Her little finger hit the delete key. Delete. Delete.
Her mobile phone buzzed and vibrated on the desk next to her computer, and she snatched it up.
“Mrs. Crowley, it’s Rodney Bellach.”
“Rodney,” said Rachel. “Do you have good news for me?”
“Well. Not . . . Well, I just wanted to let you know that I’ve given the tape to a good mate at the Homicide Squad,” said Rodney. He sounded stilted, as if he’d carefully scripted his remarks before he picked up the phone. “So it’s absolutely in the right hands.”
“That’s good,” said Rachel. “That’s a start! They’ll reopen the case!”
“Well, Mrs. Crowley, the thing is, Janie’s case isn’t closed,” said Rodney. “It’s still open. When the coroner returns an open finding—as they did with Janie, as you know—well, it stays open. So what I’m saying is the boys will take a look at the tape. They’ll certainly look at it.”
“And they’ll interview Connor again,” said Rachel. She pressed the phone hard against her ear.
“I guess that’s a possibility,” said Rodney. “But please don’t get your hopes up too high, Mrs. Crowley. Please don’t.”
The disappointment felt personal, as if she were being told she’d failed some test. She wasn’t good enough. She’d failed to help her daughter. She’d failed her again.
“But look, that’s just my opinion. The new guys are younger and smarter than me. Someone from the Homicide Squad will call you this week and let you know what they think.”
As she put down the phone and returned to the computer, Rachel’s eyes blurred. She realized she’d had a warm sense of anticipation all day, as if finding the tape was going to set into motion a series of events that would lead to something wonderful, almost as if she’d thought that the tape was going to bring Janie back. An infantile part of her mind had never accepted that this could truly happen, that your daughter could be murdered. Surely one day some respectable authority figure would take charge and put it right. Maybe God was the reasonable, respectable figure she’d always assumed was going to step in. Could she really have been that deluded? Even subconsciously?
God didn’t care. God couldn’t care less. God gave Connor Whitby free will, and Connor used that free will to strangle Janie.
Rachel pushed her chair back from her desk and looked out the window at the school yard. She had a bird’s-eye view from up here and could see everything that was going on. It was nearly school pickup time. Parents were scattered about the place: little groups of mums deep in conversation, the occasional father lurking in the background, checking his e-mail on his mobile phone. She watched one of the fathers quickly step aside for someone in a wheelchair. It was Lucy O’Leary. Her daughter, Tess, was pushing the chair. As Rachel watched, Tess bent down to hear something that her mother said, then threw back her head and laughed. There was something quietly subversive about those two.
You could become friends with your grown-up daughter in a way that didn’t seem possible with your grown-up son. That was what Connor took away from Rachel: all the future relationships she could have had with Janie.
I am not the first mother to lose a child, Rachel kept telling herself that first year. I am not the first. I will not be the last.
It made no difference, of course.
The buzzer went for the end of the school day, and seconds later the children tumbled out of their classrooms. There was that familiar afternoon babble of childish voices: laughing, shouting, crying. Rachel saw Lucy O’Leary’s grandson run to his mother and grandmother. He nearly tripped because he was using both hands to awkwardly carry a giant cardboard construction covered in aluminum foil. Tess bent down next to her mother’s wheelchair, and all three of them examined whatever it was—a spaceship, perhaps? No doubt it was Trudy McDuff’s doing. Forget the syllabus. If Trudy decided Year 1 was making spaceships that day, so it would be. Lauren and Rob were going to end up staying in New York. Jacob would have an American accent. He’d eat pancakes for breakfast. Rachel would never see him run out of his school carrying something made out of cardboard and aluminum foil. The police wouldn’t do anything with the videotape. They’d put it on file. They probably didn’t even have a VCR to watch it on.