The Backs (2013) by Alison Bruce Read Free Book Online Page A

do.’
    His grandmother pointed over at the chapel. ‘Look at the east window.’
    He knew it well: five tall panels with Christ in the centre one, surrounded by saints, angels and martyrs. Above the main five panels were eleven smaller ones depicting doves, stars and still more angels.
    ‘Do you remember what you once told me?’
    The glass containing the second angel from the right had been installed incorrectly, in a mirror image of the way it should be. He’d noticed that on his first visit.
    He nodded.
    ‘I don’t know anyone else who has ever spotted it, Gary, and even though I know you won’t agree to help Jimmy Barnes, you won’t be able to stop yourself from noticing if the smallest detail there is out of place either.’

SEVEN
    Jane’s drama teacher used to shout
Own it!
in reaction to any half-hearted attempt at acting. Of course the kids, Jane included, mimicked this expression without mercy, shouting it out whenever a classmate in any other lesson hesitated with their answer. There had been times since when she’d remembered this and wondered whether hiding the truth had always been her destiny.
    In life, Jane lied frequently: some days she felt she was good at it, at other times she was doubtful, but most of the time she did it without thinking. Tonight she’d need to concentrate, working hard to keep her expression blank, revealing nothing and reminding herself that being believed was all down to
owning
her forthcoming performance. DI Marks needed to believe the news of her sister’s death had come as a shock.
    In the end it wasn’t so hard to achieve.
    As she stepped from the police car, it was the change in location that hit her first. The Cambridgeshire air was dry and warm; they’d driven through all of that rain and come out the other side as they entered the north of the county. She glanced up at the cloudless night sky and remembered how different the solar system looked here compared to anywhere else she’d ever visited. The stars here seemed better spaced, as though the dome of the atmosphere was somehow grander and had lifted them up and away from each other.
    The police station was directly in front of her, ugly as ever, while behind her – on the other side of Warkworth Terrace – stood well-kept townhouses, the kind with fat front doors reached by a short flight of stone steps and basements that begged to be stared into as you walked along the pavement.
    The familiarity of it startled her. She had expected to feel like a total stranger but all this was etched somewhere in the back of her mind.
    DI Marks too.
    She’d only ever seen him on the news giving updates on the case but, now that he faced her, she recognized that shrewd expression and the neat precision of his words. He’d aged, however. Who wouldn’t, doing that job? His black hair was streaked with grey and he was thinner than she remembered. But it was him all right. It made her wonder how her own father might have changed. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t think of him again, and maybe that was unrealistic, but she’d kept this bargain with herself for a long time now.
    DI Marks had escorted her to the room where she now sat, some kind of interview room but with less starkness than usual. A female officer was with him, but she seemed mute: a pair of eyes and ears, nothing more. There was a table with a single plastic chair on each side, but there were also four easy chairs grouped around a coffee table, and a box of toddler toys in the corner.
    ‘This is a room for bad news, right?’ she asked. The comment had been involuntary.
    ‘Sometimes, unfortunately,’ Marks replied.
    She realized she’d now given him a cue – an opening through which to drop his bombshell. He directed her to sit in one of the soft chairs, whereupon the black vinyl huffed wearily. And that’s when he explained that her sister had been murdered.
    She knew already, of course, but she’d only cried when she’d been on her own.