The Sleeping and the Dead (16 page)

‘I know.’ He squeezed her hand.

Of course her mother hadn’t killed anyone. She was the least violent person in the world. When Jonathan walked out on her, she hadn’t even raised her voice in anger. But it was odd
all the same. Her mother couldn’t have told the full story. Something had happened.

They had come to the lighthouse, which had been converted years before into an art gallery. It still had a whitewashed wall around it. There was no need for the light now. The rocks in the bay
were marked by navigation buoys on the water. Looking back towards the town, they saw the flashing neon which marked the entrance to the funfair, the strings of street lamps, the inevitable
blinking blue light of a police car. From the lighthouse a footpath led inland, skirting the cemetery and arriving at last at the housing estate where Rosie lived. The free drink and the walk
seemed to have cheered Joe up. He didn’t mention Mel again, or the stranger who had been looking for her. As they sauntered past the cemetery he started making howling, ghostly noises. There
were houses banking on to the footpath and Rosie had to tell him to shut up.

Outside her house Joe lingered. If she’d invited him in for coffee, he’d have accepted like a shot. She could tell he was too wired up to go home. But Rosie couldn’t bear any
more confidences. Not tonight. She might end up confiding in him. A small wind had got up. Down the street a Coke can rattled against the kerb and startled them. The trees threw strange
shadows.

‘You’d better go,’ she said. Then she imagined him turning up at the Gillespie house, making a scene. ‘You’re not going to try to see Mel?’

‘God no.’

He kissed her on the cheek as if she were a favourite aunt. She gave him a quick hug. Then he loped off. Inside her mother was still up, watching a late film on Channel Four, half dozing.

‘Sorry I’m late.’ Since the drama after the school reunion Rosie had been sporadically worried about her mother. She wasn’t getting much support. When Rosie had told her
father about the police investigation he’d had difficulty in stopping himself laughing. ‘Hannah! Mixed up with the police. God, she’ll hate it.’

Yet if the murder had happened recently, everyone would have considered it horrifying. Rosie could tell that the past had become very real to her mother. She seemed to have become lost in it.
Hannah said nothing, but Rosie could tell that in the long silences she was reliving it. Now, half asleep in front of the television, she was probably dreaming it too. To bring her back to the
present Rosie offered her a piece of information. Usually she never told her mother anything about herself unless she could help it.

‘Joe walked me home.’

Hannah stirred at this but wasn’t, Rosie thought, sufficiently distracted. Not as distracted as she normally would have been. Usually she took an unhealthy interest in Rosie’s
relationships with men.

‘The police phoned,’ she said. ‘They want to come here to talk to me. More questions. After work on Monday.’

‘I’m sorry. It must be shitty.’

Hannah was usually prudish about language and Rosie expected her to object to the word. Instead she repeated it. ‘Shitty. Yes, it is, rather.’

‘It can’t be important if it can wait until Monday.’

‘I suppose not.’

At the top of the stairs there was a landing window which looked over the street. She stopped and looked out, not expecting to see anyone because Joe walked very quickly and would have been long
gone. But someone was there, half hidden by a windblown sycamore on the pavement opposite. Her mother called downstairs to ask if the front door was locked. Rosie turned away to answer her. When
she looked again, the figure had gone.

That Monday the weather broke and Hannah went back to work. She woke too early, unrested, to bright sunlight, but by the time she went out to the car the sky was hidden by thin
cloud like smoke. She ran back to the house to fetch an umbrella just in case. The prison was five miles to the north. She drove along the coast road towards mountains of cloud. The first rain
started just as the barrier lifted to let her into the staff car park. The drought which had brought Michael’s body to the surface of Cranford Water was over.

Apart from the weather it was just like any other morning. She queued at the gatehouse with the officers. Some spoke, others didn’t. No one realized she’d been away. After
she’d collected her keys she bumped into Arthur, who was sheltering from the downpour, blocking the doorway so the officers had to squeeze past. She thought he’d enjoy being an
irritation.

‘I thought it might blow over. It was fine when I left home. I’m not really prepared.’ Grinning at himself, liking looking such a mess.

He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, jeans and open sandals. Everything was dripping. His dress was another excuse for the education department’s disapproval. The principal thought it set
the wrong tone. Hannah had heard comments from the inmates too. They didn’t know what to make of him. The officers were openly hostile. Despite his lack of hair there were muttered comments
in the mess about ageing hippies.

