The Scorched Earth

by Rachael Blok

  ‘No, we’re going softly. There’s no identity on the body and no results back from the knife that prove conclusively it has any relation to Leo Fenton. We’re not in a position to charge anyone. We’ll go in gently, but we need to ask about the photo, the text and the presence of the knife and the zolpidem. Sunny’s taken a brief statement, but more background will help. We need to get a feel for it. Whatever happens, let’s keep the tone calm. Harper’s convinced she’s innocent and we’re more likely to get something from her if we go gently.’

  Entering the room, Ana Seabrook is crying. Her eyes are puffy and she keeps pulling at the edge of her brow, running her fingers along and upwards at the side. She looks much younger, he thinks. It’s not being dressed for work. And she looks tired, pale despite the sun. Most of his younger staff have been soaking up the warmth, colouring like chameleons.

  ‘Good to see you again, Ana,’ he says as he sits, smiling.

  She nods, her hands trembling as she places them on the table in front of her. She reaches for a cup that someone has given her, and she lifts it, but doesn’t drink. ‘Yes, I understand why you want to see me,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t seem to stop crying. I have no idea why, I’ve been holding it together pretty well so far. I think it’s the interview room. It brings back a lot – all those times with Ben when Leo died.’

  Maarten nods. It’s not a home from home. Her tears drip and fall. She will know what they have, and maybe it’s fear, that he will press her and that she will be found out – if she has something to hide.

  ‘You know that we found a knife buried at the bottom of your garden? And we also found a batch of drugs that were the same kind Ben had in his system after Leo’s death. There’s certainly some cause to believe that the person involved in the murder of Leo buried these. We’re looking into it, and we’re also checking to see if Jam died of an overdose of zolpidem.’

  The tears don’t slow, and she nods, clutching a tissue and shaking her head. ‘Poor Jam.’

  ‘The other things we found of interest are a photo hidden beneath your pillow, and also a text message on your phone, sent from an account you have listed in your contacts as “Leo”. We checked the number and it’s the last number we have for Leo Fenton. His phone wasn’t found at the scene of his disappearance.’

  She’s still crying, quietly, and Adrika looks at him, opening her eyes wide for a second, rolling them up and back into her head, and then switching back to blank.

  He feels the same. It’s so hot outside, and she has withheld this information. It’s in all their interests to just get on with it.

  ‘Ana, why didn’t you tell us that Leo had texted you? If there’s a chance that he might still be alive, didn’t you think we needed to know?’

  She begins by shaking her head. ‘I don’t know. I know how it looks – the photo…’ There are fresh tears and Maarten firms his tone up.

  ‘What’s happening in the photo?’

  ‘It was—,’ she begins, and her hands tear at the tissue she’s holding. She picks up the cup and drinks this time, swallowing loudly, appearing to calm a little. She shakes her head again, looking down and twisting her fingers. ‘It was something that shouldn’t have happened. I was in New York with work. The company has its head office over there and they throw these huge elaborate conferences every few years. Five-star hotels, big meals, long days listening to speeches – a lot of booze. Anyway, Leo worked over there, so he came along one night to join us for a drink before we went for dinner. It was in the W bar – cocktails, lots of cocktails. I had a drink with him, and he chatted to a few of my colleagues…’ She fades out.

  Maarten watches the sag of her shoulders. Her speech slows. Her words come slowly, as if digging for them exhausts her.

  The case shifts as she speaks. He feels the layers beneath the surface rising, shaking off the dirt and sand.

  41

  Thursday 21st June

  ANA

  She has to tell them. There’s no holding this back now, but it’s important she get it right. She needs to be clear and give them the facts correctly. Not cloud Leo’s name, not darken his memory or scribble over his truth.

  ‘He was upset.’ She remembers the heat in the bar. It had been June and New York had sweltered in a heatwave. This part seems important, and she adds it in. ‘When New York gets hot, it’s like the air changes – the mood. It’s like a different city.’ Thinking carefully, she remembers Leo drinking quickly, like he was thirsty, but it wasn’t water he was knocking back and he was normally more of a beer drinker.

