‘Water?’
Mickey brushed her away with a flutter of fingers but Hannah went to get her some just the same. The kitchen was a mess of cereal bowls and bottles stained with protein shake. She found a clean glass at the back of a cupboard and filled it to the brim.
Back in the living room the country ballad had come to an end. Mickey had fallen asleep, white wine in hand. Hannah took the glass from her and as she covered her with a rug Mickey opened her eyes.
‘He was my responsibility,’ she said, swallowing hard. ‘I knew something was wrong.’ Her eyes drooped. ‘I let him keep going there, alone.’
Hannah presumed Mickey was talking about the undercover officer who had committed suicide at the back end of last year. It was just like Mickey to blame herself. She shushed her back to sleep and then, once she was settled, set to work emptying the house of booze. She glugged the bottles into the sink and then gathered the empties in a black bag, turned off the lights and let herself out. At Mickey’s recycling bin she lifted the lid and dropped the rubbish inside. It landed with a smash, glass on glass, colliding hard with the bags of bottles already there.
Jem
Monday morning.
I have a visitor.
Alina.
I wait inside the cell, my hands gripping the bars, while Mr Dalgleish waves a metal detector wand around her body. It looks like a small black cricket bat and when he swipes it near her hip it makes a high-pitched cheep like a smoke alarm. Alina doesn’t need to be told. She empties her trouser pockets, revealing a phone, lipstick and tissue pack.
‘You’ll get them back at the end,’ he says, holding out a plastic tray.
She hands them over and he scans the rest of her without incident.
Hannah hovers by the kettle in a white vest and denim cut-offs. There are flecks of pink icing in her hair and a smear of buttercream on her cheek. She picks up an empty mug and then puts it down again, as though she’s not sure whether to offer everyone a cup of tea.
Mr Dalgleish gives Alina the all-clear and motions for her to take a seat on one of the chairs arranged in front of the cooker. Once she’s in position I am let out.
I can cover the length of my cell in just one and a half strides and being able to walk those few extra steps toward the chair is luxurious. My quads and hamstrings twitch in pleasure and I have to fight the urge to keep going, to sprint toward the stairs and take them two at a time.
Mr Dalgleish guides me to the seat opposite and goes to sit by the French doors. He has to observe each visit, to make sure she doesn’t try to slip me contraband or break any personal contact rules.
‘Hannah,’ he says when she shows no sign of moving from her spot by the kettle. ‘Some privacy?’
‘Oh.’ She puts down the mug and grabs hold of the pendant she wears. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’
Alina watches her go and turns to me with a smile.
‘Cute.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Girl next door meets Swedish exchange student,’ she teases. She looks over my shoulder, toward the pond and the Heath beyond. ‘You’ve landed on your feet.’
I nod at the cell.
‘Not quite.’
She laughs that bit too loud and I realise she’s relieved, that she was more worried about all this than she’d let on.
Alina and I met working the summer season in Majorca. We were based in the port town of Pollença and spent our nights prowling the promenade or hanging out by the enormous sandcastle sculpture that all the tourists stop to photograph. I’d noticed her around but I preferred to keep to myself. Then one night I stumbled across her outside the disco that overlooked the small outcrop at the far edge of the bay. She’d got herself into a spot so I decided to help out. We became friends soon after.
These days Alina is a single mum to a three-year-old called Franklyn, conceived on a one-night stand with one of the yacht workers who flitted in and out of the port, and so she prefers to work closer to home, in the Square Mile. The City is better money and the regular hours mean she gets to spend weekends with her son. She’s come here on her way in to Bank and she looks the part. Her hair is bouncy with fat curls, her silk blouse soft underneath her suit. I imagine she blends right in.
When I was arrested it was Alina I called. She was the one person I knew I could trust, who would be able and willing to help.
‘I’m a bit ripe, sorry.’ I sniff at my armpits. ‘I only get two showers per week.’
‘I don’t mind.’ She goes quiet then, a spot of pink on each cheek. ‘So.’ Her eyes flick to Mr Dalgleish. The DLOs aren’t supposed to listen in on prisoner visits but of course they do. ‘Any joy?’
