Falling Off Air (31 page)

“I swear to you that she will not,” Tanya said. I couldn't ask for more.

I could hear Hannah upstairs, shouting to be picked up. That meant William was awake too. I couldn't face them. Every bone
in my body ached with tiredness, the left side of my skull was brewing a major headache.

“Where is she?”

“Right now? She's sitting in my kitchen having a cup of coffee.”

“Okay, tell her she's got a job,” I said. She could take the children to the Common, I told myself, and I could telephone
the drug rehabilitation center in Penzance.

“Tanya, don't hang up, I want to ask you something. Am I what you'd call excitable?”

The things Lorna had said about Gilbert were still circling in my head.

“Excitable? What the hell does that mean? If it means do you have a temper, then yes you do.”

“Okay, thanks.”

Tanya's friend, Carol, turned up. She was maternal and confident in a way Erica was not, and the children allowed themselves
to be swept along by her warm efficiency. They were tidied up, nappies changed, dressed in cold weather clothes, all before
they knew what was happening. They looked a mite surprised to be heading for the door, but they didn't complain, just looked
up with curious eyes at this large woman who beamed down at them and marched them out to the strains of the “Grand Old Duke
of York.”

“Now get some rest,” she hissed at me between verses, and saluted in farewell.

I went to bed still in my jeans. I slept, then woke as the doorbell sounded. I looked at the clock. They had been gone only
twenty minutes. The children must have changed their minds about Carol. Or there had been some accident. I hurried downstairs,
almost tripping in my haste to let them in, but it was Finney.

“Oh,” I said, incapable of welcome. It was raining again, pouring, great bombs of rain exploding against the ground. The street
was empty. Where were the children?

He gave me a strange look.

“You were asleep.”

“It's not illegal,” I snapped. Finney always managed to wrong-foot me.

He ignored my bad temper and said he wanted to speak to me. I remembered the leaks to the papers. Finney was on my side.

“Of course.” I stood aside, shut the door, and waited for him to remove his raincoat. I caught sight of myself in the hall
mirror. My face was pink and puffy with sleep, my eyes huge and tired. My hair was all over the place. Well, I couldn't do
anything about it now. I took Finney's raincoat and hung it over the radiator. He watched me, and I could tell he was baffled,
but really I did it out of sheer habit. Whenever the children and I came home wet through, we just stripped off our wet clothes
and hung them on the radiator to dry, but I was too tired to explain. Instead I went through to the sitting room. Finney knew
the way, he could follow me. I sat on the edge of the sofa, curled over, my elbows on my knees, hands supporting my forehead,
my body craving the sleep it had just lost. I could still feel the heavy core of it inside me.

Finney came and stood in front of me.

“Are you ail right?” he said.

I twisted my head, looked up at him.

“I should thank you,” I said, “for making all that stuff public.”

He nodded. “My pleasure.”

“I thought you were too scared to break the rules,” I told him.

“It's just that I've done it once too often.” He sat down at my side, leaning forward just like me.

“Facts are facts,” I said, trying to marshal my head into some sort of action. “I still don't understand why you were concealing
facts just because they pointed away from me. What difference does it make to the police?”

Finney rubbed his chin.

“Wills's death is very high profile,” he said slowly, “which means the police service is very aware of the public perception
of how it is being conducted. In this case I have a superior who has conceived a particular school of thought that says if
we reveal contradictory facts it looks as though we don't know which way to turn. The public then feels insecure and starts
to bay for the blood of the officer in charge—of course he doesn't put it quite like that. The public wants to see us make
progress, so that is what they should see. Of course, this man would say, we'll still follow up every clue, every lead, but
if we're more than sixty percent sure we've got the right person in the frame, then let's at least let the public know where
we're heading.”

“I'll sue his balls off,” I muttered.

“He hasn't got any,” Finney said, deadpan.

We turned to look at each other. I was half in tears, half laughing. Our faces were so close, and it seemed the most natural thing
in the world when Finney leaned toward me and kissed me on the
lips. He drew back almost at once to gauge my reaction. I smiled
at him, and we kissed again as though we were devouring each
other. I felt his fingers in my hair, then on my neck, my throat. We
fell back against the cushions, finding each other's hands and weaving
our fingers tight. My body flexed against his, heat rose from us
like steam, and I thought, inasmuch as I could think at all, that
never had a kiss been so much like sex.

The first time his mobile rang we both ignored it until whoever was on the line gave up. The second time even the ring tone
sounded more insistent. We drew apart. He rubbed his hand over his face and cleared his throat. He glared at his phone, but
when it continued to ring he grunted into it, then grunted again, in response to something.

“I'll be there,” he said. He shoved the offending phone back into his trouser pocket, and we stared at each other. Then he
got to his feet.

“We must do this again sometime,” he said, a strained attempt at levity.

I didn't grace it with a response. I watched as he shrugged his suit into crumpled respectability. Then I stood too, and followed
him into the hall, where I took his steaming raincoat from the radiator and handed it to him without a word. He put it on,
then stepped toward me and we kissed again.

“I'll be back,” he said.

I
awoke the following day to a call from Father Joe Riberra. I'd grabbed the phone in my sleep and it took me a few seconds
to work out who was on the line.

“Sorry to call so early,” he said when we had clarified who he was and that he was returning my call, “but I got back yesterday
and my body clock is totally screwed. I think this is the opposite of how it's supposed to be. I must have slept too much
on the plane.”

“That's okay,” I managed, pulling myself to sit upright in bed and rubbing my eyes. I looked at the clock and saw with a shock
that it was eight already. Maybe if I sent the children out for a walk on the Common in a thunderstorm every day they would
lie in until eight every morning.

“Plus it's urgent, right?” he said.

“It's urgent,” I agreed.

