Butterfly Grave (Murder Notebooks) Read online

  To Alice Morey and Josie Morey

  My favourite teenagers

  CONTENTS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  Also by Anne Cassidy

  ONE

  Rose Smith thought about murder a lot. On the bus, on the way home from a Christmas shopping trip she stared at the passengers sitting opposite her as image after image forced its way into her head. There was the girl floating face down on the waters of a silent lake, her hair fanning around her like seaweed. A boy lying on a railway bridge, a single stab wound letting the life haemorrhage out of him; days later his girlfriend dead on the path of a rose garden. The drowned man who had his hands tied behind his back, his body washed up against a pier while holidaymakers looked on.

  It was not something she talked about to her grandmother, Anna. Nor did she mention these morbid preoccupations to her stepbrother, Joshua. She kept them to herself, tightly shut away in her head. She only brooded over them when she was on her own.

  She hoped they were the last deaths.

  She got off the bus and wove her way through the late afternoon crowds and headed back to Anna’s house. When she got to the corner of her street she was surprised to see Joshua waiting for her. He was wearing the grey tweed coat that he’d bought in Camden Market a few days before. It reached past his knees and made him look like someone out of an old film. His hair was cut shorter than normal and he had stubble and looked a bit distracted.

  ‘I tried ringing you,’ he said, walking with her. ‘Your phone kept going to voicemail.’

  ‘I must have turned it off.’

  ‘Your gran said you’d be back about five so I thought I’d wait.’

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘My Uncle Stu has had an accident. He fell off a cliff while walking his dog.’

  Rose stopped walking, shocked.

  ‘He’s all right, I think. Broken bones. Cracked ribs. A touch of hypothermia. Well, he’s not all right of course . . .’

  ‘How big a cliff?’

  ‘Big enough. It’s called Cullercoats and is somewhere we used to walk the dog. The policeman I spoke to said that my uncle just lay there all night. It seemed that he fell on to a ledge that had bushes and stuff so he was sheltered from the worst of the cold but he must have been there for hours, not being able to move.’

  ‘That’s horrible.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Didn’t he have a phone?’

  ‘Usually, yeah. It must have fallen with him and landed somewhere out of reach.’

  ‘He’s all right, though? He’s not . . .’

  ‘No, Rose. He’s not going to die.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that. I didn’t . . .’

  ‘It means I’m going up to Newcastle tomorrow instead of on Christmas Eve.’

  ‘ ’Course!’

  ‘Skeggsie’s happy to go a few days early so we’re packing tonight. It means I’ll be away longer than I planned but . . .’

  ‘You have to go. ’Course you do.’

  ‘Why don’t you come with us?’

  They’d reached Rose’s house. Rose knew that Anna would be inside beautifully dressed as ever and possibly listening to classical music.

  ‘Me and you and Skeggs? Would we fit in the car?’

  ‘Sure. It would be a squeeze but it would be OK. In any case, with Stu in hospital it would be good to have you there.’

  ‘Anna is expecting me to be with her over Christmas.’

  ‘You can ask her. She can only say no.’

  ‘I will. I’ll ask her. I’ll call you later.’

  Joshua smiled and hooked his arm around her neck and gave her a kiss on the side of her face. Then he went off up the road. Rose’s fingers touched her skin where the kiss had been. She stared after him, the familiar feeling of longing stirring in her chest. It was so good to see him, to be with him, if only for a few moments. She took a deep breath and got her front door key out of her pocket and walked into the house.

  She put the shopping bags in her rooms and went downstairs. Anna was in her drawing room, sitting at the small antique desk writing in a notebook. There was music playing at a low volume. Rose decided she had to come straight out and ask about Christmas. She knew that Anna had made plans for both of them to visit some of her friends and for trips to music concerts at the Barbican and the Royal Festival Hall. She also said that she’d like Rose to accompany her to church on Christmas Day.

  None of these things appealed to Rose but she’d kept telling herself that it would only be for a couple of days – the real Christmas holiday would be the time she spent with Joshua.

