by John Harvey
‘What are you working on?’ Alice asked.
‘Oh, another still life, I’m afraid. Fruit in a bowl, flowers in a nice vase. Same old, same old. I don’t know why I bother. Except there’s always the thought that next time you’re going to really nail it, the perfect painting. But that’s not what you’re here for, confessions of a moderately successful artist.’ She smiled encouragingly. ‘You don’t have to be polite any longer.’
A blackbird landed softly on a patch of open ground between two shrubs and began to peck hopefully at the soil.
‘You’ve had a visit from the family liaison officer,’ Hadley said.
‘Yes, indeed. All very sympathetic. If, perhaps, a little distant. Good at explaining the nuts and bolts, whys and wherefores.’ She cut a muffin neatly in half. ‘I presume there’s still no way the body can be released?’
‘I’m afraid not. Not at the moment.’
Susannah bit into the muffin, nodded approvingly. ‘It’s one of those curiosities of life – your former husband, whom you’ve barely spoken to, never mind seen, in almost twenty years, dies and you’re expected to make the arrangements for his funeral.’
‘I’m not really sure how these things work,’ Hadley said. ‘But if you really objected …’
‘No, no.’ Susannah waved a hand in the air. ‘It’s fine. Or it will be, I’m sure. There are the children to consider – I say children, but you know what I mean – they kept in touch with Anthony to a degree, Melissa when she was younger especially. And I dare say it’s what they’d expect. A family funeral.’
‘Melissa, she’s what? Twenty-two? Twenty-three?’
‘Twenty-three. Matthew’s two years older.’
‘And they’re …’
‘Melissa’s taking a break from university. She started a bit late; couldn’t, you know, make up her mind. Thought she fancied art school and by the end of her foundation year found out she hated it. Too much like following in the family footsteps, I suppose, too many expectations. She tried English after that, North Wales, Aberystwyth – that didn’t work out either.’ She smiled. ‘Too many long books, too much reading. I’m not sure what she expected. Wuthering Heights on Twitter, possibly. Thomas Hardy on Snapchat. Anyway, now she’s at Leicester studying history. Or she would be. If, as I say, she weren’t taking a sabbatical.’
‘And so, what, she’s living at home?’
‘Some of the time, yes. She’s still got her room, a student house up in Leicester. And a room here, of course. Flits between the two, sort of. Starts her course again properly in September. Or she should do.’
‘And Matthew?’
‘Contrary to all my wishes, he’s in the military – Twenty-six Regiment Royal Artillery.’ Another smile, self-deprecating, crossed Susannah’s face. ‘So much for never letting him play with guns when he was growing up. Now he’s a lieutenant in charge of a fire-support team in Afghanistan. What do they call them? The punch behind the iron fist?’
‘He’s there now?’
Susannah nodded. ‘Kandahar. Part of the International Security Assistance Force. Though I don’t know for how long.’
‘You’ll be pleased to have him come home,’ Alice said.
The smile this time was wistful. ‘Only to have him posted somewhere else. But still’ – she sat up straighter, hands together – ‘life is what it is, you play the cards you’re dealt. And if you’ll just excuse me for a moment, I’ll get some more hot water for the pot.’
Hadley ran a finger slowly down her cheek to mime tears and Alice nodded.
The female blackbird had been joined by her partner; the scent of flowers was faint in the air. Somewhere in the middle distance a lawnmower started up, stopped, started again. How many young men had been killed with knives in London the previous week, Hadley asked herself? Six? Seven? Enfield, Bromley, Peckham, Brent Cross, Battersea, Bow. How many killed in Kandahar? Maybe living somewhere like this really was little more than an illusion, she thought, life as some Quaker idealist had seen it at the turn of the previous century. Though there were probably food banks here as well. Weren’t there everywhere nowadays? Knives, too.
Susannah came back out, red-eyed, carrying a kettle. ‘Who’s for more tea?’
Hadley held her cup towards the pot, said no to another muffin, asked if, to Susannah’s knowledge, Anthony Winter had left a will.
