The Missing Marriage (30 page)

‘Who was Bryan's alibi?'

Jim finished shrugging his jacket on, turning to glance briefly at his reflection in the glass doors of the bookcase. ‘Mary Faust. You knew that already. Can I go now?'

He walked past Laviolette to the office door, holding it open. ‘Are you staying or going?'

Laviolette stayed where he was, thinking.

‘I'm meant to be somewhere – thirty seconds. They're fitting me with a pacemaker next month. I don't run any more.'

‘Alison Marsh gave us a positive ID on the body at the mortuary. She was sure anyway, but the tattoo placed it beyond a doubt. I drove her there myself. DC Wade acted as witness. Should I contact Laura Deane or . . .?'

Jim held onto his office door. ‘Nobody comes out of something like this completely clean. Not even in private. Why does Jamie Deane's innocence matter so much to you now? Twenty years ago the only thing you asked for was the mattress to be taken away.' He let go of the door and stepped up to Laviolette as it clicked quietly shut. ‘You didn't care then. That boy was barely breathing when you finished with him. You could have been a very different man, Laviolette.'

‘Maybe, but I like myself the way I am.'

‘You do?' Jim said, genuinely surprised.

Since his death, Mary had been prescribing herself Erwin's morphine. She'd also taken to carrying the tablets around with her whenever she left the house because these days anything and everything had the potential to terrify her while catastrophe seemed so inevitable and imminent it often left her breathless. Carrying the morphine around with her made her less afraid, and gave her back the dignity robbed her by fear. As soon as she shut the gate to number nineteen Parkview, she tapped her pocket to check for the now familiar rattle before – reassured – embarking on whatever journey she needed to embark on in pursuit of life's necessities despite life itself having ceased to feel necessary.

People she met – young and not so young – seemed to be under the impression that because she was old, her loss could be counted as bearable. It wasn't. Life had become unbearable, and the one person she felt like telling was Erwin, who was no longer there – and that, she realised, was one of the defining cruelties of grief: the cause of it was also the only cure for it.

She stood in the kitchenette, unaware of the time, listening to the quiet house. Houses were never silent – she could hear an isolated drop falling from a tap in the bathroom, the muffled clank of the old fashioned toilet cistern and the click of the central heating installed in the early nineties – but number nineteen Parkview had definitely become quiet as she moved, uncertain, through it leaving barely any trace. She'd found that if she waited until midnight before going to bed, she could sleep through until at least four – maybe five. She ate breakfast in the kitchenette while it was still dark, the blinds down and the orange light humming overhead. After that she sat in one of the rocking chairs in the lounge, waiting for dawn. Sometime after dawn the family in the house next door – number twenty-one – stirred; the man first if he was on the early shift at the Nissan factory; heavy footed. Then came the sound of the child – running feet, slamming doors . . . TV. The walls were thin and she heard most things that went on in the house next door, reassured by the rhythms and noises of their family life.

Once their TV went on, Mary put on hers, watching it without really understanding any of it, unsure how much longer she could carry on like this.

The first few weeks after the funeral, Don and Doreen had been good to her – having her round to lunch most days. If Don was playing golf, she'd pop next door and watch the Jerry Springer show with Doreen. Don drove her to the supermarket Friday mornings, and took her up to the club for a white wine and soda Friday nights, but she didn't like to lean too heavily on people – it wasn't how she'd been brought up.

It was a grey day today and with the kitchenette light on she was able to see – clearly – her reflection in the window as she pushed a strip of tablets into the pocket of the powder blue Mac she'd bought with Anna in Newcastle.

Outside, Don was getting into his car with his golf caddy, wearing a pair of plaid trousers that would have looked ridiculous on a more competitive man, but Don was so ready to laugh at himself that others rarely had to.

Mary could tell from the way he greeted her that he knew where she was going, which was why – without any preliminaries – Don was able to say to her now, ‘Mary – he's gone. I was about to come and tell you.'

Mary stared at him as he watched her, uncertain. ‘Bobby – he's gone.'

