by Will Harker
He was right. It was a kind of homage, I suppose, maybe an act of contrition too. Being a travelling kid of no fixed abode, it had been difficult to get a library card from the places we pitched up in. And so, with a father who refused to pay for the books I devoured, I had stolen hundreds.
I took a breath. Felt my pulse skip. There was no point trying to avoid it. “I’m sorry if the idea of seeing me again has upset you. Haz, you know it wasn’t my choice to end things the way they did. After what happened, I tried calling and writing; I even turned up at your house. Your family said you didn’t want to see me and, in the end, I had to respect that. It was hard, but I came to terms with it. I don’t know if you ever got the note I left at your flat when I moved back into halls, but I meant every word. Even if you didn’t want to be with me anymore, I needed you to know that I understood what happened with your dad.”
Tears flashed into his eyes and he looked away. “Don’t, Scott. Please. I can’t.”
“Hey.” I touched his arm. “I can leave, OK? Campbell has probably given me all the research material you have anyway. I didn’t know he’d already been in touch with the library here. Harry, listen, I have to be in town for a few days, but I can make it so that we never have to see each other. I don’t know what happened between us, and I’m not asking you to tell me. All that was a long time ago. But I don’t want my being here to distress you.”
I was turning back towards the road when he snagged my sleeve. “Scott, wait.” He shook his head. “Maybe if you come inside we can talk and… I don’t know. Just talk. I’ve been rehearsing this moment so much in my head, now that it’s here everything I thought I’d say has gone out the window. All I know is, I’m glad to see you again.”
It was hard to resist the hope I felt then. For over a decade, Harry Moorhouse had barely left my thoughts. I had tried to replace him, to paper over his memory, but like the ghosts of the Malanowski children, he wouldn’t be denied. In fact, it had only been since their deaths that Harry had fallen a little into the background. Perhaps because the comfort of our memories together had felt like an indulgence I no longer deserved.
Following him into the snug little library, I asked, “How did you end up here?”
I looked around the homely space. From the great Bodleian in Oxford to the tiniest rural branch, libraries have always struck me in the same way: havens for the lost and curious; often the only refuge for people out of joint with the rest of the world. Places of power too, if you know how to use them. This one was a typical example of its kind, warm and fusty and welcoming—an old boy snoring away in the reading section; students gathered in a huddle at the single study desk; toddlers on scatter cushions, mouths agape as Harry’s colleague read to them from a pop-up book.
“I drifted into it,” he said. “After I left Somerville, I tried out a few things before volunteering at our local branch. When one of the librarians there retired, I applied for her job and they took me on. Then austerity started to bite and our library was closed down. Instead of making me redundant, they created this sort of floating position—now I move between about a dozen different branches on a rota system.”
“I’m lucky you were here today,” I said.
He didn’t answer, just guided me behind the issue desk and into a cramped back office overflowing with books. I stayed by the door while Harry flipped the switch on a kettle that nested precariously on the windowsill.
“What about your music?” I asked, as he rummaged in a cupboard for cups. “Your compositions?”
He puffed out his cheeks. “Come on, Scott, even you have to admit I was never all that good.”
“I admit no such thing! Those pieces you used to play me back in our flat? Haz, they were beautiful.”
He kicked the inside of my boot with the toe of his shoe, an old habit that brought back a flood of memory. “To a sympathetic ear, maybe. Beneath all that cynical brooding, you were always a sentimentalist, Scott. That’s why you never took to literary criticism. You get too caught up in the romance of the big picture and can’t see the little mistakes staring you in the face. You liked my music because it was heartfelt, but that’s all it ever was. Emotional, haphazard, shambolic.”
“You think I’m too emotional?” I almost laughed.
“You were.” He turned to the window where steam from the kettle made a halo around his head. “Like you said, that was a long time ago. I suppose I don’t know who you are now.”
I leaned back against the door. “Well, I know who you are. A librarian and, therefore, a hero.”
