Maloney's Law (14 page)

Chapter Eleven

The police release Jade’s body on Thursday 30 September. This seems almost too soon for them to have decided there’s no hope of an arrest, but I don’t question it. Her funeral takes place on Tuesday 5 October. I only know this as a small plain postcard arrives on the hall floor the day before postmarked from Essex. When I turn it over it gives me the reason, the date, and the time and then a simple message, handwritten: We thought you’d like to know.

Tuesday morning, I spend a long time sitting next to the door, back against the wall, knees bent, gazing at the long crack from floor to ceiling opposite me. It’s so familiar by now that I hardly register it. Instead I think of other people’s kindness and how far my own falls short.

Maybe, now, it’s time to move on.

In the bedroom, I pull on a pair of jeans and a jumper. There’s no point looking smart as there’s no-one to see. For the first time in weeks, I shave, trimming my unwanted new beard down to the skin so the razor won’t cut.

At the door, when the sharpness of the air hits me, I hesitate for a heartbeat or two. It’s as if I’m breathing in the knowledge of the place where I live once again, even though every day I’ve been out to the shop to buy food. All that doesn’t matter. Now, I close my eyes and smell dust and the dying heat drifting to autumn and winter, I smell petrol exhaust, sweat, and smoke. All the hooks that tie me to the earth.

I open my eyes. This hasn’t changed. Nothing I see or smell or hear is different.

Ten minutes later, by the time I reach the office, I’m sweating even though it’s not hot. I could do with a whisky, but there’s no chance of that. As I climb the outside steps, taking them one by one, I can’t help glancing to the right where Jade’s bike was usually chained to the railings.

Don’t think like that. Keep focused. Keep calm.

There’s no bicycle, and I wonder who has it now. Jade’s parents? Some thief? I don’t know, it’s not important, so instead I swallow and make my way inside.

The door is hard to open due to the mound of post piled up on the mat. I throw away the junk mail unopened and finish with five letters that might need attention. One day. As far as I can tell, I have in the course of one month and four days gained what seems to be three demands for money and two official envelopes, one coming from the largest of my insurance clients and one that has no stamp and must have been delivered by hand. Someone in one of the other shared offices here must have brought it up. I’ll open them all later.

In the meantime, there’s work to be done, actions to be faced.

I begin with what is simple. Looking around, I can see the police have done their best to leave the premises tidy, but there’s a layer of dust almost as thick as the one at home. This is no place to see potential clients, should I have any left. I take duster and polish from one of the cupboards and start to clean. After taking the rough off the main office, I go through the stacks of papers the forensic officers have piled up on the floor in one corner and try to put them in order. From it I create three smaller stacks: filing, actionable, important. I abandon these, and start to search through the drawers. As I work, it’s as if Jade is working next to me, as if, should I glance up quickly enough or cunningly enough, I might catch a glimpse of her, tapping at the keyboard, frowning at the screen, sashaying in with hot chocolate. Today, if such a thing happened, I would drink the offering with joy and not bear within me one whisper of criticism. Each time I look, without thinking, the image vanishes.

At last one room is done. There is no Delta Egypt CD, but I anticipated that. Neither do I think the police have it, or they would have asked me about it. Next I tackle the bathroom, and when I finish it’s as clean as it’s ever been. It seems less distant, too, less something that has never belonged to me, as if the fact of routine physical work has altered how I see my surroundings, has drawn them nearer.

I haven’t entered the kitchen yet.

I will have to, soon. For now, I am, as Andrew tells me, in the stage of avoidance. Damn him, so would he be if this had happened to him. I can’t do it; I’m human and no hero. I shouldn’t have to do this, Jade should still be here, Jade...God, I wish, I wish...too much, but none of it will help. Too late I wonder if I should have brought someone else with me for this first visit back, but there’s no-one else I can ask. Not Dominic, not my parents, not anyone. I have to do it now; if I don’t go into the kitchen today then I never will. I tell myself there’s no need to clean it after all and that just being there, opening the door, is enough. Then I go in.