  ‘Anna, I’ve just had some bad news.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Joshua’s uncle has had an accident. He’s fallen off a cliff and is in hospital.’

  ‘A cliff? Goodness, that sounds dreadful. Is that why he came here earlier? I wondered. He looked a little upset. Is the poor man in hospital?’

  ‘Yes and the thing is . . .Well, Joshua’s going to Newcastle tomorrow to see him and I wondered . . .’

  Say it, Rose, she thought. Say it out loud.

  ‘If you didn’t mind I thought I might go with him. Stay in his uncle’s house. Try and help out a bit. I know it means leaving you alone . . .’

  ‘Of course you must go, Rose.’

  Anna stood up and closed the book she’d been writing in.

  ‘It’s just that he might need someone to . . .’

  ‘I understand. It’s good of you to offer. I’ll be fine here. There are a number of events I turned down because I didn’t want to bore you but I’ll go to them now. I’ll keep myself busy. You go off to Newcastle with Joshua. And of course give my good wishes to the poor man when you see him.’

  Anna left the room. Rose frowned, puzzled, as she watched her go. Later on, after ringing Joshua to tell him the news, she could have sworn she heard her grandmother singing quietly to herself as she went down the stairs. Rose hadn’t been looking forward to spending Christmas with Anna. Was there any reason to suppose that Anna had felt differently? She sighed. Her grandmother had changed a lot over the previous weeks. There was a time when Rose couldn’t mention Joshua’s name. Now Anna had accepted that he was part of Rose’s life. Indeed she seemed relieved that Rose had someone else.

  The next morning she lay in bed after her alarm went off. The rain peppered the glass and the wind slipped in and out of the trees making them shiver. She rubbed her eyelids. Even though the room was still dark she could see the outline of the clothes that she’d hung on the back of her door. A black jacket. Black trousers. Grey blouse. On the carpet were her black boots and her bag and rucksack. She was really going to Newcastle.

  The clock showed 6.18. Joshua and his flatmate Skeggsie were coming for her at seven. Just before going to sleep she’d got a text from Joshua to say that his uncle was having an operation today on his leg. Other than that he was comfortable.

  This certainly wasn’t the Christmas they had planned.

  Joshua and Ske
ggsie’s term at Queen Mary College had finished the previous Friday. Rose’s college had broken up for the Christmas holidays on the same day. Skeggsie, Joshua’s flatmate, had intended to take Joshua up to Newcastle on Christmas Eve; Joshua to his Uncle Stuart’s and Skeggsie to his father’s house nearby. Skeggsie was actually excited about the trip. He’d told Joshua that he wanted to go and see the Angel of the North. He’d had an idea for an art project linked to it, involving photography and animation. He had a new camera that he wanted to try out and had asked Joshua to help him.

  Joshua and Rose had shopped for gifts at Camden Market and Rose had bought an old crystal vase for Anna from an antique shop. Joshua had bought a second-hand leather bomber jacket for his uncle and a blanket with paw marks on it for his uncle’s dog, Poppy. Skeggsie hadn’t gone with them. He’d ordered his Christmas gifts online and they were sitting in plain brown cardboard boxes under his computers.

  Now things had taken a different turn and Rose’s elation about going with Joshua to Newcastle was tinged with guilt. She had to keep reminding herself that Joshua’s uncle had had a bad fall. She was going to help, not to enjoy herself.

  She carried her rucksack and bag down to the hallway. She placed them by the front door. She went into the kitchen to give her grandmother her Christmas present. She’d wrapped the vase in silver tissue paper and ribbon.

  Anna was sitting at the table eating a croissant. Beside her plate was a miniature jar of jam. There were dozens of them in the cupboard. Anna liked a fresh jar every time. It was one of the things that sometimes made Anna’s home seem a bit like a hotel.

  ‘You all ready?’

  Rose nodded. She placed the wrapped vase on the table.

  ‘Here’s your Christmas present. As I’m not going to be here.’

