by M. R. Hall
‘Je-sus,’ Sonia said, poking the meter around the living-room door. ‘Ninety-three.’
Jenny pointed to where Mrs Jamal’s clothes and the whisky bottle had been found. ‘She was sitting just about there.’
Sonia hastened into the room, pointed the meter at the spot, then swiftly drew it in a circle around her. She stepped towards one of the two armchairs and swept the meter over it.
‘A hundred and ten.’ She headed for the door. ‘That’s enough. We’re going.’
Sonia was reluctantly persuaded to sweep the remaining four landings of the building before reaching for her phone, but found only slightly higher than background levels. It confirmed that the trail led from the front door directly to Mrs Jamal’s flat. The fact that the fabric of an armchair had the highest reading suggested that someone or something contaminated had come into direct contact with it. It was only a matter of a few particles – a faint dusting, Sonia called it – but it screamed to Jenny that in her final hours Mrs Jamal had had a visitor.
Sonia refused to take the lift and hurried ahead down the stairs, making a call to the Health Protection Agency. Within the hour the building would be evacuated and sealed off. A team of operatives in post-apocalyptic white overalls would search for and suck up every last radioactive crumb. The neighbourhood would never have witnessed a more incongruous sight.
Descending the penultimate flight of steps, Jenny heard voices in the lobby below. She turned the corner to see Alison standing on the doorstep of the caretaker’s flat talking to Mrs Aldis. Sonia was already outside the building, phone pressed to her ear as, with much gesticulating, she explained the situation to an incredulous official at the Health Protection Agency.
Leaning on her crutch, Mrs Aldis nodded gruffly towards the lift. Jenny heard her say, ‘Tall fella, slim.’
‘Colour?’
‘White. Fiftyish, I’d say. Baseball cap on. Shoved straight past me. No sorry or nothing.’
Alison said, ‘Did you tell the police this?’
‘I wasn’t here, was I? I was on my way to hospital to have my knee seen to.’
‘At what time?’
‘Must’ve been about one-ish, maybe a few minutes after.’ Mrs Aldis noticed Jenny. ‘You remembered to lock up, love? There’s no way my husband’s going up there today. Lazy sod. It’d take a bomb to get him off that sofa when the football’s on.’
Jenny said, ‘You might be in luck.’
They sat for a while in Alison’s car, a few moments of peace before the air would be split by the scream of sirens. Jenny resisted any temptation to discuss her officer’s decision to step away from her friend and fellow churchgoer, DI Pironi. She was simply grateful that she had. She hated to admit it, but it was a childlike gratitude: there was something of the mother substitute in her relationship with Alison. What did that say about her? She heard McAvoy’s voice: there’s someone who’s had the confidence knocked out of her.
‘I’ll take a statement later,’ Alison said quietly. ‘The man who came out of the lift sounded rather like the one Dani James saw in the student halls all those years ago.’
‘White . . . I don’t know why, I was expecting her to say he was Asian.’
‘We don’t know he was connected with Mrs Jamal. He could have been anyone,’ Alison said, but with no conviction.
After a moment of silence, Jenny said, ‘Anna Rose Crosby worked at Maybury power station. Our missing Jane Doe had a thyroid tumour . . .’
‘You can’t start building castles in the air, Mrs Cooper. Best start with what we know.’
Then came the first one. A squad car screamed up behind them and screeched to a halt outside the block. Sonia Cane rushed to meet the two constables who scrambled out.
Alison said, ‘She may never get another one like this. We’ll leave her to enjoy the limelight, shall we?’
‘Why not?’ Jenny said. ‘And talking of which, I think Monday might be a little soon to start taking evidence again, don’t you?’
‘Whatever you think’s best, Mrs Cooper.’
The day had taken on a dreamlike quality, its moods shifting as swiftly as the restless sky. She used the last of her phone’s battery dialling Ross’s number, only to reach him for a few short seconds in which he announced he was staying at his father’s for the rest of the weekend, and could she drop his things off on her way to work on Monday?
