When Will There Be Good News? (33 page)

All made up, of course. She couldn't really remember any of them but that didn't stop them still possessing a reality that was stronger than anything alive, apart from the baby, of course. They were the touchstone to which everything else must look and the exemplar compared to which everything else failed. Except for the baby.

She was bereft, her whole life an act of bereavement, longing for something that she could no longer remember. Sometimes in the night, in dreams, she heard their old dog barking and it brought back a memory ofgrief so raw that it led her to wonder about killing the baby, and then herself, both of them slipping away on something as peaceful as poppies so that nothing hideous could ever happen to him. A contingency plan for when you were cornered, for when you couldn't run. A famine or a nuclear war. The volcano erupting, the comet dropping to earth. Ifshe was in a concentration camp. Or kidnapped by evil psychopaths. If there were no needles, if there was nothing, she would hold her hand over the baby's face and then she would hang herself. You could always find a way to hang yourself. Sometimes it took a lot of self-discipline. Elsie Marley's grown so Jine, she won't get up to Jeed the swine.

If she could she would run, she would run with the baby, she would run like the wind, until she was safe. She heard footsteps coming up the stairs and held the baby closer. The bad ma
n
was commg.

Reggie Chase, Warrior Virgi
n
SHE HAD PHONED CHIEF INSPECTOR MONROE THREE TIMES SO FAR and got no answer. When she phoned Dr Hunter's phone it no longer rang out, now a recorded voice on the other end informed Reggie that the number she was trying to reach was currently unavailable. Perhaps it had run out of battery, it must be ailing by now, if not dead. The slender thread that still connected Reggie to Dr Hunter was broken. Dr Hunter's lifeline. Reggie's too.

If Reggie could get her hands on Dr Hunter's phone, then the socalled aunt would be in her 'Contacts' list. She could phone the aunt and ask to speak to Dr Hunter. And then Dr Hunter would answer and Reggie would say -very casual -'Oh, hi, I just wanted to ask when you'd be back. Everything's fine here. Sadie sends her love.' And Dr Hunter would say, Thanks so much for phoning, Reggie. We're both missing you. And then all would be right with the world.

All she had to do was go into the house and find the phone. And if Mr Hunter came back she could always say that she'd left something behind, a book, a brush, a key. It wouldn't be like she was breaking in, technically speaking, you couldn't break in if you had a key, could you? She had to know that Dr Hunter was all right.

She got off the bus on Blackford Avenue and bought a packet of crisps in the Avenue Stores before setting out to walk the rest of the way to Dr Hunter's house. The crisps were cheese and onion flavour and as soon as she tasted them she had to put them away in her bag because they reminded her too much of the night of the train crash, breathing into Jackson Brodie's airless lungs, willing him into life.

There was no Range Rover which meant that Mr Hunter wasn't at home, as the two of them didn't go anywhere without each other. Reggie crouched down in the bushes and watched to make doubly sure that there was no sign of life in the house. Maybe she should have brought Billy along, for once his talents as a natural-born sneak would have come in useful. Billy wasn't answering his phone either. What was the point of phones if no one ever answered them?

Sadie gave a whine of homesickness at the sight of the house and Reggie stroked her ears comfortingly and said, 'I know, old girl. I know,' the way Dr Hunter would have done.

Searching for the Hunters' door keys, Reggie's fingers touched the bit of grubby blanket that was nestled in her pocket. A little green flag of distress left for her to interpret, a clue to be tracked, a trail of breadcrumbs to follow. How sad the baby must be to lose his talisman. How sad she was to lose the baby.

'Right,' she whispered to Sadie and the dog looked at her enquiringly. 'Let's do it.'

First the mortise, then the Yale, so far so good. In the hallway she paused for a second to check the coast was clear while Sadie raced up the stairs looking for Dr Hunter, although it was quite plain to Reggie that neither Dr Hunter nor the baby was here. The house was empty of breath, as quiet as the grave. Dead air. Even the clocks had stopped with no one here who cared to wind them. The absence of Dr Hunter from her own house weighed heavily on Reggie's heart.

