The Verdict

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The Verdict Page 3

by Olivia Isaac-Henry


  ‘Sometimes I choose to stay out of sight,’ he says.

  Considering the stench of weed, he’s remarkably lucid.

  ‘Do you have it?’ I ask.

  ‘If you’ve got the money.’

  I pull the money from my bra, which raises a smile from Garrick. After I count the twenties into his hand, he raises the notes to his mouth, kisses them, leers at me and says, ‘I’ll treasure these.’

  I step back, having visions of being dragged into the house.

  ‘I’ve brought the exact money and nothing more,’ I say.

  Garrick looks amused.

  ‘No need to worry. I never harm paying clients – wouldn’t stay in business if I did.’

  He disappears into the house and returns only a few seconds later with the phone. It’s an old Samsung Galaxy, badly scuffed, but I’m hardly going to have it on display.

  ‘I’ve turned the Wi-Fi off for you – no point to an untraceable phone if all your searches come up through your router. You’ll need to set a PIN. And there’s twenty pounds on it. If you want more, go to FoneFirst down the road. They’re very discreet.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I say.

  ‘Anything else, just ask.’

  I’m about to turn away, hoping to God I’m never this desperate again, when I have a thought.

  ‘You know how you said you keep an eye out for people in the area?’

  ‘Necessity of the trade,’ he says.

  ‘You’ve not seen anyone new around?’

  ‘There’s always someone new.’

  ‘I think a man is following me.’

  He leans back on the wall and lights a spliff.

  ‘Is that so?’ he says.

  ‘Have you seen anyone?’

  ‘That first time you spoke to me a fella was watching. Just being nosy, I think. Not police – I can always spot them.’

  ‘Can you describe him?’

  ‘He didn’t come close enough to have a good look. All I noticed was that he was older, had grey hair and wore a dark jacket.’

  ‘A padded jacket?’

  ‘Couldn’t say.’

  His eyes have moved beyond me, looking for his next trade.

  I race back to the office and head straight for the toilet and lock the door. I take out Garrick’s phone and open the web browser. Body found on North Downs – is the headline on the BBC South East webpage. Underneath is a video link. I turn the phone’s volume to low and press play. The familiar rolling landscape comes into view. The journalist is wearing a green wax jacket and corduroy trousers, as if he were interrupting walking his gun dogs to give this report. Behind him stands a beech copse and behind that, a radio mast on a distant hill. Through the trees white tents are visible and people of indeterminate gender move about in plastics suits.

  A body was discovered today by a student from the Environmental Science Faculty at the University of Surrey.

  The journalist’s voice takes on a false gravitas. He wants to be the next John Simpson, reporting on international conflicts, not bypass protests and increased drunkenness in the town centre.

  Police have confirmed that the remains are human. There’s been no comment on the cause of death, but it has been confirmed that it is being treated as suspicious.

  Police refuse to speculate on whether this could be Hayley Walsh – the teenager who went missing in Crawley three weeks ago.

  The shot changes to a man in late middle age, wearing a grey suit. At the bottom of the screen the caption reads: Detective Inspector Frederick Warren.

  DI: We’re making inquiries into all missing people in the area.

  Reporter: Is this a recent death?

  DI: We’re not jumping to any conclusions right now.

  Cut back to the reporter standing in front of the copse.

  And that’s all we have to tell you at the moment. We’ll be keeping you up to date as and when we have more information.

  The clip ends.

  I remember that hill. It’s a little different now, perhaps the beeches have grown, but the copse stands on the route we used to take to the pub. On cloudy nights the only light was the streetlamps from the town reflecting against the sky – a lonely, dark, isolated spot.

  I watch two more clips from different sites. Their reports are much the same. No clue as to the identity. But on a local newspaper site, one word differs from all the other reports.

  It’s believed the remains indicate a violent death.

  Violent. A lonely, violent death.

  Someone bangs on the door.

  ‘You’ve been in there ages. Are you ill?’ Miranda’s voice.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  I leave the cubicle and scuttle back to my desk. Jonathan’s back and, fortunately, hasn’t registered my absence.

