The Heights

by Louise Candlish

  I don’t mention the chase scene, my cowering behind shelves of cold and flu medication in the Co-op when I should have been engaging this Ratcliffe and learning all that was not so easily gleaned online. No, it is evidence only of my own tendency to overreact.

  Vic zooms in on the image of the investor, a complicated expression passing across his face. Guilt is one component: it’s clear he’s regretting having doubted me. As he closes the screen and hands back the phone, there’s silence between us, trepidation on both our parts as we wonder who will say first what cannot be put off any longer.

  It is me, of course. I led before and I will lead again. ‘What do you think went wrong with our plan, Vic?’

  ‘I have no fucking idea.’ He casts cautious glances in every direction, discreetly raises a finger to his lips. ‘But I do know we shouldn’t say anything with cameras around. Police can lip-read this shit. Can we meet after work, somewhere outside?’

  ‘Of course.’ I get to my feet. ‘Meet me at London Bridge Station at six and I’ll show you where he’s living.’

  Living: the word seems to cause an electric current between us, to connect us simultaneously with the central fact of our new reality.

  The man we arranged to have murdered is still alive.

  Chapter 19

  Never in my worst nightmares – and there were plenty of them – did I think we’d actually have to see Kieran again after he was released. That he would be free to come back to the community he’d devastated and pick up where he left off.

  But this was what he did. And, fate being the cruel mistress she is, I must have been among the first to set eyes on him.

  It was Easter, April 2017, and Justin and I had been to the cinema – one of the few activities I was able to enjoy, thanks to its obliterating impact on my emotions. It was just the two of us, Freya having stayed at home to study for GCSEs, and we’d gone afterwards to the pizza place on the high street. Sawing into my Fiorentina, I became aware that Justin had frozen, almost comically, with his fork halfway to his mouth, transfixed by something he’d seen through the window.

  ‘What is it?’

  He lowered the fork, his eyes opaque, jaw tensed. ‘Over the road. Outside the pub.’

  Following his line of vision, I saw for myself: a man who looked like Kieran, on the pavement outside the Crown, standing at the edge of a group of smokers.

  ‘Is that him?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  Out of nowhere, I had a sore throat, a racing pulse, a terrible light-headedness, as if the mere proximity of Lucas’s killer had infected me with some instant-acting virus. ‘I feel sick.’

  Justin placed a glass of iced water in my hand. ‘Drink this.’

  I was trembling and spilled a little before managing to take a gulp. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the figure across the road. He was thinner than when we’d last seen him, his jeans and sweatshirt too big, and his hair had been clipped short.

  Strangely, once the shock had lifted, the first thought that surfaced was of the night of Freya’s birthday at the sushi place. His face at the window, that gesture of contempt. What would he do this time to signal his hatred, now that so much had passed between us? He’d already made the gesture to end all others. There was nothing left.

  ‘Better?’ Justin had, by now, recovered. ‘I suppose it was only a matter of time, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Why’s he allowed to come back here?’ I whispered.

  ‘There may not have been any other options. Do you know any of the people he’s with?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ How wounding it was that my eyes still searched for Lucas. Perhaps they always would, conditioned from the day of his birth to expect to find him right at the centre of my world. I felt a shiver pass over me as a smiling young blonde woman came into view and perched on the edge of a table close to Kieran. ‘Oh! Is that Jade?’

  ‘I think it is. She must be home for the Easter holidays,’ Justin said.

  I knew from sporadic meetings with Sheridan that Jade was doing well at uni. About to enter her final term and ambitious about a career in marketing, she’d secured an internship with a gaming company on graduation. Dressed in the hugging bodycon style all the girls were wearing these days, she had the same lean, eye-catching looks I remembered from Crete. Her bare legs gleamed white, almost pearlescent, in the pub’s external lights.

  ‘How can she bear to see him, Jus? I don’t understand it.’ My voice shook. ‘And why didn’t Sheridan tell me she was still in touch with him?’

