24

Detectives Holton and Bairden were waiting for us outside my house. My lawyer, Karen, was sitting beside me in my car. She had insisted that she accompany me to the house in case the cops tried to wrong-step me into saying something incriminating.

From habit I parked in my drive, and then worried about how this might be perceived by the detectives.

‘My head’s full of mince,’ I said. ‘I don’t know how to behave here.’

When I saw the officers climb out of their car, solid and sober with purpose, I couldn’t have been more grateful for Karen’s presence. I turned to her in the passenger seat and sent her a smile of thanks.

‘Shouldn’t it just be some uniformed officers?’ I asked

‘They want to rattle you, Mr Boyd.’

‘It’s working.’ I exhaled. Felt a sharp twist low in my abdomen. ‘Jim confessed? What the hell’s he playing at?’

‘You know him better than I do, Mr Boyd. Could he do it?’

‘I can’t even…’ I shook my head. Looked over at my house. Saw nothing but shadow and threat.

Karen clicked open her seatbelt and looked over at me.

‘Ready for this?’ she asked.

I nodded.

‘We’ll stick to the living room and the bedrooms, okay?’

‘Why…’

‘You won’t want to go into the kitchen,’ she said and I heard the warning in her voice.

‘Right.’

Anna died there. And my mind filled with an image of her prostrate body, limbs pointing at the various compass points. I pushed the picture from my head, released my seatbelt, tried to quell the roil and surge of nerves in my gut, and climbed out of the car.

The detectives met us at the front door. They both looked at Karen with surprise.

‘Nothing better to do on a Saturday?’ asked Holton. His tone was going for jocular, but his eyes were dismissive. As if he was questioning why she would be with a low-life like me.

She ignored his question. ‘My Boyd will need to get a suitcase out of the loft, and then gain access to both bedrooms.’

‘Understood,’ said Bairden as he looked at me. His gaze was calm and accepting of the situation, but underlying it I could sense a quiet simmer of anger.

I was desperate to ask if they had forced a confession out of Jim. What evidence did they have against him? More than anything I wanted to know how Jim was. If I could visit him and ask him what the hell had he done.

Instead I remained silent, uncertain how my questions might be viewed. Worried that my behaviour might indicate guilt or innocence, I studied the ground.

Then I gave myself a mental ticking off. An innocent man shouldn’t need to question how he acts.

‘When can I bring my boys home?’ I asked, looking at the three officials in turn.

‘It’s still a crime scene, Mr Boyd,’ Karen answered. ‘It will be released to you as soon as the investigation allows.’ Her smile was reassuring and I thanked whatever god had put her in my path. ‘In the meantime, let’s get your stuff and get you back to those wee boys of yours.’

I walked into the house, half expecting Anna to be standing in the hallway, hands on her hips. I made my way upstairs and to the loft. As I climbed the stairs I kept my focus ahead of me. I didn’t, couldn’t, allow my eyes to stray in case I saw something that I didn’t want to see.

In my mind’s eye I saw a large-blue suitcase in the far corner of the loft and when I climbed up, it was exactly where I thought it might be.

Down in the bedrooms, I packed several changes of clothes for the boys and for myself. As I threw items into the case, Karen and Detective Holton stood by the door. One a silent support, the other a scowl in a brown suit.

‘Right. Got a DVD for Ryan,’ I said to no one in particular. ‘Just need to get Pat’s dinosaur.’ I scanned the room but it was nowhere to be seen.

I looked at the walls and there, pride of place above Ryan’s bed, was a poster of Spongebob Squarepants. And memories of happier times. This time last year, complete with buckets and small nets on the end of a two foot long bamboo pole we’d gone jelly-fishing. Pat explained it all to the grown-ups patiently. We go fishing for jellyfish, he said. Put them in the bucket, count them, guess how many might be on the beach and then release them back into the sea.

Anna had been terrified that one of us would be stung. And then grew disgusted, to the boys’ delight, when I said that if anyone did, we all had to pee on them.

I noted the feeling of sadness and tried to rid my head of the memory. I had to focus on the here and now.

‘Might it be in the living room?’ asked Karen and from the seriousness of her tone I guessed that she was a mother and well knew how disastrous it might be if I arrived at my mother’s without the requested toy.

‘There’s no toys in the living room,’ said Holton. ‘In fact, the whole house is spotless. Like a show home.’ He looked at me, studying me for a reaction. ‘Apart from where the body was…’ he tailed off.

I looked around and considered his words. Right enough, the house was spotless. I tried to remember if it had been like that when I’d come round to see the boys that night. Came up short. All I could see was their sleep-tousled faces as I bundled them into the car.

