The Weight of Angels Read online

  The sergeant stared back blankly. Too blankly. He had slipped up and given me information he hadn’t meant to. The young girl at his side raised an eyebrow with perfect cool disdain. She didn’t respect this guy, even while she sucked up to him.

  ‘So here we are, back to talk to him again,’ the sergeant said. ‘Last chance, I think, before we take him in. We can’t be having this, see?’

  ‘He’s not here,’ I said. I wasn’t lying. Or not exactly. I had got up a bit late and hadn’t looked in his room. If push came to shove I could say I was mistaken.

  ‘Ali,’ said Marco, a warning note in his voice.

  ‘Away to school already?’ the sergeant said. ‘It’s early, surely.’

  ‘Not that early,’ Marco said. ‘In fact, I need to be getting going, if that’s okay.’

  The young girl turned her head a little, intrigued by this, but she kept her eyes on me and her thoughts were on her face. I’d settled for not very much, in her opinion. This little house and a man who’d walk away and leave me to deal with cops on my own. Not to mention the mess I’d made of bringing up my son.

  ‘You can have the car,’ I told Marco. ‘I’m getting a lift. So you don’t need to go belting off.’

  Marco eased himself back down onto the windowsill where he’d been perching. I was on the footstool, the two police side by side on the couch. I couldn’t help it: I was ashamed of the way we were living. I wanted to explain it to them, except I was sure they’d already know. Local cops, they’d know everything.

  ‘You can’t honestly think my son knows anything about the murder,’ I said, deciding not just to take it. Whatever ‘it’ was. ‘It said on the news he’d been there for years and years. I mean, have you even identified him yet? Are you round here bugging us because you can’t think what else to do? Because we’ve only been here six months. Him next door that was so happy to point you our way? He’s in with the bricks. He’d have been here when the body was buried. Have you just taken him at his word?’

  ‘Ali,’ Marco said again. His face was a picture of something I couldn’t name but it wasn’t husbandly concern. Maybe I was talking louder than I realized. He turned to the cops and gave them a grimacing kind of smile. ‘You need to excuse my wife,’ he said. ‘She’s been under a lot of strain recently and she sometimes doesn’t keep very well, you know.’

  ‘What sort of strain would that be?’ the sergeant said. He’d been sitting back against the cushions but he bent forward now. ‘Do you spend much time over there, Mrs McGovern?’

  ‘I never go near the place!’ I said. ‘I’ve just started a new job, so I’ve been busy. If that’s what you mean, Marco? As to not keeping well, I haven’t had so much as a cold for ten years, so I’ve no idea what you’re on about.’

  The young cop was exploring one of her molars and staring down at her notebook.

  ‘Oh, we’re not dinosaurs in the police service,’ the sergeant said. ‘We understand there’s more to good health than colds and cholesterol. So, would you say your child inherited any of your problems, Mrs McGovern? Is that the cause of you being so very protective?’

  I stared at him. ‘I don’t have any problems,’ I said. ‘And Angelo doesn’t have any problems either. No more than every other teenager.’

  He must have been standing right behind his door listening, because I didn’t hear a single footfall before his door blatted open and Angelo came out, walking in a strange, stiff-legged gait around the little living room, hopping over everyone’s legs. ‘For fuck’s sake, Mum!’ he said. ‘What is wrong with you? What’s wrong with both of you? You’re not fine. I’m not fine. I never was. What’s the point of saying it when everyone knows it’s not true?’

  ‘That’s more like it,’ the sergeant said. ‘Now we might get somewhere.’ I wanted to hit him. I wanted to pick up the stupid glass bowl we kept in the middle of the coffee table and run at him with it, drive it into his stupid face for sounding so pleased when my boy was in this state.

  ‘I saw it,’ Angelo said. ‘I was over there on the Sunday night after the flood drained and there was a hand sticking up out of the ground. But I thought it was a monk. I thought it was funny.’

  ‘Funny?’ said the girl. She hadn’t learned the poker face yet, new to the job of not reacting.

  ‘Harmless,’ Angelo said. ‘Gross but harmless. Like mummies or that. I never knew it was a real person from now.’

  ‘And your phone?’ said the sergeant.

  Angelo stopped stalking around and stood panting. ‘It. Got. Stolen,’ he said.

