by Rachael Blok
‘You think this one might be important?’ Adrika asks, coming to stand next to him. She’s wearing shades and a hat, and she lifts the shades to lean in and read the writing carefully.
‘No idea. But she would be a similar age to Leo Fenton and Ana Seabrook now. Perhaps they knew each other? It’s a long time ago – ten years since her death. But we need everything we can get. The background will be ready later?’
She nods.
He turns and sees a single cloud, hovering in the sky. More a puff than anything substantial. ‘They were saying on the radio it’s been almost forty days without rain,’ he comments.
‘Scary really, if you think about it too long,’ Adrika says. ‘We’re not set up for it. Crazy country. Two snowflakes and the trains grind to a halt. This sun and no one can sleep, the ground turns yellow. My mind overheats by lunchtime. My thoughts roast. Burned on the outside, pink in the middle, BBQ brain.’
Watching the cloud as it floats away, with its promise of rain, Maarten nods his head. ‘We could be more productive right now. Inertia is heat-bred.’
Ready to get out of the sun, he heads back across the hard ground. ‘Come on, let’s visit Ms Seabrook. There’s nothing new to see here.’
54
Monday 25th June
ANA
The pub is closed until 6 p.m. today and Ana stretches, lazy like a cat, flat on the grass. She’s missed her run for a couple of days, and her limbs feel heavy. The heat has unwound her muscles, already softened them. She flexes her foot, testing herself, then she pulls her body up in a yoga move, arching up. It’s a bridge pose. She breathes into it, feeling the muscles down her spine locking. She’s downloaded some app with daily ten-minute workouts. Her back is getting stronger. Physically, she’s almost whole.
‘Is it OK if we come in?’
Ana sees the police entering the pub garden. They must have knocked and spoken to her mum first.
She lowers herself, sitting up, waiting for the pull in her back to fade before she stands. She’s light-headed.
The very tall one, the Dutch DCI, comes in quietly, and the DI is the one who talks, chatting as she enters: ‘It’s lovely here – how amazing to get all this space.’
‘When I’m not sharing it with the rest of the village,’ Ana says, drinking from her water bottle, uncurling her legs and rising carefully to sit at one of the wooden tables.
The benches either side of the table have no back support and she pulls in her stomach.
They sit, baking in the morning sun, facing each other. Sweat sits on the brow of the Dutchman. He is upright and melting. He looks like he exercises, though; he’s not flaccid in the heat like some.
‘We have no evidence that it was a push rather than a fall,’ the DCI says, his soft accent laying out the facts clearly. ‘But we have found a link to Leo Fenton. It’s far from proof, but he and Jack Thurbridge were at the same university.’ He pauses, allowing this to sink in, looks at her then looks away.
Despite the heat, he seems comfortable, relaxed. He doesn’t tell her this with any sense of eagerness. Seems oblivious to her hands, which close tight on the wooden table of the beer garden; her knuckles, which pale beneath the sun and the burn of the news.
His eyes swivel back to her. ‘We’ll follow this up. We wondered if it rang any bells.’
She shakes her head as she looks at him. He has dark brown eyes behind the thick black frames. He must be about ten – fifteen? – years older than her; he’s handsome, in a geek-chic kind of way. She can imagine him drinking red wine, at film festivals… She wonders if he takes delight in his cases, in this case. Like he might seek the delight of finishing a Rubik’s cube. Turning her upside down, slotting her next to the reds, easing out the yellows. She thinks of Leith’s energy, which rallies others to please him; of Ben’s humour, which can hold a crowd in a pub on one story easily for half an hour.
And of Jack812, who possibly tried to push her under a train.
‘You think he might have killed Leo?’ she asks. ‘You think it’s been him all along?’
‘We have no idea,’ he says. ‘We’re looking into it.’
‘We looked for the face of the man you saw wearing a cap, but there wasn’t enough CCTV to get a clear image.’ The DI speaks, and she leans forward, placing her hand close to Ana’s. ‘He might be completely unconnected. Have you remembered anything else?’
