Can You See Her?: An absolutely compelling psychological thriller

by S. E. Lynes

  HS: So you had no suspicions?

  IT: Not then. Obviously with hindsight I realise that Rachel must have taken the knife with her. I mean, to me, that’s premeditated, isn’t it? That’s like putting a silencer on a gun or something. She knew she was going to stab that girl and that’s a pretty chilling thought, to be honest. I mean, we used to have coffee together, chat over the fence when I was watering the neighbour’s plants. So no, no suspicions at the time other than her general spaced-outness, but it all makes sense now. Mark was worried about her. When I mentioned her nightly walkabouts to him, he said she’d started doing that quite recently. After their daughter’s birthday party, I think he said. Said she’d gone a bit strange suddenly, although he didn’t put it like that. He wouldn’t talk about her that way, he’s too nice.

  HS: So you were worried enough to express concern to Mr Edwards?

  IT: I did say to Mark that she didn’t seem well. I tried to get him to see that, but only because I was worried about her. If I happened to see her out talking to strangers, I would mention it to Mark because it felt like the right thing to do. At first I was only trying to alert him to the fact that she might need help. He did eventually tell me she’d suffered with her nerves, as he put it, after their son was born and he knew she’d been a bit down lately. I guess he really needed someone to talk to. It was the least I could do.

  HS: So you saw yourself as his confidante, would you say? A shoulder to cry on?

  IT: I’m a good listener. At least, men find me easy to talk to. So yes, sometimes when Rachel went off on her little walkies, I’d either call in to see if he was OK or text to see if he wanted to pop over for a glass of wine and a chat. As friends, obviously.

  14

  Mark

  Transcript of recorded interview with Mark Edwards (excerpt)

  Also present: DI Heather Scott, PC Marilyn Button

  ME: She wasn’t well. She wasn’t well before, years before. When Kieron was born, she kept thinking she was going to kill him. We were worried sick.

  HS: We?

  ME: I mean her mum, her dad. And Lisa.

  HS: That’s Lisa Baxter? For the benefit of the tape, Mr Edwards is nodding.

  ME: It was diagnosed quickly, once we’d called the hospital. Well, we ended up calling the emergency services because she went missing and no one could get hold of her. Then Lisa spotted her at the edge of the estate, looking… dishevelled, like, and distressed. So actually it was Lisa who rang and they sent an ambulance. I can’t believe I didn’t recognise the signs, to be honest.

  HS: What signs?

  ME: Well, she was very down. She’d been down even before Kieron went to uni…

  HS: For the benefit of the tape, Mr Edwards is taking a moment.

  ME: Then this last year, she and Katie were always rowing, sniping at each other, you know? And they never used to do that. They used to make each other laugh. In hysterics, they’d be, over one of those pictures with the captions or a silly video clip Katie had found on her phone. Used to get on my nerves sometimes, but obviously it’s better than doors slamming, the shouting and the swearing and that. I’d give anything to hear them mucking about now, obviously. And then… and then the walking. And when she was at home, she was vacant, you know? I’m supposed to be her husband and I didn’t even see her. I was too… I couldn’t look at her… and now she’s… I can’t believe what she’s… She never laid a hand on the kids. She was a lovely mum. The kids adored her. She’d never hurt anyone. She was gentle. My Rachel… (Breaks down)

  HS: For the benefit of the tape, I am pausing the recording.

  HS: Mr Edwards. Mark. Can you tell us your whereabouts on Saturday the twenty-ninth of June?

  ME: There’s nothing on the calendar. We don’t really go out anymore, but I think I was at the Norton Arms with Roy, just for one or two, like. I’ll have gone out after she did. You can check with him but he might not remember. I was going out a lot. I’ve been drinking too much lately, I know that, and Roy didn’t expect me to talk about anything apart from football and crap like that. I didn’t know what to say to Rach. Just looking at her broke my heart. I couldn’t fix her… I couldn’t… (Breaks down)

  HS: (Pause) Mr Edwards, I know this is difficult, but can you tell us what time your wife returned home that night?

