Gone to Ground (4 page)

"That's right."

"And when Stephen got a job here, you upped sticks and followed suit?"

"Yes."

"Really, then," Helen said, "you put yourself out for him quite a lot?"

"I suppose so."

"He was calling all the shots."

McKusick shrugged.

"Come on. You chucked in your job, found somewhere else to live and no sooner had you done all that then he turned round and said he didn't want to see you anymore."

McKusick shook his head. "That's an oversimplification."

"But it's what happened."

McKusick didn't answer.

"If that were me," Helen said, "if someone treated me that way, I'd be royally pissed off. To put it mildly."

"So? What? I lost my temper and bashed him round the head? Is that what you're saying?"

"Did you?"

"Don't be ridiculous."

"Is it ridiculous?" Will asked.

"Of course it is."

Will took a beat. "What made you think," he said, "that Stephen had been bashed around the head?"

"I don't know. I don't know what happened, do I? You won't tell me."

"Even so, bashed round the head, that's what you said."

"And that's supposed to prove something?"

"Let's see," Will said. "He could have been stabbed, shot, poisoned, gassed, strangled, strung out from a beam, anything."

"Crucified," Helen suggested quietly.

"But you chose beaten around the head," Will said. "I wonder why?"

Will fetched two coffees from the machine and, despite the cold, he and Helen stood outside so that she could smoke a cigarette. For a moment, Mark McKusick had looked surprised when, after the usual warnings about not changing his address, not leaving the country and so on, they had told him he could go. They would, it was made abundantly clear, be wanting to speak to him again. He had looked over his shoulder not once, but twice, descending the shallow steps away from the station, as if half-expecting to be called back.

"You still think he's lying?" Will asked.

"Still?"

"Play-acting, then."

"Doesn't have to be the same thing."

"No?"

"No." Helen drew smoke down into her lungs, held it there, then, head averted, released it in a slow, blue-gray stream. "I mean you might behave in a certain way because you think that's what's expected of you, because you want to convince people of what you're feeling. That doesn't mean the feelings themselves aren't true."

"And in this case? You think he's selling us a bill of goods?"

Helen shrugged. "It's what salesmen do." She dropped the end of her cigarette to the ground, swiveled it flat with the sole of her shoe, and grinned. "But how the fuck should I know? You're the SIO."

STEPHEN BRYAN'S WALLET WAS FOUND IN A GREEN REcycling bin less than half a mile from where he had lived. Most of the contents had been recycled, certainly, only a creased five euro note and an out-of-date Tate membership card remaining. Of the laptop, there was still no sign and, without sending officers round to every car boot sale in the county and having them check assiduously on eBay, he doubted if there ever would be.

The postmortem showed that Bryan's skull had been fractured in five places, as a result of having been struck numerous times by a wooden implement which seemed to have been wielded as a club. Several tiny splinters had been found embedded in his skull and were being sent for further analysis.

Initial tests showed that the blood in the shower matched Bryan's and Bryan's alone. If he had fought back, there were no physical signs, no skin trapped under the fingernails of his hands as might then have been the case. It was as if, Will thought, Bryan's attacker had been able to take him completely by surprise.

But how?

Unbeknown to Bryan, had he gained access to the house and climbed the stairs, finding Bryan, naked and unsuspecting and at his mercy? There were no signs of forced entry, which suggested that, were this the case, whoever it was had been in possession of a key. The alternative scenario was that the murderer had been already in the house when Bryan went off to take his shower. Which in itself suggested something about the relationship between them. Not lovers necessarily, but, Will thought, two people who knew one another quite well and were at ease in one another's company.

Despite his protestations, Mark McKusick could easily be made to fit either version of the story.

Paul Irving was the family liaison officer attached to the case, and it was his responsibility to accompany McKusick to the viewing of Stephen Bryan's body. Irving was a slim, bespectacled man with light-brown hair and an unassuming expression that could easily be read as sympathetic. Looks aside, perhaps his greatest asset as liaison officer was a voice that was low and warm and, in other circumstances, could have been used to sell toilet paper or personal insurance.

