Ash & Bone

25

'Jesus!' Karen said. 'Don't you have any heating in here?'

Elder smiled. 'It's that underfloor thing. Comes on automatically, as far as I can tell.'

'No thermostat? Override?'

'What looks like a thermostat in the bedroom. Doesn't seem to work.'

Karen looked at him, eyebrow raised. 'How about the living room? Is it any warmer in there?'

'I doubt it, but I'm not sure. I seem to spend most of my time in here.'

In the kitchen were a dining table and two chairs and little else. Karen wandered off to check the living room, while Elder rinsed two glasses and wiped them dry. Still wearing her coat, Karen returned and looked idly along the kitchen shelves.

'This is how it works, then? They set you up in one of these places, what, rent free?'

Elder nodded.

'Plus salary?'

'Some kind of daily rate.'

'Overtime?'

'We didn't discuss it.'

'Maybe I should apply for early retirement now.'

'What? Before you make superintendent?'

'Yeah. And hell freezes over.'

Elder was holding the bottle of Jameson's over Karen's glass. 'Say when.'

'Say it for me.'

He poured them both a good shot, considered, then poured a little more.

'Cheers.'

They clinked glasses and stepped back.

'You want to sit?'

'Why not?'

The chairs were made from some kind of moulded plastic, less uncomfortable than they looked, though it was a close thing.

'It really got to you, didn't it?' Elder said. 'This afternoon.'

Karen shrugged. 'Kind of thing you hear all the time.'

Elder thought there was more to it than that, but he let it ride.

'How come you drink this?' Karen said. 'And not Scotch?'

'Habit, I suppose.'

Karen tried a little more. 'If you had to drink it blindfold, you think you could tell the difference?'

'I doubt it.'

'Kennet,' she said a few moments later, 'what do you reckon? You reckon he's our man?'

Elder made a face. 'We've got no forensics, nothing that places him at the scene.'

Karen nodded. 'Plus the little matter that he was still in Spain when Maddy was killed.'

'You said that had been checked?'

'We saw a print-out from the airline – electronic ticketing, isn't that what it's called? But did we go rifling through flight manifests and so on? No, I don't think so.' She sighed and shook her head and drank some more whiskey. 'We fucked up, right?'

'We don't know that.'

'No,' laughing despite herself. 'Not yet. But chances are looking pretty good.'

'Like I say, we don't know it was Kennet at all.'

'We know what he does when someone tries to walk away.'

'That was different, they were living together.'

'I'll kill you, that's what he said.'

'Situations like that, stakes are raised, people say that all the time. Doesn't mean they're going to follow through.'

Karen looked at him. 'Have you?'

'Ever said, I'll kill you?'

'To someone you were involved with, yes.'

'No. No, I honestly don't think I have.' But he'd thought it, more than once. Joanne. Martyn Miles. When first he'd learned the truth.

'Kennet didn't just say it,' Karen said. 'He beat her up. Put her in hospital.'

'That doesn't mean he killed Maddy.'

'You're backing away from this now?'

'No. Not at all. I just think we shouldn't get too -'

'What? Too excited?'

'Yes.'

'Chance would be a fine thing.' She drained her glass and slid it across the table towards him. 'Tunnel vision, that's what you're supposed to guard against, isn't it? When you're leading an investigation. I've been to bloody lectures on it, for God's sake.'

'It isn't easy,' Elder said. 'Everything starts to point one way, you get dragged along.'

'Frank,' pointing her finger, 'don't you fucking patronise me.'

'I'm sorry, I wasn't. I didn't mean to.'

Karen held his gaze.

'I held on to an idea for a dozen years once,' Elder said. 'Case I'd been working on. Girl who'd disappeared. Sixteen. So certain I was right about who'd murdered her I almost got my own daughter killed in the process. And I was wrong. Couldn't have been more so.'

Karen didn't speak straight away. 'Whoever it was, killed the girl, you found them in the end?'

'She's wasn't dead. She was alive. The other side of the world.'

'And your daughter? How's she now?'

Instead of an answer, Elder slid the bottle back in her direction. 'You ever had any kids?'

Karen shook her head.

