Текст книги "The Risk of Darkness"

Last time round, frothy coffee had come in shallow see-through cups and tasted of nothing. Now it came in a tall glass with a tall spoon and tasted strong. Dougie Meelup sat at a table towards the back of the café with the tall glass and the newspapers. Three newspapers. He had read one and a half from cover to cover, aside from Business, and all the sport, apart from golf, and if he stayed another half-hour or so he’d finish them all. Then he might get another paper and come back for a bit.

In the past couple of weeks he had spent as much time in the café as he had at home, during the day at least. Eileen had barely noticed. He was worried about it and it was driving him mad, both together. At first, she had spent every hour there was on the computer, learning how to work it and then beginning to look everything up, every word that had been written, it seemed, first about Weeny’s case, then about the missing children. She had got Keith to buy her a printer and set it up, so then the printing-out had started, all day and into the night, chug chug churn churn, until the kitchen table was a white sea of paper and there were boxes of stuff printed out from the Internet all over the house.

“I have to do it, I have to find out and I have to understand, if I don’t do that then I can’t help sort it, Dougie.”

Then the papers had to be filed in the box files she had gone into town to buy. Then it had gone quiet while she had read them through, painstakingly, every single one, occasionally making him listen to some of it out loud, asking him what he thought. He found it hard to answer.

“I don’t know, Eileen, it sounds too legal, it’s all police talk, I don’t know.”

“You get used to it,” she had said, “legal things and the police talk. You get to see through it after a bit.”

Then she had started on the names and addresses, sheets of them. And then the letters had begun. She was writing a letter about Weeny to half the country, he thought, asking Lord this and Sir that and Mr Justice whoever. He’d looked at a few when she was in the bath. They were all the same, asking for help with the case, asking for letters to be written, asking how it could have happened that Weeny could have been arrested for dreadful, terrible crimes she could not have committed, asking for more names and addresses, more people who would join her campaign, asking, asking, asking. After a bit, the replies had started to come. Then she had begun to telephone people, newspapers, police stations, MPs, judges. Half the country. Half the world.

He got his own meals. She ate a banana or a packet of biscuits or cut a chunk of cheese, and made tea. There were tea mugs on every shelf, every window ledge. The sink was full of empty tea mugs. He washed them up and put them away and tidied the kitchen and went to the supermarket and cooked and tried to get her to come to the table for a meal and in the end gave up and sat down on his own. But after a bit, he had taken to coming into the café and drinking the tall glasses of frothy coffee, stirring three spoons of sugar in each one with the tall spoons. He read the papers, tried the crosswords, marked the racing columns, learned how to do Word Wheels so that his score moved up from Fair to Good and, once, Very Good.

His life had been turned upside down and he couldn’t get a purchase on what to do about it, how to get it back upright again, how to help, how to bring Eileen to her senses. How. How. He knew one thing. He wouldn’t have said it aloud, not to Eileen, not to anyone at all. But he knew. They didn’t arrest a person for terrible things like this without being sure. It wasn’t like shoplifting, say, or pinching a purse. They didn’t take someone in and have it official if it was a maybe, a lookalike, an educated guess.

He didn’t know Weeny. She had been to see them once, called in, on her route, she’d said, brought a bunch of garage flowers, stopped for a cup of tea and a biscuit. A slip of a thing, dark hair, dark jacket, dark jeans. When she had gone, he had had the strange feeling that nobody had been there, no one he could pin down or remember, a nothing sort of person, a small, dark, fleeting shadow. She hadn’t said a lot to him but what she had was perfectly nice, perfectly pleasant. But he didn’t remember much of it. It was as though even her words hadn’t been there, hadn’t left any trace on the air, just breath which had evaporated, leaving no mark in his memory.

He looked down at the paper. Musselburgh 3.30. It was a choice between Empire Goldand Miljahh. Nothing to split the two. Perhaps he’d Dutch them, a fiver each. That would be around seven-pound profit whichever won. Was it worth walking to the bookies and standing in a queue for seven pounds, always assuming he was right and one of the two did win? The café was quiet. They had the back door behind the counter open on to the yard whch let in some air as well as the smell of dustbins.

The bookies would smell of sweat and smoke.

Eileen would be printing-out or click-clicking, her face close to the screen.

