Sincerely, Yours

by Charlotte Barnes

  Remember what I said about the police and the letter, won’t you? They won’t find anything on the women; a slip of paper won’t be the thing to break the case.

  Look after yourself, Sarah. Be seeing you.

  Sincerely, yours –

  18

  2014

  It had been two years since that second letter, but I carried the memory of it still. It had arrived a week after they found the sixth victim, and I didn’t talk to anyone for four days, not even Madison. It took me a while to decide what I would do with it. I’d never told anyone about the first that he’d sent. Telling people about the second would have opened up questions that I didn’t have answers for.

  The letter had been hand-delivered, like the first, to Madison’s house; the same address I’d been registered to since Mum had died, although I’d been living in student accommodation for most of that year. Madison set it to one side for me: ‘Stamped but not franked. You should steam that off.’ I’d known from the handwriting. But I’d learnt to keep a better poker face than most. I joked about her stinginess and kept the letter until I was alone. Lifting the lip of the envelope and unfolding the paper felt like an act of intimacy, and I’d hated it. I’d stashed the words back inside their casing and sandwiched that between the pages of a book, to make a pressed confession of it. He’d set a precedent in writing twice. When he told me he’d kill again, I believed he’d write again, too.

  The job at the paper was everything I’d wanted it to be. I started every morning with a bulletin in my email inbox, compiled mostly by members of the team. They sent over ideas, police reports and rumours, and then I was free to launch myself into which ones were worth covering and which weren’t. I quickly struck up connections with crime reporters in the surrounding areas, too, including smaller print papers in the city and one or two new connections a few cities over.

  ‘You’re making contacts already?’ Marcus asked during a team meeting.

  ‘I’ve got a friendly face,’ I replied, with the most deadpan expression I could muster. ‘It’ll help to know what’s happening elsewhere in the city, to make sure we’re covering everything. Outside of the city is just a bonus.’

  ‘Okay. Next.’

  It had only been a few weeks but Marcus had already taken to leaving me to my own devices. I’d only had one word of caution after I had allowed an intern to put together a small piece on the statistics of violent crime in the area: ‘Remember our readership, Sarah. Sometimes grisly doesn’t sell.’ But, despite what Marcus might have believed about the paper’s audience, there hadn’t been any complaints. In my experience of writing, violence sold well.

  When I powered down at the end of my second Saturday, I hit the speed dial key for Madison’s number to talk to her on the way home.

  She answered on the third ring. ‘Darling girl, I thought I’d lost you.’

  I laughed. ‘I’m sorry. It’s been so busy, Mad, that’s all.’

  ‘Are you happy?’

  ‘Straight to the point.’ I crossed the road to avoid a man head and shoulders taller than me with his face hunched out of view. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘That isn’t what I asked.’

  From the background I heard the murmur of another voice. ‘Hey, are you busy?’

  ‘I’ve got a friend over. I can talk, darling girl, I’m fine to talk.’ She lowered her voice. ‘I’ve been thinking, what with the anniversary coming up…’

  I’d lost count of the people who’d tried to have this conversation with me. Madison had been the first, two weeks ago via a text message that I’d ignored. Landon brought it up most often out of them all, but at least I knew he had his reasons. After our lunch together we decided to hang fire on a formal interview until the week of the anniversary. It was a callous suggestion on his part but also a completely understandable one. Besides, it was easier to make business out of Mum’s death than it was to make a reality of it.

  ‘…what do you think?’

  I’d completely missed her idea but, ‘If that’s what you want.’ I fumbled in my coat pocket for my door fob, and then my key. ‘I’m just walking into my building.’

  ‘I’ll stay on the phone.’

  ‘Really, Mad, I’m fine,’ I lied. Unlocking the front door and going into an empty flat still unnerved me, for fear of it not being empty at all. But I’d begged so many phone calls from Jessie in the last two weeks, to avoid this scared loneliness, that I thought it would be a bold move on my part to at least try. ‘Text me tomorrow.’

  ‘Will you reply?’

  ‘Love you.’

  ‘Love you, darling girl.’

