by Penny Kline
‘He worked at Ava’s Place for time. Washing up, serving food, I’m not sure.’
‘Hoshi did? I wonder why Ava didn’t say?’
He sighed and she turned round, angrily, then noticed how weary he looked and relented. Tiny lines spread from the corners of his eyes and there were deeper lines between them. How had he felt about Claudia’s death? If what he had told her was true, they had not been friends – he had only met her two or three times. All the same, the accident, and Ollie’s subsequent disappearance, must have been a shock.
‘What were you going to tell me?’
He took a step back. ‘I thought Ollie might have gone home, to his mother.’
‘He hasn’t. The police checked.’
He nodded, but his thoughts had moved on to something else and, by the look of his face, he was not going to tell her what it was. The first time they met, he had struck her as someone she would be able to talk to, someone she could trust. Someone who listened, without interrupting, and gave the impression he had been through some bad experiences and come out the other side with an increased understanding of people’s pain. She had warmed to him, not just because he was the antithesis of Declan, or because he was good looking and reminded her of her father. There was more to attraction than that.
He was back, with his hand on the door. ‘How’s it going at the hospital?’
‘As well as can be expected. Sorry.’ She had not intended to sound so brisk and matter of fact. ‘It’ll be several weeks before the baby can be born. I’m hoping by then Ollie will have returned.’
Jon cleared his throat, and she held her breath. His parting remark was going to be something important. Something about Claudia. ‘Feel like going down the road for a cup of tea?’ he said. ‘It would do you good to get out of here.’
She controlled a sigh. ‘Not Ava’s Place.’
‘No.’ He took her coat from the hook on the back of the door and, as he passed it to her, their hands brushed. No, she thought, no definitely not that. Never, ever again would she become involved with a married man. An agonising memory returned – when Declan told her his wife was pregnant. It might not be mine, Erin, actually I don’t think it is. But it could be, she had said, and he had shrugged, and she had known the bitter truth. She tricked me, Erin, must have. No use pointing out how he had told her his marriage was over, dead, and he was in the process of getting divorced . . .
‘I’m sorry, Erin.’
‘What about?’ Had Jon said something important and she had been too absorbed with the past to take it in?
‘Everything. There’s so much I want to tell you but . . .’
Someone was leaning on the front door bell.
‘Probably the meter reader,’ she said. ‘It’s hard to know what to do about Claudia’s bills, or the rest of her mail. Check in case it’s something important, or keep it for Ollie.’
Running down the two flights of stairs, she opened the front door, and the conversation between the two police officers stopped abruptly, their faces turning into expressionless masks. The middle-aged one had short bristly hair. The other was a woman.
‘Can we come in, please?’ The female officer reeled off their names.
‘Is it Ollie?’ Erin’s throat constricted. ‘Not Claudia?’
‘No, not your sister.’
‘In here.’ Erin held open the door to Claudia’s living room and, when Jon hovered in the doorway, snapped at him to go on ahead. ‘This is Mr Easton. He and Ollie work together.’ She gestured to them to sit down and they waited for her and Jon to do the same. The room felt unlived in and the mantelpiece had a layer of dust, and a spider had spun a web in the corner above the television.
‘I don’t wish to alarm you unnecessarily.’ The policewoman appeared to be the senior of the two, or perhaps they had decided the occasion needed a woman’s touch. ‘But the body of a young man has been found and it matches the description of Oliver Mitchell. You gave us a photograph but it was not a very clear one so I’m afraid it’s impossible to be certain.’
‘Where? Where was he found?’ The photo was one Claudia had taken when they were in a club. Flashing lights blurred part of his face. A man, with a mane of white hair, had his arm round him and Ollie was looking faintly embarrassed.
‘In a barn, an old farm building,’ the policewoman said, ‘close to a golf club. It hadn’t been there very long.’
