by John Harvey
'Get shot of her?'
'To the aunt, like he said.'
'There was no aunt.'
'How was I to know that?'
'You didn't care.'
'I did what I could.'
'You could have taken her there and then. Taken her yourself.'
Jones shook his head. 'I'd got myself too involved already.'
'I'll bet,' Will said sourly.
'What the hell d'you mean by that?'
'Whatever you want.'
The two men glared at one another in pent-up anger. Twenty years younger, no, ten, Jones would have come for him, Will knew, and the warrant card in his pocket would have been no defence.
'Will,' Helen said. 'A word.'
Reluctantly, Will turned away.
Helen walked till she was out of earshot and waited for him to follow. 'You think Roberts could have brought her here? Beatrice?'
'It's possible.' He looked around as, with a loud raucous caw, a crow rose up on the wind. 'If he did, where is she now?'
'The ground in the corner there, near the rubble. It looks as though it's been disturbed.'
'Animals? Foxes?'
'Maybe. But if they were digging down, what were they digging for?'
'Okay. Let's get a search team out here. Dogs. See what they can find.'
There were two crows now, then three, circling above them on the air.
70
The dogs homed in on two locations: the one Helen had noticed, amongst the debris of the building that had mostly fallen in; the other at the rear, amidst what had, presumably, once been a garden and was largely overgrown now with weeds. Will and the crime scene manager walked the ground, discussing priorities: the interior site would be examined first, bricks and rubble carefully removed before Scene of Crime officers in coveralls and surgical gloves started, cautiously, to dig.
It might be possible, in time, to divert some of the team to the second site, so as to begin work there. The entire area had been cordoned off and a white tent erected around the immediate location of the search.
A small generator had been brought in to ensure power was available; lights already rigged.
It was going to be a long day, a long night.
Will called Lorraine twice in the afternoon to establish that she and the children were all right. Helen had accompanied Samuel Jones back to the central police station and was interviewing him again under caution.
'When do you think you'll be back?' Lorraine asked, the second time he rang.
It was impossible to say.
'Later, if I can. I'll do my best.' Even as he said the words, he knew it was less than likely. If a discovery were made, he wanted to be there when it happened.
He spoke briefly to Jake, listened to Susie breathing, and broke the connection. Twenty minutes later, after checking with the senior officer in Ely, he called Parkside and talked to Jim Straley.
'Jim, a favour. The local nick hadn't reckoned on sending anyone out to babysit Lorraine and the kids beyond midway through the evening. Presumed I'd be back by then. Can you organise someone from your end?'
'No need. I'll get up there myself.'
'You're sure?'
'Sure. You want me there for when?'
'Close to nine as you can.'
'Okay, not a problem.'
'Thanks, Jim. I owe you one.' Pulling his coat collar up against the burgeoning wind, Will moved back towards the centre of the site.
'Police investigating the disappearance of the schoolgirl, Beatrice Lawson, are understood to have begun searching the grounds of two long-abandoned farm workers' cottages in the vicinity of...'
Ruth pressed the preset button on the radio and the news-reader's voice gave way to a swirl of strings, a melody she instantly recognised as coming from the final movement of Tchaikovsky's 6th Symphony, the Pathétique.
Instantly, she switched it off.
Better the silence than that.
Anita Chandra had rung them earlier to prime them on this new development. 'I just wanted you to be aware,' she said. 'In case the media bump it up to be something more than it is. At the moment there's nothing definite to link what's going on to Beatrice, whatever the press might say, nothing at all. But if anything does emerge you'll be the first to know.'
The first to know—she had meant to be reassuring, Ruth understood. The first to know whatever was discovered out in that barren place.
Meanwhile, she moved aimlessly from room to room, avoiding Andrew and the look of helplessness on his face; at least, now her parents had returned to Cumbria she didn't have to cope with their near-silent presence, the assumption—clear in their eyes, but never spoken—that Beatrice was already dead. So she made yet another cup of tea she would forget to drink, picked up this book, then that, and set them both down, unread, while, beyond her sight, the search went on.
Men and women—she supposed there were women—their bodies as covered as if they were contaminated themselves, were down on their hands and knees, no more than an arm's length apart, gently lifting up soil, depositing the least thing suspicious into some sterile plastic bag. She had seen it many times, in so-called entertainment programmes and on the television news. That business out in Jersey, the former children's home, and then the body of that poor girl that had been discovered in the back garden of her killer's house down by the south coast. All so familiar...
It was a little over a week since Beatrice had disappeared. By six o'clock that evening it would be exactly eight days.
What if her parents were right and she would never see her daughter alive again?
She knew how that felt.
She went to the living-room window and looked out. All that was visible was her own reflection, pressed back upon the glass. Slowly, silently, she began to cry.
***
Lorraine scraped what Jake had left of his pasta supper into the bin and ran the bowl beneath hot water, rinsing it clean. There had been a time when she would decant all of the children's leftovers, cover them with cling film and put them in the fridge for another day. Of course, what happened was that five days later she found them pushed to the rear and lightly mouldering, and got angry with herself for not making use of them when she could. Now such providential days were over. Whatever was left on their plates, dumped and gone. Move on.