  ‘We were both drunk,’ she says. ‘The heat seems to make you drunker somehow. Is that a word?’ She shakes her head. He had held her hand, and she’d been surprised that when she’d looked at him, there had been tears in his eyes.

  ‘He was upset,’ she says, and now she looks at Maarten Jansen, implores him to understand. ‘He was crying in the bar and Leo doesn’t really cry – at football sometimes; when his parents died, but he’s not a crier. I was worried about him. I’d been on a bit of a session after the conference, and it threw me a bit. My office had dinner planned but I said I’d catch them up.’ She thinks of who she’d spoken to. Probably Fran. They’d all been drunk; no one had given it a second thought. She’d sat with Leo in a booth and he’d ordered more drinks. He’d gripped her hand tightly and he’d cried, saying something she couldn’t hear. The music had been loud.

  ‘Go on,’ Maarten Jansen says.

  The room here is hot, and both the officers sit very still. The heat makes her head thick, takes her back to that hot night.

  ‘He was upset. He said that something had happened, a while ago. That he’d got someone pregnant.’ There’s not a flicker on the faces of the police, but her stomach plunges just thinking about it again. She’d reeled back, surprised. The beat from the music had thumped in her stomach; she’d felt sick. ‘I knew he’d had a long-term girlfriend for a few years, over there, but a baby… I had no idea. Anyway, he shook his head and said no, it wasn’t his American girlfriend. But he wouldn’t tell me who it was. Only that there was no baby in the end. That it had come to nothing, but that he should have behaved better.’

  He’d slammed his fist hard on the table. The glass had tipped and the bartender had given them a warning look. More drinks had appeared, but she couldn’t remember whether she or Leo had ordered them.

  ‘He said he should have been a better man, a better human being,’ she whispers, thinking of the noise in the bar, how she’d strained to hear him. There had been a group of girls screaming at the bar in laughter, and she’d leaned right in to Leo to listen to what he said. She’d had to ask him what he meant.

  ‘What did he do?’ Maarten Jansen asks gently. She hears him from a distance, feeling Leo’s hot hand as he’d looked at her with eyes swimming in shame.

  ‘Ben had told him to walk away,’ she says slowly. She still can’t believe he would have done it. The anger and shock she’d felt. ‘He’d been young, Leo said, but still. I couldn’t believe it. I just felt… betrayed. Like it had happened to me.’

  ‘His brother?’

  She nods. She looks down at her hands and remembers that she’d been wearing black nail varnish, that her fingers had gleamed like black diamonds.

  ‘They’d been young, and Leo said he was going to change his mind, go back to her, but it all came to nothing anyway. It had been taken out of his hands and he hadn’t had another chance. He never saw her again.’ She thinks of how exhausted and beaten he’d looked when he’d said this.

  What, never? she’d asked, and he had cried afresh, dipping his head down. There had been something she hadn’t wanted to ask but she can’t remember it now. She looks at Jansen. ‘He said he thinks of it, around that time, mostly. Each year.’

  He had leaned in to her and his breath had been sweet – the strawberries from the cocktails had stained his lips, and they had been an inch away as he had whispered his secrets: Ana, I would give anything to have sa
id something different. What do you think of me now?

  There had only been him and her. His breath, soft; his hand holding hers so tightly, and she wasn’t sure who had tipped first, but the kiss had been soft and familiar. His tongue had been laced with vodka and the sweat in the bar was on their skin. She’d been wearing a thin, strappy top, and the bare skin of his forearms had brushed up her arms and snaked round to the skin on her back. She had felt naked, dressed only in him.

  ‘We kissed. One thing led to another. We were drunk,’ she says. Her head bowed. ‘You have to understand that it wasn’t about betraying Ben, it was about comfort – and spite. We both let him down. But Leo was angry with him… and so was I, in that moment, in that night. I think we did it a little to spite him; but we were both to blame.

  ‘Ben had been young too, looking out for his brother. Not much more able to deal with the seriousness that a baby can bring than Leo was. It was Leo’s decision, at the end of the day.’ She’s not crying any more; the fear of knowing she would have to tell the story passes as it hits the air.

