by C. J. Cooke
‘Never mind, that’s what I’m here for,’ she says proudly. ‘The insurance company says they’re waiting on a report from the arson investigator. They’ve got some results from the forensics team and are speaking to the police.’
I double-take. ‘An arson investigator? So they believe it was malicious?’
She shrugs. ‘They didn’t say. If the Fire Service hasn’t found the cause then maybe this is the next step?’ She takes a deep breath. ‘Hopefully they’ll resolve it in the next couple of weeks. That would be something, wouldn’t it? I seriously cannot believe one family can be hit with so much misfortune all at once.’
At the hospital, I take Saskia’s hand and read one of her unicorn books aloud, talking to her as if I am reading her a bedtime story. It’s useless – my voice is thin and high-pitched, wobbling on the brink of tears. Coming back to see her in the hospital is devastating. It steals away the hope I’m able to muster when I’m at home, surrounded by her toys and pictures. More machines than I could have imagined possible are keeping her alive, all with intricate names and functions that I’ve memorised: a transcranial doppler, cardiac parameters, a Brain Tissue Oxygen Monitoring System, the ICP and a Saber cerebral blood flow sensor and jugular bulb oximetry. How anyone could survive such injuries is beyond me, let alone a little seven-year-old girl. And yet, she is still here, fighting on. I try to cling to that but I have voices in my head telling me I’m stupid for hanging on to hope, that I must prepare myself for a life without my daughter.
But I can’t. I have no idea how to do such a thing.
The rehabilitation nurse, a young woman with expressive green eyes named Heather, tells me that reading to her like this and posing questions was a really effective way of activating the brain. Within a couple of days of Saskia being moved here we organised a rota, with many of my friends, Saskia’s teachers and even her friends’ parents all signing up to come and read to her for an hour or two per day. At night, the nurses set up an MP3 player plugged into donated speakers with the sound recordings that Reuben made for her so that she could hear familiar voices, including her own.
We have been told to talk to her, too, and ask questions as though she might respond. ‘It can feel really strange,’ Heather counsels. ‘We know that the brain responds to these questions and begins to form patterns in areas that are damaged by trauma. Talking to her can also help her body fight infection. She may seem unresponsive, but what’s happening inside her head is completely the opposite.’
I am telling Saskia about Chewy and Oreo when my mobile buzzes in my pocket. I recognise DS Jahan’s voice immediately.
‘There’s been a development,’ he says. ‘A transaction made on one of the credit cards. Can we come and talk to you about it?’
The detectives are waiting outside my house when we arrive back from the hospital. Jeannie helps me out of the car and they follow after. They smile and ask after Reuben, but I can tell from the stiff smile on DS Jahan’s face that the news isn’t good.
‘How’s your little girl?’ DCI Lavery asks, taking a seat in the living room. I catch my breath before answering.
‘They’re still monitoring her very closely,’ I say, steeling myself so I don’t cry. I’m tired of crying in front of strangers. ‘She’s starting to move her fingers and make noises, which is a positive sign.’
‘Is that her teddy?’ DCI Lavery asks, looking at Jack-Jack on my lap.
I dust him down. ‘He’s her favourite teddy. Unfortunately we’ve had to bring him home as they don’t want anything synthetic lying around. There was a chance he might get binned by one of the cleaners.’
‘You said there was a transaction?’ Jeannie says, impatient.
DS Jahan nods. ‘A withdrawal from a bank in Paris.’
‘Paris?’
‘Do you have any connections there?’ DC Fields asks.
I shake my head. ‘No, none.’
‘No family or friends based out there?’
A shiver runs down my spine. Luke had family out there. Maybe they’ve taken Michael, forced him to leave.
Should I tell them my suspicions about who has taken him?
‘What about friends or colleagues? Mistresses?’
‘Of course not.’
They all wait in case I decided to change my mind.
‘This isn’t about either of us having an affair, I can assure you.’
Michael’s never cheated. I’ve wondered a few times but my snooping yielded nothing. I’ve never been tempted to. Everything orbits around Saskia and Reuben. Our careers, home, day-to-day routine, even our marriage – it’s all about them. And even if either of us had the inclination we certainly lacked the energy.
