by S. E. Lynes
‘Next door must have cleared out early,’ he says. ‘They’re staying in a nice hotel, I suppose.’
No one replies.
When the rumble of machinery starts, we close our eyes. Fred is unusually restless. As if he knows what horrors are to be unearthed. I hold him close, let him suckle.
Later, another police car. Matt spies it through the crack in the curtains. Like a nosy neighbour, he turns to me and announces it with a sigh. I know how helpless he feels because he keeps telling me so and because I feel it too. We have never known such helplessness. Even that day, we were consumed – by fear, by hope. We were distracted by action. Now, this inertia is all there is. This waiting.
‘Farnham,’ Matt says. ‘She’s getting out of the car. She must’ve gone away and come back.’
I follow him into the hall. He opens the front door and is about to step out, but then, somehow, he is backing up, Farnham striding forward. She doesn’t lay a hand on his chest, doesn’t push him, but the whole thing unfolds as a kind of surrender. A second later and the front door has been closed and Farnham is showing us into our own living room, everything about her exuding an assertive calm.
‘Let’s wait in here,’ she says. ‘Let us do our job and let’s make it as bearable as we can for everyone, OK?’
‘OK.’
We are the guests. We are the strangers. We are the puppets.
A moment later, another rumble from next door. I have changed my mind. We should have got out of here today. We should have gone to the park, to a café, anywhere other than here.
As it is, we sit. We do not turn on the television. Hours accumulate into minutes, minutes become seconds, until Farnham takes a call and leaves us.
I bury myself in Matt’s arms. ‘My baby. My little girl.’
Farnham returns, though I have no sense of how long she has been gone. Through my tears I can see she is trying to give nothing away, but the merest nod to Matt and the year we have lived in agony shrinks to no more than a flash.
‘Have they found her?’ I am on my feet.
‘I know this is difficult.’ Farnham is gently restraining me. Lorraine is sitting me down. Farnham is crouching in front of me as you crouch in front of a child who is hurt.
‘Please,’ I sob.
‘I’m very sorry,’ she says. ‘They’ve found her.’
‘I need to see her.’
Farnham transfers herself to the sofa beside me. Lorraine has hold of my hand.
‘Let them look after her now,’ Farnham says. ‘They’ll take good care of her, I promise.’
I can hear Matt crying. On his sheepskin rug, Fred kicks his arms and legs and coos.
After a moment, Farnham stands. ‘I’ll call you as soon as there are any developments. Best thing to do now is try to get some fresh air, try to pass the time if you can. You’ve got my direct line. I’ll check my phone as often as I can, all right? We’ll be in touch.’
Forty-Three
Neil
Neil rests the back of his head on his hands, the thin mattress hard against his shoulder blades. Outside the cell, the noise of a police station at night jangles and jars; the smell of disinfectant on lino makes his nose itch. Cigarette smoke drifts in through an open window; someone shouts abuse in another cell. But none of this distraction can keep him from the torture of his own crowding thoughts: Bella, Matt and Ava, his mum, his mates down the rugby club, his sister Bev, her husband, his family, his old school teachers, his clients… his entire town. Everyone.
There were so many awful moments. The crawl of the zip, Jasmine calling for him from the other side of the door, showing the copper round the work site, trying to keep it together. Testing the weight of the bag that afternoon when the dogs finally cleared out and he found a moment to return, rehearsing the excuse of securing his tools. He feels the weight of that bag, feels it now, as if the strap were still cutting into his hand. He can carry it without strain is what he’s thinking; no, with the right amount of strain, that’s the main thing. That terrible afternoon. It’s 3 p.m. The dogs have sniffed his house, his shed, his van, and now he’s here again, a place he’d prefer never to come back to as long as he lives. It’s now or never. If he can get her into the van and stick his bike in, he can take the van up to Richmond on the excuse of leafleting a bit further out. Then all he has to do is cycle home and somehow sort the rest out later.
