by Claire Askew
She put a shaking hand on the car roof to steady herself. She pulled a long, cold drink of real-world, outdoors air into her lungs. It smelled like wet conifer and grass clippings. Moira counted slowly in her head: she hadn’t been outside in eight days, not since that car ride, and Amy hustling her up the garden path under her own coat with the journalists baying.
Now she looked around. They’d backed the car as far into the little footpath as they could, before it got too narrow. On one side, the rain-streaked back walls of garages hemmed the path to its vanishing point. On the other, those wet conifers with their peeling branches snagged plastic bags that the breeze was trying to wrench free.
‘That’s a go,’ one of the men said.
They’d sent a scout up the path a little – he’d walked a few dozen yards and looked around, then stopped and turned to face them. Now he put up one hand and beckoned to Moira. She had the urge to hold up her thumb and snuff out the tiny, dim figure of him, a thing she suddenly remembered doing with Ryan when he was a small child – a thing she hadn’t thought about for years. She remembered sitting on the top deck of the bus, headed into town: pulling up at the traffic lights and teaching a delighted Ryan that, thanks to this trick of perspective, he could make people disappear. She shivered, and bit her lip. Don’t cry, she chanted inside her head. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry.
‘Mrs Summers?’
One of the men placed a paw-like hand on the small of her back, and she flinched into action. Adrenaline had pushed her to keep arguing with Amy, to insist to DI Birch that she had to go, had to do this. Adrenaline had got her out of the door, and she’d even showered and changed her clothes – another first, since she’d come home. But during the drive here in yet another tinted police car, that adrenaline had seeped away. Now she walked slowly. She felt like one of those rattling plastic bags – washed out, thin and empty. Like she too could easily let go, and blow away into the white afternoon sky.
She reached the distant policeman. Now he was as overlarge and imposing as his colleagues. He walked ahead of her down a fork off the footpath: a narrower gap, hidden by the garages. Here, there were bottles and graffiti, a bad smell. The backs of sheds. Fence panels. Moira felt like she was floating, rather than walking. She was hungry. A headache buzzed in her eye-sockets. The little path bent and twisted. She had no idea where she was in relation to the black car, or the road they’d driven here on, or her own house with its shattered front window. When the policeman in front of her stopped, she almost cannoned into him.
‘Here we are, then,’ he said. He sounded so cheery that she almost smiled. He unlatched a scruffy wooden gate, set into a scruffy wooden fence, and Moira stepped into a little grey concrete yard.
‘Where am I?’
The yard was loud with the whir of an industrial extractor fan. Against the fences were stacks of sun-faded bread delivery trays, recycling bins spilling over with cardboard. Above her, the back of a tenement loomed, boot-blacked with hundred-year-old soot.
‘You said Muffins Cafe, right?’ The policeman was wearing a lopsided smile, as if he believed this might all be some sort of trick she was playing. ‘This is the tradesman’s entrance.’
He stepped up to the building’s back door, a plain, chipboard-covered job that had a steel grille screwed onto it. He knocked, loudly and urgently, and the door was opened, though Moira couldn’t see the person on the other side.
The policeman flipped his badge, and said his name. Behind her, beyond the scruffy fencing, Moira could hear the radio static of the other men, gathered now, and waiting.
‘We called ahead,’ the policeman said, with that same half-smile.
The door opened a little wider.
‘On you go, then.’ Moira’s queasy feeling must have shown on her face, because he added, ‘You’ll be grand. Amy and Steve are already in there, panic button at the ready.’
He stepped back into the yard, and put an arm around her. She shivered.
‘Besides,’ he said, steering her towards the door, ‘he’s no match for you, that Lockley guy. A puff of wind’d knock him over.’
He didn’t remove his arm until she was standing on the threshold, looking into the cramped strip-lit kitchen inside, at the sticky shine of its stainless-steel units and hoods. She knew what he was thinking. We’re all in too deep for you to back out now. His job was to deliver her to this place, and he’d see that job done.
