To find out why somebody died, you have to consult the living.
Professor Madoc’s words came back to him unbidden, and cleared his head in an instant. He got up and went over and squatted down beside Lexi.
‘Just leave her!’ said Jackson, and Kim echoed him. ‘Leave her alone, Patrick!’
But he didn’t leave her. He needed her.
And maybe she needed him.
He didn’t know how to start, so he started awkwardly. ‘My father’s dead, too.’
‘Good!’ yelled Lexi, and a string of snot swung from her nose and attached itself to the carpet like an escape rope.
‘He was hit by a car,’ Patrick continued.
‘Good,’ said Lexi again, but with a lot less feeling.
‘I don’t know what happened to him or why,’ said Patrick. ‘I’ve tried, but I just can’t understand it. But your father—’
He stopped to think.
Slowly Lexi sat back on her heels to look at him, her arms clamped around her midriff and her face streaked with black tears and silver snot.
‘What? What about him?’
Patrick closed his eyes. He rarely spoke without knowing what he was going to say, but here he’d set off without a map, unsure of the footing ahead, or of where he might be heading. He had no evidence. He had no expertise. He had nothing but a missing peanut and the strangest feeling in his gut that was so strong he couldn’t ignore it, despite its lack of logic.
‘What about my father?’ Lexi insisted.
Patrick opened his eyes and they were all staring at him, so he looked away from them and at the grubby woodchip wallpaper before he could speak again.
‘I think your father was murdered.’
35
‘I’M PREGNANT,’ SAID Tracy Evans.
Her reflection looked perturbed by the news.
‘We’re going to have a baby,’ she tried again, and flashed her teeth, but it wasn’t the same as smiling.
Her face was getting round. She turned sideways and stood on tiptoes so she could see her stomach in the bathroom mirror. She stroked the gentle swelling there, frowning at her reflected hands. Even though it had been nearly four months since she’d peed on a stick, it was hard to believe there was a baby inside her. A tiny stowaway, riding her belly, stealing her food and pumping her blood… Even harder to imagine that whatever was growing inside her now was going to come out of her some time next June, come hell or high water…
Frightening.
Tracy chewed her lip.
She hoped Mr Deal would be happy. Raymond. His name was Raymond, but she couldn’t get used to it. Raymond, not Ray – he was quite firm about that – but the name rarely came easily to her lips, and never to her mind when she thought of him.
Which was often. Too often – she recognized that, but she couldn’t help it. She wasn’t sure why it was; she only knew she had never felt this way about any of the over-eager youths she’d slept with before, but – strangely – now felt no desire to sleep with again.
She saw Mr Deal three nights a week. He picked her up from work and took her to his home. Sometimes she stayed over. The house was like something from a magazine – white and spotless, with real art on the walls, where you could see actual brush marks if you cocked your head in the right light.
There was a steep spiral staircase and a bidet in the bathroom. On her first visit it had given her the opportunity to ask about whether they had children.
‘Why would you say that?’ Mr Deal had frowned.
‘Because there’s a kiddy’s toilet,’ said Tracy, and Mr Deal had laughed at her on and off for the rest of the evening. When Tracy had pressed him to explain how it worked, he’d told her to Google it.
Then they’d had sex. As usual.
Tracy looked into the mirror now and wondered when it was that she’d stopped thinking that an evening without a quick shag was an evening wasted. Now there were moments – just moments, mind you – when she took just as much pleasure in watching him eat food she had cooked, or smelling the side of his throat when they embraced. He didn’t use aftershave but he used coal tar soap, which reminded her that sometimes childhood had not been such a bad place to be.
On the four nights she didn’t see Mr Deal, she had no idea what he did. When she asked he just said, ‘Nothing much.’ Those were nights when Tracy had started to wonder, and to worry. Men were very easily led, and she didn’t want some slut luring Mr Deal away from her…
She’d begun checking his phone and his laundry when he was out of the room.
She’d stopped taking the pill at the end of August.
And this was the consequence.
Tracy stroked her belly again. She would have to work faster than she’d initially planned.
But she thought that if Mr Deal felt the same way about her as she might be starting to feel about him, then everything would be just fine.
36
‘I DON’T WANT to go in.’
Lexi stalled at the bottom of the driveway of the house on Penylan Road.
‘OK,’ said Patrick, and started up the gravel by himself.
‘Wait!’
He turned.
‘Are you going in anyway?’
‘Yes.’ Of course he was. Why would he not? It was what they’d come here for, wasn’t it?
‘Well, what am I going to do?’
‘I don’t know. What?’
‘I don’t know.’
Then why was she asking him? Patrick shook his head in confusion. ‘OK,’ he said again, and carried on to the front door. By the time he lifted the heavy brass knocker shaped like a lion, Lexi was beside him again, biting her lip nervously.
‘How do I look?’ she said suddenly.
Patrick looked her up and down, then shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
She glared, but it was wasted on him.
The door was opened by a dumpy woman in jeans and a big cardigan.
‘Alex,’ the woman said warily.
‘Hello,’ said Patrick firmly. He had prepared his opening lines and didn’t want to be diverted. ‘I need information about Mr Galen. Can I come in?’
The woman looked at Lexi. ‘Are you going to cause trouble?’
‘No,’ said Patrick.
‘I was talking to Alexandra.’
‘Who’s Alexandra?’
‘She is.’
Lexi crossed her arms and fidgeted, and Patrick leaned away from her to avoid accidental contact.
Lexi finally said, ‘No,’ and the woman opened the door and let them both in.
The house was about ten times bigger than any house Patrick had ever been in.
The dumpy woman looked at him and said, ‘I’m Jackie.’
‘I know,’ said Patrick. ‘Your ceilings are very high.’
‘Yes, they are,’ she agreed with a strange look.
She led them into the front room, and an old mongrel hauled itself off the rug in front of the blazing fire and gave a token bark.
‘Ssh, Willow. Friends.’
Willow wagged apologetically and came over to lick Patrick’s hand.
Patrick smoothed the dog’s head. ‘Soft,’ he said.
Jackie smiled and pointed to the couch. ‘Have a seat.’
Patrick sat down, but Lexi didn’t. Instead she wandered around the room, looking at things as if taking an inventory.
The room was like something from a magazine. Art Forum or something else. It had decorated ceilings and pale-pink walls, and a big white fireplace.
On the mantelpiece was a photograph of Jackie and a man with a snowy mountain and blue sky behind them. The man was smiling with teeth Patrick knew very well. It was Number 19, on holiday.