To
her mother, he’d remained inconsequential, even when it was publicly assumed
he’d committed the foul deed. Now it seemed he’d been irrelevant in every way,
a scapegoat tethered to a hillside just to draw out the tigers. Why wasn’t she
angrier with Harkness and his reckless passion? Was it because she’d nursed her
own doubts, underneath all the righteous bluster and indignation?
“Well,
those awful people from over the road. They must have started the fire after
all. And now they’re gone. Isn’t it wonderful news, dear? We can all sleep safe
and sound in our beds again.”
“Well,
it doesn’t exactly say that in the article, mum.”
Sharon
had never represented the Braxtons or met them socially. They’d moved into
Marne Close after she’d moved out but she’d never heard any complaints about
them as neighbours. Hadn’t Keith Braxton actually tried to stage a rescue on
the night of the fire, getting himself singed in the process?
“Well,
these journalists
can’t
say everything, dear, can they? But they can’t
make it up. They
must
have got it from somewhere. You should know that,
in your profession. These men were obviously all mixed up in their drugs and so
on together, so it’s just logical. It’s a great weight off mine and your father’s
minds that they’re gone.”
Why
on earth would mum be so exultant, so garrulous about an equivocal report that
the Braxtons had started the fire? Or, more precisely, by the fact that both
men had now been rendered harmless, one forever and one for a decade or more.
Had they done it? Had mum or dad or Jeremy seen something and been threatened?
“Mum,
I’m going to ask you a question.”
“Am I
in trouble, dear? You’re using your professional voice on me.”
“And
it’s very important that you tell me the truth.”
“I’m
not a child. And you can always talk to me directly. About anything. Spit it
out.”
“About
the fire next door.” Sharon ignored the oblique criticism and stored it for
later mulling. “Did you or anyone in this house see anything? You know, on the
night of the fire. Did anyone
say
anything to you? I mean, did anyone
threaten you?”
“You
sound like that policeman, dear. He wasn’t so direct but that’s what he was
after.”
“I’m
just concerned, mum. You seem, well, different.”
“Of
course I’m different,” she snapped, eyes flaring. “It’s all different today,
isn’t it? This is what you wanted, both of you. To be away from me! So I do my
best. I look my best. Shouldn’t I try harder?”
“I’m
sorry, I’m just concerned…”
“Of
course you are, Sharon,” Marjorie continued, whispering now, all sibilant
spite, ever mindful that Tony and Jeremy and the neighbours alike must never be
disturbed by unnecessary or unseemly noise. “Slipping out of the office for a
second to show your concern, while I’m stuck here every second of every day and
it’s still not good enough, never good enough for him or you and Jeremy doesn’t
know and he can’t understand but he’s still grateful….and now he’s escaping me
like I’m just some old ward nurse with my keys to the drug cabinet and my
nagging and my clean apron and….and…..”
Sharon cast her eyes to the floor and allowed herself to focus on the old and battered
linoleum where she’d first crawled and walked decades ago. She tried not to
think about how much she’d enjoy ripping it out, gutting the old house,
cleansing it and replacing everything with new fixtures and fittings, gleaming
and bland and entirely free of associations.
Marjorie
accepted this mute surrender and stood, dabbing at her eyes and fussing with
her hair in the mirror. A diesel engine stopped nearby. A few seconds passed
and a hydraulic whining began.
“I’m
sorry, dear. It’s a very difficult day for me. It’s just….well, I’m not one of
your clients, not one of those people.”
A
fist rapped briskly at the front door and the breeze carried a whistled pop
tune to the half-open kitchen door. Death, thought Sharon, is in chipper form
today.
Marjorie
walked up the side path via the kitchen door to greet and boss and arrange; to manage
her latest campaign. Feeling like a naughty schoolgirl, Sharon slipped into the
front room to find her father in his wheelchair, ready to embark. Some light
had died in him; his body become nothing more than jagged bones held together
by taut and lifeless skin. And yet his eyes had found a few more scraps of fuel
to burn as they focussed wide, hungry and sparkling on the family photographs
arrayed on the sideboard, images he’d seen many thousands of times before, but
which may never have seemed as real or as pregnant with meaning as they did today.
