‘Well,’ said Reynolds, ‘when we catch him, we ask him.’
There was a long silence on the line.
‘You ask him?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And you just believe him?’
‘Well, sir,’ said Reynolds, ‘usually any criminal who’s arrested, and faced with evidence he feels will stand up in court, will ask for other offences to be taken into consideration for the purpose of sentencing. At that point there’s really no mileage in the offender saying he didn’t carry out a particular burglary, because that means he could be tried for it at a later date and sentenced for it separately and possibly do another spell in jail.’
‘Well,’ said Mr Passmore, ‘I’m still very surprised that you’d take the word of a criminal.’
‘It’s called confession,’ said Reynolds. ‘We’re all for it.’
If Mr Passmore noticed the sarcasm, he ignored it. ‘So how close are you to catching this Goldilocks character?’
‘As I said, sir, I can’t—’
‘All right. All right!’ said Mr Passmore impatiently. ‘So while we all wait for a thief to be caught and to tell the truth, I have to put up with my insurance company calling me a liar, do I? Calling you a liar, in effect, Sergeant Reynolds.’
‘I’ve been called worse,’ said Reynolds, which was true.
‘Fine!’ said Mr Passmore, and hung up.
Reynolds cleared his throat. Then he put a clip on the Frosties and picked up his car keys.
Rice winked at him. ‘Hot date, Glen?’
‘Don’t forget to leave the window open, Michelle.’
JACK COULDN’T REMEMBER a time when he wasn’t angry.
It was always there, like an itch. Sometimes mild and ignored, sometimes so big and sore that his slight frame could not contain it, and it burst like a boil, spewing violence and bitter hatred that left him hollow.
For a short while.
He always filled up again. Easily, and to the brim.
He wished it would stop. He wished he could stop. Every time he woke up, still tired, in a stranger’s clean, comfortable bed, he wished for a childish miracle that would turn back the clock to before the hard shoulder.
Sometimes he felt as if he’d never left that road. Or that day. As if he’d been stuck there ever since his mother had disappeared, and everything that had happened since was a dream, a mirage, a fake life that he couldn’t discover how to escape.
Sometimes his need to be free of it all was so strong that he packed a bag and planned a route to somewhere – anywhere – where he could forget his past, get a job, go back to school, start at the beginning again.
He wouldn’t miss anything.
Not the house or the town.
Not Joy, rotting away in a dungeon of useless news.
He certainly wouldn’t miss himself – this dirty, angry, sneaky little thief that he’d become, waking each day from a nightmare into exhaustion and grief, then lurching from there to anger and hate and destruction.
And back to exhaustion.
Sometimes he wondered what his mother would say if she knew what he was doing …
Shit! He should leave this place. He should have left it already.
Only Merry kept him coming home.
Only in-the-way, book-to-read, mouth-to-feed Merry.
Who would bring Merry books if he didn’t? Good books, not stupid kids’ books about Spot the dog and the Cat in the Hat. Who else would understand that she needed vampires in her life, and Donald in her arms, and a worm hotel and a lawn to mow?
Nobody.
Nobody in foster care, anyway.
He couldn’t just abandon her, because she’d already been abandoned. Twice.
And that made him angriest of all …
‘I fucking hate my mother.’
Baz was at a playdate, so it was OK to swear.
Louis shook his head. ‘Nah, you don’t.’
‘She didn’t love us.’
‘She loved you,’ Louis said firmly. ‘You know that.’
‘Bollocks. If she loved us, why did she leave us?’
‘Mate,’ said Louis carefully, ‘she didn’t mean to leave you. She was murdered.’
‘Serves her fucking right. I don’t even care any more. I don’t even care who killed her.’
In the defiant silence, Louis stroked his own leg with a slow, seeking thumb.
Two Blundell’s boys went past in their posh blue-and-maroon uniforms – shiny leather satchels on their backs. They stopped to feed their sandwiches to the ducks, then moved on.
