Find Them Dead

90 Thursday 23 May

Rain was still pelting down an hour after Meg had left the court. She sat in her car in the Hove station car park, engine running, demister on full blast, trying to clear the windscreen. Rain pounded the roof and thoughts pounded her brain. The trial today, how had it really gone?

The defence counsel had scored some points and all her witnesses had been robust. How much would that prosecutor twist everything in his closing speech tomorrow? How would she respond? How would the judge direct the jury — impartially, she hoped? Richard Jupp had been hard to read all along.

A text pinged. It was from Ali, suggesting they meet for a coffee or a drink on Saturday and saying they were having a barbecue on Sunday, if the weather was better. Then she noted a WhatsApp had come in from Laura some hours ago — it must have been while her phone was on silent when she had gone into court.

She opened it immediately, scared what might be there. Scared, suddenly, now the trial was almost at an end, that she might have been abducted and this was going to be yet another threat. To her relief, she saw a happy Laura, in a floppy hat and sunglasses, standing on a rock in front of a massive sea lion that almost dwarfed her.

Meg smiled. God, I need to get a message to you. To warn you to disappear if it goes badly tomorrow. How?

How?

I love, love, love you so much. My precious angel. I’m going to keep you safe, whatever it takes, somehow, I promise you.

As she drove home, she continued churning over the day’s events in her mind. It had been a good day for the defence, no question. But how good? Enough to convince the disparate jurors?

Good enough to save her daughter’s life?

A quarter of an hour later, entering her house as warily as always now, she was greeted by a stench from Daphne’s litter tray. But there was another, fainter smell. As if someone had been cooking. Meg frowned. She had made herself an omelette and fried tomatoes for breakfast — and burnt some of the tomatoes in the process. But it seemed strange the smell still lingered.

Daphne suddenly gave a pitiful miaowww. Meg knelt and stroked her neck. ‘You want food, right? Of course you do, when didn’t you?’

She stuck her umbrella in the Victorian coat stand, hung up her wet cagoule and went through to the kitchen. As she tore open a packet of cat food, Daphne vaulted up onto the work surface and began eating ravenously, once she’d tipped the contents into her bowl.

She cleaned up the litter tray, then went upstairs to check Laura’s rodents had water. As she reached the landing, she heard the familiar squeak-squeak-squeak of the gerbils on their spinning wheels. She switched on the light and entered her daughter’s bedroom.

She peered into their cage. They looked up, twitchily, on their hind legs. They had plenty of water. She moved on to Horace.

And stared, puzzled. The cage was empty.

She opened the door, put her hand in and lifted up the tiny little covered area at the back where he sometimes slept on his bed of straw. It was empty.

Had the little bugger escaped? How? She felt panic.

‘Horace!’ she called out. ‘Horace!’

Useless, she knew, he had never responded to his name. She checked all around the room, looking under the bed, Laura’s chair and in every other nook and cranny where he might possibly be. Then she returned to the cage, checking it carefully.

Could she have left the door open this morning, after feeding him and filling up his water, she wondered? And had she left the bedroom door open or closed? If closed, he must be in here. If not, he could be anywhere in the house. What would she tell Laura if she couldn’t find him? She doted on this dumb little creature above all her other pets.

Exhausting every possible hiding place in the room, and feeling increasingly anxious, she searched every room in the house. Had he gone through a hole into one of the cavities? Or out of the house somehow? Her best hope, she thought, was that he would get hungry and head back to what he knew as his food source. And, despite all her anxieties, she was hungry too, she realized.

She propped his cage door open and went back down into the kitchen, trying to remember what quick meals she had in the freezer. Bending down, she opened the door of the freezer compartment and pulled the top drawer out.

And stared in numb horror at what lay there, with a handwritten note beside it.