by Sarah Hilary
‘In the Middle Ages, people believed the devil lived in the souls of unbaptised children. A baptism drove him out, but he had to be able to exit the church. So they built these little doorways which they bricked up after the devil was gone. You wouldn’t want him trapped in the church, you see. The devil’s door in the reclamation yard was very small, and riddled with worm. I did the key test and it went right through.’ She bent her head to sip at her tea again.
Joe met Marnie’s eyes. She smiled a fraction, happy for him to encourage Lara to talk, wanting the woman to relax and open up.
‘What about the other doors,’ Joe asked, ‘which were your favourites?’
‘A pair of saloon gates, would you believe it? Piebald where the cream paint had peeled. They made me think of John Wayne, “Get off your horse and drink your milk,” do you remember? Oh, you’re too young!’ She made a sound like spurs with her tongue against her teeth. ‘Most of the doors had their locks dug out. If you bought one you needed a new lock to go with it. We sold antique locks too, so it was a nice money spinner for the yard.’
Doors without locks, without rooms. Leading nowhere, waiting for new homes. Each with its story, everything from cat flaps to fleeing devils. Was Lara thinking of Michael when she said that? Or was she simply putting off the moment when she would have to talk about him?
‘When did you stop working at the reclamation yard?’ Marnie asked.
‘A year ago, thereabouts.’ Lara put a hand to her freshly cropped hair, following its new margin with her fingers. ‘There were a lot of changes in the village, people coming and going. Too many of the houses here are second homes, holiday homes. We’re going through a mini depression, shops closing, building projects grinding to a halt. People think that only happens in big cities, but we’re suffering too. I lost all my friends, that’s how it felt. No one’s interested in an ex-Londoner living alone in a holiday cottage she’s done up as a hobby.’ She shook herself a little. ‘The hobbies I’ve had! Everything from jam making to flower arranging. Christmas wreaths made of cranberries, hundreds of cranberries, each one pinned in place.’ She inspected the ends of her fingers as if she could see pinpricks there. ‘No one can say I didn’t try to fit in. I made friends who moved on, new people moved in and it all becomes so exhausting, doesn’t it, after a time.’ She put the mug to her mouth again. ‘Everyone’s a stranger suddenly. I don’t feel safe.’
She was lonely. She’d denied it too quickly, afraid of hearing Marnie speak the word. There was so much stigma attached to the idea of a middle-aged woman living by herself, bored and isolated. Of course she resisted the cliché. Had that been the beginning of her correspondence with Michael? An act of outrageous rebellion, setting herself beyond the realm of cliché, demanding a different kind of judgement. Even with six or seven people inside the cottage, its silence was oppressive. Her nearest neighbour was half an hour away. The roads often flooded, trapping her here. No WiFi, no phone signal. How could she not be lonely? Was it possible Vokey’s hold over her had at first felt safe? Sitting here in her grey stone prison, writing to him in his. Held captive in the photos she sent him, ageless and unchanging, a form of death. Immortalised in his sketches, so much more than a bored housewife making jam and sticking pins through cranberries at Christmas to make a wreath for her door which only the postman would see. Taking long drives that caked the underside of the car with mud, coming back as the light started to leak from the sky and the night moved in.
Lara’s hands tightened around the mug. ‘I thought this was a fresh start, a new adventure, that I was shucking off all of London’s grime and cynicism, the way it lays the world wide open when I wanted to be small again.’ She looked around the room, her stare bristling with betrayal. ‘I thought I could be small here, but it wasn’t like that. It isn’t. There’s nothing here. I’m nothing here.’
She’d come to hide behind her floral curtains in this remote cottage with its heart-wrenching views. What did she see when she looked out of its windows? Miles and miles of nothing, the rattle of wood pigeons coming like stones. The Edmonton estate was grim, but at least Julie had her family close by. Lara had luxury kitchen appliances and acres of rural isolation. No community, only quarantine masquerading as peace and quiet. Her loneliness was like an animal crying to be let in, a child who wakes and won’t settle until it’s lifted and cradled, and fed.
