Little Black Lies

by Sharon Bolton

At the mention of flashbacks, Catrin’s head dropped into her hands. She peers at him now, over the top of her fingers. ‘You didn’t hurt me. Not really. I hurt you much more.’

  His eyes soften. ‘You don’t take shit from anyone. But imagine if I got hold of a kid…’

  Alarmed glances flicker my way. I concentrate on breathing in, breathing out, knowing that if I show signs of being too upset, they’ll remove me from the room. I look at a spot on the wall, behind Catrin’s head. I try not to look at Callum, try not to think of those strong hands on my child.

  ‘OK, so you were driving along the Airport Road after Catrin, and you could feel an attack coming on?’

  ‘That’s right. But before I got to the Grimwood house, before I could even see it, Catrin’s Land Rover came charging back down the road again. I’m not sure she saw me, although she practically drove through the ditch to get past me. She sped off, leaving me facing the wrong way.’

  ‘I saw you,’ Catrin says.

  ‘I was half tempted to go home, leave you to it.’ He’s talking directly to her now. ‘Then I realized you were probably heading for the boat, and that didn’t feel like a good idea. So I carried on up the road, meaning to turn round and follow you to the harbour.’

  ‘A few minutes before four,’ Josh says. ‘Catrin has just put the little boy back in the garden, Rachel has seen her from the window and is running down the stairs. Carry on, please.’

  ‘I’m driving too fast at this stage. I’m worried about Catrin, and I’m slipping.’

  ‘Slipping?’ Skye this time.

  ‘Losing my grip. Feeling the flashback taking over.’

  ‘Almost four o’clock. You must have reached the house by now?’

  Almost four o’clock. Callum is at the house and I’m – where? Pulling on shoes? No, I was barefoot when I ran outside that day.

  ‘I reached the house.’ Callum is continuing with his story. ‘Driving far too fast. Not concentrating. Peter had got into the road again. I hit him, head on. He flew up, hit the bonnet, the windscreen and then disappeared under the wheels.’

  Catrin’s white face looks from Callum, to me, and back again. I don’t react. I can’t. I’m thinking, that was quick then. He wouldn’t have been afraid. He didn’t suffer. He probably didn’t even feel much pain. I can keep telling myself that, can’t I? There are worse ways, surely, for a little boy to die.

  Callum is still talking. ‘I stopped the car, of course. I got out, but the boy was dead. I could tell straight away. If he hadn’t been, I’d have done something, called someone, I know I would. But I’ve seen enough corpses to know when someone is beyond help.’

  Killed outright. If he’s going to be dead, that’s the best way, isn’t it? I realize that Skye is holding my hand. I squeeze hers, to let her know I’m grateful.

  ‘What did you do with him?’ asks Josh.

  Callum isn’t looking at anyone as he goes on with his story. ‘Picked him up, wrapped him in a blanket from my car and put him in the gun case in the back. Then I turned round and drove back down the hill. I think I went to the harbour, still looking for Catrin, but I’m not sure about that bit.’

  Exactly what I claimed I’d done. In my stupid, fabricated story, I said I put him in the boot of my car. I’m paying for that now.

  ‘You’re not sure about that bit?’ Skye has let my hand go. ‘You remember the accident clearly, but you don’t remember what you did immediately afterwards?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ He takes a deep breath, ready to try again.

  ‘You said a few seconds ago that you remember very little about what you do when you have a flashback,’ Skye says. ‘Just images of the conflict, you said. And yet you remember hitting Peter and putting his body in your boot?’

  ‘You’re going to have to hear me out, guys.’

  Josh clears his throat. ‘Carry on, Callum. Let him go with it, Skye.’

  ‘I disposed of his body later that day,’ Callum says. ‘I’m not sure about the exact time, it all gets a bit hazy, but I know I drove up to the cliffs above Port Pleasant.’

  Catrin’s head lifts, like a dog with a scent.

  ‘I left the road, drove as close to the edge as I could, then took Peter out of the car. I threw him over the cliff.’

  Skye’s hand grabs mine again. It makes no difference, I’m telling myself. He was past being afraid by then. Past being hurt.

