The Girl Who Stole the Apple

‘I think you know, Maggie.’

She shook her head. She wasn’t sure what she was doing, what her strategy was, but playing hard to get was going to be part of it.

The pupils of Billy’s eyes seemed to shrink even more. He slipped his hand inside his jacket and pulled out a small black gun. He set it down on the arm of his chair and placed his right hand next to it. ‘Search her, Sam.’

Maggie stood up. Her legs were trembling. She waited while Sam frisked her. His hands lingered longer than they needed to on her legs, thighs, trunk and arse. She wanted to knee him in the crotch, but she didn’t. She tried to focus only on his face as his fingers probed her pockets, where they found nothing except the car keys. He studied them before passing them over to his boss.

‘What happened to Ellie?’ she said to the man.

He glanced up at Sam. ‘Didn’t Sam tell you?’

‘He told me a pack of lies. Why did you kill her?’

The smile was back on his podgy face. Insincere. Self-satisfied. Nasty. Was that the last thing she would ever see? Would she take that face to her grave? His vicious fat ball of a face, half overexposed in the bright sunlight, the other half sunk in shadow, peering across at her in this room that held so many good memories?

‘Why would Sam lie to you?’ he said, smooth as a rattlesnake. ‘Ellie shot herself. But Sam didn’t want Beth to live with that terrible knowledge. A traffic accident was a much kinder way of explaining it.’

‘Do you think I’m an idiot? There’s no reference to her death anywhere on the internet. People who blow their brains out usually get a mention. Someone comes across the body — someone walking a dog or training for a marathon or taking their kids for a picnic. And then the local papers report on it because it’s much more interesting than a flower show that’s been rained off.’

‘We recovered the body. Tracked it through her mobile. So we took charge of her and saw she got a proper funeral.’ He had all the answers. She distrusted people with all the answers. ‘But we kept it out of the press because Sam wanted to protect Beth, like any father would.’

‘So tell me why the hell Ellie would have killed herself and thereby abandon her daughter? Mothers don’t do that.’

‘You’re an expert on motherhood are you, Maggie? Since when?’ The jibe was a dagger slipped in between her ribs. Did he know? About her and the still-birth? That she would never, ever give birth again — even to another dead baby? She looked up at Sam. He knew that bit of her history. Had he told him? Or was she being paranoid? Sam was silhouetted against the window with the sun behind him, his expression hidden deep in the shadows. She had never been able to work him out. Not then. Certainly not now.

‘More than you,’ she said to Bowman, but so quietly that neither of them could possibly have heard. She had carried her baby for seven months. She knew what it was to be a mother. And she knew too with absolute certainty that Sam had betrayed her deepest secret to his boss.

* * *

The pain was less now. It still stabbed right up his leg every time Elgar put his foot down, but in between it was bearable. He was only a hundred metres or so from the cottage and although he was moving ridiculously slowly, the distance was gettin

g less. The woman’s car was still parked where it had been when they had arrived and there was no one in view which meant they had to be inside, though quite what state they would be in was anybody’s guess. There would have been four bullets left in his gun after she had blown off his toe. Who knew what she might have done with them?

He tried to review his options. Bridget had held onto the car keys in her usual control-freak manner. So even if his right foot had been capable of controlling accelerator and break, the lack of a key ruled out driving off into the sunset. Staggering to the pub would involve another 300 metres of agony, so forget that. Which left one option: going into the cottage and seeing what the mess was there. If Maggie was in there and in charge, hopefully she wouldn’t blow the big toe off his other foot.

He plodded on, trying not to limp more than he had to. Best not to attract the attention of curious villagers now they had reached the end game. As he got closer to the cottage, he saw movement through the front window. Then in an upstairs window he glimpsed a face which suddenly ducked out of sight. He kept his eyes on it as he pressed on and was rewarded by another, longer, glimpse. It had to be the girl. He was glad about that. The kid was OK. For now at least.

He didn’t bother knocking. He took a deep breath, twisted the handle and pushed his way in.

Three sets of eyes swivelled towards him. Bowman, Sam and the woman.

It was Bowman who spoke. ‘Elgar, how nice to see you. I would introduce you to Maggie, but I think you’ve already met.’ Not a word about the blood all over his sock.

Elgar moved gingerly towards the dining table and grabbed the back of a chair. Now that he was inside, there was no need to pretend. The pain was taking on a new and virulent life of its own, jabbing at his foot like an angry scorpion. He wanted to tell them this but all he did was give the chair a violent twist and then slump onto it with a gasp of relief.

‘I think I need some medical care,’ he said.

‘What happened?’ Bowman asked the obvious question, but he didn’t seem to be interested in the answer. His attention was clearly elsewhere — on Maggie, to judge from the way he was glaring at her — and maybe on how to clear up the bloody mess over which he was presiding.

‘She blew my big toe off.’ Elgar tried to lift his foot, but a stab of pain made him stop. He looked around the room. The woman, Maggie, was sitting absolutely still, her eyes fixed on Bowman. She was not, he now knew, a woman to be underestimated. Sam stood with his back to the window, silent and in shadow, so it was hard to read his face. Elgar didn’t trust him. He wasn’t sure why, but what little he had seen of the man disturbed him. If he was the kid’s father, how come he was so cool about the situation?

‘Maybe you should retire,’ Bowman said. ‘If you can’t carry out the simplest of orders, then you’re clearly past your sell-by date. And where the hell is Bridget? And the old man?’

‘Didn’t she tell you?’ Elgar gestured towards Maggie.

‘She claimed they were both dead.’

‘That’s right. They are.’