by Nicola Tee
“One tile, two tiles, three tiles … forty-five tiles.” I am happy that all the tiles are accounted for, therefore I lift my eye line and begin my three hundred and sixty-degree take of the room, shuffling my body around in the chair as I do so.
“Dangling light switch, check. Cardboard on windows, check. Kettle facing the wall, check. Kitchen towels folded, check.” I close my eyes ready to replay the horrific things that happened to me when I was sitting in this exact chair. The back of my left hand starts stinging; I am overcome by the sensation of my skin blistering and am being floored by the smell of my flesh burning.
“Please stop! It hurts! Please, I promise I won’t do it again!” I fall to my knees. Bang!
“That noise,” I scream.
“What noise?” the detective replies.
“The bang! Let me show you.” I lift myself up, sling myself back into the chair and fall to my knees once again. Bang!
“Did you hear it?” I cry.
“Yes, your knees,” he replies with this confused expression on his face.
“Yes. There was banging at night, it sounded like that but louder, a lot louder.”
“Are you okay?” Mr. Simmons worriedly adds.
“Yes, I am fine. We need to find that noise. Now!”
Mr. Simmons lifts his radio to his mouth,
“Come in—,” he begins to radio through my breakthrough, when an officer comes bursting into the kitchen.
“Sir, follow me,” the officer summons him. I am too intrigued to stay on the kitchen floor, so I drag myself to my feet.
“I need some fresh air,” I deliberately say aloud.
And with that, I duck and dive between the hundreds of officers scattered throughout the house, with my entourage (more police officers) following closely behind. I am trying to keep the detective in my sights, and at the same time trying to not give away that I am following him, so I can be nosey. I shuffle through a suspiciously large crowd forming to the left of the house. I make it through. And, then I see it: a trap door sitting all alone in the middle of the grass, taking centre stage. At first glance it could easily pass as an underground storage facility; however, the number of bolts on the door screams, ‘Open me!’ I mean, who uses six padlocks to protect a few belongings in storage? And if that didn’t raise alarm bell, then the cut piece of grass that was lying to one side of it does. Who camouflages an innocent underground storage facility?
Everyone is standing in pure silence.
“Got them!” one of the officer’s shouts as he walks back towards us all waving a pair of cutters in the air. The suspense increases as each lock falls to the ground. The last lock. It falls.
All the officers spring into action. It is like something you see in a movie; well, a Russian movie at least. Lights, cameras and action. All the guns come out and everyone lines up in formation, ready to swing open the door and enter. I hold back against my will. One officer lifts the door, starting proceedings. A huge gush of the wind yanks the door out of his hand and slams it shut all within a blink of an eye.
Bang! It was a deafening and an all-too-familiar sound.
“That’s it; that is the noise I am looking for!” It is the exact sound that would break the silence when I was all alone in my room at night. Now I am one-hundred percent sure that something down there is of value, as why else would Mr. Hump go down there so often during the night? Without thinking I duck under the officers’ legs, lift open the hatch door and step inside.
“Get back here! Get back here!” The officers’ demands go in one ear and out the other. Their voices fade with every step I take until I reach the bottom of the stairwell and become submerged in pure silence and darkness.
“Crash. Bang. Wallop.” No more silence. All the officers have followed me down here in an unnecessarily loud manner. The lights come on, nearly blinding me. Once my eyes recover from the overwhelming brightness, I see it. A little china doll perching on the edge of this bench tucked away in the corner. I cautiously walk towards it in autopilot mode to get a closer look. I am inches away from the doll when all the flashing cameras, radios buzzing, and officers’ voices vanish. Everything vanishes but the doll and me.
I carefully pick her up, to make sure it isn’t Dotty. My Dotty has a faded purple nail varnish stain just above her stitched knicker line, I made it when I was six years old. I remember because when my mum found out she grounded me for a whole month. The number of times my mother said, 'do you know how expensive that doll was’, blah, blah, blah, was record-breaking. I hold my breath and shut my eyes as I lift up the doll’s dress, fearing I will see a hint of purple. Slowly I open my left eye just enough to tell me whether it is Dotty or not.