Will had made it clear that he wanted to be present, but if he had been expecting McKusick to break down and reveal something crucial, he was disappointed. Tears came readily to McKusick's eyes at the sight of his former lover's body, but that was all; although visibly shaken, there were no histrionics, there was no more self-flagellation. Instead, for several minutes, McKusick closed his eyes and his lips moved in what Will assumed was silent prayer. Then he turned and, head bowed, walked away.

Irving raised an eyebrow questioningly in Will's direction and Will shrugged and shook his head. Later that day, Irving would be meeting Bryan's family at the railway station and escorting them to see what was barely recognizable as their son.

"Well," Irving said, "he didn't exactly break down and confess."

"That'll be the day when they do."

"How is it going?"

Will raised a smile. "Slowly?"

House-to-house enquiries had so far yielded little: Stephen Bryan's neighbours were the type that kept to themselves, eyes glued to the screens of their home computers or, given the demographics of the area, whatever documentaries were being shown on BBG4. No one had noticed anything suspicious at or around the time of Bryan's murder; nobody had seen what Will wanted: Stephen Bryan entering the house with another man, McRusick or someone else, as yet unknown. Nor had they seen somebody other than Bryan leaving alone.

Will and Helen, separately or together, had had initial conversations with Bryan's former colleagues in the Department of Communication Studies at the university: Bryan, though not yet all that well-known, had been generally liked and respected as someone who prepared his lectures assiduously and seemed to take his departmental responsibilities seriously. His students, by all accounts, had responded well to his manner and his teaching.

"You ever feel," Will asked as they were driving back from the main campus, "no matter how far you go, you're not really getting anywhere?"

Helen stared back at him scornfully, as if the question didn't deserve answering.

"McKusick," Helen said. "That's where we're concentrating?"

Unable to find a space in the station car park, they found one on the street close by.

"Until someone can show me a better suspect," Will said, "yes."

Helen lowered one of the windows and lit a cigarette. "The motive being rejection? Bryan calling a halt to the relationship?"

"I think McKusick believed what he told us," Will said. "The break-up was only temporary, some kind of breathing space."

"And Bryan thought otherwise?"

"Who knows? He might even have had his reasons for allowing McKusick to think the door wasn't completely closed."

"Letting him off lightly?"

"Trying to."

"But McKusick pushes him..."

"Wants a decision..."

"Urges Bryan to change his mind."

"Pushes him too hard until what he finally hears from Bryan is the truth. It's over. Bryan's not going to change his mind at all." Will clicked forefinger against thumb. "McKusick finally snaps. Bingo."

"While Bryan's in the shower?" Helen said. "They're arguing in the shower?"

"No, the argument's over by then. As far as Bryan's concerned, anyway. Gould be he even takes a shower as a way of saying to McKusick, listen, we've nothing else to talk about, I need to get ready. You can let yourself out."

"Which leaves McKusick fuming."

"Exactly. And instead of letting himself out, he follows Bryan into the bathroom." Will brought the back of his clenched fist down into the palm of his other hand with a slap.

"There's just one thing wrong with that," Helen said.

"Only one?"

"The weapon."

"What about it?"

"Either it was something Bryan had left conveniently around in the house, in which case what? Or was it something the murderer had brought with him..."

"Which argues against a sudden loss of temper..."

"And suggests premeditation."

"Exactly."

For several moments, neither of them spoke.

"You're not thinking of charging him?" Helen said. "McKusick?"

"Not yet," Will said. "We're not even close."

"But we'll talk to him again?"

"Oh, yes. I think so, don't you?"

That evening, while Will, to Jake's rowdy delight, was sinking half his fleet of bath toys with a mixture of plastic darts and ping-pong balls, Lorraine was downstairs on the settee, trying to keep her eyes open through another episode of
EastEnders.

