First One Missing (24 page)

He dropped his bag to the floor and made a face in the hall mirror before proceeding slowly down the hallway.

‘Ah, there you are. Darling, say hello to Susan.’

The woman sitting at the kitchen table gazed at him as if she was having trouble focusing. She had long black curly hair that looked like it needed a wash, and green eyes which were pink around the edges. Her face looked too wide for the amount of skin which was stretched very thin and almost see-through in places. Her hand when he shook it was shockingly cold, despite the mugginess of the day, and lay limply in his like a foreign object.

‘Would you like some tea, darling? Biscuit?’

He looked more closely at his mother. She had that unnatural brightness that usually came from being with … Oh. Now he knew who this woman was. The knowledge was a dull thud in his stomach. Susan Glover. The mother of the latest victim.

‘Kieren just dropped Susan off. You remember Kieren, don’t you, the Glovers’ lovely FLO? He thought it would do Susan good to get out of the house. Did you have a good day at school?’

His mum was bustling about the kitchen pouring water into the kettle, opening cupboards, rustling biscuit packets, but all the time it was like she was play-acting, as if the stage directions had called for a ‘normal family scene’. Rory guessed it must be because of the woman. Mrs Glover. Probably his mum wanted to show her that life did get back to normal and the Glovers could look forward to being an ordinary family again. Yeah, right.

‘Are you taking your GCSEs this summer?’

Mrs Glover’s voice was like a child’s. It made Rory feel uncomfortable. Adults should sound like adults. Otherwise it was just creepy. But then maybe that wasn’t her real voice. Maybe it was just the voice she’d been landed with since what happened to her daughter. Maybe they were all walking around using voices that weren’t really their own.

‘Yeah. That’s right.’

‘He’s about to retake maths for the second time!’ his mum chimed in. Rory hated it when she did that – used his abysmal academic record to try to prove something about herself.
Oh, look how relaxed I am, no hot-housing here. See how tolerant I am? What a good sport?

‘Third time lucky, they say.’ The soft voice cracked as Mrs Glover tried to laugh.

‘Better go. Got loadsa revision.’

He grabbed the tea that had just been poured and started backing out of the room.

‘Catch!’ A packet of biscuits sailed through the air. His mum was smiling, her cheeks flushed. Susan Glover looked on as if watching the scene through a thick pane of glass.

As he scurried up the stairs he heard his mum say something – probably at his expense – and giggle. At least she seemed to be pulling out of the dark mood she’d been in for the last few days. He sighed, remembering how Susan Glover’s cheekbones looked like they might tear through the thin skin that covered them. He thought about how his own mum had been two weeks after Megan’s death.

Life was shit sometimes. No word of a lie.

28

So now I’ve seen the template for how it will be. I’ve seen how life becomes possible again. I’ve seen how I can be a mother of a murdered child but also a mother of a living child, and a wife of a living man. I’ve seen how I can move about my kitchen as if I care about whether there are biscuits in the cupboard and teabags and coffee. Or whether the dishwasher needs emptying or the cat needs to be fed. And how much. And is he getting fat.

In Helen Purvis I’ve seen my future smiling nervously and darting about and putting a warm hand on my arm. Playing the part of a mother, a friend, a wife. I’ve seen how I can accommodate even this most unaccommodatable thing, and still keep on living and breathing.

Two weeks ago I weighed myself in the morning. Ten stone seven. I’d never been so heavy except during pregnancy. All day I was preoccupied with my body, feeling myself to be swollen, enormous, whale-like. I remember Poppy put her arms around me and squeezed and I moved away because I didn’t want her to feel how my tummy squidged beneath her fingers. I put on the skinny jeans that I’d bought so proudly after I lost my Mia baby weight and felt constricted and stupid, like people would look at my legs and see two sausages bursting their casing.

It mattered to me then. What I looked like.

Just fourteen days later I’ve lost sixteen pounds. I stood on the scales this morning, and saw the needle at under nine and a half stone and felt nothing. Losing my daughter has made me thin. I can’t bear the sight of my ribs poking through my skin because I know what has revealed them. I hate my cheekbones and my hip bones, all the hard nubs of me that have appeared since Poppy went. I want to wrap the fat back around me, winding it like a bandage until time is reversed and she is back.

