by S Williams
‘Daisy–’
‘The door wasn’t just locked.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It was bolted as well. I know you saw that.’
Jay blinked. Here it was. The black hole at the centre of the morning. The thing they hadn’t mentioned.
‘Yes.’ Jay took a slow drag of her cigarette. ‘What do you think that means?’
When Daisy answered her voice was almost a whisper. Like she was hiding from it. ‘Maybe there was no intruder.’
This, Jay understood, was the thing that was scaring her friend. More frightening than having her flat creeped. Than someone leaving a phone in her living room with a picture of a strange tattoo on its screen. More than whatever made her throw the phone at the wall. ‘Maybe it was me and I’ve forgotten. I’ve been having blackouts recently…’
Jay reached out and placed her hand on top of Daisy’s. ‘Daisy, the meds you take. I know you feel you can’t go to legit doctors, but buying them from the street is no good. Who knows what’s in them? It wouldn’t surprise me if they didn’t fuck-up your short-term memory.’
‘But what if it’s more than that? It’s not just that I zone out, Jay. There’s whole chunks of time I can’t remember! What if I’m… I don’t know. Sleepwalking or something?’
Jay laughed. ‘I think if you were zombie-ing all over Leeds, someone would have noticed you!’
Daisy nodded but Jay wondered. She remembered all the times she’d knocked on Daisy’s door and got no answer. At the time she’d always put it down to Daisy not wanting to see anyone. The woman was a war zone to herself. She could only take a certain amount of time around other people before she shut down. But maybe it was more than that? Jay remembered reading something about fugues; the state when people do things. Go for walks, even drive cars, and then have no recollection of doing them.
‘Look, Daisy.’ Jay tightened her grip on the woman’s arm then waited until Daisy turned and looked at her.
‘The phone was real. Is real. And so was the photograph of the tattoo. I saw it. It had been downloaded. It hadn’t just been photographed from the device. So even if you had been out taking pictures in your sleep,’ she tried for a smile, ‘which by the way is a non-starter cos you couldn’t operate a smartphone to save your life…’
Daisy smiled wanly.
‘…then that wasn’t it. Somebody sent that as an attachment. It didn’t download until you answered the phone. And you only answered the phone just before I came, yes?’
‘Yes,’ said Daisy in a small voice. ‘But the bolts…’
‘Fuck the bolts. Maybe the bolt-fairy did them. Let’s leave the bolts for now. The only thing I’ve had to eat today is coffee and cigarettes. I’m starving!’
She stood and offered her hand. After a moment’s hesitation, Daisy grasped it. Jay hauled her to her feet.
‘Let’s go and get some food.’
‘Okay,’ said Daisy. ‘What shall we get?’
‘We’ll go straight for the important food groups and get chocolate,’ said Jay firmly, then licked her lips. ‘And possibly some form of marshmallow.’
19
Canal
* * *
Daisy Daisy Daisy.
Sometimes when I watch you it breaks my heart. Really. I can feel it folding and refolding inside of me, creasing until it just falls apart. Disintegrates like paper in water. Seeing you sitting there, with the weak sun washing your face, with your reflection rippling on the canal like you’re not real. I want to remake you into what you could have been. Reshape you into what you should have been. What you will be.
I watch you with the policewoman and pretend that you aren’t what you are. I make up whole alternative histories for you.
Like a childhood.
Like maybe you grew up with loving parents in some suburb somewhere. Ate fish fingers with ketchup sandwiches. Had posters in your room and joss sticks and dreamt of boys or girls and walked to school with your satchel on your back.
Gave away your virginity as a promise kept to yourself, rather than a price ripped.
I try to imagine all these things, but I can’t.
Because I know they’re not true.
Because I know you, Daisy.
I know everything about you.
Of course I do.
20
September
‘Thank you for agreeing to see me. I know what you’ve been through must have been a gruelling experience.’
Beata and the detective were sitting in a café near the bus station. The woman had approached Beata as she was on her way home, showing her ID and explaining that she had some follow-up questions about the dead man.
‘I don’t know how I can help. I’ve already told the officer who interviewed me everything I can remember.’
Beata shivered and took a sip of her hot chocolate. Outside the café, buses arrived and left, heading or returning from the rugged countryside that surrounded the city.
‘It was so awful. That poor man.’
‘And you didn’t touch anything?’ prompted the woman.
‘No. Yes. I touched his arm to see if he was okay. I was concerned because I couldn’t smell urine.’
‘Urine?’ The woman, Detective Slane, raised an eyebrow.
‘I saw a patch of wet around him and thought it must be urine. You know how it is. Drinking to stay warm and then falling asleep.’ Beata shrugged.
Slane nodded, her hands clasped around her own cup of coffee.
‘Yes. Sadly the homeless situation is getting out of hand. They seem to drift here from all over.’
‘God knows why. It’s so bloody cold here! You’d think they’d have the sense to be homeless somewhere warm.’
Slane looked at her curiously. ‘You don’t like Leeds?’
‘Oh, Leeds is nice enough. It’s just where it is that’s so bloody awful. It always rains! And it’s not like normal rain in a normal country. It just seems to go right through your clothes like you are naked!’
