Owen blinks.
‘You don’t mind, do you?’ she asks, her eyes narrowed.
‘No,’ he says. ‘Why would I mind?’
‘I don’t know. You might feel it was a breach of your privacy. Or something like that.’
‘Well, it’s not my garden, is it? It’s everyone’s garden.’
‘Yes,’ says Tessie, ‘yes. That’s right.’
There are police in their back garden now, picking through the undergrowth, over the piles of rusty old gardening equipment that no one ever uses. He watches them for a while, trying to hear what they’re saying. He catches the occasional word but not enough to form any idea what they might be talking about.
There appears to be a smaller group of detectives searching in the vicinity of his bedroom window, at the back of the house. Aflash of anxiety passes though Owen’s gut and he heads back to his bedroom and closes the door behind him.
He hears a voice, close to his window, a man calling to someone else. ‘Here, look. Bring the flashlight.’
He catches his breath, stands to one side of the window, his back pressed against the wall, listening.
‘Get the governor,’ says the man.
He hears someone run off through the grass and across the gravelled drive, calling out for DI Currie.
A moment later he hears a woman’s voice. ‘What have you got?’
Owen peers cautiously around the window frame. He looks down and sees the tops of three heads, a light being shone into the grass, a suggestion of rose gold glinting in the beam. He sees gloved hands gently parting the blades of grass. He can see the phone case being plucked from the grass and dropped into an outstretched plastic bag.
The air feels electric. Something is about to happen. Something extraordinary. Something appalling.
The helicopter blades spinning overhead sound like herds of heavy-footed animals thundering through thick black dust.
Owen turns away from his window and collapses against the wall.
28
SAFFYRE
Roan’s son’s name was Josh. Joshua Fours. You almost have to say it posh otherwise it doesn’t sound right. He went to the school opposite my flat. I saw him from time to time that autumn term. I would never have picked him out in the crowd before, just your typical gangly white dude in a North Face jacket and black trainers. He had a friend; weirdly this friend had red hair and a pointy face and it was almost as though the friend and the fox were somehow interchangeable, like maybe Josh only liked things that resembled foxes.
I followed him home a few times that autumn. He walked so slowly, like a tortoise. If he wanted to look at something on his phone he’d literally just stop in the middle of the pavement,oblivious to whoever was behind him or near him. Sometimes he’d cross the street for no good reason, then cross back again. He’d stop and look into shop windows that didn’t look like the sort of shop he would even care about. It was as if, I sometimes thought, he was just trying to drag it out. Like maybe he didn’t even want to go home.
He slipped through the bushes into the empty plot quite often, to smoke weed. One night he went in with the boy with the red hair. I heard them laughing a lot and I was pleased that he had a friend to laugh with.
Then one day, late September, during my first few weeks in the sixth form, I went to my Thursday class at the dojo, and there he was, all green and nervous, doing a trial class. I was a few minutes early for my class so I sat and watched him finish his. He was a foot taller than everyone else; it was a beginner class so mainly kids. I couldn’t work out what he was doing there, this shambling, weed-smoking, fox-chatting boy. He did not seem the type.
He’d been paired with a small girl for the last exercises. He looked embarrassed. She looked resigned.
Then it was over and they were taught how to end the class:
‘Kahm sa hamnida.’
‘Ee sahn.’
He shuffled into the changing rooms and reappeared a moment later in his school uniform, his North Face coat, his schoolbag. He caught me staring at him and I nodded. He flushed and turned away.
It seemed like it meant something, that this boy was there, at my dojo. I wondered for a moment if he’d seen me following himand was trying to turn the tables on me; you know, like letting me know that he knew what I was up to. But he never seemed to notice me there; he didn’t have a vibe about him as if he was aware of my presence.
The third time he was there I arrived late and I was in the changing area with him. The curtain was pulled across. Two small boys sat cross-legged on the floor tying up the laces on their school shoes. I took off my coat and my hoodie and hung them from a peg. I turned to Josh and I said, ‘How are you finding it?’