Post Mortem (12 page)

The late-night streets were spilling over with people. A girl on the pavement was falling about, drunk, or pretending to be so. It was hard to tell. The guv'nor had to brake to allow a couple leaning
into each other's arms to cross in front of the car. He waited for them to pass.

‘It isn't a big deal, Lizzie, really it isn't. Don't worry, it'll all get sorted one way or another.'

She tried to sound as though she agreed with him. Silly of her to think it might be a big deal. ‘Yes. You're right.' The car pulled away again and accelerated. Then she said quietly the thing that was now on her mind. ‘I suppose everyone's got an opinion about this.'

‘You won't last long in the job if you worry what people say about you. Just ride it out. Stick to your guns.'

‘Stick to my guns?'

The street light pulsed over Shaw's impassive face in waves of white and darkness. ‘Well, you know what I mean.'

But she didn't know what he meant. That was the whole problem.

Shaw decelerated for the approach to the traffic lights, then, as the lights turned to green, swung out on to the speed and blankness of the A road. The car slowed for a speed camera and then accelerated to 80. Lizzie sank back into the leather seat and surrendered to the speed, to the night. A firearms car drew past, blue lights flashing, no siren. Another part of London; another drama. They pulled off the main road and weaved through roundabouts and intersections before the car slowed to a halt. He said, ‘Exactly where do you live?'

‘It's a few streets up here. I'll direct you.' She gathered her things from the footwell. ‘Or I can walk the last bit.'

‘Don't be silly. I'm just here on the left. If you want a drink first.'

19

C
ollins and Steve worked their way systematically from opposite ends of the seafront, trying every hotel. The Sea Crest, which had a dirty awning and condensation misting its windows, had its own little car park, from which Steve exited pulling his North Face jacket tight around him and lighting a cigarette. He called Collins on his phone.

‘Bingo.'

They parked a little way down the front, facing the car towards Hastings with a good view of the hotel doors and the exit from the car park. Collins called for more troops to drive down and relieve them. Jez and Alice said they could work the overtime. They were on their way – drive time away. Collins needed some sleep. Ideally someone else would be responsible for detaining Lizzie if she turned up to retrieve the car.

They waited.

Night had fallen and the sea was an expanse of glassy blackness. In the distance Collins could just make out the spectre of the ruined pier. She slid her seat back and closed her eyes. When she woke, she was stiff and cold.

Steve said, ‘Thank God you've woken up. I'm absolutely Hank Marvin.'

‘What the hell's keeping them?'

‘I got a text while you were sleeping. There's been an accident on the A21. They're stuck in traffic.'

‘OK, get some chips for both of us. Plenty of salt—'

‘And no vinegar. I'll be quick.'

‘No problem.'

Collins got out of the car and stood by the iron balustrade that protected the fall to the beach. She lit a cigarette and imagined her empty house going through its solitary motions, the central heating clicking on.

She turned and leaned back against the balustrade, glancing to her left. A young woman was walking towards her, a slight figure in a hoody, jeans and trainers. Collins fished her phone out of her pocket and selected Steve from her favourites, but it rang unanswered. The young woman was getting closer. Collins ended the call and slipped her phone back into her pocket. She turned back towards the sea and leaned her weight against the railing. She would wait for Lizzie to pass. With any luck Steve might even be back by then. But the young woman's steps were slowing, and then she too paused and leant against the balustrade.

The countryside had given way to lights. The seafront was a half-night stained by neon and sodium. Lizzie turned her back to the town and gazed out towards the darkness of the sea. She listened to the sighing and pulsing, the stones shifting endlessly.

He had become Kieran to her that night; that was the detail she remembered now. Before, he had been the inspector, the guv'nor, sir, Mr Shaw. Now, with the physical act, came his name: Kieran. She could taste it still in her mouth, the voiceless velar stop, the vowel like a sigh, the sound travelling forward and turning like the roll of a wave to end with the soft touch of her tongue tapping the n. She remembered him leaning forward to kiss her. His lips, his tongue. The taste of him, the pressure of their desire, as if they wanted to swallow each other whole. Her hand around his neck,
the short hair at the back of his head. His hand – how tender – flat against the small of her back. And yet, in spite of this moment of tenderness, the desperation, the hurry, like runners racing towards a finish line.

They had not moved from the sound system, as if they were teenagers; the coffee table cramped them. Somehow to go to his bed was out of the question. Their clothes were torn away, discarded, only half removed, and then, with a final impatience, they were naked. There was a moment's stillness. She had traced her finger along the line of darker tan where the short-sleeved police shirt ended. She was leaning backwards. There was a scar glimpsed on his arm, a tattoo on his chest and another on his bicep. Then, with the shock of intimacy, he was inside her. He leaned away from her. He smiled and said her name.
Lizzie
. As he reached towards her, she saw more clearly the tattoo on his arm: a rose blooming and winding. A sudden compassion arose in her: the mess of it, the pain, the urgency, the unexpected beauty, the awkwardness, the bloody stupid coffee table.

She rested both hands on the balustrade, felt the cold metal against them. The incontrovertible rightness of it: that was what she remembered. Even now her desire held its own justification, its own meaning.

The sea sighed and turned. Lizzie glanced to her left. A woman a few feet away was also leaning against the balustrade, smoking, looking out to sea. Lizzie watched her and wondered what thoughts were going through her head, what memories playing. What had brought her here on her own to contemplate the sea? She was older than Lizzie, wearing good flat leather shoes, and what looked like grey suit trousers, all incongruously topped by a zip-up waterproof jacket. Lizzie realized all at once that she was, of course, a cop. Then the woman turned slightly and Lizzie saw her on the roof, holding out her warrant card.

