The Hanging Time

by Bilinda P Sheehan

  Drew nodded as he pulled his phone from inside his jacket. Harriet sat on the small wall outside the door as he paced along the edge of the road. Snatches of conversation drifted back to her and more than once she heard Drew’s voice rise in anger. In the end he moved over to her and nodded.

  “Gregson’s agreed to a FLO considering the situation and your opinion on Mrs Whitly’s state of mind.”

  Harriet inclined her head and gazed back up at the house. “I hope I’m wrong.”

  “You and me both,” Drew said, following her line of sight.

  “Should we try and go back in there?”

  Harriet shook her head. “I don’t think so. If she’s going to do anything, she’ll wait for us to leave in case we might raise the alarm.”

  It had started to rain and Harriet’s jacket was no match for the British weather.

  “I can stay here if you want to wait back in the car.”

  “I’m fine,” she lied as a particularly cold droplet of water slid down the back of her shirt and trailed down over her spine like an icy finger.

  “Will it be like this for all of them?” Drew tilted his head back so that his face was upturned toward the sky. He rocked back on his heels and Harriet could almost have imagined how he must have been before his life fell apart.

  “Probably.”

  “When Freya died,” he paused, and Harriet’s heart stalled out in her chest. Was this it, was this the moment when he remembered? “I woke up in that hospital bed and I asked for her.”

  Harriet bit her lip to keep from interrupting. He needed someone to listen to him, no judgements, no opinions.

  “And when they told me what had happened, I broke down. I sobbed like a baby and they had to sedate me. In that moment I wanted so badly to go to her.” He turned his attention to Harriet.

  “Have you ever felt like that?”

  “No. Or at least not as you described it.”

  “What then?”

  The memory of her mother’s frantic fingers fumbling with her seat belt filled her head and Harriet pushed it aside.

  “When I was ten my mother drove my brother and I off a pier into the sea. She was sick and wanted to end it all but she couldn’t bear the thought of leaving us behind.”

  “Jesus Christ, I’m sorry,” Drew said.

  Harriet met his concerned gaze and shook her head. “Don’t be. You didn’t cause it.”

  “No but—" He cut off. “You both got out all right thought?”

  Harriet tipped her head down and gazed at her hands clasped in her lap.

  “I did,” she said. “Mom managed to get my seat belt off before we went over, I think she thought it would be over faster that way. My brother, Kyle was in the front seat and he fought back against her.” Harriet coughed and cleared the lump that had formed in the back of her throat.

  “How did you get out?”

  “When we hit the water, Mom changed her mind and bailed. Kyle helped me out to the front but his seat belt had jammed after the impact. He told me he’d be fine but that I needed to go and get help.” Harriet blinked back the tears that filled her eyes. “I was ten and I believed him because he was my big brother. He was sixteen and when I look back at it now, he knew if he didn’t tell me to go we’d both have died.”

  Drew’s expression of horror said it all. It was a typical reaction to the memory of her childhood and despite part of her being used to it, it still surprised her to see him so affected by it.

  “What happened to your mother?”

  “She was taken into custody but deemed incapable of standing trial so they sent her to an institution. I saw her yesterday. That’s why I was late coming back to the office.”

  “You still visit her?”

  Harriet nodded and clasped her hands tightly together. “Despite everything she has done, Detective Inspector, she’s still my mother. There’s a part of me who will always love her. I can still remember her when she was well, when things were good. And for the most part my childhood was good.”

  Drew turned and paced down the side of the road alongside his car.

  “I don’t know how you could forgive her for something like that.”

  “It’s amazing the things we can forgive those we love for the terrible things they do to us, isn’t that what love is all about?”

  Drew opened his mouth but Harriet cut him off with a shake of her head. “You asked if I’d ever felt as you described. I was too young to fully grasp the idea of suicide as a viable option but in the months following Kyle’s death I searched for an answer as to why I got out and he didn’t. They call it survivor’s guilt.”

  “Is this your roundabout way of telling me that what I was feeling then was perfectly normal?”

  It was Harriet’s turn to smile. “I suppose you could say that, yes. We all suffer from these things in our own way.”

  It was at that moment that another car pulled up alongside the road.

  “Saved by the bell,” Harriet muttered more to herself as Drew went to speak to the two FLO’s who climbed from the small silver Fiat.

  Harriet returned to the car and slid inside. What had behooved her to share with him like that? What had happened in her past was just that, a past event. The last thing she ever tried to do was allow it to encroach on her present in any real way. It was enough that she went to see her mother on a regular basis without letting the shared memories of that tragedy infect other aspects of her life too.

  It took only a couple of minutes for Drew to get the FLO’s up to speed but when he returned to the car, he started the engine up without saying a word, something Harriet was more than grateful for. She’d made enough of a fool of herself by sharing so much.

  They sat in silence as the FLO’s approached the front door and knocked. It took a few minutes—Harriet’s heart seemed to beat louder with every second that passed—for Kate Whitly to answer the door and when she finally did, Harriet felt the tension in the back of her neck loosen.

