“Yeah. Yeah. Let her sleep. Do her good.”
A heavy silence.
“You in already?” asked Tom.
“Yeah. Fucking ’mare, mate.”
Eased out into the middle lane, past a car doing thirty. “What’s going on?”
“You know who it is, right? The vic?”
“Who?”
“Libby Hanover. The PCSO.”
Tom stared at the picture on the white board, the woman young, fresh, dark hair pulled back into a low bun. He had spoken to her, once, twice maybe. Nothing of note, the exchange of pleasantries in a hallway. Maddie knew her though. Maddie knew everyone, just the way she was. Would tuck a new PCSO under her wing, show her around so that she recognised people, would feel welcome even in the areas where her authorities would never extend, like CID. Remembered her bringing Libby in, explaining how they worked, their investigations, giving Tom a swift kick on the ankle when he hadn’t turned fast enough. He remembered smiled at Maddie, trying desperately not to think about the last time he kissed her.
“People, listen up.” The DI looked stripped bare, eyes red, skin pale, couldn’t have slept much, if at all. He had pulled his tie loose, slipped his jacket off so that circular sweat stains were visible beneath his armpits. “Dog walker found a body this morning at 8.15am. Located along the banks of the river Tawe, just outside of Clydach. Uniform attended and positively identified the body as that of Libby Hanover.” A pause, a gulp of air, and Tom looked down at his fingernails, studying the edges where they had been bitten to the quick. “Ah, um, family have been informed.” The DI was looking down, studying the papers in his hands. Tom was prepared to bet that he had every piece of information on those pages memorised. “For those of you who do not know her, Libby is…” Another breath. “Was, one of ours. A Police Community Support Officer with eight months service. A good girl.”
There was a noise, a soft moan from Maddie, and Tom reached out, gripped her shoulder. For her benefit or for his, he was not sure.
“Her father, Jim Hanover, is a retired Superintendent, and, a,good friend. Libby, she lived alone, single, twenty six years old. The condition of the body - scenes of crime are with her now. They say she was fully clothed, dressed in her uniform, no obvious evidence of sexual assault, but we’ll have to wait for the PM to be sure.”
Tom raised a finger. “Boss?” He said quietly. “The murder site?”
“Yeah, Jim, her dad. He notified us that she was missing late last night. His concerns were raised when he found blood in her kitchen, so obviously we’re looking at that as a possible murder scene. Again, scenes of crime are there as we speak. Jim said that when he arrived the front door was locked as normal. We’ve examined that windows, doors, all locked up nice and secure.”
Tom shifted, running through a house he’d never seen. She let her killer in.
“Obviously, we’re considering that Libby may have let her murderer in. It’s possible that they had a key. Equally possible that after they…they killed her…they took a key, locking up behind them to throw the investigation. Now,” the DI slapped another photograph onto the white board. A kitchen. “As you can see, someone’s been cleaning. If the kitchen was the murder site, someone has worked very hard to make sure that it doesn’t look that way. The only obvious blood spatter was at the side of one of the cabinets. Out of the way, so it looks like they missed it.
“Now, have a look for your names on the board. I’ve got you split into teams. Outside action team, you’re going door to door. Somebody must have seen something. We’ll brief again at the end of the day.”
There was a flurry of movement, the office filling with the scraping of chairs. Maddie wiped her hands across her eyes, glancing back at Tom with a watery smile.
“You okay?” Tom asked. Could still feel the wool of her sweater beneath his fingers.
She nodded, slowly. “Not much choice, is there?” Her hands circled her belly, and for a moment he thought that she was about to say something. Then she shrugged. “I’ll see you later.” She turned, slipping into the mass of bodies, leaving him sitting there, watching her go.
He’d thought about leaving Cecilia. Of course he had. Sometimes, when Maddie laughed, or just brushed past him with that rush of perfume that was utterly and entirely her, then the thought would occur to him that he could leave. But then he would remember his father, the black bin bags lined up neatly alongside the front door.
Stooping down in front of Tom, eight years old. You know this isn’t about you? You know that, right? Trying to tousle his hair, Tom jolting backwards as if he had been stung. That look in his father’s eyes like the time he had cut his finger, slicing the top clean off with the carving knife. It just, it isn’t working, your mother and me. It’s not about you. Then stay. His father grimacing, it wouldn’t be right. I’d be living a lie, Tom. I can’t live like that. So Tom stayed and watched as the world moved on without him.