‘Not yet.’
She appraises the cell.
‘I really don’t see how—’
‘That’s my problem,’ I say, cutting her off. ‘I’ll figure it out.’
‘Do you even know where it is?’
‘No, but give me time.’
Alina came to visit me often in the Holding Centre. Those conversations were largely unsupervised and there I’d been able to tell her everything. We’d come up with a plan.
‘You know how it is, I take what I can get.’
This is an old joke of ours and we laugh.
‘I heard about the transfer request.’
I smile.
‘The universe finally gave me a break.’
She’s quiet then, thinking.
‘Why not just tell her?’
‘You know why.’
She hears the warning in my voice and sits back. She tucks her hair behind her ear and I notice she’s wearing the pearl earrings I gave her for her birthday that summer.
‘Did you find out anything more?’
I’ve been wanting to broach this since she arrived, holding the question in like a breath.
Her face changes, a tensing around her lips and cheeks.
‘I asked around.’
‘How long?’ She can’t meet my eye. ‘Tell me.’
She finds the sleeve of her blouse underneath her jacket and fiddles with the tiny cloth-covered button.
‘Six months, maybe more.’
I do the maths. Today is 27th September.
‘I have until March.’
‘Or it’s over,’ she says, completing the thought.
I sag, a punctured balloon.
She gets to her feet and smooths down the creases in her skirt. ‘I should go. Work.’
‘You know, this would be a whole lot simpler if you could just get it for me.’
She looks from the cell to Mr Dalgleish.
‘No thanks.’
‘I’ll send you another visitation order in a few weeks.’
Mr Dalgleish looks up.
‘All done?’
He walks me back to the cell, locks the door and then goes to get the tray of confiscated items. He hands it to Alina to empty but she fumbles and the contents flip onto the floor.
‘Sorry.’
Mr Dalgleish crouches down to help her. Alina thanks him and once she has everything back in her pocket he goes to see her out. She gets to the bottom of the stairs, stops and turns round.
‘Got everything you need?’ she asks. Her curls have dropped in the heat and her hair hangs limp against her shoulders. She gives it a beat, making sure I properly understand the question. ‘Toiletries, books? I put some money in your commissary.’
‘I’m good.’
They leave and I force myself to stand still, to ignore my legs’ craving to pace the one and a half steps back and forward. The clock is ticking but I mustn’t rush.
I look at the bags of flour and boxes of eggs Hannah has stacked on the worktop, at the green and gold Fry’s tin on the windowsill behind the sink, at the calendar on the wall. I know it’s an optical illusion, a trick of the brain, but it’s amazing how quickly you stop seeing the metal bars. After a few minutes it’s as if there’s nothing there and I could step forward and go anywhere I liked, into the kitchen, up
the stairs, into the house.
Hannah
Friday night at the Southbank Centre. Hannah took the lift to the roof garden at the top of the Queen Elizabeth Hall and searched the grassy expanse for Rupert’s angular frame. Disturbed by her encounter with Mickey, she’d asked if they could meet. She wanted to share her concerns, to discuss what, if anything, she should do about the DCI’s drinking.
The bar was packed with people basking in the October evening sun, the fruit trees and wildflowers heady with the zing of cold Pimm’s and orange. Even at this hour, it was baking. The warm air shimmered. It made the scene before her look like someone had pressed pause on a videotape.
No one could put an exact date on when the weather changed. It was more of a gradual muddying of the seasons, the prolonged heat creeping across the weeks and months like bindweed, the occasional vicious cold snaps and floods brutal anomalies. It was like living with someone who gradually piles on weight. Even as their flesh grows and bulges you remain oblivious. Being that close, seeing them every day, brings on a kind of blindness, an inability to see things how they really are.
She spotted Rupert at a table in the corner. Shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows, he seemed to have already sorted drinks and kept arranging and rearranging the placement of the flutes and the ice bucket.
She came up on him from behind, placed her hands on his shoulders and kissed him on the cheek.
