by Unknown
'Well, you sound crap.'
'I feel it. Been up all night and come straight here to the airport. We're on the Tarmac now.'
'We?'
'Me and Sancho Struthers. My travelling companion.'
'Not off to Miami, then. Or do you take him on your holidays too?'
He didn't laugh. 'Joe,' he said, 'are you going anywhere today?'
'Me? Only the corner shop. I'm staying in. Got a book to write.'
'We're on our way to Heathrow. Be with you in a couple of hours. Need a little consultation if that's OK.'
'A consultation? What's up?'
He hesitated. 'It's a lot to go into on an open line, Joe, if you're with me. Shall we hold it till we're face to face?'
I threw off the covers and swung my feet out of bed. Something in his voice had set a bell ringing in the back of my head. 'It's not him, is it? That sad sack on the slab in Dumfries, that's not Malachi. I've left messages, Peter, about this. Been waiting for you to call.'
There was a silence. Just the sound of static on the line and the steady thrum of a small-engined jet.
'Peter? Can you hear me? I said, it's not him, is it?'
'It's not him,' he said eventually. 'The DNA's wrong.'
'Fucking knew it.' I stood up. 'He found someone who looked like him. The suicide note, everything, he just wanted you off his back for a few weeks.'
'No. We don't think he did this one – think it's coincidence.' He lowered his voice – probably getting the evils from the other passengers. 'The Dumfries guy's an ex-squaddie, not been right since Desert Storm. Threatening suicide for years.'
'Peter,' I said, pacing up and down the room, tapping out the words in the air, 'how long does DNA take?'
'Not long. It's—'
'Exactly. Not long. You said Friday – that's three days ago. You've known three days, and I've left messages asking you to let me know if—'
'Joe, listen—'
'To let me know if there wasn't a match and in the meantime Angeline's gone to the fucking newspapers and given them her story.' I went to the window and flicked open the curtains, expecting to see her coming down the street. 'He'll read it this morning and know where she is and—'
I broke off. Something in the street outside had caught my eye.
'Peter?' My blood had gone a bit slow, a bit cold. 'Peter, you bastard? What's happening? What aren't you telling me?' I opened the window and leaned out, my breath steaming in the air, condensation wetting my naked shoulder. 'There's a fucking squad car in the street outside with his lights on. What the fuck's going on?'
'He's from Salusbury Road. Joe? Joe! Listen. He's just there as a precaution.'
'A precaution? Jesus fucking Christ – you'd better tell me what's going on.'
'Maybe you'll stay in the house today. You've got no reason to go out, eh? Cancel the shopping trip. I'm going to text you the number of the local nick – they know all about the situation.'
'The situation?'
'The plane's taxiing, Joe – I'm getting the evil eye from the stewardess.'
'Listen,' I hissed, 'Angeline's out. What am I going to do about—'
'Just relax. There's nothing to worry about,' he said, and the phone went dead in my hand.
I punched in 1471 then 3 but his answer-service picked up. I hung up and stared at the phone, the blood thumping in my ears. 'You bastards,' I said. 'You knew about this.' I looked out of the window. The streetlights were still on, the orange mixing with the flashing blue light. When I went to the bed and put my hand on the side where Angeline slept it was cold. The newsagent's was only a five-minute walk. Fear came up into my mouth like stomach acid.
I put on jeans and went down the stairs, pulling on a T-shirt. Every step was a bit closer to panic. By the time I got to the hall my teeth were chattering. I ran outside in my bare feet, hesitated, went back and unhooked the keys from above the phone, then slammed the front door tight behind me. In the car opposite the police officer turned his head in my direction as I came down the path. I couldn't see his face – it was behind the sun visor – just his chapped hands resting calmly on the dashboard. I ran into the middle of the road, the cold biting my feet. I turned to check both ways up the street and was about to continue over to him, to hammer on the car window, when I saw her in the distance, coming down the road towards me.
It nearly snapped me in half, the relief. I limped back and leaned on the gate, getting my breath, lifting my head to watch her approach. She was carrying three newspapers and her eyes were bright.