Chapter 11
The redbrick building was next to a patch of rough grass. A single tree had shed its leaves, but the sun was shining and the expression glad to be alive ran through Erin’s mind and for an instant she was filled with guilt that she was alive and the rest of her family were dead. Except for the baby. She was her closest relative now and she desperately needed her to survive.
Outside the entrance to the mortuary, a couple of cars had been parked so carelessly there was no space for anyone else. The policewoman glanced in her mirror and swung round, pulling up in a “no parking” area next to a battered grey van, with whatever logo had been on its side, painted out a darker shade of grey.
‘All right?’ The policewoman said her name was DS Smith. ‘Maria, please call me Maria’. That was the only piece of information she had provided during their short journey. That and the fact she had hoped Erin would be accompanied by a friend or relative.
‘I prefer to do this on my own.’
‘Fair enough.’ Then, afraid she had sounded a little harsh. ‘Yes, I can understand how you feel. You’ve been through a lot these past few weeks.’
It was Ollie, she was sure of it, and seeing him, facing the reality of his death would be unbearable but also, if she was honest with herself, almost a relief. She was worn out, speculating where he might have gone, and whether he was dead or alive. No, that was wrong. Not a relief. His death would turn Claudia’s accident into a double tragedy.
She could have let Jon come with her to the mortuary. Someone to share the ordeal. When she said she wanted to go on her own, his face had fallen – perhaps he thought he had more right than she did to identify Ollie’s body – but if it was Ollie, it was partly her fault. She should have gone along with what he wanted for Claudia and the baby. But how could she?
Already – she would not have admitted this to anyone – she was planning what would happen to the baby. She would keep her, love her, teach her how to draw and paint, bring her up as her own. But supposing they stopped her, they being social workers. She would have to be vetted and the fact that she was single would go against her. Or would it? Single women were allowed to adopt these days. But how could she afford to look after a child? If Claudia had not made a will what would happen to the house? Was it mortgaged up to the hilt? She ought to check, look in her desk again, search through her papers.
Whatever she found, she would sort it out somehow. For the sake of the baby. Her baby. Unless someone else came forward, claiming to be the father.
‘Right then.’ DS Smith sprang out of the car and opened the passenger door. ‘I should warn you, when we go inside there’ll be an unpleasant chemical smell. If you feel faint let me know. There may be a short wait but we can get some coffee from the machine.’
Don’t worry about me, Erin wanted to say, I’m used to chemical smells. Much of my time is spent with the sick and dying, apart from when I retreat to the safety of my flat. Was her flat safe? Lately, Claudia’s house had felt empty and inhospitable, and at night she heard sounds that could come from the street but could equally well mean someone had got in and was prowling about. Clicks and creaks. Tapping noises. A branch banging against a window? Except there was no wind. She thought about the basement flat that Jennie had let to the “smartly-dressed woman from London”, and wondered if a basement would be preferable, and thought it might be.
As soon as they entered the mortuary building, questions flooded into her head. Who would show her the body? Would it be pulled out on a freezer tray? Would there be blood, injuries, or would only the head be visible?
DS Smith gave her a half-smile, appropriate to the situation. ‘This way. I’ll tell them who we are and then we wait to be called. There’s always a short delay.’
Erin had expected to feel fear. Fear that it was Ollie or fear of death itself? Her squeamishness about dead mice and birds could be seen as a fear of death. Claudia had laughed about it. Honestly, Erin, you’re so sensitive. It’s only a dead bird. Or a mouse. Or once it had been a rat.
The waiting room was too large. Surely only one person at a time was allowed into the building. Instead of the dread she expected, she felt nothing. All her emotions had closed down as though she had been drugged. It was a task to be done. She was a character in one of those gruesome television series, walking down a tiled corridor, pausing while someone came out and ushered her into an ice cold laboratory.
