When Will There Be Good News? (25 page)

Marcus entered her office, waving a piece ofpaper like a little flag. He caught sight of the photograph and said, 'News of Lord Lucan?'

Everyone remembered Lord Lucan's name but hardly anyone remembered Sandra Rivett, the nanny he clubbed to death. The wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like Gabrielle Mason and her children, also mostly forgotten by the collective memory
. W
ho could name one of theYorkshire Ripper's victims? Or the Wests'? The forgotten dead. Victims faded, murderers lived on in the memory, only the police kept the eternal flame alight, passing it on as the years went by.

'What was the nanny that he killed called?' Louise asked Marcus. Here beginneth the catechism.

'Don't know,' Marcus admitted.

'Sandra Rivett,' Karen said.

'She has the memory of an elephant,' Louise said to Marcus.

'Gestating an elephant as well,' Karen said. 'Can't wait to get the little fucker out.'

'You have to stop swearing once you have a baby,' Louise said.

'Did you?'

'No.'

'You're supposed to be a role model for me.'

'Am I? You're in trouble then.'

'Boss?' Marcus said, handing her the piece of paper he'd been holding on to. 'Our Mr Hunter's been unlucky lately. It turns out that a couple of weeks before the fire the manager of the Bread Street arcade was attacked when he was cashing up and one
of the
windows in another amusement arcade was put in last Saturday night. Plus, one of his drivers was dragged from his cab outside the Foot of the Walk and beaten up, and another car had its windows smashed when it was picking up a passenger in Livingston-'

'Livingston?' Louise said sharply.

'It's OK, boss -nothing to do with our lady.'

Louise didn't know when or why Marcus had started referring to Alison Needler as 'our lady' but it always threw her. Our Lady of Livingston. Our Lady of the Sorrows.

Louise could see Karen's belly clearly through her thin jersey maternity top. Her belly button pushing out like a doorbell asking to be rung. The belly was pulsing as her baby moved around, like something from Alien. Louise remembered that odd fluttery feeling of having a freewheeling baby inside you, independent and dependent at the same time, an eternal maternal dialectic. A foot, a little foot, a tiny, tiny little foot, pushed against the thin drumskin of flesh and jersey. It didn't help Louise's queasiness.

'So?' Louise said. 'The man has bad karma, or someone's trying to tell him something? He's all yours by the way, he's giving nothing away but he looks like a very worried man to me.'

DI Sandy Mathieson, a man who had risen above his abilities as far as Louise was concerned, put his head round the door. If there was a collective noun for police like Sandy it would definitely be 'plod'.

'MAPPA have been on the phone, about Decker.'

'What about him?'

'He's disappeared.'

A black crow flapping across the sun, a dark place, a bad feeling in Louise's own belly. A real, physical feeling, probably brought on by the tub of egg mayonnaise that Karen Warner had just produced and was digging into with a teaspoon. The woman couldn't go five minutes without eating something. Something disgusting usually.

'Patrol car in Doncaster did a routine check on him this morning just to see he was where he was supposed to be.'

'And he wasn't?'

'Mother said he went out at tea-time on Wednesday and never came back.'

'He knew the press had got wind of him,' Louise said. 'He was probably just trying to escape.' That word again. What had Joanna Hunter said, I think I'll go away, escape for a bit? Were they both running from the same thing? Two people who would never be free of each other. Joanna Hunter and Andrew Decker would belong to each other for evermore, their histories twisted and fused together.

'Well, at least the train crash stopped it making the papers for a day or two,' Sandy said.

'Every disaster has a silver lining, eh, Sandy?' Karen said. 'It won't be long before the press hounds are baying at their heels again. A train crash only gets headlines for what -three days tops? Anyway, he's in England, isn't he? He's not our problem. MAPPA's emailed through a photo,' she added, placing a photograph on the desk in front of Louise.

Decker looked a completely different person from the teenager who had stared out of the papers thirty years ago (Louise had googled up his ghost). He was a different person, of course
. T
here was a whole wasted lifetime between the two images.