  His eyebrows lifted. ‘She probably doesn’t know. Anyway, Jade might not have planned to meet him, they might have bumped into each other.’

  I took the napkin from my lap and placed it over my abandoned plate. Then I pushed back in my chair with a loud scrape.

  ‘Don’t,’ he said, putting out a restraining hand.

  ‘Don’t what?’

  ‘Go over there. It won’t help and you might even get in trouble.’

  I twisted my wrist from his grip. ‘I’d get in trouble?’

  ‘If he feels harassed, yes. He could make a complaint. He’ll know about the campaign, don’t forget. Everything that went on while he was inside, he’ll have seen it all.’

  Since Lucas’s death, there had been the sense that Justin intended never again to make the mistake he’d made during Lucas’s life, which was to give Kieran the benefit of the doubt. It was an indisputable fact now between us that Kieran was wicked and always had been, and Justin had supported every last sentiment of Lock Up Longer. But it had been easier when Kieran was absent, I supposed, and this gentle resistance in the face of his reappearance shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

  I sank back in my seat and picked up my wine glass.

  After a minute or two, Jade went inside and Kieran remained with a handful of men I didn’t recognize, laughing and chatting with his old ease. Far from appearing diminished by his spell inside, there was a new authority to him, almost a heroism, as if he’d returned from military service.

  I tried to filter my knee-jerk thoughts before speaking again. Could we restart Lock Up Longer with the Mirror, highlighting the harrowing effects of a premature release on the victim’s family? Was Kieran legally protected in some way now he had served his time? Justin was right: deprived of internet access during his stretch, he had probably only recently been able to update himself on his own media coverage, his brief reign as a symbol of evil. It was unlikely he’d liked what he’d seen. Might he even feel justified in coming after us?

  And, of course, I knew Justin would be against further media exposure, on Freya’s behalf. I was against it for that reason myself.

  Jade came back outside with a drink in either hand, handed one to Kieran, and I lip-read his ‘Cheers’ as he took the glass. I wanted to tip back my head and roar.

  There was a moment when he raised the glass to his mouth and stared over the top of it that I thought he’d caught sight of us, but the traffic was constant and he couldn’t possibly see us through the headlights reflected in the pizzeria window.

  At most, we’d be phantoms. And he probably hoped we’d stay that way.

  * * *

  I called on Sheridan the next evening. She and her husband Matt lived in a Victorian semi on Blakeney Road and in all the years we’d known each other the front door had been the same strident yellow, as if reminding arrivals to check their mood before knocking. When she answered the door, her clothes – candy-pink tweed jacket, aquamarine trousers – reinforced the message that this was a zone of positive energy.

  The sight of a black crow on her doorstep, I knew, would be dismaying.

  ‘Ellen! Come in, I was just getting myself a G&T. Had a bit of a day at work.’

  I accepted a drink and we settled in her living room. There was more yellow here, with ill-advised accents of rust-red and ivy-green and a nod to Easter in the form of a bowl of egg-shaped LED lights on the coffee table. I didn’t like going into the houses of Lucas’
s old friends. Seeing the paraphernalia of their continuing passage through young adulthood caused a deepening of the ache I carried in my chest, sometimes sudden enough to cause me to reel from the savageness of it. Graduation photos and birthday cards with numbers on them Lucas had not been allowed to reach. It wouldn’t be long before there’d be talk of weddings and the arrival of grandchildren – I didn’t expect to be invited to the former or encouraged to cast my bad fairy’s spell on the latter.

  ‘I can guess why you’re here,’ Sheridan said, the glass in her hand trembling slightly. ‘Kieran?’

  ‘I saw him at the Crown last night. He was with Jade.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ The fingers of her free hand began to play with the edging of a velvet cushion. ‘I know she’s seen him a few times since she came home for Easter.’

  ‘How long has he been out?’

  ‘Just a couple of weeks, I think.’

  ‘Are he and Jade going out together?’

  ‘No, of course not.’ She faltered, tipped her glass steeply and I watched her throat convulse as she swallowed. ‘At least not that I know of.’