“It can’t be!” I scream. My hands start uncontrollably shaking. Dotty falls to the floor. I see every part of her fly off into different directions. It happened at the speed of light but at the same time I saw it all in slow motion. I drop to my knees and frantically start gathering up all the pieces.
“He hates mess, do not leave one bit behind, he hates mess, do not leave one bit behind, I said he hates mess do not leave one bit behind, Kate!”
“Are you okay?” the detective asks whilst placing his hands on my shoulders, attempting to snap me out of my cleaning bubble.
“I just cannot leave one bit behind because he hates mess,” I snap back, hoping he will get the message and leave me alone so I can tidy up.
I look back down and continue to pick up the pieces. The second gush of déjà vu hits me as I am going around on all fours, picking up Dotty’s pieces, a mirror image of how I used to go around collecting Mr. Hump’s nail clipping with the same theme tune of, ‘He hates mess, must not leave one bit behind’, ringing in my ears. I really am a product of his design.
“Snap out of it!” Mr. Simmons screams. Suddenly all eyes are on me as every officer within a hundred-metre radius of us stops what they are doing and stares.
He lifts me to my feet, places his left hand under my chin and raises it, which naturally raises my eye level. I see a sight, a terrible sight. I don’t think I will ever be able to un-see it. ‘Kate’s first day of school, Kate’s twelfth birthday, Kate’s sixteenth birthday’. My life is splashed across the opposite wall to where I am standing; each picture has a label to identify which milestone in my life the photo is of; it is in order. He made a timeline of my life from when I was a baby to now. I am twenty-four years old. I missed my twenty-first birthday party. I missed eight years of my life. There are photos of the birthday cakes that I had when growing up; there is even a photo of me blowing out the candles at my sixteenth, whoever took the picture was standing just a few feet away from me. I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to picture everyone who was at my party. He wasn’t there! I know Mr. Hump wasn’t there! So, who gave him the photo? I start to doubt my own mind, especially now I know it has been eight years.
“The suspect is in custody, I repeat, suspect is in custody.” Those words ring and ring on every radio, in a synchronised fashion. I need confirmation with my own eyes that they have the right man and once that thought crosses my mind, I bolt towards the stairs to take myself above ground. “One step, two steps, three steps, five steps, seven steps.” I take the last four steps in twos as I am desperate to get outside. I tumble over the hatch door and fall face first onto the grass.
“Stop!” I beg.
All the officers turn around, allowing me to get a look at the person in cuffs. I stare into his eyes and do you know what I see? Pity. His past was tragic, his present is pathetic, and his future will be limited, because I will make sure all he has for company is four walls, like he did to me. And the fact that he will be given three meals a day and have no say over what the meals will be, gives me unexplainable satisfaction. I suppose what goes around comes around. My smug grin must be giving it away to the officers that he is indeed the correct suspect, and with that, they load him into the police car.
I immediately wipe the grin off my own face when I realise I need to
find Lizzie. I pull myself up off the grass and run to the other side of the house. I scan the lawn looking for the stick with my hairband tied to it.
“Where is it? Oh God, where is it?” I cry. It must have broken off in the wind.
“Please get people here to dig this whole area up?” I beg the detective who is lingering behind me,
“Come in—” Mr. Detective radios through.
“Yes. Yes. Come in.” His radio rings with numerous people ready to listen and fulfil the boss’s orders. He has this authoritative tone when he talks meaning the other officers must automatically know it is him.
“Get forensic round the back of the house. I want the whole area dug up,” he orders.
“I want to go back to the station now, please.” I thought I was strong enough to handle this, but I can’t face seeing Lizzie’s remains. She will have decomposed by now. I can’t take seeing that.
“Okay follow me,” Mr. Simmons swiftly escorts me to the closest police car and within seconds we are heading through the trees to pick up the country lane to get us out of this hellhole.