  ME: I think it was about ten o’clock. Maybe a bit earlier. I was back watching the telly by then and she pushed the dog in and said she was going up. I didn’t take my eyes off the television. I heard the shower go and then she must have gone to bed, like. That was it.

  HS: And how would you describe her state of mind the following day, Sunday?

  ME: Like she was there but not there. I played a round of golf with Roy. Rachel did a roast chicken – she generally does a roast on Sundays – but she was spaced out, for sure. It was the next day, the Monday, that she started banging on about the knife.

  15

  Rachel

  I’d assumed that I couldn’t remember anything about my walk home on Saturday night because there was nothing memorable about it – no, that’s not right, I hadn’t assumed anything, I hadn’t even thought about my walk home. It was only then, reading that report, that I realised I simply couldn’t remember a single thing. The houses on our estate are as familiar to me as my own corns, so there was no reason to notice anything unless it was something out of the ordinary. And there was nothing out of the ordinary. There was no one about. Two lads vaping in the Cherry Tree pub car park came to me eventually, but that was it. Hardly hold the front page, was it?

  I tried and failed to eat a bowl of cereal while I flicked through my file, mentally adding up all the knife crimes I’d collected since the previous September. I put the radio on, but they were playing a sad song so I switched it off. That poor, poor girl. Her poor parents. Her poor friend. Mindless, absolutely mindless.

  Mark’s feet came clumping down the stairs. I jumped up and put the file back on the dresser shelf. My breathing was beginning to settle but I was still shaky. I wiped my cheeks with the back of my hand.

  ‘Coffee?’ I just about trusted myself to say.

  ‘If you’re making.’

  He knew I wasn’t, but as I’ve said, it’s the dance we do. I put the kettle on and tried to act normal, which is more difficult than you think. I felt like a puppet trying to pull my own strings, all my movements jerky, my head at the wrong angle somehow.

  ‘Sleep OK?’ I asked.

  ‘Not bad. You?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘You were out a long time.’

  ‘Went for a long walk. Needed some head space.’

  Mark poured his cereal and some milk into a bowl, flicked on the iPad and brought up the BBC sports page. If he noticed that I’d been crying, he didn’t say anything. It was a pretty regular occurrence, to be honest, and we all run out of comfort eventually. I would have managed to keep calm, I think, if I hadn’t taken my sandwiches for work out of the fridge, made to put them in my bag and seen the knife.

  My bag was on a hook in the cupboard under the stairs. I fetched it and plonked it on the kitchen table so I could put my sandwiches and my flask in. None the wiser, I opened the zip that goes across the top.

  The air made this big sucking sound.

  ‘It was me,’ I say, meeting Blue Eyes’ gaze briefly. ‘Gasping.’

  ‘And why was that?’ She has her pen poised. She knows what’s coming next, I know she does, because I’ve told this bit to the others.

  I tell her anyway. I tell her that there was a knife in my bag. It was on the top, on top of the cloth bags I keep in there for the supermarket, my purse, my glasses case, my brolly, my tissues. I took it out but almost immediately threw it back. The blade was folded into the wooden handle, but even so I recognised it straight away. It was Mark’s. He’d bought it on holiday in Spain a couple of years before.

  ‘Oh God.’ I backed away. My Tupperware box with my sandwich in it was still in my hand.

  Mark didn�
�t look up from the iPad.

  ‘There’s a knife in my bag,’ I said.

  ‘What?’ Eyes still glued to screen.

  ‘There’s a knife. In my bag.’

  ‘A knife in your bag how?’ He swiped his forefinger across the screen. Still he didn’t look at me.

  ‘In my bag,’ I said. ‘There’s a knife in my bag. I think it’s yours.’

  His brow furrowed, but I couldn’t tell if it was in response to me or something he’d read. The lack of reaction made me wonder whether I’d spoken out loud, whether I’d imagined seeing the knife. Between the hot flushes and the fugues and the nightmares and the rages, I wasn’t myself – I knew that much.

  I stepped back and peered into the bag. The knife was still there. It looked peaceful, as if it were sleeping.

  ‘Mark,’ I said, louder this time. ‘Will you listen to me? Your hunting knife’s in my bag.’

