rested near the cover’s edge, as if at peace, their fingers loosely curled.
He had been back close on two years, long enough to view the move north with some regret. Not that north was really what it was. A hundred and twenty miles from London, one hour forty minutes, theoretically, by train. Another country nonetheless.
For weeks he and Joanne had argued it back and forth, reasons for, reasons against, two columns fixed to the refrigerator door. Cut and Dried, the salon where Joanne worked as a stylist, was opening branches in Derby and Nottingham and she could manage either one she chose. Derby was out of the question.
On a visit, Katherine trailing behind them, they had walked along the pedestrianised city centre street: high- end fashion, caffe latte, bacon cobs; Waterstone’s, Ted Baker, Cafe Rouge.
‘You see,’ Joanne said, ‘we could be in London. Chiswick High Road.’
Elder shook his head. It was the bacon cobs that gave it away.
The empty shop unit was just off to one side, secluded and select. ‘Post no Bills’ plastered across the glass frontage, ‘Sold Subject to Contract’ above the door. Joanne would be able to hire the staff, set the tone, everything down to choosing the shade of paint on the walls.
‘You know I want this, don’t you?’ Her hands in his pockets as she pulled him back against the glass.
‘I know.’
‘So?’
He closed his eyes and, slow at first, she kissed him on the mouth.
‘God!’ Katherine exclaimed, whacking her father in the back.
‘What?’
‘Making a bloody exhibition of yourselves, that’s what.’
‘You watch your tongue, young lady,’ Joanne said, stepping clear.
‘Sooner that than watching yours.’
Katherine Elder: eleven going on twenty-four.
‘What say we go and have a coffee?’ Elder said. ‘Then we can have a think.’
Even a casual glance in the estate agent’s window made it clear that for the price of their two-bedroom first- floor flat off Chiswick Lane, they could buy a house in a decent area, something substantial with a garden front and back.
For Katherine, moving up to secondary, a new start in a new school, the perfect time. And Elder…?
He had joined the police as a twenty-year-old in Huddersfield, walked the beat in Leeds; out of uniform, he’d been stationed in Lincolnshire: Lincoln itself, Boston, Skegness. Then, married, the big move to London, this too at Joanne’s behest. Frank Elder a detective sergeant in the Met. Detective inspector when he was forty-five. Moving out he’d keep his rank at least, maybe push up. There were faces he still knew, a name or two. Calls he could make. A week after Joanne took charge of the keys to the new salon, Elder had eased himself behind his desk at the headquarters of the Nottinghamshire Major Crime Unit: a telephone, a PC with a splintered screen, a part-eaten Pork Farms pie mildewing away in one of the drawers.
Now, two years on, the screen had been replaced, the keyboard jammed and lacked the letters R and S; photographs of Joanne and Katherine stood beside his in-tray in small frames. The team he’d been working with on a wages hijack north of Peterborough had just brought in a result and shots of Scotch were being passed around in polystyrene cups.
Elder drank his down, a single swallow, and dialled home. ‘Jo, I’m going to be a bit late.’
A pause in which he visualised her face, a tightening around the mouth, the corners of her eyes. ‘Of course.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s the end of the week, the lads are raring to go, of course you’ll be late.’
‘Look, if you’d rather-’
‘Frank, I’m winding you up. Go and have a drink. Relax. I’ll see you in an hour or so, okay?’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Frank.’
‘All right. All right. I’m going.’
When he arrived home, two hours later, not so much more, Katherine was closeted in her room, listening to music, and Joanne was nowhere to be seen.
Barely pausing to knock, he pushed open his daughter’s door.
‘Dad!’
‘What?’
‘You’re supposed to knock.’
‘I did.’
‘I didn’t hear you.’
Reaching past her, he angled the volume control of the portable stereo down a notch, a half-smile deflecting the complaint that failed to come.
‘Where’s Mum?’
‘Out.’
‘Where?’
‘Out.’
Cross-legged on the bed, fair hair splashed across her eyes, Katherine flipped closed the book in which she had been writing with a practised sigh.
‘You want something to eat?’ Elder asked.
A quick shake of the head. ‘I already ate.’
He found a slice of pizza in the fridge and set it in the microwave to reheat, opened a can of Heineken, switched on the TV. When Joanne arrived back, close to midnight, he was asleep in the armchair, unfinished pizza on the floor close by. Stooping, she kissed him lightly and he woke.
‘You see,’ Joanne said, ‘it works.’
‘What does?’
‘You turned into a frog.’
Elder smiled and she kissed him again; he didn’t ask her where she’d been.
Neither was quite in bed when the mobile suddenly rang.
‘Mine or yours?’
Joanne angled her head. ‘Yours.’
Elder was still listening, asking questions, as he started reaching for his clothes.
Fourteen miles north of the city, Mansfield was a small industrial town with an unemployment rate above average, a reputation for casual violence and a soccer team just keeping its head above water in Division Three of the Nationwide. Elder lowered the car window a crack, broke into a fresh pack of extra-strong mints and tried not to think about what he would find.
He missed the turning first and had to double back, a cul-de-sac built into a new estate, just shy of the road to Edwinstowe and Ollerton. An ambulance snug between two police cars, lights in the windows of all the houses, the periodic yammering of radios. At number seventeen all of the curtains were drawn closed. A child’s scooter lay discarded on the lawn. Elder pulled on the protective coveralls he kept ready in the boot, nodded to the young officer in uniform on guard outside and showed his ID just in case. On the stairs, one of the Scene of Crime team, whey-faced, stepped aside to let him pass. The smell of blood and something else, like ripe pomegranate on the air.
The children were in the smallest bedroom, two boys, six and four, pyjamed arms outstretched; the pillow with which they had been smothered lay bunched on the floor. Elder noticed bruising near the base of the older boy’s throat, twin purpling marks the size of thumbs; he wondered who had closed their eyes.
‘We were right to call you in?’
For a big man, Saxon moved lightly; only a slight nasal heaviness to his breathing had alerted Elder to his presence in the room.
‘I thought, you know, better now than later.’