Can You See Her?: An absolutely compelling psychological thriller

by S. E. Lynes

  I took a step nearer, another. My hands sank into my pockets – well, into Mark’s pockets. The jump leads were still in there. I dug them out and stopped walking, teased them apart and returned one to the pocket. Alligator clip in one hand, I wound the lead around my other hand, pulled the smooth, thick cord tight, testing it. It was very strong.

  I ducked behind a gravestone so he wouldn’t see me. He was engaging in this indecent activity to shock, that much was obvious. To shock himself mostly. The noise I’d made had excited him, for crying out loud. He was getting off on being seen, on being observed in a holy place doing an unholy thing. ‘Dirty bastard,’ I whispered. ‘Have you no shame?’

  The cord was wrapped double around my hand. It slid about on my knuckles. Teeth gritted, I pulled tighter. Echoes of images took shadowy shape in my mind’s eye. In them he became a child, a child abused by, oh, guess what, by a ruddy priest. Not in this church, not in any church in this town. How original, though. How depressing. It started to make sense. Poor chap. Have you no shame? I’d wanted to spit in his ear. But he was riddled with shame; I felt the queasy roll of it in my guts, the cold heat of it burning through my body, head to toe. All his life, this shame for something that had been done to him when he was a nipper, a shame that was not, was never his. And my God, the loneliness, loneliness to make a grown man howl at the moon. He’d been lonely all his sodding life.

  Blackness. The rustle of leaves above me. A pain throbbing on the left side of my head. I coughed, once, twice. I was on my knees, coming to my senses. I had the impression that time had moved on, but I couldn’t say how far. The jump lead was loose around my hands but my knuckles were sore. I had dropped to my knees, here, behind a gravestone. I was still here, behind the gravestone. Had I passed out, hit my head?

  Quick footsteps. Panting. I peered over the top of the stone to see the chap running as if startled across the dark cemetery, away, away, towards the road. His wheezing receded into the night. I stared down at my hands, which were dark with what looked like blood. I rubbed at it, wiped the backs of my hands against my legs and set off for the chippy.

  The queue had died down. The clock on the wall said it was twenty-five to nine. I’d lost half an hour, I reckoned. Round about that. The jump leads were in my pocket but my hands were pinky-brown where my knuckles had bled and were filthy with soil. I’d rubbed them clean as best I could, but I’d done no more than smear the remaining blood into my skin. One knuckle was still bleeding a bit. My mouth was full of a metallic taste. I felt sordid, grimy. I was sure I must stink of mud and oil, wet clothes. Maybe sweat, too.

  The line moved forward, the lush hiss and waft of salty battered cod; sausages on the warmer plate; thick, soft chips. The ring and clink of the till, the slam of the cash drawer, the sing-song of the northern pleasantries I’d heard all my life: Y’all right, love? Usual, yeah? Hiya, love, large and chips? How’s your Debbie? She’s not still in hospital, is she? I thought it was only mumps.

  ‘Love? Love? D’you want serving, love?’

  I shook my head. Yvonne, the woman who owned the chippy, was staring at me.

  ‘Sorry, love,’ I said. ‘Miles away.’

  22

  Rachel

  The house smelled weird when I got back. Cigarettes, I thought, but couldn’t be sure; it was more of a top note than a whiff, if you know what I mean. I shouted Mark from the lounge and called up to Katie on my way past the stairs.

  ‘Katie! Your scampi and chips!’

  The big light was off in the kitchen and the house was chilly. The smell of ciggies was stronger in here, if that was what it was.

  ‘You’ve been ages,’ Katie said, swinging in through the door. Again, she’d heard me this time, the promise of chips apparently cutting through noise-cancelling headphones in a way that can you clean the bathroom? couldn’t.

  ‘There was a queue.’

  ‘It’s freezing in this house.’

  ‘Put the heating on then.’

  She made a face. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

  ‘Nothing’s the matter. I’m just cold and tired, that’s all. Has Liam been over?’

  ‘No, why?’

  ‘Smells like someone’s been smoking.’

