Wolf

  ‘Mrs Frink?’ Caffery approaches cautiously. ‘Hello?’

  Slowly, very slowly, the woman’s head turns to him. Her face is puffy, the skin stretched. But her eyes are bright. They flicker across his face.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  He touches her hand. It is freezing. The blanket is thin – too thin to be any protection. He looks up at the house – there’s no one to be seen. He jams off the wheelchair brake with his foot and begins to push her inside, jolting across the flagstones.

  As they near the door she whimpers. Her hands rise weakly. When he stops to push open the back door she puts her chin up and speaks one word, clearly. ‘No.’

  Caffery hesitates. ‘Mrs Frink?’

  ‘That’s my name.’ Her voice is hoarse and cracked but it’s clear and educated and quite adamant. ‘And please – I don’t want you to take me inside.’

  ‘I thought you couldn’t speak.’

  ‘I’m sure you did.’ She licks her lips. It seems to be an effort to hold her head up. ‘That’s what he wants you to think, but I can.’

  ‘The MS?’

  ‘It doesn’t stop me speaking. Now, please, don’t take me back into the house.’

  ‘You can’t stay out here. It’s too cold.’

  ‘Then a coat. The hallway.’

  Caffery hesitates, caught between wanting to do the right thing and doing what she asks. After a moment, he leaves her where she is and goes into the warm kitchen, where the Aga pumps out heat. The place smells dank and sour, there are dirty tea-towels all over the kitchen, and plates piled in the sink. He crosses to the doorway and is about to enter the hallway when a noise from above stops him. He stands, his hand on the door, and swivels his eyes to the ceiling. The floorboards creak and bounce. Something is banging against the wall in the room overhead.

  The nurse’s handbag – he’s sure it must be hers – crocodile-skin effect with a gold clasp, sits on the floor in the hallway. It looks expensive.

  OK. So now he understands. The colonel’s getting what he needs from the nurse and the nurse is getting what she needs from him. Angry, Caffery goes to the coat stand and pulls three coats off. Outside, Mrs Frink meets his gaze sadly – as if she’s ashamed – and for a long moment neither of them speaks. Then she lets her head droop back to where it was before, almost touching the blanket. He feels her arm. It’s as cold as ice.

  He sighs. ‘You’ve been out here hours, I’d say. Not minutes.’ He puts the coats around the old woman, tucking them in. ‘How did you get out here? You didn’t wheel yourself, did you?’

  ‘No. They bring me out.’

  ‘And how often does this happen?’

  ‘Most mornings. Not often at night.’

  He wheels the chair down the path a small way into the sunshine, until they are out of earshot of the house. Next to a small garden bench he puts the brake on the wheelchair. He sits opposite Mrs Frink and studies her. The veins under her skin are visible. Her eyes are blue. Close up he sees she’s not all that elderly – maybe in her mid-seventies. She’s not stupid and she’s not losing it. Not yet.

  ‘Why won’t he let anyone speak to you? Why does he pretend you’re losing it?’

  She rolls her eyes to him. ‘Because of what I would say.’

  ‘About that, you mean?’ He jerks his head in the direction of the house. ‘About what’s going on in there with the nurse?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How long’s it been happening?’

  ‘I don’t know. I lose track of time. Probably since we lost Hugo. Our son and daughter-in-law still won’t talk to us. They blame us, I think, because it happened here. They think we could have stopped it somehow.’

  ‘But that was years ago. Fifteen years at least.’

  ‘Fifteen?’ she says tremulously. ‘Yes, I suppose it is fifteen now. And I’m glad. I’ve been so hoping I’ll be able to forget it all soon.’

  ‘The nurse hasn’t been with you all that time, has she?’

  ‘Yes. She was Hugo’s nanny first. And now she’s mine.’ She gives a half-hearted smile, as if it’s a joke she’s practised several times. ‘Marina.’

  ‘Marina?’

  ‘She’s been everywhere with us. Everywhere he was posted, she came too. I don’t blame Charles for it. I do still love him.’

  ‘Love him?’

