by Kate Simants
Then he remembers. That time, weeks ago, when he watched Paige leave.
He’s got this all wrong.
The world dips. He’s thinking about the conversation he had with Paige about Polzeath. Except he never said his name.
She never said his name.
She could have been talking about anybody.
Luke goes back inside, up to his room, and closes the door. And he recalls each of the eleven digits of the phone number of the person who had been texting Paige.
He writes them down. And then he calls it.
He puts his phone next to his ear as it connects, thinking about that car with its sweeping indicator, his heart finding its pace now, thumping low and slow.
It goes straight to answerphone, and Luke knows why. Battery’s been playing up, wasn’t that what he said?
It’s Yardley. It was Yardley all along.
36
Now
Suzy Wood pulls up outside the house and turns off the music. She undoes her seatbelt and presses the palm of her hand to the side of her belly, where a hard limb has been jabbing her from the inside for the last ten minutes.
‘Would you mind just, down a bit… Thank you,’ she whispers, manipulating the foot or elbow back into its rightful place. The miracles of conception and gestation she can rationalise, but sharing her body with another person is still incomprehensibly freaky.
Several minutes of hauling and groaning later, Suzy is at the front door, her hastily repacked suitcase at her feet. A surge of hope as she steps inside. Her mum, who she stayed with last night, had been right, as always. This isn’t the hill to die on, she’d said.
Suzy puts the case down, lets her shoulder bag drop to the floor, and closes the door. And she just stands there for a moment, feeling their home greet her. She breathes deep through her nose, filling up with the familiar alchemy of dog and residual baking and just… them.
Her and Wren.
The thing people say more than anything else is how tough the two of them are. It has become a bit of a joke between them. People can’t see past their jobs, the stereotypes, whatever, but the truth is, what they have is strong and warm and loving. Maybe they are tough, but they are tough like a tree, or a bridge. She’d just needed a day outside it, on her own, to see that. But a day was long enough.
They are going to be great mothers. It is going to be worth the work.
Radclyffe comes trotting up, claws clacking on the hard-wood. Although she wants to just drop to her knees and hug him, she heads out to the conservatory at the back. She sits down on the cushioned wicker sofa and pats her legs.
‘Come on then, sweetheart.’ He jumps up and licks her face, and she jerks her head back, loving his simple affection. Then the baby shifts and kicks out suddenly, and Radclyffe jumps back, surprised, and barks at it.
Suzy laughs aloud. She rests her head on the back of the sofa, and closes her eyes, rubbing the dog on the bumpy crown of his skull.
A noise in the kitchen. Breaking glass.
Radclyffe instantly gets up and starts barking.
In one movement she stands, faster than she’s got to her feet in months. The training kicks in instantly; it doesn’t give a fuck that she’s spent the last twelve weeks on desk duty. Assess exit, assess weapons. On the coffee table there’s a fat remote, an empty pint glass, and a foot-long, boat-shaped clay dish full of batteries and pens and change. She grabs the dish, jettisons the crap, goes to the door. Radclyffe runs out ahead of her.
‘Police officer!’ she shouts, holding the dish in front of her with one hand, using the other to swing the door open. There’s a squeak, a series of light thuds. She knows without any doubt it’s footwear, it’s trainers on her kitchen floor.
Someone is in her house.
Her phone is in her bag, all the way through the house at the front.
Two options: try to get to the door before he sees her, or stay and defend. Can she get to the landline? Bottom of the stairs?
Not without passing the kitchen door. But she glances over at it, thinking does she have time to—
No. She doesn’t. Because emerging from the kitchen into the hall is a man, his nose and mouth obscured by a bandana. The dog runs at him, then bottles it and runs back to her, barking all the time, his eyes wide with terror.
Her two options reduce to one.
‘Police!’ she shouts again.
He freezes. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. In his hand, he’s got a crowbar. In her house, with her and her unborn baby, there is a fucking stranger carrying a weapon.
‘I’m sorry – I thought—’ he says, then, ‘I didn’t think—’
But Sergeant Suzy Jean Wood doesn’t hear any of it. She sees red. She wraps her free hand around her belly and lifts the dish, ready to swing.
