She thanked the Reverend Wheatley, and made a neat set of bulleted notes, which she sent to Jaz’s inbox. She stared at the screen for a while. It was like looking into a swimming pool and trying to guess the temperature. She checked her contacts, picked up the phone and dialled a number.
‘Can I speak to DCI Moon?’
‘Give him my regards,’ Jaz said, over her shoulder.
‘Jesus, Jaz,’ she covered the receiver, ‘I wish you wouldn’t sneak up on me. I didn’t hear you come downstairs.’ He’d taken off his shoes and a pair of purple socks stuck out from his suit trousers. The switchboard at the Human Trafficking Service was playing Nina Simone.
‘Been doing yoga,’ he said. ‘Natalie’s been teaching me. Trying to de-stress. You getting on better with Moon then?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘That night in the pub, he said you had a row and went home. He tried to follow you, to make sure you were okay or something.’
‘Oh, that,’ she shrugged, wishing Charlie would mention it if he was going to tell lies on her behalf. ‘I was worrying about my brother and he wasn’t very sympathetic, that’s all.’
At least that last bit had a ring of truth, even if it was ancient history. Jaz shuffled back upstairs as Charlie came on the line.
‘I need to talk to you about Johnny Mackenzie,’ Karen said.
‘Oh? Hello. This is nice.’
‘What do you know about him?’ Karen said.
‘Right. Mackenizie. In what context?’
‘My brother was working for him and he was sniffing round my sister-in-law, now it seems she’s moved in with him.’
‘Ah.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Well, let’s just say he’s of interest to HTS.’ There was a pause. She could hear him breathing.
‘Look Charlie, I can’t bear the thought of that man being around Holly. He’s dodgy.’
‘Dodgy isn’t a term that would stand up in court, but from the evidence that’s coming together, I’d have to say that your instincts about Mr Mackenzie are probably bang on, but just for now, please, and I know this is hard, don’t say a word to your sister-in-law.’
She promised and put the phone down. She opened up a document and punched some numbers into a spreadsheet, looked at them and deleted them again. She tried to force her concentration back on to her work but her mind wouldn’t stay on one thing. When the phone on her desk rang, she nearly jumped out of her chair.
‘Let’s meet up,’ Charlie said.
‘What?’
‘Come on. I’ve been waiting for you to call and now you have, it just happens that I’ve got the afternoon off. I can be in York in an hour, if I make the next train.’
She met him at the station and they turned right, away from the city centre, cutting down a snicket. She let him hold her hand, dropping his when they emerged into a street of hotels. The chances of seeing someone she knew were too high.
He checked into an anonymous-looking chain hotel and she realised he’d booked it on his way there. Once inside the room, they began undressing each other, undressing themselves, heads stuck in jumpers, elbows poking through inside-out sleeves. She wondered if she needed a drink to see this through, but then he was laughing at himself, at her. They looked like a pair of scarecrows. The laughter carried them both on to the bed, where they lay looking at each other naked. They weren’t laughing now, just listening to the sound of their breathing. He traced his fingers across her collar-bone and smoothed his palm over her breast, while she ran her hands around his pelvis. He surrounded her lips with his and drew her tongue into his mouth. They kissed and touched and pulled back just to look, and then their hands and fingers found each other. When she could hardly bear it any longer, he eased himself over her, taking his weight on one arm, raising her back with the other, drawing her up to him as he pushed himself into her. She let go straight away, meeting his rhythm with her own. It was smooth and effortless, and as she buried her nose in his neck, she breathed in the smell of his skin.
When it was over, he wrapped himself around her back and they lay like spoons. In time, they must have fallen asleep because when she woke, she wondered why it was so light. She remembered then that it was mid-afternoon, that she was in a hotel bed and this was Charlie’s arm curled heavily round her waist. It wasn’t until she looked at her watch that she sat up with a jolt.
‘Oh, my God, I have to make a phone call!’ She scrambled to her feet, the bed sheet tangling around her legs. Her bag was by the door and she shivered, gathering her clothes haphazardly towards her. She was cold and naked and late again.
Charlie offered to make her a cup of coffee, but she had to go.
‘My Dad’s with the kids. I wasn’t going to be out this long. I’ll have to say I got stuck at work.’
She made the call and dressed quickly, leaning against the door fame, watching him making himself a drink in the nude. There was a copy of the Guardian newspaper on the floor where he’d dropped his coat. He must have been reading it on the train. The headline caught her eye. Beneath it was a picture of a crowd, waving red flags emblazoned with black eagles.
‘Where’s that?’
‘Kosovo. My brother Hugh’s been posted there with the Welsh Guards. Making sure they don’t fry up the Serbs on their independence barbecues. Can’t be worse than Basra.’
She’d been dimly aware of something on the radio in the past couple of days, but a missing child and an impending financial crisis had eclipsed it. She peered at the paper. In the photo, huge yellow letters spelled out the word NEWBORN.
‘Independence?’
‘It was announced two days ago. They’ve had to wait a long time.’