  ‘Sarge, I think I should take Rachel outside.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I say, although I’m squeezing her hand so tightly I doubt she is. ‘Thank you, Skye, but I’m fine. Carry on please.’

  ‘Did you see him reach the bottom?’ asks Josh, after a worried glance at me.

  Callum shakes his head. ‘I didn’t look. I think the tide was in. I would have assumed the water would take him away.’

  I wonder if I’ve blacked out. I can see nothing. After a moment, I realize I’ve closed my eyes.

  ‘Why didn’t you say anything before?’ asks Josh. ‘Why come in now?’

  ‘Because I remembered none of it. I had no idea until I saw the footprint on your system at the station.’

  ‘Hang on, hang on. Footprint?’

  They are just voices now, swirling around in the darkness.

  ‘I went to the police station earlier today. There were a couple of officers in the back room but they had to attend to something and I was left alone. I looked on your computer, Skye, and found the footprint you’d lifted from outside Rachel’s house. I recognized it immediately as mine. But I’d only been wearing those boots the afternoon Peter disappeared, so that meant I had to have got out of the car, even though I couldn’t remember doing it.’

  I have a sense of heads nodding, following the argument.

  ‘When I saw that print, I knew I must have killed Peter that day, and blanked it from my mind. I went straight outside to my car, fully expecting to find him in the lock-up box. He wasn’t, of course, and neither was the blanket.’

  No, he was lying on the beach, broken by rocks. Oh God, what if he wasn’t dead? What if he was clinging to life down there, crying for – not me, he wouldn’t cry for me.

  ‘Rachel, are you OK?’

  Skye’s question brings me back to myself a little. I open my eyes and nod. The four officers are all looking at me. Catrin’s eyes are on Callum. His are staring somewhere into the middle distance.

  ‘I do think you should be waiting outside,’ Josh tries.

  I shake my head at him. I’m going nowhere.

  Something has occurred to Skye. ‘Callum, I understand why you’re worried, but there’s nothing in any of that to suggest you killed him.’

  ‘I agree.’ Josh isn’t looking any happier than Skye. ‘If I understand correctly, you don’t actually remember any of this, you just surmised it after you saw the footprint on our system and your missing blanket.’

  Callum’s eyes are fixed on the tabletop now. I cannot share the relief of the officers around me. Neither can Catrin, I see. We both know there’s more to come.

  ‘I went to the beach this afternoon,’ he says. ‘The one where the child’s body would have landed.’

  We wait.

  ‘I found him.’

  I can’t help the sob slipping out. Across the table, Catrin’s face has creased in misery. I think I see her reach out towards me, but then her hand pulls back sharply.

  ‘You found him? He’s on the beach? He’s there still?’ Josh demands.

  Callum lets his head fall forward and back up again. My baby is still on that beach. I try not to see it. Try to make my mind go blank. Those skinny little limbs, that pale, perfect skin.

  Josh is giving instructions to the two constables. ‘We need to get down there. Quick as you can. Call as soon as you find him.’

  ‘Wait.’ Catrin’s face is as white as the walls.

  Josh isn’t having it. ‘No, I’m not waiting any longer. Off you go, both of you. Let me know as soon as you find anything.’

  ‘Be careful,’ Cat
rin calls after them. ‘That cliff is steep enough in the daylight. Take good torches and watch your step.’

  The second the door slams behind them she turns to Callum. ‘What did you see, on the beach? Tell me exactly what you saw.’

  What is she doing? Skye reaches out to take my hand again. Josh clears his throat. ‘I don’t think so. We need to get Rachel back to her family. Catrin, are you OK to stay here until we can get all this stuff processed?’

  Catrin is looking at me now. ‘Trust me,’ she says. ‘Rach, trust me.’

  I nod. It feels like the least I can do, and she faces Callum again. ‘What did you see on the beach?’

  Callum looks at me, as if for permission.

  ‘Go on,’ I tell him.

  ‘I found the blanket pretty quickly,’ he says. ‘It was caught by a rock, just out of reach of the tide. I couldn’t see anything else at first, but as I got closer – I’m sorry, Rachel – I saw his body.’

