by Alison Bruce
‘Meaning what?’
‘You’re not stupid. Work it out.’ A short silence followed. What mattered most now was the assault on DC Goodhew. ‘I didn’t see anything,’ she continued. ‘I thought at first that the car park was empty, so I walked towards the main entrance. Then I don’t really know whether I spotted something out of the corner of my eye, or maybe heard something, but I glanced round and saw an arm. And when I moved a little closer, I recognized him. I ran to the pub door, shouted for help. Then went back to him.’
‘And you called an ambulance?’
‘From my mobile, yes. And I assume they called the police or ambulance from inside the Carlton.’
‘We have the time of your call. How soon after discovering Goodhew would you say you made it?’
‘Straightaway. Two minutes at the absolute most.’
‘And you’d say the car park was empty for approximately how long before you found DC Goodhew?’
‘Another minute or so as I crossed the road. Tops.’
‘And where did you find your father eventually?’
‘Back here. When I got home, he was asleep on the settee.’
‘Not worried about you, then?’
Charlotte stiffened. ‘You weren’t ever really prepared to help me, were you?’
‘I did exactly what you asked me to do, and there was nothing to tell you. But instead of accepting that, you just kept pushing.’
‘No, you strung me along. How many times did you tell me you were waiting for a chance to look at this, that or the other document? The coroner’s report first. Then results from Forensics, yet another witness interview . . . You dragged it out for weeks, Michael.’
‘You heard only what you wanted to hear. I told you right from the start I couldn’t find anything. How could I, when there was nothing to find. Why is that so hard for you to live with? They’re not even your own family.’
‘Matt is my brother.’
‘Yeah, Charlotte, you’ve made my ears bleed over that one already.’
‘Well, you lied to me about plenty of things, but until tonight I still felt you had a common thread of decency.’ This time when Charlotte stood up she was determined that their conversation really was over. ‘There’s so much less to you than meets the eye, Michael.’
She pulled open the kitchen door, then realized that they weren’t alone in the house after all. Matt and Libby stood side by side in the hall.
Matt peered beyond Charlotte, into the kitchen, then back at her in disbelief. ‘What the hell did you do, Char?’
But, behind him, she was certain that she saw Libby give her a small but definite nod.
THIRTY
Dear Zoe,
I know I do all the talking, but it helps me, it really does.
Sometimes Charlotte seems in denial. Sometimes I truly did believe that she thought Rosie and Nathan had killed themselves. The problem with all of this is wondering if I would believe the full truth if I came across it. In my mind it’s a conspiracy, like Marilyn and Kennedy and Presley all rolled into one.
I take people’s words at face value, the first time I hear them, then repeat them to myself and find another stance and, finally, they are turned over so many times that I eventually discard them as nothing more than static in the bigger picture.
Tonight I saw that Charlotte and I really are on the same side. She probably doesn’t favour one truth over another the way I do, but the fact is there is only one truth and she knows we haven’t had it all revealed yet.
I didn’t hear everything that went on between her and the policeman, but I was there for longer than she realized.
And I’m not going to make any moral comments. As far as I’m concerned, if she slept with him it shows her determination. And I think he’s not the kind to go out of his way without getting something out of it for himself, but I know Matt will dwell on it even if I don’t.
Matt dwells on everything.
Should I tell him that I know he slept with Meg? And why should it bother me? Because, if I’m honest, it does – but then the other part of me wonders why it doesn’t bother me more.
Maybe I don’t have feelings for him, or maybe I’m no longer capable of having a normal range of feelings for anyone, or anything. Is it possible that emotional reserves are like eggs? It’s one of those mind-blowing facts that I was born with all the eggs I’ll ever produce already inside my body. What if all the feelings I’m capable of having were there from birth, too, and I don’t have any left for the rest of my life because they were all used up on my family.
My family?
My dad put my mum in hospital today. That was supposed to be the first thing I should write; instead, it’s lower on the list than my fertility.
Joke.
Actually, I don’t know what to think. It’s not the first time he’s hit her, but this time he was arrested and charged. I’m relieved, I suppose. I don’t want Mum hurt. Neither do I want them to split up. Sometimes I wish someone would thump me – it might be a relief to hurt for some other reason, and at least with a physical injury I could watch myself heal.
Well, that’s kind of a joke, too. Not a very good one, I suppose, but like the rest it has a sliver of truth in it.
Matt was coming with me to the hospital tonight to visit her. I wanted to visit my dad in custody, too, but I don’t know whether I’m allowed to yet. Matt didn’t want to visit my dad, not even to keep me company, not even as far as the door. He’s more black-and-white than me; he won’t make it up with his own dad so I guess he’ll hate mine forever too.
Anyhow, it seems like the visit to the hospital is out of the question now. Matt and Charlotte are having some kind of heart-to-heart and that detective is still attempting to pin down her statement on the injured officer. He was attacked not long after arresting my dad; if my dad had any friends left I think that one of them might have done it out of warped loyalty.
Funny thing is though, one of Dad’s only mates was attacked at pretty much the same spot. I hadn’t thought of that until this very second. Mind you, he wasn’t a close mate, because the really close ones gave up after the second funeral.