Deflated and dejected, Jenny drove home. The roads were eerily quiet as the sun sank towards the hilltops, briefly casting the Wye valley in a light of almost angelic clarity. For a brief moment the whole of life seemed to stop and be held in stark relief. She was a mere onlooker to the series of baffling tableaux which made up her present existence: a son disillusioned by her weakness; a disturbing and erratic man to whom she felt a visceral attraction; a case that, as much as she tried to ignore the fact, touched her darkest fears; and the latest bizarre composition in the city that lay a mere river’s span behind her – a trail of radiation that led to the naked corpse of a woman whose final call for help she had ignored. She should have felt guilty, horrified that she’d taken McAvoy’s call in preference to Mrs Jamal’s, but in this moment of stillness she felt almost a selfish sense of relief. It was as if everything that had been ominous and unseen had briefly surfaced and shown itself. Mrs Jamal’s killer – Jenny had convinced herself that was who the spectre in the baseball cap had been – was one and the same demon who had visited on the night of Nazim and Rafi’s vanishing. Eight years ago he had left only scratch marks on the door frames; this time he’d left a smear of hell itself. Evil now had a form if not a face.
There was no time to reflect or elaborate on her theories; the phone calls came relentlessly for the rest of the afternoon. Andy Kerr, the undertakers, various functionaries from the Health Protection Agency, DI Pironi and even Gillian Golder managed to obtain her supposedly ex-directory number. All wanted information she didn’t have and none of them believed her when she claimed ignorance. Both Pironi and Golder sounded close to desperate for any lead to the source of the radiation; both seemed convinced she was keeping critical evidence to herself. She told them about Mrs Aldis and the man in the baseball cap, rationalizing that in doing so she had fulfilled her duty, but made no mention of either Madog or Tathum. They belonged to the past and that, she told herself, was still her exclusive territory.
Between calls Jenny sat at her desk, trying to work out her next moves. She had already gone far beyond the accepted bounds of coronial practice by behaving like a detective, but her gut told her there were questions that would never be answered merely by examining witnesses in court. The stolen Jane Doe had an early-stage thyroid tumour possibly caused by exposure to low-level radiation; the missing Anna Rose worked in the nuclear industry; Nazim Jamal had been a physicist. It was more than just wishful thinking, there had to be a connection.
The phone interrupted her thoughts for what felt like the fiftieth time. Jenny answered with a weary hello.
Steve said, ‘That good, hey? Busy?’
Jenny’s mood lifted. ‘What did you have in mind?’
Steve said, ‘I’d like to talk.’
The Apple Tree was quiet for a Saturday. Steve was a lone figure sitting next to the iron brazier on the flagstone patio. The snap of the fire and the rush of the nearby stream making its final descent to the Wye were the only sounds in the damp, chilly night.
‘Can you stand it out here?’ Steve said as she climbed the uneven steps.
‘I like it,’ Jenny said and took a seat next to him on one of the three rustic benches arranged around the fire. It was throwing out a good heat, but she was glad of her thick wool sweater and the waxed jacket which made her look like a farmer’s wife.
Steve touched his roll-up cigarette to a lick of flame and took a draw. ‘Got you a Virgin Mary.’ He handed her a glass.
‘Thanks.’ She took an alcohol-free sip. ‘God, it’s boring being virtuous.’ She reached for his tobacco tin. ‘Am I allowed one sin?’
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‘As many as you like.’ He gazed into the flames.
Clumsily rolling a cigarette she said, ‘I’d tell you what kind of week I’ve had, but I’m not sure I’d believe it myself.’
‘Ross told me some of it,’ he said, as if from a far distance.
‘You’ve been talking to him a lot . . .’ Jenny replied, fishing.
‘Here and there.’ He blew out a thin trail of smoke. ‘He worries about you.’
She licked the paper and performed the final roll. Not bad. She poked it though the iron slats of the brazier to catch a light.
‘He really does,’ Steve said.
‘What can I say? I do my best . . . Is this what you wanted to talk about?’
‘No. You mostly.’
‘What about me?’
