Emma had tried to make Maggie forgive herself. She had helped Maggie contact social services, counselled her when they wouldn’t pass on a single detail about Lee, said one day he would understand, Lee would forgive her for what she had done in the years after Tom’s death.
Emma had turned Maggie round completely, stopped her drinking, kept her sane.
And Maggie had failed her. Good God, she had failed herself. She had always seen Emma as her daughter, ever since she’d looked after her as a babe. But she had never truly lived up to her role as godmother.
She stood up, knees wet and joints sore but at least her hands had stopped shaking.
There was still time to fix things. She would claw back the money, Emma’s money. Give the girl a future to be proud of. She would tell her the truth, the whole truth, and be there to help Emma through it.
She looked behind her to the church, the steeple and cross, hoisted herself up from the ground and stood tall.
No more excuses.
No more gin.
No more lies.
She hadn’t failed Emma, not yet.
Maggie wiped her mouth and her eyes with the back of her hand, turned to the gate to head back home.
She would tell Emma tomorrow, tell her everything, and set about changing her ways.
The ground was damp underfoot from wet leaves and wet mud, but her boots held firm as she walked. She reached into her back pocket for the second hip flask of gin, the last she vowed she would ever drink.
From low down on the hill came the shot from a gun, the sound closer than the last round of lamping.
Maggie sipped from her flask again, walked on towards home, her mind straying to the small, frightened animal.
Poor rabbit.
Maggie
Sunday, 19th November, 2017
Maggie woke up, neck stiff and head sore, her eyes squinting against the weak morning sun.
She was downstairs in the bar. She must’ve fallen asleep by the fire.
Where was Emma?
Maggie looked around her, saw the empty glass on the floor by her foot.
Why was her head so sore? Just a nip was all she normally allowed herself, a mere capful here and there. Even the two empty hipflasks, lying on the sleeper, held no more than a few measures each. But beside the flasks was an empty tumbler, a half-empty gin bottle behind it. What the hell had made her slip up and drink so much she fell asleep in her chair?
Why hadn’t Emma woken Maggie up, taken her upstairs, unpeeled her dirty clothes and put her to bed?
Maggie ran her hand over her hair, over her face, down the front of her shirt and felt the crispy remnants of bile.
The fire was out, her legs felt cold and stiff. The fire poker was lying on the floor, on its side. Had Maggie dropped it there, left it?
She looked up to the bar, saw the clock. Just gone ten in the morning. Emma was always up by now, would normally have cleaned the bar, laid a fresh fire, sorted breakfast and thrown a wash in. Where was she?
She gingerly walked to the sleeper, peered over it into the kitchen.
‘Emma?’ she called but could see her goddaughter wasn’t there. It had been cleaned up, though.
The kettle was pushed back and wiped down, a stack of clean mugs and saucers by the sink. The rubbish had been taken out, too, an empty bin liner in the bin by the door. Maybe Emma did all that last night before bed. Maybe she was asleep before Maggie came home. Maybe she was still in bed.
Alone?
Maggie thought of Toby, the way he had crept out of Emma’s room a few weekends before. Maybe he had called round last night. Maybe he was up there now.
Maggie left the kitchen behind her, walked up the stairs, knees and hips complaining more than usual. Why were they hurting so much? Why couldn’t she remember?
The hallway was dark but Emma’s door was ajar. Maggie pushed it open.
Empty.
The bed had been made and the room smelled of stale air, faint notes of apples and bleach.
She turned around on her heel, spotted the guest room across the hall. Remembered Nuala.
Remembered that James was dead.
Remembered, with a twist to her gut, that he was Emma’s half-brother.
Had Emma somehow found out?
She thundered downstairs, ignoring the pain everywhere.
‘Emma!’ The silence was too much, bearing down from every angle.
The kitchen was empty, the bar was empty, the bathroom beneath the stairs empty too.
Maggie’s car keys, normally hanging above the kettle, were missing. So too was the familiar brown smudge through the frosted glass. The old Rover wasn’t there. Which meant Emma was—
‘Emma!’ Maggie ran through the door, ignoring the pain in her knees and shins, ignoring the burning in her bile-stripped throat.
