As Darkness Falls

14

“Yeah,” Sara said, “Hi. Mary, isn’t it?”

That was a trick as well. It was meant to bother Mary, to make her wonder how Sara knew her name. It was meant to make her realize that Sara knew from the file the police had on her, because knowing that, knowing there was a file, usually made people very uncomfortable.

That didn’t really work either, though. Mary just nodded, as if it was obvious that Sara would know her name. And it was obvious, Sara thought. Of course Sara knew her girlfriend’s name. Mary probably assumed Zoe had told her.

She should stop being clever, Sara thought to herself, and just deliver Zoe’s message. But part of her didn’t want to just do anything.

Part of her was too furious to be sensible.

Sara was angry. She wanted to hurt this woman. To upset Mary. To make her realise what an awful, horrible person she was. Sara had never wanted to hurt anybody as much as she did this family, and she had been around some nasty crimes before. She’d never wanted to hurt someone just for being a bystander to wrongdoing, but the more she thought about it, the more she realised that hurting Mary was exactly what she wanted. It wasn’t about justice or punishment or any of those things. It was much simpler. Just hurt. To cause pain. To punch Mary in her nervous face, to king-hit her over onto the ground, and then kick her and kick her until she wept and begged and bled onto her neatly trimmed lawn.

Sara took a slow breath, and tried to make herself calm down. It bothered her a little how angry she was, and how violent this situation was making her thoughts. She was still in control of herself, easily in control of herself, but she could equally easily not be, if she decided to let that happen.

She didn’t want to be angry, though, not now. She wanted to be there for Zoe, and do what Zoe needed her to do, and not to just lose her temper over nothing, for the sake of her own feelings, because somehow, by doing that, she would be letting Zoe down.

Sara made herself relax. Zoe had wanted her to be nice, so Sara was going to be nice. Nice, but also quietly hostile, while Zoe was out of earshot, in the car.

“We’re going to take off for a while and come back later,” Sara said. She made it a statement on purpose. She wasn’t asking Mary if that was all right, she was just telling Mary what was going to happen.

Mary decided it was a discussion anyway. “Oh,” she said, seeming surprised. “Well, now would be better.”

“Zoe’s a bit upset,” Sara said. “She’d rather to this later.”

“But everyone is here now.”

“I’m sure you can all wait.”

“Robert went away, like she asked.”

Robert was Zoe’s father. Sara almost pointed out that it wasn’t that Zoe had asked him to, it was that there was a court order and a law saying he couldn’t be in the same place as Zoe, ever again.

She bit that back. “Doesn’t he have a phone?” she said instead.

“Well, I think so,” Mary said.

“So ring him and tell him not to come back yet.”

Mary looked at Sara for a while, as if she didn’t want to make a decision like that, and Sara suddenly wondered if there was other abuse going on that the initial investigation had missed. She stood there for a moment, wondering. All her training said she ought to follow up on that thought. She ought to befriend Mary, and try and find out more. She ought to, but Mary had done the unforgivable, to someone Sara loved, so Sara wasn’t especially concerned about Mary’s wellbeing.

In fact, she decided, she would happily let Mary suffer in her own hell rather than inconvenience Zoe for another second.

Sara wasn’t going to care about Mary and her problems.

“We’ll be back later,” Sara said. “Zoe doesn’t want to do this now. I’d suggest you make sure your husband isn’t on the property when we get back or he’ll be in breach of his supervision order and I’ll arrest him myself.”

Sara stood there for a moment, letting Mary think about that. She waited long enough for Mary to realize all the implications. That’s right, you horrible old cow, Sara thought. You don’t quite know who I am, but I’m someone who can being all those problems back into your life if you don’t behave.

It wasn’t true, of course. Sara couldn’t actually arrest anyone out of state, and it wasn’t completely clear that Robert would be a breach of the supervision order either, since Zoe would be going to his place of residence, but Mary wouldn’t know either of those things. Robert would probably know, because criminals always ended up knowing that kind of thing in exact, precise detail, but Robert would also know that Sara could make a lot of trouble for him in a lot of other ways, without needing to be legally correct about this particular one. And Sara would make trouble, if anything went wrong, unless Zoe told her very clearly not to. So the threat was a threat even if it wasn’t actually a threat, and Mary seemed to accept that.

Mary nodded.

Sara decided that was enough. “Nice to meet you,” she said, and then didn’t know why she had. It hadn’t been nice at all. She turned around, and started walking back to the car. Then she remembered, and stopped, after just a few steps, and turned back towards Mary. “Oh yeah,” she said. “Zoe asked me to say sorry for nuisance too. For coming here and then leaving again without coming inside.”

Mary didn’t answer. Sara waited for a moment, in case Mary did, but Mary was just standing there silently, so Sara went over to the car and got inside.

“Is everything okay?” Zoe said.

“It seemed fine,” Sara said. “We’ll come back later, when you’re ready.”

“What were you talking about.”

“Nothing much. Just organising it.”

Zoe was still hugging herself, still tense, but she smiled a little. “Thank you.”

“No worries,” Sara said, and started the car. “Where should I go?”

Zoe didn’t answer, and Mary was still watching them, so Sara just drove off.

Sara drove away, and Mary stood there and watched them go, and Zoe still didn’t look at Mary as they did. She just stared straight ahead, out of the windscreen, for all the world as if Mary wasn’t there.