Cold Light (37 page)

“You will eat?”

She didn't answer, looked at him, wanting his attention. Needing it.

“Wouldn't it be awful, when they found you, if you had just faded away?” He scraped the underside of the spoon against the edge of the dish before bringing it towards her mouth. “One thing I wouldn't want them to say, you were neglected. Not looked after. I wouldn't want them to be thinking that.”

The tip of the spoon passed between her lips and tapped against her teeth and Lynn was reminded of his kiss. She opened wide enough to let it in. The cereal was lukewarm and tasted both of sugar and of bran.

“Good?” Michael inquired pleasantly. “Is that good? Should you like some more or is it a drink of tea?”

The tea was more difficult, she had to tilt back her head and still some of it escaped and ran down on to her neck.

“Here,” he said, opening a tissue from his trouser pocket, then folding it again into a pad, “let me do something about that.”

Unwillingly, Lynn flinched from his hand.

Michael just smiled and tried a second time. He noticed then the damp residue drying on her thigh. “A little accident,” he said. “Is that what this is?” Carefully, he refolded the tissue before gently releasing spittle on to it, a gesture Lynn had seen her mother make a hundred times. “There now,” Michael said, dabbing at her leg, “that's better now.”

Damn you, Lynn thought, I am not going to cry again.

Smiling, Michael lifted another spoonful of cereal to her mouth and gratefully she swallowed it down.

Robin and Mark had made an early start; there was still some mist hanging quite low and when that finally cleared they knew there would be snow on the tops. But the local forecast was good and besides they were well equipped, compasses and extra clothes and food, regulation survival kit in their rucksacks. Robin had scarcely spoken of Nancy since he had arrived and Mark had been content to leave it that way, thought it best. What Robin needed most of all, Mark reckoned, was something to take him out of it, not long, cloistered conversations centered on nostalgia and regret. Not that, if it came to it, he would be anything less than sympathetic.

They had been walking now, steadily gaining altitude, for a little over an hour. Mark had set off in the lead and after a while they had changed places, Robin pushing on ahead, lifting the pace. Even though they were still at the lower levels, the effort was enough to test their breath and, of necessity, conversation was kept to a minimum.

“Look. There.”

Mark stopped and followed the direction of Robin's arm, eastwards to where the sun had finally broken clear above the peaks.

“Didn't I tell you?” Mark said. “Didn't I tell you this was going to be a great day?”

Robin smiled before turning back and continuing to climb.

Lynn had asked for the rest of her clothes back, complaining of the cold. For reply, he had turned the heater up a notch and laughed. An eerily musical sound. She thought now she had heard him earlier, moving around outside, singing. No way of knowing if that were true. Somebody else? A dream? “I thought you were meant to be looking after me,” she'd said.

He had left the caravan instantly, returned with an old piece of sacking, and thrown it down across her legs. “There.”

When the door had opened for him to leave, she had heard it more clearly, the same insistent sound. Possibly a generator, the report on the tape's background noise had said. If she twisted her head a little she could make out the lettering, faded into the weave of the material:
Bone Fertilizer
—
Saddleworth & Sons
.

Michael came back half an hour later, whistling quietly. Lynn watched as he drew round one of the folding chairs and sat there, one leg crossed over the other, relaxed. “I'm sorry,” he said, “that I lost my temper.” He smiled. “That's unusual for me. I don't like it, never have. The way it affects you when that happens. Out of control. That's not what I want for us. I'd rather we continued to be friends.”

“We could have been, Michael. You know that. That's why this is such a shame.”

“And we're not now? Is that what you're saying?”

“Not exactly, Michael. Not any more.”

Disappointment passed across his eyes. “But why ever not?”

“After this? After what you've done?”

“To you? What have I …?”

“Not only to me.”

“I've been good to you. I like you.”

“Really?”

He moved off the chair and sat close beside her on the floor.

“You've got a strange way of showing it, that's all I can say.”

“But I do, you know I do.” She could feel his breath against her thigh.

“How much, Michael?”

He looked at her, questioning.

“Enough to let me go?”

“Maybe.” His hand was resting on her thigh, a little above the knee, the thumb tracing small circles on her skin. “I'll have to think about it. I don't know.”

“What will it take, Michael? What will I have to do?”

“What?”

“For you to do that? Let me go?”

He looked at his hand as if it belonged to someone else, before pulling it away. “It isn't like that.”

“It isn't?”

“Threats. Promises. We don't have to do that.”

“We don't?”

“I could have you …”

“Could you?”

“I could have had you …”

“Michael, it's true.”

“What …?”

“That night at my flat. You could have had me. Whatever you wanted.”

He was looking away, shoulders hunched, head down. “You think I didn't know. The way you were lying there …”

“Then why didn't you? What stopped you?”

“Nothing stopped me. I stopped myself. I …”

“No good like that, is it? Straightforward. Normal, Normal sex. Two people. Me and you, Michael. Me and you.”

“Stop it.”

“Is that what it is, Michael? Is that the problem?”

“Stop.”

“Part of the problem?”

“Stop it!” He kicked the chair away and it smashed against the wall. His hands were clamped over his ears. He was shaking.

“Michael,” Lynn said, “I could help you. Really. But you have to trust me. You have to.”

She had no idea if he had heard her or not. Without another glance, he walked from the caravan and locked the door behind him. Oh, Christ, Lynn thought, all of the energy suddenly sapped out of her, I hope to God I haven't just pushed him too far.

