Father Joe Riberra came to visit, all eaten up with guilt.
“I should have just gone to the police,” he berated himself, “but Adam had entrusted me with those tapes, and it seemed like it would be some kind of a betrayal just to run to the police. I don't know what I was thinking of.”
Lorna was there at the time. She told him I had only myself to blame.
“You're only human,” she said in her beautiful voice, “we all do the best we can.”
Riberra looked properly at Lorna then, and I could see that he noticed for the first time the halo of golden red ringlets and the luminous porcelain skin. They have spoken since on the telephone, and I suspect they may have met, but that's another story.
David, Adam's brother, brought the children more academic journals to tear up and showed them how to make paper airplanes. My mother had a talk with Norma and Harold Wills too. Several talks, I suspect. Then one day they arrived at my bedside, contrite. After an awkward minute or so of groveling apologies, Harold elbowed his wife in her ribs, and she embarked on a little speech.
“I'll understand entirely if you say no,” Norma said, “but we would love to be able to help with the children. I mean we'd love to see them, but we'd love to help you out too. We've been thinking about it, and we'll understand absolutely if you don't want to see us, although perhaps we could just come and collect them sometimes and deliver them back, and you really wouldn't have to see us at all …”
My mother and I both gazed at Norma in amazement. She was practically on her knees in this orgy of self-flagellation. I looked to my mother for help, but she was leaving this one up to me.
“Perhaps one day you can come around and spend some time with all of us, so the twins see us all together and know we're all…” I nearly choked and had to try again, “know we're all … a family.” I got it out at last, and they were bowled over, thanking me as they retreated out of the door, afraid to stay longer in case I changed my mind. Behind their backs, my mother rolled her eyes.
Jane came one day and took Hannah and William to the playground and returned with them as victorious as if she had scaled Everest. She came back a week later with Quentin in tow and did it again. When she brought them back the second time she came in to see me and confided that she and Quentin were thinking of having a baby because Hannah and William were so sweet. Which they were. Both on their feet, hurtling around, bottoms wiggling with the sheer joy of mobility.
“Actually we're doing more than think about it,” Jane said, and roared with laughter.
“Very wise,” I told her weakly.
Three times the front doorbell has rung, and that has been followed by a low conversation downstairs involving a male voice. Each time, shortly afterward Carol has come up to my room with a bunch of lilies. The first time this happened I thought they were from Finney and seized the card, only to drop it with alarm when I saw that it bore the words “With best wishes for your rapid recovery, Gilbert.” I have not encouraged him, and nor have I told Carol to turn my father away. I accept his flowers. I notice he has never come to the house when my mother is around and realize that one day when he comes to call it will be me who opens the door to him. I will cross that bridge when I come to it.
Next week I'm going back to work. My head has healed and my hair has grown back, but it's still short, and a great white streak has appeared. I've dyed the streak blond, because I'm not ready to go gray. My first outing has been to buy a new wardrobe for my new life. When I look in the mirror I think I look strong. Ready for anything. There is no spare flesh on me, and when I look into my eyes I see little in the way of frivolity there. I'll have to work on that.
The editorial pages did a 180-degree turn in the space of twenty-four hours when it became clear that I was not a murderess, and the Corporation got a beating for not giving me their full support. As the story emerged, with the details of the death of Sean Morris, Maeve clung to me for dear life. If she could show herself to be on the side of the wronged party, that is me, her career would survive. I let her cling and exploited it ruthlessly. She agreed I could return to work on full pay, first two days, rising slowly to three, four, perhaps five days a week if and when I felt able, and I had carte blanche to make pretty much whatever documentary films I wanted.
“Perhaps you could do a series on miscarriages of justice,” said Maeve helpfully, her eye on the ratings.
“Ballantyne's World,” I suggested drily, and she muttered something under her breath and changed the subject.
Now, a week before I return to work, I am moving home, out of my little nest and into Adam's flat. The Carmichaels—those who are left of them—have already sold up and moved to a house in the country. Richard has dropped by a few times over the last few months, and so has Kyle, but always separately. Richard has brought books and magazines and Kyle has brought me chocolates. I had one long talk with Richard. He is not a happy man, but he has become more settled, more tranquil, for the sake of Kyle. He is sad that his wife's reputation has been so battered, but he is still proud of her. Kyle is having a tough time with his mother's suicide. For a while there was talk of him moving back to live with his real father, but Richard seemed glad when he decided in the end that he preferred to stay where he was. Richard wants him to move to a more supportive school and to get him specialist help. George has been in trouble at school for drunkenness, but he is a kind older brother to Kyle.
With Dan gone too, the street is empty of my ghosts, but I've been having nightmares about that night, about the whispers in the wind and Paula's fall. I have a private theory, that if I heard a voice that night just before she fell, it was the voice of Paula herself shouting into the storm, declaring her guilt to the world. She needed to do it, and she did it standing on the balcony before she threw herself off. It was, I like to think, her last confession. A confession not to God, but to humanity.
