‘I brought you this.’
Brenda Coldacre is holding something out to Chloe. She expects it to be a newspaper or a printout from the Internet. She’s sure Mrs Coldacre will say, I know who you are. Maybe it’s a noose to hang herself with. Someone sent her one once in prison, but it got intercepted.
‘Go on, open it,’ says Mrs Coldacre.
Chloe shivers and makes herself look at the object. She sees a brown paper bag.
‘Cheese and pickle, in case you were a vegetarian.’
Chloe walks slowly back into the orchard, not wanting to gobble down the sandwich in front of them. She still has some dignity. At the furthest row of trees she chooses one where she mowed too close to the trunk. At least she can sit on the short grass without fear of disturbing any wild bees. She leans against the tree, letting it press into the centre of her back.
The smell of the pickle starts her salivating. The cheese is sharp, strong enough to make her suck her cheeks in, but wonderful, and the bread tastes better than any she’s ever experienced. There’s something nutty and clean about it. She’s sure it’s home-made. Her throat tightens, but she fights the urge to cry. She should be happy. Surely this is as good as it gets. Live in the moment. Who said that? Jay was fond of saying it, but she was sure he got it out of a book. She remembers sitting like this in one of the allotment sheds with the sound of rain on the corrugated roof. They were safe inside. There was no need to talk.
Jay had a packet of orange Club biscuits from his mum’s cupboard. He said she would only buy biscuits in wrappers, so she could be sure they were clean. Chloe thought that was daft because how could she know the people in the factory hadn’t picked their noses before they wrapped them? The biscuits could last them all day if they were careful. They sat against the wall of the shed in a corner by an old filing cabinet. Its drawers were marked ‘Top Secret’, ‘Middle Secret’ and ‘Bottom Secret’. They found a bottle of whisky in ‘Top Secret’, but she didn’t want any; she thought the smell was disgusting.
She thought this might be the time that Jay would kiss her, but they weren’t touching. They’d held each other once, hugged, sort of, but she wasn’t sure if it meant anything. Jay was upset. He wouldn’t tell her what about, but he cried for ages. She felt like a mum with a little child, not like a girl with a boyfriend. It wasn’t really certain that he was her boyfriend, even though everybody thought they were going out and it was written on the back of the toilet door at school.
That day in the shed he was very quiet, quieter than his normal quiet self. She shuffled a bit nearer to him so that their thighs, where they sat with their knees drawn up, were close enough that they could be touching by accident. He flinched and wrapped his arms tighter round his knees. The space opened up between them again.
‘What’s up?’ she said.
‘Nothing.’
‘D’you want another biscuit?’
‘I’m all right,’ he said. ‘Have one if you want one.’
‘I’m all right.’
The rain pattered harder above them and it was a while before he spoke again.
‘I wish I could fly.’
‘Yeah?’ she said. ‘Yeah. That would be cool.’
‘Any time I wanted to, just up and out. I do it sometimes, in my head.’
She laughed and wished she hadn’t, because he folded over his knees and hid his face. She thought he might be crying again, but there wasn’t any sound. His curly red hair fell forward and she wanted to stroke it. On the back of his hand, where it clasped his leg, there was a mark she hadn’t noticed before: a red disc of blistered skin. She looked more closely and realised the same marks were on his knuckles.
‘Who’s done that?’
‘No one.’ He didn’t lift his head, but she sensed he was watching her from under his hair.
‘Did you do it to yourself? That’s flipping stupid, that is.’
‘Why would I do that?’
She didn’t know. Other people did stuff to themselves, she’d seen marks on girls’ arms. She didn’t think lads did it though.
He raised his head and looked at her. His eyes were dry, but there was something different, as if the light had gone out of them. She was looking at him, but it was like she didn’t know him any more.
‘Chloe?’ Bill is standing in front of her, blocking out the light. ‘You were fast on.’
‘Was I? I’m sorry, I’m not sleeping so well at night.’
‘Aye, well. Brenda’s got the kettle on. Come and have a cuppa.’
She pulls herself up to her feet and follows him.
‘You know what they say, don’t you?’ He calls over his shoulder. ‘Them that lie awake at night have a guilty conscience.’
He’d no sooner said it than he hesitated, missed a step and mumbled to himself.
‘Brain before mouth, Bill, brain before mouth.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Doncaster
Meeting room four was laid out with rows of grey plastic chairs. One of the IT guys was setting up the laptop. Khan handed Sean a marker pen.
‘Time, date, location on the whiteboard, please. And leave some space to add anything important that comes up.’
‘Hope I don’t cock up any spellings. At least I know how to write “Chasebridge”.’
‘You’re not kidding, are you?’ Khan said. ‘You worry about that a lot. In the lift you said…’
‘Dyslexic.’ Sean said. ‘Thought I was thick until I became a PCSO, got a test and there it is. Doesn’t cure it, knowing what it’s called, just means you can’t discriminate against me.’
Khan looked at him sharply, then a smile flickered across his lips.
‘You were Community Support? So you’re working your way up. Nice one. I like that.’
Quietly and carefully, Khan spelt out the victim’s name for him as the seats started to fill up. The room looked different this way round, Sean thought, standing up front with a cluster of faces looking at him. The new District Commander, Chief Superintendent Laine, was sitting in the front row. Not a crease in his uniform or his face. Sean wondered how many anti-ageing products he kept on his bathroom shelf. The community support officers at the back didn’t even have chairs. He couldn’t see Carly, but as Commander Laine started the introductions, Sean spotted her spiky hair edging round the door.
‘I’d like to welcome DCI Khan, joining us from Sheffield. He’s heading up the investigation. Sheffield has also kindly leant us Detective Sergeant Dawn Simkins, who’ll be managing the incident room here and coordinating the house-to-house inquiries. I’m told she’s the queen of spreadsheets, so she’ll keep everyone organised.’
The woman in the grey suit, who Sean had seen yesterday, stood up in the front row, turned to the audience, nodded without smiling and sat down again.
‘The current climate has left us shorter staffed than normal, so I’m sure we’ll all benefit from the collaboration.’ There was an unhappy murmur from the audience, which stopped dead when Laine raised his pale, unblinking eyes and scanned the room. ‘From our side we’ve got DI Rick Houghton from drugs and I’m pleased to confirm that PC Denton will be seconded to CID for the time being.’ He paused, offered Sean a brief glance of recognition and then his face softened into a smile. ‘And it’s a great pleasure to welcome Lizzie Morrison back to Doncaster. She’ll be the operational Crime Scene Manager for this case.’
Her hair was different. She said something to the person sitting next to her and when she turned her head, Sean could see she’d had it cut short at the back of her neck. It looked like it would be soft and fuzzy to touch.
‘We’ve got an IC4 male,’ Khan launched straight in, ‘positively identified by the family as Mohammad Asaf, aged twenty. No wallet on the body, but there was a Blackberry phone. That’s gone to IT to see what we can get from it. Stab wounds to the shoulder, direct hit to the heart and then, hold on to your lunch people, but there’s a particularly nasty knife wound to the genitals. Over to you, Miss Morrison.’