Under a Silent Moon: A Novel (23 page)

“I’d like to . . .”

“I can hear a ‘but’ coming on.”

“I’d like to. But I can’t do this. Not at the moment. I need to focus on this case, and I’m spending too much time distracted, thinking about other things . . .”

“. . . like what we could be doing if we went back to my place?”

Lou looked at him for a long moment, drinking him in while there was nobody else watching. He matched her gaze and the longer she looked, the more tempting it was.

“You know Hamilton is a huge asshole, right?”

“What brought that on?”

“It’s just the way he speaks to people. Arrogant piece of shit.”

“He gets the job done, Jason,” Lou said, wondering where this was coming from.

“He’d do it much better if he could stop showing off all the time.”

Lou sighed. “Unfortunately he’s still my DI. Much as I wish he wasn’t sometimes.”

“Right. Just know that we’re not all shits like that, huh? And when this case is over, or when it quiets down, or when you just need a bit of moral support, I’ll be here waiting for you. For whatever it is you want, or you need.”

21:44

Flora was thinking about lying in Polly’s bed in Yonder Cottage, the late-summer heat drifting lazily in through the open window with the scent of the farm and the white lilies in a vase on the windowsill, naked, too hot for covers. She was gazing at Polly, the almost unbearable beauty of her.

“Flora, don’t look at me like that,” she said, smiling.

“Like what?”

Serious, all of a sudden. “Don’t fall in love with me, Flora. I’ll break your heart if you do.”

Of course, it was too late. Flora only found out what she meant a month later.

I can’t stand it, she thought. I miss her too much.

She heard Tabby coming in, heard the door bang. Heard her muffled conversation with Chris, the kettle going on, mugs clinking in the kitchen.

“She’s upstairs. Been there since you phoned.”

“. . . try to talk to her?”

“I don’t know . . . thought she was asleep.”

All those text messages between Polly’s phone and hers. They were always texting, even when Flora was working at the farm and Polly at the stables. It was like a secret between them, a delicious secret that nobody else could be involved in. At the stables, once, Connor, who had a crush on Polly like everyone else did, was mucking out while Polly brushed Elki’s coat and Flora kept interrupting her with messages:

And she’d laughed and Connor had demanded to know what she was laughing at, and that had made her laugh harder, shaking her head so her blond ponytail swished from side to side like Elki’s tail.

And the replies Polly sent, late into the night, all of them saved on Flora’s phone:

Well, the police had her phone now. They would have seen all those messages, everything that had been private between them. Would they tell Felicity?

Polly was always teasing Flora about coming out. It was time, she said, for Flora to come clean to the world, release herself from the chains of parental expectation. For a while Flora thought this was because Polly wanted to be able to go out in public as partners and lovers, not just as friends. But in reality, of course, it was neither here nor there to Polly whether Flora came out as gay or stayed firmly in her little closet, because from her point of view there wasn’t a relationship. The word simply wasn’t in Polly’s vocabulary. After all these weeks of agonizing over what went wrong, Flora realized that it was simply because there was nothing Polly found more depressing than people who weren’t true to themselves. She’d phrased it exactly like that once, when they’d been talking about Felicity, whose inhibitions were more of the social-class variety.

I wish I could talk to her, thought Flora. Just once more. I just want to tell her I love her, that I miss her, that I don’t care that she didn’t love me back. I just want to let her know I’m still here and I will always love her . . .

The weekend after that first afternoon in the top field, Flora had taken Polly out for the evening to meet some of her friends. They had drunk too much, giggled like schoolgirls, and when the last of the friends disappeared off home, Polly had pushed Flora gently but insistently against a wall and kissed her hard. Flora had responded, at first uncertainly, and then with a force that surprised her. Polly’s hand cupped her firmly between her legs, while all Flora could think of was how soft her mouth was, how sweet her taste.

They’d stumbled their way back to Flora’s flat.

“Is this where you live?” Polly asked, astonishment on her face, as Flora felt through her pockets for the key.

“Yes, why?”

