by Lauren White
Dinner date?
I might as well find out all the gory details and Sam is clearly dying to tell me everything he knows.
They're going out to dinner, tomorrow night. To a restaurant! We aren't invited.
Mummy hasn't asked me to babysit. More than that, she hasn't mentioned one bloody word to me about it. If she thinks she can exclude me by going out to eat, she has another think coming.
We're getting packed off for the night to friends.
Ryan?
Yeah.
Great! Personally, I blame Ryan for leading my innocent nephew astray. Maybe now is the time to put Carrie in the picture about the shoplifting. That might stop her from going out on this date, with Nigs.
My flat has been let to a Sikh couple called Jaswinder and Jitendra, whose grandparents emigrated to Britain from the Punjab. They're friends of my next door neighbours Bennett and Chelsee and have signed a six month lease, while their own house in Richmond is being renovated. The place was just sitting there empty waiting for the sales market to pick up so Carrie and I thought, why not? Jitendra is an accountant and his wife, Jaswinder, an interior designer. They have a little son called Surinder. They speak a kind of Punjlish among themselves, using the words from each language best suited to encapsulate whatever it is they’re trying to express. I understand them. This is one of the pleasant surprises to being dead, languages foreign to me in life are intelligible now. I find that thrilling. London is so rich in different cultures, there really is no need to travel the world. I’ve never had the opportunity to enjoy this diversity before because I’ve invariably entered people’s lives on the heels of a tragedy. But, now, for the first time, I can find out more about what they’re like, without them knowing I’m around. It is so strange. When I lived, it was the dead who preoccupied me. I had to die before I developed a curiosity about the living.
I find an excuse to have dinner with my new lodgers, at least once a week. My kitchen used to be the place where I sometimes dished up a takeaway but now it is in the hands of an accomplished cook. The food Jaswinder prepares tempts every sense I no longer have. The taste is in the smell. How does she do that?
As they eat the meal she has cooked, they all take turns to talk about their day and when they've finished I tell them about whatever is troubling me.
It was much more than a physical attraction between Nigs and me. We liked each other. I mean really liked each other. It's that feeling you get of being seen through by someone. But, seen through in a nice way. Seen through and still liked. No loved. Loved for being yourself. I'm beginning to think it was the biggest mistake of my life, not to have acted on my feelings for this man. The closest I got was at a colleague's birthday party. I stepped out into the garden to get away from the smoke and noise and there was Nigs, sitting alone on the terrace wall, gazing up at the moon. We'd both had a bit to drink and I remember thinking this was good because the only way I could overcome my objections to having a relationship with him was to get them drunk. I asked him what he was doing out there on his own and the next thing I knew I was in his arms. We were just about to kiss when someone bellowed for me from the back door. I can't even recall who it was. Nor, why they were looking for me. We both jumped away from each other. The next morning Nigs said: About last night. And I said: Forget it. It never happened. And, from then onwards it was as though it never had. You probably think, Jas, this almost-kiss doesn't entitle me to be as livid as I am with my sister for going out with Nigs, particularly given I'm now dead. But, there was so much more between us than actual deeds. It may have been all in the air but it was there. That should count for something, with Carrie. We had an agreement, when we were young, that if one of us liked a boy, the other one left her to it. We treated boys the same way we did the parents, we divided them up. Then, there were never any fights. If she doesn't cancel her date with Nigs, I promise you, there's going to be one hell of one now.
My house guests listen politely to my outpouring, without passing comment or judgement upon me, which if I’m honest is precisely why I like talking to them so much.
I wait until Carrie has fallen asleep to lay on the bed beside her and whisper into her ear her own worst fears. If Phil finds out you’re dating the detective who arrested him, your case against him might fail, you know. He could be suspicious that there’s a spark, between you, already. He might think you were having an affair before. He will probably kill you, this time. And, even if he doesn’t, knowing your luck with men, Nigs will turn out to be as bad as him, anyway. No, he will turn out to be even worse.
She tosses and turns to get away from the terrible dreams I am causing her to have but I take no pity on her. I'm determined to ensure that this dinner date doesn’t go ahead. She will ring Nigs first thing in the morning to cancel it. Then, I will then find a way to make certain it is never rearranged.
There's a noise, downstairs. One of the boys must have woken up. Maybe, they need a drink. Or, perhaps Caleb has wet the bed and gone to the living room to sleep on the sofa, rather than awaken Carrie.
I go to take a look.
A figure is sitting in the dark at the kitchen table. For a split second, I think it is Phil because it does seem familiar, but another moment on, I fall in.
Sergeant Ross, what are you doing here? He looks fed up. Is everything, all right?
Ah, Madding, I was wondering when you'd show up. I think we need to have a little chat, don't you?
I gather from having worked for him in the past, I'm in trouble.
What do you want to chat about?
You think rules are for everyone else, except you, do you?
I am not sure what he’s talking about so I try to deflect his question by changing the subject. I'm in the middle of a murder investigation, Sergeant.
No, you're in the middle of becoming too involved in what is over and done with.
What do you mean?
I've just said what I mean. What is it you didn't understand about it?
