She should have known there was something more. On the morning she left, she found him in the kitchen at first light, hand round a mug of well-brewed tea. “It’s the doctor, Lynnie. He says I’ve to go to the hospital, see this consultant. Something here, in my gut.” He had stared at her along the table and Lynn had hurried from the room before he could see her cry.
It was a little after four in the afternoon and the dark was starting to close in. Still you could read, graffitied in two-foot-high letters on the Asian shopkeeper’s wall, Keep Christmas White-Fuck Off Home. Lynn glanced at the street atlas again and readied herself for another three-point turn.
Michelle had not been home long. The buses had been overloaded with shoppers and those whose working day had finished in the lunchtime pub; sporadic bursts of carol singing, most often with the words changed to crude parody, drifted down from the upper deck. A ginger-haired man, still wearing his postman’s uniform, sat with his legs out into the aisle, performing conjuring tricks with a deck of cards. As they were veering across the roundabout at the end of Gregory Boulevard, a businessman, wearing a gray pin-stripe suit and a red and white Christmas hat, had leaned wide from the platform of the bus and lost his lunch beneath the wheels of the oncoming traffic.
Natalie had fallen asleep, rocked by the vehicle’s motion, and Karl had sat close, clinging to the sleeve of Michelle’s coat, wrapped in the wonder of what was going on around him. When the postman leaned across and magicked a shiny ten-pence coin from behind Karl’s left ear, the small boy squealed with delight.
“Whatever’s happened to him, poor lamb?” Michelle’s mother had asked, pointing to the swelling puffing out the side of Karl’s face.
“He fell,” Michelle had said quickly. “Always rushing at everything. You know what he’s like.”
“Aye,” her mum had said. “Bit of a madcap, like his dad.”
There were Christmas lights in some of the windows as they walked back up the street towards home; tiny red and blue bulbs glinting from plastic trees. A neighbor called out a greeting and Michelle felt a sudden rush of warmth run through her. Maybe this wasn’t such a bad place after all. If they could just see off the winter, it really could be a new start.
She had called out opening the front door, expecting Gary to be back; the queue at the Housing must have been even longer than he’d thought. Quickly, she’d got the children changed, shipped Karl off in front of the TV with some bread and jam while she spooned rice and apple in and around the baby’s mouth. Once fed, she’d put her down and tend to the fire, get it going before Gary returned, settle down to watch Neighbours with a fresh pot of tea.
The knock on the door was clipped and strong and though her first thought was that Gary had mislaid his key, it didn’t sound like his knock at all.
“Michelle Paley?”
“Yes.”
“Detective Constable Lynn Kellogg. I’d like to talk to you a minute, if I could.”
Michelle took in the warrant card, the neat dark hair, the sureness of the stance, cheeks that showed red in the light spilling from the house.
Lynn glanced past Michelle into the room and saw the beginnings of a fire, a cartoon Dracula on the television, volume turned low. On a carpet that had seen better days, a mousy little kid with both legs in the air behind him, squinted round.
“You’ll be letting in the cold,” Lynn said. Michelle nodded and stood aside, closing the door behind Lynn as she walked in, pushing the folded square of rug back against it to keep out the draught.
Lynn unbuttoned her coat but made no move to take it off.
“What’s happened?” Michelle said, sick to her stomach, fearing the worst. “It’s Gary, isn’t it? Is it Gary? Is he all right? Tell me he’s all right.”
“Why don’t we sit down?” Lynn said.
Michelle swayed a little as she felt her legs starting to go.
“Nothing’s happened to him,” Lynn said. “You don’t have to worry. Nothing like that.”
Michelle did sit, uneasily on to the sofa, reaching for the arm to steady herself down. “He’s in trouble, then,” she said.
“He’s at the station,” Lynn said. “Canning Circus. He was arrested earlier this afternoon.”
“Oh, God, what for?”
Lynn was conscious of the small boy, leaning back against the legs of the TV set, paying them all his attention. “There was a disturbance, at the Housing Office …”
“A disturbance? What kind of …?”
“It seems he threatened the staff, physically. At one point he locked himself in a room with one of them and refused to let her out.”
Michelle’s face had drained of what little color it had.
“I don’t know yet,” Lynn said, “if he’ll be held overnight. It’s possible. We thought you ought to know.”
“Can I see him?”
“Later. I’ll give you a number you can ring.”
Upstairs, the baby began crying and then, just as abruptly, stopped.
“Did he hit anyone?” Michelle asked.
“Apparently not. Not this time.”
“What d’you mean?”
“He’s done it before, hasn’t he? He’s on probation.”
“That was ages ago, what happened.”
“A year.”
“But he’s changed. Gary’s changed.”
“Has he?”
Karl was rocking backwards and forwards as, on the screen above him, a fading football manager vouched for the splendors of British Gas.
“That’s your little boy?” Lynn asked.
“Karl. Yes.”
“What happened to his face?”
Divine thanked the sister from Intensive Care and replaced the receiver: Mr. Raju had returned from Recovery, was sleeping, sedated, his condition critical yet stable. It was unlikely he would be strong enough to speak with anyone until the morning.
“You’ve not changed your mind, then?” he said, as Naylor crossed the room behind him.
“About what?”
“Bringing Debbie along tonight.”
Naylor dropped two folders on to his desk: transcripts of interviews pertaining to the taxi driver’s assault. Several thousand words and still no clear identification. Two youths in boots and jeans, much like many others. “Why should I?” he said.
Divine’s grin was broad as a dirty joke and about as subtle. “Last chance for a bit of spare this side of the stuffing.”
“Forget it, Mark, why don’t you?” Naylor flipped open the first file and began to read. It had taken all of his persuasion getting Debbie to agree to come with him. “You don’t want me there,” she’d said, “getting in the way. You’ll have a lot more fun on your own.” Times were, back when things were going wrong with their marriage, Naylor would have been the first to agree. Jumped at it, the chance for a night out on his own, with the lads. Now it was different; he felt it was different. “All right,” he had told her, “if you don’t want to go, I’ll stay home.” That had done the trick.
Now he looked at his watch, the workload on his desk; best give Debbie a quick call.
Lynn was sitting in Resnick’s office, telling him about her visit. Earlier, Resnick had interviewed first Gary James and then Nancy Phelan, conversations in still, airless rooms with the tape machine ticking digitally across the long afternoon. Gary had been alternately contrite and angry, constantly bringing things back to rotting wood and sagging doors and damp that ran down the insides of walls.
“You realize,” Resnick had said, “behaving the way you did, it’s not going to do your case any good.”
“No?” Gary had said. “Then tell me what is.”
Unable to answer, Resnick had handed him over to the custody sergeant and now he sat sulking in one of the police cells.