  ‘I do. I keep thinking it’ll blow over. I haven’t been a proper wife to him, not since Hugo went. I lost a grandson that day, and a son, you might say. But my husband – he lost all of those. And a wife too. Men take things like that much worse, don’t they?’

  She smiles tremulously at Caffery, her eyes searching his face as if she’s trying to commit it to memory. As if these days everything she witnesses needs to be scrutinized thoroughly so she can carry it on safely to the place she knows she’s going.

  ‘I’ve got a photograph. Of Hugo. Would you like to see it?’

  Caffery hesitates. He’s seen Hugo’s face – there are family photos of him in the extensive files he read through the other night. There are also photos of him naked, his face bound tightly to Sophie. And autopsy photos of what his face looked like when it was unwrapped. Caffery still can’t comprehend the force that was needed to break a person’s face like that, and what drove Minnet Kable, who knew neither of the teenagers, to such barbarism.

  He realizes Mrs Frink is still smiling expectantly.

  ‘Of course,’ he says. ‘I’d love to see a photo. Where is it?’

  ‘Under the chair.’

  He gets up and looks in the basket under the seat of the chair. There are wipes and handkerchiefs and an empty bottle of glucose drink, and, nestling under everything at the bottom, a large box. A crude painting of a lion on the lid, it looks like something the Frinks may have acquired during an Asian posting – as if it’s from India or Nepal. He straightens.

  ‘Is this it?’

  ‘Yes. Thank you, dear.’

  She opens it and with shaking hands begins to take out the contents. There are letters and newspaper cuttings. A birth certificate and some baby portraits. She pauses at a photo of a young man. Dressed in straight-legged jeans and a white shirt, his hair worn short and neat. He is standing in front of the gates to a large house, squinting in the sun.

  ‘Hugo?’

  She nods. ‘On his way to summer camp. That’s where he met Sophie. He fell for her – we all did. He had lots of girls after him, but she was the one.’

  She begins to say something else, but the memories have overwhelmed her. Caffery notices tears leaking out of the sides of her eyes. He crouches next to her and fumbles out his cloth handkerchief, using it to dab at her eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry, dear. I am sorry. Silly old thing – that’s what I am. A silly old thing, crying like this.’

  Caffery lets her take his handkerchief. He holds her other hand, rubs it gently to get some circulation going. She’s still so cold, in spite of the sunshine. It’s as if she’ll never warm up.

  ‘Who are you?’ Mrs Frink stops wiping her eyes and gives him a watery look. ‘Why are you here? Are you from the hospital?’

  He shakes his head. He straightens and fumbles around in his pocket for his card.

  ‘I’m police.’

  He holds out the card and she takes it cautiously. ‘Police?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘I’m here to …’ He pauses. ‘It’s a courtesy call – to see how you’re doing.’

  ‘A courtesy call? After fifteen years?’

  ‘We like to visit the people who’ve suffered in these circumstances. Even years later when everyone else has forgotten.’

  ‘How lovely.’

  ‘Do you mind if I have a look at the things in the box? I didn’t know Hugo. It would be nice to get a feel for him.’

  She holds the box out to him with shaking hands. He takes it and sits down on the bench again. Begins to sort through the things.

  ‘He was a good boy. Always a good boy
. Very good at sports – he had a place at Durham, you know. He was going to go up that September.’

  ‘A talented boy. No wonder the community felt his loss so deeply.’ Caffery speaks the words woodenly, automatically, not really thinking what he is saying because his attention is no longer on Mrs Frink but on what he is looking at. It is a photocopy of a painting, folded and made into a card.

  He lifts it from under the other objects and tilts it sideways to catch the sun. It shows a globe, floating in a darkened sky. An amateur painting, with the vague flavour of a religious image, nonetheless it’s clear in its depiction. It shows a ring of material, like the rings of Saturn, circling the globe ethereally. And shooting out from the earth are light rays.

  He opens it. Inside are written the words:

  Our sincerest condolences on your terrible loss. With much love, warmth and affection. From Lucia and all the Anchor-Ferrers. The Turrets, Litton

  Caffery doesn’t move for a moment. Then he lowers the card and stares at Mrs Frink.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘The Anchor-Ferrers?’ he says distantly. ‘The Anchor-Ferrers.’

