by C. J. Skuse
‘You’re not the police?’
‘I work with the police but no, I’m not a copper. I’m not supposed to be here, I’m on leave, but I’ve been working with Ellis a long time. Since she… left her old life.’
He won’t look at me. He stirs the mugs. Pours the milk. Takes the bags straight out. It can’t have brewed. ‘You make it sound like she had a choice.’
‘She talked about you all the time.’
‘She did?’ I say, a well of emotion rising in my throat. ‘I think about her a lot too. You work in Witness Protection then?’
He frowns. ‘I shouldn’t be talking to you about this.’ He brings the mugs over and sets them down on the coffee table before me.
‘Then why are you?’ I pick up the mug meant for me. ‘My mum told us everything, after Ellis and Uncle Dan had gone into hiding. Well she told us what she knew. Which wasn’t much. Are you a social worker?’
‘No, I work for the UKPPS – UK Protected Persons Service. We look after people who are at risk from criminal entanglement.’
‘Uncle Dan grassed on some drug dealers, yeah?’
‘I… can’t go into this.’
‘Yeah you can.’
He sips his tea and settles it down again. ‘His testimony got six of them put away for life. He sang like a bloody canary for us. He was afraid. It was a £700k supply line, spanning the whole country. Major dice. When police raided one of the addresses, they found an industrial pill press making more than 200 ecstasy tabs a minute.’
‘Oh my god.’
‘They had twelve-year-olds in the supply chain. It was frightening. That’s when your uncle drew the line. His testimony stopped it in its tracks. He pissed off quite a few big bads though. That’s why we had to hide them.’
‘So, do you think something’s happened to Ellis? The big bads?’
‘No, I don’t,’ he says flatly. ‘I think she’s playing silly buggers again and any moment she’s going to walk through that door, that’s what I think.’
I look towards the door he’s pointing at. It remains closed. ‘What?’
‘This is what she does, Foy. She lies. She plays games. She runs off, pretends something’s happened to her, gets everybody worried and worked up and then, Hey Presto, back she comes, like butter wouldn’t melt.’
‘Now hang on a minute…’
‘No, you hang on. You haven’t seen her since you were, what, ten years old? She’s not the Ellis Kemp you remember. She’s changed a lot in eighteen years.’
I spy a Lego model of a castle on a high shelf. A Roald Dahl book with creases in the spine – The Witches. A note on a small blackboard written in pink chalk – Buy cheese, eggs, blue bootlaces. Ornaments – The Snowman. George and his pot of marvellous medicine. Scented erasers. DVDs of Disney movies we used to watch together. A tiny Christmas tree with a small pile of presents around it labelled neatly – her handwriting’s the same. The Minnie Mouse cuddly she got from Disney World – the white bits all grey and shabby and her dress all flat where she’d been well-cuddled. The unicorn pencil topper I gave her is there too. I walk over to the window-sill to pick it up. Definitely the same one, though its mane has fallen out and the face is rubbed off.
‘Actually,’ I tell him, ‘I don’t think she’s changed much at all.’
19
Sunday, 3rd November (afternoon)
I switch on my phone and call home to let them know I’ve arrived safely. Isaac answers. Hearing his voice settles my anxiety somewhat. Even if he is mad with me.
‘Where the fuck—’
‘I’m in England.’
‘You’re what?’
‘I’m in England. I knew you and Paddy would try and talk me out of it.’
‘Out of what?’ I overhear him telling Paddy and the words fucking England? ‘One minute you were on the phone, the next we call you for dinner and Joe finds a note taped to your bedroom door. The fuck, Foy?’
‘Okay. A few months after Luc died, I employed a private detective. To find Ellis.’
‘Oh god, not this again.’
‘Yes, this again. They found her.’
‘They found her? Oh my god. Is she—’
‘She’s alive, at least. Somewhere. But she disappeared suddenly.’
Isaac sighs, like he’s deflating of all his air. ‘Sis, you should have said.’
‘I knew what you’d both say – you’re chasing rainbows again, Foy. She’s a different person now, Foy. She won’t remember us. Well, I needed to find out for myself.’
