Sandra shook her head, her eyes hardening. “She knew, Paul. Edna knew.”
“Something else Ward told me,” said Gray. “Len had Alf Brown helping him go through all the old files yesterday. Alf Brown retired five years ago – but he’s the one who done all the forensics on the Woodrow case. And there was one thing that always bothered me about what they said about the crime scene. Up until today, I put it down to the shock of what I saw, that I din’t take it in or remember it properly. But I never saw no pentagram in blood around Darren Moorcock’s body.” He snapped the logbook shut.
“Ring him,” Sandra’s voice was urgent. “Ring Ward before Rivett get him too.”
* * *
Smollet went into the en suite in the spare bedroom, stared at his face. His skin looked grey and he could see lines by the corners of his eyes that hadn’t been there a couple of days
before. His teenage infatuation might have burned itself out over the many years of his marriage, but until the dawn of Monday morning, he had still cherished the idea that he had done the honourable thing. That matrimony hadn’t just been an enterprise engineered to benefit his uncle – to benefit himself.
Smollet had been told that Samantha’s teenage breakdown had been precipitated by a row with her mother that had led to Amanda’s miscarriage, the culmination of months of bad blood between the pair. That was why she had had to go back to London to have treatment in a private clinic and then been returned to the custody of her father, Malcolm. When Smollet’s training took him to Hendon, Rivett had helped instigate the resumption of the tentative courtship that had only just begun before she was forced to go away. After two years’ engagement, Smollet married Samantha in Chelsea Town Hall, brought her back to Ernemouth with him when he passed out as a newly qualified PC. Told everyone she was a girl he had met in London. They said it would be better that way.
Smollet’s love had still burned brightly then, even though there were few traces left of the girl he had known at school. He understood that the sterilization, the dentistry and the other surgery had been necessary, for her own good, and it had certainly rendered Smollet’s beloved the perfect policeman’s wife. Her childlike frailty made him love her even more, so that the promise he had made to Eric had not been entirely down to Rivett’s ulterior motives, the rewards he was promised he would reap from their union – and had, in due course, received.
Samantha never alluded to the time when they had first
met, and Smollet didn’t expect her to – from his understanding of the medical facts, she’d had to blank a lot out of her mind in order to recover. She sometimes recalled her earlier childhood, often forgetting that her nana was no longer with them, although she never mentioned Eric. Only Rivett seemed to make her uncomfortable, as if there was still something lurking in the corner of her mind that she half-remembered about him.
She had never reconciled with her mother. Amanda now lived somewhere in Hertfordshire, still married to her toy boy Wayne and, from what Smollet had gathered, taking on a constant stream of foster children as some form of penance. Eric had died in 1989, succumbing to a second heart attack not long after the wedding. He left half of everything he owned to Smollet, so long as he continued to act as Samantha’s custodian.
Smollet had risen rapidly to take command of Rivett’s old station. The long hours, his dedication to the gym and his carefully cultivated standing in the community had been compensation enough for the holes at the heart of his home life, holes that gradually widened over the years. As his wife drifted further away from him and into the shell of herself, Smollet’s good looks continued to attract the kind of similarly frustrated, middle-aged women who appreciated string-free assignations and were compelled by the bonds of their own marriages to remain discreet.
He had accepted that his lot was not a bad one, until Sean Ward rolled into town.
Smollet opened the cupboard door, banishing his ruffled image. He’d already packed her normal medication, but the doctor had given him an emergency supply of something stronger, in case she ever became violent. He’d seen some flares
of temper over the years, but nothing that had ever made him think it would be necessary to use it.
But, as he picked up the packet of Rohypnol, he felt unknown territory opening up before him. Sean Ward had deduced correctly that from the moment he had first contacted Rivett, things had reverted to exactly as they were before he retired: Rivett giving the orders, telling Smollet to be as gracious as possible to the PI while letting Uncle Len take care of the real business his way. Suggesting that he might like to take Samantha out of town for a while, that if she caught wind of anything about Ward’s enquiry, it might rekindle unwanted memories of a very unpleasant time for all concerned.
