Next of Kin (19 page)

The woman nodded and made a note. ‘So, you didn’t go with him?’ she asked.

Woody shook his head. ‘No.’

‘And what about emotionally? How would you say he was?’

‘He’s
my
brother,’ Sarah interrupted.

They all looked at her. ‘We know, Sweetie,’ he said. Sarah felt Woody’s fingers tighten around hers, and then he continued. ‘He seemed okay. He said he’d got a bit of work on at the moment. He and I had been talking about maybe finding somewhere to do up. A project we could both get involved in.’

‘So you’re a builder too, are you, Sir?’

‘No, no not at all, but I’ve got some business expertise. And we were keen to work together.’

The woman nodded. ‘And how would you describe your relationship with Ryan?’

‘He’s my friend. Actually I knew him before I knew Sarah. In fact that was how we first met. Ryan introduced us, didn’t he?’ Woody managed a smile, which turned into a choking sob that caught in his throat. ‘Oh god, I’m so sorry, this is terrible. I can’t believe he’s dead. He’s such a nice guy. Are you sure it’s him?’

The woman made the slightest of gestures with her head. It might be tiny but it was unequivocal. They hadn’t made a mistake; they were in no doubt, Ryan was dead.

‘God,’ said Woody. ‘I can’t believe it. I was only with him a few hours ago. We’d been talking about the idea of working together – big plans – big plans.’ His voice crackled and finally broke.

Sarah watched Woody; it was a masterly performance. It felt as if she had been written out of the picture, side-lined by his obvious grief. They were talking now about Ryan getting beaten up, about how Woody thought there was more to it than Ryan had been telling people. Sarah listened, wondering how the hell he had the front to spin them a tale like that when he knew exactly why those men had been after Ryan and who they were. He could probably give the police their names and addresses.

The policeman was nodding. They drank the tea. The male officer joined them at the table.

Woody was getting into his stride now.

‘So you’re saying that Ryan had enemies?’

‘No, not enemies, just that he had more going on than he was telling us.’ He glanced at Sarah apparently for corroboration.

‘Us?’ said Sarah, unable to keep quiet any longer.

The policeman glanced across at her, but it was Woody who spoke. ‘What I mean is that I think he probably knew who those men were and kept quiet about it. He didn’t talk about it very much. In case it made things worse. I think he was afraid of the consequences of splitting on them; at least that was the impression I got.’

He was watching Sarah as he spoke. She caught the message loud and clear; it wouldn’t do for her to tell them whatever it was she thought she knew, not now, not ever.

The policeman was looking down at his notepad. ‘So, he didn’t mention any names?’

Sarah shook her head. ‘No, but he seemed okay recently. He was working. Helping out.’

‘Helping out?’

‘Yes, paying his way,’ said Woody, snatching the conversation back from her. ‘Ryan was always a bit casual about money and we had to remind him that this wasn’t a hotel, and that we aren’t a charity, didn’t we, Sarah? He could take all that kind of thing for granted, bills, helping out round the place, you know, unless we reminded him.’

‘So he lives here with you?’ said the policeman, glancing round the kitchen.

‘Yes and no. He lives downstairs. In a self contained flat,’ said Woody.

‘Would you mind if we took a look at it?’

‘No, not at all, would we, Sarah?’

‘No,’ she said, getting to her feet, which finally gave her the chance to pull her hand out from under Woody’s.

‘Where are you going?’ he said in surprise. Sarah wondered if he thought she meant
No, they couldn’t look,
and was surprised how good it felt to wrong foot him.

‘I have to go upstairs and get the spare key.’ She looked at the policewoman. ‘I won’t be a minute.’

The woman nodded.

Sarah took the stairs two at a time. They had to be wrong about Ryan. Surely she would know if he was dead. She would feel it. A few more minutes and they would all be on the basement steps, unlocking the flat and he would be shouting, ‘What the hell are you doing. Can’t you knock? I’m asleep in here. What do you want?’

