Reconstruction (4 page)

A trickle of sweat drops from an eyebrow, and for a moment the window puddles into blurry nothingness. And then the eye blinks, and focus returns, and the win-dow is there again, and the man appears behind it for the sixteenth time since counting began, pausing dead centre of the crosshairs.

Somebody’s voice – impossible to say whose – says for the sixteenth time, ‘Target acquired.’

Steady
, a voice in the ear repeats.

(Sometimes, it seems as if the dream will repeat this loop forever – ‘Target acquired.’
Steady
.)

The man dips out of shot again, but the crosshairs remain; a circular adornment to the shape of the window frame, as if a passing architect had sketched out an embellishment.

And at last things interrupt.

The room, already lit, is lit further; something flashes, and there’s an almost simultaneous noise – a crack; some-thing breaking, something broken. And the voice in the ear crackles into furious life:
shots fired shots fired
, and as well as being an announcement that something has happened, it’s a signal that other things should occur too now; that the waiting part of the dream is over, and the doing part must begin.

The man in the dirty vest appears once more, and the thing in his hand acquires definition as he turns to the window, looks directly through it – enraged – and brings the object level with his chest, pointing it outwards, out of the dream, into the night.

‘Target acquired.’

. . .
Take him? Break him? Wake him?
The reply isn’t entirely clear.

But the finger squeezes anyway, in accordance with years of training: this finger has been taught in gyms and galleries and out in the open air, where targets have swung in complicated, restless patterns, which have never been enough to save them in the end.

The window shatters. And the man’s head . . . What happens to the man’s head remains obscure, because at that precise moment something shrill and insistent rips the picture apart as if it were an unsatisfactory sketch, leaving only tatters and fragments. The wall, the shattered window: everything disappears, to be replaced by a view of duvet, through which 9 a.m.-type light is soaking.

As with almost every other occasion on which this has happened, it is a dream; one from which Detective Sergeant B. J. Bain emerges as if from a dripping, smoking, shit-bespattered, bat-infested tunnel.

But the phone is still ringing.

‘Jesus!’

‘Sorry –’

‘You
scared
me!’

‘I’m sorry –’

She’d turned and stepped back, when he’d touched her shoulder, the image flashing through her mind one of violence; not violence directed specifically against herself, but against who and where she was. No one who worked in a nursery could fail to have these moments: unguarded slices of nightmare, in which playgrounds were targets for lone men with grudges and indecipherable pathology. But it was a different nightmare taking shape here; one best called
consequences
. Where Memory and Incident collided, scattering shards that needed collecting before anyone turned up to gawp.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said again.

And he was: you could say that for Eliot. When he was sorry, it was spelt out in capitals, all over his face.

‘. . . It’s not eight yet,’ she said.

(This was something she’d noticed of herself and others: a tendency to remark on the time when trying to grasp a situation.)

‘I wanted to see you.’

‘But
here
?’

‘I’ve got the boys. They’re in the car.’

Oh, fucking great, she thought.

‘Louise –’

‘It’s the middle of the street,’ she said. ‘Broad daylight.’

‘There’s no one around.’

‘It’s my place of work. I work here, Eliot. You can’t just turn up like this. We don’t open for another hour –’ ‘That’s why I thought we could talk –’ ‘What about the boys?’

‘They’re in the car. They can’t hear –’ ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’

Her back to the gate, she surveyed the scene behind him; the junction where the riverbound road bisected the street the nursery was on. A car rolled in then out of view, and any moment now one of a hundred pedestrians – dog-walkers, newspaper boys, joggers, winos – would spring out of nowhere and recognize the nursery lady having a tête-à-tête with a dad. Information that could circuit a neighbourhood twice in less time than it took to jump to a conclusion. ‘You can’t leave them in the car, Eliot. They’re boys, not dogs.’

‘I thought it would be more private –’ ‘Eliot. Eliot? This is not private. This is where I work. Now take the boys somewhere else. We open at quarter to nine, you should know that.’

‘We have to talk about this, Louise,’ he said.

