Кара Хантер - In the Dark

***

If there’s one thing I loathe it’s watching myself on TV. Even now, after half a dozen appeals, I still can’t stand it. So when the rest of the team gather to watch the news I make my excuses and head for the coffee shop on St Aldate’s. It’s like the answer to one of those linear programming things I was so crap at in school: large enough that you usually get a seat, far enough from the main tourist drag that the big chains haven’t snapped it up. Which is why it amuses me, momentarily, to see a snake of Chinese tourists coming down the pavement towards me, following a woman holding high a bright red umbrella, marching confidently in entirely the wrong direction. Because whatever architectural masterpiece they’ve been promised, they aren’t going to find it down the Abingdon Road.

I’m at the counter when my phone goes. Challow.

‘You want the news or the good news?’

I swear silently as I hand over a fiver to the barista; I’m not in the mood for Challow’s mind games.

‘Don’t tell me. The DNA results.’

‘Sorry. Still waiting.’

‘So I assume that’s the news, rather than the good news?’

‘Can’t you tell?’

‘Look, just tell me, can’t you.’

Challow laughs drily. ‘Why don’t you come and see for yourself?’

***

‘Adam? Is that you?’ The voice on the speaker is breaking up, but I recognize it straight away.

‘Hold on a minute, Dad. I’m driving.’

I pull over to the side of the road and pick up the handset.

‘I’m here. Is there something wrong?’

I can hear him huffing slightly. ‘Why do you always assume there must be something wrong?’

‘Sorry, it’s just that –’

‘We saw you on the news, your mother and I.’

‘Oh, OK. Right.’

‘You were very good.’

Somehow or other, he always rubs me up the wrong way.

‘It’s not some sort of “appearance”, Dad – it’s not about me .’

‘I know that, Adam,’ he replies. He sounds as tetchy as I do. ‘What I meant was that you came over very well. Calm. Authoritative.’

And now I feel like a shit. As usual.

‘I know you don’t think we’re proud of you, son, but we are. The police force wouldn’t have been our first choice for you, but you’ve managed to make a creditable career of it.’

That’s an evil little word – ‘managed’. And then I tell myself that I’m imagining it – that I need to stop seizing on every possible negative inference. I’m not even sure he meant it that way.

‘Look, Dad. It was great of you to call, but I have to go. I’m on my way to the lab.’

‘Your mother says hello and she’s looking forward to seeing you. And Alex, of course.’

And then the line goes dead.

***

As the day wears on the clouds gather and by mid-afternoon the sky is as dark as November. Slow summer rain patters in the trees in the centre of Crescent Square. Two squirrels chase each other across the grass.

In the flat, Pippa is curled up on the sofa, playing Candy Crush on her phone. She can hear Rob talking in the other room. It’s Hannah’s parents. She’s never met them but she knows exactly what they’re like. Gervase and Cassandra – even their names are up themselves.

The door to the study opens and Rob appears in the doorway. He’s dressed for work, but perhaps she can change his mind. She stretches out her legs and flexes her bare feet.

‘The office called,’ he says, ignoring her. ‘Some sort of crisis. I don’t mind going in. It’ll help take my mind off things.’

‘How did it go – on the phone?’

A flicker of irritation at that. ‘Well, what do you expect? It’s hardly a social call, is it, “How’s the weather, oh and by the way they found your daughter buried in some old pervert’s shed.”’

He walks over to pick up his car keys. ‘I don’t know what time I’ll be back.’

‘I need to talk to you.’

‘Well, it’ll have to wait,’ he says, moving towards the door. ‘I said I’d be there by four.’

‘I’m pregnant.’

He turns. Looks at her. She still has the phone in her hand.

‘You’re pregnant.’ His voice is dull. ‘That’s not possible.’

‘Of course it’s possible , Rob.’ She flushes slightly. ‘I kept wanting to tell you. There never seemed to be a good time.’

‘You said you were on the pill.’

‘I was. I am. Sometimes it happens. You do science – you should know.’

‘That’s right,’ he says, his voice dangerously soft. ‘I “do science”. And that’s how I know that that kid you’re having isn’t mine.’

‘Of course it is – it has to be –’

‘Why?’ he says softly, coming towards her. ‘Because you haven’t slept with anyone else?’

‘No,’ she stammers, terrified now, ‘of course I haven’t.’

‘You,’ he says, standing over her, stabbing the air with each word, ‘are lying .’

She flinches back at the violence in his voice. ‘I don’t understand.’

He smiles a horrible smile. ‘No? Not worked it out yet? I can’t have children . That clear enough for you?’

Her cheeks are bright red. She looks down at the phone – more to avoid looking at him than anything else – but it’s the wrong thing to do. He reaches for it and hurls it across the room. Then he grabs her hard by the wrist and wrenches her to her feet. ‘Look at me when I’m talking to you.’

His face is so close her skin is peppered with spit.

‘You’re hurting me –’

‘So who was it? Whose brat are you trying to pass off as mine – some random student? The bloke who reads the meter? Who? ’

He takes her by the shoulders and shakes her. ‘Have you been doing it here – in my flat? ’

‘No – of course not – I wouldn’t. It was only the once – it didn’t mean anything –’

He laughs. Nastily. ‘Yeah, right.’

‘I don’t love him – I love you –’

She bites her lip till the blood comes. There are tears now. She’s pleading with him.

Rob laughs. ‘ Love? You don’t know the bloody meaning of the word.’

He pushes her back hard on to the sofa and walks to the door, where he turns. He watches her sobbing for a moment.

‘When I get back, I don’t want to find you here.’

‘You can’t,’ she wails. ‘What about Toby – who’s going to pick him up? Who’s going to look after him?’

‘I’m perfectly able to care for my own son. Leave the keys and go. I never want to see you again.’

***

29 Lingfield Road, Banbury. Semi-detached. Neat gravelled drive. Geraniums.

‘What do you think?’ says Gislingham, turning off the engine.

Somer considers. ‘Looks just like what it is – a schoolteacher’s house.’

Gislingham nods slowly. ‘Can’t see it featuring in a future episode of Unsolved Crimes , but you know what they say about still waters.’

At the gate she turns to him but he makes a gallant gesture. ‘After you.’

She smiles, a trifle tightly, then reminds herself that just because most men like to stare at her backside doesn’t mean Gislingham must be one of them.

At the door, she pauses then rings the bell. Then a second and a third time. Gislingham moves to the front window and squints in. Through a gap in the nets he can see a sofa and armchairs too big for the room, a coffee table with a pile of magazines, their edges neatly aligned.

‘No signs of life,’ he says. Somer joins him and looks in. Neat but uninspiring. Austere without elegance. They know from the records there’s no official Mrs Walsh but she’s beginning to suspect there’s no unofficial one either.