The Bad Things: A gripping crime thriller full of twists and turns

‘Wind off the Urals,’ Alex said, for the sake of saying something after the sudden change of subject.

‘That’s what they say.’ Jackie Wood was nervous. Probably as nervous as she was, Alex realized. ‘I’ll make the coffee.’ Pom-poms flapping, she made the short journey over to the sink, filled the kettle and set it on the top of the cooker.

Alex shrugged off her coat and put it down beside her, looking around the caravan. Not much to see, really. A small kitchenette, cupboards above the sink and cooker; a corridor that she guessed led to the bedrooms – two?– , and bathroom. A couple of paintings on the walls. One was a view of beach huts. The other of a few lonely sheep in the middle of a snowy field. Both had the corpses of insects preserved behind the glass.

There was silence while they both waited for the kettle to boil.

‘Here we are.’

Jackie Wood set a tray down on the table. On the tray was a cafetière of coffee and two plain, white mugs. There was a plate with chocolate digestives. A jug of milk. A bowl of sugar. She hovered.

‘Shall I pour?’ Alex asked.

Jackie Wood nodded. ‘Please.’

She pressed the plunger of the cafetière, hearing that pleasing sucking sound, then poured out two mugs of coffee. ‘Milk? Sugar?’

Jackie Wood nodded again. ‘Lots of milk. Three sugars. Please.’

Alex did the honours, wondering when the Mad Hatter was going to turn up. ‘Here you go.’

‘Thanks.’ Jackie Wood lowered herself onto a plastic chair.

Alex took a sip of coffee and then reached into her bag, taking out her digital recorder. ‘I hope it’s okay to record our interview, Jackie.’ She tried not to stumble over her name. She had never thought of her as ‘Jackie’, only ‘that woman’ or ‘the murderer’s accomplice’, or ‘Jackie Wood’, both names together. To call her Jackie was implying an intimacy that she didn’t feel. But then that’s what she did all the time; that was her job. She had to think of this as another job. Money. Cash. Gus’s skiing trip. Millie’s grave. No, not that, not yet.

‘I know who you are, you know.’ The words were spoken quietly.

Alex switched on the recorder then looked up at her. ‘Really?’

‘I’ve known ever since Jonny Danby told me you were coming.’ She smiled. ‘You think I’d forget you? Sasha’s sister?’

Alex held up her hand. ‘Don’t,’ she said.

‘Don’t what?’

‘Just…don’t. Her name.’

‘What? Sasha? What should I call her?’

‘Not her name. After what you and Jessop did. It does not give you the right to call her by her first name.’

She looked startled. ‘What Martin did. Not me. Not me. Anyway, I looked you up. Googled you. Found out about your work. I’d never read any.’

It didn’t surprise Alex that Danby had lied. ‘She likes your work.’ Please.

Jackie Wood smiled. ‘We didn’t get too many upmarket newspapers in High Top. And when we did, someone had always nicked the supplements.’ She shifted herself and reached into the back pocket of her jeans, pulling out a squashed packet of cigarettes. ‘Do you mind?’ she asked, pulling one out and putting it between her cracked lips. ‘Only it’s a hard habit to break. Something to do when you’re banged up.’

Alex shook her head, wanting one herself.

‘Here.’ Jackie Wood thrust the packet at Alex. ‘You can have one if you want.’

How did she know? ‘No thanks, I’ve given up.’ Alex found herself smiling apologetically.

Jackie Wood shrugged, put the cigarette between her lips, took a lighter off the table and lit it. She inhaled deeply, then coughed – a great hacking cough that shook her whole body. Alex hoped the smoke was furring up her lungs, causing changes in the cells of her body. She hoped it was killing Jackie Wood.

‘I missed my books,’ she said, quietly.

‘Pardon?’

‘Books. Being around them all the time. Discovering new authors. Flicking through a book, deciding if I wanted to borrow it from the library. I missed that.’

‘Right.’ Alex was suddenly wrong-footed by a sudden feeling of compassion. ‘But you had a library in the prison?’ What did she know?

‘Oh yes.’ Jackie Wood waved her hand, a dismissive movement. ‘Statutory requirement and all that. But it wasn’t the same. I mean, I could look at books at all times of the day in my job. Savour them. There was a time limit in prison.’

‘I see.’

‘I miss the children.’

Alex’s back stiffened.

