You Can Run

by Steve Mosby

  The geography of it was immediately familiar, although much had changed. Driving down the main street, I recognised the architecture of the buildings themselves, but none of the businesses that now occupied them. Nevertheless, the village still corresponded to the map I’d kept folded up in my head all these years, and emotions flared as I passed certain places. It was subconscious; I often wasn’t sure why. But I knew each flash was a rope I could pull on if I wanted, bringing some buried memory back up to the surface. That happened there, didn’t it? I remember now. The day was sunny and warm, so I drove with the window down and my elbow resting on the sill, and even the sounds and smells of the place brought my childhood back to me.

  I passed through the centre and then took a turning away from the shops, towards the residential part of the village, where the houses rubbed up against the edge of the countryside. The street curled around, and I parked up on a quiet corner and turned off the engine. The houses to my right were expensive and detached. To the left, there was a stretch of neatly tended grass, and then an old stone wall that separated the street from the steep, tangled embankment beyond. A short distance ahead, there was a break in both the grass and the wall, where a path led to the bridge over the railway.

  I got out of the car.

  The Bridge hadn’t changed at all. I walked slowly along it, looking at the vaguely cobbled ground beneath my feet. The nubs in the black stone on the tops of the walls to either side looked as though a thousand children’s thumbs had been pressed into the stone as it formed. As a grown man, I’d expected it all to seem smaller, but it didn’t. When I stopped in the centre, the wall still came up to my chest, just as it had all those years ago. How was that possible? The place felt like a tree that had grown thicker with time: expanding with long, steady breaths, and somehow keeping pace with the size of it in my memories.

  I stood for a minute, staring over the top of the wall at the tracks disappearing into the distance, then hoisted myself up slightly and leaned over. It still seemed a long way down. I hadn’t been back since Rob had tried to kill himself, and it was easy to imagine him here now. Sitting on the wall, looking around and remembering what he’d seen as a child – the man with long hair and a sad face. Perhaps thinking of the email he’d sent to his once best friend that had never been answered. And then eventually leaning forward and tumbling through space for a second or two before his body hit the hard stretch of pebbles so far below.

  Do you think the fall would kill you?

  Yes, I thought now. Yes, it would.

  I didn’t know exactly what I’d expected to feel here. There are people who think you can tell when something terrible has happened in a place, and it’s true that I did sense a trace of sadness in the air, but I’m sure that was only because I’d brought it with me. A part of me wondered what would happen if I waited long enough. Would the day darken? Would anything appear to me? I could see it all so clearly anyway: separate instants superimposed over each other and gathering emphasis, the way a faint pencil line grows stronger the more you go over it. A different kind of pareidolia. Seeing not a face formed from the environment around us, but patterns discerned from events over time, only making sense in hindsight.

  I didn’t wait. Instead, I placed the flowers I’d brought with me at the base of the wall, said a quiet final goodbye to my friend, and made my way back to the car. Even so, I was almost surprised not to see a pair of bicycles, one more expensive than the other, leaning against the wall at the end.

  The next morning, Emma and I arrived at Mill Hill crematorium.

  The grounds around the building were beautiful. The crematorium was on the outskirts of the city, with the driveway winding almost leisurely through quiet green woodland, and the parking areas lined with carefully tended banks of flowers. From the outside, the building itself resembled a cabin in the middle of nowhere. We walked into a long room where everything seemed to be made of polished wood, and where every sound, even the gentlest of footfalls, echoed respectfully.

  Emma and I took a seat at the back of the room. Ferguson was already here, I noticed – sitting with Reeves on the other side of the aisle.

  A number of police who had been involved with the investigation were also attending; I recognised a few faces from the operations room. Other officers were stationed at the two entrances to the grounds and outside the crematorium building itself. For obvious reasons, there was enormous press interest in today’s events, but everybody involved was determined that the funeral of John Blythe would be a private affair.

