‘Seems a bit drastic,’ Thorne said.
Hendricks smiled and tore into a packet of crisps with his teeth. ‘Like that pair you’re after.’
‘What?’
‘The couple …’
‘Conrad and Sarah.’
‘Right. Similar sort of situation, when you think about it. They’re reliant on each other, aren’t they? Same as we are. Keeping the secret, I mean. If one of them … weakens, they’re both screwed.’ Hendricks stuffed a handful of crisps into his mouth. ‘So, who’s the weakest in our little chain, do you reckon?’
FIFTY-THREE
The weed made Sarah think about her father again, but that was fine. She had read interviews with rock stars and writers who talked about the way smoking had opened them up creatively; freed something. Maybe this was the same sort of thing, because it certainly helped her think a little more clearly.
It helped her plan.
Yes, it was painful to recall some of the things her father had done, the way his cruelty – his use of her – had made her feel, but the pain was bearable, the dull ache or the sharp sting of it, because it was something she could harness.
You know I don’t mind if it hurts a little bit …
She remembered the last time she had seen him, dribbling and unable to speak in a room that stank of urine and overcooked liver, how that disgusting smell had lifted her spirits. The happy stink of getting what you deserved. She remembered just how much she had enjoyed making it clear exactly what she thought of him, knowing he could not answer back or get away, and she would never forget the weight she had felt lifting from her as she marched out of the place, smiling at the hard-faced nurses she would never have to see again.
Thanks so much for taking care of him. Dad seems ever so happy.
That had been a day or two after Peter had cracked and come clean about his all-but-adolescent bit on the side. The fling and then the pregnancy, the mistake the poor, confused soul had been ‘unable to help himself’ making. Perhaps it was having to deal with Peter that had given her the strength to finally confront her father, and once that boil had been well and truly lanced, striding away from that shitty nursing home, she had made the decision that she would never allow herself to be betrayed by a man again.
The new woman she was becoming would not put up with that.
Sarah smiled and took a long drag on her joint.
None of the new women …
Conrad was mooching around in the house somewhere, and as she hissed out smoke she remembered the way he’d looked up at her that morning as she moved on top of him. Lost in it. The way he’d probably looked when they’d been doing it the night before, though she hadn’t been able to see his face then, for obvious reasons.
Grunting and sweating, fucking his anger away.
Whatever else was going on, however scared and unsure he might be, he was still enjoying her.
He still loved her, she was certain of that.
Love alone would never be enough though, sadly, because she and Jamie could not live with doubt. They needed commitment, and the fact that Conrad no longer seemed willing or able to provide it tore at her heart. Whatever he had done and, more important, whatever he might yet do, still she would have given almost anything to have the man she had thought Conrad was back.
The two of them and whatever the two of them had become.
Above and beyond everything …
Moving on would not be easy, but Sarah had grown used to it and had steeled herself for doing whatever would prove necessary. In the end, all that mattered was keeping herself and her son safe. She dropped the remains of the joint on to the floor of the garage and ground it into the concrete good and hard as she gave herself a talking-to.
Whatever doesn’t kill you, all that.
The mistake she had been unable to help herself making.
She had thought that bonds forged in blood would be that much stronger than those forged by it, but clearly she had been wrong.
Conrad perched on the edge of the sofa, flipping aimlessly through TV channels and scratching at the livid rash on his arm that had appeared overnight. It was a nervous thing, he knew that, the same rash he’d suffered with on and off as a teenager, when exams had loomed or things weren’t going too well with some girl. Sarah had seemed genuinely upset at seeing it first thing that morning, having noticed it only once she’d had what she wanted from him in bed. She had fussed over him as if the rash was a symptom of something terminal, which as far as Conrad was concerned, it was; talking baby-talk and pressing a hand to his forehead. She had lowered her head to gently kiss the red welts and promised to pick some cream up on her way home from school drop-off.
She’d stared hard at him when she’d said that, watching for some reaction, testing him.
‘Fuck’s sake.’ Conrad tossed the TV remote away and resumed scratching.
When things weren’t going too well …
It was a wonder that the rash wasn’t covering him, head to foot.
The woman Sarah had threatened had called him three times already today and he had been able to do nothing but sit and let it ring. Worse, he had held the phone out towards Sarah, so she could watch him refusing to take the call. He had told her the woman’s name so that now she would recognise it whenever it came up on his screen; so that she would know he was ignoring her.
It had pleased her, no question about that. Brownie points.
She had told him what a good boy he was being as she’d rubbed the cream into his arm, told him it was time they put these teething troubles behind them. She said that she’d always be there for him, because he was her best friend.
Conrad felt somewhere between a pampered pet mutt and an attack dog.
Kept, either way. Owned …
Fed and fucked and forced to do God only knew what, whenever she decided the time was right.
He scratched and scratched until the welts began to bleed, while he tried to forget the beach and the look on that boy’s face, a dusting of sand stuck to the sweat on his cheeks. The bloody graze on his own palm. The sound of that teacher’s skull shattering and the low moan before the hammer came down again.
