‘I’m sorry.’ A bright, high note on a scale.
‘You’ve risked that boy’s life!’
‘I’m sorry.’ The scale descending into tones of hopelessness.
‘You owe me a proper explanation.’
‘I know. I’m scared you won’t understand.’ Just a whisper.
‘Try me.’ My tone was cynical now. I’d become my professional self, tucked away the things I wanted to say. It was self-protection. I hated myself for doing it, but what choice did I have, really?
She talked then, a slow stream of words and it was breaking her to say them.
‘Because I saw the photographs Rachel took, they were photographs of Ben. She loves him. I saw it for the first time, how much she cares about him, because they’re such beautiful pictures and they made me feel so guilty.’ She clutched at my arm. ‘I’m telling you because I don’t know what to do and I want you to help me make it right. You won’t tell anybody, will you? I’ve stopped already. I won’t do it again.’
‘You can’t come back from this. You cannot,’ I said, but she was pulling her handbag onto her lap, digging through it.
‘I’ve got a personal email address for the author of the blog. We can track them down. I’ll get it for you, I’ll get it now.’
She took her phone out. I could see that she had missed calls, but not who they were from, and she ignored them, as she tried with trembling fingers to access her mailbox.
‘It’s gone too far. You can’t make it right.’
‘We don’t need to tell anybody else,’ she said. She looked pale and fearful, her eyes darting nervously from me to the phone and back. ‘If you help me we can do it. We can get the blog removed.’
‘You not we. I didn’t do this, it’s got nothing to do with me, and actually you do need to tell them. Look at me! You’re kidding yourself if you think you can get away with it. And you’re compromising me just by telling me, let alone expecting me to help you!’
‘Please. I’ll lose my job.’ Her eyes were locked onto mine now, wide and wild with panic.
‘Do I really need to say that you should have thought of that earlier? What you leaked was spiteful, wicked stuff. Jesus! And now you want me to put myself on the line for you. Do you have any idea what you’re asking me to do?’
‘Jim.’ It was a plea. ‘I thought you would help me.’
‘I thought I knew you.’
She tried to reach out and touch my face, but as her fingers grazed my cheek I said, ‘Don’t,’ and she withdrew her hand quickly, as if I’d scalded her.
I massaged my temples, and I felt an exhausted, debilitating sadness because I knew that this was the end of us, and that I’d made my own bed on this one. It was my own fucking fault. End of.
She took another deep breath. ‘I did it because of what happened to my sister,’ she said, and I could hear that there was bravery in her voice, that she was working up courage for what she was about to say, but for me it was too late for that, because she’d betrayed the police force and the investigation, betrayed Benedict Finch, and betrayed me.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not interested. I don’t want to hear it.’
She opened her mouth to reply but something she saw in my face made her close it again, and her features drained of hope.
‘Jim…’ was all she managed.
‘No.’
I didn’t want to hear it because Emma wasn’t the person I thought she was, and I wouldn’t lie for her.
She started working at her phone again, desperately tapping at the screen, and it was too much for me; it was delusional.
I snatched the phone from her, opened the car window, threw it out and watched it clatter across the pavement and break against the urine-stained wall, pieces of it scattering amongst dark black puddles, fag butts and other unidentifiable scraps of filthy rubbish. A passer-by paused to give me a look and I told him to fuck off.
‘Tell Fraser,’ I said to Emma. ‘Or I will.’
‘Jim.’
‘You need to go and do the right thing or this could hang us all. Now.’
I started up the car and eased back into the traffic. I couldn’t look at her. In the rear-view mirror I could see a vast mural covering the side of an office building: a mother and child. It was a pure image, made of black lines and a white background, the mother’s lips as sensual as Emma’s. I thumped the dashboard again, felt the pain again, and then I took the car in the direction of Kenneth Steele House. On the way, we didn’t speak at all.
When we parked at Kenneth Steele House, Emma got out of the car without a word and I watched her walk across the car park, and climb the steps to the entrance, slowly, straight-backed. I gave it a full twenty minutes before I followed her. Twenty minutes of gazing through the windscreen at the sharp-tipped silvered-metal railings that encircled the car park and wondering whether she was doing the right thing in there.
When I finally got out of the car, my body was protesting with fatigue, and I checked my face in the wing mirror to be sure I wasn’t wearing the whole episode for anybody to read. Inside, I said my normal hello to Lesley who was on Reception, and she smiled at me, and I hoped she didn’t notice that I felt like I was wading through shit.
RACHEL
With Zhang not answering her phone, and somebody in the incident room telling me that Clemo and Fraser were unavailable too, I had to turn to John. Or, as the papers would have it, the unimpeachable Mr John Finch, Consultant Paediatric General Surgeon and proud owner of a lovely new wife.
He answered the phone with the same haste with which I jumped on every call I received. To give him credit he quickly managed the disappointment he obviously felt when I said I didn’t have news, took me seriously when I explained about the pictures in the book and didn’t demur when I asked him to drive me, and the book, to the police station.
Heading up the steps of Kenneth Steele House, I realised I could barely even remember our arrival nearly a week before. The receptionist told us that if we’d like to leave the book with her then she’d ensure that it was taken up to the incident room.
I said that I’d like to speak to somebody in person. I mentioned DC Zhang, and DI Clemo.
She asked us to sit and we perched side by side on the same sofa we’d occupied on Monday morning.
She made some hushed calls, head down, covering her mouth as if we could lip-read. Then she crossed the foyer, heels clipping the floor noisily, and said, ‘Someone will be down to see you soon. If you wouldn’t mind being patient.’
She brought us hot tea in plastic cups so thin you could burn your fingers.
John passed the time by looking through Ben’s book methodically, page by page, over and over again. I could barely sit down; I was pulsating with impatience, and after what felt like an interminable wait I approached the desk again.
‘Somebody’s coming, they’re rather busy up there this morning,’ I was told.
‘Can we interrupt them, this is very important?’
‘They know you’re here, they’re just in a meeting.’
‘Can I just speak to DC Zhang?’
‘Please be patient, Mrs Finch.’
‘My name is Jenner.’
‘Sorry, Ms Jenner. DC Zhang and DI Clemo have only recently arrived themselves and I’ve rung the incident room but they’re both tied up just at the moment. If you can try to be patient one of them will be down before long, I assure you.’
‘Please.’
‘I would ask you to sit down again if possible.’
I sat, my knees jigging, hands wringing.
John said, ‘Perhaps it’s best if we just leave the books here.’
‘What if they can’t read Ben’s writing?’
‘Rachel…’
‘No. I want to hand them over myself, explain them.’
After another ten minutes I felt my patience snap. I took the book from John and said, ‘If they’re not coming down here I’m bloody well going to go up there.’