  “Were you as nervous as I was?” Drew asked as he pulled away from the curb, leaving the FLO’s to their job.

  Harriet laughed, a release of the unspent tension that still gripped her body and Drew glanced over at her.

  “You all right?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine. But yeah, I was nervous.”

  He grinned and turned his attention back to the road. “Sian’s parents are staying with a relative nearest to here, maybe we should hit there before we go on to Aidan’s?”

  Harriet nodded. The last thing she wanted at that precise moment was to submerge herself in the misery and trauma of such fresh grief. It had been hard enough with Kate Whitly and she at least had moved past the initial stages of shock. But it needed to be done.

  “The file is there if you want to review it,” Drew said, indicating a pile of beige folders at her feet.

  She scooped it up and was once again greeted with the teenagers smiling picture. It was so unfair.

  Why them? Why these teenagers in particular? Harriet let the questions mull over in her mind and the germ of an idea began to form.

  What commonalities did these three teens share?

  She glanced down at the files again and grabbed Aidan’s file off the top. Flicking through the pages, she pulled the sheet with a list of his family out from among the others and scanned quickly down over the list.

  “Damn.”

  “What is it?” Drew glanced over at her.

  “I thought I’d found something is all,” she said. “But it’s nothing.”

  “Well what was it anyway?”

  Harriet sighed and slid the sheet back into the file.

  “Sian’s father is dead. Cancer, right?”

  Drew nodded.

  “Well, Jack Whitly’s father is also deceased. Car accident.”

  Drew shot her an incredulous look. “And Aidan’s parents?”

  “Both alive,” Harriet said and bit back the inappropriate giggle that threatened to erupt from her. “I nev
er thought I’d feel such disappointment over something like that.”

  Drew kept his attention trained on the road but Harriet could sense him mulling over everything she’d just said.

  “It was a long shot anyway; I don’t think it could be so simple as all that.”

  “Maybe,” Drew said cryptically.

  Sitting back against the seat, Harriet closed her eyes and tried to picture the shadowy figure that had stalked the children. How did you get close enough to them to know everything about them? It seemed impossible and yet their killer had done just that.

  There was obviously something she was missing and it made her uncomfortable to know that someone out there was so many steps ahead of her. No matter how simple or obvious it seemed, no stone could be left untouched. The killer had obviously done his homework and Harriet had the feeling that it would be this that would help them finally catch up to him.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  It was almost impossible to make them understand that the world was a bad place that would never get better. They knew it was terrible, that the simple act of living was an act of extreme foolhardiness. And yet they kept trucking forward.

  It baffled him.

  Why fight to stay in a place that wanted nothing more than for you to disappear entirely?

  Some people grouped themselves together. There was a kind of safety in numbers, he supposed, but it didn’t change the fundamental facts at play. We were all alone and in the end that was how it would be.

  For the lucky few he chose to help shirk the mortal coil they at least were not alone in the end. He was there with them, holding their hands as they fought.

  But it was in the end when he stared into their eyes that he saw the truth. They wanted this; they were just too afraid to admit it out loud. That was the problem with people; we were too afraid to admit what we wanted. He wasn’t afraid.

  He wanted for nothing more than to leave this world behind and ascend to the greatness that awaited beyond. But there was nobody out there to help him cross over. No kindly soul that could take his misery from him and carry the burden along with their own.

  He was the only one who saw the truth and with that knowledge came a weight that only he could bear. Of course, there would come a day when his body gave up and he longed for that day to come. He welcomed the thought of it. Just thinking about it was enough to bring a tear to his bloodshot eyes.

  With hands that shook, he tied and retied the noose. He’d practiced it over and over and still, no matter how often he did it, he couldn’t shake the fear that this time it wouldn’t work.

  This time it would be different. It needed to be different. But he was afraid. Not that fear was necessarily a bad thing. It kept him alert, kept him keen and aware and it was all of that that kept him going. He stayed one step ahead of those who would seek to destroy his work because of the fear.

  Their stupidity and ignorance blinded them to the truth. They couldn’t see the great work he was committing, couldn’t see the truth of his mission and it was this that made them dangerous and gave his fear purpose.

  This time would be different. There would be suffering but as with most things in life; from great suffering came the greatest joy. And while he wouldn’t enjoy it, he knew it was necessary. A necessary evil. And afterwards, perhaps if he was lucky, he would sleep. He glanced down at the bear and smiled.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll take you home soon enough.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “What do you mean you think Sian’s death is suspicious?” Nigel Thompson sat forward on the couch and pushed his wife’s hand away. “How can you come in here and say something like that? I cut her down from the tree myself and she was—"

  He covered his mouth with his hand as tears filled his eyes. “Do you know what that’s like?”

  “I can’t begin to imagine how traumatic that must have been for you,” Harriet managed to get the words in before he turned on her.

  “And just who are you? What good is a psychologist now that Sian is dead? Where were you when she was stringing herself up?”

