The Backs (2013) (6 page)

‘Jackson’s expression was
wrong
.’ Jimmy strummed his fingers on the table and looked at him, clearly agitated.

Goodhew sat a little straighter. ‘That’s it?’

‘That’s it. I understand the trauma, her fear of being alone, even the fear that the man she’s sent to prison might come after her. Then I think, if she really believes he’s innocent, why isn’t she scared of the real killer? What the fuck is the
wrong
expression? That’s the reason she says she can’t move on.

‘Look, I’m not walking out on her because she’s developing mental health issues – if she is – but the idea that she has been festering for so long over something so trivial . . .’ abruptly he pressed his lips together and scowled. ‘I don’t know what I’m asking you . . . Maybe you could find a detail that’s been missed? Something that will make sense of a
wrong
expression?’ Jimmy pushed his chair back and hurried to his feet. ‘Now I’ve said it out loud again, I can hear how stupid it sounds. Forget it, I’m sorry.’

Goodhew didn’t try to stop him. He’d already promised himself that he’d turn down anything pushed in front of him, so watching the man trudging out of the Michaelhouse Café should have been the very end of it. But the whole meeting had left him thinking, something he was still engaged in when his grandmother rejoined him.

‘An interesting man,’ she remarked as she placed a tray of tea things on the table between them.

‘Seems perpetually uncomfortable. What does he do for a living?’

‘He works in the purchasing department at the Council offices. He’s been there since leaving school, secondary education. He married Genevieve when she was twenty-four, after they’d dated for five years. No children, small mortgage, no debts.’

‘How do you know all this?’

‘It doesn’t matter, the point is, I do.’ She filled up both cups. ‘I doubt he’s ever courted the limelight, so I don’t think he’s crying out for help for any other reason than he truly needs it.’

That made Goodhew smile. ‘I hope that’s not emotional blackmail. You
know
I’m not getting involved.’

She smiled too. ‘I forgot.’

‘But you’re right about the limelight. He’s not the adventurous type, not a risk-taker or a narcissist, yet he’s come here to tell it all to a complete stranger. And in such a public place . . .’ he glanced at his grandmother. ‘Is that why you picked here as our meeting point?’

‘In part.’

‘And the other part?’

‘Are you going to look into it?’

‘Into what? A wrong expression?’

‘Come on, that’s the part that intrigues you.’

‘It’s obvious there’s nothing I can do.’

His grandmother pointed over at the chapel. ‘Look at the east window.’

He knew it well: five tall panels with Christ in the centre one, surrounded by saints, angels and martyrs. Above the main five panels were eleven smaller ones depicting doves, stars and still more angels.

‘Do you remember what you once told me?’

The glass containing the second angel from the right had been installed incorrectly, in a mirror image of the way it should be. He’d noticed that on his first visit.

He nodded.

‘I don’t know anyone else who has ever spotted it, Gary, and even though I know you won’t agree to help Jimmy Barnes, you won’t be able to stop yourself from noticing if the smallest detail there is out of place either.’

Jane’s drama teacher used to shout
Own it!
in reaction to any half-hearted attempt at acting. Of course the kids, Jane included, mimicked this expression without mercy, shouting it out whenever a classmate in any other lesson hesitated with their answer. There had been times since when she’d remembered this and wondered whether hiding the truth had always been her destiny.

In life, Jane lied frequently: some days she felt she was good at it, at other times she was doubtful, but most of the time she did it without thinking. Tonight she’d need to concentrate, working hard to keep her expression blank, revealing nothing and reminding herself that being believed was all down to
owning
her forthcoming performance. DI Marks needed to believe the news of her sister’s death had come as a shock.

In the end it wasn’t so hard to achieve.

As she stepped from the police car, it was the change in location that hit her first. The Cambridgeshire air was dry and warm; they’d driven through all of that rain and come out the other side as they entered the north of the county. She glanced up at the cloudless night sky and remembered how different the solar system looked here compared to anywhere else she’d ever visited. The stars here seemed better spaced, as though the dome of the atmosphere was somehow grander and had lifted them up and away from each other.

