by Claire Askew
Annoyance flared across Moira’s vision.
‘Hey, young man,’ she said, hearing the words come out sharper than she’d intended. ‘You don’t speak that way about your father. Not in this house. Not anywhere.’
Ryan’s voice went low and sulky.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘It’s just . . . I try to do the right thing, and she doesn’t give a fuck. None of them do.’
‘Who?’
‘Just . . . all of them. Girls. Women. It’s like I’m invisible.’
Moira looked at her son. He sat, hunched over the table with his head pulled low into his crow’s shoulders, and looked at the plate in front of him, its congealing swirl of food.
‘Ryan,’ Moira said, after a while. ‘I really think it’s time that you put Abigail Hodgekiss behind you.’
He looked up at her then. In his eyes was that same dark look she didn’t like, his pupils enlarged, the brown rings of his irises shadowed somehow.
‘Yeah?’ he said. ‘Me too.’
Moira tried for a smile.
‘She’s a person from your past,’ she said. ‘Think of her that way, maybe. Put her in the past, and leave her there. Move on.’
Ryan was looking into the middle distance, nodding steadily.
‘Put her in the past,’ he echoed. And then, ‘I could put them all in the past.’
Something flickered in Moira – there was a strangeness sitting over her son that she couldn’t quite fathom.
‘Sure,’ she said, the word quivering between them.
Ryan pulled his gaze back into focus, and met her eye.
‘Okay, Mum,’ he said. ‘You’re right. I’m going to do it – put them in the past. I’m going to do it tomorrow, okay? I have your blessing now.’
He made to stand up. The conversation, it seemed, was over.
‘You do,’ Moira said. ‘I want you to do whatever you think you need to.’
Moira opened her eyes. The words she’d just pulled out of the memory seemed to reverberate against the empty, faded walls of her son’s room.
‘Do you see now why I didn’t tell anyone, DI Birch? How could I have said that? What if the press got hold of the fact that I’d said that? People like Lockley would have had a field day. I was worried you might think I’d encouraged him, might think I was an accomplice – once it had happened, of course, and I realised what he’d been alluding to. I promise you at the time, I had no idea. Not a clue.’
DI Birch was nodding.
‘Then what happened?’
Moira closed her eyes again – it was helping her remember.
‘Then he said, “Thanks for the last supper,” and walked out of the room. I heard him go up the stairs, back to his room. I shouted after him, because I didn’t think he’d eaten enough, and then because I didn’t like the way he’d left. I was worried, by that “last supper” comment mainly, and I wanted him to come back and explain what he meant. I thought perhaps he might kill himself, I think. It’s hard, now, trying to remember what I really thought, trying to think anything other than I must have known. Or I should have known, at least. I called him back, again and again. I yelled. But he didn’t come. I tried going back up to his door but I got no answer, though I could hear him moving around in there. In the end I gave up. It had shaken me, but I went to bed trying to console myself, thinking, Well, at least we spoke. I’ve started a dialogue. And then . . . everything that happened, happened. I feel so stupid, now.’
She stopped speaking. Her breath felt ragged. The room had grown darker. There was no sound from downstairs – Moira suddenly remembered why she was sitting there, on Ryan’s bed, with DI Birch listening. Birch’s brow was creased. She looked to be deep in thought.
‘I think,’ she said slowly, and after a long silence, ‘that what you’ve just told me makes very little difference, in the grand scheme of things. I don’t think you ought to feel stupid. There were too few dots to join, there. Personally, I don’t think you could possibly have added together the remarks he made and got to a place where you felt you ought to raise the alarm with the police; not before the shooting happened, anyway. But you should have told someone – me, Anjan, Amy – from the start of the interview process, about this conversation. And we’d have wanted to know more, we’d have talked about it a lot, those first few days when you were at the station, I dare say. But I don’t think anyone would have said you should have done anything differently. You told Ishbel downstairs that you knew, but you didn’t know. Not really.’
Moira was crying again – loudly now, her sobs fluttering the tattered fabric of the divan.
‘It’s amazing,’ Birch said, ‘the secrets that can be kept from you, by the people you love. The people you think you know absolutely everything about. Like I said on the phone earlier, I know how you feel. I know what a shock you must have had, that day.’