Both boys’ beds were both made. In memory, they were dressed in different sheets. Had Anna also changed their bedding? Ryan’s had the faint impression of a body on the surface of his quilt as if someone had lain there briefly. I couldn’t imagine one of the crime of scene officers would have done so. That left Anna.

Did she lie there after I took the boys away?

Did she clean after I took the boys away?

She did keep a clean house, but was relaxed with untidy. I often heard her say that messy home was a happy one. Had she gone through the house, cleaned and put everything back in its place after I left? Why would she do that? I walked to the top of the stairs and looked around as if the place no longer belonged to me. The appearance of the place held the feel of ceremony.

‘Any ideas about this dinosaur then?’ asked Karen.

I chewed on that for a moment. ‘The garden,’ I replied. Both boys often took toys with them when they played out in the back green.

‘You’ll need to go round the outside of the house,’ Holton interrupted. ‘You can’t use the back door.’

‘Right,’ I acknowledged and walked down the stairs.

In the hallway, Holton got Bairden up to speed and the four of us stepped out of the front door, round the side to the back garden.

There was a spit of rain in the air and I looked up at the gathering mass of cloud in the near distance to assess if it might dump its load while we were outside.

Detective Bairden was walking alongside me.

‘I meet men like you all the time, Boyd. They’ve got no place for their anger so they take it out on the person they’re supposed to love the most. It’s fucking depressing.’ The heat of his irritation rose in his neck and coloured his face.

‘Get out of my face, Detective,’ I replied and lengthened my stride.

Karen caught up with me, a question in her eyes.

‘S’all right,’ I answered and shoved my hands in my pockets to hide the tremble.

The four of us stood in a line on the patio, house at our backs, facing the back fence.

‘Anybody see a dinosaur,’ asked Holton, his tone light as the realisation of the strange nature of his question hit.

‘No, but I can see a man getting away with murder,’ answered Bairden.

‘Detective, that is out of line.’ Karen was robust in her response.

So, the police weren’t buying Jim’s admission of guilt, or they thought I might also be involved somehow.

Feeling a weakness in my thighs I walked over to Ryan’s swing thinking I could scan the grass from that central point. I was also keen to show them that I didn’t care what they thought. Karen walked alongside me as if to protect me from the thoughts and scrutiny of the detectives.

‘Did Anna smoke?’ asked Karen, as she bent at the waist to study something lying between the blades of grass.

‘No,’ I replied and followed her gaze.

‘Do you?’

I shook my head.

‘Jim?’

‘Nope.’

‘Detectives?’ Karen looked at Holton and Bairden. ‘To your knowledge have any of the team come out of the house for a cigarette?’

‘They know better,’ said Bairden as if he was offended at my lawyer having the temerity to even ask the question.

‘In that case you should get an evidence bag and bring it over here.’ She looked around herself. ‘There’s another,’ she pointed and said. ‘And another.’

‘A bird could have dropped them,’ said Bairden.

‘Three? In almost the same spot?’ Karen scoffed.

I followed her eyes and spotted them. Three white stubs. Each of them with that distinct shape of the self-made.

‘Whoever it was must have been standing here for some time.’ She looked back up at the house as if imagining the thoughts of the smoker.

‘Means nothing,’ said Bairden.

‘We won’t know what it means until we analyse any DNA found on them,’ Karen replied. She gave both men a smile of challenge. ‘But I shouldn’t need to tell you gentlemen how to do your job.’

‘Ken Hunter,’ I heard myself say.

‘What?’ Holton looked at me.

‘He was married to Sheila from my work. He beat her badly. I was round at hers this morning. She had a collection of cigarette stubs just like that in her back garden.’

‘So what?’ asked Bairden.

‘He’s got a history of violence. Don’t you guys do the DNA thing? Match those cigarettes with these. That puts Hunter at this house. There’s no telling what that guy is capable of.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ said Bairden. ‘Save us from the TV crime addict.’

‘Sounds like a desperate attempt to deflect our investigation,’ said Holton. The detectives shared a look that showed they gave my theory no credence whatsoever.

‘And weren’t you getting a wee bit too cosy with this Sheila? What exactly is going on here, Mr Boyd?’ asked Bairden, taking a step closer to me.

‘Mr Boyd?’ Karen held a hand out, pointing towards the path round the side of the house. ‘We should go.’ She raised her eyebrows.

Bairden walked by my side as we made our way round to the front door.

‘We know your brother didn’t act on his own, Boyd.’

My mind was full of the implications of the cigarette stubs, thinking about the ones in Sheila’s back garden, so I didn’t respond.

Disappointed, Bairden moved closer to me, almost nudging me with his shoulder, his lips a thin line of loathing. ‘We think big brother says jump and the other asks, sure, which window?’