The chucka-chuck of a helicopter passes overhead. He thinks of Bella and begins to cry. He doesn’t know if he can do it; doesn’t know if he has it in him, and if he does, what that says about him, but he will never be able to give her a baby, a family, a home if he doesn’t see this through. He will lose her. He will lose his life. Nothing he can do will bring Abi back. He loved her; he loved her like his own. But he can’t save her. He can’t make this right. Making this right will make everything else wrong.
In the hallway, he composes himself in front of the mirror, pushing back his hair, blowing out short breaths of air, over and over.
‘Come on.’ He squares his shoulders, tries to look himself in the eye. ‘Come on now.’
And in that moment of utter loneliness, he wishes, bitterly and keenly, that he had known his father. Wishes he could call him now and ask him what to do. There was never anyone to ask; he’s had to figure it all out for himself. He knows what he’s doing is wrong, off-the-scale wrong, but what the hell else can he do? If he doesn’t sort it, there is no one, no one else.
He grits his teeth. ‘Come on.’
Another blast of staggered breath. He opens the door. Steps out onto the street. It is still raining, though not as heavily now. He pulls the Lovegoods’ door closed and walks as slowly as he dares past Matt and Ava’s house. Eyes front, head locked, he presses on towards his own house. No sign of the dogs. He just has to keep the bag off the ground.
Halfway down the road, twenty metres, no more, from his home, his throat blocks at the sight of two police officers coming out of number 58.
He recognises PC Peak, smiles and raises his free hand. ‘Just dumping my tools in the van,’ he offers. ‘It’s all open at the back, don’t want them getting nicked.’
With a perfunctory nod, they carry on to number 56.
The urge to run is almost too much. His lips purse, as if to whistle, but he stops himself. At the van, he levels his key fob and clicks. The central locking clunks; the tail lights flash. It is all he can do not to look around. It is all he can do to put Abi inside the bleak metal shell. As if she were no more than this: a bag of tools, valuables to be locked away in case of thieves.
‘I’m so sorry, baby girl,’ he whispers. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’
And later, much later, his beautiful god-daughter still in the cold van, his best friend’s face looms over him in the dark and empty building site, eyes creased up in agony as he confesses.
‘It was me. I left the door open.’
The thin, wet frame of the man in his arms, weeping for his fatal mistake.
‘Don’t tell her,’ he hears himself say, astounded at how easily the words fall from him, as if they have in fact been spoken by somebody else. ‘There’s nothing to be gained.’ And on and on – a sleight of hand with which he transfers the weight of guilt so that he can absolve himself of the larger blame and save his life: ‘No police, no Ava, no one else. It ends here. Our secret. I’ve got your back.’
This – this is the moment he becomes a monster, he thinks. In the depths of his best friend’s personal abyss, he sees only his own chance – to step in as the keeper of another’s secret so that his own might remain buried. And then, later, in wild panic, when he realises he’s left Abi’s coat in the Lovegoods’ washing machine, when he says goodbye to Matt in the pretence of going to bed, only to make a frantic dash in the dark, back across the splintering, cobwebbed fences, when he hides in the black scrubby garden of Johnnie Lovegood’s dream home and sees the man he loathes at the loft window, leaning out, smoking a joint, floating above it all, riding his life l
ike a luxury cruise while he, Neil, crouches filthy and sweating and crying in the shadows, he will see clearly the unfairness of it all. Johnnie, who is also to blame, smoking a bloody joint, enjoying his peace of mind in his soon-to-be state-of-the art show home, the home that Neil will build for him. He wants to run up there and punch him, hard, in his smug little face. But no.
Violence can’t save him. Only stealth. He must get the coat into the river. He must try to somehow make it through this night. And tomorrow he will lay the bag in the trench and concrete in the steels. It is all he can think of. It is all he’s got.
He grabs the coat, escapes once again over the back fence. Up to the lock he runs, lungs tight, the metal of blood in his mouth. Over the bridge towards Ham. No sign of the police. On the water, nothing stirs – not even an arrow of ducks disturbs the black water. The houseboats are mostly dark, one or two lit from within by the warm glow of an oil lamp. A damp, cold smell rises from the water. The breeze rustles in the scrappy branches of the spindly riverside trees. At least it has stopped raining.
