The Missing Hours (15 page)

Beck is watching me, waiting.

‘Why don’t you come on through?’

He follows me, easy as a sheepdog. Waits as I unlock the interview room, turn on the lights. I watch him from the corner of my eye, looking for anything that will give me some kind of clue. Is he anxious? Fearful? But then I’d say this is a man who doesn’t know fear, who has never known worry. He looks like a soldier about to undergo interrogation. I guess in a way he is.

He slides into the hard plastic chair. Folds his hands in front of him at the table. Waits.

‘So.’ I take the seat opposite him, feel his eyes resting heavily on me. ‘Thanks for coming in. We’ve been looking for you for a while.’

Beck nods, the slightest movement of the head.

‘Okay,’ I say. I take a breath. Waiting for it all to go wrong. ‘Beck, I’m placing you under arrest on suspicion of murder.’

After Vikki had called me, I sat at my desk, phone still in my hand, thinking. Beck Chambers was downstairs. Beck Chambers had had opportunity; he was the last person Dominic had headed out to see. He was on CCTV, his hands on our murder victim. He was downstairs.

I thought for a moment, then pushed my chair back, walked with quick strides into the SIO’s office.

‘Boss,’ I said, pulling him away from an engrossing e-mail, ‘we’ve got Beck Chambers. He’s downstairs.’

‘Excellent. Good work.’ A pat on the back I’d done bugger all to earn. ‘Right, get him arrested.’

‘Sir?’

‘He’s our prime suspect. He’s got form, nasty little temper to go with it. Arrest him on suspicion, let’s get this all on record.’

It’s a big deal, especially for a sergeant of eighty-three days, to make the arrest of the prime suspect in a high-profile murder case, and my stomach flipped.

‘Go on then, Sergeant,’ said the SIO with a grin. ‘Sort out the interview plan. Get it all on video. You lead.’

I’m waiting for Beck to blow. It seems that it is inevitable. But he just sits there, looking down at his hands, his breath coming in short, sharp bursts. Then he simply nods.

‘Okay.’

I watch him, unsteady. ‘Okay.’

Aware of the video running, I pull myself up straighter. ‘I need to make sure that you are aware of your rights. Do you want a solicitor?’

Beck looks at me, gives me a smile that is not a smile. ‘I don’t have a solicitor any more, remember?’

It feels like someone has squeezed a wet sponge on the back of my neck, and now all I can see is Dominic Newell, dead on the side of the road.

‘Well.’ I feel like I’m floundering. ‘Do you—’

‘No.’ His voice is as flat as his expression, so calm, and I have the sense of sitting right in the eye of the storm. ‘I don’t want a solicitor.’

I look at him, keep my own voice steady. ‘You had a drink today, Beck?’

He gives a little laugh. ‘Impressively, no.’

‘When did you last have a drink?’

‘It’s been thirty-four hours.’

‘Long time.’

‘When you just found out your friend was murdered, yeah, it’s a really long time.’

‘You’re ex-military, right?’

He nods slowly, gaze wary now. ‘Yes. Why?’

I shrug. ‘I served for a couple of years. Army. Fusiliers. Was out in Iraq for Op Telic.’

The words feel strange as they escape me. You never talk about it. You won’t let me in. How many relationships have ended with that particular swan song? And here I am confiding in this towering hulk of a murder suspect.

He looks at me differently now, a visitor from a foreign land suddenly realising that we have the same native tongue.

‘I know some boys who were out there for that. Tough times.’

It is hot in here now, like sitting inside a furnace. The sound of tread on gravel. The pock, pock, pock of gunfire.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘You were in Musa Qala?’

He fixes me with a look, and his expression answers any question I may have. See, the truth is, we never really leave there. Not really. The heat, the death, the fear. Once you have tasted them, they never go away, worming themselves into your life like they are a part of your DNA.

‘So, why’d you come out?’ he asks.

I’m pretty sure this wasn’t a part of my interview plan.

I bite my lip. Consider not answering. But I tell myself that I am getting the suspect to open up, that by offering a little something of myself, I am encouraging him to do the same. I tell myself that. ‘Love.’ I grin. ‘You know how it is.’

He raises an eyebrow, nods. Points at my left hand. ‘You’re not married.’