And before she runs at him, she looks him in the eyes, and she roars.
37
Now
The Meadowside psychiatric inpatient unit is a nondescript two-storey affair sitting in an appropriately depressed-looking border of garden and hedges, and Wren can see something is wrong before she’s even parked. Several members of uniformed staff – too many – are standing outside the main entrance, facing the short driveway as if expecting someone. As Wren pulls her jacket closed against the cold and heads over, a black-clad female security guard, vaguely familiar, breaks away from the group and approaches her.
‘No visitors I’m afraid,’ the woman says, before frowning slightly. ‘Do I know you?’
Wren stops halfway up the steps. She struggles for a few moments to place her, then a lightbulb goes on. ‘You go out with Cara, right? She’s my partner’s ex. Suzy Wood, you know her? The cop?’
‘Shit, right,’ she says, satisfied. ‘Small world. But Cara’s my ex now too, Jesus.’ She rolls her eyes, grinning lopsidedly. ‘Your girl made a lucky escape. But look,’ she says, squinting back towards the building, ‘your visit’s going to have to wait I’m afraid. We’re in lockdown.’
‘Lockdown? Why?’
The woman pauses to regard her. ‘You police too?’
‘Probation. I’ve come to check on a… someone I’m working with.’
The guard nods, then drops her voice to a conspiratorial low whisper. ‘Guy came in demanding to see a patient, no ID or appointment. Staff tried to deal with him but he just lost it. Went round opening doors, trying to find this person – I was on my break, never run so fast in my life.’
‘Where is he now?’ Wren asks, her heart galloping. What she doesn’t ask is, who is he.
‘Waiting inside.’
‘For what?’
‘The police. Should be here any minute. We put him in one of the secure rooms. Not locked or anything,’ she adds quickly. ‘In all honesty he’s not a threat, we could probably just sit him in reception. Feel a bit sorry for him really – he said he really wanted a cigarette, so I snuck him one of mine. After all that, turns out the patient’s not even here. Hasn’t been for a couple of years. Fight totally went out of him when he found out. It was him who asked us to call the police – though we had already, obviously. He wanted us to tell them he was co-operating.’ She checks her watch, then puts her hands on her hips. ‘Who was it you wanted to see?’
‘Actually, I think it’s him. Robert Ashworth, right? He’s my offender.’
The guard’s eyes go wide, and she leans back on her heels. ‘Oh.’
It takes Wren a lot of charm and a bit of wheedling, but it isn’t long before she’s convinced her to take her to him. She knows she’s got minutes, if that, before the cavalry arrive.
When the guard pushes the door to the secure room open, Wren’s first thought is that he’s done another runner. But then she sees him. He’s crouched in the corner, almost behind the door. His head turned away from her, face in his hands.
‘I’ll leave it open,’ the guard says softly as she leaves.
The room is thick with the smell of the illicit cigarette. ‘Rob,’ Wren says, then again, more firmly, ‘Rob.’
He looks up at her. His eyelashes are peaked into wet clumps, and as he meets her eye, he lets out a sob.
‘Fuck,’ he says.
‘What are you doing here, Rob?’
This is a man brought as low as he’s going to get, but even though she’s itching to dig out a tissue for him, show him that there’s still compassion in the world, she’s not going to. Front and centre in her head is that wretched, sodden bag. Those clothes.
‘I wanted to find my mum. I told you that’s what I wanted to do, and you wouldn’t help me, you wouldn’t…’ he breaks off, screwing his face up like he’s got to shut himself up tight. ‘All of this, all this stupid shit I’ve had to do, it – well it doesn’t matter now, does it?’
Right on cue, there’s a siren. Rob jumps to his feet. He takes a step towards her and for a second she thinks he’s going to hit her.
But he doesn’t. He says, ‘I’m going to do whatever they say, all right? But you’ve got to tell them. I don’t know why you did it, and I know you think I’m this fucking monster, but you’ve got to change your mind, all right?’
She glares at him. ‘About what? What is it I’ve done?’