‘You can’t cope with this right now, not on top of everything else. Shall we come over, me and Pads?’
‘No, you’ve got enough on your plates. And the roofer’s coming later today and you need to be there to make sure he puts those slates back on right. I’m okay. There’s a miserable detective guy here who’s supposedly on the case.’
‘I’m worried about you.’
‘Yeah, I’m worried about me too but I’ll be fine.’
‘Alright, but you call us if you change your mind and we’ll be there. Call us if there’s any news too. Love you.’
‘Love you too.’ I ache when the screen fades to black.
In the lounge, Neil sits before the TV, his brown lace-ups propped up on the coffee table. He’s watching a programme about Hampton Court.
‘What did you mean when you said she’d done this before?’ I ask him.
He sips his tea, not taking his eyes from the screen. ‘When she was living in Manchester. She ran off. Left a note saying she’d had enough. By the time I got there, having done eighty-plus on the motorway thinking she was going to throw herself off a bridge, she opens the door to me, as good as new. Twice she did that. I got firm with her in the end and she didn’t do it again.’
‘What do you mean, “got firm”?’
‘I said if she tried it again, I’d stop dealing with her case and pass her onto one of my team. That was all it took. That was before the tram smash.’
‘She was in a tram smash?’
‘She said she was in a tram smash. She was actually nowhere near at the time it crashed. Next thing I know, she’s on TV news talking about her injuries.’ He goes back to learning the intricacies of King Henry’s velvet piss pot. ‘She lies about everything.’
I sit down tentatively on the single armchair, brushing the cat hairs off the arm, which is a losing game because there are so many. ‘Like what?’
‘You name it,’ he says. ‘She changes her name daily, depending on who she’s talking to. She has seven cats, none of which actually belong to her. I’m only giving you the very tip of the iceberg though. She’s… messed up.’ He looks at me. I can take that from him. He knows her. It’s not like when Cotterill called her a freak on the phone – he’s only known her a month.
‘Where have you come from, Edinburgh?’
‘No, I’m still based in Bristol. Well I was. I’ve been staying at my parents’ place in Dumfries for the last couple of days. Bit of a break.’
‘So how did you know she was missing?’
He turns his attention back to the TV. The historian’s reading out Henry’s weekly food ration. It’s a long list. I don’t think Neil’s going to answer me, but all of a sudden, he does. ‘She left me a voicemail. I put off listening to it because it’s usually the same thing. Asking me to visit. Paranoid she’s being followed. All Peter and the Wolf stuff.’
‘But the wolf eventually got Peter.’
‘That’s why I listened to the message. Always that possibility, isn’t there? I found some broken glass when I came in.’
‘Where?’
‘Some in the bedroom, some in here. She’s done a Gone Girl. Planting clues.’
My chest clenches. She could walk in that door any second. And then she’ll see me. And we can be together again, like it was. Well, not exactly like it was. I lose myself in a trance for whole moments. When I come to, Neil’s sad grey eyes are staring at me.
And then it strikes me – h
e can fill in the gaps in my understanding. He can tell me things about Ellis I’ve always wondered. I reach for the tea he’s made me but it’s so milky, my stomach turns over. I leave it alone.
Some historian’s poring through a dusty old book in white gloves.
‘I had nightmares for years about Ellis,’ I tell him. I don’t know if he’s listening. He’s watching the book-fingering. ‘We weren’t allowed to ask questions after those first few days but we talked about her, me, Paddy and Isaac. They’re my brothers.’
He affords me an eyebrow raise, but nothing more.
‘I pretended she’d shrunk, like in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. And I had to find her. I’d have nightmares about losing her. Or Dad mowing the lawn over her.’
Neil frowns. ‘Bit daft.’
‘Yeah, it was daft. But that’s the only possibility I could handle, rather than accept the fact she’d fallen off the edge of the earth. I had this stupid ritual I made Dad do every time he was about to cut the grass. He had to shout that the lawnmower’s coming, so Ellis had time to run to safety. I’d scream if he didn’t. My poor dad. Later I got to thinking she’d been taken by a big bird. I’d climb trees and search nests for her. Maybe she’d been turned into a bird herself. But she never ever flew back to me.’
