Hannah thought of her bachelors in graphic design, how she’d had to switch to something else to ensure she could make the rent.
‘Uni isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be,’ she whispered. ‘Take it from me.’
The plumber slid out from the sink and selected a wrench from his toolbox. The kitchen was hot and Hannah saw that the floor tiles were blotched with his sweat.
‘How long are you stuck with him?’ he said, waving the wrench toward the cell. His eyes scanned Jem top to bottom, like a faulty boiler.
‘I’ve appealed.’ Hannah looked to Jem and away. It felt wrong to talk as if he couldn’t hear them, as if he didn’t matter, especially after their most recent exchange, but then she wasn’t sure how to include him either. ‘Asked for a transfer.’
The plumber strode over to the cell, gave one of the bars a shake and looked up.
‘Does this attach to a frame in the ceiling?’
Hannah nodded. They’d plastered over the worst of the damage and repainted but if you looked hard enough you could still see the odd crack.
‘It’ll make a mess, ripping all that out. Never mind your walls and floor.’
She shrugged. The damage would not be her concern. Once Jem was gone she would no longer be allowed to live here and the house would be allocated to another key worker. She and Aisling had talked about getting a flat together, somewhere close enough for her to continue to keep an eye on Pru. Still, the prospect of dismantling the stuff she’d worked so hard to preserve since John’s death – edging the hoover around the jeans he’d left piled in a corner of the bedroom, guarding the fridge magnets against wandering hands – terrified her. The house and his things were like a spell she had to maintain. She knew it was irrational, mad even, but she worried that to change or tidy away any of these items – to concede he’d gone – would be to remove the possibility he might one day return.
Back at the sink, the plumber sat a black metal cylinder on the worktop and started taking it apart with a screwdriver.
‘I was on a job the other day,’ he said, placing each bit carefully to one side. ‘Harlow Civic Centre. They had two inmates in the cells there, a man and a woman who until recently had been Host and prisoner.’ He winked and poked his tongue into the side of his cheek. ‘They’d started a relationship. Got caught.’ He shook his head at the memory, separated the cylinder in two and peered inside. ‘A-ha!’
Hannah ran to him.
‘Did you find it?’
He held up a piece of gold.
‘SIM card.’
‘That?’ She squinted from it to the black cylinder. ‘It’s tiny.’
‘It didn’t cause the blockage, although it won’t have helped.’ He fished out a mangled chunk of plastic from the blades. ‘This is your culprit.’ He pulled it apart and laid it flat on his palm. It looked like a white credit card with a rectangular-shaped hole in the top right-hand corner. ‘The holder it came in.’ He set to work putting the cylinder back together. ‘Looks like a pay-as-you-go.’
‘My phone is on contract.’ So was John’s, she thought. She felt again for the smooth spot on her finger. How could she have lost something so precious?
She paid and went to see him out. Opening the front door, she found John’s partner, Rupert, walking down the path, a black Prius pulling away from the kerb.
‘Where’s the MG?’ said Hannah as he and the plumber passed each other. Rupert travelled everywhere in his beloved maroon coupe and was the only person she’d ever met who wore driving gloves as if they were a regular item of clothing, whether he was behind the wheel of a car or not.
‘In for a service.’ He grimaced. ‘I’m having to go everywhere by Uber.’
Rupert Cammish. Full name Rupert St. John Oberon Cammish. A trust fund boy who didn’t need to work but did, he had a narrow, whippet-like face and dopey brown eyes that were more Disney than Detective Sergeant and liked to wear yellow wool scarves wrapped round his neck, even though it made it easy for people to tease him about the similarity to Rupert the Bear, his furry namesake. An unlikely copper, he came from a family where it was routine for men to have ‘Explorer’ as their job title and as a baby he had been encouraged to scale a climbing wall long before he could walk. His father and three brothers were all avid mountaineers. Tragically, Rupert’s youngest sibling Hugo had died trying to summit Everest two years earlier.