‘I hated my mother for a while.’
Jack didn’t look at him.
‘I used to be so angry with her. Always getting nicked and going inside and leaving me to pick up the pieces. Having to keep all the balls in the air. The job and the yard and all the heat and hassle of it, and nobody helping me. I mean, you know what Tammy and Victor are like, and Shawn … shit! I mean, I love them all, but they’re right useless bastards.’
Jack nodded in agreement.
‘Everybody thinks it’s a bed of roses, getting left with a business to run and money coming in and shit, but it’s not. It’s a pain in the arse. I didn’t ask for it and I didn’t want it and I was like, what the fuck, bitch!’
He laughed. Then he went on, ‘But now I’ve got Baz and I know—’
He stopped and shrugged.
‘What?’
Louis went on more slowly. ‘I know you only want your kids to be safe and happy, you know? And I know you do your best, but you don’t always get it right. Not even half the time! So, anyway, now when I go to visit my mother, or even just get a letter, I get, like, reminded how hard it is and that she’s trying, even if she keeps screwing up. And I know she’s trying because she loves me. And then all that angry shit just fades away …’
Jack glared at the canal. ‘What’s your point?’
‘Jeez, I don’t know!’ laughed Louis. ‘I don’t even know if there is a point. All I’m saying is, when you have a kid, then suddenly you understand how easy it is to make mistakes, see? And you forgive your parents a bit, you know?’
Jack said nothing.
‘But you can’t go and visit your mother or get a letter from her. So you never get reminded that she loves you because … you know,’ he shrugged, ‘she’s dead.’
Jack picked at the end of the wooden bench.
‘And that’s not her fault,’ Louis went on. ‘Or your fault. It’s only the fault of the bastard that killed her.’
Jack nodded.
‘You gonna hate anyone,’ said Louis, ‘make it him.’
‘SHE’S MOWING THE lawn,’ called Mrs Reynolds. ‘Come and see.’
Reynolds sighed and stared at the kitchen ceiling, then he got up and trudged upstairs and joined his mother at the back-bedroom window, because he knew he would have to in the end, so he might as well get it over with.
Next door there was indeed a small child mowing the lawn with a large petrol lawnmower. The handle was as high as her head, and she had locked her elbows and was leaning into it at a frightening angle in order to get the machine to move. Often it got stuck and she’d shove and yank until it got going again, and then walked it backwards in the other direction to avoid having to turn it round at either end of the mercifully small garden. Now and then she stopped and left it running to remove a large brown rock from her trajectory. After the second time, Reynolds realized it wasn’t a rock, but a tortoise.
‘You see?’ said Mrs Reynolds accusingly.
‘I don’t see what you’re worried about,’ he said.
But his mother was determined to find fault with her new neighbours, and if she couldn’t criticize the mowing, she had other ammunition. ‘She’s a terrible little liar, too, and hangs off my fence like a chimp. She’ll break it one day and then who’ll pay for it? Not the scruffy brother, that’s for sure!’
‘Why don’t you wait to cross that bridge if you ever come to it?’ he said soothingly
.
It didn’t soothe his mother one little bit. She made a hmff noise that meant This isn’t over, and stomped downstairs to finish making the supper.
Reynolds stood at the window for another moment.
He watched the little girl stop to wipe her sweaty face on the bottom of her T-shirt, exposing pale ribs.
Skinny as a pin!
Then she pushed her straggly nothing-coloured hair behind her ears, puffed out her cheeks and leaned into the mower once again.
‘I tell you what,’ he mused to nobody but himself, ‘she’s making a bloody good job of that lawn.’
THERE WAS A knock at the door.
Adam.
He’d only left for Ludlow five minutes ago. And he had a key, of course. Even so, that’s who Catherine expected to see when she opened the door.
Instead it was the burglar.
A shock ran through her and she gasped so loudly that Mr Kent across the road looked up from washing his car.
‘What do you want?’
‘The knife,’ said the boy bluntly.
