by Ali Knight
‘Not at all. Would you like a cup of tea while you do it?’
‘That would be fantastic. Milk, two sugars, please.’
Melody really was a hoarder, because her folder on the family computer has hundreds of files stored within it, but they’re not named, just a series of dry numbers, as if they’ve been transferred en masse from somewhere else. I slip a memory stick into the hard drive and copy everything. A few moments later, I’m informed that fifteen hundred files have been transferred. I hear Mrs Graham clinking cups in the kitchen and I rest my head on the table edge. This mission is hopeless; I’m never going to have the time to trawl through all of this; the police will have a team of computer experts with cancelled weekend leave racing ahead of me. The sun appears and its beams of happy yellow illuminate the thin layer of dust on the French polish of the table. I watch the dust motes dancing with an energy I don’t feel as my eyes come to rest on something under the computer. Instinctively I pull at it with my fingernail and a CD-Rom appears. Inside-Out and some dates are crossed out on the label and ‘Neat Feet!’ is scrawled underneath.
Mrs Graham appears, holding two cups. ‘I just found this under the computer, it’s Melody’s. Looks like it worked its way under and got lost.’
Mrs Graham comes towards me and reads the label. Her mouth turns down at the corners. ‘You take it. I didn’t much care for that programme.’
I slip the disk into the Forwood file containing the dull expenses and put it in my bag with the memory stick. ‘Can I see the roses now?’
We walk out into sunshine and cross the lawn. ‘She put up a struggle, you know, even when the rope was round her neck—’
‘I’m so sorry—’
‘But she fought. She gets that off me, I’m a fighter. She always wanted to get her own way. She wasn’t popular.’ I make a noise of protest but she cuts me off. ‘Parents always talk about their children like they’re perfect, but Melody was far from that. But she was never ignored, never.’
‘Did she talk much about her job at Forwood?’
‘Oh all the time! She talked as if it were one big family, you know.’
I take a sip of tea. ‘We all know how strife-ridden families can be. The harmony’s often a myth.’
Mrs Graham frowns. ‘Well. Maybe. She liked it very much at the beginning. Towards the end she went quiet on that a bit.’
‘Oh?’
‘Maybe things were getting on top of her. It’s hard to say.’
‘What things?’
Mrs Graham looks at her tea. ‘Nothing I can put a finger on. Every look and gesture is overinterpreted once something like this happens.’
I pause, but nothing more is forthcoming. ‘I’m a researcher on the crime programme she invented. We have very high hopes for it. We’re dedicating the next programme to your daughter.’ Mrs Graham sighs as if she’s disappointed. We pause by a flower bed and I change the subject. ‘I didn’t know roses bloomed so early in the year.’
‘It’s someone she didn’t know.’
‘Pardon?’
‘She was killed by someone she didn’t know.’
‘You seem very sure.’
‘It’s the only explanation I can accept.’ The doorbell chimes faintly and she gives a small groan. ‘That’s my niece, most likely, doing her guard shift. She watches too much rubbish on daytime TV.’
‘Why do you think it’s someone she doesn’t know?’
She pauses. ‘Don does research on cancer cells. Melody wasn’t exactly discovering a cure for Alzheimer’s. She was very bright, she could have trained as a doctor or a lawyer. Done things to really help people. I didn’t like the programmes Melody wanted to make, I didn’t share her dreams. She was putting her efforts into a job that was . . . superficial, silly even.’ She pauses. ‘It’s a stranger, someone mad.’ Her voice turns hard and betrays the emotions she’s trying so hard to control. ‘I refuse to believe she died for Inside-Out or some reality-TV variant. She didn’t, she couldn’t. It’s dark enough already.’
‘But what about other parts of her life, boyfriends—’
‘She didn’t have any. She worked. That’s all she did.’
‘As far as you know.’
‘The police kept banging on about this, as if we were all stuck in some ghastly Fifties play. I grew up in the Fifties, we really did have secrets then. She lived at home because she liked it. She was saving to buy a flat because she didn’t want to waste money on rent. She talked openly to us about drugs and sex and what have you. We’re all unshockable now. What secrets are left?’