Richmond is three miles away. He’s not sure he can run three metres. His bones ache, his skin is freezing. He is so tired. He is so fucking tired. But the rest of his life depends on now. All around is silent. The loud, fast, foetal heartbeat he knows is coming from his own mind. A memory from an early scan, Bella’s face lighting up in wonder. The galloping sound of life, of a family he almost had, only for that blessed noise to cease. Until now. Now, it has chosen to visit him, to torture him.
And so, tortured and snivelling, freezing and wretched, he runs the miles up to Richmond, where he drops his beloved god-daughter’s coat, and weeps as it falls pale and blue into the deep black water.
It is 3 a.m. by the time he gets home. He has never felt so completely wrecked, so alone. Everything hurts, inside and out. And, like a child, he cannot stop crying. In the dark hallway, he strips. The washing machine is empty; his heart threatens to explode at the sight. Where are his overalls from this morning? He runs upstairs, naked, checks in the bathroom cupboard and almost cries out with relief to find them there, folded along with other clothes, airing in the warmth in a neat pile. Bella will have emptied the washing machine when she got in and put his stuff in the dryer. She won’t have thought twice about it. Back downstairs, he loads his filthy jeans, T-shirt, raincoat, socks and pants into the machine and sets it to wash. Still shivering, teeth chattering now, he takes a long shower, increasing the temperature by degrees, warming himself through.
In bed, he curls himself around Bella’s warm naked body. He presses his nose between her shoulder blades and breathes her in. She smells of perfume and the oily scent of her skin at night. Aromatherapy. She is what he needs. She is all he needs.
‘Hey,’ she whispers, stirring, then shifting, sitting up.
‘We didn’t find her,’ he says, and it’s enough to send her into floods of tears.
‘Oh my God,’ she says through her fingers. ‘Oh my poor darling Abi. I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it. Poor Matt and Ava, oh my God.’
He rubs her back. ‘I know. I know.’
There is nothing he can do but let her cry. He waits it out until at last she plucks a handful of tissues from the box on her bedside table and presses it to her eyes.
‘You’ve been gone ages,’ she says, blowing her nose. ‘What time is it?’
‘Late. Listen, there’s nothing we can do now. Let’s go to sleep, eh? We’ll search again in the morning.’
She nods, her breath still shuddering in her chest as, dopey and obedient with tiredness, she lies down, rolls her back to him and pulls his legs to hers with the hook of her big toe.
I can’t lose this, he thinks, wrapping his arm around her waist, returning his face to that place between her shoulder blades. I’d do the time; gladly, I would, but I can’t lose this. Everything I have done, I have done for her. For us.
‘I love you,’ he whispers into her neck. And he feels it, oh God, he feels it.
‘I love you too,’ she slurs. ‘You’re my hero, you know that.’
Forty-Four
Matt
Lorraine Stephens returns the next day to confirm. The body is Abi’s. They will not be called to identify her. The police will use her DNA samples. Matt doesn’t ask why. He knows why.
‘Have they charged him?’ Ava asks – these last days, she has become the stronger of the two of them, he realises.
‘They’ve charged him with prevention of proper burial and with perverting the course of justice, but nothing else yet. We’re still waiting for the post-mortem results, but we’re looking at manslaughter on the grounds of professional negligence.’
Their daughter. Under post-mortem. Such a small mass.
‘Try not to think about it,’ Lorraine says.
She stays an hour or two before leaving them in the shattered peace of their new reality. Abi is dead. There is no doubt about that now, only horror and hope. Horror at what his best friend has done; hope that Abi did not suffer at the end. Neil killed their baby girl and hid her away. The fact of it is astonishing. It cannot be and yet it is. Neil. Matt can barely even remember a time when he didn’t know this man, when he wasn’t his friend. Friend goes nowhere near what Neil is to him – not even best friend can convey what he is, what they are. Was. Were. Friends no longer, just like that – a severing, a laser cut so precise the pain is yet to make its way through the fog of shock. A best friend will have your back, buy you a beer, turn up. But Matt trusted this friend with his daughter as with his very life, and now, feeling himself falling, what he has known bodily since he took the call his brain begins to frame in thought: Neil might not have murdered Abi, but Matt knows with total clarity that he can never forgive him for what he has done, that he will not, can never, see him again for as long as he lives, and that he will think of him and miss him every day for the rest of his life.
