‘I know. Poor Liz. And I’m sorry about … you know, you and me.’
‘Oh, don’t worry about it from my end, I know it’s only tabloid muck-racking. A bit of nasty gossip, innit? Like you said that first night we got together, it was eighteen years ago, you two.’
He remembered her saying that? Robin was surprised.
‘I just called to check you were all right. Especially with your mum as well. How’s she doing today? Any news?’
‘I rang Dad about half an hour ago. They’re going to give her an MRI but they haven’t been able to do it yet. Dad’s talking like they’ve been there for weeks, getting into the lingo – he says her pressure’s very labile, which seems to mean it swings wildly up and down, so it’s really hard to medicate.’
‘What are you doing tonight?’ he asked.
‘Going to see her.’
‘Want me to come along? I wouldn’t come in, that’d be a bit intrusive for your poor mum, me seeing her in her nightie and all that, but I could sit in the waiting room, be there when you come out?’
Robin felt a rush of affection for him. ‘Thanks, that’s really good of you. But you don’t want to spend your Friday night on the stroke ward, believe me.’
‘Yes, I do – if it helps you, I do. Anyway, what else am I going to do? I’m hardly going to go out on the lash while you’re in there, am I?’
The warmth of feeling was replaced by an odd guilt. ‘Look, I really appreciate it,’ she said, ‘but shall we try and meet up tomorrow or Sunday? Honestly, it’s so depressing in there and we could be hours or five minutes, depending on how she is. I don’t want to mess you around.’
She thought he might remonstrate further but he didn’t. ‘Okay then, tomorrow or Sunday it is, let me know what suits. I don’t want you to feel like you have to worry about me as well, concentrate on your mum.’ He paused. ‘Well, and the three murders.’
‘Sorry this is all such a train-wreck.’
‘Don’t you worry. By the way, I’ve got to ask, where did they get the photo? I remember that day, out in Dad’s old Bentley.’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I mean, I think I do but I hope I’m wrong, let’s put it that way.’
‘Your brother?’
‘I can’t see who else. I had that picture, Corinna gave it to me. I thought I’d burnt it when Samir dumped me, though – I burnt all the pictures of us.’ She’d taken them out into the back garden at Dunnington Road, dug a hole in one of the flower beds – much to her mother’s outrage – and set fire to the lot of them, watched them curl and melt and die. ‘Obviously I must have missed that one.’
‘Hm. I’m kind of glad you did. In a way. Memory of a nice day. You look so young, both of you.’
‘Well, we were, weren’t we?’
‘I guess so. Feels like a long time ago today.’ He laughed a little. ‘Nice rack, by the way.’
‘God, Kev, please don’t make me laugh. If I do, I’ll start sobbing and I might never stop.’
The incident-room door opened and she saw Samir come in. He was headed for her office but where she might have come marching across the room, he walked as if it were a normal afternoon, nothing in particular going on, neutral expression, hellos to Malia and Tark and a brief pause to look at some footage onscreen.
‘DCI Lyons, have you got a moment?’ he said, sticking his head round the door.
‘Of course. Come in.’
He shut the door behind him. ‘Bloody hell,’ he said, face still completely nothing-to-see-here. Her Venetian blinds were open, and from the corner of her eye, Robin could see some very poor efforts at low-key surveillance.
‘I think I should step aside,’ she said.
‘What?’ The neutral expression vanished.
‘I don’t mean resign, just hand this one over to someone else. The Herald’s got a bee in their bonnet about me and it’s not helping anyone: you, the team, the victims.’ She thought of Deborah Harper again and said a silent prayer that anyone who knew her would be kind enough to keep the piece a secret. She’d hear about Gupta, of course, but she really didn’t need the boobs or the insinuations. ‘It’s damaging our work.’
‘No, I don’t think it is,’ Samir said. ‘Not the work itself. We’ll talk to the team now, together, take the piss out of ourselves a bit and make it clear there’s nothing going on between us. Right?’
Their eyes met and for a fleeting moment, in his, Robin saw something – a question. She remembered his look the day of the last article, Did it have to be Kev? He broke the eye contact and looked away.
‘Right,’ she said, slightly unsettled. ‘I agree about talking to them but I’m still not convinced it’s a good idea for me to carry on as …’
He eyeballed her again. ‘What were you telling me this morning? We call the shots? We have the authority? I’ve just spent twenty minutes convincing Kilmartin of that, drawing on every dark art in my arsenal; please don’t tell me it was for nothing. I refuse to be told what to do by the Daily Herald. Anyway,’ he said, eyebrows up, ‘I’m your commanding officer so I call the shots.’
‘All right, boss man, keep your hair on,’ she said, largely to interrupt the weird atmosphere. ‘In a professional context, by the way, and only then, to be clear.’
‘Good. So take a deep breath and let’s go and get this over with.’ He opened the door.
Robin followed him out, watching the gawpers make a hash of looking as if they hadn’t been straining for every syllable. As usual, Samir’s presence drew all eyes, no need for any hand-clapping or calling-to-attention. He waited a minute or two for people to finish phone calls. Tark rolled in on his chair.
