To Catch a Rabbit (32 page)

Karen could imagine Phil, sitting in the van, queuing to get on the boat, edging forward minute-by-minute, getting closer to the point where he couldn’t go back. He did what Arieta told him to do if she didn’t make it. Keep going. Carry on. Go south. He followed her instructions to the letter. Found her country. Her city. Her apartment. Found her father, an alcoholic when she left, now a reformed, remarried man, devoutly attending the mosque and preparing for his country’s independence. Karen pictured the man and the woman in the newspaper, solid middle-aged people, either side of her brother. He said he’d sold the van to the girl’s cousin, who carried his building tools in it. Tools to build the new Kosovo. He went into the city with Mr and Mrs Osmani, where young men danced on the roofs of cars and automatic gunfire filled the air.

‘Do you remember the photo in the paper, Charlie? The giant yellow letters in the square on the night of the declaration that spelled out newborn? It really was Phil. He got to Kosovo. He was there for the celebrations.’

He told her on the phone that they had danced all night and gone home to the small apartment. They waited for Arieta to come, but she didn’t and he knew he couldn’t stay forever.

‘He said when he heard my voice it was a relief. He knew it was over.’

Charlie sighed. ‘Why didn’t he call you before, or call your dad, just to let you know he was safe?’

‘He thought we were better off thinking he was dead than thinking he was a killer. He got close to taking his own life, but he couldn’t do it. He’s going to hand himself in as soon as he lands.’ She reached up and put her hands on Charlie’s shoulders. Their faces were close enough to kiss, but he wasn’t meeting her eyes. ‘I’m sorry, Charlie. I should have phoned you last night, when I knew. Does this change things between us?’

‘I don’t know. It depends.’

There was a streak of dirt on his cheek. She wanted to wipe it off but she hesitated.

‘Are you going home to your husband?’ he said.

‘That’s over.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be,’ she said. ‘It was over a long time ago.’

She broke away first and thought he was about to say something else, when she noticed some movement in the doorway of the barn. The young woman from the forensic team was carrying something, wrapped in thin plastic. Charlie seemed to snap back into police mode as he strode across to see what she’d got. The other detective, Rick Houghton, was coming from the farmhouse. They all seemed to forget Karen and although she hung back, she was close enough to see that the bundle of plastic contained a yellow and black car number plate. Houghton got into one of the police cars and a few moments later jumped out again.

‘Got it!’ he shouted. ‘Registered to a printing company in Somerset. Must be a sales rep. Doesn’t ring any bells with me, so I don’t reckon it went national as a missing person. Either he was way off his route or no one cared enough to go looking.’

Or maybe, Karen thought, they’d been looking all this time, but just in the wrong place. 

Summer

Marvin was pulling Ben along the river path, while Holly ran after him, calling to him that it was her turn to hold the lead. Sophie walked behind them, listening to her music. York was full of families enjoying the heatwave. Karen felt Charlie’s hand in hers and thought how like a perfect family they must look. If only that woman on the bicycle knew, or that man, throwing bread to the ducks. The children ran up on to the Millennium Bridge and Charlie sneaked a kiss on Karen’s ear.

‘Where does the river go?’ Ben called to her. She let go of Charlie’s hand.

‘To the sea.’

‘But before that?’

‘Well,’ she was on the bridge now, helping him up on to the wooden bench which ran the length of the curved arch, ‘it goes down to Goole and it joins another river called the Humber, which becomes a big wide estuary and then it goes past Hull and out into the open sea.’

‘Hull,’ said Holly, leaning her forehead against the metal meshwork. ‘It starts with a haitch. Like Holly. That’s where we went to see my Daddy.’

Karen waited to see if she said any more. The social worker said it was good to get her to talk about it, not to pretend. The front of HMP Hull didn’t offer much scope for pretending. The hard Victorian stone screamed jail as soon as they got out of the taxi.

‘It was supposed to be heaven,’ Holly said, more to Ben than anyone else, ‘but someone was silly and got it wrong. It was Hull.’

Ben nodded sagely, watching a pleasure boat nosing its way under the bridge. ‘They must have got mixed up with their haitches.’

They walked back through the park so the children could go to the playground. Sophie found a school friend and they swung together on the swings, laughing. Karen and Charlie sat on the grass with Marvin and watched Ben and Holly climbing up a rope structure shaped like a spider’s web.

‘She’s a tough little thing, isn’t she?’ Charlie said, looking at Holly.

‘Gets that from her mum.’

‘I was going to say she takes after her beautiful aunt.’ He plucked a piece of grass and tickled her wrist.

‘You’re so cheesy!’ She pulled her hand away but he caught it and held on.

‘Can I stay tonight?’ he said.

She thought about the state of the house. She’d given up on housework. The bookcases were full of gaps where Max had taken his books away. Over the fireplace a ghost frame of dirt marked the place where he’d removed a picture she’d never liked. On the mantelpiece there were two visiting orders with a Home Office crest, one for Stacey, one for Phil and a postcard of Taunton Castle from the real victim’s elderly mother, thanking her for her sympathy. She and Max had argued over the photograph of their baby, Cara, but in the end, he left it for her. She thought it might look nice in a new frame. Maybe she’d paint the wall and hang something else up there, a landscape would be good, with plenty of wide-open space.