“Tom.” The DI moved through the crowd towards him. He looked worse up close.
Tom took a breath, smoothing out his expression. Pushed himself up to standing. “Hey, boss.”
“Tom, I need you to do something for me.”
“Of course.”
“Jim. He…he’d be more comfortable if he had a CID liaison there. A fellow detective. He’s met with the Family Liaison Officer, but, you know, he’s a detective at heart. Could you…”
Tom nodded. “Sure. I’m assuming you’ll need someone to take statements anyway?”
“Yeah, yeah, of course. Just, you know, also hold their hands a bit. Okay?”
Tom watched his boss, thinking about the crime scene. The locked doors and a young woman dead. Thinking that in all likelihood she had been killed by someone she had allowed in. Wondered to himself if she had been killed by someone she loved.
“Sure. No problem, boss. I’ll go see the family.”
Chapter 12
Freya – Friday, 16th March – 11.21am
“Another cup of tea?”
“I’m okay, Grandma.”
“Coffee? There’s coffee here. It’s not, well, I mean, it’s instant, but you don’t have…ah…no. It is Nescafe. Nescafe? Nice cup of coffee?”
“No thanks.”
Freya rubbed at her eyes. The kitchen was grey, sky outside heavy with unshed snow. She had put the light on, a brief burst of colour in a black and white world. Her grandmother had turned it off again. It’s daytime. We don’t need the lights on. The world was fuzzy on the edges, colours leaching across one another as if someone had dragged at them with a wet brush. But that could be just her eyes, weighted down with the need for sleep.
“Looks like snow again. Look. They said it wouldn’t. It’s supposed to be gone by now.”
The paint was still on Freya’s nails, unkempt patches of colour. She hadn’t showered, hadn’t dressed. Sat at the kitchen table in purple checked pyjamas, baby soft brushed cotton. Her hair pulled up into a rough top knot that her grandmother’s gaze kept trickling back to, lips pursing.
“What about your mother? Would she want tea, you think? I could bring her a cup.”
Freya shook her head, watching the sky past the kitchen window, thickening, entire world doused in sepia tones. “She didn’t sleep much. Leave her. Let her sleep while she can.”
It had taken a moment, after her grandfather had come back, after the world had split into a thousand pieces. Her mother staring at him, the enormity of his words too much for her to take in all at once. Then it had happened, the truth breaking through the shell of denial, the light blinding. And she had crumbled. Freya had grabbed for her, catching her under the arms before she hit the floor, biting her lip as a wail pierced the air, a sound she had never heard from her mother before, one that ate at the inside of her, that would chase itself around in her dreams when she finally managed to sleep. Her mother had clawed at her, begging her to say that it wasn’t true. That he wasn’t dead.
Freya had wanted to lie to her, had wanted it so much that it made her bones ache. But instead she had hugged her mother close, feeling her shudder with grief.
They had carried her mother to bed, Freya and her grandfather, lifting her up, limp between them. Freya had lain down beside her, wrapping her arms around her whilst she cried and cried and cried.
“Do you have bacon?”
“Huh?”
“Bacon. I found the sausages, but I don’t see bacon. Your grandfather likes bacon. Do you have any?”
“I don’t know, Grandma.”
Her grandmother sighed, frying pan hitting burner with a clank. “Have to be sausages then. Do you want to clean the mushrooms or will I?”
Freya didn’t answer, shaking her head as the kitchen filled with the sizzle of oil, the smell of a breakfast that no one would eat. There had been thirteen survivors. Thirteen. Out of seventy four. The turboprop had torn in two, tail severed against the slope of the mountain. That was what had saved them, being pulled from the body of the plane, tossed into snow. Everyone else had died, eaten by fire. No bodies found. The television was dark now. Her grandmother had snapped it off, muttering something about knowing too much, would do nobody any good.
It had been a little after 4am when her mother had finally fallen into a restless sleep. Freya must have slept as well, for a little while at least. Had vague recollections of kaleidoscope dreams, of fire and rushing wind, her mother’s scream. Each one pierced with the distant sound of her brother sobbing.