Despite coming from different ends of the social scale – John had grown up on a Shadwell estate – they’d become good friends after working their first case together in homicide, a gruelling investigation into the murder of nine prostitutes in west London. John had been sceptical of Rupert at first, unhappy at being partnered with some posh boy who was clearly only in the Met to make Daddy mad, but had soon been won over by his tenacity, work ethic and willingness to get his hands dirty. Rupert had always volunteered to take first watch on overnight stake-outs, had done the lion’s share of paperwork and had been responsible for catching the monster responsible, thanks to his painstaking analysis of thousands of pages of mobile phone records. He also, much to John’s delight, shared his partner’s love of darts and for his birthday that year had bought them both tickets for the World Championships. They’d had such a great time that they went again the next year and the year after that, the trip out to Lakeside becoming the highlight of their December.
Hannah remembered the case the pair had bonded over and how only four of the women’s families had been willing to press charges. As was the way with a single perpetrator and multiple crimes, once the guilty verdict was delivered they had divided his sentence between them, taking the prisoner into a cell in their home for seven years each.
Rupert gave Hannah a hug. After a few seconds she went to draw away but he lingered, his hand on her lower back. She tensed and patted him firmly on the shoulder and this time, when she retreated, he did the same.
‘To what do I owe the pleasure?’ she said, as they headed downstairs. She was glad he was here; she wanted to raise the question of Mickey’s drinking, see if he’d noticed anything.
‘I thought you deserved to know straightaway.’ In the kitchen he clocked Jem and his face hardened. He seemed more puzzled than angry, perhaps unable to process how or why this person had killed his friend.
‘Know what?’ said Hannah, her hand circling her pendant.
He sighed. ‘Maybe you should sit down.’ He guided her to a chair and then set about removing his driving gloves.
‘Rupert?’
‘The ruling on your Foster Host request came through.’ The gloves gone, he flexed his hands. His fingers and palms were calloused from years of gripping rock. ‘I saw it on the system. Your appeal has been denied.’
Hannah frowned. ‘There must be some mistake.’ She looked from Jem to the freshly painted ceiling. All intentions to discuss Mickey’s sobriety gone. ‘It was a formality.’
‘Word is you’re the fourth case they’ve knocked back today. There’s a feeling in Westminster that too many people are dodging their responsibilities. They’ve issued a crackdown.’
He reached a hand toward her but she wasn’t ready to be comforted and shook him off.
‘So what, my husband is dead and now I have to spend the rest of my life with the man who killed him?’ The more she said, the louder she got. ‘How is this fair? Who exactly are they punishing here?’
‘You can lodge a second appeal,’ he said, low and firm, ‘but I have to tell you, they look badly on repeat applications.’
‘Twenty years.’ She looked to the cell but Jem had hung his head, unable to meet her eye. ‘I can’t.’
The plumber had left the heap of brown sludge he’d cleared from the waste disposal in a bowl on the side. Already, flies had started to gather on the surface.
Hannah sat on a chair in the middle of the kitchen. Spread out on the floor around her was a mosaic of objects and photographs. Selecting and arranging the items, over a hundred in all, had taken most of the night but now sh
e was done and ready to survey her handiwork.
To her right sat a pair of John’s old trainers, the grey laces muddied and tied into double bows; over by the French doors was an auger shell they’d found on a weekend in Filey, its cone speckled brown, and in front of the cell was a row of selfies she’d printed out from John’s phone. He’d loved to document himself in the cool and often bizarre parts of London his job took him to and the pictures showed him everywhere from a secret tunnel that ran underneath Downing Street to high atop a city roof to the inside of the tiny black and white house in the middle of Soho Square.
She felt for her amber pendant. Found on him when he died, it had been gift-wrapped with a love note tucked inside. His bank statement showed he’d purchased it that morning. She’d placed the note, black ink on white card, centre stage.