  ‘Not lost,’ said the sergeant. ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘Because it was in my back pocket and then it wasn’t,’ Angel said. ‘Like I told you. At the school and the police station. Over and over and over again.’

  ‘Yes, I remember,’ the sergeant said. ‘Stolen from your back pocket while you walked through the Loreburne Shopping Centre on the afternoon of Monday, the fifteenth of February.’ He was watching me as he spoke and I’m sure he saw the quick tug at my eyebrows. Had Angelo been in Dumfries that day? He could get there easy enough. He just had to stay on the school bus all the way, but then he was stuck. He had to phone one of us to get back again. Had he? The day before my interview at Howell Hall. Had he?

  ‘Quite a coincidence,’ the sergeant was saying. ‘A phone’s stolen all that way away, then used to report a body right across from where its owner happens to stay. Twenty-four hours after the owner admits he saw the body.’

  Angelo said nothing.

  ‘Well, son,’ said the cop, ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to come back with us again. Sorry and all that, but since your story has changed so much I think we need to take a different statement.’

  ‘After school,’ I said. I wanted some good to come of this, and getting Angelo back in the classroom would be something to be thankful for. ‘After your school and our work. We’ll all come in tonight.’

  ‘This is a murder enquiry, Mrs McGovern,’ said the sergeant. ‘We make the timetable.’

  ‘Did you not just hear me saying I’ve got a new job?’ I said. ‘And my husband too? What do you think’s going to happen if we start taking time off already?’

  ‘Ali, Ali,’ Marco said. ‘It’s okay. I can take a bit of time off this morning.’

  I didn’t want to argue, but I didn’t see how that could be true. It was one thing walking out of training days, but it was something else on the first real shift. Marco had never worked for anyone but his dad and then himself: he had no clue.

  ‘Don’t look like that,’ he was saying to me. ‘Honest, Als, I’ll take Angel in and then get him back to school after. It’s no problem at all.’

  ‘Can we say we’ll meet you there within the hour, Mr McGovern?’ the sergeant said. ‘We’ve got more enquiries to make but we’ll see you when we get back.’

  Marco went out with them, God knows why. Angelo and I stood staring at one another across the coffee table. I couldn’t read his expression.

  ‘At least put some decent clothes on and have a wash, eh?’

  ‘Behind my ears and under my fingernails?’

  ‘But not your black waterproof. I’m borrowing it because it’s teeming down and you’re getting lifts.’

  ‘You’re getting lifts too,’ Angelo said.

  I took his coat down from the peg, hoping he would protest, tell me I was a weirdo for wearing his clothes and if I got perfume on it he’d never wear it again and I’d have to buy him a new one. But he knew I was goading him and he didn’t rise.

  ‘Aye, okay, whatever,’ he said. ‘Go to work and stop worrying.’

  ‘We’ve gone over this,’ I said, trying to sound light. ‘I’ll stop worrying about you when I’m dead, oka—?’ but I cut myself off when a sort of yelp escaped him.

  ‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘Stop being brave and stop trying to be funny. For God’s sake, just try to be okay. Okay?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ I said. ‘Of co
urse I’m okay. I’m worried about you. And I’m pissed off with you too. Why didn’t you tell someone about the monk?’

  He opened his mouth to speak but the door opened and Marco was back. ‘Your lift’s here,’ he said. His voice was flat and his face was blank, but as he turned to Angelo he managed a smile. ‘Right then, my wee gangster! Here we go again, eh?’ So it looked like the flat words and dead look were just for me.

  Lars was parked outside the gate with his engine running but he had stepped out of the car into the last heavy splats at the end of the rain to get a better look at the abbey. And he had attracted attention, standing there in his hoodie. The neighbour was just closing his door when I came out of mine. ‘Here! You!’ he said. ‘You can’t just stop there and gawp. That’s a crime scene.’

  I was at the little hedge before I knew I was moving. ‘Leave him alone,’ I shouted. ‘He’s a friend of mine and it’s none of your bloody business who parks where on a public road or who looks at what. If you would keep your nose out, and stop spreading lies about other people to cover your own arse, the police might actually find this murderer. Unless there’s some reason you don’t want them to. Eh? Eh?’ I could feel a bulge of sour heat rising up inside me.

  The man was shrinking back against his front door, like my words were darts. ‘What’s that supposed—’ he said. He put a tremulous hand up to his mouth. ‘What lies? Cover what?’