Oh fuck. I hate my life.
Sometimes I really wish for something significant to happen, but it would take something pretty huge to pierce this constant numbness. Yet I have days when I think that I want it to happen, no matter how bad it is. Anything to move me somewhere else.
Then I remind myself that this isn’t numbness. It’s an overload of self-preservation and I really don’t want something bad to happen, even when I think I do. I just thought it, but I didn’t mean it. Sorry.
THIRTY-ONE
Marks felt there was little doubt that Meg DeLacy had committed suicide and, up to a point, Goodhew couldn’t help but agree. It definitely looked that way.
Megan lay mostly on the bed, one arm dangling over one side, and a foot protruding from the other. She’d managed a partial suicide note. It began as a status update on her Facebook profile: hey guys, I no wot u all think but I neva meant 2 upset Shanie. Soz babes.
It carried on with notes scribbled on a sheet of paper next to her keyboard. Shanie was a bitch but she didn’t know better and I didn’t want her dead. Neither did Phil. Then, It was no biggie, would have been forgotten if she hadn’t died, and I wasn’t being a bitch but now she’s dead I look like such a cow. How do I come back from that?
There were empty drugs packets on the bed, the computer desk, and also one on the floor. Some were painkillers, but most were sleeping tablets, and two drinks bottles kept each other company in the waste-paper basket. One had contained Sambuca and the other a cheap brand of vodka.
Half a bottle of Southern Comfort lay on its side next to the bed and some had leaked on to the carpet.
Marks shook his head. ‘I’m not surprised she didn’t get to finish that bottle if she really had gone through the rest.’
Meg was sprawled on her back, her face tilted to one side, with a trail of vom
it around her mouth and nose. It was still wet where it had pooled in the soft well of the suprasternal notch.
‘First thought?’ Marks asked.
‘Squalid . . . and depressing.’ Goodhew studied the room for a few seconds longer, noting the dirty laundry in the corner, the unopened packet of digestive biscuits on top of the portable TV, the red marks scribbled on the calendar.
They looked like assignment-due dates, extensions and final, final deadlines. ‘Based on first appearances, it seems genuine,’ he remarked finally.
‘Emily tells me that some kids at her school talk about suicide as if it’s a cool thing to do. She says they don’t really get it, because they think that they’re going to witness the aftermath, watch their friends crying for them, and so on. It’s so wasteful. They just don’t seem to grasp the permanence of it.’
‘Really?’ It wasn’t the first time that Goodhew had heard this theory, but he still found it too unlikely to fully accept. Without a shadow of doubt he himself had understood the frailty of death from the age of eleven when his grandfather had suddenly died. Un-learning a lesson like that seemed impossible.
‘We’ve already had contact with the family, and they acknowledged that she had intermittent emotional problems throughout her adolescence.’
‘If that’s the case, I’m sure that, between her former teachers and her GP, there’ll be reports to corroborate it.’
‘Subject to forensics and toxicology, I am satisfied. That goes for Shanie Faulkner, too.’
Goodhew nodded but he was far less convinced.
Marks picked up on his scepticism. ‘We’ve had confirmation from her doctor that Shanie not only sought advice about feeling unable to cope with the pressure of her studies but had also raised concerns about her making a trip to the UK by herself. Her doctor is willing to make a statement to that effect.’
Goodhew nodded again and continued to agree with Marks until slipping from the room looked like a viable possibility.
Once again, the house was quiet, but this time the retreating students had left more than shocked silence in their wake. There was fear here now.
There were people he knew, his grandmother one of them, who liked the idea that buildings retained memories, that an imprint of events could be left within the fabric of the walls.
He didn’t buy it. The whole concept belonged with the kind of new-age philosophies that he would believe as soon as he had proof. And not before.
Despite that, there was definitely more than just dust hanging in the air.
He already knew which room belonged to which student, but if he hadn’t, it would have been as easy to deduce as each of them having a photograph pinned on a tag and hanging from a hook on the centre of their door.
The girls’ rooms were particularly easy. Jamie-Lee’s erupted with energetic colours and quirky kitsch. Libby seemed determined to colour or disturb her environment as little as possible. Her room was neat, and everything from her clothes through to her notebooks and toiletries could have been picked for their low-key and almost inconsequential appearance.
No doubt too many assumptions based on a few incomplete facts had to be a bad thing, but on the other hand, who in the house but horticulture student Matt would have owned a bookshelf with titles ranging from Science and the Garden to A Handbook for Horticultural Students? The books were well used, the corners battered and the edges of the pages grubby as if they’d been hauled from classroom to allotment, and back.
By the same token, a single glance at Phil’s bookshelf said ‘science’ in a way that Jamie-Lee’s selection of gossip mags and chick lit never had. Phil’s personal flavour seemed to be physics. Goodhew selected a couple of volumes at random, both of them creaking open as if it were the first time. He slid them back into place.
