Rush of Blood (21 page)

‘He’ll make a mistake,’ Marina said. ‘They always do.’

Dave shook his head again. ‘Yeah, in films, but there’s loads who never get caught or else get away with it for years. It’s
always the ones you least expect, as well. Your best mate or the bloke next door who looks like he wouldn’t say boo to a goose.’

Angie gave a theatrical shudder. ‘Makes you think, doesn’t it? I mean, nobody knows anyone really, do they?’

‘I know one thing,’ Ed said. He turned towards Sue. ‘Somebody’s going to get a smacked backside if they don’t go and put a
pot of coffee on.’

‘Your wish is my command,’ Sue said, pushing her chair back.

‘Anybody else?’

‘We should hit the road,’ Dave said.

‘Actually, I wouldn’t mind a coffee,’ Marina said. ‘D’you mind, babe?’

‘Any chance of a cappuccino?’ Angie asked.

‘Sorry, we keep meaning to get one of those bloody machines,’ Sue said.

Ed looked at Sue, like it was all her fault. ‘Shame, I fancy one of those too.’

‘Never mind,’ Angie said. ‘If you can find me a straw, I’ll blow bubbles into it for you.’

‘You hear that, Barry?’ Ed said. ‘Your wife’s offering to give me a blow job.’

Barry’s spoon clattered into his bowl so loudly that Marina jumped a little and let out a gasp. He looked at Ed for a few
seconds, then pushed his chair back hard and stood up fast. Ed flinched as Barry lunged towards him, and managed a weak laugh
when Barry did no more than playfully slap him on the cheek.

‘Bloody hell,’ Ed said, when he had recovered himself. He was laughing a little more now. ‘I thought he was going to deck
me.’

Barry smiled. Said, ‘I still might.’

‘You see?’ Angie said. ‘What did I tell you? Nobody really knows anyone.’

Jeff Gardner called his wife from a motel near Hartsfield-Jackson airport in Atlanta.

‘How was it?’ she asked.

‘She did pretty well, considering,’ Gardner said.

‘That’s good.’

‘I know she’s putting on a show though.’

‘Of course. I can’t imagine …’

Gardner did not tell his wife that
he
could. Because he’d stood sweating on that hot tarmac as the casket had been lifted down from the hold and imagined that
it was his little girl inside.
Their
little girl. He did not tell her that he had a pretty good idea what that hole inside yourself felt like when you lost a
child. That for Patti Lee Wilson it seemed as though she would never be a complete person again, as though every time she
laughed or talked about something ordinary it would be no more than a trick she had taught herself.

‘Wait, shouldn’t you be on the plane already?’

‘She wants me to stay for the funeral tomorrow,’ he said.

‘Oh.’

‘I told her I needed to get back.’

‘Right, we’re supposed to be seeing my mom and dad tonight.’

‘I think I should though,’ he said. ‘Stay, I mean.’

Michelle said nothing.

‘I’ve found a cheap place near the airport and there’s a flight I can get right after the service. Honey …?’

Michelle said OK, and that she understood, but he knew that she really didn’t. He asked about their daughter and his wife’s
voice was colourless when she told him that she was doing fine. She asked, ‘Who’s going to read her the tiger story tonight?’

‘Look, I’m sorry.’

‘You know she’s only happy if you do it.’

‘It’s one night.’

‘I can’t do all the voices the way you can.’

Gardner did not know if there had been a story Patti Lee had liked to read for Amber-Marie, if she had done voices. But there
would have been rituals and shared moments, silly things that the woman would certainly be thinking about the following day
when she finally said goodbye.

‘I need to be there,’ he said.

‘You’re not her friend, Jeff.’

‘For me as much as her, OK? I feel like I’ve let her down.’

‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘I think she’s been let down too many times in her life,’ he said. ‘And this is something I can do. It’s really not such a
big deal, we can rearrange with your parents …’ He told her that he loved her and to give his little girl a big kiss. He told
her that he would probably get something to eat at the motel and that he would call her in the morning.

He said, ‘We’ve got a lot to be thankful for.’

When he had hung up, he lay back on the thin mattress and turned the pages of the laminated motel services guide. Thinking
about trying to find a decent bar and the look on Patti Lee Wilson’s face when he told her that he would be coming to the
funeral.

‘Appreciate it,’ she said. ‘Really, I do.’

The decision made, he had taken another beer from her and they had talked for another hour or so. From what she told him,
just having one more person inside that little church was going to make a real difference.

In the end, Jenny had decided to stay in. Her flatmate was out on the razzle which made the decision easier, but she was happy
enough with a few glasses of wine and the TV, even though there had been nothing on but reality shows and chick-flicks and
she had eaten rather more of what was in the fridge than she would have liked.

A lot more, in fact.

She got into bed with one of those crime novels whose disregard for even the most basic elements of police procedure drove
her crazy. She was keeping a note of all the inaccuracies and one day she fully intended to contact the writer and let him
know. After only ten minutes of reading, her eyes felt scratchy and she had read the same paragraph three times, so she turned
off the light.

