She took a deep breath, let it out as one long sigh. She looked across the river to the lights from the port. Ships would be coming in, going out once more. No screaming babies there. Just the vast, open water. The sea. The ocean. Calm. How Hester wanted to be there, to be miles away from here.

She sighed. It wasn’t the first time she had thought that in her life. It wasn’t the first time she had thought that this week. But she knew that even though all that was just over the river, it may as well have been a million miles away. On another planet, even. She would never go there, not even to the port, let alone over the sea. Here was where she was from. And here she would stay.

Her sister had escaped. Or tried to. She closed her eyes. Didn’t want to think of her sister again. Of the night she got away. Of the night she became Hester. No. All that horror, that screaming, wailing . . . No. Don’t think of it. Too upsetting.

Yeah, her father had said. Her sister had got away all right. Got away for ever. Hester knew what that meant. And what she had to do. So she had stayed.

Hester sighed. From inside, she could hear the baby still screaming. She closed her eyes, willed it away, but it was no good. She opened her eyes again. Her husband was there.

Fuck’s the matter with you? he said. What you doin’ out here?

‘The baby,’ she said, ‘it’s the baby. I can’t . . .’ She was about to say ‘cope’, but she knew her husband wouldn’t like that. Would think her weak, maybe even try to get rid of her, replace her. She thought again of the baby. Her possible replacement. She definitely wouldn’t tell him those thoughts. Didn’t want to give him ideas.

It’s makin’ a hell of a fuckin’ racket.You’d better get in there, sort it out.

She couldn’t answer, just shook her head.

Hey, he said.You wanted it.You can look after it.

‘Can’t . . . can’t you do it?’

I can do it all right. I can go in there an’ make it stop. But if I do, it’ll never start again.That what you want?

Hester thought for a moment. Was that what she wanted? It would make everything so much easier. So much quieter. Just go in and . . .

You can always get another one.There’s still the list . . .

She knew what he meant. He was so high on the blood lust that he wanted to go again. And if it meant getting rid of this one and finding a replacement, then fine. But no. She couldn’t do that. Not after everything they had been through to get it. She couldn’t just let it go like that.

She shook her head. ‘I’ll deal with it.’

Then sort it. Shut it up.

Hester nodded. It was what she was, what she had wanted, what she did. She was a mother. She had to cope. And she could. As long as her husband was with her, as long as they were a family, she could cope.

She opened the door. Immediately the noise was amplified. She walked inside.

53

Stanway had once been a village with its own identity. It wasn’t that long ago, Phil thought, twenty years at the most. But first came the zoo, then the retail park. Now it was rapidly becoming just another part of Colchester’s suburban sprawl.

He stood in a modern estate comprised of boxy houses of varying sizes in red and yellow brick, designed to hark back to some unspecified architecture of the past, something that would endow the flimsy new houses with a sense of tradition and solidity. They were billed as executive dwellings, but from looking at the cars parked there, Vauxhalls, Fords, Renaults, a few Volvos and Audis, he would have said they were more for middle management with either ambitions or delusions.

Phil knew it would be the kind of place that the residents would have moved to from inner cities and town centres, associating them with violence and fear. Thinking money would protect them. And now they found themselves reluctantly embracing those things in the form of a brutal murder. He knew what they would be thinking: the people they had tried to escape from had followed them here. But Phil knew different. From sickening experience, he knew there were no boundaries. Money wouldn’t protect them. Nothing would. Murder could happen anywhere.

The house he was standing in front of was one of the yellow brick ones. It had small, square windows and a pillared porch and was, he supposed, designed to project a vaguely Regency air. It looked, outwardly, as ordinary as could be. But once that threshold was crossed, Phil knew that once again he would be stepping into a different and much darker world.

The circus had been called out. The street had been closed off, the white tents had gone up, arc lights erected and pointing at the house. Rubbernecking residents had gathered at the corner, some evicted from their own homes, some being questioned by uniforms. Phil spotted Anni. He crossed the street. She saw him coming, nodded.

He looked round, took in the scene once more. ‘What’s the damage?’

Anni, bundled up in her parka and scarf, put her hands in her pockets, exhaled steam in the darkness. ‘Nasty, boss,’ she said. ‘Stating the obvious, but there you go. It’s him, though. She was pregnant. No baby. No sign.’

Phil nodded, his eyes on the threshold of the house. ‘Where’s the husband?’

Anni pointed along the street. ‘Ambulance,’ she said. ‘He found her.’

‘Poor bastard,’ said Phil. ‘Any children?’

‘Two. Twelve and ten. They’ve been bundled off to Grandma’s.’

‘Right.’ He made to cross to the ambulance. Anni stopped him.

‘Boss,’ she said. ‘The husband. He’s holding something back.’

‘Any idea what?’

‘Just being a bit secretive, that’s all. Bit vague on his whereabouts this afternoon.’

Phil gave a grim smile. ‘I think we know what that usually means.’

Anni returned the smile. ‘Maybe thought I would prejudge him. Probably happier sharing with another bloke.’

Phil walked over to the ambulance. The night was properly dark now, autumn changing to winter. He had once read somewhere that a writer had suggested six seasons instead of four, with the extra two either side of winter. Locking and unlocking, he had proposed they be called. A time when the world closed itself up, clutched itself in something more like death than hibernation. Looking around at the stunted, denuded trees at the fringes of the estate and feeling the icy wind blowing towards him, he had to agree. The world was locked, holding itself in. Itself and its secrets.

He reached the ambulance. A man, mid-forties, Phil guessed, overweight, balding but disguising it and wearing a suit that looked expensive but still didn’t seem to fit very well, was sitting on the gurney, a foil blanket draped over his shoulders. He held a mug of something warm in his hands, absently, as if unaware that it was there. As if unaware that he had hands.

Phil remembered his name, spoke to him. ‘Mr Eades?’

The man looked up. It was as if his eyes were at the back of a long, dark cave and he was having trouble seeing out.

‘I’m Detective Inspector Brennan.’ Phil offered his hand. The man detached his from the mug he was holding, absently shook it. ‘I’m sorry about what’s happened.’

Graeme Eades nodded.

‘I’m going to have to ask you a few questions, I’m afraid.’

Another slack, absent nod.

Phil started in on his questions. He knew this was often the worst time to be asking them, but he pressed on because he didn’t have time to wait. Sometimes he got lucky: a witness in shock would remember something with startling clarity, and like a thread that could unravel a jumper, it was something that could be worked on, teased out.

Graeme Eades was clearly in shock, struggling to give answers, to be consistent. The more Phil went on, the less he thought there would be some kind of revelation, but he still kept plugging away. He also bore in mind what Anni had said while he asked the same things over and over: where were you this afternoon, what time did you get home, did you speak to your wife during the day, if so what time . . . and each time he received the same vague answers. He was about to give up, leave the questioning for later, when Graeme Eades looked up, grabbed his arm.