Текст книги "The Risk of Darkness"
Автор книги: Susan Hill
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She hadn’t meant to leave the girl. The girl was unfinished business and she couldn’t stand that, it drove her mad, any of it left unfinished, hanging, not cut off. She liked to cut each one off, snip, finished. A clean end. She felt as if worms were writhing in her gut when she thought of it, not finished, not clean, not cut off. It was like an itch she couldn’t scratch, one right inside where she couldn’t reach, an itch in her liver or her gut. Nothing would stop it. That was his fault. Theirs. Men.
She woke up. The door banged open. Keys.
Man.
The tray went down on the table with a crash. Sausages smeared in orange beans. A doughnut. Water.
She stared at the man. At the keys.
She kicked the tray and it went over, orange beans swilling with water all over the floor. He cursed.
She was pleased. She didn’t speak to them, none of them. Said her name, that was it. Didn’t answer questions, didn’t tell them what she was thinking. Kept quiet. She could do that for ever.
Good, she thought, when they gave up and left her alone. Good girl. She smacked her fist into the opposite palm. Good. It stopped the worms writhing in her gut. For a bit.
She wished she hadn’t kicked the water over. She got thirsty. It was dry here, dry air, stale.
She began to kick her legs against the bench hard. It brought an image to her mind of the football one. He’d kicked. She’d had a bruise on her thigh for a week, purple and sulphurous where he’d kicked out. She’d even wondered for a moment if he was going to be the one who got the better of her, but he hadn’t. She knew, really. None of them ever could. In the end, she was always stronger.
“Strong, Ed,” Dad had said, “that’s the girl. Go on, strong. Try and hurt me.”
She never had. He’d taught her. Before he was gone.
That was all she could remember.
“Strong, Ed. Go on, get on with it. That’s the girl.”
It was enough. She went on kicking until they came, the grille banging open, the keys.
The woman, this time.
“Stop that, Sleightholme, pack it in. What do you want?”
“Water.”
“You should have thought of that, shouldn’t you?”
But the water came. They daren’t leave her without water.
She drank half of it and threw the rest in the woman’s face.
An hour later the door opened again and she had to go out, down the narrow passage, through swing doors, into another corridor. Into a room.
She knew these rooms now. No windows. No decoration. Table. Chair on one side, two on the other. Electricals for the tape machine. That was it. Bloody torture chambers.
She swung in behind them, eyes on the floor. They pushed her towards the chair and into it.
“All right, all right.”
They went. All but one. He stood by the door, behind her.
She turned round. Looked into his face.
Him. She had a moment of terror, flashing back to the ledge, and then she thought she was going to fall again, her head spun, her ears buzzed, shewas falling, not him. Not like in her dream.
Him.
He had another with him, face like a mushed-up turnip.
She stared at him. Then at Blondie.
“DCI Simon Serrailler, DS Nathan Coates. Interview with Edwina Sleightholme, time c”
The rigmarole. She had to be careful. She straightened herself up. She’d not had any time to prepare. Be careful.
She stared at him. But it was turnip face who spoke.
“What was your job, Edwina?”
“Ed.” NO. Don’t say anything. Only she couldn’t take it. Wina, she’d called herself when she was a kid. Couldn’t say it, Wina. Mother called her bloody Weeny. Christ. But then she had decided. It was Ed and stayed Ed.
“Tell us what you did.”
She stared at him.
“You travelled.” He looked down at his paper. “Fruit machines. You did something with fruit machines c one-armed bandits, that sort of stuff.”
She bit her tongue.
“Was it or wasn’t it?”
She nodded.
“What?”
Nothing. Zip it.
“Did the Mondeo go with the job then? Company car, like?”
She smiled. Couldn’t help it. Company car.
“Got you about the country, OK, didn’t it? Not a bad car. Quite fast. Big boot.”
Silence.
She looked up at the ceiling. There was an odd stain. No cobwebs.
“How long did it take you to drive from here to Lafferton, Ed?” Blondie now. He had a nice voice.
“Where’s Lafferton?”
“Lafferton’s where you saw David Angus, waiting by his gate for the lift that would take him to school.”
