The accused, p.23
The Accused, page 23
Cora had been covering a day-long court case, listening to closing arguments in a protracted hearing which saw a well-known judge in the dock, accused of taking bribes from several defendants and allowing them to walk free. She had returned to court slightly late from lunch, rushing in after everyone else had just taken their seats, and had frantically pulled notebook and pen from her bag, anxious not to miss anything. Unfortunately, along with the notebook and pen had also come a tampon, which had been rolling around loose in the bottom of the handbag. Dislodged by the removal of the notebook, it flew into the air and, watched by a horrified Cora, sailed merrily across the press bench to land right in front of the lawyers’ table.
Aghast, cheeks burning, Cora had cringed in her seat as, amid sniggers from around the court room, the elderly male usher had retrieved the offending object, holding it delicately out in front of him between thumb and forefinger as he carried it back to its mortified owner.
‘I believe this is yours, miss,’ he had said solemnly, eliciting further titters of laughter from a couple of tabloid newspaper journalists sitting alongside Cora.
‘Yes. Thank you. I’m so sorry,’ she had whispered, squirming with embarrassment and shoving the tampon firmly back into her bag.
Now, she punched a still-sniggering Rosie in the arm. ‘Right, come on, enough silliness, we need to get some work done. Let’s be all serious at the table when Nicole comes back.’
‘Oh, go on then.’ Rosie hauled herself off the sofa and they both settled themselves at the table, booting up their own laptops. When Nicole returned two minutes later with a tray laden with steaming mugs, a milk jug and some plates and napkins, they were tapping away, engrossed in their screens.
‘Blimey.’ Nicole dumped the tray on the table. ‘I’m impressed.’
Rosie and Cora both looked up and smiled.
‘Just a few moments of madness. I needed that after the week I’ve had,’ said Cora.
‘I know, I get it. Let’s do this.’ Mugs and plates distributed, Nicole sank down onto her chair, selected a doughnut from the box, took a large bite and then started work.
For twenty minutes or so there was, apart from the occasional tut or sigh of frustration, mostly silence, as Rosie and Nicole worked their way through endless lists of theatres, now extending their search to Greater London and the Home Counties after drawing a blank with the more central venues. Cora’s Equity search had proved fruitless too, and after staring into space for a full minute as she chomped her éclair, she decided to hit Google again, now that she was fairly sure Sally was still using her real first name. She began trying search after search with multiple word combinations – Sally, actor, actress, drama, New York, USA, London, play, film, casting. It was when she tried “Sally + actor + American” and started scrolling half-heartedly through the page after page of search results, that a photograph caught her eye. Sally? Was that Sally?
Startled, she clicked on the image and a newspaper article appeared on the screen. As Cora read the headline, she gasped, staring at the words.
‘Oh no. Please, no. This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening ...’ The words came out in a strangled whisper.
‘What? What is it?’ Rosie’s voice was sharp with alarm. Nicole, who had put headphones on to listen to music as she worked, pulled them off, spooked by the expressions on her friends’ faces even though she hadn’t heard a word of what they had said.
‘It’s ... it’s Sally. Here, in this local newspaper piece. I ... can’t ...’
‘What? Hang on, let’s see.’
As Rosie and Nicole leapt from their chairs, Cora spotted the date on the newspaper article. November. November last year. Months before the murder. Months before Sam went to prison. That’s it then. It’s over, she thought. It’s all over. As her friends leaned over her shoulder, impatient to see what had caused such a reaction, she pushed the laptop aside, sank her head onto the table, and started to cry.
36
They sat in stunned silence, lined up together on one sofa, wine glasses in hand now instead of tea mugs. Cora was still shaking slightly, her glass clinking against her teeth as she tried to take a drink. The implications of what they had just read in the article from the Islington Gazette were still sinking in, but all three of them were fully aware that no good was going to come out of what they had discovered.
