Darke

by Matt Hilton

  If asked to explain her emotions, Kerry couldn’t because they were conflicted. Swain’s death — whether or not it was her fault — was still on her conscience. He was a vile, violent, racist thug, but still. She felt no pity for him, but was sorry he’d died. Her heart went out to the mother and child murdered because of the ridiculous dick-measuring contest Swain was involved in with Jermaine Robson. Erick Swain’s premature death meant there would be no real justice for Nala and Bilan Ghedi and that wasn’t right. For killing them, especially the child, he shouldn’t have got an easy way out: he should’ve been left to rot in prison the rest of his stinking life. As soon as she was old enough, Kerry had joined the police for one reason: to get justice for Sally. By proxy any child harmed on her watch was a failing in the very thing she’d set out to do.

  Erick Swain was Bilan Ghedi’s Fell Man. Perhaps she deserved criticism for her mishandling of the arrest. If anyone knew how desperately she wanted to bring him to trial and watch him imprisoned for the rest of his days, they’d know she would have done everything to pull him back onto the roof. But she was blinded, stunned from his blows, and fighting for her own life at the time. Maybe if she’d fought harder…

  She had no recollection of when Adam helped her to stand, or led her upstairs to the bathroom.

  ‘Here. Let’s get you out of those wet clothes,’ he said, and began teasing her jacket off her shoulder. ‘Have yourself a warm shower; it’ll make you feel better. Then you can come to bed.’

  Down to her underwear, she stood numbly as he reached inside the shower and turned it on. The patter of water reminded her of the rain on her car’s windscreen as she’d arrived home — how long ago now? She glanced towards the open door to the landing, noticed a shifting of the shadows, as if someone small and silent had ducked away to avoid being spotted. She shivered and it wasn’t because of the cool air on her bared skin.

  ‘I’ll take it from here,’ she whispered.

  ‘I was just going to—’

  She stopped him with her fingernails resting on his cheek. Stared at him, imparting the seriousness of her words. ‘I need some privacy, Adam. Close the door on your way out.’

  His features tightened, and he exhaled sharply. Typical man, he’d thought he could turn her need for comfort to satisfying a need of his own.

  ‘You take our bed, I’ll have the settee,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I’m going to be able to sleep tonight, and you have to be up for work soon.’

  ‘You don’t have to take the settee; I’m OK, I can get by on only a couple of hours…’

  ‘Adam. Please. When I asked for some privacy…’

  Now his entire frame tightened. Without comment he turned and stepped out onto the landing. But then he leaned back into the bathroom, his hand on the door handle. ‘You know something, Kerry? Maybe you should look at this suspension another way. Use it as some thinking time; ask yourself if this is really the job for you, because it’s getting to you in a way I don’t like.’

  ‘Really?’ She tilted her head on one side, her vision sharper now. ‘Well, Adam, it isn’t all about you I’m afraid.’

  ‘Yeah! That’s my bloody point!’ Before she could respond, he yanked the door shut and stomped downstairs cursing. Even over the patter of water she caught the words “obsessed about finding Sally”.

  She made sure the door was fully closed, and for good measure slid across the small brass bolt into its holder. It was the first time she’d used it since moving in with Adam. It was nothing to do with keeping him out, but everything about protection from other eyes. Not that a closed door had ever proven a barrier to Girl before.

  When she entered the cubicle, slid down the wall, and hunkered under the spray from the showerhead hugging her knees, she was still dressed in her underwear.

