Andrew Taylor - Fallen Angel

‘I mean I can’t tell you any more about what’s in Maxham’s head than Michael can.’

‘Of course.’

Sally’s voice sounded low and reasonable, which was all the more remarkable because simultaneously she was screaming to herself, I don’t give a fuck about Maxham: I just want Lucy. Oliver stood aside to let her pass into the living room. I am ordained. I must not use language like that even in my own mind. As she passed him, she was aware of his height and of the way he held himself back to minimize the possibility of accidental contact between their bodies. In the living room she crossed to the window and looked down to the street.

Oliver picked up his jacket from the back of the armchair. ‘Still there, are they?’

‘I can see six of them, I think. Two of them are talking to the neighbours.’ She moved back from the window. ‘We’re besieged.’

‘You could go and stay with relations or friends.’

‘But this is where Lucy would come. She knows the phone number and the address.’

‘We could transfer the calls and leave someone here just in case Lucy turns up on the doorstep.’ Oliver stared down at Sally, making her feel like a specimen on a dish. ‘Think about it. This is just the beginning. If it goes on, there’ll be more of them. Maybe radio and TV as well. The whole circus.’

She shrugged, accepting that he might have a point but unwilling to think about it.

‘I’ll phone this evening if that’s OK.’ He rubbed his nose, which was long and thin and with a slight kink to the right near the end. ‘Shall I leave my number?’

As she passed him a pen and a pad, their eyes met. She wondered whether he was being diplomatic; whether he realized that Michael had erected an invisible barrier between his family and his friends. Sally knew that the Rickfords had bought a flat in Hornsey, but she had no idea of the address or the phone number.

‘I’m on leave till the new year,’ he said.

‘You and Sharon aren’t going away, then?’

‘Sharon’s already gone, actually.’ Oliver rubbed a speck of paint on his jeans. ‘Permanently. She moved out a couple of months ago. We decided it just wasn’t working out.’

‘I’m sorry.’ She had stumbled on another of Michael’s failures in communication. She was past feeling humiliated.

‘She got a chance of a job with our old force – Somerset.’ Perhaps Oliver sensed a need for a diversion, any diversion. ‘It came up at just the right time.’

‘It gave you a positive reason to separate as well as all the negative ones?’

He nodded. He was very easy to talk to, Sally thought – quick on the uptake, unthreatening. She was not surprised that Oliver and Sharon had separated. They had made an ill-assorted couple. Sharon had struck her as a tough, sharp-witted woman, very clear about what she wanted from life.

‘We’re still good friends.’ Oliver’s fingers twitched, enclosing the last two words with invisible inverted commas. ‘But you don’t want to hear about all this now. Is there anything I can do before I go?’

Sally shook her head. ‘Thank you for bringing Michael back.’

The words sounded absurdly formal. Sally felt like a mother thanking a comparative stranger for bringing her child home after a party. A silence ambushed them as each waited for the other to speak. The sound of a key turning in the lock was a welcome distraction. They both turned as Yvonne came into the flat. She looked pale beneath her make-up.

‘You haven’t watched the news, have you?’ she blurted out. ‘Or had the radio on?’

Sally took a step towards her, swayed and clung to the back of a chair. ‘What’s happened?’ she whispered.

Yvonne opened her mouth, revealing the prominent and expensively regular teeth. No sound came out.

‘Come on,’ Oliver snapped.

‘It was those journalists, sir.’ Yvonne blinked rapidly. ‘They asked me if I’d heard.’ She turned to Sally. ‘Look, I’m sorry about this. They said someone found a child’s hand this morning. Just a hand. It was lying on a gravestone in Kilburn Cemetery.’

‘… we carry private and domestick enemies within, publick and more hostile adversaries without.’

Religio Medici, II, 7

On the morning of Saturday the thirtieth of November, Angel opened Eddie’s bedroom door and stood framed like a picture in the doorway.

‘Are you awake?’

He sat up in bed, reaching for his glasses. Angel was wearing the cotton robe, long, white and in appearance vaguely hieratic, which she used as a dressing gown. As usual at this time of day, her shining hair was confined to a snood. Eddie liked seeing Angel without make-up. She was still beautiful, but in a different way: her face had a softness which cosmetics masked; he glimpsed the child within the adult.

‘Just the two of us for breakfast today. We’ll let Lucy sleep in.’

‘OK. Have you been down yet?’ He had heard the stairs creaking.

‘You know I have. And yes, Lucy’s fine. Sleeping like a baby.’

He felt relief, a lifting of guilt. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’

A few moments later, Eddie trotted downstairs to the kitchen. He filled the kettle and set the table while waiting for the water to boil. The washing machine was already on, and through the porthole he glimpsed something small and white, perhaps Lucy’s vest or tights. In the quieter phases of its cycle, he heard Angel moving about in the bathroom. He had hardly slept during the night and now felt light-headed. He did not know whether Angel had really forgiven him for acting on impulse the previous afternoon. But he could tell she was pleased to have Lucy safely in the basement. The latter, he hoped, would outweigh the former.

At length Angel came downstairs, carrying the receiving end of the intercom to the basement. She plugged it into one of the sockets over the worktop. The tiny loudspeaker emitted an electronic hum.

‘I thought I’d do a load while Lucy’s asleep,’ Angel said. ‘Lucy’s things, mainly. That toy of hers stinks.’

‘Jimmy?’

Angel stared at him. ‘Who?’

‘The doll thing.’

‘Is that what she calls it? It’s not what I call a doll.’

Eddie shrugged, disclaiming responsibility.

‘It had to be washed sooner or later,’ Angel went on, ‘so it might as well be washed now. It’s most unhygienic, you know, as well as being offensive.’

Eddie nodded and held his peace. Jimmy was a small cloth doll, no more than four or five inches high. Yesterday Lucy had told Eddie that her mother had made it for her. It was predominantly blue, though the head was made of faded pink material, and Sally Appleyard had stitched rudimentary features on the face and indicated the existence of hair. Eddie guessed that Jimmy was special, like his own Mrs Wump had been. (Mrs Wump was still in his chest of drawers upstairs, lying in state in a shoe box and kept snug with sheets made of handkerchiefs and blankets made of scraps of towelling.) The previous evening, Lucy had kept Jimmy in her hands the whole time, occasionally sniffing the doll while she sucked her fingers. She had not relaxed her grip even in sleep.

‘Lucy looks rather like how I used to look at that age,’ Angel told Eddie over breakfast. ‘Much darker colouring, of course. But apart from that we’re really surprisingly similar.’

‘Can I see her this morning?’

‘Perhaps.’ Angel sipped her lemon verbena tea. ‘It depends how she is. I expect she’ll feel a little strange at first. We must give her a chance to get used to us.’

But it’s me she knows, Eddie wanted to say: it was I who brought her home. ‘She wants a conjuring set,’ he said. ‘You can get them at Woolworth’s; they cost twelve ninety-nine, apparently. I thought I might try and buy it for her this morning. I have to go out for the shopping in any case.’