‘I need to look at it again.’ Cora staggered across the room to retrieve her laptop from the table, her legs feeling wobbly and alien. Maybe this was all a bad dream? She often had trouble with her legs in dreams, dreams in which she needed to escape from somebody or something, but felt she was running through quicksand, each step requiring superhuman effort. Maybe that was what this was? But as she sank back onto the sofa, she knew that this was all too real. Real, and horrible.
She tapped the space-bar to wake up the screen, and read the article again, slowly this time. Woman killed in High Street collision read the headline, the photograph next to it a smiling Sally, leaning on a red London telephone box, her longer hair blowing in the breeze but her face Sam’s face. There was no doubt, no doubt at all. She was Sam’s identical twin sister; the likeness was uncanny. And then, the details, not many, but enough. Enough for them all to know that the searching they’d been doing for days had been in vain. This was Sally Henderson, their Sally Henderson, and she was dead.
A 30-year-old woman died today after a driver lost control of his car on Islington High Street and mounted the pavement. A 47-year-old man and a 3-year-old girl were taken to hospital with minor injuries. The woman who died was later identified as Sally Derson, an American actress who had been working in the UK for some time. The 86-year-old driver of the car is believed to have suffered a stroke at the wheel ...
‘Derson. Sally Derson. She just dropped the “Hen”,’ said Nicole softly.
‘Yes.’ Cora’s throat felt tight. She picked up her wine glass and tried to drink, but she could barely swallow. She put the glass down, and checked the date of the article once again, running her finger over the words on the screen. Maybe she’d read it wrongly? But no. The sixth of November, last year. It made sense now that Clare Henderson hadn’t heard from her daughter this past Christmas. Sally had been dead since before Christmas, dead for months, dead long before Marcus was murdered. And that meant ... that meant ...
‘She couldn’t have been involved then. In Marcus’s murder. She was already dead. She’d been dead for ages. So ... what does that mean?’ Rosie was pale, her scattering of freckles more pronounced than usual against the whiteness of her skin.
Cora shook her head, a wave of nausea suddenly robbing her of her ability to speak, and Nicole sighed a deep, shuddering sigh, eyes closed, head pressed back into the sofa cushion.
‘It just means ... it just means that we’ve lost a possibility.’
‘What?’ Rosie frowned.
Nicole opened her eyes and turned to her friends. ‘Remember, Cora, you told us that right back at the start of all this, Nathan listed four possibilities? Even though some sounded pretty unlikely? One, that Sam was framed by a person or persons unknown who somehow nicked her DNA and planted it at the scene, although we have absolutely no idea who or why. Still possible, I suppose, but we’ve failed to come up with anyone who might have done that. Two, a forensics mix-up. Three, that someone else’s DNA matched Sam’s, which we dismissed of course until we found out about Sally’s existence. And four – the one none of us want to consider, but a possibility nonetheless – that the police are right, and Sam did it after all.’
Cora took a deep breath, willing the nausea to pass.
‘So we’re down to three. Or two, really. Adam is convinced there was no forensics mix up, and I believe him. He nearly got himself in big trouble going down that road, but he checked it out thoroughly. So ...’
She took another deep breath. ‘So what we have left is that somebody, somehow, framed Sam. Or ... or that ...’
Tears sprang to her eyes again. This was ridiculous. Why couldn’t she say it? Why couldn’t she stop crying?
‘Or that Sam is a murderer.’ Cora and Nicole turned to look at Rosie. She was staring straight ahead, eyes wide, as if unable to believe what she had just said.
‘Yes,’ said Cora quietly.
‘Liane, thank you so much for that. I really appreciate it. And again, I’m so sorry.’
‘Thank you, Cora. Nice to talk to you. Bye.’
