What She Left: Enhanced Edition

by T. R. Richmond

  ‘I didn’t kill her,’ I said to Charlie a few days later.

  ‘Mate, no one suggested you did,’ he replied.

  Bizarre that we weren’t spotted by the river or caught on CCTV.

  Last night I read it’s vital that victims of crime cooperate to produce a photofit within twenty-four hours. Otherwise the impression they generate can diverge wildly from the reality. If the police don’t solve a crime – especially a serious one – within twenty-four hours the chances of doing so plummet, this article said.

  In that beer garden in Waterloo, my phone rang, a number I didn’t recognize. ‘It’s Robert Salmon speaking. Where are you?’ he asked. ‘Are you alone?’

  That was when I started lying.

  Later still – two Stellas and two double vodkas later – that massive man at the bar, me thinking: You’ll do.

  And now I’m staring at the email you sent me on Friday 3 February, the day before you died, marginally before our two months was up. I’d found it three weeks after you died in my junk folder, shunted there because of the attachment, which seemingly flagged it as a virus risk, sandwiched between spam from a man claiming to need urgent cash because he was stranded in the Philippines and one offering me affordable office supplies.

  ‘US’, you’d typed in the subject field and my initial reaction had been: Why had Al emailed me about America? But then I’d recalled we’d talked about a holiday there – visiting Ground Zero, the Empire State, eating bagels, taking in a show on Broadway. Maybe head out to the west coast. Dawson’s Creek, The O.C., 90210. ‘The vicarious landscape of my childhood,’ you referred to it as.

  I count the days since you died. Thirty-two. 768 hours. A photofit now would bear a barely approximate resemblance.

  The police, your family, your friends, that man in the pub, Megan, the contractor who I sat in a meeting room with today and complained about ‘under-delivery’. Stupid, they are, all of them, ignorant and in the dark. It’s me and you, we’re the ones who know what happened. It’s our secret.

  ‘Hey Mr L,’ your email began.

  Extract from transcript of interview with Jessica Barnes conducted at Southampton Central police station led by Detective Superintendent Simon Ranger,

  5 April 2012, 17.20 p.m.

  SR: To reiterate, you’re not under arrest and are free to leave at any time, but please can you confirm your full name, age and address, and that you’re happy for this interview to be recorded.

  JB: Jessica Barnes, I’m nineteen and live at 74a Hartley Road. Yes.

  SR: Jessica, can you explain what you did on the evening of Saturday February 4.

  JB: Me and a load of friends had a night out in town, seven or eight of us – do you need names?

  SR: Not at this stage, but it would be helpful to hear which pubs you went to.

  JB: We started off in the Rock and Revs then went to the High Life and ended up in the Ruby Lounge. Went to Carly’s Bar as well – oh, yes, and the New Inn.

  SR: The Ruby Lounge is by the river, isn’t it? Was there any reason you went there?

  JB: It’s a good place to end the night, they’re open till two and it’s proper buzzing.

  SR: Towards the end of the evening, I gather you became separated from your friends. How did that arise?

  JB: I’d had an argument with Mark.

  SR: Mark?

  JB: My boyfriend. He was out with his mates so we’d arranged to meet up at the Ruby Lounge, but he was being a right douchebag, flirting with Lottie. No way was I going to stand around watching that so I was out of there. Went along that shortcut path by the river; it brings you out by Hooper Road and I was going to get a night bus there.

  SR: What time would this have been?

  JB: No idea, was ages ago. Would have mentioned it before, but I thought nothing of it. Like, only heard about the drowned girl on the news this morning, was at my dad’s and it was on the telly. I never watch news. Why should I if it doesn’t affect me? Might have been about midnight.

  SR: So this was when you saw a couple on a bench on the other side of the river?

  JB: Yes, I told the policeman that earlier.

  SR: It would be helpful if you could share your impression of what they were doing.

  JB: It was a long way away and it was snowing and shit.

  SR: How old would you guess they were?

  JB: Older than me, maybe thirty.

  SR: But presumably you could make out roughly what they were doing?

  JB: They was definitely arguing because I heard bits. I was there for a few minutes having a ciggie while I decided whether to go back to the Ruby Lounge and have it out with Mark. Is it that dead girl off the telly? It is, isn’t it? I’ll be devastated if it is.

  SR: Until we establish more details, we’d prefer to keep her as ‘the girl on the bench’. Can you describe either of them?

  JB: He might have had a black shirt on – I was only there for a few minutes. Wasn’t paying them no attention, my head was all over the place and none of my business was it? I wasn’t going to go all emo. It’s her, isn’t it? They said she drowned. The students are right stuck-up wankers but she looked nice. Am I going to get into trouble? I haven’t done anything wrong.

  SR: No one’s suggesting you have, Jessica. But an extremely serious incident did occur, which may or may not have involved one or both of the individuals you seemingly encountered. It would inform our investigation if you could recollect more of their exchange.

  JB: They was miles away. The river’s well wide there so it was hard to make out, like, when you’re on the phone and the signal’s shit and you get bits and then nothing and then bits again. Think they was planning a weekend away because I heard her mention ‘Prague’. I saw this thing about it on the telly; all the posh couples go there for breaks.

