Frannie reaches for the man’s wrist with the other hand. ‘I can feel a flickering,’ she says hopefully, and Joe grabs his other arm.
‘It’s your own pulse,’ he says, after a few seconds. ‘In your fingertip. Because you’re frightened. I’m sorry. There’s no pulse.’
‘Keep going, then,’ Frannie says hysterically.
‘I am.’
Joe is staring at the body as he pumps away. Even if he gets the heart going again, it would be useless. He will be brain dead. Half an hour.
It’s futile.
He sits back on his heels, looking at Frannie. All three siblings’ hands are covered in blood. The man’s body is stamped with their red fingerprints.
Cathy breathes into the man’s mouth, then listens again. After two more breaths, she must come to the same conclusion as Joe, because she stops too. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘No, no,’ Frannie says. She sits cross-legged, just as she did when they were children, her head in her hands, one still holding the wrist of the body to her face like a comforter. Frannie, the baby of the family. ‘No, please, Cathy – Joe. Please keep going,’ she says.
‘He’s cold,’ Cathy says quietly. ‘He’s lost a lot of blood. His heart isn’t responding.’
Frannie is shaking and shaking her head, over and over. ‘No,’ she starts saying. ‘No – don’t say it, Cathy, keep going, keep going.’
‘He’s dead,’ Cathy says. She looks to Joe for confirmation.
‘I’m so sorry, Fran,’ he says. He reaches for her, but she doesn’t respond, her head still in her hands.
‘I was on the wrong side of the road,’ Frannie says. ‘I forgot. I forgot they drive on the right here.’ She drops her head towards the body like a condemned woman. Joe stares at her, aghast. Cathy closes her eyes. ‘I’ll go to prison,’ Frannie says in a voice so quiet Joe has to strain to hear her.
He looks at Frannie. Then at the body.
He knows the man is dead. But what he hadn’t quite pieced together is that this means his sister is a killer.
3.
Cathy
Cathy’s whole body starts to tremble. She’s gone cold, out here in the hot, suffocating night.
‘We – I … the policeman saw us arguing with him at the market,’ Frannie says. ‘They’ll assume … they’ll think … please tell me what to do.’
‘I can’t,’ Cathy says.
‘If I call anyone now,’ Frannie says. ‘I mean – I’ll go to prison, won’t I? No – no. This can’t be true. Is it?’ she implores them.
Cathy’s eyes become wet. She blinks.
Joe’s still sitting, staring into the distance.
Frannie is wiping her nose on her forearm. Something about it is so raw, so primitive, from her usually glamorous sister, who only last month drove two hundred miles to fetch a vintage vase that she just had to have.
Cathy is thinking, suddenly, against her will, about DNA. Fingerprints. Hairs. Fibres. Skin cells. They’re all over this body, this crime scene.
‘Right,’ Joe says softly. ‘That policeman. The one who thought you were … giving him a hard time.’ He looks at Frannie, then despondently down at the body. ‘They’re tough here.’
‘The police?’ Cathy says.
‘Yeah,’ Joe says, apparently not feeling the need to explain. Cathy stares at him expectantly. She knows what happened with Frannie, obviously. But not Joe.
‘There was a thing in a bar on the first night,’ Joe says. ‘This guy cracked on to Lydia.’
‘So …’
‘Well,’ Joe says, and Cathy’s sure she can detect a blush. ‘You know.’
‘You hit him?’
‘Might have,’ Joe says. He looks away from her. He’s always been this way. Quick to anger, then embarrassed by it, cagey about things he’s done. He would never hurt anybody he cared about, they have always told themselves.
The ground is warm underneath Cathy’s legs. She stares at her sister. ‘I have to call an ambulance,’ Cathy says.
‘No – no! We can’t, we can’t,’ Frannie cries, her voice ragged, hoarse in places, phlegmy in others.
‘What are you doing?’ Cathy says in the quiet. She can barely make out her sister’s features in the gloom, but she knows her so well. She knows all of her moods. Her sunny resignation when her latest relationship ended. ‘Oh, sod it, I’ll have a gin and forget about him,’ she’d laughed, her nose wrinkling attractively, but how, later, she texted Cathy from the bath, asking if there was something wrong with her, if she’d ever find somebody, if maybe she’d be alone with Paul, her son, forever.
