White Light

by Alex Marks

  I waited ten minutes then wheeled out the bike and headed down the road to Oxford. As I rode, my stomach started to feel strange again and I realised that I was hungry: I'd been awake for hours now and yesterday's diet of black coffee and pot noodles wasn't cutting it. My body was healing, it told me, and I needed to fuel it. I cut along the ring road and then stopped at MacDonald's for a burger, a mere anonymous delivery man amongst the van drivers and kids and students and tourists. One lad stared at my black eyes, but when I looked back at him he sunk his head down and pretended to be fascinated by his burger. Funny, really, all it took for me to become intimidating was a bereavement, a beating, and some time-travel – easy. I slung my tray onto the bin and then it was time for the owner and sole employee of Nemesis Couriers to head back to Summertown.

  Friday, 3 April 2015. 10.16

  Lonsdale Road was soft and prosperous. The morning grey had cleared into a beautiful day, and the sunshine had brought the street alive with people bustling from their cars and out in their front gardens. I pulled up down the road a little way, and pretended to be reading a map whilst I kept an eye on Richard's fuck off big Jaguar, which gleamed on the driveway. My father-in-law was ridiculously proud of his garden, doing all the work himself with an array of expensive tools and equipment, and I wondered whether I'd see him pottering around with that stupid garden hoover he'd recently bought himself. But I was pretty sure that he usually played golf on a Friday morning, and at 10.30am I was relieved to see him heading out to the car with a set of expensive clubs. He drove sedately down the road, and after a few moments I set off after him. Golf, I reckoned, was as good a chance as any to get some photos of his sick cronies. I was honest enough to realise that following him also delayed the moment when I had to decide whether to try to stop Sarah's car crash from happening.

  Oxford is not short of well-heeled middle class men, and a number of manicured golf courses lay around the city to cater for them. I'd scoped out a couple on the map, and once Richard had turned the jag towards the largest and glossiest I risked losing sight of him and roared past, aiming to get to his destination before he did. I was pretty sure he wouldn't recognise me in my new get-up, but I didn't want to take too much of a chance.

  I purred through the Oxfordshire countryside, postcard-perfect in the Spring sunlight, and turned down the long, sweeping drive to Sandwich Place – a medium-sized Georgian stately home that considerable amounts of money had transformed into an exclusive golf course and hotel. Discrete signs along the trimmed verge directed me to the twenty-first century's equivalent of the tradesmen's entrance, and I turned the bike and came to a stop outside the admin office. As I switched off the engine all I could hear were the birds singing, the well-mannered thwack of golf balls being struck, and the chatter of the middle classes at play. Just Richard's sort of place.

  I'd filled my courier bag with padded envelopes stuffed with random magazines, and, under the pretext of checking my delivery list, looked up the Club Captain's name on my phone and scribbled it onto one of the packages. I took my time, keeping an eye out to catch Richard as he arrived. From my vantage point I had a pretty good view of the closest greens, so I should be able to get a look at some of his golf buddies. At least, I bloody hoped so. After five minutes stretched into ten I couldn't really string out this visit much longer, so dropped the parcel off with the vacuous but posh receptionist and had straddled the bike ready to move when the big blue jaguar swung round the drive and came to a complacent stop in the members' carpark.

  I pulled my bag round in front of me and began rummaging through the parcels as if looking for something, but what I was really doing was readying the camera and putting it into continuous shooting mode to get as many images as possible. With my visor shut, as long as I angled my head down, no-one could tell that I was actually looking up and towards the carpark where my father-in-law was now unpacking his expensive clubs without an apparent care in the world. Several balding men in designer golf-wear hailed him as they passed, and my hands tensed on the shutter button, but they all just walked on. I had begun to think this whole thing was going to be a bust when two of them stopped.

  'Holland,' one said as they all shook hands.

  'Gillespie,' he replied, but annoyingly didn't mention the other man's name. They were both in their middle years, but the nameless one seemed quite a bit younger than the other two. Gillespie was bald and fat, his golf jumper straining across his belly, but Nameless looked in great shape and fidgeted about as he spoke as if filled with impatient energy.