We should celebrate. We should celebrate this …
When the doorbell rang, he sat and waited for Sarah to answer it, but when she failed to appear, he went to the door himself. He signed for the bulky parcel, almost certainly more toys or kids’ clothes.
‘Enjoy the rest of your day,’ the delivery man said.
Conrad watched the man leave and thought how easy it would be to follow him. To cut and run. To grab what few things he needed, dash to his car and drive away right then, without looking back, without ever having to see her again.
What would Sarah do, if he did? What could she do?
She could not go running to the police and tell them about him and what he’d done without incriminating herself. The only possible reason he could think of for her doing anything so stupid would simply be to punish him for leaving, for daring to abandon her, but would she sacrifice her freedom for that?
Her own and her precious, make-believe boy’s?
He watched the delivery man climbing back into his van, remembering the night Sarah had attacked him. The rage and the violence that a few lies had unleashed. His hand moved to the bruise on his face, which was starting to yellow.
She might go to the police anyway.
Like a dog sloping back to its own vomit, Conrad closed the front door and walked slowly into the kitchen. He looked at the worktop she had kissed him against, punched him against. He was shaking as he tossed the parcel as hard as he possibly could into the corner.
Thorne was grateful to finally get back to his flat, to dump the overnight bag he’d been dragging around all day. He dropped it on to the bed then immediately began digging through the assortment of CDs he’d brought back from Helen’s, searching for the Patsy Cline anthology he’d been thinking about since he left the pub.
Patsy half smiling a
nd lit blue on the cover, sultry and doomed.
Once he’d loaded the album, he tossed away the junk mail that had arrived in his absence and rinsed the dirty mug and plate he’d left in the sink two mornings earlier. He wandered back into the sitting room and stared at one of the empty, off-white walls, nodding along with the music and thinking that the weird, seemingly arbitrary way that memory worked might be something else he could talk to Melita Perera about.
These were songs his mother had loved, that he could remember her singing. ‘Walking After Midnight’, ‘Sweet Dreams’, ‘Three Cigarettes in the Ashtray’. Fond memories, often recalled, while those of his mother busy at an easel had for some reason been filed away at the back of his brain, misplaced and unreachable until only an hour or so before.
He made a mental note to call Auntie Eileen when he got the chance.
It was probably not, Thorne decided in the end, that mysterious. Those memories which defied their natural propensity to fade were usually the ones attached in some way to music. Didn’t most people talk about how a particular tune could call to mind a landscape not seen in years or the face of an old friend in perfect detail? Just a line or two sometimes, a snatch of a lyric. It was certainly true for Thorne, even if, occasionally, the associated memories were not quite so welcome. There were melodies which would, without fail, conjure images of killers or crime scenes he had hoped to have forgotten. One particular Eurythmics track, which had drifted down from an upstairs flat years before, would for ever prompt the memory of a particular spatter-pattern – vivid against pale-green anaglypta – and the peculiar arrangement of the victim’s waxy limbs on the carpet below.
One of the more benign occupational hazards, Thorne supposed.
Just so long as murder never screwed up a Hank Williams song …
He walked back into the bedroom and began sorting through his bag. He lobbed dirty socks and pants towards the open washing basket then walked across, picked the pants up from the floor and dropped them in. He took out the cardboard file he’d taken to Glasgow, opened it and laid three printouts on the bed.
The e-fits of Conrad, the photograph of Sarah, taken in that coffee shop.
Perfectly on cue, Patsy Cline began to sing ‘Crazy’. Strange how that shit happened to him a good deal as well.
He stared down at the couple who had done so much worse than tarnish a few memories. Who had targeted then killed the same way someone else might buy a ring or a bunch of flowers; pledging themselves to one another in murder and creating what Thorne did not doubt were a few precious memories of their own.
He could only hope Melita Perera had been right.
These couples tend to fall out in the end …
Thorne began to get undressed, happy to leave his clothes where they fell and thinking about something Hendricks had said as they’d left the Grafton Arms. It was the tail-end of the conversation they had begun in the bar, the parallels Hendricks had drawn, and Thorne had quickly dismissed, between a pair of cold-blooded killers and the awkward situation Hendricks, Thorne and Tanner now found themselves in.
Thankfully, they had come back to Conrad and Sarah before last orders.
‘Can’t get a much more co-dependent relationship than those two,’ he had said. ‘I mean, they can’t afford to fall out, can they? Each one of them is the other one’s alibi, but one stupid row about taking the bins out and before you know it, they’re a witness for the prosecution.’
FIFTY-FOUR
Sarah stopped dead, then took half a step back, the few seconds that followed stretching like a scream growing louder: from the instant she turned into the supermarket aisle and saw the woman at the far end, until the moment when the woman looked up and their eyes met; the paralysis of blind panic taking hold, Sarah’s brain telling her to turn on her heels and head straight for the exit, but her legs refusing to obey one simple, urgent instruction.
Shoppers stepping around her, muttering and shaking heads.
A few seconds, during which the only thing she knew with complete certainty was that Conrad had been right. Misguided in so many ways, of course and probably thinking only about himself, but unquestionably right about this. Helpless and struggling to swallow, rooted to the spot, Sarah knew that, whatever else had been going through her head at the time, she should have listened to him.
