Can You See Her?: An absolutely compelling psychological thriller

by S. E. Lynes

  Also present: DI Heather Scott, PC Marilyn Button

  HS: Mr Edwards, can you tell us where you were on the night of Thursday the fourth of July?

  ME: Thursday? Thursday I generally… let’s see…

  HS: It was the Thursday following the Saturday that Joanna Weatherall was attacked.

  ME: Oh. Oh, OK.

  HS: Your wife says her car broke down?

  ME: Oh, right, yes. Right you are. She was late home. I was watching the telly when she came in. She was soaking wet, said could I give her a lift and help her start the car, so I did. It was just the battery.

  HS: And how would you describe your manner that evening? With your wife?

  ME: My manner? Erm… I suppose I might have been a bit off with her, yes, I think I was, but you know what it’s like, long day, getting near the end of the week, last thing I needed, like.

  HS: (Pause) So you helped her start the car?

  ME: Like I said.

  HS: And then?

  ME: And then nothing. There was nothing in for tea so she said she’d go to the chippy. (Pause) I should’ve gone. I should’ve gone but I didn’t. I let her go.

  HS: Can you remember which car she used?

  ME: Which car? (Pause) She’d have taken mine, yes, she would have done, because she drove mine back after we started hers, so she’d have parked it behind hers and I definitely didn’t go out and swap them or anything because it was bucketing down. (Pause) I should’ve gone for the chips, though. She never seemed like she minded, Rachel. But I knew that about her and I let her do it anyway. Just because someone’s willing to do anything for you doesn’t mean you should let them, does it? I suppose my mum did everything around the house when I was growing up, but that’s no excuse, I don’t even know why I said that, sorry. I… I know the change is a difficult time. I could hear her up and about in the night, and I did see her having one of them hot flush things, but she didn’t really talk about it. I should’ve thought of ways to make life a bit easier, tried to cheer her up, like. But I couldn’t take her out for a meal or anything. I couldn’t take her out full stop, to be honest. What would we have said to each other? I had nothing to say to her. (Breaks down)

  HS: For the benefit of the tape, PC Button is handing Mr Edwards a tissue. Mr Edwards, if we can just reach for the facts, as you see them. Where were you that evening?

  ME: (Pause) At home. Ask our Katie. Ingrid called round to ask about something. Some pretext or other. But she only stepped in for a few minutes. Actually, she could tell you I was home. Then about half an hour later, Rachel got back from the chippy.

  HS: And can you describe her state of mind?

  ME: She was… she was angry. She seemed really angry. She was slamming around, making snippy comments. I tried to ask her if she was OK, but she didn’t even eat her tea with us, which is unheard of. She went up for a bath, said she needed to chill out. So I let her. I didn’t know what she wanted half the time. She just seemed furious. I told myself it was hormones, but it was more. I knew it was more. What is this anyway? Why are you asking about that Thursday? Was there another attack I don’t know about?

  HS: Did you notice any injuries on your wife?

  ME: No. Why? What’s this about?

  HS: Did you notice that her knuckles were bleeding?

  ME: What? No!

  HS: Did you go out later that night?

  ME: No.

  HS: Are you sure?

  ME: Yes. No. Hang on. I might have done. I don’t keep a diary. Why?

  HS: Can you tell us where you went?

  ME: Why? Why do you need to know?

  25

  Rachel

  The next day, there was nothing for me to print off, not even in the nationals. But the day after, it took me only two seconds to find my chap. It was the Saturday, 6 July, and for the second time that week, my blood froze in my veins.

  Homeless man found unconscious outside cemetery gates

  A homeless man was found fighting for his life near St Michael’s church on Thursday evening at approximately 10 p.m. Police have told the Weekly News that the man was found collapsed near the cemetery. He had vomited and was struggling to breathe. No further details have been released at this time. A spokesman for Merseyside Constabulary has appealed for witnesses to come forward.

  ‘Oh my God,’ I whispered. Because I think that up until then, I’d held on to the remote possibility that nothing had happened.