  Pig-Heart

  MATILDA IS NEXT to Oliver, facing him, her hand tucked up under her chin, her head on the floor, her hair streaming out around her. Her feet are bare, warm and heavy where they rest on his shins. The woman he has loved for forty years, limp on the floor next to him, where she has been placed by the monster who calls himself ‘Molina’.

  Oliver buries his face in her hair. She smells of the soap they use in the house – the white stuff with the carved face in the top of the cake. Matilda, he thinks, the light shatters in a million pieces when you walk into a room. The laws of physics themselves are helpless in your presence.

  Oliver’s not going to struggle. There’s no more to struggle for. Not now that Matilda is dead. She is soft and limp against him, but there is no hot breath on his face, no heart dancing against his. Just a heavy stillness, the creeping wetness of blood, and cooling skin. Her face in its familiar place, inches from him, as if they are asleep in bed, sags sideways. Her eyes are still bright. But they see nothing and they don’t blink.

  Molina has made them lie together like this, on the floor. A mockery of a loving couple. Oliver squeezes his eyes closed. This is damnation. It is the dark hole at the centre of the universe. Tears roll out of his eyes and soak into her hair. He takes Matilda’s dead arm and places it over his ribcage, as if she is holding him. The cameras haven’t covered what’s happened in this room, but John Bancroft will deduce everything, Oliver has to have faith in that. There is nothing else he can do. Nothing nothing nothing.

  ‘I love you,’ he murmurs to Matilda. ‘I love you.’

  She will go to heaven – or wherever it is that the good and the thoughtful go. That’s where she is now, whatever heaven she has spent her life dreaming of, he’s sure she’ll have got there. While he – well, he is going to hell. He can’t see any way round that. For the role his chosen job has played, and for the warnings he ignored. He will go to the coldest place in the universe, where particle storms rage and his heart beats in fear two hundred times a minute for eternity.

  Keep beating, keep beating …

  ‘Hey.’ Someone shakes him on the shoulder. ‘Hey, come on – look at me.’

  Slowly, numbly, Oliver opens his eyes. He sees Molina kneeling next to him. He’s taken off his black sweatshirt and is wearing only a T-shirt. In his left hand is the Stanley knife. His arms aren’t as muscled as Oliver imagined they would be. In fact they are thin and long and freckle-covered. But that inadequacy means nothing – not now.

  Lucia is still on the bed. She isn’t bound but she isn’t trying to fight either. Behind her Patty Hearst stands like a towering statue.

  Oliver says, ‘Kill me. Kill me. Just kill me now. Put that knife in my head, put it in my chest.’

  Molina ignores that. Ruminatively he prods the back of Matilda’s head. ‘Look now. This is your chance. You can do whatever you want and she won’t argue. All the disgusting things you wanted to do that your wife wouldn’t let you? Now’s your chance. Don’t be embarrassed. We’ve got open minds – me and your daughter.’

  ‘Kill me. Be a man for the first time in your life and kill me.’

  ‘No. I won’t.’

  Oliver meets Molina’s eyes. He runs his tongue around the inside of his mouth. Though part of him has already gone – already moved on from this life – he can’t die without telling this man what he has worked out. Matilda hasn’t died the way Hugo and Sophie died, but it doesn’t change anything. Oliver knows the truth. Just for a moment, for one more moment, what is left of him is going to hold itself together:

  ‘I’ve met you before,’ he says slowly. ‘I don’t know your real name, but you grew up in Litton. You were a fighter and a thief. Then, fifteen years ago, you came through my front door and stood in my hallway downstairs. The moment I saw you, I knew you were wrong. I knew you were everything that was bad. Maybe on one level I even guessed what you had done and I—’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘You’re not the person you think you are – you haven’t got what it takes.’

  Molina’s face changes. He tilts his head sideways. ‘Cunt,’ he says. ‘Perfect cunt. You tried to keep me from the only thing I ever gave a shit about.’

  ‘Thank you,’ says Oliver. ‘You’ve answered my question. Now kill me.’