‘OK,’ DS Jahan says brusquely. I see him slide his eyes at his colleague at how I’ve suddenly shut down. ‘I’ll show you what we’ve got.’
He pulls out a tablet, clicks on a file. ‘This was taken yesterday afternoon in a bank near Place de la Concorde.’
Immediately a video image appears of a queue of people lined up in front of three ATMs inside a bank. A man in a baseball cap is visible, his hands in his pockets. The camera is clearly mounted on a wall, pointing down. I hold my breath, waiting to see Michael. The queue shuffles forward and the man in the baseball cap approaches a bank clerk. I notice he has a limp.
‘Is that Michael?’ I say.
‘That’s certainly the man who made the withdrawal,’ DS Jahan says.
He hits pause, then rewinds the footage to the beginning. I watch again with a sense of disappointment and frustration. I can’t tell for certain if it’s Michael. He’s wearing black jeans and a white T-shirt with a logo across the chest. He looks too thin to be Michael. But then I catch a momentary turn of his head, an almost invisible movement, and I know it’s him. It’s Michael.
At the end of the queue there’s another man, broader across the shoulders, also wearing a baseball cap. He’s dressed like Michael, too. He keeps his head held down at the screen of his mobile phone. Michael approaches the ATM, punches a number into the keypad and receives a bundle of notes. Michael turns to walk away from the machine, and the other man nods at him.
‘Who’s that?’ I say loudly. ‘That man. Is he with Michael?’
DS Jahan rewinds the footage and zooms in. ‘You recognise him?’
‘No, but he signalled at Michael. Look.’
We all lean forward to study the screen.
DCI Lavery says, ‘OK, he does seem to nod at Michael.’
‘He could just be saying hello,’ Jeannie offers. ‘One stranger to another.’
‘Or they could be together,’ DS Jahan says. ‘It’s hard to tell. Either way, Michael withdrew five hundred euros.’
‘He could have been forced to make that withdrawal,’ I say, because Michael has never been the sort to withdraw money from our account without asking me, and certainly not that amount. Five hundred euros? Are they sure? Isn’t that more than the daily ATM amount? DS Jahan tells me that unlike British ATMs, many French ATMs don’t have caps on withdrawals, but still, I’m having a hard time understanding why Michael would be withdrawing that amount of money of his own volition.
‘Maybe this man was there to make sure he withdrew the cash,’ I say, and my stomach flips.
‘We’ll look into the identity of the guy who gave Michael the nod, just in case,’ DS Jahan says. ‘We’re in touch with the French police.’
The sight of Michael in the footage leaves me shaking from head to toe, my heart beating in my throat.
‘Have you any idea where he’s staying?’ I ask in a shaky voice. ‘Have you checked out the hotels?’
DS Jahan draws a sharp breath, and I can tell he’s frustrated, that something isn’t going the way he wanted. ‘Ordinarily these kind of searches are straightforward. We can use ANPR or cell-site analysis to get an address fairly quickly. But in this case, Michael appears not to be using his mobile phone and he seems to be using public transport.’
If the man in the
footage had kidnapped Michael, he wouldn’t be staying at a hotel, or even a hostel. They’d keep him in a house somewhere, in a basement. Chris Holloway. He has Michael. He is forcing his hand, bleeding him dry. Chris knew about Mont Blanc. And he isn’t going to stop until he gets revenge.
And yet I can’t tell the police a word of this. They’ll ask questions. Why would someone be seeking revenge? And everything would unravel, picking our world apart piece by piece. That’s why Michael is in France, playing along, doing whatever Chris says. He’s protecting our family.
‘We’re just beginning to see what resources the French police can pull together,’ DS Jahan says, his voice clipped with frustration. ‘It’s a little more complicated when a charge hasn’t been brought against someone, but that’s in progress.’
‘A charge?’ Jeannie says, glancing from me to the detectives. I’m so lost in my thoughts that I don’t figure out what she’s asking. DCI Lavery laces her hands, takes a breath.