  I looked down the aisle at the coffin. It was plain and brown, and of course, there were no flowers on it. There was nothing at all for the moment, although Blythe’s body would not be going behind the waiting curtains to the furnace unadorned. I glanced around. Blythe had no known surviving family, and none of his friends, neighbours or work colleagues had wished to appear today. But the room was still full.

  The officiant stood patiently at the front. He was old, with curly grey hair and round glasses, and I sensed an air of kindness about him even from the back of the room. He seemed like a man who would be good at saying the right things – guiding you through the prayers and hymns and eulogies with care. After a time, he nodded towards someone standing at the back of the room. I heard a gentle click behind me as the door was closed, and then the murmur of conversation faded away.

  The officiant approached the lectern.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said. ‘We are gathered here today in terrible circumstances and for horrible reasons. On a different occasion, I would begin by speaking at some length about the deceased – stories about their life and achievements. But we will not be talking about the deceased today. Instead, may I please ask Elizabeth Brown to join me at the front of the room?’

  A woman in her early seventies wearing a black dress moved slowly to the front of the room, and the officiant stepped back to allow her space. She put on a pair of reading glasses, then placed a piece of paper on the lectern.

  ‘I want to tell you a story about a woman named Rebecca,’ she said. ‘Rebecca was my daughter, and I loved her very much. Many people did. One of my strongest memories is of when she was six, and obsessed with becoming a doctor. My husband and I bought her a toy medical set for her birthday, and I remember she wore the stethoscope for days on end, and insisted on subjecting her poor little sister to endless unwanted interventions.’

  She looked into the audience and smiled. Following her gaze, I saw a woman, perhaps in her forties now, smile back at the memory.

  ‘Rebecca always cared for other people,’ Elizabeth went on. ‘I thought she might end up as a nurse or a doctor when she grew up, but she took a different direction in the end, and I was equally proud. She loved children very much, and she was working as a primary school teacher at the time she was taken from us. I know some of her former colleagues are here with us today.’

  She placed one hand on her heart.

  ‘Thank you all so much. I still have each and every one of the messages you sent me about her, and I treasure them all. I’m sorry that Rebecca never had a chance to become a mother herself. She would have been as amazing at that as she was as a daughter. There is nothing else to regret about her life, though – just the manner in which it was so abruptly and cruelly ended. I miss her very much, and I think about her every day. Goodbye, Becky.’

  She closed her eyes for a moment, gathering herself. Then she picked up the sheet of paper, folded it, and placed it carefully on top of the coffin.

  The relatives all took their turn to speak. Mothers and fathers, husbands and boyfriends, grown children. They all approached the lectern to tell something of the truth that lay behind the bare list of victims.

  I want to tell you a story about a woman named Mary.

  I want to tell you a story about a woman named Kimberly.

  I want to tell you a story about a woman named Grace.

  Mary Fisher had always loved language as a child. She spoke French an
d Italian fluently, and had just started her own small translation company when she went missing. Kimberly Hart’s twin children remembered their mother’s calming presence and the way she read them bedtime stories using different voices for all the characters. Grace Holmes had been born prematurely and spent several difficult weeks in hospital before finally being allowed home. That was why they had chosen her first name: Grace.

  I want to tell you a story about a woman named Sophie.

  I want to tell you a story about a woman named Chloe.

  Both Sophie King and Chloe Smith had been teenagers when they were killed by Blythe. Sophie had already been an accomplished artist and had plans to study to be an architect. Chloe had gone off the rails for a time, her brother said, but she was bringing her life back around. He’d argued with her so much over the years. He was sure he’d still be arguing with her now if she was around, and he wished that she was.

  I want to tell you a story about a woman named Anna.

  And there were Anna’s parents. I recognised them, of course, and even though they seemed so old now, it was easy to see the people they had once been. Her father spoke about how they’d had two little boys before her, and how he’d been thrilled to have a daughter finally, just so he could encourage her to climb trees, ride bikes and do everything her brothers did. And she had. Her husband, he told us, had taken his own life after her disappearance.

  I watched as he placed the folded piece of paper on the coffin, glad that in its own small way, Rob’s story was part of this too.

  I want to tell you a story about a woman named Amy.