  8

  1997

  As it happened, their mother’s urgency to reach Penrith railway station before their dad’s arrival turned into a longer wait than she’d anticipated. A freight train had suffered mechanical failure in the valley below Shap, and dad’s train held at Oxenholme for the line to be cleared. A railway station wasn’t a safe place for two energetic girls to play, so she took them over the road to the grounds of the crumbling 14th century castle, built to defend the town from marauding bands of Scots. The girls had finished the picnic she’d put together when they’d stopped to play earlier, so before leaving the station she bought cartons of orange Kia-Ora and bags of cheese Quavers from a kiosk. They ate and drank sitting on the grass outside the castle walls, with the sound of traffic buzzing past on Ullswater Road. Finished their snacks, and boundless with energy, Siobhan allowed the girls to explore the ruins, with an explicit warning to stay clear of the road and not to climb on the walls. To Kerry, that was as good as adding petrol to a fire, and ignited her. She was off at a gallop conjuring knights and princesses and dragons in her fertile imagination. Fretting that she’d get them both in trouble, Sally followed her kid sister closely, hissing and prodding when the little tomboy got too close to anything remotely recognisable as sandstone. Sitting under grey, but thankfully dry skies, Siobhan grasped the few minutes’ peace by burying her nose in a dog-eared Patricia Cornwell novel she’d picked up from a charity shop weeks ago and hadn’t got round to finishing yet.

  She could hear Kerry sword fencing imaginary ogres, and Sally primly attempting not to join in with the uncool fantasy, and becoming the target of Kerry’s magic sword as a result. The girls giggled and chased, then giggled and chased some more. Soon their tinkling laughter and drumming feet became background noise along with the throaty grumble of engines, reedy tannoy announcements from the station, and the squawks of gulls fighting over fish and chip wrappers plundered from a dustbin, while Siobhan grew engrossed in the gory details of a post mortem being conducted under Kay Scarpetta’s scalpel.

  A single drop of moisture tapped Siobhan’s wrist. Another dampened a tiny patch on her open page. She looked up, mouth open in dismay. The sky had turned to steel. Wind tugged at her. Siobhan marked her page by turning down a corner, and stood, shoving away her book into her handbag. An empty Quavers packet somersaulted past, caught on the breeze. She should have chased it, binned it, but already it was dancing out of reach. She was a country girl, and loathed litterbugs, but why have a puppy and bark yourself? She looked for Kerry, the obvious culprit, about to chase her after her crisp bag and put it in a bin. But then rain lashed down, and her shout to Kerry was for another reason.

  Kerry charged over, wellington boots chugging through instantly soaked grass. Her face was screwed tightly, eyelids pinched against the solid raindrops peppering her, and her hands were filthy with dirt. The shoulders of her sweatshirt were damp.

  ‘Where’s your coat?’ Siobhan demanded.

  ‘It’s in the car. I took it off before we got here.’

  Siobhan clucked her tongue. ‘Where’s Sally?’

  Kerry scanned back the way she’d just come from. ‘Looking at something boring. She didn’t want to play anymore, and went to read an old sign in there.’

  ‘In the ruins?’

  Kerry shrugged. ‘I was with my friend digging for worms.’

  Siobhan didn’t react to her announcement, digging for worms and playing with imaginary friends were daily activities for Kerry. ‘Go and give Sally a shout. Tell her to come now.’

  Her puppy wasn’t prepared to bark: with a whine Kerry buried herself between her knees, arms wrapped round her thighs. She grabbed Kerry’s hand so she wouldn’t stray, and headed to where a wooden bridge allowed access across the moat to the ruined castle. Both of them went bent over, the rain now battering their hair flat.

  The castle hadn’t fared well over the turbulent centuries, and now little remained beyond a fortified wall, and the remains of a couple of towers. Most of the castle’s structure had been reduced to the foundations. There were few places to hide in its interior, although as they entered, there was some sort of ruined archway off to their right. It was the
obvious place for Sally to shelter. Except a few strides in that direction told Siobhan her daughter wasn’t inside. She scanned the rest of the ruins, and though some of the walls were tall enough to conceal a hunkered down child, she doubted Sally would hide. Kerry would have, but not her conscientious sister.

  ‘Sally?’ The hammering rain almost deadened Siobhan’s voice. She hollered louder. ‘Sally? Where are you? Come here now!’

  Kerry stood mute, with rain dripping off her nose and her teeth clamped.

  ‘Where was she last time you saw her?’ Siobhan demanded.

  ‘I was pretend-digging over there.’ Kerry pointed in a random direction near to where she’d been playing. ‘And Sally came in here to read the sign, but I wasn’t interested in boring history stuff.’

