Under a Silent Moon: A Novel (34 page)

A lot of shouting, rushing people, consultants being summoned, together with the cloud-patterned curtains being hastily pulled and repulled around the bed, lest Brian should be in the least bit concerned about what might be happening behind them.

Whatever had caused his demise, the man was beyond recovery, and after a long, long while and, by the sounds of it, a great deal of effort, all the various doctors and nurses went their separate ways. The dead man was left there until the porters came to take him away in the early hours. When Brian woke the next morning, the bed opposite was clean and covered in freshly laundered sheets; the one next door was naked, down to its rubber mattress.

Get me the fuck out of here, Brian thought to himself, not for the first time deeply regretting not having spent a few extra pounds for the company health care insurance that would have placed him comfortably in a private hospital, away from all this degradation, despair, and death.

To add to it all, the weekend had been dreadful. Normal ward rounds didn’t take place, and the food was even worse than it was during the week. His only consolation had been a visit from the registrar, who had looked at his notes, listened to his heart, and declared that in all likelihood he could be sent home on Tuesday or Wednesday.

“Really? That’s great.”

“Assuming, of course, you have sufficient care at home.”

Brian was silent for a moment.

“Do you have someone at home who can look after you?”

“Yes,” he said at last. “There’s someone.”

As soon as the registrar had gone, Brian had donned his bathrobe and taken himself off to the dayroom. It was an effort getting there; even walking just a few steps was physically exhausting. How could he cope at home on his own? He couldn’t. He would need help. How handy, then, that he knew someone who happened to be an experienced private nurse?

In the dayroom he had managed to put in a quick call to Suzanne. As always, on the phone, she was brusque. There was no point indulging in idle talk. He told her about the registrar and listened to her response. It wasn’t quite the solution he’d had in mind, but it would do for now. Agency nursing was going to cost a fair amount of money, but if it meant he could get out of this hellhole, then he would have to swallow the cost.

Suzanne would make arrangements for someone to take care of Brian as soon as he was discharged. Meanwhile she would maintain a discreet distance, despite his protestations that he needed her. She would have none of it.

Suzanne ended the call abruptly and Brian made his way back to bed.

For a fleeting moment, Brian had thought about Barbara. Had it hurt? he wondered. Or had she been almost anesthetized by the alcohol she had drunk?

He remembered her cold features, the mouth set in a hard line. “It’s no use, Brian. I’m leaving you. I’ve found a man who can truly love me.” Her words were slurred, her diction indistinct.

“Good Lord,” Brian had said. “This must be some character. Well off, is he?”

She had shaken her head so fiercely that she had almost lost her balance. “We’ll make do.” Then she had laughed.

And now she was gone. She wasn’t his problem anymore. She wasn’t going to spend a penny more of the money he’d earned; it was all there for him to do with as he pleased.

10:02

Hamilton returned to his car, parked in the same lay-by that their Crimestoppers witness must have found himself parked on, the night that the blue car was spotted. Realistically, Hamilton had thought when he parked there, it must have been the driveway of Hayselden Barn that the vehicle had been sitting in; there was the lay-by, fifty yards further on. There wasn’t another driveway within a mile in either direction that could have accommodated a parked car. Most of them had gates bang up to the road, or were not the sort of driveway you would just stop in. Here the gate was about ten yards from the road, leaving an entranceway suitable for a car to pull in temporarily.

It had to have been Polly in the car. But who was with her? Brian? Nigel?

The weather was definitely colder again, the wind biting his cheeks. He would have preferred to have been inside the office rather than out here on the house-to-house.

The probationers were keen, though, he’d give them that. And, to be fair, there weren’t a huge number of houses between here and the quarry. It was mainly country roads, plenty of bends, a few open fields. The houses that were here were mainly large, set back from the road. If anyone had seen anything it would be a fucking miracle.

Inside the car, he shut the door, keeping the wind outside. From where he sat, he could see half into a drainage ditch that ran along the edge of the field bordering the garden of the Barn. A traffic cone, green with algae, was sticking out of it. A crisp packet fluttered, caught on something that looked like the wheel of a bike; then it was lifted by the breeze and was gone. He leaned forward in his seat, then got out of the car again and went round the front of it to the edge of the ditch.

