The Start of Everything (14 page)

“Just like that?” I start laughing. Keene’s giving me a kick-under-the-table sort of look, but really? He’s accepting this?

“So you’re saying she was willing,” Keene clarifies politely.

Stephen shifts position, away from me. “Yes! I wouldn’t—” He stops short, not wanting to even use the words. “After that, I had to wash the sheets again, for my uncle. He was coming back. The laundry’s across the hall. She took a shower. She was gone when I came back. That was my last day. When I packed up, I noticed my sweater was gone, and her college sweatshirt was still over the back of the chair. That’s it. Really. I left. I didn’t have any idea, until today, that anything might have happened to her.”

We quiz him on the particulars: the address of this manor-house conversion, his uncle’s full name, the names of the other residents, which he didn’t know. And her name.

“It’s what the mum she worked for called her, too. I heard her. If it was a lie, I wasn’t the only one she lied to.”

“She didn’t tell you her last name,” I point out.

“No. I didn’t tell her mine, either. It didn’t come up.”

I bring the problem into focus: “Don’t you find it strange that you’re the only one to have missed her?” We all think about that for a while. “If she was our body, then where was the family she’d worked for, where was her own family? Shouldn’t their concerns have been raised by now?”

“Did you know that someone was looking for
you
?” Keene pulls out a photo of Mathilde that had been in her wallet. She wore the navy jacket and skirt of a school uniform, next to, presumably, her father. Both stood straight, and not touching. “Do you know her?” he asks.

“I don’t think so,” Stephen says. He takes the photo and bends to examine it. I lean in, too. She was petite and serious, her blond hair held back by an Alice band.

He shakes his head. “Not at all,” he says. “Why would she be looking for me?”

“She’s been receiving your letters,” I say.

“What? Why would that happen? What did she do with—”

“She tried to meet you at the train.”

“No, I—I didn’t make the one I’d planned. My train into London had run late. I felt awful. If Katja had come, I wouldn’t have been
there. I would have been just half an hour late, if the trains had been running properly. Just half an hour, but she wouldn’t have waited, would she? And then I wouldn’t know if she’d come and left or never come.… That’s why I went straight to Corpus.”

“You went nowhere else? Corpus first?” Keene clarifies.

“The train stopped, and we were diverted onto buses. Track maintenance or some electrical nonsense. By the time I got to Cambridge, it was certain she wouldn’t have lingered for me.…” He trails off. “Of course, that doesn’t matter now.” Then, “Why did this woman have my letters?”

“She’d been trying to get them to Katja. Then she tried to find you, coming off the three-forty-five train. Then she fell in front of it.”

“My God, was that why the station was closed?”

“She might have been pushed. Do you have your ticket?” I ask. If he really did catch the later train, then he wasn’t on the trackside with Mathilde. But so far we have only his word for that.

“No.” He squirms.

“Did you buy it with a credit card?”

“Yes.”

“Can you give it to us to check?”

“No! I don’t have to do that.”

I raise my eyebrows to Keene at that bit of non-cooperation. Keene tosses him a kindness. “Would anyone on the bus remember you?”

“Yes! Yes. Thank you for asking,” he says primly. “I signed an autograph. There was a woman reading my paperback.”

“Makes you feel like a man, does it?” I prod him.

“Makes me feel like a decent success, yes. Why not? Anyone ever ask for your autograph, Detective?”

“So you’d have her name?” Keene interjects, expectant.

“Adrienne!” Stephen blurts, victorious and half-rising. “She spelled it:
i-e-n-n-e
.” Then he drops back to his seat. “No, that’s her mother. She had me sign it for her mother, Adrienne.”

I can’t help the laugh; it just pops out. How deflating to offer to sign a woman’s book, and she turns it into a gift for her
mother
.

“What’s so special about Katja or Grace?” I ask. “You didn’t know her well enough to even get her name right. What makes her worth chasing?”

“It’s not chasing, I … Never mind.”