She opened her umbrella and they ran together towards the education block. The rain was a deluge which had already formed a lake over the hard-packed ground. Inside, she walked with him as far
as his room.

‘Did you have a good break?’

She paused. ‘It’s a long story.’

‘I’m not doing anything for an hour. I can make you a coffee.’

‘My orderly will be waiting. Perhaps I could meet you at lunchtime.’ She thought she sounded like a teenager suggesting a date, regretted the words as soon as they were spoken.

‘Sure,’ he said easily. He unlocked his door and went inside, his sandals squelching on the tiled floor.

Marty was waiting outside, his face pressed to the glass door to see if anyone was in the room. There was no porch and by the time Hannah had opened the door he was soaked. He was wearing a
thin, prison-issue shirt which clung to him.

‘Oh God.’ She pulled the hand towel from her cupboard-sized cloakroom and threw it to him. ‘I’m so sorry. I went in the other way and I was talking.’

He rubbed his hair and looked like a five-year-old just out of the bath.

‘I’ll make some tea,’ she said, realizing she was staring. ‘Warm you up.’

‘It’s OK, really.’ He folded up the towel and handed it to her, pulled his sodden sleeves away from his wrists.

‘Everything been all right?’

‘I’m glad you’re back. The guy they sent didn’t know the ropes. And he didn’t want to be told.’

‘No bother then?’

He shook his head.

‘The lad that kicked off before I went on leave wasn’t in?’

‘Don’t worry. He’ll not be back.’

‘You’ve not done anything stupid?’ She was thinking threats if not actual violence.

‘Nah. Too much to lose. He’s out soon. Doing his pre-release course now. He’s lucky you didn’t say anything and that Dave’s a good sleeper.’

Hannah made the tea, handed a mug to Marty.

‘I could get used to this,’ he said.

‘Don’t tell anyone. You don’t want to spoil my reputation.’ Which was, she knew, as a tough bitch, a bad-tempered cow who was OK at sorting out books, would move heaven
and earth to track down a requested title, but who wouldn’t listen to excuses about lost or damaged copies, would have you up on report for a bit of chewing-gum stuck to a page.

He smiled. The rain hammered on the flat roof, streamed down the windows so it was impossible to see outside. The perimeter wall had vanished. They could have been in a rain-soaked library
anywhere.

‘Do you mind if I ask what you’re in for?’ she asked. Suddenly she felt she had the right to know. Perhaps it was that being the subject of a police investigation gave her some
fellow feeling. It made her position in the prison more ambiguous.

‘Don’t you know?’

‘I suppose it was in your file. If I ever did know I’ve forgotten. Look, it doesn’t matter. It’s none of my business.’

‘Manslaughter.’

She thought that was all he was going to say. She didn’t blame him for not wanting to go into any detail. She shouldn’t have asked. He’d been kind to her and she’d been
rude. But he continued.

‘It was a fight in a pub. Stupid. I was pissed and I can hardly remember now what started it off. The court accepted it was self-defence. To be honest I think I was bloody lucky. I had a
good brief.’ He drank the tea. Hannah didn’t know what to say. ‘The lad I killed had a wife and a baby. Sometimes I think, well he shouldn’t have been in the pub then should
he? Getting tanked up and gobby, spoiling for a fight. He had responsibilities. He should have been at home. But that’s bollocks, isn’t it? I can’t blame him. You can’t
blame the victim.’

Hannah thought of Michael Grey. ‘No, I suppose not.’

‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘I sound as if I’ve been on one of those courses. Victim awareness.’

‘And have you?’

‘Not here. But I’ve been through it all. I can talk the jargon standing on my head.’

‘Where then?’

He didn’t answer directly. ‘I’ve done supervision, care, probation, community service. Spent more time in prison than I’ve been out. Long enough to know the right thing
to say when you’re after parole.’

But he’d meant it, she thought. That thing about not blaming the victim. He’d meant that.

‘Have you got a release date?’

He shook his head. ‘First board comes up next month.’

‘Then what?’

‘Then I’m going to stay out of trouble. Of course.’ He gave a twisted grin. ‘That’s what all the cons say, isn’t it? I bet you’ve heard it before.
“I’m serious, miss. You won’t see me in here again.” Then a couple of months later, there they are at your reception talk.’

