It isn’t empty.
Scraps of paper, torn from a spiral pad, lie innocently on one side of the drawer. Grace Southeard, the first is headed, above a series of bullet-points.
36
married?
London Bridge.
I pick up the sheaf of papers and look at the second.
Alex Grant
52
Grey hair, bobbed. Slim. Looks good in jeans.
I feel like I’m going to be sick. I remember how reassuring Simon was, that night we went out for dinner, when I was so worried about the adverts.
Identity theft, that’s all it is.
‘What have you found, Mum?’ Katie walks towards me. I turn the papers over but it’s too late, she’s already seen them. ‘Oh my God …’
There’s something else in the drawer. It’s the Moleskine notebook I gave Simon for our first Christmas together. I pick it up; feel the soft leather beneath my fingertips.
The first few pages make little sense. Half-written sentences; words underlined; arrows drawn from one boxed name to another. I flick through the notebook and it falls open at a diagram. In the centre, the word ‘how?’ surrounded by a hand-drawn cloud. Around it, more words, each in their own clouds.
Stabbing
Rape
Asphyxiation
The book falls from my hands, landing in the open drawer with a dull thud. I hear Katie’s strangled cry and I turn to comfort her, but before I have a chance to say anything there’s a noise I instantly recognise. I freeze and look at Katie, and I know from her face she’s recognised it too.
It’s the bang of the door at the bottom of the stairs.
31
‘Coffee.’
‘No, thank you.’ Kelly hadn’t eaten all day but she didn’t think she could stomach anything. Diggers had hung around for half an hour after dismissing her, before disappearing to do whatever a nearly retired DCI did with an accumulation of rest days in lieu. He hadn’t spoken to Kelly again; only paused by Nick’s desk on his way out, for a muttered conversation Kelly had been certain was about her.
‘It wasn’t a suggestion,’ Nick said. ‘Get your coat, we’re going across the road.’
The Starbucks on Balfour Road was more of a takeaway than a café, but it boasted two high stools in the window, which Kelly commandeered, while Nick got the drinks. Kelly ordered a hot chocolate, suddenly craving its sweet comfort. It arrived topped with whipped cream and sprinkled with chocolate, looking embarrassingly gauche next to Nick’s flat white.
‘Thank you,’ Kelly said, when it became clear Nick wasn’t going to do the talking.
‘You can get the next ones,’ he said.
‘For bailing me out, I mean.’
‘I know what you meant.’ He fixed her with an unsmiling gaze. ‘For future reference, if you fuck up, or you do something stupid, or for some other reason you’re likely to need bailing out, for God’s sake tell me. Don’t wait until we’re sitting in the DCI’s office.’
‘I really am sorry.’
‘I’m sure.’
‘And very grateful. I didn’t expect you to do that.’
Nick took a sip of his coffee. He grinned. ‘To be honest, I didn’t expect me to, either. But I couldn’t sit by and see one of the best detectives I’ve worked with’ – Kelly looked down at her hot chocolate to hide how pleased she was – ‘get the boot for doing something so monumentally stupid as to use her position for some sort of personal campaign. What exactly were you doing?’
The pleasurable flush Kelly had felt at Nick’s compliment disappeared.
‘I think an explanation is the least you owe me.’
Kelly spooned some of the warm cream into her mouth, feeling it dissolve on her tongue. She tested the words out in her head before she spoke. ‘My sister was raped in her first year at Durham University.’
‘That much I gathered. And the offender was never caught?’
‘Never. There had been several suspicious incidents prior to the rape; Lexi found cards in her pigeonhole asking her to wear certain clothes – outfits she had in her wardrobe – and once someone left a dead goldfinch outside her door.’
‘Did she report it?’
Kelly nodded. ‘The police weren’t interested. Even when she told them she was being followed they just said they’d make a note of it. She had a late lecture on a Thursday evening and no one else walked back the same way as her, so she was on her own. The night it happened she was on the phone to me. She called because she was feeling nervous – she said she could hear footsteps behind her again.’
‘What did you do?’
Kelly felt her eyes burn with the threat of tears. She swallowed hard. ‘I told her she was imagining it.’ She could hear Lexi’s voice, even now; breathless as she walked to halls.
‘There’s someone behind me, Kelly, I swear. Just like last week.’