Keep You Close

by Lucie Whitehouse

  ‘Was it a bad drive?’

  ‘Not great. I’m going to have a glass of wine. Do you want one?’

  ‘I’ll get it,’ she told him in the kitchen, ‘you sit.’

  ‘I’ve been sitting for the past hour and a half,’ he said, brusque.

  ‘Is she still outside – the journalist? Did you get my message? I texted you.’

  ‘Yes, I saw it.’

  Did he think he’d replied? Did the message get lost? Confused, Rowan turned to the worktop to open the wine, glad of the excuse to hide her face for a moment. She poured two glasses then carried them to the table. As she handed him one, he met her eyes properly for the first time and, with a jolt of trepidation, she saw something new in his, more than just emotional and physical exhaustion. After hours of waiting, imagining catastrophe, she couldn’t take any more. ‘Is something wrong, Adam?’

  He took a sip of wine, seeming to consider. ‘I went to see Peter this evening.’

  ‘Peter Turk?’ she said, too quickly. Then, trying to compensate, ‘Why? Did you want to tell him in person, too? The news, I mean.’

  ‘That was part of it.’

  The knot of tension in her stomach pulled tighter.

  ‘Why did you go and see him, Rowan? The week after the funeral. Was it really just to try and build bridges?’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ She frowned, trying to mask her alarm.

  ‘Pete told me you wanted to talk about Marianne. He said you didn’t believe she slipped.’

  ‘You know I didn’t.’

  ‘You hadn’t spoken to either of them for ten years and yet you made a special trip to London to talk to him. He reminded me, by the way, that you vanished just when Dad died, when Mazz really could have done with having you round.’

  Rowan looked straight at him. It was a gamble but she had to do it: she couldn’t let him pursue this line of thought any further. ‘Did Pete tell you I’m a gold-digger, too?’ she asked, heart thumping. ‘A leech – that was his word. Did he ask if I’d got my claws into you?’

  As she’d hoped, Adam was wrong-footed. ‘What?’

  ‘That’s what he said to me the last time I saw him – which, by the way, was the day he came here, to the house, the morning you saw him, too. He made up a story about having lent Mazz a pair of cufflinks for a party, but it turned out he’d come to steal instead.’

  ‘Steal? What are you talking about?’

  ‘He’s furious with me because I caught him stealing her sketches. Lots – ten or fifteen of them. It wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment idea, either: he came prepared. He had a sort of press in his rucksack to carry them.’

  Adam was looking at her as if she’d started speaking in tongues. ‘Pete was stealing sketches from Marianne?’

  ‘Yes. To sell. He’s broke.’

  ‘No.’ Adam shook his head. ‘That doesn’t make sense. The royalties from the record …’

  ‘One record, split between four, years ago? What’s he done since? Some radio jingles last year?’ She stopped: being a bitch wouldn’t cover her in glory. ‘Did you meet his lodger?’ she asked. ‘The friend of a friend, staying for a few days?’

  A look of dawning realisation told her he had. ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’

  ‘Because I felt bad for him. And he said that Mazz used to give sketches to her friends and that was true, too.’ She thought rapidly, made another decision. ‘Also, I didn’t want to leave.’

  Adam looked up.

  ‘That morning, when Turk was here – that was the first time you and I … got together and then you vanished. I thought that if you knew there hadn’t been breakins after all, you might think it didn’t matter so much, my being here.’ She felt the flush rising up her neck. ‘I wanted to see you again.’

  They moved to the sofa, and Adam put his arm around her shoulders. He told her how he’d broken the news to Jacqueline, and Rowan related her brief run-in with Georgina Parry. ‘She was gone when I arrived,’ he said, ‘she didn’t come after me, anyway, but if she’s back tomorrow, I’ll ask Theo if there’s anything he can do. Not that there will be.’ He drained his glass. ‘I still can’t believe it was Peter who was taking the sketches.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Do you know where he was selling them?’

  ‘No. We didn’t get that far before he told me I was mad and stormed out.’

  Adam smiled. ‘Have you still got the sketch Cory made of you? I was looking for it down here this morning, thinking about him, but I couldn’t find it.’