Naturally, it was nothing like television. They sat in the waiting room for what felt like an age and she started to panic as she struggled to remember what Ollie looked like. Fair hair, small nose, firm chin. Did he have a firm chin? And what colour were his eyes? Brown, she thought, or grey, but they would be closed, at least she hoped they would. She had only known him for a few months, and had never studied his face closely, but even if you were unable to recall the details of how someone looked, you recognised them instantly, even from quite a distance, the shape of their body, the way they walked.
Ollie would be still, lying on his back with skin as white as dough. Why dough? Why had she thought of dough? Because no one’s skin was pure white, not even when they were dead.
She wanted to ask if he had carried a donor card. He had a social conscience – it was one of the things Claudia loved about him – but he was too young to imagine his own death.
‘Do you know how he died?’ she asked, her voice sounding too loud in the silent room.
DS Smith hesitated. ‘He was found hanged.’
‘Oh.’ It was not what Erin had been expecting. An overdose. She realised she had assumed he would have taken a lethal dose of painkillers. ‘So it was definitely suicide.’
‘It looks that way.’
Looks that way? But it was too late to ask any more. A man, wearing a white jacket had come to fetch them and, picking up her bag, she swallowed hard, trying to compose herself. She agreed to be escorted to the end of another tiled corridor, where they entered a small room with a bright light and a single bench, and where a body lay, covered by a sheet. The walls were bare. Of course they were. What kind of pictures could there be? More stupid thoughts raced through her brain. Did some poor person come in early and clean the place each morning? How many more corpses were lying in the freezer compartments?
After a few moments, to allow her to acclimatise she supposed, she was asked if she was ready and she nodded, watching as the sheet was drawn back to reveal the head and neck, and the top of pathetically bony shoulders.
His neck was marked – by a rope, or had he made an improvised noose from his clothes – but his face was smooth and unblemished and he looked so young and, like Claudia in her hospital bed, if he had not been so unnaturally still, he could have been asleep. Erin forced herself to study his face, although there was no need. His hair stood up in tufts and there were freckles on his nose.
It was not Ollie.
As she turned away, shaking her head, it occurred to her they thought she was too shocked to speak, and she felt obliged to take another heart-breaking look. ‘It’s not him,’ she said, ‘it’s not Ollie.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Certain.’ Her voice cracked and DS Smith reached out a hand as though she feared she was going to faint.
‘Thank you for your help.’ She nodded to the pathologist. ‘Come on, I’ll drive you home.’
Chapter 12
Stella had expected the lecture to be well attended but it had never occurred to her it could be sold out. With any luck, if she attached herself to a group, the ticket checker would lose count of how many people she had let through. But the gimlet-eyed woman looked like she was well up on that ploy.
Now what? If she waited there were sure to be a few empty seats. People who had failed to turn up. Even so, they might not let her in and she would have to walk about in the wind and rain until it was over, and could well be wasting her time since there was no guarantee he was there.
A voice behind her called her name and she spun round, nerves jangling, even, for one irrational moment, thinking it was him. But whoever it was had been talking to someone else whose name wasn’t even Stella.
‘Bella!’ the girl yelled again. ‘Sorry, can’t make it. That guy I told you about.’ She broke off, giggling. ‘See you.’
Her friend looked daggers and Stella jumped in with an offer to buy the spare ticket.
‘Have it.’
‘How much?’
The girl called Bella shrugged. ‘Forget it. I didn’t pay, she did.’
‘Thanks.’ Stella waited in the queue and entered the hall, eyes darting about until she spotted an empty seat in the back row where she would have a clear view of the whole audience. Would she recognise him? He could look different, but she doubted he would have changed very much. His clothes perhaps, but even those were likely to be the same. Jeans, jacket, white T-shirt or, at this time of year, it was more likely to be a dark sweater. A creature of habit. One of the things she had both liked about him, but also found a little irritating. As people grew older they tended to become more fixed in their ways. Was that how she had become? Surely not.