I can't go on having nightmares. I know I need to go. I need to leave the security of my hibernation and reclaim my place in the world. Adam's flat will be a new start. Carol will come with us. She's agreed to live in for the next year, to help me with the children while I find my feet. Jane thinks it weird that I should go and live in Adam's home, and of course it has occurred to me that one way or another he will still be there, but I trust he will be a friendly ghost, and we should all probably get to know him. Adam was far from perfect, but he was, after all, Hannah and William's father.
The moving men, all of them Australian, are just about done. My life is in boxes. The children are at Norma and Harold's for the day. My only worry about them being with Adam's parents is that they always come home on such a sugar high that it's impossible to get them to bed, but in the scale of things, a sugar high does not rank as a problem. I'm standing in the hallway trying not to get in the way of the movers. The front door is wide open and D.C. Mann appears there, except that now she's a sergeant.
There is nothing strange about her visit. She has come here often over the past few months. There was a time when they didn't think I would be able to testify at Suzette's trial, and Mann was charged with monitoring my mental health—she and a battery of psychiatrists. She also filled me in on the life and times of D.C.I. Finney. She told me one day how his wife walked out on him, to go and live with her boss in Manchester. Another day she told me about the case that got Finney in trouble a year ago. It had indeed involved another woman, and one Finney had been fond of, but this one had been seventy years old, a woman who had been beaten up in her own home by her nephew. “It wasn't,” Mann said carefully, determined that I should understand, “at all a romantic thing. He just liked her and bent the rules to make sure she was okay.” Now, whenever she gets the chance, she tells me little stories, and the point is always the same: Finney is a good man and he is a lonely man. All this I knew. I like to hear the stories, but in all this time Finney has never been to see me.
Mann comes in without knocking, and squeezes against the wall while two of my Australians stride by, boxe
s of books on their shoulders, biceps bursting. She flashes a grin at one of them, then looks over the scene of devastation. With my furniture gone the house looks grubby.
“Do you have time for a walk?” she asks me.
I know this means there is news. I tell my men I'm taking a break, and go out into the early summer sun. I fall into step beside her.
“Sennet's been detained in Wales,” she tells me, “and he's talking.”
“You mean he's made a deal. Let me guess—he won't be charged with supplying the drugs that killed Sean Morris?”
“It would have been almost impossible to make it stick. He claims Morris brought his own drugs, and he says he didn't pay Morris for shooting up on film—and since Morris dropped dead before any money could change hands, that's technically true. We've got Paula's account of what happened, but she's dead.”
“And the cash gone from her account for the blackmail,” I said. “Surely that's proof of something?”
“Could have been charitable donations. Anyway, the point is Stein, Sennet, whatever you want to call him, is giving us what we need to nail Suzette's motive for killing Adam. He's going to describe how Morris died. He heard Suzette swear Paula and Adam to secrecy in the hotel bar that night. He heard the row over what should happen to the film. Adam promised to stay silent about Morris's death, but only if he got the tape. He promised to destroy it.” Mann trailed off and sighed. She loved her story, how it grew and made more sense with every fact she uncovered, but she hated this bit. “Why did Adam want the tape at all? That's the bit I don't get,” she said. “Why say you'll stay silent but preserve the evidence? It doesn't make sense.”
It did to me. No real journalist can bear to destroy the historical record. You can bury it, you can hide it for a thousand years, but destroy it and you'll be hit by a thunderbolt. Besides, maybe Adam knew that even if he was prepared to stay silent about Morris's death in the short term, in the long term he might change his mind. Adam was a pragmatist. Never burn your bridges. I guessed the only reason he'd agreed to stay silent at all was out of loyalty to Paula, and perhaps to Suzette too. By all accounts Suzette and Adam had indeed been having a relationship, as Suzette had told me, but their friends and colleagues agreed they had not been seen together after the documentary had been abandoned.
Mann went on talking, as if reciting by heart the facts of the case. “Then on the day of Paula's funeral Suzette overheard you telling Finney that Adam was coming to see you. Suzette knew Adam was going through hell after Paula killed herself. She had watched him walk out of Paula's funeral. She must have known what was going through his head. Maybe they even talked about it. She must have thought he was about to bare his soul to you. She drove over to your house in her own car. She was wearing her hair up, covered in a knitted hat, with a scarf over half her face, a basic disguise, nothing fancy. She probably told herself she was going to confront him, or just scare him. In fact she would probably have killed him in her own car. Then she got lucky. She saw yours and recognized it. She parked her own in the next street, tried the door of yours, it opened. You'd even left the keys in the ignition. Well, we won't go over just how stupid that was.”
“Thank you.”
“We've got a witness now, who saw Suzette stop by your car. She got in. She was wearing gloves, but when she adjusted the seat to reach the steering wheel she cut her hand on that bit of metal on the floor. She mopped up the blood with a paper hanky, then for some reason she got careless. Perhaps she saw Adam walking along the street, getting ready to cross the road in front of her. She dropped the tissue. We've got her. She must have thought she could throw us off the scent by trying to frame you.”
“She was right,” I pointed out, but Mann wouldn't be led down that road. She returned to her story.