He came over and pressed a warm mug into my hands. “An unappreciated one, if I am.”
“I heard. Hillstrom and Carmody and the local council are closing you down.”
“We’re local government employees, so we can’t get directly involved,” he sighed. “But our users have started the fight-back. Petitions, marches, the usual stuff. I doubt it’ll get anywhere, but sometimes the fight’s worth having for its own sake. But what about you? I heard you left Oxford soon after I…”
Murdered your father? We kept dancing around it.
“You know I never really enjoyed Oxford,” I said. “I stayed because other things kept me there.”
He looked into his tea. “And after?”
I didn’t want to go into that. A broken heart makes for a dark guiding star and it had led me into many murky places before Pete Garris had found me.
“This and that,” I said.
“Well, it hasn’t done you any harm.” He chuckled. “In fact, you don’t look a day older.”
“Really? You do, and better for it.”
It was true. The boy had gone and the man stood in his place. Older, wiser maybe, more himself anyway.
“Please tell me you’re still singing at least,” I said.
“Maybe you can guess. Do you still do your old tricks?”
I cast a quick glance around—even amid the office clutter, the clues were pretty obvious. I pointed to a chipped Hello Kitty mug on the desk. “Honey and lemon, and no cold.” Without thinking, I stepped forward and placed my fingertips close to his throat. He didn’t pull away but I let my hand fall. “You’re still singing.”
He moved back to an office chair and took a seat, cradling his cup in his lap. “And so you’re, what? A hired researcher?”
“Something like that.”
“How mysterious. What about your writing?”
I had only ever shared my stories with Harry. After we parted ways, they had remained private scribblings in my notebook, until the Malanowski case and its aftermath had taken away any desire I had left to write.
“I’m back with the fair,” I said.
“What? But you said you’d never–”
“I know. Best laid plans. Anyway, it’s not what you th…”
The office window gave onto the street where my trailer was parked and, as the steam from the kettle cleared the pane, I could make out two figures circling the tin box I called home. One kicked at the wheels and his companion laughed. I put my cup on the desk and turned to the door.
“I’m sorry, Harry. Will you excuse me a moment?”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I STALKED TOWARDS THE ROAD, irrational anger scratching under my skin. During my time in uniform, I had often worked with the kind of officers currently lounging against my trailer. Best practice was usually to send them back to the car to make a report while cooler heads interacted with the suspect. Problem was, there were no cooler heads present that day. Not mine, not theirs.
“The fuck’s going on here?” I asked.
I knew from their shared smirk I’d made a mistake; that the wisest thing to do was wind my neck in. But my nerves were raw. Dealing with Kerrigan at the diner, finding Harry waiting for me in Bradbury End, my hunger to solve these murders and the strange sense that parts of my life were being threaded into the case—all of it coalesced into the frustration that sang behind my eyes.
The office
rs—both a bit long in the tooth to still be on the beat—kicked their heels against the Eccles and stood upright. They came swaggering to meet me, thumbs hooked into their belts. They had that patronising ‘let’s be reasonable’ air. The kind that, with little provocation, transforms into sanctimonious fury. The first, balding and red-bearded, held up his palm, as if he expected me to rush them.
“Calm down, sir. Now, is this your vehicle?”
“No,” I said, forcing myself to stop. “I’m just wildly pissed off on behalf of a complete stranger.”
“Goodness me, you do have a temper, don’t you?” The second officer, scrawny and bird-faced, grinned. “Any reason why you don’t like the thought of us in the vicinity of your caravan?”
I shrugged. “I was hoping to sell it and, to be honest, boys, it’s a shitty enough looking wreck without two dickheads bringing down the tone.”
“If I could ask you to moderate your language,” Redbeard said, shooting a troubled glance at a host of non-existent passers-by. “If you’ve nothing to hide then there’s nothing to be worried about. All we’d like to do is take a look inside your charming caravan.”
“On what basis?”
