by Simon Lelic
Sitting in one of two chairs positioned in the alcove, Fleet turned his wedding band over between his fingers. The color of the metal wasn’t dissimilar to the fiery glow that was leaking through the window, though the ring itself was more scratched than Fleet had realized. As a symbol of his and Holly’s marriage, perhaps it was fitting that it should be so scarred. Even the shape of the ring seemed emblematic. The loop was supposed to represent eternity, but futility, in their case, seemed more fitting. Hadn’t their arguments always gone round in circles? And no matter how many times they’d sought to resolve things, they’d always ended up precisely where they’d started.
“Detective Inspector?”
Fleet turned, caught unawares by the voice at the open door. He sat up straighter, and slipped the ring back onto his finger. Another futile gesture, it occurred to him.
“Anne,” he said. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you. And it’s Rob, please.”
The hotelier was wearing pajama bottoms and a hoodie, her hair loose across her shoulders. It was such a change from her customary primness, Fleet almost hadn’t recognized her. Certainly she looked younger than he’d assumed her to be. Perhaps early rather than late forties. Her coloring—dark hair, gray eyes—was similar to Holly’s.
Anne took a step into the room. Her feet were bare, Fleet noticed. She had a tattoo that might have been a feather at the fold of her left ankle—another surprise.
“You didn’t wake me,” she said. “I didn’t even hear you come in. Would you like a light on?” Rather than switching on the overhead light, she moved to a corner and turned on a side lamp. Instantly the room felt warmer. It was the guests’ lounge, Anne had informed Fleet when he’d checked in, with half a dozen comfortable armchairs scattered around the room in pairs, and a television in the corner farthest from the door that Fleet had never seen switched on. In fact, he’d never seen any of the chairs occupied either, though he knew there were other guests staying at the hotel.
“What time is it?” said Fleet, even as he moved to check his watch. The hands on the dial showed him it was just before midnight. He’d left the station not long after ten. “God, sorry. I only meant to sit here for a minute.”
Anne tucked her hands into her armpits. “Tough day?” she said. Then, flushing, “You don’t need to answer that. They’re all tough at the moment, I would imagine.”
Fleet winced his agreement.
“I actually came down to get a drink,” Anne said. “A proper drink, I mean. Would you like one?”
Once again Fleet looked at his watch. “Well, I . . .”
Anne freed her hands and made a flustered motion. “I’m interrupting. And you already told me you weren’t much of a drinker.” Fleet had, when he’d checked in and Anne had offered him directions to the local amenities, which in this area amounted to a corner shop, a café and a pub.
Anne smiled awkwardly and turned away.
“You know what?” Fleet said, as she retreated toward the door. “I’d love a drink. I could do with something to help me sleep.”
Anne studied him for a moment, as though testing his sincerity. “Really? You’re certain you don’t want to be left alone?”
“Really,” Fleet assured her.
She smiled. “Brandy OK?”
“Whatever you’re having.”
She wasn’t gone long. When she returned she had a tumbler in each hand.
“May I?” she said, gesturing to the armchair opposite Fleet’s.
“Please,” he said, making room.
“To be honest, I’m not much of a drinker either,” said Anne, when she was settled. She’d tucked her feet underneath herself on the seat.
“So what’s the occasion?” said Fleet, raising his glass at her and then taking a sip. He didn’t care much for the taste, never really had, but the burn was exquisite.
Anne gave a lopsided shrug. “The same as you, I suppose. Can’t sleep. I rarely can when the place is empty.”
She tested her own drink and gave a slight grimace.
“Empty?” said Fleet. “I thought there was a couple in the room opposite mine? And I saw a third room key missing from the hooks.”
Anne smiled. “Did anyone ever tell you you’d make a good detective?” Her eyes sparkled in the lamplight. “They checked out this afternoon,” she said. “Both couples. The weather, you know?”