“Hi,
dad. It’s me.”
“Hello,
love,” he mumbled through his oxygen mask as his right hand, a withered and
sluggish thing unsure of its purpose, slowly drew it from his face.
“Thought
I’d come and say hello.”
“And
goodbye,” he said, blankly, his face glazed and slack.
“No,
dad, I’ll be seeing you at Riverside. Tonight, if you like, when you’ve settled
in.”
“Don’t
need to,” he said, holding his head from sinking to his shoulder with a
twitching effort. “Just death. Nothing to it. My turn. Are you courting? Look
like you’re courting. All….rosy.”
“Yes,
dad, and without a chaperone too.” She faked a convincing giggle, sensing the
depths he’d had to plumb to focus beyond his own end. “He’s got his own car and
he’s so cool. But I’m always home by ten.”
“Don’t
be cheeky,” he gasped. “I’ll put you ….across my knee.”
“I’ll
look after mum,” she said, regretting it.
“Don’t
be….morbid.” He took another gasp of oxygen from his mask. “Heard arguing. Not
happy. With this. Your mum. She’ll….have…. to get used…”
“I
know, dad, I know.” She motioned to the sideboard. “Are you taking some
pictures, dad? Make the place more homely?”
“No.
Not home, love.” He shook his head fiercely. “Not home. We know that.”
“I’m
sorry.”
“No.
Me. My fault. Scared. Grumpy. Got pictures in here though.” He raised one
crooked finger to his head. “And you….still my bonny girl.”
She
thought she’d held it all back until she felt the bulge in her throat and then
the tears were shuddering out of her. She turned away from him, ashamed to let
the side down, as the front door opened and her mother ushered in death in the
form of a middle-aged man with an apologetic smile plastered to his face and a
uniform that couldn’t quite contain his belly.
Under
the pretext of keeping out of the way, she retreated into the kitchen like a
coward, suddenly regressing into the cowed little girl who’d been jolted into
life by other people’s needs. Loose threads had been plucked and the old fabric
of this place had begun to unravel. Jeremy, the one unchanging but
uncomprehending thread, couldn’t be here for this. Her father was moving beyond
her as she paced the linoleum, dwindling into oblivion, barely himself, no
longer her doting, protecting dad. Her mother had also changed utterly and
inexplicably, and her change was the least explicable.
Sheepishly,
she followed the procession up the garden path, her father leading, swaddled in
his wheelchair and propelled by the fat driver, while she brought up the rear,
locking the doors behind her. As she bolted the garden gate, the hydraulic lift
raised her dad into the private ambulance and her mum stepped in after him to
secure him in place. The driver resumed his whistling, winked at her and
slammed shut the rear doors.
Her
mum waved to her, a polite dismissal, and continued tending to dad, wholly
engaged and too busy for sentiment. As the ambulance departed, Sharon cocooned
herself within the Mini’s close-fitting interior, letting its recently valeted
aromas of leather and polish wash away the tang of stale urine, detergent,
cooking fat and decay, the tastes of a home that wasn’t hers anymore. Her
blackberry flashed a warning of the imminent conference with counsel, another
hefty fee and tranche of paperwork about to be generated over a question far
less pressing than the one Sharon had just discovered wearily and without
surprise in her mother’s kitchen.
For
all her teary truthfulness, her mother still hadn’t answered Sharon’s
questions. Had her mother been a client she’d shepherded through a police
interview, she’d have commended her artful and powerful displacement routine.
It would have taken a persistent and cold-hearted cop with an aggressive line
of questioning to penetrate the lachrymose veil she wore; and even they’d have
balked at doing that to their own mother. Marjorie Jennings, taller and
steelier than the mother Sharon thought she knew, had undoubtedly lied
consistently and well about the events of the third of August.