She’d gone.
‘Emma!’ Her shout more of a sob.
Maggie stumbled out into the street but it was empty, not a person or car in sight.
Lois.
What if she had called, told Emma everything? What if Emma had gone to Shore Road to hear it from Lois in person? The idea caught and Maggie knew it was true, knew that that’s where Emma had gone.
She began to run, feet slipping on the pavement.
She tried to breathe through her mouth but it filled with saliva, her throat burning when she swallowed, her body too fat and weak to keep the pace.
When she turned the last corner she saw her car, that familiar brown smudge. She lurched toward it, knowing Emma was close, knowing she had to find her and hold her and explain, before Lois could.
Maggie rang the bell, but there was no answer. She tried the handle and it opened, the house quiet and still. Perhaps Lois and Emma were upstairs.
It was colder inside this house then it was on the street. Damp spotted the paintwork in hazy black dots, the paint flaked and powdery. But worse than the cold was the silence. No movement, no breathing.
A light caught her eye, from beneath the kitchen door.
Odd, she thought, that a light would be on at this time of day.
Her hand paused above the handle.
All was quiet.
She took a deep breath and pushed, opening the door.
The first thing she noticed was the blood, the ocean of blood, with the viscosity of black gloss paint. A cast-iron door-stop shaped like a dog sat primly in the centre of the kitchen table, covered in the congealed liquid, pieces of hair, bone and flaccid flesh sticking to its etched-on fur.
Then there was Lois, sitting on a chair, bent over with her face pressed into the tabletop and the back of her head a beaten mess.
And finally there was Emma, always Emma. Sitting beside Lois at the table, her clothes, shoes, hands, covered in blood. Her blond hair was lank, the ends rusty with dried blood, some of it hanging at her shoulders, some of it sticking in matted clumps to the wall behind. The shotgun was in her lap, its barrel pointing to where her face should have been.
Maggie
Monday, 20th November, 2017
‘My name is Detective Sergeant Pale.’ He had a city voice; was trying hard to cover his accent. Bristol, perhaps, Bath at a push. ‘This is my colleague, DC Ali.’
If this was the ‘interview suite’ then Maggie never wanted to see an interrogation room. The walls were dirty beige, and there were no windows.
‘Good afternoon, Mrs Bradbury.’ Ali held out her small, thin hand for Maggie to shake. She reached for it over the table, until Pale coughed, shook his head and Ali’s hand retreated to her lap. She smiled instead, opened her mouth to apologise but closed it again when she saw Pale’s face.
‘We’re here to talk to you about the events that unfolded on Saturday night,’ Pale said, turning back to Maggie.
Maggie rubbed her dry eyes. She hadn’t slept since the sedatives the paramedic administered had worn off. Because every time she closed her eyes she saw them.
The blood.
Lois’s head.
Emma.
Always Emma.
Maggie blinked and saw it all again, the blood and the lumps of hair, the cast-iron dog.
‘You need to look for Nuala Greene.’ A drip of sweat slid down Maggie’s neck. She wasn’t sure if she’d said it aloud or not.
The room was too small, too dark, for this conversation, the ceiling too low, not enough air.
She shifted her feet beneath her. They had taken her shoes away, the sturdy boots that were covered in mud from the walk on Saturday night, the soles covered in blood from the scene she’d discovered on Sunday morning. Instead, she was wearing thin ballet pumps. She’d never worn a pair of ballet pumps in her life, and her feet were sweating.
Her arms were sweating too, and her back and the folds of her belly. A cold sweat, constant, making her shiver when a draught caught her skin. She hadn’t eaten anything. She hadn’t drunk anything other than coffee, the rehydration she’d received from the drip they’d inserted the day before long worn off. But she didn’t feel hungry or thirsty.
All she felt was horror, abject horror.