He looked just the same as he had in the supermarket car park. The same unwashed jeans, the same blue hoodie. The same home-cut hair and dirty grey eyes.
Catherine shook her head. ‘I don’t have it.’
‘Where is it?’
‘I don’t have it.’
‘Shit!’ The boy shifted his weight and looked around, as if somebody nearby might have an answer that suited him better.
‘It’s my husband’s knife,’ she said. ‘And he’s very angry about this whole thing, so I wouldn’t hang around here if I were you.’
‘But I need it.’
‘Well, he found it and now I don’t know where it is,’ she said, ‘so you’re out of luck.’
And she made to close the door.
The boy put out a quick hand to stop it shutting. It bounced back at Catherine and gave her a fright.
‘I can find it,’ he said. ‘Can I come in?’
‘No, you cannot!’ she said incredulously. ‘And if you don’t leave right now, I’ll call the police.’
‘Go on then,’ he said, stepping away from the door. ‘Call them.’
‘I will.’
‘Go on then!’
Catherine hesitated. She hadn’t expected the conversation to take this turn. She wasn’t sure what she had expected. Maybe a threat? Or an apology? Both seemed unlikely – but both seemed more likely than this – a burglar demanding that she call the police!
‘This is stupid,’ she said. ‘Just go away!’
‘Are you all right, Catherine?’ Mr Kent called out. He’d stopped washing his car and now stood holding the big yellow sponge in both hands against his chest, like a parade rifle.
‘I think so,’ she called, with what she hoped was just the right amount of weight to keep him alert without inviting him to come over and get involved. ‘Thank you, Mr Kent.’
It worked. He continued washing his car, but glanced over often, and with comforting suspicion.
When Catherine looked back at the boy, he carried on as if they’d never been interrupted.
‘It’s not stupid,’ he said. ‘My mother was murdered. And the knife that killed her is in your house.’
Something in the boy’s eyes and determined tone was so completely honest that it took the wind out of Catherine’s angry sails and, suddenly, the only emotion she felt was pity. Whatever had happened to the boy’s mother – whether she’d been murdered or died of cancer or had just left her family for a new life – he’d clearly been traumatized by it.
‘What was your mother’s name?’ she said gently.
The boy looked wary, but said, ‘Eileen Bright.’
‘And yours?’
He hesitated. He looked around the estate again, for an alternative line of questioning. For a lie, perhaps.
He didn’t find either.
‘Jack,’ he said finally.
‘Jack,’ said Catherine more kindly, ‘the knife belongs to my husband. He’d actually lost it and was quite pleased to have it back! But there must be a million knives out there just like it.’
‘No.’ Jack shook his head forcefully. ‘That’s the one.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I don’t know how I know,’ he frowned. Then suddenly he wobbled. He bit his lip and looked away across the gardens, tears sheening his eyes. ‘I just know.’
Catherine felt a pang. He was a thief, but he was still only a child.
‘But it’s not logical, is it?’ she told him gently.
‘You’re not logical!’ he shot back. ‘If you were logical you would have called the police!’
‘That may be true,’ Catherine smiled. ‘But I’m pregnant, in case you hadn’t noticed. And sometimes logic takes a back seat.’
The boy looked at her sharply – as if she’d said something of real import.
‘What do you mean?’
She shrugged. ‘Pregnant women do crazy shit.’
Then she half smiled, but he didn’t. He just stood there, frowning, as if he were thinking of something else. Someone else.
‘Jack,’ she said firmly, ‘you have to understand that your break-in was terribly upsetting for me. It’s very lucky for you that neither of us want to extend that upset by going to the police, because of the baby coming so soon. Really we just want to forget it, and so we were prepared to let it go. But now you’re making that very difficult for us!’
There, thought Catherine. That’s telling him!
But the boy didn’t look as if he were even listening to her.
‘You said your husband found the knife?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then he must have been looking for it.’
She stared at him blankly.