On her way back from a Tasking and Coordinating Group meeting at St Leonard's Louise realized she was famished and pulled into Cameron Toll car park and bought an enormous bar of chocolate in Sainsbury's. She never ate chocolate but she ate the whole bar as soon as she was in the car and when she got to the station she had to throw the chocolate straight back up again in the toilet. Served her right for trying to put herself into a diabetic coma.

She was coming out of the toilet when her phone rang. 'Reggie Chase,' the voice said. The name was familiar but Louise couldn't place her. The girl was going a mile a minute and Louise couldn't keep up with her. The gist of it was that 'something' had 'happene
d
to Dr Hunter'. 'joanna Hunter?' Louise said. My lady, she thought, another one. Louise's ladies. Reggie Chase, the wee girl who had opened Joanna Hunter's door to her on Tuesday. 'What do you mean something'
s
happened to her?'

Wee girl and a big dog, it turned out. Dr Hunter's dog. It wagged its tail at the sight
of her
and Louise felt flattered, absurdly. Perhaps a dog would fill the space between her and Patrick that he wanted a baby to occupy. Was there a space between them? Was that a good thing?

Or a bad thing? She had driven back into town to meet the girl. They left the dog on the back seat of Louise's car while they went and had a coffee in a Starbucks on George Street. Louise hated Starbucks. Drinking the Yankee dollar. 'Someone has to make money for the evil capitalists,' she said to the girl, buying her a latte and a chocolate muffin. 'Some days it's you and me. This is one of those days.' The girl said, 'Och, we do a lot of things that we shouldn't do.' The girl had a nasty-looking bruise on her forehead that she made some excuse for but to Louise it looked like she'd been hit by someone. Reggie Chase. Joanna Hunter's nanny, like Sandra Rivett -no, not nanny, 'mother's help'. Mother's little helper. Louise had taken Valium after Archie's birth, 'Numb the shock a bit,' her GP said. The guy had been a pusher, handing out tranquillizers like they were sweeties. Louise couldn't imagine Joanna Hunter doing that. Louise wasn't breastfeeding when she took drugs, her milk had never come in properly and ran out after a week. (,Stress,' the GP said indifferently.) Archie seemed to find a bottle more emotionally comforting than his mother's breast. She stopped taking the Valium after a week, it made her into such a dull-witted person that she was afraid she would drop the baby or lose it or forget she'd ever had it to begin with.

Was Reggie old enough to look after another woman's child when she was almost a child herself? She was the same age as Archie. She tried to imagine putting Archie in charge of a small baby but the thought made her shudder.

'Look, look what Sadie found in Dr Hunter's garden,' the girl said, thrusting a manky piece of green cotton into Louise's hand.

'Sadie?'

'Dr Hunter's dog.'

'What is this?' Louise asked doubtfully, holding the scrap of green between thumb and forefinger.

'It's the baby's bit ofblanket, his comforter,' Reggie said. 'He won't go anywhere without it. Dr Hunter would never have left it behind. I found it in the garden. Why was it in the garden? It was already dark when I left and he had it in his hand then, and look at it, that stain there, that's blood.'

'Not necessarily.'

Archie had something similar, a bit of egg-yolk-yellow plush that had started life as a duck hand-puppet before the stitching gave way and the duck was decapitated. He couldn't go to sleep at night without it, she could see him now clutching it fiercely in his hand as if his life depended on it. Only in sleep did his fingers uncurl. He was the deepest sleeper. Louise would creep into his room in the middle of the night to cut toenails, remove splinters, swab cuts and grazes, all the little acts ofeveryday child maintenance that would cause him to scream the house down in daylight hours. He would rather have been separated from Louise than from that bit of yellow material.

She handed it back to the girl, saying, 'Things get lost.' Accidents happen. Milk gets spilt. Platitudes rain.