‘Hannah.’ He fumbled to his feet and, turning round, took in her red and white print maxi dress and milk braids, pinned loosely to the top of her head. He took a breath. ‘You look lovely.’
Hannah had presumed he’d suggested they meet here because it was convenient for after work but now, looking at him, she realised he was freshly showered, his hair combed, chinos pressed.
They sat and he reached for the fizz. She tried to refuse – drinking champagne felt odd; there was nothing to celebrate and it turned what she’d thought was a quick catch-up into something else – but he poured her a glass anyway.
‘I feel bad I haven’t been over more.’ He leaned forward on the table. His forearms were strong, the bones packed with muscle. ‘It must be awful, having him there.’
He squeezed her hand and then, self-conscious, quickly let go.
‘It’s Mickey,’ said Hannah, getting straight to it. ‘She’s drinking again.’ She relayed the events of the other night and told him how she was sure the DCI had been inebriated when she’d met her at work a few weeks back.
‘Shit.’ He puffed his cheeks and then blew out the air. ‘I had no idea.’
‘I was thinking we should call Laramie?’
‘I’m not sure Mickey would appreciate that.’ He paused, thinking. ‘Maybe it’s not as bad as you think, maybe she’s telling the truth. The other night was a one-off. She has it under control?’
Hannah held her silence.
‘OK, you’re right,’ he said. ‘I’ll keep an eye on her. If I think she’s struggling we’ll talk to her direct, not go behind her back to Laramie. Agreed?’
‘Agreed.’ Hannah smiled grimly, relieved to have an ally.
She was wondering if she should bring up the things Jem had said, if she should tell Rupert about the hotel he’d mentioned, about Marzipan Rain, when they became aware of a crowd forming by the wall that overlooked the river. They were quiet, their heads craned in the same direction.
Curious, they grabbed their drinks and went to join them and were rewarded with the sight of three guys parkouring across the concrete below.
Vaulting, swinging, climbing and rolling, they moved as if weightless from the outer curves of the enclosed staircase to the Royal Festival Hall.
One of the trio completed a particularly daring leap and the roof broke into mass applause.
‘Hugo was into that as a kid,’ said Rupert. ‘Loved it. When he got older Dad made him stop, said he needed to focus all his energy on serious climbing.’ He smiled sadly.
‘Does it get easier?’ she said, alluding to Rupert’s grief. ‘Tell me it gets easier.’ This morning she had found herself calculating how many days it had been since John had died.
One hundred and eighty.
Every twenty-four hours a lifetime.
‘When Hugo died it was like falling down a rabbit hole. I’m not sure when you’re supposed to stop falling, but it’s been two years and it hasn’t happened yet.’
His brother’s body was still there on top of the mountain. In the past Rupert had explained that it would be impossible for them to ever bring him home.
He reached in his inside pocket and held something red in the flat of his palm.
‘His climbing knife.’ He angled the handle so she could see the initials – H.C. – embossed in gold. ‘This was the only thing of his they brought back from the expedition. Mum let me have it.’
They looked out at the river, the buildings opposite hazy in the dimming sun.
Rupert placed his hand on her hip and brought her close. Ordinarily Hannah would have pulled away, put some distance back between them, but even once the parkour lot were gone and the crowd dispersed, she stayed where she was. Maybe, she thought, if she stood by him for a while, she could help slow his fall.
Hannah rinsed the last of the pans, set them to dry and got to work unloading the dishwasher. Everything inside was covered in the dusty white coating that builds up when things have been washed and rewashed many times.
Pru hovered by the French doors.
‘They think I can’t see them.’ She held the right arm of her glasses between her fingertips, as if to focus her gaze, and peered at the Heath. ‘Yesterday there was one by the front of the house. Hanging around for hours. Looking to burgle the place, rob us in our sleep.’
Hannah placed a stack of plates in an overhead cupboard and was hit by a waft of rancid air. She searched the kitchen for the source and soon landed on the bin, overflowing with empty milk cartons. A blast radius of sodden teabags covered the nearby floor.