Slane laughed, nodding. Beata felt herself warming to her.
‘I know what you mean. I’m from the south of England. When I first came here I couldn’t believe how cold it was. And how grimy the houses were. Like someone had forgotten to wash them a hundred years ago and then gave up.’
‘Tell me about it! The stone on my flat looks like it’s been eaten away by moths.’
‘Beata, after what you experienced, it’s common to feel…’ the woman seemed to be searching for the right words. ‘A little shaky. Sometimes days or even weeks later. As the full impact of what you’ve been through hits. This is also the time when memories, little details, come back into the mind that might have been hidden in the moment. Tell me, are you getting some support? Your boyfriend, perhaps?’
Beata stared at the woman. She thought about her boyfriend, and what he wanted to do to her. What he wanted his friends to do to her so he could earn some money. ‘No help, No. I’m fine as I am.’
The woman clearly did not believe her but said nothing. Instead, she took out her tablet and began swiping. ‘I understand from your interview that you said there was no one near the body when you found it?’
‘That’s right. I’d gone into an arcade for some shelter. When I saw the man, at least I thought it was a man, he looked so sad. He had this little tin cup by his hand. I remember thinking that he needed someone to change his luck, like me. So I decided to give a few pounds.’
‘Very kind.’ Slane smiled. ‘And as you crossed over to him you didn’t see anybody? Hear something, maybe?’
Beata shook her head. ‘No, nothing.’
Slane nodded. ‘The thing is, Beata, that according to the police report; from the first officers on scene and confirmed from the attending medical officer, the man could only just have died when you found him.’
Beata’s eyes widened in shock. So this was why the woman was here.
‘I swear I didn’t do anything! I just work–’
‘N
o, Beata, I’m sorry! You misunderstand, I’m not accusing you.’ Slane reached over and touched her hand briefly. ‘Far from it. We do not suspect you of anything other than being a decent citizen. What I’m saying is the murder was so fresh it seems possible that you might have seen the killer.’
Beata relaxed. ‘As I said, the street was empty. The rain–’
‘This is CCTV footage of the route you took from your previous job to the one you were heading for. Do you recognise it?’
Slane spun her tablet around for Beata to look at. She leant forward and saw herself hurrying past the Grand theatre. The camera was static so she wasn’t in the shot for long.
‘Hey, that’s me!’ she exclaimed, then looked up at the detective. ‘The other officer, the one who interviewed me, never showed me this.’
Slane nodded.
‘There have been more developments since your statement, Beata. The identity of the homeless man has been ascertained, and the whole investigation has gone up a notch.’
Beata was intrigued. ‘Who was he?’
Slane shook her head and tapped the computer tablet. ‘I’m afraid I’m not allowed to tell you that. Suffice to say that it impelled us to look again at all the information streams we could. See here where the Uber passes you?’
Beata nodded, watching herself as a car stuttered past her on the screen in black and white. It was a different shot, from a different camera. Beata guessed that the whole city must be wired. She’d read somewhere that, after China, the UK was the most surveilled country in the world.
‘We’ve tracked him and ruled him out. The same with some street cleaners and a prostitute. We haven’t been able to find the clubbers, but by the way they were swaying as they walked we doubt that they were involved.’
As Slane talked she brought up various camera shots of Beata’s journey. It was odd to think how much of her life had been archived without her knowing.
‘In fact, the only person we failed to track down was the jogger who nearly ran you over,’ said Slane mildly.
Beata remembered. There had been the youth in the hoodie and tracksuit. She had had to step off the curb to allow them to pass. As if on cue the incident repeated itself on Slane’s tablet. Beata watched as, in starts and stutters, the jogger ran past her.
She swallowed as she felt a flutter of fear. ‘You think that she’s it? She’s the killer?’
Slane said nothing, pausing the shot on the tablet. The jogger’s face couldn’t be seen from the angle of the camera. ‘Let’s just say that they are a person of interest.’
‘She,’ corrected Beata, staring at the still. ‘It was a woman. Maybe thirty-five.’
‘That’s excellent, Beata,’ said Slane, a twist of excitement in her voice. ‘Are you sure? From the footage, it seems that you barely had time to view her.’
‘I’m sure,’ said Beata, nodding vigorously. ‘I’m very good at faces. It was definitely a young woman. I thought she must be a student or something.’
Slane nodded, then reached into her jacket. She removed a photograph and showed it to Beata.
‘Is this the woman, Beata? Is this the woman you saw?’
Beata looked at the photograph and swallowed. The slip of fear she had felt became a slow creep, numbing her. She nodded.
Slane looked at her a moment, her features unreadable, then put the photograph back in her pocket.
‘Then I’m afraid, Beata, you are in terrible danger. So much so, in fact, that I might have to move you to a safe area, out of Leeds.’
21
23rd October
‘What’s the session this afternoon? CBT? Place-solidity? What to store in the extra head?’
Jay and Daisy were sat in the churchyard off Briggate, eating chocolates from Charbonnel et Walker. The unkempt gravestones had long since lost the names of those buried beneath them and all the drunks were asleep against the church wall, steaming gently in the mid-morning sun. Jay thought they looked like statues, before they became stone. Sad and decaying, but in some odd way permanent and life-affirming. They always seemed to find some brightness in the day.