  I shift in my chair and look at the clock on the wall. The hands appear to be ticking backwards. I really have to go but Jonathan expects long hours. Miraculously, at six o’clock, Miranda becomes my unlikely saviour.

  ‘Anyone fancy a drink? I’m going to the Huntsman.’

  She pronounces it ‘Huntsthman’. Jonathan looks up.

  ‘I’ve been here till ten, the last two nights,’ Miranda says defensively.

  I expect Jonathan to roll his eyes, but he says, ‘Could do with a drink myself.’

  I never socialise with work. Instead, I stay late to create elaborate charts that will go unread, and no one presses me to join their trip to the pub. I wait for the office to empty before pulling on my coat.

  The sky’s a smudgy grey, and the drizzle diffuses what little light there is into a yellow haze. To the left I can see the fuzzy profile of two smokers standing outside the Huntsman. One of them looks like Paulo, though it’s impossible to be sure through the mist, and I turn in the opposite direction, towards the Tube.

  A man stares out of the Sensuous Bean’s window. He lowers his head to his coffee cup as I pass. A padded jacket is thrown over the arm of his chair. Is it the same man as earlier, the one Garrick saw, or am I being paranoid?

  I reach the entrance to the Tube and I’m about to pull out my Oyster card when my phone bleeps in my pocket.

  The unknown number.

  IT’S HIM.

  Chapter 6

  1994 – Archway, London

  Two hours after leaving Genevieve and Downsview Villa, Julia arrived at Archway Underground station, North London. The surrounding streets, noisy and litter-strewn, stood in contrast to the bourgeois avenues of Guildford. Pearl shared the same draughty house with the same seven people as in her final year at university. Despite all having jobs now, they continued to live off junk food and alcohol, as evidenced by the polystyrene cartons and beer bottles scattered about the place. It was a long way from the immaculate rooms of Downsview Villa, where the carpets might be dated, but at least they weren’t covered in fag burns and stained with chilli sauce. Strangely, some part of Julia envied Pearl’s overspilling bin and rattling windows. It symbolised city living, youth, vibrancy and independence. In going to Guildford, she couldn’t help thinking she’d swapped one dull backwater for another, with a different middle-aged woman hovering over her instead of Audrey.

  Audrey, ever present and ever critical – Julia never thought of her as ‘Mum’. ‘Mum’ was used by daughters capable of pleasing. Whose mothers didn’t tell them being dumped by their boyfriend was their own fault, who didn’t always take the side of step-siblings over flesh and blood, because wasn’t it their father, not hers, paying for everything? Why was she so difficult and contrary? Why did she have to study computer science instead of something feminine, French perhaps? Couldn’t she have nice friends instead of misfits like Pearl and Andre? No, in her mind, Audrey would never be ‘Mum’.

  A housemate let Julia in, and she made her way up to the room on the top floor, where Andre was already sprawled on the bed, a bottle of Holsten Pils in his hand. Pearl was sitting in front of the mirror, getting ready for their night out. She had shaken off the remains of parochial teenage
misfit in the last couple of years and now smoked roll-ups and drank German lager, instead of the Consulate menthol and Diamond White she’d preferred in sixth form. Her hair had changed from a short, jet-black crop to a choppy, dirty-blonde shoulder-length bob.

  ‘We used to call that cut a shag,’ Audrey said when she first saw it.

  Pearl had turned to Julia and smirked.

  ‘Well, it does get me laid,’ she’d said.

  Today, Pearl was wearing a powder blue baby doll dress and enormous black boots. She leant towards the glass to smudge her eyeliner and muss her hair. An enviable look Julia couldn’t pull off. Dishevelled, she looked more like a librarian gone to seed than a hard-partying rock chick. Half of her longed to be forty, when the tailored dresses and slender-heeled shoes, which actually suited her, would be more acceptable. As it was, she had twisted her hair into two long plaits and wore a loose vest top, jeans and new blue suede Converse, and hoped a little of Pearl’s don’t-give-a-fuck cool rubbed off on her.

  ‘I want to meet her,’ Pearl said, when Julia told her about Genevieve’s eccentricities.

  ‘Me too,’ Andre said. ‘She sounds like a hippy version of Audrey.’