  I want to be brave. I want to trust Catrin, but the thought of my baby lying at the bottom of a cliff …

  ‘No!’ Catrin slaps her hand down on the table. ‘Tell us what you saw. Not what you think you saw. What did you see?’

  ‘For God’s sake, Catrin!’

  In response, she gets up, strides to him before either officer can stop her, and leans across the table. ‘Did you see clothes? Peter was wearing blue shorts and a yellow-and-white-striped T-shirt when I picked him up. Did you see those?’

  Somehow he holds it together and shakes his head. ‘The clothes weren’t there. I think they must have been ripped off. Catrin, he’s been on a beach in spring for two days. You know what will have happened to him.’

  My baby’s body, at the mercy of every creature flying or crawling or swimming around these islands. I feel a cry building at the base of my throat. There’ll be no holding back, once it reaches the point where I let it go.

  ‘Did you see shoes?’ Catrin is relentless. ‘I’m pretty certain I remember buckled sandals. They wouldn’t have come off his feet easily.’

  He seems to be thinking about it. Did he see brown leather sandals on tiny plump feet?

  ‘What about hair? Peter is blond. His hair looked quite long to me. He looked like he needed a haircut. Did you see hair?’

  ‘I saw enough! I wasn’t about to carry out a frigging autopsy!’

  I’ve pulled away from Skye, wrapped my arms around myself. I’m starting to rock, forwards and backwards, the time-old physical response to grief. Is this her punishment, then? To put me through this?

  She’s kneeling down by Callum’s side, has reached up to take his face between her hands. I think he’s trying to pull away. She won’t let him.

  ‘Tell me what you saw. Rachel can deal with it. She’s tougher than she looks.’

  I doubt that. I’m hanging on by a thread here.

  ‘Ribs, a skull, a spine. What looked like fingers. That’s all I could bear to look at. I saw those and I came away.’

  ‘Skeletonized, or still with flesh attached?’

  He’s almost sobbing now. She’s tormenting him, as well as me. ‘Mainly skeletonized. Some flesh, but there were birds feeding on it as I approached. There was very little left.’

  Catrin gives a heavy sigh, then stretches up, bends over and drops a kiss on his forehead. I can’t believe what I’m seeing. I knew she hated me but …

  ‘You saw a seal, you idiot,’ she says.

  ‘What?’ say Josh and Skye simultaneously.

  She straightens up. ‘South American fur seal, at a guess. The young adults are a very similar size to small human children.’ She looks round, towards the door. ‘I can show you. Let me fire up the computer and I’ll show you a seal skeleton.’

  Josh and Skye are staring at each other. Callum can’t take his eyes off Catrin. I simply can’t allow myself to think. Without waiting for permission, Catrin leaves the room. Josh motions for Skye to follow her. I go too. Behind us Callum and Josh bring up the rear.

  Everything seems to be happening in slow motion now. For me, anyway. I focus on the back of Catrin’s head. She’s switched on a desktop computer and entered log-in details and password.

  ‘You did drive up to Port Pleasant that day.’ She raises her voice so that Callum will hear her. ‘Early evening, around six thirty p.m. I heard your engine first, then I saw you.’

  We form a semicircle around Catrin. All eyes are on the screen, but Josh and Skye make sure to keep between Callum and me.

  ‘Around six thirty on third November, you can confirm that Mr Murray drove up to the cliff above Port Pleasant?’ Josh says.

  ‘About that time, yes.’ She’s distracted, searching through databases. She enters something into the search engine but types too quickly for me to read it. ‘He stayed for around thirty minutes. Most of the time he was in his vehicle, but he got out and walked to the clifftop at one point.’ She turns to Callum. ‘You had me worried for a second. You came very close to the edge.’

  ‘Was he carrying anything?’ Josh demands. ‘Did he have anything with him?’

  She’s flicking from one image to the next. ‘Not a thing. He was wearing a faded denim jacket and jeans. Blue and brown scarf around his neck. Not what he’d been wearing earlier in the day. I remember wondering why he’d changed.’

  ‘Did I see you?’ Callum asks her.

  She shakes her head. ‘I was below, watching you through the hatch. I didn’t take my eyes off you, though, all the time you were there. I was just about to come on deck and wave when you turned round, got into your car and drove away.’