The police station was directly in front of her, ugly as ever, while behind her – on the other side of Warkworth Terrace – stood well-kept townhouses, the kind with fat front doors reached by a short flight of stone steps and basements that begged to be stared into as you walked along the pavement.

The familiarity of it startled her. She had expected to feel like a total stranger but all this was etched somewhere in the back of her mind.

DI Marks too.

She’d only ever seen him on the news giving updates on the case but, now that he faced her, she recognized that shrewd expression and the neat precision of his words. He’d aged, however. Who wouldn’t, doing that job? His black hair was streaked with grey and he was thinner than she remembered. But it was him all right. It made her wonder how her own father might have changed. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t think of him again, and maybe that was unrealistic, but she’d kept this bargain with herself for a long time now.

DI Marks had escorted her to the room where she now sat, some kind of interview room but with less starkness than usual. A female officer was with him, but she seemed mute: a pair of eyes and ears, nothing more. There was a table with a single plastic chair on each side, but there were also four easy chairs grouped around a coffee table, and a box of toddler toys in the corner.

‘This is a room for bad news, right?’ she asked. The comment had been involuntary.

‘Sometimes, unfortunately,’ Marks replied.

She realized she’d now given him a cue – an opening through which to drop his bombshell. He directed her to sit in one of the soft chairs, whereupon the black vinyl huffed wearily. And that’s when he explained that her sister had been murdered.

She knew already, of course, but she’d only cried when she’d been on her own. She’d never spoken about it, never had the opportunity to ask questions, only to try to find answers within the news reports. And that wasn’t the same.

She’d meanwhile stopped listening to him. Instead she stared into her lap and caught sight of her own chest rising and falling in exaggerated breaths. Becca had died seven years and three months ago. Jane thought she’d done all her crying, yet here she was still fighting tears. She drew in a deep breath, and for a second her head cleared.

DI Marks was still speaking. ‘I’m very sorry.’ He had now said it twice; perhaps he assumed she hadn’t heard the first time.

Those were, she realized, the very first words of condolence anyone had offered her. ‘Thank you,’ she breathed. Acknowledging them meant she’d accepted them. The tears then broke loose, erupting as though they’d only ever been buried in the shallowest of graves. She heard her own pain too, voiced along with sobs that sounded primitive but disembodied, out of her control. She realized she was shouting ‘No, no, no’ between the sobbing.

The silent policewoman pushed a box of tissues into her hands. Jane pushed them away. Right then she didn’t want to stop to even think about what she’d done. She’d missed her sister’s funeral. Never been to visit the grave. That bastard had gone to prison, but she’d always known he wasn’t the killer. How had she thought it OK to let a guilty man go unpunished? How much respect had that shown to Becca?

‘Am I free to go?’ she asked.

Marks nodded. ‘You are, but I need an address.’

‘I don’t know what I’m doing about that yet.’

‘I still need an address.’

‘I see.’ She nodded, but didn’t have an answer.

‘A friend perhaps? It would be better for you to have some support.’

‘I’ll go back north tomorrow.’ Lies always found her when she needed them. ‘Back to my boyfriend. Please can I phone him? I can sort it out.’

She could tell he doubted her; he thought for a few seconds, then let it go. ‘No one will pursue the shoplifting charge on this occasion. I would appreciate receiving an address from you, when you can. I’ll now leave you with PC Wilkes; she’ll get you in touch with victim support.’ He shook her hand and left her. Then the silent policewoman spoke for the first time: ‘Where are you going right now?’

‘What time is it?’

‘Just after three a.m. You might find a hotel but you’ll never get into a B and B at this hour. I finish at six, so I could leave you in here until then. Would you like me to fetch you a sandwich?’

‘No. I’m just going to clear off, but thanks. I’ve got friends who won’t mind. I can get a taxi there.’

‘OK, if you’re sure.’

Sometimes people believed lies just because it suited them.