  I distracted myself with thoughts of Madison’s company – male, female, romantic or otherwise – while I climbed the stairs to home. The alarm chirped when I opened the front door and I quickly keyed in the digits of the date when Mum and Madison met, to silence it. I slammed the door, bolted the locks, and wedged the key back on the inside hole. The reason was two-fold: I could unlock and leave quickly if I needed to; but no one could force the lock without forcing the keys to drop, and clang, from the inside of the door. Living alone was fine and all, but measures had to be taken.

  I held my breath tight in my chest while I stepped quietly around the flat, opening doors one by one before peering behind them, lest any cartoon villains be folded out of view. My bedroom was the last space I checked. There wasn’t much to look over, though, given that the room comprised of four walls and a bed. I didn’t have a wardrobe. So unless the killer was small enough to origami himself into the drawer of a bedside table, I reasoned I was safe.

  With the overhead light blaring, leaving no corner unlit, I landed heavy on the bed and let go of my breath. The last picture that Madison took of me with Mum was on my bedside table, and I grabbed it for our nightly talk. Every evening I filled her in on the latest adventures around the city, most often detailing small-time crimes and petty thefts.

  ‘I still haven’t found him,’ I said at last, rubbing a thumb over her smile. I can’t believe it’s been four years since I heard you laugh. She was mid-giggle in the image. I could never remember what we’d been laughing over, although I’d spent hours trying to. I set the frame back on the table, weighing down the flattened letters that lived underneath it. I liked to keep everything close. ‘Maybe tomorrow,’ I said, half-speaking to Mum still, but also to myself, as though making the promise into an affirmation. ‘Maybe tomorrow I’ll find him.’

  On my way out of the room I hovered over the light switch, but I decided to leave the space illuminated for later – just in case.

  19

  Eleanor the Intern – her full name around the office – appeared in my peripheral vision. I was halfway through typing a long email to a self-proclaimed super-fan, and I reasoned that Eleanor was a patient enough teenager to wait for me to finish. She cleared her throat three times; the fourth time turned into a full cough. But I was finishing up the final paragraph – about how nice it was to hear from fans, and how it wasn’t at all strange when they went to the effort of tracking down my work email, only I back-spaced to delete that final part – so I raised an eyebrow and carried on. When I hit the send icon I blinked hard, as though clearing my eyes of something, and then turned.

  ‘Thanks for waiting, Eleanor. Did you need me for something?’

  She flashed a sweetheart smile. I wondered whether she was flattered that I knew her name. ‘I’m sorry, Sarah, I know you’re busy.’ I waved the comment away – even though we both knew the truth of it – and her face became more serious then. ‘But there’s a police officer here to see you.’

  There was a shift in my gut somewhere. ‘I’m sorry,’ I looked down at my diary, ‘I don’t think I have anything…’

  ‘No, no, she said you weren’t expecting her.’

  She. ‘Did you get a name, by any chance?’

  ‘DS Brooks. She said you’d remember her.’

  I did remember her; only she’d been DC Brooks when I’d known her. During
the months of putting together notes for Those Who Stay, Brooks had been the only person to return any of my phone calls. We weren’t friends, of course, but she’d never shied away from talking things through with me either. ‘It strikes me that you’re a good person to be on good terms with,’ she said once during a telephone interview, and I thought the same about her. I suppose we’d both had our reasons. After the second lot of murders had taken place, though, I’d pestered different police stations, different officers. Brooks and I hadn’t had enough in common to cover us for any more phone calls.

  ‘I do.’ I pushed myself away from my desk and smoothed down my shirt. ‘Point her in my direction, would you, Eleanor?’

  ‘Sure thing. Tea, while I’m on my travels?’

  I smiled. ‘Did anyone tell you yet how great you are today?’

  Eleanor let out a nervous laugh. ‘You’re the first.’ She disappeared, then, and I found the time to read another email – not a fan this time, just a concerned citizen – before Eleanor reappeared with Brooks lingering behind her. ‘I’ll just grab your drinks,’ Eleanor said, as she stepped aside to let the officer into the room.

  I stood and extended a hand. ‘Detective Sergeant Brooks.’ I leaned on the sergeant. ‘You’ve moved up in the world. Take a seat?’ I gestured across the desk, and she landed hard in the visitor’s chair.