  I sent the article to the printer, ran to the cupboard under the stairs and grabbed my bag off the hook. The knife was still in it – in its sheath. My heart lurched into my mouth, but honestly? I couldn’t remember whether I’d taken it out after I’d seen it the first time. I remembered finding the sheath in the cutlery drawer, but it looked like I’d slipped the knife into it and put the whole kit and caboodle in my bag. But that was OK, I told myself, making myself think it through calmly. I hadn’t taken my bag out with me to the chippy, just shoved some cash in my pocket. I was sure of that.

  Besides all of which, the man hadn’t been stabbed, had he? Unless that was a detail yet to come out.

  I took out the knife and pushed the button on the handle. The kitchen light bounced off the blade. It was clean. I closed my eyes and let out a strange sob. It was clean it was clean it was clean, and anyway, I’d only imagined myself as the jump-lead strangler for a few brief minutes of madness, hadn’t I? And I was now putting that down to a hot flash with major side effects.

  The police were calling for witnesses. There was a number. I wondered if it was the same one as for Jo. That was two calls I should make. Two calls I wouldn’t make because, really, I had nothing to say. No one had come forward. There had been no one about. If anyone had seen me, they’d have seen no one at all.

  The man was discharged the following day. The article was no more than a paragraph in Monday’s update: The homeless man found in a state of semi-asphyxiation near St Michael’s church on Thursday evening was discharged from hospital yesterday. Police are not treating this incident as suspicious. Not suspicious? Were they serious? How suspicious did it need to be? A flaming axe sticking out of his head?

  Oh God. I dry-heaved into the sweating palm of my hand. There was a pressure in my forehead, right across the front. Strangled. Almost to death. I ran my thumb softly over the tiny burgundy scuffs on my knuckles. I closed my eyes and willed myself to remember, but… no. Nothing.

  A few more details followed. The cemetery strangler victim (my phrase, not theirs) had a name: Henry Parker. No fixed abode, history of mental illness. A footnote even in the local weekly news of a northern industrial town. That made me feel even worse: for his ruined, wasted life, for the crimes I felt sure had been committed against him when he was a child, for those I may or may not have committed myself.

  For the invisibility we shared.

  I printed the article out on a sheet of plain A4 in the usual way before sliding it into a clear sleeve and clipping it into my file with Jo and the others. It wasn’t knife crime, but violence was violence. I closed the file. It felt like I was shutting him out. Out of sight, out of mind. My eyes filled with tears.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I whispered to him. ‘I’m sorry for what I think happened to you when you were little and what I’m scared I might have done to you the other night. I’m sorry I said what I said to you even though I don’t think you heard me. I wish you peace, I really do, but I know you can’t find it and I doubt you ever will. I wish I could give you some comfort, but I have none to offer, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Mum?’

  Katie was standing at the door looking at me like I’d completely lost my marbles, which it’s possible that by then I had. ‘Who were you talking to?’ She glanced at the dresser, at the clip file, at me. Her eyes filled.

  ‘No one, love,’ I said, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand. ‘Well, to myself.’ I smiled as best I could. ‘Only way I get a decent answer, isn’t it? Anyway, what’re you up to?’

  Her f
ace hardened. She held up a wad of tissues covered in blood. When she spoke, it was with barely concealed fury. ‘I’m moving these. They were freaking Liam out. So disgusting.’

  ‘Liam.’ Blue Eyes says, making me jump. ‘That’s Katie’s boyfriend?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And Katie was holding bloody tissues?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She jots that down. ‘And what was your reaction to that?’

  I think back, trying at the same time to breathe my way out of a hot flash I can feel coming at me. My forehead and armpits go from dry to wet in a split second. Focus, Rachel. What was my reaction? I stared at my daughter, that was my reaction. I stared at the bloody mess she was holding up like an accusation or a victory trophy or something, the mess she was now putting in the kitchen bin with a gob like she’d bitten into a lemon. A blunt pain pushed into my sternum.

