by Sarah Hilary
Marnie crossed the room to kiss him, resting a hand in his curls. ‘I’m fine, thanks.’
‘You look wiped out.’ He put the book down, reaching for her.
She let him pull her hand to his face, holding it curled to the shape of his cheek. Then she remembered the heat of Harry’s thumb in her palm and a twinge of guilt cut through her tiredness. ‘I might go back to the flat, just for a couple of days.’
Ed straightened and stood, coming round the sofa to her side. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Nothing, really. Just this case, the shape it’s taken. So many parts are still in play, I’m going to be in work mode for a while. I’d rather take my bad moods back to my place.’
Ed didn’t say, ‘This is your place,’ but she saw the pain in his eyes and she was sorry for it.
‘Stephen’s mother was at the hospital, asking to see him. I’m just – struggling through it right now, trying to process everything.’
‘I don’t want you on your own with that.’ Ed put his hands on her waist, but didn’t try to pull her close. He wouldn’t do that, she knew. He understood about space, her need to put distance between things. Loss and grief, work and play, pain and comfort.
‘I won’t be on my own.’ She smiled. ‘The way things are looking I shan’t have much time to myself for anything. The flat’s nearer the station, that’s all, for when I get the chance to crash.’
The flat would be chilly, unwelcoming, unlived in. A form of exile, self-imposed. Familiar.
‘I need this.’ She put her hands in Ed’s hair. ‘Just for a while. It doesn’t mean anything, not really. It’s just – what I need. For a few days.’
‘Take whatever you need, you know that.’ He bent to kiss her, hiding the hurt in his eyes. ‘But I’m here. So you know. I’m always here.’
‘I do know.’ She leaned her cheek to his, feeling the sweet tackiness from Natalie’s skin sealing them together. ‘I’ll pack a bag, just a few things. Then I’m going back to the hospital.’
‘Stephen?’ Ed stepped away, giving her space.
‘Not just Stephen. The man we think is responsible for the worst of the riot. Ted Elms. I had a call to say it’s not looking good. And I need to see his medical records.’
Gore under his fingernails, Noah had said. And there was the evidence from the allotment, and Anita’s interview. It was going to be a long night.
Ed watched her pack, in silence.
‘It won’t be for long,’ she promised.
She wanted to give him a token of her faith, to reassure him that this was temporary, she wasn’t walking away, or running. But most of all, she wanted to be alone. In the empty flat, where the bed, like the lights, was too hard and all the sharp edges were on show.
49
The next day dawned white, no trace of the storm remaining, the air ironed flat and damp. DCS Ferguson joined Marnie at the hospital, early and in a good mood.
‘We’ve heard from Julie. Natalie’s back home, in good spirits. Julie wanted to thank you.’
Marnie knotted her hair away from her face. ‘I’m glad they’re all right.’
‘Ruth’s refusing a lawyer, asked to see her pastor instead. You did well to get her out of there without making more of a scene.’
‘She wanted to come, in the end.’
Climbing barefoot up the cellar steps, Marnie’s hand under her elbow to support her weight, her ugly shoes left in the pit behind them.
‘As for this scumbag,’ Ferguson nodded at the room where Ted was lying, ‘Ruth would call it divine intervention.’ She made a note of Marnie’s silence. ‘You and I need to talk.’
‘Ma’am?’
‘Detective Chief Inspector Rome.’
Promotion. She should be thrilled, honoured, relieved. She nodded, feeling numb. Her short night in the flat had been sleepless and uncomfortable. She’d forgotten how colourless the place was, and how happy she’d once been with that lack of colour. Tonight she would take Harry’s African violet home. One bright spot, at least.
Ferguson was saying, ‘Hoops to jump through, of course. And it should be done on Tim Welland’s watch.’ She tucked her lanyard inside her jacket. ‘Which means waiting until he’s well enough to return to work and I’ve buggered off back to Manchester.’
Marnie thanked her, shaking the hand that was offered.
‘You’ll want to check on your other scumbag,’ Ferguson said. ‘I’ll see you at the station. DS Jake can drive you back.’
In the private room, the narrow bed was empty, stripped down to its mattress. The monitor had been switched off, the oxygen mask packed away. The room smelt of starch and syrup. Marnie didn’t trust the smell any more than she trusted the rush of blood to her chest as she saw the empty bed and feared the worst— He was gone.