  ‘Please don’t compare that woman to my mother. At least not in front of her. Can you imagine Audrey in a turban?’

  ‘She’d look adorable,’ Andre cooed.

  ‘She’d have an aneurism,’ Julia said.

  ‘Who else is going to be living there – any guys?’ Pearl asked.

  ‘Someone called Alan, but he wasn’t in.’

  ‘A pity. Never date someone you’re sharing with, but he might have friends.’

  ‘I’m not looking,’ Julia said.

  ‘Well, you should be.’

  ‘Pearl’s gone all Cupid’s arrow because she’s got some news herself, haven’t you, Pearlie?’ Andre said.

  ‘No,’ she said and scowled.

  ‘What?’ Julia said.

  ‘Nothing,’ Pearl said.

  ‘Are you seeing someone?’ Julia asked.

  Pearl and Andre glanced at each other.

  ‘Not exactly,’ Pearl said.

  ‘He’s called Rudi,’ Andre said. ‘They’re inseparable.’

  ‘Not inseparable. I’m not with him now, am I?’

  Pearl smeared lipstick across her mouth, with no attempt to stay inside the lip line.

  ‘You see him most nights,’ Andre added.

  Julia felt suddenly jealous that Andre knew all about Rudi and she didn’t. She and Pearl had always been the closest of the trio, perhaps because they were both girls, or perhaps because Pearl was an only child, and Julia had been too, until the age of nine, whereas Andre was one of four. Now, it seemed, their physical distance had resulted in an emotional one. Pearl used to tell her everything. It would get back that way, once Julia moved nearer.

  ‘How long has it been with this guy, Pearl?’ Julia asked.

  ‘Not sure.’

  ‘Two months,’ Andre said. ‘She’s only pretending not to remember.’

  ‘Two months!’ Julia said. ‘That’s a marriage for you, isn’t it, Pearl?’

  Andre laughed, and Julia was about to, when she checked herself. Although Pearl was smiling, something in her expression made Julia think she’d been offended.

  ‘You really like him, don’t you?’ Julia said.

  Andre stopped laughing too. ‘Do you?’ he asked.

  Pearl shrugged and turned back to the mirror without replying. Andre threw Julia a confused look.

  ‘What is it?’ she mouthed.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Andre mouthed back.

  ‘Er … guys, I can see you in the mirror,’ Pearl said.

  ‘So, what’s going on, Pearl?’ Julia asked.

  ‘I didn’t want to say anything. It’s really bad timing, me getting a boyfriend so soon after you and Christian split up. I didn’t want to upset you.’

  Julia felt sick. She couldn’t lose Pearl to coupledom. Not just now.

  ‘Nothing’s going to change,’ Pearl said. ‘We didn’t stop hanging out together because of Christian.’

  That was different, Julia wanted to say. They still lived with their parents and Christian used to come out as part of their group.

  ‘No one would ever put you three together as friends,’ he’d said.

  He was right. At school, their bond had been that none of them fitted in. Before Pearl was effortlessly cool and desirable, she had been weird-looking. Tall and spidery thin, with hands and feet too large for even her height, her domed forehead, large wide-set eyes, narrow chin and small mouth gave her an odd and unnerving appearance. Craig Carter, the school bully, said she looked like an alien. ‘E.T.’, he had called her, and it stuck.

  Only at sixteen did her features start to make sense – ethereal rather than alien, her figure willowy not lanky. Jolie laide, Audrey called it, that peculiar, off-beat beauty, androgynous and without symmetry, beloved of avant-garde fashion shoots.

  Andre always preferred hanging out with girls and was taunted for being a ‘poofter’ long before he realised he was, in fact, gay. At which point, he embraced his sexuality, modelled his clothing on Quentin Crisp and any boy taunting him was met with, ‘You weren’t saying that in the bushes last Saturday night, were you, darlin’?’

  Unlike her two friends, Julia felt she had yet to blossom. Awkward and shy changed to slightly less awkward and slightly less shy.

  ‘We’ll find you someone tonight,’ Pearl said. ‘Or I’ll introduce you to one of Rudi’s friends. We could go on double dates.’