For the Tape, Sir
“For the tape, please state your full name and date of birth,” asks Mr. Simmons.
“Mr. Gregory Stamper, born March the third, nineteen sixty-five, but please call me Greg.”
“Okay, Greg, do you know why you have been arrested?”
“Arrested! Have I been arrested? You can’t arrest me! I have worked my whole life contributing to this country, you can’t repay me this way.”
“Mr. Stamper, you have been arrested, now please enlighten me on what you were doing when my officers found you?”
“I was hiding by the cottage that was inundated by police, but I just wanted to pat the dogs, all I wanted to do was pat the dogs. I love dogs. And then I was rugby tackled to the ground by three policemen, it was like something I see in the movies I watch. Bottom line is, I am not a criminal, so I shouldn’t have been treated that way. I just wanted to pat the dogs.”
“So, let me get this straight, you were there simply to pat the dogs?” the detective summarises.
“Yes. I love dogs. When I was growing up my dad had this dog called Spiky, and we did everything together. I did not have many friends as we were always moving around because of my mum’s job. Therefore, my only constant companion was my Spiky. He was a German shepherd and a gorgeous one at that. If we got to go to the lake on the weekends, Spiky and I would camp out around the fire we built. I say ‘we’ because I would send him to fetch logs of wood, and he would return with as many his mouth could hold. I would then light the fire, and we would cuddle into each other and forget our worries.
“I know what you are thinking what worries could a kid and a dog have? Well, my mum hated dogs but when she met my dad he already had Spiky, so she had no choice but to accept him, but she made sure everyone and their mother knew how she felt about him. He was not allowed in the house when she was home, so he had to stay in his kennel outside even when it was windy and raining. I wish my father would have stood up to her, but he was a weak man. In fact, ‘weak’ is an understatement. He was a pathetic excuse of a man, he allowed everyone to walk all over him and would apologise about a hundred times a day for things that did not even involve him. A father is meant to teach his son how to be a man, but all I learned from him was how to be a doormat. That is why I walk the forest by myself as I have no one, Spiky is dead, my dad is dead, and my mother is— God knows.”
“Tell me more about your mother?”
“She was, or is, a bitch. I do not know whether to talk about her in the past or present tense, sorry. Maybe she is dead. Maybe she is alive. Who knows? One thing I am sure of is the fact that I hate her. Did you know that every year for my birthday I didn’t even get a card from her?”
“What did you get?”
“Nothing! I got nothing! ‘Why do I need to celebrate you? I am the one who pushed you and your big head out? Where is my gift?’ That statement was what she said at the breakfast table once a year to me when I shyly touched upon the subject of gifts. I do not know why I even bothered to ask each year, maybe I thought with age she would mellow and learn to love and appreciate me. She didn’t. But my dad, he always made me something little and gave it to me once my mother had left for work. One year he made me a penknife, it was amazing. I would flick the knife open and think, what if I just stabbed her with it? If I managed to stab her in the right place, my dad and I could actually have lived happily ever after.
“Of course, I never stabbed her. I had no idea where the killer spot on her would be. I thought the heart, but it is easier said than done to take the life of the woman who brought me into this world. The sad thing is, if I was man enough to kill her my dad would still be alive, and that haunts me every day.”
“Did your mother shoot your father?” Mr. Simmons continues, keeping the questioning on track.
“Who told you that? I have only ever told my friends that in confidence. And I only have one friend now. So, the only person who would have told you that is Kate. I can't believe she would betray my trust like that, or did you force her to tell you? Is she here now? KATE! KATE! KATE! If you have hurt her, I will hurt you.”
“Are you threatening a police officer?”
“Indirectly, yes, I am. But please don’t hurt her, as she is all I have left, my last musketeer. I had another friend, Lizzie, but she died, that was a sad day. But I couldn't show too much emotion as I needed to be strong for Kate, as she developed a sisterly bond with Lizzie over the years. We were the three musketeers, then the two musketeers and now, if you do not release me she will be the only musketeer left. She will not cope by herself.”