Now Cathy can imagine her expression, even though she can’t see it – streaked eyeliner, red nose. Her holiday freckles are out.
But, for once, she doesn’t know what to say.
‘Will an ambulance be able to help him?’ Frannie says. She comes down to Cathy’s level, right on to the ground, like an animal.
‘No,’ Cathy says. ‘Not now.’
‘And if I do call one – what’s going to happen to me?’ Frannie’s hands are twisting together. Her shoulders are hunched. Cathy is aware of some dim notion that she will remember this conversation for the rest of her life. ‘What’s going to happen to Paul?’ she says.
Cathy stares at the car. At the body. Thinks of the policeman who witnessed Frannie arguing with this man earlier today. Thinks of Joe’s encounter. The police will think they’re trouble, the Plant family.
‘I don’t know,’ Cathy says. ‘I don’t know.’
‘I can’t call one. I can’t.’
‘We could say it was me,’ Cathy says desperately. Tears start to clog her throat.
‘But you were at the market too. They’d infer … that it wasn’t an accident.’
Cathy drops her head into her hands, massaging her forehead. She can’t think in these circumstances. Her brain isn’t working. ‘We could say we found him,’ she mumbles. ‘By the roadside?’
‘It’s too late,’ Frannie says. ‘It’s too fucking late. It’s been too long. Our car – the hire car’s dented. And it’s hired. We can’t just get rid of it. I’m fucked. I’m fucked.’ She looks at Cathy and then at Joe, who has his red hands over his face. ‘I’m so fucked. Please do something. Please help me. Please help Paul.’
Cathy’s mind races. A few feet away, Joe is finally sick. A fountain of vino rosso adding to the blood, to the mess, on the dirt road. The smell drifts over to her – acidic, tart – and Cathy thinks she might throw up too.
‘Paul’s got only me,’ Frannie says. ‘I mean – we have to … to cover it up.’
They sit in silence for a few minutes.
‘This is fucked,’ Joe says eventually, wiping his mouth on his t-shirt. ‘You cannot seriously be asking us to – to what? What’re you saying, Fran?’ His eyes swivel towards hers.
‘I’m not saying anything,’ Frannie cries. ‘I’m saying if I – or you – call anyone now, I’m going to go to prison and leave Paul alone for a decade. Probably more.’
Cathy looks again at the body. Their fingerprints are all over it. On his skin. On his clothes. And inside the wound on his side. Their DNA mingling, binding them to this injury, this accident, forever. This man in front of her isn’t only a body. He is a body of evidence too. Cathy’s shoulders come out in goosebumps.
She begins to shake, despite the hot night. She meets Frannie’s eyes. They’re wide, like a panther’s, only the whites visible in the dark night. ‘What are you saying?’ Cathy whispers.
A sad expression arranges itself across Frannie’s brows.
‘I can’t do this,’ Joe says. ‘I can’t do it.’ He stands up and turns away from them. ‘Not even for you,’ he throws over his shoulder at Frannie.
‘Oh, walk off, why don’t you,’ Frannie says. ‘Go punch something? Will that help?’ She glances back at Cathy, who avoids her gaze. It’s not the right time to bring up Joe’s temper.
‘You’ve killed someone,’ Jo
e screams. Cathy and Frannie sit in shocked silence while his words echo around the Verona countryside.
Cathy looks at her, now that she is close enough to see her properly. She was wrong about the expression. There aren’t any tears, no red nose.
Joe begins fussing with the car, shining his torch light on to it and rubbing at it.
‘I want to go back,’ Frannie says, closing her eyes and looking heavenwards. ‘I want to go back to when it never happened.’ The tears come now, leaking sideways out of each eye. ‘Please let me go back.’ She looks straight upwards, into the navy-blue sky, scattered with stars by God’s careless hand.
‘I can’t,’ Cathy says, her voice hoarse, thinking of little Paul, innocent Paul, who loves cheese sandwiches, Party Rings, and his mother.
They sit in silence for a few seconds.
‘We have to bury his body,’ Frannie says. She wipes at her cheek and leaves another bloodstain across it. It’s crusted and dry. She meets Cathy’s eyes in the gloom. ‘We have to bury the body.’
