by Alison Bruce
‘No, I don’t think so, but she insisted she could if she wanted to. And that she would at some point, and would tell me when she did. That’s bad enough – no, actually, I think it’s worse. On one hand she told me she loved me, and I know she did, but on the other . . .’ He paused and gnawed his bottom lip.
There was something about Richard that reminded Goodhew of a teenage boy talking about his first romance. He should have been sitting on a tubular steel and canvas chair with his feet hooked round the legs as he leant over an old wooden desk scraping something like ‘LS 4 RM’ into its hinged lid with his pair of school compasses.
‘If she never followed it up, perhaps it was only the fantasy of the notion that attracted her.’
‘She was pretty insecure. I told myself she only did it to keep control, but I was getting to the end of my tether. I wanted it to be just a phase, something she’d abandon when she realized we were stable. We’d only been together since last December, but I couldn’t stand the thought of being without her.’
‘That’s not long.’
‘No, it’s not. It’s been strange, true, like time since I met her has moved at the wrong speed. Alice says I rushed into it, but it never felt like rushing.’
‘And you met through work?’
‘She started with us last summer, first of all as a temp, then we gave her a permanent contract.’
‘She came through an agency?’
‘Yes. Sort of. She was friendly with Victoria Nugent, who works for the dentist in the same building. Lorna came in to meet her for lunch on several occasions and, in the process, started talking to Alice.’ He paused and smiled affectionately. ‘My sister was constantly frustrated with the temps we were sent, as they often lacked basic written English skills and struggled to balance figures. When she found out that Lorna was job-hunting, she suggested that she register with the agency we use, then hired her.’ Richard nodded towards the ceiling. ‘Ask her yourself.’
That threw Goodhew. ‘Alice is here?’
‘She lives here, I thought you knew. We’ve always lived together.’
‘Always?’
For the first time since meeting him, Goodhew saw genuine amusement reach all the way up to Richard’s eyes. But it didn’t add warmth to his face; in fact it dropped the temperature to well below bitterly cold. ‘Lorna and I were very close,’ he continued. ‘The point I’m trying to make is that Lorna could have been out walking on her own. It doesn’t follow that she had to be meeting someone she knew.’
‘No?’
‘No, not at all. Sometimes she just liked to be alone. She would go off for hours on end.’
‘Even at midnight?’
‘Yep.’
‘She said that?’
‘No, I made it up.’ He sounded deliberately sarcastic, but the words had come out too fast. A defensive reflex, perhaps.
‘Sorry, what I mean is, did you ever see her taking one of these solitary walks?’
‘It wasn’t an excuse.’
‘Excuse?’
Richard’s eyes narrowed and he looked away without replying.
Goodhew nodded. ‘What happens when you reach the end of your tether, Richard? She told you she went walking alone, and you wanted to believe her, but you had to be wondering how open she was really keeping your relationship.’
Richard continued to look away, and when he next spoke he sounded distinctly pissed off. ‘You’ve just twisted it right around. She was faithful to me,’ he gasped, then stopped. The next couple of minutes ticked by and Goodhew watched him try to shut down the emotions that were suddenly clamouring to escape. Richard blinked, and then swallowed. He tried breathing deeply. He pressed his hands over his mouth in an attempt to curb the quivering of his lips.
Goodhew cringed. He hadn’t foreseen this, and didn’t know how to handle it either. He willed Richard to hold it together. Fat chance, though; here was a man unravelling before his eyes. It wasn’t a systematic unravelling either; more like a moth-eaten sweater falling apart in many places all at once.
A voice came from the doorway. ‘Leave him.’ He hadn’t noticed any movement, but looked round to find Alice glaring at him, one hand resting on each side of the door frame. Her hair was brushed straight down from a centre parting, and she was fully dressed in a pale-stone trouser suit. Apart from eyeliner under her lower lashes, her anger had drained all the other colour from her face. For someone so thin, she made an excellent job of filling the doorway, and Goodhew found himself on his feet, reacting to her words like a naughty Labrador caught with its nose in the shopping.