  Finally he looked up, not quite at me, and his eyes were screwed up in a cynical expression. ‘My hunting knife? Since when did I go hunting? What’re you on about?’

  ‘It’s your knife. From Spain. The one you bought as a souvenir but we realised afterwards how sharp it was? Look, I might be menopausal, but I’m not mental. That knife you bought on holiday the year before last. The fancy one with the blade that pops out when you push the little button.’

  Still he didn’t move from his chair. More than half an eye on the iPad, he said, ‘Did you read about this girl getting attacked Saturday night near the town hall?’

  ‘Mark,’ I said. ‘Mark, didn’t you hear me? The hunting knife from Spain. What’s it doing in my bag?’

  He moved. Stood. Took a step towards me. Like an ocean liner inching out of a harbour or a glacier creeping down a hill, you needed time-lapse photography to see the progress. ‘A knife?’

  ‘Look.’

  He dragged his limbs over to where I was standing and peered at the knife, lifted it carefully out by the handle. Can’t rush these things. ‘Mine, you say?’

  ‘It’s that one you bought in Spain. Don’t you recognise it?’

  He was inspecting it as if he’d never seen it before, turning it in his hands like he was on that CSI show. He’s not the most observant, Mark. Not with material things. Wouldn’t recognise our crockery in a line-up, and you could give him another man’s shirt to wear and he’d never know. When Kieron was at home, Mark would only realise he had the wrong trousers once he couldn’t get them past his knees, and even then he’d swear blind they’d shrunk in the wash.

  ‘Don’t you remember?’ I prompted. ‘Malaga, the year before last.’ Christ, it was like playing charades, except you’re allowed to speak plain English and still no one can guess what you mean. I wouldn’t mind, but we’ve only been abroad once. ‘Don’t you remember buying it in that little tourist shop? It had a brown leather sheath with beige patterns on, wherever that is. You had to pack it in your hold luggage because of airport checks. No? Don’t you remember you cut yourself within seconds of buying it? You didn’t even notice until your hand started gushing.’

  He opened his hand and stared at it as if he expected to find it bleeding all over again. Light appeared to dawn. His mouth opened. His brow furrowed. ‘What’s it doing in your bag?’

  ‘Oh my God, that’s what I’ve been saying for the past half hour, love. That’s what I’m asking you. What’s your hunting knife doing in my bag?’

  ‘How should I know? What are you getting all het up about?’

  I took a moment, made myself breathe.

  ‘I’m not getting het up,’ I said with as much calm as I could muster. ‘I’m just asking.’ Honest to God. Marriage is a spiral into madness sometimes. It’s like Alice in Wonderland, except with a lot more chores.

  I took the knife out and pressed the button on the side. The blade flicked out, flashed under the kitchen lights. It was clean. Why wouldn’t it be clean? I thought. What had I expected?

  I didn’t say any of this out loud. I felt Jo’s shoulder against the palm of my hand, remembered my urge to shove her, push her face under the water. A knife tip pressed against skin. Breakthrough. The warm plunge into bloody insides. My chest tightened, as if someone had put a weight on it. I was getting hotter. I think I was scared, somewhere deep down, that I might have done something very bad.

  ‘We keep it in the garage,’ I said. ‘In the old chest of drawers.’

  ‘Did you lock the garage?’ He meant the door that leads out from our kitchen.

  ‘Why the hell would I lock the garage? What kind of weird question is that? I never go in there.’

  And then I remembered that I’d been into the garage to fetch dog food the day before yesterday. I remembered seeing the knife in a drawer but I couldn’t remember why I was looking in that drawer or whether I had taken the knife out. But it had definitely had its leather sleeve on it then. So where was that now?

  ‘The case is here.’ Mark was standing by the open cutlery drawer, the ornate leather sheath in his hand. ‘Are you sure you didn’t bring it in from the garage, use it for something?’

  ‘I went in for dog food, that’s all.’

  ‘Maybe you used it to open the dog food bag or something? Maybe it was already in the kitchen drawer?’ His eyes drifted towards the dresser, rested a moment on my file. It was only a second, but I saw it.

  ‘It’s got nothing to do with that,’ I said.

  ‘With what?’

