by Nicci French
‘I’m here.’
‘I was naughty.’
‘No, darling.’
‘Milly did die?’
‘No. She’s a doll. She isn’t alive and so she can’t die.’
‘Did you die?’
‘I’m here.’
‘But did you?’
I looked up at the two detectives.
‘I think we’ve done all we can,’ Finch said.
* * *
At the door I put an arm out and held Kelly Jordan back.
‘What did she mean, putting yourself out on a limb?’
‘You don’t need to concern yourself with that.’
‘But I’d like to know.’
She gave a small sigh. ‘It’s going to be quite hard to justify the time and resources I have spent on your anxieties.’
‘Will you get into trouble?’
‘Maybe a bit of a dressing down – and loads of forms to fill out, which is worse.’
‘So why?’
‘Why am I doing it, you mean?’
‘Is it because you believe me?’
‘I don’t know, Tess. Maybe it’s because I’m a mother too.’
‘Thank you,’ I said softly.
TWENTY-FOUR
‘We’re not staying.’
Aidan was standing at the front door, holding a pink peony in a large terracotta pot. A portly man with silver hair stood behind him, carrying another one.
‘What’s this?’
‘A client gave them to me but as I don’t have a garden, I thought of you.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course.’
‘You should have warned me you were coming,’ I said. I smiled as I said it but I meant it. I didn’t like surprises. ‘I might not have been in.’
‘We would have just left them outside. But now we’re here, can we come in before we drop them?’
Aidan introduced his colleague, Fred Gordon, who gasped a greeting. His face was red and sweat was running off it.
I stood back and they staggered into the hall just as Bernie flung open his door. All four of us stood crammed into the little space while I manoeuvred open the door to the flat.
‘Let me take that, mate,’ said Bernie to Fred. ‘You look like you’re about to have a heart attack.’
‘Where’s Pops?’ asked Bernie as they carried the plants downstairs into the conservatory.
I pointed into the corner of the garden, where Poppy and Jake were squatting.
‘They’re finding worms,’ I said. ‘It’s their latest obsession. There’s a jug of elderflower in the fridge. Can I get you some?’
‘Yes, please.’
Bernie had sat himself down as if he was settling in. Fred stood by the glass door, wiping his brow with a tissue.
Aidan collected glasses, yanked open the fridge, poured out elderflower juice into glasses for everyone, including Bernie.
‘Cheers,’ he said, passing a glass to me and putting a hand on the small of my back.
Now Bernie was walking around with his drink, looking at my pictures and my books.
‘How was the conference?’ I asked Aidan.
He touched my hand and spoke in a low voice so that only I could hear. ‘I missed you.’
‘Are you staying for the evening?’
‘I can’t. We’ve got a work event.’
The doorbell rang once more.
‘I’ll go,’ said Aidan, leaving the room before I could stop him.
‘The little guy doesn’t look too happy,’ said Bernie.
I looked out into the garden. Jake was curled on the ground, his hands over his face, while Poppy tried to push a handful of mud through his spread fingers. I pulled open the door.
‘Poppy! Stop it!’
I pulled Poppy off Jake, who immediately started crying.
‘When I was a little boy,’ Bernie said from behind me, ‘I ate worms.’
Poppy gazed at him and Jake stopped his crying mid-gulp.
‘Yum yum,’ said Bernie and rubbed his stomach. Jake giggled.
‘What’s going on?’
Both Laurie and Jason had come into the garden, Aidan behind them looking flustered. He made a gesture to me, palms up in apology and helplessness. I realised that while he and Laurie knew each other slightly, this was the first time he and Jason had met.
Jason was looking at Aidan appraisingly, his head slightly to one side and a slight smile on his face, and my heart lurched because Aidan looked small beside him; his hair was thinning and his glasses were slightly lopsided. But Laurie was looking down at his son whose face was smeared with mud and tears. Nellie was in a canvas baby carrier on his back; her round face peered over his shoulder accusingly.