Jackie Wood waved her arms. ‘No, no, what I meant was the children in the library. I miss seeing them, reading to them, story time. You know.’ She stubbed out her cigarette. ‘Anyway, I expect you’ve got better things to do than spend all day with me. What did you want to know?’

A loaded question, but Alex restrained herself. She smoothed back her hair. ‘You agreed to see me because you wanted to do the interview?’

‘’Course I did.’ Jackie Wood blinked at her. ‘Why else? It’s a good chance to put my side of the story, to tell the world what really happened.’ She leaned forward on her chair, put her elbows on her knees, and it was all Alex could do not to recoil. ‘It’ll be a good scoop for you as well. Don’t think I haven’t thought of that.’

Alex ignored the jibe. ‘Your side of the story?’

She blinked again. ‘That’s what you told Jonny. That it’d be an opportunity for me to tell everyone what really happened. How I was only trying to help.’

‘Trying to help?’ Why was she echoing everything?

Jackie Wood put her mug down, leaned back again. ‘Look, I hardly knew him, before, before the…you know.’ There were tears in her eyes.

Alex tried not to move a muscle; if she did she would hit her. How dare she cry. How dare she.

Jackie Wood blinked harder than ever. ‘Sorry.’ She gathered herself. ‘He – Martin Jessop – just came to my door and asked if I wanted to help, organize searches and stuff. Well, there was no question about it. I knew little Harry and Millie from the library. Sash – your sister – used to bring them to story time.’ She gave a sad smile at a memory. ‘They used to love the stories.’

Alex had a prickling sensation in her nose and was finding it hard to swallow. She hated hearing Jackie Wood say their names. Sasha’s names, the children’s names, all of it.

‘But I want to start at the beginning. Can I do that, Alex? I can call you Alex, can’t I? Even if I can’t call your sister by her first name?’

She nodded, but she still didn’t want to call her Jackie.

So Jackie Wood told Alex about her childhood – middle class, ordinary, lonely, brought up in Great Yarmouth by parents who were both teachers. She liked books, didn’t want to go to university so she thought she would enjoy working in a library.

‘You know, I was quite happy, in my own world. I even had a boyfriend.’

Alex must have looked startled. ‘Surprised you, haven’t I?’ she said. ‘And it wasn’t Martin Jessop, whatever the papers might have said.’

‘Who was it?’

Jackie Wood looked out of the window. ‘I didn’t say anything about him then, and I’m not going to now.’

‘Come on, Jackie. It’s been fifteen years.’ Alex could scent a good story here. A different story. She didn’t think she’d read anything about her having a boyfriend before.

She shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter who he was. He wasn’t involved, wasn’t around when it was all happening.’ She gave a harsh laugh. ‘Certainly didn’t want to know when I was arrested.’

Alex sensed she would not open up about this mysterious boyfriend. Yet. It was a case of gaining her trust and confidence, and to do that she really had to put any negative feelings aside. ‘And then?’ She tried the gentle probing, concerned face, furrowed brow.

‘And then I was alone.’

Jackie Wood stubbed out one cigarette, but not before lighting another from its stub. ‘When the children disappeared it was a dreadful day.’

A dreadful day. Alex shuddered inwardly and wanted to tell the woman how her sister’s life had been destroyed that afternoon. How she had waited, not knowing what to do with herself while Jez hunted for the children, dreading Sasha’s return. Then, after what seemed like days but was only hours, a police car picked her up and took her to Sasha’s house. Jez white-faced, holding Sasha’s hand saying over and over again: ‘they’ll be back soon, Sash, they’ll be back soon.’ Sasha crying. At first great screams that tore the air to shreds, then silent gulps, her face running with tears and snot and saliva. More police turning up, wanting a picture of the twins. Sasha scrabbling in her bag. Finding that picture taken on a sunny day in a clearing in the woods. They were having a picnic: Sasha, and her, Millie and Harry. Who took the picture? Must have been Jez. Then a policeman asking questions while a young woman police officer sat by, her notebook out, pen poised. She didn’t take one note as far as Alex could tell. Endless questions. Questions she couldn’t answer. Alex, not looking at Jez, keeping her arm around Sasha, comforting her, telling her it would all be all right. Their parents driving over from Mundburgh to stay. Then the endless searches, the false sightings, the weirdos who wanted a piece of the grief. How, as the days went on and there was no news, Sasha grew thinner and smaller. Insubstantial. When they found Harry it was a sort of tortured relief.

