Cambridge Blue - Alison Bruce [111]
All this was obvious now Marks had worked it out. At some point in the morning he had called the team investigating Victoria’s flat and asked asking them to make a special search for anything resembling Alex Moran’s journal, and bingo.
Goodhew slid it out on to his desk. It had a navy-blue hard-back cover, a red linen spine, and looked like it had once been part of the stationery supplies of a government department circa 1972. The pages were sewn in place rather than glued, and Goodhew immediately saw that the cream paper matched the loose sheet. The book itself was just over a quarter of an inch thick. He opened it at the back and thumbed forward until he located the last used page. The book was almost empty, and he continued to flick forward, turning a total of eleven pages before he reached the front.
A date and the number ‘56’ were inscribed on the inside cover. Did that mean there had been another fifty-five of them? Moran had started on this one a couple of months before he died, so fifty-five of them would probably take him back at least twenty years.
There were no dates, but it seemed as though he’d written something in it every day, commenting that there was ‘nothing to note’, or in some cases abbreviating this to ‘ntn’, rather than skipping a day. His style was rambling, and initially it was difficult to grasp his purpose. He frequently mentioned his daughter Jackie. He felt she had been in some kind of danger, and just as he had on the torn-out sheet, he wrote that he was scared for her. As Goodhew turned each new page, it was her name that constantly jumped out, but the purpose of the journal only hit him as he reached the end of the fifth page.
I have always thought that two things keep me from handing her over, namely my fears for her safety and the slimmest doubt that I am mistaken. But now I think I have been kidding myself. There will be no one left to monitor Jackie once I am gone. I don’t know whether I can ask Richard and Alice, since they have isolated themselves from her; it is as if they know. I only ever know on a day-by-day basis that all is well, but I cannot be sure she won’t do something again. I made excuses for her when David died, but she isn’t a child now. It may be better that she languishes in an institution rather than risk having another innocent family suffer. I think I must visit Martin Reed.
Goodhew’s stomach lurched. The one seperated page had appeared to point to Alice, but the rest of this journal was her father’s documentation of his younger daughter’s guilt. He turned to the sixth page and scanned the words, looking for any reference to the proposed visit to Martin Reed. He spotted it on the opposite page, and he traced the words with his index finger to prevent himself from rushing ahead too quickly:
Why did I visit him in the first place? Did I think that I could learn to sidestep the occasional waves of guilt that swamp me even at this late stage? I know my own shortcomings, and loving Jackie as I do has made me a victim of her.
I think he is a braver man than me, since he wants to face the truth and, despite my intentions to do so, I am incapable of making myself break it to him. Instead, I prefer to think that I am being kinder by keeping the rotten truth from him. If her body turned out to be somewhere else I would have made things worse again, although in my heart of hearts I know I am correct. There are only so many good places to hide a decaying corpse.
By the time Marks returned to the building, the journal was back in its newly sealed envelope, and photocopies of the eleven pages were safely hidden in Goodhew’s inside jacket pocket.
FORTY-THREE
‘My office,’ Marks growled, ‘Now.’ He didn’t wait for a response before he strode off. Goodhew grabbed his phone, the sealed envelope and Joanne Reed’s case notes and darted after his boss.
Marks sat down at his desk, but with no paperwork in front of him. In fact, all that was in front of him were his crossed arms. Body-language experts claimed that folded arms were a sign of ill ease, but from where