He was avoiding her. Irritated, she felt her cheeks glow. He was acting like a teenager, missing his night with Tom and then ducking all attempts to face up to it.
If the mountain won’t come to Muhammad…
Janine had never been inside the townhouse that Pete and Tina shared near Salford Quays. On occasions she had dropped the kids off there but it was far more usual for Pete to ferry them from her house.
It was dark and a wind was blowing leaves and litter about as Janine parked outside.
Twee, she thought looking at the house, ill-proportioned then she caught herself. Get a grip – don’t be petty.
She used the door-knocker, three loud raps, and waited. She heard the baby crying and it grew louder until Pete opened the door, Alfie over one shoulder, legs pumping, head twisting, face red with exertion.
An expression of dismay crossed Pete’s face.
‘Tom was expecting you last night,’ Janine said, ‘we all were. I left you messages.’ She spoke loudly to be heard above the squalling.
‘Not now,’ Pete said and she saw from the set of his lips and the light in his eyes that he was very angry.
‘When then? You’ve been avoiding-’
He held up a hand to stop her. The baby bawled.
‘Not now,’ Pete said again.
‘Pete, Tom needs you-’
He shut the door on her.
She stood there, dumbfounded.
She was tempted to bang on the door again, hammer on it until he had to respond but she judged it would not be a wise thing to do.
She simmered with outrage all the way home, holding imaginary conversations with him in her head. Re-running the doorstep encounter so that she got what she wanted: an honest apology and a renewed commitment to his duties as a father.
She chewed it over as she helped Tom with his homework and found his missing PE kit, as she left a note for the nanny with a request to get some fresh fruit and sliced bread for school lunches. She probed at it like poking at a sore tooth while she got changed and ready for bed.
She wouldn’t let him off the hook, she decided, she would ring him every day until they sorted out what on earth he was playing at. Plonker.
When she slept she dreamt of going to the house and shooting Pete on the doorstep. It should have been satisfying, comic even, but it filled her with a dark dread as she desperately tried to stop the blood and revive him.
Chapter 24
That day, the day the police came to Adele’s door, was a Tuesday, a bright, sunny Tuesday and she hadn’t seen Marcie for four days. Her stomach fell and then there was a moment when she forced hope to rise in her chest. Marcie had been caught stealing, that would be it. Nothing they hadn’t handled before. Nothing to panic about.
‘Dead,’ the woman said once they were in the house. There were other words, for identification, sorry, suspected overdose, post-mortem but Adele barely heard them. Acid flooded her veins, stripping her nerves, burning her skin. She felt the ground beneath her buckle and crack. Howard was calling to her, holding her. She was hitting out, screaming, but the gestures, the cries came from a long way away through the dense, cold clouds of shock.
It was hard to remember the sequence of things, the memories were like a slideshow, a horror-show of images. At some point Dr Halliwell had come, bringing condolences and the offer of tranquilizers. ‘To help you deal with these difficult few days.’ Christ, talk about the art of understatement.
There had been the waiting till they could go to identify Marcie. Then they wouldn’t let her touch her, wouldn’t let her anywhere near. It was clinical, impersonal, she could’ve been looking through the glass to choose a piece of meat.
Adele tried to explain and said, ‘Howard, I want to be with her.’
‘You’re welcome to sit here,’ the attendant said, ‘we could get you a chair.’
Adele looked back at her daughter, shook her head. ‘That’s not what I mean, I want to hold her.’
‘Once the body’s released-’ the woman began.
‘How long will that take?’ Howard said.
‘A few days,’ she said, sounding uncertain.
Adele wanted to press through the glass, lift her daughter up, take her home, make her warm and clean, breathe life back into her, put cornrows in her hair and kiss her eyelids. She wanted a fucking fairy tale and it wasn’t going to happen.
She worked it out one night, Marcie had been alive for fifteen years, four months, and two days. With her gone, the centre of Adele’s world, the focus of her life went too. And her future. Adele would have drowned in her grief had it not been for a growing flame of anger at Marcie’s death; the sense that it was not an inevitable outcome but one that Adele had feared and tried so hard to prevent.
Chapter 25
Lisa couldn’t settle, replaying the events of the day over and over: racing after Matthews, triumphant when she caught him, the look on DI Mayne’s face when he realised she had failed to follow procedure, feeling stupid, so stupid.
She pushed away the pasta she had made, too queasy to eat. Their prime suspect and she’d ruined their chance at questioning him. They knew Aaron Matthews had been part of the Wilson crew, and in his previous offence he had used the gun that later killed Halliwell. He was also a patient of Halliwell’s. Had he a motive for shooting the GP? Or did Halliwell just get in the way? Lisa felt confused, muddled. Now they would have to start again, see if there was anything else to link Matthews to the crime.
Why wait for tomorrow, she asked herself? There was no way she was going to do anything staying home but sit here feeling sorry for herself and working up a panic about what DI Mayne would decide to do with her tomorrow. She might as well put the time to good use, see if she could find anything else.
She picked up her ID, turned off the lights and set off.
Day Four – Friday
Chapter 26
Opening the morning team briefing, Janine started with the weapon. ‘Back to basics. Our killer had access to a gun; Aaron Matthews’ gun. Two possibilities.’ Janine counted them off on her fingers. ‘Matthews fired the gun; or our killer obtained the gun from Matthews at some juncture and used it. We couldn’t hold Matthews but he is still our number one suspect.
‘The Range Rover, the one that was seen outside the surgery on Monday and was used to ram Halliwell’s car, I bet that’s our killer’s,’ Shap said.
‘Let’s see if we can find a car like that on local CCTV approaching the surgery on the Tuesday prior to the shooting or on the Monday when Dr Gupta saw it. Lisa can you do that?’
‘Yes, boss.’
‘We’ve still not found the briefcase,’ Janine said, ‘are any of these people suddenly chucking prescriptions around?’ She pointed to the boards, all the names connected to the inquiry. ‘Is anyone bragging about a hit? Meanwhile we throw everything we can at links to Aaron Matthews: friends and family, the gang network, hangers-on, wannabees.’
‘Boss,’ Lisa raised her hand. ‘I found a connection last night.’
‘Go on,’ Janine said.
‘Aaron Matthews’ uncle is Howard Urwin,’ Lisa said, ‘Adele Young’s partner.’
Janine felt the hairs on her neck lift. The atmosphere in the room shifted. Richard turned to face Lisa, Shap sat up in his seat and Butchers leant forward.
‘Has Urwin any criminal record?’ Janine asked.
‘No, boss,’ Lisa said.
‘Any association with the Wilson Crew?’ Richard said.
‘No, boss.’
‘You found this out how?’
‘Did some digging,’ Lisa said. ‘Urwin had given a character reference for Aaron Matthews when he was on trial, how he deserved another chance, that sort of thing.’
‘He backed a wrong ‘un there,’ Shap said.
‘Urwin was mouthing off outside the inquest,’ Richard said.