Then they found the clothes in Jessop’s rubbish bin. More evidence in his flat. Evidence linking Martin Jessop and Jackie Wood. And the guilt that settled on her, suffocating her. So, yes, Alex wanted to tell her how her sister’s life had been destroyed that afternoon.

‘Why did you do it?’ Alex looked at her properly then, for the first time. She looked past the scar and noticed how her eyes were dull, her skin lifeless. She had lines around her eyes – not so much crow’s feet as bloody great emu feet – and there were smoker’s lines around her mouth. Her forefinger and middle finger were stained yellow and her nails bitten down to the quick.

She took out another cigarette from the squashed packet. Lit it. Inhaled deeply. ‘I told you, I didn’t kill anybody.’

‘You gave him an alibi.’

She smiled, the scar down the side of her face rippling. ‘He didn’t do it. Funnily enough, he was in the library that day, researching something or other, I can’t remember what now.’

‘Nobody else saw him.’

She laughed. ‘For one thing, hardly anybody came in that day, and for another, he was tucked away in a corner behind one of the book stacks. Unless you went round there, you wouldn’t see him. Anyway, I’ve been over that a hundred times. I was only telling the truth, and look what it got me. Accessory to murder.’ She stubbed out the half-smoked cigarette and grabbed Alex’s arm. ‘I didn’t do it. Nor did he. That’s what I want you to say.’ Her voice was earnest, a note of desperation.

Alex sat still for a moment, then shook her hand off. ‘You were both put in prison. The police didn’t believe you. Nor a judge and jury.’

Jackie Wood’s mouth twisted in a parody of a smile. ‘You think evidence can’t be manipulated? That the police can’t be corrupted? That a jury can’t be fooled? What are you? Stupid or something? Have you already forgotten that I got out because the evidence was suspect? The expert witness was discredited!’

Alex clenched her fists, tried to breathe evenly, not wanting to shout at Jackie Wood, not wanting to shake the truth out of her. She knew she had to be careful, treat her as though she were normal and that she thought she had a point. After what seemed like minutes but was probably only seconds, she got her breathing under control.

‘Jackie,’ she began gently, ‘signs of the twins were found both in Jessop’s flat and in yours. Items of their clothing were found in the rubbish bin. So much evidence.’ She wanted to pick up her coffee cup but knew her hands would be shaking.

‘I was acquitted.’

Alex thought she saw a sly look flash across Jackie Wood’s face, then it was gone.

‘The particles of dirt didn’t add up,’ she went on. ‘Professor Gordon Higgs was discredited.’ Professor Gordon Higgs. Such a competent name. One you would trust, don’t you think? But he was wrong. Or lying.’ She leaned forward. ‘I wasn’t involved.’

‘Jessop was.’

‘Jessop was what?’

‘Involved,’ said Alex, the lightness in her head threatening to come back.

Jackie Wood shook her head. ‘I told you. He had an alibi.’

‘No, the evidence was too strong.’

She shrugged. Silence opened up. ‘He kept a diary, you know.’

‘What?’

‘A diary.’

Alex tried to look uninterested, as if her words hadn’t made her heart beat faster, the palms of her hands sweat. ‘Oh?’ She hoped she’d hit a casual note. ‘And what happened to it?’

Another shrug. ‘Dunno.’

She was lying. Alex knew she was lying, she could feel it in her bones. ‘Why did he keep it?’

‘Said he’d always kept a diary, right from when he was young. Always told the truth in it, he said.’

‘So,’ said Alex, measuring her words, ‘it might contain details of where he buried Millie.’

She shook her head. ‘We didn’t kill them.’ She put two fingers either side of her temples and pressed hard. ‘At least, I didn’t kill them. Can you go now? Come back another time.’

Alex stared at her. She wanted to shout at her. Demand to know what Martin Jessop did, how he did it. Why did he put Harry into the suitcase – what was the point of that? Why they let Harry be found but not Millie. She wanted to grab Jackie Wood around her neck and shake the answers out of her. Shake the whereabouts of Millie right out of that horrible, thin, lying mouth.

But she didn’t do any of that. She merely leaned forward and pressed the off button on the recorder, trying to stop her hand from shaking. She was going to have to be patient. ‘So who do you think did kill them?’ she asked quietly.

Jackie Wood leaned back, eyes closed, fingers still on her temples. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore. Sometimes I wonder what’s real and what I’ve imagined.’ She opened her eyes, looked into Alex’s. ‘But it’s a long time. Fifteen years. You know?’

