by Danuta Reah
McCarthy ran through the information they had. ‘According to Allan, Emma didn’t know about the relationship. She knew Allan wasn’t her father, but she didn’t know who was. And according to Polly Andrews, this “older man” Emma was seeing was a drugs contact, not a boyfriend.’
‘OK, even if she’s just selling pills to her father, it’s a hell of a coincidence.’ Brooke stared blankly in front of him for a moment. ‘Set it out for me, Steve. Who knew and who didn’t.’
McCarthy went through the story Dennis Allan had told him, slowly, bit by bit, laying out in front of the interviewing officers and his solicitor the story that Sandra had told her husband shortly before her death. Phillip Reid, Don G., had come back. He’d been living in America, had married, but his marriage had broken up, and he was back. Reid had been happy to start up what Sandra thought of as a relationship, but what to him was probably no more than a one-nighter. When she found she was pregnant again, she went looking for Reid, but he’d moved on.
‘She knew his ex-wife’s family, apparently,’ McCarthy said. ‘The Walkers. Or knew of them. She went to them to see if they could find him, but they couldn’t.’ She’d been seeing Dennis Allan, who had apparently kept in touch over the years. ‘Maybe she thought the child was his,’ McCarthy said. ‘Or might be. He certainly had no doubts, not until Emma’s bombshell.’
The Beeches was a large stone building. To Barraclough, it looked as though it had once had extensive grounds, but a new housing estate surrounded it, the houses looking like dolls’ house ensembles with ornate exteriors and tiny patches of grass next to car ports and garages. Corvin cast a critical eye over the stone frontage as Barraclough pulled up. ‘Cost a fortune to look after,’ he said. ‘Wants pulling down.’ Barraclough could see rows of chairs in one of the ground-floor windows, and a head craning awkwardly round to look at them. There were steps up to the front door. Someone had constructed a concrete ramp to one side of the steps: ugly, but, Barraclough supposed, adequate.
They went through the front door. The floor was a scuffed, dull red, and the walls looked in need of paint. There was a smell of disinfectant overlying the faint smell of urine that Barraclough always associated with homes for the elderly. Barraclough looked round for somewhere to announce their arrival. Eventually she spotted a bell on the wall with RECEPTION in small letters above it. She pressed it, and they waited again.
‘Oh, fuck this,’ Corvin said. ‘I’m going to find someone.’
But just then a woman in a white overall came down the stairs and smiled doubtfully at them. ‘Yes, it was me you spoke to,’ she said when Corvin introduced himself. ‘I’m the manager, Mrs Court. You want to see Catherine. She’s expecting you.’
‘Is she … ?’ Barraclough wasn’t too sure how to word her question.
‘With it?’ the woman said. ‘She has good days and bad days.’ She pushed open the double doors in front of them. ‘Through here.’
They followed her along a corridor to another set of double doors. There was a background noise of crockery being shifted about, and someone shouted and banged against something. They were in a large sitting room, with chairs round the walls and in a row across the middle of the room. Most of the chairs were occupied, the sitters staring ahead at the walls, at the floor, at nothing. The chairs were low, with deep seats. There wasn’t really anything to look at, apart from the television. The smell of urine was stronger in here.
Mrs Court went over to one of the sitters and shouted in her ear. ‘Catherine? Catherine? These people have come to visit you.’
A small woman with white hair and pale, fragile skin looked at them. She stood up slowly, helped by Mrs Court’s arm. ‘Have you come from Carolyn?’ she said, looking anxiously at Barraclough.
Barraclough didn’t know what to say. ‘No,’ she said, after a moment’s silence. ‘No, we haven’t come from Carolyn.’
‘They want to talk to you,’ Mrs Court said, with the same exaggerated enunciation. ‘They’ve come to take you for a walk.’
The woman looked at her and then at Barraclough and Corvin, frowning with bewilderment. ‘I don’t want to go for a walk,’ she said.
Barraclough could feel Corvin shifting restlessly beside her. She tried to catch the woman’s eye and smiled at her. ‘We want to talk to you about your grandson, about Simon,’ she said.