  She shrugged. ‘The doorbell went about half an hour ago.’

  I took my order out, handed her the bag and flicked the heating on. ‘Did anyone answer the door?’

  ‘I dunno.’

  The words blood and stone came to mind. I literally hadn’t the strength to ask anything else. My stomach was hollow and the skin on my legs was starting to itch.

  ‘Shame no one put any plates on to warm,’ I said. ‘And the table’s not set. Wouldn’t have been too much, would it, to set the table?’

  She threw up her hands. ‘Whoa. Pass-agg or what?’

  At that moment, Mark came in. ‘I was about to send out a search party. We’re starving here.’

  Rage. Flashing heat all through me. A glimmer, a tiny fraction of what I’d felt in the graveyard, but still – strong enough. As I often said to Lisa, I could strangle Mark sometimes. Which, now I think about it, is probably not the best wording.

  ‘Well, I’m sorry the delivery service isn’t to your satisfaction.’ I put my chips into the oven and turned it on low, slammed the door. ‘Next time you can get your own.’

  ‘Mum!’ Katie said, shoving her nose in. ‘Calm down, will you?’

  Because saying that always works.

  ‘Katie, can you set the table please?’ I said through gritted teeth. ‘Ketchup and that.’ I didn’t look at her. I didn’t look at either of them.

  ‘Oh my God why are you in such a mood?’

  ‘I’m going for a bath.’ I left them to it, made a point of closing the door quietly.

  To the muffled sound of Katie’s outrage at her mother’s appalling rudeness, I climbed the stairs on aching legs. Lazy pair, I thought. Couldn’t be bothered to answer the sodding door, waited for me to come home to flick one small switch to put the heating on, couldn’t be arsed to fetch three plates from the cupboard and put them in the oven to warm or get the ketchup out of the sodding fridge, and I bet, I flipping well bet, the washing was still in the machine, setting in its creases so that it would be an absolute nightmare to iron. And meanwhile, tired out, wet through and fed up to the back teeth, I was the one who’d gone to get their pigging dinner. Meals on wheels, me, and all I’d got was a where’ve you been?

  ‘Where’re you going now?’ Mark was calling up through the banister at me as if I’d gone mad. ‘I thought we were eating.’

  ‘I said I’m going for a bath. I’ll catch my death in these wet clothes. Eat without me.’

  Just because I didn’t wait for the heavy sigh didn’t mean I couldn’t hear it. Didn’t mean I didn’t know he was shaking his head at me either. I put a bath on to run, pictured Mark glued to the television like he’d lost the use of his limbs, Katie upstairs stuck seething in front of some Netflix drama with umpteen series – or seasons as she called them now – probably in her onesie, sticking diamonds to her toenails or staring at herself in the mirror or taking her fiftieth selfie of the day or scrolling endlessly through bloody Instagram or whatever the hell it was that took all her time between her one shift a week at Lee’s bakery and the next, and neither of them answering the door. Although if the house stank of fags, one of them must have. Maybe it was a canvassing politician who’d called round. The Avon lady. Jehovah’s Witnesses.

  The water wasn’t too scalding hot so I lowered myself in and let it carry on running. Soap bubbles like blown glass, the smell of my rose bath foam. My head hurt, as if I’d bashed it. When I put my hands into the shining suds, my knuckles stung. The rage still coursed around my system. I felt the hot power of it. Perhaps that was what was giving me these bursts of strength. They made up for the sudden attacks of tiredness that made me think I must have been hit round the head by a tree. I didn’t know much, but I knew something – if Katie and Mark had seen me
half an hour ago, they wouldn’t be talking to me like I was nothing. There’d be at least a bit of recognition.

  I pushed my head under the water. I missed Kieron.

  23

  Rachel

  They hadn’t set a place for me, obviously. They hadn’t cleared their plates into the dishwasher or wiped away the crumbs from the bread and butter. The washing was still in the drum, starting to smell. A hot thumb of irritation burned somewhere around my sternum. But it was an ember of an hour ago.

  ‘Mark?’ I called out.