“She thought she was getting away with it, and then Michael Amey rings her, trying to track down Ned Sennet after Bovin called him. Amey is all heated up, and he tells her of Bovin's allegations that Sennet had dealt drugs. Suzette panics. She's totally paranoid by now. She returns to Cornwall to try to find out what is going on. Well, the rest you know only too well.”
I sighed. I wanted to go home, to build my new home around me. I'd been through this a million times. Suzette's trial had been hanging over me ever since my mother told me she had been picked up trying to board a plane to New York the day after she attacked me and left me for dead. It was clear to me that Suzette was effectively out of control by the time she killed Adam. It was a risky, opportunistic murder, panicked and last-minute and ill thought-out. Then, when she attacked me, she hadn't even stopped to make sure I was dead.
“I'm glad you got Dan,” I said, “but I hate to think of him walking away from this.”
Mann and I had walked by this time all the way up and all the way down the street. She nodded at the estate agent's sign outside the front door.
“Did you get a good price?” she asked.
“Not bad,” I said. But I'd taken the first offer I'd got. I hadn't the heart for a hard sell, and when the surveyor came around I came clean and told him the roof leaked. Still, once I'd paid off the mortgage, the rest was profit. With the legacy of Adam's flat I could see light at the end of the financial tunnel.
I was back at my house, and Mann said she'd come in for a cup of coffee to get a better look at the Australians, but as we were about to walk inside another car pulled up, and her face broke into a broad grin.
“Hello, sir,” she hailed him.
Finney wound down the window and gave her a lopsided smile. I could have sworn he blushed.
Mann pulled a face at me.
“I'll be off then,” she said.
Finney and I watched her go. He looked over at me, but he didn't get out and my heart twisted. I walked over to the car.
“You're going,” he said.
“Not far.”
He nodded. Then he reached behind him and picked a bunch of red roses off the backseat. He handed them through the window to me.
“For the new house,” he said.
“You haven't been to see me. All this time.”
He shook his head, apparently incapable of speaking. He stared straight ahead. I looked back at the house, but it was no time to invite anyone in. I walked around the car, opened the passenger door, and sat down beside him, roses on my lap. I could feel the thorns on my thighs.
He turned toward me. He reached out and touched my short hair.
“You're blond.”
“In parts,” I said. “I heard they have more fun.”
We smiled at each other then, shy at first, then just sheer happy. He stretched his hand, palm upward, toward me, and I put my hand in his. His fingers tightened around mine. I leaned back against the headrest. I was sitting in a police car, double-parked in the middle of a south London street, and I was home.
“I can't mess things up again,” he said. “I'm off the case, but the defense could still make something of it. So could the press.”
“You're here today.”
“I wanted to wish you well. With work and …” His voice trailed off. “Well, just with everything.”
We sat in silence. The sun was setting over the rooftops, but the dusk was warm and slow. The Australians lugged the last box into their truck and slammed the doors. They waved at me and shouted that they'd see me tomorrow morning, then they beeped their horn in farewell and my belongings bumped off down the street. We sat in silence for a while longer.
Suzette's trial would not go away. Even after it was over, it would stay with me forever, like Adam's death and Paula's before that. Hard, dark moments in my life—but I would not let my life, or Hannah's, or William's, be lived in gloom.
“When the trial's over,” I said, “you could give me a couple of weeks. Then you could call me, and we could have dinner. If you wanted to. Or we could take the kids somewhere.”
He breathed in deeply.
“Dinner sounds good,” he said.
I nodded.
&nb
sp; “To me too.”
“I would need your new number,” he said.
So I wrote it for him in his notebook, the number I had called and called on the night of Adam's death, and Finney took it and put it in his jacket pocket.
“I won't lose it,” he said.
“Don't,” I told him. I leaned over and kissed him lightly on his cheek, then opened the door and got out. He sat immobile for several seconds, looking out at me and smiling. Then he raised his hand in farewell, and he drove away.
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Catherine Sampson!
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Out of Mind
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Chapter 1
WHEN I awoke the twins were laying quietly in the patch of sunlight at the foot of my bed. I pretended to be asleep and through half-closed eyes watched them squatting, bottoms stuck out, in their pajamas. Hannah and William are three years old. Hannah has the willpower of a Sherman tank and William the devastating cunning of a stealth bomber. They were sorting through my jewelry box, draping strings of beads around their necks. William had a bangle dangling from one ear, and Hannah had devised for herself a crown. Once in a while, Hannah would thwack William, and he would obediently hand over whatever treasure she coveted, then steal it back when she wasn't looking. They were so busy that they had forgotten even to demand food and drink.
Their father, Adam, was murdered nearly two years ago and anyway was never really a father to them. Perhaps, I thought wistfully as I watched them play, this was what parenting would be like as they grew older. They would require only the occasional meal or dose of moral guidance, and I could recline on the sofa and admire them as they quietly bathed and dressed themselves and bent their heads dutifully over their homework.
Half an hour later, when Finney arrived, Hannah was sitting stark naked on the stairs and screaming, and William was clinging to my leg, trying to pull me toward his train set. Finney took in the scene in one sweep of the eyes, settling on. Hannah to give her a look he would usually reserve for the drunk and disorderly.
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