‘Why what?’
‘You said you had your reasons. What were they?’ ‘What does it matter? I told you what I did. I told you what I didn’t do. It’s not helping
your kid, keeping me here like this.’
‘You’re lying. You can’t explain, which means you’re lying!’ ‘No!’
‘Where is she? Tell me where she is!’ Leo half rose from his chair. He felt a hand settle lightly on each of his shoulders.
‘Mr Blake,’ said DI Mathers. ‘You said you wanted to talk to Mr Curtice. So far you haven’t told him anything you haven’t already said to us.’
Blake fiddled with something unseen. ‘No. Well. I said Curtice, didn’t I? I didn’t say you and Hulk Hogan over there too.’
‘Meaning what, Mr Blake?’
‘Meaning it’s none of your business!’
‘Mr Blake—’
‘Actually. You know what? I’m leaving. You’ve got no evidence. You haven’t charged me. You haven’t even arrested me!’ Blake stood and appeared surprised when the constable let him. He seemed to take heart – until the detective inspector cleared his throat.
‘Vincent Blake,’ he said. ‘I am arresting you on suspicion of murder.’ Blake’s eyes stretched wide. ‘Wait a minute,’ he said. ‘There’s no need for—’ ‘You do not have to say anything unless you wish to do so—’ ‘Wait! Just wait a minute!’
‘– but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned—’ ‘OKAY!’
The room went quiet.
‘Okay,’ Blake said again, more softly this time, as though wary of severing the silence. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Look.’ He sat down. ‘I’m cooperating. Okay?’
The inspector, at Leo’s side now, folded his arms. ‘But I’m not gonna say anything till we’re alone. Till you guarantee me nothing’s being
recorded.’ Blake pointed at Leo. ‘And Curtice here,’ he said to Mathers, ‘is a solicitor. Which means I’m covered. Right? Leo? I’m covered, right?’
Leo had no idea what logic was playing in the man’s head. ‘Right,’ he said. Mathers looked across the room towards his colleague. He considered Blake, then Leo,
seated at the table. Then, with a grimace, he gestured for his junior to follow him out. ‘Hey,’ said Blake and the inspector, in the doorway, paused. Blake glanced warily at Leo.
‘Don’t go too far,’ he said.
‘Blake.’
Daniel’s stepfather had slid from his chair the moment the policemen had left the room. He bent, gathered his cigarette packet, and bore the remains back to the table.
‘Blake!’
Blake twitched.
‘Talk,’ Leo said. ‘Quickly. Your so-called reasons.’ Blake set aside his plunder. He glanced over at the door and scanned the ceiling, as
though to check they were not being monitored. ‘It wasn’t personal,’ Blake said. ‘Okay?’ He smiled. ‘I like you, Leo. Always did. So just remember that this had nothing to do with—’
‘I don’t care! All I care about is my daughter!’
‘Okay, okay.’ Blake shuffled. He edged his chair a little further from the table. ‘I’m just saying, that’s all. But you wanna know why, right? And that’s the problem, Leo. You were always banging on about why .’
Leo felt his face crease.
‘ Why this, why that. Wouldn’t shut up about the bloody trial .’ Blake sniffed another smile. ‘The why’s the why. Get it?’ He drew a cigarette from his pack.
‘The trial? You wrote the notes to put me off a trial?’ Leo watched Blake watching him through the flame of his lighter. ‘That doesn’t make sense. What difference would it have made to you if we’d gone to trial?’
‘What difference?’ Blake winced at the stupidity of the question. ‘A trial would have been about Daniel!’
‘Bollocks,’ said Blake, sputtering smoke. ‘It would’ve been about us. Me and Steph. Steph most of all. Why , right? You wanted everyone to find out why.’
‘For Daniel! For your stepson’s sake!’
‘Yeah, yeah. So you say.’
‘It’s true!’
‘So what if it is! Daniel wasn’t the only one with something at stake. Ask your shrink friend if you don’t believe me.’ Blake put on a voice. ‘Tell me about his past. Tell me about your past.’ He sneered, shook his head. ‘Dragging shit up is all she was doing. Looking for someone else to blame.’ Blake dragged, exhaled, dragged again. He threw the filter to the floor.