'Joe!' she said, speeding up when she saw me. 'It's in here!' She waved one of the papers at me. 'She said I'm beautiful.'
'Come inside.'
She hesitated, her smile fading, her arm falling slack at her side. 'You haven't got any shoes on.'
'Just get inside.' I took her arm and led her down the path, not speaking. Inside I locked the door and bolted it, put the chain on. She stood in silence as I locked the back door, up-ended the coffee jar on the floor and sorted through the keys until I found the security key. I went round each room locking the windows. I drew all the curtains, then went back to the hallway and took the newspaper from her limp hand.
'Is this it? The article?' I put it on the kitchen table and began to leaf through it. 'Does she say we're living together?'
'No,' she said, unwinding her scarf. Cautious. 'She doesn't mention you at all.'
I found the page and placed my hands flat on it, leaning down to study it. Above me the electric ceiling light moved in a slow circle, its shadow rotating across the newspaper like a divining stone. The article was a two-page feature, a large head-and-shoulders shot of Angeline in the centre, and two insets: one of Dove and one taken offshore at Pig Island, the police tents and boats clustering round the village.
I skimmed the text rapidly. It was standard who-what-why-when journalism: the horror of the massacre, the number killed, Malachi Dove on the run, Lexie's death, all covered in the first paragraph. Then it went on to describe Angeline. There was her favourite line: a beauty, hints of a piercing intelligence. It said she had been disabled from birth and walked with a limp. Nothing more specific than that. Then there was a synopsis of her life on the island, her impression of the murdered cult members, finishing with a reference to the book, due in August. I didn't get a mention.
I bent nearer and examined the photo, looking at the reflection in her eyes, half expecting to see my own face there, standing in the shadows of the studio, anxious and jealous-looking. But there was nothing. Just the photographer's flash.
'Joe. You'd better tell me. What's happening?'
I shook my head and sat down at the table, pressing my fingers into my temples. I needed a painkiller. I pulled the paper towards me and stared at it glumly.
'But, Angeline says, the members of PHM treated her well. "They were all so sweet to me, I think they knew what was happening to me."'
'They were so sweet?' I looked up at her. 'Is that what you said? "I think they knew what was happening to me?" Those are not the words I remember.'
'No.' She coloured. 'I didn't want to ...' She rubbed her nose, embarrassed. 'I didn't want to sound bitter.'
'Didn't want to sound bitter?' I sighed. 'Listen, you think you know what you're doing but this is dangerous crap we're dealing with. It wasn't smart talking to them.'
'It's just self-preservation.'
I looked at her stonily, my words coming back at me like an echo. 'You think this is self-preservation?'
'Yes. Yes. I do.'
'You know what it sounds like? You know what it sounds like to me?'
'What?'
'Not only does it sound like you've given a different story from the one I'm giving, which is going to be a bit fucking embarrassing since that part of the book is already with the publishers—'
'Please don't swear.'
'Listen,' I said, holding up my hand. 'Let me finish. Not only does it sound like that, but it also sounds to me like antagonism. It sound
s like you're baiting your dad.'
'Baiting him?' She blew a little air out of her nose. 'Well, that's stupid. How could I be baiting him? He's dead.'
I dropped my hand from my head and looked at her seriously. 'Sit down.'
'Why?'
'Just do it.'
'Joe?' she said, sitting at the table opposite me, her face paling a little. 'You're scaring me.'
'They're coming down from Oban to speak to us. Something's happened.'
'All the way from Oban?'
I sighed. 'Angeline, you think you saw your dad in that mortuary but ...' I put my hand over hers '... it wasn't him. They ran a DNA match.'
She snatched her hand away from me, all the colour leaving her face. 'What're you talking about?'
'It wasn't him. I know you ... I know you wanted it to be him, and I know why – but it wasn't.'
'My God,' she whispered, putting both hands to her face. 'My God, you mean it, don't you? You really mean it. It wasn't him.'
'It's not just your fault – they wanted it to be him as much as you did. But looking at it now, I think you and Danso both, you were clutching at straws.'
