She stared at him.

“What did you talk about?”

“Stuff. What we were doing. Anything. You know.”

“I don’t know. Tell me.”

“No.”

“Kyra will.”

She blazed at him. “Don’t you talk to Kyra. Leave her alone. Leave her right out of all of this, OK? I don’t want Kyra knowing c”

“Knowing what? About the other children?”

“Where I am. What c”

“What you’ve done c about Amy and David and Scott c and c how many others were there? Kyra may have to know.”

“If c”

Serrailler could almost see the tension in her, like an electric charge coming at him across the table. He felt excited. He was getting somewhere. Getting there.

“We have to talk to Kyra. She’ll be asked about you c what you did together c how often she was with you c what you talked about c whether you ever did anything to her c tried to get her away.”

“We were going away. I was going to take Kyra on holiday. To a caravan.”

“Her mother didn’t mention that. Did she know?”

“It was OK, she’d be fine.”

“Was the caravan in Scarborough, near the beach and the cliffs?”

“No.”

“I thought you’d have liked it there. With Kyra c she’d have loved it, along the sands, playing in the caves.”

There was a steel cable and it was stretching and stretching, thinning, growing tighter c He felt the pull on it. The room was hot and humid and the silence was extraordinary, an electric, quivering silence. It went on, as the cable tightened and stretched. He could feel Marion Coopey beside him, tense herself, hardly breathing. There was a faint smell of sweat.

Ed Sleightholme’s hands were too still. She did not fidget with her fingers, did not move one hand on top of the other, did not scratch, did not pick her nails. Her hands were as still as wax hands, in front of her on the table. If hands could speak, perhaps they would tell most of all. They were ordinary hands, not large.

“Where were you going to take Kyra, Ed? You must have had a plan.”

“I said. Holiday. A caravan.”

“Is that what you told the others?”

“What?”

“Come on, we’re going on a holiday, we’re going to a caravan. Did you tell them their friends would be waiting there for them? Did you say, ‘It’s fine, Mummy and Daddy are going to come on later?’”

She looked straight at him. Her eyes were steady. They hid nothing. Ordinary eyes. She was so ordinary.

It was what Serrailler had noticed every time he had been close to a murderer, unless they were high on drugs, or out of their minds. The ordinariness. You wouldn’t notice them in a crowd. Ed. Boyish. Not plain, not pretty. Not unpleasant. Not remarkable. Not memorable. Ordinary.

“How do you see yourself, Ed?”

She blinked. Then shook her head.

“Do you understand what I mean?”

“No.”

“I don’t mean how you look, I mean what you are c how do you see yourself? As someone who would melt into the background? People wouldn’t really be aware of you at all c If we said, ‘What did she look like?’ they’d scarcely be able to remember. Insignificant, really. Is that how you see yourself?”

“No.”

“Then how?”

“I’m c Ed, that’s what people see. Ed. Me. They know me. ME. Kyra c ask her c she thinks a lot of me, she’s always wanting to come round. People think c they just think Ed.”

“Good Ed? Pretty Ed? Funny Ed?”

“How would I know?”

“But what do you think? Give me a word. Describe ‘Ed’.”

The silence lasted minutes, not seconds. Ed was staring at her own hands, but the hands had still not moved. Dead hands.

Then Serrailler saw that she was crying. The tears were silent, and ran very slowly, individually, down her cheeks. He waited. She made no move to brush them away.

“Just tell me,” he said quietly. “It’s easy. Say their names. Then tell me what happened. Ed?”

Nothing. The silence went on and the waxen hands remained still and the tears came, one by one, and slid slowly down, and he waited. And there was nothing.

Twenty-two

“There’s the men again.”

“Get away from that window, how many times do I have to tell you?”

“Yes, but they’re going into Ed’s house again, they’ve just opened the door. Ed wouldn’t like that, I know she wouldn’t. When she gets back I’m going to tell her. When is she getting back?”

“I said GET DOWN. Bloody hell, will you listen to me? I told you, you’re not to talk about Ed, forget her. Forget she ever lived.”

Kyra turned round and stared.

“Go and put the telly on.”

“I don’t want to put the telly on. I want Ed.”

“Jesus wept. You hear me, Kyra c if you say that name in this house ever again, ever, you hear me, so help me I’ll beat the daylights out of you, I’ll give you away for care, I’ll send you in that panda car. You never say that name again, OK? Hear me.”

Slowly, silently, Kyra got down from the chair by the window and started to trail away out of the room.

“Kyra!”

She froze.

“You promise, right. ‘I will never say that name in this house again.’ Go on. Say it. SAY IT.”

Kyra had her back to Natalie. Her shoulders were stiff, her head rigid.

“Say it. ‘I will never c”’ A pause. Natalie was shaking. “‘I will never c’”

“I will never c”

She could hardly hear the child’s voice. “SAY IT LOUDER.”

“I will never c” It was still barely audible.

“‘Say that name c’”

“Say c that name c”

“‘In this house again.’”

“In my house again.”

“‘THIS house.’”

“THIS house.”

“‘I swear.’”

“I swear.” Then, after a second, “Amen,” Kyra said.

“Now bugger off. Get upstairs. Get anywhere. Go on.”

Kyra slipped from the room like a shadow off the wall.

Natalie shut the door and lit a cigarette. She had started again when it happened, after giving up for three years. It was the first thing she had needed. She stood back, so she couldn’t be seen, watching the house next door, watching the police vans and the police in white spacesuits carrying stuff in and out. She’d watched and watched every day. She couldn’t keep her eyes off it. She’d scarcely been out. She’d no idea what she might see, hadn’t put her fears into shape, in case they came true. But somewhere at the back of her mind, the idea of bodies, things dug up in the garden, children, lingered like a gas, poisoning her.

She had scarcely slept since they had knocked on her door, barely an hour after she had seen the news on television. There had been three of them and she’d been waiting for them. Kyra was out, playing at a friend’s house. They would want to talk to Kyra, they’d said, but not now, not yet.

The front door opened and two of them came out. One was carrying two black bin liners full of c of what? Natalie dragged on her cigarette. She wanted to go inside. She’d been once or twice, to fetch Kyra, but Ed had never asked her in properly. Besides, it had been just a house then, someone else’s living room and hall, someone else’s interesting furniture. Now it looked different. Its shape seemed to have changed. It looked wrong, peculiar. She saw photographs of it, on the television, in the papers, Ed’s house, the house next door, but not that house, somewhere else, with drawn curtains and police in white suits and vans outside. A murderer’s house. One day it would be in a film or a Real Crime book, that house.

She needed to talk to Kyra again. The police hadn’t been to do that and Natalie ought to get whatever it was out of her first. That there was something to get, she never doubted. There had to be. She went cold thinking of what had happened and, more, what could have—would have—happened any day, any week. Kyra.

She loved Kyra. It was difficult, on your own, and she had bad days. Kyra took it out of her, never stopping with questions and bouncing and wriggling about, never being still, not sleeping well. But she loved her. How could anyone even ask?