When the Dead Come Calling

by Helen Sedgwick

Georgie nods. Trish leans forwards.

  ‘He was using hypnotherapy, to help her remember more details of what happened to her. At first she didn’t know who it was, you see. For years she’d lived with that. The shapes of those men surrounding her, their faces hidden behind sheets turned into masks, those awful slits for their eyes… Dawn told me everything, eventually. It wasn’t easy for her, but she did.’

  Georgie listens, scarcely breathing herself. She listens for every inflection, every waver in her voice, though quite what she is listening for she couldn’t say. Truth, perhaps.

  The details had come slowly at first. Four, nearly five years ago this was, while her dad was in hospital and Dawn started seeing Dr Cosse. She wanted to stop the nightmares – all her life she’d had them. Reliving what they’d done to her, waking up in the cold, in the dark, surrounded by faceless creatures, the knife at her throat, the rope around her neck. She just wanted peace from it. But Dr Cosse, he wanted to know who it was. So he persuaded her to try some hypnotherapy, said patients could sometimes remember vivid details they’d lost. He’d let her describe what she remembered, asking questions, is there any sound, is there any smell… And there was a smell. That’s what she remembered first. The smell of mince and onions. The meal her mum had cooked that evening, before Dawn was taken from her bed.

  ‘He kept trying,’ Mrs Helmsteading says. ‘Kept leading her to the playground, wanting her to describe what she saw, what it felt like. I asked Dawn why she kept going back, but she said she needed to know the truth.’

  Georgie looks up, meets Mrs Helmsteading’s gaze.

  ‘But it wasn’t until she recognised his eyes that she was certain. There was the smell – the meal we’d had that evening. There was the prickling she felt from his beard when he leaned close. And there were his eyes, peering out of the slashes cut in the mask. She’d seen her father’s eyes.’

  Georgie nods.

  ‘And he wasn’t home, you see,’ she swallows. ‘That night, I woke up. Must have been the middle of the night – it was pitch-black. He was gone. He wasn’t in bed. I didn’t even know Dawn was missing, didn’t know anything was wrong and I just thought…’

  ‘But then Dawn remembered?’

  ‘The smell on his breath, the eyes. She thought it was her dad. The ringleader. The one who held the knife to her throat.’

  ‘Yes, it was.’

  ‘No, that’s the thing. It didn’t work right. The hypnotherapy, it was making her remember things that weren’t true.’

  ‘False memories?’

  ‘She was… She remembered what happened, but it was the wrong man she was seeing. She believed it though, completely, and so I believed her.’

  ‘You’re saying you killed your husband in revenge for what you thought he did?’ Georgie speaks quietly, slowly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And now you think he was innocent after all?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Trish cuts in fast. ‘And Dawn knew about your plan.’

  ‘No!’

  Georgie reaches for Trish’s arm, giving Mrs Helmsteading a chance to lean back, to reach for her plastic cup of water. Though her hands aren’t shaking.

  ‘So what happened after your husband died? I mean, after you cremated him.’

  ‘Nothing, for a few years. We were trying to move on. We thought we could put it behind us, once he’d paid for what…’

  ‘Dawn stopped seeing Dr Cosse?’

  Mrs Helmsteading nods.

  ‘But then?’

  ‘A few months ago…’ She shakes her head. Looks down. Looks ashamed, truly ashamed, for the first time since the interview started.

  ‘What happened a few months ago? Mrs Helmsteading?’

  ‘A few months ago, Bobby came back.’

  NO MORE OF THAT HERE

  Simon walks the last few paces to where Dawn Helmsteading is lying crumpled on the rocks. His pulse is still pounding from how fast he ran down the cliffs, but he wasn’t expecting her to turn and fall, her arms splayed out like that. Like something broken. He’d needed to catch her, accuse her, put every fucking thing he had left into how fast he could run; maybe he was expecting a fight. But whatever he was expecting, it wasn’t this.

  Her eyes are closed but she’s singing something, humming to herself. She looks like she’s been out in this weather for days, her hair knotted and plastered to her face, her clothes drenched and her skin, her hands, red raw from the wind, the salt. She’s wearing a dress and her legs are bare beneath, prickled blue with goosebumps. It doesn’t feel right to be towering over her like this, and so he sits down beside her instead. He can feel the bite of the sea on his face. The tide is on its way in again.