The kitchen was messier now, although there was no sign of Mr Hunter having cooked anything. There were the remains of a pizza and a lot of dirty glasses that he hadn't bothered to put in the dishwasher. The fridge was still full of the same food that had been in there on Wednesday. The bananas in the truit bowl were black now and the apples were beginning to shrivel. There was a large cobweb slung across one corner of the ceiling. It was as if time was accelerating in Dr Hunter's absence. How long before the house reverted to some kind of primal state? Before it disappeared altogether and was replaced by field and forest.

Reggie searched everywhere in the kitchen for the phone -the drawer in the table, all the cupboards, the fridge, the oven, but there was no sign of it anywhere. She was wondering where else to look when she heard the Range Rover approaching with its usual brutal pace and dramatic finish. It was followed by another equally aggressive-sounding car.

Car doors slammed and heavy tell-tale footsteps crunched on the gravel path at the side of the house -they were corning to the back door, to the kitchen. Reggie sprinted up the back stairs, like a scullery maid caught with her hand in the biscuit tin, and ran into Dr Hunter's bedroom where she found her companion in crime asleep on the bed. Sadie woke when Reggie entered the room and gave a little bark of excitement. Reggie jumped on the bed and clamped her hand over the dog's muzzle. A person could die from a heart attack under this kind of stress.

Down below she could hear voices, in the hallway now. Mr Hunter and two other men by the sound ofit, their voices raised. She couldn't make out the conversation but it was moving nearer, they weren't in the hallway any more, they were coming up the stairs. A person was definitely going to die of a heart attack in these circumstances. Reggie grabbed hold ofSadie's collar and tugged at it. 'Come on,' she whispered desperately. 'We've got to hide.' There was, of course, only one place to hide in the bedroom, the louvred closet, the last refuge
of the
slasher's innocent victim in horror films. Reggie stepped quickly into Dr Hunter's side, pulling a reluctant Sadie in with her.

There wasn't enough room to breathe, it was horrible, it was like going into Narnia except there was no other world beyond, just Dr Hunter's clothes, pressed up against Reggie's face, all smelling of Dr Hunter's perfume. Reggie's heart wasn't even in her chest any more, it was too big and too loud to fit any more, it was filling the whole of the bedroom. Boom, boom, boom.

The men were having a conversation with Mr Hunter on the landing outside the open bedroom door. Through the slats in the closet door Reggie could see the back of one of them. He was big, bigger than Mr Hunter and was wearing a leather jacket, she could see the thick trunk of his bull neck and his bald head. There was a big, shiny gold watch on his wrist and he tapped the dial ostentatiously and said to Mr Hunter, 'Time's running out, Neil.' Another Glaswegian by the sound of him.

They must be able to hear her heart from where they were standing, a great big drum of sound banging away in the closet, boom, boom, boom. Any moment one of them would yank the doors open to find the source of the noise. Reggie stretched out her fingers and felt the soft fur on top of Sadie's head for comfort.

'I'm doing my fucking best,' Mr Hunter said and the man with the gold wristwatch said, 'You know the score, Hunter. You and yours. Think about it. Sweet little wife, pretty little baby. Do you want to see them again? Because it's your call. What do you want me to tell Anderson?'

Sadie gave a low growl, upset by the proximity of so much nasty human testosterone. Reggie crouched lower and put her arms round her in an effort to keep her quiet. 'Right,' Mr Hunter shouted and suddenly he was in the bedroom, halfway across the floor to the closet. Reggie thought her heart was going to explode all over the bedroom and they would find it, like a burst balloon, on the floor of the closet. He opened the door on his own side, pulling on it aggressively so that Reggie could feel the whole closet shake. He threw things around, looking for something, and must have found it because he left and the men followed him downstairs. Reggie laid her face against Sadie's big body and listened to the dog's heartbeat, solid and regular, unlike her own fluttery organ. The back door slammed and first one and then the other car started their engines and both drove away. Reggie rushed to the window in time to see Mr Hunter's Range Rover following a monstrous black Nissan. She repeated the registration over and over again until she could grab a notebook and pen from her bag and write it down.