  I want to tell you a story about a woman named Ruby.

  I want to tell you a story about a woman named Olivia.

  Amy Marsh had been a scientist. She was a single mother who’d worked hard for her PhD, and a keen runner. Her daughter remembered how she had been training for her second marathon when she disappeared.

  Tom Clarke, dressed in a suit, his long hair neatly combed, explained how Ruby Clarke had saved him. He’d never been able to believe that someone so caring, so gentle, could be interested in a man like him. He’d lost track of things since she went missing, but he was going to try to do better.

  Olivia Richardson, her mother said, had always been so bloody obstinate. They hadn’t got along at all. It was only in hindsight that she realised that that was because they were so very similar, and she wished she’d had a chance to tell her that and say sorry.

  The coffin gathered its pages, its tales. If you watched carefully, it was possible to see some of them unfolding a little, like flowers, after they were left.

  I want to tell you a story about a woman named Carly.

  I want to tell you a story about a woman named Emily.

  I want to tell you a story about a woman named Angela.

  Carly Jones had worked as a session musician. Her father had tried to steer her towards the violin – his own personal love – but she’d gravitated to the guitar. She’d practised for hours on end as a teenager, hunched over the instrument, and she had such long hair that when you walked into her room, it was like Cousin Itt from the Addams Family was sitting crosslegged on the bed.

  It had taken Emily Bailey five attempts to pass her driving test, but she had never wavered in her determination. She was always such a serious child, her brother said. When she started something, she never gave up. She loved films and had her own amateur review blog, which had been attracting increasing traffic, and which he continued to update as best he could, even though he found it difficult.

  ‘We tried so hard to have children,’ Angela Walsh’s mother said. ‘Eventually we adopted Angela. Her birth name was Davina, which I think is simply beautiful. I wonder what would have happened if we hadn’t changed it – if things would have been different. It would still have been her, of course, but maybe there’s another story there. I think about that a lot.’

  Amanda Cassidy remained in hospital, but her husband Peter was present, and he spoke in her place. As he walked to the lectern, I recognised him from his vigil at the hospital. He seemed lighter now.

  ‘Amanda is recovering slowly,’ he said. ‘She’s better every day, and my daughter Charlotte and I are so grateful to have her back. When Amanda was a little girl, her mother, Carol, would fold sheets of paper in half and get her to write stories in them. Carol kept them all and I have one with me here. So I’m not going to read a story about Amanda today, but one by her. She was ten years old when she wrote this, by the way, so I can only apologise in advance.’

  There was a little laughter at that, but it disappeared as he started to read: a story about a girl who wandered into a terrifying forest and was pursued by a monster that cast an enormous shadow over her. The little girl ran and ran, until at the end she finally turned around and saw that the creature pursuing her was a small, snivelling thing that fled when it saw her looking.

  ‘So however scary monsters are, and whatever awful things they do, that’s all they ever really are’ he finished. ‘The End.’

  He placed the book on the coffin – a handful of old pink sheets, folded over and sewn at the crease with green and white string – and returned to his seat.

  And then it was Melanie West’s turn to speak.

  She had been sitting at the end of a row, next to Jeremy Townsend. Now, she stood and made her way to the lectern. With the exception of Amanda Cassidy’s childhood book, the other papers people had brought were new – freshly written or printed – but Melanie’s pages were old and worn. They had been with her for a long time. She took off the dark glasses she was wearing and looked around, and for a moment it wasn’t clear whether she was seeing us or something else entirely.

  ‘I want to tell you a story,’ she began, ‘about a girl named Jennifer.’

  ALSO BY STEVE MOSBY

  The Murder Code

  The Nightmare Place

  The Reckoning on Cane Hill

  YOU CAN RUN

  Pegasus Books, Ltd.

  148 West 37th Street, 13th Floor

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2017 by Steve Mosby

  First Pegasus Books hardcover edition December 2017

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or

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  ISBN: 978-1-68177-558-6

  ISBN: 978-1-68177-607-1 (e-book)

  Distributed by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.