‘Now.’ Lara put down the mug, empty on the desk. ‘You want to talk about him. That’s why you’re here, yes?’ She looked at Joe, looked at Marnie. ‘Michael Vokey.’ She said his name without flinching this time. ‘You want to hear all about the letters I wrote because you’re imagining I know where he’s gone. You’re hoping I’m hiding him. Will you arrest me?’
Joe moved his hand in a bid at reassurance but Lara shook her head at him, looking at Marnie. ‘Not him, you. He’s very kind.’ A smile for Joe. ‘You’ve been very kind. But now I need that to stop. I need to know what’s going to happen.’
The atmosphere in the room altered, reshaped by her new severity. This was her room. She’d made certain this conversation took place on her territory, her terms.
Marnie said, ‘When were you last in contact with Michael?’
‘Sixteen days ago.’ No hesitation, her eyes unblinking. ‘I wrote him a final letter and then I stopped. I received two further letters from him, but I didn’t reply to either one. He’s not written since and to be clear? I never visited him, I never met him, I never spoke with him.’
It was easy to imagine her preamble had been a smokescreen to knock Marnie and Joe off-balance. She was formidable now, more than able to stand up for herself.
‘You haven’t written to him in sixteen days.’ Marnie had letters in her bag, the ones found on the allotment, which said this was a lie. Lara had written to Michael every day of the last month, before and after his escape. ‘Why did you stop writing to him?’
‘I could see where it was headed. His letters were getting stranger and stranger. You’ll argue I started it, encouraged him. But at least I stopped before it got out of hand.’
The letter about the red dress, her challenge to Michael – ‘Come and find me’ – the promises of what she’d do when he tracked her down. Did she imagine the fire had destroyed it all? Or was she hoping to brazen it out, believing he would have disposed of any evidence? Her expression wasn’t triumphant, or defiant. She held Marnie’s gaze without faltering and it looked very much as if she was telling the truth. Had she somehow persuaded herself that she was?
‘Why were you in Kendal yesterday?’ Marnie asked.
‘I wasn’t.’ She moved her head to the right, frowning. ‘Yesterday I was driving home from Edinburgh.’
‘Your car was seen in Kendal.’
‘I was driving home from Edinburgh,’ inflexibly, ‘whoever imagines they saw me is mistaken.’
‘Traffic cameras don’t have an imagination. And they don’t make mistakes.’
Lara’s breathing quickened. ‘Then the route I took back.’ She looked genuinely confused, her fingers moving in her lap until she stilled them. ‘I may have come that way. I know I got lost, I always do. And there were diversions. You can look at my satnav, it’ll tell you the route I took.’
‘Thank you, we’ll do that. Do you know anyone in Kendal?’
‘No. That’s how I know I wasn’t there unless it was by mistake, a wrong turn. All these roadworks following the floods, diversions at every turn. I don’t know anyone in Kendal.’
Marnie nodded, making a note. ‘How many letters did you write to Michael? In total.’
‘I suppose two dozen?’ She held her head high. ‘That seems a lot. But he didn’t reply, not for a long time.’
‘Did you send him anything other than letters?’
A tiny silence took shape before Lara said, ‘Photographs.’
Marnie looked up from her notepad. ‘Photographs.’ It was an odd confession to make if she imagined the fire had destroyed everything, or if she hoped it
had.
Lara moved her body a fraction closer to Marnie. ‘Can we— Must he be here?’ She forced a smile for Joe, but it was ghastly. ‘You’ve been so kind, but this is very hard for me.’
Joe stood, collecting the empty mugs. ‘I’ll be downstairs if you need me.’
After he’d gone, Lara said, ‘You know I sent him photographs and letters, that’s why you’re here. But I stopped. Sixteen days ago, and I was in Edinburgh the day he— The day of the riot. Yesterday I was driving home from Edinburgh and I didn’t stop in Kendal.’
ANPR cameras had caught her car going through Kendal, but there was no evidence she had stopped there. She could be telling the truth about the roadworks. Joe Coen’s first thought had been roadworks when they’d told him about the ANPR evidence.
‘Michael has your address,’ Marnie said. ‘Are you afraid he’ll come here?’
Or are you hoping that’s what he’ll do?