For my love. I know things have been difficult recently but I’m so excited about the future and the adventures that await. I love you. JC x
John had always had his own way of saying sorry. Never one to come right out with it, if they’d had a row he preferred to make up obtusely, to sometimes comic effect. Once, after they’d bickered over chores – Hannah was sick of him not doing his fair share – she’d woken to find him naked but for a pinny and a pair of rubber gloves, scrubbing the bathroom. Seeing her, he’d paused briefly, given her a wink, and got back to it. All the frustration she’d felt dissolved into giggles.
They’d argued more than usual in the months before he’d died. John had been cranky and distracted. But then in the weeks leading up to his murder there’d been a shift. The rows had stopped and he’d shown the same fondness – plaiting her hair in tiny braids as they chatted in bed at night, bringing her tea on a morning, hand-feeding her snacks when her hands were deep in fondant – as at the start of their marriage. The amber necklace had obviously been some kind of peace offering.
She crossed her legs and then uncrossed them, trying to get comfortable on the chair.
Jem had been oblivious to her many comings and goings, asleep under his bed. It was clear the other morning had been far from a one-off and that, for whatever reason, he preferred to sleep with his headphones on, out of sight on the floor. True to his word, he’d left his baseball cap on his pillow so she would know not to worry if she found his cell seemingly empty.
She was wondering why, imagining what might have happened to make being hidden the only way he could feel safe enough to rest, while the sun wearied its way up into the sky and the cell bars were hit with light. Shadows striped her lap.
Twenty years of living like this. Twenty years with him.
She looked at the notecard again. At John’s excitement about the future.
Who cared where Jem slept?
He deserved neither sympathy nor concern.
He emerged shortly after, his hand curling around the side of the bed frame. Seeing Hannah, he startled and removed his headphones, surprise changing to confusion as he took in the arrangement on the floor.
‘What?’ His eyes ran up and down the different items. ‘Are you OK?’
‘His first day at Hendon,’ she said, reaching for a colour snap of a much younger-looking John, sweaty and red-faced. ‘They had to run 10k and so he gave it all his might and finished before everyone else. They made him run it again.’ She replaced it and picked up a pink silk tie. ‘He wore this with a white three-piece suit to our wedding.’ She brought it to her nose. ‘I can still smell his aftershave.’
Understanding dawned. He blinked slowly, then turned away.
‘Look at it,’ she said her voice low, ‘look.’ She held up the tie. ‘Isn’t that why you’re here, for you to understand who you took from me?’
Still, Jem refused to meet her eye. He seemed to have decided that the best thing to do was withdraw from the situation, to pretend she wasn’t there.
‘I’m sorry you lost your husband,’ he said softly, after a moment. ‘That you’re stuck with me.’ His words were thick with regret but there was something else there too, some emotion he was trying hard to keep under control. It strained beneath the surface, a fish in a net, fighting for release. ‘But I meant what I said. I’m innocent, I didn’t do it.’
Hannah laughed bitterly.
‘Were you not listening when they reeled off the evidence against you in court? What do you think I am, an idiot?’
‘No, of course not . . .’ he said and there it was again, some feeling he was working hard to keep in check.
‘John was good, decent, whereas you . . .’ She tried to stop herself – despite everything she didn’t want to stoop to this – but giving in to her anger felt good, like careening down a hill in a car with no brakes. ‘You’re nothing.’
Exhausted, she got to her feet.
Jem swallowed. ‘You think he was perfect,’ he said. ‘He wasn’t.’ It seemed he too had decided to let go. He paused before continuing. ‘That evening, when he left the bar, he was on his way to meet someone. A woman.’
It was like she’d been hit. She swayed back on her feet, blinking, unable to believe what she was hearing.
‘Seriously? You kill him and then you decide the best way to make reparations is to insult his memory?’
‘I’m telling the truth. Before he left I heard them arguing on the phone.’