  Molina breathes in and out. His face is red – he is furious. He gets to his feet and walks around the room once or twice, like a caged animal. He stops in front of Lucia, who sits silently on the bed, knees drawn up, her eyes like reflective black holes, her face raised to him.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well what?’ she says.

  ‘Get up and help me.’

  There’s a long pause. Whatever is going on in Lucia’s head, Oliver can’t tell – but he knows this is the moment his life has been galloping to all these years. Eventually, her expression fixed, she pushes herself off the bed. Molina steps forward and grips her by the elbow. Not roughly. She doesn’t struggle – she hasn’t put up any sort of a fight yet. She allows him to lead her towards her parents.

  He stops her at Matilda’s head. Lucia’s feet are inches away. Oliver rolls his eyes up and sees them, boots with pastel-coloured faces on them. Black soles that seem as big as buildings from this angle.

  ‘Right,’ Molina murmurs to Oliver. ‘Now is the time – your decision. You do something to her body or I’ll make your daughter do something. Which would you prefer?’

  Oliver stares at the feet. Fifteen years ago – a few weeks after the Wolf killings – Lucia came home with this man ‘Molina’ and tried to introduce him to her father. Oliver recalls coming down the stairs and seeing him standing proudly next to her in the hallway with his hand out. Oliver was a piranha for character judgement and took no prisoners with Lucia’s boyfriends. He formed an instant dislike to ‘Molina’ and didn’t bother hiding his feelings. He simply nodded at the young man at his daughter’s side, bypassed the offered hand, not bothering to listen to the introductions, and continued into the kitchen.

  Oliver never found out his name and Lucia never tried to bring him to the house again. That’s why he, ‘Molina’, hates Oliver and Matilda so much. He blames them for keeping him from Lucia.

  He sucks in a breath. It’s going to be his last. He locks his throat tight – the time has come. If Molina won’t kill him then Oliver is going to have to do it himself. His lungs bloom hard and sore in his chest but he fights them. He fights pig-heart – tells it Thank you, thank you for the time you’ve given me. But now I don’t want you to keep beating. I want you to stop.

  It shouldn’t work – no one should be able to will themselves to death, no one can beat their body’s stupid, dull desire to survive. But the new valves the doctor has given him – the valves of a pig – can be overcome. They can’t stand up to Oliver Anchor-Ferrers and his determination.

  Lucia lifts
her right leg. There’s a pause then the pastel-coloured boot kicks Matilda in the face. It withdraws and does it again. And again.

  The last thought Oliver has is a prayer – a prayer that Matilda has got safely to the place where there is sun and lightness and brilliance.

  Somewhere she is safe from Lucia.

  Oliver Anchor-Ferrers

  MRS FRINK HASN’T met the Anchor-Ferrers but she recalls Lucia, the daughter, who dated her grandson Hugo for a while before his death. Mrs Frink doesn’t know much about the family, she thinks they still live in the area, and when Caffery quizzes her she decides she remembers the cleaner, Ginny Van Der Bolt, saying she’s done some work for the Anchor-Ferrers too. Ginny hasn’t turned up for work this week, she says. The Turrets is … she has to dig deep to remember where the house is. It’s … on the other side of the hill – very remote.

  ‘Lucia was a nicely brought up girl,’ she tells him. ‘A little troubled, I think she never forgave Hugo when he finished with her. I don’t know what became of her, where she is now.’

  Caffery puts the box back under the chair. He clicks off the wheelchair brakes and begins to push her towards the house. ‘I’m going to take you inside now. Whatever your husband’s been doing, let’s hope he’s finished. See that business card?’

  Bewildered, she looks down at it in her hand.

  ‘That’s my number. If any of this gets too much for you, call me, will you?’ They reach the conservatory. He pushes her into the warmth. He can see through the hall into the living room. The nurse is standing with her back to him in the hallway, checking her reflection, refreshing her lipstick. She doesn’t hear Caffery. He watches for a moment then goes back into the conservatory. ‘In fact,’ he tells Mrs Frink. ‘Call me anyway. I’d like to know how you’re getting on.’