In the Dark (2 page)

‘What she
gettin'
.'

When he turns he can see that the woman in the BMW is scared enough already. Just a couple of feet away. Eyes all over the place; a twist of panic at the mouth.

He raises the gun.

‘Do it.'

This was what he wanted, wasn't it?

Kissy-kissy noises from the back seat.

‘
Do
it, man.'

He leans across and fires.

‘Again.'

The Cavalier pulls away at the second shot, and he strains to keep the silver car in sight; leans further out, the rain on his neck, oblivious to the shouting around him and the fat hands slapping his back.

He watches as the BMW lurches suddenly to the left and smashes up and over the pavement; sees the figures at the bus stop, the bodies flying.

What he wanted
. . .

A hundred feet from it, more, he can hear the crunch as the bonnet crumples. And something else: a low thump, heavy and wet, and then the scream of metal and dancing glass that fades as they accelerate away.

PART ONE

ONE

Helen Weeks was used to waking up feeling sick, feeling like she'd hardly slept, and feeling like she was on her own, whether Paul was lying beside her or not.

He was up before her this morning, already in the shower when she walked slowly into the bathroom and leaned down to throw up in the sink. Not that there was much to it. A few spits; brown and bitter strings.

She rinsed her mouth out, pressed her face against the glass door on her way through to get the breakfast things ready. ‘Nice arse,' she said.

Paul smiled and turned his face back to the water.

When he walked into the living room ten minutes later, Helen was already tucking into her third piece of toast. She'd laid everything out on their small dining-table - the coffee pot, cups, plates and dishes they'd bought from The Pier when they'd first moved in - carried the jam and peanut butter across from the fridge on a tray, but Paul reached straight for the cereal as always.

It was one of the things she still loved about him: he was a big kid who'd never lost the taste for Coco Pops.

She watched him pour on the milk, rub at the few drops he spilled with a finger. ‘Let me iron that shirt.'

‘It's fine.'

‘You didn't do the sleeves.' He never did the sleeves.

‘No point. I'll have my jacket on all day.'

‘It'll take me five minutes. It might warm up later on.'

‘It's pissing down out there.'

They ate in silence for a while. Helen thinking she should maybe go and turn on the small TV in the corner, but guessing that one of them would have something to say eventually. There was music bleeding down from the flat upstairs anyway. A beat and a bassline.

‘What have you got on today?'

Paul shrugged, and swallowed. ‘God knows. Find out when I get in, I suppose. See what the skipper's got lined up.'

‘You finishing six-ish?'

‘Come on,
you
know. If something comes up, it could be any time. I'll ring you.'

She nodded, remembering a time when he would have done. ‘What about the weekend?'

Paul looked across at her, grunted a ‘what?' or a ‘why?'

‘We should try to see a few houses,' Helen said. ‘I was going to get on the phone today, fix up a couple of appointments.'

Paul looked pained. ‘I told you, I don't know what I'm doing yet. What's coming up.'

‘We've got six weeks.
Maybe
six weeks.'

He shrugged again.

She hauled herself up, walked across to drop a couple more slices of bread in the toaster. Tulse Hill was OK;
better
than OK if you wanted to buy a kebab or a second-hand car. Brockwell Park and Lido were a short walk away and there was plenty happening five minutes down the hill in the heart of Brixton. The flat itself was nice enough;
secure
, a couple of floors up with a lift that worked most of the time. But they couldn't stay. One and a bit bedrooms - the double and the one you'd fail to swing a kitten in - small kitchen and living room, small bathroom. It would all start to feel a damn sight smaller in a month and a half, with a pushchair in the hall and a playpen in front of the TV.

‘I might go over, see Jenny later.'

‘Good.'

Helen smiled, nodded, but she knew he didn't think it was good at all. Paul had never really seen eye to eye with her sister. It hadn't helped that Jenny had known about the baby before he had.

Had known a few other things, too.

She carried her toast across to the table. ‘You had a chance to talk to the Federation rep yet?'

‘About?'

‘Jesus, Paul.'

‘
What?
'

Helen almost dropped her knife, seeing the look on his face.

The Metropolitan Police gave female officers thirteen weeks after having a baby, but they were rather stingier when it came to paternity leave. Paul had been - was
supposed
to have been - arguing his case for an extension on the five days' paid leave he had been allocated.

‘You said you would. That you
wanted
to.'

He laughed, empty. ‘When did I say that?'

‘Please . . .'

He shook his head, chased cereal around his bowl with the back of the spoon as though there might be some plastic toy he'd missed. ‘He's got more important things to worry about.'

‘Right.'

‘
I've
got more important things.'

Paul Hopwood worked as a detective sergeant on a CID team based a few miles north of them in Kennington. An Intelligence Unit. He'd heard every joke that was trotted out whenever
that
came up in conversation.

Helen felt herself reddening; wanting to shout but unable to. ‘Sorry,' she said.

Paul dropped his spoon, shoved the bowl away.

‘I just don't see what could be . . .' Helen trailed off, seeing that Paul wasn't listening, or wanted to give that impression. He had picked up the cereal packet and was still studying the back of it intently as she pushed back her chair.

 
When Paul had gone, and she'd cleared away the breakfast things, Helen stood under the shower for a while, stayed there until she'd stopped crying, and got dressed slowly. A giant bra and sensible pants, sweatshirt and blue and white jogging bottoms. Like she had a lot of choice.

She sat in front of
GMTV
until she felt her brain liquidising, and moved across to the sofa with the property pages of the local paper.

West Norwood, Gipsy Hill, Streatham. Herne Hill if they stretched themselves; and Thornton Heath if they had no other choice.