‘You coming in, or whit?’
Moira stepped forward. She now saw that the door had been opened by a young woman, who was maybe twenty or so. Her hair was pulled into two braids that had been clipped up around her head. Each braid had a pink streak in it, Moira noticed. She was wearing an apron that looked like it needed a wash.
‘Well come oan then,’ the girl said. ‘I’m on my ane today. Dinnae need this, frankly.’
The door swung shut with a clang.
Moira felt she ought to say something.
‘I . . . appreciate this,’ she said, her voice hoarse. ‘Thank you.’
The girl pulled her mouth into a tiny bud, and looked Moira up and down.
‘Save yer thanks,’ she said. ‘I ken who you are. Cannae believe they’re letting you walk free after whit you did.’
Moira felt her eyes glaze with tears.
‘It wasn’t me,’ she whispered, though she didn’t know what she was denying – didn’t know whether she had a right to deny it. The girl only rolled her eyes.
‘Yer man’s through there,’ she said, gesturing towards a swing door with a small square window set into it. ‘I’ve got a hundred things oan, so go dae whitever it is you’re here for.’
Moira staggered through the swing door, which was lighter than she’d expected and gave way too readily under her weight. The cafe seemed dim after the industrial lighting of the kitchen, though it had floor-to-ceiling plate-glass windows on two sides. It wasn’t especially busy, but every single face whipped round to look at Moira as she barrelled into the room. It felt like one of those moments you see sometimes in movies, where everyone’s frozen but the hero, and the camera swings round to show all three hundred and sixty degrees of that frozen scene. The afternoon light was coming in refracted through the twee net pelmets on the windows, through the barrelled glass cake cabinet, and it sparkled on the tabletops with their wipe-clean gingham PVC cloths. Moira noticed that everything was green: green flocked wallpaper, green patterned coffee cups, green artwork hanging in clip-frames on the walls. There was a little moulded vase on every table, and a green plastic flower in every vase.
Moira straightened up. Look normal, she told herself, though she didn’t really know what that meant any more. She tried to avoid catching anyone’s eye as she cast about the room for Lockley, but her gaze did alight for a moment on Amy, who was holding a coffee cup in mid-air, looking more worried than Moira had ever seen her. She didn’t want to look at her too long, so – yes, there he was. Lockley had settled himself at a table right by the window, so Moira could be seen by any passer-by who happened to look in. She felt her annoyance flare up and then go out, like a thrown match. She didn’t have the energy to keep it alight.
‘Mrs Summers,’ Lockley said as she sank into the chair opposite him. ‘May I call you Moira?’
Moira looked, blinking, into Lockley’s face. He’d emailed her a photo of himself so she’d know him when she arrived, and though it had helped her to pick him out, it wasn’t a true image of him. He was smiling at her, but only with his mouth. He had small, neat teeth, with a gap in between every one – like a child’s teeth, she thought. His eyes were remarkably pale, and a little strange, almost expressionless. Moira felt cold. She didn’t know what she was doing here.
‘Yes,’ she said, after what felt like a long time. ‘I suppose so.’
‘I so appreciate you coming here,’ Lockley said, but as he said it, he rattled the teaspoon in its saucer against his empty cup, to show her he’d been waiting. ‘Allow me to say before we begin that
I am so terribly sorry for . . . what happened.’
Moira swallowed hard, but said nothing.
‘Right,’ Lockley said, after waiting a moment, watching her with his pale eyes. He fished behind him, amongst the folds of the coat he’d thrown over the chair-back. Moira wanted to turn and look over at Amy, but she didn’t want him to see her do it.
Lockley pulled out a mobile phone that, to Moira, looked huge. He fiddled with the screen for a moment, and then placed the phone face up on the table between them.
‘You’re recording this?’ Moira asked. Her voice came out like a squawk. She could feel people’s eyes on her.
Lockley smiled his mouth-only smile again.