Her head tilted sharply, directing him out into the hall. She removed one arm to let him pass. ‘Go,’ she hissed.
He was happy to oblige; a swift retreat seemed like an all-round healthy idea.
He wondered whether there was anything appropriate he should say to her, but before he’d seriously begun considering this question, Alice had joined her brother on the settee. She sat very close to him, and Richard leant forward, burying his head into the crook of his sister’s neck. Her chin now rested in his hair and her arms curled him in towards her, like a protecting shawl over his shoulders.
She continued to glare at Goodhew, who mouthed the word ‘Sorry’ before turning away.
Each step he took echoed loudly on the hardwood floor, advertising both his intrusion and his retreat.
Finally, from behind him, Richard let out a whimper as the last of his self-control fractured. By the time Goodhew opened the front door, the man’s hysteria was in full flow. It didn’t sound attractive: altogether too much snot, dribble and wailing.
Goodhew didn’t look back at the house; he was too busy thinking about his conversation with Richard. It had been interesting, bizarre and not quite the laid-back, low-key chat that he’d had in mind.
Perhaps it was just his sixth sense, but he guessed that Marks would not be impressed.
SEVENTEEN
Goodhew walked home the long way, alongside the river until he reached the footbridge that crossed above the gentle gushing of the small weir. A houseboat was moored below; one window was lit and in it, he could see the silhouette of a woman and the book she read. The water barely moved, almost inviting him to dive in, but he knew that stillness was deceptive. It was a thought which stayed with him as he entered the long corridor of unlit trees crossing Jesus Green and leading towards the spot where he’d first set eye on Lorna’s body.
There was no breeze, just the darkness of unmoving shadows. This would have been a more secluded place to commit murder. His gaze wandered over the grass beyond the trees; he seemed to be alone, but even so found it hard to believe that no one was watching him.
He had felt strangely unsettled since leaving Richard Moran’s house, dwelling on Richard’s idea that Lorna had been murdered by a stranger. It was possible, of course, but then there still needed to be a reason why Lorna would have chosen to be alone near Midsummer Common in the early hours, especially on a foggy night when someone could be waiting just out of sight.
Like Alice waiting out in the hall.
He tried to imagine the relationship that Lorna and Richard had had, and wondered whether Alice had always been there, either trying to suck Lorna into their claustrophobic clique, or leaving her shut out of it. He wondered what Richard and Alice were like when alone altogether. He’d only seen them three times in twenty-four hours, but they already reminded him of the two halves of a pantomime pony. Next, he wanted to know who would play the front half.
Goodhew was pleased when he reached the end of the footpath, and he now kept to the road, with the common on his left. At almost the eleven o’clock position, he could see the ripple of the blue-and-white police tape cordoning off the southernmost corner. In the time it took to draw alongside the crime scene, only two cars had passed, but neither driver seemed to notice him. There were no other pedestrians either.
So much for thinking this junction would be less deserted; when this area of Cambridge slept,
it was virtually comatose.
He crossed the road, then stopped to look back at the taped-off section. Even without fog, it remained a dark corner, falling outside the nearest pools of lamplight and absorbing any natural light into its thick, deep grass. In daylight, he had found it impossible to believe that no one had witnessed Lorna’s death, and that the killer hadn’t taken an enormous chance. At night, though, it seemed a very different place, and he now left it with a more open mind. And glad, too, that he’d taken the detour to see for himself.
Within another ten minutes, he’d reached home and, apart from the new message light blinking on his phone, everything looked the same. He allowed it to blink a dozen times or more, wondering if he was about to hear DI Marks demanding an immediate call-back. Goodhew considered not listening to it at all; if ignorance really was bliss, then he could enjoy a decent few hours’ sleep without having to plan a conversation with his boss.
He sighed, then pressed ‘Play’. Might as well know what he was up against.