“No, no, please tell us,” Keene says, leaning forward.

“It’s not chasing. We had a connection.”

It comes to me, what could account for the intensity. “Were you a virgin, Stephen? Is that it? Did she deflower you?”

Keene pushes his chair back, getting out of the way. Stephen sucks in a breath.

“Or did you imagine the whole thing? Are you still waiting for it?”

I wait for denial, swearing, rage. Stephen looks down. His hands grip each other on the table, vibrating.

Just one more push: “You always repress anger like that? You look ready to pop.”

“I don’t want to talk to her anymore!” he says to Keene, pointing at me, whole arm extended.

Keene offers to have him dropped off somewhere. He doesn’t need a lift; the bus station is down the street. He gives up the address of where he’s staying next, house-sitting for a friend up in the Lake District.

“Anyone might lose their temper if you say that, whether it’s true or false,” says Keene with maddening quiet, after Stephen has gone.

“That’s my point. Everyone has a temper. What if he tried it on with her, and she laughed at him?
Bam
, there’s your temper. Everyone has one, and some of them kill.”

Everything Stephen’s described could be a twisted version of what’s really a stalking. I spell it out for Keene: “Watching her through the window. Supposedly intense relationship without any solid information to show for it. Those letters? Rehashing and elaborating a ridiculous fantasy. She just had to have him, huh?”

“Women aren’t necessarily sentimental about sex. It could have happened the way he said.”

“Thanks for the lesson in feminine sex drive, Keene. I thought we were all virgins on our wedding days.” Sure, I’ve thrown myself at a man or two. Well, if those overgrown boys I knew at uni count as men. “Things could have happened the way Stephen said, they could have. We just shouldn’t rely on his word alone.”

“He’s a public—well, minorly public—figure. We can track him down,” Keene assures me. “But we had no reason to hold him. Not yet,
anyway,” he adds. Nice of him to throw me one crumb. “You sure did scare him.” He chuckles.

“One of us had to remain objective.”

“I was good cop! You didn’t think I really trusted him, did you? We don’t trust anyone. Right? Just each other?” He leans back in his chair. He smiles.

Just like that, just for a moment, we’re back to the way things were, before the knife.

“I can drive you back to Cambourne,” I offer.

“No. There’s one more bus.”

I tap East Deeping on the wall map. “I’ll pick you up at eight tomorrow. We’ll head for the house early, catch people before they’re out for the day.”

He nods but won’t look me in the eye.

“What happened to your brother’s car?”

He pumps out a resigned laugh. “I’ve no idea. The bigger question is what’s happened to
him
.”

He’s right; Richard is never unreliable. “Are you sure you understood him?”

He turns on me. “Oh, you’re right, Richard’s error can only be explained by me having incorrect expectations. Not possible for him to make a mistake. Thanks, Mum.”

I feel as though I’ve been punched in the belly.
No, he doesn’t know. He’s just being sarcastic
.

“Morris,” I begin.

“I’m fine, remember?”

“Morris, don’t try to do it all on your own. Stop trying to impress us. Cutting me out doesn’t make me think what a great man you are. It makes me angry. Work with me.”

“You sound like my physio.”

Shut up about the damned physio
. I hear more about her than I do about his family. “Morris.” I take a breath. “I’ve been letting you just barrel on, but not much longer. There’s only so much coddling—”

“Coddling?”

I throw my hands up. “Oh, never! I’m only pulling your rickshaw all over this investigation. The driving is mine, the paperwork is mine. In interviews I have to fight for my share. You’re not the only one with
struggles. You’re not the only one off-kilter.” Tears burble out of my eyes.
Not now, not now. Damn
. “You’re not the only one whose body is out of control.” I rub my fists on my eyes to make it stop. “Do you have any idea how vast a difference there is between a man who takes time off to recover from injury in the line of duty and a woman who takes time off to have a baby?”

