Fragile Cord (24 page)

Coupland ignored them and shouted up to
the lone figure in the window: ‘I’m coming in Angus, now you can
either open the door or I’ll get some ham fisted copper keen to
clock off his shift to knock it down, it’s up to you!’

Seconds ticked by as Angus digested the
information.

Despite the adjacent properties being
spaced widely apart, the commotion had alerted most of the
neighbouring homes to Angus’s distress. The cul-de-sac was too
upmarket to twitch curtains; instead the man of each house had been
dispatched outdoors to glean what they could. And so, with wax
jackets thrown hastily over ironed pyjamas they began to seep
noiselessly out of their homes and huddle in a small group at a
safe enough distance from the exploding scene. Chatting nervously
amongst themselves they half listened to each other as they craned
their necks to watch their neighbour rail against the world.

One clean-cut city type asked Coupland
if he needed any help. Coupland’s mouth twitched. There was a time
when would’ve taken the piss, asked if maybe he could extend his
overdraft for there was little else the nosy bastard was built for.
Wiry glasses and smug, he looked like someone who crunched numbers
for a living.

‘You could maybe arrange for
rent-a-crowd to go back indoors.’ Coupland answered instead. The
man was as good as his word, dispatching embarrassed onlookers back
to their pushy wives, excitement at the troubled house over for one
more night.

At that moment the music blaring from
Angus’s stereo stopped and seconds later the front door opened just
wide enough for Coupland to squeeze through. He caught a glimpse of
Diane and Harry as they looked over helplessly, motioned for them
to leave him to it. As the front door closed behind him Coupland’s
eyes adjusted to the darkness, took in the state of the hallway.
Where previously there had been order, now there was disarray, milk
bottles had been taken in but left on top of the hall table and
turned sour. Dirty footprints criss-crossed the floor tiles like a
mad aunt’s embroidery. Letters and junk mail scattered across the
floor. The sitting room was no better. Each chair contained a
combination of discarded clothing and blankets. A bottle of scotch
stood atop the square coffee table, beside it a brochure from the
local funeral home and a blister pack of paracetomol.

Was this what Coupland had to look
forward to?

Framed photographs clustered every
surface: Tracey, Kyle and Angus in every combination: A younger,
happy Angus with an older couple Coupland took to be his parents;
Angus in his graduation gown; on a climbing expedition; on his
twenty first birthday, surrounded by helium balloons and homemade
banners.

Angus cleared a space for Coupland to
sit on the armchair nearest the fireplace.

‘Didn’t expect you to be making night
calls, Sergeant.’ He said as he swiped a pair of running shoes from
the chair opposite. His words slurred into one another and Coupland
reckoned there were more bottles than the one on the coffee table
lurking about. He turned in his seat so the scotch was out of his
line of vision. ‘I was passing.’ He replied, ‘Thought I’d drop
in.’

Angus had only just lowered himself
into his chair when he jumped back to his feet. ‘Need a drink.’ He
said, then raised a hand as if to halt the protest Coupland had no
intention of giving, adding: ‘Not the alcoholic type.’ before
staggered from the room. He was wired, edgy. His edginess seemed to
permeate Coupland’s skin. The detective looked around the room for
something to focus on.

A framed wedding photo
stood upon the mantelpiece. Taken after the service, the picture
captured the newly married couple before they left for the
reception. Sitting in the back of a white limousine, a beaming
Tracey held out her hand to her new husband.
Dark hair framed pretty eyes, a heavy smattering of freckles
across her nose. A sun worshiper once, before it got added to the
list of contraband pastimes up there with smoking and unprotected
sex. Coupland couldn’t remember the last time he and Lynn had taken
a holiday. In the photo
Angus was gazing
at Tracey’s wedding ring, trying to suppress a grin that suggested
he felt like the cat that got the cream.

It was probably the happiest day of his
life.

No prizes for guessing
which was his worst, Coupland thought, as he turned to face the
young widower as he zig-zagged into the room carrying two mugs of
strong coffee – ‘the sedatives leave me groggy,’ he explained, ‘and
the booze leaves me numb’ – spilling a little of the contents of
the over-full mugs onto the light-coloured carpet as he handed one
to Coupland. Angus didn’t blink.
Not like
I’m going to get a row for the mess,
he
seemed to shrug.