She stared at the table. Her heart was thudding. They might look at the pulse in her neck, so she bent her head right forward. She had him in her mind’s eye as clear as clear. The cap. School bag. The pillars on the gate. Felt the car slowing as she pulled into the kerb. A hand was squeezing her heart, like squeezing out a mop.
“What’s the matter?”
Stare at the table. Stare at it. Don’t look up.
“What did you say to him to make him get in? Or didn’t you? Did you pull him in? Did he try and get away from you?”
No, he’d just come with her. Believed her. Got in. Not like the others. She saw his face clearly. Heard his voice. He’d talked a lot. All the bloody way, he’d talked, asked her stuff, whinged. She hated a whinger. Never whinge. She’d learned that damn quick. Zip it.
“Did you hit him? Did you gag him? Where did you take him, Ed?”
They were both asking now, playing ping-pong with her, one after the other. She wanted to laugh at them. It was easy, now that she realised they hadn’t a clue. Easy. She was clever and you had to be, no use pretending they weren’t clever too, that’s where people went wrong. These people weren’t stupid. Just that she was cleverer.
“Did you take David to the cave, Ed? Is that where you hid his body?”
Jesus. She felt the blood behind her eyes, pulsing. They’d got her, for a second; she hadn’t thought they’d put two and two together and come out with it, bang, like that. It wasn’t fair. They weren’t playing fair.
“I want a solicitor.”
He smiled. Turnip head. She wanted to smash her hand into his ugly face.
“Why?” Blondie asked. “Why now, all of a sudden?”
“Yeah, what brought that on, Ed? The cave, was it?”
She slumped down in her chair and shoved it back slightly, so that she could look at her own feet. Not see them. Not look into their faces. Their eyes.
She heard the cave in her head, the echoes, and the sound of the sea outside. She walked round it. She walked right to the back of it. She smelled the seaweed smell. Cold seaweed. Damp sand. She had loved the cave. All those caves. Years ago, it had started. She’d slept in one. She’d dared herself. She’d found them and they were hers. She was afraid of the sea but she’d worked out how the tide went. She’d slept in one.
A different one.
“Don’t you think you should tell us where their bodies are, Ed? Think about their parents. Those boys. And others. Are there any others? How many did you take to the cave? David Angus c Scott Merriman c”
She could see Blondie’s hands out of the corner of her eye. He was ticking the names off on his fingers. He said them again.
“David c Scott c you were taking Amy there too.
How many others are there?”
How many?
She knew. They were in her head. You didn’t forget. She was very, very careful. The thing was, now, that it was the end and yet it wasn’t finished, the thread hung loose. The girl. It wasn’t finished.
She smelled the green-sea smell of the cold cave.
They were lucky. No one would understand that but her. The cave was beautiful. She’d hidden there. She wouldn’t mind ending there. What could be nicer? Quieter? Peaceful. They had each other. They were safe for ever there.
She felt very, very tired. She could hardly stop herself from putting her head down on the table in front of her.
“What about Kyra?” Blondie.
She sat up, angry, banged her hand down.
“What, Ed?”
“Kyra’s c leave Kyra alone.”
“Kyra’s what?”
Shut up, shut up, shut up, stupid. Only they wouldn’t understand in a million years about Kyra and how they were going on holiday, her and Kyra, in a caravan, and how Kyra was different. Would always be different. How she loved Kyra.
“Take her back.”
He sounded disgusted. He looked into her eyes. Yes. Disgusted. He’d no time for her. She hated him for that.
“Get up.”
She thought afterwards, in her room, that she should have spat in his face. She should have done that.
The DCI beckoned Nathan away from the CID corridor. They went down the concrete stairs and out into the yard at the front of the police HQ.
“Let’s walk,” Serrailler said. Not that he knew anywhere decent to walk to. Just the straight main road, dusty now and smelling of tar from the heat of the day.
“I thought Ooop North was supposed to be great,” Nathan said, taking two steps to Serrailler’s one stride, to keep up. “Dales and that.”
“That’s the other bit. Like the cliffs. The beaches.”