  A single drumbeat of alarm in her chest. ‘I put it away. It made me feel strange, knowing he’s gone.’

  ‘Can I see it?’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Yes, but don’t get up – I’ll go and get it. Where is it?’

  ‘No.’ She put her hand out, keeping him in his seat. ‘It’s okay. You stay there, I’ll fetch it.’

  Thirty-nine

  She fell asleep as it started to get light and it felt like only minutes later that she was woken by the sound of the doorbell. Sitting up, she found Adam’s side of the bed empty again but when she stumbled to her feet, she heard him on the kitchen stairs. As she came out on to the landing, pausing briefly to pull her jumper over her head, he was unlocking the front door. Her first thought was of the journalist – bad enough – but as she came down the stairs, she saw Theo and DS Grange on the doorstep. She could tell from their faces that there had been a development.

  In the sitting room Theo took a seat but Grange stayed standing. He had the air of someone who’d learned to discipline the energy that kept him so lean. There was a controlled quality to his stillness but his eyes moved constantly, looking at everything with a focus that said they were taking it in, recording.

  ‘We’ve had the results of the post mortem on Michael Cory this morning,’ said Theo without preamble. ‘It’s a murder inquiry now.’

  Rowan turned cold. For a long moment, several seconds, she – her mind – seemed to detach itself from her body. She felt as if she were hovering over the scene, there but separated from everyone else by an infinitesimal screen, the thinnest plate of glass. Theo’s voice reached her as if from a distance. ‘… position of the wound too high on the head – near the crown – to be easily seen as an injury sustained by falling backwards. Tiny fragments of slate in the wound, not naturally occurring along the riverbank here.’

  Fuck.

  ‘Also telling,’ said Grange, pulling her focus in his direction, ‘are traces of blood on the collar and back of his coat. It looks like the blood ran down, which suggests he was standing when he was injured. If he’d fallen, it likely would have pooled around his head, and if he’d fallen directly into the water, there might have been no direct staining at all.’

  Adam’s face was white. He sat on the edge of the sofa, elbows planted on his knees, fingertips pressed against his mouth.

  ‘What we also have now,’ Theo said, ‘is an approximate time of death. The pathologist is telling us it was sometime on Friday afternoon.’

  ‘Likely mid-afternoon,’ said Grange.

  ‘So we have to ask you both, I’m afraid, where you were at that point.’

  ‘Are we suspects?’ said Rowan and her voice floated away from her, a frail thing, disembodied.

  ‘Not suspects, no,’ said Theo. ‘Not as such.’

  ‘Cambridge,’ said Adam. ‘I had a supervision for an hour at two o’clock with two of my undergraduates – they can confirm. Also, actually, the college handyman – a sash window in my rooms was jammed open, over-painted, and he came to sort it out just afterwards. That took about ten minutes. Then I left college – there’s CCTV in the lodge and the porters saw me. I cycled home then I got in the car to come here. Oh – I filled up with petrol just outside St Neots. The receipt’s probably in my wallet but if not, I’ll be on their CCTV, too. And I paid on my credit card. It would have been about four, quarter-past – I can tell you which garage.’

  ‘Thanks, we’ll check all
that out,’ said Grange. ‘But it’s just a formality. Due diligence.’

  ‘Rowan?’ Theo fixed his eyes on her and the sentences she’d formulated while Adam had been talking disappeared from her head. The closest thing she had to an alibi was being seen by Martin Johnson before she left and after she returned but now she saw that if she gave those details, she’d only be drawing attention to the large lacuna of time in between. Theo raised his eyebrows, prompting.

  ‘Sorry.’ She shook her head as if she were having difficulty refocusing after the shock. Better, she decided, to give an answer that sounded honest even if it didn’t get her off the hook. ‘I was working,’ she said. ‘Studying.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Here. At the house.’

  ‘Can anyone back that up?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. I was on my own. Oh,’ as if she’d just remembered, ‘I waved to Martin Johnson in the flats at lunchtime when I went upstairs to put an extra jumper on.’