I look down too, like this is a surprise to me. Evie. That was her name. We had been together for seven years by the time I came home for good. It was time, we had agreed. We were going to settle down. Be together. Together together, not army together, when you see one another every six months if you’re lucky. I would come home. It was the right thing to do.

I came home.

Three months later, she left me.

Turns out I was a far more attractive prospect half a world away, with the imminent threat of death hanging over me.

I shrug. ‘Ah well. Life’s a bitch.’

‘Ain’t that the truth.’

‘You’ve had some troubles yourself.’

Beck nods. ‘You mean I’ve brought some trouble on myself. Yes. Yes, I have.’

‘I get it,’ I say. ‘Sometimes you just need to forget.’

‘Trouble is,’ says Beck, ‘you get to a place where you’ve spent so much time trying to forget who you are that who you are becomes a completely different person.’

‘You had any help with that? Rehab, anything like that?’

He looks at me, flat. ‘Dominic. Dominic was my help.’

‘I hear he’s got a thing for that. Helping, I mean.’

He studies me. ‘Fae told you?’

‘About her history, you mean?’ I ask. ‘Bronwyn told me. Fae filled in the blanks.’

‘Yeah,’ says Beck. ‘Dom, he cared. Probably more than he should. Most of us didn’t deserve him to care that much.’

‘Well,’ I say, ‘thirty-four hours. That’s got to count for something, right?’

He doesn’t answer, just looks down at his hands. Then, ‘You know how many people have tried to put me right? How many people have given a shit when they frankly had no need to? And still I fall. And now this …’ He looks up at me. ‘You want to know where I was when Dom died.’ It is a statement, not a question.

‘Yes.’

He hefts his shoulders, deltoids heaving like a wave on to sand. ‘I was out and about.’

‘Where?’

He shrugs again. ‘Nowhere special.’ He gives me that look. ‘And I was alone.’

It seems to me a challenge, that he is tumbling towards his upturned sword, daring me to stop him. I glance at my notes, try to find my feet, take back the reins.

‘Look,’ he says, leaning closer. ‘Dom was a good man. He helped me. He cared. I let him down. But I didn’t kill him.’

Tumbling back

DC Leah Mackay: Thursday, 1.53 a.m.

I PUSH OPEN
my children’s bedroom door, softly, softly, listening for the scrape where it hits the carpet, the soft squeal as the hinges whisper a protest. The room is a murky pale darkness, a low orange light bubbling from the unicorn night light. The rain crackles against the bedroom window, a questionable day tumbling into a full-blown storm, the wind clambering up, so that in the distance the garden gate slaps against its post, again and again and again. I stand in the doorway, listening to my babies’ breathing, picking it out from in amongst the sounds of the rain, synchronised so that it sounds like distant singing; the soft whistle of Georgia’s snores.

I breathe out.

It is almost 2 a.m. I no longer remember which day. I returned to the office far, far later than I should have done, a guilty husband returning from a late-night tryst, thinking that if anyone came too close, they would smell the Cole household on me, polish and firewood. I crept in, my shoulders tucked, as though that way I could ward off attack, and prayed. Don’t ask me where I’ve been. Don’t ask me where I’ve been.

I saw the DI, phone at his ear, looking up at me, a frown sitting on him so heavily that his entire face seemed to sink from it. Thought it was inevitable that he would pull me in, give me the bollocking I so richly deserved. But he is a man, and once he got over the initial disgust at my late entry, his attention returned to his call and he forgot about me.

I sat at my desk, played the good little girl.

I was at my desk for an hour, maybe more, before it dawned on me that Finn was missing.

‘Where’s …?’

Oliver grinned. ‘He’s in interview. Caught himself a big fish.’ Gave me a wink that made me want to punch his lights out. ‘Think your brother is under the impression that he’s going to solve this case all on his own.’

I sat at my desk, did what I was supposed to be doing. Watched the clock ticking by. Ten. Ten thirty. Eleven.

Tess cups her moon-faced tiger in her rounded fingers, has it pressed up against her cheek so that they are nose to nose. She faces the wall, her knees drawn up to her chest, and I think that this is what she must have looked like in my womb. Without the tiger, of course. I pull her duvet up just a little bit higher, even though the room is warm enough and there really is no need. I hear her breathing change, responding to my touch.

Georgia sleeps in the adjacent bed, her arms flung wide, head tilted back, mouth open. I allow myself to rest my fingers gently on her cheek, pulling her duvet down a little lower. She doesn’t like to get too warm, will sleep better if it is cool, if she is uncovered.