“This is rubbish. This is worse than Bevham.”
“Funny. It changes everything. No one in Lafferton can ever look at the Hill in the same way again c won’t, for generations. I can’t think of the coast c that stretch of cliff. The sea. It’s some of the best coastline in the country c and it’s blighted. It’s stained. Nothing will shift it.”
“Do you reckon it’s your cave where she took them?”
Simon shrugged.
“Forensics will go in.”
“Forensics. It’s all we’ve got, Nathan. The house. The car. And the cave. If they don’t find anything, we’re empty-handed.”
“They’ve got to.” Nathan smacked his balled fist into the other palm.
“She won’t talk.”
“Like an iron door, ent she? Gives nothing. Not a flicker. Only c”
“What?”
“Only she did it. She did them all.”
“Oh yes.”
“How long will she go down for as it is, do you reckon? Ten? More?”
“Ten minimum.”
“If we can get forensics c”
“Yup. Then it’s fine.”
“If we don’t c”
“I can’t stand it. Loose ends. We know. She knows we know. But there’ll be nothing She could have buried them in the sand. Thrown them into the sea.”
“Can a shrink get her to open up?”
“Doubt it. They don’t win them all either. Only pretend to.”
“I get a smell off of her, you know, guv? That smell.”
“Guilt.”
“Badness. It smells.”
They reached a junction. The road went on for miles, shining and sticky in the sun.
“Come on.”
“We having another go?”
Simon was silent. Were they? They could leave it until the next day. Or press on, hope to grind her down, wear her out. It wouldn’t work of course. She wasn’t the sort to wear out. Ever. Yet he couldn’t leave it, go back to Lafferton. Loose ends.
“I’ll go in there without you this time. Take one of their team to sit in.”
“Guv.”
“No reflection on you, Nathan.”
“No, it’s fine. I don’t fancy looking at her any more today. I’m going to ring Em.”
“How is she?”
“Bloomin’, thanks. Suits her. All, like, rosy with it, you know?”
Simon laughed. He remembered his sister, pregnant with her last. “Rosy.”
It occurred to him that he would never know what it was like to have a wife, “rosy” with his own children. He knew it instinctively in the same way that he knew Ed Sleightholme was guilty. You didn’t ignore feelings like that, even if you were powerless over them.
“Be glad to get away from here, be glad to get home.”
A patrol car swerved, screaming, out of the station forecourt. Another.
“Where’s the difference?” Simon said.
Twenty-one
They were to see Ed Sleightholme at ten. At half past nine, Serrailler sat in Jim Chapman’s room with a plastic cup of sludge-grey coffee and DC Marion Coopey Simon had asked for her. He wanted her take on Ed.
“You won’t crack her,” she said now. “She just stared me out and it’s what she’ll go on doing with you. How’s your forensics team doing?”
“They’ve done the caves—the beaches, the cliff paths—nothing. They’re in the house now. They’ve got the car and another lot are pulling that apart. We might be lucky. But I wanther confession. I needher to talk.”
“She’s got to you!”
“Well, of course she’s got to me. Hasn’t she got to you?”
The DC shrugged. She was wearing a cream T-shirt and short linen skirt. She looked cool. “Not really. I try not to let them.”
“If I didn’t get like this from time to time I wouldn’t think the job was worth doing.”
“Shows you care?”
He swigged his coffee and ignored her. “Do you think she’s a psychopath?” he asked after a moment.
“Probably. On the other hand, she wants gratification. But that’s the usual. It’s like an itch c in the end, you have to scratch it. The urge is too great, and the satisfaction is great c for a bit. Until you start to itch again.”
“Why children? What makes a womanwant to abduct children?”
“Why stress ‘woman’? What makes anyone want to abduct children?”
“It’s a male crime, overwhelmingly. You know that.”
“I still don’t see why the motives need to be different.”
He thought about it. “Maybe c maybe they’re not. But either the desire to abduct children and probably kill them is rare in women, or women suppress it more readily c something censors it very strongly.”
“So the censor is absent in this case?”
