The Darkness Around Her

by The Darkness Around Her (retail) (epub)

It was Dan’s turn for the cold smile. ‘Do you know what the hardest part of this job is? Doing it mostly alone. You have a whole police squad looking into your leads. For now, I’ll keep what I know to myself.’

  Zoe turned to go, much quicker than before, the urgency in her stride telling him that her day wasn’t over yet.

  Dan sighed, weariness taking him over after a tiring day. Trials were like that, having to keep the mind focused every single minute of the day, always looking out for that wrong word, that slip-up he might be able to use in the case. So far, however, the prosecution case had gone well. All he had was a gut feeling that something was amiss, and he hadn’t worked out how to make the jurors feel it too.

  In most trials, there was a tipping point. It could be an unexpected comment from a witness, or a flaky witness who turned out to be strong and confident. Or it could go the other way, when the high point of the prosecution case turned out to be vague and inconsistent. The sands shifted and the jury shifted with them.

  In Peter Box’s case, Dan didn’t know what the tipping point would be. The prosecution had already hit its high point with the revelation that Peter’s blood was on Lizzie’s shoe. That point would be repeated throughout the trial. But strong cases can only get weaker. That was Dan’s main hope.

  The court usher picked up some loose papers from the desk, screwing them into a ball. ‘You’ve got a tough one this week, Mr Grant.’

  ‘If they get this far, they’re never easy.’

  ‘You’ll try your hardest, and that’s all that matters.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  Dan picked up his bag and went back out into the court corridor. It was deserted, theatre over for the day, only his own footsteps for company.

  The exit was one way, the street visible outside, with the robing room the other. He didn’t want the lawyerly bonhomie. He took off his tabs and gown and put them in his bag, before unfastening the first button of his shirt. Hoisting his bag over his shoulder, he headed for the exit.

  The day had turned fresher, the warmth in the spring air disappearing after its false start at lunchtime. Dan checked up and down the street, looking for the tall man, but the street was quiet. There were late-afternoon shoppers and office workers making their way home, but no one loitering.

  He pulled his phone from his pocket. It was blinking a blue light. A message. It was from Jayne. I’m following. Will report back.

  Progress. Jayne would find out what he needed to know. He was used to threats, which came with the territory of dealing with crimes. It was the unknown he didn’t like.

  He rummaged in his pocket for his car keys and headed for the car park.

  Twenty-one

  Jayne had almost missed him.

  She’d been distracted by a young mother grappling with bags of shopping, a pram, and two small children, when she spotted movement at the edge of her vision.

  When he came outside, he didn’t look around or give any sign that he’d noticed her. Instead, he headed towards the bus station, his hands jammed in his pockets, his pace quick. Provided she hung back, all she had to do was get on the same bus.

  He trudged across the bus station forecourt, green and blue buses lined up in front of stands highlighted by large red numbers.

  Jayne kept the same pace but always with a few people between them, so that it looked like she was just another weary passenger. She’d have to ask for a ticket to wherever the end stop was and then come back to collect her car, but at least it would get her somewhere.

  But he wasn’t getting on a bus. Instead, he turned towards a stairwell dominated by the stainless-steel doors of a lift. He was heading to the car park above.

  For a moment, she panicked. Her car wasn’t parked too far away but he’d be on the road before she had a chance to catch up. Still, she might be able to get his registration number and work out who he was from that.

  He pressed the lift button and looked around as he waited.

  She fought the urge to duck into a hiding spot, because it would make her more conspicuous. Instead, she stared straight ahead, past the lift entrance, as if she were merely looking for a bus somewhere further along.

  She could feel him watching her, but he must have been satisfied as she walked on past, her gaze never switching back to him, because she heard the doors open, followed by the echo of his feet as he went inside. She knew she couldn’t get into the lift with him; it would make her too memorable. She stopped to check out a bus timetable, running a finger down a column of numbers, until she heard the lift doors close and the whirr of the mechanism taking him upwards. She bolted back into the tiled entrance and watched the numbers light up.

  The numbers stopped rising at four.

  Her footsteps rang loud as she raced up the concrete stairwell. She tried not to breathe in the acrid stench, but by the time she reached the fourth floor, she was panting hard, bending over to regain her breath before she pushed open the door to the car park.

  Although they weren’t on the roof, the walls of the car park were open, and the light and steady breeze from the outside world blinded her for a moment after the dark stillness of the stairwell. A stream of cars was leaving, the engine noises loud as their tyres squealed down the ramps. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she looked along the row of cars and saw him.

  He was by the edge, looking out over the bus station below and talking to someone. A woman with dark skin and a close-cropped afro.

  Jayne skipped up the nearest ramp to the mezzanine level. She crept between the cars closest to the pair and peered down at them through the gap between the floors.

  The woman was much younger than he was, late twenties at the most, smartly dressed in a dark trouser suit and white blouse, but looked as if she was trying to keep herself hidden. He leaned in as he spoke to her, his eyes darting around, whereas she was looking over the wall towards an ugly office block, so that it was hard to get a full view of her face.

  Jayne took her camera from her pocket and snapped a few pictures as they got into separate cars. The man was driving a silver Fiesta, average and forgettable, so she made sure she got a shot of his registration number.

