The Overnight Page 9

  Something breaks—the lens or Lorraine or both. The impact flings her over the windscreen, clearing a swathe of the glass. Ross still can't make out the shape hunched over the steering wheel; the inside of the car looks clogged with fog. Lorraine sprawls on the metal roof and then, as the car swerves back the way it came, slithers off. The first part of her to hit the tarmac with a slap that sounds flattened and somehow empty is her head.

  Ross feels as if everything has been stretched thin and brittle and unreal as a film: the toddler shouting "Fell down" and beginning to giggle, the mother so desperate to put a stop to this she snatches off her scarf and winds it round the child's mouth before supporting herself on the push-chair and hustling it away into the shop, Woody cursing under his breath as the numbers he types fail to hush the alarm, Mad running to kneel by Lorraine only to recoil from an expanding stain darker than the condensation on the tarmac. Then the car slews into view, its driver's door flapping wide, and Ross is terrified for both women until it rams the left-hand tree and stands nuzzling the broken stump.

  As the alarm falls silent he seems to hear a huge sluggish wallowing movement so muffled it sounds buried, and then there's only the discord of Mad's abandoned car. He's no longer paralysed by the clamour of the alarm. He dashes out of the shop, and the chill of the day gathers in his stomach before shivering through him from head to foot. He has no idea how his voice will sound if he calls to Mad not to move Lorraine—not when her head is at such an awkward angle he doesn't see how she can bear it. Lorraine's body jerks with a cough, and greyness rises from her lips before they settle into a slack grimace. He wants to think she's trying to expel the fog she had to breathe in as she ran. Then her eyes appear to fill with it, and the low dismayed cry that escapes Mad turns into it as well.

  Ray

  When the Pinto coasts towards the back of Texts a pale mass as wide as a coffin is long seems to swell out of the concrete wall. As the car noses closer and the headlamp beams squeeze the fog brighter, the mass shrinks and splits in two like an amoeba. The halves glare at Ray like great flat blank eyes until he switches off the lights. A glow the red of diluted blood vanishes behind the car as though the fog has swallowed it in the process of catching up with him. The key rasps out of the ignition, and the cooling engine starts to tick like a clock that's growing slower by the moment. He retrieves from the passenger seat the lunch Sandra insists is the least he needs to eat, and the Mothercare bag it's wrapped in crackles as he steps onto the slippery tarmac.

  Four cars are already huddled under the last two letters of the shop's name. As he sets the car alarm he stays well clear of the adjacent vehicle in case he might wake it up. He's pinching his overcoat shut—no point in buttoning it for the sake of a few hundred yards—when he has to snatch his hand away. Of course the shrill chirping is only his phone; he knows that before it finishes the first phrase of the Manchester United anthem, and why should he feel it is drawing attention to him? He perches his lunch on the car roof and drags the phone out of his pocket, together with a wad of paper tissue he used the other day to wipe little Sheryl's mouth. Dried chocolate has turned the wad hard as a pebble, which skitters across the tarmac as he interrupts the tune. "Is that you?" Sandra says.

  "Who else are you expecting?"

  "I thought for a moment I heard someone else. What's making you sound like that?"

  In the year and a half since Sheryl was born he has grown used to being told he's doing things he's not aware of. "Like what?"

  "As if you're in a basement. Deep down somewhere, anyway."

  "No basement here," he says as a shiver sets him buttoning up after all. "You know you're welcome any time you want to come and see."

  "When the baby's finished teething. You don't want her making a fuss when people are trying to read."

  Ray wishes she would stop acting embarrassed whenever anyone hears Sheryl cry, as if she thinks it means she has failed somehow. "You still haven't said where you are," she reminds him.

  "Out at the back of the shop."

  "Where that poor girl was?"

  The murk lurches at him as Sandra's voice does, and he wonders if he could be standing where Lorraine began to be chased by whoever stole Mad's car. The notion makes him feel as though fog has gathered in his stomach. "It's all right," he tells himself as well as Sandra. "I'm just going in."