“Has to be. She has not only done it, she’s done it again and again. Boys and girls. No conscience, no brakes c seize the moment. Gratify. Why?”
“It’s sexual. Surely it always is.”
“In men.”
“Why not in women?” She was aggressive with him. She had him on the spot and knew it. “Look, if you believe women have a tender side in relation to children, because they mother them, whereas men, who father them, don’t—that’s crap. And why shouldn’t women’s sexual feelings be as strong as men’s?”
“No reason, if you’re talking about normal sexual feelings, but these are not normal, are they?”
“Why does that signify?”
“There’s a reason, somewhere c Why does she want to do this? Why does anyone need to commit this particular crime?”
“I know what the usual explanation is.”
“Emotional deprivation in childhood c abuse c possibly in care c lack of close and trusting relationships when growing up c”
“Blah de blah, de blah.”
“You don’t buy it?”
“Dunno. It’s trotted out as an explanation for most crimes. Makes me look for more.”
“I want Ed Sleightholme to tellus more.”
“She’s not going to. You might as well get back down south.”
“Come on. Back in there.” He held the door open for her. DC Coopey went through with a contemptuous look.
Ed Sleightholme gave him no sort of look at all.
“Did you talk to the children?” Serailler asked. She was staring at the table and did not glance up but he thought he noticed a reaction, some sort of start or hesitation, some twitch in her body. She had registered. She had had to stop herself from responding to him.
“Or did you gag them? Knock them out? Or were they killed pretty soon after you got them into the car?”
Silence. Marion Coopey leaned back in her chair, one leg up over the other.
Simon plugged on. “Are your parents alive, Edwina?”
“Ed.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why are you so bothered about it? I rather like the name Edwina.”
“Well, I hate it.”
“Why?”
No answer.
“Did your mother call you Ed?”
“No.”
“Edwina?”
“What’s it to you?”
“I’m interested. Was it your father then? Who called you Ed?”
Silence.
“You love your parents, don’t you?”
“What gave you that idea?”
“So you don’t?”
“Don’t know them. Never known them.”
“What, neither of them?”
She looked up straight at him. “Fuck off.”
“Not yet. Were you adopted? In care?”
“None of your business.”
“Tell me about Kyra.”
That was it. He’d got it. Nothing else worked. She held back, or blocked him out, she was silent, or defiant. But with Kyra, he had got there. Twice now. Her eyes flashed and brightened, her skin took on the faintest flush. She leaned towards him.
“You shut up about Kyra, you hear me?”
“You’re her friend, aren’t you? She goes round to your house and spends time with you.”
She looked at him. He thought she was going to say something but, at the last minute, she did not.
“What did you do?”
“Made biscuits. Made toffee. Cut things out and stuck them in the scrapbooks. Coloured in. Did soap-and-water bubbles.”
“Fun.”
“Yeah. We had fun. She likes doing fun things.”
“Were they the sort of things you did when you were a kid?”
A flicker. What? A shadow across her face. Gone.
“When I was that age, we made peppermints on wet Saturday afternoons. With my mother. That was fun.”
She stared at him.
“What did you talk about?”
“Stuff. What we were doing. Anything. You know.”
“I don’t know. Tell me.”
“No.”
“Kyra will.”
She blazed at him. “Don’t you talk to Kyra. Leave her alone. Leave her right out of all of this, OK? I don’t want Kyra knowing c”
“Knowing what? About the other children?”
“Where I am. What c”
“What you’ve done c about Amy and David and Scott c and c how many others were there? Kyra may have to know.”
“If c”
Serrailler could almost see the tension in her, like an electric charge coming at him across the table. He felt excited. He was getting somewhere. Getting there.
“We have to talk to Kyra. She’ll be asked about you c what you did together c how often she was with you c what you talked about c whether you ever did anything to her c tried to get her away.”
“We were going away. I was going to take Kyra on holiday. To a caravan.”
“Her mother didn’t mention that. Did she know?”
“It was OK, she’d be fine.”
“Was the caravan in Scarborough, near the beach and the cliffs?”
“No.”
“I thought you’d have liked it there. With Kyra c she’d have loved it, along the sands, playing in the caves.”