  SR: What other snippets of their conversation did you pick up? Did you hear either of them refer to each other by name?

  JB: Yes – she called him Luke.

  SR: Are you positive about that?

  JB: Yes, defo, because my kid brother’s been watching all the Star Wars films and he’s been going round saying ‘Luke, I am your father,’ and that’s what made me notice.

  SR: Anything else?

  JB: This’ll sound nuts but she said something about ‘lemmings’.

  SR: OK, let’s try a different tack. How were they arguing? Would you say it was an angry argument?

  JB: What other sort is there? Thing is, you know how some arguments you’re constantly on it? Well, them two were worked up, then calm, then worked up, and there were bits when they were either not talking or whispering. Couple of points she gave him a right sledging and once he fell over, stumbled on to his knees. It was like he was begging. Might have slipped on the snow, I suppose.

  SR: How drunk was the girl on the bench? Was she more or less drunk than you were?

  JB: Less. No, more. She was just a drunk girl. It’s her, isn’t it? They said she was a crime-buster for violence against women, is that right?

  SR: Others in your situation might have called the police?

  JB: Say I had called the old bill – sorry, you lot – what would I have said? I’d have gone, ‘There’s two people on the other side of the river,’ and they’d have gone, ‘What are they doing?’ and I’d have gone, ‘They’re on a bench talking.’ They’d hardly have mobilized special branch, would they?

  SR: Jessica, this isn’t a joke. Someone’s died.

  JB: Sorry, but you’re making out it’s my fault and it’s not. I’m not going to get in trouble, am I? I can’t lose my job; I’ve got a baby. I’m sorry. I knew I should have rung 999 when he started pushing her around. They said on some Internet thing that she was pregnant – is that true?

  SR: Pushing her around? Elaborate on that.

  JB: After he’d fallen over she was cracking up and he got right in her face and put his arms round her, but not in a good way. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please don’t arrest me. I’ve got a baby …
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  Letter sent by Professor Jeremy Cooke,

  9 July 2012

  Larry,

  Remember I told you years ago about that shrink, the supercilious fellow with the Roman nose and bird-like shoulders? Well, I’ve been re-examining the notes I made from our meetings. He actually had the gall to accuse me of not liking him very much.

  ‘Don’t take it personally,’ was my riposte. ‘It’s people I don’t much like.’

  ‘Curious,’ he said, ‘to hear that from an anthropologist.’

  ‘To an anthropologist, existence is curious,’ I informed him. ‘Curious and baffling.’ It was like intellectual tennis. ‘Accept it,’ I said, ‘you’re fundamentally incapable of mending me.’

  ‘It’s not about mending you; it’s about you acquiring a deeper understanding of yourself. How about you elaborate on why you’ve chosen to visit me, Jeremy?’

  His repeated use of my first name irked me. After a pause, doubtlessly of exactly the length he’d have been taught at some second-rate polytechnic, he shrilled, ‘There are no incorrect answers here.’

  ‘There’s not a huge amount else to do on Wednesday afternoons. The students play sport.’

  It was the second consecutive Wednesday I’d trooped like a battle-beaten soldier into this supposedly highly regarded and discreet practice in a residential suburb of Winchester, despite my opinion of shrinks being far from positive. I’d been taught to take an evidential-based approach and they’re so bloody woolly. Not that she’d have cared, but Fliss was gloriously oblivious, as she had been to where I’d spent so many previous Wednesday afternoons when the students played sport: locked away in tawdry hotels with the latest recruit to the English faculty: Elizabeth Mullens.

  He scratched his mangy beard, crossed and uncrossed his legs. Clearly gay. In the silence that ensued, it enveloped me again: that dense, cloudy anger at his probing and at me – for needing to be here with a diminutive, forensic man approximately five years my junior with tiny round spectacles, worn presumably in a bid to convey gravitas. ‘She thinks I’m playing squash,’ I said. ‘Fliss does. My wife.’

  ‘Why does she think that?’

  ‘Because that’s what I told her.’

  ‘Does she always think what you tell her?’

  ‘Believe me, she hardly ever thinks what I tell her.’

  ‘Should she?’

  ‘Of course not. She has her own mind.’

  ‘Does that worry you?’

  ‘Not as much as the tyranny of Ayatollah Khomeini, or these bloody trade unions.’

  Even then, it dawned on me how redundant I was rendering the exchange. It had been the evening after the party when my wife had confronted me. She’d been washing up when I’d arrived home and when I’d said, ‘Hello, darling, how was your day?’ she didn’t turn round, as she didn’t when I said, ‘You’re up late’ or ‘I’m off to bed, I’m bushed’, but when she finally did she was crying. ‘Martin rang,’ she said.

  I froze.

  ‘He mentioned he bumped into you yesterday evening – how was the party?’

  I should have cut my losses there and then, Larry, admitted it. That might have counted in my favour: mitigation. But I’d pressed on. ‘Boring. Typical academic get-together. You know what they’re like.’

  ‘Actually, I don’t. Explain to me.’

