Never Go There

by Rebecca Tinnelly

  Maggie nodded, took a breath, her mind sharper now the sedatives had fully cleared from her system.

  ‘Have you spoken to Arthur?’ she asked.

  ‘He’s not spoken to a soul since he came back from the morgue. Locked himself in his house, won’t answer his phone or the front door.’

  Maggie nodded again, unsure of what else to say, knowing how inappropriate it would have been to voice her opinion of Arthur under such circumstances. Wishing, too, she was in her own house instead of a guest in someone else’s.

  ‘I was wondering if you wanted me to call anyone?’ Jennifer said when they reached the spare room, standing very straight and rubbing her hands together as if she were cold. She shifted her weight from one hip to the other.

  Maggie kept her eyes on the wall behind Jennifer.

  ‘No,’ she said. There was no one left for her to call.

  Maggie looked around the bedroom, eyes lingering on the computer at the desk by the window. Imagined Jennifer, her grey hair and thick ankles, the age spots on her cheeks and the backs of her hands, typing at a keyboard, clicking like and share and send. Was it really just Maggie, then, who hadn’t succumbed? Who had resisted all efforts to connect?

  Emma had tried to get Maggie computer literate, taught her about Facebook and Twitter. She had even tried getting Maggie to create a page of her own, telling her it would be a good way to try and find Lee, to reconnect. Maggie had refused, solidly refused. She couldn’t make up for the past by liking a status on a computer screen. The joke of it.

  She regretted it now. It would be a lot easier to find Nuala if she knew how to use that machine.

  ‘Is there anything I can get you?’ Jennifer asked, one foot in the hallway, the closed-lipped smile back on her pitying face. ‘Anything at all?’

  Mind on clearing Emma’s name, Maggie said, ‘Yes, actually there is. Do you have any maps in the house? Maps of the country, London in particular?’

  Jennifer stepped back into the room. ‘You’re not going to London? You’re not going to try and track this woman down?’ She frowned, placing her hands firmly on her hips to complete the disapproving schoolmarm façade.

  And Maggie wanted to say, why not, why couldn’t I, but caught her reflection in the wardrobe mirror, the spare tyres floating beneath her blue shirt, the thick arms, thick neck, wrinkled face and grey hair, so instead she said, ‘No, of course not. But if I can just get the police to take me seriously, to see that I’m not just making this up as some naïve, desperate attempt for attention, then maybe they’ll go see Nuala themselves, bring her in.’

  Jennifer flicked the switch on the old computer. She brought up street maps on Google Earth. ‘How exactly are you going to do that?’ Her voice was chirpy again, cajoling. Maggie knew she was being placated, but she didn’t care. She’d make Jennifer see too, knew that one day very soon the police, her neighbours, the village, would see she was right and congratulate her ingenuity, her persistence in making the police follow the right lead.

  Because she had to make them find Nuala Greene. She may not be on social media or au fait with search engines, but why should that stop her? Whatever happened to good, old-fashioned legwork? She would write down everything Nuala had told her, look in every phone book and directory for sign of an N or J Greene, no matter how long it took. She would phone every one of those parks if need be, see if she could find the one where James worked, the park Nuala Greene’s house backed onto.

  She looked at the image of London on the screen over Jennifer’s shoulder, the dark blocks of buildings and houses. She had no intention of going herself, how ridiculous, how impossible it would be for her to even attempt it, but if she could lead the police in the right direction, if they could go themselves then surely they would see?

  She looked on at the dark blocks, winding roads, the green swathes of parklands and wondered where in it Nuala was hiding.

  Nuala

  Tuesday, 21st November, 2017

  Steam fills the shower, swathes of foam cover her breasts, hiding her knees and elbows. The soap is expensive, oil filled, rich with the scent of the ocean, yet it’s the cheap bar soap she longs for, soap that would strip the grease from her body, rendering her tight and raw.

  She marks the steam on the glass door with her finger, leaving loops and whorls in the mist, then washes the patterns away, cleans the shower door to a shine until all that’s left is her reflection. But there’s a mistake, because this woman can’t be her. This woman’s hands are scrubbed clean, whereas hers are black with blood.