Moira looked up at her, her own brow furrowed now.
‘Do you?’ she said. ‘Really?’
But DI Birch was distracted. Her phone had buzzed, and she drew it out to look at it. After a moment, her eyes widened.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Well. Okay then.’
Moira craned her neck, as though she had any chance of reading the tiny words on the screen in Birch’s hand.
‘What?’ she said.
Birch looked up at her.
‘The death threats,’ she said. ‘Our suspect . . .’ She trailed off.
‘What? What about the death threats?’
But Birch had gone stiff, and was listening. Downstairs, there was a knock at the front door.
8 June, 8.00 p.m.
Ishbel had stood for a while, looking around Moira Summers’ living room. It was a little old-fashioned, décor-wise: textured wallpaper, thick with many layers of paint, and a gas fire set in an ugly, mock-stone fireplace. The mantelpiece was dusty, and along its top there were clear marks – gaps in the dust, where picture frames had stood, but had been taken away. Ishbel felt a pang of something. She was glad she didn’t have to look at pictures of this woman’s son . . . but she was also sad that his mother had been forced to banish him.
She knew what she needed to do, what she had come to this place to do. She just had to summon the courage to do it. She wasn’t sure how long DI Birch would be content to stay upstairs and out of the way, so she ought to get things in motion. Nevertheless, she was afraid. Stalling for time, she drifted to the kitchen door and opened it, quietly. Poking her head around the door, she registered a line of empty wine bottles on the worktop – they reminded her of the bottle she’d thrown at Aidan, that night in her own kitchen, and the cut she’d made on his cheek. She felt a tiny spark of pride now, remembering. It warmed her – it felt like something inside her was coming back to life. But as soon as she’d registered the feeling, she folded it away again. Moira’s kitchen had a bad smell, she realised: the bin, slowly ripening. There was more than a day’s worth of dirty dishes piled up in the sink, and beside it.
Come on, Ishbel thought, backing away and returning to the living room. She took out her phone, and from a different pocket, Grant Lockley’s business card. The word entrapment drifted through her mind as she thumbed in the number. Was what she was about to do illegal? She didn’t know. At the sound of Lockley’s voice on the other end, she found she didn’t care.
‘You’ve reached Grant Lockley,’ he said. And then, ‘Ishbel, is that you?’
She swallowed hard.
‘It is,’ she said.
She fancied she could hear him punching the air.
‘Oh, fantastic,’ he said. ‘I’m so glad you felt able to call. Is now a good time to talk?’
Ishbel took advantage of the fact that he couldn’t see her, and rolled her eyes.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You’re able to come to me?’
‘I can come wherever you like,’ he said. You’re overegging it, she thought. If we were really doing what you think we’re doing, you ought to be more careful. But perhaps, she thought, the successful
manipulation of Jack Egan had made him complacent.
‘Are you at home?’ he asked.
Ishbel blinked. Surely if anyone knew she’d moved out of the matrimonial nest, it was him. It’s a test, she thought. Don’t tell him.
‘Not just now,’ she said, trying to sound breezy. ‘Actually . . .’
Just say it. Make it sound normal.
‘I’m at Moira Summers’ house.’
In the stunned pause that followed, Ishbel allowed herself to imagine a particularly contorted expression on Lockley’s face.
‘Oh,’ she said, before he could respond, ‘didn’t you know? Moira and I . . . we’ve been in touch.’ She closed her eyes, to see if that might make it easier to lie. ‘For a little while now, actually. She . . . offered me an olive branch. We’re . . . building bridges.’
Never mix your metaphors, she thought. But these euphemisms, she hoped, would keep her from wading too far into the swamp of untruth.
‘I had no idea,’ Lockley said, and his voice was rueful.
‘No one can know everything, Mr Lockley.’ Ishbel couldn’t resist it. But she went on, ‘Anyway, you know now. And after I saw you this afternoon, I had a chat with DI Birch.’ That part was true, at least. ‘Then I had a chat with Moira.’ Also true, technically, if their cold exchange of a few words could be called a chat. But now came the big lie. ‘And we’ve decided, we’d like to talk to you . . . together. Both of us. Moira and I, in conversation, like you suggested. We both want to . . .’ Ishbel swallowed, her nose wrinkling with distaste. ‘. . . To sell you our stories.’