  ‘Is she in?’ I pictured Jade upstairs, cowering from the sound of my outrage in the room below.

  Sheridan put down her glass. ‘No, she’s out – not with him, before you ask.’

  ‘Why does she want to see him at all?’ I said, more sharply now. ‘This is the man who killed her boyfriend. He took a life. Has everyone forgotten that?’

  She looked at me with a mix of compassion and dread. Like Prisca, like everyone, she knew she couldn’t win. Other parents, other mothers, could never prevail against a woman who’d lost her child. She was certainly not about to remind me that Lucas had been – just – Jade’s ex. ‘They were close, as well,’ she ventured.

  ‘Still are, evidently. Has he told her anything?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘The night of the accident – assuming all that therapy he had inside loosened a memory or two. There are treatments for PTSD, aren’t there?’ I pressed. ‘Ways of releasing traumatic memory? Has he told her anything about that?’

  Sheridan gazed unhappily at me. ‘I’m really not sure. I don’t think so. I mean, if there was something to remember that cast a different light, something more sinister… Well, Jade wouldn’t want anything to do with him, would she?’ She gathered her confidence and spoke more firmly. ‘It was a terrible accident, Ellen. Kieran has admitted his mistakes. That’s why he was put behind bars.’

  ‘Not for long enough.’ There was an edge to this that she would have known instantly how to interpret. It wasn’t that she’d opposed Lock Up Longer, but she could have been more wholehearted in her support. She’d chosen to protect Jade from further anguish, I knew that. Families closed ranks, even on friends, it was natural. The flowers she sent when my father died had the scent of apology on them and I’d accepted it without rancour.

  But her condoning a renewed friendship between Kieran and Jade, I couldn’t accept. I put down my glass and stood. ‘I have to go.’

  ‘Ellen, wait!’ Sheridan scurried after me to the door. ‘What can we do? Seriously, what’s the alternative to just getting on with things?’ When I failed to answer, her voice became thin with exasperation. ‘We can’t force him to leave town, can we?’

  Still I said nothing. The truth was I didn’t have the answer. Yet.

  * * *

  The next morning, I rang Vic. ‘Did you know he’s back?’

  ‘Yes.’ His tone was bleak. ‘I just saw him in Bromley Shopping Centre. I thought about going and having a word, but it was too crowded and I lost him.’

  ‘Out and about in all his old haunts. We saw him drinking at the Crown.’ I didn’t mention Jade, sparing him the hurt and indignation of that. ‘No doubt he’s getting all kinds of help at the taxpayer’s expense. Anyone would think he was the victim. It’s a disgrace.’

  There was a pause before Vic murmured his agreement.

  ‘I wish there was a way to make him suffer,’ I said.

  ‘You and me both,’ Vic said, and a beat passed between us, a communion that had, it seemed to me, a natural link to that question of Sheridan’s: What’s the alternative?

  Even then, I had faith that the answer would reveal itself.

  * * *

  Easter weekend passed and, after much persistence, I was able to identify and speak to Kieran’s offender manager. He was called Marcus Flynn and sounded young and idealistic, with a tuneful West Midlands accent.

  ‘How has he been allowed to come back to the neighbourhood where his victim lived?’ I demanded.

  ‘He’s not living in Beckenham, he’s over in South Norwood, which was his home before his conviction.’

  ‘What, he’s back with Prisca, is he?’

  But Flynn would not confirm the address. ‘I know how hard this must be for you, but he will have friends from his old school neighbourhood and there’s nothing to stop him seeing them. In fact, it’s encouraged that he should make contact with a supportive network.’

  ‘God forbid he should suffer,’ I said. ‘He’s not considered a high-risk person, Mrs Saint. And he’s on supervision, so rest assured we’re here to make sure he settles in without incident. I’m sure there’ll be no stepping out of line. Any meeting between you will be completely accidental.’

  ‘How long does the supervision last?’