But the voice that spoke wasn’t Marks’, it was his grandmother’s. ‘Gary, I’d like to have a chat with you, so I’ll ring you later. But perhaps, if it’s not too late when you get in, you could ring me instead. I’ve come to a decision and it’s time I put you in the picture.’
He checked his watch and decided it was too late to call back, then he rang anyway; they were both night owls, after all.
She had caller display on her phone, and answered with typical directness. ‘Can you meet me tomorrow?’ she asked.
‘After work?’
‘Yes, latish, if that suits you.’
‘It would actually. There’s a new case—’
‘Yes, I saw the papers. I hoped you’d be working on it.’
‘But I don’t know exactly when I’ll be free.’
‘Doesn’t matter. I’m having a late dinner at the Felix. Call my mobile once you’re on your way, and I’ll make sure I’m home for you.’
‘What’s going on?’
‘Nothing to worry about, I promise.’ She hesitated. ‘It was just that, when we were at the Rock the other day, I suddenly realized how much you’ve grown up . . .’
‘And?’
‘I’ll tell you tomorrow. It’s too complicated for a phone call.’
‘You can’t just tell me half the story!’
‘I haven’t told you any particular fraction of anything, actually.’
‘Now I’ll be kept awake trying to guess.’
‘Well, then, that’s better than lying awake thinking about your work. In any case, you’ll never guess.’
Goodhew went to bed still curious. But as he drifted into sleep, his thoughts ended up back with Lorna Spence and his own unofficial visits to Bryn and Richard. There would be a team briefing session first thing; updating Marks beforehand was his best chance of avoiding greater fallout later. In the end, he was too tired to feel anything but philosophical, happy just to make an early start and think what to do about Marks then.
EIGHTEEN
Goodhew was up and dressed again before it was fully light. DI Marks usually arrived around 8 a.m., therefore Goodhew decided to turn up at the station half an hour before that.
It was another clear but chilly morning as he made a quick and jacketless trip across Parker’s Piece to the swimming pool. He knew that over an hour of swimming would leave him better able to withstand the cold than an extra layer of clothes.
He found he had the pool to himself, which wasn’t unusual for very early mornings. Most days he barely noticed the other swimmers in any case, but today he particularly appreciated the silence. He soon fell into a rhythm based on his regular breathing and his hands constantly plunging into the water, punctuated every twenty strokes by the turn and glide he made at the end of each length. Maybe it was this easy rhythm that made him crack a full one hundred lengths fifteen minutes faster than usual. He stepped from the water and paused at the pool’s edge, burying his face in his towel just long enough for the chlorine sting to fade from his eyes. He felt like he’d made such good time because he’d woken totally focused, and that was how he intended to tackle the rest of the day. He slung his towel over his shoulder and headed for the changing rooms, reflecting that it was either that, or he’d just miscounted.
It was 7.25 a.m. when he walked through the car park at the rear of the station. He was pleased, but equally not surprised, to notice the absence of Marks’ Mazda. The car park itself was almost full, but quiet still, too early for members of the general public to be scrapping over each of the three visitors’ spaces, and too late for the upheaval signalling early morning shift changes.
Goodhew glanced through the closest windows as he approached the double doors. As always, he paid particular attention to the three coat hooks visible through the window directly to his left. Today, however, this was just out of habit, as he expected them to be empty. Mel, he knew, always wore one of four jackets to work, a red cut-off parka with a grey fur-edged hood on the coldest days, through to a bleached denim jacket on the warmest, with either her brown bomber jacket or her knee-length red trench coat taking care of the temperatures in between. Now hanging on the middle hook was her red mac: an early start for someone not due in until 9 a.m., and especially early compared to her normal clockwork-precison arrival at three minutes to.
Mel’s cubby-hole of a desk was buried too deep inside the building to be seen from outside, and Goodhew was happy to put his single-mindedness on hold for a few minutes, just to say good morning.