She breathed in and out a few times through her nose, moving this information around her head. Then slowly, very slowly, she raised her eyes to the kitchen window, to the curtains drawn tight against the morning. She turned and looked down the corridor to the lock on the door. 'Oh, no,' she whispered. She put a hand to her throat. 'This is a barricade, isn't it?' She looked at me. 'Isn't it? A barricade? They think he's on his way.'
I didn't say anything for a long time. Then I took her hands. 'They'll be here in two hours. There's a police car outside. We're going to be fine.'
9
For the last few days the skies over London had been draped swollen over the rooftops, inert, not breathing. But late that morning, just before lunch, the clouds gave up their stalemate. They dropped a barrage of hailstones on the little terraced houses of north London, which bounced off the roofs like buckshot, danced pogo in the street.
We didn't speak much that morning, but I was sure Angeline and me were both thinking the same thing: that Malachi was clever, that he could slip through air vents and up chimneys and through knotholes in the floorboards. She had turned on all the lights, looked under the beds and checked inside every cupboard. Then she went to sit in the living room and tried to read her newspaper. But she couldn't concentrate. From time to time she'd get up and go to the french windows, flick open the curtain and stare at the rain-drenched garden. 'There's someone in a tree,' she said at midday, putting her nose against the glass. I came to look. It was a police officer, dressed in boots and a blue sweater with epaulettes. When he saw us he waved. We raised our hands in reply. After that Angeline stopped peering out at the garden. She left the curtains closed.
I wasn't content with the locks on the windows: I'd hammered nails into the runners of the sash windows to seal them and closed up the letterbox with packing tape. I took a torch into the attic, ripped my jeans as I crawled around checking all the tiles, every brick, every rafter, every rotting roll of insulation, the hail clattering on the roof inches above my head. It was like hearing hell fall out of the sky.
'The cellar,' I said, when I'd finished. Angeline looked at me from the sofa, where she sat biting her nails and anxiously watching the clock. 'I'm going to check the cellar.'
'Do you have to?' She sprang to her feet and limped after me to the cellar door. 'Can't you stay up here? They'll be here in a minute.'
'I won't be long.'
I went down the rickety steps, fumbling with the torch. Angeline stood at the top of the stairs, watching until I disappeared from view into the gloom. I'd bolted the garden door from the outside and pushed the lawnmower against it, but now I hammered an extra four nails into the wood until I was sure it would never move. When I'd finished I sat down on an old deck-chair and clicked off the torch, letting the darkness come to rest round my head and shoulders. It smelt of moss and petrol in here, and something older, more familiar. Overhead Angeline had left the doorway and was in the kitchen, making the floorboards creak.
I switched on the torch and shone it up into the braces under the kitchen floor, listening to her moving about, watching the little puffs of dust coming out of the ceiling. She'd stiffed me with those comments about the PHM. She couldn't see it, but she'd totally stiffed me. I was going to have to talk Finn into getting that bit of the manuscript retracted. I let the beam travel down the wall into the box-vaulted recesses that stretched out under the front garden. Everything was as I remembered it, all the crap piled up, the fridge-freezer glinting dully at me. Strange how nothing down here had changed when upstairs everything was so different.
The doorbell rang. I went up the steps, clicking off the torch and running the bolt on the cellar door, giving it a kick to wedge it into place. 'They're here.' I went to the front door. I switched on the porch light and pressed my face close to the window. 'Yeah?' I called. 'What d'you want?'
'It's us,' came Struther's dry answer, raised above the clatter of the hail. 'All the way from sunny Oban.'
I pulled off the chains and bolts and opened the door. They stood huddled in the porch, cold and sombre in the overhead light, their shoulders wet with hailstones. In the dark street beyond, another marked police car waited, lights flashing lazily, its driver turned in his seat to watch us, resting his elbow on the steering-wheel.
'Our ride from Heathrow,' Danso said, when he saw me looking. 'I admit I wasn't expecting that kind of co-operation from the Met, the stories you hear.' He leaned back and cast his eyes around the front garden, first over one shoulder, then the other. 'Joe?' he said, peering past me into the warm hallway. 'Hate to bother you, son, but it's cold out here.'