‘Right,’ Samir said, looking round. ‘It will have come to the attention of the majority of you, I’m sure, that your Senior Investigating Officer here and I have our picture on the Herald’s website this afternoon. I’ll confess, I was jealous after the last piece but they’ve done the decent thing and put me in as well this time.’ His eyebrows flicked up. ‘Robin and I want you all to know that we’re deeply embarrassed by our youthful indiscretions …’
‘I’m considering legal action against the people who sold me that top,’ she said, and saw Phil Howell snicker and mutter something to Niall before Malia gave him a laser stare.
‘Reports that we were together in our late teens are, as you know, absolutely true,’ said Samir. ‘However, our teens were a depressingly long time ago, and we’ve both moved on, sartorially and otherwise, despite the Herald’s romantic notion that we’re somehow keeping the love alive here at Force Homicide.’
A ripple of respectful laughter.
‘Seriously, though, as we’re all aware, this kind of piece makes our lives a lot harder, and we can only imagine the effect it might have on the victims’ families and their faith in us to do the job as we all want it done. So let’s keep up the good work and keep our mouths shut as far as anyone who might conceivably be a journalist is concerned. Loose lips sink ships.’
Chapter Twenty-seven
When they met him at the ward doors, Robin’s father looked tired out. She imagined him alone at Dunnington Road last night, her mother’s side of the bed empty for the first time in years. When had they last spent a night apart? When her mother was in hospital having her? No, her dad had done occasional trips to Belgium and France for work when they were younger, though he’d been so happy to get home you’d have thought he was returning from the trenches.
‘How are you, love?’ he said, giving her a tight hug. He held her at arm’s length and scrutinized her. ‘I heard about that poor chap Gupta,’ he said quietly. ‘We watched the news on your mother’s little telly.’ Robin felt Lennie shift beside her. They’d talked about the Herald’s piece in the car on the way over and agreed not to say anything about this one unless, of course, he’d already heard about it.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s been quite a difficult day.’
‘Well, you’re here now,’ he said without apparent irony.
She and Lennie had glanced at each other. Did she think she wasn’t?
‘Have you seen Natalie, Mum?’ she asked.
Dennis answered for her. ‘This morning. She thought it might be a bit much to bring Jack in here so she left him with her mum – they’re back from the Canaries now – and popped in for half an hour, brought your mother some nice hand-cream.’
‘That was kind of her. How is she?’
‘Hard to say. Preoccupied. Sad. We hope they’ll sort it all out but we can’t get involved, can we? It’s between them.’
With her usual sensitivity, Len had picked up on Christine’s unhappiness at being ‘out in public’ looking less than her best. ‘I’ll bring you my dry shampoo tomorrow, Gran,’ she said. ‘Me and Niamh swear by it, not for the cleaning bit, though it does that as well, but because it gives you really good volume. It’s the best.’
‘Thank you, love.’ She gave Lennie’s hand a squeeze and Robin felt her own eyes prickle suddenly. She blinked. God, what was wrong with her? Nothing – nothing a quiet couple of hours wouldn’t sort out. Nonetheless, now would be a good time to get away from the bed before she started tearing up and really freaked everyone out.
‘Where’s Luke?’
‘He’s gone to the break area down the other end of the corridor. We found it earlier.’
‘I might go and see how he’s doing,’ she said. Her father looked alarmed, no doubt remembering last night’s canteen blow-up, but her mother nodded, blissfully unaware. ‘Thanks, love,’ she said, eyes soft.
‘You stay here, Len, and chat to Gran. I won’t be long.’
She buzzed herself out of the ward and followed the overhead signs down the corridor. A very elderly man rolled by in his bed, escorted by two voluble porters. ‘Best Friday night you’ve had in ages, eh, Jimmy, out and about, eyeing up the ladies?’ one of them said, giving Robin a wink as the old man smiled.
Pairs and pairs of double doors to different wards, single ones to technical rooms. It was relatively busy at first, medical staff and visitors on the move, but at the end of the corridor, the signs directed her through a snicket lined with public loos and a maintenance room, and the foot traffic thinned out.
The break area was an alcove full of vending machines off a small glassed atrium filled with tables. Only a handful of people were there, Luke not among them, and she wondered if he’d gone to the loo before spotting him loitering outside on the pavement. He was smoking, which she hadn’t seen him do since they were teenagers and Natalie made him stop.
She cranked the door open and stormed over. His usual response to her was an eye-roll, either literal or metaphorical, but he looked a bit frightened now. Good – as well he might.
‘What were you thinking?’ she demanded.
‘What?’ The fear morphed into poorly concealed guilt.
‘Oh, spare me. Giving them the photograph! How could you do that? This isn’t about you and me, Luke, getting a jab in. People’s lives are at stake here.’
‘Get over yourself, Robin. No one’s going to die ’cause there’s a picture of you in the paper with your tits out.’
She felt a nearly overwhelming urge to punch him in the face, and shoved her hands in her pockets.
‘No,’ she said, voice shaking with anger, ‘but have you thought about how the victims’ parents might feel, seeing it? What they might think about my ability to find their daughters’ killers? And the longer this looks like a juicy story, the longer the media are going to cover it, which puts pressure on us, the police, when frankly, that’s the last thing we need. All sorts of nasty people are getting riled up, Luke, stories like that throw fuel on the fire, and I don’t want anyone else to die like Gupta did.’