I feel admiration for Mrs Graham, for her certainties, but she’s wrong. There are so many secrets. I doubt she’d be happy about her daughter seeing a married man, for instance, but I don’t push it. The newly bereaved attain a special position with their peers: respected and feared. The doorbell chimes again, louder this time. I’m out of time. ‘Do you want me to get the door on my way out?’
‘Would you?’
‘Of course.’
On the doorstep I pass a big woman with a tan and tight, high-heeled boots. We shake hands and she says she’s Melody’s cousin.
‘She OK?’ she whispers, peering into the house.
‘I’m not sure I can say.’
‘My mum says she’s never cried yet. Not once.’ A streak of mascara pulses down her check. ‘It’s not normal, is it?’ She wipes a manicured finger carefully along her lower lid and examines it for black traces. ‘I mean, how can I cry for Melody if she’s not weeping for her own daughter?’
‘There’s no hierarchy on grief.’
‘There bloody is in this family,’ she adds, sniffing.
I hand her my pack of tissues and walk away towards the Tube. As I turn the corner I check my phone and see I’ve missed some calls and have a message from Livvy. ‘Where R U?’ I break into a run. I need to get back to the office.
25
By the time I get back Livvy has forgotten why she even phoned me. She waves me away with an angry swish of her ponytail as she grabs a phone. The rest of the day passes in a flash and as darkness falls people begin to snap shut laptops and shuffle bags and coats. I prepare to leave and start tidying, wiping the grooves of my keyboard with a tissue. Shaheena passes on her way out. ‘The cleaners do that, you know.’ I nod, embarrassed. Old habits die hard. I’m the last to leave, my guilt at my long lunch break chaining me to my desk for longer than is necessary. I flick the lights off when I get to the door and plunge the corridor into blackness. I hurry blindly forward in the unfamiliar space, a jittery panic making unreasonable inroads into my skull. This building gives me the creeps. I’m relieved when I get outside into the driving rain, which is being thrown up on to the pavements by the rumbling juggernauts. I bend towards home but after a couple of steps I have to turn round. The street looks empty, but a little further on I do it again. Someone is watching me, I can feel it.
I quicken my pace and turn suddenly in the street, weight on my front foot, bag banging my leg. I’d rather confront my fears than suffer any more creeping unease. I pause, uncertain, the rain intensifying the shadows and grimy corners. A dark figure peels itself off a wall and heads my way . . .
‘You’re always so ready for a fight, little one.’ It’s Lex. ‘We need to talk.’
‘Have you spoken to Paul?’ We hurry side by side down the pavement.
Lex laughs. ‘Who, my partner?’ He says this with a sarcastic flourish as the rain pelts down harder. ‘My car’s round the corner. Come on, Kate, let’s get out of the wet.’
‘I need to get home.’ What I mean is, I’m desperate to get home, as soon as I’d left the building my heart and head had turned back to my children, my need to reconnect with them after a long shift.
‘I’ll take you. You must be tired after being in there all day.’ He turns into a side street and beeps open the passenger door of his dark-coloured car. I note the colour match to the vehicle the police are looking for. ‘Come on.’ Something about his manner
makes me reluctant. He’s not a big man but he’s wiry and strong . . . I shake the thoughts away with the splats of rain. I’m being melodramatic and ridiculous. I’ve known this guy for more than ten years, I’m his best friend’s wife. It’s no surprise, considering what’s happened, that he wants to talk.
He slams the car into gear and screeches away as I reach for the seat belt. ‘I thought about coming in to see your new offices.’
‘“New” is stretching the term.’
‘Who’d have thought it, you working for me, Kate. But then I thought, if I walk in there, a potential murderer, I might scare the cavalry – I might make Livvy bolt. But I don’t scare you, do I, Kate?’ I gasp as he swings left straight on to the main road without so much as looking right. ‘And we both know why, don’t we?’
I watch the speedometer move round its dial. ‘How’s your website campaign?’
‘Oh, you shouldn’t waste your money, Kate, by taking a bet; after all, you know I didn’t do it.’