She lay there, struggling to get comfortable and unable to sleep despite her exhaustion, knowing that her flatmate would probably
wake her up when she came back in. Cackling with girlfriends or with some horny junior doctor.

They were what, five hours behind in Florida? She imagined Detective Jeff Gardner getting home from work about now. Taking
off his gun and settling down to dinner with his wife.

Was he married?

For a few moments she considered getting up to see if she could find any clues on the internet. Perhaps if she blew up that
picture she had found, she might be able to see if there was a wedding ring or not.

She could imagine what Steph would say, and stayed where she was.

If he
was
married, she wondered if he had mentioned her to his wife. She wondered if he had bothered looking
her
up; he would probably have done so out of curiosity if nothing else.

She finally drifted away, asking herself if there were any pictures of her floating around out there in cyberspace, and when
she was woken
by music from the living room, a glance at her bedside clock told her that she had only been asleep for forty minutes.

She listened. Mumford & Sons … laughter … the low notes of a man’s voice.

The horny junior doctor.

Bitch!

They were both well over the limit, but as Angie had drunk marginally less than Barry, she had been the one to take the keys
to the Range Rover when they left the Dunnings’ in Southgate. Despite Barry’s insistence that driving slowly was even more
suspicious than weaving all over the road, she stuck to a steady sixty miles an hour, even on an all-but-deserted stretch
of the M25.

When he wasn’t moaning about how long the drive home was taking, he was bitching about the last few hours he was ‘never going
to get back’.

‘There’s definitely something off about that pair,’ he said.

‘Which pair are we talking about?’

‘Yeah, well, could be either of them, but I was talking about Sue and Ed.’

‘Go on …’

‘Did you notice that when he told her off … I can’t remember what it was about exactly, but she seemed to
like
it. And all that slapping her on the arse.’ He stared out of the window. ‘You reckon they might be into, what do you call
it, S&M? Whips and chains and all that?’

‘I never had her down as the kinky sort,’ Angie said. ‘It’s like I said back there—’

‘Do you reckon he puts a dog collar on her?’

‘Haven’t got a clue,’ Angie said. ‘Who knows what people get up to when the bedroom door closes?’

Barry said nothing for a while and Angie knew she had said the wrong thing. After all, aside from nodding off with a good
book and some heavy snoring, there was nothing at all going on once she and Barry had closed
their
bedroom door.

Still a very sore point.

‘I just mean it’s not really our business, is it?’ she said.

‘Well, there’s definitely something funny going on.’

‘She’s got problems,’ Angie said.

‘What?’

She told him about Sue’s daughter, the conversation in her bedroom.

‘Jesus,’ Barry said.

‘I know, can you imagine what it’s like to lose a child?’

They drove on in silence for a minute, until Barry said, ‘Yeah, well good as lost mine already, haven’t I?’

‘It’s hardly the same, love.’

Barry’s head was back, his eyes closed. ‘I think in a way it’s actually worse. I mean, if they’re gone, they’re gone, aren’t
they? But with Nick … it’s like all I can do is imagine all the stuff he’s doing without me. It doesn’t make any sense …’

‘Don’t you think losing a child at thirteen is senseless? Doesn’t matter if it’s an illness or a car accident or if it’s what
happened to that girl in Florida.’

‘Talking of which,’ Barry said, ‘how bloody odd is that Dave? How bloody odd is his other half, come to that?’

‘Well, she’s a bit … theatrical, maybe.’

‘They’re always
touching
each other,’ Barry said. ‘You noticed that?’

‘Nothing wrong with that, is there?’

‘Always got their hands all over each other. Like bloody kids.’

‘I think it’s nice,’ Angie said.

‘All that crap he was coming out with.’ Barry leaned forward and
looked at her. ‘And while we’re on the subject, what was that about “At least we’re off the hook”? What the hell was that
supposed to mean?’

‘It was a joke, Barry. I was joking.’

‘So, do you think they actually thought we might have had something to do with it? Is that what you think?’

‘I don’t know about “we”,’ Angie said. ‘I think it was that business of you driving off to buy fags or whatever that was the
issue.’

‘
Or whatever?
What’s that mean?’

‘It doesn’t
mean
anything. I’m just saying.’ She cursed herself for saying anything at all. The last thing she wanted from here to Crawley
was Barry ranting about how the world and his wife were out to wind him up. Pushing his buttons. How everyone was against
him.

She asked him what he’d thought of the food, talked about making them both a nice cup of tea when they got in, and nudged
her speed up to sixty-five in an effort to keep him happy.

This time of night, Dave and Marina had elected to drive home straight through town and were only ten minutes from Forest
Hill. They had talked all the way about what Sue had told Marina and Angie in her bedroom. Or rather Dave had talked, and
Marina had chipped in when she had the chance.