‘I was doing everything you said. Wasn’t I? I was doing all the visits, I was doing the interviews, keeping my head down. I’ve done my time, right?’ The siren gets louder. ‘Why are you setting me up?’
‘Setting you up?’ She laughs bitterly. ‘No, Rob. That bag, those clothes, were in your flat.’
‘You’re the only person who knows where I live!’ he shouts.
From just beyond the door the guard says, ‘You need help in there?’
‘We’re fine,’ Wren says, feeling anything but. She turns back to Ashworth, incredulous. ‘Someone saw you digging.’
‘No, Wren, look—’ His eyes are filling with tears again.
‘No, you look. Did you think you’d get away with it? Just because she was in care? You deserve everything you’re about to get. And I hope you fucking rot.’
‘Listen to me.’ The meniscus breaks and Ashworth is crying. ‘I made some mistakes, OK? I really did. I let my brother get into some serious trouble, and I let my mum down, and I got Paige wrapped up in something fucking lethal when I should have just walked away. I know that. I’m a bad person, all right, I get it. But I’m not—’ He stops, his breath ragged. ‘I’m not a fucking killer.’
‘Who did it then? Huh?’ Half of Wren is still furious with him. The other half is weighing this up. Because this doesn’t sound like the Rob Ashworth she knows.
‘I don’t know. I thought… I thought if I could find Luke, and find my mum, I could find Paige too and it would all – it would all be OK.’ He glances towards the window and a flash of blue light hits his face. They’re here. ‘You’ve got to believe me.’
She doesn’t know what to say. There’s a commotion outside and then male voices, heavy footfalls.
Robert Ashworth lets his eyes close for just a moment and then he releases a long breath, stands tall, and faces the door. Hands empty and by his sides, ready. This is his last moment of liberty, certainly for some time, possibly for decades.
But just before it happens, he turns to her. This time, when he speaks, it’s in a voice belonging to someone much younger, and so quiet that she can hardly hear him.
‘Is Paige dead, then?’ he says. ‘Is that what this means?’
38
Before
Luke sits motionless on his bed, a blackness sweeping up inside him. The phone is gone.
So what now? Without it, he’s got nothing at all. No one’s going to believe him, not if it’s his word against Yardley’s, not without proof. And the proof just sped off on five-hundred-quid tyres. If Yardley’s got half as much sense as Luke thinks he has, that phone’s going to be corroding on the bottom of the Avon by teatime.
He gets up, and aims a kick as hard as he can at the wall. Then he gets his coat and goes back outside.
He doesn’t know where he’s going, or what he’s going to do. It’s four o’clock in the afternoon. School’s over. Paige will be on her way back now. Just as he’s wondering which way she’ll come from, whether he should try to intercept her, a car passes him, then screeches to a stop, reverses until it’s level with him.
It’s Rob.
And in the passenger seat, her face blotched white and red and her eyes so swollen with tears she looks like she’s been punched, is Paige.
The door behind Paige clunks open. Rob doesn’t even look at him. ‘Where’s the phone?’
‘I haven’t got it.’
Paige turns to Rob; she lets out this sob and says, ‘He has! He did, this morning, I know he did.’ Then she turns back to him. ‘Please, Luke. Just give it back.’
Luke can’t even look at her. ‘I told you I haven’t got it.’
‘Then who has?’ Rob barks.
Luke says the name so quietly he can hardly hear it. His brother turns his eyes on him and Luke manages about half a second before he has to look away. He tries Paige, but the horror on her face is even worse.
‘Oh, Lukey,’ she says, crumpling. ‘Oh, no.’
‘Right. Get in the fucking car,’ Rob says, hardly moving his lips, his knuckles tight on the wheel. ‘Now.’
They drive, lefting and righting until Luke’s pretty sure that Rob doesn’t know where he’s going, hasn’t got a plan. The car – one he’s either stolen or borrowed from the garage, Luke guesses, because he sure as hell wouldn’t have bought a Volvo estate – has that sickening smell of plain-can air-freshener over cigarettes.
