Resolutions (18 page)

He glanced over his shoulder. Ursula was waiting for him, clutching her backpack and George's. Cheryl stood beside her, one hand on Ursula's shoulder, watching and clearly wondering if she should intervene.

‘I have to go,' he said again. ‘I've got physics first period, a double lesson. I've got homework to hand in.'

‘Homework!' Karen stared in disbelief. ‘George, I get the feeling you're not hearing me. I can't believe this. What have they done to you? It's as if you've been brainwashed.'

‘No, no, I've not. I'm fine, Karen. I want you to be in my life.' Did he? Really? ‘I love you, you're my big sister and we went through a lot, but I can't go with you. Karen, I've got to do what's right for me now and you've got to do what you think is right for you.'

He turned, began to walk back towards the minibus, hoping she'd just get in the car and go, worried that she wouldn't.

Cheryl moved towards him, suddenly really concerned as it dawned that this was not just some rather unconventional and unannounced sibling visit. ‘George?'

‘It's all right.'

‘Get on the bus, OK. We'll take care of this now.'

George nodded, wondering if Cheryl and the rest of the staff would really be capable of handling Karen. He certainly wasn't, not any more. It was as though she suddenly understood that he meant what he'd been saying.

‘You'd trade me for that lot of losers?' Karen shouted.

George faced her, tears streaming now and not caring who saw. ‘No,' he yelled back, his voice breaking with the emotion of it. ‘I want both. I don't want to have to make choices, but you're the one making me choose – and I choose not to be blackmailed. Dad did that, Mum did it too. It was always “do as I say or I'll hit you” or “do as I say because I might top myself if you make me unhappy”, and now you're doing it too. I can't live like that, Karen. I didn't know how much I hated it until I didn't have to do it any more. Don't tell me to choose.'

He got on to the bus and Ursula followed him. An unaccustomed silence had fallen and all eyes seemed trained upon them as the other kids stared. The engine choked into life and the bus pulled off. Karen made no move to shift her car, so the driver eased round her, hoping the wheels would not sink into the sodden lawn. George breathed a sigh of profound relief as they regained the drive and rounded the bend that took them out of sight of Hill House.

‘What do you think she'll do?' Ursula whispered. Around them, conversation had begun to buzz. George knew he'd be the subject of most of it, but he didn't care any more.

‘I don't know,' he said. ‘I've never seen her like this.' He wiped his eyes on the back of his hands, grateful when Ursula produced a pack of tissues and handed him one.

‘You must have been really close,' she said tentatively.

‘She was all I had; I was all she had. Dad was just violent and Mum was in bits most of the time. Karen kept it all together, kept us away from him, kept us moving. When we settled here, we thought we'd lost him, then he came back and Mum took pills and . . . then there was just me and Karen for real, and then there was just me.'

Ursula took his hand and held it tight. ‘My dad's in hospital,' she said. ‘He's been there since I was little. Mum couldn't cope. She left me with my gran and then my auntie, and then she just went off somewhere.'

George was shocked. They'd both avoided talking about the past, just touching on the less painful elements, but not wanting to dwell on those parts so hard to face.

‘You don't know where she is?' he asked.

‘She left with some man she met at work. Said he made her feel wanted and important. Gran was too old and then she died, and my auntie works abroad a lot, all over the place. Anyway, there was no one else, you know? Stuff happened and I ended up at Hill House. I hated it, until you came.'

George squeezed her hand and welcomed the firm pressure in return. They fell silent then, each buried in their own memories, aware that around them the morning gossip and quibbling had regained its normal volume. They said nothing more until they got to school.

NINETEEN

M
ac had been trying to contact Miriam all morning, but her mobile phone kept ringing and then going over to voicemail. Eventually getting someone to answer the office phone, he was told that she had not come in that day nor had she called in sick.

Worried, Mac phoned her sister, only to be told that she had left as usual, her sister thought, just before eight. Could she have broken down en route? Surely, if so, she'd have called someone.

