Simon Beckett - The Restless Dead

Trask nodded approvingly as he took a drink. ‘You didn’t buy that in Cruckhaven.’

‘No, Tesco.’

‘Ah, thought I recognized the terroir .’

He was making an effort to be sociable. They wouldn’t have had many dinner guests recently, I realized. ‘Thanks for asking me over. I appreciate it.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, it’s the least we can do after yesterday,’ he said, but not as though his heart were in it. He took another drink of wine, then picked up the bottle and topped up all of our glasses. Mine included, before I could stop him. ‘Where is Fay anyway? I thought she was supposed to be helping.’

‘She was. She just needed to go to the bathroom.’ Rachel lifted a pan to the sink and drained it. Perhaps it was only because I knew about the white lie that I could detect it in her voice. Trask didn’t seem to notice.

‘And Jamie?’

‘I bumped into him outside,’ I said.

Trask’s face hardened. ‘Doing what?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, hoping I’d not spoken out of turn. Christ, Rachel was right: this was like walking on eggshells.

He shot Rachel a look. ‘I told him he was eating with us tonight. He’d better not have taken himself off again.’

‘He won’t, he knows.’ She kept her voice inflectionless, clearly used to this sort of mediating. ‘Can someone set the table, please?’

I got up to do it but Trask waved me back down. ‘I’ll do it. I dare say you’ve been busy enough as it is, Dr Hunter.’

‘Call me David,’ I said, sidestepping the question. It might have been innocent or not, but I wasn’t going to be drawn into discussing work.

Trask took cutlery and cane place mats from a drawer and went to set the rosewood dining table. ‘So, do you know how much longer you’re going to be here?’

‘Perhaps a couple more days. But if staying at the boathouse is a problem, I can find somewhere else.’

‘If it was a problem you wouldn’t be staying there.’ He finished laying the table and took another drink of wine. Glancing at the almost-empty bottle, he went to the wine cooler and selected another. I saw Rachel give him a nervous glance. ‘How’s the investigation going?’

‘It’s progressing.’

‘Progressing.’ Taking a corkscrew from the drawer he used the spike to strip off the foil from the bottle neck. ‘What about that thing in the creek? Any idea yet who it was?’

‘Andrew, I’m sure David doesn’t—’

‘I’m sure David can answer for himself.’ He wound the corkscrew into place. ‘I’m being a good boy, I’ve not asked anything about Villiers. And I think I’m within my rights to wonder about the corpse my daughter was sharing the barbed wire with.’

The cork came free with a pop . Trask set the opened bottle down, regarding me with a hint of challenge.

‘Sorry, there’s not much I can tell you,’ I said, which was true however you looked at it.

‘You’re telling me the police haven’t said anything else about it?’

‘Not about who it is, no.’

My ignorance was genuine: I hadn’t even had time to read the post-mortem report Lundy had emailed earlier. Trask didn’t look satisfied, but before he could ask anything else the sound of the front door opening came from downstairs.

‘That’ll be Jamie.’ Rachel sounded relieved at the distraction. She went to the top of the stairs and called down. ‘Jamie, can you tell Fay to come up? Dinner’s ready.’

Trask fell quiet as we went to the table, pouring the last of the wine I’d brought into mine and Rachel’s glasses and refilling his own from the bottle he’d just opened. Rachel watched uneasily, but said nothing.

I should never have accepted Trask’s invitation, I realized. Renting the boathouse was one thing, but sharing a dinner table with the man was another. It was asking too much to expect him to avoid any talk of the investigation. And I should have had enough sense to see what sort of position I’d be putting myself in. Everyone outside the inquiry still believed that Leo Villiers was dead, and that the body the police had recovered from the estuary was his. So now I was about to sit down to dinner with the family of a missing woman, pretending I didn’t know her suspected killer was still alive.

What had I been thinking?

I became aware of Rachel looking at me as she brought dishes to the table. I forced myself to smile. I was here now: I’d just have to make the best of it.

Fay trudged up the stairs, a martyred expression of boredom on her face. ‘Where’s Jamie?’ Trask asked.

His daughter scraped a chair across the floor and slumped down in it. ‘He says he’s not hungry.’

‘I’ll go and fetch him,’ Rachel said quickly, but Trask was already getting to his feet. The same tight-lipped expression as I’d seen on his son’s face earlier was now on his.

‘No, you carry on.’

She watched him stride downstairs, anxiously. While Fay was preoccupied stroking and talking to the dog, which had come over to flop at her feet, I left the table and went over to where Rachel was taking the casserole out of the oven.

‘I should go,’ I said quietly.

With a glance over at Fay, she put the casserole down and turned to me. ‘It’ll be worse if you leave now.’

I didn’t see how it could be. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have come.’

‘I’m glad you did,’ she said softly.

I felt something unravel as the green eyes looked at me, a knot that had been there for so long I no longer noticed it. Rachel held my gaze as footsteps on the stairs announced the return of Trask and his son. Then, picking up a stack of dinner plates from the worktop, she offered them to me.

‘Please?’

Oh, hell . Wondering what I thought I was doing, I took the plates from her. Trask and Jamie came up as I set them out at the table. Neither of them looked happy as they took their places in silence. Jamie sighed ostentatiously as he sat down, watching his sister as she bent to stroke the dog.

‘It looks like you’re having a contest for who can have the most bandages.’

‘Shut up.’

‘I think Cassie wins. We should start calling her Frankencassie from now on.’

‘No we shouldn’t.’

‘It’s alive , master! It barks!’

‘Stop it! You’re the one who looks like Frankenstein!’

‘And I haf created a dog! Rise, Frankencassie, rise!’

‘Shut up !’ his sister told him, but they were both laughing.

‘All right, quieten down,’ Trask said, and the brief moment ended. There was silence again as Rachel brought the casserole over to the table.

The scrape of the serving spoon sounded too loud as the food was dished out. I looked out of the long window and saw that night had once again turned it into a dark mirror. The creek had disappeared behind a smoky reflection of the room, where another five people sat around an identical table to ours. They didn’t look to be enjoying it any more than we did.

‘Help yourselves to jacket potatoes and broccoli,’ Rachel said, ladling steaming chicken casserole on to plates and passing them round.

Fay scowled. ‘I hate broccoli.’

‘That’s because it’s brain food and you don’t have a brain.’ Her brother’s tone was still jocular, but this time his sister scowled.

‘I’m cleverer than you!’

‘Yeah, in your dreams.’

‘I am! If you’re so clever how come you failed your mock exams?’

‘That’s enough,’ Trask snapped. ‘Fay, eat your broccoli and stop showing off.’

‘I’m not—’

‘I said that’s enough!’

The musical chink of cutlery seemed to emphasize the silence. ‘This is delicious,’ I said, taking up another forkful of food.