by Simon Lelic
There was a low brick wall at the edge of the pavement, and Fleet moved to sit down. Holly propped herself beside him, so that together they faced the police station. As they watched, the building’s doors opened, and one by one they began to file out. Abigail Marshall. Cora Briggs. Fareed Hussein. And finally, tentatively, as though he were expecting to walk into an ambush, Mason Payne. He was right to be wary, Fleet thought, although by now the press would most likely have lost interest in him. The story had moved on. And anyway, the hacks were for the most part otherwise engaged. Inside the building, Superintendent Burton was finally hosting the press conference he’d been obliged to delay, though Christ knew what the man was saying. Fleet made a mental note to avoid the evening news. Now that he knew the truth, he had no interest in how the superintendent chose to spin it.
“Is that them?” said Holly.
Even as she spoke, the kids spotted Fleet across the road from them. There were mutterings, Fleet sensed—and then Cora raised her middle finger.
“Yeah,” said Fleet. “That’s them.” He returned Cora’s salute with a nod.
“What’s going to happen to them?” Holly asked him.
As he watched the kids walk off—Fash in front, Cora and Abi side by side, and Mason dragging his feet just behind—Fleet felt an urge to spark up that cigarette. He swallowed, to remind himself of the burn in his throat.
“In a legal sense, you mean?” he said to Holly. “Not a lot. A slap on the wrist all round. Mason—he’s the one at the back. He’s in the most serious trouble. Potentially. But there are mitigating circumstances. He’ll be OK. I hope.” Fleet queried himself, and found that he genuinely did.
“And the boy? The one you fished from the river?” Holly laid a hand on Fleet’s knee then, squeezing it gently. Fleet turned and Holly looked down awkwardly, returning her hand to her lap.
“Luke’s still in hospital. He’ll be there for a few days yet. It was touch-and-go for a while. Nicky saved his life on the riverbank, you know. Administered CPR. And she’d already called for an ambulance.”
“I know,” said Holly. “I heard.”
“You did?”
“Word travels quickly in this town. That’s what I’ve gathered, anyway, from the little I’ve experienced of the place so far.”
Fleet didn’t know why he was surprised. The whole story was probably out by now. It wouldn’t have taken long for the news to go around, not after the police were seen heading to the woods again, and reports had begun to emerge that they’d discovered Sadie’s body.
“Do you know they changed their stories?” said Fleet, nodding toward Sadie’s friends. “When we told them what Luke told us . . . when they heard that he’d confessed to holding the knife . . . from saying they couldn’t remember what happened, every single one of them claimed they were the one holding the knife when Dylan died. Independently. Luke came back to protect them, and they decided to return the favor.”
Holly joined him in watching the kids heading off in the direction of the harbor. Cora had an arm around Abi’s shoulders, a sight Fleet would never have expected to see four days ago. Although when the lies had finally been stripped away, he’d been astonished by how much each and every one of the kids had changed. Even Mason. Particularly Mason. From a brash teenager, he’d morphed in Fleet’s eyes into a terrified little kid. Telling him that Sadie was really dead was one of the hardest things Fleet had ever had to do. At first Mason had said nothing. Moments later, Fleet hadn’t been sure the boy would ever be able to stop crying.
As he watched the kids comfort each other now, he marveled at how quickly indiscretions at that age were forgiven. He pictured them gathering on the quay one coming evening, passing around a bottle of cider and sharing stories about Sadie. Their friend. A girl they had loved in spite of their betrayals, and whose memory would haunt them for the rest of their lives. And afterward—after that final ceremony to say good-bye—it was likely their friendship would begin to crumble. Abi and Cora. Mason and Fash. Yes, indiscretions could be forgiven, but some could never be forgotten, and after Sadie things would never be the same. And of course there was Dylan—another ghost that would haunt them. This town was full of them, it turned out. Life was.
“So who was holding it?” said Holly, pulling Fleet from his thoughts. “The knife,” she clarified. “Out there in the woods.”
