Stefan’s. She wondered about Goodhew’s, though; she found it hard to believe that he really had remembered her and her painting. Why would a police detective have been hanging
around the street market? Without opening herself up to paranoia, no viable answer came to her. No, she didn’t understand his agenda, but her own was more straightforward.
At 5 a.m. every day, Riley would wake up and climb into her bed. He slept again then, with his head on her shoulder and one hand on her stomach. It was peaceful and perfect.
Her own agenda was therefore clear: get Riley safely home, no matter what the cost.
SIXTEEN
The walk from Blossom Street to Parkside Station took him no more than five minutes. Goodhew used every second to inhale fresh air: it enlivened him, it took his thoughts away
from the inertia of that house, from the smothering wait and the distorted clock that was ticking unpleasantly in the corner of Riley Guyver’s life. Wait, hope, wait, hope . . .
He turned on to East Road, where the air was less clean; bursting instead with street fumes, the smell of petrol, a kebab shop, bus diesel and dust.
It smelt great.
His head was full of his various conversations with Kimberly, the things she’d said and the things she hadn’t. He knew far less about her now than he’d thought he’d
already learnt during the few minutes they’d spent watching the blaze.
She had been just one entity then: a mother terrified for her child, a woman fearing the future, a human being in need of help. He knew that there was far more to her than that, like there was
far more to everyone than how they might be perceived in one traumatic moment. But he could not shake the feeling that the woman he’d tried to talk to today was different from the one
yesterday. Walls had appeared, mirrors, shades, and somewhere amongst them he’d lost sight of her. She had reappeared in kaleidoscopic fragments: a moment of distrust, a flash of openness, a
breath of fear and a millisecond of hate. She’d been holding back at the one time no parent could afford to do so. He didn’t yet understand her motivations, didn’t like the
possibilities either, but equally couldn’t erase the memory of the first moment he’d seen her at the fire, nor could he shake the instinct that told him that had been the real
face of Kimberly Guyver.
He wanted to keep walking – past the police station and on to wherever Stefan was hiding, there to find Riley and bring him home. He recognized a metaphor as he thought one.
He didn’t relish trading the inside of one building for the inside of another, but he knew that Parkside had to be his next stop, and hoped he could make some independent progress before
Marks caught him and reeled him back in.
Goodhew switched his mobile to silent and slipped in through the main entrance, past the desk sergeant.
The first stop was Sergeant Sheen. Sheen shared his office with two other officers, but neither of the pair would have dared to call it theirs. In fact Goodhew found it difficult to keep tabs on
who was the current incumbent of each of the other chairs. The rule for that room seemed simple: if you weren’t Sheen, you had merely a desk and chair, and no licence for any overspill. If
you were Sheen, however, every other square inch was yours for the taking.
The room was small and crammed with box files and ring binders; it had two card-indexing systems, one that was alphabetical and religiously but grudgingly replicated on to his computer, and a
second one which only Sheen ever touched. ‘My red box,’ Sheen described it in his strong Fen accent. Since it had now spilled over into six overflow boxes of various colours, its loose
title was a fair cautionary hint as to the state of the contents.
Only Sheen ever touched it because only Sheen was half capable of finding or deciphering anything it contained. Mostly it held pages of his own notes: sheets of A4 smothered with the entangled
scrawlings of
around the street market? Without opening herself up to paranoia, no viable answer came to her. No, she didn’t understand his agenda, but her own was more straightforward.
At 5 a.m. every day, Riley would wake up and climb into her bed. He slept again then, with his head on her shoulder and one hand on her stomach. It was peaceful and perfect.
Her own agenda was therefore clear: get Riley safely home, no matter what the cost.
SIXTEEN
The walk from Blossom Street to Parkside Station took him no more than five minutes. Goodhew used every second to inhale fresh air: it enlivened him, it took his thoughts away
from the inertia of that house, from the smothering wait and the distorted clock that was ticking unpleasantly in the corner of Riley Guyver’s life. Wait, hope, wait, hope . . .
He turned on to East Road, where the air was less clean; bursting instead with street fumes, the smell of petrol, a kebab shop, bus diesel and dust.
It smelt great.
His head was full of his various conversations with Kimberly, the things she’d said and the things she hadn’t. He knew far less about her now than he’d thought he’d
already learnt during the few minutes they’d spent watching the blaze.
She had been just one entity then: a mother terrified for her child, a woman fearing the future, a human being in need of help. He knew that there was far more to her than that, like there was
far more to everyone than how they might be perceived in one traumatic moment. But he could not shake the feeling that the woman he’d tried to talk to today was different from the one
yesterday. Walls had appeared, mirrors, shades, and somewhere amongst them he’d lost sight of her. She had reappeared in kaleidoscopic fragments: a moment of distrust, a flash of openness, a
breath of fear and a millisecond of hate. She’d been holding back at the one time no parent could afford to do so. He didn’t yet understand her motivations, didn’t like the
possibilities either, but equally couldn’t erase the memory of the first moment he’d seen her at the fire, nor could he shake the instinct that told him that had been the real
face of Kimberly Guyver.
He wanted to keep walking – past the police station and on to wherever Stefan was hiding, there to find Riley and bring him home. He recognized a metaphor as he thought one.
He didn’t relish trading the inside of one building for the inside of another, but he knew that Parkside had to be his next stop, and hoped he could make some independent progress before
Marks caught him and reeled him back in.
Goodhew switched his mobile to silent and slipped in through the main entrance, past the desk sergeant.
The first stop was Sergeant Sheen. Sheen shared his office with two other officers, but neither of the pair would have dared to call it theirs. In fact Goodhew found it difficult to keep tabs on
who was the current incumbent of each of the other chairs. The rule for that room seemed simple: if you weren’t Sheen, you had merely a desk and chair, and no licence for any overspill. If
you were Sheen, however, every other square inch was yours for the taking.
The room was small and crammed with box files and ring binders; it had two card-indexing systems, one that was alphabetical and religiously but grudgingly replicated on to his computer, and a
second one which only Sheen ever touched. ‘My red box,’ Sheen described it in his strong Fen accent. Since it had now spilled over into six overflow boxes of various colours, its loose
title was a fair cautionary hint as to the state of the contents.
Only Sheen ever touched it because only Sheen was half capable of finding or deciphering anything it contained. Mostly it held pages of his own notes: sheets of A4 smothered with the entangled
scrawlings of
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