She wanted to scream but her mouth wouldn’t open, her jaw wouldn’t release.
Her stomach fought against her, fighting the gin from last night, the lies Jennifer was trying to make her swallow.
Just then, a tap at the front door announced DC Ali’s arrival.
Maggie pulled her arms around herself, hugged her middle. She didn’t turn to look.
‘Tea, detective?’ Jennifer jumped from her seat.
Ali declined. She didn’t take a seat either, so Jennifer remained standing too, hovering nervously at the edge of the table.
Ali didn’t say anything, and the silence was thick in Maggie’s ears.
‘I’m sorry,’ Ali said at last, and the apology was unbearable, horrible and sincere. ‘The investigation is complete, Mrs Bradbury.’ There was no hint of Pale’s triumph in Ali’s voice. ‘We’re handing it to the coroner now, so an inquest can be carried out.’
Last night’s gin reared up, wringing Maggie’s throat, her stomach. ‘But … Nuala Greene,’ she managed to whisper.
‘All lines of inquiry have been followed up,’ Ali said gently.
Maggie could smell her own body, stale and sour.
Ali was still talking, saying something about Nuala writing to Lois months ago and telling her James was dead, but that couldn’t be right, Maggie must have heard wrong because she saw Nuala, spoke to her, so did Emma. Did the police really think she’d made it all up?
‘Mrs Greene’s very fragile … agoraphobic … hasn’t left her house in months …’
Maggie could hear little else above the ringing in her ears, the churning in her gut, the see-saw pain in her head. The police had talked to Nuala, but she must have fooled them, spun them lies.
‘The GPS on her phone hasn’t moved … no one saw her leave or return. Maggie, she was never here …’
But she was, Maggie tried to say but couldn’t.
‘… You could be suffering from symptoms of post-traumatic stress …’
Hair of the dog was what she needed. A sip of something strong and she’d be able to concentrate, tell Ali she was wrong.
‘Memory transfer is a common side effect,’ Ali continued. ‘Something that happened a year ago may seem to have happened recently, or vice-versa. Shock can be devastating to the mind.’ She put a leaflet down on the table, the letters PTSD staring up. ‘There’s a number you can call to talk to someone or arrange counselling.’
They thought Maggie was losing her senses, getting confused, mixing up reality with stories she’d been told.
Maggie squeezed her eyes shut, but that hurt too and bright dots floated across her vision. The dots were replaced by Maggie’s boy, by Lee, his face screwed up, scared, sorry, missing his father and bracing himself for his mother’s fist.
‘You all right, Maggie?’ Jennifer’s hand was on Maggie’s. Her skin hurt, her back, her stomach, oh God, her stomach.
She stumbled to her feet, reached for the counter, vomited into the sink.
‘Tell her,’ she could hear Ali saying to Jennifer, her voice already receding from the room, ‘that Pale saw Mrs Greene himself. She’s been cleared of all involvement.’
After the detective left Jennifer sat down, sighing with unmistakable relief. For her, it was over: the interviews, the police, the responsibility.
But Maggie, bent at the sink, could see the bag-for-life by Jennifer’s feet. The map of London was poking out, the parks encircled in blue. She knew it wasn’t over, not yet.
It wouldn’t be over until she found her.
Nuala
Friday, 24th November, 2017
She held the letters above the bin. Her fingers were shaking, making the tears uneven. Some of the letters tore in half with precision, but others more clumsily, all with a crisp ripping sound, the fragments cascading down, some falling into the bin, some to the floor.
But her breathing wasn’t so laboured.
And she had only showered once today, hadn’t even rewashed her hair.
Was that what would happen, now? Every day she’d see a slight improvement, worry a little less, until she could pass herself off as normal?
But she dropped the matches four, five times before eventually one struck and lit. No, it wouldn’t be so easy.
She’d had visitors yesterday, unexpected and unwelcome.
Afterwards she knew she would never be normal again.