I stepped back to allow them in, placing the torch nose down on the windowsill. 'He's not dead.' They came in and I shot the bolts. I put the chain on and turned to them, my back to the door. 'Is he? Not dead. And you know where he is.'
Struthers nodded. 'We know where he is.'
'Listen,' said Danso. 'Can we—' He looked around the hallway. 'I think we should go and sit down for this.'
I stared at him, suddenly angry. 'He's here, isn't he? In London. And you've known it for days.'
'I think,' Danso said, more slowly and deliberately this time, taking in me and Struthers with his tone, 'we should sit down for this.' He put his hand on the living-room door. 'This way, is it?'
We went into the living room, me angry, Danso weary, his feet dragging. Struthers came behind, ostentatiously checking out the room, lifting the curtain and peering out at the police cars in the road. 'Nice place,' he said, dropping the curtain and looking around at the posters and the drab houseplants. 'But, then, it's a nice job you've got.'
'There you are,' Danso said, raising his hand to Angeline. She'd appeared at the kitchen door, wiping her hands on a tea-towel. 'Hello, wee lassie. Saw you in the paper this morning. You're famous.'
'Hello,' she said, with a weak smile. She looked at Struthers. 'Hello.'
'Hello,' he muttered, standing stock still staring at her, at the low-cut sweater, the glitter of something at her neck, her hair caught up in a slide so little curls just covered her ears. 'How are you?'
'Yes. Yes, I'm—' She swallowed and put the tea-towel on the counter. She limped into the living room and stood in front of Danso. 'It wasn't him, then? That's what Joe said. The man you showed me, it wasn't Dad.'
'We're so sorry, hen.' He gave her a sad smile. 'So sorry you had to go through all that.'
'I'm sorry I made a mistake.'
'No.' He shook his head. 'Don't be.'
We all stood for a moment, looking at each other, embarrassed. 'Well,' she said, with a tired shrug, 'you'd like a drink?' She pointed at my drinks cabinet, at the VSOP Armagnac Finn got me last birthday. 'I've got brandy. Or some gin. There's lime-flavoured tonic water in the fridge. Oakesy only drinks Newcastle Brown Ale and you won't want that.'
'No, thanks
, pet, we're on duty.' He indicated the sofa. 'Can we?'
'Sorry,' she said. 'Of course.'
Struthers took off his coat and draped it over the sofa arm. He dropped down, settling himself comfortably with his legs stretched, patting the sofa and nodding approvingly, like he was in a showroom, testing the furniture. 'Joe,' Danso lifted up the tails of his coat and sat down on the sofa, with a soft 'ooof' like any movement pained him, 'we need to ask you a few questions.'
'Ask me some questions? What about I ask you some questions and what about you give me some answers? Is Malachi in London?'
'If I give you my assurance you're safe, would you believe me?'
I hesitated.
'I mean it, you're quite safe. You and Angeline. But we've got to follow up a new line of investigation and that's where you come in. Bear with us, son. It's going to sound like we're going round the houses a bit.'
'But we're not,' Struthers said, still checking out the sofa, bouncing his arse up and down to test the springs. 'We're going somewhere.'
I sat on the other sofa opposite them, moody. There was an empty glass on the table between us – the G and T Angeline had been drinking. 'Well?' I folded my arms, trying to calm down. 'What?'
'Look, I know we've done this to death,' Danso put his elbows on his knees and leaned forward to look at me, 'but, see, it's that car again. I want to go back and think about that car you saw outside the house the day Lexie was attacked.'
'The saloon?'
'Because the surveillance PC's version is different from the version you gave us. The lad's saying you first came to the house from the east. From the road that ran along the bottom of the playing-fields.'
'That's right.'
'Right?'
'Yeah. But I never saw the car parked up. I've thought about it and I'm sure.'
Danso sighed. 'Joe, Joe, why didn't you tell us this earlier? You never said you came from the east.'