The Siren (3 page)

It was a mid-terrace residence with a small passage that led from the back garden straight through to the street at the front. Including this in its overall ground plan made the house several
feet wider than the neighbouring properties. It had allowed Rachel and Stefan space for an upstairs bathroom and an en-suite extension to their bedroom. The house was one hundred and seven years
old and had spent the entire post-war period mostly in the hands of the same family.

The first thing they had done was hire a skip. Apart from three brief trips to the landfill site near Milton, it remained outside for a full week as layers of the house’s history were
stripped away and discarded. The thick brown and cream lounge carpet, the wood cladding from the chimney breast along with the two-bar electric fire with the fake coals. A free-standing kitchen
unit and a Belling cooker. The twin tub with its flaking paint, rusting from the bottom up. A double bed with velour headboard and the plastic laundry basket printed with orange and yellow flowers
all over its lid. Interior doors, strips of old skirting, the sink, the bath, the immersion heater, and on and on until all that remained had been a windowless, featureless shell.

They’d then extended outwards at the back and upwards into the loft. And the builders had used the narrow side passage each time new building materials were delivered. Everything from
wiring and plaster to shelves and cushions was replaced.

But the passage itself stayed, too convenient to be deprived of it for the sake of a few extra square feet of floor space. They’d never worked out how to give the place a more contemporary
feel, and so this passageway and the one surviving plum tree stayed as relics of the house’s original guise as a cramped and unfashionable Edwardian family home.

Although Rachel always studied her own home in this way, she rarely thought about it in any depth. For some reason today was different, and by the time she’d manoeuvred Riley’s
pushchair in through the patio doors, she was preoccupied with the idea that she was leaving the one place they’d truly made their own.

She corrected herself: the one place
she’d
truly made
her
own.

Rachel drew a deep breath and wondered if living alone somewhere new would really be any better.

It was her exchange with Kimberly that had brought about this occasional sentimentality, Kimberly whose pregnancy had brought her a sense of purpose as well as a beautiful baby boy. Rachel loved
this house but it was just a house, a means to an end. Her next steps were all about getting herself to a point where she could afford to be sentimental. The chance to become as lucky as
Kimberly.

She lifted Riley on to the settee, and he opened his eyes. ‘Hi, Riley. It’s Rachel.’

‘Where’s mummy?’

‘Gone shopping.’

That satisfied him clearly. He was still drowsy and turned his head to one side.

‘Sleepy boy,’ she murmured and stroked his hair. He seemed oblivious to her and a minute later she was in the kitchen with the hob alight and a deep pan of cold water sitting over
it. She was sure he would come to find her when he wanted attention. And, even though she couldn’t see him, she’d hear him if he called out.

She went back to thinking about the house, trying to imagine locking the door for the last time, then telling herself that there was no point in getting emotional when the decision had already
been made.

She was far too deep in thought to notice the lengthening of the shadows outside the kitchen window, or the TV burbling in the front room. It was the key in the latch that made her start, and
notice that the water in the saucepan was now boiling. The tiles behind the cooker were moist with steam.

She glanced at her watch but didn’t bother looking out into the hall. ‘You’re early,’ she called.

There was no reply, so she tried again. ‘Stefan, I’m in the kitchen.’

She listened for a reply but, if he had bothered speaking at all, he’d only mumbled one, merely grunting back at her some dutiful greeting. ‘Sulky git,’ she muttered, slowly
drying her hands on the nearest tea towel, feeling acutely aware of how stale the air became when they shared it. She knew she should go to welcome him, though, and make the effort for one last
meal.

She straightened up, determined to seem caring, relaxed, content and display every other positive aspect of being happily married that it was appropriate for him to see.

That lasted all the way along the hallway and as far as the front room, where he stood in the doorway with his back to her.

‘When d’you want dinner?’ she asked, her smile fading as he turned and she could see the darkness in his expression. She glared instead, knowing that the words would come out
of her mouth sounding sharp and indifferent. ‘What’s up now?’

