62

Monday rolls around and Izzy pretends everything is normal, going to the quiz with Chris even though … even though what? Even though she and her father are on the brink of something, she supposes. Even though she is waiting to illegally log on to a police computer. Even though she doesn’t care about any of this stuff, except finding out the answers.

Halfway through the music round, she says it. ‘I wanted to ask you something. About Dad.’

‘Your dad?’

‘Yes.’

‘What?’

Britney Spears blares out over the sound system and, to her surprise, Chris puts his pen down and walks out, gesturing for her to join him.

It’s warm, but the beer garden is empty. The early days of the heatwave, when everybody was barbecuing and drinking outside, are over. Now, it is just life, in all its inconvenience. People are irritated that they can’t water their gardens or run a bath. That strips of road are melting, causing roadworks. That trains don’t run on time and nobody can sleep during the warm nights. The promised rain still hasn’t come. It’s moving later and later, like a delayed train that will eventually be cancelled.

She sits at a picnic table, under a Carling parasol, and looks in at the quizzers.

‘We’ll lose if you’re not quick,’ Chris says lightly, kicking the side of the bench. He stands, looking at her, hands on his hips. ‘What do you want to know?’

She takes a deep breath. How can she explain it all to him? The whole journey? All of her digging in the bank statements? That they are – she just knows it – on the cusp of figuring it all out?

She rolls up the sleeves of her denim jacket and lets the evening sun warm her wrists.

‘Come on, English. Left my Coke and my phone in there,’ he says, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

‘Do you remember a man at the restaurant called Marcus? He was a regular.’

‘No … I don’t think so.’

‘He had white-blond hair.’

‘Oh, yeah – I do remember him!’

‘Well, he got arrested for dealing drugs.’

‘Right?’

‘And Mum was … Well, there’s evidence she was laundering money through the restaurant.’

Something in Chris’s expression closes down. ‘Laundering.’

‘Yes. Some things inflated. Some people taken off the books – black salaries.’

‘Who’s told you this?’

She looks up at Chris. The sun is behind him, his face is in shadow. He’s moving the gravel with the toe of his trainer, steadfastly not looking at her.

‘I’ve worked it out myself.’

‘Worked what out?’

‘Well … that. There was all this extra money in the business.’

‘She was working hard,’ Chris says shortly. ‘She extended the licence.’

‘No, but she …’

‘When was the drugs conviction?’

‘July 2002. But he wasn’t convicted.’

‘Right. Three years after. Hardly relevant, then.’

‘I think it is.’

‘Your father murdered her, Izzy,’ Chris says, sitting down gently next to her and taking her hand, which she withdraws. ‘I’m so sorry, but he did.’

‘He didn’t. I really think he didn’t. I think there’s been a miscarriage of justice.’

Chris says nothing, shaking his head, almost to himself. Izzy thinks about the newspaper clipping and the threatening text, about the people she suspected: her grandparents, her uncle, her cousin. And all along it was somebody else. Somebody involved with a dark world Izzy hadn’t even considered. Drugs. Money laundering.

‘You need to forget this, Izzy,’ Chris says.

‘Why are you being so short with me?’

‘I’m not.’

Izzy thinks of Tony’s behaviour, coming into the restaurant in the night, and the wine rack having been moved. ‘Did your dad know about the money?’

Chris’s next sentence tells Izzy everything she needs to know. ‘No, he didn’t know about the money,’ he says. The emphasis is placed upon the word before he has consciously realized it.

‘He was in the basement, near the safe, acting … strangely,’ Izzy says.

Chris says nothing, evidently weighing it up. ‘Okay,’ he says eventually. ‘Okay.’

‘Okay what?’

‘It doesn’t have anything to do with your mother’s murder.’

‘What doesn’t?’

‘Dad … he tried to get me to help him get into that safe.’

‘But why?’

‘Don’t freak out.’

Izzy says nothing, making no promises.

‘Something happened between my dad and … and your mum.’

The air seems to still around them. The noise inside the pub retreats stage left and all Izzy can hear are her own thoughts.

‘It was nothing to do with what happened … what happened to her. Though maybe it motivated your dad, I don’t know.’

‘What do you mean – what happened?’

‘They slept together.’

A palm tree rustles in the distance. Her mother. Her fearless, outgoing, strong mother. Sleeping with her husband’s brother.

‘How do you know?’

‘He told me. He’s been trying to get into the safe because …’ Chris puffs air into his cheeks. ‘She told him she kept a second phone in there. They’d been using it to communicate. And he knew you’d started to look into it. He panicked. He knew the police wouldn’t check behind the wine rack, but he thought you might. He checked it to make sure it was locked. No key.’

‘A second phone?’

‘I know. He doesn’t know why she had it. But he used it to – I think it was … I think it was a mistake, a one-off, but he used it to text her on. She kept it in the safe, and he was worried everyone would find out. And see his messages to her … which were, I think, a bit forceful.’

‘He knew she had a second phone, and he never told anyone?’

‘I know,’ Chris says. He looks at her, his eyes red-rimmed. ‘I think that’s horrible. So that’s why I’m telling you.’

‘There wasn’t a second phone in the safe.’

‘Then I don’t know where it is.’

‘Did your father have something to do with it? What happened to her?’

‘No – no,’ Chris says quickly. ‘I think he’s just … ashamed. About trying to cover it all up.’

‘I can’t believe she’d do that. This whole time – it’s like I didn’t know her.’

‘I know.’

‘If she had a second phone, that fits with the drugs. God.’

‘No, it doesn’t,’ Chris says. ‘Doesn’t it make more sense that she had an affair, and your dad … well, you know.’

Izzy looks at him, properly this time. She has been suspicious about Chris’s motives, about his and Tony’s staunch belief in her father’s guilt, in mud sticking, just like her father said. Everybody seemed so sure, but now she sees it for what it is: faith. Faith in the justice system. Faith in a conviction. And faith in the establishment, too, in the status quo. In self-preservation – the lies we tell ourselves.