Ana shakes her head. Her mind is filled with the rush of hot air as the Tube sped towards her. Her fingers had almost brushed the tracks as she had tipped down. A jerk from behind. The billow of her skirt.
A cap.
‘There’s no chance Leo might be alive?’ she asks. ‘That maybe it was all one big fake?’
She is dizzy now. The back of her neck burns under the sun. Ben is in jail. Deep down, she knows Leo wouldn’t have left him in there. Even if Leo had wanted to get away from something, he wouldn’t have left Ben in jail.
Jansen shakes his head. His eyes are kind, she decides. Noticing the kindness makes her feel as though she might cry. It’s only her fingernails, digging into the wood on the old table, that keep her from tipping backwards, from giving in to the dizziness that makes her head spin. She hasn’t eaten, she remembers, she’s eaten nothing at all since last night.
He says, ‘We don’t discount anything. We’ll follow up on it all. We have fairly solid evidence that Leo is dead. It’s the lead we’re pursuing at the moment. I’m sorry.’
‘Can Ben get out of prison soon? If you’re convinced that this is all the hand of someone else, you must be sure now that he didn’t kill anyone. So, can he get out? Can he come home?’ She longs for Ben, for what they had, like the country longs for rain – seeking the familiar, wanting to ease this dryness, this burn.
DCI Jansen nods. His face is impassive. There is no hint of anything. The kind eyes, the face that gives nothing else away. Rod-straight, he sits beneath the sun and is unmoved. Melting, but unbothered by it.
‘If the identity of the body is confirmed as Leo’s then it’s likely Ben will be released. We have no interest in keeping an innocent person in jail. Can you think about any Jacks that Leo might have mentioned? Sometimes it takes a reminder to bring things to the surface, a catalyst.’ This time he smiles. ‘If anything occurs to you, you have our number.’
‘Hopefully, it won’t take long, Ana,’ the DI says, leaning further forward. She smiles, and Ana finds herself smiling back, trusting her. Trusting both of them. ‘We want Ben to come home to you. And we want to give you all some closure with Leo. We know how hard it is for the families when a body is missing.’
Maarten Jansen smiles at her. ‘I did want to ask if you knew a Caitlin Miller?’
Shaking her head, Ana tries to banish the fog of heat that is closing in. She thinks for a minute. She’d been thinking of her earlier. Who else had mentioned her? ‘Caitlin Miller? She was Andy Miller’s sister. She hanged herself – depression, they said. We were all given sessions on how to handle the stress of GCSEs. They moved away afterwards. It was very sad.’ She thinks of how sad it had been – no one had really understood it. ‘But I wasn’t sorry to see Andy Miller move.’
‘There was no relation to Leo? To Ben?’ Jansen asks.
Ana looks down at her nails. One has ripped, and there’s a darkening pink underneath. It will bleed, she thinks. The dizziness increases. The heat cannot be fought. She lifts her nail, aware of the sting of it, and as she does so, her vision melts into a landscape of grey. Her head becomes soft and the muscles in her stomach, holding her back upright, release.
She shakes her head again. ‘I don’t think so. I was a bit of a recluse around then. Dad had died. I wasn’t coping. I think Leo went out with her for a while, boyfriend and girlfriend, but I don’t really remember… He was always in love with someone. He was a charmer.’ She smiles. Laughs. ‘He pulled you in. The Fenton boys have something.’ Her smile disappears quickly and she thinks of Leo, and thinks of him lying in a grave. So young. So
unlived.
As the sound of her voice fades along with the faces of the police, Ana hears only one word as she tips backwards, back towards the hard ground, the odd cigarette butt, the patchy earth. It comes from her mouth, but it could come from anywhere.
‘Leo.’
55
Monday 25th June
MAARTEN
‘Mama, we brought balloons!’ The girls rush into the room, a vent of energy, a gust of colour. The balloons snag on the doorframe before pulling down and up again. Vivid, they fill the space, rising up towards the ceiling; thin twisted foil ribbons catch the light as they dangle down, grabbed by tiny hands.
‘Thank you!’ Liv, dressed and waiting in the chair by the bed, hugs them both – still moving cautiously, Maarten sees, but her colour is normal, and she stands on both legs equally, solid again.