  There was a plaque on a wooden pedestal near the castle’s entrance, relating its potted history. There was no hint Sally had ever been there. She grabbed Kerry tighter, and dragged her through the ruins, ducking, and stretching to see over, around and under any obstructions large enough to conceal a sylph-like ten-year-old girl. Sally wasn’t in the ruins. They exited through a wide gap in the walls and on to the grassy embankment that overlooked the adjacent park. There was a bowling green, a few picnic tables, and a tennis court — all deserted in the teeming rain. Siobhan’s anger was overtaken by mild concern, then by throat-clenching anxiety. Calling Sally’s name repeatedly, louder and more high-pitched each time, she hauled Kerry along as she followed the decrepit walls back towards the grounds adjacent to the railway station. But her desperate wish that Sally had somehow followed another route back unseen was unrewarded. Sally wasn’t there.

  Had she crossed the main road and returned to the car in the station’s car park? If she had, Sally was in for a bollocking, but also a hug of relief. Toting her bag, and towing along Kerry, Siobhan darted for the safest crossing at a point where three roads converged at a mini-roundabout. She checked the roads leading downhill to the market town. Sally wouldn’t have wandered into town. Penrith wasn’t exactly a metropolis, but Sally was a country kid the opposite of streetwise. To her any urbanization larger than a village was a scary concrete jungle. Siobhan caught a break in the traffic, and she grabbed Kerry and ran across the road, already craning to check the gaps between cars parked outside the station. Her five-year-old Vauxhall Cavalier was hidden from view by a white Transit van belonging to a local window cleaner. She charged around the van, bleating for Sally.

  Their car was locked. Sally wasn’t inside, and hadn’t taken shelter nearby. If she’d returned to the car and found it locked, she could have ducked inside the station when the rain started. Still dragging Kerry she charged inside through the entrance and onto the platform, head spinning as she checked each direction. By now there was little volume to her croaks of alarm. She searched the waiting room, and the public toilets in seconds. Clutched by panic she rushed back out to the car park. By then she’d attracted the attention of one of the platform attendants. ‘Summat the matter, lass?’

  ‘My daughter,’ Siobhan croaked, as if it should already be obvious. The man gave Kerry a confused look, which Kerry returned.

  ‘My other daughter!’ Siobhan screeched. ‘She’s missing!’

  The attendant then did a full three hundred and sixty degree turn, all the while with no real idea of whom he was seeking.

  ‘She’s not here. She’s gone.’ Siobhan grabbed Kerry’s hand tighter, terrified her second child would disappear as resolutely as the first.

  ‘OK, lass, don’t worry,’ said the man. ‘She can’t have gone far. We’ll find her.’

  ‘I have to keep looking,’ said Siobhan, and strode away. Kerry scuttled alongside her.

  ‘Wait,’ the man called out. ‘We should call the police. Come back inside out of the rain. We’ve a direct line to the BT police…’

  Siobhan halted. She was desperate to continue the search, but the more people looking for Sally the sooner she’d be found and safe with her mam again. She turned back to him, jaw quivering, her eyes pools of desperation. Behind her a battered old Land Rover puttered as it picked up speed, heading out along Ullswater Road.

  Only Kerry noticed the vehicle. Its bearded driver grinned when she caught his eye. Kerry didn’t like his grin, his teeth were big and yellow, and his friendliness didn’t extend beyond his tightly bowed lips. Standing there, water sluicing from her, Kerry watched the old four-by-four recede, concealed by the falling rain and blue smoke belching from its exhaust. For a moment, she fancied that a rag of fumes hung in the air over the road, and it took on the form of a straggly-haired girl that stared with as much discomfort after the Land Rover, before the battering rain dissolved her.

  9

  In a huff, Adam had gone to work by the time Kerry finally vacated the bathroom. She’d deliberately waited him out, even when he’d knocked at the door needing access to the loo and to his toothbrush. She hadn’t unlocked the bolt, so he’d stomped downstairs again, and she assumed he’d taken a pee in the backyard or he’d held it in and driven to work cross-legged. He deserved the discomfort, after being such an insensitive prick earlier. In hindsight, Adam had only tried to be supportive, but he’d gone about it the wrong way. Whether or not Swain had got what was coming to him, she didn’t want Adam to commend her for his murder; she needed reassurance he’d never believe the accusation she was under.

