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‘No You’re the one with the police here, you’ll be the one to hear anything’
‘Then why are you early? You’re never this early’
‘Just a cancelled operation … it does happen’
‘It never happens’
‘Death happens and this patient died All right?’
‘Alan, I have to talk to you … it’s very hard to do that’
‘Why ever should it be?’
‘You’re never here’
‘I’m here now’
‘You’ve cut yourself off froood would it do for me to stay in the house all day? Would it help find him? Would it help you or Lucy? Not to mention my patients?’
‘Oh yes, your patients’
‘If you can convinceabout here with you all day instead of doing us headed for the stairs and his wife followed
Kate finished peeling the potatoes, cut them up and put them in a pan of water, then looked around for a carrot As she did so her phone rang
‘DC Marshall’
‘Hi Kate, it’s Nathan’
‘So ca He’s just been in He’s a cyclist Says at first nothing clicked, only when he got to work he reus standing at the gate … his school bag was on the ground … he was looking up the road … round about ten past eight’
‘And?’
‘And that’s it’
‘Oh’
‘So eyewitness … he was definitely there’
‘Well, we knew that already …’
‘Mightn’t have … ht have co him after all’
‘Oh come on Anyway, forensics have been all over the dad’s car – always do You knoell as I do – suspect the parents first, so try and pin it on the else?’
‘Nope Sorry’
‘OK Thanks, Nathan’
Kate found a sharp knife and an onion and began to slice it, with the cold tap running the way her mother had always done, and which wasn’t a da
So now she had to tell the Anguses that there was news, but no news … nothing they didn’t already have If only the ht … But you couldn’t think like that Deal in facts, she’d learned over and over again, never speculation Never dash hopes but never build thee in fantasies, don’t get involved in theirs …
Frory The slauish
She went out of the kitchen as Marilyn was co down, hands to her head, her face contorted with tears and rage
‘Don’t say it’s all right, because it’s not … it’s never going to be all right again What’s happened? You’ve heard so …’
Kate led her into the kitchen
All over Lafferton David Angus’s face looked out from posters, in shop s, and the s of houses, on noticeboards, in pubs and clubs, the library, the sports centre, the swi pool But not only over Lafferton; now, the poster had been taken up countrywide David Angus, the nine-year-old schoolboy with an earnest face and protruding ears, saw, if he could have seen, mothers pull their own children closer to theates and in playgrounds; heard, if he could have heard, what everyone said about ‘that poor child’, ‘those poor parents’; and worse, heard the words ‘dead’ and ‘murdered’ and, most frequently of all, the word ‘hopeless’
As Simon Serrailler walked down the blue carpet towards the exit doors of the us’s eyes followed him from the noticeboards He realised that the extreer There was precious little in his larder and the last thing he felt like was eating out, even in a pub, but the sight of the Sprat and Mackerel Fish Shop on the corner of March Street was cheering
He bought freshly cooked haddock and extra chips, had them double-wrapped and sped down the road towards home
The sound of the silence as he opened the front door had never been ainst the wet night, switched on the la hi drinker, especially when at home alone, so that what he had noould be plenty to relax hie off his tiredness and the chill in his bones which he kneas more emotional than physical
He would eat and drink, raphy of Stalin which he had bought the previous day; glass in hand, he browsed along his bookshelves The Diary of a Nobody Three Men in a Boat … but he knew he did not want to laugh and in the end took down a Hornblower novel he had not reread for so in to the station
‘Is Nathan still there?’
‘Just gone, sir’
‘Anything happened?’
‘Afraid not … most people have called it a day … they’re all a bit dispirited’
‘I know Everyone needs a good night’s sleep’
Except the people who uses The FLO had told hius only slept when she took one of the tablets Chris had prescribed for her but that she hated doing so, in case there was news and she needed to be alert
And David? Was he sleeping? Or dead?
Soh Si paper He opened the oven door and was about to take out the plate and the package of fish and chips when his doorbell rang He reht call round on his way home, and went to the intercom
‘Hi, Chris, come on up’
He went to meet his brother-in-law at the flat door
‘Hi …’
But it was not Chris Deerbon who caht of stairs towards hie … I realise it wasn’t ht, the last person in the world
‘Diana’
He stood in the doorway looking at her and she was a total stranger, this tall, red-headed, slim woman, smart, scented, well-made-up He did not know her Had he ever known her? Yes, in another life, when he had been another person
‘What are you doing here?’
He did not want to let her in The flat, his sacred space, was forbidden to her She had never been inside it They had never met in Lafferton at all
‘You’re hard to track down’
He did not reply