The Day She Died (18 page)

“What did she do to you?” I whispered. Slowly, the pressure of his head on the mirror lessened. The glass creaked in its frame, the front legs came down onto the floor again.

“Kids,” I said, “I'll make you sugar fingers if you wait in the kitchen.”

“Wot dat?” said Dillon. But Ruby knew sugar anything was great and she dragged him away.

“Gus,” I murmured to him, smoothing his hair back. “Go through and wait in the bedroom, eh? I'll be as quick as I can.”

Sugar fingers was only buttered toast, dipped in brown sugar and cut into strips, but Dave had some cinnamon in his cupboard and I sprinkled that on. I left them trying to work out whether they liked it or not and hurried back through.

He was sitting on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands. I went over to him, eased his hands away, and let him rest it on my shoulder instead.

“What did she do?” I said again.

“She hit me,” said Gus. “Go on and laugh.”

“Why would I laugh?”

“Size of her,” he said. “Size of me.”

“Did you hit her back?”

He shook his head. “I was getting there, though. I was so angry. I'm so … ” he pulled away a little and turned so he could look at me. “I'm so angry, Jessie. I'm scared of how angry I am. I'm cracking up.”

“No, you're not,” I told him. “But of course you're angry.” Angry enough to pound the answering machine, grab me by the arms.

“I'm acting like she did!” said Gus, as if he had mind-read me. “I feel as if she's inside me. I feel like, when I speak, it's her voice—
sniping and sneering.”

“You never hit her back,” I told him, slow and sure. Was I trying to make him hear me or was I telling myself? Assuring myself it was all going to be okay?

“And she called me a wimp for it,” he said. “She told me I was a coward and a joke.”

“And now,” I said, “she's gone. But she's left a big echo. You're not turning into her. And I'm not going to turn out to be like her. It's just an echo. It'll fade.” I was soothing both of us now.

“I can't believe she's gone,” he said. “You said you were listening to her—I thought she was back. I can't believe she's gone to stay.”

And it was at that moment that we both heard the car, trundling along the track, turning in, stopping. Gus's eyes flared and I felt my breath come quicker. Crazy. I don't believe in ghosts—certainly don't believe in ghosts that can drive, anyway. But if the ghost of Becky King
was
here, it would feel my boot up its arse for what she'd done to this guy and those kids, and for all the nicey-nicey stories she'd shovelled at everyone else. Miss Colquhoun, I meant, but I bet there was more of them.

It wasn't, of course, the ghost of anyone. It was the cops. Again. The sergeant and the woman one called Gail.

They sat with Gus in the living room and I went to take whatever was coming when Ruby and Dillon sussed the sugar fingers recipe. Of course, I took a tray of tea through, so I got to hear some of it. I was all ready to weigh in. Pretty clear I didn't need to though.

“The Fiscal himself is satisfied,” said the sergeant. “Since there was a note and after what you've told us about your wife's … lifestyle. But we want you to understand that if you yourself have any doubts, Mr. King, any doubts at all, you're quite within your rights to request a full PM and inquiry.” He stopped and looked at me, standing there like a frozen idiot with the tray. I came back to life and put it down on the coffee table.

“If I thought there was any chance of the inquest coming back with ‘accident',” Gus said. “Jesus, ‘murder', even—I'd say go for it. But that wouldn't happen, eh no?”

“Fatal accident inquiry,” said Gail. “No, there's no chance of that, Mr. King.”

“No inquest?” I said.

“Fatal accident inquiry,” she said again. Her partner made some kind of movement. My guess is she said it ten times a day and it drove him mental. “Not when the case is as clear as this one.”

“Unless the family requests it,” the sergeant said. “Same with the full post-mortem. Just tell us, Mr. King.”

“Gus?” I said, looking down at him. He was staring into the fire. He'd lit it, as usual, on auto, and it was just beginning to glow. I'd thought he would snatch at any chance at all, no matter how slim. The way he'd been talking. And now, when it came to the crunch, he was going to let the record say suicide after all?

