“What about confidentiality issues?”
“I think it’s worth a try, anyway. We’ve got nothing to lose.”
On my way home that night, I stop to pick up some food. Mrs. Chin in my local Chinese place shouts my order at her husband as soon as she sees me pushing through the door: “One special fried rice for special detective!”
I sit at one of her scrubbed and chipped red Formica tables while I wait for my order, thinking about the two families I’ve met, and how there’s mostly a consensus about the boys’ relationship, with the exception of Fiona Sadler. Experience has taught me not to ignore a mother’s intuition, but she’s not a mother in an ordinary situation. Word this evening from the hospital is that Noah Sadler’s condition remains stable and comfortable, so that at least is something.
I check out the local rag that somebody’s left on the table. The fallout from last week’s anti-immigration march is still being discussed in an article that includes comments from many of the city’s bigwigs:
Mayor Tony Harris issued a statement to say: “Bristol is an inclusive and diverse city. We pride ourselves on welcoming people of all faiths and backgrounds. If we had the powers to prevent the White Nation March from going ahead, we would certainly have exercised them.”
The article goes on to describe the damage caused by the riots and the likely cost of repair to the city and to local business. Blame is firmly placed on what’s described as an “at best woeful, and at worst grossly incompetent” attempt by police to contain the situation. It’s not good for us.
Mrs. Chin makes her usual comments about my singleton lifestyle when she hands me the food.
“Not healthy for a handsome man to dine alone every night, Detective!”
“Thank you, Mrs. Chin. I’m working on it.”
She pops a fortune cookie into my bag of food.
“Maybe this bring you luck in love!”
“I’ll keep you posted.”
As I unlock my bike and hang the bag on my handlebars for the last bit of my ride home, my phone rings. I check the caller display. There aren’t many people I’d be surprised to hear from, but this is certainly one of them.
“Becky?”
“Jim. I didn’t know if this number still worked.”
“It’s been a long time.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m . . . why?”
I’ve hardly seen my sister at all since she walked out of our family home, and then only at family occasions when my mother applied enough emotional blackmail to get us both there. Becky would come to those only if she was sure she could avoid our dad. The last time we saw each other was at his funeral. We meant to have a drink when I moved to Bristol, because she was already living here, but we never got around to it somehow.
“I’m at your flat. I need a place to stay.”
Five minutes later I find her sitting on the stoop, and I barely recognize her. She has long dirty blond dreadlocks with beads in them, and her cheekbones look sharp, her cheeks hollowed beneath them. One of her eyes is a bruised, swollen mess. When she sees me she gets up stiffly.
“Please don’t say anything,” she says.
I obey her instruction as I lock up my bike, open the front door, and beckon her in. She looks out of place in the elegant hallway of my building. I offer to carry the large rucksack she has with her, but she refuses. She hoists it onto her back and follows me up the stairs.
She’s never been to my flat before, and I watch her take it in with her good eye. I split the special fried rice between two bowls and give her one. She eats very quickly. I notice that her fingers are dirty and she also has bruising on her collarbone.
We both speak at the same time.
“Are you going to tell me . . .”
“Can I stay with you for a while?”
On the last evening my sister and I lived in the same house, my father hit her, backhanded, and she fell against the wall of our kitchen. He put a lot of effort into that blow, so much that the spice rack fell off its hooks and hit the ground beside Becky. There was an explosion of different-colored herbs and powders. Our mother was keen on experimenting in the kitchen.
I was eating fish fingers when he did it. My mother had gone out to the shed to get some ice cream out of our chest freezer for dessert. It took Becky a long time to get up, and when she did, she was dizzy.
My father turned his back on her to take a cut glass whiskey tumbler from the cupboard, and as he did, Becky left the kitchen silently and went upstairs to pack her things. She left a trail of spice red footsteps on the carpet.
My father had just heard that Becky had been in one place when she’d told him she’d been in another.
Not long after, as she dragged a suitcase out of the front door, I watched from the kitchen and made sure to finish my meal even though it had gone stone cold long ago. I was a good boy. I was terrified. I saw my mother stuff banknotes that she got from a tin in the larder into Becky’s pockets and try to lay a hand on her daughter’s cheek, only to be rebuffed. I saw her wash the Neapolitan ice cream down the sink because it had melted. My mum’s hands shook under the gushing water, and she ran the tap for a very long time.
My father’s study door stayed shut that night, and for days afterward when he got back from work. A week later, he had the paprika-stained carpet replaced, overseeing the fitting of it personally, and the photographs of Becky that had been on the piano were removed on the same day. He never mentioned her again.
Becky doesn’t talk the night she arrives at my flat. I give her my bedroom and lie on the sofa, telling myself it doesn’t matter that the springs are digging into my back, because I wouldn’t have been able to sleep anyway.
DAY 2
I’m hot.
Dad says, “Why would this happen?”
“Most likely it’s an infection that’s developed very rapidly overnight. Our priority is to stabilize Noah’s temperature and then we’ll investigate the causes.”
That’s the doctor speaking. He’s a doctor I haven’t met and I can’t see. His voice is higher-pitched than I would like. It grates. I hear lots of shoe shuffling and squeaking. I’ve become hyperaware of sound. I think there are a few people around my bedside.
“We should see a temperature drop pretty fast. That’s the idea, anyway.”
“It’s a lot of ice.”
“We’ll keep it there for as long as we need to and replace it if necessary.”
“Will he be able to feel this?”
“I doubt it,” says the doctor, but to cover his bases he raises his voice and says, “Noah, we’re packing some ice around you because you’re running a very high temperature and we need to bring it down.”