Can You See Her?: An absolutely compelling psychological thriller

by S. E. Lynes

  HS: For the benefit of the tape, Mr Edwards is composing himself.

  ME: Our first date was sharing a bag of Hula Hoops on a park bench, do you know that? Of course you don’t, sorry. But that’s all we needed, do you see what I’m getting at? There’s too much materialism in the world now, too much stuff… and it all gets in the way of everything and there’s all this hate. Hate, hate, hate, everywhere you look, everything you read. No wonder people are stabbing each other. I see it at work, people jumping to conclusions, never seeing the best in people, never giving the benefit of the doubt. And they want all this stuff, the young ones. They want film-star weddings and cars and designer clothes and the latest iPhone and the latest laptop and all this stuff they haven’t earned the right to yet and it’s really really important to them and when they don’t get it, they’re raging, you know? They’re furious, as if it’s their right to have it all, as if they really believe it’ll make them happy. And where does all that rage go? I mean, I can understand why some people don’t understand someone else’s lifestyle; I had difficulty understanding it myself, at first, with Kieron, thought it was something I’d done, but Rachel helped me get my head round it, showed me that being gay wasn’t anything wrong in the first place. But hate? I never hated. Hate doesn’t solve anything, does it? Never has, never will. Love solves things and that’s my biggest failure of all. I… I should’ve picked her up from work that day. I should’ve… and now it’s all…

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

  HS: Mr Edwards, when you’re ready, and I know this is difficult… we have CCTV of a Vauxhall Astra, registration DM11 VCP, on Barnfield Avenue at eight thirty-five on Thursday evening. Barnfield Avenue runs adjacent to Brookvale Leisure Centre, where your wife went to her spinning class. She says she went there in her own car. You say that you were in the Norton Arms, which is at the top of Halton Brow, as I’m sure you’re aware, nowhere near Barnfield Avenue. Can you explain what your car might have been doing in the vicinity of Brookvale Leisure Centre at that time?

  39

  Rachel

  Saturday, 28 September. My first memory of that morning is sitting at the kitchen table, iPad open, weeping into my hands. It was half past six in the morning. I’d been awake since three, had lain there trying to keep my eyelids shut over my stinging eyeballs, but in the end I’d come downstairs, made myself a hot milk with honey and sat on the sofa in my dressing gown crying through The King’s Speech on DVD. I’d drifted off until six or so, but then I’d needed a wee so I’d given up and decided to start the second-worst day of my life. Sooner it started, the sooner it would end.

  And now I was sitting in the kitchen in the bright light of an early autumn morning, staring at a headline with tears rolling down my face.

  ‘Is this the article?’ From her notes, Amanda pulls out a sheet and hands it to me. I scan it briefly. There is a black smudge on it, which tells me it’s been photocopied.

  ‘Yes,’ I say, and take a moment to reread it.

  Local mum fatally stabbed in car

  Mrs Anne-Marie Golightly was found fatally wounded in her car outside Brookvale Leisure Centre in Halton in the early hours of this morning. Police were alerted to the incident late on Thursday night.

  ‘Leisure centre manager Mr Timothy Dyer called the emergency services at approximately five minutes to midnight after spotting Mrs Golightly slumped at the wheel of her sports vehicle in the car park,’ said police spokesperson Paul Gowers. ‘An ambulance arrived a little after midnight but the attending paramedics had difficulty accessing the victim as the car had been locked from the outside. After breaking into the car, they pronounced Mrs Golightly dead at the scene. She had been stabbed in the ribs and died of her injuries.’

  ‘I only went back because I’d forgotten to set the alarm,’ said Mr Dyer. ‘Thought she’d fainted after a gym session or something. I only noticed the car after I’d locked up for the second time, as it was over on the far side, by the trees. It’s a nice motor, not the kind anyone would leave, but I thought maybe someone had had a few drinks at the bar and decided to come back for their wheels tomorrow. When I saw her inside, I couldn’t believe it, to be honest. Not here. I can’t take it in – it’s just an absolute tragedy. I hope the police catch whoever did this and put him away for a very long time.’