  'Thanks for that tip the other day,' he said, smirking at Richard. 'A great bouquet, with such a firm finish.' They all laughed, and my stomach twisted violently.

  'Yes, definitely a good mouthfeel,' agreed Gillespie and all laughed again, standing happily in the sunshine and making it feel sullied and obscene. While they laughed, I whipped up the camera and fired off a dozen or more automatic shots. I shoved it back in the bag just as, still chuckling, they turned towards the club entrance. Instinctively I swung off the bike and walked in the opposite direction, back to the administration office, my head pounding.

  'Yes?' asked the girl on the desk, and I wondered how old she was. I thought I was going to faint, so leaned on the counter, pushing up the visor to get some air. Her eyes widened slightly at the sight of my black eyes and patched face.

  'Er, I've just seen a car back into one of the other vehicles in the members' car park,' I improvised. Her face swept into an expression of alarm.

  'Oh no!'

  'Yes, and I'm afraid it didn't stop. I thought I ought to let you know.'

  'Which car was it?' she was reaching for her computer keyboard.

  'A silver grey Audi RS3,' I said, describing the car I'd seen Nameless step out of. 'The car that hit it was a – er – light blue Nissan.' I silently apologised to Dave for thinking of his car.

  Her fingers stilled on the keyboard. 'Oh dear! That's Mr Naismith's car!' She picked up the phone on the desk, 'I'll page him and let him know.'

  I had opened my mouth to utter some platitude or other when I glanced over the receptionist's shoulder and suddenly noticed the large white-board labelled 'Members Playing Today'. Amongst all the names printed carefully in red marker my eye riveted to two words: Nick Walters. The room seemed to spin away as my eyes travelled along the line, reading the scribbled note: '11.30pm joining Holland, Gillespie, Naismith'.

  I don't know what she said to me next, or what I said, if anything, instead I felt my feet walking me calmly out of the door and crunching across the gravel towards the bike, my hand reaching up to close my visor as if controlled by somebody else. In seconds I was barrelling down the drive and back onto the main road, and then on towards Oxford. My brain felt cold, and my stomach was roiling - after a couple of miles I was forced to pull into a lay-by and throw up my Macdonald's breakfast into the cow parsley. I knew I should really have hung around and watched for Richard coming back out, or to see if Walters was there, but a visceral compulsion to put as much distance between me and those men as I could got me back on the Yamaha. I didn't stop until I found myself in St Giles, where I parked up and risked taking off my helmet to get some air.

  I sat in the shady graveyard of St Giles' church, isolated from the traffic and the buzz and noise all around me, slumped on one of the benches alongside trendy tourists drinking expensive coffee from the Maison Blanc and homeless men in assemblages of tattered clothing sifting through the bins. The nearest guy shot me a glance, and his narrow face made me think of Kenny – maybe Susie had known something, and maybe Richard or Naismith or even fucking Walters had paid her a visit and encouraged her to disappear. After all, who would take the word of a pathetic ex-junkie against their polished North Oxford respectability? I wondered where Susie was now, or even if she was alive, poor cow. Ahead of me, the green of the church yard was sliced across by the broad carriageway of St Giles, its parallel lines of immense plane trees marching away, all the way down to the Martyrs' Memori
al. Burning at the stake seemed too small a punishment for my father-in-law and his friends.

  I had thought that I had understood what Richard Holland was like, but now that seemed mere deluded self-deceit. I felt disgusted, and disgusting, soiled by even breathing the same air as these men, with a white hot panic in my chest that somewhere in this city, somewhere nearby, there were children going through what Sarah and Helen had endured. I pulled out my phone and had dialled Darren Underwood's number before I realised that I couldn't phone him – my earlier self wasn't even going to find Sarah's video till later tonight. Anyway, even if I called it in anonymously there was still DI Walters sitting there like an obscene spider, trapping all those statements and witnesses and pieces of evidence like little flies, and wrapping them up and hooking them out of reach of each other where they could do no harm. There was no innocent explanation for his involvement: the fees for that place alone must be nearly his annual salary. Paedophilia must be profitable, I found myself thinking, and had to fight down an urge to retch.