‘Funny,’ said Hannah, ‘how you omitted to mention any of this at the trial.’
‘My lawyer said it was hearsay, that it would harm my defence.’
Jem’s version of events had been torn apart by the prosecution. He’d claimed John had dropped his wallet, phone and keys on the floor of the bar and that he’d been about to run after him to return them when he was detained by another customer. That, he’d said, was why he’d had to pursue him at pace, why he’d had no choice but to follow John into the alley and why his fingerprints were on John’s things.
He had not been able to offer an explanation as to how his prints had found their way onto the murder weapon.
‘Liar,’ said Hannah. The police had checked John’s phone records; if there’d been any such call they would have investigated. But then she remembered the SIM the plumber had found in the waste disposal.
The doubt wasn’t there and then it was, a sinkhole in the middle of the road.
Was it possible John had a secret pay-as-you-go, is that what people did when they had affairs?
‘From what I heard, he’d tried to break things off between them but she wasn’t having it. Something had happened at a hotel they’d been to, The Wallaby or The Warlaby, something like that. He seemed to want to come clean about the affair but she didn’t. He kept saying “we have to tell her”, that he was planning to confess to you the next day.’ Jem’s sentences crashed over each other like waves. ‘He had some weird pet name for her, Marzipan Rain, something like that. By the end of the call he’d agreed to meet.’
Hannah’s skin prickled.
‘Say that again.’
‘They arranged to get together.’
‘Before that.’
‘Marzipan Rain? I remember because I thought it sounded like a great name for a band.’
Her pulse snickered in her neck.
‘Marzipan Rain, you’re sure?’ She’d heard those words once before. Or rather she’d seen them, written down on a piece of paper.
‘I’m not lying,’ said Jem, mistaking her expression for fury. ‘Promise.’
The sun was up. The shadows yawned to nothing and they found themselves paired by the same white light. Hannah went to walk away, only to look down and see John’s things dotted across the floor, like booby-traps.
Jem
Late afternoon and Hannah is making cupcakes. Chocolate sponge with yellow buttercream, each cake is topped with a tiny fondant teddy bear.
I’m reading. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. It’s one of my favourite novels, a story of sibling loyalty against all odds, but I keep getting distracted. Watching Hannah sculpt the bears’ paws and faces is mesmerising. Her fin
gers coax the fondant into shape with only the lightest touch. I’ve always admired dexterity in others but there is something magical about the way she rolls, pats and carves these figures into being. I notice that each bear is slightly different; one has a flower behind its ear, another clutches a green bag, and one wears what looks like a tiny hearing aid.
We haven’t exchanged a word since this morning. Hannah is even more furious with me than she was already. She might have dismissed my claims out of hand but they definitely hit a nerve and now, mixed in with her fury, is something else, a softening. I’ve made a hairline crack in the wall. Tiny now, if I work at it long enough I’ll be able to turn it into a fissure, then a gap, big enough to crawl through.
Humming a rock ballad under her breath, she nestles another selection of bears into the buttercream and places the finished cakes in a box. Lunch was hours ago and the candied air is making me hungry. A low growl fills the kitchen. My stomach. I cover my belly with my hand, trying to muffle the sound, but it’s no good. The growl gets louder.
Hannah pauses but doesn’t turn round and, after putting the box to one side, she sets to work creaming the next batch of butter and sugar.
The kitchen is large, two basement rooms knocked into one, but still my cell dominates. A protrusion of concrete and metal, it sits against the wall in the middle of the space and is the first thing you see as you come down the stairs. I don’t know what was here before but at a guess I’d say the dining table, huddled as it is now into the too-small corner by the French doors, and maybe some cupboards; the remaining storage spaces and worktops overflow with crockery and pans that don’t seem to have a home.
I’m sure Hannah would rather I was hidden away in some more avoidable part of the house, but I’m glad the cell was put here. It means I get to see her often. To observe.
The Captive Page 5