They should have run.
Then, somewhat tentatively, the woman waved, and it was clear there was nothing that could be done to avoid the confrontation. Sarah waved back and began walking down the aisle, moving faster as the panic began to lift; her confidence, her strength, growing with every step because, even from this distance, it was patently obvious that the woman waiting for her at the far end was a damn sight more scared than she was.
‘Oh, my God!’ Sarah did not have to fake a smile, enjoying the look on the woman’s face as she stared forlornly down at the phone in her hand, well aware that she did not have enough time to use it. ‘It’s so great to see you …’
The woman just managed a poorly manufactured smile in return then slipped the phone back into a Hermès handbag as though surrendering her grip on a life raft. She muttered, ‘Yeah …’
Sarah shook her head in pantomime disbelief. She said, ‘So great,’ then laid her basket on the floor before moving quickly across to hug Heather like a long-lost friend.
Elated and fierce, like she needed it.
When she finally stepped out of a decidedly one-way embrace, Sarah manoeuvred the woman’s trolley to the side of the aisle, then took both Heather’s hands in hers.
Heather said, ‘Listen, Sarah—’
Sarah shook her head and squeezed. ‘I know, you’ve got questions. Bloody hell, of course you have, and I promise to answer all of them.’
‘The police …’
‘It’s fine. You’ve already talked to them, I suppose?’
Heather swallowed hard. ‘They came to the school.’
The tremor in the woman’s voice was music to Sarah’s ears. Like the rest of them, Heather had always been so confident, so sure of herself. ‘Yeah, obviously.’
‘A teacher was killed.’
Sarah shook her head, sadly. ‘I know. I saw it on the news.’
‘They were asking about you.’
‘Look, it’s all really complicated, that stupid business with Jamie, but I will explain. It’s just a bit difficult … here.’ She stood aside as an old woman reached past to pick a bag of flour from the shelves, then noticed that Heather was looking anxiously around. ‘What?’
‘Is Conrad with you?’
‘No.’ Sarah laughed. ‘Not the shopping type.’
‘I think he’s the one the police are interested in.’ Heather nodded and swallowed. Something ticked just beneath her eye. ‘Are you still … together?’
Sarah’s face arranged itself into an expression she had come to rely on whenever she had been found out before. An awkward conversation at one set of school gates or another. Obviously, this was a little more serious than a few questions about a child nobody had ever seen, but she hoped it would do the trick.
Brave, despite everything, and determined to confide something that was all but unbearable to articulate.
This is so difficult for me, so painful.
Please trust me, I’m doing my best because I really want to tell you.
The truth is, you’re the only one I can tell …
She said, ‘Why don’t we pay for this stuff, then get out of here?’
Somewhat nervously, Heather suggested that, seeing as Sarah only had a few bits and pieces in a basket, it would be easier for her to go to the designated six-items-or-less checkout, while Heather nosed her trolley into a small queue.
‘It’ll probably be quicker,’ she said, her voice cracking a little. ‘Up to you, though …’
From her own position near a till fifteen feet away, Sarah kept a close watch on those perfectly manicured hands wrapped tight around the handle of the shopping trolley; guessing that, each
time Heather turned to look at her, smiling or shaking her head at the time those ahead of her were taking, she was almost certainly hoping that Sarah might have found herself distracted just long enough for Heather to get to her phone.
It would only take a few seconds to dial 999 and she probably wouldn’t even need to take the phone out of the bag. Sarah didn’t think Heather was brave enough to try, but she wasn’t going to give the woman the chance to prove her wrong.
She never took her eyes off her.
She was already thinking ahead.
She simply smiled back whenever Heather glanced across, like she was still thrilled that they had run into one another. It had only ever been a matter of time, of course, until something like this happened. Conrad had known that, had tried to warn her. It was why he’d suggested that they get away while they had the chance.
In so many ways he had let her down, but he had an instinct for self-protection; she had to give him that much.
Sarah tapped her credit card on the scanner, then took her single plastic bag and walked over to wait for Heather, whose shopping was being scanned. Sarah watched as bag after bag was loaded into the trolley and saw Heather glance somewhat sheepishly at her one more time before reaching for her purse.
‘Looks like you’re feeding the five thousand,’ Sarah said, as they walked towards the exit.
Heather grunted, eyes fixed front.
‘I’d struggle to spend that much on food in a month.’ The automatic doors opened, and Sarah followed Heather out into the car park. ‘Someone’s got expensive tastes.’
Heather said nothing, one wheel on her trolley squeaking rhythmically as she pushed it across the tarmac.
Sarah said, ‘God, I hate it when you get one of those—’
Heather stopped. Sarah opened a bar of chocolate she’d just bought and bit into it, staring at her.
‘You need to go to the police,’ Heather said.
‘I know.’ Sarah chewed quickly and swallowed. ‘I’m going to, obviously, but there’s so much I need to tell you first. You deserve to know, because you were such a good friend when all this was happening.’
Their Little Secret Page 24