Shooting Star

44

We found a place in Eltham to have coffee, waited for it in silence at a table on the pavement, Orlovsky smoking.

‘The voices,’ said Orlovsky. ‘Remember what Alice said about the voices?’

‘I remember.’ I got out my mobile and rang inquiries, got a number.

And she still went to school every day, driven by Eric, got good marks.

‘Yes,’ said a woman in the school records office after I’d lied to her, ‘Cassandra Guinane was a pupil here. She finished in 1979.’

‘Stephanie Carson?’

Pause. ‘Carson. Yes, finished in the same year.’

‘Was that a large class?’

‘No, about twenty.’

I said thank you. The coffee arrived. Orlovsky took a sip, looked disapproving.

‘Tastes like something made from a parasitic plant that attaches itself to mangrove roots,’ he said.

I was thinking: This is the moment to ring Vella, meet him, lay it all out. The moment to stand clear, leave it alone. My watch is over.

I hadn’t killed Anne Carson. There was never a moment when I could have saved her, never a moment when anyone could have saved her. She was doomed the instant the Guinanes decided on her, decided that she would be the next sacrifice to the memory of Cassie.

But why the Carsons? Was it possible they thought Mark took Cassie from them? Mark was probably an abductor and a murderer, had probably killed Anthea Wyllie, got his sister and Jeremy Fisher to lie for him, give him an alibi. Jeremy Fisher’s career had gone like a rocket after he lied for Mark. Tom Carson had moved all the CarsonCorp business to Jeremy’s firm, Jeremy was in charge of the Carson stock exchange float, a man grown rich on the Carsons.

Did Graham Noyce know about Mark? Who knew what Noyce knew? He fixed things for the Carsons. He didn’t want me near Mark. Because of the float, he said, didn’t want any bad press about a Carson, any Carson.

And Barry Carson? Barry didn’t mind me having a look at Mark, encouraged me. Barry hated Mark, wouldn’t be in the same room with him. Perhaps Barry was less worried about a Mark Carson scandal because he didn’t mind the float prospects being hurt. Was he the person cultivating the idea that Tom was too old to lead the company into its new public incarnation? Tom thought so.

But none of that mattered. The Guinanes had killed a girl. Done things to a terrified girl and then electrocuted her, executed her.

Had they done it in the shrine to Cassie?

Why was it a Carson girl?

It didn’t matter. Time to go. Back to Afghanistan.

You planning on going back there? Have another crack at them? Bring the boys back to life?

‘I’m going back,’ I said.

Orlovsky was looking into his coffee cup. ‘I don’t feel inclined to pay for stuff like this,’ he said. ‘What?’

‘I’m going back.’

He fixed dark eyes on me, ran fingertips over his lips. ‘To what end?’

I didn’t want to answer the question. It wasn’t reasonable to want that man in the camouflage pants, those men in camouflage pants, weak chins, mocking eyes, to want those men to tell me what they’d done, to show me where they’d kept the girls, to show me where Anne’s hair got wet before they took her picture, where they’d combed it, to show me the bath they electrocuted her in, to show me where they kept her body, kept it cold.

But I wanted them to do that, the Guinanes.

I’d put my hand out to her, touched her lovely face, felt the cold.

What had David Klinger said?

…even bloody cold storage, some silent fridge thing he devised.

Orlovsky said again, ‘To what end?’

There was no reason in it. I had no explanation to offer.

Orlovsky saw that. I saw it in his eyes.

‘Take a cab home,’ I said. ‘It’s on the house.’

We sat there looking at each other.

‘Just don’t fucking smoke,’ he said. ‘No fucking smoking.’