There’s a rush of bile to my throat but no tears. The door swings shut behind me as I stand at the sink spitting out the bitter yellow fluid from my mouth. Finally, I turn, lean against the sink, and look around the room.

There’s nothing different, nothing in the air that holds the memory of what happened here. I gaze for a long time at the place on the floor where Jade’s body lay. Then I wipe my hands over my face, swallow once, and return to the main office.

Before I leave, I remember the correspondence I’ve saved. As I thought, three are bills. One is framed in red so I’ll pay it first. One month and four days ago, I would have just handed it over to... Another wave of sickness grips me, and I have to sit down, leaning forward and breathing slowly until it passes. There’s nothing inside to bring up anyway. God, Paul, don’t think, I tell myself, don’t make these treacherous connections of thought; it’s not going to help you. There’ll be enough to face later on. I have to stay calm, let the fact that I’m on my own now mesh in enough to tackle the backlog. I have to get back to my abandoned working life.

There are two envelopes left. The first is just routine correspondence from my insurance contact. He has nothing specific for me at the moment but thinks something might arise by Christmas with a case they’re handling. Thank God for that. If something had come up while I’ve been out of action, then it might have been a source of income gone forever. I open the last letter. There’s no date on it, and its contents make me tremble. My mouth goes dry as I read the brief message:

Take this as a warning.

It’s raining. As if it will never stop. Jade’s parents haven’t looked at me or tried to talk to me since I arrived, slipping in at the back where I might remain unnoticed. There was no time to do the polite, the human thing. In the place of the greeting I should have given to Mr. and Mrs. O’Donnell comes all the tortured thoughts. It should have been me. If I hadn’t been screwing with Dominic, Jade would be here now. It would be me lying silent in the dark coffin, and Jade would be crying. That would be okay. She’d cry for a while, then walk away, get another job. She’d forget about this, meet someone fantastic, marry them, be happy, and have all the children she wanted.

That’s what should have happened. But because of me, it never will.

Jade is dead.

I should be out there, finding out who did this to her, getting evidence, finding the connection with Delta Egypt. I should be doing everything I can to salvage something from the mess of unfinished business. Instead I’m standing in a chapel overflowing with people in the rain-soaked, wind-driven Essex countryside saying goodbye to someone I loved. It’s a day that shouldn’t exist, but it does.

The words of the service mean nothing to me, but they set up a faint echo of a past funeral, another day, another life. Then of course there was no body, something from which my family has never recovered, but now the evidence of what the O’Donnells might call “sin” and that I call crime is all too real. Around me, people start to cry. Gazing at the simple white walls, the bare wooden cross, the cream lilies and roses that crown the coffin at the front, and breathing in the sharp herbal scent of polish, I envy them their release.

The elder in his formal black suit starts to talk about Jade in a way that tells me the information he’s conveying is second-hand. He describes a woman he hasn’t known for at least ten years, telling us about her school days, her time at University, and then, in vaguer terms, her short-lived career in what he calls “investigative services”. I want to stand up, cut across his bland words, and shout aloud about the woman I knew. I want to tell the congregation about the way she smiled, the wildness and glitter of the jewellery she wore, her love of exotic clothes. I want to tell them how she always drank Chardonnay and how she would groan when I teased her about it. I want to let them know her genius with the computer, her love of salsa and all types of dance, and most of all the warmth, wit, and wisdom I have relied on ever since I met her. I want to say all these things and hold the truth of them in my mouth, but already the moment is passing. There is no space for it here. This service is not for me; it’s for Jade. For her family.

After the service, we troop quietly out of the chapel, back into the driving rain, following the slow progress of the coffin. Turning up my collar and stuffing my hands in my pockets, I’m careful to look at no-one.

We drive to the Crematorium in a convoy. I have glanced at the map once, and it made no sense to me, but it doesn’t matter as we slot into place behind each other. In the rain, there is somehow no dignity to this. We cram ourselves into seats set too close together in a sparse room built for double the number. We listen again to more words of comfort that have either already been said or are pointless for the saying. As we wait, the coffin slides through a thick black curtain and is gone. A sudden movement at the front catches my eye, and I can see Mr. O’Donnell has half-risen in his seat as if trying to object to the way things are, even now. As he turns, he stares full at me, but there’s no quiver of recognition. His face is gaunt and pale, and he looks as if he might fall. A second later, Jade’s mother pulls him back down beside her and hugs him close. I can see his shoulders are shaking, and I close my eyes to block out the image.