A little after seven in the evening, Sharon Farnham is sitting on their sofa once again. The light is falling. Ava has a glass of brandy in her hand. His own is on the coffee table, untouched.
Farnham is here to talk to them about the post-mortem. She addresses them as a couple still together, and there is no reason to tell her otherwise – that they share a roof, their grief, their son; that they have survived, and that is all. Out of the eye of the storm, Matt can see how careful these people have been with them over this time and wonders at how they can put themselves here, in the middle of other people’s horror, for no other reason than to try to find the truth, whatever that truth turns out to be.
In the strange enforced intimacy, Lorraine brings in three mugs of coffee and a large glass of water for Ava. She is feeding Fred, as she has been for most of the day. He needs the comfort, she has said, more than once, though Matt knows that in reality it is Fred who is the soother here.
‘Are you OK?’ Farnham asks them.
‘We’re ready,’ Ava replies.
Farnham brings out a notebook from her pocket, shifts her weight, seems unable to get comfortable on the sofa. A heavy exhalation and, with apparent physical effort, she begins.
‘The post-mortem revealed that Abi died of a trauma to the head. This is consistent with the fall into the building trench. The trauma caused bleeding to the brain, which proved fatal.’
The air thins. Ava opens her mouth but just as quickly closes it again.
‘Did she suffer?’ Matt asks, glancing at Ava, who meets his gaze with silent acknowledgement.
‘A blow to the head is quick,’ Farnham replies. ‘The concrete surrounding the bag preserved some tissues and remnants of her clothes. From those, we estimate she was buried approximately twenty-four hours after her death, which would tie in with Mr Johnson’s account of events. He says he returned to work the following morning, having removed Abi from the site in the large tool bag and stored her body in his van, as I told you on the phone. He told us he parked on the Lovegoods’ drive after they left for work the following morning, lifted Abi into
the house in the bag and placed her, inside the bag, into the first trench as you come into the kitchen site. From there he was able to cover her under the pretence of concreting in the RSJ beams according to the building schedule. The lad who was labouring for him, when questioned again last night, believed Mr Johnson when he told him the site would be closed for a few days due to the police investigation.’
‘So while we were looking at the picture of her coat,’ Matt says slowly, aware that he is processing what he has just heard even as the words fall from his mouth, ‘he was next door burying her in…’
‘I’m so sorry.’
Matt smothers a gasp in his hands, his vision clouding.
‘Sharon.’ Ava’s voice is no more than a croak. ‘Can I ask you a question?’
‘Of course.’
‘Does this mean you’ll be arresting Neil now for murder?’
The room stills. Matt makes himself look up. Farnham and Lorraine are not exchanging a glance, not exactly. It is smaller than that. They adjust their backsides forward on the sofa. And they do it at exactly the same moment.
‘I was coming on to that,’ Farnham says. ‘The trauma to the head wasn’t consistent with the angle it would have been had she simply fallen into the trench. There were also other internal injuries not consistent with the fall. And there was a small flake of paint found on her bracelet – I think it was a christening bracelet?’
‘Yes,’ Ava rushes in. ‘It was getting too small.’
‘We’ve sent it to forensics, but I don’t have the results yet. We’ll be in touch as soon as we do.’
Forty-Five
Ava
Day one, we stay at the back of the house, watching movies on Matt’s laptop, avoiding the press. My finger hovers over Farnham’s number, but I don’t call. My mother offers to come down, as she did when Abi went missing, but I tell her to stay put. This is too tough to watch. And there is nothing she can do. Once we know, I will call her.