As usual, Smollet had deferred to Rivett’s wisdom, making arrangements to take Samantha to a trusted retreat after work this evening where he could leave her in safety to be properly looked after, while biting back the nagging doubts that popped into his mind with every fresh turn of events. All the strangeness up at the old pillbox had brought back a lot of memories Smollet thought he had buried years ago. Of the days when he was at school with Darren Moorcock and Corrine Woodrow, of that brief time when Samantha had been one of them weirdos herself.
But, until Blackburn’s call, Smollet had assured himself that there could be no repercussions from the twenty-year-old case, that, as usual, his uncle had everything in hand. Perhaps, he admitted to himself, as his eyes ran down the label on the bottle, he hadn’t wanted to think anything else was possible.
He had rung Rivett to ask him if he knew anything about what DS Kidd had been doing up at Alcott’s farm. Rivett had denied any knowledge of it and, for the first time, Smollet realised he was lying. He knew how far back Kidd went with
Rivett, knew the part he had played in the original Woodrow investigation. These last two nights, Smollet had sat up late, reading the old case files himself, along with the reams of Ward’s notes, trying to see between the lines of history, to divine if there was anything that had been hidden from view back then that Rivett had not revealed to him since.
But before he was able to articulate any of this, Rivett had told him that they needed to meet before he left, up in what they both still referred to as Eric’s office.
“Why?” Smollet had been dumbfounded. “I thought we sorted all the business stuff up there last night? You know, so’s I could get off early? Which was your idea anyway …”
“Dale,” Rivett’s voice took on the jocular tone he liked to use just before interrogating a suspect, “you know I’m taking special care of your interests, like I always have. But something’s been brought to my attention that could be a problem for you if we don’t sort it out now. There’s been a journalist sniffing around. She might have stumbled on something that could harm you. I can’t go into it on the phone, I shouldn’t have to explain why. But you want everything to keep being all right for you and Samantha, don’t you?”
“For me and Samantha?” Smollet still didn’t quite compute what he was hearing.
“That’s right,” said Rivett, “your lovely wife. That’s her I’m thinking about and you should too. I’ll see you in half an hour, Dale. Give me a ring when you’re on your way.”
Then the phone had clicked off. Smollet left the station in a daze, ordering Blackburn to deal with the mess his best friend had made for the DCC of Norwich, while he drove home way above the speed limit, unable to dampen the fuse of fear that last comment from Rivett had lit in his head.
In all his thirty-six years, Smollet might never have managed to decode how his uncle’s mind worked, but he could read enough of the signs to know when the old man was setting something – or someone – up. He came home to find Samantha in the deepest torpor he had seen in months. And now she was telling him Rivett had already paid a visit here this morning …
When Smollet came back into the bedroom, his wife was still sitting in her silk nightie and dressing gown. But she was holding something he had never seen before. A big, old, black, leather-bound book.
“Look,” she said, “what Uncle Len gave me. He said he was returning it, like I’d lent it to him or something. But Dale,” her eyes were fearful. “I don’t like it. It reminds me of something … Something bad …”
* * *
Gray put the phone down. “I’m meeting him now,” he told Sandra. “At DCI Smollet’s house.”
“Do you think—?” Sandra began, but her husband cut her off with a kiss, pressing the logbook into her hand.
“Take good care of it, love,” he said. “I’ve got to go.”
* * *
Rivett picked up the receiver. The voice on the other end was not one he had been expecting and for a second he struggled to comprehend what he was hearing. Something about Kidd knowing he’d be at this number. Something about the selfsame Kidd getting arrested for B&E at Alcott’s farm, the old biddy holding him up with a twelve-bore while her husband rang Norwich police. It was Blackburn doing the
blabbering and, as this registered, Rivett thought he must be playing some kind of spectacularly unfunny practical joke, of a type he excelled at.
“And if that weren’t bad enough,” Blackburn went on, “DC Snell went down Pearson’s place, to take care of him like you told me, and he’s now in casualty with half his arse ripped off. You never said the old boy had dogs.”
“Dogs?” repeated Rivett, and as he said the word, he thought he could hear the sound of barking. He got to his feet, putting the gun back down on the desk. “You’re fucking me about, in’t you?” he said, loosening his collar, looking straight through Francesca, his face flushing a vivid red. “Tell me you’re fucking me about.”