He held his cigarette hesitantly in front of his lips.
‘What?’ she insisted.
‘The other night when we were in bed . . . it was as if you weren’t there. And it’s not the first time.’ He turned and held her gaze. ‘You don’t feel the same way any more.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘You hardly call me.’
‘I’m a working mother.’
‘And I go to an office, too . . . I’m not the same, am I?’
‘The same what?’
‘The fantasy. The guy with no chains.’
Wounded, Jenny said, ‘I think you’re confusing me with your ex-girlfriend. If you remember, I encouraged you to go back and qualify.’
‘I really didn’t want to argue, Jenny.’ His head sank towards his knees. ‘I just want to know what’s going on with us, what you’re expecting.’
She drew hard on her cigarette until the hot smoke scorched her mouth. ‘I’m sorry if I seem that way. It’s probably the pills my shrink put me on. I’ll be off them soon.’
‘Didn’t I used to make you happy?’
She felt her legs twitching nervously. A shiver passed through her, physical sensations taking the place of thoughts. ‘You know what I am, Steve. I try to keep the parts of me I’m trying to deal with separate, but sometimes they escape from the box.’
‘You know you can talk to me all you like. I wish you would.’
‘It doesn’t work like that. That’s not what I need from you.’
‘Can you tell me what you do need?’
To touch me, hold me, reassure me, give me a place to hide . . . The words tripped out of her mind but stumbled and fell somewhere short of her mouth. All she could manage was to shake her head.
Steve said, ‘Do you love me? Or just the idea of me.’
‘You’re not leaving?’
‘I need to know what the future is, I need to know how you feel. A girl at work asked me if I was with anyone the other day. For a moment I didn’t know what to say.’
‘Was she pretty?’
‘For God’s sake, Jenny.’ For once he was closer to tears than she was. ‘You’ve got to stop being afraid. Letting yourself feel loved is a gamble, don’t I know it, but you won’t even try.’
‘I . . . I do . . . I try all time.’ The words sounded empty even to her.
Steve said, ‘I’ve been thinking more about your dream – the part of you that died. Why would you have it again now? When we got together I watched you come alive. You smiled and laughed and lost yourself. And then it was as if you felt too guilty to let yourself be free again.’ He tossed his cigarette end onto the fire and drew his palms back across his face. ‘What I’m trying to say is, sometimes being faced with a choice is the best way to get bounced out of a rut.’
He stood then leaned down and kissed her lightly on the forehead. ‘Think about it. Give me a call.’
He disappeared down the steps and into the night.
EIGHTEEN
JENNY HAD SUFFERED MANY INSULTS from many men over the years, but no one had accused her of being lifeless in bed. True, she’d allowed herself to think about someone else during sex, but she’d done that many times with her ex-husband and even in the midst of their acrimonious split David had had the good grace to say that he had few complaints about the physical side of their marriage.
Studying her face in the mirror she did detect a certain absence, a dullness in her eyes, a lack of vitality in her features. She felt sure these changes had occurred since she had been on her latest regime of medication. Yes, the malaise Steve had detected was partly existential, but she could see in her own reflection that it was partly physical too. The pills had been a useful support at her low points, they’d staved off the melancholy and anxiety which forced their way in when her mind wasn’t absorbed with work, but they’d blunted her edge, diluted her passion.
Steve was right: part of her had died, the part that wasn’t afraid to feel the rush of life.
It was time for a new strategy; to cut loose. The deadening drugs must go. Across the wet grass and into the dark stream with Dr Allen’s poisons. She’d rather live raw and true, be like McAvoy – a force of nature, a raging gale or a barely moving breeze depending on how the spirit moved her.
And if she faltered, a glass of something nice or a tranquillizer or two couldn’t do any harm.
She checked in the bottom drawer of the oak chest where she kept her special things – silk underwear, white cotton gloves with delicate pearl buttons, a pair of stockings she had worn only once – and dug down to the bubble-wrapped package she’d stashed there months before, when she’d vowed that the single container was for life-saving purposes only. She slit the sticky tape with nail scissors and released the small brown bottle. Xanax 2mg. Contents 60. A reassuring rattle. She unscrewed the lid and pulled out the plug of cotton wool just to make sure.
