Lying Beside You (Cyrus Haven #3)(95)

I have stepped away to call Evie’s number. She doesn’t answer. I leave a message:

‘The police want to see Lilah. Stay with her and call me.’





63


Evie


The cardboard boxes and bin bags have multiplied and are partially blocking the front hallway and the landing. I hear furniture being moved above our heads.

I shout up the stairs, ‘Hey! What are you doing?’

Nobody answers.

I climb, leaving Lilah to put the dogs in the garden. The attic door is open.

‘You’re not supposed to go up there,’ I say.

A head appears. Elias. Grinning. He has cobwebs in his hair.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I thought I might make this my bedroom.’

My throat begins to close. ‘No! You can’t! It’s mine!’

‘You already have a bedroom.’

‘Put everything back. No! Don’t touch anything. Get out!’

I push past him into the attic. The furniture has been moved – the wooden chests and boxes and old rugs and moth-eaten curtains. My cardboard walls have gone. My hiding place. He has forced the window open and swept at the dust, which is floating in the air as though suspended in water.

‘A coat of paint and a bed and it’s going to be nice,’ says Elias, who has no idea what he’s done. ‘I even get a view,’ he says. ‘Across the park. I was watching you and Lilah walking the dogs.’

I look at the window sill, searching for the collection of coloured glass, marbles, polished pebbles, and the button from my mother’s coat.

‘Where are they?’ I ask, my voice shaking.

‘What?’

‘There was a button and pieces of coloured glass.’

‘I thought they were rubbish.’

‘Where are they?’

‘I threw them away.’

‘Which bag?’

‘I don’t know. One of them.’ He laughs nervously.

‘They were my things. They belonged to me.’

He gawks moronically.

‘Show me where,’ I yell.

‘I can’t remember. One of the bags.’

‘In the hallway? On the landing? Where?’

I shove him aside and go down the stairs, tearing open the first plastic bin bag, which is full of bank statements, electricity bills and receipts. I rip open the next bag and find yellowing copies of National Geographic and crumbling school exercise books. I kick at a box. It topples over, spilling out old clothes including a mouldy army uniform and a box of military medals.

I only care about finding the button. It’s all I have left of my mother – a small piece of something she wore. When I hold it in my fist, I can remember the sound of her voice and picture her face and feel her arms wrapped around me.

‘What are you looking for?’ asks Elias.

I’m so angry, I can’t answer him.

Moving down the stairs to the hallway, I tip over more boxes and rip open bags, scattering the contents. I’m kneeling on the floor, using both hands to search. My phone is ringing. I ignore it and keep looking.

Elias has followed me. ‘You’re making a mess.’

I topple another box and scrabble through the innards, my eyes blurred by anger and tears.

‘Where is it? The button. Which bag?’ I scream.

He shrugs, grinning or grimacing.

‘Fuck you!’ I scream, thumping him in the chest. I want to rip out his eyes. I keep hitting him, but the blows bounce off. I aim at his face, connecting with his nose, and feel something break. He shoves me backwards with no effort at all and I slam into the wall, shaking the framed mirror.

He wipes his nose and licks blood off his top lip. I swing again, but he grips my wrist and his other hand closes around my throat and pins me against the wall. I keep trying to hit him, or kick him, but his fingers tighten, and my feet are no longer touching the rug.

His eyes are empty. Hollow. Unknowable. I can’t see anger or pity or sorrow or empathy. My toes are scrabbling to reach the floor, searching for solid ground. My left hand is pulling at his wrist. I croak his name. I want to breathe. Just one breath. One mouthful. Air.

Elias’s face is going out of focus. Blood runs from his nose, across his lips, staining his teeth. In that moment, I see the teenager who carried the knife. The one who heard the voice. The one who followed instructions. I am clawing at his wrist, trying to open his fingers. Losing strength. Slowing down. Light-headed. Dizzy. The last thing I hear is Lilah scream.





64


Cyrus


Unlike most people her age, Evie doesn’t treat her mobile phone like an appendage. She doesn’t spend hours glued to the screen watching TikTok videos, playing games, and DMing her friends. ‘Because I don’t have any,’ she’d say, if I were talking to her now. I would if I could. She’s not answering her phone.

A small doubt has begun to gnaw inside my chest, like a burrowing animal searching for safety. I tell myself that Evie would have stayed with Lilah. They probably slept in, or they’ve gone out for breakfast or to walk the dogs.

Edgar yells across the incident room.

‘Thompson showed up for work last Monday with cuts on his face, smelling of booze. The boss sent him home. He hasn’t been seen since.’