When she had eventually come round, earlier that morning, she was tucked up in a bed she didn’t know, a room she’d never been in. A two-litre bottle of water at her bedside, the room so clean you could smell the laundry detergent on the duck-egg blue bedclothes, no hint of damp, smell of mould, in the air. She had heard footsteps, hushed murmurs, the flush of a toilet somewhere downstairs. She had climbed out of the bed, made it all the way to the door, padding along the soft carpet, before she had remembered. Before she had closed her eyes and seen the blood, the blood everywhere, the blood.
Staggering back she had landed bottom down on the bed, let out a cry.
Jennifer Hill had burst into the room, the cry drawing her up from downstairs, and Maggie realised where she was, at Toby’s parents, Jon and Jennifer’s house, the dairy farm that backed onto the pub.
‘It’s all right, it’s OK,’ Jennifer said, her hands on Maggie’s shoulders, easing her back down onto the bed. ‘It’s all right, it’s all right.’ And she tucked Maggie in, Maggie’s eyes already rolling, head lolling on the soft cotton pillow.
But she couldn’t sleep, couldn’t close her eyes. She had never been good with blood, not since Tom’s accident.
‘You’re OK,’ Jennifer had said, and in hushed tones, her voice low, told Maggie what had happened. How the paramedic had sedated her, to help with the shock of discovering the scene, how Jennifer had taken her home.
But the sedatives had worn off now, long gone. Maggie didn’t think she’d ever be able to close her eyes again.
Once she’d felt able to stand and had drunk some water, she had demanded to go straight to the police. And a good job too, as they had been waiting for her, needing her statement as the first on the scene of the crime. The drugs pumped into her system had been an awful delay in the procedures that needed to take place.
‘What we need to do at this stage,’ DC Ali said, resting her hands, palms together, on the table and looking sympathetically into Maggie’s eyes, ‘is to identify—’
‘Emma?’
‘Yes, it’s about Emma. We hope that—’
Maggie felt the squeeze on her stomach again, the same one that had caused her to contaminate the crime scene with her vomit the day before.
‘She has blond hair, the colour of pine. Blue eyes. Tall for a woman, about 5-8, 5-9. Never wore heels, just trainers or wellies. She was wearing trainers on Saturday, with a black T-shirt and jeans.’ Emma never wore skirts, they made her feel vulnerable. But she wasn’t vulnerable, she was strong, capable, brave. Oh, Emma.
She closed her eyes, an involuntary, instinctive blink and there it was, all that blood, there it was again.
It must have shown on Maggie’s face as DS Pale’s voice softened when he said, ‘Mrs Bradbury, you really don’t …’
But Maggie held up her hands for quiet. She could do this, she could be strong. She could remember her goddaughter with her face intact, her hands clean. It was the first step, she reasoned. Identify Emma, then identify her killer.
‘She has three small scars on her tummy, from surgery. And she wore a necklace: a silver chain with a gold band hanging from it.’ It had been Elaine’s, left in the envelope for Emma, along with a letter Maggie had never had the courage (or the invitation) to read.
‘Mrs Bradbury, you don’t have to identify—’ The detective touched her arm with a tanned, manicured hand. Maggie looked at him, but all she could see was the ceiling pressing down, the sickly yellow light from the bulb above her, Emma’s missing face, missing chin.
‘She had another scar beside her right eye, about an inch long. Got it when she was seven.’ Whenever she smiled, the white scar crinkled, nearly disappeared. ‘She wore an old gold watch and a gold ring on her little finger. Right hand, both of them.’ They were her mother’s, her real mother’s. She used to complain she’d inherited her father’s working hands and the ring wouldn’t fit on any other finger but the littlest.
‘Mrs Bradbury, you misunderstand. You don’t have to identify her, that’s already been done.’
‘What?’ Somewhere in the building, a phone began to ring. ‘Who by?’
‘Her father.’ Pale rested his arms on the table, leaning on his elbows, his voice weary. ‘We took him to the morgue this morning. He confirmed the other details: hair colour, eye colour, height, her penchant for cleaning with neat bleach, hence the damaged skin on her hands and fingertips. Gave us her dentist’s details for the X-rays, not that they were much use considering the damage to her jaw.’
‘It should have been me,’ Maggie said, even though she knew it was petty and pointless. ‘I knew her far better than him.’