She hoped that when he saw the police he had the good sense not to panic and to keep his mouth shut till they had chance to explain what this was about, not blurt anything out. Alone in her bedroom Sarah opened the dressing table drawer and rummaged through the debris, trying to remember exactly where she had put the spare keys. They had to be there somewhere; she pushed aside a tangle of earrings and cheap jewellery; maybe they should just go downstairs and knock. She emptied the drawer out onto the bed. There was no sign of the keys.

After the thing with Anna, it had struck her just how crazy it was to have the spare keys to the whole house hanging on a row of hooks just inside the kitchen door, and so she had brought them upstairs and dropped them into a tin. She’d put it into one of the drawers in her dressing table. But which drawer?

The middle one wouldn’t open; something was catching on the lip. She tried to tease it free with her fingertips. Once upon a time it had been her mother’s dressing table and Sarah had never really cleared it out, not properly, so there was an overlap of possessions. Carefully, Sarah pressed down the thing that was causing the drawer to stick, teasing it backwards and forwards, until finally the drawer gave up and opened. Sarah smiled; it was a little jewellery box that had belonged to her mum. It had been a while since she had seen it and without thinking Sarah lifted the lid.

Once upon a time the whole thing had been covered in tiny glittering tiles and little white shells all of which had long since loosened and dropped off so that now the pattern was picked out in glue and dust, but the inside of the box was pristine. As the lid opened a tiny ballerina in a pink tutu stood up and began to turn
en pointe
to the theme tune from Doctor Zhivago, rotating on a stage of deep buttoned dark pink velvet, her dance reflected in a small mirror set into the lid.

The sound of the music stopped Sarah dead in her tracks. A memory appeared fully formed into her head like a snippet of film; a time when they used to dance round the bedroom to the music box, Sarah with long hair, caught up in bunches, dancing with a redheaded doll, while Ryan, just a little boy, a toddler with a mop of curls, danced, standing on his mother’s feet, holding onto her hands. Their mum would spin him around and around, until they got dizzy and they would all laugh so much, so very, very much, and fall over onto the bed, giggling like crazy, while over by the window their dad would sit in an armchair, a blanket tucked up round him, watching and smiling, the skin on his face yellow and thin as parchment and drawn tight over his skull.

The music slowed and faded, and the image died; Sarah felt a pain in her chest, in her heart, a pain so fierce and so hot that she thought for a moment that she might be having a heart attack.

Ryan couldn’t be dead. There was no way. No way. He couldn’t be dead. He was too precious, too special. Ryan was all she had. Her lips began to tremble; her hands joined it, the tremor spread until it felt as if her whole body was going to shake itself apart. She had to do something – she just couldn’t remember what it was – and then Sarah saw the pile of things on the bed and remembered the key.

Feeling as if she was coming unravelled, Sarah threw things out of the drawers, onto the dressing table top, onto the floor, onto the bed until she found the tin box and inside it the spare keys for the basement flat, for the house, for the car, for their whole life. And then she set the box down on the bed where she could see it, and with butterfingers dragged a brush through her hair, so that she looked at least a little presentable. On the dressing table the dancer watched her in silence. Sarah picked up the key, and oblivious to the chaos she had left behind, closed the bedroom door, and hurried downstairs.

It felt like she had been gone hours, and it surprised her that the three of them were still there sitting in the kitchen waiting for her. They looked up as she opened the door. Sarah couldn’t help but wonder what they had been talking about in her absence, and knew that it must have been about her.

‘I found the key,’ she said, holding it out in her open palm.

The policeman nodded. ‘Good. We’re all set then. And you’re okay to do this?’

She looked at him, feeling her lips start to quiver again. ‘If I don’t think too much,’ she muttered. ‘I don’t want to believe it.’

He nodded, and she could see the compassion in his eyes. ‘I know. We can wait until tomorrow if you’d rather.’

Sarah shook her head. ‘I need to do it now. I want him to be in there. In the flat. For him be to cross that we’ve disturbed him.’ Her voice sound crackly and uneven, like a bad recording on an old gramophone record.

The policeman took the keys from her. ‘You’re sure?’

She nodded.

‘I’m happy for me and your husband to go down and have a look if you’d prefer?’

