The Start of Everything (33 page)

“Are you sure?” I glance at the recorder. Do I really want to go down this road? If Grace had been still living, helping cover up the crime could open Dru up to an accusation of conspiracy from an overzealous prosecution.

“She … her arm stretched out, but then it stopped. She stopped moving. The blood kept coming. I … I had to step back because the blood was …” Dru kicks her feet, trying to crab away from it.

Mrs. Bennet squishes Dru’s face against her shoulder and rocks her. “Inspector, please!”

For Dru’s sake, I have to be clear: “You walked into the room and, to the best of your understanding, you saw her die almost immediately? Is that correct?”

“Yes. Then he took her away with the dead Christmas tree. Is that all you need?”

It’s like lights on at the end of a movie. Everyone shifts and blinks.

“That’s really good, Dru. Thank you.” I click off the recorder. “Is there someone I can call for you, Mrs. Bennet? Do you want to go home, or …?”

I don’t know where in Deeping House the man hanged himself. If it was in their flat, that would not be a good place to return to. Even if he’d done it out on the grounds … I needed to send CSI to look for traces of Grace’s blood in their lounge. I had to declare it a crime scene. “Do you have family we can contact for you?” Though from Dru’s description of their struggles before the marriage, probably not.

Mrs. Bennet starts to shake. I don’t know what to do for them. Ms. Barnes has a plan:

“We have a holiday home, in Florida. You can stay there as long as you like. It’s near a beautiful beach. There are sheets and towels in the …”

Mrs. Bennet shakes her head. “Max needs her doctors, and I—I have to work.”

I suggest various services. It all feels hopeless. I keep it together until we all split up, then I pull the car door shut and cry over the steering wheel. I get it all out, in snot and tears and hot breath.
I hate this. I hate my job
.

I’ve done no good. Grace is dead. Ian Bennet is dead. Dru was raped and the family is in straits. Connecting the dots hasn’t changed any of it. My prize of a recording will close the case and cut another notch in my bedpost. I’ve proven my promotion.
Cheers
.

CHAPTER 28

GEORGE HART-FRASER

I
had every right to call the hospital. Tobias and I worked together. We were close. There was nothing suspicious in my concern. I called. I told them who I am; nothing to hide. They wouldn’t let me speak to him. Did that mean he was unconscious? They wouldn’t tell me his condition. I called from my office every hour; that seemed a reasonable span. I called his house. Mathilde didn’t answer.
That bitch
.

I slammed our door and pounded the stairs with my feet. Our bedroom is up three flights. I flicked on the light. Juliet was home. She filled the bed and the covers were tangled up around her. She shifted and groaned. I turned off the light and backed out. I locked the bathroom door behind me. It was the bathroom on the landing. She would use the en suite. I was safe.

I pulled my mobile out of my coat pocket and called the hospital again.

Juliet eventually left for the lab and I was alone.

After I heard the front door, I unclicked the bathroom lock and returned to our bedroom. The covers remained twisted. She hadn’t bothered to make the bed up. I could smell her.

I ripped the sheets off and dropped them down the stairs. I stuffed them into the washer in our kitchen, punched them to make them fit. I added soap and turned the temperature as high as it would go.

Tobias was dead. He had died of a heart attack.

I don’t drink. I hadn’t had alcohol since the last night that Stephen was alive. But Juliet keeps wine. She buys it in boxes so she doesn’t feel like she’s wasted a bottle by only drinking one glass.

She came home late. I was drunk. Daisy was on my mind, beautiful fucking Daisy. I thought about if Stephen hadn’t been home that night, or even had just slept through it. What if I’d fucked Daisy in the kitchen, and laughed at him when he stumbled down the stairs, instead of him laughing at me?

Juliet stomped downstairs. What the fuck was wrong with her? “What happened to the sheets?” she wanted to know. They were still in the washer. Then, “What’s wrong with you?”

Me?
What was wrong with
me
? It was
her
wine.

She stood over me and kicked the empty box. “Jesus, George.”