Catherine Walker was suddenly attentive. ‘Do I know you?’ she said, peering at Barraclough. She put her hand on Barraclough’s arm and patted it gently. ‘Do I know you?’ she said again.
‘No, Mrs Walker. I’m a detective. I’m Detective Constable Barraclough, and this is Detective Sergeant Corvin. We’d like to talk to you about Simon.’
‘Simon.’ The woman’s eyes hunted round the room. She looked back at Barraclough. ‘Have you come from Carolyn?’ she said.
‘This is getting us nowhere,’ Corvin muttered.
‘It’s a lovely day,’ Barraclough said, still looking at the old woman. ‘Would you like to go out in the garden?’ Not that there was much of a garden that she could see, but the gravelled area in front of the house was sunny, and there were some shrubs and flowers in the borders. Catherine Walker took her arm and they moved slowly towards the door.
As they went out into the corridor, Barraclough felt the woman grip her arm more closely. ‘Can I walk with you?’ she whispered to Barraclough. ‘I don’t like it here. I don’t know … My daughter’s coming to take me home soon.’
‘Is she?’ Barraclough guided her towards the door.
‘I haven’t seen her for a while.’ Barraclough looked down at the fingers gripping her arm, then into Catherine Walker’s face and saw the fear and distress.
‘I’m sure it’s all right,’ she said. ‘Maybe your grandson will come.’ They were down the steps now and in the sunlight.
The noise of traffic made the whispered words hard to hear. ‘Simon’s problem,’ Catherine Walker said. ‘He had his problem, you see.’ Her face was blank, her eyes staring into the distance.
Barraclough nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said. She didn’t want to distract this fragile train of memory.
‘But he did very well.’ Catherine Walker’s smile was proud.
‘Yes,’ Barraclough encouraged again.
‘I told him, “You can do it,” I said. I think he was proud too.’ There was a brighter light in her eyes now, as if her mind was freeing itself of the clouds. Barraclough felt more of an awareness of a person beside her. ‘Our Simon, going to university. It’s more than Carolyn ever managed.’
Barraclough expected the story to fragment in the woman’s mind any minute. She had been holding her breath as she listened. ‘I can’t remember,’ she said. ‘Which university was it? Was it Sheffield?’
Catherine Walker looked at her. ‘Of course it was,’ she said. A slow bewilderment was growing on her face. ‘Do I know you?’ she said. ‘Have you come from Carolyn?’ Barraclough could see, from the corner of her eye, Corvin’s thumbs up, and his jerk of the hand to tell her it was time to get moving.
They made their slow way back inside. Mrs Court was nowhere around when they returned to the sitting room. A harassed-looking woman in a pink overall steered Catherine Walker back to a chair and sat her down firmly. ‘Come on, Catherine, love, you sit down here. That’s right. Come on.’
Catherine looked across at Barraclough. ‘Have you come from Carolyn?’ she said. ‘Is she coming to get me?’
Barraclough couldn’t think of anything to say. She shook her head. ‘I haven’t come from Carolyn. Thank you, Mrs Walker. You’ve been very helpful.’ And before the woman could respond, she turned and followed Corvin who was already heading back to the car.
Suzanne had waited for about an hour. She’d parked close to the flats where Lee’s family had moved after they left Green Park, pulling into the forecourt of a garage. According to the records, Lee still lived with his family. She was banking on him going out on Saturday night, going into town. He’d have to come this way. The ga
rage was busy. She watched the cars pulling in and driving away. She watched people going into the all-night shop. It looked like the closest place to the flats where you could get cigarettes, sweets, newspapers. She looked at the bright bands of primary colours, red and yellow, the light from the canopy spilling down on the pumps, the bright light from the shop window illuminating the forecourt as the evening darkened. A group of youths were messing around on the pavement, using the forecourt to shoot their skateboards through complicated manoeuvres and leaps. Two girls, skimpily dressed even for a summer night, swayed past on impossible shoes.
Then she saw him, strolling towards the two girls, watching them as they passed him. There was no mistaking that red hair, that distinctive swagger. She opened the car door and got out, feeling less and less sure about what she was doing, now that the moment had come. He was moving faster now, and she hurried after him, calling, ‘Lee! Wait.’