  Mrs Golightly’s family are asking for privacy at this time. The police are urging anyone who might have any information, no matter how insignificant, to call them immediately on the number below.

  ‘Rachel,’ Amanda says. ‘Are you OK?’

  I nod, yes. But I’m not. I’m not OK.

  The report had been posted the evening before. I’d not looked at the news at all. I’d been distracted, eating spaghetti and listening to Katie, thinking how passionate she was, actually, about what she was doing. All thoughts of Lisa and Mark together had been hovering somewhere else, somewhere I had to push them to until I no longer had the strength to hold them there. And strangely, we’d almost been a family in that moment. I’d been almost happy.

  I printed Anne-Marie off.

  ‘I enjoyed meeting you,’ I told her as the letters washed across the page. ‘You were such a nice person.’ I carried her carefully to the kitchen and laid her to rest in my file. ‘I’m sorry we’ll never be friends now. May you rest in peace.’

  I looked at the police contact details at the end. I dialled the number, wiping my eyes with my hands. The dial tone sounded once, twice. I hung up. What to say? What was there to say?

  I’d had nothing to do with it. I’d chatted to her, that was all. I’d chatted to her and then I’d come home and had a shower. I remembered the cigarettes, putting them with the others… Had I looked for the knife? I could remember checking the cutlery drawer and feeling a bit confused that it wasn’t there. I had no memory of checking my handbag. But even if the knife were in my handbag, I hadn’t taken my handbag to the leisure centre, only my rucksack with my towel and my hoody. I’d left the rucksack on the bedroom floor, forgotten it until now. The hoody and the towel would still be in there. But where was the knife?

  I stood up, crossed the kitchen, opened the cutlery drawer. The knives and forks crashed as the drawer hit my stomach. I scrambled through the serving spoons, the knives, the salad tongs, the corkscrew… Mark’s knife had to be in there, even if I hadn’t seen it last night. I’d seen it recently, I was sure, and it had been in this drawer. I’d taken it out and closed my fingers around its leather handle, pushed the button, and now, remembering, it seemed to me that I’d seen the blade glint under the kitchen light. But had I? A different memory surfaced. Me, rummaging in the drawer, finding nothing. The two memories sat side by side, each as clear as the other.

  Had I after all returned it to the garage? Perhaps when I stashed the dog ends?

  I slammed the drawer shut, ran through to the garage. In the old dresser, in the top-left drawer, were the two cigarette ends balled up in cling film next to the other two in the bread bag. But no knife. No knife in the right-hand drawer, on the top of the unit, in the cupboards, on the shelves. A missing knife. A woman stabbed in her own car, children left without their mother, a man widowed in the blink of an eye. My eyes clouded. I wiped at them with the backs of my hands.

  I am wiping my eyes with the backs of my hands now. There will never be enough tears and yet they will never stop.

  ‘Do you need another break?’ Blue Eyes sounds like she’s calling to me from another room, but when I look up, she is there in front of me. ‘Rachel? Do you need another break?’

  I shake my head. ‘No. No thank you. I want to get it over with. There’s not much more and then you’ll know everything there is to know and you can send me where I belong.’

  Outside, a bus rumbles past. After a moment, I tell her the rest. About how I got through that awful day, about how I killed that poor lad and how I eventually made the call.

  40

  Rachel

  I’m at home. Saturday nig
ht. Silence and darkness. It’s late. After midnight. The back door blows open and clatters against the wall of the house. I pull it shut and lock it. I make myself a hot drink and sit in the dark watching grey clouds float over the moon, and all I can think is that the day has ended. It’s over. Now, hopefully, sleep will take me at least until the small hours. I am so tired. In the morning, I’ll call the police and tell them everything I know about Anne-Marie, about Jo and about Henry Parker. But first I will rest.

  On heavy legs, I climb the stairs to bed.

  Mark is asleep, snoring softly. The room smells of stale beer, clothes thick with cigarette smoke. He said he was meeting Roy at the golf club Saturday night, tonight. Golf club, my arse. Look at him, sleeping the sleep of the righteous. Exhausted after an evening at Lisa’s. Nothing stopping them now her girls have gone, is there? I’m out of their way, as I have been for some time.