There was another long pause on the line, and within it, a scuffling sound: Lockley was getting his coat.
‘Mrs Summers is there with you now?’ he asked. Ishbel closed her eyes, and let loose a silent thank you. He’d bought it.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘She’s . . . not keen to speak on the phone, but she’s here. You can come, now?’
There was a pause on the line.
‘Wait,’ Lockley said. He sounded uneasy. Come on, Ishbel thought, you’re a shark, and I’m laying a trail of blood. ‘I don’t want to be seen. Are there photographers outside? If I’m going to do this, I want it to be an exclusive, obviously.’
Ishbel quickly shuffled to the window, and twitched the curtains aside, just a little.
‘No,’ she said, ‘there’s no one outside. I was able to arrive unseen, after all. I’m sure you’d have got a call from someone otherwise, wouldn’t you? To say I was here, and . . . and there was a story?’
Ishbel felt out of her depth. Her bargaining skills were failing her. Her head felt like a faulty lightbulb, fizzing in and out. She listened to Lockley considering things.
After a long while, she could hear that curiosity had got the better of him.
‘Okay,’ he said. She heard the zip of his coat.
‘And you know the address?’
Of course he does. And plenty more besides.
‘I do.’
‘Great,’ Ishbel said. Her heart smattered like hard rain. ‘We’ll see you shortly?’
‘You will,’ Lockley said. He began to say something more, in his fawning voice, but Ishbel had already hung up.
The light went out of the room. Ishbel sat on Moira Summers’ sofa, still wearing her coat until she realised that would look weird to Lockley and stood up and took it off. She tried to run through in her mind what she wanted to say to him, how she wanted to present the information – tried to anticipate how he might react. But that train of thought kept slipping away from her. Instead, she thought about Ryan Summers. This wasn’t just his mother’s house: it had been his house, too. He’d sat here, in this very spot, on this very sofa. He’d breathed this air. In this house, he’d hidden his guns. He’d plotted to kill her daughter, because she’d complained about him at the student union.
In the quiet gloom, Ishbel tried to imagine how such an action might begin, what thought might spark it. It’s unimaginable, a lot of people had said to her, since the event. Since Abigail died – she forced herself to think those words, to mouth them silently. It’s unimaginable: Greg had said it at the hospital. Rehan had said it to her, and to Aidan, more than once. Pauline had said it to her, on the phone. It was a phrase she’d heard a hundred times on the news.
But now, she found it wasn’t unimaginable at all. She allowed herself to sit there, on the same couch that her daughter’s murderer had sat upon, and imagine it all. He was a lonely boy, maybe – a weird kid that people steered clear of, if Abigail’s journal was any indication. His dad had died not long ago. He was sad. Ishbel didn’t remember much about being twenty, not really, but she remembered that it had been hard work. She imagined adding sadness, frustration and loneliness into the mix. And she tried to imagine being a man – Aidan was always telling her that things were harder for young men, growing up. Baby’s got it easy, he used to say of the teenage Abigail, whenever she got whiny about something. She doesn’t know the half of it.
Then Ishbel imagined that sad, frustrated, lonely young man hearing that one of his classmates had complained about him – ‘creeping around me’, those were Abigail’s words. Yet really, all Ryan Summers had done to Abigail was try to protect her from the influence of Jack Egan. Had things not ended as they did, Ishbel might have thanked him.
I’ll kill her, she imagined him thinking. I could kill her. That was it: that was the thought that sparked the action. They were words Ishbel had thought, too: plenty of times, about all sorts of people. She’d thought them about Abigail herself – regularly, in fact. And she’d said them, aloud, to Aidan. At times, she’d been frightened by how close she’d come to meaning them. I could kill her. I could kill her with my own bare hands.
Ishbel shook her head: her face was wet. She wiped her eyes with her sleeve.
