The Start of Everything (37 page)

The fire engine comes first, followed by the ambulance. The flashing lights on their tops add a flickering of cinematic unreality. I corral the residents of the attached houses to mill by the monument at the end of the street. They hug themselves against the cold. A paramedic stands on a bench, enumerating gas exposure symptoms: queasiness, dizziness, headache. A similar flu is going around; several people raise their hands and step forward for priority examination.

Two firemen, huge in their coats and with snoutish masks, force in George’s door. No explosion, thank God. Windows are unlocked and raised from the inside.

Shouts. A plus-shape fills the doorway: a fireman up and down, and a body in his arms lying across. The hem of a purple skirt hangs off the legs.

The paramedics abandon the neighbours and scrum around her. No compressions are attempted. I stretch to see; there’s a head wound. Black curly hair and black matted blood. They discuss her injuries and the scene inside. I’m not immediately needed; the house is still unsafe. I peel off to vomit in the brook.

On the other side of the water, a bench faces the cars circling the roundabout at Fen Causeway. It’s missing one long seat slat. Keene’s already there, elbows on knees, head in hands. Headlamp beams travel over him as cars enter the roundabout.

“Where the hell have you been?” I say.

He looks up. “Nice,” he says.

“No, really, have you been here this whole time?”

“Once the cavalry showed up, there wasn’t much left for me to do.” No, just everything left for
me
to do.

I sit next to him. “What’re you over here for? The view?” I shield
my eyes as the glare from a turning car sweeps across us. I blink fast, but tears make it through and fall down my face.
Shit
. I rub my cheeks.

He sits up. “Are
you
all right?”

“They found a body.” I can’t look at him. “I recognised her purple skirt. It was George’s girlfriend. I talked to her today. She’s dead.”

His breath snags.

“Her head was banged up. Blunt trauma. Massive blood loss. If I’d checked on her after interviewing Dru …”

“You had no reason to. You’d solved it.”

“I’d solved Grace Rhys. What about Mathilde Oliver? What about this woman? Her name was Juliet. Jesus Christ. It takes time to bleed out. Maybe I could have been here before she …”

“You’re sure?” His voice is eager. “She died this afternoon?”

“No, Keene, no one’s sure. But they’re guessing from the blood loss in an upstairs bathroom and how far she got on the stairs. She must have lost track of which floor she was on; she kept going all the way to the basement.…” My voice cracks.

“But they think she was dead before we got here? That’s what they think?”

“Why do you want me to say it again? Yes, she likely died hours ago. And I did nothing to stop it. Are you happy now?” I mean it sarcastically, but the question is bizarrely apropos. He’s smiling. “What are you laughing at?” I say.

“I’m not …” But he is. It turns into a cough. “I don’t know.”

“Nothing about this is funny.”

“Shit, Chloe, nothing’s funny. Fucking nothing. I know that.” Another headlamp streak prowls across his body. He doesn’t move. “I knew she was there,” he says.

“What?”

“I saw part of her through the window. I saw her, and didn’t try to get her out.”

“Jesus, Keene.” On the stairs, when he hesitated.
He saw her
.

“I know.”

“What’s wrong with you?”

“I know. I know.”

“You should have done something.”

“I know what I should have done! I should have broken in. I should have taken a brick to the window, and got in, and pulled her out.”

He could be sacked. He could be sued. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I don’t know! I haven’t been the same since coming back. I can’t …” He doesn’t finish.

“You can’t what?”

“I didn’t have a gas mask. I didn’t want to suck that poison into my lungs. I had to make a call: her or me. I chose me.”

“No one’s asking you to be a hero all by yourself. I was there, Keene. I was on the other side of the stairs. You should have said something. You should have—”

“You don’t get it, Chloe. I froze. I’ve lost my nerve. I—” He pushes out a long breath. “It took me by surprise the first time it happened. I drop out. I drop away when things get … I just see that knife coming at me.”

“You’re scared?”

He blinks, as if seeing the banality of it for the first time.

“I … yes. I was scared. A year ago I would have gone in. No hesitation. It’s easy to be brave when you don’t really know what it feels like, what it feels like
in your head
, to have a knife go in. I was open. I thought I was dead. Jesus Christ. I’ll never go near that feeling again. I can’t. I … I just can’t.”

He bends forward. I put my hand on his back.

He pants. “She was already dead. I didn’t kill her. I didn’t kill her.” His shoulders bounce. He’s laughing again, from relief. Maybe not laughing. Maybe that other thing, that thing we both hate to do.

“You got the neighbours out first. A spark could have caused an explosion. You made the right decision,” I assure him.

“It wasn’t a decision. A decision is a choice between two things you could do. I couldn’t do it.”

“Don’t say that. You made the right decision.” I put force on each word and raise my eyebrows at the end. He needs to stop saying these things out loud. Say them to a therapist, a priest, in bed … just not to a fellow officer.

