The Start of Everything (16 page)

MORRIS KEENE

I
let out a low whistle: two cautions for shoplifting in Milton Keynes. If it made it that far twice for Grace Rhys, it must have been a way of life for her. Nothing to kill over, but interesting. I stretch my arms overhead and look at the clock on the wall. Half an hour since Chloe had gone. Forty more minutes till my bus. What else to ask the database?

Using just my left-hand index finger, I type in “Mathilde Oliver.” Nothing. “Stephen Casey.” Nothing. They’re both clear. I Google Stephen Casey—good reviews, the new paperback, used copies of the hardback going for 4 pence.

Who else? “George Hart-Fraser,” Mathilde’s father’s colleague and Grace’s supervisor. His surname is easy to remember; it’s the reverse of the name of a jewellery store chain. I’m always looking for memory tricks, now that I can’t write. It’s not just having the notes as a reference that matters. Chloe does a good job with that, and in this case Louis the porter had done it for me. But I hadn’t realised how much
the act of writing clarifies one’s thoughts. The decisions and sorting that go into putting something on paper do a trick in the head. I cling to other tricks now.

George Hart-Fraser: originally from Bristol. Suspicion of murder, questioned, released.

Murder
.

I scramble to print his record and Google for news stories. This happened ten years ago; there isn’t much online about it. His University page doesn’t have many links, just a photo showing dark hair and a bland expression, and a list of his journal publications. He apparently focuses on “high redshift galaxies” at the Institute of Astronomy.

I sprint to the bus station. The wall of Emmanuel College stretches down towards my stop. I flat-out run its whole length as the bus at the corner pulls away and out of sight.

I pant and swear. I flick open my phone to call Richard, but his mobile is off again. I try his home, but the line is engaged.

I walk back to Parkside station, no hurry. My desk is at the Godman-chester office, not here, but I can stretch out on the sauna bench for the night. I can’t justify the cost of a taxi.

But in the station car park, a young officer fresh off shift heads for his Mini. I can’t bring his name to mind, but I remember he lives in Cambourne, too. I jog to catch up.

“Sir?” he says, bright-eyed. He’s my height, but his chin tilts up at me.

I ask if I can catch a lift, as we live in the same town. He’s all kindness, even fulsome. I dodge his name by using “mate.” The seatbelt takes only two tries to click in, two quick tugs, then a satisfying
tunk
into its buckle, while he shifts into gear and lunges out onto East Road.

“How long have you lived in Fulbourn, sir?”

“I …” My mouth dries up. Fulbourn. “I live in Cambourne.” Twenty miles’ difference, on the opposite side of the city. This, this is the memory on which I now rely, and on quirkily abbreviated notes in Chloe’s tight, slanted printing. I want my own written words back, my emphases, my priorities. I try to make a fist, but my fingers can
only hang in the attitude of a weak slap. “I live in Cambourne,” I repeat.

“No worries,” he says cheerfully, looking straight out.

A jolt, and streetlights streak by in a stripe. I squeeze a quick blink. “Sorry. No, let me out at the corner.…”

“I said no worries!” And he faces me with a huge smile. I wonder at what Chloe has said, that I’m golden here.

“You’re very kind. Thank you.” I swallow. I want to ask his name, but I can’t now, not when I’ve already pretended to know him. “Thank you,” I say again. I force my mouth shut. Panting only makes things worse. The lap belt tightens across that part of my belly that had taken the knife. There’s only a scar now, with no lasting damage behind it. But that was the cut that, at the time, had scared me. The cut across my hand had seemed like nothing then.

“You said, sir?”

“No. Nothing. What?” Had I said something?

“You said it was all right.”

“What’s all right?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

I lean back against the headrest. “Have you ever been in hospital, Harris?” His name made the leap from memory to mouth with no conscious effort. “Harris?” I try again, worrying I’d got it wrong.

“No, sir. Have you?”

I swallow a laugh. “No!” I announce. “Never.”

I deny it all. He has no idea.

Chloe has it all wrong. I’m not golden. Harris isn’t driving me home out of reverence for the sacrifices of a superior officer. He might have been cowed by my rank, or politic enough to play up to me, or genuinely kind. But my name is nothing to him. I’m nothing to him. My right arm starts to quiver the way that it does at the end of a long day. I tuck my hand inside my coat.

“Cold, sir?” He reaches for the heating dial.

What would be next? A flask of whisky and a homemade scone?

“It’s April, Harris.”

“Snow earlier,” he reminds me.

Snow. Yes
. On a slippery trackside.

“Melted now,” he goes on, perhaps to justify his speed. “Like it never happened. Sweet?”

