Kyra was silent.

“Come on, I’ve gotta go to the shops, get some stuff. What’s wrong with you, Kyra, for God’s sake, you look like you’ve seen a bleedin’ ghost.”

But she hadn’t. That was what was wrong. She hadn’t.

Very slowly, one at a time, Kyra came down the stairs.

There was always somebody outside now. Kids. Neighbours. People from the other side of the estate. They hung about, watching, talking to one another, waiting as the white suits came out, staring at what they carried, eyes following them back in. They knew better than to ask any questions. They just stood, waiting, hoping for something to happen, some excitement, and then television vans and men with furry microphones in their street.

Natalie dragged Kyra into the car and slammed the door so hard it made the windscreen rattle. Kyra did not look at Ed’s house or the watchers, she kept her eyes down. She said nothing.

Natalie muttered something under her breath as she screeched the car in reverse, crashed the gears and then shot forward, making Kyra rock sharply to and fro in her seat belt.

Once, Ed had taught her a game where you closed your eyes and said the name of a colour and then tried really, really hard to see it in your mind and nothing else. Just pink. Just green. Nothing else. “Even at the corners,” Ed had said. “Black,” Kyra thought now, and made her closed eyes stare and stare until all they could see was black. She could do it. She’d learned. But for a few seconds she tried quickly to see Ed, before the black came down.

“Ed,” she said to herself. But there was no Ed, even at the corners.

They were out for an hour and when they got back, there was another car, black, outside their own door. The watchers were keeping an eye on it at the same time as they oversaw the activities of the white suits, swivelling round the moment Natalie’s car turned the corner.

“There’s someone at our house. There’s a black car.”

“I’ve got bleedin’ eyes, Kyra.”

“What’s it there for?”

“Get out.” Natalie yanked the handbrake on and, as she left the car, put two fingers up to the watchers.

“What you done then, Nat?”

“Fuck off.” She pushed Kyra through the front door so hard she fell. Natalie hauled her up by one arm. “Watch where you’re putting your feet.”

The door banged.

There had been two people in the black car, they’d both seen that. Now, Natalie saw their shapes, on the other side of the front-door glass.

“Kyra, get upstairs.”

“I want—”

“Kyra c”

Kyra fled.

Natalie turned and waited for the doorbell to ring.

“DS Nathan Coates, DC Dawn Lavalle. Mrs Coombs?”

“No. Ms.”

“Sorry c Ms Natalie Coombs?”

“You bloody know I am.” She held the door open for them. In the sitting room, there was no chair which did not have something on it. Natalie shoved a few things at random on to the floor. “I suppose it’s about next door. You want a coffee?”

“Thanks, that’d be good. They keep us parched on this job.”

“Awww.” Natalie went to the kitchen. On the way, she glanced up the stairs. “Kyra, what did I say?”

There was a slight shuffling sound, and the closing of Kyra’s door.

When she got back, the ugly bloke was standing at the window looking across at next door.

The policewoman was examining a photograph of Kyra in burgundy taffeta as Natalie’s sister’s bridesmaid. “How old was she in that one, Natalie?”

“I didn’t say anything about Natalie.”

“Sorry c Ms Coombs.”

“Four. Sooo pretty.”

“Very. You must be proud of her.”

Natalie gave her a look. “Right, get on with it. It’s about next door—don’t take a genius to work that one out.”

“It is. We’ve got some questions for you, but then we need to talk to Kyra.”

“Oh no, I ent having that, she’s a kid.”

“And she went next door to see Miss Sleightholme quite regularly, I gather?”

“I wouldn’t say regularly. I didn’t let her.”

“Why not?”

“Well, you never know, do you? Someone on their own, having a little kid round all the time c not very normal, is it?”

“Did you think there was something not very normal about Edwina?”

“God, that’s funny c never even knew she was called that. Ed, she was. Never anything but Ed.”

“And how did she seem to you—Ed?”

Natalie shrugged.

“But you did let Kyra go there on her own?”

Natalie shrugged again.

“How often, would you say? Once a week? Three times a week?”

“I said, just c sometimes.”

“Once a month?”

“Well, I didn’t keep a fucking diary.”

“Was it just a casual thing, or did Ed invite her?”

Natalie sighed and lit a cigarette. She wondered what she’d have done without taking it up again.

“Kyra was always nagging to go round there and half the time I didn’t let her.”

“Why?”

“Well, it’s a nuisance, someone else’s kid from next door always wanting to mither you, must be c”

“Did she ever go without asking you?”

“She’s cunning is Kyra, she managed to slip out c made me mad.”

“Why?”

“Cos I don’t like her being disobedient, that’s why.”

“No other reason c to do with Ed?”

“Well, if I’d known about it then, bloody hell, of course she wouldn’t have gone near, would she? What kind of mother do you take me for?”

“But you didn’t know. Did you?”

“Of course I didn’t bloody know!”

“Fine, you made your point, Natalie. What I’m getting at is c was there anything about Ed’s behaviour that worried you c or did Kyra ever say anything c even just a hint?”

“No.”

“Nothing at all that you remember?”

“NO. I said NO. Is that it now?”

They got up. “If you think of anything c” Ginger head.

“I won’t.”

“OK, thanks for your time.”

“We’ll want to talk to Kyra. Someone’ll ring to make an appointment. I’ll bring another officer with me, from the child protection unit c”

“She won’t have anything to tell you. There’s nothing to tell. At least I hope there bloody isn’t.”

“Children pick up on things, that’s all c and anything she can say about what she did there, what they talked about c it may help.”

“But she’s arrested, isn’t she? No way is she coming back here? You got her.”

They walked to the door.

“She’s been arrested on one charge, yes. But we need a lot more information. That’s why we want to talk to Kyra.”

Natalie closed the front door and paused. There was another soft noise.

“Kyra c get down here.”

Kyra got.

Twenty-three

“I’m out of here,” Simon Serrailler said. He threw a file on to the others beside his desk and switched off his laptop. “Don’t call me, don’t expect me to call you.”

“Guv.” Nathan Coates followed the DCI out of his room. “Not even if c”

Simon looked at him. “Only a message,” he said. “And only news. Not no news.”

“Understood. You off abroad?”

“No. London.”

“Seeing any shows or that?”

Simon smiled. “You could say I am.” He ran fast down the stairs. “Yes.” He waved his hand and dodged out to the car before anyone else could get after him.

He’d had enough. It had been exhilarating, interesting, draining by turns and he wouldn’t have missed the last couple of weeks, but he needed to get away, from the station, police business, Lafferton. He had always thrived on cutting himself off and plunging into a different life, and as he drove towards the close, to get his things together before heading down the motorway, he was light-headed with pleasure. He was spending three days at the gallery supervising the setting up of his exhibition, after which there was the private view. Then he would see. Theatre, opera, good food, walking about London. He didn’t care, he made no exact plans. It was the way he preferred to relax, surprising himself each day.

He had booked his usual, comfortable room in a hotel overlooking some quiet gardens in Chelsea. It was unfussy and as unlike a hotel as he could have found. It was also expensive. When he went abroad Simon travelled light and spent little; he was happy in Ernesto’s modest flat in the Venice backwater or at a remote farmhouse bed and breakfast, a cheap parador. In London, he liked comfort and spent money.