Fleet shook his head. “Who knows? To be honest, I’m not sure it even matters. Maybe to some people, but whoever it was, they didn’t mean for it to happen. Officially, what happened to Dylan will go down as an accident.”
“And Luke?” said Holly, hesitantly. “Will he be charged? I mean, is it true that he killed Sadie? That’s what everyone seems to be saying.”
Fleet gave in. He lit the cigarette. The smoke was fire in his throat, and he sucked it greedily down into his battered lungs. “It wasn’t Luke,” he told Holly. “It was Dylan.”
“Dylan?”
Fleet left time for the sound of the name to settle. He knew he was breaking every rule in the book by confiding in his wife, but it would all come out soon enough anyway. Fleet would make sure of that. He knew Luke wanted nothing more than to protect his brother—even now, even after his death—but Fleet couldn’t simply stand by and watch Luke throw away what was left of his life.
“Sadie was pregnant,” he said. “I mean, that’s not confirmed yet, but those tests . . . the ones you can buy? They’re never wrong, are they?”
Slowly, Holly shook her head. “You can get a false negative if you take the test too early. It’s rare to get a false positive.”
“So Sadie ran away. We haven’t worked out yet where she was going. Maybe she didn’t even know herself. I suspect she had a plan of some sort, depending on what she intended to do about the baby. But ultimately it hardly matters, because when she left her house in the middle of the night, her little brother heard her go. We’ve yet to get the full story from Luke about how it played out after that, but . . . Well. I doubt there will be any surprises.”
In fact, Fleet thought he knew exactly how it had all played out. When Luke had got up to check on Dylan, just as he’d described, it was Dylan’s door he’d found open, and his brother who’d been missing from his bed. Sadie would have made sure she’d closed her bedroom door behind her. A girl who went to such lengths to cover her tracks—with her bag, her bank records—wouldn’t have taken the chance that one of her family would so easily discover she’d sneaked out in the middle of the night. And perhaps when Luke had crept downstairs in search of his little brother, Dylan had already returned. Either that or Luke had ventured farther, and when he’d found Dylan, his little brother had confessed what he’d done.
He’d heard Sadie leave, perhaps after waking from one of his nightmares, and he’d followed her into the woods, in precisely the manner Luke had told Fleet he’d followed Sadie himself. And when Dylan had caught up with her, or Sadie had realized he was there, they’d argued. Perhaps at first Sadie had tried to reason with Dylan, to explain why she needed to go away. Maybe she’d even mentioned Mason, which would have explained why Dylan was so angry with Mason at the end. But whatever she’d said, it hadn’t worked. Dylan had insisted she come home; Sadie had refused. Maybe she’d even shouted at him, lashed out in an attempt to get him to leave. And if Luke had had conflicting emotions about his sister, how much worse must it have been for Dylan? He loved her, unquestionably, but how he must have hated her on occasion, too—not least when he saw his parents adoring her the way they had never adored him. And then for her to tell him she was abandoning him—leaving him and never coming back . . . It was no wonder that when Sadie turned away, Dylan had felt such rage. And it was his rage—his sheer emotional turmoil—that had prompted him to pick up the rock.
Perhaps he never really meant the rock to hit her. Or, if he had, maybe he’d been aiming for her back. Certainly it was unlikely he understood how much d
amage a blow to the back of the head could cause. It would only have been after Sadie had fallen that Dylan would have realized what he’d done.
Except . . . Luke. Everything Luke did from that point on was designed to protect his little brother. He took Dylan back to his bed, telling him all the while it would be OK. And then he went into the woods himself, following whatever directions he’d been able to coax from his brother. When he found Sadie where she had fallen, at first he would have tried to help her. For some reason he had removed her jacket, perhaps to prop up her head. But when he realized he was already too late, he came to understand what he had to do. He concealed her body, in the best nearby hiding place he knew. He covered the hollow with branches, completely masking it from sight. Ideally he would have taken Sadie to the river, but there was no way he could have carried her that far—not by himself, and not while his brother lay waiting for him at home. But after Sadie was hidden, he realized he’d forgotten about her jacket. Perhaps he was reluctant to disturb the camouflage he’d constructed around the hollow, or perhaps he simply couldn’t face going back, but either way, he decided to toss the coat into the river, going via the stream to get cleaned up on the way. At some point, Sadie’s new phone had slipped from one of her jacket pockets, without Luke even noticing it had been there.
