The Pure in Heart (25 page)

‘Can I have a gin before the wine?’

‘You staying the night then?’

‘Yup. OK?’ Simon threw his car keys on to the table.

‘Sure. You know where the bottles are.’

When he returned with his drink, Cat had shifted Felix on to the other breast and Sam had vanished back to the playroom.

Simon went to sit beside his sister. ‘He was waiting for me … he’s worrying about David Angus, isn’t he?’

‘Of
course he is.’

‘Told me he thought David was being held to ransom.’

‘And is he?’

Simon avoided his sister’s eye. ‘I doubt it.’

‘He’s dead.’

‘You don’t want to have this conversation.’

‘Not really. How do you think your new nephew is looking?’

‘Bigger. Sort of – smoother.’

‘So he was small and wizened and you didn’t even mention it.’

‘What’s to eat?’

‘Mary put a lamb thing in a casserole.
She’s here every day all day for the next two weeks.’

‘Has Ma talked to you today?’

‘Yes. Didn’t sound good.’

‘Karin was at the funeral.’

‘I know, Ma said.’

‘It was pretty meaningless. I wish it hadn’t been up at Farnley Wood. I hate that place. I hate crematoriums, period.’

‘How do you feel now?’

Simon shrugged. ‘Don’t say it’s for the best, that’s all … I’ll miss going to see her. I always
felt so peaceful with her, you know.’

‘Ma says you did a drawing of her.’

‘When she was in BG, yes.’

Simon drank, then got up and went to the cupboard in search of crisps. Mephisto gave him a glare. ‘Hello, evil one.’ Simon stroked his ears but the cat twitched away and jumped down.

‘Diana came to the flat,’ Simon said, his back to Cat. He heard the baby making small snuffling sounds.

Cat
said nothing.

‘It was very late.’

Still nothing.

He turned. Felix was over her shoulder having his back rubbed. His head was bright pink and had a small bald patch in the middle of the fluff of dark hair. Cat looked at Simon.

‘I was bloody furious.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t like people turning up unannounced, uninvited.’

‘You only like people on your terms.’

‘That isn’t true.’

‘Not us. People
as in “women”.’

‘Is that so terrible?’

‘Have you asked yourself what she felt?’

‘She was taking things for granted.’

‘That isn’t what I said. What did you do anyway? Let me bet you didn’t open your arms wide to embrace her.’

Simon flushed.

‘No, I thought not. Maybe it took a lot for her to beard you in your den … maybe she felt desperate. How long is it since you were in touch?’

‘I don’t
have to be in touch.’

‘Did you ever tell her you weren’t going to be? She probably left your flat feeling humiliated and crushed and very, very hurt.’

‘It’s her own fault. She shouldn’t have come at all. We had a perfectly good understanding, I didn’t owe her anything … nor she me.’

‘Right.’

‘Bloody hell.’

‘Get me a glass of water, would you – big glass?’

‘I thought you’d be sympathetic,’
Simon said, taking out the spring water.

‘I’m a woman.’

‘So? I’m your brother.’

‘I love you, Si, but I have to say so far as women are concerned, you are bad news. Harsh, I know.’

‘Indeed.’

‘So let’s talk about something else.’

‘Just not work.’

‘The economic state of the nation? The Booker Prize?’

‘Do you think I’m too comfortable?’

‘As in …?’

‘The flat … the job … just in general.’

‘I don’t know that I’ve thought about it. What’s wrong with comfort?’

‘Quite.’

‘Dad been getting at you?’

‘No, the Chief Constable.’

‘Does she want to move you?’

‘She muttered something. New units, new challenges. It’d be in the county … and promotion.’

‘Don’t move far,’ Cat said, and her eyes filled with tears. Easy, easy to cry, she knew, just now after the birth of Felix, too easy, but
she could not have borne her brother to go away. ‘I didn’t mean what I said just now.’

‘I know.’

‘I did feel a pang for Diana though.’

‘Save it. Diana’s a tough cookie.’

‘Hm.’

‘Uncle Simon, what would be the most money a kidnapper would ever get? What would a nine-year-old boy be worth, would he be worth hundreds of pounds to be kidnapped or thousands of pounds?’