She looked at the clock: Will wouldn't be home now, she was sure. Walking away from a potential crime scene where a body might be found—Lorraine smiled—she knew him better than that.
Both children had gone down remarkably easily; the fact that Will had spoken to them on the phone making his absence at bedtime easier to bear. Before Lorraine had finished reading to them, Susie's eyes had closed and even Jake's had blinked shut once or twice.
All had been silent since.
In the kitchen, she turned the pages of a magazine. Recipes she would never make, clothes she would never wear. When the doorbell rang, she jumped.
Through the security spyhole Will had insisted on being fitted when they first moved in—'Just in case the natives aren't friendly'—she could see the uniform of the officer outside.
'Only me, Mrs Grayson,' he said, smiling as she opened the door. 'By rights, I ought to be getting off now. Gone nine. Replacement's comin' up from Cambridge. Held up, maybe. I could hang on for a bit if you'd like.'
'No, it's okay. We'll be fine.'
'Long as you're sure.'
Lorraine made sure the door was locked and bolted after he'd gone. Out of habit as much as anything, she checked the windows: all secure. The sliding glass door that opened out into the garden was firmly closed but not locked and she pressed down the metal lever to lock it fast.
There was one of those programmes about moving house on the television, a repeat most likely: a couple wanting to swap their studio flat in some fashionable part of north London for a farmhouse in the Yorkshire Dales, with outbuildings so that she could have a studio for her felt-making, while he ran his computer software start-up co
mpany from the barn.
After watching just five minutes—the man, rimless glasses and a Paul Smith scarf, was particularly annoying—she decided she needed a drink. A glass of wine, why not? There was a bottle, already opened, in the fridge.
She was just taking it out when she heard a sound.
'Hello.' He spoke just as she turned.
Her heart seemed to drop down inside her body.
Roberts leaned against the door jamb effortlessly. Scuffed leather jacket and combat trousers, dark trainers on his feet, grey mittens on his hands. Smiling.
'You know who I am?'
'Yes.'
'Seen my picture a time or two, I dare say?'
Lorraine didn't reply, her mind racing too fast, accelerating alongside her pulse. How...?
He read her mind.
'Thought when you slipped the lock on that door there, you was shutting me out.' He laughed, high-pitched and short. "Stead of which, you was lockin' me in.'
'What do you want?' Lorraine said, not recognising the sound of her own voice.
'Your little ones, both upstairs are they? Safe asleep?'
She made a dash, heedless, past him towards the doorway and the stairs, but he grabbed hold of her arm and swung her back into the room.
'Sleepin' like babies, last time I looked. Regular babes in the wood.' He laughed again, louder, showing long, discoloured teeth. 'We know what happened to them, don't we? Strangers took 'em off to be killed.'
'You bastard!'
Lorraine rushed at him, one hand going for his face, but he knocked her arm aside and pushed her away, shoving hard enough that she lost her balance and collided with the edge of the table, rolling away and half-falling to the floor.
'What I like to see in a woman,' Roberts said. 'A bit of spunk.'
When he threw back his head to laugh, Lorraine's hand closed round the neck of the wine bottle and she launched herself towards him, swinging the bottle hard and fast and smashing it high against the side of his face above the eye.
With a yell, he went stumbling back, half-blinded, clutching at his face, and she yanked open the drawer beside the sink and seized the first implement that came to hand, a long-bladed knife with a serrated edge.
Roberts swore and spat as blood leaked from his face and Lorraine, evading his flailing arm, closed with him again and drove the blade as deep into the pap of his belly as she could, then ran.
Taking the double set of stairs two, three at a time, she burst, breathless, through the bedroom door, her children sleeping sound and undisturbed, Jake with his thumb in one corner of his mouth, Susie clinging to a small brown bear.
Tears flooded her eyes and she had to catch hold of the door to stop herself from falling, her legs giving way beneath her, her breath beating harsh inside her body.
A roar of pain and anger alerted her and she ran back to the head of the stairs in time to see Roberts, face half-masked with blood, blundering towards her; time to lift herself, one hand on the head of the banister, one on the window ledge, and kick out, her right foot catching him in the throat and sending him tumbling, the back of his head striking the wall and then a stair and then the wall again before he was still. Splayed awkwardly, unnaturally, one leg twisted beneath him and still.
He was in that position when Jim Straley arrived minutes later, apologies frozen on his lips as he saw what was before him, this woman he had met once and then briefly, throwing herself into his arms and weeping, her whole body shaking, unable to find the words to explain.
As soon as he felt he could, Straley eased her away and sat her down, handcuffed Roberts to the nearest radiator, phoned requesting back-up and an ambulance, and then phoned Will.
'Will, it's me, Jim. No, listen, everything's okay ...'
71
'Lorraine,' Helen asked, the first question on her lips next morning, 'she's okay?' The whole police station at Parkside was agog with what had happened; people standing in line, almost, to shake Will's hand and tell him to pass on good wishes and congratulations.