  As the squeal of their tyres was lost in the general noise of the car park, Jayne checked the pictures on her camera. She had them.

  She ran for the stairwell, bolted down the stairs and rushed through the bus station towards her own car, parked a few hundred metres away in an outdoor car park. She looked over her shoulder as she ran and saw the silver Fiesta pull out of the multi-storey and take the road towards the motorway. Her chest was pounding as she reached her car, her hair sticking to her forehead with perspiration. The Fiat started on the second turn of the key and then, with the exhaust rattling as if it was barely attached, she swung it out into the rush-hour traffic.

  She peered ahead, trying to see the Fiesta in one of the queues making stop-start progress towards the motorway and a couple of miles of traffic lights and out-of-town shopping parks. She was despairing of seeing his car again when she thought she spotted him on the long climb to the motorway, driving below the speed limit, steady and careful in the left lane.

  Jayne took up a position behind him, far enough back so as not to raise suspicion.

  The miles passed and not even the faster motorway traffic made the Fiesta speed up. The grey city blight gave way to open fields grazed by cattle, stone villages dotting the distant hilltops.

  They drove fifteen miles before he turned off the motorway and headed towards Whitton, one of the small places that lie along the canal but were now connected to the rest of the county by the motorway, another valley town dominated by lines of old grey terraces and a high brick viaduct. Jayne was able to keep the car in sight but dropped back behind another commuter until the Fiesta turned into a small estate of new-build houses, all open lawns and curved cul-de-sacs.

  He turned into a driveway, but Jayne drove on to a turning point. She turned round in time to see the man unlock the door and disappear
inside.

  She pulled out her notepad and started to jot down all that she’d seen. The car. The address.

  She checked the photographs on the back of her camera and scribbled in her notebook.

  The knock on the window made her yelp.

  The man was glaring through the glass. She thought about driving off but realised that would look worse. Her heart was pounding as she lowered the window.

  ‘I think you need to come inside.’ His voice was quiet, filled with the tiredness of a long day.

  ‘Do I?’

  He nodded and opened her door. ‘You do.’

  Twenty-two

  Trudy closed the door softly, so that Sean wouldn’t know she was back. She needed time on her own. She’d spent the day driving through the hills around Highford, working out what to do next. She hadn’t found any answers.

  She hung her scarf and coat over the end of the bannister rail and looked around the hallway. It was quiet, their haven in the hills. A grandfather clock ticked, an affectation Sean had picked up from an antique shop, trying to finish off the cottage vibe. The floor still had the original black-and-white tiles from when the house was first built, preserved by years of carpets and brought back to life by polish.

  There was a box of books on a chair in the hallway, delivered by Sean’s publisher, the contractual freebies of his autobiography. She picked one up to flick through. It was his big attempt to rehabilitate himself. He’d been cleared but too many people were cynical, not always prepared to see him as innocent, and the book advance would see them through the next couple of years, with public appearances filling the calendar.

  The cover showed him outside the Crown Court, his cheeks red from tears of outrage, standing in front of a microphone as he readied himself to give the speech that he hoped would change the public perception of him. Before the retrial, he’d been the sick child-abuser who’d preyed on his stepdaughter, every mother’s fear about their new boyfriend.

  The retrial had changed that for many people, and Sean had given a tearful speech about how he’d been mistreated by the system, how it had closed its mind to anyone else but him and, as a consequence, the real killer was going unpunished. He’d vowed to continue the fight; not just to clear his name, but to find the real person who ended the life of the girl he’d loved as if she’d been his own child, who’d breathed her last breath in his arms as he held her, unable to save her.

  There were two sections of photographs, dark patches in the pristine white edges.

  She went to the first section.

  It started with shots of Sean as a younger man, unaware of the infamy that would come his way, and then some with Rosie on a family holiday. Sean, the perfect stepfather, sitting behind her on a merry-go-round, both grinning happily, his arms around her. In another, they were relaxing with Rosie’s mother, Karen, on a picnic blanket, the grass of the canal bank behind them.

  She knew the rest of the pictures; she’d helped Sean compile them but it was different seeing them between the pages. It made the story seem more real.

  She put the book back in the box. Not everyone would believe it, of course. They got regular hate mail, particularly by email, but they’d learned long ago to ignore it. It was part of the price for his past.

  There was a noise towards the back of the house. She went into the kitchen. Wooden cupboards and unvarnished furniture. Eggs in a wire basket. Lavender in a stone vase. Pithy slogans on battered metal signs adorned the walls.

  Sean was taking off his boots, grunting with exertion as he threw them on to some newspaper put there for that purpose.

  ‘You been out?’ she said.

  ‘Just checking the boat.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Too many vandals around here.’

  She went to the window and looked out over the lawn, just for the distraction. The boat was their escape. It was complete solitude once they were away from the town. Even when gliding through, they felt apart from it, only ever in transit. Waking up to breakfast at a small country pub or enjoying a glass of wine with ducks and swans for company, damp grass trailing on the water, was idyllic.

  ‘Is it all right?’

