Cory had torn a piece of paper from her pad of A4 and, with a pencil from his jacket pocket, he sketched the pile of books next to her computer while they talked. His moments of absorption were a relief, respite: she felt hollow, as if having kept the secret inside for so many years, her body had grown around it and now couldn’t spring back.
For the most part, Cory told her, he’d focused on trying to work out what had happened in the past, so Rowan found herself telling him what little she’d managed to discover about Marianne’s final weeks. ‘I’ve been going round and round,’ she said. ‘I’ve tried everything I can think of, pretty much, but I know as little now as I did when I got here. Less, probably. But something did happen to her, I’m sure of it.’
‘How about the guy in the garden – the one you thought was me?’
‘I haven’t seen him again. Maybe I scared him off. Now there’s just the creepy guy in the flats. Though they might be the same person – I haven’t ruled that out.’
‘Who?’ Cory pulled back, frowning. ‘What are you talking about?’
Rowan told him about the man at the window. ‘He’s there all the time, just standing, looking – I’ve seen him at three o’clock in the morning.’
‘So who is he?’
‘I’ve no idea. I thought he might be you, too – I went round there to look for your car.’
‘You haven’t confronted him? Knocked on the door?’
‘No. In case it was you – I wanted to know what you were doing first. But then, if it wasn’t you . . . I’ll admit, I was frightened.’
‘We should go see him.’
‘I don’t know. What if he’s dangerous?’
‘There’s two of us now. You went there on your own.’
‘When I thought it was you. And I was only . . .’
‘Me, the voyeur?’ he said, looking up. ‘The man who drives women to suicide?’
‘I’m just saying, we don’t know what we’re walking into.’ She breathed all the way out, trying to ease the tightness in her chest. ‘What if it’s the police?’
He shook his head, dismissive. ‘There to do what? Blow their budget on twenty-four-hour surveillance of the house of a woman who had an accident?’
‘I know but . . .’
‘He was sure about that, wasn’t he, your police friend? Marianne was alone – no other footprints.’
Rowan quashed a childish impulse to deny that Theo was her friend.
Her phone was in her lap and while he sketched in the lettering on the guidebook from Harvington Hall, she tapped in her code and checked her messages. Nothing. She thought for a moment. ‘Michael.’ He looked up at her in surprise. ‘What?’ she said.
‘That’s the first time you’ve ever used my name.’
‘Oh. Look, I wondered, have you spoken to Adam?’
‘No, but I want to, obviously. Why? Do you think he knows something?’
‘No. No, I don’t think so.’
‘Then . . . ?’
Rowan felt herself redden. ‘He’s a friend. I haven’t spoken to him for a few days and I just wondered if you had. He’s grieving, so . . .’
But Cory was no longer listening. Above the wall at the end of the garden, the light in the flat had come on.
He waited while Rowan locked the front door and they went down the steps in tandem. As they rounded the corner and came on to the section of Norham Road that edged the Dragon’s playing field, there was a stretch of a hundred yards or so without houses or streetlamps, and though it was still only early evening, not yet six o’clock, beneath the trees, the road was dark.
Cory walked quickly, though not, thank God, as quickly as the day she’d had to chase after him to the meadow. Were they working together now, as far as he was concerned? Could he possibly trust her, after what she’d told him? And could she trust him? Going through her room like that – when she’d gone upstairs, she’d found chaos, her clothes in a great pile, books lying open, clearly shaken out by their spines. And the door. It looked as if the whole upright would have to be replaced. Before coming out, they’d improvised a barrier by putting a plank through the back of a chair and bracing it against the kitchen units, but until the jamb was mended, she’d have to sleep with it like that.
Cory had backed her into a corner and she had very little option now but to go along with him and pray he meant what he said about keeping his mouth shut.
But perhaps teaming up with him – properly – was what she needed to do now anyway. She couldn’t have risked going to the flats like this on her own, making herself so physically vulnerable. She tried to ignore the small voice warning her that perhaps, by going with Cory, she was making herself more vulnerable still.
They turned on to Benson Place. Empty parking spaces at the kerb; most of the windows in the flats dark, the residents still at work. Streetlight lay in puddles on the carefully tended patches of lawn. She pointed at the second door along.