Mia tightens her grip on my hand when the police footage reaches the attic. I don’t stop to think before I blurt out loud, ‘Well at least we don’t have to go far to get new luggage.’ By the time Mia glares at me I already know it was a stupid thing to say. Gallows humour, I think they call it. Neither of us is thinking straight. Stress and sleep deprivation are messing with our heads. Now that copper is looking at me like I’m a dick, and it’s not for the first time. If he’s not directing most of what he says to Mia, then he eyeballs me like I’m guilty of something.
We watch as the camera operator returns to where the footage began, in the porch. The parquet flooring stacked up in piles triggers something and my eyes unexpectedly start filling up. That flooring was an eBay find and I travelled more than a hundred miles to pick it up from the stately home that was getting rid of it. Then, for the best part of a week, I spent every night sanding, varnishing and slotting each piece together. Now I see some of them are broken, scarred or chipped from where they’ve been jimmied up to look underneath. All that wasted effort. I wipe my eyes with my free hand.
I watch as another CSI drills into the wall and a dog handler appears with a springer spaniel on a lead. It sniffs the hole briefly then wanders off. I assume that means there’s nothing – or no one – in there.
‘When do you reckon this will all be over?’ I ask Goodwin.
‘Not for some time, I’m afraid,’ he says to Mia, not to
me.
‘How much is some time? A couple of weeks?’ I persist. When he shakes his head, I know I’m not going to like
his answer.
‘Finn, an investigation like this involving multiple historic homicides can take months. We are in it for the long haul.’
‘Months?’ I repeat. ‘But this is our house.’
‘I know that, but our warrant allows us, by law, to take every step needed to ensure we are one hundred per cent confident there are no more bodies inside.’
‘Can’t you bring in more people to speed it up?’
He looks at me as if I’m an idiot once again. ‘Because there’s so much evidence to gather and preserve in a place this size, it’s a job that requires specially trained, licensed officers. There is no urgency here.’
‘Not for you, mate, but there is for us.’
He returns his attention once more to my wife, as if she’s capable of being more rational than I am. He wouldn’t be thinking that if he’d been around her twenty-four hours a day for the last few weeks like I have. She’s had more ups and downs than a bucking bronco.
‘If we cut corners or try and speed things up then we are at risk of making mistakes,’ he adds. ‘We can’t risk missing anything.’
I know that he’s right, but it doesn’t help our circumstances. I just want shot of this place, but I can’t see that happening any time soon. In my naivety I contacted an old schoolmate who works as an estate agent to see what the chances would be of a quick sale once this is over. He laughed, then asked me, ‘Who in their right mind would want to buy a house where seven kids were murdered?’ He reckoned we should consider tearing it down and rebuilding
it or selling the land instead. Goodwin has already told us the Home Office will pay for all repairs if we decide to stay. But we can’t afford to build another place here, and selling the land means we’d take a massive financial hit. We’re fucked if we do, fucked if we don’t.
Personally, I reckon I could live here. I don’t believe in ghosts. Once we put our stamp on the place, it’d feel less like a morgue, I’m sure. However, when I suggested it to my horrified wife, she made it clear pretty quickly that she wasn’t having any of it. Perhaps in time she might change her mind. But from what Goodwin says, it’s not a decision we’re going to need to make in a hurry. So, for now, we’ve no choice but to live with my folks.
Mia asks Goodwin for an update about the bodies again, but to be honest, I’ve had enough of hearing about it for today. I know that sounds harsh but Mia and I need to focus less on the dead children we never knew and more on the living one I’m holding. My family is my priority, not them.
She tried to bring it up with me earlier this morning when she saw on the breakfast news that one of the kids had been identified. But I’d already tuned out. I don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl. I don’t even care. I’m trying hard not to let these murders dominate our lives but they’re coming between us a lot lately. She accused me of being cold and unfeeling but I’m not. I’m just better at compartmentalising than her. Whereas everything in her head lately is untethered, as if her thoughts are colliding with one another like bumper cars in a dodgem ride. I get it, I tell her – what she saw, then her fall and our baby coming early, has hit her hard physically and emotionally. But she’s not alone. It has been tough on us both. And now she needs to see that we have someone else to prioritise above ourselves.
Every time I look at my son I think of how lucky he is to be alive. When Mia fell off the ladder and smacked her head hard on the floorboards I was convinced I was going to lose both of them. I was totally helpless in the back of the
ambulance watching as she slipped in and out of consciousness, and for the first time in my life, I prayed. God, if He or She or it exists, must have been listening because here we all still are.
Goodwin slips his phone back into his jacket as two more forensic CSIs enter, removing their plastic head coverings and mopping their brows. Goodwin grins at Sonny as my boy turns his head to gauge his surroundings. I find myself clutching Sonny a little tighter to my chest and moving my body so that he is out of Goodwin’s line of sight. Then a sickly sweet, familiar smell grabs my attention and I know it’s nappy time. I don’t bother asking Mia for her help as she is preoccupied. So I take Sonny to the corner of the tent to change him.
When we return a few minutes later, I don’t think she even realised we’d gone.