I should sleep too. The tiredness buffets me, so that it seems the ground is moving beneath my feet. I need to go to bed, lie down before I fall down. But instead I stand there listening to the waves of my children’s breathing.

Finn came back into the office a little after midnight. The conquering hero. He headed straight for me, and I moved the mouse quickly, closing down the search screen. Although in truth it is unlikely that the words ‘devil’s breath’ would have meant anything to him. But I closed it anyway, not stopping to question why, why I couldn’t tell him, why it mattered so much to me to keep my thoughts a secret.

I rest a kiss on Georgia’s head, feel the fragrant wisps of her hair brush my cheek.

I think of Selena, kissing her own girls goodnight. Of the fact that she is home, and that, whatever filled in those missing hours, at the end of them is a mother kissing her children. And so everything is well. Right?

‘Hey.’ Finn’s smile was wide. ‘What you doing?’

‘Nothing.’ The word came too fast, a child with her hand in a cookie jar.

Finn looked at me, eyebrow raised, and suddenly I expected him to turn, run to Mum, Leah’s being naughty, Mummy.

‘So,’ I said, deflecting wildly, ‘how’s Beck?’

He sank to my desk, shrugged. ‘Has no alibi. Says he didn’t do it.’

‘And did he?’ I asked. ‘Do it?’

My brother stared at his feet, a long way away in his mind. ‘I don’t know, Lee. I really don’t know.’

We sat like that for a moment, two children in the tree in the back yard, just shooting the breeze.

‘Hey,’ said Finn, ‘why are you still here?’ He looked up at the clock, shook his head. ‘Go home, Lee. Give my nieces a kiss from me. See your husband.’

I look at my girls.

It is so precarious, this life of ours. You can be pushing your child on a swing one minute, and be gone the next. It can all change, just like that.

And then I think of that moment, the moment I do not allow myself to think about.

The lights are off in our bedroom. I pick my way through the heaped piles of laundry, the stacked-up toys that just need a quick sort-through, listening for Alex’s breathing. I think he must already be asleep. Think? Or hope?

I will not think about it.

I cannot think about it.

Because it is like a portal, an opening in space and time, and through it creeps the darkness. So I will not think about the cold of the kitchen floor, the bottle of wine cradled in my fingers.

I climb into bed, pulling the covers up tight.

‘Are we okay?’ Alex’s voice is soft, but still it makes me jump.

I turn, my eyes picking out his shape in the dark, and I wonder how he knew. Whether he could hear my thoughts, if they were as loud outside my head as they are in. ‘What?’ I am playing for time. I know exactly what my husband is asking me.

He goes quiet for a moment and I think it is over, but then he sighs softly. ‘Will you ever forgive me?’

I don’t want to talk about this. I don’t want to think about it. Because if I do, then I will return there, to that kitchen floor, my hands shaking so that the bottle clinks against the ice-cold tiles, my world in pieces around me.

‘It was a long time ago, Alex.’

I will him to stop. To just let me be. Even though that is cowardice, I am running.

‘I know. But it just feels … I don’t know, since the girls … I mean, we’re so lucky, we really are, but it’s just … It feels like we’ve … we don’t get a chance to be us any more, just us. And it seems, you seem to be distant, and I know, I mean, it’s not like I blame you. But I just keep wondering if we’re okay.’

I close my eyes. Breathe in. Try to think about my children or a beach or a sunset. But it is too late. I am already there.

Standing at the kitchen counter. Stirring a pot. What was it? Pasta? I don’t remember. I just remember the movement. Around and around and around. Hearing the car on the drive. The footsteps. Thinking that they were slower than normal. That he was probably texting, messing about with his phone. Smiling at the thought. God, I remember the smile, and how absurd it felt afterwards. Turning to him as he walked through the door, that same fucking smile plastered across my face. I remember how it froze. His expression one of horror, grief. But most of all guilt.

He never needed to say it. It was all there. Writ large across his face.

But of course, he did say it.

It was a mistake. It was only one time. It was at the works do last night. I didn’t mean to do it. It just happened. I’m so sorry.

I remember the words flying at me like gnats, bouncing off me, so that all I was left with was a picture, my husband fucking some bit-of-fluff secretary.