“Then I'll meet you for breakfast in, say, an hour from now?”

We settled on a café that we both knew, just off the King's Road. Carol wasn't due 'til nine, so I called her mobile to redirect
her to Tanya's house. Then, feeling like a total heel, I took the children and my front-door key to Patrick, because Tanya
was at work. Patrick, who had just dropped their three off at school and had been looking forward to a child-free morning,
looked fed up.

“I'm so sorry.” My guilt provoked me to melodrama. “It's life and death.”

“It always is recently,” he grumbled.

In my rush I had forgotten to bring baby paraphernalia with me. No bottles, no nappies, nothing.

“They don't drink anything, they won't pee,” he said grimly, and shooed me on my way.

Father Joe Riberra was turning heads. Out of his clerical garb he was cute in a scrubbed all-American way, and he smiled his
thanks to waitstaff with huge benevolence every time they did so much as fill his water glass. He stood to shake hands with
me, then wasting no time, began speaking as we sat down.

“I heard all about you from Adam,” he said.

“I'm thinking of starting a fan club,” I said.

He smiled, revealing even white teeth. For a moment our conversation was interrupted as we ordered breakfast, then he picked
up where we had left off.

“Adam was the biggest fan of all,” he said.

“Adam was a fine man in many ways,” I said, “but let's not rewrite history.”

Riberra nodded, then sat with his hands clasped on his lap. His scrutiny of my face was excrutiating in its detail.

“You are investigating his death,” he said.

“And that of Paula Carmichael. I'm sure they're linked. You knew them both, and I believe that you counseled them both. Is
there anything you can tell me?”

“You're afraid I'm going to tell you I can't pass on the secrets of the confessional,” he said, apparently amused.

I nodded, sipping my coffee.

“Well, I'm not. Paula was what they call a lapsed Catholic, although how anyone could think of her as a lapsed anything I
don't know. She had constructed her own belief system, a belief system that I would say ran parallel to Christianity. It had
no place for Christ or God, but her concern for her fellow man and woman was, I would say, deeply religious. She thought I
was misguided on the existence of God. She did not think I could commune with Him, but we did get on well and she asked my
advice on matters of a spiritual or moral nature. It was Paula who introduced Adam to me. The two of them were good friends,
and he was also at a point in his life where he was looking for some kind of spiritual framework. He grew up, as you know,
in the Church of England, but he too would not have said he believed in a God. Neither of them felt inclined to ask me—or
indeed God—to hear their confession.”

The waiter delivered breakfasts to our table, and we paused to spread butter onto hot toast.

“I'm just going to carry on talking, if you don't mind,” the priest said. “You eat while you listen. I'm talking to you now
because of what I heard from Adam about you. I know what you mean about rewriting history, and I do respect that, but you
should know that he did not take the end of your relationship lightly. I am sure you did not kill him, or I would not be talking
with you now.”

I nodded politely in between mouthfuls of fried egg and bacon. I knew he meant well, but I was profoundly irritated by the
fact that Adam had been writing the book on my life all around town. I was also impatient. I was interested in the spiritual
angst of Paula and Adam only so far as it impacted on their deaths, and I was afraid there was a way to go before Father Joe
got there.

“Well, what was it that was bothering them?” It sounded dismissive, but I wanted to goad Father Joe into a response.

“I wish I could tell you,” he said, his clasped hands parting in a gesture that said, That's all.

“You wish you could tell me?” I could hear the vexation in my voice.

“I have never met two such circumspect individuals,” he said. “I can tell you that Paula was obsessed by what I might call
sins of omission and sins of pride, and that she was overwhelmed and deeply depressed by a sense of guilt—and annoyed with
herself for feeling guilt when she did not believe in a higher being who was capable of judging her. I can tell you that Adam
had found in himself a sudden thirst for the meaning of life, and that he found his present state of affairs wanting in all
sorts of ways. I have no doubt that the two of them had got into some sort of trouble, but in my conversations with them we
talked only in the abstract and the theoretical, because as soon as I tried to probe the specifics they clammed up like a
couple of schoolgirls caught smoking.”

I puffed out my cheeks and exhaled slowly. Our eyes met, mine disappointed, his still curious.

“Now I have to eat,” he said, “so it's your turn to talk. I want to hear about the children. Hannah and William, is that right?”

I had no desire to talk. If I was going to leave empty-handed I'd rather have done it straightaway, but my plate was clean
and he still had his breakfast sitting in front of him, and common courtesy dictated that I stay and indeed that I talk. I
started grudgingly, very aware that he had heard much of this from Adam. He was a good audience, however, and I soon relaxed
into it. He ate steadily, pausing sometimes just to raise his eyebrows, or to grunt or chuckle. His face was expressive, and
I felt as though we were having a conversation, not as though I was reciting a monologue. I wondered whether this was a technique
he had perfected, something he used on his congregation. Somehow my story drew to a natural break just as he mopped his plate
clear of yolk. He licked his lips, patted them with his napkin, then looked up at me.

“Adam came to see me on the afternoon of Paula's funeral,” he said. “I'd already left for the airport, so I missed him.”

I stared at him, and he went on speaking.

“However, he left me a package that I found on my return yesterday. He left it with instructions that it be locked in my office
until I came back, and that is what happened.”

He bent and picked up his briefcase from the side of his chair and drew from it a large padded brown envelope. This he placed
on the table in front of me. He nodded his consent, and I reached for it and picked it up. It was unsealed. Inside were three
videotapes as well as one much smaller tape about the size of a calling card that I recognized as a sixty-minute MiniDV tape.
The videotapes were numbered one to three and bore the initials “CM,” but were not otherwise labeled. The MiniDV tape had
no marking of any sort. There was also a note. Glancing up at Father Joe Riberra, and receiving another nod, I unfolded it.