‘I went into the bedroom and started to pack my things, though why I would want to take any of that crap is beyond me. I should have walked out as soon as she shouted at me to go, then someone might have seen me. I would have had an alibi.
‘Somebody started banging on the door to the flat. Cherry was still shouting at me to leave and screaming that I would never see her or Happy again. I should have ignored whoever was at the door, but I think I wanted someone else to shout at. I opened it and there was Andy Cruikshank. He had a squat a few floors below us. Cherry must have phoned him on her mobile when I went into the bedroom. He should have been the last person I wanted to see, but I was delighted. I punched him in the face. Then I heard Happy screaming. She had been crying before, but this was a different kind of scream, a shout of real terror. It was me she was calling for.’
Jeb’s voice shifted. His eyes gleamed sad and distant in the candlelight.
‘I ran through to the sitting room. Cherry was standing on a chair on the balcony. I yelled for her to stop, but she didn’t look round, just took a step up on to the safety barrier and pushed herself into the air with Happy in her arms. She wasn’t my child, but I loved her. I saw her face looking over Cherry’s shoulder an instant before she jumped. Happy knew what was about to happen and she was terrified. If I had been quicker I could have saved her. I knew Cherry was desperate and hurting, but I stopped to hit Andy Cruikshank. That was all the time it took to kill her.’
The tears were running down Jeb’s face now. He lifted a hand and wiped them away.
Magnus kept his voice soft. ‘It’s tragic, but I don’t see how Cherry’s suicide would result in your going to jail. She killed herself and Happy, not you.’
‘Cruikshank told the police that I had pushed them both over the balcony. Cherry had told him I was a police spy. He blamed me for her death and he wanted to see me damned. The few people in the building who would speak to the police said they’d heard a man shouting and Cherry screaming that he would never see his child again. Someone even claimed to have seen me do it. It didn’t matter that he was a junkie who had seen a spaceship land on the local play park the week before, he was treated as a credible witness. As for my bosses, as far as they were concerned I was on my own. They maintained they had already decided I was going rogue and were about to pull me. They pretended to think I’d killed Cherry and Happy too. The best they would offer me was a guarantee of vulnerable prisoner status in return for not revealing details of our operation. If I spoke out they would throw me into the general population. I didn’t care much about what happened to me by then, but being a policeman in prison who had spied on his girlfriend and then killed her and her child? I knew enough to know I wouldn’t survive that.’ He looked at the floor. ‘I was a coward.’
Magnus said, ‘What about Cherry’s medical records? Didn’t they show she might be suicidal?’
Jeb’s eyes met his. ‘I already told you. She wouldn’t go to the doctor. Even I didn’t realise how far gone she was. If I had I would never have told her the truth.’ Jeb stared at the ceiling. ‘Andy Cruikshank was a star witness. All that fire and hatred made him seem righteous. I was a proven liar and he was a man of principle. Other witnesses for the Crown were a ramshackle lot. Junkies, hippies, the usual losers who end up in these squats, but Andy was good. He wore a suit and tie to court and he repeated his version of what had happened over and bloody over, until even I almost believed it.’
Magnus said, ‘But he was lying?’
‘Yes, he was fucking lying.’ The warmth was back in Jeb’s voice. ‘I’ve just told you God’s honest truth and if you don’t believe me you can go to hell.’
Magnus said, ‘I believe you.’ He heard his father’s voice, Never trust a liar, son, never trust a liar. ‘Of course I believe you,’ he repeated.
Twenty-Seven
They set out in an open-topped truck, Jacob at the wheel, Magnus and Will squeezed into the cab beside him. Belle sat in the back, her face shaded from the sun by a wide-brimmed straw hat Father Wingate said the abbot would have wanted her to have. Raisha had not appeared and they had left without her.
‘She goes off on her own,’ Belle said as they walked across the yard of a farm Magnus knew was too industrial in scale for them to manage, but which might have some useful equipment smaller farms could not have afforded to invest in. ‘She misses her children.’
Will and Jacob were a little ahead, both of them with rifles slung across their backs. Magnus had been musing on the weapons Jacob had confiscated at the scene of the crash and had not yet returned. He wished Belle would leave him alone, but he said, ‘Of course she does.’
He and Raisha had not used any protection. The sweats had made HIV look like a joke, but there were other reasons why people did not use contraception.
Jacob glanced back at them. ‘What do you think?’ Even when he was asking a question the priest’s voice held an edge of command.
‘It’s big enough to have its own combine. We should check these sheds.’ Magnus pointed to a series of flat-roofed buildings that looked more suited to a factory than a farm.
Jacob nodded. The day was warm, but he was still wearing his combat jacket. ‘Stay close. You don’t know who might be around.’
Now was the moment to ask for his gun back. Magnus tried to frame the words. The sun seared his eyes, blinding him for a moment.
Belle said, ‘She goes into empty houses looking for children.’
Magnus glanced at her. The girl had tucked her hair inside the hat, which lent her a Huck Finn prepubescent look. Her nose was freckled and she might have been a boy.
Magnus said, ‘Raisha?’
Belle nodded. Her features were lost and revealed again, as the shadows thrown by the hat brim advanced and then receded.
‘At first she thought she would find one alive. There must have been children who survived.’ Belle looked up at him again, her eyes wide with the horror of it. ‘But they might have been too little to manage on their own.’
Magnus had not been able to forget the body of the toddler that had somehow fallen to its death. It had looked unmarked, like a large doll abandoned on the pavement, except for the bloom of blood around its head.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It must have happened.’
‘Raisha was obsessed by the idea. She started off by looking for her sons’ friends. She knew where they lived and so she drove to their houses.’
Raisha had not told him any of this, only of her thwarted search for her relatives and her husband’s family.
‘They were all either dead or had left town.’ Belle’s voice was matter-of-fact. ‘And so she started to check likely-looking houses, places with a trampoline, or a swing in the garden. Raisha says it’s easy to spot homes with children.’
Magnus said, ‘It’s been too long now. If a child was locked in somewhere, or was too young to look after itself, it would be dead.’
‘She buries them.’ Belle’s eyes met his, the hat brim a halo around her face. ‘She wraps them in a sheet, digs a hole in the garden, puts them in it and says a prayer over the grave. I’ve told her she should stop. Things have got beyond burying.’
Beyond burying, a voice in Magnus’s head whispered.
‘What does she say?’
‘She says—’