  ‘I did it later then.’

  ‘You did come back later.’ She nods sharply in agreement. ‘Much later. The next morning. I watched you park, get out and walk to the edge again. This time you had that blanket wrapped around your shoulders. I don’t blame you. It was a very cold dawn. You watched me get arrested and taken on to the other boat.’

  He’s nodding. ‘I remember that. The flashback was over by then. Had been for several hours. I’d been up all night.’

  ‘You did look a bit rough. Before the police boat arrived, I was watching you through the binoculars.’

  ‘Did anyone else see him?’ Josh asks. ‘Any of the arresting officers?’

  ‘Possibly, but I think their attention was mainly on me. I tell you what I did see, though, just before they made me go below deck on the police boat.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I saw you turn round and walk back towards your car. And I saw the blanket blow away from you, up into the air, and then down towards the bottom of the cliff.’

  He’s shaking his head, not daring to believe what she’s telling him.

  ‘You didn’t even notice, did you? All you were thinking about was me. There you go.’

  She enlarges the image on the screen. We are all staring at the skeleton of a South American fur seal. About a hundred centimetres long, unmistakably a seal.

  ‘Catrin, I really don’t—’ Josh begins.

  ‘It wouldn’t be whole and complete, like this one.’ She raises her voice to make her point, keep our attention. ‘It will have been mauled by scavengers. Callum, on the beach today, you saw the blanket and that confirmed your worst fears. Then you saw a ribcage, very similar to that of a human child. You saw parts of the spine, again virtually indistinguishable, maybe part of the skull. Even the bones of the flippers could look like those of a human hand to someone not quite in his right mind. But now you know you didn’t throw the blanket, there’s no reason to think you threw the child.’

  Faces around me look far from convinced. I want to be convinced, but …

  Catrin has turned away from the computer now, is looking directly at Callum. ‘All the time you were on that clifftop, I was watching. You didn’t throw Peter off. You didn’t kill Peter.’

  ‘So who the hell did?’

  They both look at me. I shake my head. I didn’t kill him. I don’t know who did. Three of us looking at each other now. It is as though t
he two police officers have ceased to exist. Callum speaks first.

  ‘He disappeared in what – fifteen minutes? Both Catrin and I were outside your house then. Three cars on that road in that time? Not possible.’

  ‘I didn’t see him,’ I say. ‘When I ran outside, he wasn’t there.’

  ‘Exactly, it must have been me. I’m sorry, Cat, but I’m the only one with time unaccounted for. I’m the only one of us with an established psychiatric condition. I’m the only one with a history of violence against other people.’

  She shakes her head. ‘No.’

  ‘There wasn’t anyone else there.’

  ‘Except his two brothers,’ says Skye in a small voice.

  38

  I’d thought I was numb. How wrong I’d been. I can see my own shock mirrored on the face of my friend. ‘No,’ she says again.

  Callum isn’t going to hand over guilt easily. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Skye.’

  ‘Five people were on or near the property when Peter vanished.’ Skye is quiet but insistent.

  ‘When you came down to the garden, Rachel, were your two older boys there?’ asks Josh.

  I pretend to think about it. ‘No,’ I say, after a few seconds. ‘They were down on the beach somewhere. They’d talked about going down there to watch the eclipse. They came back up when they heard me calling. They helped me search for Peter.’

  ‘Did you stay together?’

  We didn’t. The second I knew Peter was missing, I went into panic mode, stopped thinking straight. ‘They went back down to the beach, I think,’ I say. ‘I searched the house and the stables. We were separated for about twenty minutes. Then I called the police.’

  Silence. I can’t deal with what I’m seeing on the faces in front of me. ‘They love their brother. They take better care of him than I do. They wouldn’t hurt him.’

  ‘I’m sure they wouldn’t, Rachel.’ Skye takes my hand again. ‘But there could have been an accident. Maybe they felt responsible. Couldn’t bring themselves to tell you.’

  The garden gate. The one Mum has nagged and nagged me about. The cliff path could have been in shadow. ‘I have to get home. I have to talk to them.’

  ‘Are they there? I thought they were with their grandparents.’