by Susan Hill
She poured boiling water into the teapot and took her tray through. They had never been a noisy couple, and the street had always been a quiet street, but now it was uncanny, the empty silence. They had lived in the flat above the shop for the last ten years, since their old street had been demolished. When they came, there had been a dozen shops in the row – launderette, baker, butcher, greengrocer, hardware, and then a Chinese take-away, a minicab office. Below them had been a wool shop, then a toy shop, then a cafe. One by one, they’d all closed. Now there was a charity shop at one end, a letting agency office at the other, and in between, nothing but windows boarded up. It was lonely and it was bleak and Tom had said they’d try and find somewhere else. But where else was there? So long as he’d been well she hadn’t minded. She minded now.
She started to watch a crime drama but it was too violent, turned over to a comedian who was too crude. The last ten minutes of a cookery programme was entertaining enough, but after that she switched off.
She would go to bed with a book she’d bought from the charity shop. Travels with my Elephant – she loved animals, she loved reading about places she would never see. Tom would have picked it up, smiled, teased her about it.
Now, he had forgotten how to smile.
A child was screaming.
She went to the window but the street was empty and silent. She opened the window. Nothing.
It had stopped.
Maybe it was a cat. A fox. The foxes still came scavenging round.
As she was getting into bed ten minutes later, she heard the scream again and this time it was in the street. This time, there were people – a car, pulled up outside the boarded-up shop next door, two men, one of them pulling a small child by the hand. They were too far from the street lamp for her to see clearly and in a few seconds the child was pushed into the car, one of the men in the back with it, and the car was moving away, accelerating fast as it reached the corner.
Then nothing. The street was silent, empty, dark. Jean wondered if she had been hallucinating, or was half-asleep, and somehow begun to dream while still awake.
Did that happen?
She went back to her bed but when she tried to read, the image of the child being pulled towards the car came between her and the words, and the sound of its cry seemed to echo again and again through her head.
She wondered what she should do.
She knew what she ought to do but her story sounded so fanciful that she could not bring herself to make the call.
It was four nights later that the child screamed again. There was no car in the street; the sound came from somewhere nearby but indoors. And almost as soon as she had heard it, the noise stopped quite suddenly. Then nothing.
Jean lay for a long time, listening, but the only sound she heard was the beat of her own heart.
She had fallen deeply asleep by the time the car drove up the street, lights doused, and stopped outside the empty shop next door. She was asleep when the child, silent now, was carried out and driven away.
There were no neighbours left to talk to. She was used to it by now. She had never been unfriendly, it was just that she and Tom had been company enough for one another, but now she remembered the sounds she had heard, of the child screaming in the night, she needed someone to talk to – just no one official, not the police or anyone else in authority. She had not been over to see Kath Latimer for months, partly because she found it hard to deal with questions about Tom, questions to which she didn’t really have any answers, partly because it was either a long walk or hanging round waiting for one of the few buses that went anywhere near Spalding Green. But Kath and Dennis Latimer had been the closest to best friends that either she or Tom had ever had, all at school together, all living in and around Lafferton most of their lives. Dennis had died ten years earlier and then Kath had shut herself away, before moving to be near her sister in Bognor. It had been a disaster, they had fallen out and Kath had returned to a smaller house in her old road.
‘I feel bad about you,’ Jean said later that morning, sitting in Kath’s tiny cluttered front room with a cup of milky coffee. The budgerigar hopped to and fro, to and fro, on the bar inside its cage until Jean had to look away, it irritated her so much. ‘Does he never settle down?’
Kath glared. ‘He’s perfectly happy.’
‘I’m sure. Just seems a bit restless.’
Funny, Jean thought, how you forgot things. There had always been a budgie – it was one of the things that had put her off visiting. Tom had never been able to stand them either. The only way they managed to stay friendly was if Dennis and Kath came to them, then halfway through an evening, Kath would say she was worried about Charlie or Pippy or some other silly thing, so they ought to get back.
Kath got up and fiddled with a stick of millet on the side of the cage, pursed her lips and made a tweeting noise. The budgie hopped about madly, tweeting back.
People’s lives. Jean finished her coffee. People’s narrow lives.
They couldn’t find anything to say.
‘I suppose there’s no real point in you visiting him, is there? As he doesn’t know who you are. No point in troubling him.’
‘It doesn’t trouble him, he likes me to go.’
‘Are you sure?’
Jean was not sure but would have cut out her tongue rather than say so.
‘I wouldn’t dream of not going.’
‘Well, I suppose if it’s a comfort to you, it’s worth it.’
Was it? A comfort? Worth it? Worth what?
She had made a mistake in coming. Kath was the last person she could confide in about the sounds she had heard. In any case, sitting here in the hot room with the hopping budgerigar, she wondered if she had heard anything. Sometimes, you hovered about the edge of a dream, sure you were awake and heard a sound that was never there. Kath would have made her feel a fool.