‘Must have been hard,’ he mumbles, but doesn’t look over, which allows me to cry. I have such a headache and it starts banging. The crying seems to make it worse.
‘When I was about thirteen, fourteen, I read an article at school in an art lesson – we were doing papier-mâché and tearing up all this newspaper – and this girl, about my age, had been knocked down and killed on her way home from a party. I thought she was Ellis. I tried to convince myself that she’d died. But there was always that little voice that thought Maybe not. What happened to them, that day at Heathrow Airport?’
Neil cracks his knuckles. ‘It’s all classified stuff, really.’
‘Oh come on, it was eighteen years ago. It doesn’t matter now.’
‘Still classified.’
‘TELL ME.’
‘They went to Scotland, to a safe house. After a time, they went to Liverpool. Settled there pretty well for a couple of years.’
‘Then?’
‘A few members of the cartel tracked them down. The more money in the business, the bigger their reach. So we had to move them – to Scarborough. They were fairly happy there until Ellis was eighteen.’
His face had changed. Darkened. I said nothing but I waited whole minutes for him to say anything else. The history program went to an ad break. Then he said it.
‘Three men broke into their house. They didn’t get away that time.’
‘What did they do?’
He swigs his tea. ‘You sure you want to know?’
‘I have to know.’
‘They beat your uncle badly. All morning. Tied him to a radiator. Finished him off by strangling him. Ellis was there.’
He says it so matter-of-factly. There is no warmth in the room at all.
‘Ellis saw it?’
‘She got home from college later that day and found him tied up in the living room. They’d waited for her, tied her to the rad at the other end of the room and beat her up too. They didn’t strangle her though. They just made her watch.’
‘Did they… touch her?’ I ask, wiping my cheeks again.
‘No. Thankfully. There was one guy in the cartel who used to intimidate female witnesses that way, but he wasn’t there. He was in prison at the time thank god. Nasty bastard. He used to carry a rape kit round with him. So no, she wasn’t touched. But she was badly hurt. That’s the reason she can’t have kids. Had to give her a hysterectomy.’
‘Oh my god.’
‘I hadn’t checked on them for a few days. Dan wasn’t answering calls. So I went round. And I found them in the living room. She still had a pulse, barely. He was cold. I don’t know why she forgave me for that day but she did. I got home that night, opened a bottle of JB and downed the lot. I didn’t want to stop.’ He rubs his eyes.
‘You saved her life?’ I can’t stop the tears then. They keep coming. Next thing I know, he’s handing me two sheets of kitchen roll.
‘After she came out of hospital, she was moved to Manchester for a time then back to Liverpool. Did a spell in Nottingham before she came here, two months ago.’
‘Always with new names?’
‘New names, new identities. New jobs. Passports. Ann Hilsom. Melanie Smith. Claire Price. And now Joanne Haynes.’
‘She can’t have known if she was coming or going.’
‘It’s all part of it, I’m afraid. I visit her sometimes. See how she’s doing. Bring her shopping when she can’t go out. I don’t have to do that anymore, but I do.’
‘Why can’t she go out?’
‘She gets paranoid. I come up and see how she’s faring. But since she’s been recategorised as low-risk, it’s not been as often and she’s struggled with that.’
‘Probably looked on you as another dad.’
He didn’t answer that. ‘The cartel Dan grassed on are no longer operational. But she thought three of them were following her a few weeks ago.’
‘And were they?’
He stares into space. ‘No. She was making it up.’
‘But she was being followed. By Kaden Cotterill, for one. For me.’
He shakes his head but doesn’t say anything else. Christ, he’s so miserable. Talk about dour Scot. I’d have thought the least he could afford me was a reassuring smile. It’s all so gloomy in here. Damp in the corners, brown cat-scratchy sofa, brown chair, small TV with a crappy aerial. Avocado bathroom suite. Everything is so ugly and sad and cold. I want to burn the place to the ground. He seems to want to watch TV.
‘You didn’t take her warnings seriously, did you?’