“Please go ahead and answer the question. Did your mother shoot your father?” Once again, the detective repeats himself.
“Yes, my mother killed my father! Is that what you want to hear? I am from a broken home!”
“Please tell me how the shooting happened?”
“Daddy and I were paddling on our new home-made boat when that witch—”
“Sorry for the tape, who is the witch?” Mr. Simmons interrupts.
“My mother,” snaps Gregory.
“Okay, continue."
“My mother pulled up in her car and noticed we were having too much fun. She hated anyone laughing and enjoying life. I can remember seeing her walking towards the edge of the lake, screaming for us to dock the boat and get inside the house. I still to this day do not understand why my dad let her speak to him the way she did. It was like he was her second child to boss around, but that day, my dad and I were feeling mischievous, so we intentionally paddled back to the dock slowly. Who would have thought that that decision would have caused so much heartbreak?”
“Please go on.”
“As my daddy’s body hit the water, I dived in to save him, but it was too late, he was sinking too quickly. All I could see was the colour red, he was entangled in his own blood. I tried to push the blood away, so I could get a quick glimpse of my dad’s face, and I did, I managed to see him one last time, but that image is now all I can see when I think of him. His face was as a white as a ghost, and his eyes were wide open and lifeless. The sound of more shots being fired meant I had to swim for my life. I swam with the stream, so I could get as far away from my mother as possible. I swam till my arms couldn’t take any more. I then climbed out of the lake onto the bank. I forced myself to my feet, ran into the woods and hid behind one of the trees.”
“And you told your friend Kate this story?” Mr. Detective asks.
“Yes,” an infuriated Mr. Hump replies as he is coming to realise Kate has betrayed him.
Daddy Dearest
“Okay, let’s take a minute to talk about Kate. How did you meet her?” The detective gently asks, trying to ease into the most crucial line of questioning.
“Kate and I met through her father. I used to go fishing down by the Bournemouth Hill Lake, and I saw Kate’s father there a few times. After a while
we got chatting, all things fish-related, and we just clicked because of that. Before I knew it, we would arrange days and times to meet up and fish. We became firm fishing buddies within a matter of months; it was nice actually to have some company. Ever since I was young I had wanted a fishing buddy and I found him in the shape of Jonathan. He knew everything from what bait to use on what fish, which fishing strategy to carry out depending on the time of day and how to properly gut a fish, which is not as easy as people think.”
“Fishing buddies?” the detective lightly giggles.
“Yes, fishing buddies. One time we were fishing together, and Jay caught a huge eleven-pound beauty. My description of it won’t do it justice, so I won’t even try. We quickly took a few photos with it as a keepsake, as we both could not believe his catch of the day, he then unhooked it and released it back into the lake. The moment I saw him do that I knew he was an honourable man, as most people would have killed it, gutted it and eaten it, but it was too beautiful to die, and he knew that. We were on the same wavelength. I would say that catch cemented our fishing friendship if that makes sense. But soon after that Jay started to blur the line between what sort of friends we were; he started to tell me all about his family life.”
“What did he tell you?”
“Why are you so interested in Jay?”
“Just answer the question,” he orders.
“Okay. He told me that he had a wife, a son and a daughter. I didn’t know where to put myself when he started to divulge information about them. He was telling me how he met his wife at a party in London and fell in love with her at first sight, but she didn’t feel the same. In fact, she took a lot of persuading to even go on a date with him. But he worked his magic and five years later he got her down the aisle. I remember that conversation like it was yesterday, because of how much his whole face lit up when he thought back to how beautiful she looked on their wedding day. Not long after their wedding their son came along, he showed me loads of pictures of him as a baby and he was unbelievably cute and clearly the apple of their eyes. But then their daughter Kate came along, and it completely changed the dynamics of their family. From a young age, she learned the fine art of the word ‘no’. She was, according to him, ‘challenging’. I couldn't work out whether Jay liked or hated that she was a shepherd, not a sheep.