Leo watched him. ‘We were right,’ he said. ‘Weren’t we?’ Blake turned.
‘About the abuse. About what Daniel went through.’ Leo tightened his eyes. ‘You. You abused him.’
‘No!’
‘Is that why you married her? Because she had a child? Someone you could get at whenever you—’
‘No!’ Blake stood. ‘I said, no! Okay?’
Leo hesitated. ‘Who then? His father? His real father, I mean.’ Blake, slowly, settled himself. He shrugged. ‘No. Maybe. I don’t know.’ Leo waited.
Blake looked and looked away. ‘There was a bloke,’ he told the floor. ‘One in particular. One of Steph’s friends.’ He spoke the word with disdain. ‘This was after Frank left her. She kind of . fell apart. Started drinking. Started seeing blokes. Started, you know. Being with them. It was how she “got by”,’ he added, as though mimicking – ridiculing – a phrase that, in private, had become a euphemism. I coped . Isn’t that how Stephanie had put it talking to Karen?
‘So this bloke. He was a regular, shall we say. Before my time. He’d show up, have his fun, then bugger off. In a week, a month, he’d be back again. For her, Steph thought. She always told herself he was coming back for her.’ Blake met Leo’s eye. Something passed between them. Even Blake, it seemed, could comprehend the horror of what Daniel would have suffered.
‘But that’s . . .’ Leo forced himself to focus on Ellie. ‘I mean, if it wasn’t you . . .’ Blake made a face, like Leo was struggling to keep up. ‘It was Steph. Wasn’t it? She
knew what was going on. She drank but she still knew. He turned up, she opened the door. You ask why and the answer points to her.’
Leo made no sound. He swallowed. ‘No,’ he said at last. ‘Not necessarily. I mean, one could argue . .’ He was not sure where the sentence was headed but Blake, anyway, cut it off.
‘It wasn’t just that.’ He leant in, studied his hands. ‘There was other stuff. When Daniel was a baby. Bad stuff, like . . .’ He glanced at Leo. ‘Bad stuff,’ he said.
The hospital visits. The trips to A & E. The times Daniel almost died. Leo stared.
‘You read about it all the time,’ Blake said. ‘Someone gets done for something they did like a million years ago. Like the Nazis, the fucking Yids hunting them down. Not letting bygones be bygones.’
Still Leo could say nothing.
‘She was wrong. She knows she was. I’m not trying to make out it was accidental or anything but . She was ill. Sick. She saw doctors, shrinks like your mate, but all they ever did was give her pills. When she got better it was on her own. With me.’ His voice, momentarily, conveyed pride. ‘But a trial. That would have been, what? Another year?’ He gave his head a sharp shake. ‘She couldn’t have handled it. She’s barely handling things as they are.’
‘Stephanie,’ said Leo. ‘Did she . . .’
Blake’s head snapped up. ‘She doesn’t know. She didn’t. The notes, all that: it’s down to me. Okay?’ He looked around the room, as though speaking to whomever might be listen-ing. ‘I wanna make that clear right now.’
Leo, watching him, found himself struck. ‘You love her.’ Blake seemed puzzled by his tone. ‘I married her,’ he said, as though that, surely, were
evidence enough. ‘I’m not the hugs-and-flowers type but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t do anything for her.’ His frown deepened. ‘You’re married, right? You know what it’s like. What kind of man lets something happen that he knows is gonna hurt his wife?’
Leo, to t
hat, could offer no answer.
Blake took his silence as an accusation. ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said. ‘You’re thinking about the boy, that I screwed him over. I would have.’ Blake straightened his shoulders. ‘I’m not denying it. He’s the guilty one, right? And Steph’s better off without the little sod if you ask me. But it would have made no difference anyway. Would it?’ Blake paused but not long enough for Leo to reply. ‘Like I said, right at the start. If he’d pleaded not guilty it would’ve been a show trial. A publicity stunt. Guilty, not guilty: whichever way you played it, Daniel was always gonna end up on a plate.’
The abuse. Maybe if they’d been able to prove Daniel was abused . . . But even that, Leo knew, would not have been enough. Nothing, short of madness, would
have been enough.
‘I was right, wasn’t I?’ Blake said. ‘At least my way Steph was spared.’ He took another cigarette from his pack. ‘I mean, I’m sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘About the notes and that. Maybe, I dunno. Maybe I could have played it some other way.’ He did not, listening to himself, sound convinced.