  ‘I told you, I’m not interested,’ Julia said.

  ‘Well, whatever, nothing’s going to change. When are you moving to this new place?’ Pearl asked.

  ‘The beginning of June,’ Julia said.

  ‘Yay! The old gang back together every weekend,’ Andre said. ‘And without Craig Carter hanging around.’

  Julia looked at Pearl. Would she be with Rudi every weekend? She tested the water.

  ‘I can’t crash at Pearl’s all the time.’

  ‘Of course, you can,’ Pearl said.

  ‘And if not, you can stay at mine,’ Andre offered.

  Andre shared a dank basement flat in Finsbury Park. Julia had once come across a slug on the bathroom floor.

  ‘She’s staying at mine, aren’t you, Jules?’ Pearl said.

  She really did love Pearl.

  Chapter 7

  2017 – Archway, London

  It’s nearly seven o’clock and the Tube is still busy when I get off the Northern Line at Archway station. My thin jacket’s insufficient against the chill. I pull it tight around me and turn the collar up, while casting an envious eye over the woman in front of me wrapped in a cashmere scarf.

  I loiter at the exit and check no one’s followed me. Perhaps Audrey was right, I shouldn’t have moved back to this area. Too many memories. It’s only two streets down from the house I shared when I first came to London. The area’s supposed to be gentrifying, which just means the prices have gone up, otherwise it’s not changed since I left, with Turkish kebab houses, Greek cafés and Irish pubs. Lorries spew their fumes into the cold night air as they rumble up the A1 towards Suicide Bridge, a soon to be obsolete sobriquet for the vast iron structure that spans the Great North Road, as an anti-jumping fence is to be erected.

  After a couple of minutes I’m shivering and, certain no one has followed me onto the Tube, I head home. Even if my pursuer is imaginary, the texts are real. Turning into my road, I half expect to see a police car, but the street is empty, apart from a few people like me, hurrying to get home, out of the cold and dark.

  My flat is on the top two floors of a tall Victorian property. The lounge and kitchen are on the lower floor, the bedroom and bathroom in the attic. I can only afford it because it belongs to friends of Andre, who had nightmare tenants and were willing to take a considerably lower rent from someone who didn’t get raided by the police for growing cannabis. There are still holes in the ceilin
g where they hung the lights.

  Once back inside, I fetch a half-empty bottle of Californian white wine from the back of the fridge. In the local saver shop you can buy it for £3.49. Chilled to nearly freezing, it has no taste.

  I sit at the kitchen table, unscrew the cap, fill my glass and stare out of the window at the blurred City skyline in the distance. I finish it quickly and pour another. Many years ago, I set myself a limit, no more than two glasses of wine on a work night. This rule, I’ve broken three times: when my husband discovered my infidelity; when my son called me a whore; and again today, when an unidentified body of someone who died a violent death is discovered on the Downs outside Guildford.

  IT’S HIM.

  Not her, not the missing schoolgirl, Hayley Walsh – him.

  The landline rings. My head’s a little fuzzy from the wine. I go to the lounge, lift the receiver and wait for a low voice, to repeat the menace of the text.

  ‘Hello, darling.’

  It’s Audrey. I should have known. She’s the only person who calls me on the landline.

  ‘Hi, Mum.’

  ‘How are things with you?’ she asks.

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘You don’t sound fine.’

  ‘You always say that,’ I reply.

  ‘I can’t help worrying about you, Julia. Neither can your father.’ Robert Hathersley is not my father. ‘I know you made your bed, as they say, but it doesn’t mean I don’t care.’

  I ignore the implied criticism.

  ‘Did you ring for a reason?’

  ‘Do I need a reason to ring my daughter?’

  I wait.

  ‘I spoke to your husband today. Am I still allowed to call him that?’ she says.

  ‘How did he seem?’ I ask.

  ‘He’s not happy.’

  ‘But did he sound upset, anxious?’

  ‘I imagine he’s all of those things after the way you’ve treated him.’

  My husband could never stand my mother. Only since our separation have they started having cosy chats together. To him, Audrey’s just another weapon to use against me. Not that she sees it like that.

 

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