In the photograph there was a crowd of faces, young and old, some half way up lampposts. There was an older woman in a headscarf and next to her a younger man was smiling, waving both arms in the air. He looked so like Phil. People, unremarkable people. There could be any number of faces in the world like his or like the man on the other side of him, whose lined face smiled at the camera or like the figure in the foreground, sitting astride his friend’s shoulders.
‘What are you thinking?’ Charlie touched her cheek.
‘About Phil. I think I would find it easier to believe that he’s really dead if I’d seen him. I should have insisted.’
‘It might not have looked like him, you know that, don’t you?’
She did, and she knew that she’d rather remember him healthy, young and full of life, like the man waving at the camera in the photograph.
The journey home seemed interminable. Charlie wanted to come with her, stay with her as long as he dared, but she needed to be on her own. She had been shaken by the photo in the paper, even though she knew it was a common effect of grief, a kind of madness that makes us see the faces of the dead all around us. The bus dawdled through the traffic, waiting for an eternity at the lights. The faces of strangers, flowing past on the pavement blurred as she stared and crystallised when she blinked. Between two houses she caught a glimpse of green: a playground, with metal structures, red, blue and yellow, like a miniature circus. A roundabout was spinning and she could just see the edge of it. A child disappeared and reappeared, again and again, until the bus pulled away. Now you see him, now you don’t.
At home, she rushed through her apology to her father. She needed a shower. She was heading for the stairs when the doorbell rang. Sophie opened it.
‘Is your mum in…oh, Karen, I’m so glad to see you!’
‘Trish, hi! Come in.’
She tried to act normally, while they sat in the kitchen drinking tea. Karen was sure Trisha would be able to smell Charlie on her, but her neighbour was pre-occupied with her own problems. She and Paul had taken a series of fertility tests and the results were strongly i
ndicating that he was unlikely to conceive. Karen was only half-listening, but she could hear the desperation in Trisha’s voice.
‘I’ll try anything,’ she was saying.
‘Unlikely though, Trish, that doesn’t mean never, and the fact that he’s got kids already.’
‘That’s something else, it turns out he and his first wife had fertility treatment too, he just never said. Seven years ago, I mean, the twins are nearly eight. His fish just don’t swim Karen. They were slow then, but it looks like they’re going nowhere now.’
The clock in the hall struck six and Karen still hadn’t had her shower. Max was due back anytime now. She found herself promising Trisha a girly lunch when things were quieter at work and managed to get her out of the door. She locked herself in the bathroom and was just about to step into the jet of hot water, when she heard the phone ring. She willed Reg or Sophie to answer it. Tipping her head back into the water, she let it drum against her skull, tasting it in her mouth. Her mind raced, hammering a thousand different thoughts through her head. Then the hammering was outside her, a fist pounding on the door. ‘Mum! Mum!’ She heard Sophie’s voice over the roar of the water in her ears. She stopped the shower, and stood dripping, starting to chill instantly.
‘Grandpa says you’ve got to come. He says it’s urgent!’
‘I’m coming, I won’t be a minute.’
Wrapped in Max’s huge bath towel, water ran off her feet and into the carpet as she came downstairs.
‘Funny time for a shower.’ Reg sounded irritable.
‘This isn’t about my washing habits. What’s happened? Is Ben all right?’ She heard the snappiness in her voice and regretted it straight away.
‘Stacey wasn’t going to tell us, but I left a message for Keith Clegg, said I was here, he just phoned back. He thought we knew. It’s the bloody inquest. It’s tomorrow.’
Chapter Twenty-Five
‘One more written warning and I’m out of a job.’
Carly Jayson was leaning against Maureen’s kitchen worktop, cradling a mug of tea. Outside the window, the rain was coming down in spears.
‘I’m not asking you to do anything you shouldn’t,’ Sean said. ‘Just keep your ears open. Ask Rick what’s going on.’
A pool of water had formed around Sean’s feet. They’d done a runner as soon as the rain got heavy but they were still drenched. The jackets were fully waterproof, but their trousers were soaked.
‘Well, all I know is that the whole of Doncaster Central is crawling with outsiders. There’s an evil-looking pair from Serious and Organised, an internal investigation team picking over Burger’s undeclared family connections and that bloke from Human Trafficking. They’re like a bunch of flipping meerkats, popping up when you least expect them and demanding to see everyone’s notebooks. Sandy’s having a field day with the paper work. Don’t know how she sticks it.’
‘I suppose Lizzie Morrison got the praise for finding out Stella was Burger’s sister too.’
‘Why should she?’ Carly asked. ‘I’m the one who told Rick Houghton to explore that murky little avenue. Don’t look at me like that, I need all the Brownie points I can get at the moment. ’
‘How’s she getting on?’
‘Golden girl?’
‘Don’t.’
‘Touchy! Seems to be keeping her nose clean. She’s been sorting out the forensic statement for Philip Holroyd’s inquest tomorrow.’
Sean looked up. ‘Yeah? I’ve got to give evidence, about finding the caravan.’
‘Hey, I might come along for a laugh, heckle you from the cheap seats.’