4.
Now
Jason’s Office, early February, 5.00 p.m.
It’s the coldest February since records began, apparently. It’s late afternoon, in Birmingham city centre. Corporation Street is a white-out, the air dense with a thick winter mist, the pavements frosted, scuffed in places with black footprints.
It’s just before five. Paul will be at nursery until half past, then to Mum and Dad’s, where he will be handed back to me without fanfare, without conversation, since they found it all out.
A tram goes by as I walk up Corporation Street. It’s lined with trees that haven’t had leaves on them for months. The tail end of winter that seems to drag on like a flatline.
I press the buzzer that perfectly fits the shape of my fingertip and soon I’m on the second floor and sitting opposite Jason, who has his legs crossed at the knee. He has made us both tea, which surprised me.
I cradle mine, even though it is burning my hands. Outside his cocooned room with his two electric heaters and his books, I can hear the muted conversation of a colleague of his, and I’m momentarily reminded that this isn’t Jason’s life: it’s only his job, something he leaves in the evenings and doesn’t think about until the next morning. Maybe.
‘How’s your week been?’ he says to me. He has dark hair and a greying beard, like a wolf. He fiddles absent-mindedly with the earring he wears in his left ear. This is how Jason operates. Heavy, professional conversations dressed up casually. He doesn’t believe much in convention. He chews gum in our sessions and makes too many drinks, leaving teaspoons scattered on the desk where his illegal kettle, as he calls it, lives. But his brain is lightning-fast. When I mention small details, his eyes narrow, and, a little while later, I find that we are discussing them again, going in at a new angle that he has orchestrated without my knowing.
‘All right,’ I say. He sips his mug of tea, not taking his eyes off me, not filling the silence. ‘Tough, I suppose. Like every week,’ I add, staring at his wall of books. The room smells of them. That old, papery, dusty smell. There seems to be no arrangement whatsoever. Some are back to front. Some lie on their sides along the tops of others. Letters and postcards and flyers are tucked in beside them.
‘You?’ I say, and Jason gives a little laugh out of the side of his mouth.
‘Yeah, had better,’ he says. He checks his watch discreetly. I always see him at five o’clock, and he always accompanies me out into the foyer and leaves with me, heading off in the opposite direction, at ten to six, no matter the weather, no matter how busy he is. I have no idea where he goes, but I do know that it isn’t the train station. He once cryptically referred to it as a long-standing appointment.
‘I have been thinking a lot about Verona,’ I say. He reaches for the tea again, downs half of it in a gulp. It’s funny the clues and signs you spot in a professional relationship. I have no idea if Jason has a partner, a child even, but I know the sound he makes when he gulps too-hot tea. I can tell that he only irons the parts of his shirt that will be on show.
I like this appointment slot at the moment, because the sun sets during it. I go in in the light and emerge into the darkness, which seems fitting somehow.
Jason raises his eyebrows at me. ‘What element of it?’ he asks, his expression open.
‘I guess – if I could have stopped it,’ I say quietly. ‘I should have stopped it. I don’t mean the crime. I mean – the cover-up. My siblings’ cover-up.’
Jason looks beyond me, out of the window, and on to the busy city below. A bus hisses as it pulls away into the mist, disappearing almost completely. Two pigeons are on the windowsill, close enough for me to see their gnarled toes, despite the spikes built there to deter them. The sky is beginning to darken at the edges.
‘We all know,’ Jason says, fiddling with the handle of his mug, ‘that looking backwards leads to sadness, and forwards to anxiety. All we’ve got is now.’
I feel my shoulders relax, and take a breath, the air pushing out my tense stomach. ‘I just – I just don’t know,’ I say, ignoring his advice. He doesn’t labour the point, merely sits there listening, as he is paid to do. ‘There were so many forks in the road, and I don’t know –’
‘Talk me through one of them,’ he says. ‘Your thought process.’
‘The piece of paper we found on Will. William.’
‘Yes. But, Fr –’
‘Nobody knew how significant it would become,’ I interrupt. ‘And I just keep thinking – over and over – about the could-have-beens. If only this, if only that …’ My voice catches as it trails off. ‘Anything but – be here, really. We made so many mistakes.’