Birdface blinked. “I’m sorry?”
“You want to search my home, so you either have a warrant or reasonable grounds to consider me a suspect in some crime. What are your grounds?”
For the first time, I wondered if Kerrigan had reported me for assault. It seemed unlikely but nothing about how this day was panning out would have surprised me.
“You’re behaving quite aggressively, sir,” Redbeard said. “That in itself–”
“Isn’t enough. I have video of you kicking my tyres and laying your flabby arses against my paintwork.” I brandished my phone, cursing myself that the idea of actually filming these pricks had only just occurred to me. “So, do you want to know what I think is really going on here? The fair’s coming into town in a few days, you saw what you’d call a ‘pikey’s caravan’, and you thought you’d have a bit of fun. I’m not a Romany myself, but mistaken racial profiling is still racial profiling.”
“Now, now,” Birdface placated. “It’s nothing like that.”
I chuckled and stepped around them, giving the fuckwits a wide berth so that they had no excuse to feel threatened and come at me with their batons. At the trailer, I took out my key and opened the door.
“Fill your boots,” I said, sweeping a welcoming hand over the threshold. “Just know I’ll be taking your badge numbers and putting in an official complaint. Are your records in that department squeaky clean, boys? Is your senior officer going to want to dirty his hands with you again? Or will it be a dressing-down from the chief constable this time? Sir Michael Wishman, isn’t it? Yeah, I think he plays golf with my old mate, DCI Pete Garris.”
It was an educated guess, but I could see from their faces that I’d hit the bullseye. Weathered old turds like these don’t remain on the beat out of choice. Even if they were happy in uniform, they’d have found cushy admin roles by now. Progression halted by a string of dodgy arrests had been my bet. Now I cashed in the chips.
“Come on,” I sighed. “I haven’t got all day. You up for the tour or what?”
They exchanged narrow glances and Birdface sucked his teeth.
“Just get it shifted,” he said. “This is a public thoroughfare.”
Redbeard spat on the curb and they toddled off in search of less challenging prey. I smiled to myself and closed the door. With some of my ‘off-prescription’ benzos lying around in open drawers, it had been a risk, but I knew that playing nice would have got me nowhere. When bullies bark at you sometimes the only thing you can do is bark back.
“Scott, what was that?”
I turned to find Harry standing behind me, his long nervous fingers twining together.
“That was par for the course when you’re a Traveller,” I said.
He looked troubled. I suddenly realised why. In the beginning, before loving him had softened my edges, he had known that old Oxford persona, brooding and tetchy, but this new darkness, this well of rage always stewing under the surface? That was a Scott Jericho he hadn’t met. A personality forged in the grief of losing him and refined in the deaths of Sonia Malanowski and her brothers. I decided then that he shouldn’t see it again.
“The fair isn’t licensed to arrive on the common for a few days,” I said. “Do you know any local caravan parks where I could set up until then?”
He laid his hand against his cheek, an old anxious habit. “I’ve got a driveway at my bungalow. You can park it there, if you like.”
“Haz, I don’t think–”
“It’ll be fine,” he cut in. “You’ll just need to find somewhere to wait until my shift’s over. Meet me back here at six.”
Before I could say another word, he disappeared into the library.
Three hours to kill. I slid behind the wheel of my Merc and headed out of town, finding a siding on one of the rural roads. I flipped on the radio and listened to news and traffic reports, pop songs and afternoon dramas, taking in nothing. By four, the clouds broke and a drizzle ticked relentlessly against the windscreen. After a while, I went back to Campbell’s file but found nothing fresh in those now-familiar atrocities. In all this, I knew I was trying to distract myself from Harry’s invitation and what it might mean; just an old acquaintance being kind, my hollow heart told me. Nothing more.
At quarter-to-six, the sun was blazing again and I drove through steaming streets to find Harry waiting at the curb. When he waved, I felt a ridiculous lump in my throat.