‘And you?’ she asked. ‘Will you be back?’

‘No. Not this time.’

‘What’s different this time?’

‘I’ve grown up, I suppose. About time.’

‘And?’

He smiled. ‘You’re in the wrong business. You should be a cop. You’ve got a better interview technique than most of them.
And
there’s a girl.’ He corrected
himself. ‘A woman. She’s an actress. Younger than me but not that much. Dunno what she sees in me. Crazy.’ He shook his head in wonder. ‘She said she’d wait. This
time. No second chances. We got together when I was on bail. My solicitor wangled me a hostel place. She was running a literacy course. A volunteer.’

‘Does she visit?’

‘Yeah. Regular as clockwork. With a list of books I should be reading.’

‘So. A happy ending.’

‘For me, yeah. One last chance. Up to me not to blow it. Not so lucky for the guy in the pub.’

Or for Michael Grey, she thought.

‘You said you’d been in trouble when you were a kid . . .’

‘Oh yes.’ Now he’d started talking about himself it seemed he couldn’t stop. ‘We were the classic dysfunctional family.’ She could hear the quotation marks in
the self-mockery. ‘My dad beat up my mum. My mum left him and took me with her. She couldn’t cope so I was in and out of care. Where I met real little thugs. I was brighter than them so
I didn’t get caught so often. But often enough to go right through the system. I never did drugs but I drank too much, even when I was a kid. It clouds your judgement. If I hadn’t been
a boozer I’d probably have been a brilliant criminal. But I needed the drink.’

‘Did you ever do youth custody in West Yorkshire?’ This is ridiculous, she thought. A waste of time. Leave it to the police. But she held her breath while she waited for an
answer.

‘Why?’

‘I’m just after some information.’ She wasn’t quite daft enough to trust him with the truth. He might keep it to himself, but if it got round the prison that she was
involved in a murder inquiry her position would be impossible. ‘A long shot. Something came up at the school reunion. Someone we’re trying to trace. There’s a place at Holmedale
isn’t there?’

‘Yeah. I was there for a few months. It was all right. There was a farm. Pigs. Some of the instructors were OK.’

‘When would that have been?’

‘Early seventies.’ He was older than he looked. ‘I’d have been fourteen.’

‘The timing would be about right. Like I say, it’s a long shot but do you remember a lad called Michael Grey? Very blond hair. He’d be a few years older than you.’

He paused and she thought for a minute he’d remembered the name from the news reports. But he must have sorted the daily papers without reading them. Certainly he hadn’t seemed to
have made the connection.

He shook his head. ‘It’s a long time ago. And I knocked around with so many lads over the years.’

‘He might have been using a different name. You’d have noticed him. Posh voice, well educated, bright.’

He used almost the same phrase Stout had done. ‘You didn’t get many like that in borstal. Nice boys in trouble got probation or were sent off to see a shrink. I think I’d have
remembered a lad like that.’

She could tell there was no point pushing it. ‘Thanks anyway.’

There was a jangling of keys. Dave the prison officer came in, snug in his uniform waterproof. He raised an eyebrow at them drinking tea and the papers not sorted. Hannah could tell he would
have liked a cup himself but was too idle to make it. He took off the coat, shook the water all over the floor and went into the office for his kip.

When Hannah went to find Arthur at lunchtime he was still running a class. He’d got them to pull the tables together and they sat round as if they were at a board meeting. The prisoner
who’d pushed over the library shelf was standing at the front, writing on a flip chart with a fat felt-tip pen. This must be the prerelease course. Hannah knew it was feeble but she
didn’t want to meet him again so she waited in Arthur’s office until they all streamed out. There was a list of the men attending the course on his desk, with their dates of birth and
release dates. By a process of elimination she identified her troublemaker as Hunter. The next day he’d be gone.

Despite the rain Arthur took her out of the prison for lunch. It was her choice. The food in the officers’ mess was cheap but she hated the noise in there, the banter, the unspoken
implication that anyone not in uniform was an outsider. They went to a pub in the nearest village. Often that was full of prison staff too, but today it was empty. They sat in the bay window but
low cloud hid the view. Arthur went to the bar for drinks and to order food. As soon as he returned he said, ‘I’m sitting comfortably. Let’s hear the story.’