John Harvey - Cold Light

With her free hand, she took hold of his hand but immediately he pulled away. She waited until he was almost at the door. “I was watching you,” she said, “this morning. The way you were just watching me.”

He stopped in his tracks and she thought he was going to turn around, angry, even strike her, but instead he carried on, out through the door, and soon she heard him again, moving around outside the caravan, alternately whistling and singing a snatch of a song she had only ever heard him sing.

By the time Michelle came away from casualty, Natalie grizzling in her arms, it was mid-morning. Karl’s hand had taken nine stitches and was securely bandaged. Lucky, the doctor had said, none of the tendons were touched. The staff nurse, checking Karl’s name against the records, had noted this was his second visit within a short space of time. “I explained all of that when the social worker had me bring him in,” Michelle told her. “He had an accident, ran into the door.” And this time, the nurse thought, he just happened to pick up a knife someone had left lying around. Wrigglesworth, the social worker’s name was on the card; the nurse made a note to call his office as soon as she got a spare moment. The local police would be informed as a matter of course.

LOCAL CLIMBER KILLED IN FALL read the placard outside the corner shop.

“Fish fingers, Karl? Is that what you’d like?”

“Ish fingus,” Karl beamed, jumping up and down, hand forgotten. “Ish fingus.”

When she unlocked the front door and called Gary’s name, she was relieved there was no reply.

“What do you think?” Lynn said.

He had brought her tomato soup from a can, heated up for lunch; sliced bread, buttered, then folded in half. Freed one hand so she could eat. Michael sitting on one of those insubstantial chairs, chattering away quite happily, not eating himself save for what remained of a chocolate bar, all the while watching her. Concerned.

“Is that all right? The soup, I mean. Precious little choice in the village and, besides, I’m never sure which kind is best. Heinz, I think, that’s what they say. I like to buy that Scottish one, but they never have that. The bread was all they had left. I shall have to go earlier tomorrow.”

“Michael, why won’t you answer me?”

“What?” he said. “Sorry, what did you say?”

“I asked, what do you imagine’s going to happen?”

He seemed to give it some thought. “Oh, I suppose we’ll stay here for a while. Quite cozy now since I got this thing, don’t you think? Throws out quite a good heat.”

“Michael …”

“What I’ve got to do this afternoon, though-well, Five years I suppose tomorrow would do-see about hiring some kind of rotavator. That soil out there, I’m not turning it enough by hand.”

“Michael, you’re not listening.”

He blinked. “Aren’t I? I thought …”

“I mean me.”

“What about you?”

“What d’you think’s going to happen about me? About this … situation?”

He looked at her for a long time before answering. “Oh, we’re not getting on too badly now, are we?”

Five years ago, on an application to open an account at the Halifax Building Society, Michael Stuart Best had given his place of birth as Dublin; as a guarantor he had cited his father, Matthew John Best, an address in Germany, serving with the British army overseas. Applying for a small business loan two years later, he had stated that he was born in Greater Manchester and that his father was deceased.

“He talked about it just the once,” the sales manager at Schotness Stationery had told Graham Millington that morning, “the accident which took his parents off, like. Both of ’em. Aye. Lucky to get out himself, strapped in the back, see. On their way to visit relatives, Norfolk way. Terrible. Something you never get over, a thing like that. Good salesman, though, say that for him. When he was in the mood, talk the birds down out of the trees.”

A quiet chap, the general verdict had been, Divine and Naylor going round the neighbors in Ruddington, knocking on doors. Kept himself to himself; friendly enough, though, not standoffish. Nice, the way he used to buy flowers, drive out to take them to his mum in the nursing home every Sunday.

They had made a room available in the local station; Skelton was there now, something of a sparkle back in his eye. “She was right,” just about the first thing he’d said to Resnick when he arrived. “About the Rogel case. Helen. The connection.”

Resnick didn’t give a shit about Helen. The person he cared for here was being held prisoner, her captor a man who had killed one woman already, probably two.

They were steadily narrowing the marked locations down and Resnick continued to pace from desk to wall and wall to desk again, willing the phone to ring.

“Tactical unit’s ready to move, Charlie. Helicopter on stand by if we want it. Two ARVs on their way, one from the city, one from Leeds.”

Resnick’s thoughts had jumped back several years to the unexceptional living room of an unexceptional house save that, cold in the small garden, Lynn Kellogg had just come upon her first dead body, a woman with blood drawn like ribbons dark through her hair. “How are you feeling?” Resnick had asked, and Lynn had fallen, fingers of one hand hooked inside his mouth, face pressed against his chest.

“Charlie?”

Before he could answer, the phone startled to life and Resnick fumbled it into his hand. Listening, his forefinger traced lines along the surface of the map before them. “You’re sure?” he asked. “No room for doubt?”

“No,” Sharon Garnett said. “None at all.”

Before turning to Skelton, Resnick withdrew two of the remaining pins from the map and set them aside, leaving just the one in place. “Got him,” he said, his voice now strangely calm.

“On your way,” Skelton said. “I’ll call up the troops.”

Michelle had been mixing Natalie’s food when Josie came to the door, short of breath from running almost the length of the street on high-heeled shoes.

“The law, they’ve nicked Brian. Gary’s done a runner.”

Michelle stared back at her, open-mouthed. “What’s Gary … Brian … I don’t understand.”

“Christ, girl, where the fuck’ve you been? Brian’s been dealing since before Christmas, I thought you knew.”

“But Gary, he’d never …”

“Oh, Gary. You know what your Gary’s like. Wanted to feel big, go along for the ride. Anyway, look, what it is, I’ve got to go see Brian’s brief. Okay if I bring the kids down, dump ’em with you?”

Michelle nodded, arms tight across her chest. “Josie, what’m I going to do?”

“My advice. Pray they lift Gary before he gets back here. Once he’s inside, change the locks, move. Anything. Gary’s a loser, always will be. Whatever happens, you’ll be better off on your own.”

Michael was sitting at the far end of the caravan, thumbing through a catalog, making notes in the margins, occasionally copying prices down on to a sheet of paper. From time to time he would purse his lips and whistle. “These now,” he remarked from time to time, “they’ll look something special, you’ll see.” In some part of his mind, Lynn thought, the two of them, Michael and herself, were living together on this piece of land, working happily side by side. The perfect couple. “Your father,” Michael said once, looking up suddenly. “Maybe there’s a way you could phone him, find out how he is. Set your mind at rest.” But that had been close to half an hour ago and he’d mentioned no more about it. Lynn wondered if Skelton had asked for a news blackout or whether her mother, pottering in the kitchen, had been startled by her name. Tears pricked her eyes at the thought and for the first time she was close to breaking down.