‘What’s happened to Jake?’ asked Laurie. ‘Jake, are you OK?’
‘I’m Aidan.’ Aidan held out a hand to Jason who took it firmly. I could see the two of them doing battle over the handshake. Aidan’s mouth was a thin line and Jason’s smile didn’t meet his eyes. It was almost funny. Almost.
Laurie hauled Jake to his feet. Aidan and Jason let their arms drop to their sides. Then Poppy squeezed her eyes tight shut and opened her mouth so wide it seemed to take up her entire face and a roar came out.
‘Kingcunt,’ she yelled. ‘Kingcunt kingcunt kingcunt.’
‘Someone’s tired,’ said Bernie.
‘Now then, Poppy, that’s enough.’ Jason spoke in his head teacher’s voice and tried to lift her into his arms, but Poppy squirmed and kicked him hard on his shins.
‘Mummy,’ she said and she wrapped her arms around my legs and burrowed into me. ‘I want to go home.’
‘We are home, darling.’
‘I want to be good.’
TWENTY-FIVE
The next morning, as I was taking Poppy to school, I was called by Kelly Jordan.
‘Are you at home?’
‘I will be. I mean, after I’ve dropped Poppy off. I’m not at work today.’
‘Can we come at ten?’
‘Sure. But what do you mean, we?’
‘See you then.’
At two minutes past ten, I opened the door to Kelly Jordan. A man was standing beside her.
‘This is Chief Inspector Durrant,’ she said.
‘Ross,’ said the man, but without smiling.
He looked like he had dressed in a hurry and chosen a grey suit that was slightly too small for him, a dark tie that was loose. He was flushed and jowly. Even the exposed scalp on the top of his head had a red tinge, surrounded by unkempt curly grey hair. He was breathing heavily as if the walk from the car had been too much. When he sat down on the sofa, I saw there were beads of sweat on his forehead.
‘I’m sure you’re pressed for time,’ I said.
‘Why?’ asked Ross Durrant.
The question was so brusque, almost aggressive, that I was taken aback and struggled for a moment to answer.
‘I didn’t actually mean anything by it. I was just being polite.’
‘That’s all right,’ said Kelly Jordan. ‘Chief Inspector Durrant is the detective responsible for the Skye Nolan death.’
‘You’re not saying “murder”.’
‘That’s why we’re here,’ said Ross Durrant.
‘Do you want me to make a statement?’
‘That won’t be necessary at the moment.’ He took a little notepad from his outer pocket and a ballpoint pen from his inner pocket and laid them on the table. It seemed like something more for writing a shopping list than for serious police business.
Ross Durrant looked at me directly and I saw that he had deep dark brown eyes. He didn’t smile reassuringly and he didn’t frown. He looked entirely impassive as if he were explaining the detail of an insurance policy. I immediately felt like I was in the wrong.
‘Let me put the situation from one point of view,’ he said. ‘We have the body of Skye Nolan.’
‘Do you think she jumped?’
‘I think it’s plausible. Or perhaps she fell
. Against that, we have a drawing by a three-year-old girl, evidence that, in my view, would be inadmissible in court. The police interview with her was, in any case, unproductive. We also have your own statement that you met the dead woman. I won’t insult you by telling you about the problems with eyewitness evidence.’
‘I’ve already heard that. But I did meet her. I’m a hundred per cent sure. You can ask my boyfriend if you like: he was there as well. And there’s the doll.’
‘Yes, of course. There’s that.’
Ross Durrant picked up his ballpoint pen and tapped it against his notebook but didn’t open it. He looked across at Kelly Jordan and she looked back at him, making a slight tip of her head. It reminded me of the looks that married people exchange and I thought I could interpret it: we’ve already had this conversation.