Now wasn’t the time to point out that
coffee would make his edginess worse, that soon enough he’d need
the pills again to calm himself down, swilling them down with drink
to soften the edges while he waited for the drugs to kick in. He
was on a downward spiral that Coupland had seen many times before,
although this time he understood the temptation. He’d be doing
neither of them any favours if he stayed too long. He put his
untouched coffee on the table.

‘Tell me about Tracey’s pregnancy.’ He
began.

This seemed to throw Angus, and he
jerked his head up sharply as though he’d been asked a trick
question. It took several seconds for him to compute Coupland’s
words. He leaned back into his armchair, swung his polished black
shoes onto the coffee table. The soles were barely worn, insteps
yellow and unmarked.

‘We did all the things expectant
parents enjoy doing.’ Angus told him.

‘Making preparations for the baby.
Talking about the future, making plans. Everything was coming
together.’

‘How did Tracey cope?’

‘Tracey? She just got on with it.
Didn’t like to make a fuss. Didn’t even go to all her ante-natal
appointments because she felt fine. Said the doctors were trying to
turn something that came naturally into a science.’

Angus’s head bounced
as he spoke, as though someone was pulling his strings. It gave the
impression that he was emphasising certain words, as though making
a point:
Fuss
and
Science
. Perhaps Tracey didn’t like people looking into her private
business.

‘And Kyle’s birth?’

Angus shrugged. ‘You’re asking the
wrong person aren’t you?…..It was a long labour, I remember that.
She’d wanted a home birth but we learned the baby was breach. She
didn’t want to go into hospital, waited until the very last minute
before she let me take her in.’

Coupland found himself wondering if
Angus had cried in the hospital’s car park after Kyle had been
born, decided that he probably had. He looked at him now, wondered
how it must feel to bear such loss.

‘Tracey used to be a
sound sleeper,’ Angus continued, ‘but after the birth she would
wake up instantly as soon as Kyle cried out and feed him on demand,
which meant she was getting up every two to three hours. She’d sit
with him in a chair in the nursery in semi-darkness, feeding and
burping him until he fell asleep. Sometimes when she put him down
she didn’t return to bed, just stayed in his room by the cot – less
disruptive that way, she said.’ He nodded at the words
she
and
said
. They featured a
lot in Angus’s playback of their life together. Another man who did
as he was told for a quiet life, Coupland pondered. Or a man so
besotted with his wife he overlooked the things she didn’t want him
to see.

‘I saw an easel in the mud room, Angus.
Did Kyle like to paint?’

‘Och, he loved it.’ Angus gushed, ‘His
teachers commented on how good he was from the day he started
school.’

Coupland nodded.

‘Funny, then,’ he said, ‘that there
aren’t any pictures around the place.’

Angus seemed to sober in an instant. He
looked around his surroundings with fresh eyes, surveying the
walls.

‘I suppose you’re right.’

‘Any reason why that is?’ Coupland
prompted.

Angus shook his head from side to side.
He looked confused, or as though he was trying his hardest to
remember something.

‘Tracey liked to keep everything Kyle
drew. Said his pictures were too good to stick on the wall with
Blu-tak, fading over time. Told me she was going to frame
them.’

‘Do you know where she kept them?’

A shrug. Angus raked his fingers
through his hair. ‘No.’

Without warning Coupland got to his
feet. The earlier uneasiness had got the better of him and he knew
why. He wanted a drink. Something to quell his panic at the thought
of losing Lynn. He needed to leave now while he still had power
over his actions. He walked out into the hallway, blinking several
times in succession. Standing in a row beside the front door were
two pairs of trainers – a woman’s and a small child’s. The smaller
shoes were unfastened but he recognised the loosened knot already
tied onto the larger pair. He picked one of the trainers up, found
himself disappointed rather than relieved that he now had the
evidence which proved Tracey’s fatal knot had been tied by her own
hand.

Angus’s voice startled him.