  ‘How lovely! And here’s yours.’

  Anna held out an oblong package. Rose smiled but took the package without enthusiasm. Anna bought all her presents from two or three West End stores and she had everything wrapped in-house. The wrapping was like a small work of art, its corners at right angles, evenly tied with a ringlet of ribbon springing from the centre.

  ‘Open it whenever you like. I thought you might like it.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Rose said. ‘I’ll take it with me.’

  The doorbell rang.

  ‘That’s them.’

  ‘You will tell Joshua how sorry I was to hear about his uncle’s accident.’

  ‘I will.’

  The doorbell rang again.

  ‘I should be off.’

  She bent down to her grandmother who paused from buttering her croissant and offered her cheek for a kiss. Then Rose dashed along the hallway and picked up her bags. The Mini was a few parking places along the street. Joshua took her luggage and put it in the back of the car beside the stuff that was already tightly packed there.

  ‘You all right?’ she said, looking up at him.

  He nodded. He held the door open so that she could climb in the back. They drove up the street and turned out of the main road into slow moving traffic. After a few moments Joshua half turned in his seat.

  ‘I called the policeman dealing with Stu’s accident late last night,’ he said. ‘Stu’s not talking much. He’s had painkillers but it seems that he also has a head injury.

  ‘Maybe that explains why he didn’t ring anyone.’

  ‘No, that’s not why he didn’t make a call. They found his mobile on the cliff path. As though he dropped it while walking. They also found an empty half bottle of Scotch in his car.’

  Rose didn’t know what to say. She caught Skeggsie’s eye in the rear-view mirror. He’d probably already heard this.

  ‘So I’m not clear in my head now what happened. I’ve been thinking that he lost Poppy and went after her and fell over the cliff. On weekdays he normally took her to the local recreation ground but for some reason he went up to the cliff path. That’s odd because it’s a drive to get there and it’s pitch dark and pretty dangerous. It’s the sort of walk we did at weekends or summer nights, not in December. Now it looks like he might have been drunk and lost his way.’

  ‘Perhaps he’d had a bad day in school.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  Joshua’s voice had a tinge of anger to it.

  ‘We’ll probably find out more when we get up there,’ she said.

  Joshua turned back to the front. Skeggsie put the radio on. It was a talk show and they drove along quietly listening to it. After a short while Joshua started to fidget and Rose saw him struggling to get something out of his pocket. It was a small notebook and pen. He flipped the pages over a couple of times.

  ‘Can we pull over soon?’ he said. ‘There’s a black Mercedes that’s been behind us ever since we left Rose’s road.’

  Rose felt her neck tense.

  ‘I want to see if it’s following us.’

  ‘Sure,’ Skeggsie said. ‘Let’s get through the next lights then I’ll park.’

  Rose turned round and saw a black car behind them. The driver was a grey-haired man and next to him was a woman of the same age. She frowned. They looked like a married couple. Why on earth would they be following the Mini?

  She heard the indicator going and saw Skeggsie move out of the traffic and into an empty parking space. The Mercedes went past and Rose saw to her dismay that Joshua was writing down the registration number in the notebook. He closed it and put it on the dashboard. Skeggsie started the car up again but Joshua put his hand out.

  ‘Hang on, let’s give it a few minutes. When we get going again we should keep an eye out, see if it turns up further along.’

  As they drove off Rose tried to stretch her legs but the seat and the footwell was full up with Skeggsie’s plain brown boxes. On top of them was a small brown suitcase, old-fashioned and battered. It had hard edges so she couldn’t lean against it.

  She tutted silently and looked out of the window at the road, to the side and behind. The Mercedes was nowhere to be seen.

  They were not being followed at all. It was just Joshua’s anxiety.

  TWO

  A hundred miles later they were nearing the services. There was music playing in the car. It was a new band that Skeggsie had started playing since he’d hooked up with Eddie, a boy at university, who was on his course. It wasn’t a sound that Rose particularly liked but still she was glad of it because she had been struggling to find things to talk about.

