Considine stood on the pavement beside the car, arms folded and brow furrowed. She tapped on Swan’s window and he rolled it down. Dipping her head, she spoke across him to the girl.
‘If you feel sick or anything, just say, and he’ll stop.’
‘Of course I’ll stop,’ said Swan. What was he, an ogre? ‘I’ll ring you later this afternoon for an update, boss.’
‘Thanks, Gina.’
Swan turned the key in the ignition and pulled out, unsure for a moment which direction to take. Ali pointed at the road over the bridge.
‘Is that the best way?’
‘I need to pick up something from Davy’s house.’
He parked where she told him to, on the side of the road just past the farmhouse and out of sight of it. She wouldn’t come up to the house herself, but gave him very exact directions of where to find what she wanted.
The Guards had stretched perimeter tape around the bungalow, but there was no one about to see that the barrier was observed. Swan gazed at the unfinished house, the lump of concrete smeared with dried blood in front of it.
The doll was where she said it would be, lying on a kitchen surface. This house was almost as depressing as the ruined cottage where they dug it up. A defeated kind of place. And the dirty old doll in the middle of it. He had a notion to just throw it away, to tell the girl it was gone.
He lifted it into the crook of his arm and went over to the stainless-steel sink that tilted from one wall. He took his handkerchief out of his trouser pocket and wet it, then wiped the doll clean of dirt as best he could. It was an ugly little thing, the pouchy eyes shut fast.
‘What’s to become of us?’ Swan said, wiping its plastic brow. ‘What’s to become of us at all?’ He had rarely held a baby, didn’t know how he felt about holding one. It’s different when it’s your own, they always said. He couldn’t imagine the pleasure ever being more than the worry.
There was a plastic carrier bag lying on the floor. Swan left his muddy handkerchief by the sink and quickly dunked the doll in the bag, head-first. You could think about things too much.
Ali slouched down in the passenger seat and waited. There was a chance that Una had seen them pass, might come down to the road to talk to her. Ali sank her head lower, fingered the edge of her bandage, wondered what was keeping Swan.
If her aunt came down, so what? Una didn’t know what Davy had told her, about the child on the kitchen table and Una disposing of it. She didn’t know that Ali had seen her car with its broken brake light outside the marquee, had heard a familiar voice call for Joan.
No one would know.
Last night, as they tried to get Davy’s body out, in the stink and panic, her aunt had taken Ali in her arms, folded her into her body so that they were crying into the crook of each other’s necks, rocking there on their knees in the dark, like being at sea, like being washed in the storm and the salty sea. All of it flowing from her, jagged pain turned to water. And a thought had come clearly into Ali’s head. I won’t give her up.
A sharp tap came on the glass by her temple and she jerked away, raising her hands to protect her head.
Swan walked round the front of the car and got in.
‘Sorry, that was stupid. You didn’t see me coming.’
He leaned over and placed a plastic bag in the footwell beside her legs. Two little feet stuck out of it. She picked up the bag, wrapped it more tightly around the doll and twisted round to put it on the back seat. She couldn’t bear to look at it.
Swan drove back to the village and turned left, passing Melody’s pub and the pink church. Goodbye, Ali thought as she counted off the landmarks. Goodbye. Goodbye.
The regimented field of the new graveyard was next. There was a large yellow digger in the middle of it, next to where Joan was buried. Swan slowed the car down to look.
‘You’ll be glad to know,’ he said, ‘we’re going to give Joan Dempsey a proper post-mortem. There’ll be an investigation, too, see if they can’t find out a bit more.’
Ali didn’t dare meet his eye, just kept looking at the digger.
‘I thought you’d be glad.’
‘I am glad,’ she mumbled.
But he made no move to drive off. ‘I wonder how they’re getting on. Looks like they’ve made quick progress.’
Ali prayed he wouldn’t get out and keep her waiting when they were so close to escape. She turned her head away, and there, on the other side of the street, stood Ivor, his wild hair flowing in the wind. He was looking at the digger too, showed no signs of noticing her.
She remembered his fingers on her lips, the tang of tobacco in his hair. Their time in the van together that night seemed tawdry now, worse than tawdry. He should have been minding Joan. She shouldn’t have gone with him.
‘Can we go?’
Swan looked at her, but didn’t say anything, just pressed his foot on the accelerator and they eased away. Ivor saw her then, turned and took one step after the car. She watched him grow small in the side mirror.
She didn’t know if the body of Joan would somehow lead them back to Una. She couldn’t be certain that Una had anything to do with it, anyway. She hadn’t lied to anyone. If she had sinned, her sin was one of omission. And