‘Mrs Greene? I’m PC Charlton,’ the woman in uniform had said, standing on the doorstep the day before, a dark-haired man by her side. ‘I’ve come from Kingston Police Station. This is Detective Sergeant Pale, from the Somerset constabulary …’
Pale looked beyond her to the hall, eyes scanning the dark carpet, ivory walls, the photographs that hung either side.
And then they lit upon her.
‘There!’ screamed a jackdaw, perched in a pine, beak pointing down to the house. ‘There she is, there!’ But neither officer looked at the tree.
The thump of her heart felt heavy, her knees and ankles weak. She could see the jackdaw, hear its call, could see Maggie’s face in its feathers.
But all eyes were on her and the time had come, her time had come. As if she could get away with it, as if it would’ve worked. What had she been thinking—
‘May we come in?’ the WPC asked, her lips folded in an apologetic smile.
Then they were in the kitchen, sitting across the table, fruit flies and mould spores in the air. Perhaps she should have taken them to a different room, one less neglected. But which? All the rooms downstairs were the same. And she couldn’t let them upstairs.
The letters were upstairs.
Her head was swimming with Pale’s citrus aftershave, the sound of the flies.
‘Can you tell me when you last saw your mother-in-law, Mrs Greene?’
And the room faded to grey, the calls from the birds let up. ‘My mother-in-law?’
Where were the handcuffs? When would they read her her rights?
‘Your mother-in-law, Mrs Lois Lunglow. Can you tell me when you last saw her?’
‘I’ve never—’ Could she do it? She looked from the woman to the man. Pale’s head was slightly to one side, his dark eyes narrowed.
Charlton was smiling, waiting for the lie to complete.
What else was there to do?
‘I’ve never met her,’ she said, and the jackdaws woke up, calling her liar and worse.
‘James never—’ and she started to shake, the tremble spreading down her arms.
Pale stood still and watched her.
He wasn’t smiling, just listening. Waiting to catch her out.
They knew what she had done.
She closed her eyes and held out her wrist.
Charlton reached forward, took her outstretched hand. ‘Your mother-in-law was attacked at her home,’ she said in a low, soft voice. ‘I’m afraid she died at the scene.’
They told her how Lois was killed.
How a local girl committed suicide after the attack.
There was no one else involved, they said.
The inquiry had been handed to the coroner, they said.
The tremble in her body grew stronger, her face in agony as she tried to control it. She covered her mouth to stop the screaming, but the tears wouldn’t let up.
Charlton kept hold of her hand.
Pale placed a mug of tea before her on the table.
‘Have you ever been to that place, Mrs Greene?’ he asked.
The tea hadn’t been stirred and the milk was dancing, suspended in the dark water.
‘Were you there the weekend of the 15th November, Mrs Greene?’
Of course, here it comes; they knew it was her all along.
They would have known the minute the door opened inwards, the second they saw her face. The things she had done were etched into her skin, the blood stained in the creases of her knuckles.
But still, she kept to the lie. ‘I was at home last weekend, alone,’ she said.
Pale’s ey
es never left her, narrowed and searching.
Charlton squeezed her hand again, nodded at Pale.
‘Just procedure, Mrs Greene. I’m sorry for your loss,’ she said.
Where were the handcuffs, where were her rights? Why couldn’t they see who she was? A criminal, a murderer.
They had let her get away with murder.
Was it really as easy as that?
Except …
Except they could return at any minute.
They could decide to look upstairs.
They could take a closer look around the house, inspect the soiled clothes, the photographs on the walls, the shoe box of letters in the bedroom.
She had barely slept all night, convinced they would return, wondering what she should do, coming to a decision in the early hours of the morning. Now, the metal bin was in the bath, the letters, ripped to pieces, lying in its base, the shower hose ready if the flames got too much.
The match that finally lit did little to the wastepaper bonfire. It burned for a second, a flare of red and the smell of sparks and smoke. The edges burned briefly with a witch’s cackle, but the flame was quick to go. The embers kept moving, though, sucking at the paper and turning it to ash, the black-grey spreading like a smouldering rash. The letters crumbled into a heap of fine grit.