‘All right,’ Ross Durrant said. ‘This is an unusual situation. Because you have approached us with your concerns, I’m obliged to investigate if there is anything substantive in them.’ He was telling me he didn’t believe me. ‘You’ve been through a difficult break-up, I understand. With the father of your daughter.’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ I said. ‘I don’t know if it’s relevant, but I just wanted to be straightforward. I went through what I thought was a good break-up. But after all of this happened, I…’ I paused. ‘I asked some questions and it turned out I’d been misled about various things.’
‘Your partner, Jason Hallam, was unfaithful,’ said Durrant.
‘Yes.’
‘You know of one person, but you suspect there were others.’
It felt terrible and shaming having this conversation with a stranger.
‘It’s possible.’
He thought for a moment. ‘According to your theory—’
‘It’s not exactly a theory.’
‘All right, according to the concern you’ve raised, you think your daughter witnessed a threat.’
‘She may just have overheard it.’
‘Overhearing is witnessing. So we need to consider the people your daughter has spent time with in the last few weeks. It seems like the obvious place to start is with Mr Hallam.’
‘It’s just because she came back from his house with the drawing.’
‘And that’s the place where she’s spent the most time,’ he said. ‘Apart from here.’
‘Yes.’
‘Who would she come into contact with there? Apart from Mr Hallam.’
‘His new wife, Emily Hallam. She’s pregnant, by the way. And she seems very nice. And nice to Poppy, so far as I can tell.’
‘Good,’ said Ross Durrant.
He still hadn’t opened his notebook and he wasn’t referring to any notes. I was moderately impressed. Clearly he had done his homework.
‘Her brother is also there,’ I added. ‘Ben.’
‘Ben who?’
‘Carey.’
‘What do you make of him?’
‘He’s clearly a bit troubled.’
‘Troubled? In what way?’
‘I think he has some issues, some kind of depression. He’s out of work. Now his wife has left him. That’s why he’s living with them. He’s only been there a week or so. The same amount of time that Poppy’s been acting strangely. Maybe it’s a coincidence. Anyway, I’ve only met him once.’ Twice, I thought, if you counted our meeting in the park. I was trying to forget about that. ‘He seemed quite passive.’
There was a pause. Once again Durrant barely reacted.
‘Do you trust him with your daughter?’
‘Trust Ben?’
‘Yes.’
‘I wouldn’t want him to look after Poppy. He can barely look after himself.’ I checked myself. ‘That’s my impression anyway. It may be unfair. But as far as I know, he’s never been left alone with her.’
Now Ross Durrant picked up the little notebook and opened it and clicked his pen and wrote something that I couldn’t make out.
‘I saw in the file that you’ve got a new partner.’
I swallowed, suddenly feeling self-conscious. The stepfather. Of course, he wasn’t a stepfather. It didn’t even seem right to describe him as my new partner. But the words already felt suspicious, including anything I might say about it, or him. It hadn’t even occurred to me that Aidan would be dragged into this. That he would become a figure of suspicion. I suddenly realised that this was going to have an effect on everyone around me, the guilty and the innocent and the in-between: Jason and Ben and people at Poppy’s school and my friends. And Aidan.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Aidan.’
‘Last name?’
‘Otley.’
‘I was hoping you’d say a little more about him.’
‘I don’t know what you want me to say. We’ve been seeing each other for a bit.’
‘A bit? A week? A month?’
‘A few months.’
Ross Durrant made a note.
‘He must have seen a lot of Poppy.’
‘I don’t think a lot, actually. I felt very cautious about that when we started seeing each other. I worried that Poppy would get attached and then it might not work out. So he hasn’t been around that much and I’ve always had clear boundaries. Even now, he doesn’t stay the night when Poppy is here. It’s complicated.’
‘Does he mind that?’
I hadn’t even talked about this with Gina. I hadn’t thought about it in any coherent way.
‘I don’t know. It’s probably frustrating. But he knew what he was getting into when he met me. Us, I should say.’
Ross Durrant closed his notebook and laid it down.
‘You know, of course, we’ll be interviewing everyone.’
‘Yes, now that you say so, I can see that.’