Why? Because you just said so?
But she couldn’t deliver that reply; it was neither fair nor honest. Because they did have to talk about it; otherwise it would hover over both of them, with the deadly potential of the not-yet-mentioned. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Yes. But not here. And not now.’

‘So –’

‘Call me,’ she said. Then remembered that that was off-limits; that her home phone was potentially in enemy hands. ‘Not at home – look, come back when we’re open. I’ll give you my mobile number.’

Fifty yards behind Eliot’s back, a dumpy anoraked figure turned the corner and headed towards them. Louise’s heart sank.

‘Now
go
,’ she hissed, or tried to. It came out a hoarse whisper; one she had to retract immediately: ‘No, wait. Ask me something.’

‘. . . Ask you what?’

‘
Anything
. How the twins are doing, or when half-term is, or –’

‘Oh. There’s someone coming. How are the boys doing?’ ‘Just fine,’ she said, her voice hitting a slightly higher pitch. ‘They mix well with the other children, which isn’t always the way with twins – there can be a tendency to become a republic of two, if you know what I mean.’

‘Yes, sometimes it’s like they speak their own language.’

‘Well, so long as they’re socializing, you don’t have to worry about that – oh, good morning, Judy.’

‘Morning.’

‘Anyway, as I was saying, we don’t actually open doors until 8.45, so –’ ‘Not to worry. I’ll take them on to the recreation ground for a spin.’

Spin – he wondered why he’d said that as soon as it left his mouth.

8.45 or not, Judy was opening doors now, four swift jabs on the keypad – a diagonal downward slash, left to right, then another figure, obscured by her hand.

Louise saw Eliot notice, deliberately or not, and frowned.

Judy pushed the gate open, and marched in, towards the main building.

Eliot said, voice low: ‘Does she clean up after the kids, or cook them and eat them?’

‘Keep a close eye on the boys, if you’re going on the rec ground. It’s early, yet.’ She followed Judy through the gate, making sure the lock had secured behind her, but didn’t look back until she’d reached the nursery door, and Eliot had left by then.

Some mistakes you keep on making. A year ago, she thought, I’d have been at my desk half an hour by now: telephone soldered to my head; mind locked into the inter-national money market (except that part wondering when Crispin would stick his head round the door:
Ms Kennedy?
Do you have a minute?
). On my third America no. The aromas of spoilt milk and plasticine definitely absent; the artwork tending towards Rothko and Kandinsky rather than the homage to Brit Art four-year-olds produce. But pulsing underneath these new surroundings was the same old heartbeat; the one that reminded her –
lub-dub
– that she’d done it again: slept with someone she shouldn’t have. But let’s not deal with that right now. Let’s postpone introspection until there’s a glass of wine in hand, and some work behind us.

‘Judy?’

They were in the nursery vestibule. Judy had her back to Louise, and was hanging her anorak in the store cup-board where the props of her trade were quartered: squeezy bottles and pump-action canisters; mops and dusters; dustpans and brushes; bleach and disinfectants. If she got half an hour’s use out of this lot in the average week, thought Louise, she was keeping things clean Louise hadn’t encountered yet. And she wasn’t listening, either. Or deliberately ignoring her. ‘Judy?’

‘What?’

‘When you’re opening the gate, try not to let anybody see the number, please. It’s not good security.’

‘Don’t you trust him?’

‘That’s not the point. The system’s meant to preserve security. Nobody’s supposed to know the number.’

Judy flashed her a look, face predictably set to offended spite. ‘I’m not used to being spoken to like this by junior staff.’ Her voice rose in volume and pitch: that too was predictable. ‘Mrs Christopher wouldn’t –’

‘Claire will be late this morning. But when she gets here, I’m sure she’ll be only too happy to listen to your latest grievance.’

She left Judy standing, closing her mind for the moment to the obvious: that there were any number of tactical errors there, from
latest grievance
to the interruption. But it was impossible to occupy space near Judy Ainsworth without causing offence; Judy always gave the impression that, last time you’d met, you’d attacked her with a broom-handle, and while you might have forgotten this, she wasn’t about to. Besides, there came a point in any woman’s morning when she’d spent too long biting her tongue. ‘Junior staff’, anyway, was a joke: Judy’d not worked here herself much more than a year. And the fraction of that spent doing actual work was significantly shorter.