Fleet joined her in looking out of the window. If he was honest, he was surprised anyone would want to visit the town in the first place, rain or no rain. But with the weather what it was, and the beach no longer an attraction, there was certainly nothing else to keep them here. Other than morbid fascination, of course, which Fleet didn’t doubt would bring its own glut of visitors soon enough.
“Are you missing her?” said Anne, and for a moment Fleet’s stomach gave a lurch. “Or him, I suppose I should say. These days, I mean.”
Which threw Fleet completely. “Sorry, I . . .”
“Your wedding ring. I saw you playing with it. I’m prying again, I know, but it’s either that or ask you about your investigation. Or I suppose we could make small talk about the weather.”
Fleet looked down at his left hand. With relief, he realized, because he’d assumed at first that Anne had been asking him about someone else.
“It’s a her,” he said, with a smile. “And I do miss her. Although I should probably be getting used to it.” He looked up. “We’re separated. Soon to be divorced.”
Anne surprised him with her reaction. She didn’t seem concerned that she’d put her foot in it, or offer him the customary condolences. Instead, “I’d kind of figured,” she said.
“You had?”
Anne took a drink and shrugged. “I had you pegged as either a divorcée or a widower. My money was on widower.”
“What made you think that?” A widower, thought Fleet. Good grief. Was that really the persona he projected? At thirty-six years old.
“The fact that you’re staying here, for one thing,” said Anne. “And I field your phone calls, remember? If you were living with someone, I assume I would have spoken to them by now.”
Fleet couldn’t argue with the logic. “Maybe you missed your calling,” he said. “It seems I’m not the only detective in the room.”
Anne smiled at the drink in her lap. Sadly, Fleet thought.
“I almost did join the police force, as it happens. A long time ago now.”
“Oh?”
“But it was only to get back at my dad. A threat because he was such a bloody crook. Only small fry by your standards, I expect. Although everyone’s small fry in this town.”
Fleet gave a sniff at that.
“Anyway, my dad—he had a finger in whichever pie was cooking. A touch of fraud, a spot of fencing. He brought the money in, I went to school and ran the household, from the point my mother left us when I was twelve. That was the deal, until one day I came home and found him at the kitchen table with a set of scales and a bowl of white powder.”
“I’m guessing he wasn’t baking a cake,” said Fleet.
Anne laughed. “Now that would have been a shock.” She ran a finger around the rim of her glass. “I was sixteen by then,” she went on, “and I’d already seen what drugs had done to some of my friends at school. Not friends, really, but I knew them, and I wasn’t having any part of it. Because I knew my dad, and I knew he’d be looking for me to act as his little gofer. So I told him to flush it down the toilet or I’d go to the police.”
“How did he react to that?”
“I went to bed that night with a fat lip. But the next day I came home from the careers office with a brochure and an application form, and left it filled out on the kitchen table for him to find. I was serious, too. I would have joined. And when he confronted me about it the next evening, my dad saw that, too.”
“So what did he d
o?”
“He went straight,” said Anne. “To the coach station, that is. Took what he needed to and left. Which is how I ended up here.”
Fleet frowned his confusion.
“My grandmother owned this place originally. My mum’s mum, who’d disowned my mother when she’d run out on us, and had always loathed my dad. So she was only too pleased to take me in. I had to do my bit—by the end it was just me and her running things—but nothing I wasn’t used to doing at home, back on the other side of town. And when my grandmother died, she left the place to me. The mortgage as well, but that’s a different story.”
Anne took a long swallow of her brandy, almost draining the glass. She winced.
“And that, in a nutshell, is me,” she said, clearly trying not to cough. “It’s not even the short version, either.” She waved a hand. “There are a few car-wreck relationships I could throw in, I suppose, which Freud would probably have found interesting but most normal folk would assume were par for the course. For a forty-three-year-old spinster like me, I mean, whose only excitement these days is an occasional illicit shot of brandy.”
