Everything Is Lies

by Helen Callaghan

  Nothing made sense.

  Whenever I called to check in with the police, they kept telling me that ‘the investigation into the course of events was ongoing’, but it was very obvious what they all believed. I’d had the chance to read all about it in the paper a few days ago, when it was shoved into the groaningly full mailbox bolted to the gate:

  WOMAN DEAD, MAN CRITICAL IN PULVERTON MURDER – SUICIDE

  The body of a woman and a critically injured man were found at a house in Pulverton on Saturday morning after what appears to be an attempted murder – suicide.

  Police and ambulance were called at 9:05 to The Old Mill, Pulverton, after the couple were discovered in the garden of the property.

  The dead woman was confirmed as Nina Mackenzie, 46, and the injured man her partner, Jared Boothroyd, 51. The couple ran Eden Gardens and Café together, a garden centre attached to the property in which they were found. Mr Boothroyd is currently in a coma in the Royal Suffolk Hospital in a ‘critical condition’.

  The woman is understood to have died by hanging and the man sustained serious knife wounds during the evening of Friday, 28 July. Both were discovered in the garden by their daughter, Sophia, 26, who lives in London.

  Local woman Babs Moran, of Brightley Cottages, Pulverton, described Nina Mackenzie as ‘a nervous little mouse of a woman’ and ‘rather strange, though she seemed very nice. You’d never imagine she was capable of such a thing.’

  Detective Inspector Rob Howarth told the Mercury, ‘This is a tragic and baffling event, and it’s far too early to discuss the motives involved. Indeed, we are very keen to hear from anyone that can shed some light on the mindset of Nina and Jared in the weeks leading up to the incident.’

  He confirmed that the police were not currently looking for anyone else in connection with the matter.

  The conclusion would seem to be obvious to everyone but me. My mum had planned to kill herself, and tried to stab my dad when he attempted to stop her. The DI, Rob Howarth, had shown me her pair of green kitchen scissors, bloodstained and with bits of grass still stuck to them, the blades gaping apart – these scissors had stabbed my dad so hard that the little rivet holding the pieces together was broken, and now both halves rattled about in the clear plastic evidence bag.

  ‘Do you recognize these scissors, Sophia?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I whispered, because I did. Mum had had them for years, and my dad would sharpen them for her in his shed.

  Fingerprints were dried into a maroon crust on the silver steel.

  It made no sense at all.

  I had never known my mum to commit a violent act. Ever. She was the kind of woman who would spend the best part of half an hour wafting a trapped fly towards the open windows of the house.

  I told all this to Cleo down the phone, as I took a short break in the hospital coffee shop to wolf down a bland cheese sandwich and some vending-machine coffee. I’d looked for a vegan sandwich but couldn’t find one. Despite the fact that I’d rejected their vegetarianism years ago, for some reason it felt important to stick to it now – perhaps, if I did, the unseen forces of the universe would relent and let my dad get better.

  ‘But there’s no change? I mean, in his condition …?’

  ‘No,’ I said, setting the paper cup down. Then, as kept happening, I burst into tears.

  ‘Oh, Soph, Soph, don’t cry … I’m sorry. No news is good news, isn’t it? He’s not getting worse, right?’ She paused, as though reluctant. ‘Do you want me to come down?’

  I did. I’d become increasingly cut off from my old friends by my new job at Amity, to the point where calling them felt more awkward than I could cope with in my fragile state. ‘I could do with—’

  ‘I mean,’ she interjected quickly, ‘I’ve got some reports due in for James on Monday morning, so I have to work this weekend, but maybe next …’

  I understood instantly and with a flash of annoyance replied, ‘It’s all right, Cleo, thanks, I’ll be fine. Rowan is here.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Rowan, a friend from when I was a kid. He works for my dad.’ I tried to rein in my impatience. I’d told her this already. I seemed, on top of everything else, to have developed a savage, hair-trigger temper. It’s very hard to explain. It was as though I was constantly spoiling for a fight, for someone to beat up.