  She moves the same, this reflection. She too reaches behind her for the thermostat, turning it to its highest, her skin flaring red.

  But when the mirage with clean hands disappears behind the steam, she looks down. Her palms and nails are still tattooed with blood, her arms aching from the weight of iron in her fist, the gun in her hand.

  No matter how hot the water gets, her limbs never lose their tension, the soap never cleans the blood away. Her mouth, closed and silent, never surrenders its scream.

  The dead won’t let her be.

  All the washing was no use, no use at all.

  Afterwards, the brush caught a lump in the underside of her hair. Small and pink as lamb meat, it oozed juices through the bristles. It wound round her senses; the taste of ham left to rot in the heat.

  She threw the brush to the floor, watching it bounce and crack until it skidded to a halt by the wall. The lump fell too, landing with a moist thud, a putrid ruby of another woman’s flesh, glistening on the bathroom tiles.

  The extractor fan, like an old man, rasped down her neck.

  She pushed the window open, letting it swing wide and blast her with cold from outside.

  Layers of toilet paper covering her hand.

  She stepped towards that lump, hovered, retreated. Then plunged, picking it up from the floor and flinging it out of the window, not waiting to see where it landed.

  But the jackdaws saw and swooped from the trees. ‘There!’ they cried. ‘There!’ And the window was open, her body still naked. Were they calling at her or the meat?

  Her fingers were sticky, smelling of death, rot, iron doorstops, and gunshot residue.

  The tissue had not been enough. She wiped her fingers clean but the smell lingered.

  She scrubbed them at the sink, with soap and a scouring pad, but the smell leaked through the almondy hand wash.

  She clutched the green bottle from beside the cistern and lurched back into the shower. She emptied it into her hands, the liquid burning rivulets along her belly, singeing the skin at her groin.

  She rubbed her hands until they smelt of pine, until the top layer melted and her palms stung. The reflection in the glass watched her wash.

  She rubbed harder, swapping the piney bleach for coconut shampoo, forcing her fingers into every crevice, scrubbing every fold of skin until she shone pink.

  She turned her back on the glass, faced the tiles, and her mind filled with the image of someone else, someone hunting, chasing, finding her naked with the smell of the dead in her hair.

  She closed her eyes, squeezed them shut, but the image remained. A fat old woman with a deep-scarred cheek and clothes that stank of a bar-room.

  Maggie

  Wednesday, 22nd November, 2017

  Keys in hand, Maggie opened the door to the bar.

  The sky was dark, clouds low. A few pinpricks of rain spotted the detective’s shirtsleeve.

  ‘I’ll come in,’ said Pale, but he was looking at something past Maggie. She followed his gaze to the burnt-out house beside them – Lois’s old house.

  Pale’s words from the interview on Monday repeated in Maggie’s head, his conviction that Emma was to blame, that she had some kind of history of wanting to hurt both herself and Lois. She shook them away, her grip tightening on the holdall by her side.

  The wind seemed to tilt the house forward as if, with the next gust, the last of the scorched bricks would loosen and bury them both.


  Maggie squeezed the handles of the bag, the plastic nestling into the creases of her palm. It was all she had brought with her from Jennifer’s house, a bag-for-life half-full with notebooks and maps.

  ‘I expect you want to talk to me about the case,’ Maggie said hopefully, standing to one side to let Pale through. He had barely spoken since collecting her from Jennifer’s house, his silence making her nervous. ‘Want me to show you the room she slept in, where she parked, that sort of thing? I expect the door-to-door inquiries will start soon, won’t they?’

  Pale ignored her, striding into the bar and looking around.

  Maggie stayed in the open doorway. Her feet felt too heavy to step inside, the first time she’d been in the bar since finding Emma and Lois.

  The detective’s top lip twitched disdainfully as he took in his surroundings. There were the chairs Emma sat in every Monday when it was quiet, reading a book. Maggie suddenly realised that she would never now buy Emma the Kindle she had promised her but could never afford.