Harkness
awoke to the hollering of his mobile phone in the dusty half-light of a
stranger’s bedroom. Over the last few nights, his sleep, while generally
restless and shallow, had plunged him into deep ocean trenches of oblivion,
dark and silent spaces where nightmares drifted by without ever quite touching
him. He found himself missing the flaming medium and her commentaries; at least
she’d given him a sense of purpose.
He
could blame for his stupefaction the pain-killers he’d been prescribed to mask
the lingering pain in his hands; codeine by day and amitryptiline with a whisky
chaser by night left the world a blanched and nebulous place. He could blame
the glut of overtime he’d been compelled to put in over the last week to round
off the committal file for R v Braxton, and he was certainly entitled to the
bone-deep weariness that had seized him.
He
could blame the bitter and abrupt end of his five-year relationship with
Hayley; he could also blame the fact that this had coincided with the messy
wrapping up of a murder enquiry in which he’d irrationally allowed himself to
take a personal stake. He couldn’t blame it on the sunshine, the moonlight or
the good times, but he could blame it on the boogie. He winced at the lameness
of his wit, dragged himself to his feet and waited for the floor to stand
still.
Had
the phone rung? Why else would he be out of bed at this hour? What hour was
this anyway? It might be work, but he’d taken leave with Brennan’s enthusiastic
blessing, on condition that he didn’t leave town and kept his phone with him.
It might be Slowey, although relations between them had been strained. When the
prosecutor’s decision had been relayed to them the day after they’d interviewed
Braxton, neither had expressed any recriminations or regrets and they’d worked
hard together to tidy up and submit the file.
The
original murder enquiry team remained in place, working hard under Brennan’s
direction to exhaust the few remaining lines of enquiry and ultimately satisfy
the Coroner that whoever committed the deed, whether Firth or Murphy, had
subsequently taken their own life. His private doubts throbbed like a
toothache, tender but impossible to leave alone. Still, of the four solid
candidates for the original murders, only one still drew breath and he’d be
serving serious time soon.
He
would need to patch things up with Slowey, if Slowey would ever let him, but
for now it suited him to remain on the outside, where he could neither harm nor
be harmed. Sharon had gone to work. He remembered her stooping to kiss his
forehead, thinking him soundly asleep, showing unguarded affection as she left
in her severe business suit. He’d slept even more deeply afterwards, allowing
unsought affection to slip under his wire and make him feel utterly cosseted.
He
couldn’t stay here. If Hayley hadn’t ejected him, if he’d met Sharon under less
tainted circumstances, if he’d had his own place or the time and inclination to
rent a new one, he wouldn’t be staying here. Yet he’d stayed here every night
since he’d rendered himself homeless. He’d been offered wardrobe space in the
spare room and cabinet space in the bathroom; he’d demurred, preferring to live
out of the suitcases and plastic bags he’d stuffed his essentials into. He
wouldn’t lay his hat or slide his feet under the table here.
They
spent their nights as lovers and their days as flat-mates. Far removed from
colleagues, past loves, friends and family, their affair was an escape, an
amnesty, a tryst with home comforts. They said nothing of the past or the
future and very little about the present. They gave and received passion and
companionship without pretence or expectation and would do so for as long as it
remained exciting, painless and convenient. Or so they’d said, right at the
start, a few weeks and a thousand years ago.
Yet
he’d found himself not just needing her but caring about her. If he hadn’t
cared about her, he might have felt less like he was exploiting her, as surely
as he’d exploited Hayley towards the end. He deplored the hackneyed and mutable
concept of love, a handy device for self-deception and emotional blackmail.
He’d already drifted into deep shoals and should claw his way back to shore
before a riptide snagged him. Even if it could work, the stigma of adultery,
the inertia of the rebound and an accidental cohabitation would not make an
auspicious start.