  ‘Lies about my son,’ I said, in a fierce whisper. I knew my face was red. Maybe my eyes were red too. Maybe my hair was smoking. ‘And I don’t know what you’re covering, do I? I don’t go sneaking around in everybody’s business to find out.’

  ‘Ali.’ Lars put a hand on my arm. I flinched at his touch but just before I jerked to shrug him off, some bit of me registered the warm, firm grip and the steady sound of his voice. ‘Come on, come away, come and sit down. Sorry, pal,’ he said to the neighbour.

  ‘I’ve never been spoken to like that in my life!’ the man said. He had misted up behind his bottle-bottom glasses, either from fear or anger, it was hard to say.

  ‘Well, this has been a nice change for you, then,’ Lars said, guiding me over to his car and helping me in. He did up my seatbelt, then hopped in at the driver’s side and drew gently away. ‘Want to tell me what that was all about?’ he said, so reasonable.

  I bent over at my waist and pressed my face into the fabric of my white uniform trousers, not caring if I was covering them in tears and snot. At least I never wore make-up for work. I thought it was better to be bare-faced and show my clients the benefit of a good cleansing routine. That was me: nothing to hide.

  ‘Angel knew about the body,’ I said at last, sitting up and letting my head fall back against the headrest. It was hammering. ‘He lied to the police.’

  Lars had just slowed to turn off at the checkpoint. He tooted and waved to the soldier on duty and then, when we were out of sight, he pulled off the track and turned to me.

  ‘You mean he was lying about the phone being stolen?’ he said. ‘Why?’ I just shook my head. It wouldn’t sound any more sensible to Lars than it had to the sergeant. ‘And what’s the problem with your neighbour?’ I shook my head again. ‘I thought you were going to lamp him. And I’m not the only one. He was shaking like a Chihuahua.’ He was almost laughing now. I tried to join in but it came out like a sob so I bit it back again.

  ‘What else is it, though, Ali?’ he said. ‘Is it this place?’

  ‘Else?’ I asked him. ‘Isn’t that enough?’

  ‘Plenty, but I can tell the difference between massive trouble hitting you like a frying pan when you’re basically okay and massive trouble coming along like one last thing and finishing you off.’

  ‘I’m basically okay,’ I said.

  ‘Sure?’ said Lars. ‘Because that would mean I can’t tell the difference at all.’

  I nodded. I sat forward, flipped open his sun-blind mirror and looked at my face. ‘Bloody hell. I’m getting too old to cry. I’ll look like shit for days now.’

  ‘So you’re not going to tell me what’s wrong?’ Lars said.

  ‘Right now, what’s wrong is that if Dr Ferris sees me looking like this she’ll think I’m too flaky to be doing my job and she’ll sack me.’ But again my voice let me down. It shook towards the end.

  ‘Look in that bag on the back seat,’ Lars said. ‘If you can reach it. I know it sounds daft but it helps.’

  He wouldn’t say any more so, as he started up and got going again, I twisted round and grabbed a big hospital laundry bag, sturdy blue plastic and a toggle with a drawstring. I peered inside, no idea what I thought I’d be seeing.

  ‘It’s a dolly,’ he said. ‘We use them for regression. I took it home to put it on the gentle cycle, after it got cried on on Friday.’

  ‘What am I supposed to do with it?’ I said, still peering into the bag. I could see the checked pinafore and round white legs of a Raggedy Ann.

  ‘Seriously? You’re supposed to cuddle it. What else would you do with a dolly?’

  ‘This is your idea of therapy?’ I said. ‘Cuddling a doll?’

  ‘Cuddling a doll,’ Lars said. ‘Going for a walk, baking a tray of fairy cakes.’

  I had no idea what had happened to my dolls after I was grown-up and left home. Maybe they were still in the eaves of my parents’ attic. Or maybe my sister-in-law had chucked them. But I had been a good mum to my plastic Tiny Tears, changing her clothes every day, going up to my bedroom after school and getting her out of her pram to sit and watch me doing my sums and my reading.

  I didn’t see what good it could do me, but because I agreed about the walks and the baking, I reached into the bag and grabbed the rag doll.

  ‘There you go,’ Lars said.