‘How are you for food?’ she said, opening the fridge. A packet of bacon sat on the middle shelf, a head of broccoli, limp and sallow, at its side. ‘Shall I go to the shops for you later?’
Pru nodded absently, her eyes now trained on a bench on the other side of the pond.
‘Ted would know what to do. He’d see them off.’ She pushed her glasses up onto her head and looked around the kitchen as if expecting to see her husband appear. ‘He’s been gone all morning, do you know where he is?’
Hannah stuffed as much of the overflow into the bin bag as she could and drew it shut.
‘He went to post a letter.’
Pru waited until Hannah had set the bag by the door, nodded her approval at a job well done and returned to surveying the Heath.
Pru had lived here for decades and her house had a crumbly, faded grandeur that was tolerated by Kiki Masters and her like because it spoke of a Hampstead gone by. Her kitchen had the same footprint and French doors overlooking the pond as Hannah’s but that was where the similarity ended. In the spot where Jem’s cell sat, a cream Aga sweltered, the splashback covered with colourful tiles collected by Pru and Ted on their travels, and whereas Hannah’s units were uniform white MDF topped with grey Formica, Pru’s were a higgledy-piggledy collection of scrubbed pine, handcrafted shelves and drawers that got stuck whenever you tried to open them. The walls gleamed with copper pans hung in rows, a set of thirty gifted to the couple on their wedding, and a yellowed newspaper cutting detailing Pru’s Channel swim, picturing her limp on the Sangatte shingle, was framed and fixed to the wall above an enormous dining table.
The photo filled Hannah with awe but also fear. She’d never learned to swim, not even the doggy-paddle, and the thought of being alone in open water like that was terrifying. Her parents hadn’t been able to swim either and the single term of obligatory once-weekly school sessions had made little impact. She had tried to learn in her first term at Falmouth; the council pool offered cheap lessons to students. But putting her head
underwater had given her nightmares and after only three sessions she’d stopped, never to return.
John had encouraged her over and over to give it another shot. He’d swum in the Heath’s mixed pond and wanted her to be able to join him. She’d usually refuse but then, when the city boiled, she’d concede and put on her bathing costume underneath her clothes, pack a towel and walk full of good intentions across the scrub to the disc of greeny-brown. She’d be keyed up, certain that this time she was going to go for it, but as soon as she saw the light netted across the water she’d change her mind and by the moment they reached the packed mud she’d have formulated an excuse, a reason, why today wasn’t the day after all.
Whenever this happened, John would carefully adjust the rug on the ground, make sure she was comfortable and then dash off into the pond alone. Hannah had loved it when he resurfaced in the shallows, skin twinkling. After shaking the droplets from his hair, he’d slick it back and then come and join her on the rug, the exertion making his chest barrel in and out.
The bin sorted, she set to work wiping down the draining board and emptying the plug of the translucent scraps of onion that had accumulated since the last day she was here.
Pru had always been house-proud and had had help come once a week for as long as Hannah could remember. But then, a month or so after John died, Hannah had popped over and found the worktops piled with dirty crockery. Pru had grown paranoid the cleaner was stealing and so had taken to following her around the house while she worked. The woman had endured it for months before handing in her notice.
She’d had a word with Pru’s children, Christopher and Annabel, and they’d organised a replacement and that seemed to be that. Christopher lived in Winchester with his wife and four boys and Annabel worked in Paris as a buyer for a department store. Since Pru’s dementia diagnosis she was regularly assessed and, after having the back gate removed and high fences installed to prevent her from getting down to the pond, had been deemed fit to live alone; but then the same thing happened again. After that Christopher and Annabel started making noises about putting their mother into care. Hannah couldn’t bear the thought of Pru being made to leave her home and so when the fourth cleaner in as many weeks walked out after only an hour on the job, Hannah had decided to keep quiet and take on the role unpaid for herself. She already had a spare set of keys for whenever Pru locked herself out, she didn’t mind the hoovering and dusting and besides, these days, being around her neighbour was a kind of respite.
The Captive Page 7