  ‘No one else? You didn’t leave the house at all? Buy a pint of milk or take a walk?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did anyone ring you on the landline?’ Adam said. ‘Phone calls?’

  Shit. What if someone had called? Would it come up on the records? Focus, Rowan, worry about that if it comes to it; you’ll have to say you were in the bathroom or something. She narrowed her eyes as if she were thinking. ‘No … no, I don’t think so.’ From the corner of her eye she saw Grange make a note in his little book and sweat bloomed under her arms. ‘God, I just don’t know – I’m sorry. I’ll check my email, my mobile, see if that helps me remember anything. But I was here, all afternoon, I know I was.’

  ‘If you do think of anything,’ Grange asked, ‘ring us, will you?’

  ‘How about Bryony?’ Adam said.

  ‘Cast-iron alibi.’ Theo gave a dry smile.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘She was at school.’

  When the police were gone, Adam walked to the bottom of the stairs and sat down. She looked at him, uncertain what to do. He’d withdrawn, pulled away into himself: his eyes were open but unfocused. She wondered if he even saw her: when she sat down next to him and put her arm around his back, he jumped. For a long time – a minute, maybe two – neither of them spoke.

  ‘Ad, what can I do?’

  A delay, as if her voice had reached him via satellite. ‘Nothing,’ he said. His face was blank. ‘I just need some space. To think. Do you mind?’

  It made sense, it was completely reasonable, and yet the request turned her stomach. ‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘I’ll have a shower and then I’ll go out. To the library. Perhaps work is what I need – distraction.’

  She waited but he only nodded. As she stood to go upstairs, the landline rang, too loud in the fraught silence. Adam seemed to hesitate, it rang and rang, but then, just when she thought it would ring out, he stood and grabbed the handset.

  She was too far away to hear what the tiny voice at the other end asked him but she saw how Adam gripped the phone, the way the tendons stood up on the back of his hand. ‘I’ve no comment now,’ he said, ‘nor will I have at any point. Don’t call this number again.’

  He stood across the kitchen and watched as she packed her laptop and books. She hoped he couldn’t see how much her hands were shaking.

  Cory’s drawing was on the table where he’d left it last night. When she’d come back downstairs with it, he’d looked at it carefully. Her heart had flailed then, too, and into her head had come his response the first time he’d seen it. Does he like you? ‘I was thinking about what Mazz said when we had a drink after Christmas,’ he’d said after a minute, maybe even longer, ‘about getting in touch with you again, sorting out what happened back then. She said Michael was helping her get her head straight.’

  Into the silence now, Adam spoke again. ‘Why did you and Mazz fall out?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Back then. What did you argue about?’

  She shook her head. ‘Ad, you know all this. You’ve got enough to worry about without going back through all …’

  ‘I’m not sure I do know. Not really.’ He looked at her, waiting.

  The old story; there was no time to come up with anything better. ‘Because I pushed her too hard after your dad died,’ she said. ‘Marianne wanted space, time alone, but I was afraid of losing her.’ She paused, sweat prickling in her hairline.

  ‘Why would you have lost her?’

  ‘I don’t know. It just felt like everything was changing. She’d made those big sales to Dorotea Perling and I was afraid she was going to be so successful, such a supernova, I’d lose her that way. And then things fell apart here. Your dad …’

  Georgina Parry’s black hatchback was parked frankly at the kerb outside. As Rowan opened the front door, she saw her look up at once. When she turned to say goodbye to Adam, she could feel the woman’s eyes on her back.

  ‘Speak to you later on,’ she said. ‘If you need me at all, just call. I won’t be doing anything that can’t be interrupted.’

  He nodded but by the time she reached the foot of the steps, he’d closed the door behind her. As she crossed the gravel, however, Parry’s car door came open.

  ‘Morning. How are you?’ Her quick footsteps followed Rowan down the pavement. ‘The police were here earlier, weren’t they? You know that Michael Cory’s death is definitely being treated as murder now.’

  Shaking with fury, Rowan spun around. ‘I said no. No. What about that do you not understand? What the fuck is wrong with you?’

