‘It’s right at the top,’ the agent said. ‘Super views.’
As the agent was fumbling with the keys, the front door opened and there stood Lizzie Morrison. The agent said ‘thank you’ and walked in, but Sean stayed where he was, frozen to the top step.
‘Hello,’ she said.
They ended up round the corner in The Salutation, a friendly pub with a good choice of beers, but Sean wasn’t tempted. When he got back from the toilet, Lizzie had already ordered two double espressos. If this didn’t sober him up, nothing would. The estate agent had left him with his card, unable to understand why Sean had changed his mind about the viewing. He wasn’t sure himself, he just knew he couldn’t live in the same block as Lizzie; it would drive him insane.
She listened as he told his story about the Clean Up Chasebridge meeting and how he wished he’d tipped someone off about the torchlit parade. He described the fire and the television crew and Khan’s reaction.
‘It’ll be OK,’ she said for the third or fourth time.
She sounded like she was on his side, but she had no advice to give him other than to wait and see.
‘He’ll calm down, I’m sure of it. He’s got no proof that you leaked Asaf’s death. I’m sure the whole estate knows who the victim was. Let’s face it, the locals usually know more than we do.’
‘It’s a nice square,’ Sean wanted to change the subject, talking about his job was making him feel miserable. He forced a smile. ‘Have you lived in your flat for long?’
‘Are you drunk?’ Lizzie said. ‘You sound a bit drunk.’
‘Slightly, but as I don’t have to work, it doesn’t matter.’
‘Fair enough.’
She studied the dregs at the bottom of her cup, as if she was playing for time. He didn’t want to hear about it if the flat belonged to a boyfriend, the successor to Guy of the Rovers, or whoever she’d been seeing in London. He was beginning to wish he hadn’t asked.
‘I moved in when I got back from London. My dad bought it,’ she said finally, and looked at him as if he was going to criticise her.
‘Nice. That was nice of him.’ And he meant it. She lived there alone. Probably. That was nice, very nice.
‘Were you really looking to rent a flat?’ she said.
He was startled. ‘Yes, why? Did you think I was stalking you?’
She laughed and shook her head. ‘Of course not.’
‘Lizzie?’
‘Sean?’
‘How am I going to get out of this mess?’
‘I don’t know. But I do know I’ve got to go to work. There’s a burnt out shop needs checking over.’
‘If you fancy a brew while you’re up there …’
But he didn’t finish. He wasn’t sure she’d be welcome at his nan’s. She’d been there once before, when they first knew each other, and it hadn’t gone well. Different worlds. He suddenly thought about Jack, about the cleaning equipment he’d left there and the sleeping bag he’d taken up, before the whole estate went mad. He wouldn’t be making Lizzie a cup of tea in that kitchen either, but he might be able to make his dad something to eat and have a go at cleaning up the bathroom. A caffeine-induced sense of purpose was stirring within him. Stuff DCI Khan; Sean had work to do.
When the bathroom floor was clean again, right to the edges, the knees of Sean’s jeans were black and his throat was parched. He resisted the urge to sneak off to the shop for a beer. There was no AK News and Convenience Store now anyway, just a blackened frontage between the library and the bookies, where right now Lizzie was probably picking over the wreckage.
‘Stop it,’ he said to himself. ‘Leave her alone, or she really will think you’re a stalker.’
His dad had perked up.
‘I’ll make you something to eat, lad, if you don’t mind that I can’t cook.’
He’d been shovelling down all kinds of pills and he told Sean he had good days and bad days. This was a good day.
‘There’s a tin of mushroom soup,’ Jack said, ‘if you fancy it and I’ve got some sliced bread in that top cupboard. Toaster still works, more or less. More than can be said for its owner,’ he wheezed, laughing at his own joke.
They didn’t talk much that evening. Sean’s arms and back ached. He’d never realised what hard physical work cleaning could be. They watched the television, with Jack’s running commentary, until he limped off to bed and Sean unrolled his blue sleeping bag on the settee. He took his jeans off and hung them over the back of a chair, kept his socks on, and his shoes close by. The carpet was dark and stained with unidentifiable marks and he couldn’t be sure there wasn’t some broken glass among the discarded newspapers.
He slid inside the bag, pulled the hood round his head to keep his face away from the greasy fabric of the settee and let exhaustion wash over him. Tomorrow he’d go out and get more bin liners and some carpet spray. Cleaning this place up would keep his mind off Khan, and Starkey, and the mess he was making of his career.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
York
Everyone at the hostel is sick of Chloe using mugs from the kitchen to water the plants, but they’ll shrivel up and die if they don’t get a drink, and she’s the only one who cares. Eventually, Darren brings a watering can from home and lets her use that. She carries it, heavy and sloshing, into the back garden and rations each pot, being careful not to splash the leaves. She asks Darren if he’s got the sprinkler rose to put over the nozzle, but he says he lost it years ago. He’s not much of a gardener. That’s obvious from the amount of spiders and cobwebs in the bottom of the watering can.
No one says anything about Taheera’s absence. Even when Emma asks Darren directly, he shrugs and says he’s not sure when she’ll be back. A new woman has started covering the night shift. Emma says she used to be a screw and none of the girls like her. Chloe hasn’t formed an opinion either way, but the woman let her use the computer early this morning, so she’s prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt. She found out that the fire in the newsagents’ may have been started deliberately. Chloe would happily have started it herself, to burn up all those copies of The Doncaster Free Press with her picture on the front page.
It’s Emma who calls out from the doorway to tell her she’s got visitors. It’s odd the way she says it, sort of snarky. Chloe hesitates. Who would visit her here? She pours the last bit of water onto the soil around the busy Lizzies. They might be the world’s most boring bedding plants, but she’s not going to let them die.
‘Are you coming?’
Chloe lays down the watering can and turns round. She wipes her palms on the back of her jeans and follows Emma inside the building.
They’re standing by the office door. Even as her eyes adjust to the gloom, it’s easy to see what they are from their outline: two female police officers who just want a quiet word. Darren shows them into the office. Chloe wishes he would stay; she’s afraid of what she might say, but he doesn’t, probably not his remit or something.
‘We’ve been asked to come and speak to you, to rule something out. Do you understand?’
Chloe nods, but she doesn’t, not really. Now they haven’t got the light behind them, she can see one of them is plain-clothes. Must be CID. The suit is an ugly dark grey. It’s as if the woman wearing it would rather have the security of her old uniform, so she’s got herself a suit cut in the same style.
‘We want to know where you were on Tuesday night, that’s the night of Tuesday the seventh of June,’ the detective says and glowers at her, square-jawed like a boxer.
Tuesday the seventh. Chloe’s good with dates. Years and months and weeks of counting down the days have given her an excellent memory for these things. On Monday the sixth she had her first day at work then breached her licence by going to Doncaster. On Tuesday the seventh she went to work again, and early on the eighth Taheera got a phone call which made her cry. She begins to guess what this might be about.