  ‘Yes, fine. I’d have gone out in it later but I’ve got something on tonight.’

  ‘Have you?’

  ‘Just an author event at a library.’

  ‘Ah yes, your adoring public need to hear you speak.’

  ‘No, I need to sell some books. Sitting on local justice committees doesn’t put food on the table.’ He straightened, once the boots were off. ‘Where did you go?’

  ‘I went to see Pat Molloy.’

  He unwrapped his scarf and threw it over the back of a chair. ‘Why?’

  ‘Why do you think? His underling came to see us yesterday and seemed pretty intent on making us feel awkward. I wanted to know what was going on. Pat Molloy was your lawyer. His job was to protect you, so why was Dan Grant here?’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Pat was just as hostile.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘It was as if he disliked you.’ She shook her head. ‘No, it was more than dislike. He kept on telling me to ask you, as if he knew you had some secret.’

  Sean went to the sink and poured himself a glass of water.

  ‘Sean, please don’t turn away from me.’

  ‘I’m getting a drink.’

  ‘You’re avoiding me.’

  ‘What do you want me to say?’

  ‘Tell me what Pat meant.’

  ‘Why is it important?’

  ‘It’s important to me, you know that. He didn’t look well. Coughing. Grey. Does he know something about you?’

  ‘It’s fine, relax.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  Sean didn’t move for a few seconds. He gripped the glass tighter and Trudy braced herself, expecting him to throw it, but instead he put it down and turned around. He pulled her in close, his hand round her throat. ‘Don’t worry about Pat Molloy.’

  She closed her eyes and tried not to think about what he could do. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I just do. He doesn’t matter. He was my lawyer, nothing more.’

  She nodded that she understood and he released his grip. She rubbed her neck as she said, ‘I worry, that’s all.’

  ‘You worry too much. We’ll survive. We always do.’

  He pulled her in close again and held her, but she couldn’t relax. The darkness was always close by.

  Twenty-three

  Dan strode through the care home, wanting to get to his father’s room as quickly as possible. He hated visiting the place. The residents were nice enough, and he knew that everyone there had a story to tell, but the care home’s quiet atmosphere amplified how far his father had fallen.

  Dan’s father had been a servant to the trade-union movement, spending late nights in the family kitchen planning campaigns, his evenings lost to secret meetings in smoky pub back rooms. Dan had grown up with talk of revolution, of strikes and protests, tales of battles in the Yorkshire coalfields and poll tax protests in the capital, hearing his father’s anger in the crash of his fist against the kitchen table.

  That fervour had become spent as his father got older, the trade union battles lost one by one, until all he had left were memories of defeats and frustration at a changing world.

  A stroke had weakened him, withered his left arm and confined him to a wheelchair, the man who’d once seemed so fearsome, now broken. A shadow of his former self.

  The corridor was long and dark and too warm, the aromas of the meal that had just been served filling the building, steamed vegetables and meat, the peace broken by the clatter of someone clearing away plates.

  An old woman was sitting at the end of the corridor, staring out of a window. She turned towards Dan but didn’t respond to his greeting as she turned back to the view.

  His father was in room twelve. He knocked. The television was on too loud so he knocked again, not wanting to scare him. The televi
sion went quiet and a familiar gruff voice shouted, ‘What?’

  Dan sighed and went inside.

  His father was sitting in a wheelchair, a glass in his hand half-filled with cider, the squashed plastic bottle on a bookcase.

  Dan raised the bag he’d brought with him. Four more bottles of cider.

  ‘Put them over there.’ His father gestured with his glass towards a cupboard in a part of his room designated as a kitchen, although it amounted to nothing more than a microwave and a kettle, a small fridge on top. He spilled cider on to his shirt.

  Dan put the bottles away and sat down. ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’m stuck in here. What do you think? Do you want a drink?’

  ‘I’m driving.’

  ‘Got your eye on some of the posh stuff, more like.’

  ‘Good wine doesn’t give you hangovers.’

  ‘I didn’t know it was medicinal.’

  Dan smiled. His father infuriated him with his bloody-mindedness, but he knew he’d inherited many of his traits. Stubbornness for one, and a willingness to fight.

  His father took a drink and said, ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘I was passing.’

  ‘You don’t just pass. You call in when you want help, especially when you bring cider.’

  ‘Can’t a son seek guidance from his father?’

  ‘I knew there was something. Go on, what is it?’ He raised his glass. ‘I guess you’ve paid the admission fee.’

  ‘Pat Molloy’s packing up at the end of the month.’

  His father raised an eyebrow. ‘Is he now? Why’s that?’

  ‘He’s ill. Cancer.’

  His father looked towards the window, with a view to a small patch of grass and a fence. ‘Cancer’s a bitch.’

  Dan had lost his mother to cancer, and he’d seen her decline taking its toll on his father.

  He turned back to Dan. ‘The town will be missing a good man. He’s served us well.’

  ‘Yeah, he’s hinted before that you used to send work to him.’

  ‘It was rough back in the eighties. Everyone was against us. The courts. The police. If someone local got into trouble, we sent them to Pat. He didn’t always charge. With Pat, it never seemed like it was about the money.’