  I don't know how long I sat there, but eventually I was able to take a deep breath and start to think properly. I was a very intelligent man, I said to myself, there must be a way I could stop this, there must be a way. A grubby bloke looking older than his years shuffled up to the bin next to my bench, and matter-of-factly began to root amongst its contents. A sheet of crumpled newsprint fluttered to the floor, and my eyes followed it automatically – and then I sat up. That was one avenue I hadn't tried: the press. With Operation Greenland still regularly making headlines, there was every chance that my allegations would at least be heard. And in my paralysis of horror I'd overlooked something else – the lock-up garage on Hockmore Street. There might be all manner of evidence which could back up my allegations. I pulled out the camera and spooled through the photos I'd taken back at the golf club: they'd come out well, but without the context you'd think they were just three balding, prosperous, middle aged men. I returned the camera to the bag and headed back to the bike. I needed to get

  more proof.

  Friday, 3 April 2015. 12.53

  By the time I'd ridden across town and up the long expanse of the Cowley Road the Spring sunshine had faded and been replaced by a sky of polished grey. A cold wind rattled the new blossoms on the cherry trees planted alongside the huge consumer warehouses marking one boundary of Temple Cowley, and the shoppers wrapped their coats closer as they scuttled between the Delight Kebab shop, the twenty-four hour Dominos, the betting shops and the supermarket that clustered under the concrete balconies of the 1970s shopping centre. The whole place was buzzing with people and the roads clogged with cars and buses. I stopped at the traffic lights at the junction of Between Towns Road and Crowell Road, and turned my head to look into the window of the incongruously posh estate agents on the corner. Then the lights changed and I turned left, under a strange first-floor walkway, and then left again into Hockmore Street.

  It was a narrow, oddly winding back lane, presumably built to service the businesses along the main street and the poky maisonettes stacked above them. After the bustle of the shopping area it felt sinisterly quiet, but I couldn't tell if that was just my own sense of foreboding. I rode slowly down the row of garages, and it was only when I'd nearly gone past that I realised that Unit 12 was right at the corner near one of the exits of the big shopping centre. Swearing under my breath, I carried on until I reached the far end, did a U-turn in the slightly wider space between a bus stop and some semi-detached houses, then turned back.

  This time I kept my eyes peeled left, and when I got within sighting distance of the correct door I pulled into the curb and began my fake rummaging in the courier bag. Opposite, I could see that what I had initially taken to be a crappy garage door was actually something that looked much more modern and secure. It had a person-sized door cut into one side, with an expensive looking keypad and a security camera positioned to look down at whoever was standing there. My hands froze when the camera abruptly moved with a whirr and pointed in my direction.

  My pulse accelerated and it took all my self-control not to race off immediately; instead I continued my play-acting, looking at the bogus parcels in my bag, before slinging it over my back and purring off down the street, the very epitome of a bored delivery man... I hoped. On autopilot I turned back onto the main street and did a long circuit up to the junction with the Cowley Road – ironically, right next to the Cowley police station – and then back again. With all the traffic lights the trip took me fifteen minutes and I hoped anyone watching would assume I'd buggered off. Paranoia pricked my mind and I frowned to try and focus. I was anonymous, just a guy on a motorbike, not memorable.

  As soon as I could, I turned back into Crowell Road and then under the concrete entrance of the Castle Car Park. When I'd studied the map earlier that morning I'd realised that I would get a pretty good view of the garage from this typical 1970s brutalist multi-story, and I twirled up and around its many levels until I reached one where the twists of Hockmore Street opposite lay spread out before me. I steered the bike slowly into a corner, partially tucked behind a huge concrete pillar, and switched off the ignition. The roar of the traffic on Between Towns Road echoed around the space, filled sporadically with the cars of workers or shoppers, and the cold Spring breeze danced across the floors, rattling the litter in the corners. I zipped my jacket tighter, and pulled the camera out of the bag.

