‘Yes,’ Joe says, thinking back to the wedding photograph. ‘That sounds like Freddie.’
He waits for Lucy to turn back towards the lift. She doesn’t.
‘Thanks,’ Joe says. Still she doesn’t move.
‘Is there something else?’ Joe tries.
Lucy looks deeply uncomfortable. ‘I probably shouldn’t say this, but—’
‘I’m worried about Felicity,’ Joe says quickly. ‘Looks like you are too.’
His words seem to give Lucy the permission she needs. ‘She received letters,’ she says. ‘From prison. I see all the incoming mail, and obviously I don’t open anything personal, but the postmark was obvious. HMP Durham.’
‘How many?’ Joe asks.
Lucy makes a thinking face. ‘I can remember three,’ she says. ‘Could have been more.’
‘Can you remember when they started?’
She nods. ‘In March. I know that for a fact because she left the office the minute I gave it to her. I was a bit worried, I’d never seen her like that before, she looked – I don’t know whether it was angry or scared but it was weird. Anyway, I watched her from the window and she opened the letter when she was standing near some daffodils. That’s how I know it was March.’
Joe is thinking March. Felicity’s problems began in March. That’s when she experienced her first fugue state.
‘Each time a letter came she changed,’ Lucy says. ‘It was a bit freaky to be honest. But what I’m trying to say is, maybe they were from her husband. Maybe her husband is in prison and that’s why she never mentioned him.’
Joe nods.
‘So this man who turned up here looking for her could also have been her husband, released from prison,’ Lucy says. ‘That would be pretty scary, wouldn’t it?’
‘It certainly would,’ Joe agrees.
* * *
He drives to her house but he knows, even before he gets out of his car, that she has gone. He walks to the front door all the same and peers through into the hallway. The internal doors are all closed. At the back he lets himself into her courtyard. The back door is locked. The kitchen beyond looks spotless. He glances down and sees the basement window has been repaired with what looks like reinforced glass.
The lid on the recycling bin doesn’t quite close. Joe wanders over and sees it is full of cardboard boxes, bubble wrap, the stuff people leave behind when they move house.
‘She’s gone.’
Joe starts round to see a man’s face peering at him over the fence from the courtyard next door.
‘Already?’ Joe asks. ‘I thought she had at least another week here.’
‘Left the day before yesterday. Evening flight to Chile from Heathrow. I’ve to put the bins out on Wednesday.’
Knowing the neighbour is still watching him, and not caring, Joe lifts the dustbin lid on an impulse. On top of the bubble wrap and cardboard lies a slim white envelope. Pulling his handkerchief from his pocket as he’s seen his mother do he wraps it over his hand and tips out the contents. Inside are four photographs of Felicity, taken at night or in the early evening, almost certainly without her knowledge.
They have been lying on an upturned photograph in a silver frame. Joe picks it up, still using the handkerchief and sees the black-and-white wedding picture. Felicity’s face is hidden behind the gossamer mist of a bridal veil but the groom is shiningly handsome, tall and fair as a Viking prince. The runaway bridesmaid is cute as a button. Joe takes both the envelope and the wedding photograph and leaves Felicity’s property.
Part Three
CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND
Seven Months Later
‘Are the days of winter sunshine just as sad for you, too?’
Gustave Flaubert, November
60
Joe
Winters are rarely mild on the English Fens and this one is no exception. In January, snow falls early and often. Layer upon layer coats the city’s roofs, piling high on gable ends and window ledges, until the rooms beyond take on a twilight cast, and even the college porters fear their ancient halls might not hold. From time to time, the old buildings groan, as though the burden is indeed too heavy, but the sound is only that of a thick wedge of snow breaking away and falling to the ground. Joe Grant walks the white streets of his city and thinks of tumbling icebergs, of silver-blue glaciers and biting blizzards, and wonders if his heart has frozen over.
Warmer days at the beginning of February turn the snow and ice into a rushing torrent of meltwater. The Cam overtops its banks and those who live close carry their valuables to upper floors. Towards the end of the month the snow returns, thicker and faster this time. Street signs, public benches and cycles are lost completely. Heraldic badges at the college gateways lose all distinction, and the great statue of Henry VIII doffs his hat, doublet and hose for a heavy-hooded mantle of white. Joe’s hair and coat turn the colour of cobwebs as the snowflakes land and melt, land and melt.
The temperature drops again, and the willow trees along the riverbanks are claimed by frost. Tendrils of white lace droop into the water and the bridges turn silver. The water surface crinkles and its movement slows. The Cam is starting to freeze over. Snow slides down its banks and finds purchase on the ice. The Cam, too, is taken.
The council works hard to keep the main roads clear, but soiled, salt-strewn snow piles up at the roadside, and the Environment Agency worries about the already flooded groundwater system. Schools are closed more than they are open, the elderly keep to their homes, and the rough sleepers, those who can be found, are taken indoors, because when all is said and done, Cambridge is a kind city. Knowing his homeless are safe from the cold is a small comfort to Joe.
The weather turns once more, the snow melts and low-lying fields become shallow lakes. Swans glide proprietorially over the Backs and the water meadows. The Environment Agency opens all the floodgates but the run-off can’t escape. Roads turn to rivers, cellars begin to stink and in an old drain not far from Peterhouse College, the body of Dora Hardwick is found at last.
Joe gets the call halfway through the morning and clears his afternoon appointments. He arrives at the hospital mortuary at three o’clock, when the sky outside is already darkening, and a minute or two before his mother. The pink hair of last summer has gone. Delilah is looking older and more tired, thinner but not healthier. The unsolved murder, possibly about to become two unsolved murders, has taken its toll. Since the start of the new year, she has been talking about retirement.
‘Sorry,’ she says to her son, when she has announced herself at reception and she and Joe are on their way to the place where the dead are stored. ‘There wasn’t anyone else.’
‘How was she found?’ There is no doubt in Joe’s mind that he is about to identify Dora.
‘Unusual flooding down at the Mill Pool off Silver Street,’ his mother says, ‘even allowing for how much snow we’ve had. The Environment Agency suspected a blocked storm drain and sent some equipment in to clear it. They pulled out Dora.’
‘Do they know how long she’d been down there?’
His mother’s face is grim. ‘A while.’