The office was just off the vestibule. Louise shut the door behind her, removed her jacket, and tried to summon up what the day held – there was a chart on the desk, with activities marked in half-hour blocks, but until she could hold a day in her head without paperwork, she’d still feel a beginner. Claire seemed to carry the whole week with no mental effort, including any variations the three of them agreed on a Monday morning, always supposing bright ideas had sparked over the weekend: the three being her-self, Claire and Dave, the other nursery assistant. Dave was younger than Louise, but had been doing this longer; he was a nice guy, quiet, helpful, and had a great way with the Darlings, who worshipped him. One or two of the yummy-mummies found his presence reassuring too, though that wasn’t an area Louise was in any hurry to dis-cuss with him.

Speaking of which, while she remembered, she wrote her mobile number on a post-it for Eliot. More shades of the same old mistake, but this hand was already dealt. She just hoped Eliot had the sense to work out that this was Part 1 of how to say goodbye, and not an invite to continue the conversation.

Eliot, meanwhile, had unloaded the kids and taken them on to the recreation ground. This had the advantage of retroactively validating the reason he’d given Chris for coming out so early in the first place, but felt like defeat anyway – in his mental rehearsal, the encounter with Louise had resembled one of the sparkier scenes from
The
Philadelphia Story
, with her matching his every quip. In real life, he’d had the knowledge of impending grief. He hadn’t had much practice, but even he knew when the Conversation was coming. It’s one of those moments that’s familiar the first time.

Eliot –

Sorry. I’m sorry. It was stupid to come, I shouldn’t have –

(Unequivocal surrender. The first line of defence.)

No, you shouldn’t. Look, I’ve been thinking –

And that, right there, was the Conversation; it made little difference now whether they had it or not. She’d been thinking, and that was the kiss of death. What he had to do now was head her off before the words were spoken; before they could weevil into his head and and haunt him for weeks, or possibly years.

It’s not eight yet
, she’d said. She wouldn’t have cared what time it was if she’d been planning to match his quips.

Actually, what little they’d said to each other hadn’t stuck. He might be misremembering. But it had ended with
Call me
, he was certain of that. Which simply meant the Conversation had been postponed, didn’t it, unless it meant something else.

Jesus, Eliot. Face facts.

There followed one of those sudden brain-drenching moments when he became aware that he had charge of his children, and they weren’t actually in his field of vision –
Fucking hell
was how this expressed itself, quickly followed by
She’ll kill me
– and then there they were again, chasing each other round the nearby basketball hoop. Over the far side of the field a man was walking a dog, but neither were anything to worry about: the dog was on its last legs, and the man – whom Eliot had seen up close a time or two – had cheeks the colour of broken roses; the ever-after legacy of too many nights on the beer.

Keep a close eye on the boys on the rec ground. It’s early, yet.

Some of the night folk might still be hanging around, she’d meant.

The recreation ground was bordered on all sides by ditch, tree or hedgerow, broken by a barrier – a padlocked pole on a hinge, blocking cars and quad bikes, with a bin for dog-waste next to it – in its south-east corner, opposite the nursery gates. A sturdy, six foot fence marked off the nursery perimeter; between that and the rec ground was a footpath that ran to the railway line. As for the rec ground itself, it boasted an open-air basketball court and a couple of five-a-side football pitches, but not many years back had been a dusty grey nowhere; a former gasworks’ site, whose soil, if not terminally ill, wasn’t terribly well. Environmental redemption wasn’t impossible, then, provided the target area was reasonably small. Kids from the local primary school, a short way up the road, played here in the summer months, and Eliot had rarely passed in the evening without the sounds of one ball game or another floating into the open sky. Even without a ball, there was space and grass enough to run around.

‘You okay there, boys?’

‘We’re not boys, daddy.’

‘Daddy, we’re lions.’

‘Of course you are.’

He should be joining in, he knew that, but pretending to be a lion this early in the morning was beyond him.

‘Rrarrrr?’ said Gordon.