‘And it won’t be a problem?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean with your ex-husband or his brother-in-law or your new partner? Will that feel awkward for you?’
‘Of course it’s awkward for me and it’s awkward for them as well. But that’s not the point. I’m thinking about Poppy and I’m thinking about a dead woman.’ I paused. ‘But you’ll be careful?’
‘Careful?’
‘I mean, you won’t be heavy-handed?’
He looked unconcerned. ‘People who are innocent don’t have anything to worry about, do they?’
‘I don’t think that’s true at all.’
Once again he didn’t smile. He closed his notebook, put it in his pocket and stood up. It felt like an effort for him and he gave a small groan.
‘You’re the one who thinks there may be a murderer out there,’ he said. ‘You’re the one who contacted us. Don’t you want us to find him?’
TWENTY-SIX
I walked aimlessly, barely noticing the cars and buses rumbling past, the cyclists weaving along the pavement to avoid the traffic, the tangle of deflated balloons hanging from the magnolia tree, limp among the triumphant candles of flowers, or the sun breaking through the clouds, or the sound of London all around me: never silent, never still, a city in perpetual motion and perpetual change.
I was thinking about what I had started. Soon, today perhaps, the police would question Jason; they would question Ben. Jason was going to be furious. They would question Aidan. It was all in the open now.
I trudged along the road and considered the three men. I didn’t know Ben. He was obviously in a bad way: his wife had left him for reasons I could only imagine; he didn’t work; he looked like someone who was wretched and unravelling, and he had ended up in his sister’s house, with my little daughter. I had no way of knowing what went on there.
But I did know Jason. I would have said, just a few days earlier, that although we were no longer together, I knew him intimately, better than Emily or anyone else knew him. I knew him as a lover, as a partner, as a father, a friend. I knew him as a young man and now as a man who was no longer so young. I had seen him grow and change and solidify. I had seen him at work, seen him succeed and rise on the wa
ve of his ambitions. I had seen him ill, drunk, hungover, stoned, tender, angry, insecure, kind, derisive, petty.
Now I knew there was a side of him that he’d kept hidden from me. I hadn’t seen it because you have to trust each other in a relationship: that’s what we had said to each other at the heady start, when it was inconceivable that we would ever want anyone else. Trust is like faith. It’s an act of will and of optimism. Once you start distrusting your partner, it’s over.
I no longer trusted Jason. He had cheated on me and lied to me over the course of his affair with Ellen Dempsey – and if with her, why not with others?
But could he kill someone? Jason? Poppy’s father? In my mind I saw his face when we had last argued, disfigured by anger and contempt. Perhaps he could. But then, if he could, what did that say about everyone else?
No. I didn’t mean everyone else, of course. I meant Aidan: lovely, modest, slightly shy Aidan whose face brightened when he looked at me, who listened to me with the kind of attention that made me feel recognised, who treated Poppy with unpatronising respect. Aidan, who arrived at my flat with his bags of complicated ingredients and spent hours cooking meals that Poppy prodded at dubiously with her fork, who felt that in meeting a single mother and her small daughter, he was the lucky one. Did I trust Aidan? Did I think – I crossed a road and a motorist jammed on his brakes and blared his horn – did I think Aidan could kill someone?
No.
I didn’t. Of course I didn’t.
And then I made myself think of Aidan again. He had met me at my weakest. Had he met me because I was at my weakest? Always, ever since I was a teenager, I’d felt like the one on the outside, on the edge of the group, ignored. I think I’d always been grateful, too grateful, for any attention. Once or twice I’d slept with people as a way of saying thank you for wanting me and only then discovering they were the sort of people who would want anyone.
Was that Aidan? Was Aidan’s attentiveness, his acceptance of Poppy and me together, just a form of control? Even as I considered this, probing it like an open wound, I felt, that’s me again, that’s Tess. Because I’d always felt so unsure of myself that I also felt unsure of anyone who fell in love with me because why would they fall in love with me?
