“She hit me,” said Gus. “Go on and laugh.”
“Why would I laugh?”
“Size of her,” he said. “Size of me.”
“Did you hit her back?”
He shook his head. “I was getting there, though. I was so angry. I’m so… ” he pulled away a little and turned so he could look at me. “I’m so angry, Jessie. I’m scared of how angry I am. I’m cracking up.”
“No, you’re not,” I told him. “But of course you’re angry.” Angry enough to pound the answering machine, grab me by the arms.
“I’m acting like she did!” said Gus, as if he had mind-read me. “I feel as if she’s inside me. I feel like, when I speak, it’s her voice – sniping and sneering.”
“You never hit her back,” I told him, slow and sure. Was I trying to make him hear me or was I telling myself? Assuring myself it was all going to be okay?
“And she called me a wimp for it,” he said. “She told me I was a coward and a joke.”
“And now,” I said, “she’s gone. But she’s left a big echo. You’re not turning into her. And I’m not going to turn out to be like her. It’s just an echo. It’ll fade.” I was soothing both of us now.
“I can’t believe she’s gone,” he said. “You said you were listening to her-I thought she was back. I can’t believe she’s gone to stay.”
And it was at that moment that we both heard the car, trundling along the track, turning in, stopping. Gus’s eyes flared and I felt my breath come quicker. Crazy. I don’t believe in ghosts-certainly don’t believe in ghosts that can drive, anyway. But if the ghost of Becky King was here, it would feel my boot up its arse for what she’d done to this guy and those kids, and for all the nicey-nicey stories she’d shovelled at everyone else. Miss Colquhoun, I meant, but I bet there was more of them.
It wasn’t, of course, the ghost of anyone. It was the cops. Again. The sergeant and the woman one called Gail.
They sat with Gus in the living room and I went to take whatever was coming when Ruby and Dillon sussed the sugar fingers recipe. Of course, I took a tray of tea through, so I got to hear some of it. I was all ready to weigh in. Pretty clear I didn’t need to though.
“The Fiscal himself is satisfied,” said the sergeant. “Since there was a note and after what you’ve told us about your wife’s… lifestyle. But we want you to understand that if you yourself have any doubts, Mr. King, any doubts at all, you’re quite within your rights to request a full PM and inquiry.” He stopped and looked at me, standing there like a frozen idiot with the tray. I came back to life and put it down on the coffee table.
“If I thought there was any chance of the inquest coming back with ‘accident’,” Gus said. “Jesus, ‘murder’, even-I’d say go for it. But that wouldn’t happen, eh no?”
“Fatal accident inquiry,” said Gail. “No, there’s no chance of that, Mr. King.”
“No inquest?” I said.
“Fatal accident inquiry,” she said again. Her partner made some kind of movement. My guess is she said it ten times a day and it drove him mental. “Not when the case is as clear as this one.”
“Unless the family requests it,” the sergeant said. “Same with the full post-mortem. Just tell us, Mr. King.”
“Gus?” I said, looking down at him. He was staring into the fire. He’d lit it, as usual, on auto, and it was just beginning to glow. I’d thought he would snatch at any chance at all, no matter how slim. The way he’d been talking. And now, when it came to the crunch, he was going to let the record say suicide after all?
“I forgot the milk,” I said and went back to the kitchen. Ruby and Dillon had sugar fingers hanging out their mouths like dogs’ tongues. They were sucking and giggling. Surely soon they’d be choking. “Nice, eh?” I said.
“Yummy yummy in my tummy,” said Dillon.
“Except they’re really just toast, though,” said Ruby.
Becky grew cabbages and had her own car and these two kids and a cottage by the seaside and she looked happy in the pictures with Ros. And if she loved Ros she could follow her, and if she didn’t want a baby she didn’t have to have one. Maybe she was turning the car. Maybe it was an accident. How could Gus not want an inquest? What had changed since he was wild for one, desperate to try anything to keep that word away from the children? The door opened behind me and the WPC appeared, as if she’d heard what I was thinking and had come to tell me it was fatal accident inquiry.
“A word,” she said. “We’d better step outside.” All right for her in her coat and shoes, but I followed anyway. The back of the cottage was a different world from the front. It was sheltered, what with the trees and the rise of the land, but somehow the endless wind-too strong in October to call it a breeze-at the front made it feel alive. That and the sparkle off the sea, the gulls, the long high sweep of the sky. Back here, the dark was darker and, despite the shelter, the cold was colder. The ground felt damp instead of whipped dry and there was no salt in the air. Just that rotten leaves smell and the soft moss underfoot. I had taken a dislike to the back of the house the night of the wheeliebin and nothing would change my mind.
“You’re surprised,” the copper told me, once the door was closed at our backs, and I thought again that for someone who was hoping to get people to talk, she didn’t half make a lot of statements and ask hardly any questions.
“I am,” I said.
“You don’t think Mrs. King was suicidal,” she didn’t ask.
“I never knew her,” I said. “Don’t look like that. I told you I didn’t know her the first night you were here.”
“But you’re surprised anyway,” she didn’t ask again.
“I’m… ” I could feel her watching me, even though it was full dark with not a single star and no gleam of moon through the thickness of the cloud. “I’m surprised Gus wants to leave it,” I said. “He’s so…
troubled. I thought he’d want everything investigated right to the last little thing. He’s in such a mess, you know? I’m just surprised he’s ready to let it go.”
“Troubled and in a mess,” she repeated. “Of course he is.”
“Of course,” I agreed.
“He said as much to us,” she said. “Can’t believe she’s gone. Can’t believe she’s really dead. It’s the funeral’ll sort that out for him. Not an inquiry. That just keeps things in the air, hanging on.”
“I suppose so,” I agreed.
“So you don’t really know anything,” she told me. “You don’t actually have any information you need to share.”
“No,” I said. “You’re right. Can I ask you something?”
“It’s very common,” she told me.
“I haven’t asked you yet.”
“To be unable to accept that someone has died, I mean,” she told me. “If you love them.”
“Oh yes, of course. I know. Like Elvis and Diana.” I could feel her staring at me. But it’s true. There’s never a conspiracy about someone nobody cares two hoots for. A worldwide belief that some day-time soap star who died at ninety actually didn’t die till ninety-three. And of course I hadn’t said the other name to the copper, the big one. Jesus, Diana, and Elvis, I really meant, like I’d tried to tell my mother once too. “They didn’t want him to be dead, so they just said he wasn’t,” I had explained. It hadn’t gone well, and the more I tried to convince her that I didn’t mean any harm the worse it got.
“It’s like the ultimate good review!” I’d said. “Hung from a cross? So what! Holes all over you? Granted. Starved? I’ll give you starved. Bled white? Since you mention it, yes. Bunged in a cave with a great big boulder over the door? I believe so. But dead-no way. Or if he was, he’s alive again now. Glory Hallelujah! I’m not calling them stupid. He was their friend and they loved him, but come off it, Mum! If you got like that about one of your friends, I think two thousand years later people should be ready to let it go.”