  ‘I’ve come to arrest you,’ he says, his breath ragged from the run. Even so, it is strange how difficult he finds it to speak.

  And the way she sings, it’s like it’s coming from somewhere else, or maybe from everywhere, the sound being pulled from the rocks themselves. There’s a sea mist out towards the horizon, a purple-grey haze separating the land from the sky. She sits up then, pulls her knees up to her chest and turns to face him with a question in her eyes.

  ‘I know you,’ she says.

  He nods. ‘We went to the same school.’

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘I don’t mean that.’ Her eyes are searching for something, or someone. ‘I heard you shouting to the wind. Do you remember? It was a long time ago. Years and years, I think. Or maybe days.’

  Yes, Simon remembers. So she was there, watching him. Hiding behind him as he choked on everything he had lost. The awful violence of it. Falling to his knees in the sea. She was watching him.

  ‘I wanted to help you,’ she says. ‘I wanted to reach out—’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  But she reaches out now, touches her frozen hand to his face. ‘It sounded like you were all alone.’

  He’d thought he was angry, at last, that he could stop with this pain, this aching. That he could place the blame where it belonged. He tries to say ‘I’m arresting you’ but he can’t even finish the sentence, his throat’s closed too tight around the words.

  ‘It’s good to cry,’ she says. ‘My mum says that.’

  Simon forces a breath, presses a hand across his eyes. There’s seaweed floating in with the tide. That’s better. Black. Lumpy. Ugly, like it should be.

  ‘You can’t get away,’ he says. ‘I won’t let you get away with it.’

  She puts her head onto his shoulder and curls her legs up beside her. ‘That’s okay,’ she says. The water from her hair seeps through his shirt, touches like ice. He can feel her shivering now.

  ‘We can shout together, if you like,’ she says. ‘Shout it all away, then sit here and watch it go. The colours will change as it moves over the waves and this is a beautiful spot for watching, don’t you think? The sea is coming closer now.’

  ‘I’m arresting you,’ he says, his voice stronger now. ‘I’m arresting you for the murder of Alexis Cosse.’

  She makes a noise like a breath, only slower, her arms stretching out to him as though she imagines him to be her father, or her friend, or her child. ‘I was dreaming that he might have been okay,’ she says. ‘I wanted so much for him to be okay.’

  ‘He’s—’

  Simon doesn’t even know why he lets it happen, but Dawn has put her arms around him and is rocking back and forth. Maybe he could push her off, stand without falling, march her to the station, shout, blame, but he doesn’t. Somehow he can’t.

  ‘I’m sorry, Alexis,’ she says. ‘They’re whispering again, can you hear them on the wind? I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Why did you kill him?’

  She starts that singing again, like a lullaby.

  ‘He was just trying to help you.’

  ‘He did help me.’

  ‘That’s all he ever did, he tried to help people.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘But then you … you blamed him and you’ – he forces himself to say it – �
��you stabbed him over and over again and left him to die. Why did you do it?’

  At last her arms are gone from around him and she’s looking at him with her transparent eyes and there are tears flowing down her cheeks but she doesn’t make a sound, she doesn’t sob or cry or even try to deny it.

  ‘He gave me something special,’ she says. ‘And then he told me to run. Run, Dawn, run – that’s what we’ve been doing. He gave me a present. But I think now that he should have given it to you. If you arrest me, can I take you back to the cave to get it?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’d like to show you the cave, before we go back to the police station. To give you the present he gave to me. Just before he saved my life.’

  SHOULD HAVE BEEN TEATIME

  ‘You’re saying you had no idea what had happened to Dawn until she told you?’ Trish leans back and regards Mrs Helmsteading over the table.

  Mrs Helmsteading shakes her head.