“I wish I was, sir,” Blackburn’s voice was a pathetic whine. “But that DCC from Norwich left here ten minutes ago and I reckon he’s headed your way.”
“What?” Rivett’s face turned from crimson to chalk white. “And where’s Smollet been through all this?”
“I don’t know,” Blackburn said. “He run out of here ’bout half an hour ago, screaming his head off that I shouldn’t talk to you about it, then left me to deal with all this shit …”
Rivett dropped the phone. The sounds in his ears were getting steadily louder, a pack of hounds he could hear now, yammering and howling, baying for blood. Pain shot up from his legs and into his chest, down from his arms and towards his heart, so strong he felt it throwing him upwards, throwing him backwards, Eric’s old chair tipping over beneath him. Then he was falling, falling, towards the dark water, images racing through his mind.
Eric’s granddaughter, her hair fanned out around her on the pillow, telling him she had seen a murder, the boy who had been
reported missing that morning. The words dropping out of her with an actress’s precision, a story so complete no innocent could have possibly made it up. Eric holding her hand and telling her that she was a good girl, she looking up at him expectantly. Him looking down at the girl’s hand in Eric’s, at her broken nails, her skinned knuckles.
Edna in the kitchen, kneading dough.
Paul Gray nodding as he looked at the picture of the boy. Paul Gray going to work. Alf Brown going to work afterwards, moving slowly through the foul air of the pillbox, stoic and unmoved, a good soldier who never questioned orders.
Corrine Woodrow crying in the cells. Corrine Woodrow with no cuts and grazes on her knuckles, her black-painted nails unbroken. Darren Moorcock’s dried blood smeared all over her face.
Fires in the night in the South Town terraces, cries of vengeance on the lips of the people, smoke billowing into the night air. Riots at the gates of Ernemouth High, a tall, thin man being ushered away under a blanket into the back of a police van, while a mob of mothers screamed for his blood.
The weight of Edna’s coffin on his shoulder, the sombre dirge of the church organ as they processed up the aisle.
Eric, lying on a hospital bed, wired up to all them machines. Leaning in close to give him the last rites, whispering the words of benediction: “A marriage between our families, Eric, that’s what we said. Now that’s all set in stone …” – fanning his best friend’s brow with the solicitor’s documents, with Eric’s Last Will and Testament – “your part is done.” Fingers closing around the oxygen tube, pinching it shut, seeing the realisation bloom in Eric’s eyes just before they clouded over.
And Gina, Gina running towards the river in Norwich, down a narrow alleyway, GET INTO ARCHEOLOGY – GIVE
SNOWY ONE daubed across the wall in white paint. Gina stumbling and falling, her red lips framing curses, her black eyes flashing up at him, stone cold with hate to the last.
Fading into Corrine, waiting by his car, dancing with herself.
Rivett felt an iron fist clench around his heart, felt the hounds’ hot breath on his cheek as his head hit the floor.
* * *
“Here,” Smollet offered the glass across to his wife. “Drink this. It’ll make you feel better.”
But she shook her head.
“Don’t want to,” she said, sounding like a child. Or a petulant teenager.
“Please, darling,” Smollet pleaded, looking sideways at the clock again, thinking how much longer they had got, feeling as if everything was slipping away from him, wondering why he had never comprehended before what Rivett and Eric Hoyle were really capable of.
He put the glass down on the bedside table, reached to take the book out of her hands.
“What is it?” he asked.
“It belongs to a master magician,” she whispered, and her eyes rolled away.
Smollet could take no more. If he couldn’t get the drugs down her throat, he would have to use another method. With a deft flick of his palm, she slumped forwards across the bed, the book falling from her arms and sliding onto the floor.
* * *
The rain started suddenly as they passed the Britannic Pier, sheeting down hard on the windscreen. Noj looked up in
time to see a fork of lightning cracking across the horizon, a jagged line in the sky momentarily illuminating the turbines that towered above the North Denes. She felt a quickening in her blood, a sense of time coming full circle.