  The room is still. The face of the DI, who had looked so cold at the start of the interview, is alive with listening, bent forward, ready to catch the truth in the story.

  ‘We spent the night together. In the morning, it was like it was finished, all by itself. We had breakfast together, and by the last coffee, it was gone, buried. I don’t think we agreed out loud, but we weren’t going to tell him.’ She thinks of ordering the pancakes, of the blue of the sky outside the hotel she was staying in.

  She catches her breath for a second as she thinks of the night. He had been… She had tasted his skin. She won’t say it aloud, but she had wanted him. She had been on fire with wanting him – drink, New York; once he had touched her, she couldn’t reason it with words, but she had known exactly. If he had hesitated at any point, she hadn’t. Skin on skin, simple desire. It had been another life.

  ‘I think that because of our friendship – we’d always been so close – it was easy to compartmentalise, to tuck it up and place it out of time. It was about comfort. And we never told Ben.’

  She loved Ben. In the morning, when she’d walked the blocks to the office, sailing in her heels, she had felt painted in guilt. But it hadn’t really changed them. She and Leo had slipped back into friendship in a way that, if anything, she felt had strengthened them all. One secret was out. The other one buried.

  There had been times in the past when she’d been jealous of their relationship, of their closeness. And now she’d sunk herself into the fractured cracks of their brotherhood.

  ‘And the photo?’ Maarten Jansen asked. ‘Have you always kept a photo under your pillow?’

  ‘No!’ She speaks quickly, the shock of the photo a reminder of where they are. ‘I was sent it the day the body was found. It came to my office. Leo had taken it on his phone, and I’d always assumed he’d deleted it, to be honest. He’d taken it in the bar. But someone sent it to me, which means that someone knows. Someone knows about that night. I thought the only people who knew were Leo and me.’

  This time the DI speaks, and she does so slowly, with a layer of anger brimming somewhere. Ana understands; she’s been withholding evidence. ‘What if it was Leo? You have a text on your phone from him, and a photo that you say only he has. Hasn’t that made you think about the possibility that Leo himself is the one sending these?’

  Ana thinks quickly, trying to put it into words, but it’s hard making it sound clear. ‘Initially I thought Leo wouldn’t have sent me that text, I didn’t think it sounded like him. Do you see? It’s never come up. It’s never been something that we talked about, or even thought about. I assumed he wouldn’t ask if I was missing him. I thought it must be someone else – someone else might see it as something very, very different. But now I don’t know. I’m not sure of anything any more.’

  Maarten Jansen looks at her for a minute, and no one speaks. Then he nods slowly. ‘You mean that someone else might see the photo as evidence that you and Leo Fenton were having an affair. And that by faking his death, and setting his brother up, he manages to get rid of the man he is so clearly angry with and get his girl, all in one swoop.’

  ‘But—’ Ana says, stopping, knowing that this sounds plausible, but it’s so far from the truth.

  ‘And the reason you might not want to tell the police about it is that it would seem very possible that you were an accomplice. That you buried the knife and the drugs. And that your dog found them and dug them up. Do you think Leo’s alive, Ana?’ He leans forward, and Ana is so dizzy now there are dark spots in front of her lids, patterning the room.

  ‘Is Leo alive, Ana?’

  The room swims, swims with a head in a cap. Could it be Leo? Nothing is clear any more. Nothing makes sense. As the black spots bleed into a curtain before her vision, she thinks of Leo’s touch, his scent. The cap half turns. Is it him?

  42

  Two Years Earlier

  June

  LEO

  ‘You fucking what?’ Ben’s voice is loud. The volume and anger in it eases Leo’s tension a little. Like blood-letting. Like scratching a mozzie bite.

  People look up. The mother nearby frowns as their card game pauses. She is dressed in a blue-and-white striped top. Breton, Leo thinks. The pattern is Breton. He looks back at her, but doesn’t apologise. He’s unleashed it. It’s only going to get worse.

  Slowly, he turns his gaze back to Ben. He deserves this. He needs to take some kind of retribution. He is owed it.

