by Carla Kovach
‘Don’t do this to me,’ he said as he sighed.
‘Don’t do this to me! You know I can’t leave it and go home. I’ll pay the bloody bill myself if I have to. Take it out of my salary. That should balance the books.’ She imagined him sitting at his desk running his fingers through his brown hair with grey speckles peppering it, the hair she’d once loved running her fingers through.
‘Okay, okay. I’ll authorise a patrol car to pass every hour or so. Good enough?’
‘Good enough, sir. Oh, and one other thing.’
‘Shoot.’
‘I’d like her image to be released to the local media. As you’re at the station, can you please arrange for a release to hit the morning news?’
‘Of course, Harte. I’ll head over to Corporate Communications in five and get that sorted with Annie. I don’t think it will hurt to put her image out there.’
‘Thanks, sir.’ She ended the call and hurried to the car, oblivious as to how soaked she’d become. A cough came from the cut through at the side of Mary’s house and Gina trembled. Had someone just heard that whole conversation? As the rain bucketed down, she crept along the kerb, keeping well back from the little cut through, ankle-deep in murky water that was gurgling up from the overflowing gutters. Whoever was behind the wall was now running. She picked up the pace. As she splashed along the path at the side of the house, she saw a white trainer making its way behind the garden. She darted after the figure in the shadows, barely able to see what was ahead as rain drizzled into her eyes. As she reached the end of the garden she came to a halt and stared ahead through the falling sheet of water. Whoever had been watching had escaped.
‘Clare, Clare,’ she could just about hear Mary shouting. There was no reply.
Twenty-Two
A loud scream came from behind the door. Harrison began to yell and Rory cried. Mary tapped on Clare’s bedroom door but there was no answer. The music stopped. She pushed open the door and heard the shower running in the en suite. ‘Boys, boys – keep it down.’
Rory ran over and hugged his nan’s legs and Harrison continued jumping on the bed while continually singing ‘Baby Shark’ and ignoring her. A pillow narrowly missed her head as it flew from Harrison’s hands. She walked over and held him tightly to his dismay. He kicked and screamed. The whole street would probably wonder what was going on. She gripped the boy under her arm and held Rory’s hand then met Howard at the bottom of the stairs.
‘Clare’s in the shower. Could you take these two for ten minutes?’
He nodded. ‘I’ll put something on the box, keep them occupied for a bit. You go and have a rest, love.’ He kissed her on the cheek and took Harrison from her. As she let go, he tried to wiggle out of their grip to escape back up the stairs, but Howard already had him under his arm. ‘No you don’t. Mummy needs to have a shower in peace and Nanny needs a rest. You can go back up in a minute. Come and watch TV with Pops.’
Howard smiled and closed the door, a favourite programme already distracting them both.
Mary ran up the stairs and shut her bedroom door at the other side of the house. While the children were being quiet and Clare was in the shower, she could have a further look through Susan’s blue box.
Lying on the bed, she flicked through the pieces of paper by lamplight. The box was full of little poems, snippets of prose and drawings. She never realised her daughter had been so dark-minded. Why had she left, or what had she left? Mary was relying all too heavily on the contents of this little box for answers.
She recognised one of the drawings. She’d walked in on teenage Susan while she was creating that particular piece of art. A pencil sketch of a gate with a thick round handle. If Mary could turn it, she wondered which part of Susan’s imagination it would lead her to. The shading was done to perfection, accentuating light and dark, each grain in the wood precise. On the second half of the door was a smaller door that was open. Susan was letting her in. She held the page closer to her, capturing it clearer in the lamplight. Amongst the swirls and shadows was a familiar shape. Maybe Mary was reading too much into it. It looked like an eye, possibly a sinister-looking eye, angled down towards the tear duct like it was angry. It may not have been an eye, it may have been nothing more than a few pencil strokes that she was looking too deeply into. No, it was an eye.
She flicked through the box and stopped at another sketch. A smudge of charcoal rubbed off onto her fingers. Susan had tried to copy a painting Mary knew to be called The Nightmare by Henry Fuseli. A woman spread across the bed, deep in slumber, lay still as a small demonic-looking incubus mischievously stared directly at its audience – her. She dropped the picture. No wonder her daughter had suffered with night terrors, drawing things like that. Occasionally Susan would wake up, swearing that she was surrounded by little monsters and she couldn’t scream, she couldn’t move and she couldn’t breathe. All Mary could do was comfort her. She lifted the picture up one more time and almost fell off the bed as a flash of hail hit the windows. She hoped that Susan wasn’t out there alone and scared, living a very real nightmare.
Shivering, she got into bed fully dressed and pulled the quilt over her chest and read the poem one more time.
The Secret Door
There is a door, which leads to a door, which leads to a door.
And I hear what’s behind it, beckoning me.
It will take me away, far away – somewhere better.
I dream that the door will take me to another world,
A secret place built only for me.
The calling is faint but I hear my name,
So I open door one, and the calling gets louder.
‘I’m here,’ I whisper, but there is no reply.
Was I mistaken? I thought it wanted me.
Like always in my life, there was no one there.
‘Only you can open the next door and let me in.’