‘I’m afraid I’ve no idea. I haven’t heard from his solicitor or anything. But if there is a will, there’s no way in which I’d be any kind of beneficiary. The children, possibly, but not me.’ She shook her head, resettled in her chair. ‘I remember a conversation we had, Anthony and myself, around the time of the divorce. I wouldn’t give you, he said, the shit from the sole of my shoe.’
‘Nice,’ Alice said quietly.
Susannah shrugged. ‘Alliterative, at least.’
‘His estate,’ Hadley said, ‘won’t be inconsiderable, I suppose. Once the sale of recent work’s been taken into account.’
‘I do have a few of Anthony’s paintings,’ Susannah said. ‘Early, of course. Before all that latent nastiness had squirmed its way on to canvas. Third-rate pornography, if you ask me. But then who am I? A woman artist painting flowers, what do I know? Just a lady fucking painter!’
More tears. She brought her cup down hard on the saucer, splintering it across. ‘I’m sorry, I …’
‘It’s fine,’ Hadley said. ‘It’s okay.’
‘No, it’s not fine. It’s not fucking fine. It’s …’ With a sweep of her arm she sent cup and shattered saucer catapulting across the garden.
Alice arched back out of the way; Hadley was swiftly to her feet. Susannah pushed herself up from the table; stood for several moments, head down, breathing uneasily. ‘Life,’ she said. ‘It’s so … so fucking unfair.’
‘Do you want to go back inside?’ Hadley asked solicitously.
‘No, no. It’s okay. I’m better off out here.’ She leaned for a few moments longer against the back of her chair, then sat back down. ‘You know, I never used to swear. Oh, sometimes under my breath if a brushstroke went wrong, but otherwise … it betrays an insufficient vocabulary, I used to say. But then when Matthew came back on leave – well, I’d heard all the words before, but not necessarily in that order. Even Melissa, since she went to university. F this and F that, the new universal qualifier. It used to be in the papers in asterisks, but now it’s spelt out in full. The C word as well.’
She fished a tissue from the sleeve of her tunic, dabbed her eyes and blew her nose. ‘You’ve just heard me swear more in a few minutes than I have in the last six months. But then I suppose you’re used to it.’
‘We hear the odd word,’ Hadley said with a smile. ‘Now and again.’
Susannah smiled back.
‘You said you’d barely spoken to your ex-husband in twenty years. That would be since the divorce proceedings?’
‘Yes.’
‘And the occasion on which he made the remark about the sole of his shoe?’
‘That was the same. July the twenty-sixth, nineteen ninety-seven. Not a date I’m likely to forget.’
‘Melissa would have been what? Three?’
‘Three and a half, yes. Matthew was just five.’
‘It must have affected them badly.’
‘Matthew more, possibly. At the time, anyway. He was old enough to know what was going on. Not all the whys and wherefores, but yes, he understood and he was angry. Really angry.’
‘At what was happening? The situation?’
‘At me. It was all my fault, that’s what he thought. What his father had told him.’
‘And Melissa?’
‘She was too young to really know what was happening. Except that her daddy was going away.’
‘And she blamed you for that as well?’
‘No, not really. At least, I don’t think so. I mean, she may have done later, but then, no, it was Anthony. Anthony she had it in for. From her point of view, why wouldn’t she? O
ne minute he was there and the next he was gone. Walked out on her for reasons she didn’t understand.’
‘But later,’ Alice said, ‘when she was older …?’
Susannah sighed. ‘We come to terms, don’t we? On the surface, anyway. It’s what we do.’
‘And Melissa managed to do that? Come to terms?’
‘For a while, yes.’ She turned her head away as if something down the garden had caught her attention.
Hadley waited. ‘You wouldn’t have any idea, would you, who might have wanted Anthony dead?’
‘Apart from me, you mean?’ Susannah said and laughed. ‘But, no. No, I’m afraid I don’t. Aside, that is, from probably half the people he ever met.’
Hadley paused alongside one of the paintings as they were leaving. A portrait, head and shoulders, of a girl of perhaps thirteen or fourteen, soft features, dark shoulder-length hair.
