they intersected, overlooking the black and white checks of the aisle. He let his hand trail over the pews as he went towards the altar, and when he got there, he sat down. He closed his eyes and tried to find some solace in all the years that the church had been there, that his problems meant nothing.
But as he sat on the pew they all came back to him, the deaths, right back to his first, a bony old man found dead in his flat, killed for his pension money, the bravery that had made him carry a gun in wartime spilled over a blood-soaked rug, his life taken away in front of framed pictures of his grandchildren. And so the movie flew forward again, past car crash victims and fights that went too far, once more juddering to a halt at Alice Kenyon, floating lifelessly in Billy’s pool, her hair trailing around her like rags caught on a branch.
Sheldon got to his feet. The church brought him no comfort. For all the years of prayer, he wasn’t sure any had been answered. Good people died, bad people lived. That seemed to be always the way, and Billy’s murder didn’t change that balance. It was a blip. He stepped up to the altar, unsure of what he was doing, but then saw a stone doorway that opened onto steps that would take him upwards in the tower. Sheldon thought of the view, the fields and hills surrounding Oulton, and he had an urge to go up there.
He looked around to make sure no one was watching and then stepped into the tower. As he started to climb, the steps felt suffocating, winding in a tight spiral so that all Sheldon saw as he got higher was more stone, more steps, turning, getting narrower, so that he wondered whether he would reach nothing but a dead-end. But he was wrong. He burst gasping onto the roof, a small square hemmed in by the castellated ramparts of the tower. As Sheldon headed for the wall, he was breathing hard, the effort of the climb making his chest pump hard. Sweat flashed across his forehead, and as he pitched forward, the ground below swayed and blurred.
Sheldon looked forward instead and sucked in clean air as he let the horizon settle down. It was as he imagined. The roll of the hills on the other side of the valley, and the chimneys and terraced streets in the nearby towns. As he looked further, he could see how the green around him turned grey and ugly as the sprawl of Manchester took over.
He was cold. He was wearing just his suit, and although the sun was shining, the exposed tower chilled the wind, so that he folded his arms to try and keep warm. He felt his ribs under his fingers and wondered how they had got there. He knew he hadn’t been eating that well, surviving on sandwiches and microwave meals, but he was surprised. But then as he thought about it, he couldn’t remember his last meal.
Sheldon looked down at his shoes. They were worn and scuffed. He could feel the ground through his soles, cold against his feet.
How had he got to this? Pushed out of the station on forced leave. He had only tried to do what was right, to track down a killer. Why wasn’t that enough?
The view held his attention for a few minutes, the rumbles of a diesel engine reaching him as a bus struggled up a hill. Cars threaded through the town. A train ran along the valley floor, Manchester-bound. The trains will keep running, the people will keep praying, and then his life would get lost in the fade of time, so that nothing about Alice Kenyon would matter anymore. Nothing about him would matter anymore.
Sheldon put his head back and looked up, let the blue sky swirl above him, the view broken only by the occasional wisps of cloud. There was nothing of his life up there, just infinite emptiness. None of the failures, or the obsessions. For a moment, he felt a tight grip around his throat as he realised how his life was turning out. There was no real way forward.
He stepped forward to the wall. He looked ahead and not down, just towards the roofs of distant buildings, and all he had to do was keep on walking. The stones scraped his hands as he lifted his foot and let it settle on the wall, and then the other one, so that he was crouching and the view below opened up in front of him.
The ground was just stone a hundred feet below. As he looked down, he thought he could hear voices telling him to jump, that the ground would end it and bring him peace. But the voices got louder. He looked round again. There was a woman behind him. She was young, with long red hair, her face kind but worried. She looked like Alice.
‘Are you all right?’ she said. She looked scared, a tremble to her voice. ‘I saw you come up. I was at the back of the church.’
He didn’t have the answer to that. He hadn’t seen her. His eyes welled up with tears, or maybe it was just the sharp cut to the breeze.
‘You shouldn’t do what you’re thinking of,’ she said, her voice softer now. She brushed her hair away from her face, the wind sending it into a tangle. ‘Things get better. They always do.’
He swallowed.
‘Why should you care?’ His words came out thick with emotion.
Her hand went to her mouth. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, just to calm herself. When she opened them again, she said, ‘I just don’t want you to do it, not here, not in front of me. Just step down. Please. For me.’
Sheldon looked at her and the young woman reminded him not just of Alice, but also of Hannah, his daughter. He couldn’t let her remember him like this. He wiped his eyes and took a step back so that he was off the wall, level with her again. He looked at the floor for a few seconds and clenched his fists, trying to hold back the tears. But he couldn’t. They rolled down his face, his mouth quivering. He looked at her and said, ‘Thank you.’
His pace was quick as he walked away. She was right. There was so much still to do. He looked back just once, and he saw her watching him leave, her arms folded around her chest.
Sheldon headed swiftly down the stone steps, and when he burst out of the stairway and into the open spaces of the church, it felt like he’d been given another chance.
He ran out of the church and looked towards the town. All he could see were the stone buildings and slate roofs, dark and moody, but they were just facades, because behind those buildings was the rest of the town, and somewhere in there was the killer of Billy Privett. And as Sheldon thought of Billy, he remembered Alice Kenyon – as if he could ever forget her. The thought of the empty days ahead scared him, but of course they didn’t have to be empty. He could fill them. He could keep looking for Alice’s killer. And Billy’s.
As he crossed over the road, he walked with more purpose. He knew where he was going next.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Charlie went straight to his apartment, a long run from Amelia’s house. He was sweating and feeling sick, but speed was more important than appearances. He needed to get in and out quickly without being noticed, knowing that he needed to do something with the knife. Perhaps return it to the knife block and then call the police – provided that the two clients in suits had gone. He knew that was the riskiest option.
He sank to his knees when he got into his apartment, panting hard from the run. All Charlie could hear was the peace and quiet of his home. The hum of his fridge. The sound of the television from the apartment below. He closed his eyes, just to take stock, but his head was filled with the image of Amelia once more. That told him that he had to keep moving.
He went towards the bathroom, but the sight of his living room made him pause when he went past. It was just as he had left it the previous morning, with beer bottles and an empty pizza box. There was just one boozy night between then and now but suddenly it seemed like a different life so that just worrying about some untidiness seemed like bliss.
He went to the