She looked inside the room and the answer was all too obvious. While she’d been distracted by a saucepan of boiling water, Riley had gone out of the lounge and found the CD racks in the
front room. There were at least thirty cases, now separated from their disks and booklets. She knew immediately that most of them were hers, but she doubted that would change the outcome.

‘What the fuck’s he doing here?’

Rachel lowered her voice, hoping he would take the hint and do the same. ‘That’s not why you’re back?’

He kept his voice at the same pitch, not exactly loud considering it came from a six-foot-two wall of a man. But it was loud enough. ‘Answer the fucking question.’

‘You’re back because you saw the news?’

‘I said answer the fucking question.’

For the first time Riley glanced over at them. He grinned and shook another loose CD on to the floor.

‘Shhh,’ Rachel said, ‘I
am
answering.’ She backed away from the door, jerking her head to persuade him to follow her to the kitchen. Thankfully he did.

‘No, you’re not.’

‘Shut up, let me finish, and you’ll see that I’m actually answering the fucking question.’

She paused, wondering whether she’d already pushed her luck too far. He looked angry, pissed off even, but was yet to tip into the
dangerous
mood. She knew she now had to try to
keep things smooth.

‘Go on, then.’

‘You saw the news, and Kim’s seen it too. I’ve taken Riley while she sorts some stuff out. She’s going to leave town for a while.’

‘Like we don’t have our own shit?’

‘It won’t hurt for us to stick together.’

She saw him change then, a tiny twist in his expression, more tension evident round the mouth and a narrowing of the eyes. His voice took on another tone, a kind of
one-wrong-step-and-you’re-out type vibe.

‘You mean loyalty? That’s new.’

‘What?’

‘All this faithful crap doesn’t include me, does it?’

‘I haven’t a . . .’ She could see where this was going but had no idea why they were heading there. She tried to remember anything she might have said or done to trigger this
jealousy. She kept returning to the idea that somehow he’d discovered the only thing that couldn’t be explained away. He was standing about six feet from her but his fury seemed to fill
her entire field of vision.

‘I kept my mouth shut. I put up with your coldness, always avoiding me touching you, but don’t you think it’s always on my mind, Rachel? I don’t need you telling me how
you’re going to stand by her, when you won’t stand by me. Rubbing my face in the shit like that. Do you see what I’m saying? Do you? You have pushed me until all I want to do now
is snap. I’m not keeping my mouth shut any longer. So tell me . . .’

‘What?’ He waited for just a few seconds before he spoke, but to Rachel it felt like several long minutes, and in that time she was no closer to finding anything to say to save her
situation.

When he finally whispered the words, she wanted to sob with relief. ‘Who are you shagging?’

Who are you shagging?

She shook her head and kept her response low-key. ‘No one.’

‘Liar.’ He stepped closer, and in response she stepped backwards. The wall behind her was nearer than she expected, so she found herself pressed up against it. Stefan leant towards
her, one broad hand pressed to the wall on either side of her face.

She tried to turn away, but those big hands were quick and she found herself slapped back against the wall. ‘This is stupid,’ she breathed.

He just shook his head. ‘I have to know,’ he said finally.

‘There’s no one.’

He grabbed her face, cupping it in his hands, pressing his thumbs into her cheekbones. ‘Tell me.’

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Riley appear in the hallway. He remained silent, with an intent expression on his face. Stefan gripped her just as tightly as she tried to smile despite the
pain.

She knew he would let her go soon, and until then there was nothing else to say.

FOUR

It was approaching 8 p.m. and the afternoon had faded. Inside Parkside Pool the artificial lighting maintained the illusion of daylight, but the restaurant had already closed
and the children’s swimming class had finished. Only a few adult swimmers remained to wind down the day.

The man at the very back of the viewing gallery sat low in his seat. He held open a copy of
The Times
but wasn’t reading anything on the page in front of him. Below him, Gary
Goodhew swam the last of his hundred lengths with the same swift but unrushed front crawl that he’d used on the first. He cut a clean line through the pool, with a technique close to textbook
perfect and timing that was damn near metronomic.

