‘Maybe what?’ Megan urged.
Ella looked at her. ‘We need to turn on the news,’ she said. ‘I heard something a few weeks ago … Oh, Megs … They must have let her out, and if they have, does it mean … ?’ She pressed a hand to her mouth. ‘I don’t even want to think it,’ she said, ‘not after all these years.’
Understanding what was in her mother’s mind, Megan stared at her in disbelief. Eventually she said, ‘If they’ve found them – oh my God, it could be bodies.’ She felt sick.‘Or maybe,’ she added tentatively, ‘they’re still alive and someone’s found them.’
Could that even be possible after all this time?
No way!It couldn’t be.
It just couldn’t.
CHAPTER ONE
‘We’re going to make you an offer you can’t refuse.’
‘What kind of an offer?’
‘You’ll find out soon enough. I’ll have my PA reach out to make an appointment. I think you’re going to like it. Confidential for now, though. OK?’
That short, totally unexpected phone call, coming out of the blue as it had, just before Christmas, was still resonating with Cristy Ward two weeks later as she boarded the train to London. She had already spent far too many hours trying to second guess what might lie in store today, letting all sorts of scenarios run away with her, although she felt quietly certain that the podcast she produced,Hindsightwas going to be at the heart of it all.
It would be something big – she was sure of it, because the great Paul Kinsley wasn’t someone to waste her time, or his own.
It must have been ten years or more since they’d last met in person, at a party to celebrate the publishing of his book,Staying Tuned– a first-hand account of his journey through local and national media to become the head of a European-wide network of news and entertainment channels. Back when Cristy was fresh out of UCL, he’d given her her first big break as a researcher for a London based current-affairs show. That was where she’d met Matthew, her now ex-husband, and father of both her children, who’d beenan associate producer at the time. Kinsley had orchestrated their move to Bristol – her hometown, to set upThe News Agenda,which Matthew presented to this day. She’d been a senior producer on the programme until just over five years ago when her marriage had ended. Since the divorce she’d reinvented herself as a true-crime podcaster, and now, thanks to some early successes, she felt that all was right with the world.
A dangerous conclusion for someone with a fiftieth birthday coming up and the menopause looming.
She was definitely no longer the bright young thing Kinsley probably remembered. However, she now had experience and maturity on her side, and according to her astutely loyal nineteen-year-old daughter, Hayley, she carried off glamour as easily as if no effort went into it at all. It did, although Cristy had to admit that she wasn’t as focused on her looks as some. However, for today, her lively and magnetic – Hayley’s word – blue eyes were subtly enhanced by liner, and her normally scrunched up shoulder-length curls were falling loosely, hopefully stylishly, around her oval face. Beneath her long padded coat, she was wearing a navy suit from The Fold, and since, at five foot nine, she didn’t need the discomfort of extra height, her matching ankle boots were low-heeled. She simply wanted to look smart and elegant without appearing to have tried too hard.
She’d do that later today for the man in her life: the one she’d once tried, through her podcast, to expose as a triple-murderer.
David Gaudion. The man who was living proof that she didn’t get everything right, and in this case she couldn’t be happier for it.
Simply thinking about him caused her heart to skip a beat. They’d been together for over a year now, and she still experienced teenagerish flutterings of pleasure at the prospect of seeing him. Apart from being drop-dead gorgeous, atleast to her mind, he was a Guernsey-based wealth manager, a father of three, a skilled yachtsman, a powerful and passionate lover, and though he was never around often enough, he somehow managed to feel like a constant and always welcome presence in her life.
Knowing that he was going to join her later today made her even happier about being in London, and as the anticipation of seeing Kinsley began to build, she found herself almost wanting to laugh.
It was just after eleven when she jumped into a cab at Paddington, and after giving the driver directions, she took a call from her podcast co-producer, Connor Church. ‘Hey, Con. Everything OK?’
‘I’m guessing you haven’t seen the news,’ he said, ‘or you’d have rung by now.’
‘What is it?’
There was a crackling on the line as he said, ‘… knew you’d want … Trying to remember …’
‘Hang on, you’re breaking up,’ she interrupted.
‘Sorry, in a bit of a dodgy area,’ he told her. ‘Any better now?’
‘I think so. Carry on.’
‘OK. Did you get the bit about Nicole Ivorson being released? Not sure about any of the conditions yet, but apparently it’s happened.’
Cristy’s eyes rounded as her heart skipped a beat. ‘We knew it was going to after she confessed … Did she confess? Do we know that for certain yet?’
‘All accounts say she did. The nation’s press has already flocked to Randall Lane apparently, but no sign of her yet – or her mother.’
‘Does Maeve still live there?’