She wasn’t at her desk, he discovered, but he hovered for a few minutes anyway. He doubted she’d left her coat behind the night before; also, her purse sat next to the telephone, and two empty polystyrene cups lay in the bin, post-cleaning lady and therefore post-8 p.m. the previous evening. In addition, her chair wasn’t tucked neatly away either, but marooned halfway between the desk and where he now stood. He tucked it back under the desk.
He guessed he must have heard Mel before he actually saw her, though he wasn’t aware of any sound, just had an instinct to turn around.
‘Hi,’ he said.
She wore a baggy jumper with sleeves hanging loose down to her knuckles, but even with her hand closed, he could see it was clutching a screwed-up ball of tissues.
‘Hi,’ she mumbled, and she did a funny up-down thing with the corners of her mouth – the one people do when they wish they could flash a signboard saying ‘Imagine I’m smiling back at you.’
‘Doing overtime?’ he enquired.
‘No.’ The way she said it left no opening for further conversation. ‘What’s up?’ She looked up at him enquiringly, and he saw that, although her eyes weren’t red, she’d obviously been crying.
‘That’s what I should be asking you. You look upset.’
‘No wonder you made detective.’ She pulled her chair back out from the desk and dropped on to it with her full weight, the gas-lift letting the seat bounce down by an inch before it recovered. She threw the ball of tissues into the bin. ‘Looking crap and feeling crap, it’s always a winning combination. Thanks for pointing it out.’
‘You look nice, just upset.’ He smiled. ‘I mean, you don’t look crap, even if you feel it.’
She studied his face for a while, in silence, then spoke. ‘I’m messing up, and I’m making choices that are meant to bail me out, and it’s only once I’ve made them that I see I’ve fucked up again.’
‘It can’t be that bad, can it?’
Mel was still staring at him. ‘Fuck-up on top of fuck-up, that’s me, Gary.’ With no warning, a new flood of tears rose and teetered, defying gravity to stay put until she finally managed to blink them away.
To him, the ‘If you need to talk’ offer always sounded like a line, but he said it anyway, and then wasn’t surprised when she shook her head.
‘I don’t think so. I’ve decided I’m not making any more choices. My new plan is to stick where I am, as my anti-fuck-up strategy. But thanks for the offer.’
Perhaps he showed some surprise because she added, in further explanation, ‘You always make me feel so transparent.’
And whatever he’d expected her to say, it wasn’t that.
‘Like you’re not there?’ he queried.
‘No, not like that.’ She looked impatient then. ‘Transparent,’ she repeated.
She looked at him as if thus saying it a second time would make it clear. But he wasn’t just missing the point, it was invisible: no pun intended.
‘Is that good, or bad?’ he asked.
‘Completely shit.’
‘Oh.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry, but it’s not deliberate.’
She pressed one eyelid closed with her right thumb, determined to poke away anything resembling another tear. Her voice had an edge to it now. ‘Even if you were trying to do it, you probably couldn’t, so there’s no point feeling sorry, is there?’
He was lost now. No point saying no, just to be agreeable, but he could also see that asking her to explain what she meant wasn’t going to help either. He raised both hands from his sides and then dropped them again, a kind of pointless penguin-thinking-about-flying type gesture. ‘OK, then.’ He stood still for an awkward moment, then tried for a belated but dignified exit. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’
She nodded and he turned away, but her voice followed him and caught him when he’d barely taken his third step. ‘When I see you . . . around, I mean . . . you make me feel uncomfortable,’ she said.
He turned to look at her. ‘Sorry.’
‘It’s not your fault, but I thought you should know.’ She bit her bottom lip, then she added, ‘Sorry.’ too.
‘OK,’ he mumbled, then inexplicably, and without any trace of sarcasm, added, ‘Thanks.’ He felt pretty dumb.
He took the stairs to the third floor to wait for Marks, wondering as he climbed the steps when Mel had noticed his interest. How long had she been aware that he watched her arriving at work and leaving in the evening? And did she know he’d been disappointed when she started wearing an engagement ring?