‘I record everything,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to be whiter than white in my line of work, Moira.’
Moira shook her head. A faint tinnitus was troubling her hearing, making her feel like somewhere behind her, someone was whispering something she couldn’t quite catch.
‘I don’t think I’m okay with that.’
‘The recording?’ Lockley spread his hands, palms up. ‘No problem, but I can’t tell you what I know unless you agree to my terms.’
Moira looked down at the table, felt him watching her.
‘Fine,’ she said, after a long moment. ‘Let’s talk.’
This time, Lockley’s eyes smiled too, but the smile had an edge to it – a glint, like moonlight on a knife.
‘Great,’ he said. ‘First, Moira, I’d like to ask you: why do you think Ryan did what he did at Three Rivers College that day?’
Moira blinked.
‘I’m not here to talk about that,’ she said.
‘Did you have any idea – any idea at all, Moira – that he might have been planning something?’ Lockley didn’t acknowledge that she’d spoken; he barely paused. ‘Even if you didn’t at the time, do you now, with hindsight? Maybe there was something he said. Maybe the two of you had a conversation that looks different now, in the cold light of day?’
His words seemed to echo around her. A conversation that looks different now. Now, with hindsight.
Lockley watched her.
‘Tell me what you know, Moira,’ he said. ‘Tell me what you knew about this crime.’
Moira passed a hand over her mouth. She was trying not to cry.
‘I’m here to – you said you would—’
She stopped, closed her eyes, and pulled air in through her nose.
‘You said I was coming here,’ she said, a little more steadily, ‘to hear about this . . . theory.’
Outside, a pedestrian slowed down to look into the cafe. Moira met the man’s eye, and watched as he struggled to place her. She saw it happen, a light going out in his eyes as he realised who she was. His face darkened and he hurried on, out of sight.
‘I’m right, aren’t I?’
Lockley was still watching her – with those weird eyes he seemed to be looking right through her skull.
‘I’m right,’ he said. ‘You knew something, didn’t you? Something you still haven’t told anyone. You talked to him, and something he said made you suspicious. Or maybe you found a diary entry he wrote, and you couldn’t help but read it. You dismissed it at the time, but then – what? A week later? A month later? All those young girls were killed. Thirteen deaths you could have prevented if you’d spoken up.’ He leaned forward over the table. ‘You could have been the hero here, Moira. You could have saved those women. But you didn’t, did you? You let them die. You did that. You. When all along you could have—’
Moira flicked a hand out from under the table, and smacked her palm against the tabletop, just once.
‘Stop.’
The sound was louder than she’d intended – a slap against the shiny plastic tablecloth. The cafe fell silent around them.
‘Is there something you’d like to say?’ Lockley nudged the phone a little closer to her.
Moira closed her eyes, waited for the gradual ebb of background noise to return.
‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘about these people.’
Lockley widened his eyes. ‘People?’
‘The internet people,’ she said. ‘The truth – truth unifies? Those people. They think Ryan is . . . they think this was all some sort of hoax?’
‘Is that what you hope happened, Moira?’
Looking back, Moira would realise that the reality of the situation had already begun to dawn on her then. Hopelessness was rising in her, a column of smoke through cold air. But still, she answered him.
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Of course I want to hope . . . that it isn’t true. That none of this really happened.’
‘You wish Ryan were still alive – that these Truth Unifies folks are right?’
She was crying now, she realised; she’d forgotten that she was trying not to.
‘Of course I do,’ she said. ‘I wish that more than anything.’
‘More than anything,’ he echoed, ‘you wish the Truth Unifies folks are right.’
He smirked, avoiding her eyes for perhaps the first time since she’d sat down.
‘Interesting,’ he said.
Moira’s heart chugged. ‘What’s interesting?’
