Lucie Whitehouse - Critical Incidents

Except Josh, because he’d been there, too, more weekends than not. Though his dad was training him up to run their family business back in the Midlands, most Friday nights he’d arrived on the doorstep in Shepherd’s Bush with a curry – ‘Not the Balti Triangle but it’ll do’ – and stayed ’til Sunday. He’d watched Euro 2004 on their scratchy green sofa, giving Lennie a bottle, and when they’d all gone out together, he’d taken her in the baby carrier, her cheek pressed sideways against his chest, little feet bumping the tops of his thighs. He’d only been twenty-four but if anyone ever thought Lennie was his, he’d never jumped to deny her like some of her other mates had, the ones who’d treated Robin as if she was suddenly a different, mildly contagious person, The Girl Who Got Knocked Up.

The slam of a car door. Lifting her head from her hands, she saw a tall black woman in a three-quarter-length coat on the pavement outside. A second later, as the woman checked her phone, a shiny blue-black head emerged from the driver’s door on the far side. Robin froze.

Riveted, she watched as the man rounded the back of the car. The hair was right, he was Indian or Pakistani, but then he looked up and – oh, thank fuck – she saw that the face underneath it was wrong: too young, too fine-boned, too light. And as he stepped onto the pavement, she saw that he was too short – two or three inches too short, under six feet. She leaned backwards into the cover of the dining-room curtains, heart thudding.

Energetic footsteps on the path, then the four Big Ben notes of the doorbell. Her mother appeared in the archway, eyelids swollen. ‘They’re here, love. Shall I let them in?’

‘I’ll do it.’ The room tilted as she stood, the floor underfoot uncertain. Her body moved as if she were operating it by remote control – left leg, good, now right leg – normal communication between brain and muscles suspended. When Maggie had dropped her back a couple of hours ago, direct from Sparkhill, she’d walked up the front path like the Tin Man, stood with her arms by her sides, thousand-yard staring as Maggie told Christine what had happened.

Through the pebbled glass panel beside the front door now, the shimmering outlines of the police made them apparitions, visitors from another dimension.

‘Robin Lyons?’

DCI, to you.

‘DS Thomas,’ said the woman, showing her ID. ‘We spoke on the phone. This is DC Patel.’ Up close, he looked even younger than he had outside, twenty-five or -six, baby-faced. Thomas wasn’t that much older, early thirties, perhaps her own age, but her vibe was completely different. Meerkat-straight, shoulders back, posture accentuated by the crisp angles of the coat and a pair of black trousers with a sharp centre crease. Her hair was cut short at the sides, the longer top shaped into a wedgy quiff that reminded Robin of Emeli Sandé. Masculine-feminine. Got my shit together , was the message.

‘Come in.’

They followed her to the sitting room where Robin watched the woman look around, taking in the three-piece suite, a patterned aqua monstrosity whose curved backs and fluted arms recalled Botticelli and his giant scallop. It was too big for the space and so the sofa could only go against the wall, making the room look even more corridor-like than it was. Opposite was the tiled fireplace, a vase of dried grasses in the hearth, the Spode figurine of an Edwardian lady with a stupidly large hat on the mantelpiece. The least offensive thing was the gilt-framed watercolour of the Lickey Hills that had been Granny Lyons’.

‘My parents’ house,’ she said, and saw the flicker in the woman’s eyes: at her age? Robin gestured at the furniture. ‘Please, have a seat.’

They took the sofa, leaving her the armchair. If you were curled up in it, feet tucked under, it was okay, shell-like in a good way, even, but sitting properly, Robin was dwarfed by it, shrunk down like Alice in Wonderland, her feet barely skimming the floor. It added to the disorientation, the sense that everything was off-kilter. Unreal.

‘Thanks for talking to us,’ the woman said, pulling out her notebook. ‘As I said on the phone, DI Nuttall gave us your name. Maggie Hammond told him you and Corinna were close.’

‘She was my best friend. Since senior school. She saved my life, I think.’

The woman’s eyebrows went up.

‘Not literally. Maybe literally. I’m a single mother – I got pregnant by accident in my last year at university and she moved down to London, moved in with me. She cooked dinner so I could work, changed nappies, did one of the night feeds if I was about to go insane from lack of sleep. Made it all seem like less of an unholy fuck-up. I don’t know how I would have done it otherwise – I might have lost my mind. I definitely wouldn’t have finished my degree.’

‘Losing her must be tough for you.’

It was a statement but also a question. Unlike her mother, who’d burst into tears the moment she’d heard, she hadn’t cried. There was a fierce pressure in her chest but she couldn’t get to it mentally, couldn’t translate it. ‘I haven’t begun to process it,’ she said. ‘I know but I don’t know . I saw her three weeks ago – I was texting with her yesterday. Lennie – that’s my daughter – we were supposed to go over there tomorrow night for dinner.’ As she said it, she realized that even that, that small bright spot on the immediate horizon, had been extinguished. And there would be no more.

‘What time were you texting?’

‘Afternoon.’ Robin checked her phone. ‘Just after four – eight minutes past. My last reply to her at four ten.’ Last .

‘What were the texts about? How did she sound?’

‘Fine, normal. Herself. I mean, she didn’t mention herself. She was checking in on me – I only moved back here yesterday, she knew I … had reservations.’

‘You moved yesterday?’ Patel looked up from his notebook.

‘Yes. From London.’

DS Thomas nodded, glanced at him: Make a note . ‘How much do you know about what happened?’

‘Almost nothing. That there was a fire at their house. Corinna’s dead.’ She heard herself say the words as if from across the room. ‘Maggie said Peter’s badly injured. And Josh’s missing – what does that mean? Are you waiting for a formal ID?’ She felt a wave of nausea at the thought of dental records, a body so badly burned that they couldn’t be sure it was him – or even a man. She’d seen those: blackened, pink-shiny lumps of flesh, the features, genitals burned away.

DC Patel – Baby Cop – shot a sideways look at Thomas, who leaned forward, resting her forearms on her knees. ‘It’s very early, obviously, but as things stand, our priority is locating Mr Legge.’

‘Locating?’

‘We’ve only found Mrs Legge’s body. And Mr Legge’s car is missing,’ said Patel.

It took her a moment but then relief flooded through her: Josh hadn’t been there. He hadn’t been at the house. If Peter recovered – when he did – he’d have at least one parent. Thank god – thank god. ‘He wasn’t there?’

Another sideways glance from Baby Cop, missed or at any rate unacknowledged by the woman, whose eyes were trained instead on Robin’s face. ‘Again, to be clear, it’s early,’ she said. ‘Lines of enquiry are wide open and we’re still waiting on the Fire Investigator, SOCO, but even without their reports … There’s evidence of an accelerant at the scene. The fire was almost certainly started deliberately.’

‘What?’ An electrical fault, the iron left on – she’d imagined a malevolent spark spitting from the fire, nestling deep among the fibres of Corinna’s sheepskin rug, glowing, taking hold as they slept unwitting upstairs. But – arson?