‘Thank God you’re coming home,’ Maarten says as he kisses her, smiling. ‘We can’t do anything without you.’
‘Bloody can’t wait,’ she says. ‘Can we have pizza takeaway tonight? And wine?’
The girls collect the drawings that they’ve given her, pinned around the bed in frames; they clutch trinkets. Sanne wraps up the picture she’d made for Liv. She lays it carefully on the bed, wrapping it slowly in the tea towel she’d brought.
Maarten wonders if they’ve grown too fast in the last couple of weeks. They have had to show him how to plait hair, explain who the parents were who’d offered play dates, lifts to swimming, to ballet, to football. Cried because they remembered the crunch of metal, called for Liv in their sleep.
‘Must be a special occasion if you’ve let them bring me helium balloons,’ Liv says, her arms full of a rainbow-coloured one; she pulls it down and watches it float up again.
‘I had no choice. It was all they wanted to bring. You know there is still a helium shortage? We will run out. And MRIs, they don’t know—’
‘I know, Maart, I know. Thank you. It’s made their day.’ She laughs at him, and he shrugs, pleased everyone is smiling, almost ready to cry with relief.
The bags are wheeled to the door, arms full of hospital bric-a-brac.
‘I can’t believe all this stuff!’ Maarten says.
‘You’re the policeman, aren’t you?’ The voice comes from behind.
He swings round, and it’s Aggie. She’s shuffling back in from her walk, on the arm of a nurse. Her lined face is scrunched up – in fear, he thinks. She looks frightened. She leans in and squeezes his arm. Her fingers are strong, and they pull him towards her.
‘You’re not taking Katie?’
‘It’s time for her to go home. She’s all better,’ he says, smiling. He speaks gently, bending slightly so that he can look clearly into her eyes; her pupils are like beads now, almost black. Her terror is writ in there.
‘Don’t take her. She’s done no wrong. It wasn’t her fault!’ The hand on his arm shakes, the fingers dig tight in sharp trembles – she pulls him closer still. Her breath is tea-scented, with sour milk. ‘It wasn’t her fault. I know it’s a crime, but she wasn’t hurting nobody. She doesn’t deserve to be taken by the police!’
‘Aggie, come on, into bed,’ the nurse says, trying to steer her away.
But her hand is locked on his arm.
‘It wasn’t Katie’s fault!’ Tears are running down her face. The nurse glances at Maarten, and she nods to the door, indicating that he should leave. But Maarten can’t move, he’d have to peel her fingers away. He sees the girls’ faces, confused; Sanne takes a step towards them.
Aggie turns to Liv, addressing her with a voice that is light as air, rising in tone, quivering with grief. ‘Katie, I never told them. I never told any of them. He wondered if you’d come to see me, before. I don’t think what you did was a crime. You was just sad. It was his fault, that’s what I told him. I told him he was to blame. Not saying sorry for what he did to that poor girl! Of course you’d be upset. If he hadn’t shouted at you, hadn’t gone off like that… leaving you. Upset. In your condition… But I never said. I never told no one.’
She collapses on the nurse’s arm, crying, muttering.
Maarten’s arm pinches where the fingers dug deep, and his brain ticks over once. Stirring.
Katie.
Caitlin. A crime. Is she talking about suicide?
He steps forward to ask her, but the nurse is already leading her to bed and Sanne’s face, tiny and tight, looks to him for explanation.
Nic clings to Liv’s hand, and Liv is already reaching to stroke Sanne’s hair.
The room waits for movement, the balloons holding their height in the air as though stilled for a picture.
‘Is she OK?’ Sanne asks. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘She’s just old, sweetheart,’ Liv says. ‘She’s confused; she thinks I’m someone else.’
Maarten hunkers down, smiling at them all, whispering. ‘She’s remembering something, but her brain isn’t working quite right. Look, she’s fine now. It wasn’t about Mama. And you know, we haven’t told Mama how many ice creams we’ve been eating since she’s been in here. Shall we pick some up on the way home? Chocolate?’