  ‘But my husband…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He knew. I mean, he must have known – that’s what I’ve realised. He must have known Bobby was up to something and so he followed him, or found him out there, with Dawn. I still don’t know exactly. Dawn knows she passed out at the playground, when they tied the rope around her neck, and next thing she’s back in her own bed. Her dad must have found her and carried her home again. When I woke up in the morning, everything was normal except that Jack had decided Bobby had to be sent away to boarding school… He was adamant about it. He’d not even let him come home for holidays most of the time, always sending him off to camp or to stay with his uncle down south. Said it was for his education, but that wasn’t true. I understand now. It was to keep him away from Dawny. To protect her. To protect me, too.’

  She looks pleadingly at Georgie, but Georgie gets up and walks to the window: gathered in a flock right out there on the weedy grass in front of the police station, a reeking mass of grey-brown seagulls pecking at the floor, pecking in the bins, pecking at a small blue plastic bag of dog shit, turning the world into something revolting.

  ‘Please, you have to believe me – I had no idea what had happened at the time…’ Mrs Helmsteading shakes her head, scrunches her eyes shut. ‘But I could always tell Jack was keeping something hidden from me. So when Dawn remembered, when she said her dad had taken her … it seemed to fit. He wasn’t in bed that night. I’d always felt he’d had a secret. There was that group of them, him and Walt Mackie and Art Robertson, always meeting up without their wives, without their kids. It was a beekeeping society, they said… Bobby always wanted to go, but Jack wouldn’t let him. He even followed him one time, came home all covered in mud and Jack was fair furious.’

  Georgie glances at Trish, but she’s staring straight ahead and her face is expressionless.

  ‘Anyway, he was keeping something secret, just not any of the things I’d thought. He was hiding the fact that our thirteen-year-old son had drugged and kidnapped our daughter. If I’d known, I’d have gone to the police or… I’d have done something. Bobby was a bully, I’d always known that, but I never imagined … torturing a little girl, his own sister. I keep imagining it, poor little Dawn terrified out there on the cliffs and Bobby… He’d been jealous of Dawn since she was born. He’d always had this spite in him, I knew it even though I didn’t want to see it.’

  ‘Your husband didn’t go to the police?’

  She shakes her head. ‘He wanted it buried, even from me. Don’t know why. The shame, perhaps. I wondered if he thought it was his fault, not raising his son right…’ She looks at Trish, then back at Georgie. ‘Well, maybe it was. Maybe it was our fault.’

  ‘But you didn’t commit these murders,’ Georgie says to Mrs Helmsteading. ‘I don’t believe you killed anyone.’

  ‘I did.’

  She’s calm now, calm and sitting tall, and she’s got a surprising authority to her.

  ‘You’re trying to protect Dawn,’ Georgie says. ‘Because you didn’t protect her before. I understand. You’re her mother. So you’re trying to protect her now.’

  Mrs Helmsteading takes a breath as though it’s travelling all the way down through her body, burning as it goes. Her hair is turning grey. Wispy curls rise up from her head in all directions.

  ‘I killed my husband.’

  ‘There’s no proof of that, Mrs Helmsteading.’

  ‘There’s my confession.’

  ‘But Mrs—’

  ‘I killed my husband. And I killed my son. I brought him in to the world, so I needed to be the one to take him out.’

  ‘There’s evidence, then? Your blood on the knife? Clothes covered in blood?’

  ‘Yes!’ she says, ‘Yes, of course, they were all covered in blood. I put them through the wash so they’d not be smelly for you. I mean, they’re all clean now but—’

  ‘There’s no reason for you to have killed Alexis Cosse.’

  She glances up then with something that looks almost like triumph.

  ‘Oh, I didn’t hurt Alexis. And neither did Dawn.’

  Georgie leans back, tries to block out some of the noise. It’s no good, to be hearing those birds screaming all the time, seeing impossible clouds in the sky; giving in to the anger she’s kept down for years.

  ‘Then tell us what happened on Monday night, Mrs Helmsteading,’ Trish says.

  This is the question Mrs Helmsteading’s been avoiding for the past half hour.