  I pulled it out and turned it to face me. Then everything slowed down and turned to sludge as I pushed the woollen hair back off the disc of white and saw the blankness ripple and bulge and heard the moaning start – ‘Mmmhmmm.’

  And I was out of the car and running, running as fast as I had ever run in my life, gasping the cold air down into my burning lungs, stumbling over the rough grass towards the sea.

  Chapter 14

  He caught me easily, pinned my arms to my sides and held me hard in a deft professional grip that kicked me back ten years, like falling down a well into blackness. I could hear my breath, half-sobs, half-gasps.

  ‘Please,’ I said. ‘No.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Lars, ‘but it’s a live ammo day. Didn’t you see the flags at the gate? Red means you can’t be out here, Ali.’

  ‘I need to go home,’ I said. But not to the house I’d just left. Not even to our real house. I wanted to go to the house I was born in. To my room with the high narrow bed and the skirted dressing-table. I shook my head to take the picture away.

  I had wanted to go there when I was ill too. I had wanted my old room and my mum bringing me soup on a tray and a comic to read. Marco had made me sushi, hand-rolled and perfect, like little mosaic medallions, and he’d bought me a box-set to play on the flatscreen at the bottom of our bed. He’d told me ever so gently that my parents weren’t coming, that my mum was busy in France with her new house and her olive harvest. His voice had been hypnotic as he spoke so I didn’t throw the square plate against the wall. I didn’t smash the DVDs and pull the covers over my head. And I was better in six months, start to finish. Fine for a decade after.

  Lars let me go, in slow careful stages in case I ran again, then took my hand and started walking me back to the car. He had left it sitting in the middle of the track, both its doors hanging open, like Dumbo’s ears. I peered at it but wherever the dolly had fallen I couldn’t see it. I stopped walking anyway. ‘I can’t get back in,’ I said. ‘But I really need to go home.’

  ‘I can’t take you home,’ said Lars. ‘I need to run the meeting.’

  ‘I can’t go to the meeting!’ I heard myself yelp. ‘Dr Ferris would—’

  ‘Ssh,’ Lars said. ‘She’s not in. D
r F texted me first thing to say she got called away last night and I’m in charge.’

  ‘I just need to go,’ I said. ‘I thought I could do this and I need the money but I can’t cope and I want to go home. My kid needs me. Oh, Jesus!’

  As if humiliating myself in front of Lars wasn’t enough, now another car was bumping over the track. He waved at it to slow down and it crunched to a stop a foot behind his bumper. Belle leaned out of the driver’s side and I could see Surraya bending forward to crane out at us.

  ‘Didn’t you see the flags?’ Belle shouted. ‘Live day, Lars. What are you doing?’

  ‘Ali had a funny turn,’ Lars said. ‘All okay now.’ He had let go of my hand.

  ‘You shouldn’t be in if you’re coming down with a bug, sweetness,’ Belle said.

  I hung my head and said nothing.

  ‘Not that kind of turn,’ Lars said. ‘I was being my usual brilliant self and I upset her.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said at last, looking up. ‘I’m really fine.’

  But all three of them gazed back at me so shrewdly that I felt myself shrivel.

  ‘I can’t get back in that car,’ I said, nodding at the open doors. ‘Will you two take me up the road so I can . . .’ hand in my notice and call a taxi, was what I was thinking.

  Belle gave Lars a hard stare, then turned to me with a smile, her eyes crinkled. ‘Happy to.’

  Once I was in, Surraya twisted round and put a hand on my knee. ‘So,’ she said. ‘You’re fine, eh?’ I nodded, pretending to fiddle with my seatbelt so I didn’t have to look at her. ‘Ali,’ she went on, ‘nobody “fine” comes to work here.’ Belle muttered agreement under her breath as she started the engine again and followed Lars’s car.

  ‘From Dr Ferris down,’ Surraya went on, ‘no one’s fine. We’re all walking wounded.’

  She appeared so untroubled. Maybe it was the hijab, reminding me of nuns, women who lived in serenity. ‘What do you mean?’ I said.

  ‘It’s what makes the Ferrises such a good team. She only cares about the bottom line and he’s a big softie but, by amazing coincidence, that means they want the same things. Dr Ferris gives people second chances because it keeps them grateful and makes sure they can’t walk away. And Dr F really and truly believes that staff with problems help clients with problems.’