to misunderstand.
‘I’m not sure,’ said Simon. ‘As we both keep saying, no crime’s been committed. Bussey told you Trelease was alive and well-turns out she is.’
‘So Sam Kombothekra will tell you to leave it. It’s not a police matter. Just three oddballs behaving oddly, none of our business.’
Simon sighed. ‘Are you happy with that explanation? Seed and Bussey come in on the same day, separately, and tell two versions of almost the same story? You want to let it lie?’
‘Ruth Bussey said she was frightened something was going to happen.’ That was the part Charlie kept coming back to in her mind, now that she knew the whole thing hadn’t been about her.
‘One thing’s going to have to happen if we want to take it any further,’ said Simon.
‘What?’
He started to hum a tune, Aled Jones’ ‘Walking in the Air’.
‘You, not we,’ said Charlie. One of the advantages of leaving CID-the only one-was that she no longer had to negotiate with the Snowman. She tried not to sound as if she was crowing when she said, ‘I don’t work for him any more.’
3
A noise startles me: my house, breaking its long silence with a sharp ringing. The woolly feeling in my head clears. Adrenalin gets me moving. I crawl into the lounge on my hands and knees to avoid putting weight on my injured foot, and manage to grab the phone on the third ring, still holding the blanket I’ve been using as a shawl around my shoulders. I can’t say hello. I can’t allow myself to hope.
‘It’s me.’
‘Yeah,’ he says. I wait for the part that comes next:
‘Where have you been?’ I ask. He has been gone longer than usual. Two nights.
‘Working.’
‘You weren’t at the workshop.’ There’s a pause. Does he regret giving me a key? I wait for him to ask for it back. He gave it to me when I first started to work for him, the same key for Seed Art Services as for his home. It was a sign that he trusted me.
I spent parts of both Friday and Saturday nights in his messy room behind the framing studio, crying, waiting for him to come back. Several times, drained and exhausted, I fell asleep, then came to suddenly, convinced that, if Aidan returned at all, he would go to my house. I’m not sure how many times I drove from one end of town to the other, feeling as if wherever I went I would be too late, I would miss him by a fraction of a second.
‘We need to talk, Ruth.’
I begin to cry at the obviousness of it. ‘Come back, then.’
‘I’m on my way. Stay put.’ He’s gone before I can reply.
I crawl back to the hall, where I was before Aidan phoned, where I’ve been sitting cross-legged since six o’clock this morning, staring up at the small monitor on the shelf above the front door. My body is stiff and sore from being in one position too long. The underside of my damaged foot looks like decayed puff pastry. I don’t feel strong enough to clear up two days’ worth of mess, but I must.
The remote control: if Aidan sees it on the floor he’ll know I’ve been watching the tapes. He’ll be angry. I glance up at the screen, scared that if I take my eyes off it, I’ll miss something. The image changes a second later: a grainy black and white picture of the path outside my house, with English yew hedges sculpted into rounded abstract forms bordering the grass along one side, is replaced by the cluster of poplars on the other side of the house and a clear view of the park gates.
I pick up the remote control, try to stand at the same time, and knock over the stinking, overflowing ashtray that’s been keeping me company lately. ‘Shit,’ I mutter, wishing I’d thought to ask Aidan how far away he was. Will he be back in five minutes or two hours? As well as the upturned ashtray and its contents, there’s an empty wine bottle next to me and an empty packet of Silk Cut. My blood-soaked shoe lies on its side by the front door, where I dropped it on my way to the bathroom to clean myself up on Friday.
If I’d told Charlie Zailer I’d got something in my shoe, she’d have said, ‘Take it out, then.’ How could I have explained why it was so much easier to pretend it wasn’t there?
There’s still some blood in the bath. I should have given it a proper scrub on Friday afternoon, but I couldn’t face it. It was hard enough to hobble down the hall, put my foot under the tap and turn it on. I’d come home to find my boiler had packed in again. The house was as cold as the park outside, and the water coming out of my taps was colder. I kept my eyes closed as I rubbed the torn, pulpy flesh with my hand, shivering, trying to dislodge the thing that had cut me. My foot throbbed as liquid cold flowed over it. I felt sick when I heard something hard hit the enamel.
Walking on my heel, I throw my ruined shoes in the outside bin, along with the wine bottle and cigarette packet. Moving thaws my chilled bones a little. I sweep up the ash and cigarette butts, put them in the bin too. Then I give the bath a good going over, stopping now and then to get my breath back when dizziness threatens to lay me low. I’ve eaten nothing today but a Nutri-Grain cereal bar and a packet of Hula Hoops.
I have to keep moving, or I’ll imagine all the worst things Aidan might say to me. I’ll panic.
I’m about to pick up the remote control and put it on the shelf next to the monitor when I hear a noise outside, a movement in the trees close to my lounge windows. I stop, listen. Almost a minute later, I hear another sound, louder than the first: branches moving. Someone is standing next to my house. Not Aidan; he’d come straight to the door. I sink to my knees in the hall, slide across into the lounge and position myself behind an armchair.
Then I hear laughing, two voices I don’t recognise. I edge out from behind the chair and see a teenage boy framed in my lounge window. He is undoing his flies, turning back towards the path to shout at his friend to wait for him while he has a slash. A shaving rash covers his neck and chin, and he’s wearing jeans that reveal a good three inches of the boxer shorts beneath. I close my eyes, steady myself on the arm of the chair.
As he walks away, I watch to check he doesn’t look back. He adjusts his jeans and scratches the back of his neck, unaware of my eyes on him. If he turned round now, he would see me clearly.
It was one of the things I liked most about this little house, the way the lounge stuck out like a sort of display box at the front of the park, with large stained-glass-topped windows on three sides. Malcolm told me he’d had trouble finding a tenant after the last one left. ‘No privacy, you see.’ He pointed as we approached the park gates, keen to list Blantyre Lodge’s flaws before I crossed the threshold: there were bollards I’d have to lower and raise every time I drove my car into or out of the park. The lounge and bedroom weren’t perfect squares-each had a corner missing, as if a triangle had been cut out of the space. ‘I might as well be honest,’ Malcolm said. ‘It’s not as if you wouldn’t notice.’
‘Privacy’s the opposite of what I want,’ I told him. ‘If people can see me and I can see people, that suits me fine.’ I was surprised by my own words, unsure if this was the truth or the exact reverse of how I felt. I remember thinking, if I’m invisible, nobody will be able to help me if I need help.
‘Get yourself some good net curtains,’ Malcolm said, and I flinched, imagining faces obscured by densely- patterned white material: His face and Hers.