‘I thought you were trying to keep a low profile.’
‘It’s a public court isn’t it? And if I’m not on duty, I can go where I like.’
The door opened and the wind blew Maureen and another gust of rain inside.
‘Get us a cup of tea, love. I had to walk up from the number twenty bus stop. Hiya Carly!’ She dropped two large carrier bags of shopping and limped towards the stairs. ‘I’m going to get something dry on, then I’m putting these shoes in the bin. Less use than my stocking feet, they were.’
Carly started to empty the shopping, drying the packets and tins that had got wet and arranging them on the worktop.
‘Lend us a hand, I don’t know where any of this goes.’
But Sean was miles away, chewing over what he would say to Lizzie when he saw her. He was surprised she hadn’t been in touch about tomorrow. He’d got his statement ready. He would need to check with the coroner whether he should mention the boy by name or not. What had they talked about at the quarry? Had he got it all written down? There was something that Declan was telling him just before they saw the body. Something he’d never followed up.
‘Hang on a minute.’ An arc of water sprayed off his coat as he grabbed it off the hook. ‘I need to talk to someone.’
‘You’re not going back out in this. You’re a bloody headcase!’
He didn’t hear any more. The door slammed shut behind him and he was down the side of house and away along the pavement. The back of his jacket was cold against his neck and water ran inside his shirt.
The estate was empty. Even the dogs had taken cover. The peak of his hat kept his eyes dry, but the rain ran down his nose and over his lips like tears. He found the flats where he’d watched the bull terrier tearing open the bin liner. The back door to the block wasn’t locked and he went inside. He stood for a moment, trying to get accustomed to the darkness at the bottom of a piss-scented stairwell.
Everything was back to front in these maisonettes, bedrooms downstairs and living rooms up. The door, when he reached it, looked as if the last person to knock on it had done so with an axe.
‘Yeah?’ A woman in her twenties held it open two inches, making sure he couldn’t see past her.
‘Is Declan about?’ He was about to add that the boy wasn’t in any trouble, when she shut the door and shouted.
‘Declan you little bastard, there’s a copper at the door! If you’ve done owt, I’ll batter you!’ The she opened the door again. ‘Don’t mind me, I wouldn’t lay a finger on him.’
A wet brown nose pushed past her knees and Ruby came out, sniffing round his feet, wagging her tail.
‘She likes you. Funny that.’
The boy followed the dog, ducking under his mother’s sharp elbow to reach the landing. He was wearing a thin hoody and carrying the dog’s rope.
‘You wanna talk? We’ll take the dog out. See yer later.’
Sean was lost for words. The boy seemed to have aged forty years and picked up an American accent in the process. God knows what he’d been watching.
‘You sure?’ Sean realised he wasn’t going to be invited in, but even so, it was chucking it down out there. Declan was already halfway down the stairs.
They took the road that cut down through the centre of the estate. Water was flowing down the gutters in two rivers. There’d be flooding somewhere tonight.
‘Where are we going?’ Sean was surprised by Declan’s pace. He didn’t look well-nourished enough to be walking so fast. Maybe it was the relief of getting out of the flat.
‘Somewhere we can talk,’ the boy said out of the side of his mouth. He was turning into a young Sean Connery now.
They crossed the road to the children’s playground. The swings were twisted up around the top bar. Little buggers. He and Carly would have to get them down later, tick a box on ‘positive service to the community’. Tick bloody tick. He had an idea where they were headed and he was right. The dead end, where they’d chased Lee Stubbs. Declan went to the second garage and leaned against it. A catch gave way and the up-and-over door creaked open to reveal an empty space. Empty except for a couple of upturned crates and some rubbish in a corner. Declan fished a lighter out
of his pocket. He lit a candle in a bottle and stood it on the floor between the two crates. Sean watched the dog sniff around the edges of the garage.
‘You can shut the door now.’
Sean did as he was told, trying to put aside all the nagging worries about how many different guidelines he was breaking. Declan sat and waved at the other crate, every inch the little gangster in his hideout.
‘What’s this about then, copper?’
‘Lights. Flickering lights. When we found…you found, the caravan in the quarry and we were up there, you said Brandon had been scared by a ghost. You never finished telling me, it wasn’t a ghost was it?’
Declan shrugged. ‘No. More likely a zombie. People change after they’re dead.’
‘I think you saw someone real, alive. Declan, this is important.’
‘Me and Brandon went up to the woods to see if we could get anything to burn on the bonfire.’
‘So this would have been what, the fourth? The day before Bonfire Night?’
‘S’pose so, yeah.’
‘Then what?’
‘It was getting dark and Brandon was getting scared because he said we might fall into the quarry. I said it was okay because I know all the safe places. Then we went back on the path and there was this caravan. All weird flickering lights in the windows.’
Sean’s hand went to his inner pocket for his notebook. Then he hesitated. The meerkats at Doncaster Central would pounce on anything that was written down. Maybe he should wait. A story about zombies wasn’t going to do anything for his credibility back at the station.
To Catch a Rabbit Page 20