘Wait a minute. You’re not being straight with me, Nick.’

Startled, he pulled back. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You know what I mean. It wasn’t some stranger that killed Leanne. It must have been someone at the house. Because her place in Spain was sold and the money went into the trust.’ Stephanie’s eyes were wide with horror. ‘Was there an accident? Did Leanne die in the house?’

‘Whoa,’ Nick said, twisting in his seat and gently gripping her shoulders. ‘You’re getting way ahead of yourself here. There’s other explanations, ones that make a lot more sense.’

‘I can’t think of one.’ Chin up, Stephanie was back in control now. She wanted answers and there was no fending her off.

‘What was Leanne’s job? What did she do for Scarlett?’

‘You know that. She was her body double, her impersonator.’

‘Exactly. To someone who was obsessed with Scarlett, Leanne was as good as the real thing. They might even have taken her in the mistaken belief that she was Scarlett. Now, the fact that you’re delusional in one area of your life doesn’t necessarily prevent you functioning like the rest of us in other respects. Our mystery man grabs Leanne and holds her prisoner. Sooner or later it dawns on him that this isn’t Scarlett. Which means he’s got to get rid of her and cover his tracks. He finds out about the house and business in Spain and realises the alarm will be raised if Leanne appears to abandon everything. He goes there and clears out her personal stuff under cover of night. Then he impersonates her in letters or emails or texts and sets up the sale of the villa. He doesn’t care who it belongs to or where the money goes because he’s not interested in money. He’s interested in Scarlett.’

Stephanie shivered. It made such clear and terrible sense. There had often been obsessive fans hanging around outside the hacienda. The same faces showed up again and again whenever Scarlett did any public appearances. Sometimes they got too close and had to be warned off. One or two, like Megan the Stalker, had gone out of control. But what about the others, who managed to hold it together on the surface but who were mad as a box of frogs underneath? Nick’s theory answered all of the questions raised by Leanne’s disappearance much more convincingly than the notion that Scarlett or one of her circle could have anything to do with her death.

‘And in all the fuss and confusion around Scarlett’s death, nobody was paying much attention to detail,’ she said. ‘The trustees probably didn’t notice the money from the sale of the villa in amongst all the other cash that was coming in from realising Scarlett’s assets.’

‘Who are the trustees?’ Nick asked.

‘Simon, Marina and George.’

‘Maybe it’s time to talk to George,’ Nick said.

‘As soon as we get back to London. Do you still want me to send that text to Leanne’s phone?’

‘Oh, I think so. It’ll be interesting to see what a text from a dead woman looks like.’

4

It was after midnight by the time they returned to Nick’s flat. They fell into bed exhausted, but not too exhausted to take comfort in each other. Afterwards, when Nick had slipped into sleep, Stephanie lay awake, gripped by an abiding sadness. Jimmy was seldom absent from the front of her mind for long. She had imagination enough to create endless scenarios of misery and anguish for him. In spite of everyone telling her not to blame herself for what had happened, Stephanie could not escape the guilt that washed through her in regular waves. If they didn’t find him alive and well, she would feel tainted by her failure for the rest of her life. She’d made a promise to Scarlett and she had not kept it.

Eventually, she drifted into restless sleep and morning rolled around far too soon. By some miracle, Stephanie’s whereabouts hadn’t leaked to the media. Nick was insistent that while the flat was still a safe house, they shouldn’t do anything that meant her breaking cover. That included turning up at George’s office or eating in the sort of restaurant where waiters had paparazzi numbers on speed dial. ‘Poor George was completely stumped,’ Stephanie told Nick after she’d spoken to the showbiz agent. ‘I suggested he could come here. You’d have thought I was suggesting he walk through South Central LA waving a wallet full of dollars.’