“How many sausages for you? One or two?”
She should be crying. That was what a normal daughter would do. She should be breaking her heart that he was gone, the man who taught her to ride a bike, who put her to bed at night, who came to her school plays and her graduation. Freya picked at the cuff of her pyjamas. But he hadn’t done any of those things.
“Freya? I’m speaking to you.”
“I’ll have eight, please Grandma.”
Her grandmother tched, throwing two sausages into the pan, oil splattering against the tiled wall.
She tried to muster it up, the sense of loss. A catastrophic re-shaping of her world. But she couldn’t find it. Just this vague sense of a murky figure - a shape behind a newspaper, a back walking out of the door – gone. She had experimented with self-delusion, telling herself that she was trying to be strong, looking out for her mother and her brother. But it hadn’t worked, wouldn’t stick. Because even though he was gone, and you were supposed to re-work it now, tidying up history to favour the dead, there was still that chasm there, the one that had always sat so neatly between herself and her father. In her darker moments, as she listened to her family grieve, she had found herself wondering just who it was they were grieving for.
“Come on. Breakfast. I’ve done you an egg as well.” Her grandmother set the plate down in front of her, harder than was strictly necessary. Two thick sausages. Quartered mushrooms. An egg, glistening yellow with oil. The yolk had been broken.
Freya stared at it. Sometimes you had to lie. That was what her mother said. To protect people’s feelings, to keep things nice and calm. You’re too honest. It must be something to do with the psychology, all this stuff about talking everything through. People don’t always deal well with that. You have to learn when to fib.
“It’s snowing again. I told you.” Her grandmother paused, the crinkle of vertical blinds. “Now what do they want?”
“Who?”
“There’s reporters out in the front garden. Look. They’ve got a camera.”
Sometimes you had to lie. Because your mother needed you to, so that she could grieve for someone that never really existed. Because your brother needed you to, and wasn’t he still little more than a child? And so what if what you remembered was different from what everyone else said they remembered? Because all that mattered now was protecting these two people who have been through so much. And wasn’t that worth a little lie?
“I’m telling you. It’s disgusting. These people. Going round asking questions that they’ve got no right to ask. No right at all. I’ll close these blinds. Disgusting. Should leave well enough alone, if you ask me.”
Freya stood, pushing back the chair with a scrape.
Chapter 13
Cecilia – Friday, 16th March – 11.22am
Cecilia squeezed the concealer tube with her right hand. Biscuit cream pooling onto the index finger of her damaged left hand. It shook with the effort. Touching her fingers together, although it hurt. Only then did she look up. The eye was swollen, almost hidden by the dark blue bruise. She dabbed the concealer and tried to make herself believe that it was working.
Ben. She could get Ben. That was what she would do. This house, it was too quiet, too dead. The walls, each one more fucking beige than the next, and even though she’d wanted that, had insisted upon it at the time when Tom had wanted something warmer, something more homely, they closed in on her now. The heating had gone off, air frigid. Her skin prickled, perhaps from the cold, yet still she was suffocating.
Cecilia circled the eye, or where the eye used to be. Rubbing her finger back in the concealer, concealer onto the bruise. She had tried to put mascara on, but her eye had watered too much, had left her with dark streaks trailing down her cheeks.
She would go and get Ben. That’s what normal people did, wasn’t it? When they had almost died. They held their children. That’s what she would do. Patting the eye with pressed powder. Standing back from the mirror and squinting. Then looking away and wanting to cry. She would go get him. She could be that, just this once, a normal mother.
Like the other mother. Working her way onto the plane, bundled against the cold. Hi. Welcome aboard. Straight on to the back please. What had she said to her? The girl, three, maybe four, jet black hair in a page boy cut, fringe grazing hazelnut brown eyes. She had worn a pink coat, hadn’t wanted to let go of her mother’s hand, even though the aisle was too narrow, and they had to pirouette awkwardly. She had a tiny tears doll tucked under her arm. They had sat in the fifth row from the back. Against the window.
Cecilia remembered counting the few rows that remained, her head spinning, her arm throbbing, pulling the prostrate into what was left of the aisle, stumbling through jagged edges, tumbling into snow. Four rows from the back. Then nothing but snow.