The voice in her head said she’d done it, they believed her, she was free.
But, oh, what a small voice that was.
She turned on the shower hose, rinsing the last of the letters away. She would clean the house next, burn the stained clothes, delete the car’s Sat-Nav history.
But in her haste to escape she had forgotten something vital, left something behind in that village so far, far away.
The last letter, the envelope with this address on it.
‘It will all be OK,’ she told herself. ‘They won’t find it.’
But the paranoia was impossible to shake. The ghost of the doorbell rang in her ears, the noise from the traffic outside all police.
She was convinced that every woman in the street had grey hair, every woman in the park was fat and scarred.
She had to prepare herself, had to be strong, willing to fight without a shotgun or doorstop.
Someone else was coming for her.
Maggie
Monday, 11th December, 2017
‘Aren’t you ready?’ Jennifer stood at the back door, a black coat on over a dark trouser suit.
‘It’s today?’ Maggie gasped, mortified at having forgotten. She stepped back, let Jennifer into the kitchen.
‘I did remind you, yesterday.’
Maggie sighed, rubbed both hands across her face, felt the puckered scar beneath her fingertips.
‘Have you anything to wear?’ Jennifer asked, scanning the kitchen with her lips pressed together, eyes lingering on the pile of unopened letters by the bin, the recycling box half full of glass bottles, the pile of laundry shoved on the floor by the washing machine.
‘I’ll get dressed in a minute.’ Maggie poured hot water into two mugs, reached for the gin bottle and splashed a measure into her own.
‘What’s this?’ Jennifer asked, the Yellow Pages open in front of her. ‘Private investigators?’ She looked up, eyebrows raised, forehead puckered. ‘Really?’
Maggie shrugged. No point arguing, no point defending herself, no point telling Jennifer it was no use anyway because PIs cost money and Maggie didn’t have enough, not nearly enough.
She set the mugs of tea down and slumped in a chair, head in her hands.
How could she have forgotten it was today?
‘Let’s get you ready,’ Jennifer’s voice softened as she reached over to touch Maggie’s elbow.
Maggie lifted her mug and took a long sip, the tea burning the roof of her mouth. She didn’t care. She swallowed, felt it burn her throat too. She stared at the pile of letters she couldn’t bring herself to open.
Some were from the bank, wanting money.
Some were from the DVLA confirming the sale of her brown Rover, confirming the refund on her car tax. It had only been a few hundred pounds, but better than nothing. Better, by far, than staring at it every day, thinking of Emma driving it, thinking of Nuala driving it with Emma’s body inside. (Was that what had happened, how Nuala had done it? Was that something worth writing down?)
And in there, somewhere, was the letter from the coroner confirming she wasn’t to be called as a witness at the inquest in January; enough evidence could be garnered from the police, the paramedics, the pathologist, psychiatric consult. They didn’t need an old, fat landlady who had fallen apart the minute she’d seen her goddaughter’s blood. They’d already told her that she wasn’t needed, was of no use, help, worth at all and would she please stop calling.
She had hoped the sale of her car would go some way towards paying for a private investigator, but she’d been naïve in estimating the cost, the paltry sum from her car not nearly enough.
The more time passed, the harder it got. Fewer people were willing to listen to her. But she had to make them see, understand, had to make them believe that Emma wasn’t a murderer, not at all, she was kind and brave and Maggie loved her, still loved her and didn’t want to let her down.
She’d thought she could put the money from the car towards today, the service, but Arthur Bradbury insisted that he pay for it. Then he offered, again, to buy the last of Maggie’s farmland (‘What choice do you have?’). He wouldn’t talk to her about Emma, hung up the phone when Maggie tried to probe him about how he felt, what it had been like to identify her remains. She had wanted him to open up, prove that he had some humanity left in him, that she wasn’t alone in missing Emma. But he’d given her nothing.