‘Bobby?' she said. It was a long time since she'd heard Don say his name. ‘Where?'

‘Somewhere he can get the right sort of care. Social services have been trying to contact Bryan – Laura told us.' Don hesitated, unsure what else there was to say. An apology – expression of sympathy – didn't seem appropriate. ‘Are you alright?'

Mary nodded dumbly as, after another moment's hesitation, Don got into his car.

She watched the car disappear then went back indoors, her hand shaking as she tried fitting the key in the lock. Shutting the front door behind her, she went into the kitchenette, and stood there in her Mac still, in darkness, for she didn't know how long.

She was at a loss.

Eventually, without being conscious of having come to any sort of decision, she turned on the light and filled her pockets with the remainder of the dwindling morphine supplies – as well as everything else Erwin had been prescribed that was still on the bench. Crouching with difficulty, she got a freezer bag out of the box under the sink and filled it with pills, carefully sealing it.

She caught sight of herself again, briefly – in the reflection in the window. So this is what it looks like, she thought – after almost half a century of marriage, this is what the end looks like.

She left the house for a second time.

Don's car was still gone.

She walked to Armstrong Crescent at around the same time as usual, letting herself in. She felt, instinctively, the curtains twitching in the bungalow next door, but Mary had the measure of the Mrs Harrises of this world; the gossip mongers and fire starters who, unsatisfied with their own lives and unsure how to go about getting the ones they felt entitled to, destroyed the lives of others instead.

She went inside, automatically calling out, ‘Bobby?'

It wasn't that she doubted Don; she just couldn't believe that Bobby had really gone, but as she walked through rooms as empty as those at number nineteen Parkview, she knew it was true.

They'd taken most of his clothes from the wardrobe and chest of drawers, but not all of them. Looking about her it was difficult to see what else they might have taken – he didn't have much. She sat down, exhausted, on the side of the bed, which had been left unmade, thinking about the day Roger Laviolette died.

Her mind turned unconsciously to that day because it was the last time Bobby had needed her; really needed her. She'd been his first thought that day – after he was released from Berwick Street station.

He hadn't turned to anybody else.

She'd been downstairs in the kitchenette at Parkview. Anna was upstairs in the bath, upset still, and when she'd looked through the window there was Bobby standing in the garden near the rhubarb, his face the wrong colour and loose looking.

She went out to him.

Roger Laviolette was dead and Bobby had come to her.

At first she thought it was a confession, but then he told her – pulling her after him into their wash house – that he'd just come from Berwick Street station; that a neighbour had seen one of his boys enter Roger Laviolette's house.

‘Which one?'

‘They've got Jamie,' he said, helplessly, turning to pull on her arms in the twilight.

‘Who have?'

‘Police.'

‘It was Jamie who did it?'

He shook his head. ‘It wasn't Jamie – no.'

‘It couldn't have been Bryan – the neighbour must of got it wrong.'

He looked at her then, and seeing her face started to cry.

She'd been too shocked to react as Bobby stood in the wash house sobbing and clinging to her.

‘No,' she said spontaneously. ‘He couldn't of –'

‘He did.'

‘No.' Again.

‘I've got to hand one of them over. I've got to give one of them up.'

He'd pulled away from her then. It was getting darker by the minute, but she could make out his face – and eyes.

‘But Bryan did it, Bobby. It was Bryan.'

‘I can't give them Bryan, Mary. Not Bryan. She'd never forgive me.'

‘Rachel's dead, Bobby.'

‘I'm not giving them Bryan.' He took hold of her again then, pulling her close – and she let him, knowing she'd do anything he asked her to.

‘Where is Bryan?'

‘Home.'

‘You've seen him?'

Bobby looked away. ‘Tell them he spent the afternoon here – with you and Anna. Tell them that.'