But she stayed for a second coffee, and a chocolate shortcake. It would have been rude not to when it was so long since she’d made the effort. It was only when she was finally waiting for the bus into town that it occurred to her Kath could equally well have come over to see her. She never did.
The sound of the child’s scream, real or dreamed, stayed with her. She did some shopping in town, caught another bus, walked the last half-mile, and all the time, it was there, in her head, it kept repeating itself. It wasn’t the sort of sound you forgot.
If it had been a sound.
Four
JULY 2010
Kath never admitted to sleeping in the afternoon, but nevertheless, when the phone rang and rang on that Sunday, she did not hear it and it was almost half past five when she picked up the message.
‘Kath? Are you there? Kath?’ Jean’s voice sounded odd. ‘Can you ring me please, Kath? I don’t feel well …’
There was no reply when she called back, and none fifteen minutes later. Kath panicked and called a taxi.
The hospital said Mrs Mason was in intensive care and could have no visitors, unless Kath was next of kin. She waited for a couple of hours before she was told that Jean’s condition was stable and that she could come back tomorrow.
‘And,’ the woman said, ‘do you have contact details for her next of kin?’
It seemed terrible to say that so far as she knew, there were none. No Tom any more. No parents, sisters, brothers, children, aunts, uncles. She had no idea about cousins. ‘But I’ve known her many years and I’ve never heard her mention one.’
No next of kin. No relatives. No one. How could that be? On her way home Kath felt both exhausted and guilty. She and Dennis had been friends with Jean and Tom for a lifetime, yet there was nothing left to show for it.
She was back at the hospital the next day.
‘I want you to do something for me.’ It took a long time for her to form the words.
‘In my bag …’
Kath pulled the handbag out of the bedside cupboard. Jean had no movement in her arms. ‘No, I don’t like to rummage
about it your bag.’ But Jean was so agitated, she opened it. Not much. Purse. Pension book. Compact, worn shiny, the words Love from Tom hardly visible any longer. Pen. Diary. A small red ruled notebook.
Jean nodded. ‘Take it home with you. Keep it.’
‘Where do you want me to keep it?’
‘Safe. Just safe. Don’t throw it out.’
Jean closed her eyes and drifted off. Kath waited ten minutes longer but it was clear she wouldn’t wake for a while. She put the handbag back into the cupboard, and the red notebook into her own.
When she got home, she opened the notebook and glanced through. Dates. Times. A line or two in Jean’s writing. Then she locked it into the bureau drawer, on top of her birth certificate and her will.
Five
OCTOBER 2010
The duty sergeant flipped through the red soft-covered notebook. Dates. Times. The entries had been made over the last three years, mostly two or three times a month. He began to read, but after a couple of pages, looked across at the woman sitting on the bench opposite his desk.
‘Mrs Latimer?’ She got up. ‘I think you should have a word about this with someone from CID. I’ll take you into an interview room and someone will come down.’
‘So I didn’t do the wrong thing?’
‘You did absolutely the right thing.’
She only had to wait a few minutes.
‘Mrs Latimer? I’m DC Bethan Waites. Can I get you a tea? Coffee?’
They both had tea. ‘Wise,’ the young woman said, sitting down on the small, uncomfortable sofa next to Kath. ‘The coffee’s disgusting. Actually the best is the hot chocolate.’ How many times had she gone through this bit of beverage chit-chat to help settle the interviewee down? But oddly, it usually did.
She’s young, was all Kath thought. Not pretty but nicely presented. Emerald-green jacket, dark skirt, plain blouse, hair neat.
‘Do you ever wear a uniform?’
DC Waites smiled. ‘Not any more.’
‘Very nice.’
‘It is. Now … the duty sergeant filled me in briefly but I’d like you to tell me about this notebook – I didn’t get the full story before he had to take a phone call.’ Not true. They never got the full story. Starting over was what CID did.
Kath told it. ‘That was in late July … she never left the hospital. It was awful to watch her … couldn’t do anything for herself and then another stroke meant she lost her speech. It was a blessing when the next one came and carried her away.’
‘I’m sorry. Always hard to lose an old friend – just as hard as losing a relative sometimes.’
I wonder how many of either you’ve lost though, Kath thought, at your tender age? How do you know what’s hardest?
‘So Mrs Mason died when, exactly?’
‘The third of September … early hours of the morning. I wish she hadn’t been alone. I do wish that.’
‘Yes, indeed. But maybe she …’
‘Didn’t know anything about it? That’s what I tell myself. You see …’
Bethan was adept at getting them back on track without apparent rudeness or any sense of hurry. It was a useful skill.
‘And it’s now the twelfth of October. Why didn’t you bring the notebook in to us sooner?’
‘I just forgot all about it. Truth be told, I’d forgotten about it more or less as soon as she gave it to me for safe keeping and I put it in that drawer.’
‘Did Mrs Mason give you any idea at all why she wanted you to have it and keep it safe for her?’
‘No.’
‘Did she give you anything else to look after?’
‘No.’
‘Did you read through the notebook?’