She finished the tea, planting the mug on the table, lining it up with an old water ring.
Where had Jennifer gone? She had said something about getting Maggie ready to go.
Oh, God.
Maggie’s head cleared and she jumped up, pounded up the stairs.
She was out of breath by the top of them, her lungs burning.
‘Don’t!’ she called out, but it was too late; Jennifer had already opened the bedroom door, seen the boxes.
She turned to Maggie. ‘I thought we agreed that you’d stop this? I thought you agreed it wasn’t healthy?’
‘You said it wasn’t healthy, not me,’ Maggie said, trying her best to keep her voice calm, when all she wanted to do was tell Jennifer to mind her own business.
But she didn’t have many friends left. And Jennifer was just worried, she knew that. It was the reason Maggie had promised to stop trying to find Nuala Greene, stop writing notes, making phone calls.
‘Leave all this to the police, Maggie,’ Jennifer said. ‘Give yourself time to grieve properly.’
Maggie sighed, nodded. ‘I will. Just leave it for today at least, please.’ She motioned Jennifer downstairs. ‘I’ll get dressed, I’m quite capable.’
The wardrobe door was blocked by the two boxes, each brimming over with scribbled-on notes. To be sent to the coroner, the press (they could still be interested, she’d convinced herself,) the police for when they would inevitably reopen the case. She moved them away, to the foot of the bed, balancing them on another box of ring-binders and maps.
She knew the suit to wear; Tom’s old suit, the one she had tailored to fitted her five years after he’d died. It was black, it still fitted her, and today she needed a part of him with her, a part of him holding her close.
She undressed and put her clothes in the laundry basket, which was half hidden behind the largest of three corkboards. This one showed a timeline of events from that weekend made out in Post-it notes of varying colours.
Once changed, she took the second corkboard, the one with the road map showing the motorways between London and the West, possible routes Nuala could have taken and service stations that may have caught her on CCTV, away from the mirror to make sure she looked fit to pass.
On the third board was a large map of
London, the parks circled in blue, the ones who had agreed to talk to her and confirmed that a James Lunglow/Greene had never worked there crossed out in red. But most wouldn’t talk to her, no matter how often she rang them. Confidential, apparently, they could neither confirm or deny the names of their employees, past or present, even if said employees were dead. There were still an awful lot of parks marked in blue. How was she going to find Nuala Greene if she couldn’t afford an investigator, if the police weren’t interested, if the coroner didn’t want to talk to her?
Looking in the mirror, Maggie saw that the curls at the back of her head hung over the collar of her suit jacket, longer now Emma wasn’t there to trim them. The sides were longer too, the odd grey hair fading to white.
The scar on her cheek, that purple ribbon of keloid flesh, had wrinkled at the edges. She’d lost weight. Normally the scar’s tip was hidden beneath the folds of her chin but she could see it now, the neat point, half an inch below her jawline.
Her skin was pale, the whites of her eyes tinged yellow and spun with blood vessels. She looked just like she did seventeen years ago, when she had lost her husband, had stood at the grave with her crying son and couldn’t bring herself to put her arms around him, comfort him, tell him it would all be OK because how could it be? How could it be OK?
She looked away from the mirror, sick of the sight of herself, of the memories her image induced. She found her black boots, put them on, slunk down the stairs to her friend.
‘Jon and Toby are meeting us there,’ Jennifer said, pulling a pair of gloves on. ‘Shall we go?’
Maggie nodded. Paused at the door, took a deep breath. The exhalation shuddered out of her, making her shoulders tremble.
She felt Jennifer’s gloved hand slide into her own, felt the squeeze of her friend’s fingers. ‘It’ll be OK,’ Jennifer said, and pulled Maggie out through the door.
They walked down the street, Jennifer’s hand in the crook of Maggie’s arm, huddled together against the cold. All the leaves had fallen from the trees, lay mouldering and wet at the sides of the road.
The sky was clear; no clouds, just a sun low and bright.
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