‘You could have just said. About the trial. You could have insisted . . .’ ‘I did insist!’ Blake glared at his failing lighter. ‘Fucking tried to anyway.’ He shook it
and the lighter sparked.
‘But Daniel: Stephanie’s his mother, you’re his stepfather. You could have just told him . . .’
Blake scoffed. ‘Tried that too. But there ain’t no telling Daniel. Me and him, in case you hadn’t noticed, don’t exactly get along. He resents me, is what it is. Can’t handle the fact I’m cuddling his mummy.’ The cigarette was refusing to light. Blake plucked it from his lips and grimaced as he flicked it aside. ‘And as for her,’ he said. ‘She lets him do whatever he wants. That’s part of the problem, if you ask me: spoiling him like it’d make up for what happened in the past. And Danny boy: he said he liked you. Said he trusted you. Said he’d do what you told him to, which in the end meant that was that.’
It was down to him. Once again it was all down to him. ‘I’m no expert,’ Blake was saying, ‘but something about it ain’t right. The boy’s twelve.
Not even old enough to know what shaving foam’s for. But stick him in front of a jury and suddenly he’s the man in charge. That ain’t right. Surely? You’re the lawyer, you tell me. Is that right?’
Leo could only shake his head. Once he started, though, he found he could not stop. ‘I don’t believe it,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe you . You sent the notes. You said you did.’
‘S’right. And I said I was sorry. They were only meant to rattle you, mate. Give you a nudge, that’s all.’
‘And my daughter’s hair? Her blood . What was that supposed to do?’ ‘What? What are you talking about?’
‘I don’t deserve a daughter. Isn’t that how you put it? Explain the hair, Blake. Explain the blood!’ Leo was standing now, leaning towards Blake over the table.
Blake tried to slide away his chair but its rear legs caught and the chair tilted. ‘Hey. Calm down. I honestly have no idea what you’re—’
Leo was around the table and upon him. He gripped Blake’s collar and bore his weight as the chair beneath him fell away. ‘The note! The final note! It was written in Ellie’s blood! They tested it! They confirmed it! What’s your story for explaining that!’
Blake stuttered. He shook his head. ‘Honestly! Leo! I haven’t got the foggiest—’ ‘If you wrote one, you wrote them all! And you couldn’t have written that one unless . .
. unless . . .’
Leo’s eyes locked. He saw the notes in their envelopes in his bedside drawer. He saw his balled-up socks and his stash of emergency twenties. He saw Ellie’s blood. He saw her hair. He saw the words on that final note and he saw that the words, all along, had held the truth: who had written them, and why.
She does not need to look to be able to see it. She tries, though, to view it through her hus-band’s eyes, to reconcile the image with what they both, probably, would have expected.
The woman is thin. That much is programmed into her DNA. Not a worrying, wiry thin, however. Just the wrong side, in Megan’s mind, of a size ten. A pound or two extra would not hurt, particularly on those narrow hips, but overall she appears fit, healthy.
Her hair has been dyed dark. It has been cropped, too, into a boyish cut that Megan does not care for but hair grows, styles change. She recalls some of the hairstyles she wore when she was young. The perms, for instance. My God, the perms.
The pallor has gone. There is a depth of colour to her freckles that worried Megan at first. In this country, she reasoned, only people who spend most of their time outdoors develop such tone to their skin. Gardeners, for instance. Street sweepers. Street sleepers. But she convinced herself, in the end, that the colour was a good thing. A lack of it, after all, would have worried her more. And anyway the shot, from the fullness of the trees, appears to have been taken in the summer. Last summer. Which made it recent, when Megan first saw it.
Would Leo have recognised her, if he passed her on the street? Would Megan have? The answer scares her, every time. Place the woman side by side with the sketches they had drawn up, for instance, and you would not assume you were looking at the same person. El-lie might have seen her face on a lamp post and not realised she was looking in a mirror.
Megan shifts to disguise the shiver.
‘Who’s this?’
She glances at the tip of Leo’s finger, at the chin nestled on her daughter’s shoulder. She turns back to face the road.