I’m sure that’s what it said but it’s wrong.
I think really, I’d be letting it out.
It is the one trapped behind the door and I am free.
Confusing, but I can’t say no.
I know you’re gone, Dad,
But I still feel you around me. I sense that you’re with me.
I smell your aftershave and feel your warmth.
As I open door two, I know your spirit will protect me.
There’s no going back now – ever!
Secure, safe – that’s how I feel. I trust you to protect me, Dad.
Hammering, banging. ‘Open door three and let me out,’ it yells.
As I let it out, I let the darkness in.
It took me to a secret place, one which I must never speak of.
‘Be silent, be silent,’ my mind tells me so. ‘You opened the door. It’s your fault and no one must ever know.’
By Susie.
Mary placed the poem back in the box and lay in bed as she thought about young Susan – or Susie as she liked to be called back then. She glanced around the room. Susan had missed her father terribly when he had died. Maybe Mary hadn’t been there enough for her and had ignored her daughter’s grief as she worked all hours to pay the bills. Lying on her wet pillow, the whole poem running through her mind, she wondered why Susan had clung on to all this darkness. Another tear slipped from the corner of her eye as she continued to look at many of Susan’s dark musings, drawings and poems.
A knock at the bedroom door startled her. ‘Hello.’
‘Mum, I was looking for you. Howard just told me you’d come for a lie-down.’ She wedged the door open and entered, wearing her dressing gown and slippers, hair soaked. ‘Are you crying again? Don’t worry, she’ll come back, she always does.’ Clare glanced down at the bed, spotting the box. ‘You’re going through her things, aren’t you?’
‘I just want to find her.’
‘And you think she’ll thank you for nosing through all this personal stuff when she comes home. She’ll go berserk.’ Clare sat on the other side of the bed and beg
an packing all the bits of paper back into the box. ‘Yuck and gross. Susan drew some weird pictures. That one’s creepy.’ She threw the picture of the incubus on the woman’s chest back in the blue box and slammed the lid down. ‘There. We need to put this back where it came from ASAP.’ She placed the box on the bedside table and lay next to her mum.
‘Do you really think she’ll be mad at me?’
‘If you put the box back tomorrow, she won’t know.’ Clare began shuffling around.
‘You okay.’
She pulled out a string of red liquorice. ‘This yours?’
‘No, it was in Susan’s box. We best put that back too.’
Twenty-Three
Friday, 15 November 2019
A chunk of wood falls from above as I emerge from the dark, dragging the plastic sheeting across the fallen wooden beams. Snapped pool cues and broken chairs adorn the floor. The skylight has long shattered and only the moon’s milky light leads the way. I don’t use a torch here, it’s not like the back end of the building where the snug is, cocooned away and backing onto a thicket of unruly shrubbery.
Long past its use-by date, the building has been gifted back to nature and nature has claimed so much of it already. The moss is alive and adorns the corners of every room. Damp penetrates every wall. Cold, dank and unloved, just like me since you three ruined my life, especially you Susie.
‘Not far now,’ I whisper as I drag the body over the threshold, through sludge and tree branches, sweat mixing with the dust ingrained within the lines of my face. ‘Nearly there.’
I stand still as I hear footsteps crunching ahead. Dropping the body, I pull the knife from my back pocket and then exhale as you stand in the moon’s light. ‘Finally. I could do with a hand. Grab the other end.’
Twenty-Four
Every step crunched in the almost frozen grass. It had been a chilly night, so chilly Mike had made sure his boys were both wrapped up as much as they could be for their morning walk. His wife deserved a little time to herself to get up and dressed and Dobby their Old English sheepdog deserved a brisk walk alongside the River Arrow. Mike had spent many a sunny day there fishing with the boys. He loved living where they did as it had everything a young family needed. ‘Keep away from the water,’ he called out as Billy was trying to poke the river’s edge with a stick. At five, the twins had already learned to swim but Mike knew all too well what freezing cold water could do to a person. ‘Dobby. Dobby!’
He listened for rustling. With Dobby’s huge frame, he was hardly a dainty flower, especially as his wife constantly fed him scraps and treats.
‘Daddy, I can see him. He’s over there playing in the bushes.’
Mike uncoiled the dog lead. Maybe it was time they headed back and had some breakfast before school. Time flew on their little walks. ‘Dobby. Come on, boy.’ He whistled and waited for the dog to respond.
The dog’s booming barking almost shook the ground.
‘I’ll get him, Daddy,’ Billy said.
Dillon carried on walking along the path as Billy snapped twigs and cracked leaves to hurry to Dobby. As he had done on many occasions, Billy would gently guide the dog back by his collar. Dobby had once been good at coming back and responding to commands but he’d slowly been losing his senses. That dog now sensed nothing, being almost blind and almost deaf. Mike shivered knowing soon his two little boys would be exposed to the end of life cycle for the first time. Mike bought Dobby a week after he bought his first home, long before getting married and having the boys. He would miss Dobby more than anything when the time came. He shook those thoughts away, Dobby wasn’t going anywhere for ages yet. He may not come to the call and continuously bumped into things, but he still had that smiley look about him, if dogs had smiley looks. Mike nodded and smiled to himself. Dobby was definitely a smiler.