Startled out of her reverie, Lizzie turned immediately and started walking in the direction she had come from. The detective sergeant began to walk after her, calling her name. Lizzie quickened her pace and began to run.

After the first few steps, Collins turned and ran to the car. In defiance of the protesting horns, she swung the vehicle sharply round on the coast road. The seafront was busy, cars speeding. She could see Lizzie running ahead, her arms swinging easily. In a second she would be alongside her. She would head her off, run round, get hold of her. But Lizzie had looked over her shoulder towards the approaching car, and now she ran out sharply in front of it, forcing Collins to brake sharply. Collins was already getting out of the driver's seat, her right foot on the road. The traffic would stop Lizzie. She would be able to grab her. But then, to her horror, she saw Lizzie swerve away into the path of an oncoming car. The car blared its horn and screeched to a halt, avoiding her only by an inch. Lizzie almost lost her footing. She put her left hand on the bonnet to steady herself and then raced on, head down, running with a good stride. The driver was getting out of the car, a fat, angry man. Collins could see Lizzie turning up a side street. The fat man was shouting after her and shaking his fist. ‘What the bloody hell?'

Collins ran, leaving the car in the road. Her phone was ringing. She could just see the back of Lizzie disappearing to the right on to the main street.

She pulled her phone from her pocket and answered as she turned and began to run back to the car.

‘Steve, she's made off. I think she's gone up the main street, towards the station. She's too fast for me. I'm getting back in the car to look for her.'

Fifteen minutes after Collins and Steve had given up searching, Jez and Alice had arrived in St Leonards. Now they all sat together in a bar on the first floor of a big old white hotel on the seafront, drinking orange juice and eating salted peanuts.

Collins was furious. Lizzie Griffiths was making a bloody fool of her. She had a strong image in her mind – an image that she felt would always be with her – of Lizzie's young, slim frame outpacing her effortlessly, as if she were the front-runner in a cross-country event.

Neither Collins nor Steve spoke.

Jez said, ‘Look, it's not a bad thing. She's got no car now and she's running out of money. It's a small town and she hasn't got a vehicle. We can check the CCTV inside the hotel. Find out what she's wearing. Can't we get the local plod to help us?'

Steve shook his head. ‘Baillie says no.'

‘Call him. Get him to change his mind.'

Collins spoke for the first time. ‘He's not answering his damn phone, is he? I'll have to talk to him in the morning.'

20

L
izzie couldn't stop shivering. She knew how easy it could be to miss suspects when they were only a few feet away, so for a long time she had simply crouched down behind a shed in the dark corner of someone's garden. She didn't know how thorough they would be in looking for her, or how many of them there were. Finally she decided to risk moving. Perhaps they would send more officers, search systematically, even cordon off the area where she had been seen. She needed to get away, at least from the centre of town.

She walked quickly up and away from the sea through streets of ample Victorian villas, finding herself finally in a deserted business park. Workshops and warehouses, lonely offices with pictures of Alsatians in the windows. There was a row of garages, and she could see that on one of them the padlock only appeared to be closed. She pulled it open. Inside was a locked white transit van, and behind the van, some large cans of paint. Leaves had gathered along the wall.

She rested against the van and waited for things to become clearer to her. It frightened her that they had identified the hire car. She felt the facts constricting around her, forcing her to some sort of ending that she dreaded. The cold was penetrating her body. She crouched down, took the T-shirts out of her backpack and put them on in layers, then zipped up her waterproof again. Her hands had a kind of luminosity in the darkness, white with cold.

The hire car, with its powerful heater had been a kind of refuge to her and it had given her a fantasy of escape, of driving for miles
and miles, for ever and ever. She remembered bitterly the squishy leather seats of Kieran's Land Rover. The luxury and exuberance of the car. The blast of music from the iPhone in the dock.

She had been going home to her parents that first morning, and sex had made her late. Kieran had rolled her over on to her back like a lion playing with a willing cub and said, ‘Plenty of time. I'll drive you to the station.' It had been as if they had wanted to enter through the wall of skin into each other's bodies. His smell, his taste – they had been a confirmation of what she had suspected. Her desire had been verified.

Afterwards the city had swept past in all its glorious grey, the huge buffeting sky framing the Westway flyover with its billboards and high-rises.

She said, ‘A proper drug dealer's car.'

‘That's right. Can't let them have all the good things.'

Kieran glanced to his left and put his free hand briefly on her knee. Then he indicated right to overtake and changed up a gear.

‘Lizzie, about Hadley. You feeling better about that?'

‘Mmm.'

She hadn't wanted to think about Hadley at all. She had wanted the drive to last for ever. She wanted to walk with Kieran along a pebbly beach. She wanted to eat breakfast with him in a small old-fashioned hotel. She wanted to know everything, every little detail about him. She wanted to ask what on earth they both thought they were playing at, and she wanted to fuck him again, soon.

He said, ‘OK, listen.' She turned to him but he was concentrating on the road. ‘We're not having this conversation, do you understand?'

She shrugged. ‘OK.'

‘And this is just my opinion. It has nothing to do with me being your guv'nor. It's just my opinion as your, your . . .' She squinted at him and thought,
lover
. He smiled briefly at her and said, ‘. . . friend.'

‘Yeah. OK. Go on.'

‘Lizzie, this is what I would do about Hadley. Of course I'll back you whatever you decide.'

There he was, twenty years' experience and no shit sticking to him. She said, ‘OK, Kieran, guv'nor, whatever. Go ahead. I want to hear what you really think.'