“You’re—”

“You’re so sure that no one understands what you’re going through, that no one else has ever made an adjustment or had a physical change. Well, I’m hungry and sick and exhausted every day. My body’s going to inflate, my pelvis is going to crack open, and I’m going to push out a parasite that requires me to feed it twenty times a day. If my challenge were limited to my fucking hand I don’t think I would even notice it!”

My chest heaves. I close my eyes.

“I’m sorry, I—”

“Just deal with it. You’re the hero who took a cut to bring in a killer. You’re golden here.”

“No, I’m—”

I walk out. There’s no right thing for him to say. He doesn’t understand. He
can’t
understand.

I can’t believe I told him. I haven’t even told Dan.

CHAPTER 14

GRACE RHYS

I
’d made it through the college gate. My tights were laddered from tripping through the door. I looked rubbish. My head pounded.

My staircase is off First Court, in the corner. I jogged up the steps to get my heart going, up past my floor, past the toilets and shower. The kitchen is at the top. I had to have a coffee.

I put on the kettle and unlocked my cupboard for a jar of instant, Fairtrade and dark. A sugar packet would add an extra jolt. The kettle made that snorish rumble it does. I leaned onto my elbows and stared outside; the light across the road was still on; it was something to look at.
Eyes, keep open. Look
. That light has been left on for two days now.

“What are you staring at?”

I jumped. “Oh!” I said. “Nothing.”

Ainsley knelt down to the fridge. “You shouldn’t look in other people’s rooms.” She didn’t even face me to say it. I glared at the back of her pink T-shirt. She straightened, and it still hung to mid-thigh on her. She was dressed for bed. “What time is it?” I asked.

The kettle wheezed. “A bit late for caffeine,” she said.

I mixed the coffee and pulled a milk out of the fridge.

“Is that mine?”

I looked down at my hand. It was a half-pint, organic, skim, the kind of short plastic bottle with a little handle. There: “Ainsley,” in black marker on the label.

“Crap, I’m really sorry,” I said. “So stupid.” I pulled out a box of almond milk and poured that in instead. That box said “Caroline.”

“You really should get your own milk,” she told me. She had her glasses on, which she never does during the day. They made her eyes huge.

I shrugged. I pushed my hair behind my ear, then quickly tugged it back.

“You wouldn’t like it if someone looked in your room, you know,” Ainsley said.

I thought of that camera outside my window. “It’s not a big deal. She’s left her light on.” I knew it was a girl who lived there, because most nights I saw her at that desk, reading. I knew she was a Maths fresher, because I recognised the books from my previous year. “It’s not like I ever saw her do anything but read.” Pretty much every night until a few days ago, actually. “She’s probably staying with a boyfriend or something.”

“It’s not your business.” Her popcorn finished in the microwave. She emptied the bag into a ceramic bowl and picked out the unpopped kernels to bin them. Ainsley is kind of a control freak. “What are you smiling at?” she wanted to know.

I poured the sugar sludge at the bottom of my coffee down the sink and shook my head, hard. My hair was wild; I could feel static haloing around me.

“Nice earrings,” I think she said. It was hard to tell; she said it as she went out the door. I clapped my hands over them and pulled them off. Their clasps had squeezed my lobes; I rubbed to bring the circulation back. I crammed the earrings into my jacket pocket.
Stupid
. I should have taken them off before I left the pub. What if it hadn’t been Ainsley? The jagged rhinestones bulged through the fabric a little.

I rinsed my cup with Fairy Liquid and upended it in the drainer. The light was still on across the road. Her desk was as she’d left it, with
a book splayed open, text down. The title font was unreadable from here.

This book was different. All the previous ones had been first-year textbooks.

The back of this one was a face, presumably the author, looking serious in black-and-white. He was youngish, and handsomeish. It looked like a novel. Maybe some free-reading had inspired her to take a break from working so hard. Maybe she got to a sex scene and flung the book down to go and try it out herself. Yeah, she didn’t seem to be sleeping in her bed anymore, so that’s probably what happened.