  ‘You did fucking what?’ Ben repeats, slightly quieter this time, but not necessarily because of the background. He stares at Leo and the look is one that Leo hasn’t seen before. Like he doesn’t know who he is.

  ‘I slept with Ana. Just once. A year ago,’ Leo repeats. ‘I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.’ He scratches his arm. He doesn’t know if he is sorry. He knows it in his head, but he’s numb. He just wants to feel again.

  ‘Why the absolute fuck would you do that?’ Ben holds his pint still, holds his head still.

  ‘I didn’t plan it. It was in New York – she was over for work and it was June. It was… the anniversary of… you know. I wasn’t holding together well. I got upset, we were both drunk and it kind of… just happened. I’m so sorry.’ There he is again, saying he is sorry. He had sworn to himself he would never tell Ben. It would never happen again. It hadn’t happened because he’d intended it to. He’d fallen down the rabbit hole. He had stopped feeling after June 2010. He would have done anything to feel.

  It’s the same thing. He’s doing something he will regret in a few months, once the cloud has passed. He knows it already, even as he goes in deeper – he knows it’s not the thing he means to do. He’s setting fire to the things closest to him.

  ‘She’s my girlfriend, Leo. And you’re my brother. Why would you ever do it?’ Ben shakes his head. He puts his pint down undrunk, untouched. He gestures with his arm, like he’s illustrating a point. ‘And why tell me now? I’ve just told you I’ve bought a ring! Why tell me at all?’

  Ben’s voice is rising, and people are looking now. Everyone is looking. The anger vibrates round the bar and there is no sound other than Ben’s voice. Leo sees the barmaid looking over and she’s worried. She disappears out the back.

  ‘What am I supposed to do now!’ Ben screams, and knocks his pint from the table. Leo doesn’t think he intended to knock it, but his fist is flailing round. He realises that Ben might be about to hit him. Part of him anticipates the feeling of relief this will bring.

  And he wonders what it will feel like to hit Ben. He screams back at him, ‘I wanted to go to her! You told me to walk away!’

  He looks at Ben, untouched by the guilt.

  Ben stands, and he leans forward, poised.

  Nobody moves. The pub holds its breath.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Leo sees the barmaid return, and she’s brought with her the manager. He moves over, hands parted and raised in a white flag ges
ture. ‘Lads, I don’t know what this is about, but I think it’s time to head outside. People are getting upset.’

  Stepping on the glass, the crunch is loud to Leo, the crackle of glass and the squelch of the beer into the carpet.

  ‘I’m going. I’m going RIGHT NOW.’ Ben leaves with a shout and his chair falls behind him. His fists are clenched tight. His face beetroot.

  Leo knows he has broken his heart, and part of him feels better.

  43

  Thursday 21st June

  ANA

  Exhausted from the interview, Ana is working from home for the rest of the morning but can’t get anything done. Instead, she’s clearing out. The boxes from the previous life are starting to drive her mad. Baggage. Heading downstairs, she hears the bang of a bucket.

  ‘Right, that’s me done for the day.’ Jess pulls off her Marigolds and lays them on the bucket, hefting it up and walking through the back of the bar to where the toilets and cupboards lie.

  Ana can hear her closing the door.

  ‘Thanks, Jess,’ she says as the cleaner comes back in the room and picks up her bag. ‘Thanks for staying later today. Mum’s not feeling too well, so it’s been a real help.’

  ‘No problem. Nothing serious?’

  Ana shakes her head.

  ‘Want me to have a clean upstairs as well? I do domestic cleaning too. Might be nice for your mum, not to have to think about it for a while. And for you.’

  ‘That would be great. We’re having a clear-out at the moment. I’ve got all my schoolgirl stuff in there with all my adult stuff I brought back from London. Lots of boxes.’

  ‘Charlie could help with his van, if you like? I’ll ask him; he’s picking me up.’

  Ana smiles. ‘That would be great. Off anywhere nice? Enjoying the sun?’

  ‘This heat?’ Jess shakes her head. ‘I’m off to hospital. My sister’s in there. I don’t go much as she doesn’t really recognise me. We didn’t get on that well when she did recognise me neither.’