He'd come to her because he knew she would; he'd come to her because he couldn't help knowing – even after Rachel; even after Erwin – what he'd once been to her and still was. He'd been powerless that night Rachel walked into the dance hall. He'd known what it had done to Mary and he'd have done anything to lessen the hurting, but there was nothing he could do. Where Rachel was concerned, he was powerless. When Rachel walked into the dance hall that night he remembered her in her pinafore at the foot of the dunes, feeding his pit pony. He knew he'd been waiting for her ever since.

And Mary knew exactly what that felt like.

An hour later when Jamie came banging into the bungalow on Armstrong Crescent looking for his father – shouting out his name and thumping so hard on the walls that the barometer in the lounge jumped off its hook and fell to the floor – he found Mary asleep on the bed in her powder blue Mac still, halfway through Erwin's prescription drugs. There was a thin line of saliva curling out of the left hand side of her open mouth, and her left shoe had fallen to the floor, revealing a foot that had been misshapen in youth by dancing in badly fitting shoes.

Jamie stared down at her, worried, but not upset – trying to work out what she meant. He didn't know what to think – or who she was.

By the time it occurred to him to check her breathing, Inspector Laviolette was pulling up outside the bungalow.

Laviolette saw Mrs Harris positioned in her usual spot, and waved.

The front door was already open and he pushed it back, walking quickly, silently through the bungalow until he came to Bobby's bedroom at the back.

‘Jamie,' he exhaled, taking in Mary Faust on the bed, and Jamie Deane lying beside her.

Jamie spun round, terrified – recognising Laviolette properly for the first time – and got clumsily to his feet, momentarily losing his balance. His hand went out to Mary's left leg – which had been balanced precariously on the edge of the bed – for support.

The leg slipped over the edge and the rest of Mary followed until she was lying face down on the carpet, her arms twisted uncomfortably under her.

‘It wasn't me!' Jamie shouted, backing towards the wall.

‘I know – I know that now.' Laviolette crouched instinctively – as he would have done with a frightened child – trying to make himself less immense. It wasn't until he'd said it that he realised he wasn't talking about Mary – lying face down on the floor between them both.

Jamie, backed up against the wall, stared down at the Inspector, his eyes wide.

He was taller – bigger altogether – than Laviolette, but he'd retained childhood's perspective on his childhood tormentor.

‘I didn't do it –'

‘I know that, Jamie, and I'm sorry – I'm so very sorry.'

Jamie kept glancing from the Inspector to Mary Faust, concerned – not about Mary's state, but about the implications of that state on him. He didn't know what Laviolette was doing here in the bungalow on Armstrong Crescent after all these years, and he didn't know whether to believe him – or not.

Laviolette shuffled, crouching, over to Mary – worried that Jamie would run.

‘She's still alive,' he said, checking her pulse. He glanced up at Jamie. ‘How long have you been here for?'

‘I didn't do it,' he protested.

‘Of course you didn't,' Laviolette tried to calm him, ‘I'm just trying to ascertain how long she's been lying here for. We need to phone for an ambulance. Either you can do that – or I can do it.'

Jamie tried to think about this, but he was too confused still, and becoming more irate by the second.

‘Jamie we need to do this now.'

Laviolette remained crouched on the floor, his left hand on Mary's neck.

‘Who is she?'

‘A friend of your father's.'

Jamie glanced at Mary – Laviolette's response didn't explain much. ‘You phone for the ambulance.'

He watched as Laviolette made the phone call, his movements slow and deliberate as he took the phone out of his pocket and dialled, his eyes never leaving Jamie's face.

‘Where's your dad?'

Laviolette moved slowly, awkwardly, to a standing pos ition holding onto the wardrobe doors, the hangers clanging emptily on the shuddering rail.

‘He's gone,' Jamie said blankly, staring into the virtually empty wardrobe. Then again, in disbelief – looking to Laviolette for an explanation – ‘He's gone.'

‘Social services,' Laviolette said, thinking of the phone calls he'd made.

‘Why?'

‘He wasn't well, Jamie. He needs round the clock care.'

‘You sorted it up – with social services?'

‘It needed doing, and nobody else –'

‘Why?'

‘Because I could.'