‘We investigated the other bank accounts in yours and Michael’s names,’ she explains. ‘And we also looked at the JustGiving account that was set up for the bookshop. We know that just over eleven thousand pounds was raised for the bookshop, so we wondered why that money never reached your business account.’
I look across their faces. ‘What do you mean, never reached our business account?’
‘The bank details appear to have been changed sometime in the last couple of months to redirect the money to another bank account based in the Caribbean,’ DS Jahan adds. ‘We’re still looking into it but one of our team working on crimes committed via the dark web thinks it’s a familiar transaction.’
I reel. ‘The dark web?’
I assume that the dark web is something to do with the internet. ‘I don’t do social media or anything like that,’ I say quickly. ‘I’m a bit of a Luddite so not up to speed with everything online.’
‘It’s basically an underground internet for criminals,’ DCI Lavery explains. ‘You’ve heard of eBay, I’m guessing?’ I nod. ‘Well, imagine an eBay for people who want to sell their services as an assassin, or a kidnapper. That’s basically what one of our teams investigate online. We have a list of flagged names and offshore bank accounts where payments are often made before being bounced on to the bank accounts of the crims – like a Paypal for bad guys, if you will. The account that the bookshop money was transferred to was one of those flagged accounts.’
I try to process this. Jeannie reaches out and takes my hand. A moment or two when she meets my eye, a look of sadness and solidarity there.
‘Can I ask a question, Helen?’ DS Jahan asks. I notice DCI Lavery lowering her eyes.
‘Of course.’
‘Did you really not know that the money from the JustGiving fund hadn’t reached your account?’
Silence falls like a guillotine. Both DCI Lavery and DC Fields have their eyes fixed on the carpet. Why is he asking this?
‘No,’ I say. ‘No …’
‘You had access to the business account, didn’t you?’ he presses. ‘It’s in both your names.’
I nod. Is he suggesting I had something to do with the transfer? ‘Yes, I … it’s Michael’s business …’
‘But – a joint account. And the company has both of you listed as directors.’
‘Yes. But I work as a primary school teacher. I don’t have the time to do that and manage the business. The shop is – was – Michael’s baby.’
DS Jahan begins to answer but DCI Lavery cuts him off.
‘We spoke to Dr Fowad, your family GP at Lilyfield Medical Centre. It seems that you’ve had a prescription for antidepressants running back ten years. Do you mind if I ask why you were taking antidepressants?’
‘I’ve had anxiety issues ever since Reuben was born,’ I say. And a long while before that.
‘And what about Michael?’ DS Jahan says. ‘We’ve another note saying he had sleep issues.’
‘Sometimes, yes,’ I say cautiously. ‘But generally he was absolutely fine. Michael’s a kind, sensitive man. He puts our family first in everything …’ I think back to the moment I reached into the fire bin in the back garden and saw the destroyed frame of my precious painting, a few fragments of canvas revealing the dancers’ faces. He bought me that painting to bring me hope that, one day, I might return to dancing. I might accomplish the dream I had of opening my own dance studio. By destroying it he knew he was symbolically destroying my dream, and that was the real anguish, the real pain that entered my heart and never left.
‘We have a confession from the van driver in Belize naming Michael as the instigator of the crash,’ DS Jahan says carefully. ‘We’ve checked Matus’ bank accounts. A recent transaction of what equates to eleven thousand pounds was made prior to the crash.’
‘There is simply no way that has anything to do with us …’ I stammer, but DCI Lavery continues in a slow, firm voice, as though she’s speaking to a child.
‘Helen, our investigation has led us to believe that your husband arranged for someone to crash into your vehicle after a final, magical family holiday in an attempt to take his own life along with those of his children.’ She pauses. ‘And yours.’
I feel the room tilt, the air change. ‘What?’
‘When that was unsuccessful, we believe that he slipped out of the hospital to avoid charge.’
I stand up, head towards the window. I need air. I need to get out of here.
DCI Lavery rises and stands close to me. I hold on to the window ledge to stop myself from collapsing. My knees are weak and it feels like my lungs are going to explode.