Fleet watched her as she finished her drink. He wondered whether it was the alcohol that was making her so open, or—more likely, he thought—the loneliness.
“So, how about you?” said Anne. She set her glass on the windowsill and folded her arms, wriggling to make herself comfortable.
“Me?”
“I’ve shared my story,” said Anne. “What’s yours?”
Now it was Fleet’s turn to drink. “You must have heard by now,” he said. “If you didn’t know already.”
“I’ve heard rumors,” Anne admitted. “But I’ve been living in this town long enough not to believe anything that carries on the wind. Mainly because it has a habit of changing direction.”
As if on cue there was a gust of rain against the window, the breeze across the harbor gaining strength. Fleet thought about Mason: the way the community, one minute, had been ready to lynch him, but were now up in arms about the supposed incompetence of the police. Although maybe they were right on both counts.
“The stories I heard . . . they were to do with your . . . sister, was it?” said Anne. “Was she older or younger?”
Fleet felt a tightening within him.
“Younger,” he said, and that was all.
Anne took the hint. “Sorry. Too far. I didn’t mean to open up old wounds. And anyway, I was actually asking about . . .” She tipped her head at his wedding ring. “You know. Unless that’s an open wound, too. Shit, just tell me to mind my own business. You probably only had a drink with me in the first place to be polite!”
Ordinarily Fleet would have shied away from both topics, even in the safety of his thoughts, but there was something about Anne’s directness that he couldn’t help responding to. Holly was direct, too. Painfully so, sometimes. In fact, it was the very characteristic he’d been most attracted to the first time he and Holly met, six years ago now, not long after Fleet had made inspector. He’d been asked to give a presentation on personal safety at Holly’s university campus, aimed primarily at female members of staff. She’d come up to him afterward and challenged him on why the police had considered it appropriate to pick a man to deliver the lecture to a group of women. To which he’d had no response, other than to apologize, at which point she’d asked him if he’d let her buy him a cup of coffee. The story they’d come to tell—only partially in jest—was that Fleet had been too intimidated to say no.
“It’s fine,” said Fleet to Anne. He splayed his hand and examined his wedding ring, then folded it away in his fist. “My wife and I . . . it turned out we were less compatible than we thought, that’s all.”
Anne waited for him to go on.
“It was my fault,” he said. “I wasn’t honest, with myself as much as with her.”
He sensed Anne shift slightly.
“I don’t mean . . . What I mean is, Holly had different . . . expectations. Of what our marriage would lead to. And I guess for a long time I was guilty of letting her live with the misconception.”
“I’m not sure I’m following,” Anne said.
Fleet looked her in the eye. “She wanted—wants—a child. I don’t. Can’t, won’t, however you want to put it.”
Anne raised her chin slightly. There was a gleam of understanding in her eye. She’d clearly heard more details about Fleet’s past than she’d let on.
“So really, it’s all one open wound,” Fleet said, smiling but feeling no humor. “My past, I mean. My marriage. It wouldn’t take Sigmund Freud to join the dots.”
He finished his brandy in a swallow and, taking his time, set his glass down on the windowsill next to Anne’s.
They sat in silence for a moment, before Anne rose and left the room. She returned with the bottle of brandy, and poured them each another measure.
She clinked her glass against Fleet’s, still in its place on the sill, then folded herself back into the armchair.
“It’s none of my business,” she said, testing the silence. “But did you try . . . talking to someone?”
“A therapist, you mean?” said Fleet. He nodded. “Holly insisted, so we went to a couples counselor.”
“And what did they say?”
Fleet reached for his drink. “He said it sounded like there was more than one thing going on. That there was clearly a lot we needed to work out.” He shook his head. “All very insightful, I’m sure, and Holly was keen to go back, but as far as I was concerned, no amount of talking was going to alter the simple facts. And not having children . . . it was tearing Holly apart.”
Anne nodded. “I get that,” she said. “I really do.”