  Perhaps the person I wanted to smack was myself. I’d hung up on Mum that night, after all. My own mother. Even though I knew something had been slightly off about her call.

  It was the last time I would ever speak to her.

  ‘Look, Cleo, I’d better get back up there.’ My horrid sandwich and bitter coffee were finished. I’d promised the nurses I would eat something today and I had.

  Mission accomplished.

  ‘Sure, sure. When are you back in work?’ asked Cleo.

  ‘I don’t know.’ I couldn’t think about that now. Amity, Benjamin and my little flat in Brixton seemed like something that had happened in another life, to another Sophia. ‘I’m not sure it will be any time soon.’

  There was a significant pause. ‘Oh.’ She swallowed. ‘If you’re sure. Well, I’m positive they’ll understand … under the circumstances.’

  ‘I’ll ring you over the weekend, OK?’

  ‘OK. Take care, Sophia.’

  ‘Will do. You too.’

  I stumped back up the stairs towards the ward, and when I got there, a visitor was waiting – lurking near the entrance by the hand disinfector, his shirt limp with the heat, his chin and cheeks red with razor burn. His blonde buzzcut glistened faintly.

  ‘Hello again, Sophia.’

  It was Detective Inspector Rob Howarth, the man telling me and the papers he wasn’t looking for anyone else in connection to my mum’s death and my dad’s hideous injuries.

  Our relationship had quickly become tense and confrontational – in the main, because he believed my mum had hung herself, after attacking my dad when he tried to prevent her, and I knew that every single element of that scenario was impossible.

  There was no way my mum would kill herself. It was inconceivable that she would do such a violent thing, and leave her body to be found like that by anyone, especially me. The mere idea would have horrified her, struck her as selfish and … and rude, strange as that may sound.

  Even if I was wrong and she was capable of this, there was no way she would hurt my dad that way, stabbing him so hard the scissors snapped apart. That kind of passionate violence and rage – it just wasn’t who she was.

  Someone else had done this to them. Someone – and my heart clenched to think of it – who might have been stood behind Mum while she was on the phone to me that night, perhaps holding a knife to my dad’s throat, while I drank in that stupid bar and tried to get rid of her so I could get off with some worthless married man.

  The thought of it was too horrible to contemplate.

  The police didn’t see it this way because of course they didn’t know my mum and dad, and that was hardly their fault. It was my job, I reminded myself, to set them straight and make sure they kept looking for whoever had done this.

  I might have failed to help my parents that night, but it wasn’t a mistake I would make again.

  I fought to still my shaking hands and decided to cut to the chase. ‘Well?’ I asked.

  DI Howard seemed to bear my abruptness no ill will. A kind of pity lurked in the creases of his dark blue eyes and the tight lines surrounding his mouth. I understood instantly that whatever he had come to say, I would not want to hear it.

  ‘So, we’ve had most of the results back from the crime scene,’ he said. ‘Including the DNA samples from the scissors and the fairy lights.’

  ‘What … already?’ I felt breathless. ‘What does it say?’

  ‘We’ve found no evidence that anyone else was involved in the incident at Eden Gardens.’

  I blinked at him. ‘Well … well, that can’t be right.’

  His face did not move, and his serious
ness made a chilling impression on me.

  ‘I know it’s not what you were hoping to hear, Sophia—’

  ‘It’s not about what I’m hoping to hear,’ I said, my anger rising. ‘Whoever it was could have been wearing gloves or something. I mean … the fact that you can’t find any evidence just means that whoever this was … whoever did this was clever about leaving no trace.’

  He looked down at his shoes for a second, as though trying to muster his patience. ‘Sophia, I know this is hard to accept …’

  I raised my hands, as though warding him off. ‘No. No. Everyone keeps saying, “I know this is very hard to accept” in that tone of voice, and the fact is, yeah, it is hard to accept, because it’s impossible—’

  ‘Sophia—’

  ‘My mum would not kill herself!’ The tears were coming back, and I wiped them away impatiently. ‘She was down sometimes, but so is everyone. And she wouldn’t hurt my dad. I know this, do you understand? I know them …’

  My voice was growing louder, and nurses and visitors were turning towards me to see what the commotion was. I tried to collect myself. This wasn’t his fault.