  ‘Where did you find those?’ I asked her, although I thought I knew.

  ‘In the bathroom. On the windowsill.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Now. I mean, they’ve been there for ages but I didn’t think I should have to clear them up as they’re not mine. It’s a bit gross, to be honest.’

  ‘God forbid you should have to tidy up after someone else,’ I muttered, turning away from her. I had to. I was shaking, but it wasn’t anger. I was worried she’d see guilt in my face. I was thinking about seeing the knife in my bag and thinking it was clean. I hadn’t even noticed those tissues on the windowsill. When had I put them there? Had I put them there? Why not flush them down the loo? And whose was that blood?

  I pressed my hands to the dresser top, glanced at my file, away, out into the back garden. I thought I caught a glimpse of the top of a blonde head over next door’s fence. Looked like Ingrid, but that didn’t make sense; she didn’t even know next door so far as I knew, and anyway, I thought, I was pretty sure they were away on a six-month cruise. There was a thrush on the fence warbling its territorial cry, I seem to remember, and remembering that, it strikes me now that it was dusk, not dawn.

  ‘Sorry, love,’ I managed, still not looking at Katie, keeping my voice as level as I could.

  ‘Are you OK, Mum?’ Her voice had softened, which was worse, somehow.

  ‘I’m fine. I’m just tired, but I’m fine. Might go and read for a bit.’ Avoiding her eye, grabbing the worktop for support, I struggled out of the kitchen one handhold, one foothold at a time.

  ‘Me and Thea are going into Liverpool tomorrow,’ she called after me as I headed upstairs. ‘We’re going to get some stage make-up for a shoot.’

  ‘OK, love!’ I closed my bedroom door behind me. Sat on my bed, quivering, crying, trying to shake off the way she’d looked at me. Holding up tissues like a Medusa’s head, turning me to stone. My tissues. Covered in blood. Been there for… how long? Days, presumably. The knife had been clean. I had seen it in my bag and I had had that thought. I had had that thought then wondered why, why notice the blade being clean? Why wouldn’t it be?

  Who are you talking to? Katie had asked me.

  I don’t know, I thought. I don’t know.

  It only struck me later that if Katie could curb her disgust enough to pick up my bloody tissues, then she could easily have disposed of them without comment. That if she or Mark had seen them days or even weeks ago, then either of them could have done that without a fuss, the way I’d cleared away countless things for them, not to mention flushing the loo, which both Kieron and Katie seemed allergic to doing even when the contents were fit for the bomb-disposal unit. But no, she’d had to score petty revenge for all the times I’d told her that her room stank or was a tip, asked her how she could live like an animal.

  Later still, when I heard her go out, presumably to Liam’s, I ran downstairs, dug the tissues out of the kitchen bin and flushed them down the loo myself. I washed the knife with hot soapy water, dried it on loo roll and flushed that away too. I put the knife back in the cutlery drawer, in its leather case. If I’d taken it out with me for protection, now I was putting it back for the same reason. I needed protection from myself.

  Lisa texted: Drink this week?

  I texted back: I’ll call you later.

  Later came. I didn’t call.

  That night I went walkabout again. I had to; it was the only way I could breathe. I called at the Spar and nicked a large bag of Jelly Babies, literally walked out with them while the assistant was serving a group of kids without anyone even glancing in my direction. A chap called Simon was walking his dog, a blonde Cockapoo called Carl. He was getting out of the house – Simon, not Carl – to escape his fifteen-year-old daughter and her friends. He was going to kill an hour in the pub was what he didn’t say. Tuesday night was the same: young woman called Karen, all dressed up nice and in a rush. She asked me if I knew where the Red Admiral pub was, so I directed her to it before telling her she looked great, to boost her confidence. She was obviously meeting someone for the first time, possibly a colleague or perhaps one of those Tinder arrangements, and she was feeling a bit nervous about it. I didn’t persuade either of them into any dark corners. Didn’t feel anything even near a murderous or violent tendency. The knife was at home. It was in the cutlery drawer, where I had put it.