“I forgot the milk,” I said and went back to the kitchen. Ruby and Dillon had sugar fingers hanging out their mouths like dogs' tongues. They were sucking and giggling. Surely soon they'd be choking. “Nice, eh?” I said.

“Yummy yummy in my tummy,” said Dillon.

“Except they're really just toast, though,” said Ruby.

Becky grew cabbages and had her own car and these two kids and a cottage by the seaside and she
looked
happy in the pictures with Ros. And if she loved Ros she could follow her, and if she didn't want a baby she didn't have to have one. Maybe she
was
turning the car. Maybe it
was
an accident. How could Gus not want an inquest? What had changed since he was wild for one, desperate to try anything to keep that word away from the children? The door opened behind me and the WPC appeared, as if she'd heard what I was thinking and had come to tell me it was
fatal accident inquiry
.

“A word,” she said. “We'd better step outside.” All right for her in her coat and shoes, but I followed anyway. The back of the cottage was a different world from the front. It was sheltered, what with the trees and the rise of the land, but somehow the endless wind—too strong in October to call it a breeze—at the front made it feel alive. That and the sparkle off the sea, the gulls, the long high sweep of the sky. Back here, the dark was darker and, despite the shelter, the cold was colder. The ground felt damp instead of whipped dry and there was no salt in the air. Just that rotten leaves smell and the soft moss underfoot. I had taken a dislike to the back of the house the night of the wheeliebin and nothing would change my mind.

“You're surprised,” the copper told me, once the door was closed at our backs, and I thought again that for someone who was hoping to get people to talk, she didn't half make a lot of statements and ask hardly any questions.

“I am,” I said.

“You don't think Mrs. King was suicidal,” she didn't ask.

“I never knew her,” I said. “Don't look like that. I told you I didn't know her the first night you were here.”

“But you're surprised anyway,” she didn't ask again.

“I'm … ” I could feel her watching me, even though it was full dark with not a single star and no gleam of moon through the thickness of the cloud. “I'm surprised Gus wants to leave it,” I said. “He's so …
troubled. I thought he'd want everything investigated right to the last little thing. He's in such a mess, you know? I'm just surprised he's ready to let it go.”

“Troubled and in a mess,” she repeated. “Of course he is.”

“Of course,” I agreed.

“He said as much to us,” she said. “Can't believe she's gone. Can't believe she's really dead. It's the funeral'll sort that out for him. Not an inquiry. That just keeps things in the air, hanging on.”

“I suppose so,” I agreed.

“So you don't really know anything,” she told me. “You don't actually have any information you need to share.”

“No,” I said. “You're right. Can I ask you something?”

“It's very common,” she told me.

“I haven't asked you yet.”

“To be unable to accept that someone has died, I mean,” she told me. “If you love them.”

“Oh yes, of course. I know. Like Elvis and Diana.” I could feel her staring at me. But it's true. There's never a conspiracy about someone nobody cares two hoots for. A worldwide belief that some day-time soap star who died at ninety actually didn't die till ninety-three. And of course I hadn't said the other name to the copper, the big one.
Jesus
, Diana, and Elvis, I really meant, like I'd tried to tell my mother once too. “They didn't want him to be dead, so they just said he wasn't,” I had explained. It hadn't gone well, and the more I tried to convince her that I didn't mean any harm the worse it got.

“It's like the ultimate good review!” I'd said. “Hung from a cross? So what! Holes all over you? Granted. Starved? I'll give you starved. Bled white? Since you mention it, yes. Bunged in a cave with a great big boulder over the door? I believe so. But
dead
—no way. Or if he was, he's alive again now. Glory Hallelujah! I'm not calling them stupid. He was their friend and they loved him, but come off it, Mum! If you got like that about one of your friends, I think two thousand years later people should be ready to let it go.”

And then she'd started in with the prophecies and the sure and certain hope and the life everlasting—which was why we'd been talking about it in the first place, her going on about how her mum died and who was to blame, and me asking why it was
blame
if death was the start of the good bit. Why not credit? If the Bible was true, then death was great and murder was a helping hand.

