Page 68

Outside, he limps down Ralph’s drive and across the turning circle towards his house. Overhead, the sun is a white disc in a plate-blue sky. A glorious day and a terrible one. At his front door, he slides his key into the lock.
There’s no one in the hall. He hears voices in the living room, the squawk of a police radio.
He’s never felt so scared. He’s never felt so ill. The living-room door opens and Erin leans out her head. When she sees him standing there, sweat running from his forehead, she opens her mouth in surprise, and perhaps in dismay, and Joseph thinks that she must know everything – that her stepson is a killer, that her husband buried Max’s first victim in the Sussex Downs and hid Max’s second victim in his mother’s car.
Except … except … his son isn’t a killer. He’s not.
He’s just lost.
Remember, Joseph. Open your ears if you want to listen. Open your eyes if you want to see.
‘The police are here,’ Erin says.
Joseph nods, mute.
‘Are you OK? You look terrible.’
‘I was just over the road, talking to Ralph.’
‘Well, that’d do it.’
‘We need to talk,’ he says. ‘It’s important.’
Erin nods, smiles, touches his arm. And Joseph can’t help marvelling, yet again, at his wife’s refusal to carry bad feeling from one day into another.
‘That sounds good,’ she says. ‘But first I think you might want to come into the living room.’
‘Is Max here?’
‘He’s talking to the police.’
She takes his hand, leads him along the hall. Joseph follows without resistance. The pain in his knee has faded. His entire body is numb. When he enters the room, the two officers he saw on Ralph’s live feed – one male, one female – are sitting on the sofa. Max and Tilly are sitting opposite.
Everyone looks up. Erin’s voice, introducing him, comes as if through a tunnel. Joseph goes to an armchair and lowers himself into it.
Beneath the female officer’s seat cushion is the screwdriver he grabbed yesterday, during Gabriel Roth’s visit. There are other weapons here, too, in this room and beyond, but they’re useless against the police. He’d planned his security response against intruders. He hadn’t foreseen this.
‘PC Hopkins,’ the female officer says. ‘This is PC Kenner. We’ve just been speaking to your daughter about Drew Cullen. As you must know, she hasn’t been seen since Sunday.’
Joseph needs to swallow, but if he does he fears his throat will bulge to the size of a balloon, announcing his guilt. ‘There’s still no sign?’
‘I’m afraid not. It’s been a couple of days now, so we’re looking at it a little more actively. By far the most likely scenario is that Drew arrives home any minute with an embarrassing story to tell. We’re just getting on the front foot in case she doesn’t.’
Joseph nods. Finally, he swallows. His throat makes a sound like a sink being unblocked.
The officer tilts her head. ‘Casting your mind back, MrCarver, did Drew say anything to you on Sunday that might be relevant? I gather you were here with her and your daughter while your wife was up in London.’
I know what you did for Max, and I think it’s really brave.
Joseph clenches his fists in his lap. ‘Like what?’
‘Like her plans for the rest of that day? Any mention of someone she was intending to meet? Your daughter suggested an older man.’
Joseph can’t decide if maintaining eye contact will make him look more guilty than if he looks away. He shakes his head. His eyes are beginning to water from the effort of not glancing at Max.
PC Hopkins holds his gaze. Just like in the hallway with Erin, Joseph tells himself that she must read the truth in his eyes – and that any moment now she’ll ask him to hold out his hands for the cuffs.
When she doesn’t, he starts to wonder if something else is happening here, if this conversation is nothing but pantomime, a distraction designed to keep him busy until a search warrant is granted for the house. He recalls, suddenly, the Sainsbury’s bag he hid inside one of the kitchen cupboards on Friday night, containing his T-shirt stained with the dead man’s blood. Irrationally he wonders if, just by thinking about it, he has somehow communicated that knowledge to the police officer sitting in front of him.