  He admitted it was only for three months, with three weeks already completed. It hardly mattered, because it wasn’t Kieran’s stepping out of line that I feared so much as my own. I imagined seeing him in the street and, without Justin there to restrain me, losing control of myself and shoving him in front of a car or assaulting him with my bare fists. Watching him bleed.

  ‘We have to move,’ I told Justin that night in the bedroom. ‘I can’t live like this, knowing I could bump into him at any time.’

  ‘Ellen,’ Justin said, with only the smallest hint of long-suffering, and there followed the inevitable discussion about Freya, the constancy provided by her school, her friends and teachers. Forcing her to start again when she had just regained her strength was nothing short of cruel.

  And yet, it was the same school Kieran himself had attended – Flynn had specifically mentioned the link. What if Kieran had had a good relationship with one of the teachers that he intended to resurrect? What if Freya ran into him in the very place she had a right to feel safe?

  I sank onto the bed in silence, my arms wrapped tightly around myself.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ Justin asked.

  ‘I’m thinking about that bloody school. Imagine if there had been a way of stopping Kieran getting a place there. Then all of this would be happening to another family, somewhere miles away, and Lucas would still be here with us. We were forced by Foxwell into knowing him. We were never consulted.’

  Though this infringed forbidden ‘what if’ territory – not least because we’d agreed not to demonize the school for Freya’s sake – Justin recognized the need for it and pondered his answer. ‘Without a crystal ball, we would have said yes, though, wouldn’t we? And so would Vic.’

  I didn’t answer, knowing this was true.

  ‘You know, I sat in on a seminar the other day and they were talking about the ancient Greeks, how they used to eliminate the threat of bad people in advance. A kind of pre-emptive ostracization. Now that would have been useful.’

  ‘Really?’ I glanced up. ‘How did they punish murder?’

  ‘Lots of ways.’ He hesitated. ‘Sometimes it was left to be settled by the victim’s family.’

  I held his gaze. ‘If it was Freya who’d died, would you want to settle it yourself?’

  ‘I would.’ His eyes shone. ‘And I also want to because it was Lucas, you must know that. I loved him very much.’

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry.’

  ‘But I’m going to rise above it – we all are. No one’s going to settle anything.’ He flashed me a mirthless smile. ‘Whatever that’s a euphemism for.’r />
  Killing Time (cont)

  Spend any time with Felix Penney and you will become aware of the stress he places on angles. ‘Even within the context of autobiography, our understanding of crime must come from multiple points of view,’ he says.

  Ah, the vaunted POV. It was only a matter of time before that turned up in a story about storytelling. Consider, for a moment, the POV of Ellen Saint’s bête noire, Kieran Watts. In the school portrait of him favoured by editors at the time of his conviction, he looks guileless enough, all hastily flattened hair, snub nose and acne scarring. But those juvenile features are said to have belied a magnetism to which other students responded – Lucas Gordon included. This was a boy with a powerful voice.

  Following his stretch at HM YOI Danstone, Watts’s re-entry into society was well supported: he benefited from funding raised by the Friends of Danstone and had, by all accounts, a good relationship with both his offender manager and his former foster mother, Prisca Evans. He lodged with the latter on release and appeared to manage his three-month supervision period without controversy. But just a week after it ended, in July 2017, he was reported missing. He was twenty-one years old.

  How fascinating it would be to hear his side of the story, I suggest to Penney. To discover if any memories of the accident that killed Lucas Gordon had been loosened before he disappeared from view.

  ‘Yes,’ Penney agrees. ‘That would be fascinating. Just so long as the memories were true.’

  Sunday Times magazine,

  December 2021

  Chapter 20

  I can tell you the exact moment I knew I had to get rid of him.

  It was early one Sunday morning in the first week of May, when I pulled aside the curtain at our bedroom window to check the weather, and I saw him standing right there at our gate. He was in running gear and my first instinct was to imagine the joy of sprinting through open spaces after a stretch of restricted freedom. Rain would be as pleasurable to the skin as sunshine.