I have a nasty feeling this is about Carrie. I'm a ghost, we're supposed to hang around the living, I reply, sullenly.
Well, as it happens you're wrong. You're not a ghost. Ghosts are little more than sound and picture bites of experience that get trapped in time and space. Someone hits play and they play. What you are, is a spirit; an earth bound spirit, apparently. That's where you might be going wrong.
I'm where I want to be.
Oh, is that right? Well, if you are so content why are you trying to interfere in your sister's love life?
I'm not! All right, I might be - a little. But, only for her own good. He likes me, not her.
He liked you, he corrects me. And, you did nothing about that. Now, he likes her and she will. That's the difference between you. You always convinced yourself you were the stronger one, didn't you? Has it ever occurred to you, you were mistaken? She was the one who was able to do without you. She was the one who could move on alone.
Yes, to the creep she married. That was her first move. You call that strength?
She can live without you is my point - if you let her. Can you exist without her?
What does it matter now?
It matters because, if you too want to move on, you're going to have to find that out.
Then, we've just lapped the circuit, Sarge, because I don't want to move on.
You are the most stubborn...What is it you do want, Madding?
I want a result in this case.
He nods. Then, let life happen. That's my advice, for what it's worth. You don't have to be so afraid any more.
Part of me wants to ask him what the hell he is going on about. I'm dead. How can I let life happen? But, the stuff about being afraid provokes some kind of resonance in me. I don't want to admit it, though.
I do know I'm more angry with myself, than Carrie, I offer, instead.
And?
I shrug. I guess I'm beginning to wonder whether I wasted my life. Did you ever feel that, Sarge?
Yes, but I see it differently now. Life isn't the big deal, you know. It's just one rung on the ladder.
To where?
He laughs. Just work your case, Madding. Let life happen. And, you might discover the answer to that, yourself.
I didn't say anything before because I wasn't sure how you'd feel about it. I used to wonder whether you had a thing for him yourself. You sort of lit up, whenever you mentioned his name.
Carrie is confessing to the dinner date with Nigs, and pissing me off with her analysis of my interest in him, at the same time.
I've decided to cancel now anyway. I don't know what I'm getting myself into. He might turn out to be worse than Phil. And, even if he isn't, what if Phil found out? It might tip him over the edge into a full blown homicidal-mania.
I almost can't bring myself to do this. Cancel? Of course, you shouldn't, cancel. It's good you're beginning to get on with your life. And, there's no need to worry about Nigs. You couldn't find a better bloke.
You really think so?
I do.
What about Phil? He'll kill me if he finds out I’m seeing the detective who arrested him.
He won't find out, and if he does Nigs will do everything he can to make certain he can't hurt you again.
You really believe this is okay? You don't mind me going out with him?
Me? What should I mind? No, I'm all for it.
I'm letting life happen, I tell myself. But, I'm also aware that instead of undoing last night's work, I'm creating a new scenario in which I've not only given this relationship my blessing, I’ve positively encouraged it. It is the last time I shall interfere, I promise myself. But, I know myself better.
Carrie goes to the hairdressers to prepare for her big night out so it is back to the computer for me. I've decided to do another trawl of national newspaper headlines, looking at everything that mentions bride or wedding dress, during the same time period as before. It is a mammoth task. It takes most of the day but this time I get lucky. I find an interesting news story from three years before, under the headline: JILTED BRIDE IN SUSPECTED SUICIDE.
Jackie Brand, a twenty six year old fitness trainer, from St Albans, was engaged to be married to Brian Jones, a driving instructor, from Sheffield. But, on the morning of her wedding, she disappeared after her husband-to-be called things off. She was already dressed in her wedding gown and veil when he rang to dump her. Nice fellow. After, hanging up the phone, she told her bemused relatives she had to pop out, without revealing what had happened. Maybe, she felt too embarrassed. Her mother thought she was having a last minute fit of nerves as she watched her drive away. But, everything was arranged and she knew Jackie loved Brian to bits so she didn’t doubt she would be going through with the ceremony. She probably just wanted to lap the block a few times to calm her anxiety. When she wasn't back in time to leave for the church, her brother was dispatched to discover whether she was already there, and to have a word with the minister if she wasn't. It was only then they discovered the groom and best man were missing too. A rumour went around the congregation that Brian had never really wanted a big wedding and he and Jackie had decided to elope.
Mr and Mrs Brand decided that the reception should go ahead as planned. There was no point in wasting all that food and booze. It wasn't until they returned home that they discovered a telephone message from Brian. He was at his flat in Sheffield, he said. He wanted Jackie to call him there. They rang him, immediately, and for the first time they learned why neither he, nor Jackie, had been at the church. That was when they started to grow concerned for their daughter's safety, and they informed the police. Forty eight hours later, Jackie Brand's white Renault 5 was discovered, where it had been abandoned, close to the Humber Bridge. No trace of her was ever found, although suicide was strongly suspected. That’s what the police thought and even her parents believed it was the most likely explanation.