  No answer. I can remember thinking he must be back in front of the idiot box, but actually it turned out later that he’d gone to the pub. I was so preoccupied that I didn’t even realise until he crawled into bed around midnight, stinking of beer and cigarettes.

  ‘Have you been smoking?’ I asked him, but he was already snoring, one hand on my boob. I knew he wasn’t making a pass so much as passing out; that if I reciprocated, he wouldn’t respond. Like an overtired toddler, he was clutching a comforter to help him get to sleep.

  But that hadn’t happened yet, and when it did, it was the least of my worries, to be honest. As it was, as I ate my cod, chips and mushy peas (peas a bit crusty on the top), what floated to the top of my mind wasn’t Mark, Katie, Kieron or even poor Jo, but the chap in the cemetery. I don’t know if it was a delayed reaction or what, but it was only then, after I’d had my bath and got warm to my bones and got some dinner down my neck, that I started to remember in vivid detail how I’d pulled on that jump lead with the strength of a lion, enough to make my own knuckles bleed. And how I had woken as if from a dream, on my knees, with a pain in my head and no clue as to what had just gone on, or why.

  Thinking about it there in the kitchen was like coming up from under anaesthetic. It was the same feeling as when I’d read about Jo a few days earlier, found out she’d been stabbed and left for dead moments after we’d gone our separate ways. The knife in my bag… I must have put it in there for self-protection, but I couldn’t remember doing it. And now the jump leads in my hands, my skinned knuckles. He had run away, seemingly unharmed, but still, an unsettled, preoccupied feeling persisted in my guts. Maybe Mark was right when he said that collecting violent crimes in a file was making me paranoid. But the clip file was something I had to do. I had to build a body of evidence. I couldn’t talk to him or anyone about that and I couldn’t talk about the memory losses either. Maybe I should confide in Lisa. But I’d have to leave out the part about worrying whether or not I was attacking people. There’s a limit to how many sandwiches short of a picnic you can admit to being before you’re no longer welcome on the day out, if you know what I mean.

  But I hadn’t murdered young Jo and I hadn’t attacked that chap, of that I was almost certain. And I certainly hadn’t had violence or the intention to commit violence on my mind. To commit murder, to attack someone, you have to really want to, don’t you? You have to be so full of anger, rage, hate that you get to a point of not caring. And whether a victim dies or not only depends on how good you are at the murdering, doesn’t it? What your skill set is, whether your luck is in that night, whether you get the right weather conditions, privacy, lighting, tools, protective clothing, what have you. Whether you wanted to do it badly enough.

  I hadn’t wanted to kill Jo and I hadn’t wanted to kill or harm that man. I had been disgusted by him, that was all – a revulsion that had soon given way to pity. If I was avoiding my reflection in the black French windows of my kitchen, it was only because I didn’t want to bear witness to my own beaten appearance, my slack-shouldered confusion now that my rage had subsided. If it was true that no one saw me, it was equally true that I didn’t see myself.

  ‘Mum?’

  Katie was staring at me as if I was sitting there naked belting out a one-woman chorus of ‘My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean’. She was wearing her Dalmatian onesie, her hair was in rollers and she had one eye done out in green eyeshadow, the other in blue. She filled the kettle at the sink without looking at it, only broke her stare to put it back on its electrical pad and flick it on.

  You’d only see that kettle if it broke, I thought but didn’t say. But she was looking right at me again, so then I thought: maybe I’m broke.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I said.

  ‘Nothing’s the matter with me. I was talking to you. I was trying to tell you something actually, and you were just staring into space. As usual.’

  Ah, so I was broken. I wasn’t giving her my full attention. Beep beep, malfunction, malfunction. Request error report.

  ‘Sorry, love,’ I said. ‘Just a bit tired, that’s all.’

  She rolled her eyes and muttered what sounded like no change there then, turned back to the cupboard and pulled down a mug. Just the one.

  ‘I’ll have a tea if you’re making,’ I said.

  She sighed – she can be quite the luvvie when she wants to be, can Katie – and fetched another mug down.