‘I glanced inside. None of it meant anything except … well, some of the things she wrote down worried me – that’s why I brought it to you. These things about hearing children … hearing them crying … hearing a scream … seeing … I don’t know. It upset me.’
‘Yes,’ the young woman said. ‘Did Mrs Latimer ever write things – stories or poems or that sort of thing? A lot of people do. I was wondering if these were notes for some sort of story …’
‘If she did she never mentioned it and I knew her for over sixty years. She wasn’t like that.’
‘Like what?’
‘Well … arty. Fanciful.’
‘Right. Did she keep any other sort of diary?’
‘Not that I know of. I shouldn’t think so. She had a kitchen calendar, same one every year, from the Donkey Protection place … she had it hanging up in the kitchen but that was just, you know, hairdresser, dentist sort of thing.’
‘And there’s nothing else you can think of to explain this notebook? Anything about Mrs Mason that might help us?’
‘I just can’t think of anything. I’m sorry.’
‘Please don’t be.’
‘It’s only …’
Kath fiddled with her coat button. ‘I feel I’ve let her down, somehow … I don’t know … she gave it to me to keep safe and I’ve … looked into it, brought it here, shown it to you. I feel as if I’ve …’
The DC put her hand briefly on Kath’s. ‘No,’ she said quietly, ‘you haven’t let her down, you haven’t betrayed her. You have done exactly what she would have done if she had been alive.’
‘Are you sure about that?’
‘Yes.’ The young woman held her gaze. ‘I am.’
PART TWO
Six
2013
‘Good morning, Superintendent.’
A Tuesday morning in late May and there were four others round the table in the meeting room at Bevham HQ. The only one already known to Serrailler was the Chief Constable, Kieron Bright. The man who had succeeded Paula Devenish was the youngest in the country ever to be appointed Chief, a fast-tracker who had swiftly worked his way up through the ranks and then served in a high-security special unit before being an ACC for under two years. He was impressive, taller than Simon, fit, shrewd, and he had hit the ground running. The force had felt the shock but responded to it well. Simon had expected not to like the man but he did – liked and respected. The only area of disagreement they had was over drugs ops, which the new Chief had pepped up and which Serrailler regarded as a waste of time and resources. They had agreed to differ. ‘I respect your arguments, Simon,’ the Chief had said. ‘I’ve met them before and in quite high places. But they’re wrong. It’s my mission to bring you over to my side.’
The mission was not yet accomplished because there was never time for the luxury of exhaustive debates.
The Chief had called him in, without explanation, but Serrailler was fairly sure this was not going to be about drugs ops.
‘Thank you for coming over. I’m sorry I wasn’t very forthcoming but this was not for any sort of communication other than face-to-face. I’m only in for the first few minutes and then I’ll leave you with the officers here to give you a full brief. I don’t think you’ve met any of them before.’
Simon looked round again quickly. Blank and all unfamiliar faces. ‘No, sir, I’m sure not.’
‘Right. This meeting is to discuss a very sensitive covert operation. It isn’t going to be an easy one. But I wanted to say that the operation has my full support, and that I suggested your involvement because you’re not only one of the most experienced but also one of the most trusted officers I’ve ever worked with.’ He looked straight at Serrailler. ‘That isn’t bullshit,’ he said.
‘Sir.’
‘But in the same way that you’ve never met the people here before, I know you’ve never done anything like this op before.’
So the Chief had been through his career file. Serrailler had done most things in his time, except terrorism ops. Right. The Chief left. Coffee was brought in. The room went still.
‘I’m DCS Lochie Craig. I work in the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre.’
‘DCI Linda Warren. Also from CEOP.’
‘DCS Harry Borling.’ He gave
no more information.
Not terrorism then. Child protection was something Serrailler had been involved in from time to time, as almost all police officers were, but as he had risen through the ranks he had left much of it to the specialists. He said so now.
‘This is actually a side shoot from CEOP, Chief Superintendent.’
‘Simon.’
‘Thank you. And it’s Lochie.’
The other two nodded. Everyone relaxed slightly.
‘First off, I’d like you to look at some images. Three men. No names for the moment.’
He passed his laptop across the table. The older man in the photos was clearly related to one of the younger ones – they were probably father and son, Simon thought. The older was in his late sixties or early seventies, with thick white hair, a strong jaw and a beaky nose. The younger man – late thirties? – had brown hair, worn slightly long, the same nose, softer jaw. Their eyes were exactly the same shape – the family resemblance was strong. The third man looked rather less like the others but he had the same beaked nose as the first. Probably mid-forties. Simon looked hard at each of them for several minutes before passing the laptop back.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m certain I’ve never seen any of them. My memory for names is OK, but for faces it’s extremely good. I don’t recognise them at all.’
‘Good. Glad we’ve got that out of the way. Right, let me go into detail.’ Lochie Craig was a balding, burly man in his fifties. A measure of strain had become moulded onto his features but he spoke calmly enough.
‘Lafferton, 2007.’ He had his laptop open.