“Carl Dawson, right? Calm down, mate. We just want to have a word, okay?”
Dawson was frozen in place now. Amanda stepped past the pair of them and walked across to where Paul was still sitting on the bench. He stood up as she reached him.
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing.” She held out her palms, evaluating him. He looked shaken but unharmed. “Are you okay?”
But he just stared past her. She could hear more officers joining them in the playground behind, along with bursts of radio static.
“Calm down, Paul,” she said.
“What’s happening?”
“We just need to talk to Mr. Dawson.”
“About what?”
“I can’t tell you that right now.”
His gaze turned to her for a moment, and she saw the look of desperation on his face. His hands were by his side, fists clenching and unclenching. She turned around. Dwyer was leading Dawson over to the car, one arm practically looped over the older man’s shoulders. From behind, it looked as if they might have been friends, one of them helping the other home after a night out.
And then she saw Dawson slump a little, as though the air had been taken out of him, and she knew Dwyer had just told him what they were arresting him for. The suspected murder of his wife and stepson, and of Billy Roberts.
For a brief moment, Carl Dawson glanced back to where she and Paul were standing. She had never seen such loss on a man’s face before. It seemed as though everything he’d struggled and worked for over the years had been taken away from him. As if, in that single moment, he was looking back on his whole life and realizing every second of it was pointless and wasted.
And then Dwyer was leading him off toward the car again.
“What’s he done?” Paul said.
Amanda turned back.
“He hasn’t necessarily done anything. We just need to talk to him.” She put a hand on his shoulder and spoke quietly. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Why were you here with him?”
“We were just talking.”
She heard a car door slam behind her.
“What were you talking about?” she said.
Paul had been staring over her shoulder, and when he looked at her now, she found it impossible to read the expression on his face. It reminded her of when she’d asked him in the pub if there was anyone else here in Gritten she should talk to. As though he was wrestling with something inside himself, unsure of how much to tell her.
“My mother,” he said.
“What about her?”
“She died.”
“I know,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“And Carl was her friend.”
She looked behind her at the car, where Dwyer was waiting, Carl Dawson in the backseat. They had three brutal murders, and the man was connected to all the victims. I like him for it, Dwyer had told her back at the department, and surely he was right. That was playing the odds, after all. If not him, then who? But, looking back at Paul again now, she thought there was something she was missing—that there was more going on here than they realized.
“Paul?” she said.
Goddamn it. Help me out here.
But his face had gone blank. Whatever decision he’d been agonizing over, he’d clearly made his choice. And when he spoke, it seemed more like he was talking to himself.
“Carl was her friend,” he said again.
Then he looked down and turned away.
“That’s all.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
My father used to burn things.
It was one of the few memories I had of him from my early childhood. I seemed to have gotten through my entire adult life without the need to make a fire of any kind, and yet they had been regular occurrences back then. When I was still young enough for my father not to hate me, I would stand with him in the backyard and watch as he snapped kindling, leaving thin strips of wood hanging from the ends like claws, and help him sweep rustling piles of leaves into the firepit we had there. Newspapers; rubbish; clusters of branches and sharp ropes of brambles. Everything he wanted to dispose of was burned, and then the ashes would be raked over the following day, ready for the fires to come. I supposed that was just the way my father was. When something was no longer useful to him, he took it upon himself to obliterate it from the world.
Perhaps he’d had the right idea.
I stood on the back step now, holding the first of the boxes.
It was evening, and everywhere I looked, the shadows were thickening. Night fell quickly in Gritten, and it would be dark soon. Even now, the face of the woods at the end of the yard had faded into a patchwork of black and gray, occluded further by the mist rising from the tangle of undergrowth below. The air was cooling, and there was a slight breeze that brought the smell of earth and leaves to me.
I’d been in a daze all afternoon, shocked and confused by what had happened: first by everything Carl had told me, and then by the arrival of the police. Amanda had refused to explain what they wanted to talk to Carl about, and I hadn’t heard from her since. Of course, the same held true in reverse. I hadn’t told her what Carl had said, nor had I called and volunteered the information afterward. Back in the playground, it had simply been too soon. It had felt like the decision Carl left me with had been forced upon me and what I really needed was a chance to think and work out the best thing to do.
If I told the truth, three people’s lives would be destroyed and my mother’s involvement would become common knowledge. And to what end? I had gone back and forth, the whole time attempting to distract myself with practicalities. I’d collected my mother’s things from the hospice. I’d obtained a death certificate. I’d looked into funeral arrangements.
But a decision had to be made.
I thought I’d made it now.
I carried the box across the yard. The firepit was a little overgrown, but the bricks at the edges had held, and it was more or less as I remembered: a pale ulcer on the green skin of the lawn. I inverted the box and emptied the newspapers into the pit, then kicked them into a heap in the center, each contact raising puffs of old ash and the sour, dirty aroma of fires long past.
Then I went back inside.
This felt like work that should be done in the dark, so I’d left the lights off in the house for now. There was still enough daylight left to make my way down to the front door where I’d gathered everything together.
I picked up the second box and carried it out to the firepit.
Emptied it.
Was I doing the right thing?
I looked up. The sky above was dark blue and speckled with a faint prickling of stars. No answers to be found there.
I went back inside again and collected the third box, then emptied it into the pit, the pile of newspapers there as dull gray as old bone.
One more to go.
The final box, then. It was already much darker inside than when I’d started, and there was a heaviness to the air, as though my actions were somehow adding to the house rather than subtracting from it. As I carried the box out to the pit, the breeze picked up and the grass around me shivered. I emptied out the contents. My old notebooks. My dream diary. The creative writing magazine. The doll Charlie had given to James. The slim hardback book with Jenny’s story about Red Hands.