‘I’m not afraid of him. I’m afraid of you. Of what you’ll make of all this.’ She knitted her fingers into a fist. ‘Am I being arrested?’
Marnie sidestepped the question. ‘Do you have the letters he wrote to you?’
Ruth had denied it, saying she’d recycled everything, but Lara nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘May I see?’
Lara stood and went to the armoire, moving the black dress out of the way. Marnie caught a glimpse of the clothes hanging inside. No red dress, or none that she could see. Lara swept her hand across a high shelf and brought down a black beaded clutch bag. She closed the armoire and came back to where Marnie was seated. ‘Here.’ But she held onto the bag, as if afraid to give it up. ‘So you know, this was never about wanting him or loving him. It was about hating myself.’ She lifted her chin, correcting the shake in her voice. ‘He’s an animal. I’m sure you can tell me a hundred ways in which he’s an animal, without counting what he did on the day of the riot. But I was never afraid of him because he didn’t seem capable of real harm, not on that scale.’ Her fingers tightened on the bag. ‘This is going to sound strange, but I wrote to him because he seemed so safe. It was never about him, not in the way you might think. It was about myself, punishing myself. I know how that sounds, but I’ve had time to think about it out here on my own.’ She gestured at the darkness crowded outside the cottage window. ‘I was never afraid of him, only ever of myself. Can you understand? Call it an infatuation, of course you’ll call it that, but it was never as simple as him. He’s not the man you think he is. At least—’ She frowned, losing her thread. ‘I don’t believe he is. I suppose if I’m honest I never took the trouble to find out what sort of man he is.’
‘Mrs Chorley. Lara. We need to find him. If you can help with that—’
‘I can’t. He’s not here. He’s not. He wouldn’t bother coming for me and if he did, he wouldn’t sneak around. He’d walk right in.’ She fixed her eyes on Marnie’s face. ‘He’d walk in here and he would look at you like you were nothing. And everything.’ Her face flickered, dimly. ‘As if the whole house were filled with him and you. He wouldn’t speak, just look. You’d know what he wanted and you’d be revolted but you’d do it because you couldn’t see a way out until you did. And because you wanted it.’ She tipped her head back to keep the tears from brimming over, her eyes filling with the blonde light of the room. ‘Because you wanted it. For once in your life this place wouldn’t feel like a silk-lined cell. Your life would feel like living. You’d understand what your body was for and you wouldn’t be afraid any more. Just in that moment. You wouldn’t be afraid or ashamed or sorry for all the things you ever did, never did. Because you would be everything.’ She looked at Marnie through the raw running of her tears. ‘Because you would be nothing.’
27
Hospitals are never quiet. I’m meant to be getting well, but how can I do that when this place is so packed with noise? It’s worse than the countryside. Mum called it God’s peace and quiet, but not a day went by without sheep bleating or owls hooting, hawks coughing up bones so close to my bedroom window I could hear the rattle of spit in their throats.
My lucky nurse is off duty. I haven’t seen her all day. I stink of sickness and decay, rotting from the inside out. It scares me, but there’s no point being afraid in here. Fear only works when you can do something about it, when you can use it to make things happen. Otherwise it just eats you alive. I wasn’t afraid of Mickey, not in any useful way. Until the batteries and the stories of what he did in Leeds and to Julie. I’m not the sort of man who can stand aside and let terrible things happen. When the chips are down, I step up. Mum used to say, ‘You’re my hero, Teddy, a proper little gentleman.’ She could be a hard woman, but she was rarely wrong. At the end, when she didn’t want to go into the home because of the chairs – the chairs, mind you – I had to explain to them how rarely she was wrong. They didn’t like it, of course, didn’t want her with her own chairs, or her own opinions. All that was over, they said, and what’s more, ‘You’ll never cope with her, not in your own home. She needs looking after right around the clock. Bed baths, medicine, and she can be a handful, you’ve said so yourself.’