There was a steel cable and it was stretching and stretching, thinning, growing tighter c He felt the pull on it. The room was hot and humid and the silence was extraordinary, an electric, quivering silence. It went on, as the cable tightened and stretched. He could feel Marion Coopey beside him, tense herself, hardly breathing. There was a faint smell of sweat.
Ed Sleightholme’s hands were too still. She did not fidget with her fingers, did not move one hand on top of the other, did not scratch, did not pick her nails. Her hands were as still as wax hands, in front of her on the table. If hands could speak, perhaps they would tell most of all. They were ordinary hands, not large.
“Where were you going to take Kyra, Ed? You must have had a plan.”
“I said. Holiday. A caravan.”
“Is that what you told the others?”
“What?”
“Come on, we’re going on a holiday, we’re going to a caravan. Did you tell them their friends would be waiting there for them? Did you say, ‘It’s fine, Mummy and Daddy are going to come on later?’”
She looked straight at him. Her eyes were steady. They hid nothing. Ordinary eyes. She was so ordinary.
It was what Serrailler had noticed every time he had been close to a murderer, unless they were high on drugs, or out of their minds. The ordinariness. You wouldn’t notice them in a crowd. Ed. Boyish. Not plain, not pretty. Not unpleasant. Not remarkable. Not memorable. Ordinary.
“How do you see yourself, Ed?”
She blinked. Then shook her head.
“Do you understand what I mean?”
“No.”
“I don’t mean how you look, I mean what you are c how do you see yourself? As someone who would melt into the background? People wouldn’t really be aware of you at all c If we said, ‘What did she look like?’ they’d scarcely be able to remember. Insignificant, really. Is that how you see yourself?”
“No.”
“Then how?”
“I’m c Ed, that’s what people see. Ed. Me. They know me. ME. Kyra c ask her c she thinks a lot of me, she’s always wanting to come round. People think c they just think Ed.”
“Good Ed? Pretty Ed? Funny Ed?”
“How would I know?”
“But what do you think? Give me a word. Describe ‘Ed’.”
The silence lasted minutes, not seconds. Ed was staring at her own hands, but the hands had still not moved. Dead hands.
Then Serrailler saw that she was crying. The tears were silent, and ran very slowly, individually, down her cheeks. He waited. She made no move to brush them away.
“Just tell me,” he said quietly. “It’s easy. Say their names. Then tell me what happened. Ed?”
Nothing. The silence went on and the waxen hands remained still and the tears came, one by one, and slid slowly down, and he waited. And there was nothing.
Twenty-two
“There’s the men again.”
“Get away from that window, how many times do I have to tell you?”
“Yes, but they’re going into Ed’s house again, they’ve just opened the door. Ed wouldn’t like that, I know she wouldn’t. When she gets back I’m going to tell her. When is she getting back?”
“I said GET DOWN. Bloody hell, will you listen to me? I told you, you’re not to talk about Ed, forget her. Forget she ever lived.”
Kyra turned round and stared.
“Go and put the telly on.”
“I don’t want to put the telly on. I want Ed.”
“Jesus wept. You hear me, Kyra c if you say that name in this house ever again, ever, you hear me, so help me I’ll beat the daylights out of you, I’ll give you away for care, I’ll send you in that panda car. You never say that name again, OK? Hear me.”
Slowly, silently, Kyra got down from the chair by the window and started to trail away out of the room.
“Kyra!”
She froze.
“You promise, right. ‘I will never say that name in this house again.’ Go on. Say it. SAY IT.”
Kyra had her back to Natalie. Her shoulders were stiff, her head rigid.
“Say it. ‘I will never c”’ A pause. Natalie was shaking. “‘I will never c’”
“I will never c”
She could hardly hear the child’s voice. “SAY IT LOUDER.”
“I will never c” It was still barely audible.
“‘Say that name c’”
“Say c that name c”
“‘In this house again.’”
“In my house again.”
“‘THIS house.’”
“THIS house.”
“‘I swear.’”
“I swear.” Then, after a second, “Amen,” Kyra said.
“Now bugger off. Get upstairs. Get anywhere. Go on.”