Between the seats, a tin of travel sweets tilts my way. They rattle, and the rattle echoes.

“No, thanks.”

His hand knocks the tin between the console and the seat. He grimaces, probing with his fingers. “Get me one?” he asks.

I stiffen my posture. I won’t be able to open it, not without the ridiculousness of securing the tin between my stomach and elbow while my left thumb tries to pop the top.

“They’re bad for your teeth,” I say, all on one note, each syllable as dull as the next. As with his name, that sentence comes out on its own, without giving me a chance to second-guess it, which I would have.

But a laugh busts out of him. “You’re my dentist now? You don’t look like my dentist.…” He keeps laughing.

And he doesn’t ask again.

Richard is taller than I am. I’d thought I’d catch up in a burst by eighteen, but that chance came and went more than twenty years ago. And the lever for moving the driver’s seat is on the right side.

He’d left me the car at last, in the drive when Harris dropped me home last night, keys through the front door mail slot.

Now I only need to fit into it.

I try pulling the lever while standing outside the car, but then don’t have any heft in the appropriate place to get the seat forward. In fact, it automatically slides back even farther. I curse Richard for not leaving it in a better position, but if he’d tried, he would have trapped his knees under the wheel and still be here.

I put my shoulder behind the seat back, which puts most of my left arm back there, too. I bend at the elbow and can just skim the lever with my left fingers. So I pull out, pull the lever hard, and then thrust my shoulder behind the seat, shoving it forward. Too far. But I’ve found the way that works, and, enacting it three more times, make it right.

Once in, I lean back on the headrest, right foot resting on the brake pedal. I have to squash the ridiculous burst of victory that makes me
want to pump my fist. I can’t let myself get off on this stuff. I can’t sink my ambitions so low as merely getting into a car. I put it in drive. I press down on the accelerator. I take off for Deeping House.

Wanted boys, did they?
The mother must have noticed my smirk. She explains that Drew is spelled Dru, short for Drusilla. Max is, of course, short for Maxine. I’d caught the girls and their mum in the parking area in front of Deeping House, buckling in to leave for the day. Just the two daughters, newly teenaged; this wouldn’t have been the family Katja had nannied for.

“Who?” asks the mum through the open car door, one leg still out. She seems flustered by my profession, and whispers when she gives me her name: Hillary Bennet. Dru reminds her of the time. Mrs. Bennet blinks rapidly but doesn’t close the car door. Chloe isn’t here yet.

“Is this a bad time?” I ask.

“I’m sorry. Why are you here? Is something wrong?”

“I just need to talk to Katja. She nannied over the Christmas holiday.”

“For the Finleys, Mum,” says Max. “Katja worked for the Finleys,” she repeats, to me. “They live in the top-front flat.” She points towards the house. I count sixteen chimney pots, four each on four chimney towers. Sixteen fireplaces. “How many flats altogether?” I ask.

“Five,” says Max, at the same time her mum says, “We really must go. We have lots to do today, don’t we, girls?” Her voice is suddenly hearty and loud, and she gazes, specifically, at Max. Max is thinner and paler than her sister. They both have long, fair hair. Dru’s is flat; Max’s seems to erupt from her head and fall in lavalike undulations over her shoulders. I think it’s a wig.

I smile my kindly uncle smile. “Did either of you girls know Katja? When was the last time you saw her?”

The mum takes over. “She worked for the Finleys over Christmas. Then she was let go. We went into London on the day that it snowed, and when we returned she was gone.”

Dru kicks the back of her mother’s seat. Not hard, just rhythmically,
bash-bash-bash
. “I
know
, Dru,” the mum says, pulling in her leg, and then to me, “I’m sorry, we don’t socialise with the Finleys as much
as we’d like. But we really do have to go. Dru is heading back to school and we’re having a special day
together
.” She adds with forced cheer, “Aren’t we, girls!”

Max smiles. Dru stares up at the car ceiling. Chloe’s car passes them coming in as they pull out.

CHAPTER 16

GRACE RHYS

E
ach free-standing shelf in the new Taylor Library has an individual light at its top that’s triggered by a motion sensor. On late, quiet nights, the emptiness lets the room get all dark—until you startle the first light in front of you, then the next, and leave a kind of comet tail behind you as you go. Sometimes I made an S path between the shelves, watching over my shoulder, drawing snakes and paths in the dark, then letting the darkness catch up with me as each light timed out and winked off. I made a game of it, running, trying to light up the whole room at once; or sitting completely still, until the light over my head goes out, too, and seeing how long I can sit without tripping it.