Ash & Bone

24

Karen drove fast: roundabouts were a test of nerve, traffic lights a starting grid. After weeks of dead ends and disappointment, she was pumped up. Friern Barnet, Totteridge and Whetstone, Hadley Wood. The roads narrowed, then broadened, then narrowed again. All those questions, statements, searches leading nowhere. Trees, some recently pollarded, lined the pavements; houses, mostly detached, stood back from the road behind tall hedges, neat gardens; small blocks of flats sat on the edge of curving drives clustered with BMWs and Jaguars, SUVs. Slow down, she told herself, slow down.

In the event, Elder was there before her.

'The restraining order,' he said, 'just stalking or more?'

'More.' Karen's face, he noticed, had taken on a definite glow.

The house was brick-built, slate-roofed, the windows on the first floor a cross-hatch of small squares that would have made the window cleaner curse inwardly and add another fiver to the bill. A near-mint Mini Cooper, grey with silver trim, stood outside the double-width garage.

When she rang the bell, Karen half-expected it to be answered by a maid, not the cap-and-frilly-apron kind, but someone overqualified and underpaid from Croatia or Brazil. In fact it was Estelle Cooper herself, Estelle Robinson as she'd been when Kennet knew her; Mrs Cooper now, alone at home with the Mail and daytime TV until the school run, parents sensible round here and taking it in turns so as not to clog up the roads; Jake and Amber were being collected today by Tara's mum from number 35.

'Mrs Cooper? I'm Detective Chief Inspector Karen Shields. This is my colleague, Mr Elder.'

They followed her through a parquet-floored hallway into a long living room at the rear of the house, French windows leading out into a diamond-shaped conservatory, large tubs of geraniums brought inside to protect them from the frost. There were photographs of the children above the fireplace and on an oval table at the side of the room, mostly those school photos with pristine uniform and artificial lighting that had always seemed to Elder, where Katherine and her friends were concerned, to transform them into distant cousins of the kids they really were.

Estelle Cooper sat small in the centre of a wide high-backed settee, the print dress she wore in danger of getting lost amongst the busy flowers of the upholstery. She had a sharp face with a downturned mouth and faded eyes, like a doll that had been played with, discarded and left, most of the life and stuffing gone.

'Would you like some tea?' she asked. 'I wasn't sure…'

'It's fine, Mrs Cooper, thanks,' Karen said. 'We won't take any more of your time than's necessary.'

'Estelle,' she said, 'please call me Estelle.'

'Very well, then. Estelle. Estelle, you had a relationship with Steven Kennet…'

Elder thought she flinched at the sound of his name.

'That was a long time ago,' she said.

'I know. I wonder, can you tell us a little about that relationship? How it ended, for instance?'

'Ended?' She made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. 'Badly. But then I suspect you know.'

'Please tell us in your own words.'

'All right.' Her eyes rested on Karen, then slid away till she was looking at the floor. 'I started going out with Steven in 1989. I was working in central London, Holborn, as a legal secretary. I hadn't gone to university… well, I had, at least I'd started, but somehow, I don't know, I just hadn't seemed to be able to get on. Anyway, I was working for this firm and I started seeing Steven. I met him through a friend, a mutual friend, and he was… well, it was wonderful at first. He was considerate, you know, and kind and – this sounds a terrible thing to say – but for someone who did what he did, building work, you know, working with his hands, he was, well, not intellectual exactly, but interested in things, cultural things. We'd go to the theatre occasionally, foreign films, galleries.'

'When all this was happening,' Karen said, 'you were living together?'

'Yes. Steven wanted me to move in with him more or less from the start. And finally, well, he was… he could be very persuasive.'

'And how was that? Living together.'

'It was fine at first. At least, at least I thought it was. I'd never lived with anybody before. I suppose you could say I was a bit naive.' She was fidgeting with the material of her dress. 'Sometimes he got angry when I wouldn't…' She looked at Karen again as if looking for some kind of understanding, sympathy. 'He asked me to do things…'

Her voice slid away.

Karen glanced across at Elder; waited. 'On these occasions,' she said, her voice soft, almost a croon. 'On these occasions when he got angry, did he ever hit you?'

Estelle Cooper's eyes were closed.

'Did he hit you, Estelle?'