Sarah shook her head. ‘No, I want to go.’

And so she led them out of the kitchen and down the steps to the basement flat. There were still bin bags and other rubbish stacked up in the light well; Sarah reminded herself that she would really have to have a word with Ryan when she saw him, when this nonsense was all over, when he turned up and they cleared up this misunderstanding. He needed to get a grip, be tidier, get his act together.

The security light snapped on above the door. Sarah knocked. No one answered. Sarah lifted the letterbox and called into the darkness ‘Ryan? Ryan, are you in there? We need to come in.’

It occurred to her that maybe he had had a couple of beers after work, maybe he was tired, maybe too tired to hear them. Maybe he was asleep, grabbing a nap on the bed. The policeman knocked harder; she had a sense that he was humouring her.

After a moment or two and with a growing sense of urgency Sarah slid the key into the lock and turned it. For an instant the door resisted, which gave her even more hope, chances were that he had dropped the latch on the inside when he’d come in, maybe even remembered to put the chain on – but then it swung open, catching on the mat and the pile of magazines and papers stacked behind the door.

The flat still smelt of frying, old sweat, and stale water. The security light went out, plunging them into darkness; Sarah reached inside to find the light switch. There was a flicker as the fluorescent tube sparked and then the room was flooded with cold unforgiving light. The kitchen table was strewn with dirty dishes. There was a newspaper folded and propped up against a fruit juice carton, as if waiting for its reader to come back.

‘Ryan?’ Sarah called again, although she couldn’t help notice the look that passed between the police officers as they followed her. The kitchen floor was sticky under foot. ‘Ryan?’ Her voice was louder this time. Stronger.

She pushed open the hall doorway and beyond that the one into the bedroom, turning lights on as she went. ‘Ryan, are you in there?’

He wasn’t. The bedroom curtains were closed and looked as if they had been that way for a long time. Sarah flicked on the light. The bed was empty, the duvet rolled back to reveal a rucked nest of sheets. The bedside table was covered with mugs and glasses, the TV remote, magazines and book. A scrum of pillows had been scrunched up against the headboard. There was a book open face down on the bedcovers, saving the page, as if Ryan had just slipped out to grab a mug of tea or a shower.

Sarah looked into each room in turn: the tiny sitting room, stacked with clutter, the second bedroom, the bathroom, calling his name as she went. She didn’t care that they were watching her. She didn’t care what they thought. She needed to be sure. And then, when even she had to concede that he wasn’t at home, Sarah left the police officers to look round and went back upstairs.

She could see that Woody was torn between staying with them and coming with her. She could see his gaze working over the place – the table, the bookshelves, the bedside table. She wondered if he was afraid that there was something in the flat that might betray them. Was he afraid that Ryan had kept a diary or maybe made a note about their wedding or the loan, or the men who had loaned him the money, which would somehow lead back to Woody – or was there something else?

Holding his ground and making no effort to leave, Woody caught her eye as if to let her know that he was aware that she was watching him. ‘I won’t be minute,’ he said.

The policeman, seeing his hesitation said, ‘It’s all right, Sir, we won’t be long. We’ll bring the key up when we’re done. You can go with your wife if you like.’

‘Shouldn’t someone stay down here with you?’ asked Woody.

‘Well, you can if you want, Sir. But it’ll just be a quick look around. We won’t be long and we won’t touch anything or take anything. We just need to take a quick look to see if there is anything obviously amiss.’

Still Woody hesitated.

In the end Sarah left them to it and went back upstairs. She felt cold. In fact by the time she got into the kitchen Sarah was shivering so much that she couldn’t think and could barely undo the door. Eager to try and get warm she grabbed one of the jackets from the row of hooks just inside the door and wrapped it around her shoulders, trying to hold off the chill while she put the kettle back on to boil. It took her a second or two to realise that the coat she’d taken was Ryan’s work fleece; the good one he took with him on cold days. He must have left it there. It smelt of him, of sweat and aftershave and tobacco smoke. The smell of him made her whimper, and wrap it all the tighter round her.