‘Who shot this one?’
‘I don’t know. A friend, maybe. I wasn’t there.’
The camera came in close. Lucy turned and looked steadily at the lens. She didn’t blush. She didn’t try to turn away. She smiled ironically, held up the paintbrush and spoke in a mock-French accent: ‘Welcome to my atelier, little one. This is where the magic is made.’
The video stopped and for a moment the room was silent. Caffery tapped his finger on the mouse pad. This is where the magic is made. Something was here, in this video. Something important. He played it again, looking carefully at her face, at the way her hand fiddled with the shirt, self-consciously touching her stomach. This is where the magic is made. What are you trying to tell me, Lucy? What are you trying to say?
A noise behind him made him turn. Mahoney was sitting forward, peering at the table. ‘That’s odd,’ he murmured. ‘That’s very odd.’
Caffery pushed back the chair. ‘What is?’
‘Those.’
He looked to where Mahoney pointed and saw nothing out of the ordinary: just the search forms, the paperweight and Lucy’s door keys where he’d left them earlier.
‘Her keys? I booked them out from the station at Wells.’
Mahoney leant over. Picked them up. ‘Was this how you found them?’
‘They were in her pocket. Yes.’
‘Just these two. The Chubb and the Yale?’
‘They fit the front door.’
‘But one’s missing. There should be a back-door key. Usually it’s up there, on that nail.’
Caffery turned. The nail was empty. He glanced at the front door, then the back door. For a moment he felt a small chill. As if something had just come into the room and settled down with them.
‘And…’ He gave a small cough. ‘And I take it you haven’t got it?’
Mahoney turned his eyes to him. The pupils had shrunk to pinpoints. ‘No. And if you haven’t got it,’ he said, ‘then who the hell has?’
31
The residential roads around Hanham were quiet at lunchtime, and as Flea came round the corner she saw Thom’s black Escort pull away from the kerb. It raced to the end of the road, indicators flashing. Hitting the T-junction, it turned right. She kept close behind it, fumbling on the front seat for her phone.
Mandy was driving, of course. She would be. Flea knew what the guys in the unit would say about Mandy. It’d be: ‘Well, there goes a girl with a nine-inch clit.’ Or words to that effect. The Escort stopped at traffic-lights, and Flea pulled in behind it, jabbing out Thom’s number with her thumb. Up ahead she saw Mandy turn her face and watch Thom rummage in his coat pockets. He said something to her as he got the phone out, but in Flea’s ear the call was bumped to answerphone and she saw him lean sideways to return it to his pocket. He rested his forehead against the side window and stared out.
Flea floored the Clio, leaning on the horn, flashing the lights. Mandy raised her chin: a glimpse of startled eyes in the rear-view mirror. Flea put her hand out of the window, gesturing for the car to pull over.
There was a moment’s hiatus while the two cars rolled along the road almost bumper to bumper, Mandy taking time to register what was happening. Then the entrance to a cemetery came up and the Escort jerked left into it and stopped just inside the gates. Flea slammed the Clio in behind, jumped out and went fast to the driver’s side, making a circular motion with her fingers telling Mandy to roll down the window.
But for a moment, her white face just stared back through the glass. On the passenger side Thom had slid down until his chin was almost on his chest. His face was canted over, resting on his splayed hand so no one could see his expression.
‘Open the window.’
Mandy did. ‘You frightened the life out of me. What’s going on?’
‘We need to talk.’
‘I’m on my way to work.’
‘Now, Mandy. Now.’
‘Riiiiight,’ she said cautiously. ‘You’re upset.’
‘Get out of the car.’
She did as she was told: slowly, hands raised, as if Flea had a gun to her head.
Thom unbuckled and got out, too, his face appearing on the other side of the car roof. He was flustered. ‘Flea, there’s no need for this. I’m going to tell her.’
‘Going to tell me what?’
‘Mandy, don’t listen to her. Please. I swear I was just about to tell you.’
Flea held up her hand. ‘Get back in the car, Thom.’
‘Let me tell her.’
‘Get in the car.’
He stared at his sister, his hands on the roof, his face drained of colour now. A vein in the side of his neck pulsed blue.
‘Do what she’s telling you,’ Mandy said. ‘Go on – sit down.’
Thom might have been able to ignore his sister, but he didn’t know how to defy his girlfriend. He got into the car and sat, slouched in the seat. Mandy turned to Flea, her arms folded under her huge breasts. ‘What on earth’s going on?’
‘There’s been an accident. Thom’s had… an accident.’
Mandy bent very slowly to look across the driver’s seat at Thom. His face was in his hands again. ‘He doesn’t look as if he’s had an accident.’
‘It wasn’t him who got hurt.’
‘Then who?’
‘It was a woman.’
‘A woman?’ Mandy raised her eyebrows questioningly, as if the idea of Thom having anything to do with a woman was preposterous. Even through an accident.
‘He was driving. The other night. He was drunk and she stepped out in front of him. He didn’t have a chance to stop.’
‘What happened to her?’
Flea shook her head. No way of sugar-coating it. ‘I’m sorry.’
Mandy closed her eyes very slowly. ‘Killed?’ She opened them, looked at Flea, unblinking. ‘You mean he killed her?’
‘Yes.’
‘When?’
‘Last Monday.’
‘The night he came over to you?’
‘Yes.’
‘He can’t have had an accident. He stayed at yours all evening. The car’s fine.’
‘He didn’t stay at mine. He was lying to you. He didn’t want you to know he was going to a business meeting because he didn’t want you thinking he was getting into another cock-up deal, so he came to mine and used my car – he left his outside in case you drove by to check up on him.’
Mandy turned away and gazed distantly at the graves, at the plastic containers under the standpipe, the silk flowers made grey by the car fumes from the road. Seeing them but not absorbing them. ‘I can’t believe this. No one told me anything about it.’
‘Because no one knew. It wasn’t reported.’
‘Not reported? Then what happened to…’ This new dimension hit home with a bang. She put her elbows on the car roof and dropped her face into her hands. ‘My God. My God. My God.’
‘There’s something we can do.’
‘This will be the end of everything.’
‘Mandy, calm down. Thom and I have talked about it and there is something we can do. We’ve got to get him into hospital. We’ve got to build a case. There isn’t much time.’
‘Build a case? You mean you’re going to lie? Why? Why would you do that?’
‘Because he’s my brother. Because I’m totally fucking furious with him and I’d like to pull his eyes out right now. But he’s still my brother and I love him.’
Mandy rested her finger against her throat as if there was a small lump there. Then she pulled back her sleeve and checked her watch – as if knowing the time would somehow keep everything in place and stop the world tilting. In the distance thunder rolled. A bird – a rook, maybe – took off from the line of pencil cypresses edging the cemetery. ‘We need some time to think about this,’ she said eventually.