And then it was done. When Luke got home, there was only one task left: to convince Dylan that, when he’d got to the place Dylan had said he and Sadie argued, their sister had been OK.
She’d only been stunned, Luke told Dylan. You didn’t hurt her, Dylan. You didn’t. I spoke to her and tried to convince her to come home, but . . . but she left anyway. The way she was planning to all along. But she’ll come back. You’ll see. One day, someday, she’ll come home. I promise.
How desperately Dylan would have wanted to believe him. And perhaps, at first, he did. Except then people started saying Sadie had been murdered, and the entire town was looking for her body. But rather than blaming Dylan, they blamed Mason. Which meant . . . what? Dylan simply didn’t know. By the end—by the point the search party had set off—he would have been no clearer on what had actually happened than Fleet had been at that stage himself. It was no wonder Dylan had followed Luke and his friends, the same way he’d followed Sadie. He would have been as desperate to know the truth as anyone.
It’s the parents I feel most sorry for, Burton had said to Fleet, after Dylan’s body had been found. But in Fleet’s mind that was entirely back to front. Mr. and Mrs. Saunders wouldn’t have wished for anything that had happened, certainly. And perhaps they couldn’t have anticipated that their overwhelming love for their daughter would shape such radically different personalities in their sons. So yes, they deserved some sympathy—but not as much as their children did. Indeed, out of anyone, it was Sadie’s parents Fleet held most responsible for everything that had happened. The same way he would have held himself responsible if he had been standing in their place.
“I hope they look after him,” said Holly. “Luke, I mean. In hospital. I hope he gets the care he needs.”
And that was almost the most tragic thing of all, as far as Fleet was concerned. Yes, he had pulled Luke from the river, but what sort of life was waiting for him now? What sort of love?
Fleet shook his head, and tossed his cigarette into the gutter. He glanced Holly’s way, and smiled at her sadly.
“We said we’d talk,” he said. “About what happens now.”
Holly reached and took his hand. Her touch was warm and soft, and Fleet couldn’t begin to comprehend how much he would miss it.
“I think I know what happens now,” Holly said. “I think we both do.”
“Listen, Holly,” said Fleet. “I want you to know—”
“Rob, please. There’s no need.”
“Yes, there is. I want you to know that I didn’t come back here to try to justify the way I was feeling. About having children, I mean. It was the opposite. I came back because I thought it might help. I thought . . . I don’t know what I thought. That thing about confronting your demons.” He thought of his mother, of the inscription on the bench. “And actually, if anything, it’s helped.”
There was a brief flash of hope in Holly’s eyes, and for Fleet it was like a dagger to his heart.
“But it hasn’t healed, Sprig,” he went on. “If that’s even the right word. I just . . . It wouldn’t be fair of me. To you, because you’d always be walking on a knife edge, worrying that you’d made me do something I didn’t want to. Anytime anything went wrong, you’d think it was your fault.”
Holly was shaking her head, but Fleet could tell she knew he was right.
“And it wouldn’t be fair to the kid, either,” he went on. “Think about it, Holly. It wouldn’t. How could it be?”
Fleet tried to continue. What he wanted to say was that his reluctance to have children was nothing to do with being afraid of the responsibility. Responsibility, he could handle. The thing he didn’t think he could—the thing that terrified him about having children most of all—was the sorrow, the anguish, the sheer bloody heartache that would come if he were to fail them. It would destroy him, Fleet knew. And in turn it would destroy him and Holly.
They sat in silence, still holding hands. Holly used a tissue from her pocket to dry her eyes.