Depression washed over Alex. Was she ever going to get anywhere? Any nearer to finding out about Millie?

‘I understand,’ she said, getting up and putting her coat on. ‘I’ll come about the same time tomorrow, is that all right?’

‘Yes. It’s been good talking to you, actually. Cathartic. Maybe,’ Jackie Wood hesitated, ‘maybe we could go out tomorrow as well, have a coffee or something? There’s a really good pastry shop in the town. They do lovely doughnuts and things. At least, they look nice in the window. I haven’t dared go in. You know.’ She sounded pathetic. ‘Do you know, I don’t even know how to use a smartphone?’

For a second Alex got an insight into what her life must be like. Not being able to do, or being used to doing, the things she took for granted. Just simple things like having a coffee. How the world had passed her by. ‘Do you worry that people will recognize you?’

Her mouth twisted. ‘You don’t think the hair dye does much, then? You think people would know who I am?’

‘Why did you come here?’ asked Alex. ‘Why not Scotland or somewhere really far away?’

Jackie Wood shrugged. ‘Why not? It’s where I grew up. I don’t know anywhere else. Besides, I’m innocent aren’t I? I haven’t got anything to fear.’

‘And the caravan?’

‘Worried the taxpayers are footing the bill? Don’t be. My parents died some years ago, one after the other. I think the shame got to them in the end. They’d bought this caravan so they could stay in it when they visited me. They loved this town. After they sold their house to pay for my legal bills they had to live in it. When they died it came to me. It was all they had left to show for forty years of marriage. They wanted me to have the best, but the best wasn’t good enough, was it?’ Alex could almost reach out and curl her hand around the bitterness in Jackie Wood’s voice. ‘They were hounded every day by people wanting to talk to them about me, about Martin.’

‘That’s the trouble though, isn’t it? The families always suffer.’

She looked at Alex, obviously trying to gauge if she was being made fun of. But Alex was deadly serious and sidled along the bench, standing and putting on her coat. Jackie Wood sat very still, looking at her.

‘I could tell you things.’

Alex stopped, mid shrug. ‘Oh?’

This time the look on Jackie Wood’s face was sly. Mercurial; she had changed from someone pathetic to a woman with a secret.

‘What things?’ Alex’s heart was beating fast. ‘What things?’ Her voice was louder.

A quick smile and Alex saw in her face the reason she had survived prison for all those years. She had a shell; a toughness to her.

She rubbed her scar with her finger, up and down, up and down. At that moment Alex hated her so much that she wanted to slap her, hit her, rake her nails down her face; make her bleed. She had to clench her jaw and her fists to stop herself from launching at her across the bench.

‘Things that might make you change your mind about me. Things that happened that you know nothing about.’

‘The diary? Is it in the diary?’

‘Come tomorrow,’ she said, ‘and maybe I’ll tell you more then.’

‘Tomorrow,’ echoed Alex. How could she wait a whole twenty-four hours?

‘My scar,’ said Jackie Wood suddenly. ‘Do you know how I got it?’ That slow blinking again. She traced it with her finger. ‘Someone took a shank to me a couple of years ago.’ She shrugged. ‘Probably one of the worst things that happened. I had the usual spit or piss in my tea. Punches here and there. Things stolen. People not talking to me. Even when you’re on Rule 45 other prisoners try to get on it purely to do you. They don’t like child killers in prison. Even ones who are innocent.’ She smiled. ‘Goodbye, Alex.’

Jackie Wood was in control; Alex had no option but to go.

She felt weightless, dizzy with Jackie Wood’s words. She tied her scarf around her neck and opened the door. Breathed in the cold fresh air that smelled like freedom. Tomorrow.

But Jackie Wood wasn’t finished. Alex heard her clear her throat behind her. Then she spoke.

‘By the way—’

‘Yes?’

‘All those years ago, what were you doing with Martin Jessop?’

Alex pretended not to hear.

9

He’d held her hand a little longer than necessary when they first met, but Alex hadn’t minded that. He was tall, with dirty blond hair just touching his collar. The sleeves of his white shirt were rolled up to his elbows, showing strong, tanned forearms.

They met, about six months before the murders, at a talk being given by a couple of well-known authors at the college in Ipswich. She asked a question – she couldn’t for the life of her now remember what it was – but it must have ignited a spark of interest because at the toe-curling have-a-glass-of-warm-Chardonnay-and-meet-the-author event after the talk, he approached her.