Later that night, alone now after saying a subdued goodbye to Rosie and Nicole, and calling Wendy and the boys to update them on the dreadful news and call off the search for Sally, Cora had done a little more detective work. The newspaper article about Sally’s death had quoted two friends, Liane Jermyn and Rachel Larsson, described as “Sally’s devastated flatmates”. Both women had been easy to track down: both, it quickly emerged, were also actors, with profiles on several casting websites. Liane also had a Twitter account under her real name, and when Cora sent a brief message asking the woman to contact her about Sally Derson, the reply came swiftly. A couple of direct messages later, and Liane was on the phone. Cora, crossing her fingers as she told the lie, explained to Liane that Sally’s mother Clare was a friend of a friend in New York, and had expressed concern about not hearing from her daughter for some time. Cora had promised that she’d keep an eye out for Sally in London, and had been browsing the internet when she had come across the shocking newspaper article. Liane seemed happy with the explanation, and chatted openly to Cora about her late flatmate.
‘We met at a casting, hit it off straight away,’ she said. ‘Rachel and I were looking for a new flatmate and when Sal said she needed somewhere to live, we didn’t think twice. She was great. We really miss her.’
‘Did you know that she’d changed her name?’
‘Yes, she told us a few weeks after she moved in. She’d come in to the UK on her real passport, but once she got here she started calling herself Derson instead of Henderson. She destroyed all her old ID, passport, the lot. She had another passport, under the new surname. She admitted it was a fake, but it was a good one – she’d got it before she came, through some dodgy contact in New York. It must have been good, because she had no problem using it as ID here, opening a bank account, getting a national insurance number and so on.’
‘And why – why bother with the name change? Did she tell you?’ Cora crossed her fingers again, hoping Liane wouldn’t get suspicious about the continued questioning, but the woman didn’t seem to mind.
‘It was all about her mum. She loved her, and said she dropped her the odd card or note so she knew she was OK, but she had no plans to ever go home again. Her upbringing had been pretty tough, by the sounds of things. Her mum had lots of issues, was on and off drink and drugs, and Sally had to grow up fast, and look after herself most of the time as a kid. She was sad about it really, rather than angry as a lot of people would be ... but that was Sally, she was just such a lovely person.’
Liane paused as her voice cracked with emotion. Such a lovely person – just like her twin sister Sam, thought Cora. If only they could have met, if only ...
‘She just said that although she would always love her, she needed to sever ties with her mother, for her own sanity.’ Liane continued, her voice even again.
‘Even so, after she died Rachel and I tried for a bit to find her mum to let her know, but we couldn’t find her address in Sally’s things, or find her online anywhere, or even track down a phone number for her, so we gave up. The police helped briefly too, but they didn’t have that much interest. It was just another road accident to them I suppose. They left it to us, and if I’m honest, we didn’t try too hard, because of how Sally was about her. She didn’t have a will, at least we couldn’t find one, so we just asked a solicitor to see if he could sort it out – we told him as far as we knew, her mother was her only living relative. She didn’t have much to leave, to be honest, just a few clothes and bits of jewellery, so we boxed it all up and handed it to the solicitor. He said he’d keep us posted, but we haven’t heard anything. Not high priority, I suppose. Then we closed down all her social media accounts and took her profile off the acting sites and so on. We did our best for her, because we were all she had. We gave her a nice funeral too, small but nice. And ... well, that’s really all I can tell you. Will you let her mum know what’s happened now, if you have a way of contacting her?’
‘I will, yes. Where – where is Sally buried, Liane? I might pop along and put some flowers on her grave, on her mum’s behalf, if that would be OK?’
‘Oh, Cora, that would be lovely, thank you. We try to put fresh flowers on it when we can, but it’s hard to find the time, you know ... she’s in Highgate Cemetery. She visited it once and really loved it, so we thought that would be nice for her. There are lots of famous people buried there, you know? Karl Marx, Jean Simmons, Malcolm McLaren – even Catherine Dickens, Charles Dickens’ wife. Sally thought that was pretty cool.’
Cora smiled down the phone. ‘It is pretty cool. I’ll go there, this weekend if I can. Is her grave easy to find?’
