He particularly liked a challenge when it came to women. Nothing should be too easy, he told himself as he got dressed again. Jude was too easy. I just had to show up.
It had been like that at university, with women throwing themselves at him—Jude had told him one night that she had “queued” to be with him. He’d laughed.
“I was a spotty undergraduate and you were a goddess. I should have been queuing for you,” he’d said. Smooth. And she’d taken off her dress. Worked every time.
In truth, he’d never been a spotty undergraduate. His skin had survived adolescence largely unscathed and his looks had grown into his gangly frame. His seriousness at school, mocked by his peers, had somehow become an attractive depth at college. He’d suddenly found that he just had to be Will and he was adored. He’d loved being adored.
When he walked into a room, people turned to look at him and moved towards him, twitching with anticipation like iron filings round a magnet. They wanted to be near him. They wanted people to see that they were near him. The Golden Boy. It could have gone to his head—well, it did, obviously—but he didn’t let it show.
But it was frighteningly fragile, this adoration. People were fickle. You couldn’t trust them. So he’d made it seem as if he didn’t realize how brilliant he was. He’d laughed at himself and pointed out his flaws to anyone who would listen—“Made a mess of that last essay. How did you do?”
It made him even more attractive. Tutors and fellow students were charmed by his modesty and tumbled over themselves to reassure the Golden Boy that he was brilliant. Then he tumbled them into bed. Even the tutors succumbed. Indeed, they were sometimes easier to seduce than the undergraduates. Dear old Dr. Foster didn’t wait until I’d closed the door before flinging himself at me. Heady days.
He’d left Cambridge with a double first to become a rising star at a Russell Group university and had reveled in it to begin with. His department won grants and prizes, he published regularly and was feted in his field, and the perks included dalliances with a healthy handful of undergraduates each year.
The fallow years came when he emerged from that man-boy stage and his freshness started to curdle.
He’d discovered, at thirty-nine, that he was not the only wolf in the pack. Academia was full of Wills. He’d kept up his body count of willing girls, but they no longer queued.
Sometimes he had to offer an A grade to clinch the deal. It was a colleague in the sciences who told him about Rohypnol—joking but not joking, he realized. The colleague could get the drugs from a friend in the business, he told Will. They’d come on the scene recently and were proving popular with older men who had to try harder to get laid.
“It’s ten times more effective than Valium,” his colleague had said. “You can’t taste it or see it in a drink, and it makes them act totally plastered in about twenty minutes. Best bit is that they don’t remember a thing in the morning.”
He was nervous the first time he used it, planning how he would explain things if it went wrong, if the girl woke up or remembered what had happened. But he didn’t have to.
It wasn’t as satisfying, obviously, with your conquest semicomatose, but it did the job. And no one was any wiser the next day.
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He’d met Alistair Soames in Howard Street. Al was the landlord of Jude’s house and had come to collect the rent one night. The Barbie doll owed money and was hiding in her room, and Will had been left talking to Al for half an hour while Jude pretended to search. It turned out they had a couple of friends in common and Al had made him laugh with his stories about his array of weird tenants. Will had liked him immediately.
The two men had arranged to meet for a drink the next night in a Chelsea pub. They’d drunk flat beer and then gone back to Al’s nearby flat to talk until midnight about work, sex, the property market, sex, and the future.
“I’ve had a bit of trouble with the ladies,” Al had confessed as the whisky loosened his inhibitions. “And the police. Need to be more careful these days.”
And Will had told him about his little helpers.
“They don’t remember anything?” Al’s eyes had lit up. “Maybe slipping them something to keep them quiet is the way forward,” Al had said. “Look, we should team up. I’ve got the contacts and party invites, you’ve got the know-how, Will. Perfect combination.”
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It had been fun picking targets—they went for a variety of ages and types just to challenge themselves—and dangerous. Thrillingly dangerous. Barbara had been a mistake—she hadn’t drunk enough of her drink for the drug to work properly and they hadn’t noticed in their haste—but she hadn’t told anyone. He’d made sure of that.
And Emma. Well, the risk had been worth it.
He wondered if she’d made up the pregnancy. He’d definitely worn a condom for the photo session—he always did to cover his traces—but he couldn’t remember now if he’d worn one in the car. Or if Emma remembered the photo of Barbara. Didn’t really matter now.
No one will believe her, even if she does go to the police. Not with a history of mental illness. Sad woman, he thought.
He poured himself another cup of Earl Grey and allowed himself a stroll down memory lane. A frisson of nostalgia. Pity he hadn’t kept any of the photos.
SEVENTY-FIVE
Angela
TUESDAY, MAY 1, 2012
The weekend with Louise had started disastrously. Her daughter had booked them both a spa break, telling Angela she could have a massage and they could just relax away from everything. But the place was full of hen parties with shrieking women in the Jacuzzi and drinking games in the lounges.
Louise and Angela had retreated to their overheated twin-bedded room when it all got too much and pretended to read their books while they waited for their treatments. Angela had noticed that her daughter’s bookmark didn’t move over the whole two days they were there. It still stuck out an inch from the cover. But she had been no better, hiding her thoughts behind the beach novel she’d brought with her.
She didn’t tell Louise she’d cried during the massages; the soothing hands of the beauticians had made her feel suddenly defenseless and she’d felt she had to apologize. Everyone was very understanding when she explained—a bit too interested in one case and Angela had found herself telling all the details of Alice’s disappearance as she lay naked on a table.
By Sunday night, both of them had been ready to go home, but they’d paid until Monday morning and so they stayed. Angela was so glad they had because, with the bridal mobs gone, they could sit together and talk.
Louise had told her mother what it had been like growing up in a family tainted by tragedy. She’d held nothing back for the first time, even admitting that she’d hated Alice at times for ruining everyone’s happiness.
“I know she was just a baby, Mum, but I never thought of her like that. I never knew her. There were no pictures. She was just this black cloud hanging over everything. No one could talk about it in case we made you cry. I am glad she’s been found, Mum, but she’s still making you cry.”
Angela had been mortified. She’d been so bound up in her own feelings, and her determination to protect her children from them, that she hadn’t noticed their unhappiness.
“Your dad said I shouldn’t talk about it, after a while, because I was upsetting you and Patrick,” she explained. “I wish I’d known how you felt. I’ll try not to cry anymore, Lou. You’re right. We need to get on with our lives now. We’ll have the funeral for Alice as a family—is that all right?”
Louise had nodded and reached for her mother’s hand. “Of course, Mum.”
“And then I’ll concentrate on the future,” Angela had said. “On you and Patrick and the grandchildren.”
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