No one says anything. When they stop, it’s in the car park of the Maccy D’s they went to just a few weeks ago, before any of this happened. Back when Luke was a little kid, and his brother was someone good that he could rely on.
Now the engine’s off, all he can hear is Paige crying, softly, like she doesn’t know how to stop. He reaches forward and touches her shoulder but she shrugs him off.
Rob undoes his seatbelt and he turns all the way around. ‘You want to tell me what the fuck you think you’re doing?’
There isn’t an answer to that, so he continues.
‘Because I had a plan, little brother. And we need to get that phone back, right fucking now. All right?’
‘Just leave it!’ Paige says, covering her face with her hands. ‘It’s over, all right?’
Rob turns to her, fury igniting. ‘It’s not over! That money, Paige, is going to change everything.’
Luke looks up. ‘What money?’
Paige lets out a little moan.
‘What money, Rob?’ he asks again, louder.
And then Luke gets it. He lets his head sink back against the rest. ‘You were going to blackmail him.’
There’s a jolt, and the engine roars into life.
‘What are you doing?’ Luke asks, but he needn’t have bothered. Rob stands on the revs, pushes down the hand-brake, and Luke’s forced back again.
‘Stop! Stop it!’ Luke screams. Then the squeal of brakes, and he’s flying forward, smashing his nose on the back of Paige’s seat. The car stops, but Rob’s pumping his foot and making the engine pulse.
‘I did all of this for you. You understand that?’
‘How is that for me? Getting yourself fucking locked up? Huh?’
Rob slams his palms against the wheel. ‘I had a way out. For you, and for Mum.’
Paige turns to him. ‘And me,’ she says quietly.
‘Fuck’s sake, for all of us!’
Luke says nothing. He tastes blood, and his nose gives when he touches it. His whole face shrieks with fresh pain.
‘We’re going to get it back,’ Rob tells him. A thick vein is snaking in his forehead, and Luke doesn’t see his brother now. He sees their dad, the face on him the day he left, pissed out of his head, terrifying everyone around him. Take away the drinking, and it’s basically Rob now.
And that’s what makes up Luke’s mind. He leans forward again towards Paige, doesn’t care if she r
ejects him, because this is the end of the road. He’s got fuck all to lose.
‘I’m not having anything to do with this. You don’t have to either, Paige,’ he says, putting his hand on her shoulder. ‘It’s not too late. You can walk away.’
In the mirror ahead of her, Luke meets her eye. She blinks once, presses her lips into the weakest of smiles. Then she twists and reaches her arm behind her seat, and for a minute he thinks she’s going to touch him, hold his hand, squeeze his leg, something.
But she doesn’t.
She opens his door. ‘You should go.’
39
Now
Suzy’s car is already there when Wren arrives, her parking immaculate, wheels a perfect three inches from the kerb. Wren checks her face in the mirror, flips open the glovebox for powder, and sorts the shine on her nose and cheeks. She smooths her hair, knowing how silly it is. Four years in, definitely too late for first impressions. But still.
She pauses in the front garden before she goes in, noticing the space, the variety of colour there, even at this time of the year. There is a corner where they can make a mud kitchen when the baby is a toddler; Marty’s girls spent hours in theirs when they were small, making potions and dinners. She’d like that for their child.
Smiling as she digs in her bag for her key, she goes to the door. But as she lifts her head, key in hand, her mood drops.
The front door is open.
The door drags on something as she pushes it wide. Suzy’s handbag is next to her suitcase on the wooden floor, caught under the door, its contents scattered. Radclyffe, obscuring something larger behind him at the foot of the stairs, lifts his big head and whines, but he doesn’t come to her. And then, behind him, she sees the leg.
Suzy’s leg.
Something brittle cracks underfoot as she runs to her. She pushes Radclyffe out of the way and drops to her knees. Suzy is lying on her side, one arm caught underneath her, the other thrown out sideways. Her eyes are shut, but only just.
‘Suzy. Suzy, can you hear me?’
Nothing. Wren leans across her, over the powerful bare arm that is now pallid. Careful not to move her she hovers a hand in front of her mouth, praying.