Sue was waiting by the lift when Billy appeared with Emma. At first, she didn’t react — she hadn’t believed that he would be successful, perhaps — but then she dropped to her knees.
“Emma, Emma,” she said. “Are you all right?”
“I was dancing,” Emma said.
Sue had her arms around her daughter now, and she was holding her tight. “I thought you were lost. I didn’t know where you were.”
“Naughty.” Emma had adopted a strict expression, which she had copied from a teacher at school.
A brief, involuntary laugh came out of Sue, then she began to cry.
Billy could see Emma’s face over Sue’s right shoulder. The strictness faded, and a look of sympathy, almost of pity, took its place. One of Emma’s hands lifted into the air, then faltered. Peering at the side of Sue’s head from close up, she started, rather clumsily, to stroke Sue’s hair.
“There,” she said.
Once again, Billy couldn’t bring himself to move. Mother and daughter in each other’s arms, and strangers passing on either side, their heads turning, sensing a drama, perhaps, but knowing nothing of the real story — and him just standing near by, watching…
Things like that were always happening, it seemed, or on the point of happening. He turned to Eileen as if seeking confirmation, but carried on before she could open her mouth. Sometimes it got too much for him, he told her, and he would drive to the Orwell estuary after work. The thought of going home frightened him. Or exhausted him. He didn’t know which. Maybe both. He had a hard time working out whether he was lucky or unlucky. He had no clear view of the value of his life. Usually, he was down by the river for an hour or more, trying to cobble something together, some new version of himself. Not that it would last. Well, not for more than a couple of days, anyway — or sometimes it fell apart the moment he walked through the front door. Some days he’d sit in the car, not think at all. He would just switch off. Or he would read about the birds that passed through the area, and it would occur to him that he wasn’t so very different, the way he stopped by the water, gathering his strength, and then moved on. He felt Eileen’s silence near him in the room. He couldn’t decide what he should tell and what he shouldn’t tell. There didn’t appear to be any barriers or boundaries. When he touched his cheek, he found that it was wet.
Eileen walked over and put a hand on his shoulder.
“I’m all right,” he said. “I’ll be fine.” He smiled at her through his tears. “It’s just that it’s difficult sometimes, and no one’s very strong, really, are they?”
“No,” she said quietly.
“Thank you, Eileen. Christ.” He used both hands to wipe his face. “I didn’t sleep yesterday, that’s all it is. Normally, I have a nap in the afternoon.”
“You must get some rest when you go home,” Eileen said. “We all must.” She took her hand off his shoulder and stepped over to the wall again.
“I suppose I’ve been thinking too much,” he said, “imagining things…” His eyes moved to the locked fridge. “Phil said you had the key.”
She nodded, then patted her jacket pocket. “It’s in here.”
“But you’re not allowed to open the fridge, are you?”
“Not unless I’m authorised.”
“So you couldn’t open it for me?”
“No.”
“That’s what I thought. It makes you curious, though, sitting here all night…”
A silence fell between them, and Eileen made no attempt to fill it.
“Did you ever see her?” Billy said at last.
“Once or twice.” Eileen gave him a look that he had already noticed on the faces of other people who were closely involved in the operation. There was wariness in it, and a fear of being indiscreet, both perfectly understandable in the circumstances, but there was also a hunted quality, a coating of guilt, as if merely to have been associated with that murderer of children, no matter how innocently, was to have laid oneself open to suspicion or recrimination, or even to have committed a kind of crime oneself.
“What was she like?” he asked.
“Well,” and now Eileen’s eyes drifted away, towards the far end of the room, “I was never with her for more than a couple of minutes at a time, and never on my own.” She paused, as though trying to summon one clear image. “She seemed, I don’t know, very frail…” Another long pause, and then she looked directly at Billy. “If I hadn’t known what she’d done—”
“You would’ve thought she was normal,” he said.
“Normal. Yes.” Eileen seemed surprised that he had been able to assist her. Grateful too. But then she took a step backwards, and one of her hands shot out in front of her, the fingers spread, as though she were trying to keep something at bay. Her other hand had risen towards her face.
“Eileen?” Billy said. “Are you OK?”
She waved at him with the hand that was sticking out, but didn’t look at him, the rest of her body rigid, braced, quite motionless. Then she sneezed four times, in rapid succession.
“Bless you,” Billy said.
She took out a tissue and blew her nose. “I don’t know what came over me,” she said.
“Maybe it’s cold in here — colder than the rest of the hospital, anyhow.”
“Yes,” she said, turning towards the door, “that’s probably it.”
Though his observation might well have been true, he had the odd feeling that he was covering for her — or even, perhaps, for both of them. Equally oddly, she appeared to be colluding with him. There was the sense, for a few short moments, that they had found themselves in a dangerous predicament, and that, if they had survived, it was only because they had, at some level, joined forces and because they had stood firm.
He stooped over the scene log.
“You won’t tell anyone, will you?” he said. “About me getting — you know…”
She was sideways-on to him, by the door. “I don’t think there’s any need, do you?”
In sounding offhand, and choosing not to look at him when she spoke, she had allowed him to save face, and he liked her immensely for that.
He saw her out, then glanced at his watch. Thirteen minutes to go.
38
“So what’s it like?”
Virus Malone stood just inside the mortuary with his hands in his pockets, rocking slightly on his heels.
“There’s a ghost,” Billy said.
Virus looked at Billy placidly, as if it was only a matter of time before he retracted his statement.
“When she appears,” Billy said, “keep calm. She’ll try and talk to you. Don’t answer. Oh, and tell her she’s not allowed to smoke. No smoking in the mortuary. It’s against regulations.”
“Same old Billy.” Virus shook his head.
Though the two men had worked together in the mid-nineties, Virus had been transferred to the other side of the county just before the millennium, and they hadn’t seen each other in quite a while.
“So how’s Newmarket?”
“The racing’s good — and, you know, it’s a bit quieter. You’re not there, for a start…” Looking at the floor, Virus grinned and rubbed the back of his neck — for some reason, making jokes had always embarrassed him — then his eyes travelled round the room again. “So what’s it been like,” he said, “really?”
“All you do is sit here,” Billy said. “Time goes pretty slowly.”
Virus nodded. Now, finally, he had a framework within which he could function.
Billy signed himself out, then handed the pen to Virus and watched as he began to record the fact that he had taken over as scene loggist. I am Police Constable James Malone… His writing was unexpectedly small and tidy, and the letters all leaned forwards, like people walking into the teeth of a gale. Billy hoisted his bag on to his shoulder. At the door, he turned and said, “Careful you don’t catch anything.”