Helen, meantime, back home in her small terraced house, was running a bath of her own, opening a bottle of wine, glancing at the paper, getting undressed. A few weeks before she had spotted a CD by a singer-songwriter she liked, Dar Williams, bought it and brought it home and there it had sat, beside the stereo, still in its wrapping, unplayed. When she opened it, the cellophane, as it always did, stuck to her hand and it took her several attempts before she could pry it clear and set the recording to play.

Upstairs in the bathroom, she tested the water with her elbow and then her toes, dribbled in a little more Weleda bath essence, a present from her ecologically minded elder sister, splashed it around and then slowly lowered herself in.

Gorgeous!

One of the greatest pleasures in life and, unlike a number of others, with any luck and a little judicious scrubbing, you got out cleaner than you went in.

She closed her eyes and went over the day.

Mark McKusick punching himself in the face in a display of grief.

We were in a relationship. A serious relationship. For years.

Living together?

Not exactly.

What had Will said?
You everfeel, no matter howfar you go, you're not really getting anywhere?

Just a little, Will, Helen thought, just a touch.

Eyes still closed, she slid lower in the bath till most of her body was immersed; comfortable, music just audible from below, she remained in that position, more or less, until she felt the water beginning to grow cold around her. Then it was a quick wash and a brisk rub dry before she pulled on sweatpants and an oversize T-shirt and carried her empty glass back downstairs. The CD had finished and, volume lowered, she set it to play again. In the mirror, hair unkempt and still wet, face free of makeup, she could read all too clearly the lines around her eyes. Though she hadn't dialed the number in a long time, she still knew it by heart. She got as far as the final digit before stopping.

You idiot, she thought, you fool, and, lighting a cigarette, she poured herself another glass of wine.

Will stood outside on the low wooden porch, hands in the pockets of his winter coat, scarf wound tight. When Lorraine had finally fallen asleep in front of the TV, the kids already fast off upstairs, he had taken a brisk walk to the edge of the fen and now, back at the house, he stood quite still, staring out across the dark expanse of fields toward the town, some eight or nine miles off. It was silent in a way the city had never been; more stars overhead than he had ever seen. Their first six months here had been hell.

Will had complained endlessly about the drive, the time it took to and from work, the idiot drivers on the road; when finally he arrived back at the end of a grueling day, his son, more often than not, was already in his bed, asleep. And Lorraine, still breast-feeding Jake, hormonal, exhausted, shorn of her friends and the easy access to their support, had been bereft; stranded amidst cabbages and clanking farm machinery and people from the village who looked down on her if they bothered to look at her at all.

"You're the one who dragged us out here," Lorraine had said. Yet another evening when Will came home moaning, almost an hour later than he'd promised, the dinner solidifying in the bottom of the oven.

"Don't talk such bloody nonsense," Will had retorted, kicking off his shoes. "You were the one who wanted to move, more than me."

"Out of the city, yes. Somewhere nice. Not a godforsaken dump like this."

"Well, this godforsaken dump, as you call it, was all we could afford."

"Then maybe we should have stayed put where we were."

"Like it so much, why don't you move back?"

"And what'd you do? Stay here?"

"Maybe I would."

Lorraine let out a loud, humourless laugh. "And Jake? What about Jake?"

Will pushed past her and pulled open the fridge door, looking for a beer.

"Well?" she persisted. "What about Jake in this grand master plan of yours? He's not exactly going to stay here with you."

"Lorraine, for Christ's sake, leave it be."

"No, come on, tell me."

Will slammed the fridge door shut. "You just won't let it alone, will you?"

"What?"

"Anything. Any bloody little thing. On and on. You never know when to fucking stop."

"And you do?"

Snapping the top from the can, he brushed past her on his way to the door.

"You do, Will?"

Turning, he slammed the beer down on the side. "Yes, I fucking do!"

A moment later he was on the stairs, taking them two or three steps at a time. When Lorraine, following him, pulled open the bedroom door, he was pushing things into a bag, shirts, trousers, socks, anything.