The Sleeping and the Dead

In fact Porteous took the press conference early the following evening. There was all the media interest he could have wished for. The body had been discovered because of the drought and the drought was a big story, so the national press was there. He had wanted to hold the conference in the high-school hall. The only certainty he had in the case was that Michael Grey had been a pupil at Cranford Grammar. He thought it might jog a few memories. But the head teacher wasn’t keen. He seemed to think that even after all those years murder would be bad for the school’s image. He used as an excuse the fact that the hall had already been hired out for an event in the evening. Nothing Porteous said could make him change his mind.

Instead they used the community centre next to Stout’s church. It still smelled of the lunch that had been provided for the pensioners’ club which had met earlier in the day – steamed fish and cabbage. Porteous sat on the stage behind a trestle table hidden by a white cloth. His answers to the press emphasized his ignorance. He didn’t have an exact date of death. He hadn’t traced the boy’s relatives. That was why he needed their help. All he had was a body that looked like a lump of lard – this he phrased more delicately – and an old photo of a white-haired boy with a knife.

There was one moment of excitement. In the second row sat a big woman who worked for the town’s free paper. When the photo was passed round Porteous could have sworn that she recognized the face. But when he looked for her later she had rushed away.

PART TWO

Chapter Six

It was hot again. The local news was all about the weather. A magistrate had been prosecuted for using a sprinkler at midnight. Tankers were driving the region’s water south. The lake at Cranford was so low that flooded buildings were starting to emerge from the sludge and a body, trapped under a pier for years, had been found by a canoeist.

Hannah switched off the radio and parked her car. There was a new officer on the gate so she had to show her pass. The photograph was two years old and she saw him look at it then back at her, squinting, unsure at first that it was the same person. He pushed it back under the glass screen and Hannah stared at it too. It didn’t look like her. The woman in the photograph was younger. She was smiling. Not relaxed exactly – Hannah had never been that – there was a tension around the mouth. But content, complacent even. It was taken while she was still part of a family. Before Rosie hated her. Before Jonathan left with a twenty-five-year-old PE teacher, to set up home all over again.

She had to wait for a moment in the gate room for two officers to come in through the outer door. The inner door wouldn’t open until the outer was locked. Then she stood back to let them go ahead to collect their keys. She was in no hurry, early as usual. Punctuality had been a curse since childhood. She threw her tag into the chute and waited for the new man to find her keys. Ahead of her the officers were talking very loudly. She recognized them but they were too engrossed in conversation to acknowledge her. She gathered there’d been some trouble on the wing the night before. Nothing serious. She thought it had probably been caused by the heat. Those huts must be insufferable in this weather. The men walked off before she could hear any more, the heels of their highly polished shoes reflecting the sunlight. They were still talking. Every other word, she knew, would be a blasphemy.

Hannah followed them from the gatehouse and thought that generally, in the prison, the officers were less polite than the inmates. They were usually courteous, grovelling even, like the child in a class who is always bullied. Especially if they wanted something – to use the library on an unscheduled day, for example, or to be let off a fine for a lost or damaged book. ‘Please, miss, it’s not my fault. Honest,miss.’

Of course, they weren’t all like that. Neither were the officers all boors. Today she was feeling particularly jaundiced, because the photograph had reminded her of a time of certainty, and because she’d had a row with Rosie last night. Rosie. Named by her parents Rosalind, she’d changed her name with her personality in adolescence. She was Hannah’s only child. The night before, Rosie had come in drunk again with a gang of friends. It was midnight. Hannah’s room was over the kitchen and she’d heard the freezer door open and the banging of a cooker shelf, and she knew that when she got up in the morning there’d be plates everywhere and half-eaten pizza ground into the carpet. And probably a body snoring on the sofa in the dining-room and two more in the spare bed. So she’d gone down and made a fuss. Rosie had stared at her in apparent horror and amazement, actually enjoying every minute of the drama.

‘Get a life, Mum,’ she’d said. ‘Make some friends and get a life.’

Then she’d stormed off to spend the night in someone else’s spare room.