  This was my fault.

  ‘So here’s what we have, Sophia,’ he said carefully, with a thin veneer of brisk compassion as his Adam’s apple reddened above his loosened shirt collar. ‘There are no fingerprints or any other evidence that anyone else was there, except for you.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘There are no defensive wounds on either of them, no signs of any forced entry to the garden. Your mother’s ligature wounds are consistent with how she was found …’ He swallowed and I almost pitied him. ‘Sophia,’ he laid a hand on my shoulder, very carefully, as though I might bite it. ‘I know this is, uh, a lot to take in. But it’s the only explanation that fits all the facts, when you consider the problems your parents were having.’

  ‘What problems?’ I asked sharply.

  Surprised, he blinked at me. ‘The burglaries? The vandalism?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘I … no …’

  ‘They reported incidents four times in the last six months. They promised the officer who came out last time that they were going to buy CCTV cameras,’ he said, tapping his notebook with his pen. ‘It doesn’t look like they ever installed any.’

  I was too stunned to reply. Burgled?

  And four times in six months?

  Eden Gardens is out in the middle of nowhere, and not an obviously prosperous place. Who would bother breaking in even once?

  And why had my parents never mentioned it? A burglary is a traumatic event – I’d been burgled once in Brixton and had spent the next three weeks sleeping with the lights on.

  My confusion must have been obvious to DI Howarth.

  ‘You really didn’t know?’ he asked.

  I stared at him bleakly and shook my head.

  ‘Sophia, I think that number of break-ins would upset anybody. You’re sure she wasn’t depressed?’

  ‘Yes. Well, she was always a little … needy. But not depressed. If anything, she’d seemed – I dunno …’ I fought to capture the feeling I’d had, the thing that had been in the back of my mind for months. ‘She seemed a little more together – she’d …’ My cheeks were burning with shame. ‘When I first moved out, I had constant phone calls begging me to come home, to find a job nearer them, but in the last few months it had started to calm down.’

  I was paralysed by all these new, impossible doubts. ‘She tries to manage her moods, though. She meditates … sorry, meditated. You know, the standard hippy thing.’ I rubbed my sore eyes. ‘She was just, I dunno, everything was always a bit chaotic with her. She was always going to learn to paint, or write a book about her “spiritual journey”.’ I dropped my hands. ‘But she’d been saying that for years. She never got around to it.’

  ‘One thing you learn, being a police officer, is that people are always surprising you.’

  I folded my arms around myself miserably, and considered this bizarre, strange, but yet plausible scenario for a second. When said out loud, it could have played out that way. They were frantic with anxiety; they were both insular, self-contained people, and they were under attack in their little garden world.

  But here’s the thing. I knew them.

  Or at least I thought I did. Then.

  * * *

  Rowan and his wife, Kayleigh, had urged me to stay at their cottage two miles down the road from Eden Gardens, and at night they fed and housed me alongside their charming, chaotic children. I would sit at their table at mealtimes and watch them, feeling like Banquo’s ghost, aware that I was intruding but unable to face staying at my parents’ house alone.

  I had grown to rely on Rowan, who worked for my dad at the gardens. The sound of his heavy boots clumping down the hospital corridors soon became recognizable from dozens of yards away. The untidy mass of his pale brown dreadlocks tied loosely away from his face was a challenge to the sterile decor and starched uniforms around me.

  ‘Hiya, Soph.’

  I raised my eyebrows at him as he sat down next to me. I didn’t have the energy for much more.

  ‘How is he?’ he asked.

  ‘The same.’

  He nodded, as though this was progress, and leaned back against the wall, letting his head fall against it. He closed his eyes.

  There was blessed silence.

