The Risk of Darkness (Simon Serrailler 3)

But she wouldn’t talk about Ed, except to say the old stuff. I like Ed. I like going to Ed’s house. We made buns. We made toffee. We read stories. We did the garden.

“Did Ed ever do anything to you?” Silence.

“Did Ed ever tell you about other children she knew?” Silence.

“Did Ed tell you where she worked? Did Ed ever ask you to go in her car? Did Ed ever tell you off?” Silence. Silence. Silence.

Natalie was more worried than she found it easy to admit even to herself. She wondered what she ought to do now, whether she ought to ask the doctor if Kyra needed to see someone else. Or maybe she ought to get her away, take a holiday, go to Butlins or Center Parcs or camping in France like Davina at work. Ha bloody ha. She hadn’t got camping money or Center Parcs money or even, probably, Butlins money. Everything went on the rent and keeping them going, even the bit of extra benefit she got. That and the bloody car wanted mending. And then there was the business she hoped to start. The one she had had planned in her head for as long as she could remember. Dream on, Natalie.

She wasn’t going to start weeping or whingeing to anyone, because she wasn’t the weeping or whingeing sort. She was tough. She was independent and she was bringing up Kyra to be the same. Only sometimes, like now for instance, in the middle of the night, the toughness got cracks in it.

Kyra mumbled and murmured like someone with a mouth full of pebbles. Natalie had strained to hear any words, anything that made sense, but there never was anything. Just pebble mumbling.

She turned on her side and tried to sleep but her brain was shot through with brilliant light and jazzy pictures and she didn’t finally drop off until after dawn. Kyra had not stirred from her place, rolled up on the very edge of the bed.

*

The surgery was overflowing and one of the doctors had been called out. Kyra sat on the bench swinging her legs. Every time she swung them back they banged against the wall and a woman opposite glared. If she hadn’t, Natalie would have told Kyra to stop swinging and banging, but because of the woman, she let her go on doing it. They were seen nearly an hour after their appointment time and were in the room for three minutes. He had looked at his computer all the time and not at either of them and asked how old Kyra was twice.

“OK,” Natalie had said, “so you think it’s just normal, then, her suddenly wetting the bed. Fair enough.” She couldn’t be bothered. He hadn’t even asked if Kyra had had any upsets, hadn’t seemed to know a lot about anything.

“Stop scraping your shoe like that, Kyra, I gotta get back to work.”

“Can I have an ice cream?”

“No, you bloody can’t.”

“Why not?”

“No money, no time and they rot your teeth.”

“Not just one?”

“Oh Gawd, all right. But only …” Natalie stopped. She took hold of Kyra’s hand tightly, “only if you tell me.”

Kyra stared at the pavement.

“Kyra?”

“What?”

“What happened with Ed?”

Silence.

“OK, that’s it then. No talk, no eat. Come on. And stop scraping your bloody shoe, will you?”

“When’s Ed coming back to her house?”

“Never,” Natalie said, feeling suddenly vicious.

She waited for Kyra to cry but there was no crying. Nothing. Just the silence.

She’d taken the morning off, so she might as well have it. Kyra went to Barbara’s. Natalie went to Top Shop and bought herself a pair of shorts. There was time for a wander about and a milk shake.

And then it came to her, like a bubble popping inside her head and letting out an idea like a gas. She sat for a long time, thinking it through, having a Coke after the milk shake, which wasn’t the best idea because the two seemed to froth up in her stomach for the rest of the day. But the idea was a good one. By the end of the afternoon she’d worked it out quite carefully, how much she might possibly get, how she’d use it.

She didn’t go back to work. She had too much to think about. It was very hot and she took her thinking, and three different newspapers, into the garden. Ed’s house was odd, like a ghost house, a hollow shell sitting next door, not just a house where they were out at work or even away on holiday. Different.

It wasn’t just about getting money. It was about telling someone. She began to go through the papers. There were articles with the names of the people who had written them at the top and she wrote one or two down, but only women. She couldn’t have explained why, but she knew it had to be a woman.