He turned round sharply. He didn’t look surprised. ‘Lee,’ she said again. She didn’t know how to start. Her heart was beating rather fast and she realized, ashamed, that she was frightened. He stood in front of her, alert, ready to respond to whatever threat – or promise – she was offering. She stopped, still some way from him.
‘What?’ he said after a moment. He was wary and guarded.
She tried to look confident and collected. ‘Lee, please, I need to talk to you. I just—’
He stepped back. ‘I’m not talking to you,’ he said. ‘You grassed Ash up.’
Of course he would think that. To talk to the police at all was a betrayal. She knew that. ‘I didn’t,’ she said. ‘I found a dead girl, Lee. I didn’t … They didn’t understand what I was saying. I need to tell Ashley. I need to find him. Do you know … ?’ She cursed herself as she heard the words blurting out in a rush. ‘Can you tell him …’
The street was quiet now. They were in the shadow, away from the shop, and the stream of passers-by had ended. The cars raced past, unseeing. He relaxed his alert stance and, for a moment, she thought he was going to listen. He came towards her, and the darkness felt empty and dangerous. She stepped back as he gripped her arm. ‘What do you want with Ash?’ He was whispering, but his words were angry. ‘It’s not Ash you want. Understand? If you go looking, you won’t want what you’d find.’ His grip on her arm was so tight it was painful.
She tried to remember his good humour at the Alpha Centre, his camaraderie and fun, but all she could think of was the cruelty of his jibes at Dean, the coldness of his opportunism, the way his bright eyes sought out weakness. She was afraid, and he knew it. She tried to steady her breathing, telling herself that he had no reason to hurt her, that he wasn’t violent – except she didn’t know that, did she? She didn’t know anything about him, not really, only what he had allowed her to know. ‘Please, Lee,’ she said, keeping her voice as level as she could, talking at a normal volume. ‘Please tell Ashley I need to see him. Tell him I need to talk to him.’
People were coming along the pavement again, and he slackened his grip on her arm, his eyes crinkling at the corners with the smile she was more used to seeing. Almost gallantly, he turned her back to her car, opened the door and steered her in. ‘What do you want with Ash?’ he said again. ‘I don’t know where he is.’ His face hardened. ‘Now fuck off.’ He banged the car door shut, and when she sat there staring at him, he slammed his hand down hard on the roof. Unnerved, she fumbled her keys into the ignition and pulled away, steering erratically with one hand while the other fumbled with her seatbelt. A taxi swerved to avoid her, the driver mouthing abuse through his window. She was shaking.
Night began to cover the park. The shadows of the trees lengthened across the grass. The deeper woods slowly filled with darkness. The roof of Shepherd Wheel caught the last glimmerings of the sun, then the wheel yard became a pool of shadow, and the surface of the dam glittered darkly in the moonlight. Back along the path, the basement flat of the end house showed no light behind its torn curtain.
The bin still lay on its side in the garden, the contents strewn still further by the scavengers that came every night: the mice, the foxes and the rats. The small patch of carefully dug earth was still visible among the weeds. But the seedlings had wilted in the dryness of summer, the weeds were starting to grow, reclaiming the land that had been taken away from them. Through the window, the pictures still glimmered in the faint light. But now the sequence had changed again, running along the wall. First, the child, next, the youth; then the child, then the youth; the child, the youth. The child. The child. The child.
Suzanne had run. After her encounter with Lee at the garage, she had headed for home and for her study. She didn’t want to think about it, about any of it. Tomorrow, she would tell Steve what Lee had said, her ideas about Ashley: let him deal with it. It was his job; it was what he did. The tapes! She’d never told him about the tapes. She’d wanted to clear it with Richard first. Well, screw that. She’d give him the tapes as well. Maybe there was something there. Something she couldn’t see.
She sat in front of her computer, picking up the cassettes that were out of order on her desk and pushing them back onto the shelves. If she was going to give Steve the tapes, she should give him the transcripts too, typed up and legible.