  ‘Pearce is still on the brink of resigning, Shields remains convinced he’s about to get the call from Nobel, Mills is clinically incapable of having a seminal idea.’

  Some men cover their tracks naturally well, Larry, others teach themselves – I fell into neither camp; I sounded ridiculous – as if my wife had asked, ‘What shape is the earth?’ and I’d responded ‘cuboid’. ‘Boring academics blowing smoke up each other’s arses,’ I added.

  ‘Boring academics from the English department?’

  Behind me, a clicking from the Aga, my wife’s pride and joy.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How’s that new girl getting on?’ she asked. ‘The one who was profiled in the newsletter, Liz Mullens?’

  ‘Fine, I gather.’ The wooden table, the dog in her basket, a box of cereal and two bowls on the side, ready for the morning. As an environmental consultant, my wife frequently referred to the notion of ‘habitat’. This is mine, I thought. Ours. Without this, without her, what would I be, what would I do?

  ‘You promised you’d look after me for ever.’

  Larry, that scruffy shrink, a budding Bolshevik if ever there was one, was relentless. ‘How about I get to ask you some questions?’ I asked to interrupt the bombardment.

  ‘We won’t make much headway that way.’

  ‘Please, one.’

  ‘Ultimately it’s your money.’

  I could have hugged him in that instant, my skinny adversary with the string of worthless letters after his name, because contempt wasn’t a sentiment I was typically displayed, at least not to my face. ‘What is sex?’

  ‘Right now, I’m sensing it’s an area we should explore.’

  ‘Exploring it’s what’s got me into trouble.’

  ‘You can’t blame sex. Whatever you’ve done, you’ve managed all by yourself.’

  His response made me want to reach out and give his pigeon face a sharp slap, like I might a child who’d misbehaved, if we’d had one.

  ‘You still haven’t explained why you’re here.’

  ‘Because it’s like seeing a prostitute. There are no consequences, it’s entirely transactional.’

  ‘There you go again, back to sex.’

  I loathed his relentless picking. But he was right: I was thirty-five years old and part of me was broken. Silence, and the spectre of one of my greatest fears, inarticulacy, clung to me like wet fog.

  ‘Would you like to share with me who she was?’

  I hadn’t at that point directly confessed to my infidelity, so he must have filled in the blanks. ‘Why, fancy giving her a call? You could hook up; she’s not choosy!’ I heard the petulance and spite, and cringed.

  ‘Are you still in contact?’

  ‘She threatened to put a carving knife between my shoulder blades if I ever went near her again.’

  It came back to me: how I’d once dropped to my knees before Liz and she’d cradled my head in her hands as she might have a child’s, or as if I were a piece of pottery she was shaping, and the sharp absence of her stung me: her taste, her smell, a coppery tang on my tongue, a low-down ache in the pit of my stomach, my balls. Bet you’ve never felt that, have you, I almost spat.

  Fliss had recounted the details of her and Martin’s conversation with a dispassionate disinterest, like she was relating a scene from a novel: Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children perhaps, or the latest theory on one of the genus of flowers in which she specialized. ‘After he called, I had a rummage around in your jackets.’

  ‘You did what?’ I said, my righteous indignation never sounding more ill-conceived.

  She handed me a piece of paper, a restaurant receipt. Her lip quivered. ‘How could you?’

  ‘How are you feeling?’ my shrink asked.

  Wet on my cheek; the sod, he’d made me shed a tear. ‘Well done, you’ve earned your money today. Damn perplexing behaviour, the shedding of tears,’ I said, scrabbling into the familiar architecture of a debate, ‘the function of which remains the source of much debate in scientific circles.’

  ‘Throw me a bone here, Jeremy – one professional to another.’

  ‘I’m sick of feeling as if life’s escaping me. Can you stop that, Dr Richard Carter? Can you? Please.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Only you can do that.’

  ‘No one’s faithful these days,’ I said, aware it wasn’t an entirely unfounded observation, because with the exception of brain-dead, cockless old stiffs like Devereux, the whole campus was at it. ‘It’s the Eighties, everyone’s shagging everyone else.’

  ‘I can assure you they’re not.’

  ‘Are you married?’ I asked.

  ‘N
o,’ he said.

  ‘Never taken a wife, eh?’ I heard myself and it was with chagrin. The man who extolled the benefits of discussion and debate, who believed that the human species was set apart by a handful of attributes, one of the key ones of which was our ability to communicate, reduced to using that gift as a child would. She’d thrown a colander at me. Fliss had. Sounds amusing now – the sort of scene that might feature in one of those dreadful soap operas – but I can assure you it wasn’t then. It had connected with my forehead and split the skin, freeing a sticky string of blood.

  ‘Surely, intelligence,’ my shrink said, ‘is the ability to make yourself and those around you happy. You’ve clearly failed in that respect.’

  He had me; the little shit had me.

  ‘How is the woman who’s not your wife dealing with the situation?’

  ‘She tried to kill herself.’

  Twitter messages to @AliceSalmon1 from @FreemanisFree, between

  16 January and 27 January 2012

  How’s that walking of yours on the common?

  The lord said justice is mine.

  Enjoy your Italian meal last night?

  Nice hairdryer you got for Christmas.