‘No, I didn’t,’ he almost-shouts. ‘There are no new threats. You have no idea what I’ve had to put up with over the years with her. I’ve gone down every single rabbit hole she’s dug me. She keeps making up these stories about silent phone calls and coffin catalogues and men following her. It’s all attention-seeking bollocks.’
‘Okay, okay,’ I say, for once the calm one in the room. ‘Jesus, I only asked.’
‘This is what she does,’ he says, springing to his feet and pacing the floor. ‘This is who she is now, she’s an Alibi Clock. She tells one time, she strikes another and neither one’s the right fucking time. This last year she’s been a nightmare to monitor.’
‘What did her message say? The voicemail?’
‘I can’t remember now.’
‘You do. It’s on your mind, isn’t it? What did she say? TELL ME!’
He gestures towards the plug in the wall by the patio doors, and his phone sitting on a small table linked by a white wire. ‘She said she’d had enough. She said she wanted to die. And then she said she was sorry. And hung up.’
He’s more worried than he’s letting on, I know he is. I sip my tea because I’m thirsty and too-milky tea is better than none, but it tastes funny. ‘Urgh, what’s this?’
‘Tea.’
‘Is the milk off?’
‘No. I put a wee nip in it. For your nerves.’
‘My nerves are fine, thanks.’ I put the mug down. He seems jittery. And then I get it because I’ve seen this before in my own dad. He’s drunk. I spy the bottle of Bells Whisky on the breakfast bar, tucked behind a dying pot of parsley.
‘How much have you had?’
‘Oh, Christ, don’t you start.’
‘If you shout at me again I will punch you in the face,’ I warn him. ‘I do NOT do alcoholics. Alright?’
He holds up his hands in mock surrender.
‘On the phone Cotterill mentioned something about blood on the carpet?’
‘Yeah, I saw that,’ says Neil, ‘but he said she had a nosebleed the other night. I don’t think it’s significant. The bath’s half full though. I don’t understand that.’
He doesn�
��t seem worried, merely perplexed. I head for the bathroom, pulling the light cord. The lino is wet in places and the bath is half-filled with bright blue water with tiny gold stars floating on top, rippled by a breeze from a crack in the window. Along the bath and on the floor lie several blister packs of tablets. All empty. In the bin are the empty boxes for the pills – Rock-a-bye Night-Time Sleep Aids, 50mg tablets – all from different stores.
‘Don’t touch anything,’ he calls out. ‘Just in case.’
‘In case of what?’
‘In case there’s more to it than the current situation suggests.’
I pull the light and head out again. I go into her bedroom. The décor matches the lounge – dark and drab with dirty yellow wallpaper and a shabby single bed, with creased sheets and a thin duvet. In a child’s car seat on the floor of the open wardrobe, a new-born baby lies sleeping, wrapped in a knitted pink and yellow blanket like a piece of woollen Battenberg. I bend down and touch the doll’s face. It’s so lifelike. I remove it from the car seat. It’s got the heaviness of a baby but it smells of plastic. There’s a tiny wheel on the back – Cry, Wind, Urinate, Sleep. I click it over to Sleep and throw it down on the bed. I touch the covers where she sleeps. The bed feels damp.
I come back into the lounge. ‘The bed’s all damp.’
‘The whole flat’s damp,’ he says. ‘It wants condemning.’
‘No, it’s really damp.’
I come back to the coffee table and pick up my whisky tea. I try it again. No, still disgusting. I move to the kitchenette and pour it down the sink.
‘Why would she leave the bath half-empty? Why would the bed be damp?’
‘Wet towels left on it? I don’t know.’
‘Why would she have taken so many sleeping tablets?’
‘Maybe she didn’t. There’s a load of blue stuff at the bottom of the bath.’
‘But why put sleeping tablets in the bath? What does that mean?’
‘To make us think she’s overdosed,’ he says. ‘You’re going up a blind alley.’
‘Has she taken any of her clothes?’
‘Don’t know. Her phone’s on the windowsill in there.’ He tilts his head to the bathroom. ‘It was playing music as I came in.’