Mo Hayder - Gone

Flea began to laugh, thinking he was messing around, then changed her mind again and wiped the smile. ‘Christ,’ she said. ‘Are you really? A wife-beater? A child-abuser?’

‘According to my wife. Everyone else believes it too. I’m even starting to suspect myself.’

Flea watched him in silence. His hair was cut so short you could almost see the shape of his skull under it. Kids he wasn’t allowed to see. Nothing to do with the Misty Kitson case. A slab of tension eased in her a little. ‘Jesus. That’s hard. I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be.’

‘I swear I didn’t know.’

‘Fair enough. Didn’t mean to be arsy about it.’ Outside, the rain fell. The pub smelt of hops, horse manure and old wine corks. The sound of beer kegs being changed came from somewhere in the cellar. The room seemed warmer. Prody rubbed his arms. ‘Another drink?’

‘A drink? Yeah, sure. I’ll—’ She looked at the cider glass. ‘A lemonade or a Coke or something.’

He laughed. ‘A lemonade? Think I’m going to breathalyse you again?’

‘No.’ She stared at him fixedly. ‘Why would I think that?’

‘I don’t know. Suppose I always thought after that night you were pissed off with me.’

‘Well – I was. Sort of.’

‘I know. You’ve avoided me ever since. Before that you always used to say hi to me – you know, in the gym or whatever. But after that it was completely . . .’ He drew a hand down his face, meaning she’d blanked him. ‘I have to admit that was tough. But I was pretty tough on you.’

‘No. You were fair. I’d have breathalysed me.’ She tapped the cider glass. ‘I wasn’t drunk, but I was acting like a twat. Driving too fast.’

She smiled. He smiled back. The dull light came through the window, picking out the dust hanging in the bar. It found the fair hairs on Prody’s arm. He had nice arms and hands. Caffery’s arms were sinewy and hard with dark hair. Prody’s were fairer and more fleshy. She thought they’d maybe be warmer to the touch than Caffery’s.

‘Lemonade, then?’

She realized she was staring. She stopped smiling and felt her face go numb. ‘Excuse me.’ She got up unsteadily and went to the Ladies, locked herself into a cubicle, peed, washed her hands and was standing with them under the dryer when she caught sight of herself in the mirror. She leaned closer across the basin and examined her reflection. Her cheeks were flushed from the cold of the day and the cider. The veins in her hands, feet and face felt swollen. She’d used the on-board shower on the unit’s dive van but there was no hairdryer so her hair had dried naturally into white-blonde corkscrews.

She unbuttoned her shirt a short way. Underneath she wasn’t pink and flushed. She was tanned – a sort of year-round tan she must have developed as a child from all the diving holidays with Mum, Dad and Thom. Caffery’s face flashed into her head, yelling at her from the towpath. Furious. You’d never describe Caffery as congenial, but even so – that level of anger was inexplicable. She did up the buttons on the blouse and checked herself in the mirror. Then she undid the top two buttons again until a small amount of cleavage was just visible.

Back in the bar Prody was sitting at the table, two glasses of lemonade in front of him. When she sat next to him he saw the undone buttons instantly. There was an awkward, awful pause. He glanced at the window, then back again, and for a moment she saw it all clearly. She saw that she was a bit drunk, looking stupid with her tits showing, and that the wheel was about to come off the whole thing and put her in a ditch she wouldn’t know how to climb out of. She turned away, putting her elbows on the table and closing off her cleavage from him.

‘It wasn’t me,’ she said, ‘that night. It wasn’t me driving.’

‘I’m sorry?’

She felt stupid. She hadn’t planned to say it, had only opened her mouth to cover her embarrassment. ‘I’ve never told anyone this but it was my brother. He was drunk and I wasn’t so I covered for him.’

Prody was silent for a while. Then he cleared his throat. ‘Nice sister. I’d like one like you.’

‘No – I was stupid.’

‘I’d say. That’s quite something to protect someone from. A DIC charge.’

Yeah, she thought. And, believe me, if you knew what I’d really protected him from – if you knew it was much more than just a drink-driving charge – your head would spin round and your eyes would come out on springs. She sat woodenly, staring at the optics and hoping her face wasn’t as flushed as it felt.

Prody’s meal came then, and that saved them both. Gloucester Old Spot sausages and mash. Little red pickled onions on the side, like cloudy marbles. He ate in silence. For a moment or two she wondered if he was angry still, but she stayed anyway and watched him. Let the mood settle itself. They talked about other things – the unit, an inspector from Traffic who’d dropped dead of a heart-attack at a family wedding aged thirty-seven. Prody finished his meal and at one thirty they got up to leave. Flea was tired, her head stuffy. Outside, the rain had stopped and the sun was out but more rainclouds were banked in the west. The chalky earth of the car park was pitted with yellowish puddles. She stopped on the way to her car at the parapet above the tunnel’s eastern portal and peered down into the murky canal.

‘There’s nothing there,’ Prody said.

‘Something still feels wrong.’

‘Here.’ He held out an Avon and Somerset business card with his phone numbers on it. ‘If you remember what it is, call me. I promise not to yell at you.’

‘Like Caffery?’

‘Like Caffery. Now, will you go home and relax? Give yourself a break?’

She took the card but she didn’t leave the parapet. She waited for Prody to get into his Peugeot and pull out of the car park. Then she stared down at the tunnel, drawn inexorably by the glint of the winter sun on the black water, until the noise of his engine had faded, and the only sounds were the clink of the barman clearing the table in the pub, and the cawing of crows in the trees.

At three fifty Janice Costello sat at traffic lights and stared grimly at the rain trickling down the windscreen. Everything was dark and dismal. She hated this time of year, and she hated sitting in traffic. Emily’s school was only a short distance from the house, and although Cory usually drove if he picked her up from school – any mention of the greenhouse effect generally sparked off in him a diatribe about the blatant erosion of his civil liberties – on Janice’s days they walked, carefully adding up the minutes and diligently reporting back to Emily’s teacher as part of the Walk to School Challenge.

But today they were driving and Emily was thrilled. She didn’t know it was because Janice had a plan. She’d cooked it up overnight, lying in the darkened bedroom, her heart pounding, while Cory slept dreamlessly next to her. She was going to drop Emily at a friend’s house, then visit Cory at the office. On the front seat of the Audi, a bag contained a flask of hot coffee and half a carrot cake sandwiched between two paper plates. One of the things that had come up in the therapy sessions was that sometimes Cory felt his wife wasn’t exactly a traditional wife. That although there was always dinner on the table and a cup of tea in bed in the mornings, although she worked and took care of Emily, he still missed the little touches. A cake cooling on a wire tray when he came in. A packed lunch for work with maybe a little billet doux tucked inside to surprise him at lunchtime.

‘Well, we’ll change that, won’t we, Emily?’ she said aloud.

‘Change what?’ Emily blinked at her. ‘Change what, Mummy?’