Upstairs, she could hear Moira and DI Birch, talking quietly, though she couldn’t hear what they were saying. She felt loneliness settle over her, cold and hard as frost. She wanted to walk up the stairs and join them, to tell them the things she was thinking, and hear what they had to say. I should be angry, she thought. I shouldn’t be trying to understand Ryan Summers, I should just be angry with him. But she felt only that loneliness, and a strong desire to lie down and sleep.
There was the sound of a car drawing up outside, and then – after a period of quiet, during which Ishbel tried to steel herself – a knock at the door. The voices upstairs fell silent.
‘Don’t come down, DI Birch,’ Ishbel whispered, standing and moving towards the door. ‘Just give me one minute with him.’
Lockley was standing on the doorstep. He’d abandoned his small, gunmetal grey car halfway up the pavement outside.
‘You found us,’ Ishbel said.
He blinked, as though sensing a challenge.
‘I’m afraid everyone knows this address,’ he said, stepping up and into the hall without waiting to be asked. ‘This house was on the news every single night, for a while there.’
She stepped back, and he walked past her into the living room. She followed him in, and watched him as he looked around for Moira.
‘Where’s Moi— Mrs Summers?’ he said.
‘Upstairs.’ Ishbel indicated that he ought to sit down. ‘She’s just . . . gathering herself.’
Stop pausing right before you lie, she thought. It makes it obvious. But Lockley sank down onto the sofa, apparently content with that explanation.
‘I’ll just let her know you’re here,’ Ishbel said, and walked out into the hall.
At the bottom of the stairs, she looked up, and listened for a moment. The two women above her were obviously doing the same, for she couldn’t hear their voices. Good. Lockley shouldn’t know that Birch was here. Ishbel laid a hand on the newel post and tried to summon the correct voice for hailing Moira – a stranger she ought to hate, but was pretending to be friends with. She felt a déjà vu so strong that she swayed on her feet for a moment, and she had to shake herself: she’d almost called out h
er daughter’s name.
‘Moira?’ she tried, in a sing-song voice. ‘Mr Lockley’s here now.’
She waited. DI Birch appeared at the top of the stairs, her eyes narrowed. Ishbel put her fingers to her lips, and then mouthed, Trust me. Birch’s frown deepened, but she nodded, slowly: once, twice.
Behind her, Moira’s face appeared.
‘There you are,’ Ishbel said, loudly. She pointed at Moira, and then held her hand up, flat against the air. Stay there, she mouthed. Moira looked confused, but stayed still. Ishbel then pointed at Birch, and mouthed, You. Come here. She beckoned, before putting her finger to her lips again. Birch began to creep slowly down the stairs, her face a mask of confusion.
‘Oh, it’s okay, Moira,’ Ishbel said, trying not to sound too theatrical. ‘If you’re not ready, you just stay up there a little longer. Come down when you’re ready, all right?’
DI Birch had reached the foot of the stairs. Ishbel glanced behind her at the living-room door, which was slightly ajar. She risked a very quiet whisper.
‘Stay here,’ she said to Birch, ‘and just listen.’
Birch shook her head, sadly. She looked very tired. She held up a spread palm.
Five minutes, Birch mouthed.
Ishbel walked back into the living room, leaving the door half open.
‘Right, Mr Lockley,’ she said. ‘Let’s not beat around the bush, shall we? Are you ready to hear what I have to say?’
Lockley blinked in surprise.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Just give me a sec.’
He fumbled in the pocket of his grey coat, and pulled out his phone. Ishbel watched as he fidgeted with it, and then, with a flourish, laid it on the arm of the sofa. She sat down in the armchair opposite him.
‘You’re recording?’ she said.
‘I’m afraid I need to. You’re okay with it?’
‘Oh, I’m okay with it,’ Ishbel said, ‘if you’re okay with it.’
‘Why wouldn’t I be?’ he said. ‘I always record this sort of thing.’ He settled back on the sofa, a satisfied smile on his face. He thinks he’s made it, Ishbel thought. He thinks he’s finally bagged his story. Jack Egan was just a rehearsal for what he thinks he’s about to do. ‘You just start whenever you’re ready,’ Lockley said. ‘If you don’t mind, I’ll leap in with questions as you go.’
