Chapter 13 Polly
Polly
Polly breathes a sigh of relief as the plane grinds to a stop on the runway.
After three flights and two layovers, they’ve finally made it to New Zealand.
She should be grateful; none of their flights were delayed, and they’ve faced no hold-ups or disruption of any kind, but right now she’s too tired to be grateful.
There will be plenty of time, later, to be grateful.
Eventually the plane doors open. Polly exits the aircraft and grips the chilly steel handrail that flanks a set of rickety stairs with a vertigo-inducing drop either side.
The air is gusty, rocking the staircase, and carries a sting of cold that sends goosebumps flaring across her bare legs.
This isn’t what disembarking an aircraft is meant to feel like; she expected to get that hairdryer blast of hot, foreign air, the all-encompassing warmth that takes a few seconds to settle into your bones and says: you’re on holiday!
But there’s none of that. If anything, it’s slightly chillier than it was in Heathrow when their journey began thirty-six hours ago.
November is springtime in New Zealand, and she thought it would be a little warmer.
Already a voice has been telling her this is no holiday, and now it’s been confirmed.
It’s early morning, at least in the disorientating upside down of local time, and she wears prescription shades despite the faint light outside – she didn’t sleep well on the flight and her eyes are swollen and dry.
After a careful descent in which she never takes her gaze off the steel steps below, Polly reaches the tarmac and takes a moment to look around.
It’s like no airport she’s ever seen. They’re in a crater on the surface of what seems like another world, bordered on all sides by mountains that are cracked and barren at their peaks, with a great grey slope that casts a shadow over the runway and all but the furthest end of the terminal building.
She thinks maybe there is even a trace of snow atop one of those mountains.
Normally, you’d have to sit through a long and winding drive or hike for hours to get so close to such peaks.
And yet, here they are. Immediately, it seems wrong, like the contravening of some universal law: who builds an airport slap in the middle of what appears to be a national park, pours concrete over the floor of a valley like this, litters it with industrial buildings, fills pristine air with the chemical stench of jet fuel?
She quickens her step in an attempt to keep pace with Miles, who marches towards the terminal building at a pace that’s jarringly out of character with his normal, easy-going gait.
By the time a queue forms, she’s still half a dozen heads behind him.
He wears a baseball cap – she’s never seen him don one of those before – and appears full of nervous energy, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and turning his passport over in his fingers.
As Polly stands in an unmoving queue, in a land a pole apart from home, this skittish, secretive version of her brother feels eerily alien to her, and she finds herself wondering how long it will be before he returns to his normal self, if he ever does.
Maybe that old version of Miles has simply gone for good.
Maybe the events of the last year landed on him with such force that they broke him beyond repair.
She tries to remember the last time she saw the normal Miles.
When was it, Christmas? She has a hazy image in her mind of Miles holding a tall orange drink (a Harvey Wallbanger?) and wearing a tissue-paper hat and that broad Deverill smile that is almost identical to, but annoyingly more flawless than her own.
That thought makes her realise she hasn’t smiled much in the last year, either.
It’s odd to think that nearly twelve months have passed since the smiles disappeared from their faces.
On the night of 4 December, when she received a push alert to her phone notifying her of a murder investigation in the city where she grew up, she opened the story immediately.
The details were quite scant: the body of a forty-year-old woman had been found at a basement flat in suspicious circumstances.
The discovery was made at four-thirty in the afternoon, and there was one of those bland statements from police: We understand this incident will have caused some alarm in the community, and we would like to reassure residents that a team of detectives is working tirelessly to understand what has occurred, et cetera et cetera.
The most notable thing was the location, a quiet residential street in one of Bristol’s nicer suburbs.
Still, she didn’t give it much thought, beyond the normal that poor woman, followed by the faint, doomy resignation that it was most likely another domestic, that some meathead husband had come home from the pub and been triggered by something, had his fragile ego dented and decided the right response was to pummel a woman literally out of existence.
And then she slipped her phone back into her pocket and moved on.
Quickly, she forgot all about it. It wasn’t until the next day that the first tremors of something seismic began to make themselves felt among her family.
And then, suddenly, everything moved impossibly fast, like one of those controlled demolitions where explosives are used to undermine a proudly standing tower, and everything starts to come crashing down.
‘You look like a cold-eyed killer in that one,’ George says, peering over Polly’s shoulder at her passport which she holds open, ready for inspection.
She eyes the picture – he’s not wrong, but passport photos always look like this: her lips, painted a boring, neutral shade, are pursed miserably.
She glares at George; he’s wearing that inane grin of his.
Did he consider the obvious context before delivering that remark?
Polly decides it didn’t occur to him because he’s so lacking in common sense.
She gives him a half-smile. ‘Stay away from me, George, otherwise a cold-eyed killer is exactly what you’re going to get. ’
A heavy-set border officer beckons her forward, checks her passport and waves her through.
After the otherworldliness of outside, the brightly lit concourse she’s just entered is so bland it could be a depot in Croydon.
It’s grimly quiet, full of travellers too weary for chat, and there’s a faint smell of vacuum cleaners and upholstery.
Inexplicably, Miles has stopped in the middle of the room, where he stands staring at his phone.
He’s oblivious to the indignant glances from other travellers as they wrestle their rolling luggage around him.
Polly pulls up right in front of him. ‘For God’s sake,’ she snaps. He looks up at her, eyes wide and worried like a startled animal’s, and instantly she regrets her tone. ‘Miles, are you all right?’
For a moment he looks confused, and then he shakes his head, and the life returns to his eyes. ‘Yeah . . . yeah, I’m fine.’
‘Earth to Miles’ – she clicks her fingers – ‘what’s going on?’
‘It’s the police. They’re trying to get hold of me again.’
Miles continues to stare off into space, and it’s another second or two before Polly realises it’s not confusion or brain fog that he’s suffering from. It’s fear.