She’d thought this case was done but then remembered the cameras. She should never have taken the job from the Chalmers twins, it was a bin fire, ungrateful kids having a pop at their ill and grieving mother. The Skelfs tried to take cases that felt right, but this had felt wrong from the start. The sun was on her back as she walked down Strathearn Road on her way to grovel at Vanessa’s bedside to get the cameras back. She expected Vanessa to say no, have Frankie chuck her out. She stopped at the crossroads and thought about turning back, fuck the cameras, fuck the expense, save her embarrassment. But she wanted to tell Vanessa what a pair of shits her kids were, what they were planning to do, so she could prepare.
She walked along Beauford Road past the high wall of Grange Cemetery, the tops of trees waving from the other side like they were living embodiments of the deceased. Which they kind of were, given that dead bodies had fed those trees for decades. She imagined ghosts haunting the waving branches and shimmering leaves.
A painter’s van drove past and she thought of Liam. It didn’t take much for her mind to turn to him, he was always under the surface. He was a talented artist, not a decorator, a confusion they encountered a few times while a couple when Jenny introduced him as a painter. He cringed, couldn’t get his head round the idea he was a creative person rather than a civil-service drone.
She got her phone out her pocket as she walked along Grange Road, checked Liam’s socials. He wasn’t on Twitter, didn’t use Facebook that much, but kept an active Insta account, random pictures, his artistic eye naturally framing them in an interesting way. Here was a wall of graffiti by the Water of Leith, then an Anthony Gormley statue in the river, then a shot of a tree growing through a fence, reminiscent of his own organically alien paintings. She went back to Facebook and flicked through his images, stopping at one from fifteen months ago, the two of them in a beer garden in Leith, wrapped up warm against the spring chill. Why had she destroyed that?
She reached Cumin Place and put her phone away. Smelled the air like she always did at the sight of the street name. But all she could smell was cut grass that went with the drone of a lawnmower. She reached Vanessa’s house and steeled herself. She hadn’t planned what to say, was prepared to be shouted at.
She rang the doorbell and waited for the shadow of Francesco in the doorway. She pictured his pale bum thrusting up and down on the camera footage, then thought of Liam again.
No answer, maybe Frankie was on an errand, or maybe he was in her bed right now, under the covers, giving her pleasure.
Christ, Jenny needed to get laid.
She rang the doorbell again. Nothing. The smell of burgers came and went, the lawnmower buzz rattled in her head. She tried the door handle. Locked. Something about the stillness made her think, and she walked past the front rooms and along the side wall. She thought of Hannah’s escape through the patio doors. She thought of the cameras still in the house.
She reached the back of the house, the door to the kitchen. She tried it, locked. She walked further round, garden opening to her left, small paved area next to the large windows on the right. She got to the doors and stepped out, no point being coy about it.
Vanessa was asleep in bed, covers jumbled over her, legs splayed out to the side. Jenny stood for a second, then tapped on the glass. Vanessa didn’t move. She tapped louder. Nothing. And something about her grey face, she’d always had a pallor since Jenny met her, but this was different. Jenny looked at the mess of covers then tried the sliding door and it opened. She stepped inside.
‘Vanessa?’ Quietly first, then louder. ‘Vanessa.’
There was a smell, not just the staleness of a bedroom, but acrid too, sharp underneath. Jenny took a deep breath and felt sick.
‘Vanessa.’
She knew it was no use. Somewhere on the edge of her senses she knew something was wrong. She looked around the room then back at Vanessa, like the statue of a fallen woman. She approached the bed and put her hand out, touched Vanessa’s hand draped over the edge of the bed.
Cold, like the corpses she handled at the house.
She stood holding Vanessa’s hand for a long time, head bowed, swallowing over and over and trying to spread warmth from herself to the body on the bed.