  They had hot drinks and doughnuts in the services cafe and then Rose went to the toilet. Washing her hands, she dabbed some water on to her face to wake herself up. Then she stood back and looked in the mirror.

  The glass was grainy and had smears across it. Her face was oval and her skin was pale. Her brown hair was jaw-length and she had a half fringe. Today she was wearing earrings, brilliant blue discs; the exact colour of the Blue Morpho butterfly that she had tattooed on her arm. They stood out against her black polo neck jumper. Joshua had bought the earrings for her as a Christmas present in Camden Market. Put a bit of colour into your life, Rosie! he’d said giving them to her unwrapped and in advance of the festivities. They’d hung from her ears and seemed to move about in mid-air like flying creatures. He’d smiled when she put them on. Then he’d said, You know what? You look just like Kathy.

  The comment had surprised her. Kathy, her mother, who had disappeared from her life five years before. She’d gone out for a meal with Joshua’s father, Brendan, and neither of them had come back. They’d not seen them since.

  Did she look like her mother?

  She took a tiny pot of lipsalve from her coat pocket and smeared it across her lips and found herself looking at the mirror through a blur of tears. She pulled a tissue out of her pocket and dabbed at the corner of her eyes, not wanting to smear the make-up. Then she blew her nose and went outside.

  Out at the car Skeggsie had his hand on Joshua’s shoulder and Joshua was staring at his phone, looking pained. The traffic was thundering past, a torrent of noise.

&nbs
p; ‘What’s up?’ she said.

  ‘Josh’s looking on the net at the local newspaper.’

  ‘What’s it say?’

  ‘Read it,’ Joshua said, pushing his mobile at her.

  She looked at the small screen and saw a headline.

  Mystery of Schoolteacher’s Fall

  Stuart Johnson, forty-five, a teacher at Kirbymoore Academy had a fall on Cullercoats Cliffs on the evening of Wednesday 19 December. Police sources say that he lay on a ledge for over eight hours before he was spotted by a man walking his dog on Thursday morning. Friends of the teacher say that he was depressed after splitting up with his girlfriend and had taken to drinking heavily.

  Rose scrolled down but there was no more, just adverts.

  ‘I don’t understand. Who are these friends? Who would say that? In any case I thought he and his girlfriend were all right,’ said Rose.

  ‘Maybe the police gave the story to the newspaper.’

  ‘This is terrible. He’s a teacher. This won’t do his career any good.’

  ‘Let’s get going,’ Skeggsie said. ‘Sooner we get there, sooner you can talk to him. You know what that local rag is like – it’ll print any old rubbish . . .’

  Joshua nodded and put his mobile away. Skeggsie moved to the driver’s door as Joshua pulled out his notepad and began to flick through the pages, looking at the nearby cars and vans.

  ‘Just checking some car registrations.’

  Rose stared at his bowed head, hoping he’d look up at her and smile, maybe even make a joke out of it. But he didn’t. He continued thumbing the pages, looking cagily around at the lines of cars.

  She caught Skeggsie’s eye and gave a half shrug.

  Joshua stared at both of them.

  ‘We’ve got to be careful. Don’t forget what happened when the Russian followed me a few weeks ago. I haven’t forgotten it.’

  Skeggsie nodded rapidly and got into the car. Rose followed.

  She dozed on and off during the rest of the drive. From time to time she heard mumbled voices from the front of the car when Joshua and Skeggsie talked between music tracks. Then, just after Washington, they stopped for petrol. Joshua went to pay but Rose stayed in the car. She turned and extricated her small bag from the back and put it by her feet. She got out a wet wipe and patted it on her skin. She was feeling hemmed in by the car and fed up with the journey. She wanted to say, ‘How long till we get there?’ But that sort of comment was childlike. When the car finally moved off Joshua tuned in to a talk radio station. The presenter had a Newcastle accent and Rose wondered whether he was expecting to hear something about his uncle’s accident. He had his arms crossed and seemed tense, staring straight ahead.