Lex drives right through a junction and we’re chased down the road by the sound of angry horns. I try to remain calm. ‘But how do I know, Lex? Turns out you met her that night, something you forgot to mention before. Why did you do that?’
‘She asked to meet me. Said she wanted to talk over a contract. How was I to know she’d be killed later that night?’
‘Why didn’t you tell the police this right at the beginning? It looks far more suspicious that you held it back.’
Lex snorts. ‘Think you’re a crime expert now, do you? There’s no physical evidence linking me to her—’
‘So you’re in the clear.’ Lex turns the wheel and swerves across two lanes of traffic, heading for a gap in the railing separating the oncoming cars. Or trucks, as I see one slamming on its brakes uselessly in the rain-soaked road. Lex makes the U-bend and we miss each other by inches. I realise the sound coming from my own mouth is a scream. ‘You’re going to get us killed! Stop it now!’
Lex is speeding away from my house, taking us north-west out of London. ‘I’ll stop when I’m ready to stop.’
‘Why are you doing this?’ My legs are rigid against the front of the seat well, bracing myself for the inevitable impact.
‘Now we’re getting somewhere! Why? What’s my motive for being really really, pissed? Let’s talk about motives, Kate. Why do people kill? Passion, or money. Someone set me up, Kate. Someone knew I was meeting her that night, they knew it might be pinned on me. They wanted to fuck me.’
‘But the police haven’t charged you so it didn’t work!’
‘Yet! We know that innocent people are charged all the time. And the motive here is not jealousy or revenge or namby-pamby love, it’s money. Let’s follow the money, Kate. I’m a director at a company that’s being bought in instalments, the first tranche two years ago, a little bit last year, and the big prize, the last instalment, the date of which is coming up in a matter of weeks. The final instalment is when we get some real cash, isn’t it, Kate? It’s when CPTV opens the chequebook and pays us off. But if I’m charged with killing someone my conduct is deemed to be unfit for the office I hold and I can be cut out. Just like that.’ He lifts his hands off the steering wheel and clicks his fingers as the car veers dangerously towards the barrier. ‘I’m classed as a bad leaver.’
‘A what?’
‘I’m defined as a bad leaver and my share of Forwood is no longer mine!’ Lex comes up close behind a car with three people sitting on the back seat. He’s punching the horn and I see the pale ovals of their faces turning through the rain to peer. ‘Twenty fucking years I’ve worked, twenty years I’ve gobbed off – and it pans out like this!’
‘It’s red! Red light, Lex!’ The car in front has changed lanes and we’re racing towards a busy four-way junction. ‘Slow down!’
Lex slams on the brakes and we skid down our lane so sharply I’m flung forward, hard against my seat belt. ‘Know what happens to my forty-five-per-cent share of Forwood?’ He’s leaning in towards me as the smell of burning tyres wafts through the car. ‘It’s divided among the other stockholders.’ We stare at each other in silence. The lights change and a volley of horns boom out behind us as Lex doesn’t move. ‘Why don’t you tell me who they are?’ Someone shouts an obscenity out of their window. ‘You not in the mood for a chat? Let me enlighten you. Paul—’
‘Oh come on!’
‘And you and John.’ Lex lets out a low, cruel laugh. ‘You think I sound ridiculous? I’ll show you ridiculous! You stand to make a stack you never worked for, eh? Unlike me!’ His anger ignites again and he screeches away from the junction. ‘And then today I get a letter from your brother-in-law reminding me of my bad-leaver clauses, just to rub my nose a little deeper in the shit!’
He’s going to kill us both if I don’t get this under control. ‘You’re not being rational, Lex! The police were always going to question you, like they questioned me.’
‘Why did you break into my office, Kate? Which bit of the tale spun by your loving partner didn’t you believe?’ The car goes over a rise and plunges into an underpass. ‘Or maybe, maybe, you weren’t breaking in to find something, Kate! Maybe you broke in to leave something behind. Maybe you and him – and that bloody brother, for all I know – are all in it together.’