The last known person to see her alive was a patrol man from one of the breakdown networks, who was named in a local newspaper as Gordon Richards. Jackie phoned the central number that Saturday, at 12.30pm, from the M1, near the Leicester turn off, where her car had broken down. Richards managed to get it going again at the roadside, three quarters of an hour later. He remembered her particularly because of the wedding dress she was wearing, of course. She told him she was going to Sheffield but her runaway groom maintained she never arrived.
There is no photograph with this story. I wonder if she had any taken before Brian called the whole thing off? I have a dim recollection of Carrie posing for several in her wedding dress - flowers clasped to her belly to hide the bump - before leaving for the church, when she was wed to Phil. Most of them had me, the reluctant bridesmaid, standing beside her. She made me wear this metallic bluey-grey thing with a lace trim. Why, I would have liked to know? I mean every colour under the sun goes with white so what was her reason for wanting to make me look like Navy frigate? Our mother said it was so I didn’t deflect attention from the bride, being her identical twin and all. But, dressed in that monstrosity, I doubt anyone was able to take their eyes off me. Maybe Jackie did something similar – had photographs taken at home before the ceremony, I mean. (I’m sure Carrie was unique in her desire to humiliate her only bridesmaid.) It is too much to hope for probably. Besides there is not one shred of evidence that she was actually murdered, and even if she were, her killer would have to had to have known she'd been jilted to come up with the plan of making her disappearance look like a suicide. All of which makes the boyfriend seem like the best fit. The police would have looked at him pretty closely though, I imagine, and he did have a witness to vouch he wasn’t involved. The best man was with him from the time he left the hotel in St Albans, where they were staying, until the moment the police hammered on the door of his flat in Sheffield. It all rests on the dress then. That’s my only lead. I need to find out what it was like. If it is the one Kerry was buried in, Jackie joins our club, and the Weasel is her killer. And, if I can prove, at least, to my own satisfaction he was, another possibility comes into play. Casting suspicion on the boyfriends could be as much part of his signature as swapping the shoes. Brian, Karl, and Reece were all implicated to varying degrees. Karl was actually convicted, and Bim was buried in the woods opposite from where Reece lived. Kerry was thought to have run away, but if her disappearance had ever been treated as suspicious, her boyfriend too could have found himself at the heart of a possible murder enquiry. It suggests to me that the Weasel has prior knowledge. He either has to be researching his victims, in advance, or he is acquainted with all these women.
Sometimes it is possible to tell from looking around a house that a family member, who once lived there, died under brutal circumstances. It is nothing to do with black crepe, or ribbons, nor any of the usual trappings of mourning. It’s just the feeling you get there of time standing still. Often, it is the meticulous cleanliness too. It’s as though the place has been scrubbed from top to bottom to rid it of the stench of death. Jackie Brand's home in St Albans is like this. The living room is misnamed. It gleams like an empty mortuary slab and is as empty and lonely as a graveyard. Upstairs, her bedroom has been embalmed, behind the locked door, just as she left it. There are even strands of hair in her hairbrush and a faint whiff of scent lingers on her pillow. The only thing that has changed, in this house, since her disappearance, three years ago, is that all traces of her relationship with Brian and their impending wedding have been expunged. Time stopped when she died but, in the memories of her family, she has been fixed at an earlier point than this, before the seeds of the tragedy that carried her away from them were formed. The photographs of her on these pristine walls stretch from her babyhood up until the year she finished her college course. That must have been when they thought the path that led her away from them opened up before her. There are hundreds of pictures of her as a baby and small child, and tens of her during her teenage years. There are even a few from her early twenties, because she was still theirs then. Yet,
there is not a single one of her from the moment she met Brian Jones. These survive only in the family album, but even there they have been carefully chosen to exclude his image, their engagement, and wedding day. In all the photographs of Jackie on display on these walls, she is laughing. This is a feature of a suicide, I learned, during my years on the force; the photographs are always happy ones. They belie the silent scream of unanswerable questions that over the years since her disappearance have slowly become a litany of unacknowledged accusations. How could you do this to us? How could you kill yourself without a word? Why did you do that without once giving us the chance to talk you out of it?
I am not sure what I wish for them. That Jackie really killed herself. Or that in all the time they have blamed her and themselves for her death, she was the victim of a serial killer. Better than either of these, of course, would be that she is still alive somewhere and married to someone who cares for her a lot more than Brian Jones ever did.
Feeling frustrated and sad I decide to visit the regional office of the breakdown organisation where Gordon Richards works to see what I can turn up about him. I've no idea how I can find a way of asking him whether, by some miracle, he still remembers the dress Jackie Brand was wearing when she went missing but it has to be worth a try. I find myself sharing a computer with an obliging young woman with a Midlands accent. I only have to whisper in her ear two or three times what I want and she brings up the staff database onto the screen for me. Gordon Richards is no longer listed as a member of staff. He left about eighteen months ago to go travelling abroad. A personnel note, recorded on his computer file, says they would be prepared to take him back when he returns. He was a good worker, obviously. His is an odd age to go backpacking though. According to this, he’s in his thirties. Another note on his file records that the human resources department supplied the financial reference for the mortgage he used to purchase a house in Leicester, six years prior to his departure. I make a mental note of the address. Provided he hasn’t sold it since, I might as well go and take a look while I'm here.