When the Bough Breaks, page 18
Beecher can’t find the words. He wishes none of this were real. He doesn’t even know whether he believes that Hagman is a serial killer. Doesn’t know whether he should put him in handcuffs or give him a medal. He knows what he would do to anybody who put their hands on Nola or Lottie. He’d slice him up so small that they’d never find the bastard.
‘You’re going to press ahead with it, then,’ says Beecher, trying to find the strength to get out of his chair. He picks up his vape and breathes in a lungful of menthol. It makes him feel cold inside. ‘You’re going to start the arrest plan.’
‘It’s the perfect time,’ says Quinn, stretching her back, then typing out a note on her phone. ‘Bring him in for this, then hit him with the other stuff. We’ll be friendly. He won’t see it coming and he’ll be all of a jangle after what he’s just done.’
Beecher shakes his head. ‘The picture you painted of him – he’s not that man. He’s fragile. Old. He’s a sad case, really …’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Lewis,’ says Quinn, lashing him with angry eyes. ‘You’re still not on board? You’re as bad as the rest of them sometimes. This is what it’s been for … this is a career maker!’
Beecher feels himself folding inwards, his insides crumpling like paper cubes. He feels as though he’s somehow sold a piece of himself – made a deal without knowing the stakes. He suddenly knows that Quinn doesn’t give a damn whether Hagman killed anybody. It’s about the headline-grabbing result. He hadn’t seen it at first. Had believed her when she’d laughed off her brief spell in the public eye – the high-flying detective who bungled an investigation and blotted her perfect record.
‘Is this about Doctor Holloway again?’ he asks, without taking the time to soften his tone. ‘For the last time, Magda, it wasn’t your fault and nobody thinks it is! Christ, it’s almost like you’ve made up this whole “narrative” as you call it … like you’ve just come up with this whole thing to prove that you were right and everybody else was wrong. I mean, even the whole cellmate confession – Christ … I feel like I’m coming out of a bloody trance, love.’
Quinn glares through him. Licks her lips. Beecher suddenly wonders whether she’s about to unleash a forked tail, her perfect back splitting open to reveal demonic wings. He’s starting to worry about himself. Feels like his thoughts are somebody else’s. Thinks of Sal, and her weird frequency with Jarod: the way she talks of seeing his nightmares, feeling his pain. That was how she knew he was still alive for all those years when he was out of touch. She feels his heart against her own. She claims to remember the womb, though Beecher has never given the idea much credence. She’s got a taste for the esoteric, has Sal. Used to drive him up the wall with it.
‘Don’t take your guilt out on me, Detective Inspector,’ says Quinn coldly. ‘You are my deputy SIO on this investigation and if you don’t want to be a part of this – of the culmination of so much hard work – well, now’s the time to step out. But I warn you, you’ve got your ex-girlfriend sitting there sharing war stories with the partner of Hagman’s last victim. You’ve already helped her cover up a procedural fuck-up. I’d say that the way things go from here depends very much on choosing your next few words carefully. After all, the police do love a good cohesive and coherent narrative. Keep things simple, yes? Not only have we saved the service’s blushes by blocking Hagman’s attempt to clear his name, but we’ve even managed to build a case against him for half a dozen others. We’re bringing in justice for all of them. For Trina Delaney. Jack Stempel. Terry Carruthers. Tifo Trabelsi. William Fox-Barnard. Jessica Platten.’ She reels off the names like a religious incantation. Takes a breath before saying the last. ‘Doctor Perry Holloway.’ She sniffs as she says it: that wound’s still raw. ‘How about Tyson DeFreitas, eh? Mason Coolidge. Geoffrey Lerner. Theresa Booth …’
‘I know the names, Magda. I know the case inside out and back to fucking front, love.’ He drums his fingers on his forehead, as if typing. ‘The thing is, right … I don’t even know if we should be trying to stop him! Those names you read off – they’re a who’s who of evil – you get that? There’s not a man or woman among them who deserves to draw another day’s breath. You’ve half got me convinced somebody’s killing them off – but that sad little man that lives with Jarod? Jesus, he hasn’t got it in him.’
Quinn looks as if she wants to punch him right in the face. She looks at him as though she’s just wiped him off her blood-red heels.
