A Darker Shade of Blue Read Online Free Page A

Whitemore said.
    â€˜I don’t know. I don’t care. I told him to clear out and not come back.’
    Whitemore found Pitcher later that morning, sitting cross-legged on the damp pavement, his back against the hoardings surrounding the Old Market Square. Rain was falling in fine slanted lines, but Pitcher either hadn’t noticed or didn’t care.
    â€˜Darren,’ Whitemore said, ‘come on, let’s get out of this wet.’
    Pitcher glanced up at him and shook his head.
    Coat collar up, Whitemore hunkered down beside him. ‘You want to tell me what happened?’
    â€˜Nothing happened.’
    â€˜Emma says—’
    â€˜I don’t give a fuck what Emma says.’
    â€˜I do,’ Whitemore said. ‘I have to. But I want to know what you say, too.’
    Pitcher was silent for several minutes, passers-by stepping over his legs or grudgingly going round.
    â€˜He’d been whingeing away,’ Pitcher said, ‘Jason. How the pants he was wearing was too tight. Scratching. His hand down his trousers, scratching, and I kept telling him to stop. He’d hurt himself. Make it worse. Then, when he went to the toilet, right, I told him to show me, you know, show me where it was hurting, point to it, like. And there was a bit of red there, I could see, so I said would he like me to put something on it, to make it better and he said yes and so …’
    He stopped abruptly, tears in his eyes and shoulders shaking.
    Whitemore waited.
    â€˜I didn’t do anything,’ Pitcher said finally. ‘Honest. I never touched him. Not like … you know, like before.’
    â€˜But you could have?’ Whitemore said.
    Head down, Pitcher nodded.
    â€˜Darren?’
    â€˜Yes, yeah. I suppose … Yeah.’
    Still neither of them moved and the rain continued to fall.
    *
    On Christmas morning Whitemore rose early, scraped the ice from the windows of the second-hand Saab he’d bought not so many weeks before, loaded up the back seat with presents, and set out for the coast. When he arrived the light was only just beginning to spread, in bands of pink and yellow, across the sky. Wanting his arrival to be a surprise, he parked some houses away.
    The curtains were partly drawn and he could see the lights of the Christmas tree clearly, red, blue and green, and, as he moved across the frosted grass, he could see the twins, up already, still wearing their pyjamas, tearing into the contents of their stockings, shouting excitedly as they pulled at the shiny paper and cast it aside.
    When he thought they might see him, he stepped quickly away and returned to the car, loading the presents into his arms. Back at the bungalow he placed them on the front step, up against the door, and walked away.
    If he had waited, knocked on the window, rung the bell, gone inside and stayed, seen their happiness at close hand, he knew it would have been almost impossible to leave.
    Emma Laurie appeared at the police station in early January, the youngest child in a buggy, the others half-hidden behind her legs. After days of endless pestering, she had allowed Pitcher back into the house, just for an hour, and then he had refused to leave. When she’d finally persuaded him to go, he had threatened to kill himself if she didn’t have him back; said that he would snatch the children and take them with him; kill them all.
    â€˜It was wrong o’me, weren’t it? Letting him back in. I never should’ve done it. I know that, I know.’
    â€˜It’s okay,’ Whitemore said. ‘And I wouldn’t pay too much attention to what Darren said. He was angry. Upset. Times like that, people say a lot of things they don’t necessarily mean.’
    â€˜But if you’d seen his face … He meant it, he really did.’
    Whitemore gave her his card. ‘Look, my mobile number’s there. If he comes round again, threatening you, anything like that, you call me,