‘Oh, come on, there’s no connection between a picture in the—’
‘There’s every connection, you just don’t know how the world works, and that’s because you’ve never even tried to engage with anything beyond the end of your nose.’
She’d hit a nerve. Rage billowed through him, transforming his posture from vaguely cowering to full-on aggressive; pathetic – at least in her eyes – to scary. The ball of muscle in his jaw was hard as he leaned right into her face, the cigarette heavy on his breath.
‘How dare you?’ he said. ‘How fucking dare you talk to me like that? You want to know why I gave the guy the picture? Ask yourself – you’ve got all the answers.’
‘What answers?’ she spat back.
‘The way you talk to me – like I’m a moron, like I couldn’t understand difficult stuff like you do, like you’re out in the world doing it all while I’m here messing round in the sandpit.’
Aren’t you? she nearly said. Isn’t that exactly what you’re doing?
‘You’ve patronized me, made fun of me – you’ve humiliated me since you were three foot tall. Luke the loser, Luke with his five GCSEs, you with your A stars and your fucking degree. How do you think that feels – for me? Or have you ever thought about it?’
‘It’s got nothing to do with you, Luke. School, uni, my career – it’s Not. About. You.’
‘Uni,’ he mocked. ‘And yeah, believe it or not, I can understand that you doing it isn’t about me but the way you swan around, shoving it in my face, lording it over me …’
‘I don’t do that.’
‘You do. You totally do. “People’s lives are at stake here, Luke – all sorts of nasty people are getting riled up.” Nasty people? I’m not five years old. It’s in everything you say, you can’t help yourself. You can’t even say hello to Billy without reminding him that you went to university.’
‘I didn’t mean it like that.’
He snorted.
‘I didn’t!’
‘Well, after three and a half decades of your shit, let me tell you, that’s what it sounded like to me. And Billy. And Dad.’
‘Leave Dad out of it.’
‘Why? You think he’s on your side?’
Robin stopped. Wasn’t he? Her mum was on Luke’s side, no doubt about that, but her dad was neutral, Switzerland. Wasn’t he?
‘I’m his son, Robin. I’m his kid, too. You think he likes it when someone puts his son down all the time, makes him feel small?’
His turn to see that he’d hit a nerve and it seemed to satisfy him. She felt all her own anger desert her, as if Luke had ripped off her shell and it had spilled out on to the pavement. She felt cold and suddenly vulnerable.
‘If you want to know why I gave the guy the picture,’ he said, ‘it’s because he offered me money, all right? I don’t have any money and he paid me for it.’
She stared at him. ‘How much?’
‘Four hundred quid.’
‘You sold me out for four hundred quid?’
He laughed, a strange empty sound. ‘Oh yeah, I forgot. That’s small change in your world.’
‘How did it happen? Did you contact them, pitch it to them?’
‘Yeah, because I’d do that, wouldn’t I?’
‘I don’t know, Luke, wouldn’t you?’ Probably not, though, she realized – no, of course not: far too enterprising. And he wouldn’t know how to navigate it.
‘No,’ he said. ‘They already knew about you and Samir when they knocked on the door a
t Mum and Dad’s. All they wanted was a picture of you together. They offered me the money so I gave it to them.’
‘Where did you even get it? I thought I’d burnt them all. After you lied to him and made him dump me.’
‘Mum’s bedside table. She keeps it in there.’ He registered her astonishment. ‘She saved it that day you nearly set the garden on fire – you dropped it. She says she likes it because for once in your life,’ he sneered, ‘you actually look happy.’
Chapter Twenty-eight
She’d been afraid she’d lie awake all night but as soon as she got into bed, she’d fallen into a sleep so deep it felt narcotic. Then, just as abruptly, she was awake again, brain whirring. It was five past four, only the streetlight edging the curtains. She lay still for a couple of minutes, hoping to drop back off but when it became clear it wasn’t going to happen, she threw back the duvet, knowing the moment her feet hit the carpet that she was going.
She took a two-minute shower while the kettle boiled for a thermos of coffee, crept in to give Lennie a kiss and texted her a message for when she woke up.
The car was cold inside, more March rather than June; she put the heating on before typing in the address she’d emailed herself yesterday. Half a tank of petrol – enough to get her a good way before she had to stop.
The city centre was still asleep, the roads empty apart from a handful of other cars and the first of the morning delivery lorries. She thought of Dhanesh Gupta walking in the quiet to meet the van each morning, and how he’d never walk the streets again, these or any others.
By the time she reached the motorway, she’d slipped into the strange mental state of long-distance driving, that combination of hyper-alertness and dissociated thought. She left the radio off and let the jabbering week start to drain out of her ears. As dawn began to break in earnest the road opened up, the sun rising in shades of peach and gold across fields beyond the opposite carriageway that were packed tight with green wheat. It felt good to be moving, to have a sense of forward motion, and she struggled to keep the car at eighty-five, her foot itching for the floor.
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