‘So you’re quitting, yeah? You don’t want to be a part of this? That’s what I’m hearing, yes?’
Beecher arches his back. He already knows the right thing to do. Knows, as well, that he isn’t going to do it.
‘I’m in,’ he says, forcing himself to meet her eye. ‘But I tell Sal. And I tell her when I think it’s right.’
Quinn smiles. It’s not as seductive any more. He feels as though she’s simply showing him her teeth.
‘I’m happy to make sacrifices on the altar of your romantic entanglements, Detective Inspector Beecher. But do promise me you’re going to look a little less glum when we’re charging him, yes? They’ll play that bit at the end of the documentary, I shouldn’t wonder. That’ll be the moment, yes. Make sure you look like it matters to you.’
Becher hauls himself up. For an instant, he imagines grabbing her by the throat and squeezing until her eyes pop and her lying tongue falls slackly down her open throat. He shakes it away. Knows where such thoughts can lead.
‘Come on,’ she urges, as if he’s a shy toddler. ‘Let’s go and ask the lovely people to sign off on the arrest, and then we can work out how the fuck we’re going to get out to the farm to arrest him. Maybe we should hold off until the cameras can make it over. I’ve spoken to the producer again. Snow’s messing things up for them as well as us.’
Beecher isn’t listening any more. He doesn’t care. He wonders, as he so often does, what it would be like to be dead. He thinks about nothingness. Oblivion. It’s only the spectre of hell that stops him. He can’t be sure it isn’t real. He knows he won’t see heaven, not after what he’s done, but hell sounds like somewhere he’d rather not see until he has absolutely no alternative. And there are his girls. Sal, too. A couple of mates. Dad. He talks his neck out of the noose half a dozen times a day. Has done since he started reading about Sal’s past and allowing his infatuation with Quinn to blind his thinking. He wonders whether there’s any way to make amends for what he’s done. Whether there’s any way to right the scale.
He picks up his phone and thinks, for a moment, about calling Nola.
Puts it away.
TWENTY
Nola’s cleaning. Scrubbing. Putting some bloody elbow grease into it. She’s humming: a high, bright madness in her throat. She always cleans when she’s trying not to be a big girl’s blouse – trying not to whinge and moan and go on like the world’s about to fall off its bloody axis. Mam doesn’t need that, thank you very much. Not today.
She’s giving it her best. She likes to scrub the stains out of things: to really chisel away at the dried candle wax on her chest of drawers, then take her thumbnail to the bits of blu-tack on the walls and the pasta splashed on her shiny white desk. She uses all the nozzles of the vacuum cleaner to suck up the hairballs and false nails from the nooks and crannies of her little square bedroom. She’s been working hard. The room is spotless but she’s still wiping down, high on lemon-scented wet wipes and pine air freshener, furniture polish and room deodorizer. She feels light-headed. She’d like to open the window but doesn’t know if she’s allowed. They’re not made of money, after all. They can’t have hot air blowing straight out into a force-nine bloody gale. Mam’s said as much. Says she’ll send the bill to her bloody dad. He’s got the money, after bloody all.
She’s got her headphones on. She’s listening to Agnes Obel. It’s winsome and ethereal and makes her feel like she’s dancing in the rain, pirouetting barefoot through dark, gaslit streets. She’s wearing her little vest top and some jogging trousers. Her hair’s sticking to her sweaty face. She can smell herself. She’ll have a bath when she’s done. Maybe chop the split ends out of her hair.
She’s OK, she thinks. Doing fine. She’s tiring herself out. She’ll go check on Lottie in a moment. Maybe grab some water. Cheese and crackers. Just the bedspread to do. Bedspread? Ha! They’d laughed at school when she’d called it that. It was one of Dagmara’s words: an old-lady word. Quilt cover, that was it. Just the quilt cover to put on. She’s not great at this bit. Has never managed to do it without grabbing hold of the quilt by its edges and crawling inside the cover until she reaches the seams. She likes it inside the cover, with its scents of fabric softener and detergent. She’s putting on the nice white cover with the strawberries. She doesn’t know if it’s too young for her or too old for her, but she likes it, and Sal always said that she wouldn’t want to know somebody who worried about what somebody else might think of their bedspread, and …
She thinks of Sal for a moment. Remembers sending the message. God, she’s so cringe! She grinds her teeth, sucking on self-loathing, squeezing her thumbs in the palms of her sweaty hands. She hasn’t checked her phone since she started tidying up. Plucks it from its place on the tall pine bookshelf, leaning up against a copy of Lorna Doone. She hasn’t read it yet. Sal’s told her not to feel bad about this. Said nobody has ever actually reached the end of a novel by Hardy or Eliot – they just say they have to show off to their friends. And she went to university on a special scholarship and used to work in a bookshop, so …
She reads the message.