‘It explains a lot,’ Dave said. ‘I mean the whole eating disorder thing for a kick-off.’

‘She eats as much as I do,’ Marina said. ‘Some women are jammy like that, have the right metabolism.’

‘Well, I think you’re wrong, but let’s leave it. It does explain why she lets her husband treat her like dirt.’ He looked
at her, clearly with a lot more to say. Marina shrugged. Go ahead. ‘Well, it’s all about guilt, isn’t it? I know she had nothing
to do with what happened to her daughter, but the mind doesn’t work like that. It isn’t always logical. Somewhere, she might
well feel like she was responsible in some way, like it was a genetic thing that was her fault or that there was something
she could have done to prevent it. Or maybe it’s just that she feels bad for not being a better mother when her daughter was
alive.’

‘How can you possibly know that?’

‘I can’t, but like I say, the mind plays strange tricks. I just think it might be the reason why she lets Ed get away with
that stuff, why she lets him bully her like that. Because perhaps, deep down, she feels as if she deserves it. To be punished,
you know?’ He looked across at Marina. ‘It’s just a theory.’

‘You’ve got plenty of theories,’ she said.

He smiled. ‘That stuff about the girl, you mean?’

‘I don’t know why you felt the need—’

‘I didn’t,’ Dave said. ‘I mean why the hell would I? Barry clearly had a bee in his bonnet, so I told him what he wanted to
hear, that’s all.’

Turning off the roundabout at the Elephant and Castle, Marina said, ‘I think they both had bees in their bonnets. She definitely
knew about that drink Sue and I had. Did you not see the face she had on her when she got there? That comment about not getting
into London very much.’

‘Over my head,’ Dave said.

‘Did you say anything?’

‘About what?’

‘About me and Sue meeting up?’

He shook his head. ‘Ed mentioned something when we went out. I think Barry might have picked up on it …’

Marina drummed her fingers on the armrest for half a minute. ‘Well, thank God
someone
can keep a secret.’

Sue was already in bed, while Ed was taking his time as usual in the bathroom. She shouted through the open door to him. ‘Did
you see the dress Marina was wearing?’

He shouted back. ‘What about it?’

‘I’ve got almost exactly the same dress.’

‘Good job you weren’t wearing it then.’

Sue squeezed moisturising cream into her palm, put the tube back on the bedside table and began rubbing it in. ‘She has the
same
handbag as me too. She had it with her when we met up for a drink. She said she’d had it for ages, but I don’t know.’

‘You think she’s copying you?’

‘I don’t know what to think,’ Sue said. ‘It’s a bit freaky.’

‘You should be flattered she thinks you have such good taste …’

Sue counted to ten in her head, then said, ‘I told her and Angie about Emma.’

After a few seconds, Ed emerged into the hall and walked through the open door into the bedroom. He was wearing underpants,
with a towel draped across his shoulder. He was still brushing his teeth, though very slowly. He looked at Sue for a few moments
then turned and walked back to the bathroom, closing the door hard behind him.

Sue switched her bedside light off and turned on to her side. She reached across to open the drawer and took out the photograph.
She looked at it. She wiped it carefully with the edge of the sheet and said, ‘I don’t care.’

A couple of minutes later, Ed came back in, heavy on his feet. ‘What the hell did you do that for?’ He saw what she was holding.
‘Sue …’

‘Sue
what?
’ She adjusted the pillow she had propped up behind her. ‘Sue, don’t be stupid? Sue, put that back?’

‘You need to stop it.’

‘When was the last time we even talked about her?’

‘I’m not doing this.’

‘Not since her birthday.’

‘It’s ridiculous.’

‘We’re not the same,’ Sue said. ‘You don’t feel it in
here
.’ She slapped at the duvet across her belly. ‘You don’t feel anything that isn’t giving you a hard-on.’ She stared at him.
‘And I don’t
think
Emma fell into that category.’

‘You’ve seriously fucking lost it, you know that?’

She turned the picture frame around and held it towards him. ‘Ring any bells?’

‘Don’t push it.’

‘Emma Dunning? She used to live with us …’

Ed still had the towel. He threw it towards the laundry basket in the corner. He took off his shorts and did the same with
them, then walked around the bed and sat on the edge of it, his back to her.

‘Pretty girl, she was,’ Sue said. ‘I mean this isn’t even a particularly good picture of her.’ Although she knew Ed could
no longer see it, she continued to brandish the photograph at him. ‘Anything at all?’ She watched the muscles tense across
his shoulders and swallowed, dry mouthed. ‘Anything
stirring?
’

He reached across and began to adjust the digital clock on his bedside table. ‘I’m playing tennis in the morning,’ he said.

‘Ed—’

‘I’m not sure what time I’ll be back, so don’t bother about lunch.’

‘Please …’

He lifted himself off the duvet and slipped beneath it. He reached for his light and said, ‘Put the picture back.’