  ‘You know what I mean. It’s got nothing to do with my clippings.’

  He sighed. Shook his head. ‘You’ve got to stop with that, I’ve told you. I told you it’d make you paranoid and it obviously has. Carrying knives around. This is Halton, not Grand Theft Auto. You can get arrested for carrying a knife, you know.’

  ‘I’m not paranoid. And I’m not carrying knives around. It’s just…’

  But he was walking away. Out of the kitchen, shaking his head. His sandwich box was in his hand even though I had no memory of him taking it from the fridge. He walked up the hall, disappeared for a moment into the cupboard under the stairs and appeared a minute later threading one arm into his coat. At the front door he stopped, shrugged the rest of his coat on and leaned on the door frame a second before turning to look at me. I wasn’t enjoying him never looking at me, obviously, but the way he looked at me then… well, I’d rather he hadn’t bothered. His eyes were dark and puckered and tiny as raisins. They were the eyes of someone who thinks that what they’re looking at is too exasperating for words.

  Except he wasn’t looking at me, not really, not into my eyes. He was looking at some point near my collarbone. ‘Might you have been having one of your… you know, your hormonal whatsits.’

  Hormonal whatsits. I nearly snorted, made a mental note to tell Lisa. She’d love that one.

  ‘Rachel,’ he said. ‘Are you listening to me? It’s not funny.’

  ‘I know.’ I hadn’t even realised I’d been giggling.

  ‘Are you sure you didn’t bring the knife in from the garage?’

  ‘No.’ I stopped laughing then. ‘I’m not.’

  The latch clicked shut. At the sound of a woman’s voice coming from outside, I wandered into the hallway, opened the front door.

  Ingrid. Hands clasped girlishly at her waist, in her nightie and a fluffy coral-pink cardie this time, and I was sure her lips couldn’t be the exact same shade of pink naturally. It seemed to me that she’d brushed her hair. And she was smiling at Mark like he used to be in Take That or something.

  ‘I applied to Pam like you suggested.’ Her words reached me in snatches. ‘And guess what? She rang… come in… interview.’ Jeez, Louise, the squeaky tone of voice on it. You’d have thought she’d won the pools. I wouldn’t mind, but I knew from talking to her that she wasn’t keen on anything resembling hard work, so why she was so excited was anyone’s guess.

  Mark had stopped on our drive – well, he had no choice, did he; he’d been ambushed. He was smiling, actually smiling at her, teeth and ever
ything. His ears had gone red.

  ‘That’s great news,’ he said.

  ‘It’s next Wednesday,’ Ingrid said. I could hear her better now. ‘So-o-o-o, I need to ask you a few things, maybe later when you’re not busy, like about dress code and parking and…’

  My head spun. I steadied myself against the wall and closed my eyes. I saw Jo, little anxious Jo, laid out on a hospital bed. Intensive care. Critical. Her bony little shoulders, her yellow fingers. Bags of blood. Bags of saline. Bags of urine. Needles, tubes, my God.

  ‘I’m so grateful,’ Ingrid was simpering on. ‘You must let me buy you a drink!’

  I should go to the hospital. Say I’m Jo’s aunt or something. Ask her what she remembers. What do I remember? Please God, let her live.

  The click of Mark’s car lock, his voice, different from the one he used for me; this one had a smile in it. ‘It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it. Glad to help, like.’

  ‘It’s not nothing at all, don’t be silly! It was really sweet of you. I’m so-o-o-o grateful, you can’t imagine.’

  Mark ducked into the driving seat. He was blushing. ‘It’s fine,’ he said. ‘Honestly, don’t worry about it.’ The car door slammed; the engine growled into life. He backed out of the driveway and off he went. A fat plop of rain, then another, spotted the driveway. Drops. Drops on drops become puddles. Puddles become streams. Streams become rivers. Rivers become seas.

  Things that were separate become whole.

  I watched Ingrid watching him, waving like a child. But she wasn’t a child.

  ‘Congratulations,’ I called out to her from the porch and couldn’t help but smirk when she jumped out of her skin. Didn’t see me standing here, did you, love? Remember me, do you? Mark’s wife? ‘Great news on the interview.’