Cat and her brother exchanged
appalled looks and Simon stood at once, picked Sam up, threw him over his shoulder and whirled him round. Sam began to laugh.

‘Tell you what, Samuel Christopher Deerbon …’

‘What? What?’

‘I’m going to throw you in the bath …’

‘And me, and me, and me.’ Hannah came racing in and threw herself at Simon’s legs. Cat sat holding the sleeping baby as the three of them ran for the stairs.

He had handled
it as Chris usually did, by diverting Sam and causing an uproar, but she knew that the disappearance of David Angus was inside
her son’s head night and day and could never now not be there. The boy’s disappearance had changed everything. Every child, every parent. Everyone.

At half past eight the children were asleep; they decided to eat.

‘Lay the table, Si – the casserole will keep warm in
the bottom oven. I’ve fed Felix twice since I ate last and I’m beginning to feel faint.’

‘Are you worried?’

‘About Chris? No … he doesn’t always call in … there’ll be some emergency he’s in the thick of.’

‘Exhausting.’

Simon fetched wine glasses and took the bottle to the table.

‘None for me, I’ll have water. How did you think the folks were yesterday?’

‘Hard to say. Buttoning a lot up …
maybe grief, more likely relief. Dad was more upset than I’d expected.’

‘He often went to see her. Sat for hours. So the Ivy Lodge girls said.’

Simon poured out a large glass of red wine and took a swig. ‘She was no threat of course. Couldn’t disappoint him any more than she had at the start, unlike me.’

‘Oh, get over it, Si.’

Simon shrugged.

They were eating when Chris walked in ten minutes
later, grey-faced. He went straight to the table, poured a glass of wine and drank half of it
before he said, ‘I’ve put calls on to the agency for the rest of the night, I’m bushed.’ He turned to Simon. ‘Have you heard?’

‘What?’

‘Alan Angus tried to commit suicide.’

‘Jesus.’

‘By some miracle his registrar went to his office to pick up a file and found him just as he’d slashed both wrists.
He knew which way to do it too, of course, he wouldn’t have had long. But they think he’ll be OK.’

Cat pushed her plate away but Chris filled up his glass and went across to get food.

‘I’d better call in.’ Simon was going to the house phone when his own mobile rang.

‘Nathan? … I’ve just this minute heard.’

‘Mike Batty’s there, guv … he and I had been in to see Angus earlier. Went through everything
again. I told him he wasn’t suspected, I said we was just taking it from the beginning again, no way could he have thought we was questioning his story. I never went for him, guv, no way.’

‘No one’s going to think you’re to blame.’

‘He was soddin’ lucky, I tell you, someone was lookin’ after him, no one’s around them offices at that hour, not normally.’

‘I know. Where are you?’

‘Wherever you
want me to be, guv.’

‘Right, go check out Marilyn Angus.’

‘Nah, she’s at the hospital, I’m outside there now. Want me to talk to her?’

‘No, in that case leave her for tonight. She’s had enough. You go home.’

‘Guv, just before I got called about Angus I was looking back over everything. I come up with that silver Jag again. Thought it’d be worth checking out.’

‘Hasn’t it been done?’

‘We just
did Lafferton and Bevham … maybe we could go nationwide?’

‘Too many. You can’t start on that tonight.’

‘Guv.’

‘I’ll go into the hospital first thing, then see Mrs Angus. Knock off now, Nathan.’

‘OK. Guv, that was really appreciated, the Chief coming in, everyone was saying full marks to her.’

Simon smiled. ‘I’ll pass it on. Goodnight, Nathan.’

‘Cheers, guv.’

They finished the lamb casserole
and opened a second bottle of wine, but they scarcely talked. Deaths and near-deaths hung over them.

Cat went up to bed before ten carrying the sleeping baby.

Chris held up the bottle.

‘No thanks.’

‘No. God, what a week. I’ve never felt more like packing up and joining Ivo in Australia. We talked about it, you know, Cat and I.’

Simon looked at his brother-in-law, trying to assess whether
he was even halfway serious. Simon
would never be able to bear it. How could he remain here, with their parents growing older and his father more morose and bad-tempered with age, and everyone he loved either dead or thousands of miles off? Yet he had once been to visit Ivo in Melbourne and hated the place – the only person, his brother had said with amusement, who ever had. Following the others
there would never be an option for him. His life, designed so carefully and exactly as he loved it, suddenly seemed in danger of caving in on him.