‘Are you alright?’ she asks, and I shake my head. She’s shorter than me. The sunlight makes a halo of her silvery hair, picking out indigo shards in her eyes. Her tone is one of pity. ‘Murder-suicide is a massive problem all over the world among white males in their thirties and forties,’ she says, and I nod as if I might placate her by agreeing to this statement. ‘Occasionally, parents of children with complex needs form a plan together. Did he discuss anything like this with you?’
With a sickening twist of my stomach I realise what she is saying. Did Michael ask you to make a suicide pact?
I blurt out a wild laugh. ‘You’re wrong … This isn’t …’
‘Sometimes, it’s the people who are closest to you that will shock you the most,’ DC Fields summarises from across the room.
I focus on the children playing on the street. Lucy and Daniel from number forty-two. Lucy and Saskia played together often, and I see Lucy glancing at the house every so often, as though searching for her face in the window.
‘You’re implying that Michael transferred the money from the JustGiving fund to the van driver,’ I tell DCI Lavery. ‘But … there would have to be an email from Michael to someone organising this, or a foreign number on his phone bill. I’ve checked his emails meticulously.’
‘Emails are easy to delete,’ she says with a sigh, and I begin to tell her that I had also read the bookshop emails, hundreds of them, line by line, both sent and received, in case I might find a clue, some hint of where he was, and why.
‘He could have an email account that you don’t know about,’ DS Jahan says from the sofa. ‘Communications on the dark net are done through a dedicated chat system. It would be highly unlikely that a dialogue of this nature is going to turn up in a Hotmail or Google account.’
Of this nature.
‘We have a specialist team of forensic psychologists working alongside us,’ DCI Lavery says, turning back to the sofa and slipping the tablet back into its case. She glances at me to follow, have a seat, and I comply. ‘The data they’re presenting on this type of crime is shocking. Usually heterosexual men with mortgages and families. Ordinary people facing exceptional circumstances. Losing their job, not being able to provide for their family – it can just make them snap and act completely out of character, but with extremely tragic consequences.’
I sit down, trying to ignore the listing room.
‘Michael’s livelihood has been destroyed but that doesn’t mean he …’
‘I think you need to consider the possibility that Michael started the fire at the bookstore, too,’ she says. ‘We’re fairly confident that the green Zafira captured by the village CCTV on the night of the blaze was his car.’
I feel my throat and lungs constrict to nothingness, my heart stuttering at the suggestion that the fire has added to the suspicion around Michael, that they actually believe my husband is capable of such a hideous, unthinkable act as killing his own family.
Because Michael was completely right. The fire wasn’t started by kids.
The fire was started by me.
PART THREE
42
Helen
12th December 1995
I pulled out of dance school yesterday. I haven’t been in six months so I can’t imagine they expected anything less. I didn’t tell any of my classmates. I told Ronnie, Medbh and Judith that Luke died, that there was an accident. They showed me a newspaper article. There were five photographs of him and a headline:
Oxford Student Dies in Climbing Accident
I was hysterical. Seeing it confirmed in black and white was too real. It was like watching him fall all over again.
I don’t know how I survived the first few days back from Chamonix. My memory of those days is virtually non-existent. Ronnie brought me food, left it on my table. I moved out, taking only a small bag of belongings, slept on friends’ floors. I’m skin and bone, a plastic bag caught on the wind. My hair has fallen out in handfuls. This grief is planetary. I don’t feel like I’m alive. His absence is the only tangible, real thing. The knowledge that I will never hold him again, never touch him again, shatters me into a thousand pieces every single moment.
Madame Proulx came to see me this morning. When I peered through the crack in the living room curtains I was so shocked to see her there in her velvet turquoise cape and feathered hat that I let her in. I’m at Medbh’s house, sleeping in the spare room. I knew Madame Proulx was here to urge me to continue dancing. I remember when I was about ten and going through that awkward phase, she said that a true dancer had to be like fire. Flames only exist because they dance, she said. When they stop dancing, they become ash. I had to imagine myself as fire, and every time my muscles burned and my feet bled I imagined them as part of the dancing flames and it helped me persist. Plus I have a lead role in The Nutcracker all through the Christmas period. We have twenty-nine shows lined up. Kate’s a good understudy but Madame Proulx always preferred me. I knew she was really only here to talk me into going through with the show.