He doesn’t take my hint. “You know that accident, with my car?
When he came at me, I … I just, I let go. It’s like I wasn’t there anymore, and my car … it barrelled off the road. It wasn’t my hand. I kept saying that, remember? ‘It wasn’t my hand.’ And everyone understood that that meant it wasn’t my fault, it was that man’s, in the other car. He came at me, it’s true. But then
I
went off the road.… He didn’t push me there. I just, I stopped driving and the car rammed into the fence. It wasn’t my hand. It wasn’t him. It was my head. Chloe, I’m not right in the head anymore.” He flips his hands palms up, like he’s giving this to me, making a present out of more honesty than I want. “I was a fucking magician: I kept everyone, including me, looking at my hand so no one would look anywhere else. Couldn’t hide it from you, though. You’re right. I’m not fit to be back on the job.”

“If you need a break, take it,” I say. “You were right, about George.” And if I’d followed up on that thread, Juliet might still be alive.

“She’s dead; he’s gone.” He shrugs. “Being right’s not so grand.”

“We’ll call Bristol. He may have headed home. We’ll get him. I didn’t see it, Morris. You did. You were right.” This is selfish, all selfish on my end. I trust him. I depend on him. I want to keep doing that. I want what I said to Cole to not be true.
Don’t leave me, not like this
.

He shakes his head, and shivers down his whole body. “Lucky I wasn’t with you when you interviewed Dru. It could have hurt the case if I’d been more involved and then I go back on medical leave.”

Now it’s my turn to laugh inappropriately. “Lucky, yeah,” I joke. I don’t elaborate.

We walk back to my car. I have to move a pile of papers from the passenger seat.

“I’m sorry you’ve been stuck writing up the case notes,” he says.

“I don’t mind.”

“You do mind.”

I crack a smile. “You’re right. See? Right again.”

He smiles, too. But he repeats: “I have to take a break.”

“What will you …”

He waves his hand, as if dispelling secondhand smoke. He clicks the seatbelt in, first time. He shivers.

“Where’s your coat?” I ask, finally noticing.

“I left it in Richard’s car.”

I crank up the heat. He’ll get his own car back from the garage
soon. It could all go back to normal, if he’d just play along. Well, normal without his hand. Last-week normal, not last-year normal. Last-year normal is never coming back.

We wait our turn to enter the roundabout. Ahead of us, the ambulance moves slowly, no sirens, no flashers. No rush with a dead body. I suck in my breath as it passes. He asks if I’m all right.

“I’m fine,” I say.

“Me, too.” It’s like a joke now. “We’re fine.”

CHAPTER 33

GEORGE HART-FRASER

I
drove to Heathrow. I used my credit card. No point covering my steps; it was a race now, not hide-and-seek.

I knew some Spanish. I’d been there before, for the telescope. It’s a beautiful country.

In Chile, the Milky Way is bright enough to read by. Even at night, a shadow hangs off me.

I slept on the beach until a widow invited me to her house. We make a pretence of me renting her spare room, though I don’t sleep in it and don’t pay for it. Her adult son gets me work, as a builder.

I’m fitting pipes, working alone.

“Esteban! Esteban Hart-Fraser!” They kick at the door. They probably have guns. South American police carry guns, don’t they?

Gravity is a property of mass. All mass has gravity, with a pull matching its amount. My body has gravity, but not enough to affect
anything. The Earth has gravity enough to keep us on it, and to keep the moon in orbit. Stars have gravity enough to hold planets spinning round them. Galaxies have gravity. They have a lot of gravity.

Gravity pulls on light, too. Very large objects pull on the light around them and distort our view of objects near that view path. Galaxies distort light enough to act as a natural magnifier, and even to give us a peek of objects behind them. The distortion drags hidden images out from behind and projects them as if beside.

There is no truly hidden place.

I’m not ashamed. The universe itself started with an explosion. This is just the beginning.

I twist two pipes apart. Gas stinks up the air.

“Stephen Hart-Fraser! You must come out now!”

Like the other men I work with, I’ve taken up smoking. I slide the lighter out of my jeans pocket.

Ages from now, from some spectacular distance, someone looking at just this spot on our long-dead planet would see a brief, dazzling flash.

CHAPTER 34

CHLOE FROHMANN

K
eene’s chill turned into walking pneumonia, which would have allowed him to take further medical leave without confessing his post-traumatic stress. I certainly didn’t say anything about it. But he put it out there, asked for counselling, and has stepped away from the job for an undetermined time. He’s been offered alternative work on the force—meaning desk jobs—but has not yet signed on for one.

There have been no overt repercussions for me tattling to Cole about Keene’s state of mind. You’d think his voluntary leave would prove me justified, but some people blame me for driving him out. I look out for subtle punishments.

The family with the dark-haired runaway daughter—Ashley Abington—were convinced that the hammer, shirt, and hair applied to her and made lots of noise about it. For a while, that evidence got associated with her case. Then she turned up, with the actual teenage boy she’d met online, a real Romeo and Juliet, not the predator they’d
assumed. That put the Brookside hammer and shirt in limbo and in storage, unattached to any case. The parents were thrilled to have her back unhurt and, I quote, “not pregnant.”