Stephen was dead. Her eyes heated in a stab of tears, her throat hollowing with loss. Stephen was dead. All of them gone now. Her mother and father, and the boy they’d chosen as her brother. Her whole family— Gone. And Ed too, because she’d thought it wrong to be with him when she was drawn to Harry, as if she was rationed to one emotion, one love. Her body felt light, groundless; so much of her was made of what Stephen had done. She put a hand to her mouth, tasting the sterile smell of the room. She couldn’t be made of this, of him. Stephen. Fear and hate, anchored only to the past and her need to know why it unravelled the way it did. She had to mend, move on. She’d needed to do that for six years but now it was here, the moment she’d been dreading. And she would have to face it alone because Ed was out of reach, she’d put him out of reach. She was alone with this. No Stephen to take up her time, to fill all the hours and hours of life after their deaths. She waited for tears to fall but her body was parched, sucked dry of every emotion but this emptiness. This was how they’d felt, Lara and Ruth. Now she understood. She could see Vokey very clearly, flowing like smoke into the empty places inside her. All of it made sense. Even Stella with her warped truth which’d made Marnie question everything.
Six years over, gone. What would she do? She’d turned her demons into detective work. They’d given her an edge, not just insight or empathy, but energy – she’d been tireless in her pursuit of each truth, burning a trail which left no room for regret. She felt it building in her now, a tide of grief, coiling and crouching the way a wave does before it comes crashing in. She couldn’t outrun it or hold it back with her questions, with her Stephen-Stephen-Stephen. She had to stand and bear its weight thundering down, washing away every defence she’d erected against it, knowing it would drown or uproot her.
‘They took him a while ago, love.’
She turned. ‘I’m sorry?’
A hospital orderly, bringing fresh bedding on a trolley. ‘You only missed him by an hour.’
Marnie stepped out of the man’s way, swallowing the grief back down into her throat.
‘D’you know him?’ the orderly asked.
‘He was my – brother.’
‘Oh, sorry. Can’t be easy.’ He started pulling a sheet onto the mattress, its elastic snapping into place. ‘My youngest was in prison once. Not for long. Shoplifting. Never easy though, is it? Seeing them in there. Worse than when they’re in here, really.’ He tutted his tongue against his teeth.
Marnie watched him hauling at the bed, covering the mattress with a fresh sheet that smelt of burnt cotton.
He straightened his back eventually. ‘Least he was well enough to be discharged.’ He nodded down at the bed.
‘He was discharged?’ The blood thudded to her feet. ‘Stephen Keele?’
‘An hour ago,’ the orderly said. ‘You’ve only just missed him.’
Noah was waiting at the side of the car, head bent over his phone, smile wide enough for Marnie to see it across the car park. Texting Dan, or his mum maybe. Happy, anyway. She started towards him, marvelling at the way her pulse had settled, although her feet itched to run off the adrenalin.
Her phone rang. ‘Harry, hello.’ That was better, adrenalin
going to the right places.
Until she heard the sombre note in his voice. ‘Is Noah with you?’
‘We’re just leaving the hospital. Why, what’s happened?’
‘I need to call him.’ Harry’s voice tightened. ‘But I don’t want to do that if he’s on his own.’
Marnie stopped, her eyes on Noah’s smile, the relaxed slope of his shoulders. ‘Is it bad news?’
She was twenty feet away, keeping her voice low, but Noah glanced up and raised a hand in greeting, his grin broadening.
‘Harry?’ She held the phone close to her ear. ‘Is it bad news?’
‘The worst.’
She heard the pain in his voice. Felt it spreading to her cheek as if the phone was leaking distress. ‘Tell me.’
Noah was coming towards her now, his grin so bright it bounced.
‘It’s Sol,’ Harry said. ‘They found him in the exercise yard. Stabbed. The prison’s in lockdown, they called me because it was one of Trident’s convictions. The man who stabbed Sol, he’s someone I arrested last year.’
‘Which hospital have they taken him to?’ Marnie put up a hand to try and hold off Noah’s approach, wanting all the facts before he reached her side. ‘I’ll drive.’
‘Marnie, it’s not looking good.’ Harry gathered his breath. ‘They’re saying he won’t make it.’
‘No, that’s—’ A mistake, like the one she’d nearly made ten minutes ago, standing by Stephen’s stripped bed. ‘He’s young, and he’s strong.’
Noah had pocketed the phone. Three strides and he’d be at her side. The sun had come out, drilling through the clouds in a dozen places, setting a cage of yellow light around him.
‘Marnie?’ Harry said. ‘I’m so sorry. I wish I was wrong.’
Noah stopped two feet away with the sun grazing his skin, making it shine.
‘He’s not going to make it,’ Harry said. ‘I’m so sorry, but Sol’s— Gone.’