'Before Katherine was born, when Joanne was pregnant, people would tease us, you know, half-joking, about sleepless nights, how your life's never going to be your own. What they don't tell you, how the minute they take their first step, kids, away from you, on their own, you've got this fear about what's going to happen to them. I don't mean paedophiles, things like that, just ordinary everyday things like stepping off the kerb at the wrong moment, falling off the top of the slide and cracking their head open. And then you start to worry about yourself. Mortality. Dying. Stuff you'd hardly thought about before. Like what happens if you're running up this hill, pushing them in the buggy, just the two of you in the park, and suddenly you have a heart attack and they're left alone.'

Karen topped up Elder's glass and then her own.

She'd affected not to notice the tears that had come momentarily to his eyes.

'She is all right, though? Your daughter? Katherine, is that what you said she was called?'

'Katherine, yes.'

'And she's okay?'

'That depends.'

'Something like that, it can't be easy. Not for either of you.'

'I don't know how to talk to her. Not now. Perhaps I never did. No. No, that's not true. I think we got on pretty well. Even after Joanne and I had split up. We could talk to one another then. But now, I don't know what to say to her, how to be with her, even, and as far as she's concerned, the less she has to do with me the better.'

Karen smiled with her eyes. 'You know what, Frank?'

'No, what?'

'You're feeling sorry for yourself.'

'Probably.'

'More so than you are for her.'

'That's not true.'

'It's the way it comes across.'

'Too bad.' Angry, he pushed back his chair and went towards the window.

Karen sat where she was, head down, then went to join him. 'I didn't mean to upset you.'

'You didn't.'

Her breath was warm on his face.

'I think I'm a little drunk, Frank.'

'Most likely.'

'How about you?'

'Me? I'm fine.'

'Earlier, when you asked about this afternoon. Letting it get under my skin…'

'You don't have to tell me, you know.'

'No, it's okay.' She took another taste from her glass. 'When I was younger, not long out of school, doing some part-time college thing, I started going with this guy. Older than me. Quite a bit. He was a musician. Well, not even that. More a hanger-on, you know. Scarcely played at all. Did a bit of DJing, nothing special. But me, I was just a kid. What did I know? There's all my mates, you know, want to watch out, he's just out for what he can get. Well, he had that, didn't he, and we still carried on seeing one another. I'd go round, sleep over, stay weekends. My parents – I was still living at home – they were going ballistic, but I didn't care. Get your nose out of my business, let me live my own life, all that bullshit. Course, they were right. I turned up late one night, somewhere I was supposed to be meeting him, this club. All right, I was fifty minutes, nearly an hour late. He smacked me round the mouth, right there in front of everyone. Smacked me round the mouth and made it bleed. Next day he came round, all apologies, bought me this bracelet, expensive, you know, not cheap. Talked about moving in together, getting engaged.'

A wan smiled crossed Karen's face. 'Was a whole month before he hit me again. At a party this time. In front of all these people we knew. As if he needed to show he could.'

'You stopped seeing him,' Elder said. 'After that.'

'Not soon enough.'

'I'm sorry.'

Karen shook her head. 'That poor woman, in that huge great bloody house.'

'She got away,' Elder said. 'Started a new life.'

'Did she?'

'People do,' Elder said, knowing, even as he spoke, he was wishing that, for Katherine, it was true.

'I'd better phone for a taxi,' Karen said. 'Pick up my car tomorrow.'

'I could drive it in for you.'

'Okay.'

Neither of them moved.

His arm was not quite touching hers. And then it was.

Leaning forward, she kissed softly him on the mouth, then stepped away, 'This isn't going to happen, Frank. I'm sorry.'

A slow release of breath. 'Okay.'

Fishing her mobile from her bag, she punched in a number, spoke and listened, broke the connection. 'Twenty minutes.'

'I'll make coffee.'

'Good.'

Twenty minutes was fifteen. 'Kennet,' Karen said at the door. 'Tomorrow morning we'll see his girlfriend. The one he went with to Spain.'

For some time after she had gone, Elder could smell her scent in the room, recall the warmth of her arm, the slight pressure of her lips, barely opening. Foolish to pour himself a nightcap before turning in, but who was to know?