The Sleeping and the Dead

‘So we thought we’d look at things in a different way,’ Porteous said. ‘From the other end, as it were. Not looking into Michael’s origins but into where he was going. Or where you thought he was going. Because you didn’t report him missing either, Mrs Morton, and that does seem rather odd. You had been his girlfriend for a year. We’ve been speaking to your friends, to teachers at the school, and everyone says you were very close.’ He gave a sympathetic smile. ‘Deeply, madly in love, someone said. I don’t think you’d simply accept his disappearance. So he must have given you an explanation. Perhaps he told you the same story as he’d told the Brices.’

Hannah wondered which friends had been talking to him. The prose style sounded like Sally’s.

‘No,’ she said. ‘No story.’

‘Oh but there was.’ He sounded apologetic, as if he didn’t like to contradict her. ‘At least there was a story for the Brices. Unless they made it up.’

‘They wouldn’t have done that.’

‘So it was a story they believed, even if it wasn’t told to them by Michael himself. Let me explain. You were all sitting A levels. Michael’s first exam was art. We know because we’ve spoken to the school. It hasn’t been easy but we’ve chased up some of his subject teachers. The art teacher is retired but still living in the area. Michael didn’t turn up for the exam. He was one of the few pupils in the class predicted to get a top grade. It was a subject he enjoyed, so it wasn’t a case of last-minute nerves. The teacher was frantic – perhaps Michael had made a mistake about dates. He phoned the number on the school record and got through to Stephen Brice, who was perfectly calm, who seemed bewildered by all the fuss. “Didn’t Michael tell you?” he said to the art teacher. “He’s gone back to his father.”

‘If there was any other information given during the conversation the teacher can’t remember it. He assumed it was a case of family illness or bereavement. It must have been something serious, he said, because Michael had been working hard for the exam and was determined to do well.’

Oh yes, thought Hannah, remembering lunchtimes in the art room, watching Michael, smudged with paint, working on his display. He was certainly determined.

Porteous set his teacup carefully on the coffee table. ‘You never heard that story?’

She shook her head. ‘I didn’t see anyone much at that time. I went in for the exams and straight home. As soon as the A levels were finished I left the area. I’d found a summer job in a hotel in Devon. I didn’t even come back for the results. They were posted on to me.’

‘You must have noticed that Michael wasn’t around?’

‘Yes. I realized he’d gone. Back to his family, I thought. Dramatically. The way that he’d come.’

‘But you didn’t go to see the Brices, to ask what had happened, to get a forwarding address?’ Porteous was faintly incredulous.

‘No.’ She hesitated, unsure how much to say. ‘It was a bit embarrassing. We’d stopped going out with each other actually. I suppose I didn’t want them to think I was chasing him. Pride, you know.’

‘A row, was there?’ Stout asked. ‘Lovers’ tiff?’

He said it casually enough, but then they both looked at her in a way that made her realize the answer was important to them. She sensed the danger just in time. Sally hadn’t just told them how much in love she’d been.

Hannah matched her voice to his. Kept it light. Implying, You know what dizzy things teenage girls are. ‘I suppose so, but I’m blessed if I can remember what it was all about. Not wanting to face the details, even after all this time.’

‘Serious though, at that age.’

‘Not as serious as passing the exams. That was our priority at the time. That was probably why we fell out.’

‘You were jealous of the time he spent studying?’

‘I think it was more likely the other way round.’

They looked at her. They were still sitting side by side on the sofa. It was leather. One of Jonathan’s affectations. It didn’t go in the room at all. Hannah thought of Michael’s audition for Macbeth – Jack Westcott and Spooky Spence sitting in judgement on the red plastic chairs at the front of the hall. Porteous and Stout were sitting in judgement too. They thought she was lying but they were trying to decide if it was because Michael had dumped her and she didn’t want to admit it, or because she had killed him. It was impossible to tell if they’d reached a conclusion.

‘Why don’t you take us through the last couple of days of his life?’ Porteous said.

‘Is that possible? Do you know when he died? Exactly?’

‘Perhaps not,’ he admitted. ‘But we know when he disappeared. If we can believe the Brices.’

She was starting to panic. Incoherent thoughts pitched one after another into her brain. She forced out a reasonable voice. ‘It’s a long time ago. I’m not sure how much I’ll remember.’