Free What She Saw by Mark Roberts Page B

understand. You’ve been a wonderful help, a great witness and a brave girl. Don’t think of it as lying, think of it as being tactful.’
    â€˜Tactful?’
    â€˜Mindful of the feelings of others, your mum’s feelings.’
    â€˜You’re not angry with me?’
    â€˜I’m pleased with you.’
    Relief swept through her features and a moment of tenderness overwhelmed Rosen.
    â€˜â€œIt’s important to tell the truth at all times.” That’s what my grandma taught me. Truth.’
    Rosen, who agreed in principle but not always in practice, smiled.
    â€˜Your grandma sounds like a very good woman.’
    â€˜She’s the best. Because she’s dying, I think that’s why I feel so sorry for Thomas’s mum and dad. Do you think he’s going to die?’
    â€˜I’m not a doctor, Macy, I can’t say, but I understand what you mean. Your situation has taught you to empathize with Mr and Mrs Glass, and that’s a really good thing to do, it’s very grown up.’
    She held out a hand and Rosen shook with her. Her fingers were cold and he sat on his fatherly instinct and the words
Put your gloves on
because there was the possibility that she didn’t own a pair.
    â€˜I’ve got to go to Lewisham Library, to pick up some books. Grandma likes me to read to her. I’ve got special permission from Mrs Dodson, who’s head of the library, to get Gran’s books from the grown-ups’ section.’
    He hadn’t noticed the bag on her back.
    â€˜Macy?’
    She looked at him, alert and eager to please.
    â€˜Remember when we were talking this morning, in the cabin? Did you remember that thing that you said you’d blocked out?’
    â€˜It’s trapped.’ She touched her head. ‘In here. It’s been bugging meall day. Soon as I remember, Mr Rosen, I’ll come and see you, straight away, I promise.’
    Rosen watched Macy walk away under the weight of a bag of books, strapped from right shoulder to left hip. He looked at her pitiful offering of carnations and the scorched tarmac where Thomas had been set alight.
    He walked back across Bannerman Square to the graffiti-daubed wall, bracing himself to recreate the horror of Thomas Glass’s experience in the back of a burning car.

21
    4.03 P.M.
    R osen worked backwards from the point where Stevie had lain Thomas down.
    He dipped under the scene-of-crime tape and crouched at the pothole where Thomas had fallen into a puddle. He looked up at the spray-painted aerosol eye.
    The painted eye stared directly back at Rosen. As he moved his head a little to the left, the eye held his gaze.
    He stood up and walked into the charred rectangle where the car had burned, aligned the front and back of the vehicle, and positioned himself in the space next to the back left-hand door. He pictured the rising flames and imagined the complete claustrophobia Thomas must have felt, banging on the window maybe, staring out, desperation mounting.
    Rosen dipped to the height of a child in the back of that car. Through the imaginary flames and rising smoke, he stared directly at the painted eye and the words,
The position of this car, this was no accident
sounded clearly inside his head.
    Bang, bang, bang
, a fist on the window. A door they’d failed to lock. A door that fell open under a watchful, sinister eye.
    He rose to his full height and made his way slowly to the pothole where Thomas had fallen; imagined the mind-bending terror, hisagony; pictured Stevie running towards that place through the sodium-tinted night.
    And his focus came back to the eye on the wall, the complementary black and white, the black of the oval outline, the white inner eye that housed all the details, the sinister pupil with the life-like speck of white light and the spokes linking the circumference of the eye to the centre.
    â€˜DCI Rosen?’
    Snapped from the moment by the sound of a man’s