  ‘Can you pass the milk then?’ she said, like it was the principle of the thing.

  ‘I haven’t finished my chips.’ I sat firm. You’d have been proud of me. Literally, I didn’t budge.

  Mouth half open, the merest shake of her head, the faintest mutter of an oh-my-God she didn’t believe in, she crossed the kitchen on the world’s heaviest legs and heaved, yes, heaved the milk out of the fridge door. Back the same way, oh, the effort, plastic flagon dangling from her forefinger like a dirty pair of pants no one would own up to.

  ‘You should get one of them apps,’ I said. ‘A Fitbit, is it? One of them things that measures how many steps you’ve done. You must have done at least thirty today.’

  Her eyes widened to the size of flying saucers. Her mouth dropped all the way open. Honestly, I thought her chin might land smack on the kitchen table. I kept my face straight, but it was a struggle. You might not think I’m funny anymore, I wanted to say. But Jo did. She thought I was hilarious.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ she said. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Put us a sugar in, will you? I need a bit of something sweet.’

  Heavens above, the eyebrows on it. The gob.

  ‘Unbelievable,’ she said, shaking her head. Poor put-upon slave. Someone call social services.

  When she’d gone – my tea left next to the kettle, door slammed, don’t worry you’ve made your point, love – I ran my fingers over my knuckles. My left hand was the worst, but it had started to scab up now. I’d just have to be careful I didn’t knock it, perhaps not use the jump lead again.

  Perhaps not use the jump lead again.

  Yes, I had that thought, I can remember having it. Which makes me think I thought there was a chance I’d done something for real.

  I would have worried about Katie or Mark noticing the grazes but for the fact that neither of them could see me at all unless I was failing to do something for them. So I stopped worrying. As long as I got the dinner on and the shopping in and their laundry done and delivered to their wardrobes, I’d be fine, knuckle-wise. Kieron would have noticed, but he wasn’t here, was he, so there was no point dwelling on that. I sent him a quick text: Thinking of you. Hope you’re not going too mad. Send us some piccies of your latest work, I’m curious.

  I scrolled back to his last one:

  All good. Got a date tonight! Love ya.

  I’d replied: Get you. Be good. Love Mum xx

  My head was still sore, under my hair, and I could still feel the slide of the jump lead, the smear of the muck and blood. The roots of my teeth. The gasping, grunting sound that poor grubby article had made. I didn’t think I’d gone anywhere near him. But that didn’t mean I hadn’t. And it didn’t explain why I’d woken up with bleeding knuckles, as if I’d done something violent. The way he had run away… had he been running from me? Had we fought? Was that why my head hurt – from a fall?

  He could call the police, I thought then, as I washed down my last mouthful of chips with t
he cup of tea. He might have already called them. He might have legged it straight to the cop shop and be giving a statement right now. I wondered what he’d say. Actually, that was a point, what would he say?

  I was indulging in a bit of self-abuse, Officer, when some middle-aged woman jumped me from behind and tried to strangle me…

  No. Impossible. I ran my finger around my plate and sucked the salty grease off my fingertip. My nerves died down a bit. Odds on he wouldn’t go to the police after all, would he? He was a lowlife, a flasher. He was an abused child carrying a shame not his and making it his every day, poor sod. Even if he did report it, whatever it was, I doubted he could give a description. He’d stared at me without seeing me in the dark, and then for the rest of it, I’d been behind him like a chubby Nosferatu. If I’d even been behind him, that is. And then in the chippy, no one had looked at me funny. No one had looked at me at all. If anyone had noticed me, they’d have seen some grey-haired middle-aged woman in her husband’s raincoat, forgotten me seconds later. No bugger would have noticed that one of my hands was bleeding, that my eyes were glittering with the electric thrill of what had just happened. Most of them had been on their phones.

  I put the plates into the dishwasher, switched it on and swabbed the decks. I’d keep an eye on the Weekly News website as usual, I thought.

  Except this time I’d be looking out for myself.

  24

  Mark

  Transcript of recorded interview with Mark Edwards (excerpt)