'Yes.'

'Often?'

Eyes still closed, Estelle turned her head aside.

Karen looked across at Elder again.

'Did you ever talk to anyone about what was happening?' Karen said. 'Ask for help?'

'I tried to, but I didn't know… it wasn't easy. In the end I plucked up courage and spoke to my mother, but at first she just wouldn't, she wouldn't listen. She stood there with her hands clasped over her ears and then, when I persisted, she said, "You silly little cow, why don't you stop complaining and just do what he says.'"

She was sobbing now, her arms locked tight across her chest, rocking slowly forwards and back. Karen went over and leaned towards her and at the first touch of a hand on her shoulder, Estelle stiffened and gasped.

Elder went in search of the kitchen and when he returned with a glass of water the two women were sitting on the settee side by side.

Estelle drank the water in small sips, like medicine.

'Take your time,' Karen said quietly.

Her hand not quite steady, Estelle gave Elder back the glass.

'When finally I found the courage to tell him I was leaving him,' she said, 'he just said no. As though there wasn't any room for argument. I'll change, he said. I won't do it any more, you see. And for a long time, months, almost a year, that was what he did. It was like it had been before, when we started going out together, and then, suddenly, without reason, it happened again, he hit me, so badly I had to go to hospital, in the middle of the night, to Accident and Emergency, and I said, "Right, this time I am leaving you, I really am" and he said, he said, "I'll kill you if you do.'"

There was a clock ticking somewhere that Elder hadn't noticed before.

Karen reached across and took one of Estelle's hands in hers. 'You believed him,' she said.

'Yes. Of course.'

'What did you do?'

'I told my father this time. I hadn't dared tell him before. And he was wonderful. He came round when Steven was out and helped me pack my things, and then he went with me to the police. They asked me if I would make a formal complaint about Steven, apply for a restraining order against him, and I tried to say no, just tell him to keep away from me, but my father said, "You've got to sign a complaint", and in the end I did.'

'But, in the event, it never went that far?'

'No.'

'It never got to court.'

'No, I… I changed my mind. The thought of standing up in front of a magistrate, other people, and having to talk about… I couldn't go through with it. And besides, by then I thought Steven would have calmed down, found somebody else.'

She laughed nervously, as if something had suddenly struck her as amusing.

'I lived with my parents for six months or so before finding a flat of my own and that's when he started to turn up again. Just once or twice at first. I'd see him, you know, in the supermarket, or across the street, but then it was more and more. He'd be waiting there when I finished work, wanting to give me a lift home, things like that, and I told him it had to stop, I didn't want to see him again, and then one evening I came back home and he was there, in the flat, he'd got in somehow, I don't know how he'd got in…'

Pulling away from Karen, she pressed both hands hard against her face.

'I went back to the police and they said if I wanted anything done I would have to go through the whole process again, and this time I said I would. I'd had enough. My nerves were in tatters. But then – I don't know if Steven knew, about the police, I mean – but he just stopped. Following me. Coming round. I didn't see him again. Not after that. Not once.' Her eyes lowered. 'I assume he'd met someone else.'

'I'm sorry,' Karen said, 'to make you go through all this.'

'It's all right,' Estelle said. And then: 'Steven, has he… has he done something?'

'We don't know,' Karen said.

'He has, hasn't he? He's done this to someone else.'

'We really don't know.'

Estelle looked towards the window; before long it would be dark outside. 'The children will be home soon.'

Karen got to her feet, Elder following suit.

'I'm sorry for bringing all that back,' Karen said at the door. 'I really am.'

Estelle smiled the best smile she could. 'I hope it's done some good.'

'I'm sure it has. Thank you again.'

She stood there, watching them go. Jake and Amber would soon be chasing each other to the door. Biscuits and a warm drink to keep out the cold. How was school today and then probably a video before tea.

Karen stopped alongside her car, keys in her hand. Her face had lost its glow. 'I need a drink and I don't want to sit in a pub on my own. Maybe we could stop and pick up a bottle of Scotch?'

'How about Irish?' Elder said. 'I've got some back at the flat.'

'Okay, I'll follow you.'

They drove along Whetstone High Road towards North Finchley, the traffic congealing around them, Elder wondering why Estelle's story had affected Karen as much as he thought it had.