Polly’s face opened into a big, beaming smile. “No reason. It’s lovely, that’s all.”

Inside, Polly took Flora by the hand and led her straight to the bedroom, as if she had been in the flat before, as if she knew exactly where everything was. And there she had stripped Flora gently, of her clothes first, and then her inhibitions, and held her as the tears finally came, hours, hours later, when the sky was turning gray.

I never knew, she thought. All those years, I never knew it could feel like that. My heart and soul, so complete. So happy.

22:40

Andy Hamilton’s crap day had not been improved any by the transition into evening. Quietly sinking the last of his pint, he wondered whether Karen was in bed yet and whether he really should have phoned her—he checked his watch—about three hours ago.

“Time to go home, gents,” the barman said, to Andy and some other poor souls who should also have made their way out a long time ago.

The rest of the squad had gone looking for a curry house at least an hour ago. He’d stayed, claiming he just wanted to finish this one off and then he was heading home, but the truth was he didn’t want to. He wanted to be with Lou. Not forever, just for one more night.

He wasn’t used to not getting his own way where women were concerned. Every time Lou kicked up a fight he felt a twinge of humiliation—and wanted her all the more. If she would just give in, let him fuck her one more time, he would be able to get her out of his system.

Twice in the last few days he’d felt rejected by women he fancied: Lou last night, and that blond nurse. Although that wasn’t so much a rejection as a tease. What made it worse was that he knew that if he went home to Karen now, four hours after the end of his shift, reeking of beer, he wouldn’t get much of a welcome there, either.

Still, beggars couldn’t be choosers. He tipped the dregs of his last pint down his throat and made his way outside.

The night air was brisk and he debated going to fetch his car and taking a chance on the five miles between here and his house, but even with his judgment clouded by alcohol he knew it was a risk too far. He wandered off in the direction of the high street, got lucky with a taxi driver who knew him heading back toward the rank.

“All right, Andy?” Geoff said, as Andy collapsed into the backseat. “Big night out, was it?”

“Something like that,” Andy said. “I’m getting too old for these things.”

All the lights were off in the house. That was a bad sign. Andy walked up the driveway, tried his key in the lock. He couldn’t work out for a while why the door wouldn’t open, then he realized it was deadbolted and he didn’t have a key for that one.

He banged on the door with his fist and a light went on somewhere across the street. Then he saw a piece of paper thumbtacked to the doorframe. He ripped it off and took it over to the streetlight so he could read it.

TOOK KIDS GONE TO SARAH’S.

Why had she bloody double-locked the door? She knew he didn’t have that key. He groaned, slowly, and lifted his head to see Geoff’s cab coming toward him. He’d been to the end of the road to turn the car around. Seeing his fare standing forlorn by the side of the road, the cabbie stopped, wound down his window.

“Locked out, are you? Need a ride somewhere?”

“Waterside Gardens,” Andy said, almost without thinking, and climbed back into the warm cab out of the drizzle that had developed in the cold, misty night.

22:40

Flora had managed to eat some of Taryn’s spaghetti Bolognese. It tasted great, the first proper meal she’d had in days.

“I still say you need to go and see your father,” Taryn said.

“He can wait. If they’d found anything at the farm, we’d all know about it by now.”

“Even so! They had you in custody, Flora.”

“It was a caution, that’s all. Helping them with their inquiries. And if they had anything on me, they would have arrested me, wouldn’t they?”

After they’d finished eating, Flora went to help Taryn with the washing up.

“I need to go home,” Flora said. “I’ve got no clothes, Tabs, and I’ll be all right tonight. Thank you for letting me stay. You’ve been such a good mate. But, honestly, I need to go home. And I feel so much better, you know that.”

Taryn shot her a wry grin. “I know my Bolognese is good, but I didn’t realize it could mend broken hearts.”