I blinked and peered through the dark to the faint gleam of the woman copper's face.

And what about suicide? It wasn't throwing away God's greatest gift at all, was it? Not if the greatest gift came after. It was just kind of … impatient and sort of greedy. Except not even the happiest of the clappiest actually saw it that way. And those cults that off themselves by the thousands? Even the Brethren think they're nutters as well as sinners. Which they shouldn't, actually.

“So,” said the copper, “ask me.”

I blinked and refocussed on her. “Do pregnant women really kill themselves a lot?” She breathed in sharply. “My friend at work said yes, but it's just so horrible.”

“Mrs. King wasn't pregnant, was she?” said the cop. “Was she?” An actual question.

“Gus didn't tell you?”

“I can't discuss Mr. King's statement with you,” she said, back in charge of herself again.

“Isn't that a reason to do a full PM?”

“It's Mr. King's decision.”

But then what had they meant by
her lifestyle
? I thought they meant her running around and getting knocked up.

“Can I ask you another question?” I said.

“I really can't discuss it with you.”

“No,” I said. “This is something completely else. You know Becky's friend, who went away?”

“No.”

I kept my sigh really quiet. I didn't want to piss her off; she wasn't exactly helpful to begin with. “Gus didn't mention her? Okay. Well, how do you try to find a missing person is what I wanted to ask.”

“Is she over twenty-one? Any reason to suspect foul play?”

Did wads of sequential notes and the most terrified person I'd ever seen in my life count as reasons? “As far as I know, she's over twenty-one.”

“You don't know her all that well then,” the cop informed me.

“I don't know her at all,” I said. “Never met her. Gus does, though. Can a friend report a friend missing? It doesn't have to be family?”

“Mr. King's got enough on his plate,” she said. “He wants to get in touch with the hill walker that found his wife, you know. Say thank you. Not everyone would do that.” She sounded less cold and blank when she spoke about “Mr. King.” Could Gus have charmed her? Well, I suppose he'd charmed me.

“I just thought it would help if we could find Ros,” I said. “She could fill in the blanks. Closure, you know.”

“Blanks?” she said. “Mr. King has said very clearly he's satisfied with what we've done. And there's nothing like a funeral for closure, anyway.”

Which is total guff. The funeral keeps you busy and it's basically a party, and it's not till afterwards that you realise the guest of honour is really and truly dead. Or it's afterwards, anyway, that you start to get that dead means gone, and gone means forever. And that's when heaven and angels and life eternal count for nothing, and the holiest get just as sad as the rest of us, and that says a lot, if you ask me.

Maybe the copper was right, though. Gus was better after they'd gone away. He made pancakes for us, tossing them and catching nearly all of them, and he shut the bathroom door and got in the bath with the kids while I cleared it all away.

When he came back through in his dressing gown with his wet hair in a towel, he sat down in his armchair by the fire and stretched like a cat. “That's that then,” he said. “Done and dusted. Just the funeral to go.”

“You didn't tell the cops she was pregnant,” I said, just like that.

“Eh?” He sat forward and unwrapped his hair, started rubbing it hard. It would frizz like hell unless he had some pretty posh conditioner on it. Which didn't seem likely.

“So why aren't the police wondering why she did it?” I said. “What did they mean about
her lifestyle
?”

“Yeah,” he said. “No, that's all fine. I told them about her and Ros.”

“You
what
?” I knew I was gaping at him, couldn't help it. “That's not—That was just Steve at work!”

He was raking his fingers through his wet hair. It stretched and snapped, and when he had finished there was a cat's cradle of hairs caught in his fingers. So much hair, his scalp must be throbbing.

“I had to say something,” he said. “They knew it wasn't an accident. They saw the note.” He rubbed his hands together and made a ball of hair, threw it in the fire. It hissed and there was sudden stink, like witchcraft. “You showed them the note, Jessie. They were never going to think it was an accident after that.”