Mechanically, she slipped the pages of transcript into the paper holder and began typing. At first, her fingers missed the keys and fumbled with the commands. But gradually she was drawn into the routine and, as she worked, her encounter with Lee became less vivid in her mind. After a couple of hours she finished the last piece, methodically saved the file and shut down. By the time she switched off her computer, it was almost midnight. She went down the stairs to her bedroom and looked out onto the road, watching the shadows from the street lamps on the bushes, the faint shine on the flagstones from the earlier rain. The wind was getting up, and the shrubs in the gardens were moving restlessly, sending their own pattern across the pavement. The road was deserted. She was suddenly aware of the empty houses around her: Jane and Lucy away for the weekend; the student houses empty for the summer. She was in the middle of a bustling city, but she lived in an enclave of ghosts.
She looked at her watch. She was turning into a recluse, and for what? For a piece of research she couldn’t complete, and a grant that ran out in seven months’ time. Maybe she should just give up, go to the careers advice centre tomorrow and start looking for a proper job. Her breath had misted the window and she wiped the pane clean. Then she looked more closely. There was someone across the road, standing in the shadow of the laurel hedge. She could see feet in worn trainers. As she watched, a hand moved, holding a cigarette. There was a shower of sparks as the butt hit the pavement.
She felt uneasy. There was no reason why someone shouldn’t be standing there, no reason for it to be anything to do with her, but it was a good place to stand if you wanted to watch her house – and Jane’s. She frowned, realizing she was biting her nail again. She went downstairs, turning on the light in the outside passage as she went past the door, then decided to have a look out of the downstairs window. She might get a better look at whoever it was. The overgrown cotoneaster outside the bay obscured her view a bit, but as far as she could tell, there was nobody there. She went out of the side door and stood at the gate, looking up and down the road. It was dark and silent. There were lights on in one of the houses a bit higher up, but she realized again how many of them had been turned over to student accommodation now. They were marked by their dark windows and the TO LET boards in the front gardens.
The house by the privet had a light in the window. Maybe the person standing in the shadows had been a guest, or a family member, banished outside to smoke. She was pretty sure that the couple who lived there – what was their name? – had a son who’d be in his late teens, or early twenties.
She felt irritated with herself for getting distracted. She went back in and closed the curtains. If anyone was watching, they certainly weren’t going to watch her. She went upstairs an
d had a shower. She didn’t feel like going to bed, so she put on her dressing gown and went back downstairs. She put a cassette into her stereo – Cleo Laine and John Williams, music to commit suicide to, Dave had dubbed it – and let the melody take her. Cleo Laine’s voice slid over the notes as she sang about feelings, feelings of love … Only it wasn’t feelings of love she was trying to forget, but feelings of responsibility, regret, guilt. If only—Stop it! She made a conscious effort and turned her mind to her plans for the next day. How much sleep had she had last night? Last night …
Then she was abruptly alert again. Her head felt full of bubbles and for a moment she didn’t know where she was. The twiggy branches of the cotoneaster were knocking and scratching against the window as the wind caught them. She could see the moving shadows through the curtains. Then she listened. Surely that had been … There it was again. A knock, quiet and deliberate, at the door.
She moved to the front door and listened. The knock came again, and she said, ‘Who’s there?’ clearing her throat as her voice came out high and nervous. No answer. Then the knock again. She peered through the spyhole, trying to see through the shadows. Her heart was beating fast. Then she could see his face, and she felt weak with shock. She leant against the door for a second, regaining her composure, then she said, quietly, ‘Hang on,’ as she unlocked and unbolted the door.
He was through the door before she could say anything. He slammed it shut behind him and leant back against it, looking at her, breathing fast. Ashley was in front of her, his face white, his hair tangled, his clothes stained and torn. ‘Ashley.’ She didn’t know what to say to him.
‘Listen!’ His voice was an urgent whisper. He grabbed her shoulders, pushing her back into the room. ‘Don’t …’
‘Ashley.’ He looked awful – ill, and far less in control of the situation than she felt. ‘What are you doing? You can’t—’