  ‘Dawn was upset. She’d been having her nightmares again. Waking dreams, like she could see her memories playing out in front of her eyes… Her and Bobby, they hardly knew each other, see. He’d been away all these years.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘It was like they didn’t want to be in the same space together. I didn’t push it. Had a family dinner to welcome him home, gave Bobby my spare room while he got on his feet. Only what any mother would have done. I couldn’t turn him away, could I? But Dawn stopped coming round. Until that Monday night. I remember the way she stood there at the bottom of the stairs just as Bobby was coming down. Off to see Ricky, are you? she’d said, and he’d snapped back that at least he had friends to go see and then she spoke really carefully, I remember that, said that actually she was going to meet Dr Cosse. I looked up the stairs and saw Bobby there, and I knew. He had done it. I turned back to Dawn and she was gone. I haven’t seen her since.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  Georgie doesn’t move, not an inch, not a muscle.

  ‘Didn’t know what to do. Tried to keep Bobby in the house while I worked it all out. He scoffed his dinner I’d made him and all the time he was staring at me in this intense way. I had to say something, didn’t I? I said, why did you do it, Bobby? His eyes, staring. His knife and fork clattering to the plate. Then he pushed right past my chair, next thing the front door’s slammed and he’s gone. I didn’t know… I mean, I never believed he’d actually… I should’ve stopped him, I could have prevented…’ Mrs Helmsteading is crying now. ‘So I had to stop him from hurting anyone else. Didn’t I?’

  ‘Are you lying to us, Mrs Helmsteading?’

  ‘I had to stop him.’

  ‘Are you taking the blame to protect Dawn?’

  She’s shaking her head violently. ‘It was me, I did this…’

  ‘You won’t mind giving us a sample of your DNA then?’

  ‘Take whatever you want,’ she says, and she is standing, the chair clattering to the ground and Trish’s coffee spilled and something has broken in her as she holds out her hands as though she wants them to cuff her. ‘It was my fault,’ she half-says, half-sobs. ‘Please…’ She backs into the corner where there’s nothing but brown tiles and dust and she cowers on the floor, pulls her knees into her chest and whispers, ‘It’s all my fault.’

  IN LOSTHAVEN CAVE

  Simon waits at the entrance to the cave, Dawn’s wrist clasped in his hand, the sky above a deep bruised purple and the sea close at his heels, froth from the
waves gathering in the pockmarks of the rock. It’s a creepy place, darker than shadow and damp like rot, a smell of something more than stale seaweed and crushed salt. The air changes as he steps inside, drops a few degrees and tastes different on his lips – rough and thick, refusing to be disturbed.

  As they’d climbed over the rocks to get here, he’d seen the offerings left by desperate people over the years. A crucifix large as a man, made of branches, resting against the cliff face and tied with rope, stones piled into crosses that stayed standing even when they looked like they should collapse. Symbols and icons and prayers, warnings and totems, markings of death everywhere. Dawn is trying to pull her wrist free.

  Looking down, he sees torn bits of cling film scattered on the cave floor, soggy and old, and a worry doll that looks like it has been thrown there, discarded in disgust, old and mouldy and damp. He kneels, picks it up. Cold on his skin and soggy with the sea, it had fallen into one of the dips in the rock in which water or rain or something else entirely has formed shallow, stagnant pools. Its eyes, once buttons or beads, are gone, and now it’s just a cross of black thread each side that once held the eyes in place, and a similar line of red stitches for the mouth. It is ghastly.

  ‘Did you do this?’ he says, handing it to Dawn.

  ‘She told me she didn’t want to see any more.’

  The crosses of its eye sockets are mirrored all around, on every face of the cave are crosses made of sticks and twigs, driftwood, scratched into pebbles lodged in the crevices of the cliff face. Etched into the walls over centuries. It is an ancient place, he remembers that from when they did local history at school, but he didn’t know people were still coming to pray, to hide – didn’t even know the cave was still here.

  ‘I used to be so scared of that playground,’ Dawn says. She’s cross-legged on the floor now, stroking her blind worry doll’s hair. ‘Couldn’t go near it. Even as a grown-up I was too scared, until that last night, when I had Alexis with me and I knew the truth.’

  Simon feels his knees shaking – tells himself he should have eaten some lunch, drunk some water, but it’s nothing to do with that. He leans against the wall, and his hands slip over the surface like through seaweed.