‘Which school was he at?’ asks Rollo.
‘He’d left school. He worked the black market, basically,’ says Manon. ‘Cigarettes, counterfeit gear, stolen goods, other things, too.’
‘I hardly think Edith would know someone like—’
‘Oh, Ian, shut up,’ Miriam snaps, and she is immediately ashamed. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says to Manon. ‘I shouldn’t snap.’
‘It’s all right,’ says Manon with a weak smile.
Oh, stop fucking observing us, Miriam thinks. We are like that fly, helplessly bashing ourselves against glass.
‘We have the feeling,’ says Ian, ‘that there is information you are keeping back about the investigation.’
Miriam looks into Manon’s face. She can see a decision being made.
‘There was another lead, which was a focus of our investigation for a time, but it has proved … well, it hasn’t gone anywhere.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ says Ian, and Miriam smiles at him gratefully. At least he still has some fight in him.
‘Go on,’ pleads Miriam.
‘We have been looking at someone called Tony Wright. He was released from Whitemoor prison eight months ago, where he’d been serving a sentence for aggravated burglary and sexual assault.’
‘Sexual assault,’ says Miriam. ‘I was praying it wouldn’t be—’
‘It isn’t,’ blurts Manon. ‘He has a cast-iron alibi for the weekend Edith disappeared.’
She has closed the door on Detective Sergeant Bradshaw and the things she shared with them about Tony Wright, the way he held a knife to the throat of his terrified victim.
Miriam and Ian stand in the cold, quiet well inside their front door. He looks at her, then frowns and turns, and in this split second she thinks she can see contempt. For what? For her upset?
He is marching down towards his study and she follows him.
‘What was all that rattling about with the window? Can’t you sit still for a minute?’ she says, spoiling for him to swivel on his heels and give as good as she wants to give him.
‘Leave me alone,’ he says icily. He stands behind his desk, pretending to leaf through some papers.
She walks out of the study and he shouts after her, ‘Where are you going – for another lie-down?’ and she turns and storms back in, and when she gets there, his face is a jagged mess of fury and accusation. ‘Why is your distress the only thing in the room?’ he demands.
‘It isn’t, Ian, but you won’t allow me any grief at all. She’s my daughter.’
‘And she’s mine, and you sobbing or lying in a darkened room the whole time doesn’t help.’
‘What do you want me to do?’
He is silent, his head bowed again towards his desk, but she knows he is fizzing and enraged just like her.
‘Stop acting like this is my fucking fault,’ she says and walks out again.
Manon
She has her feet up on the blue tartan First Capital Connect seats, beside a sign saying Do Not Put Feet on Seats. She pulls at her eyelid, peeling it away from the eyeball in an attempt to relieve the scratching. The infection has moved from irritation to pain and yet, when she has passed a chemist – on Hampstead High Street, at King’s Cross Station – the urgency of buying the antibiotics has gone from her mind. No chance now – it’s 8 p.m. and she has to be in early tomorrow for the Crimewatch briefing.
She told the Hinds to brace themselves for renewed press interest – photographers back on their doorstep – when the televised reconstruction of Edith’s last journey home with Helena Reed is broadcast on Wednesday evening. Telling them about Tony Wright hadn’t been easy, despite his alibi. She recalls the look of terror on Lady Hind’s face, which prevented her from describing what had become of his last victim – how he had beaten her about the head with the knife handle so that her face was purple and enlarged. Two weeks after his conviction, she killed herself.
Manon’s mobile phone vibrates somewhere deep in her bag. A text, number not recognised.
I am toasty
She smiles. Buying the coat for Fly had brought her myriad unlooked-for pleasures, as if satisfaction were refracted into a fresh rainbow. Picking out a hot-pink sequinned number and saying to him, ‘This is a good look for you’; his dry look in response, as if she were the silliest object he had ever come across. Him picking the designer labels, to which she would turn the swinging ticket and say, ‘In your dreams.’ Most of all, when they had selected together a padded cornflower-blue coat, with white stripes at the chest, she had noticed what pleasure there was in keeping him warm: the thought of the softness of the fleece lining against his skin, the waterproof outer layer sheltering him from rain. It was the best twenty-five pounds she had spent in a long time.
Shouldn’t you be in bed? M
No, cos I’m not five.
Anyway, I am in bed. I’m wearing it in bed.