Helen warned me about the pills. She said I would be tempted but that I must hold firm. She said I must do it for Mia and for Oliver. She showed me her son, a great big boy-man who had nothing to do with my little girls and my life. She wanted me to see how it is possible to re-form into a different type of unit, with new skin growing over the gaping hole, and things gradually shifting to make a new family shape. Her son looked embarrassed, like he wanted to be somewhere else.

I want to take the pills. All of them. And when they’re gone I want more. I want a rolling prescription that never runs out. I want to shovel them into my mouth, handfuls at a time, until my throat is clogged with them and I can no longer breathe.

I didn’t cry when I was with Helen but she did – a steady stream of tears to show that it was all right to cry, that it was better that way. I didn’t tell her my tears are calcifying inside me, forming a solid layer of salt over my heart and veins. She says the girls are all together now. She wants me to find consolation in that. She showed me photos of Megan, a little girl frozen in time just as Poppy will be from now on. ‘Don’t worry, Megan will look after her,’ Helen said. ‘And she’ll be with Tilly and Leila. They’re all together. Doesn’t that give you some comfort?’

She wanted to help, I know, but it doesn’t help.

Two weeks ago I had my life and my girls and my petty worries about my weight and whether Oliver would still fancy me now I was fat. Now I have Helen Purvis and her laying on of hands.

I am in mourning for the life I never fully appreciated, for the future I wasn’t even aware of.

For her.

For me.

For us.

29

KENWOOD KILLINGS: POLICE FOCUS ON VICTIM’S FAMILY

Leanne read the headline in the Thursday edition of the
Chronicle
with a growing feeling of dread. The story that followed was brief but to the point.

A source close to the investigation has revealed that in the wake of the latest tragic discovery police are now very interested in the movements of a family member of one of the victims. The source wouldn’t reveal any more details but says the police are acting on a tip-off from a member of the public.

Leanne closed her eyes momentarily.

‘Well?’ Desmond was standing by her desk, so near she could see where the static on his polyester-mix trousers was trying to make them adhere to the laminate surface. His face, when she finally glanced up, had the rigid expression of someone holding themselves back from saying what they really mean.

‘I know how it looks, sir, but this isn’t down to me. I have no idea how this got out.’

‘You’re the closest person to the Reids and the only officer who knew the full story of that teacher’s information about Guy Reid.’

‘Yes, but it wasn’t me, sir. I wouldn’t—’

‘How much do you trust your new boyfriend, Leanne?’

‘
Pardon?
’

She was genuinely dumbfounded. Desmond never got personal. It wasn’t his style.

‘Look, Leanne, I don’t give a monkey’s what you get up to in your private life, as long as it’s legal, obviously, but I can’t ignore the facts. You
are
in a relationship with a journalist, and suddenly all these confidential stories start appearing in the press, and ding-dong.’ Here Desmond tapped the side of his head with a thick finger. ‘Alarm bells start ringing.’

‘Will is a features editor on a marketing magazine read by just a handful of people. He’s not a news reporter. And he wouldn’t. He just wouldn’t. And anyway, I never talk to him about work stuff.’

She and Will never had those sorts of conversations – well, only in as much as she’d have the odd moan every now and then about something that had happened. He wasn’t interested in her work except to support her if things were going badly. But already she could feel her nerve endings start to prickle with doubt. How well did she know Will, in the final analysis? Could he have a side to him that she’d never suspected? As soon as the thought crossed her mind she batted it away again. She’d met his ex, she’d met his mother. She knew his friends, his brother. One time when he had to work over a weekend and she, for once, didn’t, she’d spent a whole day alone in his flat rifling through his things. He had nothing to hide. She was sure of it. He was – as much as such things existed – a regular nice bloke. Last Christmas he’d got a card from his barber. And one from the guys at the local Indian takeaway. Will wasn’t like Pete. He had no hard edges.

‘Just be careful, Leanne.’ Desmond had pulled himself upright as if someone was tugging on an invisible wire stretching from the top of his head to the ceiling. ‘You have a good record on the force. Don’t blow it. Obviously we’re conducting urgent inquiries into where this latest leak came from. I would hate for the evidence to point your way.’