She had her parachute. Now she could jump.
The phone woke her shortly before seven a.m. on Sunday morning. Jenny went downstairs, turned the ringer to mute and had breakfast in peace. She had no intention of answering any calls today. She had nothing to say to anyone until she had some more answers. Two cups of strong coffee took away her sluggishness. She felt more exposed without Dr Allen’s pills; a small hard kernel of fear sat stubbornly between her throat and diaphragm, but there was also an energy she wasn’t accustomed to. A sense of excitement, of unleashed emotion. The day felt fresh and full of possibility. She arrived outside the Crosbys’ home in Cheltenham shortly after nine. It stood in a terrace of identical regency townhouses, distinguished from one another only by the varying designs of their intricate wrought-iron porches and balconies. Built with the first flush of serious colonial money to reach the hands of the merchant classes, these stuccoed streets in the heart of the town were an idealized vision of what it was to be English and civilized. Even on a dull February morning the buildings seemed to shine.
It was Mrs Crosby who answered the door, her hair still slightly rumpled, though she’d had time since Jenny’s call half an hour before to dress and, judging from the smell, burn some toast. She took her through to an elegant, unfussy drawing room that matched tasteful contemporary sofas with an antique chandelier. The paintings were modern abstract, the huge decorative mirror above the white marble fireplace was tarnished with age. Eight-feet-high windows looked out over a mini Italianate garden.
Jenny said, ‘It’s lovely. So light.’
Mrs Crosby offered a sad smile and glanced up at the door as her husband entered, hair still wet from the shower, his irritation at being stirred so early on a Sunday morning written across his unsmiling face.
‘Found a body, have you?’ he said, taking a seat next to his wife.
‘No. There’s no body, nothing to suggest she’s dead.’
Husband and wife exchanged a look of relief tinged with a sense of anti-climax.
‘This may sound odd,’ Jenny said, ‘but the reason I need to speak to you is that a small trace of radioactive material was found on the body of woman connected to another case I’m investigating. You might have read about it – Nazim Jamal.’
Mrs Crosby looked puzzled.
‘I’ve read reports,’ her husband said, abruptly. ‘What’s this got to do with Anna Rose?’
‘Maybe nothing. I don’t know. Let me explain.’ She gave them the bare bones: a brief history of Nazim and Rafi’s disappearance, Mrs Jamal’s campaign, her bizarre death and the traces of caesium 137 that could only have originated in a nuclear power plant. She told them that, from what she’d managed to find on the internet, the main source of black market radioactive material was the former Eastern bloc, but Anna Rose’s job at Maybury presented her with a coincidence that needed at least to be discounted.
Mr and Mrs Crosby listened in silence, exchanging the occasional fretful glance. Jenny sensed she had touched on something, but finished her exposition before asking if it brought anything to mind.
There was a pregnant pause. Mrs Crosby spoke first. ‘You didn’t know that Anna Rose studied physics at Bristol?’
‘No—’
‘She graduated last summer,’ Mr Crosby said.
‘I see . . .’
The three of them sat in silence for a long moment.
Jenny said, ‘When did she go missing, exactly?’
Mr Crosby said, ‘We spoke to her on the phone on the night of Monday, 11 January. She was at work on the Tuesday, but didn’t arrive on the Wednesday.’
‘Where was she on the Tuesday night?’
‘In her flat, we think. The bed looked slept in. Her boyfriend called her mid-evening. Everything seemed fine.’
‘Did she take anything with her?’
Mrs Crosby said, ‘It looked like she’d packed a bag. Her wallet and passport were gone. She took five hundred pounds from an ATM near her flat at seven-thirty on the Wednesday morning.’
‘Has there been any activity on the account since?’
‘No,’ Mr Crosby said definitely. ‘And no record of her leaving the country that we can find.’
Jenny said, ‘Was there any indication that anything was wrong?’