  Pale raised one eyebrow as he spotted the tar-yellow ceiling. Kept it raised when he caught sight of the hallway doorframe, smeared with greasy finger-marks.

  The doorframe Emma used to lean against, eating apples and sucking their cores, watching the drinkers.

  ‘Are you coming in?’ Pale asked.

  Maggie realised she was trembling. Her lips parted as if to speak, but the words never materialised. She wished Ali was there instead of Pale.

  ‘Well?’ asked Pale. Maggie nodded, but she couldn’t move from her post in the doorway.

  She could see Emma there, eating apples.

  She could see her in the armchair, reading Oscar Wilde.

  She could see her.

  ‘The SOCOs have left everything in order if that’s what you’re worried about,’ Pale said.

  ‘SOCOs?’

  ‘Scene of crime officers.’ And Maggie must still have looked confused because Pale said, ‘The chaps who searched for evidence.’

  The breeze from the open door spiralled through the room, mixing the sourness of the bar with the smell of rain.

  Pale took Maggie by the elbow and led her inside, sitting her down on a chair by the card table. He was firm, forceful and once again Maggie wished for Ali and her gentler hands.

  ‘What’s the point in searching the pub?’ Maggie realised she was sitting in Emma’s seat, not her own, the place she would sit with a coffee and flick through her phone.

  ‘As I said; to gather evidence.’

  And Maggie wanted to ask why, why here when the woman you want is in London? But Pale’s features were rigid, his mouth a straight line and his eyes were fixed on the carrier bag by Maggie’s feet, the bag of meticulous notes she had made, the maps she had studied, the evidence she had collated, all ready to hand over to the DS.

  That’s why she’d called Pale, why she’d asked for the detective to be the one to release the pub back to her when the crime scene tape had been removed and she was allowed to go back inside.

  Because of Emma.

  Because of the bag.

  Because of Nuala fucking Greene.

  The detective nodded to the bag. ‘What’s inside there?’

  And this was the moment. She could feel Emma smiling from the kitchen door.

  She pulled apart the handles with a flourish. ‘Evidence.’

  ‘Evidence?’

  The bag was over half full: a few notebooks, the odd sheet of loose paper. One corner of a faded map was just visible, a park circled in blue highlighter.

  ‘I’ve written it all down, everything I can remember: what she looks like, the things she told me.’

  ‘You mean Nuala Greene?’

  ‘Of course I mean Nuala Greene! It’ll help when you start the search.’ Maggie looked back at the detective. ‘No notebook for you this time? Do you want to borrow one?’

  ‘I don’t need one at the moment, Mrs Bradbury—’

  ‘Maggie, please.’

  ‘My memory’s fine for now.’

  Maggie tapped the side of her head, wanting to keep him on side. ‘The best always have good memories, Detective. I expect your mind is as sharp as a razor. That’s probably why they sent you, isn’t it, because you’re the best? I suppose you’ll be releasing a statement to the press soon, isn’t that right? Then it’ll be on the news, in the papers.’

  Pale’s gaze flitted from Maggie to the bag and he raised his eyebrow again.

  ‘It’ll help! Give you something to go on when you find her. Evidence to charge her, isn’t that what you need?’ Maggie eagerly nodded her head and felt her jowls sway with the movement.

  ‘What would be more useful,’ Pale said, scanning the handwritten notes poking out from inside the bag, ‘is electronic data. CCTV images, for example?’

  ‘We don’t have any cameras, not here. Never had the money to install them and besides, we’ve never had any serious trouble before, nothing that would warrant the need.’

  ‘Until now,’ Pale said, his eyes darting back up to Maggie, pausing on the scar on her cheek. ‘And are you quite sure you didn’t take any details, not even a swipe of her card to hold the room? Seems odd.’

  ‘We don’t have a card machine, cash only here. We’re too small for it, you see. The cost of the machine would wipe out the profits, unless I put on a minimum spend and, to be honest, that wouldn’t go down too well. I’m trying to keep hold of customers, not drive them away.’

  Pale looked again at the bag-for-life and Maggie was sure then, knew he would take it, read the notes, find Nuala.

  But Pale didn’t reach for the bag.