After he’d gone, Leanne tried to slow down her racing heart by breathing in deeply like she’d learned at the yoga classes she’d started but had to give up owing to never being able to make the times.

‘Want to talk about it?’ asked Ruby Adjaye, scooting her chair over to Leanne’s and gazing at her through her ridiculously long black eyelashes.

Leanne shook her head. Ruby had been a good friend, particularly after Pete left, but she adored Will, and Leanne knew she wouldn’t entertain a word of doubt about him. Ruby couldn’t understand why Leanne and Will weren’t living together properly yet. She kept sending Leanne links to features on adopting babies from abroad.

‘Cool. In that case you’ll have plenty of time to deal with the charming Mrs Donna Shields.’

Leanne groaned. ‘She’s not here again, is she? Please tell me she’s not in reception.’

Ruby hesitated before putting her out of her misery: ‘No. She wanted to wait for you but I said you were in a meeting and might not be out for hours. She’s got quite a tongue on her, hasn’t she?’

‘Did she say what she wanted?’

‘She wants to know what happened with the hair sample.’

‘Blimey, does she think we have no other cases at all? She’s only just left it. It’s just a breach of RO, not a bloody terrorist alert.’

‘She’s convinced they’ll match whatever we’ve taken from the latest Kenwood Killer scene. She says you’re dragging your feet.’

‘She wants the reward. That’s what she’s after. Her and the other gazillion callers we’ve had to the information line.’

Still, after Ruby had gone back to her desk, Leanne couldn’t stop thinking about Donna Shields. She was scared of her ex, there was no doubt about that. And having looked through his file, Leanne could see why. Disturbed childhood – abusive mother, absent father. A couple of serious incidents in adolescence involving aberrant sexual behaviour with young girls, and several reports of domestic violence as an adult, but no criminal convictions. Yet.

Sighing, she got to her feet and retraced her steps to Desmond’s office.

‘So you want to run a test just to prove a breach of RO?’ Desmond said after listening to her garbled explanation. He sounded dubious, and she didn’t blame him. Those tests didn’t come cheap.

‘I’ve been through his file, sir, and I think he’s dangerous. I just think it might be worth building up evidence against him. Just in case … The thing is, we don’t want another Melanie Banks.’

Desmond’s head snapped up as if yanked on a string. Even a year after her death, Melanie Banks was still a very sore subject. The woman had come in repeatedly before she died to report her estranged husband for threatening behaviour, but though two other officers had spoken to him once or twice, there had seemed little about the case to mark it as a priority. Until Melanie and her two little kids were found with their throats cut. Unsurprisingly there’d been a massive public outcry; a women’s group had got hold of the figures for the proportion of the annual police budget that had been spent on protecting and recovering property and compared it to the proportion spent on investigating domestic violence and accused the Met, and Desmond in particular, of not valuing women’s lives. It had been the biggest PR disaster of his career to date.

‘We’re not going to start squandering our resources just to pander to public pressure,’ he said, fixing Leanne with a hard look.

‘I understand that, sir.’

‘However, in view of the fact that there’s a young girl involved, I give you the authority to exercise your own judgement.’

Leanne blinked, grappling for the meaning behind his words.

‘So I can submit the sample to the lab?’

‘Isn’t that what I just said?’

Back at her desk, Leanne called up the first of the many forms she was going to need to fill in, already regretting sticking her neck out. It wasn’t as if she didn’t have enough other stuff to do. When, almost as an afterthought, she made a note to have the test result cross-referenced with the Megan Purvis sample, she felt a twinge, knowing it wasn’t strictly protocol. Yet afterwards there was a feeling that she had done the right thing. Donna Shields was hard and brittle and indistinguishable from all the other downbeaten people who passed through the station, but still there was something about her desperation that stayed with Leanne, like when you listen to music and the last note hangs in the air long after the CD has finished. This job had given Leanne a tougher skin but still she never lost sight of how differently her life could have turned out if she hadn’t had the support of her family and the basic ingredients every child needs – food, shelter, love. Sometimes, particularly on days like today when everything was going wrong, it was good to remind yourself that things could be a whole lot worse.