  "Have you time to drive over to Frugo for me?"

  "Not much at the moment. What do you need?"

  "More support tights. I've put my big fat toe through the ones I bought at the weekend. Don't bother if it doesn't matter how I look. I don't want my legs to end up like my mother's after she had me, that's all."

  "You know it matters to me, and you've never looked better."

  "I'd love to have seen your face when you said that, Ray."

  What's wrong with having a bit more of the woman he fell in love with? He has lost count of how often he has kept that comment to himself lest she think it's a substitute for a compliment. All that matters to him is that she's still Sandra under no more padding than he has put on himself and under layers of moods that are surely just a phase of having Sheryl. "You'll see it next time," he says. "I'll go over in my lunch break. Nearly time for work."

  "I don't like to think of you rushing your lunch."

  "You haven't given me an hour's worth, nothing like." As he realises she could take that for a complaint, however inappropriate, he hears Sheryl start to wail. "Listen, I really have to go, and it sounds like you do as well," he says. "Give her a kiss from me and yourself one."

  How is she going to do the latter? His turn of phrase leaves him feeling stupid. He slips the phone into his pocket and takes hold of his lunch bag, which is colder and wetter than he would have imagined he gave it time to be. As he hurries around the bookshop, a restless insect rustling accompanies him down the alley—the blank walls have trapped the fidgets of his package, a sound that flutters across the car park into the mass of fog. Woody is waiting in the entrance of the shop and just about raises a thumb to greet him. When Ray consults his watch he finds he's minutes later than he realised, though at least not late. "My wife called," he feels required to explain.

  "Okay, well, fine" It clearly isn't even before Woody says "Sure it was your wife?"

  "As sure as I am the sun's up there somewhere."

  "Somewhere is right. Well, I guess you know your own wife."

  Ray is about to enquire, possibly politely, what this implies when Woody says "Me, I get calls from people who aren't even there."

  "I expect everyone's a bit shaken up."

  "This was yesterday, before the tragedy." Woody stares into the fog as if he sees Lorraine and says "Ross convinced me I'd been called by a lady I knew."

  "I take it she hadn't."

  "She was pretty fierce about making sure I got that when I rang her last night. We won't be talking any more after some of the stuff we both said. I can live without feeling I've been tricked in the middle of everything else."

  "You don't think Ross did that, do you?"

  "He says not, and I have to believe him. It wasn't New York on the phone either, though, and I didn't do us any favours calling them to ask if it was. I guess now they think I'm worried about their visit."

  As Ray steps into the building his stomach tightens at the threat of the alarm. When it doesn't pounce he glances over his shoulder to discover Woody isn't following. "Looking for someone?" Ray asks.

  "May as well make sure people are on time while I've been moved out of my office."

  "The bosses have never done that, have they?"

  "Right, they haven't," Woody says, turning his back on the fog. "Are you thinking maybe they should because I'm not doing enough?"

  "Not a bit. If anything I'd say you try and do too much."

  "Like where, Ray?"

  "I'm saying I hope you know me and Connie and Nigel won't let you down. We're on top of our jobs."

  "You mean you've all got your territories and you d
on't like me invading them." Woody's gaze, which looks as though it's crying out for sleep, lingers on him. "You didn't appreciate me taking over your staff meeting yesterday, right?" Woody says. "One thing jobs are about is saving all the time we can."

  "I understand that. I did quite a lot of it while I was working at the stationers before I came to Texts."

  "Okay, good. Then you have to know why we need it, the way things are shaping up. Two of us running your meeting would have taken twice as long," Woody says and raises his voice. "Wilf."

  Ray is glad of the interruption. He wasn't comfortable with arguing so close to what happened to Lorraine and where it did. As Wilf turns from hastening into the shop, Woody says "Can I ask you to take something over for us, Wilf?"

  "I should think."

  "I know you're the man for it. Maybe you already realised we need someone to run Lorraine's reading group."