More important things
. . .

She thumbed through the pages, circling a few likely-looking places, all ten or fifteen grand more than they'd budgeted for. She'd need to go back to work a damn sight quicker than she'd thought. Jenny had said she'd chip in with the childcare.

‘You're an idiot if you rely on Paul,' Jenny had said. ‘
However
much free time he gets.'

Blunt as always, her younger sister, and hard to argue with.

‘He'll be fine when the baby comes.'

‘How will
you
be?'

The music was getting louder upstairs. She'd tell Paul to have a word when he got a chance. She moved through to the bedroom, sat down to try and do something with her hair. She thought men who described pregnant women as ‘radiant' were a bit weird; same as people who thought they had the right to touch your belly whenever the hell they felt like it. She swallowed, sour all the way down, unable to remember the last time Paul had wanted to touch it.

They were well past the ‘goodbye kiss on the doorstep' stage, of course they were, but they were well past far too many other things. She wasn't feeling a lot like sex admittedly, but she would have been well out of luck if she was. Early on she'd been gagging for it, like a lot of women a month or so in, if you believed the books, but Paul had lost interest fairly quickly. It wasn't uncommon; she'd read that, too. Blokes feeling differently once the whole motherhood business came into it. Hard to look at your partner in the same way, to
desire
them, even before there's a belly appearing.

It was much more complicated, their relationship, but maybe there was some of that going on.

‘Poor little bugger doesn't want me poking him in the eye,' Paul had said.

Helen had scoffed, said, ‘I doubt you'd reach his eye,' but neither of them had really felt like laughing much.

She pushed her hair back, and lay down; trying to make herself feel better by remembering earlier times, when things weren't quite as bad. It was a trick that had worked once or twice, but these days she was having trouble remembering how they'd been before. The three years they'd been together before things had gone wrong.

Before the stupid rows and the
fucking
stupid affair.

She could hardly blame him for it, for thinking that there were more important things than her. Than a place for them to live. The two of them and the baby that might not be his.

She decided that she'd go and have a word about the music herself; the student in the flat above seemed nice enough. But she couldn't rouse herself from the bed, thinking about Paul's face.

The looks.

Angry, as though she had no idea at all how hurt he still felt. And vacant, like he wasn't even there; sitting at the table a few feet away and staring at the back of the stupid cereal box, like he was reading about that missing plastic toy.

 
As Paul Hopwood drove, he tried hard to think about work; singing along with the pap on Capital Gold and thinking about meetings and stroppy sergeants and anything at all except the mess he'd left behind.

Toast and fucking politeness. Happy families . . .

He turned right and waited for the sat-nav to tell him he'd made a mistake; for the woman with the posh voice to tell him he should turn around at the earliest possible opportunity.

The ghost of a smile, thinking about a lad he knew at Clapham nick who'd suggested they should make these things with voices designed for men with ‘specialist interests'.

‘It'd be brilliant, Paul. She says “turn left”, you ignore her, she starts getting a bit strict with you. “I said turn left, you
naughty
boy.” Sell like hot cakes, mate. Ex-public school boys and all that.'

He turned up the radio, switched the wipers to intermittent.

Happy families. Christ on a bike . . .

Helen had been turning on that look for weeks now, the hurt one. Like she'd suffered enough and he should be man enough to forget what had happened, because she needed him. All well and good, but clearly he hadn't been man enough where it had counted, had he?

Mrs Plod, the copper's tart.

That look, like she didn't recognise him any more. Then the tears, and her hands always slipping down to her belly, like the kid was going to drop out if she sobbed too hard or something. Like all this was
his
fault.

He knew what she was thinking, secretly. What she'd been telling her soppy sister on the phone every night. ‘He'll come round when he sees the baby.' Right, of course, everything would be fine and dandy when the sodding baby came.

Baby make it better.

The sat-nav woman told him to go left and he ignored her, slammed his hands against the wheel in time with the music and bit the ulcer on the inside of his bottom lip.

Christ, he
hoped
so. He hoped it would all be fine more than anything, but he couldn't quite bring himself to tell Helen. He wanted so much to look down at that baby and love it without thinking, and
know
it was his. Then they could just get on with it. That was what people
did
, wasn't it, ordinary idiots like them, even when it seemed as if they had no chance at all?

Those looks, though; and that stupid pleading tone in her voice. It was killing off the hope a bit at a time.

The voice from the sat-nav told him to take the first exit off the upcoming roundabout. He bit down harder on the ulcer and took the third. Kennington was programmed in as the destination, same as always. It didn't matter that he knew the route backwards, because it wasn't where he was going anyway.

‘Please turn around at the first possible opportunity.'

He enjoyed these trips, listening to the snotty cow's instructions and ignoring them. Sticking his fingers up. It got him where he
was
going in the right frame of mind.

‘Please turn around.'

He reached across, took a packet of tissues from the glove compartment and spat out the blood from the ulcer.

He hadn't been doing what people expected of him for quite a while.

TWO

‘Fore!'

‘Fuck was that?'

‘You're supposed to shout, man. I sliced the thing over onto the wrong hole.'

‘So
shout
.' He raised his hands up to his mouth and bellowed. ‘Fore mother-
fuckers
.' Nodding, pleased with himself. ‘Got to do these things proper, T.'

Theo laughed at his friend, at the looks from the older couple on an adjacent green. They hoisted up their clubs and trudged off down the fairway. There was no point taking the shot again; he'd drop one near the green. They'd lost half a dozen balls between them already.

‘Why you need all that, anyway?'

‘What?'