Melanie Epstein. Anna Patterson. Selina Wynn Jones. She liked that name. There was a postage-stamp photograph at the top of the article, which was about women sex addicts. Selina Wynn Jones had straight blonde hair to just below her ears and what looked like quite a big nose, which was reassuring, somehow. She wanted to have someone called Selina Wynn Jones as a friend. Friend. Natalie was struck by the word because she supposed she had thought of Ed as a friend, because of Kyra. Ed had had patience with Kyra, more than she herself usually had. They’d cooked things, started tomatoes off in pots and sunflower seeds in the garden, Ed had read books to her, and if you’d asked, Natalie knew she would have said that Ed was a friend. She didn’t have many. She was a bit like Ed, private, not always in and out of other people’s houses, other people’s lives, and that had meant they suited each other as neighbours. She remembered hearing them over the fence in the garden, Kyra rabbiting on in her scratchy little high voice, Ed saying the odd thing, but mainly being quiet, letting Kyra talk. Once, Ed had come in for a cup of tea. Once, Natalie had taken her post round when it got misdelivered. They’d said Hi. Was that being a friend?

Jesus Christ. She stood up as if a wasp had stung her, remembering what had happened, what Ed had done. If she had. Maybe there was a mistake. They did make mistakes, even big ones. Papers were full of them, people standing on the steps of a court, weeping, waving, arms round their mothers and sisters and wives, innocent after twenty years, the something Four, the somewhere Seven. Whatever.

Ed?

Natalie went indoors, got a half-finished bottle of lager from the fridge, drank it, threw the bottle in the bin and went to the telephone. She got the number of the newspaper in ten seconds and wrote it down. That was the easy bit. Then she went upstairs.

Kyra’s room was neat. Kyra was neat. Sometimes Natalie told her the fairies had swapped her for someone else’s kid she was so neat. Tidy. Her picture books were edge to edge and her soft toys arranged big to small down the shelf. Bloody hell. It was like Ed’s house when Natalie had been into it the odd time, clean, tidy, neat. What was that all about?

She looked out of Kyra’s bedroom window. The walls were there, the roof, the garden, the gate, the fence panels. It was there. The same. Ed’s house. She wondered what the men in white suits had found. She wondered what it felt like in the house, whether by standing in one of the rooms you would know. Just know.

She ran down the stairs fast and took the portable phone into the kitchen.

“I want to speak to Selina Wynn Jones.”

“Thank you.”

She hadn’t expected just that. Just “Thank you,” and the tinned music, Whitney Houston; she didn’t know what she’d expected and it had taken three seconds.

“Selina Wynn Jones.”

Natalie’s mouth went funny, as if she’d sucked on a lemon. She thought she couldn’t speak.

“Hello? Can I help you?”

“Yeah. I think … well, can I ask you something? That’s it really.”

“Who is this?”

“Natalie … Miss Natalie Coombs.”

“From?”

“What?”

“Sorry, are you an agency or what?”

“No. I just … I read you in the paper. I’ve got something to say.”

“About?”

“My neighbour … and my daughter. About Kyra.”

“You’ve lost me.”

“OK.” Natalie took a slow breath. “Right. Sorry. My name’s Natalie Coombs and I live next door to a woman murderer. I live next to Ed Sleightholme? The one with the missing children—the little boy who was murdered and that. She’s in prison, she’s been charged. I live next door to her.”

“Right. I know the case you mean but I’m not sure you’re talking to the right person.”

“Oh.”

“I’m not crime. I’m not news at all. I’m features.”

“Oh.”

“You really need the news desk.”

“Do I?”

“I’d think so.”

“I want to talk to someone … to tell them my story.”

“Oh, right, got you. Ah … hang on … give me your number, will you? It’s Lucy Groves. Yes, Lucy Groves will call you back.”

She never would. Natalie knew enough to know she’d been fobbed off.

She’d have to fetch Kyra in ten minutes. She looked in the fridge but there’d only been the one bottle of lager and what was she doing drinking lager in the day? She didn’t even like it much.

She got a glass down for some water and the phone ringing made her jump and smash the glass on to the floor.

Fifty

Early that evening a spectacular thunderstorm ripped open the bubble of hot, clear weather. Simon watched a sudden whirlwind swirl rubbish out of the gutter and high into the air beyond his office window and then the rain came sluicing down. Lights went on around the building.

“Guv? Can I have a word?”

