Back in the garage and I try to work as quickly as I can. There’s a tap that Dan installed, along with a plug in the centre of the garage floor. His thinking was that it would be easier to wash our cars in the winter if we didn’t have to stand out in the cold. His BMW is spotless next to mine, as ever. His car is an extension of him.
I fill a bucket with water and washing-up liquid, but there’s even more blood than I thought. It’s not just on the bonnet, lower windscreen and grill, it’s drizzled down towards the front wheels. There’s mud, too. Lots of it, dried and caked. It clings to the underside of the wheel arches like a leech latched onto flesh. I hate cleaning cars at the best of times. For Dan, it’s therapeutic. He’ll spend a few hours in here clearing his thoughts – or so he says – while shining his car. I don’t think that’s a euphemism. Either way, I prefer to pay a few quid to stick mine through the car wash next to the local Tesco. Can’t really show up with a tenner and a blood-covered car, though.
The first two soapy buckets of water quickly turn a reddish sort of black and disappear down the drain, but I am beginning to get somewhere. The crusts of mud and filth recede, along with any trace of what I’ve done. Or might have done.
When my back starts to ache and my fingers are wrinkled and white, I realise an hour has passed. It’s almost six in the morning and the world will be waking again soon. Dan will be back downstairs.
Now the fog has started to clear, I feel surprisingly awake. It’ll be adrenaline, something like that, but it’s like I’ve had a full and comfortable night of sleep. Those nights where the head hits the pillow and the next thing anyone knows, the sun is up. I’m sure it shouldn’t be like this.
The final bucket of water disappears into the drain; the soapy, filthy suds spinning until there are only a few dregs clinging to the concrete. If I didn’t know better, I could have imagined it all. My car is about as clean as it gets. It’s nowhere near as shiny as Dan’s, but the traces of last night have gone.
It’s only when I step away to examine my handiwork that the phrase slips into my mind. ‘Tampering with evidence’ – that’s what it’s called. It’s what they write in the news reports, what the presenters say on Crimewatch. ‘Police have charged Mr So-and-so for tampering with evidence’.
Is that what I’ve done?
I tell myself that it’s not. That’s not the sort of person I am, and yet, here it is. I’ve acted clinically, barely thinking at all. Act first, think later.
But there wasn’t a crime scene. Was there? If I hit something, then where’s the damage to the car? Where’s the animal – or person – from which the blood came? I looked, I really did. A person can only tamper with evidence if there’s been a crime – and there hasn’t.
I have to tell myself that.
There’s little point in going to bed now and I don’t feel tired anyway.
I head through the house into the kitchen. Olivia’s energy drinks are in the fridge. The ones that are ninety per cent sugar and called things like ‘Carnage’ and ‘Assault’. She knows I don’t approve – what reasonable parent would? – but it is what it is. She could be using worse things to get that buzz.
I think about having one, but my own addiction is a little more acceptable. I fill the coffee machine with granules and water, setting it to fizz and pop as I curl up on the sofa in the living room.
Unsurprisingly, my phone is on its last legs battery-wise. The modern ones are more addicted to power sockets than Olivia is to her energy drinks. I plug it in and then text her, keeping it straightforward and without accusation.
Hope u had a good night. Let me know if u want picking up from somewhere
There’s only one thing more valuable to teenagers than money – and that’s free lifts. Olivia failed her driving test a month ago and hasn’t rebooked it. Part of that is for financial reasons, but it’s mainly because she hasn’t handled the rejection well. The reason she failed was, of course, because of the examiner. He gave her confusing instructions, he wanted her to fail, he’d hit his quota for the day. Those sorts of things. There was little point in asking for specifics of what happened because it would be taken as implicit criticism that the reason she failed was something she did, as opposed to a crooked tester.
I scroll through our recent texts, hoping a new one will appear. A minute or so passes and there’s no reply, so I switch to the web browser instead and get back to my own predicament. I search for terms like ‘hit-and-run’, checking the Twitter feeds of the local police forces. No matter how many times I tell myself I couldn’t have hit something, someone, there’s that niggling voice at the back of my mind.
There’s nothing of any particular interest to find. A lorry driver was stopped on the motorway for his vehicle being too heavy; someone else arrested for drink-driving. That’s it. An uneventful night in the real world – certainly no reports of anyone found in a ditch. I want reassurance, but it’s early yet.
The problem is that, as I press back onto the sofa, those three words keep spinning around my mind.
Tampering with evidence.
Chapter Four
I jolt awake at the sound of something clanking onto the granite worktop in the kitchen. For a moment, I’m back in that field, confused and unsure where I am. It takes a second for me to realise I’ve fallen asleep on the sofa. My phone is on my lap, light creeping through the blinds from outside.
Dan is in the kitchen, opening and closing the fridge noisily. I wonder if he’s doing it on purpose. He must’ve walked past me sleeping on the sofa and said nothing. The tiredness is blinked away and I stretch high, my shoulders and neck clicking with grim satisfaction.
Most of our ground floor is open-plan and I continue watching as he mixes some powder into a protein mixer bottle. He shakes it up and then peers closely at the greeny-grey gloop, before popping the cap on the top and glugging down a mouthful. He’s in shorts and a tight, athletic T-shirt, with a large holdall bag on the counter.
‘Didn’t wake you, did I?’ he asks.
‘I need to get moving anyway.’
As he takes another mouthful, I check my phone quickly. There’s nothing from Olivia.
‘Did you hear from her?’ I ask.
‘She says she’s fine.’ He speaks with an invisible shrug.
‘Oh.’
The word slips out unguarded. I check my phone once more but there’s definitely no reply. Olivia always was a daddy’s girl and it’s hard not to take it personally that she’s chosen to tell her father she’s fine instead of me.
‘She says she fell asleep and forgot to text,’ Dan adds. ‘No harm done. She’ll be home later this morning.’
‘Right.’
‘I found my gym fob, by the way. I’m off for a quick hour before school.’
‘Right.’
I’m a broken record.
Dan bobs awkwardly from one foot to the other as he loops his bag onto his shoulders. ‘I’ll see you later, then.’
‘Okay.’
Neither of us make an effort to cross the room to say goodbye, let alone exchange a kiss or a hug, so that’s that. It’s been a long time since we did anything other than offer vague wishes of good days and the like. I can’t remember if it was him or me who stopped first. I can’t even remember when it happened. We always used to make sure we said a proper goodbye. It was our thing: regardless of what we had going on in our lives, at home or work, we’d find a minute or two to offer a decent farewell. Then, one day, we stopped. It’s a slippery slope after that – and we’ve been hurtling down that hill at ridiculous speed.