‘My name’s Martin,’ he said.

They chatted for a while, he asked her to go for a drink with him and she did, realizing that the attraction was mutual. He was clever and witty, and made her laugh. The drink led to dinner, dinner led to a hotel and a clandestine relationship. Oh, she knew there was a wife somewhere but she fell for the classic ‘my wife doesn’t understand me’ line and that there was a ‘messy divorce’ going on, which was why he’d prefer to keep their relationship quiet for a while. It was Alex who found him the flat in Sole Bay, who was careful not to be seen when she visited, and was convinced no one knew about the two of them.

When she looked back and wondered why she had been drawn in, she realized it was because she’d been lonely. She was struggling to get her freelance career off the ground and look after a lively baby boy on her own. She was young, and having a clandestine lover made her life more exciting, which was why she never questioned Martin closely about his personal life.

It wasn’t until after he’d been arrested that she found out he was spinning her one great lie. Several lies. There was a wife, but very much married to Martin (no ‘messy divorce’ in the foreground or background), and two teenage children living in a small village in Cambridgeshire. He stayed in Sole Bay two or three nights a week, sometimes weekends because of his job at the college. Not because of her. She didn’t figure at all. She read all the details in the papers and knew she had been well and truly duped. The classic woman who believed everything her cheating lover told her.

At the time, it was all she could do not to fall apart. Something she had started for fun had been destroyed. She had brought a murderer into the family. The only reason she kept on living, kept herself together, was Gus. If it hadn’t been for him, she wouldn’t have been able to get out of bed in the morning. She also had to put on a show. No one had known about her affair with Martin and she wanted to keep it that way. How she managed to get through each day, putting one leaden foot in front of another, was now a blur. But she had done it.

Alex saw Martin’s wife in court, not unexpectedly. Tall, blonde, always well turned out – well groomed, well dressed. She never said anything or displayed any emotion, not, that is, until Martin was sentenced to life in prison. Then Alex watched as a solitary tear rolled down her cheek. She didn’t wait for him to be taken down.

The only emotion Alex felt when he was sentenced was thankfulness. He would be out of her life forever. Throughout the hearing she was terrified he would bring her into it, but he never did. Perhaps he thought she had suffered enough.

The last thing she could do was confess to anybody that she knew Martin Jessop.

But it was worse than that.

She walked quickly out of the caravan park and went to sit on a bench overlooking the sea. In its seeming infinity, the water always made her feel as though nothing was as bad as it seemed. And she sat there, hunched over, watching the grey waters dash against the harbour wall and feeling the wind tug at her clothes while the salt air scrubbed her skin, making it sore.

How did Jackie Wood know?

The question gnawed at her. She must have seen them at some point. Same block of flats. But why didn’t she say anything at the trial? Why didn’t she stand up and shout, ‘the sister knew the murderer too!’

Why?

Alex arrived home to hear the grunting speak of teenage boys and the drone of the Playstation in the sitting room, and no sign of Malone.

‘Hi guys,’ she said as she took stock of the dirty plates and cups on the floor, magazines lying about, and the feral smell of male youth. It was good, though, she had to return to normal mode, forget about Jackie Wood and think about everyday life. To be honest, it was a relief. She didn’t want to wrestle with her conscience any more and she didn’t want to be going over and over in her mind what Jackie Wood might have meant by ‘things’ and what might have happened to Martin’s diary.

‘Hey, Alex. How’s tricks?’

‘Fine thanks, Jack,’ she said, resisting the urge to tidy up. ‘You?’

‘Great.’ He didn’t look up from his laptop perched on his knee, fingers flying over the keyboard. Jack, gangly and yet to grow into his cheekbones and aquiline nose and full mouth; was a little different to Gus’s other friends; into computers and gaming, though he did enjoy his sport. Alex liked him. He always said hi, and when Gus was going through his difficult phase (the difficult phase that nearly gave her a mental breakdown), he stuck by her son; helped him shake off the bad group of lads he’d been hanging about with. Probably something to do with them both being in the local youth football team and the fact that he didn’t go to Gus’s school.

Gus stood. ‘Hey, Mum, hope you don’t mind a few of us hanging out here.’

‘Nope,’ she said, counting, as well as Jack, two boys she hadn’t seen before and, sitting with slim legs curled under her bottom in an armchair in the corner, flicking through a magazine, a girl. She almost did a double take. This was the first time she had ever known a girl penetrate the male circle of Gus’s friends.