Kyra slipped from the room like a shadow off the wall.
Natalie shut the door and lit a cigarette. She had started again when it happened, after giving up for three years. It was the first thing she had needed. She stood back, so she couldn’t be seen, watching the house next door, watching the police vans and the police in white spacesuits carrying stuff in and out. She’d watched and watched every day. She couldn’t keep her eyes off it. She’d scarcely been out. She’d no idea what she might see, hadn’t put her fears into shape, in case they came true. But somewhere at the back of her mind, the idea of bodies, things dug up in the garden, children, lingered like a gas, poisoning her.
She had scarcely slept since they had knocked on her door, barely an hour after she had seen the news on television. There had been three of them and she’d been waiting for them. Kyra was out, playing at a friend’s house. They would want to talk to Kyra, they’d said, but not now, not yet.
The front door opened and two of them came out. One was carrying two black bin liners full of c of what? Natalie dragged on her cigarette. She wanted to go inside. She’d been once or twice, to fetch Kyra, but Ed had never asked her in properly. Besides, it had been just a house then, someone else’s living room and hall, someone else’s interesting furniture. Now it looked different. Its shape seemed to have changed. It looked wrong, peculiar. She saw photographs of it, on the television, in the papers, Ed’s house, the house next door, but not that house, somewhere else, with drawn curtains and police in white suits and vans outside. A murderer’s house. One day it would be in a film or a Real Crime book, that house.
She needed to talk to Kyra again. The police hadn’t been to do that and Natalie ought to get whatever it was out of her first. That there was something to get, she never doubted. There had to be. She went cold thinking of what had happened and, more, what could have—would have—happened any day, any week. Kyra.
She loved Kyra. It was difficult, on your own, and she had bad days. Kyra took it out of her, never stopping with questions and bouncing and wriggling about, never being still, not sleeping well. But she loved her. How could anyone even ask?
The white suits plodded back up the path and shut the door.
Natalie started to go after them in her mind. Into the hall. Turn left. Living room, same as this. Out again. Kitchen. Door to the back. The way Kyra sometimes went in. Used to. She saw the stairs, though she had never been up Ed’s stairs. She wanted to now, wanted to stare and stare around every room, taking it in, peeling away the wallpaper and the curtains and the furniture with her eyes to get at what was beneath, or behind.
Several times a day, Natalie had got out the phone book and looked up the name.
Sleightholme, E.S., 14 Brimpton Lane.
It stood out from all the others on the page. The line wavered. Then it looked bigger, the ink blacker.
Sleightholme, E.S., 14 Brimpton Lane.
Already, it was more than a name, an address, a telephone number. It had a ring round it. It might have been c
Christie, J. R. H., 10 Rillington Place.
West, F., 25 Cromwell Street.
It had that look.
Only they were gone and this was real and she was looking at it, this red-brick house the same as her own red-brick house, a couple of yards away from her house in which she ate and slept and dressed and cooked. In which there was Kyra.
Natalie stubbed out her cigarette.
The house next door was quiet now. No one came or went. The vans were parked. That was all.
She’d been happy to let Kyra go there. More than happy. Ready. Any day. She didn’t know what she felt about that. She didn’t blame herself. How could she have known anything? Kyra had gone on and on, every morning, every night, every Saturday and Sunday. Ed. Ed. Ed. Ed.
Nothing bad could have happened, then, nothing so bad at all, if she had wanted to keep on going, every morning, every night. Could it? How could it? She’d never said anything. She wouldn’t have wanted to go, if c
The police van shone white and square and odd in the sun. Natalie wondered what was in it.
From upstairs, there was no sound. No sound at all.
She lit another cigarette and smoked it to the end before going to talk to Kyra.
You could see Ed’s house from her bedroom. As soon as she had been sent upstairs—which was always happening—Kyra had taken the little stool carefully over to the window, so that standing on it she could watch in case Ed came back. Every day, she hoped Ed would come back. Every day, she knew Ed would come back. She saw people going in and out of Ed’s house and when Ed came back she would tell her about them. Ed might not know. She might not like it. Ed was proud of her house. She’d said so quite often.