‘Do you need them for the
investigation?’

Coupland nodded.

‘Take them.’ Angus instructed. He
sighed for so long Coupland wondered whether he ever intended to
draw breath again. He looked at Angus’s unshaven face and crumpled
clothes; signs that screamed out trouble lay ahead. He needed to
get out of there, away from the whiff of boozy breath, back to his
own home.

While it still felt like one.

Coupland
flicked through the TV channels, tutting at the number of stations
devoted to selling cheap jewellery and useless cleaning products to
the infirm and the inebriated, for who else would be watching TV at
this time? The rest of the country was asleep, or trying hard to
be. Lynn’s shift wouldn’t end until 7am and the thought of climbing
into an empty bed depressed him. He flicked off the TV, finishing
the dregs of his coffee before heading back into the kitchen for a
top up. Sleep was overrated anyway. His mind flitted to Roddy
Lewisham, then Angus, alone in their picture book homes; of Joe,
homeless, jobless, two different ends of the social spectrum yet
the road they travelled was the same. Three damaged men, connected
to him by a common fate. He shivered. What kind of a friend was he,
what kind of a
person,
if all he could do was offer platitudes?

Tracey Kavanagh’s trainers,
placed carefully in an evidence bag, stood guard in the hallway.
They were plain, white. Expensive but non-descript. A bit like the
life she’d tried to carve out for herself. The coffee machine was
empty bar a tarry mess at the base of the glass jug. He rinsed it
through, refilled the tank with water, taking comfort in the
familiar sounds: the grinding of beans into powder, the pumping of
water and the hissing of steam.

Everyone had a
past. A relationship with friends or family that defined them,
spanning locations and generations intertwining and meshing
together until it was hard to tell where one ended and the other
began. If Coupland closed his eyes he could see his father lurching
into the cramped flat of his childhood, sense the chaos that his
presence brought. He’d been in the Job too, retired on ill-health,
couldn’t cut it as a civilian. He’d never meant Coupland any harm,
probably loved him in his own particular way, but his bouts of
anger, his unpredictability, had left their toll.
We are the sum of our parts,
Coupland spoke into the silence,
whether we own up to it or not.

Yet something about Tracey
Kavanagh baffled him. She was self-sufficient, capable, had no need
for close friends, yet that only explained the here and now – or
rather her life leading up to her suicide. Kyle’s birth had brought
a certain routine into her marriage, a comforting predictability
that most families fell into, and on this topic Angus was well
versed. Yet anything concerning Tracey’s past was a blur.

What had she done with her life
before she’d had Kyle? Before she’d met Angus for that matter?
There was rumour of a brother but no contact details, no other
family to speak of, but did that really equal no history? When
Coupland had accompanied Angus back to the family home he’d scanned
every wall and surface yet found no photographs of Kyle’s maternal
grandparents or uncle. In contrast, photos of Angus’s family could
be found in several rooms.

Neither could Angus recall any
anecdotes that Tracey had told him about where she’d grown up, no
snippets that spoke of a happy childhood or even a crap one for
that matter. For all intents and purposes it was as though the day
he’d met her she’d been plucked from thin air.

Coupland racked his brains to
think what circumstances could make someone appear as if by magic,
entering people’s lives without leaving a ripple – and he could
think of only one. The realisation when it came felt like something
cold inside him had shifted; raised questions he knew he wouldn’t
like the answers to. But first, he’d need to make several calls,
cash in a few favours if he wanted to confirm his suspicions.

Morning wouldn’t come fast
enough.

Alex could
tell it was a fee-paying school by the gleaming spires and sweeping
drive that shouted
money
and lots of it; a convoy of Chelsea tractors
slowed at the turning circle allowing immaculate mothers to drop
off their offspring without having to step one foot out of the car.
A group of girls dressed in identikit navy skirts and white blouses
beneath navy and red blazers hurried towards the entrance. Their
expensive uniforms brought to mind Alex’s own school ensemble: grey
acrylic jumper over a nylon skirt which she either rolled up at the
waistband to make it shorter or wore down around her hips to add
length depending on the fashion at the time.