Chapter 4
‘I’ll need to take a full statement from you,’ DI Burton says, ‘but for now, maybe it’s best if you go to your mother-in-law’s—’
‘Ex-mother-in-law.’
‘Ex-mother-in-law’s house. Try to get some rest. What’s your mobile number?’ He wakes up his phone and clears a backlog of notifications.
Nadeeka recites her number, and he taps it in. A second later, her own phone rings.
‘Now you have mine,’ DI Burton says. ‘Call me any time. As often as you need. I’ll be what we call your family liaison officer. A single point of contact so you don’t have to deal with lots of different people. Okay?’
Nadeeka nods, even though she’s far from okay.
‘Would you like me to call anyone for you? Your mother—’ DI Burton stops. ‘Ex-mother-in-law?’
‘It’s fine.’ There she goes again. Fine. Totally fine. Nothing to see here. Only my partner murdered on my living room floor. ‘I’ll call her now.’
Nadeeka is too hot now, claustrophobically so, and she opens the car door and spills into the frosty air as though she’s bursting through the surface of a lake.
She takes out her phone and stares for a second at the missed call from an unknown number, before remembering it was DI Burton who called her.
She saves it, then brings up the number for her ex-mother-in-law, one of the few people Nadeeka knows who still favours a landline.
Only then there’s more movement by the front door of -Nadeeka’s house, and, when she looks, her hand drops to her side and the phone clatters on to the pavement.
The buzzing in her ears is a thrum, is a drumbeat, is a hundred-decibel drill.
She sees the grave-faced men in the black suits emerge from the house, one backwards, and she knows before she sees it what they’re carrying, but even so, when she does see it . . .
‘Careful now.’ DI Burton’s with her in an instant, his firm grip back on her elbows, one shoulder behind her, keeping her upright.
The cry that erupts from Nadeeka’s open mouth doesn’t sound like her.
Doesn’t even sound human. She moans as though she’s in physical pain, as though she’s the one with a knife through her stomach, the one zipped into that black bag making its way from the house to the waiting van.
Not a van, she realizes now. A private ambulance; the euphemism for a vehicle reserved for the dead, not the dying.
‘Keep breathing,’ DI Burton says. ‘You’re doing so well, you’re being so brave.’ He’s talking to her as though she’s a child.
‘Where are they taking him?’ It’s hard to get the words out.
‘To the mortuary. You’ll have an opportunity to see him there, if you want to.’
Nadeeka nods vigorously, then shakes her head just as forcefully.
If she sees Jamie’s body, is that how she’ll always remember him?
She imagines him staring at her with glassy eyes.
Or will they close his eyelids? Will they put make-up on him?
A sweep of blusher so he looks as though he’s simply asleep?
She thinks of Jamie’s face, his beautiful, handsome face, and a wave of despair crashes over her at the realization that she’ll never see it again.
The secret smile as he shared a private joke with her above the kids’ heads; the glint in his eyes when she emerged from the bathroom and dropped her towel.
How lucky she’d been to have had a second chance at love; how cruel to now have it stolen from her.
‘You don’t have to decide now.’ DI Burton stoops and picks up her phone.
‘It doesn’t look as though the screen’s cracked.
’ He hands it to her and in a fleeting but intense rush of anger Nadeeka almost hurls it back at him.
What does it matter if the screen is cracked? What does anything matter any more?
The door to the black van slams shut. Nadeeka flinches. She and DI Burton watch in silence as the van reverses into next door’s driveway, then pulls away, turning right out of Cedar Walk. Nadeeka’s face is wet with tears. He’s gone. Jamie’s gone.
‘Could you let me have any next-of-kin details?’ DI Burton says, after a moment.
Nadeeka tries to focus. ‘His parents live in Sheffield. I have an address – I was going to send them a Christmas card. I’ll message you their details.’
‘Thank you. It can wait until you’re at your mother-in-law’s,’ DI Burton says.
Nadeeka doesn’t bother correcting him.
Kath Hadley has always answered the phone as though she’s about to be scammed, a note of suspicion in her no-nonsense voice. ‘Hello?’
‘It’s me . . .’ Nadeeka’s voice wobbles.
‘What’s happened?’
Nadeeka hears a familiar sound in the background. A laugh, high-pitched and overexcited, pumped on sugar and attention. ‘Oh! Are the girls there?’
‘Scott dropped them off for a couple of hours while he went for a run. It’s only a few weeks till his race.’
Nadeeka bites back her frustration. Heaven forbid the man should look after his own kids on one of the few days he actually has them.
Scott, Nadeeka came to realize during their nine-year-marriage, is an excellent father when he wants to be, but he is fundamentally selfish and will always put his own needs first.
‘You know I’m always happy to spend time with the girls,’ Kath says.
‘Actually, that’s why I’m calling.’ Nadeeka swallows. ‘Could we stop the night with you?’
There’s a pause. ‘You too? Is everything okay?’
‘I’ll explain later.’ In half an hour, Nadeeka will be in Kath’s warm kitchen. Kath will cluck over Nadeeka the same way she clucks over the girls, and Nadeeka can cry as much as she wants. For now, she needs to keep it together. ‘Can I come, though?’
‘Of course you can.’
Kath will assume Nadeeka and Jamie have had a row.
Right now, Kath will be wondering how she can say I told you so without saying I told you so, because Kath is forthright but not unpleasant, and although she thought Nadeeka had been rushing things with Jamie, she only wants good things for the mother of her grandchildren.
It’s unusual, Nadeeka knows, to still hang out with your mother-in-law once you’re divorced, but, as a woman once married to a serial cheater herself, Kath takes a firm line on infidelity.
Bloody fool, Kath said, when Nadeeka told her what Scott had done.
He’ll realize one day that the grass isn’t always greener in someone else’s bed.
Later, when Scott had come to the same conclusion himself, Kath had tried to persuade Nadeeka to take him back, but Nadeeka had been firm, and Kath had eventually given up.
Scott is now living with a Spanish woman he met in the queue for a concert, although this hasn’t stopped him occasionally drunk-texting Nadeeka with declarations of love she deletes without acknowledging them.
She calls him now. His mobile rings and rings, and, just as Nadeeka is preparing to leave a terse voicemail message, a familiar voice answers.
‘Hello?’
‘Kath?’
‘Oh, it’s you, love. Scott left his phone here – he’d forget his head if it wasn’t screwed on.’
‘Right. I’ll see you in a bit, then.’
‘Bye, love.’
Nadeeka hangs up. Something is tugging at the corner of her mind, but it slides away before she can grab hold of it.
‘Is everything all right?’ DI Burton says.
‘Yes. We can stay at Scott’s mum’s tonight.’
‘Would you like me to drop you off?’
‘Thank you, but I’ll be fine.’ Nadeeka needs to be on her own.
She feels the weight of DI Burton’s scrutiny as she takes a final glance back at her house.
The peach-fuzz police officer has stepped away, and perhaps, Nadeeka thinks, if she avoids looking at the blue and white tape across the door she can convince herself that everything is the same as it was this morning.
But it’s no good: the image of Jamie lying in his own blood is seared into her brain.
Nothing is the same.
Nothing will ever be the same again.