‘That’s logical,’ he said slowly, as if he were just working it out himself. ‘If he found it, then he must have been looking for it.’
‘I don’t see—’
‘And that means he must have known it was missing. So it can’t have been lost!’
Catherine opened her mouth to contradict him. Then she closed it again.
She did see …
‘He lied to you,’ said the boy, and Catherine flushed at the truth.
What were you doing in my underwear drawer?
Adam had never answered her question – just demanded answers from her.
Butterflies battered the walls of her tummy and chest, fluttered in her throat.
Mere seconds before, she had had a firm grip on the situation. Now she felt … lost.
And suddenly it was the burglar who was looking at her with pity!
‘Can I come in?’ he said.
She hesitated.
I could have killed you.
He could have killed her.
‘Please?’ he said.
And Catherine While held open the door and let him in.
JACK COULDN’T REMEMBER the last time he’d entered a stranger’s home through the front door.
Everything looked different in daylight. The house was full of light and air and space and calm.
So clean.
The living room where he’d picked up the phone was decorated in plum. There was a rug in the shape of a big plummy heart. In the study, the laptop he’d once put on the kitchen table was back on the desk. There were two wire in-trays overflowing with paperwork, and a roll of Christmas wrapping paper was propped, unfurling, in a corner.
In the bright kitchen there was a silly sign over the sink that said, The Great Unwashed. A fluffy white cat brushed against his leg and then hurried to its bowl and mewed plaintively.
Catherine While stood in the centre of the room. She looked pale and confused. She looked like the stranger in the house.
‘Do you want to sit down?’ he asked cautiously.
She sat down.
Jack didn’t want to stay any longer than he had to. He’d watched and waited patiently for Adam to drive away in the white van with the red rosette on the back, bu
t he was used to getting into and out of a house fast, and he already felt twitchy just standing still in this one.
He glanced back towards the front door, and the stairs.
‘I’ll find the knife.’
‘No!’
‘But that’s why I’m here.’
‘Wait,’ she said. ‘Let me think.’
Jack was frustrated. What was the point of letting him in if she wasn’t going to let him find the knife? He should have just broken in again and taken what he wanted. For a moment he almost did that anyway – run upstairs and start to hunt down the murder weapon.
What could she do?
Call the police?
But if him taking the knife to the police had ever been the best solution, he would have done it the last time he was here. There was still a chance to try to convince her to do it.
Without threatening to kill her.
He wished Louis were here, with his gift of the gab. Louis could talk anybody into anything.
He had to get the knife. He had to make her believe him!
‘He lied about the knife. And he slashed that man’s tyre too.’
‘Who, Adam?’ she frowned. ‘Don’t be silly.’
‘I saw him do it. He came out and stuck a knife in it twice and went back inside.’
Catherine While looked pale. She clasped her tummy as if clinging to a rock in a fast-flowing river.
‘You have to call the police,’ he said urgently.
‘I …’ she started.
Then the cat flinched in sudden warning and Adam While walked into the house.
Jack froze – wide-eyed – then dived for the back door.
Locked!
Shit!
He turned the key and yanked it open—
And something hit him so hard on the back of the head that it knocked him clear out of the house.
‘Adam! No!’
Jack staggered, dropped to one knee on the painful patio, got up, nearly pitched over with momentum.
Kept going.
Someone grabbed the back of his hoodie and held on. Jack tried to pull away. The man hit him again. Hard, in the ear.
‘Adam, no!’ Muffled now. ‘Adam! Stop!’
Adam didn’t stop. He hung on. He shouted, ‘You little shit! You little fucker!’
Jack swung round, twisted to face him, ducked and pulled backwards, stripping himself out of his hoodie and tee – leaving them dangling from the man’s hand as he ran bare-chested across the lawn and through the flower bed and on to the fence, and launched off the top into the soft green arms of the fir trees beyond.
Snap_‘The best crime novel I’ve read in a very long time’ Val McDermid Page 13