‘Right.’ Maureen held up a piece of paper. ‘Well, it looks as if she might have had a second phone, separate account.’
‘Think you can charm some details out of them, recent calls especially?’
‘No. But I can impress on them the serious nature of the situation.’
‘You sure you want to do this alone?’ Maureen said.
They were parked in a lay-by on the road north from the city, arable land to their left shading into a small copse of trees. Lapwings rose sharply in the middle distance, black and white like an Escher print.
‘Yes. I think so.’
‘You don’t want…?’
‘No,’ Elder said. ‘I’ll be fine.’
Maureen nodded and got back into her car and he stood there, watching her drive away, rehearsing his first words inside his head.
It was a square brick-built house in a street full of square brick-built houses, the front of this one covered in white pebbledash that had long since taken on several shades of grey. Once council, Elder assumed, now privately owned. A Vauxhall Astra parked outside. Roses in need of pruning. Patchy grass. Close against the kitchen window, a damson tree that looked as if it rarely yielded fruit.
He rattled the knocker and for good measure rang the bell.
No hesitation in the opening of the door, no delay.
‘Hello, Gerry,’ Elder said. ‘Late shift?’
‘You know,’ Saxon said. ‘You’d’ve checked.’ And when Elder made no further remark, added, ‘You’d best come in.’
It was tea or instant coffee and Elder didn’t really want either, but he said tea would be fine, one sugar, and sat, mug cradled in both hands, in the middle of the cluttered living room while Saxon smoked and avoided looking him squarely in the eye.
‘She phoned you, Gerry. Four days ago. The day before she was murdered. Phoned you when you were on duty. Twice.’
‘She was upset, wasn’t she? In a real state. Frightened.’
‘Frightened?’
‘He’d found out about us, seen us. The week before.’
Saxon shook his head. ‘It was stupid, so fucking half-arsed stupid. All the times we… all the times we saw one another, we never took no chances. She’d come here, afternoons, or else we’d meet up miles away, Sheffield or Grantham, and then this one bloody Saturday she said let’s go into Nottingham, look round the shops. He was supposed to be off taking the kids to Clumber Park and there we are coming out of the Broad Marsh Centre on to Lister Gate and they’re smack in front of us, him with the little kid on his shoulders and the other one holding his hand.’
Saxon swallowed down some tea and lit another cigarette.
‘Course, we tried to pass it off, but you could see he wasn’t having any. Ordered her to go home with them there and then and of course when they did there was all merry hell to pay. Ended up with him asking her if she intended leaving him and her saying yes, first chance she got.’ Saxon paused. ‘You’ll take the kids, he said, over my dead body.’
‘She didn’t leave?’
‘No.’
‘Nor try to?’
Saxon shook his head. ‘He seemed to calm down after the first couple of days. Lorna, she thought he might be going to get over it. Thought, you know, if we lay low for a spell, things’d get back to normal, we could start up again.’
‘But that’s not what happened?’ Elder said.
‘What happened was, this idea of her taking the kids, he couldn’t get it out of his head. Stupid, really. I mean, I could’ve told him, a right non-starter.’ Saxon looked around. ‘You imagine what it’d be like, two lads in here. Someone else’s kids. Place is mess enough as it is. Anyway…’ Leaning forward now, elbows on his knees. ‘… you know what it’s like, the kind of life we lead. The hours and all the rest of it. How many couples you know, one or both of them in the force, children, how many d’you know make it work?’
Elder’s tea was lukewarm, tannin thick in his mouth. ‘The last time she phoned you, you said she was frightened. Had he threatened her or what?’
‘No. I don’t think so. Not in as many words. It was more him coming out with all this guff. Next time we’re in the car I’ll drive us all into the back of a lorry. Stuff like that.’
‘And you didn’t think to do anything?’
‘Such as what?’
‘Going round, trying to get him to talk, listen to reason; suggesting she take the boys away for a few days, grandparents, somewhere like that?’
‘No,’ Saxon said. ‘I kept well out of it. Thought it best.’
‘And now?’
‘What do you mean, and now?’
‘You still think it was for the best?’
The mug cracked across in Saxon’s hand and tea spilled with blood towards the floor.
‘Who the fuck?’ he said, on his feet now, both men on their feet, Saxon on his feet and backing Elder towards the door. ‘Who the fuck you think you are, coming in here like you’re some judge and fucking jury, some tinpot fucking god. Think you’re fucking perfect? That what you think, you pompous sack of shit? I mean, what the fuck are you here for anyway? You here to question me? Arrest me? What? There was some fucking crime here? I committed some fucking crime?’
He had Elder backed up against the wall, close alongside the door, the sweat off his skin so rank that Elder almost gagged.
‘Crime, Gerry?’ Elder said. ‘How much d’you want? Three murders, four deaths. Two boys, four and six. Not that you’ll be losing much sleep over them. I mean, they were just a nuisance, an irrelevance. Someone to mess up this shit heap of a home.’
‘Fuck you!’ Saxon punched the wall, close by Elder’s head.
‘And Lorna, well, you probably think that’s a shame, but let’s face it, you’ll soon find someone else’s wife to fuck.’
‘You bastard!’ Saxon hissed. ‘You miserable, sanctimonious bastard!’
But his hands fell back down to his sides and slowly he backed away and gazed down at the floor and when he did that, without hurrying, Elder let himself out of the house and walked towards his car.
He and Joanne were sitting at either end of the settee, Elder with a glass of Jameson in his hand, the bottle nearby on the floor; Joanne was drinking the white Rioja they had started with dinner. The remains of their take-away Chinese was on the table next door. Katherine had long since retreated to her room.
‘What will happen?’ Joanne asked. It was a while since either of them had spoken.
‘To Saxon?’
‘Um.’
‘A bollocking from on high. Some kind of official reprimand. He might lose his stripes and get pushed into going round schools sweet-talking kids into being honest citizens.’ Elder shook his head. ‘Maybe nothing at all. I don’t know. Except that it was all a bloody mess.’
He sighed and tipped a little more whiskey into his glass and Joanne sipped at her wine. It was late but neither of them wanted to make the first move towards bed.
‘Christ, Jo! Those people. Sometimes I wonder if everyone out there isn’t doing it in secret. Fucking one another silly.’
He was looking at Joanne as he spoke and there was a moment, a second, in which he knew what she was going to say before she spoke.
‘I’ve been seeing him again. Martyn. I’m sorry, Frank, I-’
‘Seeing him?’
‘Yes, I-’
‘Sleeping with him?’
‘Yes. Frank, I’m sorry, I-’
‘How long?’
‘Frank-’
‘How long have you been seeing him?’
‘Frank, please…’
Elder’s whiskey spilled across the back of his hand, the tops of his thighs. ‘How fucking long?’
‘Oh, Frank… Frank…’ Joanne in tears now, her breath uneven, her face wiped clear of colour. ‘We never really stopped.’
Instead of hitting her, he hurled his glass against the wall.
‘Tell me,’ Elder said.
Joanne foraged for a tissue and dragged it across her face. ‘He’s
… he’s got a place… up here, in the Park. At first it was just, you know, the odd time, if we’d been working late, something special. I mean, Martyn, he wasn’t usually here, he was down in London, but when