  ‘Recent promotion.’ She looked awkward at the mention of it. ‘You haven’t done too bad yourself, though, Sarah. Crime reporter at The Herald. How did that happen?’

  I shrugged. ‘It was something I was quietly working towards.’

  ‘I would have thought this was the last place you’d want to be.’

  ‘The city, or the crime desk of a newspaper?’

  ‘Both, maybe. But you’re happy here? It’s early days, I know.’

  ‘I’m comfortable enough. How about you? You’re happy at work?’ She threw me a quizzical look. ‘I thought, if we were making small talk, it was only right for me to ask. You’ll have to forgive me, I can’t remember what your home situation was. Partner, kids, cat?’

  Brooks laughed. ‘Okay, Sarah, you’ve got me. I have good reason for being here.’

  ‘Colour me shocked.’

  ‘It’s been nearly two years.’

  ‘It’s been nearly four,’ I corrected her. ‘But go on.’

  ‘I mean, since the last… We have no reason to think he’ll hit this city again. It might be that he doesn’t attack anyone, at all, this time around. But it would be remiss if we didn’t check in with you, given that you’re working here full-time now, and living alone.’

  ‘How do you– Do you know what, never mind. You’re the police. I guess it’s your job to know these things. It hasn’t escaped my attention, though, and I know there’s no need for me to get complacent with my safety. I promise that if I see him about to kill someone, this time I’ll call on the right side of the crime.’

  ‘Sarah, I–’

  ‘I know. You didn’t mean to cause offence.’ An awkward beat of something passed between us. ‘DS Brooks, can we be balls on the table honest?’

  She looked taken aback by the phrasing. ‘It’ll make life easier.’

  ‘I really don’t think I’m in any danger, whether he hits the city again or not. He’s had ample opportunity in the last four years to make himself known to me and he hasn’t.’ My stomach let out a hungry moan, as though reacting to the lie. ‘He would have said by now, don’t you think, if he were going to be a danger to me?’ Even I couldn’t tell whether it was gutsy rhetoric on my part or whether I was actually asking for reassurance.

  She looked like she was weighing the options up.

  ‘But, to set your mind at ease, I’m very careful, all the time. I’d explain the security measures of my building, but it sounds like you may already know them. I work all the hours that God sends, in an equally secure building. When I’m not working, I’m usually fencing phone calls from friends to let them know I’m okay. Honestly, this man started and finished with me the night he killed Mum.’

  But she didn’t look convinced. ‘Okay, Sarah.’ She pushed up from her seat. ‘You know where I am if you need anything, though, okay? That’s all I really wanted to remind you of.’

  ‘Does that include an interview?’ I asked and she smirked. ‘If he happens to wind up back in the city for any reason, and you happen to be the big chief that cracks the case.’ Her smirk cracked into a laugh then. ‘I’m serious, DS Brooks, you’re on the frontline of all this if he does end up back here.’

  ‘Which you’re certain he won’t.’

  ‘But you think that he might,’ I tried, and from the shift in her expression I could see I was right. It had been a half-guess, based on her unscheduled visit to me at work. Something must have set her on edge, though, I reasoned; I just didn’t know what. ‘Is this all to do with the anniversary, or is there more to this?’

  ‘Are you asking as a crime reporter?’

  ‘No,’ I snapped, ‘I’m asking as the only surviving witness to an unsolved murder.’

  She rubbed at the back of her neck and dropped her eyes. ‘Sarah, when the anniversary of a crime is coming up, all sorts of crazies come pouring out of the woodwork.’

  ‘It’s a good job you were on hand to tell me that because otherwise…’

  ‘Fair point. But I more meant that whatever evidence we think we’ve come by in the last few weeks, it could be nothing at all to do with the crimes themselves and everything to do with the time of year.’

  ‘So there is evidence?’ I latched on. Brooks rolled her eyes. ‘Come on, who are you worried about? Laing?’

  ‘Laing doesn’t know I’m here.’

  ‘Oh.’ I stood and stepped around my desk to close the gap between us. ‘So, you’re secretly looking out for my well-being nowadays?’