‘Is that Melissa?’
‘Yes,’ Susannah said. ‘Shortly after her fourteenth birthday. I had to practically bribe her to sit for it. Six months of riding lessons it cost me.’
‘It’s lovely.’
‘Thank you.’
‘She’s lovely.’
‘She doesn’t think so. I wish she did.’
At the door, Hadley offered her hand. ‘Thanks for your time.’
‘Thank you. Thank you for coming all this way. Whatever I might feel about Anthony, whoever did this, I hope you find them.’
‘We will.’
As they reached the gate, Hadley glanced back and saw a movement, faint and quick, at one of the upstairs windows. A hand, pulling the curtain closed.
They were almost at the car when her mobile rang. Chris Phillips eager to update her with developments. Data recovery had unearthed something juicy hidden away on Winter’s computer.
‘Okay, Chris. We’ll be there in an hour, hour and a half tops. Keep a lid on it meanwhile.’
‘Boss.’
Hadley closed her phone, snapped open the car door. ‘Right, Alice. Time to leave Munchkinland behind.’
34
The house was close to the railway station, a stunted two-storey towards the terrace end and, by the look of it, sorely in need of repair. Sacking had been draped carelessly across one of the downstairs windows, a blanket across the other; save for an accumulation of dirt and dust the upstairs windows were bare. Rubbish overflowed from two plastic bins by the door. A small, square yard at the rear, empty aside from a broken bicycle, led out into a narrow ginnel running off in either direction. Local police from the Potter Street station had confirmed Shane Donald to be in residence.
Two uniformed officers, one armed with a cyclindrical battering ram, waited either side of the front door; two more in the alley behind. Colin Sherbourne had phoned Elder before he and the other detectives had set out from Nottingham, asking him if, given his history with Donald, he wanted to join them.
They waited now for Sherbourne to give the word.
Three … two … one … A single blow with the metal ram and the door was breached, officers quickly into the house with cries of ‘Police!’ Jason Lake and Kenny Cresswell were in fast and up the stairs, shouting at the tops of their voices, loving every second. After all those hours behind desks, staring at computer screens, this was it, the real thing, the real McCoy. Billy Lavery and Simone Clarke were busy checking the downstairs rooms, Colin Sherbourne hanging back, Elder by his side.
The door to the back bedroom was closed and Cresswell kicked it open, finding Shane Donald stranded between the unkempt bed and the window. The room smelt of cannabis and unwashed sheets.
Donald edged closer to the window and, craning his neck to look down through the tarnished glass, saw a pair of beefy officers smiling back up at him, waving a two-fingered greeting.
‘Don’t bother, Shane,’ Jason Lake said. ‘Not without a parachute.’
‘Go fuck yourself!’
‘All in good time. Right now, why don’t you be a sensible bloke and get some clothes on. Catch your death like that.’
Donald was naked save for a pair of yellowing Y-fronts, a few wispy hairs sprouting here and there from his concave chest, ribs fast up against sallow skin. His right eye beginning to twitch.
‘I’ve not done nothing. Not one fucking thing.’
‘No one’s saying you have,’ Kenny Cresswell said.
‘Then what the flyin’ fuck’s all this about? You got no fuckin’ right.’
‘Few questions we want to ask, that’s all, Shane. Friendly chat.’
‘What about?’
‘Old friend of yours.’
‘Who’s that then?’
‘Adam. Adam Keach.’
‘No fuckin’ friend of mine.’
Colin Sherbourne appeared in the doorway. ‘Place is clear. Let’s get him out of here and stop wasting time.’
‘You heard what the man said, Shane. Clothes on sharpish. The local nick awaits.’
‘And you’re gonna stand there, I s’pose, watching me get dressed.’
‘My treat.’
Sherbourne and Elder were waiting on the pavement when they came out of the house.
‘You!’ Donald exclaimed, seeing Elder, recognising him straight off. ‘What the fuck you doin’ here?’
‘Nice to see you again, Shane,’ Elder said. ‘It’s been a while.’