He felt a sudden drop down into despair. He wanted to ask someone what he could do, what he could say, how he could help, how he could support Eileen and at the same time get her out of this cage she was in, the cage of trying to prove what was unprovable, that Weeny’s arrest was all a terrible error. It wasn’t an error and he could never say that. She asked him over and over again what he thought, if he would write letters, and his tongue seemed to swell in his mouth because he could never answer, the right words were not there and the truth could not be spoken. He wished she hadn’t given up her job. She had said she needed all her time on what she had started to call her campaign. But he thought she might be afraid, too, afraid of someone knowing, pointing, whispering, telling, spreading words. He wandered out into the sunshine. The town was busy. He thought he would go to the bookies, place his bets, and then buy something for her, though he didn’t know what, or even if she would notice.

The price on Miljahhwas a lot better than he’d expected, 100-30 instead of 7-4, so he had ten pounds instead of five and watched it win by a length on the bridle which ought to have cheered him but somehow didn’t. He went out and sat on a bollard in the sun and wondered what to buy Eileen. Flowers. Chocolates, which she’d always liked. But he knew she’d ignore the flowers and leave the chocolates unopened.

He went back to the car and began to drive towards the roundabout and home, but instead he took the first exit, almost without knowing he was doing it.

Leah was in the garden, rearranging the little lights she had planted, on the path, up the rockery, in the trees. Dougie had sometimes wondered if the lights were something to do with her religion but never liked to ask. She clambered down from rehanging one when she heard the gate.

Dougie Meelup would never have said he was a prejudiced man, never one so much as to notice the colour of anyone’s skin. Human was human, even if it wasn’t always easy to get on with everyone. But when Keith had said he was marrying a Filipino girl, he’d been concerned. Everything was different, wasn’t it, not just the colour of your skin, everything, the way she’d been brought up, her education, her family, her religion, food, weather, clothes, customs. Everything. “How’s she going to like it? That’s what worries me. It’s everything new, everything different, and a husband as well. What if she isn’t happy? You couldn’t blame her, but what would you do? Burning her boats, coming to live here, it’s a big step, and if it goes wrong, what will you do?”

But it hadn’t gone wrong. It had gone right from day one. Leah had never been away from her country but her English would do and soon got better and nothing else had seemed to matter. It was as if she’d been born to come here, Dougie thought, even though she had Filipino friends and met up with them quite a lot and emailed everyone at home now. He’d never asked Keith how they had met but Keith had always been a wanderer, always off with a backpack somewhere or other, so he’d supposed they’d met in a bar or on a beach or even an aeroplane.

“Internet,” Keith had said, laughing his head off. “Internet dating agency for English blokes to find Filipino girls.” And gone on laughing at the look on Dougie’s face.

“Hey, you here, that’s great, Dougie, I’ll make a cold drink or you want tea as usual?”

Always the same, he thought, always offering something, a drink or food and the best chair the minute anyone arrived. Like now, she was whipping into the shed, pulling out the deckchair, setting it up in the shade, brushing it down with the corner of her skirt.

“Hey, this is so nice, you sit here now, Dougie, tell me what drink you want.”

It had been the right thing to do. The right place.

“Keith is out, you know of course, you don’t expect to see him this time of day, but that’s all fine, if you want just to see me.”

Dougie sat down. He had to sit down. If he didn’t, he would offend her.

“You want cold drink or tea now?”

“A cup of tea would be just the ticket. Thanks, Leah.”

“No problem, only few minutes.”

And she was off, quick as a flash, into the kitchen.

The garden was like the house, bright and tidy as a new pin. Leah had never before had any such thing as a garden and she had taken to it with spirit, filling the beds and the hanging baskets and the windowboxes with flowers in as many vivid colours as she could and the rest of it with the little lanterns. Every evening from spring until autumn when it wasn’t raining, she went round lighting the candles inside the lamps.

Dougie closed his eyes. He had to say it, all of it, had to tell the whole story and think aloud about what to do and Leah would listen and not speak, not judge, not admonish.

The tea came on a tray with the best cups and a fresh cake. He knew better now than to offer to help her with anything.

“This is really, really nice, you know?” she said, smiling, handing him the tea. But her eyes were questioning.

Dougie took a bite of sponge cake, ate it slowly so that she saw him savouring it, drinking the tea before he set down his cup and said, “It’s Eileen. Something dreadful is happening, Leah. I don’t know what to do. I’m about at the end of trying to work it out.”

Fifty-five