“Lock’s broken,” I said, leaning over and opening the door for him. I snatched the case file off the passenger seat and stuffed it into my side compartment. “So,” I breathed. “Are you sure about this?”
He held his leather satchel to his chest, like a shield. “Course. But if you’d rather not stay?”
I released the parking brake. “Where’s home?”
Home was a suburban cul-de-sac just outside Bradbury End. It took ten minutes or so for me to uncouple the trailer and site it, with Harry’s help, in the drive of his bungalow. I asked if I could hook up to his electric and he agreed, waving away any talk of payment. I said I’d get him a bottle of Antinori Tignanello as a thank you. I think we both thought then of his flat back in Oxford, curled up together on the sofa, lips plummy with the aftertaste of his favourite wine.
“So your research for Campbell is a sideline?” he asked as I chocked the trailer wheels. “You’re mainly back working on the fair with your father?”
Despite constant requests, Harry had never met my dad nor been to any of the Jericho fairs. Back then, the idea of those parts of my life colliding had been hideous to me.
“It’s a bit of extra cash,” I grunted. “Campbell found me while researching the Jericho family tree.”
Harry ran his fingers across the mud-splattered side of the trailer. “You always said you’d never go back.”
“Yeah.” I straightened up. “Well, a lot’s happened since then. By the way, I heard some of the council was opposed to the fair coming here at all.”
He rolled his eyes. “They’re a fun bunch. Last year they put a block on Bradbury’s first-ever Pride event. Said it wasn’t suitable for a family town. Like we aren’t members of families too.”
“Hillstrom and Carmody’s work?”
“Mayor and deputy, the gruesome twosome.” He nodded. “Like the rest of the council, a little to the right of Mussolini. Some people think they’re even behind the anger that’s being stoked up against the new mosque.”
“I saw the signs on my way in.” I nodded.
“But to be fair, they were all for marking the anniversary of Travellers Bridge. Said it was right to celebrate such a historical landmark in the town’s history.”
“You mean the drowning of five people?”
“Tasteful, isn’t it?” He winced. “But hey, what’s
this?”
I’d been bending down to firm up one of the chocks when he snatched the notebook out of my back pocket.
“I’d recognise these Moleskines anywhere. You told me you’d stopped writing. Why would you–?” I spun around and grabbed the book from his hand. He took a step backwards.“Scott, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to–”
“No,” I said, smoothing the cover with my palm. “It’s OK. I just don’t show anyone my stories. Not anymore.”
“Of course. That was rude of me. But look, let’s go inside. I’ll make us something to eat.”
Following him into the boxy ’70s bungalow, I wondered if should I tell him about the case. In a sense, Campbell had already made Harry a part of it, asking him to take on research without revealing the bigger picture. But now that Haz was taking me into his home, was it right to keep him in the dark? The killer I was hunting had his pattern, but without yet knowing the logic behind his victim selection, it was possible he might target the people I was close to, especially if he knew I was on his track.
I raked fingers through my hair. The people I was close to… The truth was, I didn’t want Harry to know about this world in which I felt so stimulated and at home. That moody kid he’d known back in Oxford was as shadowy now as the Malanowski children who waited in the trailer behind me. I closed my eyes. I thought, on balance, I could keep him safe without exposing him to the horrors of the case.
In the end, that turned out to be just another of my mistakes.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
ELLA FITZGERALD ACCOMPANIED ME as I wandered around the open-plan living room-kitchen. An old bluesy number, it reminded me of lazy Sunday mornings in Oxford, slants of dusty daylight, and his head resting against my chest.
“Shouldn’t be long,” Harry called from the kitchen.
He diced and stirred, intently focused as he always had been when cooking. On the shelves next to his vintage Garrard turntable, I played my fingertips across hundreds of records. Everything here from Renaissance madrigals to gangsta rap. I’d always enjoyed music, but it had never spoken to me the way it spoke to Haz. I was glad he could still get pleasure from it.