Aggie is quieter now. The curtain round her bed is pulled closed, and Maarten steps through the doorframe before swinging Sanne up on his shoulders. He will need to come back. He needs to settle his family first.
‘Ice cream?’ Liv says. ‘With waffles cones?’
Maarten glances back once. Yes, he’ll come back, he thinks, once he’s worked out the questions. There are questions forming. Something is tapping its way into shape.
56
Tuesday 26th June
ANA
There’s definitely a presence.
She runs through the field. The sun is hot and the ground is hard. There’s a patch at the edge where the local cricket team play and a sprinkler lifts itself up and arcs back and forward across the bowling run. It’s the only green thing in the whole yellow landscape. She makes a beeline for it and her legs and arms catch the drips as she leaps through the falling spray. She imagines rain, thinking of it as something historic, a fabled tale. Everywhere needs rain. The world as they know it is burning beneath their feet.
Running round the edge, she can feel it again. It’s like eyes on her neck. She runs faster, lengthening her stride. Her chest burns as she pushes herself but she feels strong. She will outrun this. Real or not.
Landing on the road, she runs up on the verge as a car passes, and then back on the tarmac. She’s almost back in Ayot.
Still, that feeling that there are eyes, that someone follows her. It’s like a bag she carries now. One she can’t leave the house without.
Slowing as she reaches the pub, she allows her arms to swing wide in windmills, then bends, catching her breath. She walks across the gravel of the tiny car park and stops outside the door to the pub entrance to stretch. She glances at Jam’s bowl, which has not been moved. No one can bring themselves to take it away. The image of her lies in the garden whenever she closes her eyes.
‘Ana?’
Her name lands with the crunch of gravel, sharp and biting. She spins, her heart racing quickly as though she’s running again, preparing to flee.
‘Jack?’ She steps backwards, glancing left and right.
‘Please.’ He holds up his hands and stops. Stands stock still. ‘Please, I just wanted to talk to you. And I thought if I did it in the morning, when it was light…’
‘How do you know where I live?’ Ana shakes her head. Why would he come here? He looks the same. Friendly, unassuming. He is paler, though, slightly gaunt round the gills. Slightly haunted.
He steps forward and her heart pounds.
‘I knew the village when you mentioned it ages ago. I tried the other pub first, then I came here. Look, Ana, I’m not trying to frighten you, I just wanted to say that it wasn’t me. I didn’t push you. Of course I didn’t push you! One minute we were standing there, and I felt a bump and fell. I was the one who pulled you back up on the platform
.’ He runs his hand through his hair, takes a breath. Looks like he’s trying to compose himself. Another step.
‘But why come here, Jack? Seriously. What’s wrong with the phone?’ Ana says. She bangs her fist on the thick glass of the pub window behind her. She retreats backwards towards the door. ‘You know what you’ve been accused of, and yet you come here, find me on my own. Who does that? Don’t you blokes get it? Don’t you get it at all? Every new man Fran goes out with, for the first three dates we have a rule, she calls me from the loo so I know she’s safe, that she’s not meeting a psycho. I don’t know you. I’m sure it’s hard for you—’
‘Hard?’ His voice rises in volume. ‘Ana, I can’t go into work. They told me to take some time off until this is resolved! Hard? It’s my reputation, Ana. My fucking reputation is in tatters.’ Spit lands from his mouth on the gravel. She doesn’t recognise this face, twisted in rage.
She shakes her head. She believes him, she had never really thought it was him. What investment does he have in all this? He doesn’t know Ben, her. But she’s scared. His coming here like this is it in a nutshell.
‘Your reputation? That’s it, isn’t it. You’re scared of what other people will think of you, and I’m scared I might get raped or murdered. That about sums it up. You’ve come here to salvage your honour, and found me on my own. You think by holding up his hands, a man accused of pushing me under a train won’t seem to pose any threat? You just don’t get it.’
The pub door opens to the left, and Maisie sticks her head out.
‘Ana, you OK? I heard banging.’ She sees Jack on the gravel, not moving.
‘What’s going on?’ Maisie comes out, suspicious. ‘Who’s he?’