  After a couple of hours, several cars had driven slowly up and down the street, and the odd cyclist had slipped by, but nobody had stopped at Unit 12. The sharp wind sneaked into the seams of my leathers, and I wished I'd stopped to buy a coffee as my core temperature ticked lower. At half past three I was fed up and frozen, and I'd begun to reach the camera back into the bag when I realised a white panel van had drawn up outside the unit. The driver, a non-descript bloke in a grey sweatshirt stepped up to the garage door and pressed a button, looking straight up at the camera which twirled down to regard him. After a long moment, he opened the door and stepped through.

  I'd fired off a load of shots, and now took some more of the van and its number plate. I glanced at my watch, and timed how long the mystery man was inside. It turned out to be not long, and in less than ten minutes he was back, nodding and saying something to a person I couldn't see. Then the door was shut behind his back and he climbed heavily into his van and drove towards me and the corner, turning left when the traffic allowed and then out onto the main road. As he turned, the side of the van was displayed beautifully for me: it had a red and black printed logo for 'Marley Video Supplies' and a website address. It was past too quick for me to read it properly, so I anxiously flicked the camera to album mode and zoomed in – yes, loud and clear. Well, it wasn't a smoking gun but it was something.

  Fat drops of rain began to fall, individually, from the grey sky and I spontaneously decided that I'd had enough. My ribs were aching from all the riding, and the cold had seeped into my bones and was magnifying every twinge, every bruise. Despite the triumph of seeing someone actually go into the garage, I felt flat and disappointed. I hadn't made much headway, or gathered much evidence. I swung my leg back over the Yamaha and got it going, and glided down and around the car park's floors, one more bit of flotsam kicked up by the wind. I idled for a minute at the exit, waiting for the interminable traffic lights to switch round to be my turn, waiting for a stream of people to cross from the retail warehouses opposite – and I realised that I recognised a stooped female figure carrying two plastic bags. It was Susie, the woman who'd vanished, who'd been insisting that she knew what had really happened to Sarah. Of course, this was Friday, before she'd gone missing.

  Susie reached the pavement and turned under the concrete awning, heading towards the entrance to the shopping centre. Just as the lights flipped to amber I raced the bike across the road, ignoring protesting horns, and ran it quickly up a dropped kerb and alongside a set of bicycle racks. I threw off my helmet, quickly set the steering lock, and then hurried
through the late afternoon shoppers to keep Susie in sight. She turned into the building, and then cut left into an exterior stair-well that led to the upper floors and those dingy maisonettes I'd seen from Hockmore Street. I jogged a few steps and reached the bottom flight of stairs in time to hear the woman's footsteps reaching an upper floor and pausing. As quickly and quietly as I could manage in my motorcycle gear I ran up – as far as I could tell Susie had gone through the door onto the second floor. I reached the top of the stairs and leaned out, and luckily I was in time to see her unlocking the front door on a flat down the walkway, then stepping through without even seeing me behind her.

  I caught my breath for a minute, then walked up to the door and knocked. For a long moment nothing happened, and I stared at the cheap, scuffed door wondering if Susie was looking at me through the peep hole. Should I smile? But then, with two fading black eyes and in full leathers, a smile might be even more suspicious. Then the door cracked open, and a narrow face peered at me round the edge.

  'What?' Her eyes were huge, exaggerated by her desperately thin body. I did smile then, the sort of smile you'd give a frightened animal.

  'Hi, Susie? I'm Adam, Sarah's husband.' I saw recognition flicker. 'Katie from Homes for All said that you wanted to talk to me?'

  She stared at me, knuckles tightening on the door. I smiled again, despite a flush of annoyance that she couldn't just tell me what she bloody knew, without all this coaxing. 'Look, here's my drivers' licence,' I said, opening my wallet and showing it to her. 'It proves who I am.' She hungrily leaned forward to check my name and picture. 'Can I come in? Just for a minute?'