Once the majority of people were sitting down, she focussed her eyes on the front row, tracking from left to right, pausing at any likely candidate, making sure no one was missed out. When she reached the third row, she thought he saw him but the head turned and “he” turned out to be a middle-aged woman with an aquiline nose. The hall smelled of people who had come in from the rain and Stella wondered idly how many umbrellas would be left behind, calculating it would be at least a dozen. Most of them would never be claimed since their owners were too busy, or too rich. Her head had started to throb and when she pushed up her sleeve to check her watch she found the lecture should have started six and a half minutes ago.
In the fourth row from the front, a bunch of students were standing up, changing places. People waved to friends in other parts of the hall. An obese man immediately in front of her kept roaring with laughter and tipping his chair back until it was as much as she could do not to tell him to shut the fuck up. The guy sitting next to her smelled of sweat. He whispered an endearment to his girlfriend and she responded by squeezing his thigh through his filthy jeans. A passably attractive girl with pale hair and eyes to match. Surely she could have done better than that.
Two men rose from the front row, one slightly built and dressed in a suit, collar and tie, the other broader and taller, an archetypal professor with unkempt hair, steel-rimmed spectacles and a beard. As soon as the room was quiet, “the suit” introduced the great man, providing a glowing biography and informing the audience, how lucky they were to be in the company of a world famous authority on the subject.
For all Stella knew, the lecture was cutting edge neurobiology. As well as being delivered in a deep, gravelly voice, the words came up in power point on a giant screen at the front. Stella took in little, giving all her attention to the audience, checking each row again, this time from right to left.
The great man had a carefully perfected style of speaking, sometimes slow, ponderous, sometimes bursts of gunfire. Stella shielded her eyes from the white screen, afraid it’s changing messages, picked up by her peripheral vision, would bring on a migraine. Every two months or so her vision became distorted by a semi-circle of jagged lines that prefaced a debilitating attack. Two quickly administered painkillers usually knocked it on the head before it got a hold, but now and again she was laid low for hours, even days, the last thing she needed just now.
Once she had scanned all but two of the rows, she realised she would have to start at the front all over again,
and the thought that he might not be there made her face and neck grow hot with frustration. He must be. Why wouldn’t he be? It was his kind of lecture, his area of expertise. How had she missed him? Maybe she needed her eyes tested. She pictured herself with gunmetal rimmed designer glasses and rather liked the image. Concentrate. Try the front rows again. Knowing him, he would have arrived early.
When the lecture finally came to an end, “the suit” announced that there was time for a few questions. Hands shot up and a woman in the front row was selected. Her question – she had a high-pitched upper class voice – was concerned with functional circuits in the brain. Searching in her pocket for a couple of painkillers – she never left home without them – Stella popped them in her mouth, swallowing hard, a technique she had acquired for times when no water was available, and experienced the familiar, mildly unpleasant after-taste.
The body odour guy on her right had started to cough and a moment later he stood up, and so did his girlfriend, and so did Stella, ostensibly to let them pass but her aim was to squeeze behind her chair and lean against the wall. It was fortunate she was so tall.
One question followed by another, until the guy in charge announced that he could only take two more. No hands went up and a ripple of conversation broke out. Any moment now, proceedings would be brought to a close, the audience would make a stampede for the exit, and it would be impossible to spot him. What did it matter? He wasn’t there. She had endured and hour and a half of boredom for nothing.
Then she saw him.
Halfway up the hall, sitting between two girls. As she watched, he stood up, waiting patiently, characteristically, for the people on his left to move. How the fuck had she missed him? Because the girls had kept leaning across him to talk to one another. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to change places? He was alone and that was a relief, but in a few minutes’ time he would go out in the street where he would merge with the throng and she would lose him. Snatching her beanie from her coat pocket, she pulled it down over her eyebrows, wound her scarf round the lower half of her face, and pushed her way out of the main door, moving quickly to the place she had selected earlier, round the corner of the building, where she would be hidden but still have a near perfect view.