I pulled myself up on a drawer handle. I closed my eyes.
Daisy
.

I pushed her against the fridge. “Stop it! You’re drunk,” she whined. I held her hands at her sides and rubbed my face against her neck. She wriggled and pushed. I pushed back.

Her body was wrong. Daisy had been slimmer and taller. I kept my eyes screwed tight and ground our hips together. It wasn’t working.
If I could just get it out and do it with my hand for a minute …
She got one of her arms unpinned. She shoved my shoulder.

I fell against the kitchen table behind me. I caught on the back of a chair and steadied myself.

She ran up the stairs and slammed the front door.

I blinked. I stumbled up all the stairs, all the way up. I slept on our bare mattress.

Juliet forgave me when she found out that Tobias had died. She forgave grief.

There were some awkward moments at night and in the kitchen, but after a fortnight we had refounded our routine. “The police were here a couple of days ago,” she said one morning over breakfast.

I forced myself to swallow the unchewed toast and yolk in my mouth. “What did they want?”

“Something in the brook outside. They were in those white space suits, searching it.”

Not here. Not at our door
. I pushed my plate away.

“Isn’t it good?” she asked. She wanted to be praised for her efforts. Everything costs something. I nodded. I apologised. It was babble.

She got up and stood behind me, rubbing my shoulders. “I know how you feel,” she said. Her mother died last year. She thinks she knows what that would feel like for everyone. “Tobias was a good friend.”

I shook my head. I needed her to stop. The memorial was today. I’d been asked to speak. I’d refused.

Her hands moved down to rub my chest. We hadn’t had sex since the night I drank the box wine.

Juliet uses sex as comfort. She fucks when she’s upset. She thinks it’s the same for everyone. She thinks I can somehow get it up when the police are searching the water outside our house and Mathilde is blackmailing me for my brother’s watch. She fucks through disappointment and grief and worry; she holds on and lets sex black it out. Easy for the woman. She just has to spread her legs and say yes.

She backed off when I didn’t respond to the chest rubbing.

“Do you want me to come with you to the memorial?” she offered instead.

“Please stop talking about it,” I told her. “Please stop.” I said it again, to myself, to my brain, to the panic in my gut:
Please stop, please stop, please stop
.

Mathilde swore she’d bring it. I waited outside the church, near the bronze city map. Grieving colleagues and students gathered behind
me and were ushered inside. I traced the miniature river with my fingertip, following its pregnant bulge around the west edge. I saw her in the mouth of Senate House Passage. It should have been a straight line to the church door from there.

She saw me. She ran.

I have longer legs. She dodged side to side to avoid other people. It was easy to keep up.

When she turned down Station Road, I burned. Did she think she could just leave? Did she have the watch in her pocket?

The new ticket gates had been left open to allow returning commuters to pass through quickly. She surged through them onto the platform. She didn’t buy a ticket. What was that girl up to?

I lost sight of her in the crowd. I looked for the top of her head: fair hair, split down the middle. I got to the end of the main platform and turned. She’d got behind me somehow. She goggled. A sudden flurry confettied between us.

“Stephen?” she said.

The snow stopped. It hung, suspended.
I’m George
, I thought.
I’m George, you bitch
.

I put out my hand. It’s a shock how solid a body is, even a small thing like her. But snow got under her feet. That helped.

Her bag slipped off her shoulder. It fell with her, and dumped out onto the tracks beside her: paper, fruit, coins. Her wallet. A watch. A watch!

It lay on the tracks, well out of reach. Police were surely on their way.
Why hadn’t she just given it to me?

I pushed through the crowd.
What now?
They’d find it. They’d know what it meant. I got out of the station and walked quickly away down side streets. I rubbed my eyes.

The image of the watch face hovered in front of me. The twelve numbers shifted and re-formed. Something was wrong. Stephen’s watch had used Roman numerals. He used to joke that he couldn’t read it. The face of the watch on the tracks—I was certain, the image was burned into my eyes—was made of Arabic numerals. It looked familiar.

It was Tobias’s.

She’d tried to trick me.