  “That’s just it,” Drew tried again, and Harriet couldn’t help but admire his tenacity. “We don’t believe she took her life. We think someone made that choice for her.”

  Janet Thompson started to sob, and Harriet sat back in her chair and cast a quick look in Drew’s direction. They were going around in circles. It seemed no matter how much they tried to steer the conversation back to Sian’s death being a murder it triggered a round of accusations and questions demanding what good was it doing anyone now, Sian was still dead after all.

  “How could they have killed her?” Janet said, raising her face to Harriet.

  “I think they set it up to appear as a suicide. You said in your initial statement Sian showed no signs of being depressed, is that correct?”

  Janet shook her head. “She was a pretty typical teen. She could be a bit moody but nothing out of the ordinary.”

  “Did you notice anything in her behaviour over these past recent months? Anything different at all?”

  Janet shook her head. “She was a little bit more short-tempered than usual and I had a chat to her about her grades slipping. But she swore it was nothing, that she was just getting too grips with the curriculum.”

  “Do you think Sian was being secretive?” Harriet asked, studying Nigel and Janet’s face as she asked the question.

  “All teens are a bit secretive but I always told Sian she could come to me with anything.” Janet dabbed at her eyes with the tissue in her hand.

  “And what about you, Mr Thompson?” Harriet turned her attention to him. “Do you think Sian could be secretive?”

  “They were very close,” Janet interjected before Nigel could say anything. “She spent a lot of time talking to him, didn’t she?”

  Nigel shrugged. “We weren’t that close but I did tell her if there was ever anything worrying her she could come to me.”

  “And did she ever come to you?”

  “There was that thing with her boyfriend,” Nigel cut in. “Nasty piece of work if you ask me. I tried to warn Sian off him. Said he was a no-good waster but she wouldn’t hear of it.”

  “Aidan wasn’t a bad boy,” Janet said.

  “He was a creep, trying to pressure Sian into sex—" Nigel buried his face in his hands and Harriet’s suspicions rose.

  “Well that sounds like you were close with her,” she probed. “What about arguments between you, were there many of those?”

  “Not particularly,” Janet said. “We had our ups and downs like any parents have with their teens.”

  “I just can’t believe she’s gone,” Nigel said, his voice cracking.

  “Mr Thompson, perhaps you and I should get some air and maybe stick the kettle on,” Harriet said, making a snap a decision to break the couple up. Handling them individually meant they might actually get some useful information from them and there was something about Nigel Thompson that set her teeth on edge.

  “I can do it,” Janet said, beginning to stand.

  “Actually,” Drew said, catching Harriet’s eye. “I was wondering if you could help me create a list of Sian’s friends.”

  “Oh well—"

  Harriet pushed onto her feet. “Shall we?” She gestured to Nigel who stood and headed for the kitchen.

  Once they were safely out of earshot of the living room, Harriet directed him to the table. “You sit, I can put the kettle on.”

  “Do you mind if I step out for a fag?”

  Harriet shook her head. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

  She busied herself with filling the kettle as Nigel stepped out onto the stone flags outside the back door. From the window, Harriet watched as he scrubbed at his eyes between drags on the cigarette he clutched between his fingers.

  There was something about the entire situation that to her felt off somehow but what it was she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

  With the kettle boilin
g, she stepped out onto the terrace next to him.

  “It sounds like you and Sian shared a close bond.”

  He nodded. “As close as a step-father can be I suppose,” he said guardedly.

  “Did she confide in you a lot?”

  He shook his head. “No, why should she have? Do you think she told me she was going to do this and I just—"

  Harriet raised her hands as though to ward off his sudden defensiveness. “That’s not what I meant, I’m sorry if it came across as insensitive. I was just referring to what you said earlier that Aidan was pressuring Sian for sex, that sounded like she was comfortable enough with you to discuss something so private?”

  He shrugged. “She didn’t really need to, you know? I asked her if he’d tried it on with her, I know what teenage boys are like around pretty girls.”

  “She was a very pretty girl,” Harriet agreed. “Beautiful even.”

  Nigel nodded and took an unsteady drag of his cigarette. “If you’d seen pictures of Janet when she was Sian’s age, the two of them were like twins of one another.”

  “Was Sian unhappy at all that you’d noticed?” Harriet asked, keeping her tone light and conversational.

  “Not particularly. I think she was upset about the Aidan boy but she’d have gotten over that sooner or later. You know what teens are like, fickle as all get out.”

  “What about her friends?”

  “What about them?”

  “Did she have any arguments with them lately?”

  “Her mother said there was a bit of furore but I took no notice of it. Girls can be bitches and they were just jealous of Sian anyway. She had every bloke in the county looking to hook up with her.”

  Harriet’s discomfort intensified, a cold prickle of disgust that trailed down her spine.

  “She told you that?”

  “I’ve got eyes in my head, don’t I? You’d need to be blind.”

  “And how did that make you feel?” Harriet asked, keeping her tone conversational.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well that must have made you uncomfortable to think Sian was attracting so much attention?”