‘She has breakdown cover,' Mac said. ‘She had her mobile with her?'

‘Oh, I'm sure. It's like an extra limb; she takes it everywhere.'

True, Mac thought; like him, she was used to being summoned at odd hours and the habit of keeping the mobile close carried over even to those times when she was not on call.

‘I could drive her route,' Miriam's sister offered. ‘Just in case.' She sounded really worried now, more so when Mac instantly said no to her suggestion, then regretted the sharpness in his tone. ‘You think something happened to her, don't you?'

‘I don't know,' Mac said truthfully. ‘I'll get someone to go out and look for her. Can you tell me which way she'd be most likely to go?'

Minutes later Andy Nevins was mobilized and Sergeant Baker was alerting their colleagues in Exeter, just in case this should turn out to be more than Miriam merely being late for work.

‘She's probably gone straight to a job,' Mac told Miriam's sister when he called her back to let her know what was going on. ‘She maybe had a call-out on her way in.'

‘Maybe,' the sister agreed cautiously, clinging to that little bit of hope, but as Mac put the phone down, it was with the awareness that neither of them thought for a second that could be true.

Andy found Miriam's car halfway between her sister's house and her workplace. He called Mac.

‘It's parked on the roadside, as if she's pulled over deliberately on to the verge. There are tyre marks crossing the road in front of her car – looks like someone turned round, clipped the verge front and back when they manoeuvred. Mac, I've spoken to DI Kendal. He said I should secure the scene best as I can and wait for him to get here.'

Scene?
Oh God. ‘Signs of a struggle?' Mac's heart was pounding, but he tried hard to keep his tone normal. He heard Andy hesitate.

‘Scuff marks on the road that look like shoes have scraped on the gravel, and . . . and, Mac, there's blood, just a few drops, looks like cast off and then drips as if she . . . as if she stood for a moment and the blood dripped on to the gravel at the side of the road. Mac, I may be wrong, I'm no expert.'

Mac took a deep, sustaining breath. Andy was, in fact, very good at reading a scene. He was fascinated by the technical side of policing, and Miriam had talked him through a number of crime scenes, arranged for him to have a place on one of the new training courses her department was setting up to improve the skills of new police recruits. If someone knew how to secure a scene and what to secure, then the chances of preserving vital evidence were massively improved.

‘Let me know as soon as Kendal arrives,' he said. ‘And thanks, Andy.'

‘Trouble?' Alec had picked up on the tail end of the conversation.

‘Miriam didn't make it into work,' Mac said. ‘They've just found her car. There's blood, Alec, signs of a struggle.'

‘Thomas Peel,' Alec said.

TWENTY

M
iriam woke with a head that thumped and pounded so loudly she thought the sound came from somewhere else, until the pain told her that the sound was inside her.

Her hands were no longer bound and she lay on a narrow bed in the corner of a room with a gently arching ceiling. Painfully, she tried to focus on the brickwork above her. A basement, then. An old one, substantially built but – she inhaled, concentrating on the smell of the room and trying to shut out the worst of the pain – not damp and not particularly cold.

She struggled to sit, but her head threatened to fall off and she was forced to lie still for a little longer. Beneath her fingers she could feel the texture of rough blankets and, beyond that, metal. The mattress on which she lay was a little smaller than the frame of the bed and it was the metal structure that almost burnt her fingertips with its sudden coldness.

She tried again to sit and this time succeeded, though it was several minutes until the contents of her skull ceased slopping about and she could manage to open her eyes.

‘I have a concussion,' she said aloud, oddly startled by the sound of her own voice. She could, when she focused, hear no other sound, just her own breathing and the chink and squeak of metal against metal as she shifted on the bed. She wondered how long she'd been out.

Beside the bed stood a small folding table and on that was a plastic jug, half-filled with water, and a paper cup. Beside that a chocolate bar. Somehow she was unsurprised to find that it was a chocolate cream, her favourite. ‘Of course it is,' Miriam muttered angrily. ‘Does his research, doesn't he?'