“Come in, Nathan. Did you get anywhere with our graffiti merchants?”

“Not really.”

“I know they’re usually dead-end jobs, but this sort of thing has a habit of spreading like hogweed if we don’t get on top of it from the start. It’ll be yobs, but go after it.”

“It ent the job … well, it is, only it is and it isn’t.”

“Come in, sit down, make yourself clear.”

“Thanks, guv.”

Nathan sat rubbing his hand about in his yard-broom hair. Simon knew the sign.

“What’s up?”

“This new DC, guv. We got a problem.”

“Go on.”

Nathan hesitated. “I don’t like telling tales out of school, I ent one to come running, I can look after things—”

“Nathan, I said go on.”

“Right then, he’s a bad apple, guv. You know anything about him?”

“Not much. It was a case of beggars not being choosers—we’re two down, Exwood let us have him for a couple of weeks … What’s the problem?”

Nathan told him. Carmody was a racist, a bully, a skiver, he looked slovenly, was offhand to members of the public. “And he kept calling me sunshine.”

Simon kept a face as straight as a bat. “Was this in private or in front of the public?”

“Bit of both. Don’t get me wrong, guv, I can take a word, only it was the other stuff I didn’t go for, nasty little comments, you know, about the synagogue, about the Asian bloke at the shop … it was everything.”

“He’s not with us for good and he’s not ours, we can’t go in heavy. You’re his senior officer, sort it with him.”

“I don’t like the bloke.”

“I don’t like everyone I work with here.”

“OK.” Nathan always wore his heart on his sleeve. Now, he went disconsolately to the door, head down.

“Nathan?”

He glanced round.

“Snap out of it.”

“Guv.”

The rain had stopped but the thunder was still grumbling around. Simon half thought of taking a wander into the CID room and a look at DC Carmody, thought better of it and reached for his jacket. He went out of the building and walked the half-mile into the town centre through the subsiding storm. The florist’s where he had bought Martha her last bright flowers and balloon was just closing, galvanised tins empty on the pavement. Simon tapped on the door.

“Hello, Inspector. I’m closed really but if you see anything you want, take it quick.”

He had been a customer for a long time, buying all the flowers for his mother and sisters, for birthdays and christenings.

“Last minute, I suppose?”

“Peace offering, Molly. Can you put something really special together?”

“Go on then. Come back in ten minutes.”

He went from the florist’s to the bookshop and scooped up half a dozen paperbacks for Cat’s children and then a bottle of champagne. He knew perfectly well what his sister’s comment would be.

The flowers were waiting.

“Best I can do. Told you it was the end of the day.” Deep blue delphiniums and white agapanthus in a huge tied bunch.

It began to pour again as he was carrying everything to the car. The lightning was livid, red-rimmed, the sky sulphurous. He remembered the crash of the waves below him as he stood with Ed Sleightholme on the cliff ledge. Excitement. It had been excitement. He craved more of it. Cold cases might be many things but they rarely held out the hope of much excitement. QED.

“Uncle Simon, Uncle Simon, this is Jane, she’s brought us two books, I’ve got a new Lemony Snicket and Sam’s got—”

“No you haven’t, it isn’t just for you, Lemony Snicket is for me as well, so—”

“Sam …”

“Well, I read Lemony Snicket first, I found out about it and now Hannah’s pretending she likes it best.”

“And the other book is called The Fantora Family Files, have you read that?”

Felix started to wail. Mephisto the cat leapt off the kitchen sofa and fled out between Simon’s legs and up the stairs. Simon stood in the doorway, besieged by the children, his arms full of presents. Cat was at the table but was now reaching down to haul the wailing Felix on to her lap. Beside her sat the young woman priest who had been kept prisoner in her house by Max Jameson. She wore a pale pink T-shirt and no dog collar.

Cat gave a single sharp look at the stuff he was carrying. “Ah. Guilt offerings.”

“God, I knew you’d say that.”

“Well, it’s true. Come on then, hand over. Lovely, lovely booze, oh, Si, what fantastic delphiniums.”

“I’m afraid one of the books seems to be redundant.” He took the Lemony Snicket volume out of its paper bag.

Sam came over and held out his hand. “Thanks,” he said, “one each. I can read mine to myself. Hannah has to have it read to her.”