is a nasty situation, and it’s been a big shock, and I appreciate you helping us out in the middle of it all. If you’d like to talk to anyone about it, I’ll put you in touch with our Victim Support advocates, and they can find you someone who—”
None of us apparently felt the need for professional assistance to unpack our feelings about finding a skull in the back garden. “Here,” Rafferty said, putting a small neat stack of business cards on the coffee table. “If you change your minds about that, or you think of anything, or you want to ask me anything, give me a ring.”
Hand on the door, he turned, remembering. “That key, the one to the garden door. Are there any more copies we could borrow? Would a neighbor have one, or your brothers maybe?”
“There used to be another one here,” Hugo said. He was starting to look tired. “It went missing, somewhere along the way.”
“Any idea when?”
“Years ago. I couldn’t even begin to narrow it down.”
“No problem,” Rafferty said. “If we need extras, we’ll get them cut. I’ll keep you updated.” And he was gone, closing the living-room door gently behind him.
“Well,” Hugo said, on a deep breath, after a moment of silence. “This should be interesting.”
“I told you,” Leon said. He was gnawing his thumbnail again, and his nostrils flared with every breath. “I told you we should dump it in the bin and forget the whole bloody thing.”
“You can’t do that,” Tom said. “There could be a family out there, wondering—”
“I thought you thought it was med students.”
“The detective’s nice,” Melissa said. “Was he more like what you expected, Hugo?”
“Definitely.” Hugo smiled at her. “And much more confidence-inspiring than the other ones. I’m sure he’ll get all this sorted out in no time. Meanwhile”—glancing around—“you three should let your parents know what’s happened, shouldn’t you?”
Leon and Susanna and I, by unspoken but wholehearted agreement, hadn’t rung our parents, but I realized with a sinking feeling that Hugo was right, it wasn’t like we could keep this contained within the house forever. “Oh God,” Susanna said. “They’re going to want to come over.”
“I’m starving,” Zach said.
“Jesus,” Leon said, in a stunned voice that sounded suddenly very young. “There’s people out there filming.”
There was a general rush to the windows. Sure enough, standing with her back to our front steps was a brunette in a snazzy coral trench coat, talking into a microphone. On the pavement across the road, a skinny guy in a parka was huddled over a video camera pointed at her. A restless wind had come up, tossing the trees into bewildering whirls of green.
“Hey!” Zach yelled, banging a palm on the windowpane. “Get lost!”
Susanna caught his wrist, too late: the cameraman said something and the brunette turned to look at us, hair whipping across her face. “Get back,” Leon said sharply. Susanna reached out and slammed the shutters, heavy bangs reverberating up through the empty rooms of the house.
* * *
Around this point Zach and Sallie went into full whine overdrive about how hungry they were. Their bitching finally drove us all out to the kitchen, where Hugo and Melissa rummaged through the fridge and discussed options and decided on pasta with mushroom sauce. Susanna was on the phone to Louisa, trying to convince her not to come over (“No, Mum, he’s fine, anyway what would you do that we’re not doing already? . . . Because there are reporters out the front, and I don’t want them nabbing you and interrogating— Well then, watch it on the news tonight, and you’ll know as much as we do. No one’s telling us anything . . . No, Mum, I don’t have a clue who it—”) and holding Sallie back from the biscuit tin with her free hand. Tom was rattling on about some kiddie movie they’d seen, trying to draw Zach into the chat; Zach, drumming his hands on the counter and keeping a calculating eye on the biscuit tin, wasn’t biting.
Leon and I stood at the French doors, looking out at the garden. The big uniformed cop was on the terrace with his hands clasped behind his back, looking official and presumably guarding the crime scene, but he was ignoring us and we ignored him. Down by the wych elm, Rafferty was deep in conversation with another suit and a stocky guy in a dilapidated overall who, judging by the gestures, was the tree surgeon. The skull was gone. There