When the ceremony is over, we file outside into the rain and make our way along a pathway lined with lilies, roses, and carnations. As I begin to wonder when I can leave without causing hurt, there’s a light touch on my arm. I turn and look into the eyes of Mrs. O’Donnell. Behind her, Jade’s father hovers, but his glance does not stay on me.

‘Paul,’ she says, and it sounds like an affirmation. Of what I don’t know. ‘I’m glad you’ve come. Thank you.’

Her kindness is so unexpected it hurts.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say, and my voice sounds as if it’s travelling from a thousand miles away. ‘I’m sorry about...’

I can’t finish the sentence, but she doesn’t seem to mind and doesn’t at once reply, instead squeezing my arm. We stay in that position for a long time, and I notice strands of grey in her hair I never noticed before and lines at the corner of her mouth. She grips my arm a little tighter and sighs.

‘Will you come back with us afterwards?’ she says. ‘Perhaps we can talk?’

I’m within a heartbeat of making that step, but when I glance beyond her, I can see the refusal and the pain on her husband’s face. If I go with them, there’ll only be half a welcome, and I’ll be treading his grief down harder.

So I shake my head and free my arm gently from her fingers. ‘No, I’m sorry, I can’t, I—’

‘All right,’ she cuts through me as if she’s heard all she can bear to hear. ‘I understand. But, please, keep in touch. I don’t want to lose the people who have known my daughter best.’

I back away from her. I don’t know what else to do.

When the family and all the mourners have left, I go on my own to the place where my best friend is lying. The rain continues to trickle through my hair and down into my jacket, drenching my skin, and the sky is growing darker. It’s as if all the words I ever wanted to say to Jade are fighting for escape but I don’t understand what order they should be in or whether they’re making sense. In any case Jade can’t hear me, not now, so what the fuck does it matter? I should have said thank you to her, so many times, just for being who she is — was — and for all the times she helped me. The talks in the pub, the meals we shared, the way I could tell her anything — anything — and she would take it all in without judging me. The concern in her lovely, open face when I was unhappy and her joy in the times I wasn’t, the way she looked out for me, worried about me, where no-one else has done.

Hunkering down, I slick my soaked hair back out of my eyes and blink away the rain. My fingers trace the outline of the words on the plaque her parents have made for her.

Jade O’Donnell, beloved daughter and friend (22 November 1973 — 31 August 2004). Taken too soon, may you rest in the love of God.

And then at last and from nowhere I’m weeping, great gulps of tears I can’t hold in. My body convulses, and I can’t seem to breathe, but it doesn’t matter. I just keep crying and crying until there is nothing left but quietness and a sense of something done that can’t be undone.

‘I’ll find them, Jade,’ I whisper. ‘Wherever they are, I’ll find them. I swear it to you.’

When I struggle to my feet and turn round, he is there, and the shock of it sends a wave of panic through my body.

I don’t know how long he’s been there and what he’s seen or how he knew about it all. I don’t care much either. He’s not wearing a coat, and his posh-git shirt is sticking to his flesh in the rain. I look at him for a long time. Where he’s standing means I have to pass him on the way out of the Crematorium garden. As I start to walk and draw level with him, he reaches out and touches me. I shake off his hand as if it’s fire, but the breaking of the impasse brings me to a halt.

‘I’m sorry about Jade,’ he says. ‘Please, if there’s anything I can do—’

Without even knowing this is what is going to happen, I whip my arm out, and I lash him over the face with the back of my hand. I’m glad of it because it’s been waiting a long time. He staggers back with a small moan, and I can see the blood on his lips. He makes no move to retaliate.

‘You bastard,’ I say, realising so many things as I say it, his actions, his words on the night I slept with him crystallising into sudden knowledge. ‘You knew. You bloody, bloody bastard. Don’t you think you’ve done enough?’