  She’d huddled under the pelting shower until the water turned cold, miserable. When she began shivering violently, her teeth clamped so tightly her jaw hurt, she struggled up and turned off the shower. Draped in a towel, she sat with the lid down on the toilet. In the shower she’d replayed the memories from her childhood — the day both the Fell Man and Girl entered her life and changed it forever — but as she sat hugging herself under the towel, she turned over yesterday’s events on the rooftop, wondering what she could have done differently. Each replay ended with her standing over the steaming corpse of Erick Swain, with anger threatening to engulf her because another innocent girl had been denied the justice she deserved.

  It was Sally’s disappearance that led Kerry down the path to where she was now. Sally wasn’t only her big sister, she was her best friend, and when she had been taken, the Fell Man also snatched a large chunk of Kerry’s heart. It was a void very difficult to fill, and to this day there was a hollow spot where Sally should be. As an eight-year-old Kerry had sought comfort in a pantheon of imaginary friends, and yet the one she most wanted to lean on remained a silent, intangible companion. As she aged, the other imaginary friends fell by the wayside, and yet Girl — as Kerry christened her — was always around. Occasionally she’d come closer when Kerry was at her lowest ebb, to stand beside her with her head hanging in combined sorrow.

  Her mam didn’t offer much solace. Siobhan Darke blamed herself for Sally’s disappearance, and so did their dad, Gary. They argued frequently — and sometimes things other than curses and accusations were thrown — and when they did it was to Kerry’s exclusion. She would retreat to a private place, her room, or one of the barns on their property, with Girl keeping her silent company.

  When she first mentioned Girl to her parents, her announcement was greeted by the sad smiles of indulgence of adults who thought they’d more to worry about. But when she persisted, their mild tolerance became disdain, then frustration, and shortly after she was the one being screamed at by both parties. Soon Girl was the only person not shouting at her, and Kerry spent more time with the silent phantom than was healthy for any child. When her obsession was finally recognised, her next stop was to Ronald Dawson’s office, and he became her child psychologist. Doctor “call me Ron” Dawson reassured her parents that Girl was simply a manifestation of Kerry’s grief, a coping mechanism on which she could draw the strength to get over the loss of her sister. Siobhan and Gary accepted his assertion that Girl was an imaginary proxy version of Sally, and Kerry made them none the wiser. The silent waif was not her sister, even if Kerry wished very hard that she were. Obviou
s mental health issues were ruled out to her parents’ relief, and Doctor Ron prescribed regular grief counselling sessions with their daughter, where she’d be encouraged to accept and come to terms with her loss, at which point he was confident she’d move on, and leave such coping mechanisms as “Girl” behind. He was a gentle soul, kind and caring and Kerry had no desire to cause him difficulty, so she played along. By the time she was twelve, and on the cusp of teenage rebellion, she agreed with him that Girl was unreal, and had permanently been put behind her — all the while avoiding checking out the response of the bowed translucent figure in the corner of his office. The lie had come easy to her lips. Over the past four years she’d been party to similar lies made to each other by her parents. Not long after Kerry’s final session with her psychologist, her dad abandoned them.

  Mam blamed herself for his desertion.

  Kerry didn’t.

  Her dad was supposedly so destroyed by the abduction of his oldest daughter that he was prepared to lose his wife and youngest daughter too? She didn’t believe it. When she learned that dad had taken up with another woman, and she was pregnant with a half-sibling, Kerry accepted that he wasn’t coming home. Perhaps her mam was slightly to blame — not for Sally’s disappearance — because if she was as much of a cold fish to her dad as to everyone else, then it was inevitable that he had sought intimacy in the arms of another woman. It was laughable that Kerry sought similar attention from an invisible friend and was scoffed at by her parents, but hers was the lesser evil when compared to what Gary and Siobhan Darke tried to plug their Sally-shaped holes with. Dad took on a surrogate family, while Mam tried to fill hers with copious amounts of alcohol and prescription drugs.