Fleet looked across at her, even as she dropped her gaze. He wondered about those car-wreck relationships she’d mentioned, about what choices—what sacrifices—she’d had to make in her past. And whether, given the life she had now, she considered them worth it.
They finished their drinks. After a while, Anne stood up. She looked out at the rain for a minute, and Fleet watched her reflection in the glass.
“Well,” she said, when she turned. “I think I’ll go up to bed.”
She met Fleet’s gaze, and allowed her hand to rest on his shoulder. There was a pause.
“Thank you,” said Fleet. “For the company. If it’s OK with you I might sit here for a while. This case, you know? It’s hard to switch off.”
Anne smiled at him. She withdrew her hand.
“Of course,” she said. “Don’t sit up too late.” And she left Fleet looking at himself in the darkened window.
DAY EIGHT
“SOMETHING WRONG WITH your neck, boss?”
Fleet was later into the station than he’d intended. Nicky was already at her desk, in the area of the open-plan office that had been cleared to accommodate Fleet and his team. About half of the officers under Fleet’s command had been seconded here, just like Fleet himself. The rest were locals, more accustomed to working pub brawls than murder inquiries, but diligent enough, from what Fleet had seen so far. Of them all, Fleet knew only Nicky well. His specialty in finding missing persons meant Fleet himself was something of a stray (a “bloodhound without a leash,” Holly had quipped once), but officially he and Nicky belonged to the same branch of CID. He requested her presence on his assignments often, because he knew her work and he trusted her judgment. Plus, unlike him, she was a people person, and she had a knack for smoothing potentially fraught relationships with the locals, who sometimes resented outsiders stepping on their size twelves.
Fleet had a hand cupped around his neck as he walked in, though it was in fact a headache that was bothering him more. Inwardly he’d blamed the brandy, but he was at a stage where it was hard to tell what was down to the alcohol and what was a symptom of his lack of sleep.
“It’s nothing,” he said in resp
onse to Nicky’s question. “Fell asleep in an awkward position, that’s all.” He decided not to mention the armchair, or the fact that Anne had found him there at half past six this morning, his head back, his mouth open, and his brandy glass still balanced on his lap. “At this rate I should probably give you a discount on your room fee,” she’d joked. “It doesn’t feel right charging you summer rates when you barely ever seem to use the bed.” And then, to Fleet’s everlasting gratitude, she’d swapped his empty brandy glass for a pint of cold water.
“Sorry I’m late,” Fleet said to Nicky. “Breakfast with the super. And, it turned out, the Crown Prosecution Service.”
“The CPS?” said Nicky. “I thought lawyers only ate brunch.”
“It seems they’re happy to get up in time for breakfast if someone else is paying,” answered Fleet. “Though I admit it was strange watching one drink something other than blood.”
Nicky made a bat face, fluttered her hands like wings. Fleet gave a pissed-off laugh. He didn’t mind the superintendent parading before the television cameras, even taking credit that wasn’t his due. What he objected to was being asked to run an investigation, and then to find that the very person who’d appointed him had seen fit to undermine his authority. Apparently Burton had taken the liberty of briefing the CPS on everything they had against Mason Payne. Which remained thin, in Fleet’s opinion, and he could tell the government lawyer had felt the same. But Burton had obviously bullied the man before Fleet had arrived, and the lawyer had confirmed that the CPS would in theory be willing to proceed with a prosecution. At which point Burton had looked at Fleet as though he’d done him a personal favor, on the level of saving his career.
“As for the situation in the woods,” the lawyer had gone on, “I understand the picture there remains hazy. You’ve got a dead body, and a weapon, but nothing much more conclusive than that. Yes, Payne’s fingerprints are on the knife, but there are at least two other sets on there as well, not to mention the prints that are too distorted to identify. And there’s nothing definitive to say the crimes are connected. As such, even manslaughter would be a stretch. But if you really want to go down that route, it would be helpful if we could show the jury Sadie’s body.”