‘I know,’ Jason says quietly. ‘I mean – of course you did. I’d be worried if you hadn’t. Look,’ he says, then stops, appearing to think. ‘To stay in the present – could you – can you think of Paul?’
I close my eyes. Paul. He’s looking more and more like Joe every day. ‘Living up to his middle name,’ Joe said to me, years and years ago. In another life. Before Verona. Sometimes, if I bring Paul very close to me, it is as though I am looking into my brother’s smiling eyes. Brown, straight lashes that point downwards, heavy lids. I almost expect a wisecrack, a flash of quick irritation. Things that belong to Joe and only Joe.
A ginger-haired girl and a woman who is obviously her mother walk by on the street outside. I stare at them. She’s maybe eight. Old to be holding her mother’s hand. I wonder if Paul will hold my hand when he’s eight. I can’t imagine him at eight. He is still so little. Cheeks the colour and texture of fresh, warm peaches. Folds of fat around his elbows and wrists.
‘I offload to you,’ I say to Jason. ‘I don’t let Paul know about it. About why we’re all estranged. About where everyone is. I don’t think he will remember – you know. I don’t think Paul will remember those days when we all worked together and lived in a row of three cottages.’
I close my eyes and can remember them immediately. Rendered white on the outside. Ivy around the windows. Beams above that creaked in the winter rain and winds. Vibrant gardens that smelt of florals.
‘I know.’ Jason reaches to straighten a paper on the table in front of us. ‘But maybe that’s for the best.’ He smiles at me warmly, and the weather seems to thaw outside, just slightly.
5.
Then
Joe
Joe’s mouth tastes acrid, like he’s swallowed poison. His limbs are trembling.
‘What else are we supposed to do?’ Frannie says. Joe wishes she would stop asking him questions. He doesn’t usually mind. Mostly, it’s charming. ‘So,’ she had said right before their holiday, arriving in work wearing a kimono, ‘how long until you send me home for wearing this?’
‘Five minutes,’ he’d said.
Frannie had thrown her head back and laughed. ‘But I’ll still do the job! And look lovely.’
God, she could make him laugh with her verve and her randomness. A fucking kimono.
But nobody is laughing tonight.
‘I am not burying a body,’ Joe says.
‘Neither am I.’ Cathy’s voice is tight.
He runs a hand through his hair. It’s still snarled from sleep. He doesn’t know what they’re supposed to do, but what he does know is that nobody is calling the police.
He has downplayed what happened in the bar on their first night here. He and Lydia had headed gallantly into Verona as soon as their flight landed. One of the many things he loves about Lydia – apart from the fact that she’s fucking funny – is her willingness to embrace life, to squeeze experiences out of it like fresh orange juice. They’d stood on a terrace outside a restaurant, the smell of garlic and candle wax on the breeze, the softly illuminated arches of the Verona Arena across the street from them. Lydia’s legs were long and lean and bare, and she had on the perfume she only ever wore on holiday, suffusing him with good-time memories.
But then it had turned sour. A sleazy man, Vespa helmet under his arm, had brushed past Lydia. Joe had watched, eyes like saucers, as his hand cupped Lydia’s bum, just like that, as though it was his to touch and hold however he liked. Joe was squaring up to him without a second’s hesitation.
A weird kind of pleasure accompanies Joe’s temper, though he’d never admit it to anybody. It’s like popping a champagne cork. He felt complete relief as his shoulders thrust forwards, as his fist connected with the man’s cheek. Just one punch, a pretty light one, a telling-off. Two animals would do the same. The man had invited him outside and Joe, still full of testosterone and that pleasure-pain, had followed. Somewhere in the dimness behind him, a blur of heady-smelling plants and fairy lights puncturing the night, he was aware of Lydia protesting, but that part of him, his sensible brain, wasn’t in charge.
Two Polizia di Stato stood outside, smoking cigarettes and laughing. The man had led Joe to them, shown them the mark on his cheek. Joe had thought they’d brush it off when he explained, but they didn’t. Instead, they squared up to him. Their threats weren’t only physical, not only evident in their large chests, their huge hands. They said they could arrest him easily, their lilting English feeling sinister in the hot night. They offered to take him for a chat. One of them gestured to a nearby alleyway.
That Night Page 2