‘Her friend. Samantha. Maybe more than a friend – I haven’t worked it out.’ ‘Have you met her?’ Leo’s eyes do not move from the photograph. ‘No. But she keeps saying.’
Leo shakes his head slightly, ousts air through his nostrils. It is a mannerism, in the course of the drive, she has become used to.
‘Look,’ he says. ‘Look at her grinning.’ Ellie, he means. Their daughter. ‘You remember what she used to be like in photos? How she used to scowl? You had to sneak up on her just to get a shot. Remember?’
She does. She smiles.
Leo shakes his head again. He turns to the window and seems to register for the first time where they are, where they are headed. He peers along the motorway and frowns. ‘Are we nearly there yet?’
Megan just laughs.
‘What?’
‘Nothing,’ she says. Then, ‘An hour, I’d say. Maybe less. Are you hungry? There’re some services coming up.’
‘No. Keep driving. Unless you’d like me to?’
Megan’s hands slide to greet each other on the steering wheel. ‘I’m okay.’ She glances and Leo catches her.
‘What?’ he says again. ‘What’s wrong?’
This time she allows her exasperation to show. ‘You,’ she says. ‘Being nice. Offering to drive.’ She glares at the tarmac.
‘What? What’s wrong with that? You’re tired, I expect. I should have offered earlier.’ ‘You know what I mean.’ She glances again and sees that he does. ‘Look. Meg. She wrote to you. She didn’t write to me.’ Megan says nothing.
‘You only did what she asked you to. I can hardly blame you for that.’ She shakes her head, expels a breath. Leo turns away, as though happy to leave it at that. Megan, though, is not. ‘I had no right.’
‘Meg—’
‘I didn’t! If it were you . . . If you’d been me . . .’ ‘Please. Don’t start that. She asked you not to tell me. She told you not to.’ ‘But it was up to me. Wasn’t it? Whether or not to agree.’ ‘I’m not sure it was, actually. Knowing our daughter, I’m not sure you had very much
choice in the matter.’
‘I could have argued, though. How do you know I even argued?’ ‘Because I know you.’
‘But . . .’ Megan sighed. ‘So many times. So many times I nearly called you. And I was always going to, you know. It was only ever a question of when.’
‘You’ve told me now, Meg. I know now. Let’s leave it at
that.’ ‘I was terrified, Leo. You understand that, don’t you? I couldn’t have faced losing her
again. I kept saying to myself: after the next time I see her. Or the next letter she sends. I’ll tell him then.’ Megan turns from the road, watching for Leo’s response. ‘Can’t you be angry at least?’
‘Because that will help, do you think?’
‘Yes!’
Leo shakes his head. ‘I can’t. Not with her. Not with you.’ Megan glowers but her husband just watches the road. ‘It was my fault too, you realise.
She ran from the both of us, not just you.’
‘I know.’
Megan is thrown momentarily by his answer. Which part of what she said, exactly, is he agreeing to?
Leo notices her expression and shrugs a smile. ‘We made mistakes, Meg. Both of us, just like all parents do. But mine were bigger.’
He does not give her time to consider an answer. ‘Can I see them again?’ he says. ‘The letters?’
‘What? Yes. Of course.’ As though he should not even have to ask. As though at any point in the past six months, all he ever had to do was ask.
He dips into the footwell towards her handbag.
‘Oh,’ she says. ‘I almost forgot. My purse. It should be in there.’ Bent double, he shows it to her. ‘What do you need?’ ‘At the back. Behind all the receipts. There should be two twenties.’ He rummages, finds them. They unfold by themselves and he holds them out. ‘They’re yours,’ she says and smiles at his frown. ‘She gave me a cheque, made me
promise to cash it. Said if ever I got a chance, I should slip the money into your wallet.’ Two twenties. The same number as were missing, when Leo finally got round to count-
ing, from his bedside drawer. The place Ellie found them. The place, looking for the magazine article that had so angered Megan, she had discovered Vincent Blake’s notes.
Leo folds up the money. ‘Petrol kitty,’ he says and takes his time tucking them back in the place he found them. He takes out the letters instead and leans back with them piled on his lap. He casts his focus through the windscreen, at the spots of lazy rain and the cars beginning to bunch at the approaching junction.
Lelic, Simon - The Child Who Page 22