“You always said we sounded ridiculous,” Fleet ventured, after a moment. “Robin and Holly. Like a cheesy Christmas card. Right? So maybe it’s a blessing in disguise.”
Holly gave a laugh that sounded like a sob.
She turned away.
“You’re staying,” she said, turning back. “Aren’t you?” She moved her chin, loosely indicating the town.
“Not forever,” said Fleet. “But for a while, I think. I’ve got some bridges to build.”
Holly looked down at her lap. She freed her hand from Fleet’s. When she looked at him, her eyes were the color of rain.
She rose, and it took all of Fleet’s willpower not to stand up beside her.
“Look after yourself, Rob,” she told him. “Please.”
And then Fleet could only watch, as slowly his wife walked away.
* * *
* * *
He got up eventually. Holly had turned left, toward the center of town. Fleet went right—south—toward the harbor. He passed a litter bin and stopped beside it. He hesitated, but only for a second. He tossed away the packet of cigarettes and kept walking.
After a few moments he heard a car pull up behind him. He turned, and was only mildly surprised to see a marked squad car. The passenger-side window hummed down.
“Need a lift?” said Nicky.
“Thanks,” Fleet replied. “But I could use the exercise.” He patted his stomach and Nicky smiled.
Fleet raised his chin. “Off anywhere exciting, or are you just hitching a ride?”
Nicky’s smile set harder. “We’re off to pay a visit to Stephen Payne. Social Services are meeting us there.”
As part of their final interview with Mason, they’d asked about his relationship with his father. About how often Stephen Payne hit him. That was another thing that had made Mason cry, though this time Fleet had at least taken some comfort from the fact that the boy’s tears would ultimately offer him some release. Nicky, Fleet knew, would make sure of that.
“Send Payne my regards, won’t you?” Fleet said.
Nicky nodded. “Will do, boss. Enjoy your walk.” She pressed the button to raise the window.
“Oh, and Nicky . . .”
The window stopped moving.
“You might want to check the contents of his wallet,” Fleet said.
“His wallet?”
“Right. And if you find anything, I’d start by asking him about his friends. The local dealer, Nathan Murdoch, in particular.” Lion, Fleet thought. “A man like Stephen Payne . . . he’d throw his mates under a bus if it mean
t dodging a charge for possession. Particularly given everything else he’s going to have to answer for.”
“Gotcha,” said Nicky, and she waved as the squad car drove off.
Fleet walked on.
He passed bait shops and greasy spoons and, on the corner where the road met the water, the Harvester where Sadie had worked since she’d turned fifteen. And ice cream vans. Half a dozen, at least. Seriously, came Cora’s voice. How many ice cream vans does one town need? Only one was open for business, and Fleet half considered buying a can of something, purely out of sympathy. There wasn’t another customer in sight, and he had his doubts there would be for months now. The weather might slowly have been improving, but the summer was definitively over. Already the town had the feeling of a place that had shut up shop. Like one of those villages in the Arctic Circle that, when the seasons reach a certain point in their cycle, don’t see daylight until the following spring.
When he reached the harbor, Fleet spotted a light on in one of the rooms in Anne’s B&B. Even without the rain, on a day in early September, it was gloomy enough that natural light simply didn’t cut it. But the sun would be back, Fleet thought, looking at the horizon. The strip of blue was strengthening, and slowly extending the town’s way.
He passed the fishing boats, and the spot he’d had his run-in with Mason’s father. Compared to how it had appeared to Fleet last time, the promenade didn’t actually look that shabby. Strange, how perceptions were influenced by the way you were feeling. For the whole of his adult life, Fleet had thought he hated this place. The promenade, the beachfront, the entire town. But really it wasn’t so very different from anywhere else. It was tired, certainly, but at least it was trying. It was like with people: what more could you ask of them but that?
When Fleet was halfway along the walkway, he saw her sitting on the bench. Somehow he’d known she’d be there. He drew close, and waited for her to acknowledge his presence. When she didn’t, he joined her in looking out over the sea.