“I’m house-proud.” “Take off your shoes, Kyra, I don’t want muddy marks, I’m house-proud.” “Wash your hands after you’ve eaten that, Kyra, I don’t want cake mixture on the furniture, I’m house-proud.”
It was beautiful inside Ed’s house and she wouldn’t want the men messing it up. The floors were always shining and the carpets never had bits on them. Everything had a place, neat and careful, and the furniture smelled of polish. The mats were arranged just so and the cushions lined against the sofa back, just so, and when you put the mugs back on their hooks, you had to get the order right. Kyra did. She’d learned. Ed had taught her.
“If you’re going to be here, you have to learn the rules, Kyra. The blue one, then the white one, then the green, the pink, the yellow and, at the end, the blue again.”
“Why do they go like that?”
“That’s how I like them.”
“Yes, but why?”
“I just do. It’s how I like them.”
“I like them that way as well, Ed.”
“Good,” Ed had said. “Now wash your hands, you’ve been touching the plants.”
She loved the way it was. When she came home, Kyra wanted to arrange everything carefully. She tried to. But it never worked because their house was a tip. “Kyra, stop bloody messing, stop fidgeting, will you?” But in her own room, Kyra could keep things the way she liked them. The way Ed liked them. She lined up things in her drawers—white socks, blue socks, white knicks, pink knicks, and her dolls and animals in a line on the shelf. She had learned.
“Gawd, what’s wrong with you, Kyra, you’re a funny kid, I don’t know where you come from. Look at it, it’s peculiar.”
“It’s how I like it.”
“Yeah, right, well, let’s wait till you’re fourteen, it’ll be a bleedin’ pigsty, teenagers are.”
Kyra knew that it would not but she also knew better than to disagree.
She leaned forward. The back door of Ed’s house had opened and two of the weird men had come out and taken bags to the wheelie bin, but they were not putting rubbish in, they were taking it out, emptying the wheelie bin over into the bags. Why would you do that?
Downstairs the phone rang. Kyra settled herself more comfortably on the window ledge. Her mother would talk for ages.
When she had asked why the men and the vans were at Ed’s house every day, Natalie had screamed at her. She was used to her mother screaming but this had been different, it had made her face twisted and frightening-looking so that Kyra had understood not to ask again.
“You listen to me. Ed’s gone. OK? End. I don’t want to hear about Ed, I don’t want you asking anyone, I don’t. Do you hear me, Kyra?”
Kyra had nodded, afraid to say anything at all, afraid to ask a question. Her head was so full of questions she wondered if it had grown bigger to accommodate them all, if people would notice. Questions buzzed all day, all night, like a hive of bees that were never still and the only way she could let them out of her head was through her mouth, by asking them, and she daren’t do that, so they stayed inside, buzzing her mad.
Her mother had raised her voice now. Kyra turned slightly, to hear.
“What? When? When d’you hear that, Donna? Oh my God. Oh my GOD. It’s a fuckin’ nightmare, I’m living in one. Oh my God. No. Just the same, van and those white-suit people, you know, you see them on murder programmes c it’ll be on the news, then. I gotta keep Kyra out, she’s got ears out here, I don’t want her hearing. I just said she’d gone and she wasn’t coming back. Yeah, too right it’s true c Oh my God.”
Kyra looked back out of the window. The questions were dancing up and down in her head now, making little hard taps every time. Where was Ed? Why had she gone? Why wasn’t she ever coming back? What had she done? Why were the men in her house? What, why, why, when, who, what, why, why c
Kyra wanted Ed. Because no one else would be able to answer the questions properly, everyone else would shut her up, push the buzzing questions back inside her head and slam the door shut. But Ed always answered. Ed answered every question, though sometimes only to say, “I can’t tell you the answer to that one.” But somehow that was enough. That was an answer. Ed never said shut up, don’t ask, stop mithering, it’s none of your business, you’re too young to ask, too young to know. Ed talked to her, and thought and listened. And answered. Ed told her things. Ed knew a lot. Ed. Ed. Ed. Ed.
