Cages by David Mark (reading fiction TXT) 📗

in the article Louisa talking about the presents he would bring back from his business trips. Couldn’t confirm it, of course, but I should imagine they were considered as the murder weapon.’

‘The presents?’ mumbles Rufus, holding up a finger and grinning, madly, as Ethan angles his head, requesting explanation.

He tunes back in to what she is saying. Mumbles the words at the same time that Ruth tells him about the little treasures Walter Defreitas would bring home for his daughter. Makes the connection, and feels himself fill with something that is at once excitement and fear.

‘Snow globes …’

TWENTY-SEVEN

Annabeth dreams.

Her mother, this time. She’s sitting in a rocking chair on the porch of a little seafront cottage. Whitewashed, sun-bleached; sky-blue slatted shutters and window boxes full of purple pansies and yellow primroses. Annabeth doesn’t recognize the house, nor the humps of soft sand and grass that shield it from the wind, but the sound of the nearby sea is familiar. It’s rhythmic, like the crunch of hard cereal, or the springs of an old bed.

Annabeth feels a chill all over, as if rimed with frost, as she considers the woman in the chair. She’s all hunched in on herself: timid, fragile, as if frightened of taking up too much space or of drawing too much attention to herself. She’s holding something in her hands: pale wrinkled specimens the colour of seashells. Annabeth is at once far away and directly in front of her. She’s looking at the pattern in the crocheted blanket which winds about her mother’s legs so tightly she could pass for a mermaid.

‘Look,’ says her mother, in a man’s voice. ‘Look what you did.’

There’s a little conch shell on her wrinkled palms; the pinkish blue of newborn flesh.

‘Take it,’ she’s saying. ‘He wants you.’

And now the shell is in Annabeth’s hand. She’s raising it to her ear. She’s excited suddenly, excited to hear Daddy’s voice. And then there is wetness at her temple, at her cheek, and blood is spilling from the conch shell to gush into her ear as if she were drinking from a chalice, and her father is telling her not to make such a fuss, and that it means she’s a woman now, and women don’t make a fuss, and not to go upsetting her mother …

She jerks awake, gasping for breath. Licks cracked lips and tastes sea-salt and iron. Smears the heel of her hand across her face. It comes away dripping. She’s been crying. Tears have trickled from her closed eyes and puddled in her ear.

She rolls over, aware of the gloss of sweat that covers her. There’s a blanket around her lower half. She crocheted it herself, years ago, when she was still trying to be a certain type of mother. Ethan still asks for it when he’s feeling poorly. Tangles his fingers through the holes and feels some kind of comfort at being tightly bound.

She looks up at the clock. It’s a little after nine. She swallows, painfully. Memories flood her; surging from the depths of her mind to the very forefront of her thoughts: marbles on a tilting tray. She looks to where she left the snow globe. There’s nothing there. Sits up, panicking, shivering suddenly, and looks around frantically. She hauls herself upright. As she changes position she sees that the door to the little cupboard is ajar. She has to hold herself steady not to begin hyperventilating.

Unsteady, dizzy, she runs to the kitchen. The lights are on, and there’s a faint smell of whisky and rain.

A noise from upstairs. Ethan. God she needs him now. Wants to hold him close and sniff his head and feel as though nothing else matters as long as nobody ever takes him away from her. She makes for the door that leads into the hallway and upstairs. Hears the muffled sound of voices. Recognizes Ethan. Hears somebody else, too. Deeper. A pleasing lullaby quality to the syntax. Knows at once that Rufus is upstairs, chatting with her son. He’s not going to go. He’s helped himself to her deepest secrets with no more care than when he had rummaged through her cupboards at breakfast time.

She starts up the stairs, head spinning. She should never have let him stay. She should never have allowed anybody close. She should have acted clueless when he showed her the snow globe – not started blundering around like a crazy person. And Christ, she’d spoken about it, hadn’t she? As she was drifting off. Told her that Cox knew something about her past.

She reaches out, her hand on the wall, steadying herself. Tries to regain control. What could he know, she asks herself? Really, what could he know? She’s never been so much as questioned about the death of Walter Defreitas. Sure, she has a file full of newspaper clippings and magazines but that doesn’t mean anything more than an interest in criminology, her degree subject. No, Rufus isn’t her problem. He might even be a friend. If he’s stuck around and covered her with a blanket and is now entertaining her son, he’s an ally, isn’t he? It’s Cox that needs to occupy her mind. Cox who has got himself transferred to the country’s most notorious prison just because he knows something about an officer there. Cox who’s being questioned about the whereabouts of missing teens. She knows what he wants. She’s got the message.

She breathes in and out, counting down from ten. She can do this, she knows she can. There are protocols. Systems. People in her job have muck slung about them all the time. So what if he tells people that she was involved in a crime when she was still a teenager? She can deny it, laugh it off, and put it down to the ramblings of a vindictive prisoner.

But Ethan, she tells herself, and it feels as though her mouth is full of sand. Ethan is a walking DNA sample. Ethan ties her to Walter Defreitas. He shares half