Having consumed three glasses of wine with dinner, Flora caught a cab back to her flat an hour or so later. She let the cab drop her off at the end of the road, then walked the hundred yards up Forsyth Road to the small cul-de-sac where the flats were. She hesitated when she got to the end of the garden wall separating the small car park from the road and saw a figure standing on the top step. In the faint orange glow from the streetlight she recognized that hulking great police officer, Andy Hamilton. Flora was indignant. Surely he wasn’t going to try and talk to her at this time of night? She was about to turn back when, to her astonishment, the door to the ground-floor flat opened and, without any sound that she could hear, Hamilton was admitted.

She waited for a moment, holding her breath, looked at her watch: it was nearly eleven.

Then, as fast as she could, she ran across the gravel on tiptoe to her own front door, slid the key in the lock, opened the door, and shut it quietly behind her. At first, no sound came through the wall separating her hallway from the one of the ground-floor flat; she stood there for several minutes in the dark, the dark staircase leading up to her flat in front of her, standing on a small pile of post and junk mail, listening. She even pressed her ear to the wall; then she heard just two words. The inspector’s voice, low, quite close: “Can I . . . ?”

No reply, but then footsteps, heading toward the back.

And then silence.

23:15

It had been inexcusably late when Andy appeared at 14 Waterside Gardens, that much was clear. By the time the taxi dropped him off for the second time since leaving the pub, the cold air had sobered him up enough to realize that what he was about to do was pretty serious. He’d misbehaved in the past, but every time it had happened had been with someone he knew well. This was uncharted territory.

In his wallet was the packet of three he’d bought, against the odds, in the machine in the gents’ toilet of the King Bill last night. His objective then had been Lou, but now his needs were different. And after all, he thought, his mind wandering back to the encounter on Friday morning, he was nothing if not obedient. She expected more from him, that’s what she’d said. And that’s exactly what he intended to give her.

He’d stood for a moment outside, the air chill and damp, his breath in clouds around him, contemplating his choices. If she didn’t answer, he’d head for the Travel Inn.

He didn’t want to end up in the Travel Inn. He wanted a bed, but also a warm body to share it with. He’d been thinking about Lou, how her body felt, for so many hours today that it seemed the height of cruelty to be denied it. Now, though, there was another option: that tight arse, those breasts, small but firm, and that smart mouth. To be taken in hand by the good nurse, told what to do, relieved of all responsibility for himself and his actions.

He knocked quietly, although there were no lights on in Flora’s flat, and her car wasn’t outside. He assumed she was staying at Taryn Lewis’s house in town. After a moment the door opened, and before he could say anything she was already standing aside to let him in, shutting the door behind him with a soft click.

To his great delight she was wearing the uniform, although her feet were bare, neat, tanned feet with toenails painted pink. She was looking at him inquiringly.

“Can I . . . ?” he said. Further words failed him. He must stink of alcohol.

Without saying a word, she led him down the hallway, opening a door halfway down. The bedroom was dark, and quiet, and cool. He looked at the bed and suddenly he was exhausted.

He undressed while she was somewhere else in the flat, crawled naked between the cool white sheets, and, listening to the sounds of her running water, the television in another room, and absolutely not intending to let himself doze off, instantly fell asleep.

What seemed like hours later he half woke and realized he was not in his bed at home, and the woman who was next to him was not Karen. It was not Lou, either.

He reached out a hand and touched naked skin. She stirred, turned toward him, and he folded his arm around her waist and drew her to him. Her body was warm, her skin soft. To his surprise he felt her hand close over his penis. It hardened quickly, and it didn’t take long before he was wide awake.

A few moments later she pushed him firmly onto his back and sat astride him, her shape just visible from the small amount of light coming through the blinds. She put a condom on him expertly while he lay between her thighs, wondering whether he was dreaming.

As she lowered herself onto him, her head fell back and he heard her gasp. She put both of her hands flat onto his chest, pressing into him with all her weight. Light as she was, it was hard to breathe. But oh, this felt good. He was holding her waist, lifting her and pushing her back, trying to take some of her weight off his rib cage and moving faster, when she suddenly smacked him with the flat of her hand. “Listen to me. Do not come. Do not. You do
exactly
what I tell you to do.”