  Afterwards, in the relative sanctuary of the café in the vaults of St Mary’s Church, Rowan was angry with herself. Why had she lost control? Why had she let herself? The very last thing she needed now was a journalist who thought she had something to hide. Since seeing her with Adam yesterday, the woman had clearly gone back and looked at all the paparazzo’s pictures from the funeral, not just the ones that had made it into the paper. She’d seen the one he’d snapped from his car window. What if she talked to him, found out that Rowan had tried to buy the pictures, stop them being published?

  But in the scheme of things now, that was a minor problem.

  A murder inquiry. Too high on the head; not naturally occurring along the riverbank; it looks like the blood ran down – the phrases landed on her again like blows, every one of them evidence of how badly she’d messed things up, how vulnerable she’d left herself.

  Was there any way it could be all right now? The pieces were gathered: between them – Adam and the police – they had them all. Rowan imagined them as a reflection on water, like the leaves and the sky on the river the day she had gone to the houseboat alone, a swimming, shimmering, fragmented image. All it needed was for the light to catch it a certain way.

  And if they had everything, she had nothing left. Just like in those final days with Cory, she’d used her resources.

  The newspaper she’d bought was open on the table but she couldn’t read. She’d chosen the café because it was close to the library – it was plausible she’d take a break here – but after the waitress cleared away two cups of cold coffee almost untouched, she started to feel conspicuous. She put her coat back on, stuffed the paper into her bag and left.

  As she climbed the stairs out of the vaults to street level, she felt her phone vibrate in her pocket again and again. Outside in Radcliffe Square, she looked at it: six missed calls, all from Adam’s mobile.

  Light-headed, hot then cold, she rounded the corner into Brasenose Lane and leaned against the railings while she waited for a wave of nausea to pass. Before her heartbeat had regulated itself again, the phone buzzed in her hand. Adam. She took a deep breath and answered.

  ‘Where are you?’ he said. ‘I’ve been calling and calling; your phone went straight to voicemail.’

  ‘I’m in Radcliffe Square – I’ve just come outside.’

  ‘What college are you at?’ he said.

  ‘Sorry?’ Momentarily, she was confused:
here was her college, Brasenose. It was directly behind her.

  ‘I said, what college are you at, in London?’

  Rowan felt her gorge rise, cold sweep across her body, and she swallowed down hard. ‘Why?’ she said.

  ‘Grange rang to ask.’

  The afternoon passed in a blur, a series of images and locations that left only the shallowest impressions. Her old haunts: Blackwell’s, Waterstones, Queen’s Lane Coffee House for a bowl of soup she barely touched. Just before four, cold and exhausted, she went to the Odeon on George Street, bought a ticket for the next film starting and hid in the dark.

  Should she run, she asked again; get in the car? But if she disappeared now, the police would alert the ports, have her stopped at the border. And she couldn’t even try without going back to the house – her passport was there, up on the top shelf of the wardrobe with her mother’s pearls; she’d left them there when she’d moved the box.

  And yet perhaps, still, she was jumping the gun. Grange’s question might not mean anything more than that he was compiling facts. Due diligence. And the police hadn’t called her today. In fact, since Adam’s calls, her phone hadn’t rung once.

  The film played out in front of her, animated wallpaper, while she went back and forth, desperate and hopeful, terrified and resolute. At half-past six, however, the credits ended and the lights came up. She made up her mind: one last try.

  Forty

  Even a week ago, she wouldn’t have believed that going back to Fyfield Road – to Adam – could fill her with such dread. As soon as she saw the house, however, the feeling intensified. She knew he was there, he’d told her he would be, and yet the house was dark. If he’d had to leave for any reason, she thought, he would have texted – Gone to buy wine. Back in ten – but when she checked her phone, there was no message.

  The moon slipped between a gap in the clouds, sending a momentary gleam across the house’s blind eyes. It was still early, not even seven, but with the emptiness of the street, the absence of any human-made sound, it felt like the small hours. The only movement came from the wind that shivered the leaves on the evergreens, rattled the thin branches of the willow that bowed its head on the drive.