‘I don’t have the answer, Lex, there are things that don’t make sense. But I’m trying to find out the truth, and I’m not doing it by burning up the A40 and nearly killing myself! I have as much to lose as you,’ I hear him swear but I press on, ‘In fact I have a lot more to lose than you.’ It’s my turn to be angry now. ‘You stand to lose some cash, I stand to lose . . . everything!’ I tail off, my voice breaking. I turn to look at him defiantly. ‘You know something, Lex? I never give up. With the stakes as high as they are, I’m going to find out the answer, whatever that takes. What I do with the information once I find it is another matter, but I will find it.’
I’m not helping. Lex pushes harder on the accelerator, a smile playing on his lips. ‘Such a grand speech, such noble intentions! You’re a little bloodhound, aren’t you?’ I grow rigid in the ergonomic bucket seat. We fly past a sign indicating that the three lanes are narrowing to two. ‘Sniffing the trail, running after the thrown sticks. It’s a good name for a TV show, Bloodhound. The hit new detective series.’
‘Lex, Lex!’ Our lane is beginning to narrow, I don’t give a fuck about his media imagination now.
He ignores me, carrying on as if in a dream. ‘Bloodhound, the woman who can smell deceit . . . who doggedly—’
I’m not listening but staring at traffic cones and impatient Slow Down messages. ‘Lex! For God’s sake stop!’ He’s run out of road and a van is stopping him moving over. I hear him swear softly until a terrible metal tearing rips through his side of the car and we spin down the dual carriageway, ricocheting off the barrier of the central reservation and spinning across the hard shoulder on to a bank and back again across the road and with each crunch I feel an overwhelming desire to smell my children for the last time because at the moment of reckoning I don’t believe in anything except my love for them, and with each juddering smack my pain at not seeing them again multiplies. Lex is shouting over the squealing of brakes and there are more horns and then as suddenly as it started we career to a stop on a grassy bank, our rear end sticking out into the hard shoulder.
I sit very still, feeling each thankful beat of my heart, taking each breath as if it’s my first. I manage to turn and see car headlights at confused angles and dark shadows running towards us. I understand with a surge of relief that at least we haven’t hit another vehicle. Something warm drips down my temple.
‘Bloodhound. That’s what I’m going to call you from now on, Kate. An idea for just the two of us.’ He laughs sarcastically. ‘It’ll be our little secret. I won’t tell anyone, I promise. I do hope you live up to the name.’
He’s still on TV programmes and my anger explodes. ‘You mad fucker!’ I spit.
‘Yo
u’ve cut yourself.’ He digs in his pocket for something, his eyes never leaving my face.
‘No you’ve cut me! You’ve lost your mind!’
‘What were you looking for in my office, Kate? Come on, Uncle Lex needs to know!’
‘What was I looking for!’ I’m screaming now. ‘You just don’t get it, do you! You, with your one-track mind – fortune this, status that, money this. It’s bullshit! There are a thousand motives you can’t even imagine. And yes, that’s what I was looking for, a reason so powerful it’s worth killing a young woman for. Control. There’s a motive! Or how about shame? Oh, but you’ve never felt that, have you! Jesus, for all I know you killed her because you finally stopped fucking and – horror of horrors – started to trust her and fell in love. And then you tried to kill me!’ I reach over and slap Lex hard across the face as my door is yanked open by some people I can’t focus on and there are screams and intrusive hands on my body.
‘She’s in shock!’ someone shouts.
‘No I’m not.’
Lex pulls out a tissue and holds it on my cut. ‘You need to come clean, Kate, I’m swinging in the wind here! You’re covering for him and I’m going to find out why.’
‘Get them away from the car! It might explode!’ A voice is carried over on the wind.
I almost fall out of the door and walk unsteadily up the bank as Lex stands and leans on the roof of his banged-up top-of-the-range motor. I want to pulverise something with my bare hands but instead start to run away.
‘Help the poor woman!’ a man shouts. I’m almost over the rise when I remember I’ve left my bag – and the information from Melody’s house – in the car. I turn to find Lex chasing me up the hill, my bag in his hand.
‘Give that to me.’
Lex gives me a triumphant look. ‘Maybe I should keep it till you tell me what I want to know.’ He’s panting with the adrenalin of having survived the smash, just like I am.
I hold out my hand. ‘Give. That. To. Me.’