It was a gent’s road bike, half-submerged in the meter or so of water at the bottom of the ditch. Vegetation mostly concealed it, but Andy could tell it hadn’t been there long. The bike wheel had mud and grass caught in the spokes, clumps of green that were wilting to a khaki color. He looked across to the barn, and back at the bike. The seeds of an idea were forming. Across from the lay-by a rough mud track led off along the other side of the ditch, forming a natural boundary edge to the field. A green sign, half lost in tangled foliage, proclaimed this to be a footpath. He wondered where it went.

He hunted in his glove box for the map book he carried with him and located the page that contained Cemetery Lane and half of Morden village. There was the track—a dotted line heading off into green space. He traced the line with his finger through a further field. At the edge it split off in two directions, one heading to the east and meeting up eventually with the Briarstone Road. The second track headed due west before splitting in various directions, finally running along the top of a dark-colored structure on the map marked up in small letters as “Quarry.”

He looked up the track. What would that be like in the dark, on one of the windiest, rainiest nights of the year? And on a road bike?

He looked down at his shoes. “Fuck it,” he muttered under his breath, and pulled his mobile from his jacket pocket.

“John. It’s DI Hamilton. Can you take over for a bit? I need to go for a walk. Right. Yeah, I’ll take the phone.”

Back out into the cold air. He went through the boot of his car and found an anorak; it was thin but it might keep some of the wind out. He pulled it on over his head, locked the car, and set off up the track.

Away from the road, all noise was deadened and for the moment even the wind seemed to have dropped. He looked over the fence to his right, the structure of Hayselden Barn rising beyond it. By far the biggest thing other than the Barn for seemingly miles in any direction was a great horse chestnut tree, its branches bare, all the leaves blown away. The wind made it sway and dance like a living creature.

The path was muddy, as he’d expected, but it was cold enough for the ground to be hard underfoot and it was easy going to start with. At the end of the field he came to a stile, and another green
FOOTPATH
sign indicated the right-of-way continued into the field beyond.

He spotted the cows—a few dozen Friesians—across the other side of the field. Hamilton wasn’t fond of cows, in the same way he wasn’t fond of large dogs or any other unpredictable animals. But these seemed to be content to get on with their grazing, and he could see the path across the field would take him away from them.

Nevertheless, he crossed the field quickly, keeping an eye on the cows and not looking where he was going, until he sank almost up to his ankle in a fresh cow pat.

“Ah, fucking hell,” he said loudly, wiping off as much of the shit on the grass as he could. He continued, this time keeping his eye on both the cows and the grass under his feet.

At the other side of the field the path disappeared into a hedgerow. He paused and looked back the way he had come. He had completely lost sight of the road now, but the roof of the Barn was within sight over the top of the hedge, in the distance. He estimated he had walked about half a mile. The clouds overhead were darkening and it looked like it might rain. He shivered. He hated this time of year.

Heading toward the hedgerow, he could make out a gap leading to a field beyond. He cursed his clothing, wishing he’d decided not to try and impress Lou with how smart he could look in a navy wool suit and had gone for jeans and heavy-duty boots instead. He could really do with something warm, like a fleece. And a woolen hat.

Never mind. At least the rainproof jacket he was wearing would keep the worst of the brambles away from his suit jacket. He squeezed through the gap in the hedge, fending off prickles and branches, and to his horror his clean shoe sank deep into a water-filled ditch. Now both shoes were ruined, both socks wet through.

At last he burst through the hedge and found himself at the bottom of a steep, grassy slope. He scrambled up it and found himself on a dyke, which seemed to go for miles in either direction. On the top of the dyke a well-worn path looked like a good place for walking dogs and bike riding.

That was a thought. He looked back down to the gap in the hedge. He doubted whether a bicycle could be squeezed through that gap, but then not everyone was his size. Could you do it all in the dark, though? It was hellishly dark around here at night. And with the rainy weather there would have been no moon, either.

