‘What is it, Sam? Want to spend quality time with your kid on some fucking village green? Sunday lunch and planting bulbs?’ Actually, I
‘Or,’ Danny had continued, ‘are you finally leaving me? Is that what this is all about, and is that why you never even bothered to tell me you were applying for a job in the sticks?’
I’d shrugged, cold and hostile in the knowledge that I was behaving badly.
‘I didn’t apply for it.
He’d given a kind of groan and said, ‘Look, Sam, maybe the time has come…’
But I’d interrupted. I didn’t want to hear him say we should live together at last and I didn’t want to hear him say we should leave each other at last, although I knew that soon we would have to decide. I’d put one hand on his resistant shoulder. ‘It’s only an hour and a half away. You can come and visit me.’
‘
‘Stay with me.’
‘Oh, I’ll come and stay with you, my darling.’ And he’d leaned forward, all dark hair and stubble and the smell of sawdust and sweat, and yanked me to him by the belt that was looped through my jeans. He’d unbuckled my belt and pulled me down on the lino of the kitchen, warm where a heating pipe ran underneath, his hands under my cropped head saving it from banging as we fell.
If I ran I might be in time for Elsie. On the sea wall the wind screamed and the sky was swallowed up by the water. My breath came in bursts. There was a bit of grit in my left shoe, pressing up under the ball of my foot, but I didn’t want to stop. It was only her second day at school. The teacher will think I’m a bad mother. Houses: I see houses at last. Nineteen-thirties, red brick and square, a child’s drawing of a home. Smoke curling perfectly, one- two-three puffs, out of the neat row of chimneys. And there was the car. I might be on time after all.
Elsie tipped from heel to toe, toe to heel. Her slick fair hair swung as she moved. She was wearing a brown donkey jacket and a checked red and orange dress, and on her stocky legs she had pink spotty tights, which were wrinkled around her steadily pivoting ankles (‘You told me I could choose my clothes and I want these,’ she’d said truculently at breakfast). Her nose was red and her eyes were vacant.
‘Am I late?’ I hugged her unyielding bulk.
‘Mungo was with me.’
I looked around the deserted playground.
‘I can’t see anyone.’
‘Not now.’
That evening, after Elsie had gone to sleep, I felt lonely in my house by the sea. The dark outside was so very dark, the silence so eerily complete. I sat by the unmade fire with Anatoly on my lap, and his purr as I scratched behind his ears seemed to fill the room. I poked aimlessly around in the fridge, eating a lump of hardened cheese, half an apple, a chunk of nut-and-raisin milk chocolate. I rang up Danny but only got his stiff answering-machine voice and didn’t leave a message.
I turned on the television for the evening news. A wealthy local couple had been brutally murdered, their throats cut. A picture of their formally smiling faces, his florid and plump, hers pale and thin and self-effacing, was followed by a view of their large red house from the end of a wide gravelled drive. Their teenage daughter was ‘comfortable’ in Stamford General. There was a blurry school photograph that must have been years old, a happy, roundly plump face, poor thing. A large police officer said something about unstinting efforts, a local politician expressed shock and outrage and called for measures.
Briefly, I wondered about the girl in hospital, her savaged future. Then the news switched to an obstacle in a peace process somewhere, and very quickly I forgot all about her.
Three
‘After you.’
‘No, after you.’
‘For God’s sake, pour it, you wally.’
They were four deep around the coffee machine, uniforms and suits fighting over the sugar and the milk jug. They were in a hurry. Seating in the generally unused conference room was restricted, and nobody wanted to be late for this one.
‘It’s a bit soon for a case conference, isn’t it?’
‘That’s what the Super wants.’
‘I’d say it’s a bit soon.’
The conference room was in the new extension of Stamford Central police station, all Formica and strip lighting and the hum of the heating system. The head of the CID, Superintendent Bill Day, had called the meeting for 11.45 on the morning that the bodies had been discovered. Blinds were pulled up, revealing an office building opposite, whose mirrored windows reflected a bright winter sky. An overhead projector and a video recorder were pushed into the far corner. Plastic chairs were peeled from stacks against the wall and crammed around the long table.
Detective Inspector Frank ‘Rupert’ Baird edged his way through the ruck of officers – he towered over most of them – and took his seat at the end. He dumped some files on the table in front of him and looked at his watch, fingering his moustache reflectively. Bill Day and a senior uniformed man came into the room, which at once became silent, attentive. Day went and sat near Rupert Baird, but the uniformed man pointedly remained standing, just to one side of the door, leaning lightly back against the wall. Bill Day spoke first.
‘Good morning, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘And ladies,’ he added, catching the ironic eye of WPC MacAllister down at the far end of the table. ‘We won’t keep you long. This is just a preliminary meeting.’ He paused, scanning the faces around the table. ‘Look, lads. We need to get this one right. No pissing about.’ There were nods of acknowledgement. ‘I’d like to take the chance to introduce Chief Superintendent Anthony Cavan, who’ll be new to most of you.’
The uniformed man by the door nodded at the heads turned towards him.
‘Thanks, Bill,’ he said. ‘Good morning, everybody. I’m here for the press conference, but I wanted to put my head round the door, show some encouragement. Pretend I’m not here.’
‘Yes,’ said Bill Day, with a thin smile. ‘I’ve asked Detective Inspector Baird to chair the meeting. Rupert?’
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Baird, and he shuffled some papers on the desk in front of him with a purposeful air. ‘The point of this introductory meeting is to establish clarity right from the outset. Stamford CID is going to be under the spotlight. Let’s not make fools of ourselves. Remember the Porter case.’ Everybody knew the Porter case, if only by repute: the TV documentaries, the appeal, the books, the early retirements, reassignments. The atmosphere became noticeably chillier. ‘I’ll try to cover the ground as quickly as I can. Ask any questions. I want everybody to get all this straight.’ He put his reading spectacles on and looked down at his notes. ‘The bodies were found at about eight-thirty this morning. Thursday the eighteenth of January. The victims are Leopold Victor Mackenzie and his wife. Elizabeth. Mr Mackenzie was the chairman of Mackenzie & Carlow. They made medicines, drugs, that sort of thing. Their daughter, Fiona, was taken to Stamford General.’
‘Will she live?’
‘I haven’t heard. We’ve got her in a fully secure room at the hospital with minimum access. Her own doctor insisted on it and we think he’s right. A couple of PCs are standing by.’
‘Has she said anything?’