Reads it again.
There’s a strange feeling inside her: a low crackling, like the static on the telly or the fizz in the moments after a lightbulb has burned out. She feels sick, suddenly. Feels the urge to throw her guts up all over the nice clean floor. God, what was she thinking? She makes herself feel sick with her neediness, her weakness – all the things that Hank likes to tease her about. He’s only being funny, according to Mam. He’s nice really if you listen to Lottie.
She starts to read the message again and can’t make it to the third word before her eyes blur with tears. She puts the phone down. Tries to tune back into the music. Picks up the duvet cover and the quilt and tries to control her breathing. They did yoga for a while at school. Some friend of Dagmara’s had come in and taught them how to breathe. Nola had made half the class laugh when she’d joked that she didn’t need any help with that – she could even do it in her sleep. The other half of the class didn’t get it. One girl said she told proper dad jokes and was ‘so cringe it makes my insides hurt’. Nola hasn’t told any jokes since.
There’s a roaring inside Jarod’s skull: a sound like grit being passed through a grinder. It isn’t the quad bike. He can feel its reassuring rumble against his thighs. The sound inside his brain is something else: something old, something new …
‘Borrowed,’ he mumbles to himself. ‘Blue.’ Realizes he’s speaking, not thinking. Tells himself to stop. They’ll think you’re mad if you talk to yourself. That’s what he’d been taught, before his mother’s death, and after. He’d given the same advice to his brothers and sisters as Dagmara had given him. Keep it locked away, Jarod. Don’t ever let it out.
He slows the quad, coming to a halt outside a sagging five-bar gate. Crows are taking off from the white-capped stones, feathers fluttering down among the billions of billions of billowing fractals. Jarod switches off the engine. Allows himself to stand in hushed amazement for a moment – to let the wind buffet him, cool him, spin him. He remembers the mole-catcher: dozens of sleek bodies pinned to the barbed wire, metal skewers through their noses, corpses shrivelling inwards as the seasons changed. He’d been one of Mam’s Wednesday-night callers. Liked to watch. Killed himself with strychnine a couple of years back, according to the papers at the time. Used the same poison on himself that he used to kill the moles.
He peers at the only marker on the vanishing horizon: a line of frost-laden trees, ghost-white and stark. Remembers his way inside. Remembers Barry, giving him cigarettes, giving him sweets, telling him he’d be his mate if he’d let him come back to the Byre with him – to meet Trina, wind up that boring bastard Hagman. To get up to mischief. To have some fun. Jarod had done what he’d been taught to do. He’d been kind. Generous. He’d shown hospitality and welcome, just like the picture on Dagmara’s wall had told him to. He was repaid for his kindness in blood.
‘You hear that, Tips?’ he asks, turning in the seat to give the soggy dog a rub behind the ears. He’d like to take his gloves off to do it properly, but unsettling images keep flashing in his vision: surreal projections, fractured imaginings. He sees himself taking off his glove and pictures the flesh and fat and meat of his hand sliding out – the crimson-smeared whiteness of his skeletal hand sticking out of the sleeve of his coat like gory twigs.
He glares across the whiteness, looking for something familiar. He’s five miles from home. Three miles from the crime scene. If he takes some of the old roads and cuts across the untended fields, he can be at Weardy before the broiling black clouds disgorge their next cargo. He’ll find some comfort in work, he tells himself. He can keep busy. Do stuff. Build stuff. Make Dagmara happy.
He feels a low trilling in his trouser pocket. He’d like to answer the call but knows he can’t do it with his gloves on. He doubts it’s important. Nothing’s very important any more.