  ‘I didn’t say that. I just said Laing doesn’t know I’m here.’ She took a step back as though to put a healthier space between us. ‘I wanted to touch base with you before the anniversary. There is a lot of talk between police stations and teams at the minute. Everyone is on high alert for anything that might happen. You don’t– Sarah, you don’t have to trust us all the way because I know we’re likely not your favourite people, but you need to know we’re here for you. I’ll tell you as much as I can, but it has to work both ways, you understand?’

  Like a guilty teen, my knee-jerk reaction was to ask her what she knew. But I bit back on the panic and only agreed. ‘Of course. It has to work both ways.’ Then, when she back-stepped again, I added, ‘So, what can you tell me?’

  It brought a smile, at least, which cracked the growing tension. ‘I wish we could part ways on something substantial but there really isn’t anything out of the ordinary, given the time of year. We’ve honestly got nothing more than breathy phone calls and boastful letters.’

  ‘Letters?’ I tried to sound neutral. ‘People are writing to you?’

  She shook her head. ‘It’s crap, Sarah, really it is. There’s nothing to suggest any of these letters are worth a stamp.’

  I formed a tight O with my lips and exhaled slowly, to make a show of steadying myself.

  ‘Some of them are horrifically detailed but grossly inaccurate; some of them read as bonkers but mad polite.’

  The breath froze on its way out of me.

  ‘“I knew I’d do it again,”’ she mimicked, ‘“and there’ll be more to come still. Yours sincerely,” yada, yada.’

  ‘Yours sincerely?’ I asked. ‘You’re certain?’

  Brooks looked questioning again. ‘I’m certain of “yours sincerely”?’

  I tried to edit my enthusiasm, or at the very least direct it towards the right thing. ‘You’re certain there’s nothing to them, I meant.’

  ‘Sarah,’ she took on a tone that was somehow both friendly and patronising, ‘here’s how I think of it. If a killer got away with six murders, how likely is it that he’d go ahead and send a letter to the police that are hunting him?’ />
  Seconds rolled by and I sensed she was waiting for an answer. But I only shrugged, and thought, Maybe as likely as he is to go ahead and write to his only living victim…

  20

  ‘“The police found different ways of asking me the same question. I found different ways of not answering. Although I didn’t realise, as a teenager, that this back and forth with the case would be something that I’d carry into adulthood, too. The officers often explained that they were trying their best and I explained their best was never good enough. It was unreasonable of me. But the left behind relatives of murder victims tend to be unreasonable in lots of ways that I came to learn – from my own behaviours, that is, and from the behaviours of the kind individuals who I spent time with throughout the makings of this book. All of us have suffered a violence that, no matter the police work, isn’t something to be detained and taken away from us. For the rest of our lives we’ll live with the absence of the person who was murdered. If the man responsible was caged, somehow, I’m sure we’d all sleep a little easier. But it wouldn’t fill the spare room, or the other side of the bed – or the empty space in graduation photographs that Mum should have been in.”’ I took a deliberate pause to mark the end of the reading, and then flicked through the pages of my well-worn book to look for the next sticky note.

  ‘I’ll read something from later in the book, too, if that’s okay?’

  ‘Please do,’ Landon answered. He leaned back in his chair as though preparing himself for a perverse story-time.

  I cracked the spine a little further and spread the pages. ‘“Mum was a riot. I know that a lot of people say that about people they love, but she really was. She’d love to know that I’m describing her like that, too. She spent most of her life trying to be the soul of a room and it wasn’t until she was gone that I realised the extent to which she’d managed that. Madison and I often talk, even now, about the space in a room. We don’t mean it in a physical way either; metaphysical, maybe. It’s easy to imagine, still, how Mum might howl with laughter or cry with empathy; the inappropriate joke she’d tell at exactly the right time, or the way in which she’d waltz in with more food, wine and cheer than necessary (and that wasn’t a Christmas thing, but an any-excuse thing). For the man who did this, he was acting on an urge. He saw something – or rather, someone – who he wanted, and he went out of his way to take that person. For those left behind, though, that is, for those of us who stayed, he took away so much more.”’