‘Fairly – the staff there are very good, they’ll direct you to where the newer graves are. We put up the headstone a couple of weeks ago too, so that makes it easier. You have to wait a few months, you see, for the ground to settle? It’s not a posh one, we kept it simple, mainly because of cost – we don’t have lots of money. It just has her name, and the years, and a quote we liked that we found online. I hope it’s OK.’
‘I’m sure it will be. And I’m sure her mum will be incredibly grateful for how well you’ve looked after Sally, Liane.’
Now, Cora looked at the wall clock. It was only nine o’clock, but she suddenly felt overwhelmed with sadness and weariness. Sleep, then. Sleep, and then tomorrow work out how on earth she was going to tell Sam. And, even more importantly, what the hell she was going to do next. Were they now back to trying to work out who could have framed Sam? Was it just too late, too impossible a task? Too exhausted to think about it any more tonight, Cora turned the television off, and headed for the bedroom.
In his London flat, Adam was sitting in front of the television too, although he had no idea what he was watching – some American legal drama, he thought, but he hadn’t taken in a word since Cora had rung earlier. His girlfriend had sounded, for the first time in weeks, utterly defeated. Sam’s twin sister, the woman Cora and her friends had been searching for, was dead and had been for some time.
Adam had been overwhelmed by relief when he’d heard the news, that tiny seed of doubt he’d had about the case suddenly being swept away, but now he felt dreadfully guilty about being so pleased about it. Cora was devastated, and he could tell that she was struggling to cope with what this might now mean – that the chances that Sam was a murderer had suddenly, in Cora’s eyes, increased dramatically. To be fair, despite the solid evidence against her, Adam was still finding it hard to come to terms with himself – Samantha Tindall, this clever, sweet, fun friend of Cora’s, with whom they had spent so many great evenings and weekends over the past year, was a cold-blooded killer? The case spoke for itself, but even so. And if he was finding it hard to handle, he could totally understand how difficult it was for Cora, and why she was finding it so impossible to believe. Maybe now, though, she’d start to accept it. She was due in London at around 11 a.m. tomorrow. I’ll take her out for lunch, somewhere nice, thought Adam, try to cheer her up, take her mind off it. She’ll be OK. It’ll just take a bit of time, that’s all. And maybe I’ll get Harry to make her a card or something in the morning, before she gets here.
At the thought of his son, he eased himself off the sofa and headed for the little boy’s bedroom. Harry had developed a tendency to ignore instructions to go to sleep and instead spend an extra sneaky hour playing games on his iPad under the duvet after lights out, and Adam wanted to make sure he’d be fresh for the weekend – Cora adored Harry, but even so she might struggle to cope with a cranky six-year-old in her current frame of mind. A peek around the bedroom door, however, proved that tonight Harry had obeyed orders. Feet on the pillow, tousled dark blond hair just visible at the bottom of the bed, Harry was snoring softly. He had started sleeping the wrong way round in bed a couple of years ago, and it seemed to be a hard habit to break, but Adam didn’t suppose it really mattered. His son was safe, happy and asleep. He hoped Cora was safe and asleep too. The happiness bit, he decided sadly as he returned to the sofa, might be a little way off yet.
37
Saturday 15th June
13 days until the deadline
Cora, bouquet of white lilies in hand, was waiting outside Highgate Cemetery when its gates opened at 10 a.m. She had been there just once before, many years ago, and as she walked through the newer East Cemetery she was again struck by the peacefulness of the place. It was vast – over a hundred and seventy thousand people in over fifty-three thousand graves – and yet there was still an intimacy and serenity about its shady paths, winding through a Gothic maze of ivy-covered tombs overlooked by silent stone angels, elaborate mausoleums and carved vaults and arches. Here and there, overgrown graves with indecipherable inscriptions sat alongside shiny marble headstones, the names of those resting below picked out in gold lettering: the long-dead and the recently deceased lying shoulder to shoulder.