The air in the house felt polluted by the conversation she had just heard. On the one hand it was very bad -the man with the gold wristwatch seemed to have kidnapped Dr Hunter and the baby -but on the other, good hand, they weren't dead. Yet.

Climbing cautiously out of the closet, Reggie almost tripped on something on the floor inside it -Dr Hunter's expensive Mulberry handbag (The Bayswater, Reggie -isn't it handsome?). Reggie snatched it up and said to Sadie, 'Come on, we have to go.'

Reggie caught a relay of buses. While still inoculated against fear by her experience in Dr Hunter's house, she was going to go back to her flat in Gorgie. Her phone was about to run out of battery and if nothing else she could salvage her phone charger.

She sat on the top deck, holding Dr Hunter's black Bayswater on her lap, investigating the contents. Technically theft of course, but Reggie didn't feel that the normal rules applied any more. Sweet little wife, pretty little baby. Do you want to see them again? Every time she thought ofthose words her insides hollowed out. They had been kidnapped, that was what had happened to them. They were being held to ransom by gold-watch-wearing Glaswegians. Why? Where? (And what did the aunt have to do with it?)

The innards of the handbag seemed complete -a hairbrush, a packet of mints, a small packet of tissues, a packet of baby wipes, a copy of That's Not My Teddy, a small torch, a granola bar, a Ventolin inhaler, a packet of birth control pills, a Chanel powder compact, Dr Hunter's driving spectacles and her purse and -fat to bursting -her Filofax.

Now surely Inspector Monroe would believe her? Dr Hunter wouldn't go away without her driving spectacles, her purse or her inhaler (the spare one was still on the dressing table). No aunt could be so sick that you left everything behind. The only thing missing was her phone but that didn't matter any more because inside the Filofax was an address for an 'Agnes Barker' in Hawes. The mysterious Aunt Agnes, found at last.

Reggie got off the bus and turned the corner of the street to find that the all-too-familiar calling cards of catastrophe were waiting for her -three fire engines, an ambulance, two police cars, some kind of incident van and a knot of bystanders -all muddled up in the street outside her flat. Reggie's heart sank, it seemed inevitable that they would be there for her.

All the glass in the windows of her flat was broken and black streaks of soot marked where flames had shot out from the living room
. A
horrible smell still lingered in the air. A thick hose like a boa constrictor snaked into the close. The paramedics were leaning nonchalantly against the bonnet of their ambulance rather than trying to revive her charred neighbours so hopefully Reggie wasn't going to have the deaths of everyone in the building on her conscience as well. Reggie's life was like the Ilian plain, littered with the dead.

'What happened?' she asked a young boy who was gazing in awe at the aftermath of disaster.

'Fire,' he said.

'Duh. But what happened?'

Another boy leaned into the conversation and said excitedly, 'Someone poured petrol through the letterbox.' 'Of which flat?' Please don't say number eight, she thought. 'Number eight.' Reggie thought of the books piled on the living-room floor lik
e
a bonfire waiting to be lit. All her schoolwork, Danielle Steel, Mum's miniature teapots. Virgil, Tacitus, good old Pliny (young and old), all the Penguin Classics she'd rescued from charity shops. Photographs. 'Oh,' Reggie said. A little sound. A little round sound. Weightless as a wren. A breath. 'Was anyone hurt?'

'Nah,' the first boy said, looking disappointed.

'Reggie!' Mr Hussain said, appearing suddenly from out of the crowd. 'Are you all right?'

A piece of charred paper floated slowly down from the sky like a soiled snowflake. Mr Hussain picked it up and read out loud, 'He felt the heart still fluttering beneath the bark.'

'Sounds like Ovid,' Reggie said. 'I was worried you were in there,' Mr Hussain said. 'Come into the shop, I'll make you a cup of tea.'

'No, really, I'm OK. Thanks anyway, Mr Hussain.'

'Sure?'

'Sweartogod.'

A fireman who looked as if he was in charge came out of the building and said to a policeman, 'All clear in there.' Firemen began to coil up the fat hosepipe from out of the close. Reggie saw the goodlooking Asian policeman who gave a twitch of recognition at the sight
of her
, as ifhe knew her but couldn't place her. She turned away before he remembered who she was.