Goodhew sat on one corner at the end of Phil’s bed. He wouldn’t have much time before Marks called him away. He needed to find something – anything – that might explain why Shanie’s door had been repeatedly opened during the hours after her death. With each room he entered he was moving further from Shanie’s room and still had no idea what he might be hoping to spot. He scanned Phil’s room carefully and, as with the other bedrooms, his gaze stopped at the laptop. Turning on a suspect computer was a whole other ballgame. As soon as it booted up, evidence was lost: with every file accessed, more details still would vanish, and details of any remaining information would be wide open then to accusations of tampering.
Still, it was tempting.
‘Gary, what exactly are you doing?’
He hurried through the doorway before calling down to his boss from the head of the stairs, ‘I’m just checking through the building, making sure nothing looks out of place.’
‘How much longer?’
‘I’m coming now.’ As Goodhew said it, he crossed the small square landing to the final door. He turned the handle, but of all the rooms in the house this was the only one currently locked.
‘Just the open rooms, Gary,’ Marks shouted up. ‘Off-limits if they’re locked right now, you know that.’
Goodhew sighed. Sometimes Marks could tune into his thoughts with uncanny accuracy. It took him about twenty seconds longer than the end of Marks’s latest instruction before the lock mechanism surrendered to his trusty skeleton key.
‘Gary?’
‘Yes, sir, I heard you.’
He pushed at Oslo’s door with the tips of his fingers. The window was small and square and covered by a pair of heavy brown curtains. There was a beige stripe running down the centre of each of them, and it was through this that the daylight glowed. At first Goodhew stayed very still and after a few seconds tuned into a soft humming just to his right. On the opposite wall, a large frame hung over the bed, the aluminium-coloured sides clear enough against the dark wall; picking out the subject of the photo it contained took a little longer. It looked like some kind of animal, maybe a dog.
Goodhew reached one gloved hand towards the light switch and turned the dimmer gradually until the picture took shape. One second later, he had racked it up to full power.
The photo-frame extended to approximately the width of the bed and was about two feet high. It consisted of five large photos, each very similar to the last. The subject was clear now: it was a fox. A dead fox. In the first image it lay with its body parallel to the gutter and its head resting on the kerbside. The camera seemed to have focused on a small patch of fur right between the eyes which still stared out dully.
Between photos two and five, those eyes had dulled further, shrinking away and disappearing into little black pits.
By the third photo it was obvious that the fox’s body had been disturbed; its head and brush had barely moved, but everything in between looked close to disintegration. The final shot kept the same angle on its face, but there was little else left besides crushed fragments of pelt.
Goodhew had taken several steps towards the photographs before he looked around the room and found himself staring at two similar shots, both 10 × 8s. One showed a dead badger being picked over by crows; the other a trail of feathers leading to the headless corpse of a pigeon.
The humming he had first noticed came from the pump inside a fish tank standing near the foot of Oslo’s bed. The entire tank was about eighteen inches long but Oslo had managed to deck it out in a style best described as ‘Halloween meets Vegas’. A layer of black marble stones carpeted the tank’s floor, with a wavy pattern of gold pebbles running like a footpath from end to end. Thanks to a tasteful selection of ornaments, the lucky fish were able to swim from golden Sphinx to crystal Eiffel Tower via a sunken pirate ship and a shrunken head. The head itself housed the pump, and every couple of seconds its mouth opened and closed, emitting a lively string of bubbles between its missing teeth.
Two mismatched goldfish stared out at him, probably wishing for the more dignified surroundings of the hook-a-duck stand at the fair.
In fairness to Oslo, the room was the most dust-free part of the entir
e house, and the fishes’ view of the outside world looked mark-and fingerprint-free. A small triangle of shiny paper jutted out from under one corner. It was its skewed position in relation to the tank that first caught his eye, but it was the familiar shade of blue that made him take a second look.
Boathouse Blue.
He remembered it from the catalogue of Heritage paint colours that he’d worked through while deciding on colours for his hallway and stairs. But more importantly he remembered it from just a few minutes earlier in Libby’s room.
He changed to latex gloves, and although they were thin, it still took him two or three attempts to grip the protruding corner and ease the photograph out.
And there it was, the inside of Libby’s bedroom. One of her books on accountancy lay open and facedown on the bed. Two pieces of paper had been balled and thrown in the direction of the waste-paper basket. The bin itself contained another textbook and more rejected work. He saw the little things, a half-drunk mug of coffee which had been stirred by a broken pencil. A small calculator, the kind banks give away, submerged in a glass of water. And the drawer was left open just enough to reveal a stash of Red Bull, chocolate and Pro Plus.
Goodhew understood.
He flicked the photo on to the palm of his other hand while he considered the implications, his gaze focused further afield than any point in the room until he was done. Then, with a start, he moved towards the bedroom door. ‘Sir!’ he shouted downstairs. ‘I think you need to see this right away.’
THIRTY-TWO
Gunvald Gjertsen, aka Oslo, had his arms folded across his chest and his body stretched out in the chair so that only his shoulders and the top of his thighs seemed to be making contact with it. No doubt a body-language expert would have a term for it, but Goodhew couldn’t imagine there would be anything more appropriate than ‘the uncooperative plank position’. Oslo was trying hard to pull off a facial expression that smothered the interview with a blanket answer of ‘Whatever’, but Marks and Goodhew had been with him for over an hour now and it was about time Gjertsen began to waver.