‘CBT,’ said Daisy. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. A way of observing and cataloguing that allowed a person to break down their problems so they were easily manageable.
Jay thought Daisy might be a little beyond what CBT could do.
‘Great,’ she said through a mouthful of chocolate. ‘At least it’s not the one that makes you conjure the things that worry you, then make you bury them in a happy place.’
‘You don’t like that one?’
‘I like the burying bit. It’s the happy place that freaks me.’
‘Finland,’ said Daisy promptly.
Jay raised her eyebrows.
‘Finland?’
‘Happiest place on earth.’
Jay snorted, accidentally swallowing a piece of nut. ‘According to who? The Finnish?’ she spluttered.
‘Followed by Denmark and Norway. All the cold places, mainly.’
‘Makes sense,’ said Jay, getting herself under control. ‘Less insects. Less sand.’
‘You don’t like beaches?’
Jay snuck another chocolate. ‘Oh I like beaches, fair enough. Windswept and wild with some pre-Raphaelite lady walking towards me with lust in her eyes.’
Daisy blushed, and Jay smiled.
‘Don’t worry, I’m not painting you in that picture. What I don’t like is people all hot and oily, like chips ready for eating. All those summer holidays sitting on the beach makes me think of meat markets.’
‘And that’s why you live in Leeds, is it? No need for a bikini?’
Jay put another chocolate in her mouth, smiling around it.
‘Exactly. A tent is the nearest you’d get to a bikini round here. The next best thing would be Alaska. Is that on the happy chart?’
Jay smiled at Daisy, then felt the smile slip off her face. The girl looked so sad.
‘Daisy, what is it?’
‘That’s what it’s like in my head. Like Alaska. Cold. Sometimes it’s dark for months. Sometimes I wake up tired like I haven’t been to sleep. By the time it gets to the afternoon I’m dead. Sometimes I dream when I’m awake.’
Jay didn’t know what to say. It was the most Daisy had ever shared with her. If she had still been in the mindset of undercover police then it was the sort of thing her bosses would have been delighted with. It showed that Daisy was beginning to trust her.
Or beginning to unravel. Fall apart.
For something to do, Jay offered Daisy a chocolate, proffering the bag.
Daisy held her gaze for a moment, then looked down. She frowned.
‘It’s empty,’ she said.
Jay looked. She was right. ‘Ah. I wonder how that happened?’
‘I didn’t even get one!’
Jay nodded sadly. ‘All gone.’
‘And who do you think ate them all?’
‘Well,’ Jay mused, ‘we are next to a church. Do you think that perhaps Jesus ate them?’
22
October
Beata glanced at the church on Rider Street, taking the path that skirted through its grounds, her suitcase pulling at her arm. It was the shortest route to her rendezvous.
She grimaced to herself as she lugged the heavy case. She didn’t think it looked like a church; not a proper one anyway. There was no steeple for a start. And it had a security guard. What sort of church had a security guard, for God’s sake?
A community church, that’s what they called it.
Not like home in Poland. You knew you were in a church there.
Not that Beata went to church. Not since she was a little girl.
Beata shivered as a bitter wind came around the corner and stabbed straight through her coat.
Bloody Leeds. She was glad she was leaving. The only reason she hadn’t left already was she couldn’t work out how to get her money without her shitty boyfriend finding out, but the woman – the detective – said she’d
sort all that out.
Beata gathered her coat a little tighter around herself and walked across the car park towards the road. She had covered her hair with a scarf by way of disguise. She didn’t expect her boyfriend to follow her but she wanted to be careful. Lately, he had been even more possessive than before. First, when she had found the murdered homeless man, her boyfriend had been delighted. He thought he might be able to sell her story. Beata fumed at the memory. It was her story! She’d found the body. If there was any money to be made it should be hers. But then he had started getting paranoid. Saying they were being watched. Saying that maybe they should go back to Poland.
Bloody idiot. It was all that Leeds skunk he smoked. Or all the vodka he drank or the bloody conspiracy theory documentaries he watched on YouTube.
Beata smiled to herself as she crossed over the road.
Although he was right, in a way. They probably were being watched. The woman said that she’d keep an eye on her, just in case. She said that as she’d practically witnessed the murder she might be in danger.
Which is why she was getting protection. Why she was slipping away in the middle of the night.
As she crested the hill she could see the high rise of the office buildings on the other side of Leeds, up near the university. In the night sky, they glittered like a future that would never quite happen. Cranes were festooned with twinkly lightings, as if metal Christmas trees. Beata paused to look at them. Felt the wind skimming the lines on her face, and gathering in the folds of her scarf. Felt a shiver of fear as the wind dropped, and a stillness came over the city.
She hurried on, lurching slightly sideways because of the weight of the case. She glanced at her watch. She was meeting one of the woman’s detectives in five minutes, on the pedestrian bridge that spanned the A64; the motorway that cut through Leeds like a concrete river. Even at this time of night, she could hear it, with its constant stream of traffic. Where was everyone going, even so late, she wondered, then stopped wondering.