He looked left and right, the dyke and the path stretching as far as the eye could see in either direction. He looked at his watch. He felt spots of rain. He remembered from the map book that the distance to the feature marked “Quarry” was at least three times the distance from the road to the junction where the path split in an easterly/westerly direction—presumably the place where he now stood.

He debated his options, then scrambled back down the bank and fought his way back through the hedge.

To his alarm, however, the other side of the hedge revealed a sudden gathering of large, inquisitive Friesians, seemingly waiting for the large odd man to return through the hole in the hedge.

Another change of plan, then. He fought his way through the hedge a third time and decided he would just have to go for a long walk.

He pulled his mobile out once again, hoping for a signal. “John? Hello? Yeah. It’s DI Hamilton again . . . Can you hear me? . . . How about now? Ah, right. Listen, have you still got a car at the quarry? . . . Okay. Can you get them to stay there? I’m walking to the quarry now and I need a lift back. Okay?”

The signal finally died. He hoped it wasn’t about to start pissing it down; that really would be the final straw.

10:19

Flora had had a productive day. For some reason, her mother’s visit yesterday had sparked in her a new level of creativity. She had moved the large canvas of Polly to one side, and had started a new one, a portrait, but less abstract. It was Polly, of course. It was cornsilk and blue, mainly. And some red, the color of her heart.

She had fallen asleep in the studio at about three in the morning. All those hours she had worked, not eaten, barely drunk anything. By the time she felt the exhaustion hit her she had a headache and was covered in paint. She curled up on the old sofa, pulled the blanket over her, and fell asleep.

She’d woken this morning feeling nauseous with hunger. Without bothering to change or wash, she headed out to find something to eat. There was a greasy spoon on the corner—the owner was called Bob. He never batted an eyelid when Flora came in covered in paint.

“Good night, was it?” he asked when Flora opened the door.

Inside, it was warm and smelled of good coffee. She shrugged. “It was good in some ways, Bob. That’s as much as I can hope for.”

He gave her a lopsided grin. “What you having today, then?”

“Gutbuster. Coffee. Okay?”

“Five forty-five then.” When she had handed over a five-pound note and a fifty-pence piece, he nodded toward the table by the window. “I’ll bring it over.”

Outside on the pavement people rushed to and fro.

She was avoiding him. Recognition of the fact slid into her consciousness now as easily as the denial which had preceded it. She would have to go and see him, talk to him, even if it was the last thing she wanted to do. There was no point waiting for the police to do it. They would carry on dragging their heels, leaving him to it, waiting for their evidence package or whatever it was they were doing. But something had happened that had changed her father. It wasn’t just Polly’s death, there was more to it. As though he knew something. As though he was guilty . . .

And what, then, could she do about it? She couldn’t tell the police. They couldn’t be trusted. And besides, all she had so far were her suspicions, the awareness that there had been some kind of shift in her father’s demeanor. And who was better placed to find the truth than her? Nobody else could get as close to Nigel as she could. Somewhere there would be some kind of evidence.

Thinking about her father made her headache worse. The coffee arrived first, and she had nearly finished it by the time the vast oval plate arrived. Bacon, sausage, fried egg, fried bread, beans, black pudding, mushrooms, grilled tomato, and sautéed potatoes with two slices of buttered toast clinging precariously to the side.

She ate.

11:04

Lou had been providing Mr. Buchanan with his daily update, but now she was back in the Incident Room, complete with a tray of coffees and muffins from the canteen. Everyone was on the phone; everyone except for Jason, who was waiting in the doorway to her office, looking serious.

“What?”

“Phone stuff,” he said. “I’m not done, but yeah, it’s—interesting.”

“Have a seat.”

She had brought two of the coffees and two muffins in with her, and while he talked she pulled chunks off the side of hers and ate.

“So, Brian’s mobile-phone download, to start with. One of the other analysts said this to me when I started doing phone work: ninety percent of text messages sent over the network are porn. I didn’t believe it at the time, but hey.”