  I pull my shirt over my head and am about to drop it on the chair in the corner when I see my rucksack on the floor beneath. I never emptied it from Thursday night. I pull it out from under the chair and creep into the bathroom. I switch on the light and lock the door, close the loo lid and sit down. All day I’ve been shaking from head to toe whenever I sit down, but that’s just shock. All day I’ve done nothing but run through what has happened since Katie’s party. The girl I made a meaningful connection with in a secluded place was brutally murdered. The man I saw hidden in the shadows of shame was strangled. The woman I spoke to as the light fell and the surroundings became deserted was stabbed to death. It is still unbelievable, even now, after having a whole day to process it.

  Whoever killed Anne-Marie is the same person who attacked Jo, I know that. Maybe not the fella in the churchyard, but Jo, definitely. A knife in the ribs. The same… what d’you call it? Modus operandi. I hope that it was sharp like Mark’s, the knife. I hope Anne-Marie didn’t feel it, didn’t know too much about it. She should have had someone with her. She should have had someone by her side in her last moments. She died alone and afraid. Alone and afraid, poor woman. Her poor family. Her kids, oh, her kids.

  I pull sheets of loo roll from the holder and wipe my face. My throat aches with tears for Jo, for Anne-Marie, stolen from their loved ones in the cruellest possible way. They’ll never get over it, never. You can’t get over something like that.

  With shaking hands, I unzip my sports bag and pull out my crumpled hooded top. I was too hot to put it back on. The towel that I used to wipe the sweat from my face and neck has dried. There’s nothing else in the bag. The knife isn’t there, thank goodness. Although why am I reassuring myself? Why would it be?

  I’m about to drop the rucksack to the floor when I spot the front pocket is half undone.

  I wipe my eyes, sniff hard, pull it fully open. I see and don’t see what’s inside. A balled-up wad of tissues. Bright white, bright red. Tissue. Blood.

  ‘Oh God,’ I whimper into my hands. ‘Oh heaven help me.’

  I am crying into my hands then and now. I don’t expect you or Blue Eyes to feel sorry for me. I just want you to know that I’m sorry. I’m sorry for not being clearer, but this is all I know. I’m sorry for not getting to it in a straight path, but this zigzag was how it went. I didn’t remember killing her then and I don’t remember it now, but I know that I did it and for that I’m more sorry than I can say. And for Jo and for Henry. I’m sorry; I’ll be sorry for the rest of my days. I’m a danger to myself and to others. I don’t deserve to be free. I don’t deserve to live.

  Blue Eyes pulls the last tissue from the box and hands it to me. ‘So was that the moment you became convinced you were responsible for the attacks?’

  ‘Yes. No. I don’t know. I’d already decided to call the police. I didn’t know where the knife was but I knew they were my tissues and I knew it was her blood. Anne-Marie’s.’

  ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘I don’t know, I just did.’ I look up at her. ‘Well, it was, wasn’t it?’

  She frowns. ‘You tell me.’

  ‘There you go. It was.’

  ‘But you didn’t call the police?’

  ‘I can’t remember much more than numbness, all over, like your face after the dentist has injected your gums, you know? It was only the next morning that I rang them, the police. Only after I read about the lad. About Ian.’

  ‘So that night you didn’t call anyone or tell anyone?’

  ‘No. Ian Brown was already dead by then, obviously. I’d already killed him, but that was nowhere, nowhere at all in my mind that night, honestly it wasn’t. I’ve nothing to hide anymore and I swear to God I’d tell you if I’d had any idea, any ghost of an idea as I sat on the loo with those bloody tissues in my hand, I would. But honestly, it was only when I read about him the next morning that it really came back to me, not before. The whole of Saturday came back to me. The day. The evening. The night. I remembered all of it. And then there was no doubt, no doubt left at all.’

  ‘I think we need to talk about that,’ she says softly. ‘Don’t you? Don’t you, Rachel? Do you think you can talk about it?’

  Why are you so kind?

  She doesn’t answer. I haven’t said it out loud, that’s why. I wipe my eyes. My face is chapped. Sore.