She touched walls that were painted white over flaking brickwork, though her first impression had been right and there was no feel of damp. The room was cool and she guessed at night it would be cold, but there must be at least some heating to keep it dry. Squinting, her eyes still not fully able to focus, she could see pipes running around the room just above the level of a rather battered wooden skirting-board and a tiny, cast-iron radiator near the corner of the wall opposite the bed. At the other end of that same wall was a door. That at least looked new and heavy and solid. A single light bulb, suspended from a braided cable of a type she was sure was now illegal, shed about forty watts of light on to a concrete floor. The only other furnishing was a zinc-plated bucket in the corner furthest from the door. Next to that another folding table on which was set a single pink toilet roll.

‘Great,' Miriam muttered. ‘Thanks a lot.'

She closed her eyes again, thinking that at least he could have left her some aspirin beside the water jug. She was determined not to be afraid. Her wrists hurt and her head felt like it had an army of Morris-dancing bears performing inside it, but she felt oddly calm. Probably just the effect of the concussion, she thought.

The fact was, he could have killed her. Mac would have no way of knowing if she were alive or dead, and would have to believe Peel, but here she was, still alive, so Peel must have something else in mind and that meant . . . well, she wasn't quite sure what it meant, but she was determined to feel optimistic about it. It was either that or break down and give in to complete despair.
That
she was certainly not going to do.

Miriam shivered; she was still dressed in her outdoor clothes, but even so felt chill and shaky. She recognized that part of this was shock, part physical trauma. Shifting her weight slowly, she managed to get off the bed and stand on her own two feet – that they felt like someone else's feet was little comfort when the pins and needles began. She pulled the coarse green blanket from the bed and, with a bit of difficulty, draped it around her shoulders, grateful that it had been meant for a double bed and so reached right down to her feet. Coarse it may be, but it was warm.

She tried to move, feet still not obliging at first. She poured some water and drank, sipping slowly, trying to ignore the nausea which confirmed her thoughts about concussion. As she set the cup down, she glanced at the wall behind the bed. And froze. Pictures of children adorned the brickwork, innocent-looking images of children playing, kids with their families, in school yards and on climbing frames. Children, arranged in a rough circle on the bricks beside the bed. And in the centre of the circle, one child – smiling face, light brown, almost blonde hair, clutching a doll: Cara Evans.

TWENTY-ONE

M
ac was trying to focus on the lunchtime news and not succeeding very well. He'd spoken to Kendal and to Andy Nevins several times already and was wondering if he could call again, reminding himself that the last conversation with Andy had taken place only twenty minutes before and if anything new had happened they would have let him know. Or would they? How often, Mac thought, had he delayed speaking to family because he'd known he might have to contradict himself some time later? Then again, how often had family contacted him, not because they really expected new developments but just for the assurance they had not been forgotten?

And how often had he wished they'd lay off and just let him do his job?

Alec had briefed Wildman regarding events down in Frantham, and Mac had been glad of the intervention. Wildman stood, watching him. One eye on Mac, one on the television. Peel's little exhibition of Saturday night had taken a while to permeate, largely because reporters had been first kept at bay and then given no additional information until the Monday morning. First reports had concluded that this was a violent domestic; drama but little promise of long-term content. By Monday morning, someone had got hold of the fact that Emily Peel was the daughter of Thomas Peel.
The
Thomas Peel, child killer. That reports of his suicide had been unfounded; that, for reasons as yet uncertain, he had come looking for his daughter and her boyfriend; and that he had been intent upon murder.

It seemed to Mac that just about everyone in the street had been interviewed at least once. Reports from officers stationed at the end of Jesmond Street revealed three local news crews, two national papers and four television vans – ‘one satellite, two proper', according to one comment – and that Emily and Calum's neighbour, together with Frankie the dog who was still in residence with him, had attained celebrity status.