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64
July 2018
Rachel returned to Antibes a few days later. Michael’s body had been discovered by Joy, his housekeeper, and the police, of course, wanted to speak to her. Yes, she told them, she had visited him just a week ago. Yes, they had left on bad terms. Yes, they were separated. Yes, there were some financial issues they’d been trying to iron out. But no, she said, no, I had no real reason to kill him. None whatsoever. I left his house, she told them, determined that I would never see him again.
He was an abuser, she told them, a criminal, a man who sold equipment to drug manufacturers, who operated inside a netherworld of darkness and subterfuge and kept a handgun in his home office. He was a bad man, and she was glad that he was dead, but no, she had not killed him, and she had no idea who might havedone so. He owed a lot of people a lot of money, she told them. He knew some very bad people. There were a lot of people in this world, she told them, who might have cause to want Michael Rimmer dead. A lot of people.
‘What do you know about his first wife?’ they asked her. ‘Lucy Smith?’
‘Nothing,’ she replied. ‘Michael never talked about her. All I know is that they split up acrimoniously many years ago and he hadn’t seen her again since.’
‘Interesting,’ they said, ‘because according to Mr Rimmer’s housekeeper, he had seen Lucy Smith recently. Very recently, in fact.’
Rachel’s heart had skipped a beat. How could Joy know about Lucy being there? She didn’t go to Michael’s house on Sundays.
‘Apparently Miss Smith visited Mr Rimmer about five days before his death. The very same day, in fact, that she said you visited Mr Rimmer. She came with her children and her dog and spent fifteen minutes or so in the garden with him. The housekeeper said it all seemed very convivial.’
Rachel tried not to let her confusion show and nodded, thoughtfully. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘maybe Michael lied to me about Lucy. He lied to me about everything else, so it makes sense.’
With no physical evidence to detain her, the police let Rachel go a few hours later. She pulled down her sunglasses and walked across this now familiar town towards the beach. Rachel resisted the overwhelming urge to walk the coast road up to Castle Hill, to knock on the door of the shabby blue building, and to see Lucy and tell her she was her hero and that she would protect her with every fibre of her being from here until the end of time. But shecould not, in case it led the police to her. So instead she sat at a table overlooking the ocean and drank an Aperol Spritz served to her by a young man who looked like an aftershave model. She raised the glass to Lucy and prayed silently for both of them.
For many months afterwards Rachel was kept informed of updates in the case by the French detective called Avril. For many months afterwards Rachel knew that she was still considered a potential suspect and she also knew that the police had not yet given up on their search for Lucy. They had tracked down her last-known address via her children’s school and been told by the building manager there that they had gone on holiday to Malta, but no trace of her or her family was ever found on Malta or indeed anywhere else. Lucy had simply disappeared into the ether.
For many, many months Rachel slept restlessly at night, waiting for the phone to ring, for her presence in Michael’s house after his murder to have been uncovered. But also with the cold dread of them finding Lucy. She thought of the serious young boy, the angelic young girl, their tired eyes as they sat beside her in the square. She even thought of the dog and she feared for all of them if Lucy was ever to be caught. And then, one morning in early June, just under a year after Michael’s body was discovered by Joy in his basement, Rachel’s phone rang.
It was Avril the French detective.
‘We have an update for Michael’s case, Mrs Rimmer,’ she said. ‘Are you able to talk?’