  Wilf presses one forefinger against the length of his lips so hard they're still pale when he releases them. "Wasn't that supposed to be tomorrow?"

  "Still is. Too late to tell everyone who's coming that we've cancelled, even if we knew who they were. You're working late anyway, and I remembered how you said at your interview you love nothing more than reading."

  "I don't know which book she chose. I may not have read it."

  "Planning anything tonight?" When Wilf only lifts a cupped hand as if he's trying to catch words to feed into his mouth, Woody says "See, I knew I picked the right guy. Remember how you told me you can get through a book in an evening. Lorraine chose the Brodie Oates novel. Shows she was doing her best to be part of the team. Shouldn't give you any trouble, that size of book."

  Ray sees Wilf decide against responding and Woody take this for agreement. "Thanks, Wilf," he says, and even more briskly "Anything to add, Ray?"

  It's less a question than a dismissal. "Can you let us in, Wilf?" Ray says so as to feel in some kind of charge, and has to point out that Wilf is presenting the wrong side of his badge to the plaque on the wall. As they reach the staffroom Nigel looks up from the latest Woody's Wheedles sheet. He seems uncertain how bright he should allow his eyes to grow. "Ray," he says, not so much a greeting as an expression of sympathy, and in the same tone "Wilf."

  "Nigel," Ray feels bound to respond in as similar a manner as he can produce, though he thinks Nigel may be overdoing it a little. He runs his card under the clock and stuffs his rustling package into his locker, then heads for his desk. He hasn't switched on his computer when Mad emerges from Woody's room, followed by a policeman and a policewoman with expressions as identically sombre as their uniforms. "Thank you," the woman says without acknowledging that Mad is close to tears. As the pair tramp out through the staffroom, Mad mumbles with her back to Ray "Can I stay in here a few minutes?"

  "Have your break if you like."

  Apparently she doesn't. She sits behind him in Nigel's chair, facing the wall and Nigel's dead computer. Ray feels shut in, as though the emotion she's trying to restrain has merged with the windowless concrete. A muffled sniff he assumes he's meant to notice escapes her, prompting him to ask "Would it help to talk?"

  "They said I couldn't have locked my car."

  "You think you did."

  "I more than think." She swings around to stare not quite at him with a fierceness that almost dries her eyes. "They said there wasn't any sign it had been broken into, but that just means whoever did knew how to, mustn't it?"

  "A child would be able to do that, you think."

  "It's only Ross who says it was a child, and he didn't see what they looked like. I didn't even see anybody in the car." She turns her stare on Ray without toning it down much. "Besides, I'll bet some children these days know how to do that and worse."

  "I expect that's possible."

  "Saying it's my fault the car was stolen is like saying I wanted, I wanted Lorraine dead."

  "Good heavens, I shouldn't think so. I'm certain nobody—"

  "Somebody wanted it," Mad says and glares through Woody's door at the security monitor, where grey figures foreshortened to dwarfishness are roaming the maze of the screen. "Maybe when the police have finished with my car they'll be able to hunt them down."

  "Let's hope so. How did you get here today?"

  "My father had to change his hours to bring me. My parents wanted me to take a couple of days off, but I don't think I've got the right. It's like saying I was harmed as well."

  Ray meant to entice her away from her pain, but she seems unwilling to renounce it. "I think that's very—" he's compelled to start to say with no idea how to continue. He's glad that Woody gives him an excuse to interrupt himself. "Oh, you're still here," Woody says to Mad as he strides towards his office. "Any problem?"

  She dabs her eyes with the back of her hand so swiftly she might almost just be glancing at her watch. "Only getting over being interviewed"

  "Is that going to take much longer?"

  "Ray said I could have my break."

  "Did he? I guess you'd better be taking it, then." As if she can't or shouldn't hear, Woody tells Ray "At least she came into work."

  "Did someone not?"

  "Ross called in sick. The police are having to go to his home."