  Blue Eyes knows what’s coming. She’s read the statement, seen those terrible photos. But she needs to hear me say it, in a different way to the others. I know she’s not police. I know she’s a psychiatrist building a forensic case history of a criminally insane murderer. I don’t care. I care only about how kind she is in this moment, the way she listens with that hidden, waiting smile, about the fact that she sees me. That’s all any of us want, isn’t it? To be seen, to be listened to with compassion and attention while we unload our troubled hearts.

  ‘Rachel? Do you think you can tell me? Can you tell me what happened?’

  She slides another sheet of paper towards me.

  41

  Rachel

  Teenager found injured in town-hall gardens in third knife attack

  A boy was found stabbed in Runcorn Town Hall gardens late last night and is now fighting for his life. He has been named as sixteen-year-old Ian Brown, from Widnes. Police have not ruled out a link with the murder of Joanna Weatherall a little under three months ago and that of Anne-Marie Golightly on Thursday night. This latest attack is now being treated as attempted murder.

  ‘The method would appear to be the same,’ said police spokesperson Keith Woodhead. ‘Two stab wounds to the ribs using a sharp hunting-style knife. Mr Brown had a high alcohol content in his blood, and this and the cold temperature may have complicated matters and prevented him from seeking help. We believe the person who did this is an opportunist, and that they are armed and dangerous, and would advise against going out alone at this time. We would urge anyone walking at night to be vigilant.’

  The police are keen to speak to the woman who made the emergency call. Anyone with any information should call the following number.

  After the number, the usual links: Knife-crime epidemic sweeps UK; Have we become a nation of haters?; How to talk to your child about knives.

  I know this piece off by heart. It is the first news article I saw on Sunday morning. My eyes took it in but it was as if the electrical current relaying the information to my brain had short-circuited. Over and over I read it and slowly the realisation of what the words meant dawned. A boy I’d seen and spoken to less than twelve hours earlier was fighting for his life. He had been full of promise. I was going to help him make a future. And now he’d been stabbed, almost to death. He could still die. And I’d seen him less than… Oh God, they must have rushed the news out. Matter of urgency. Public safety warning.

  ‘My God,’ I whispered into the hot, damp palm of my hand. ‘Ian.’

  I printed it out, read it again, the paper shaking in my hands. Ian: an article in a news bulletin, reduced to facts, encapsulated in words to be glossed over in favour of a gossip column or the sports section. Soon to be a sta
tistic.

  He wasn’t a statistic to me. He was a beautiful soul. I took him over to my clip file and gently sheathed him in plastic.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I whispered.

  I brought him to my lips, felt the odourless touch of the soft cellophane, heard the dull crackle.

  I laid him to rest with the others, the unremembered that I remembered. At the kitchen table, I sat down, opened the file at the beginning and read my first-ever entry. My head fell into my hands. I was crying so much I couldn’t see, couldn’t get my breath. I laid my forehead on the kitchen table and cried for that boy, for his mother, for his father, for his family, his friends, for everyone who knew him, who loved or had loved him.

  Sometime later, I must have stopped. Morning climbed over the back fence. Light washed the kitchen a pale vanilla yellow. My breath shuddered and stalled. The previous day rushed at me. Frame by frame, it rushed. I couldn’t stop it; all I could do was watch.

  Saturday morning, twenty-four hours earlier, and I’m crying for Anne-Marie. I watched myself as if from above. Rachel. Rachel Edwards.

  ‘I enjoyed meeting you,’ I’m telling Anne-Marie as I print her off. ‘You were such a nice person.’ I carry her to the kitchen and lay her carefully to rest in my file. ‘I’m sorry we’ll never be friends now.’

  I’m taking the dog round the block. I can see myself against the pink sky: tartan pyjama bottoms blown flat to my shins, flapping about beneath my big black Puffa coat. Mark’s red woolly hat pulled low, thick hiking socks and Mark’s Crocs, a few sizes too big. I’m still crying. I’m muttering to myself. The milkman’s truck fizzes by and I see him glance in my direction. I see myself through his eyes. I look insane, shuffling along in shoes too big. To myself, remembering, I look insane.