Donald hawked up phlegm and, from less than an arm’s length away, spat it into Elder’s face.
Sherbourne elected to have Jason Lake do the interview with him, Elder and the senior officer from the local station watching on screen in an adjacent room, listening to the audio.
‘Adam Keach, no friend of yours, that’s what you said?’
‘’S’right.’
‘You know him, though? Know who he is?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Shane …’
‘All right, then, yes. I know who he is, what he done. Read the papers, don’t I? Watch the news.’
‘Of course. But not just that.’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘I mean you know him, know him personally.’
‘Who says?’
‘Met him. Spent time with him.’
‘Bollocks, I did!’
‘You didn’t meet him, talk to him? Not what we’ve heard.’
‘Heard? Who the fuck from? You’re makin’ this fuckin’ up.’
‘It would have been a while back, maybe it slipped your mind.’
‘Never slipped my fuckin’ mind …’
‘Gartree, that’s where it would have been. You were serving time. Robbery, I think. Assault with intent to cause bodily harm. You remember, don’t you? HMP Gartree?’
‘I was there, yes, but …’
‘Keach would have been there on remand. While back now, like I say, maybe that’s why you’re having trouble remembering?’
Come on, Elder said to himself, impatient, watching. Just admit you know him. Why deny it? Unless, of course, you’ve got something to hide?
‘Maybe, yeah,’ Donald said, not looking at either of the officers directly. ‘Yeah. I remember now.’
‘You and Keach, you found things to talk about, I dare say. Things in common.’
Donald didn’t answer.
‘People, too. Alan McKeirnan, for instance.’
Donald’s right eye jumped.
‘Bit of a mentor, wouldn’t you say, Shane? McKeirnan? Taught you every nasty little thing you know.’
Donald fidgeted in his seat. ‘What happened, what he did … that was him, not me … that girl … I never … the jury, the jury agreed.’
Like Premiership referees, Elder thought, juries can get conned, judges show the wrong card.
‘Have you been in touch with him lately, Shane? McKeirnan?’
‘No. No fuckin’ way.’
‘You’re sure of that?’
‘’Course I’m fuckin’ sure.’
‘And Adam?’
‘What?’
‘Adam Keach?’
‘What about him?’
‘You’ve been in touch with him.’
‘Who says?’
‘Wakefield. In touch with him there.’
Donald swallowed, glanced up at the camera, then away.
‘We can check, you know. Mobile phones, texts, messages slipped under the door.’
‘Okay, once maybe. Once or twice. Long time back now. And it was him got in touch with me.’
‘Friends, though. Still pals. Friends making plans?’
‘What?’ That eye again. ‘What plans?’
‘What you were going to do when he got out. Things you could do together.’
Donald was shaking his head, vigorously, from side to side. You’ve got something there, Elder thought, watching. Touched a nerve.
‘Exciting, was it?’ Sherbourne said. ‘Gave you a hard-on? Thinking about it. What you were going to get up to, the pair of you. Together. Like old times.’
‘No, no!’ Donald reared back, rocking the chair on to its hind legs. Jason Lake half out of his seat, ready to intervene. ‘Why are you saying that? That’s not right.’
‘Just trying to get the picture. The full picture.’
‘Picture? What you on about? There is no fuckin’ picture.’
‘You and Adam.’
Donald lowered his head.
Almost imperceptibly, Sherbourne eased forward. Let the moment settle. ‘Where are you going to meet him?’
‘What?’
‘He must’ve been in touch. Since he went free.’
‘No. No, he’s not.’
‘Come on, Shane. Why not do yourself a favour? Help us and we can help you. Keep you out of it. No blame attached.’
For several moments, Donald looked confused, rubbing his hands together, then pressing them hard against the table edge.
‘You’ve been out of prison a good while now, Shane. Kept out of trouble. Admirable, that. Something to feel proud of. You don’t want to take a wrong step now. Put all that good work into jeopardy. Risk going back inside.’
‘No.’
‘Sorry?’
‘No. No, I don’t.’