But surely now everyone knows he’s innocent, he’ll be feeling a little better? Surely he can now at least turn away from the burning building?
‘I just spoke to Georgina,’ Sarah says. ‘I thought that when he knew he was cleared it would change things for him, but…’
She’s always spoken neatly before, correctly finishing her sentences, but nothing is neat about this.
‘Give him a little more time,’ Mohsin says. ‘Maybe it hasn’t really sunk in yet.’ Both Sarah and I hold onto his words.
He drives her to the police station. The car is fogged with heat, the air-con uselessly blowing hot air back in. The heat-haze on the tarmac gives a mirage. For a while Sarah is silent.
‘They say that Grace has no brain function,’ she says abruptly.
‘But you said-’
‘I was a coward.’
I want to shout out that I’m here, as if they’ll suddenly discover me and be embarrassed.
‘I’ve argued with them. Said they were talking bollocks. Because I can’t bear Mike to lose her. Can’t bear for him to go through that.’
Mohsin puts his hand on hers as he drives, reminding me of you.
‘When Mum and Dad died I promised him that nothing awful would happen again.’
‘And you were what?’ Mohsin asks. ‘Eighteen?’
‘Yeah. But I still kept thinking that. Until Wednesday, I thought that because he’d already been through something terrible, nothing else bad would happen to him. As if terrible things, losing people you love, are doled out equally. God, as a police officer I should have known better. And now, it’s too much for him. And I can’t make it better. I can’t make it better for him.’
I realise, fully, that she loves you as a mother; as I love Jenny and Adam.
In the police station, jackets are discarded, belts loosened against the heat. Sarah goes into DI Baker’s office, closing the door behind her. There’s no need for me to shadow her any more, not now that we know the arsonist, and Adam is no longer blamed, but I want to be with her when she’s hauled over the coals.
I just want to be with her.
DI Baker’s doughy face is shiny with sweat, his too-tight clothes clinging to his paunchy body. The stagnant air is sticky with body odour.
He glances up as she comes in, his voice is curt.
‘Take a seat.’
He gestures to a plastic chair but Sarah remains standing. She goes closer to him.
‘Is it clear to you now that it isn’t a case of a little boy playing with matches?’ Her anger startles me and DI Baker.
‘Detective Sergeant McBride, you are here to-’
‘You owe Adam a formal and public apology.’
Her pent-up, furious energy reminds me of you.
‘This meeting is about your conduct. It is about-’
‘Are you going to prosecute your supposed “witness” for what he or she has done to Adam?’
Has Sarah already written off her career? Is that why she’s come into this room all guns blazing, because she has nothing to lose?
‘This is not a meeting to discuss the case, or what you have found out through your illegal methods. Ends do not justify means, Detective Sergeant. Even before PACE, what you did would have been seen as beyond the pale. I understand the emotional strain you must be under but there are no excuses. All the reforms of the last twenty-five years have made the police investigate cases by the book. And rightly.’
‘But you just flipped to the end of the book – decided on an ending, to use your analogy – not bothering to do any work at all to get there. Not bothering to investigate at all. Because of your laziness and crass stupidity, a child could have been blamed for this for the rest of his life and the real culprit not be punished.’
‘Are you asking for a mutual pact of silence – in effect, trying to blackmail me, Detective Sergeant?’
What I see as nothing to lose he sees as blackmail.
‘Fortunately,’ he continues, his voice icy in the hot room, ‘the person who made the complaint against you withdrew it just over an hour ago.’
Perhaps Mrs Healey felt compassion for Sarah once she knew she was Jenny’s aunt and my sister-in-law. Or maybe she thought the police would go easier on her if she’d been kind to a fellow police officer.
‘But that doesn’t detract from the seriousness of your misconduct-’ Baker continues, but a knock on the door interrupts him. The sharp-featured Penny Pierson comes into the room.
‘What is it?’ Baker snaps.
‘Silas Hyman gave a sample of DNA on Wednesday night when we questioned him about the fire. His DNA didn’t match anything at the site of the fire but it went into our database.’
‘So?’ asks Baker, impatient.
Penny turns to face Sarah. I think I see a flicker of an apology on her face.
‘Silas Hyman’s DNA matches the semen in the condom sent to Jennifer.’
30
‘We are now certain that Silas Hyman is Jennifer Covey’s hate-mailer,’ Penny continues. ‘The condom was a part of his malicious-mail campaign. We think it must be Silas Hyman who also attacked Jennifer Covey with red paint. We therefore need to seriously consider whether he also tampered with her oxygen. It could have been an escalation of his previous assault with paint.’
I was totally wrong when I thought Silas Hyman too intelligent, too subtle a personality, to cut out letters and stick them onto A4, let alone to post a used condom and dog mess through the letterbox.
And I remember him flirting with the pretty nurse. A smile and flowers, that was all it took, to get through the door of a supposedly secure ward.
‘You need to send someone to guard Jenny straight away,’ Sarah says.
Maybe I wasn’t jumping at shadows.
Baker shifts in his sweaty seat. ‘There is no evidence that she needs guarding. It was a faulty connection. It happens.’
‘Because otherwise your incompetence left her exposed?’ Sarah says to him. ‘Because if you hadn’t been duped into thinking it was an eight-year-old-’
‘That’s enough!’
He’s shouted at her and I think Sarah is glad of it. I think she wants shouting in here.
He turns to Penny. ‘You will arrest Silas Hyman in relation to the malicious mail and question him about the assault against Jennifer Covey with paint.’ He looks at Sarah, ‘I will decide in due course what steps should be taken against you.’
‘And the guard?’ Penny asks, winning my respect, but Baker is clearly infuriated by two women confronting him.
‘I have already told you my decision. There is no evidence of any tampering. If you choose to persist in your paranoia, I can remind you that the intensive care unit has a very high ratio of medical staff to patients; Donald White is in custody for the arson attack. And Silas Hyman will shortly be arrested and put in custody for the malicious mail and possibly the paint attack.’
‘If we can find him,’ Penny says.
Sarah phones to check that Jenny is OK and to tell you about Silas Hyman. I don’t hear your response.
She joins Penny in the police station car park.
‘I checked with Sally Healey,’ Penny says. ‘Jennifer was a teaching assistant with Silas Hyman last summer. That’s when they must have got to know each other.’
I don’t want to hear this, but know it will continue. Because Jenny is now connected, forensically connected, to Silas Hyman.
I remember he confided in Jenny about his failing marriage last summer – or a marriage he’d made out to be failing. Confiding in a sixteen-year-old when he was thirty. I’d thought it was shabby of him but nothing more; because surely she was far too young to think it anything more.
I remember Jenny standing up for ‘Silas’, even when I’d joined you in my suspicion of him. But she’s naturally fair-minded and open to people; one of her charms and strengths.