50
From: C87908 Edward Elms, HMP Cloverton
To: Anita Elisabeth Lamb, Harpenden, Herts
Dear Anita (if I may),
The year’s turning, does it feel that way to you? In the exercise yard this morning the air smelt on the cusp, green. The leaves on the few trees we have here are bursting to bud, frantic to escape and catch the sun. There’s been a fair amount of rain just lately, ripening the soil. I love the smell of the earth after rain, don’t you? The way the spade fits so neatly into soil when it’s ready to be turned. Digging is so much easier at this time of year.
Mum had a favourite tree, perhaps you do too? A lilac, surprisingly hardy. It collects the rain in all its furls and petals, dripping long after the rest of the garden’s dry, the sound of it like little acts of kindness. Mum believed in kindness, ‘A little goes a long way, Teddy,’ and it did. All the way to the garden of remembrance. ‘One last kindness, for me,’ but it didn’t stop me feeling that I ought to be punished. You feel these things so keenly at the time, fear they will prey on your mind, but you have only to remember how hard it was at the end, like tilling a frozen field, to know you did the only thing possible. The only human thing.
Mothers and their sons, it’s such a strange bond, isn’t it? Unbreakable. You do what you have to do. I was the same. We chose fire, for our loved ones. There’s a fierceness to it, and such softness to the ash afterwards. I took Mum to the hills, the place we once saw a new lamb. You took Charlie to the beach, I believe. It’s the need to know they’re honoured, isn’t it? And our need to know it’s over. It’s a kindness, to them and to us. Let me do a kindness for you, please, Anita. Let me give you the gift of peace, an end to all this. If you’ll allow it, I should like to wrap your pain in my words and bury it deep under the lilac where the soil is ripe and blue with rain. Your boy is free now, Charlie. I want you to be free too. I want you to be able to slip out into the sunshine, and know that it is over.
I’ve thought so much about you and your boy. That last day, at the beach. The shore’s grit between your toes, the water making mirrors of all the little pebbles, half-buried by fingers and feet. The sun’s shadow is on the beach, or else it’s the remains of a camp fire, an ashy black circle on the shale. You went down to the water’s edge, I expect, holding the flask firmly in both hands.
Everyone was there with someone else, only the lonely come to the beach by themselves. Children chucking laughter around like a ball, slapping the water with the open palms of their hands, making it jump. You’d come here with Charlie thirty odd years ago, when he hiccupped inside you. You wore a swimsuit to show him off.
‘When’s he due?’ you were asked. ‘Or is it a she?’
‘A boy,’ you said, although you didn’t know for sure, not then. No black and white evidence to hold in your hand, just the blood-red rush of him, the hiccup and kick inside. ‘He’s a boy.’
Water curled its hand at your toes. You let it come, wetting your feet, and walked a little way from the bathers and picnickers, for decency’s sake. The lid of the flask unscrewed without a sound. At the hospital they’d handed you an urn, but you didn’t want to bring an urn to the beach. So you decanted, a spoonful at a time, his soft ashes into the flask. Standing with wet feet at the shore, you put the lid under your chin so you could hold the flask with both hands, one last time.
‘Deep breath! Breathe, breathe! Keep breathing!’
Both arms in front of you, waiting for the wind to change direction, your eyes wide open so you could catch Charlie slipping out into the sunshine in a dazzle of golden brown, dancing and dancing to join the other children.
Acknowledgements
A book is made of many things. Sleepless nights and early days, wall-staring, and long walks by water. Patience and panic, aching wrists and quite often chaos. Coffee and cake, apples and cheese, blood, sweat and gin. And gratitude, a book is made of gratitude.
I owe thanks to my editor, Imogen Taylor, and the crew at Headline. To my agent, Jane Gregory, and her team. To the Killer Women, and the Sawday’s suspects. To Anna Britten, Becky Brunning, Jane Casey, Rowan Coleman, Lydia Downey, Mick Herron, Alison Graham, Rebecca Kwo, John Lyttle, Anne-Elisabeth Moutet, Susan Pola, Alyson Shipley, Elaine and Patrick Slanksy, Jane Riekemann, and Daphne Wright.
To Joseph Coen who won the Get in Character auction in support of the CLIC Sargent charity, I hope you approve of your role in the story.
I’m grateful too for the kindness of strangers, Kerry Halferty Hardy, Carin Knoop, Donna Scherer, and Li Whybrow. To those who battled behind the scenes on my behalf, most especially Conrad.
Always, to my family. My mother, sister and brothers, their partners and offspring, and to my miraculous Victor. What a year in which to write a book.