He didn't come back for well over an hour and when he did he came in humming softly to himself, a small tape recorder in his hand. “I thought you'd be wanting to send a message to your friends. That inspector now—Resnick, wasn't that his name?”

Robin and Mark had continued their climb, the conditions causing them to detour once or twice from the marked path, but now they were back on track and moving towards Striding Edge. Both left and right, whichever way they looked, lower peaks were topped with snow. Gray and white, the mountain rose up before them.

They had stopped once, drinking from their flasks, eating chocolate, Mark breaking off a piece of Kendal Mint Cake.

From nowhere, Robin said, “Perhaps she's better off in a way, Nancy, where she is.”

Not knowing how to respond, Mark had said nothing, but nodded, waiting for Robin to go on. But there was nothing more. Ten minutes later, everything was stowed away again and they were on the move.

The Edge was a narrow traverse, broad enough only for climbers moving in single file, the drop close to sheer on either side and deep. Robin and Mark had been across it many times.

“Want me to go first?” Mark asked.

“N-no, it's okay. I'm fine.” The sun caught his shadow as he went carefully forward, flattening it against the rock floor. Watchful of his footing on the icy surface, taking his time, Robin continued to the midpoint and his face, when he turned, was lost in a blaze of light. He stood there, stock still, for perhaps five seconds, looking back at Mark from the center of that golden haze and then, without a word, stepped sideways into space.

Fifty-one

Michelle woke to the sound of rain sweeping against the windows, the blip-blip-blip as it dripped through the gap in the roof into the plastic bucket below. Beside her, Gary's breathing was steady and when she turned towards him, twisting her leg beneath his, she could smell cigarette smoke in his hair. Out drinking again last night. Herself, too. She couldn't remember when they'd spent so much time at the pub. Not feeling so good about leaving the kids alone, not even for half an hour, but they'd been fast off by then and once they were sleeping they almost never woke. Besides, Gary, he'd only have got into a mood if she'd said no. Just one drink, she'd said when she'd arrived, but Brian, flash bugger, had been flush again, laughing and making a fuss of her, insisting she and Josie have Bacardi and Coke, rubbing his hand up her leg too, the moment she sat down. Gary, thank God, he'd been too far gone to notice.

Michelle was more certain than ever Brian was into something dicey. Brian and Gary both, the way they kept up the clever looks and nudges, going off into corners and getting their heads down, whispering. Not that Gary seemed to have got so much out of it, whatever it was. Some things, she thought sadly, never changed.

She looked down at Gary now, his features softened by the half-light; one of those blokes, no matter how old they got, who never really looked any different to when they were kids. The ones who were always looking the wrong way, stuck standing at the end of the wrong line. He stirred and, suddenly tender towards him, Michelle bent her head and kissed him and smiled as he flapped a hand towards his face as if at a fly. Downstairs, the baby was waking, the day's first cry.

Michelle rolled away from Gary towards the edge of the bed.

Resnick had been unable to sleep at all. Twice he had tried, forcing himself to lay down at one and half-past three, both times getting back up after thirty minutes of flailing around, unable to clear thoughts of Lynn from his mind. Awake, he had paced distractedly from room to room, phoned, periodically, the station to see if there had been any developments, any news; in the kitchen, he had toasted bread, eaten it with cheese, strong Gorgonzola that had tasted of nothing. He had been so certain the trawl through the Open University lists would yield something. McCain and Reverdy, neither of them usual names. But blind alleys were all it had brought them, blind alleys and false trails. Wasted time.

Resnick remembered Harry Phelan's face, distorted by anger:
Forty-eight hours, that's what they reckon, isn't it? Forty-eight hours. If you don't find them in that, likely they're sodding dead!
Harry Phelan, standing in an open field, while behind him, inside the waiting ambulance, his daughter's body lay covered by a plastic sheet. Resnick willed himself not to look at the clock.

Maureen Madden, Kevin Naylor, anyone and everyone Lynn might have talked to, Resnick had quizzed them, anything she had mentioned about seeing somebody, a new boyfriend, a man. She had said something to Naylor about her car breaking down on the way back from her parents', someone stopping to lend a hand, offering her a lift. Nothing more than that.

Resnick stood in the top room of the house, one of the cats in his arms, staring out into the rain.

Michelle had just got to the bucket in time, the water only an inch from the top. Emptying it quickly into the bath, she had replaced it before hurrying downstairs and mopping up at the back where the rain had driven in through the gaps at the edge of the door Gary had failed to fix. The cup of tea she had made herself was little better than lukewarm.

In her cot, Natalie lay on her back, gurgling away happily now she had been changed and fed.

“Oh, Karl, just look at you!”

Left in the kitchen to his own devices, he had managed to get more Rice Krispies on the floor than in his bowl. The last of the fresh milk was dribbling from its carton into the sink.

“Karl, for heaven's sake!” The boy backed away, blinking, wearing Gary's old County shirt, long past his knees. “Come on, mind out of the way. Let me get this cleared up before your dad comes down.”

Karl trundled into the doorway and bumped into Gary, still prizing the sleep from his eyes.

“Bloody heck, Karl! Look where you're going, why don't you?”

“Hang on a minute,” Michelle said. “You'll be treading all that into the floor.”

“What the hell's it doing there in the first place?”

“Karl had an accident.”

“Karl
was
a sodding accident.”

“Gary, that's not fair!”

“Not fair, it's sodding true, though, i'n' it?”

“Gary, don't. Look, he can hear.”

“So what's that matter? Doesn't know what we're on about, hasn't a clue, have you, pal?”

“Asthdent,” Karl said just inside the door. “Asthdent.”