Goodhew left the water then. He didn’t use the steps, just made the sort of easy exit rarely accomplished by the unfit or overweight. Judging by the female lifeguard’s intent
expression, she’d already spotted that he was neither. He tugged his towel from the back of a chair and rubbed his hair a couple of times, enough to leave it looking about as tidy as it ever
appeared. He headed towards the men’s changing rooms, as lithe and almost as fluid when he walked as when he was swimming.

The spectator slipped away then, similarly fluid and equally focused, the evening having proved more than satisfactory. It had taken Goodhew forty minutes to swim just over a mile and a half,
and in that time he had demonstrated discipline, fitness and an undoubted capacity for patience. Perhaps patience was the wrong term for it, more like a determination to play the long game. All of
these were attributes that Goodhew normally hid behind a mask of quiet diffidence.

Not that this was news to the spectator, who had drawn several conclusions before today, and was only present here to confirm them. DC Gary Goodhew, the youngest detective serving at
Cambridge’s Parkside Station, wasn’t the only one capable of silently observing the truth.

From leaving the water to exiting the building Goodhew took less than ten minutes. It wasn’t a hot summer yet, but more than warm enough to lift the remaining dampness
from his short and slightly unkempt hair. He ran his fingers just once through the front, as if that would salvage something. There wasn’t any particular style to salvage, so the result was
pretty irrelevant.

As he turned right from the pool, the Parkside Station fell within his line of sight, and he wondered what would be waiting for him on his return. But then, as he turned right yet again into
Mill Road, he forced his thoughts away from matters of work.

In fact the coming fortnight would hold nothing more taxing for him than meeting a light-hearted challenge set by his grandmother. Just returned from two weeks in Cuba, she had flown back
bursting with stories of jazz and salsa clubs. She reckoned that his choice of spending his two weeks’ holiday in Cambridge couldn’t touch that, especially when the place was already
his home town.

He’d grinned and said, ‘You’ll see,’ despite having virtually no plans yet for his time off.

Now he walked alongside the clog of traffic that inched slowly in each direction, first overtaking then being overtaken by cars that were heading away from the city centre. In recent years Mill
Road had become an end-to-end traffic queue, but it was far more than just a commuter route. The shops ranged from a tattooist and a traditional toyshop to antiquarian books and an oriental
supermarket, with newsagents and kebab shops in between. Some had unlocked their doors at 6 a.m., while others would stay open until two the following morning. No other part of Cambridge was so
diverse or vibrant.

Goodhew took the next side street, and from there it was just a short walk to the former bus garage that housed the car-repair workshop of O’Brien and Sons. In fact there was only one son
but apparently Vincent O’Brien had always been inclined to exaggerate. The old man was semi-retired now and mostly Bryn worked alone, grumbling that he was tempted to amend the sign to read
‘O’Brien’s Son’.

Their paths had crossed a few weeks earlier, and maybe if they hadn’t been at the same primary school they wouldn’t have bothered maintaining any contact. But that small patch of
common ground had proved enough of a link for them to forge the early part of what might potentially grow into a firm friendship.

Or potentially amount to nothing.

Gary was still taking stock and as cautious of becoming close friends with the bad boy and joker of the class as Bryn himself was undoubtedly cautious about becoming mates with the class loner.
Old reputations could prove stubborn ones to shake.

For now, though, Goodhew was more than happy to take the suggestion of an evening spent visiting a few local pubs entirely at face value. This was his fortnight off, after all.

So far, he’d found Bryn easy company, almost like they’d been friends all along rather than just acquaintances with a fifteen-year gap in their joint history.

There were no cars parked outside but the concertina doors were still open, and Bryn’s turquoise and white Zodiac was parked in the centre of the workshop beyond. Bryn had changed out of
his overalls but still had a spanner in one hand, which he raised in greeting when he spotted Goodhew.

‘What do you think?’

The car had just been repaired and resprayed. ‘It’s good.’