Up ahead, a battered blue Toyota HiLux is making its way down the curve of the road, two wheels seeking the extra grip of the grass verge beneath the snow. Jarod recognizes the driver – a tall, youngish man who farms out towards Sinderhope. He spots Jarod. Gives a grin and a thumbs up – leaning across to shout through the passenger window.
‘We’ve had worse!’
Jarod knows he’s supposed to smile back. He’s spent years training himself how to react correctly. He just can’t seem to make himself perform the command.
‘That is you, Jarod lad? Heard there’s some bother near Bewley’s place? Dead bloke – that right? God, Bewley’ll be shitting himself that he’s liable for something. I was going to have a nosey once I’d dropped some feed off for our Yvonne.’
Jarod feels as if he’s moving underwater. Hears in slow motion. Behind him, he feels Tips shivering against his sodden coat. It doesn’t feel real. Everything seems to be coming from far away.
The driver starts to look a little put-out. He wrinkles his forehead, blue woollen hat rising on bushy brows. ‘You OK, lad?’
Jarod screws up his eyes. Summons up a smile. ‘Sorry, Dan, I just choked on a bit of dirty snow – throat’s throbbing like a bastard.’
Dan laughs, relieved. ‘Been there, mate. I think I’ve still got a Lilt or two in that family pack on the back seat if you want a drink, like. By the bairn’s seat. Don’t look too closely at the fabric – think some of that stuff’s evolving. I swear to God, I left the doors open once and came back to find a retching in the footwell. Makes you take a look at yourself, a moment like that.’
Jarod feels the buzzing in his skull begin to recede. Feels himself soften for a moment. Climbs off the quad as steadily as he can and plods his way across the narrow road to where the truck is idling. He places his face in the warm air spilling out of the open window. Looks inside at a chaos of papers, cartons, pizza boxes and fur. There’s mud and snow and hay on every surface. Radio Cumbria is dribbling out of the speaker.
‘Coming in bad,’ says Dan companionably. He reaches across and pulls a can of Fanta from a half-finished pack. Hands it to Jarod, who takes it with thanks. He takes a sip and feels the sugar hit his bloodstream. He hadn’t realized how thirsty he was. How hungry. How desperately he’d needed to replenish himself. He glugs it down in one. He’s panting when he’s done.
‘Thirsty, lad?’ asks Dan, impressed. ‘God, that stuff’s gassier than Foster’s!’
‘Thanks,’ says Jarod again. He feels a trembling in his arms: needles stabbing at his skin from the inside. ‘All go at Bewley’s, aye. Car’s gone through that wee wall at the bottom of the road – the one over the falls. Driver’s gone through the window, best they can tell.’
Dan pulls a face: a toddler sucking on a lemon. ‘Under the snow, was it? Christ, it’s lucky they spotted him at all. There’s some plods there now, are there? You’re as well off out of it, I reckon. Keep your head down.’
‘Doesn’t make any difference to a dead man when they find him,’ says Jarod, surprising himself. The words come from nowhere: a searing flash of certainty, as if they’ve been carved into the meat of his brain by an intruder. Temper flashes through him. He doesn’t deserve to be feeling like this. Not again. Not after he worked so hard to put himself right – to make sense of it all; to pull on a mask he could wear for the rest of his life. The thoughts that broil and pop and sizzle inside his head are not his own. He can’t untangle his memories from his imaginings. He wishes Sal were closer. Sometimes, all he wants to do is press his head against his sister’s, to let their consciousnesses fuse – to walk around inside one another’s minds like honoured guests.
‘I’ve seen a fair few four-by-fours heading up that way,’ confides Dan. ‘Was thinking I should mention the silly sod on the lane t’other night, as it goes.’
Jarod stares at him, hoovering him up like smoke. He’s wearing a Barbour jacket over padded shirt and vest, his moleskin trousers wet to the knees. There’s a smell of wet hair and cowshit rising from the upholstery, tiny fragments of snow dancing in the air from the blowers. ‘Lot of fuss for a car crash, if you ask me. But aye, some little thing, going like the clappers over the lane from the falls. Almost had me off the quad. Told meself, they’re going to do somebody a mischief. You don’t think it was owt to do with it, do you? I mean, I didn’t get much of a look. Shouldn’t have been out in the weather that was coming in. Clouds could have swallowed it up like a mint.’