'Mr Hunter said Dr Hunter drove down,' Reggie said, 'but her car was in the garage. There was nothing wrong with it when she drove home in it yesterday. She's gone away but she never told me she was going, which isn't like her at all and Mr Hunter says she's visiting a sick aunt but she's never mentioned the existence of an aunt to me, I spoke to her friend Sheila at work and she was supposed to have gone to Jenners' Christmas Shopping evening yesterday but she didn't tell her she couldn't make it -which is 50 not Dr Hunter, believe me -and her phone is in the house somewhere because I heard it ringing, I definitely heard it ringing, Bach's "Crab Canon" she wouldn't forget her phone, it's her lifeline -she isn't forgetful, Dr Hunter never forgets anything, and her suit is missing, she wouldn't drive all that way in her suit, and-'

'Take a breath,' Louise advised.

'She's disappeared,' the girl said. 'I think someone's taken her.'

'No one's taken her.'

'Or Mr Hunter has done something to her.'

'Done something?'

The girl dropped her voice to a whisper, 'Murdered.'

Louise sighed inwardly. The girl was one ofthose. An over-excited imagination, could get stuck on an idea and be carried away by it. She was a romantic, quite possibly a fantasist. Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey. Reggie Chase was a girl who would find something of interest wherever she went. Training to be a heroine, that was what Catherine Morland had spent her first sixteen years doing, and she wouldn't be surprised if Reggie Chase had done the same.

'It happens that I was at Dr Hunter's house earlier today,' Louise said. 'I was seeing Mr Hunter about something quite unrelated.'

'That's a funny coincidence.'

'And that's all it is,' Louise said sharply. 'A coincidence. Mr Hunter told me that his wife had gone away, to stay with an aunt who isn't well.' 'Yes, I know, I said that, that's what he told me but I don't believe it.' 'The aunt isn't a matter of faith, she's not Father Christmas, she's a relative. She's not part ofsome grand conspiracy to hide Dr Hunter.'

'No one's seen Dr Hunter. No one's spoken to her.'

'Mr Hunter has.'

'He says.'

Louise sighed heavily. 'Look -Reggie -why don't I give you a ride home?' 'You should get the phone number for the aunt of Dr Hunter, make sure she's OK. Maybe you could send someone to the aunt'
s
house in Yorkshire, someone local. Hawes, H-a-w-e-s. Mr Hunter won't give me an address or a phone number but he'd have to give it to you.'

'Enough.' Louise held up a hand like a traffic cop. 'Leave it alone. Nothing has happened to Dr Hunter. Come on, my car's not far away.'

'Find out ifthe aunt exists. Get hold ofDr Hunter's mobile it's i
n ,
the house, then you can see if the aunt really phoned her.'

'Car. Now. Home.'

She said she had saved the life of a man at the train crash. More fantasy, obviously. Louise should have sent a uniform to talk to her. Ifit had been about anyone else she would have done, it was just that she had claimed Joanna Hunter and now she couldn't let her go. He
r
lady.

I might go away. Escape for a bit. Her husband's finances were i
n
meltdown, he was walking on the dark side with some questionabl
e
people, the marriage was probably falling apart and Andrew Decke
r
was back on the streets. Who wouldn't disappear? Was the marriag
e
falling apart, or was she just projecting her own feelings on to Joann
a
Hunter?

Joanna Hunter had never told Reggie about what had happened to her when she was a child. In fact she hadn't told anyone as far as Louise could see, apart from her husband, and Louise wasn't about to break that confidence. It was Joanna Hunter's decision to keep her secrets, not Louise's to reveal them. 'I don't want Reggie to know something like that,' Joanna Hunter said. 'It would upset her. People look at you differently when they know you've been involved in something terrible. It's the thing about you that they find most interesting.' But it was the thing that was most interesting. Survivors of disasters were always interesting. They were witnesses to the unthinkable. Like Alison Needler and her children.

'A burden you have to carry through the rest ofyour life,' Joanna Hunter said. 'It doesn't get better, it doesn't go away, you just have to take it with you to the end.' Louise thought ofJackson, his sister had been murdered a long time ago and now he was the only one left who had known her. No such problem with Samantha. If her husband and her son didn't remember her, her things did. She lived on, forgotten but not gone, the spirit of Patrick's wife embalmed for ever in her napkins and vases and good silver fish knives. Samantha was the real wife, Louise was the pale impostor.