'She's fine,' Will said. 'Still pretty shaken—more, probably, than she'd like to admit, but yes, okay.'
'And the kids?'
'The kids are fine, too. Susie's childminder's agreed to look after both of them for the day. Longer, maybe, if necessary. We'll see how it goes.'
'What is going to happen?'
'About Lorraine? She'll be interviewed under caution this morning. The DS is handling it himself. No way they're going to let me near. Once that's over, I assume she'll be bailed while a file goes to the CPS and they come to a decision.'
'They're never going to charge her—a lone woman protecting her children.'
'I'd be surprised.'
'What she did ... She was amazing. I mean, Lorraine ...'
'I know.'
'Proud of her, then?'
'What do you think?' Will found it difficult not to grin. The fear that had knotted his stomach when he'd first heard, fear for his children, for his wife, the guilt at not being there to protect them himself, had quickly been replaced by a sense of almost overwhelming relief. And, yes, pride. Pride in how Lorraine had handled herself, what she had done. 'And Roberts?' Helen asked.
'In hospital under guard. Operation on his stomach last night to stop the bleeding. There's plenty to hold him on for now. As long as Janine Clarke'll agree to give evidence, and I think she will, there's enough to get him put away for a very long time.'
'Any news from the search site?'
He looked at his watch. 'They'll have been back out there early this morning. I'm still waiting to hear.'
Lorraine had met Richard Fincham, Will's new detective superintendent, just the once before. One of those semi-formal evenings that she more often than not found excuses to avoid. Not that Fincham himself hadn't been pleasant enough. Willowy, prematurely grey, he'd transferred up from Kent, where he'd amassed a reputation for being firm but fair, keen to see correct procedures followed, the right boxes ticked. In his forties still and on his way to somewhere else.
He greeted Lorraine with a warm handshake, his free hand clasping hers as he made earnest enquiries as to how she was feeling in the wake of the previous night's events.
'This is Detective Sergeant Pearson,' he said. 'Judy Pearson. She used to work with me down in Maidstone. I thought it would be useful if she sat in on the interview. In the cause of impartiality.'
Judy Pearson held out her hand. She was in her early thirties, Lorraine thought, stocky, pleasant-faced, little apparent make-up, hair cut short and gelled.
'Not only a matter of being fair and above board,' Fincham said, 'but of seeming so. Just in case things go further than I think they will. Or should.'
He extended a hand, gesturing for Lorraine to take a seat.
'What exactly d'you mean,' she said, 'if things go further than you think?'
'In the event the CPS might decide a prosecution was in order.'
'But I was defending my children.'
'I know, I know. And, as I say, the chances of their coming to that decision are slim indeed. Unless, of course ...'
'Unless?'
'If Mitchell Roberts were to die ...'
'Is that likely? The last I heard ...'
'No, according to the latest information I have, Roberts' condition is stable. I see no particular cause for alarm.'
'But I am under arrest.'
'Technically, yes.'
'So this ... this is just a formality?'
Fincham smiled. 'A little more than that.'
He sat back. 'Why don't you begin by telling us in your own words exactly what happened?'
Lorraine hesitated. One way or another, she'd been rehearsing this almost since it happened; since she'd woken early that morning, at least. When Will had explained what would most likely happen, that she would be formally arrested and interviewed under caution, she had reacted badly. 'What? You mean I'm going to be treated like some fucking criminal? Well, here, here ...' holding out her wrists, '
... handcuff me now and have done with it.' It had been some time before Will had been able to calm her down.
Now, after an uncertain start, she recounted what had happened as clearly, as dispassionately as she could.
'Thank you,' Fincham said when she had finished.
She drank from the water provided and Fincham refilled the glass.
'Judy,' Fincham said, sideways over his shoulder.
Judy Pearson leaned forward. 'Mrs Grayson, when you stabbed Mitchell Roberts with the knife, the knife you'd taken from the kitchen drawer, was he still attacking you at that time?'
'Yes.'
'You—let me see if I've got this right—you hit him with the bottle, in the face, above the eye, and then stabbed him with the knife?'
'Yes.'
'One after another, bottle, knife.'
'Yes, but not right after.'
'There was a gap, an interval?'
'I had to get the knife from the drawer.'
'You had to get the knife from the drawer.'
'Look, I don't understand.' Lorraine directed her remark towards Fincham. 'What's going on here?'
It was Judy Pearson who answered. 'All I'm doing,' she said, 'is trying to establish the sequence of events.'
'You know the fucking sequence of events.'
'There's no need to swear.'
Lorraine swallowed her answer; stared at her hard and was silent.
'Between you striking Roberts to the head,' Pearson said evenly, 'and stabbing him in the stomach, how much time would you say elapsed?'
Lorraine considered. 'I don't know. Moments, seconds. I can't say.'
'And after the first blow, to the head, what did Roberts do? How did he respond?'
'How did he respond? He responded by falling backwards and grabbing at his face.'
'He fell over? To the floor?'
'No, not to the floor. Back against the wall, the kitchen cabinets on the wall.'
'And you?'
'I got hold of the knife.'
'You took the knife from the drawer?'