‘Daddy, Dobby won’t come.’
As soon as Mike heard the dog growling, he ran. ‘Just step away from him, I’m coming.’ A branch slapped Mike on the forehead as he ran the gauntlet, over deadwood, trying not to slip on iced-over leaves and moss. Holding his hands out, he destroyed the jewelled web that a spider had spent so long creating. Billy was standing slightly away from Dobby, his little blue hat just covering his fine black eyebrows. His linked mittens both on, keeping his little hands cosy. Mike leaned in to clip the lead onto Dobby’s collar and gently pulled the dog back. Dobby refused to budge. ‘Dobby,’ Mike yelled, slowly losing his temper. He had to get back now. Time, which they seemed to have so much of in the early morning, was fast running out. He and his wife had to be at work soon and he wasn’t going to allow Dobby to make the whole family late. He tugged again. The dog continued barking as Mike pulled him back. ‘You’re in my bad books today, Dobby. Don’t think you’ll get any treats when we get home.’
Dillon ran after them along the trodden path, staying back a little as Mike held his hand up. ‘Daddy, can we go home, I’m hungry?’
Mike’s gaze followed Billy’s and rested on the leg that was sticking out of the bushes. Mottled, pale flesh with a bluish twinge covered the bottom half of a naked body. ‘Get back, boys – now!’ He couldn’t let his children see the body but one look back at Billy said it all. Billy’s light brown cheeks had a rosy tinge to them only a moment ago but now that healthy tinge had gone and the little boy’s gaze remained fixed on the man as he stared with his mouth slightly open.
The children ran back towards their father, Billy crying and Dillon constantly asking him what the matter was. Mike knew that talk about death would come sooner than he’d anticipated. Billy and Dillon may only be five years old, but they weren’t stupid.
He held his hand over his mouth as he took a step back and held his phone to his ear. ‘Police, please.’ This was going to haunt them all for a long time.
Twenty-Five
‘Right, Briggs has put the appeal out and I know the calls are already coming in. Can you monitor those closely, O’Connor?’ Gina grabbed a croissant from the batch that O’Connor had brought in, another one of his wife’s bakes. As per usual she’d skipped breakfast knowing full well that the station would be littered with junk food as it always seemed to be. She glanced at her email. Nothing had come from the drive-bys of Dale Blair’s house. ‘Anything so far?’
O’Connor clapped his hands, releasing crumbs all over the floor before licking jam off his fingers. ‘A possible sighting at the shopping centre. Another at the park, oh and another at the industrial estate, two sightings on a bus and another driving through Cleevesford High Street. I sense this day is going to be a challenging one. I mean, you’d think she was Houdini if the public have got it right. I’ve been going through her friends list on social media, the ones she and Dale had in common. There are a fair few but no meaningful interactions are showing up. I’ll keep going through the list. Wyre and I split it as there are so many people to go through. I’ve also emailed them to you.’ He rubbed his shiny head, almost polishing the patch that his fingers were massaging.
‘Great, keep up the good work. Going back to the appeal, eliminate the obvious and look into the others.’ She glanced around and noticed Smith sitting at his desk, rubbing his shoulder. ‘Smith, can you coordinate uniform in following up on some of these potential sightings? You okay?’
He nodded. ‘Ouch, yes, just a cramp. I’ll get right onto it, guv.’ He turned to his keyboard and began tapping away.
Wyre hit the send button on the email she had just finished and removed the headset she was wearing, slightly lifting a chunk of her black hair to reveal her fine neckline. Her neatly starched collar fit her with just the correct amount of room and her tailored jacket pinched in slightly at the waist. Gina knew she could never carry off tailored to that degree.
A door slammed and heavy footsteps stomped down the corridor. Briggs. Their door flew open and he filled the doorway with his presence, something he’d always done with ease. Gina’s mind flashed back to a time he’d filled her bedroom door with his presence, but he hadn�
��t been wearing an expression as serious as the one he was wearing now. ‘I need a team at the bridge, the one that goes over the River Arrow on the approach to Cleevesford. A man was out with his two young sons walking their dog and they’ve discovered a body.’
Gina’s stomach dropped. All this time she’d half-thought that Susan had just been overwhelmed with life but Mary knew that something was wrong. It had to be Susan. Running her hand across her face, she was trying to figure out how she would break this news to Susan’s family. Three children would grow up without their mother. Gina suddenly felt lucky for once in her life. Her mother had always been there when she was growing up. She braced herself with what was coming next.
‘We don’t have an accurate description of the victim. Bernard and Keith are already on their way so the tent should be going up as soon as possible. Uniform have also been informed and will be cordoning off the area. PC Kapoor has just left. I need detectives down there now, talking to the family. Gina, you will be Senior Investigating Officer. Don’t miss anything.’
Jacob slammed through the door, his short back and sides looking like they were firmly plastered to his head as he went to take a seat in his booth.
‘Don’t get comfortable. Body found alongside the River Arrow.’
He swigged the coffee on his desk and slammed the cup down as he put his coat on.
‘We best go,’ Gina said as she almost left him behind, causing him to run after her.