  ‘You told us in your first statement,’ he said, smoothing his blazer down, ‘that the women had fallen out over the way Lois dealt with Emma when she fell pregnant as a teenager. She apparently bad-mouthed Emma to her son, the baby’s father, insinuated to him that Emma got pregnant on purpose.’

  ‘Yes, but Emma had—’

  ‘Had forgiven her?’

  ‘That’s right. If I could just show you some of my—’

  ‘What about the fire? The fire that started the night that James Lunglow moved away?’

  Maggie froze.

  The wind outside picked up. The loose sheets of paper shivered.

  ‘You never mentioned it.’ Pale walked to the pub’s open door, polished heels gliding across the wood. ‘Were you hoping I wouldn’t find out? You must have known it would come up, eventually?’

  ‘There was no need, it’s irrelevant.’ Maggie pulled her sleeves further down her wrists, the hair on the back of her neck erect. ‘It was a long time ago. Lois’s house caught fire, a kitchen fire. It was an accident.’

  ‘The fire started on the day Emma’s stepmother killed herself. The day Emma returned from hospital after losing her baby. The day her boyfriend ran away.’ Pale swung the door shut, the latch catching with a bang.

  ‘I think Emma set that fire.’ Pale looked at her, a cold smile on his lips. ‘Didn’t she, Maggie?’

  ‘No!’ Maggie shouted, her voice shaking.

  ‘Quite a few people have told me all about it. But you didn’t, Maggie; why was that?’

  ‘No one blamed Emma.’

  ‘I found more than a few people who did. Seems it was common knowledge.’

  ‘Then why was she never charged, tell me that?’ Maggie folded her arms, trying to ignore the apprehension growing in the pit of her stomach.

  ‘I know how it works in these places. The village takes care of itself without drawing the police in.’ Pale looked up at Maggie, his cold manner so at odds with his thick, black lashes and the schoolboy dimples in his cheeks. ‘I’ve read the official report on the fire. Firemen mistook it as an accident, weren’t aware of what had happened that day.’

  Maggie gripped her arms tightly. Pale watched her, as though waiting for the moment she would break.

  She wanted to leap across the table and grab the detective by the neck, wring out the names of the people who�
�d talked, who’d lied.

  But she didn’t.

  She couldn’t.

  She needed the detective on side, needed to make him believe, and so she kept her mouth closed.

  ‘It could have ruined Lois, couldn’t it? House gone, all her possessions.’ Pale turned his back, paced to the other end of the room. ‘No family to cling to, no friends, yet miraculously she never went destitute. Why was that, Maggie?’

  ‘The village looked after her, the community rallied round.’

  ‘The whole village?’

  ‘That’s right.’ Maggie tried to keep her voice steady, tried to keep her eyes on the holdall.

  ‘That’s not what I’ve heard.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’ Pale leant back against the sleeper. ‘I’ve heard it was one person alone who helped Lois, one person who particularly wanted to make sure she never reported Emma.’

  ‘I did as much as anyone,’ Maggie said defensively. ‘I sent her the odd bit of food, some old clothes—’

  Pale smiled, walked to the fireplace and stood before the Polaroids. ‘It wasn’t you who helped her, Maggie.’ He turned, looked Maggie square in the eye. ‘It was Arthur Bradbury.’

  Maggie felt the thrum of her heartbeat speed up.

  ‘Who do you think owns her house? Who gave her the furniture, set her up with a miserly tab at the local shop? Why would he do all that if he wasn’t trying to protect his daughter?’

  And Maggie thought of Arthur’s monstrous treatment of Lois on that terrible day seven years ago, remembered the bruises on Elaine’s wrist and mouth the night she turned up at the pub, the dirty little secret surrounding James’s birth, wondered how far Arthur would go to keep Lois’s lips sealed.

  But she couldn’t tell Pale that.

  She couldn’t tell anyone that, it would be one more thing for them to add to the evidence against her goddaughter.

  ‘Emma tried to kill Lois once before and, this time, she succeeded.’

  A distant bang echoed, the damn crow scarer again, the sound bringing back images of Emma’s shot-through face.