Ten minutes later she exited through the front door of the police station, hoisted her rucksack on to one shoulder, and set off across Parker’s Piece. The sky had stayed clear, and although it was still night time, it didn’t seem all that dark. If the building itself hadn’t been in the way, she would have paused a moment to turn to the north-east and look for the faint glow that shone from beyond that horizon. Apparently it was Norway, though she couldn’t remember if she’d once been told that or just invented it. Anyhow, it was what she always chose to believe. The idea of standing in the night time of one country while looking at day-light in another still fascinated her. She’d often watched skies like that from her bedroom window because, even as a kid, her instincts had been telling her to get as far away as possible.

That wasn’t how she felt now, though. She didn’t feel any danger walking through the city streets at night; in her mind a sleeping Cambridge was a benign Cambridge. She took her time, stopping frequently, moving aimlessly, telling herself that this really would be the final time she visited. It was only as she reached Magdalene Bridge that she realized she’d been instinctively heading towards her childhood home ever since leaving Parkside station. Again she stopped, staring at the red of the traffic lights positioned at the junction ahead. She felt the pull of seeing the house again and the pull of walking away, too.

But tonight had confirmed that leaving somewhere behind was a whole lot more complicated than just walking away.

She now pictured the house, standing a half storey above street level, the low mottled wall at the front of it holding in the shrubbery by means of six or seven layers of Cambridge brick. Too many rooms now for whichever parent had kept it after the divorce. She reckoned she’d know which it was just by observing it from the pavement outside. Even in the dark. Her father would change as little as possible, adhering to the stitch-in-time theory, constantly tinkering but never renewing. Her mother, on the other hand, never settled with anything for long.

Jane crossed at the traffic lights, passing the Folk Museum and Kettle’s Yard, then following the road as it sloped up Castle Street and next into the narrower curve of St Peter’s Street. Ten years ago this could have been her attempting a post-curfew sneak back from a nightclub. She turned the corner from St Peter’s Street into Pound Hill, the area still suffering the same identity crisis as it had then. A patchy approach to development here had resulted in an uneasy standoff between functional seventies cubes, a few grander houses, and buildings like the Castle End Mission which remained as testament to a bad-old-days version of the same city.

It was turning this corner that made her heart first start to thump. Again she assured herself it would look the same. Her strides suddenly quickened. From arriving back at the periphery of Cambridge, and through all the hours since, she’d been looking out specially for things that hadn’t changed. She didn’t know why she’d done that: she’d moved on, so surely everything else would have done so, too.

Just a few yards ahead of her now, she picked out the familiar gambrel roofline of one of the neighbouring properties silhouetted against the blue-black sky. Her gaze shifted further along but, instead of seeing her old home peering over next door’s hedging, she saw just a mass of shrubbery. Her parents’ small front garden was dwarfed by it, and the only part of their house still visible from this angle was one upstairs window and a small section of shallow roof above it.

A branch of a tree extended out at head height and, although she knew the location of the steps to the front door, the gap between the surrounding foliage revealed only blackness. She retreated to the other side of the road to wait for the clearer light of dawn.

‘Jane?’

She’d had enough of just staring at the house and thinking, by then. She remained in the same spot but was getting restless now.

‘Jane.’

He was off to her left, approaching the house from the opposite direction to the one she had come. She let him shout her name one more time before turning.

‘What do you want?’

Her father’s face was perpetually red, as though he’d been holding his breath and forcing the blood into his head. He was now slightly out of breath and a deeper shade than usual.

‘To see you, obviously. We didn’t know where to find you.’

Wasn’t that the whole point?
‘I told the police I didn’t want to see anyone.’

‘Campbell spotted you sitting out here and he phoned me.’

That bloody curtain-twitcher had been dobbing her in it since childhood. She wondered how she’d missed having the feeling of the old boy’s eyes on the back of her neck. Maybe that’s what happened when you spent too long looking in the wrong direction.

‘So you don’t live there now? I would have thought you’d have paid through the nose to hang on to it.’