Lockley’s eyes snapped back up to her face, and she had to glance away.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘First, Truth Unifies is generally considered to be the online equivalent of the padded room at the loony bin. These people are certifiably nuts, Moira. They believe in chemtrails, for goodness’ sake. If you think that I was taken in by their garbage for even one minute then you’re out of your mind. But second – you wish what they were saying were true? Really? Because what they’re saying is that your son was recruited by the military, trained for years as a licensed-to-kill marksman, and was then sent to test out his hard-earned skills on a bunch of innocent girls. They’re saying that in the immediate confusion that followed this bloodbath, he walked away, was given a golden handshake and a new passport and he’s now living the high life on the Riviera or somewhere. So tell me, Moira – do you wish that were true?’
Nausea rose through her body. Moira leapt to her feet, looking down at Lockley as though he’d administered an electric shock.
‘I didn’t say that,’ she said. ‘I didn’t say that. I didn’t.’
Lockley picked up the mobile phone and waved it at her. He shrugged.
Moira stood there, looking down at the table, for what seemed like an hour. The gingham pattern of the tablecloth flashed and swam. She felt her hands and arms go cold, prickles of static running up and down the skin, but her torso was hot and loose, as though her ribcage were suddenly molten. Rage – it took her a couple of seconds to recognise it but yes, here it was. Rage at this snide man whose desire for clicks and comments outweighed all else. Rage at her own stupidity for coming here – for demanding to come here, no less. Rage at Amy and DI Birch and Anjan and all the supposedly responsible people who’d allowed her to walk out of the house. But mostly rage at her son, at Ryan. In that moment, she felt so angry with her dead son that she thought she might throw up all over this man in his shabby grey clothes, all over the bright green disinfected everything around him. Her hand still stung from when she’d slapped the tabletop, and the sting felt good. She felt like she wanted to hit out at more things, wanted to overturn every crockery-laden table in the whole place.
‘I can’t,’ she eventually said. She had no idea what the rest of the sentence might be.
‘Moira.’ Lockley flung her name like a rock as she turned her back on him. ‘You should really sit back down and tell me what it is you knew. You want to tell someone. That’s not going to go away.’
Moira closed her eyes and began to walk. She had a vague idea of where Amy was, and began to head there. The hot-ribcage feeling was almost too much to bear.
‘The guilt’s going to keep eating at you, Moira.’ Lockley had raised his voice, so it seemed to fill the room, seemed to gently shudder the artwork in its clip-frames, the plastic flowers in their vases. ‘It
’d do you good to share the load. I’d be doing you a favour – that’s why I contacted you. Let me do my job.’
Two hands took hold of Moira’s arms, above the elbows. She opened her eyes, and it was Amy; Amy had her. Behind Amy, Steve was already halfway through the kitchen’s swing door, holding it open for them to escape. But it was too late.
‘You owe it to the public, Moira.’ Behind her, Lockley was shouting. ‘And I won’t wait forever.’
Everyone was staring. Moira didn’t need to be able to see them to know. Amy’s face was the same washed-out green as the cafe’s walls – in her eyes, Moira could see real fear.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, as Amy began to guide her out into the too-bright kitchen.
‘You know I’ll print something either way,’ Lockley yelled from the other room. The pink-streaked girl had pulled open the back door, a serves you right expression all over her face.
Moira fled.
29 May, 3.45 p.m.
Ishbel had walked out immediately after the cremation. She’d had no desire to huddle under that plastic carport roof, exchanging platitudes. She didn’t want to talk about what had happened – any of it. Not the scene Jack Egan had caused, not Abigail’s relationship with him, not Aidan’s now-public indiscretions, not Barry Kesson’s taking her side. And her daughter’s death, in all its horrible violence . . . that she wanted to talk about least of all. So she’d simply walked past those things, out into a day that seemed to be built from rain.
She’d found Greg, standing in the thin lee of the huge blue skip, smoking under its overhang of rotting flowers. It wasn’t until she recognised the angular line of his turned back that she realised she’d been looking for him.
‘I didn’t know you smoked,’ she said.
He hadn’t heard her approaching, and he jumped.
