In Interview Room Two, Donald Walsh is being formally charged. He’s trying very hard to conceal it, but he’s an angry man. Everett’s drawn the short straw on this one, but she’s grown a fairly thick skin for heavy irony. Which is probably just as well.
‘Mr Walsh, you are being charged in relation to the theft of certain artefacts from Dr William Harper of thirty-three Frampton Road, Oxford. I believe your solicitor has explained your rights to you and what’s going to happen next? Do you understand?’
‘Given that it was in words of one syllable, I think I can just about manage it.’
‘You have been given a date to appear at the magistrates’ court as we have just discussed –’
‘Yes, yes, you don’t need to reel it all out again, Constable. I’m not retarded.’
Everett finishes filling in the form and hands it to Walsh, who snatches it away and makes a great show of signing it without reading a word.
‘I still don’t know what all the fuss is about,’ he says tetchily. ‘I was just looking after the collection. Any reasonable person would see at once that Bill’s in no fit state to do so. Last time I was there one of the prize pieces had already gone AWOL. He could have flushed it down the bloody bog for all I know. And they’ll come to me when he dies anyway – he has no children, who else is there? In fact it’s a bloody miracle more of them weren’t stolen long ago – anyone could have got into that place – the security was non-existent.’
‘I believe my colleagues had to break the door down to get in.’
‘Yes, well, if they’d used their brains and tried round the back they’d have found that the conservatory didn’t even have a functioning lock. Half the windows were broken – even that bloody cat had got in – that Siamese thing – I heard it upstairs. No wonder items have been stolen. Something I will be insisting that you investigate, incidentally.’
Which, Everett thinks, is actually pretty rich, considering. But she has too much nous to say so.
Walsh tosses the form back at Everett. It slips across the table and falls on to the floor. ‘Right, I assume I can go home now, if that’s all right with you?’
***
It’s 4.30 and Alex still hasn’t done any work. It’s raining hard and she’s sitting in the kitchen with the boy at her feet. It was a nightmare, getting this extension built, but it’s changed the whole house. Given it elbow room. And light. Even in cloud, light streams down from the roof lantern. She edges off the chair and on to the floor next to the child.
‘Shall we play a game?’
He looks at her warily. He has a teddy bear in one hand. Jake’s teddy bear. The one Adam bought for him before he was even born.
‘It’s easy,’ she says. ‘Look.’
She lies down flat and looks up, into the sky. Needles of golden rain catch the light before splintering in stars against the lantern glass.
‘See? You can watch the rain coming down. It’s like magic.’
The boy looks up, craning his neck. Then he raises his hands towards the light, laughing with a bubble of pure childlike joy.
***
Telephone interview with Terry Hurst, bus driver, Oxford Bus Company
6 May 2017, 5.21 p.m.
On the call, DS G. Quinn
GQ: Mr Hurst, we’re trying to track down a young woman who got on your bus at Queen’s Lane at 4.35 yesterday afternoon.
TH: Oh yes, what’s all this about then?
GQ: It’s a police inquiry, Mr Hurst. That’s all that should concern you.
TH: So what did she look like, this girl?
GQ: About 5' 8" long fair hair. Green eyes. She was wearing a pair of denim shorts, a crochet-type top and sandals. And sunglasses.
TH: Oh yes, I remember her all right.
GQ: Do you remember where she got off? We think it may have been at the business park.
TH: Nope, definitely wasn’t there. She was standing because we was pretty full, and I remember looking round to make sure everyone was getting off OK. She’d already got off by then.
GQ: You don’t have CCTV in the bus?
TH: Not in that one, no.
GQ: So you have absolutely no idea where she got off?
TH: I didn’t say that. As a matter of fact I think it was probably by the Tesco in the Cowley Road. Will that do you?
GQ: I suppose it’s a start. If it’s the best you can do.
TH: You’re welcome.
[mutters]
Tosser.
***
It must be two or three in the morning when I wake. The sky is the deep blue never-quite-dark of early summer. The curtain is slightly open and I can feel a whisper of cool air.
I lever myself up on my elbows, blinking into the darkness. As I walk into his room he’s standing there. In the cot. In the silence. The sheen of his eyes catching a sliver of light from the window. He has a finger in his mouth, and in his other hand, Jake’s teddy bear.
‘What is it? Did you have a bad dream?’
He stares at me, rocking slightly, then shakes his head.
‘Would you like some milk?’
A nod this time.
I move closer. ‘Do you mind if I pick you up?’
He looks up at me, then lifts his arms. I reach down and gather him up. It’s the first time I’ve done it since he came here, and because of that, because it’s dark and my senses are sharpened, I’m aware of him – of his physical presence – more acutely than I’ve been before. I know I’ve been keeping him at a distance, not just mentally but emotionally, and I know that this has kept me physically distant too. But now, for the first time, I have his skin against my skin, and his smell in my nostrils. Bath soap, milk, piss, that sweet biscuit scent little children always seem to have. He leans against my chest and I feel his heaviness shift in my arms. Alex always says there’s a reason why women who have no kids have cats. Something warm and living that’s just the weight of a baby – something you can lift and hold against you just as you would a child; there’s a deep physiological pleasure in that, which goes beyond conscious love. And standing here, holding this boy against me, I feel it too.
*
In the morning, I’m up first, and when Alex comes down she finds us in the kitchen. The boy in the high chair with a bowl of mashed banana, and me at the dishwasher. I drive Alex mad re-stacking everything she puts in it, so I’m trying to finish before she comes down. The radio is on and I’m humming. Though I don’t realize that until Alex comes in. She’s in a pair of pale jeans and a white T-shirt, and her hair is down. With no make-up, she looks younger somehow. Perhaps I see too much of her in lawyer mode.
She smiles at me. ‘You sound happy.’
She’s staring at what I’m doing with the dishwasher, but she’s obviously decided not to mention it; she’s determined not to spoil the mood.
‘I shouldn’t. I’m likely to have a grim day.’
She moves closer to the boy and puts her hand gently against his hair. ‘Are you going to have to work all weekend?’ Her tone is light; lighter than it usually is in circumstances like these.
‘I’m sorry. You know how it is.’
She picks up the carton of juice and shakes it. ‘Pity. I was hoping we might do something. Go somewhere –’
She stops herself but I hear the words all the same. As a family.
I turn back to the dishwasher and start stacking again, moving cups, shifting plates. Displacement activity in every sense of the word. ‘Look, there’s something you need to know.’
She pours a cup of coffee. Carefully, with exaggerated calm. ‘Oh yes?’
‘We had the DNA back. The boy’s father. It isn’t Donald Walsh.’