Elise nodded sympathetically.
“It was a terrible time.” And Mrs. Simpson hesitated. The detective waited for the “but.” “But we’ve always wondered about it. Sofia had a key and the code to the main alarm, but what about the other alarms? On the rooms with the collections? Charles boasted they were top of the range and linked to a private-response company. But nothing went off.”
“Did you say anything at the time?”
“Well, we didn’t like to. The boy was dead and Sofia was in a coma. Charles had that to deal with. And then he sold up and moved.”
They sat quietly for a moment.
“You said there was still the odd visitor looking for Charles,” Elise said. “Has anyone come recently?”
“Well, there was a man round Christmastime. He wasn’t the usual—he wasn’t banging on the door demanding money. He just loitered around in the street and I didn’t like the look of him. You have to be careful round here—with the park just across the road. You get all sorts. Anyway, I sent my husband out to speak to him and he said he was just looking someone up. My husband said Charles didn’t live here anymore. We’d heard he’d moved out of London. And the man walked off.”
Fifty-two
FRIDAY, AUGUST 30, 2019
Kevin
Kevin Scott-Pennington sat at his laptop while the household whirled around him. The twins were struggling into their wetsuits and squealing about the sand they’d failed to rinse off them the last time.
“There’s grit all over the floor,” Janine shouted. “Do it outside.”
He hunched his shoulders against the onslaught and pretended to study his screen.
He should have been back in the office, safely tucked away battling Frank Tenpenny in Los Santos on his Xbox—and batting away angry e-mails from his investors.
But Janine had refused to go back to London when she’d returned from the shop on Tuesday with her bottles of water and inside information. She’d begun with that passive-aggressive thing Kevin knew so well: “Well, we could go—I don’t mind. The sea air is better for my head, and the kids want to do that kite-surfing course, but I understand if you’ve got to get back. Don’t worry about us.”
But when he refused to pick up the underlying message and carried on packing up the car, she went full frontal.
“Look, you can work from here and we’d be on our way back in a couple of days. We’d be doing a U-turn in London. Why do you want to sit in stinking city fumes? We should stay.”
She didn’t say she couldn’t bear to miss a moment of the town’s descent into depravity. The police were sticking to “unexplained,” but “murder” was all anyone was talking about and Janine had found a new tribe—the women of Ebbing who’d always known this was coming to their town: Liz, who’d sold them the Gulls; Karen, who occasionally did her hair; and even flirty little Millie Diamond. The Sodom and Gomorrah girls, Kevin called them secretly as Janine recounted their latest inanities.
“Liz says Charlie always had a haunted look in his eyes. Did you see that?”
“No. And nor did you. You wouldn’t have been able to pick him out in the street until this week.”
“Rubbish. I definitely noticed him,” Janine insisted. “The word is that the wife’s involved.”
“Oh, do stop this nonsense,” he snapped. “Everyone in this town is suddenly Sherlock fucking Holmes.”
“Kevin! There’s no need for that sort of language.”
* * *
—
The twins had finally gone and Janine sat down opposite him. Here we go.
“Look, I know things aren’t right,” she said. “Is it the business? Is there something I should know?”
“No, nothing,” he said, slamming down the computer lid. “Look, everything’s in hand. I’m going outside for a cigarette.”
He could smell summer dying in the air as he stood looking at the sea. Autumn just round the corner. He’d kept the feeling that the year began in September from school days. All that bustle about uniforms and protractors had been about renewal and looking forward. Not like the dead hand of New Year’s Day.
And drawing a line under things was his goal today. The money was gone. He would put the Gulls on the market next week. And then never come back to Ebbing. Janine would go mad but he could weather that—there’d be worse things to come. Bankruptcy. Having to ask his in-laws to pay the twins’ school fees. The impending shame burned his throat. There had to be another way.