  I have known Rowan for ever – since we were children. His father, Cliff, had a tiny farm on the edge of Pulverton Down and worked with my dad sporadically, each helping the other out with the bigger gardening and farming chores. For years Rowan was my only playmate and we did everything together.

  I’m not sure when that changed. Maybe when I hit my teens and became a dark Goth rebel with ennui, poetry and boys on my mind, while he stayed with the things he loved – hiking, fishing and working the earth.

  And I think, if I’m being honest, that I was more than a little jealous of him.

  Rowan’s dad died a drunk, but Rowan stuck around, working at Eden Gardens full time. He married a local girl, rented a cottage just down the road from us, sired two children and effectively became the son my dad had always wanted.

  As I sat indoors, studying for my A Levels, I would often look up from my books and out of my bedroom window, where I’d see them lounging comfortably together at the trestle table under the trees, mugs in hand, smoking tiny roll-ups with glowing orange tips in the dusk as my dad gestured expansively, doubtless telling him some story that made them both laugh.

  My dad wasn’t like that with me any more, and it made something in my heart curl up and ache.

  I’d been gone for years now, and I thought Rowan and I had grown apart. But distance is quantum, and frequently imaginary, or so it proves. He was acting as though I’d never been away.

  ‘Rowan, did you know my parents had been burgled?’

  His eyes flicked sideways at me. ‘What? Again?’ His tanned brow wrinkled.

  ‘The police said four times in the last six months.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, I knew about that.’ He seemed to relax, as though worried I’d been talking about some other, additional crime. He caught my expression. ‘Jared and Nina never told you?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘They probably didn’t want you to worry,’ he said, but his tone was clipped, his gaze evasive. We both knew that my mum always wanted me to worry about her. It was one of her tools for getting me to come home. ‘It wasn’t like any big deal – nothing important got stolen.’

  ‘But doesn’t four times in six months strike you as excessive?’ I asked.

  He shrugged. ‘You know, it did at first. But the police reckoned it’s quite common. If a criminal gets in successfully once, you know, he’ll try again. It’s not like there’s an alarm. Your dad never got around to installing any CCTV. What’s to stop them?’

  I sighed in exasperation. I knew all about my dad’s views on the surveillance culture. �
��Never be photographed,’ was his maxim, as though he subscribed to the old belief that cameras could steal your soul. ‘But what is there to rob from my parents? They don’t even have a TV.’

  Rowan shook his head. ‘Who knows? Money, jewellery, and we have loads of tools in the sheds – though they didn’t take any.’ He shrugged again. ‘If it’s druggies, they don’t have to steal a lot, just anything they can pawn. Jared reckoned it might just be kids, you know, after the thrill of the thing.’

  He looked uncomfortable, realizing he’d been in on a secret from which I’d been deliberately excluded. That ancient childhood jealousy and paranoia was stirring within me again – I pushed it down, locked it back in its box.

  There was a horrible irony to all this – while I had railed to the detective that he didn’t know my parents, I hadn’t known this was happening to them, and Rowan had. Why hadn’t they told me?

  Probably, I realized with a flash of insight, because I would have gone crazy at them both. ‘You need a burglar alarm. You need cameras. You need locks on the windows and doors …’

  I would have got involved.

  ‘I’ve got a list of people your parents knew locally – you know, like … for the funeral,’ said Rowan after a few moments.

  ‘Thanks,’ I replied listlessly.

  ‘Did the coroner get back to you?’ he murmured, glancing over at my dad, as though anxious not to be overheard.

  I nodded. ‘The funeral directors are picking her up tomorrow.’ I swallowed hard; my eyes were growing hot and it was becoming harder to think. ‘They’ve done the autopsy, so we can bury her. The next thing we’re waiting for is the inquest … whenever that will be …’

  I could say no more. Everything was falling apart again.

  ‘Come here,’ he said, and before I knew it I was sobbing into Rowan’s arms, my dad’s dislike of drama notwithstanding. ‘Soph, I’m so sorry about this. So sorry.’

  ‘I don’t believe my mum killed herself. I just don’t believe it.’

  ‘I know, Soph.’