uniform, Greene?’
‘Six years.’
‘You must have seen more dead bodies than me,’ I said. ‘You must have averaged a dead person every day. Motorists who went through their windscreens while sending a text. Cyclists who got hit by a bus. Pedestrians who got hit by the cyclists and the motorists.’ I shook my head. ‘I can’t believe that Hugo Buck was your first dead body.’
Greene thought about it.
‘It’s true,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen a lot of dead people. But what Edie— what PC Wren and I found that morning, on the floor of that man’s office, it wasn’t rotten luck or fate or stupidity. It didn’t happen because somebody was drunk or stoned or sending a text message. What happened to that man, that banker, was the most deliberate thing in the world. It felt like a violation of everything. It’s not like the daily slaughter on the roads. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s just different , isn’t it?’
I nodded. ‘You’re right. Murder’s different.’
I wake too soon.
It is the sharp point of the night – too late to go back to sleep, too early to get up.
I slip out of bed and go to the window. The lights are blazing in the meat market. I come back and sit on the bed and I still haven’t looked at the alarm clock. It feels like catching the eye of a mad man.
And then I look.
03:50
I walk across to the big cupboard built into the wall and push the double doors. They spring open, and the collection of belts and necklaces hanging on the back of the door jangle softly in the dark.
There are shoes on the left-hand side. All kinds of women’s shoes. Strappy sandals and spike heels. On the right are stacks of drawers. Knitwear. Carefully folded jeans that will never be worn again.
And directly in front of me there are all the hangers with her dresses and skirts and shirts and jackets and tops. Lots of white cotton but splashes of colour too, although you can’t see it in this light. But there are orange silks and blue batik and gauzy things spangled with silver. Soft as a feather, light as a sigh.
I spread my arms wide and sort of gently fall against it, pressing my face into her clothes, her essence, the old life.
I breathe her in.
And then I sleep.
5
THE CHILDREN HAD painted their families. An entire wall in the classroom was covered with pictures of brightly coloured stick figures. At five they were starting to make sense of the world and their place in it.
The stick-figure mothers had long flowing hair, squiggly lines of black, brown and yellow, and some of them held a sausage-shaped package with a circle for its head – a baby brother or sister. The fathers were mostly bigger stick-insect figures, and nearly all of them carried brown squares and rectangles – briefcases. All of the pictures seemed to be full of life, crowded with parents, siblings, stick figures of assorted shapes and sizes.
Apart from Scout’s.
‘Look, that’s my one,’ she said.
How could I miss it?
In Scout’s picture there was just an unsmiling stick-figure daddy with no briefcase, a little stick-figure girl with huge brown eyes, and at our feet a small red four-legged daub – Stan.
We had left the dog at home that morning, to his high-pitched howls of rage and despair, because once a month the parents were allowed into the classroom to look at the children’s work. It was meant to be a happy time. But I looked at her picture as parents and children jostled around us and I did not know what to say.
Most of the dads were dressed in suits and ties and carrying briefcases, while the mothers were either dressed for the office or for exercise, and some of the ones who were dressed for the gym were carrying babies or shepherding toddlers. So there was definitely a social realism about the pictures.
A young teacher, a blonde New Zealander, Miss Davies, watched us all with a kindly smile.
‘Do you like it?’ Scout said, disturbed by my silence.
‘I love it,’ I said.
The truth was it
‘Six years.’
‘You must have seen more dead bodies than me,’ I said. ‘You must have averaged a dead person every day. Motorists who went through their windscreens while sending a text. Cyclists who got hit by a bus. Pedestrians who got hit by the cyclists and the motorists.’ I shook my head. ‘I can’t believe that Hugo Buck was your first dead body.’
Greene thought about it.
‘It’s true,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen a lot of dead people. But what Edie— what PC Wren and I found that morning, on the floor of that man’s office, it wasn’t rotten luck or fate or stupidity. It didn’t happen because somebody was drunk or stoned or sending a text message. What happened to that man, that banker, was the most deliberate thing in the world. It felt like a violation of everything. It’s not like the daily slaughter on the roads. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s just different , isn’t it?’
I nodded. ‘You’re right. Murder’s different.’
I wake too soon.
It is the sharp point of the night – too late to go back to sleep, too early to get up.
I slip out of bed and go to the window. The lights are blazing in the meat market. I come back and sit on the bed and I still haven’t looked at the alarm clock. It feels like catching the eye of a mad man.
And then I look.
03:50
I walk across to the big cupboard built into the wall and push the double doors. They spring open, and the collection of belts and necklaces hanging on the back of the door jangle softly in the dark.
There are shoes on the left-hand side. All kinds of women’s shoes. Strappy sandals and spike heels. On the right are stacks of drawers. Knitwear. Carefully folded jeans that will never be worn again.
And directly in front of me there are all the hangers with her dresses and skirts and shirts and jackets and tops. Lots of white cotton but splashes of colour too, although you can’t see it in this light. But there are orange silks and blue batik and gauzy things spangled with silver. Soft as a feather, light as a sigh.
I spread my arms wide and sort of gently fall against it, pressing my face into her clothes, her essence, the old life.
I breathe her in.
And then I sleep.
5
THE CHILDREN HAD painted their families. An entire wall in the classroom was covered with pictures of brightly coloured stick figures. At five they were starting to make sense of the world and their place in it.
The stick-figure mothers had long flowing hair, squiggly lines of black, brown and yellow, and some of them held a sausage-shaped package with a circle for its head – a baby brother or sister. The fathers were mostly bigger stick-insect figures, and nearly all of them carried brown squares and rectangles – briefcases. All of the pictures seemed to be full of life, crowded with parents, siblings, stick figures of assorted shapes and sizes.
Apart from Scout’s.
‘Look, that’s my one,’ she said.
How could I miss it?
In Scout’s picture there was just an unsmiling stick-figure daddy with no briefcase, a little stick-figure girl with huge brown eyes, and at our feet a small red four-legged daub – Stan.
We had left the dog at home that morning, to his high-pitched howls of rage and despair, because once a month the parents were allowed into the classroom to look at the children’s work. It was meant to be a happy time. But I looked at her picture as parents and children jostled around us and I did not know what to say.
Most of the dads were dressed in suits and ties and carrying briefcases, while the mothers were either dressed for the office or for exercise, and some of the ones who were dressed for the gym were carrying babies or shepherding toddlers. So there was definitely a social realism about the pictures.
A young teacher, a blonde New Zealander, Miss Davies, watched us all with a kindly smile.
‘Do you like it?’ Scout said, disturbed by my silence.
‘I love it,’ I said.
The truth was it
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