  Mark went to the pub both nights, no surprise there. To meet his mate Roy, he said, although Roy doesn’t smoke so far as I know, and yet again I smelled tobacco on him when he got into bed. Wednesday, I don’t know what he did because I was out again, walking, walking, walking. It was a habit I didn’t seem to be able to break. I limited myself to the odd greeting, a polite two minutes passing the time of day: the weather, the unreliability of public transport, the country going down the pan.

  But on the Thursday, nearly two weeks after Jo had been attacked, came the worst possible news.

  Parents’ grief as knife-crime girl dies.

  I scanned the iPad screen with frantic eyes.

  Complications… did everything they could… Joanne Weatherall lost her fight for life in the early hours of this morning.

  Two lines further down, my blood slowed in my veins.

  The police are still keen to speak to the woman who was seen talking to Joanna Weatherall earlier that evening. She is believed to be in her fifties and was walking a small black dog.

  ‘Oh God in heaven,’ I whispered.

  I sent the article to the printer, carried it back to the kitchen as carefully as if it were a pot of funeral ashes. I read it again and again, hands shaking. I slipped her into her plastic sleeve. I clipped the file shut, trapped my finger in the ring binders and drew blood. Sucking the blood so it wouldn’t go all over, I closed my eyes. Closed my mind to my own terror.

  ‘I did not hurt that girl,’ I whispered to no one. ‘I did not hurt her.’

  She never asked for my name. I never gave it.

  The witness had remembered almost nothing about my appearance, but someone must have come forward and told them about the dog. I tried to slow my breathing, which was coming quick and shallow. There was no mention of my height, my weight, the colour of my eyes, not even the colour of my hair. A raincoat wouldn’t give me away, not when half the population had a nondescript cagoule that could be black or navy or dark grey in the night. If no one can see you, you can get away with murder. But someone had remembered the colour of the dog. Black.

  All morning I was a robot. At lunchtime, I was polishing wine glasses because there were only two punters in when the bar phone rang.

  ‘Barley Mow, Church Street, Runcorn, can I help you?’

  ‘Rachel?’

  It was Mark. My chest filled with heat. ‘Mark? Everything all right?’

  ‘I’ve been ringing you all morning. Have you left your phone at home?’

  ‘I might have. It might be off, why?’

  He sighed. I heard exasperation with a dash of weariness. ‘Have you seen the article in the Weekly News, that lass that was stabbed?’

  ‘No. Why?’ Phone hooked in the crook of my nec
k, I dug around in my bag.

  He gave another sigh, longer. Disbelief this time, with an undercurrent of depression. He knew I was lying. Knew I would have read it, printed it off. I made myself wait out the pause he was trying to get me to fill. My mobile wasn’t in my bag.

  ‘She’s died,’ he said eventually. ‘They’re saying they want to speak to a woman with a small black dog,’

  ‘Are they?’ I could barely keep my voice steady. My head felt thick, creaking, like it was full of lagging.

  ‘Here, I’ll read it to you.’

  ‘You don’t need to—’

  ‘It says the police are keen to speak to a woman believed to be in her fifties with a small black dog.’

  ‘Mark, I heard you the first time. You don’t need to read it to me – I’m not deaf. It’s not… it won’t be me, will it?’

  ‘But…’ I could hear him searching for words. ‘But you were out, weren’t you? With the dog? Near the town hall, they found her. And our dog is small and black. I mean, you walk down that way… you might’ve seen something.’

  I hadn’t said where I’d been. I never did. He didn’t care, wouldn’t have heard and certainly wouldn’t have remembered even if I had told him. ‘But I’m always out with the dog. And there’s loads of small black dogs – they’re ten a penny. I mean, I spoke to a girl briefly. But I didn’t know it was the same girl, did I? How could I have known that?’

  ‘So you did speak to her?’

  Bugger.

  ‘Only in passing, like.’

  ‘But… don’t you think you should speak to the police?’