  "I hope they won't be too rough on him." Ray wishes Mad weren't hearing him ask "Did they know he and, well, Lorraine had started going round together?"

  "Not from me they don't. Did I miss something? Did you know about it, Madeleine?"

  "Yes," she just about admits.

  "Really? Pity, then. Kind of proves what I've come to realise."

  Since she doesn't respond, Ray says "What's that?"

  "It's my experience it doesn't help the store if personnel get too close."

  "Oh," says Mad.

  "That's my experience," Woody says as if he didn't grasp or doesn't care that she meant she could do without hearing. "The girl I was telling you I phoned, Ray, I don't believe having her here would have helped me keep my mind on the job."

  With enough dignity for the person referred to as well as herself, Mad stands up and walks out through the staffroom, where Nigel is intoning "Gavin. Greg. Jake. Agnes. Jill."

  "Don't sound like that or you'll have me in tears," Jake pleads.

  "You're starting me off too," Agnes warns him or Nigel.

  "The hardest part was telling Bryony last night why I was weepy," says Jill. "And you may all think this is stupid, but I felt guilty because she couldn't remember who Lorraine was."

  "I'd like to see anyone call you stupid for that," Agnes challenges.

  When Greg clears his throat Ray thinks he means to answer her until, presumably to Nigel, he says "We don't want customers seeing anyone's upset, do we? It could put them off."

  "We can't afford that." Woody has been watching two dwarf police leave the shop, but now he makes for the staffroom. "Give me the floor a moment, Nigel."

  "Take as long as you need. It's your time, after all."

  "No, it's the store's." Woody lets more than a second of it gather mutely before he says "Okay, I know everybody's shocked and grieved about our loss. We wouldn't be human otherwise. Does anybody want to take a moment to say anything?"

  "We ought to send flowers," Jill says.

  "Already ordered. On their way."

  "When's the …" Agnes has to start again. "When's the funeral?"

  "I believe next week."

  "Maybe some of us should go," Gavin says without a trace of a yawn.

  "Sure, if it's your day off or you can swap with someone, but I've thought of another way we can remember her. Each of you and everyone that isn't here just now get to take charge of half an aisle of Lorraine's. That way we don't need to hire anyone else and it's like saying she can't be replaced, which she can't be, am I right? And I guess you all know what else that means."

  "Do we?" Greg asks as though his colleagues may not have grasped it.

  "Everyone will need to work the overnight shift," says Woody to a silence Ray imagines ful
l of shrugs and other expressions of unenlightenment. "Why don't we think of it as a tribute to Lorraine."

  Greg makes an enthusiastic sound, Nigel slightly less of one until he increases it to match, as Ray becomes aware of listening and that Woody may have finished his oration. The risk of being caught idle digs its claws into Ray's stomach. He switches his computer on and wills the blank grey screen to show some life. The opening icons gradually surface, and their colours seep up to fill them. What's the significance of the thin rectangular icon halfway down the middle column? He can't recall having seen it before, and it's unidentified by any word. He's tempted to open the program to discover what it is, but clicks on Staff instead.

  The time clock feeds its details to the computer for him to check before forwarding the information to head office. He brings up the November staff record onscreen and scrolls in search of Lorraine's name. He's copying the details of each of her last days into a separate file when he notices there's a stranger on the screen. It isn't a name. It could be a smaller version of the unfamiliar icon, so blurred that he can't be certain where its outline ends and the slightly paler background starts. Peering closer makes his eyes feel drawn out of focus. It appears among the entries for every day he has examined so far: just the minute after midnight is attributed to it on the first day of November, while it has three minutes to its credit on the next afternoon, and five the following day. It must be showing the times when some error crept into the system. As it rises yet again to meet his scrolling it puts him in mind of a grub. Seven minutes on the afternoon of the fourth, eleven the next night, thirteen early on the sixth … He hears footsteps behind him and twists around. "Calm down, Ray," Woody says, displaying his palms. "It's only me."

  "Do you mind glancing at this? There's something I don't understand."