This is the worst place.

I’m really, really hungry.

I’m really thirsty as well.

My arm hurts.

Why was it me?

It’s cold.

I’m all shivery now.

I just want …

Don’t …

Please …

Not …

Pl …

Mu …

‘I can’t do this,’ Marilyn Angus said. ‘Waiting for the worst news, waiting and there is no news. I cannot do it, but I
do
it. What is wrong with you?’

Her voice was a whisper. She sat beside Alan’s bed, among the blipping machines, and hated him. What had happened to David had torn them apart when everyone assumed it would have brought them much closer together; she would have assumed
so beforehand. But it had revealed to her a husband she did not know or want to know – one who in her eyes was a coward. Running away to work before seven every morning and staying there until late at night, taking on other people’s caseloads, putting himself on permanent call – she saw it all not merely as unsupportive of her but as cowardice. This was cowardice too. His wrists were bandaged,
there was a drip into his arm, every monitor was switched on to every function of his body and she despised him. It was the most terrifying feeling of her life. She did not know this man, her husband, Lucy’s father. David’s father.

His head was turned away from her. He had not spoken to her since she had arrived with the police officer. Kate cares more than you, she thought, staring at his bandaged
wrist.

‘I don’t know what to say to you,’ Marilyn said. ‘I don’t know what’s going on in your mind any more. I don’t understand why you did this.’

‘No,’ he said, so softly that she could hardly hear him.

‘If David had been brought home tonight, if –’

‘David is dead.’

The words came out of his mouth and rested on the air, heavy and full of black bile. They frightened her. If she had reached
out, she could have touched the words and they would have entered her body, her bloodstream and her belief. She opened her mouth but no words came out of that, neither poisonous nor hallowed.

‘I was operating. I looked at the monitor and saw my probe hovering inside a patient’s brain and I simply knew. Don’t ask me why then. I don’t know why then. I looked and saw that David was dead and then
there was no way of living myself.’

‘Is that all?’

He moved his head. She saw his face, drained of colour, grey as the face of something dead, his eyes flat and sunken into his head, lifeless.

‘Is there nothing else in your life?’

‘What?’

‘Not Lucy? Not me?’

‘Of course.’

‘Not worth going on living for?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I said, if David were to be brought home, alive and well … wouldn’t
he need you?’

‘Of course.’

‘You didn’t think of that?’

‘David is dead.’

Marilyn put her head down on the hospital bed and screamed into the covers, stuffing the sheet into her mouth so that nothing could be heard. She felt a desperate need to hurt someone and the only way she knew to stop herself was by hurting herself, trying to choke on the cotton bedding.

The bell rang. A nurse and Kate
Marshall were in the room and behind her, talking to her gently, their hands on her shoulders, lifting her back.

‘Marilyn, it’s all right,’ Kate had her arms round her now. ‘Don’t worry –’

Marilyn swung round and stabbed her elbow hard into the policewoman’s face. Kate gave a cry of pain. The room seemed to explode with people and voices.

They led her out to a waiting room with blue chairs.
Someone brought her a glass of water. Someone else came with a cup of tea. Marilyn sat with her arms clutched tightly round her own body, rocking, rocking, trying to keep every sound out, every word, every clumsy attempt at reassurance or comfort. Alan’s words had gone home. There had been a place she had kept secure,
a place in which there had been a small bright patch of warmth and hope into
which she had been able to retreat. No one else knew that it was there but she had relied on it because in there was the truth, that David was alive and well and would come home. Alan had sent a blade slicing through the wall and all the light and brightness and hope had leaked out and turned black, a pool of darkening blood on a floor. The place was empty now, the air foul and contaminating. He
had killed the last resource she had. Now there was no hope or comfort. David was dead. Everyone else had known it but she had not. Now, she did.

She unclenched her cramped body slowly. The muscles around her ribcage and in her back ached, and there was a dull pain beneath her heart.

A nurse was beside her, holding a glass of water patiently. Marilyn tried to take it but her hand shook so violently
she could not, so the girl held it to her lips and tipped it, letting her drink as a child first learning from the cup. She tried to thank her but her throat was constricted. The nurse stroked her arm.