‘He’s the next of kin; it’s standard procedure,’ Pale said, then softened his tone when he saw the look on Maggie’s face, how her shoulders dropped. ‘It was a technicality really.’
Maggie’s tongue, stuck to the floor of her mouth, felt immovable as a vast lead weight. She wanted to say, ‘She meant nothing to him, I’m the one who loved her, looked after her.’
But Ali spoke up before Maggie could find the right words.
‘What we really want to ascertain,’ Ali said, spreading out a few sheets of paper that Maggie couldn’t bring herself to look at, ‘is Emma’s state of mind over the last few days, the triggers as it were.’
‘Triggers?’ Maggie said at last and looked up at the detectives in front of her. Pale was, despite his name, very dark. Clean shaven, olive skinned, those dark, dark eyes and dark eyebrows. He wore a navy blazer like a schoolboy, his dimples only adding to the effect. It was the lines on his forehead, around his eyes and the sides of the mouth, that gave his age away as being closer to forty.
‘Yes,’ Ali said, meeting her eye and keeping the business-like quality to her gold and brown gaze, ‘the triggers. We’ve been through the pub, of course—’
‘You’ve what?’
‘Been through the pub. Nothing forensic, not considering the evidence we’ve already gathered. But it will help to give us an insight into her frame of mind, the things she had been doing, what she had been searching for online, and so on.’
‘You’ve been through my pub, without my permission?’
Pale narrowed his eyes, cocked his head, his expression assessing. ‘There was no need for permission,’ he said, ‘on the basis that a serious crime had taken place, and your pub was home to one of the deceased.’ He reshuffled the papers in front of him, sat down and poured water into three glasses, pushing one towards Maggie with a nod.
He waited until Maggie had taken a mouthful of water, then said, ‘I understand you’re under some financial strain?’
She spluttered, her mind on the letters hidden behind the cider barrel in the pub’s cellar. ‘It’ll work itself out,’ she said. ‘I don’t see what that has to do with—’
‘Did you tell Emma about the money problems?’ Ali asked, and Maggie turned towards her.
&n
bsp; ‘There was no need, I was sorting it out. Why are you looking at me like that? What?’
‘We found letters from your bank, statements and demands, strewn across the cellar floor. We believe Emma found these letters—’
Maggie groaned, covered her face, needled the scar with the pad of her finger. ‘No, no, she couldn’t have done.’
‘Can I surmise from your reaction that you hadn’t told her? There were letters relating to Emma’s savings fund, the account you were named as trustee of until Emma reached twenty-five, though it was empty, had been for some time. Was she aware of this?’
Maggie held her face in her hands, shaking her head from side to side. Emma died knowing Maggie had failed her. Worse, that Maggie had lied.
‘What we want to know, at this stage,’ Ali continued, ‘is if there was anything else that might have caused Emma to lash out in the way that she did?’
Maggie’s hands flew away from her face. ‘What do you mean?’ she said. ‘Lash out?’
Pale pressed his lips together, looked at his sheets of paper before speaking again. ‘We are still investigating this case and nothing has been finalised, not at all. But you should know that, considering the quantity of evidence that supports the theory, we are working on the basis that the crime was a murder-suicide. We believe Emma intentionally killed Lois Lunglow before turning the gun on herself.’
‘No,’ Maggie said, standing up from her chair, so forcefully it crashed away from the table. ‘You’re wrong, you’re all wrong. She wouldn’t do such a thing, she couldn’t.’
If Maggie had been expecting comfort or platitudes, she was mistaken. Pale sat back. ‘You mean to tell me that Emma had no cause for grievance against Lois? That her life hadn’t recently taken a downturn: the breakup with a boyfriend, Toby Hill, the discovery her savings were gone, the continued estrangement from her father?’
The detective surveyed Maggie, his dark eyebrows raised. ‘You don’t think these would have had an effect?’
‘How can you be so blind?’ Maggie shouted.
‘You want me to believe it wasn’t Emma?’
‘It was Nuala Greene!’
Never Go There Page 19