I had said so, it’s true. But you try turfing a stout old lady from her favourite chair, never mind from her own house after sixty years. She went into a care home to give me a break. Six days it was meant to be, but they called me after three. She’d found a way to split the seam on a wipe-clean chair they’d given her in the day room and she’d fed all sorts into there: sprouts, chicken nuggets, someone’s dentures. The staff were furious. Mum was crying when I got there, but she laughed as soon as we were in the car, showing two fingers to the lot of them. ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish!’
I tried to think of it as my privilege. It made me cross on occasion, of course it did. Just as I made her cross, I’m sure, when I was small and made a mess or wouldn’t take my medicine. Benefit fraud, that’s why they put me away. I forgot to cancel her pension, too busy cleaning up the house and organising the memorial and grieving—
Coffins are so small. Don’t you think? Hers was too small. All of her life shouldn’t have fitted inside there. More people came to the service than I’d expected. Churchgoers, not anyone I knew, no one who’d ever met her or me. Funny how people can make you more lonely, not less.
Anyway, I was late with the paperwork, certificates and so on, and they decided it was on purpose. That I’d set out to defraud the Government of their generous bounty given so graciously to old age pensioners and their carers. Benefit fraud, and they put me in there with the killers and arsonists, the rapists. Blame overcrowding, I was told. They locked me up with men like Michael Vokey, who only ever hurt people and wouldn’t lift a finger to help anyone, not even his own family, not if they were on fire. What was I supposed to do?
What would you have done?
I’m serious, because I need to know.
What would you have done?
28
‘Noah? Sorry it’s late and the signal’s not great, but I knew you’d be waiting for news from Lara.’
‘It’s not good news,’ Noah guessed. ‘You sound wrung out.’
‘Vokey isn’t here. There’s no evidence to suggest he ever was. We’re heading over to see Alyson at the hospital then we’re coming back via Cloverton so I can question Aidan again.’
‘How’s Lara?’
‘Not what we expected.’ Marnie turned away from her reflection in the darkened window of the cottage. ‘Not scared, or angry. Not like Ruth. But she told the truth, at least I think she did. And she gave me the letters Michael wrote to her.’ From the beaded clutch bag where she’d been keeping the correspondence safe. ‘She didn’t pretend she’d destroyed them.’
‘Not like Ruth then,’ Noah agreed.
Marnie walked a short distance from the cottage. The floodlights followed her, showing up the patterns in the gravel that marked out the path she walked in search of this weak phone signal.
‘We have a problem,’ she told Noah. ‘Wi
th the evidence from the allotment. What’s the news from the duty doctor? How’s Darren?’
‘He should be fit for interview first thing. What’s the problem with the evidence?’
She stood with the lights at her back, the night’s dark chill on her face. ‘The letter about the red dress, the one inviting Michael to come and find her. It wasn’t written by Lara.’
Noah drew a short breath. ‘You’re sure?’
‘As sure as I can be, without tests. She admitted writing to him, two dozen letters on stationery she stole from the firm who handled her divorce. She was quite candid about it, and I believed her. She admitted writing a letter to Julie at Michael’s behest. But she stopped writing, to anyone, a week before the riot.’
Marnie turned. The cottage chimney was a pillar of black smoke above her. Behind the pretty curtains in Lara’s bedroom, the furniture showed as shadows, crouched and huddled.
‘The letters from Michael, allegedly from Michael, Lara says he didn’t write them. She has earlier letters of his. The style’s very different. That’s why she stopped writing back, because she could tell she wasn’t writing to him. Someone was forging his letters, that’s what she believes.’
‘Who?’ Noah asked. ‘Not Darren.’
Something shifted on the tiled roof, too big to be a pigeon. An owl? The chimney shrouded its hooded head, its eyes showing as flat yellow discs.
Marnie shivered. ‘Let’s find out. But you’ll want to delay the interview until we’ve looked into this. If the letters we found on the allotment are forgeries, it changes everything.’
‘What about the ANPR?’ Noah asked. ‘She was in Kendal around the time of Alyson’s fall.’
‘She took a wrong turn. She was driving through, but didn’t stop in Kendal. We have her satnav to confirm it.’
‘You believe her,’ Noah said. It wasn’t a question. He trusted her instinct.
‘I do, yes.’
‘Damn.’ Because it took them back to square one.