The Brighton Mermaid

by Koomson, Dorothy

  ‘Why would I regret anything?’

  He looks at me as though I am being deliberately obtuse; like there is something I am going out of my way to avoid.

  ‘I don’t know, I just …’

  ‘Are you regretting it?’ I ask when he stops mid-sentence. ‘I mean, is this you needing to get a look at me with my clothes on just in case it might change your mind about not wanting to see me with my clothes off again?’

  ‘Erm, no. The other way around, actually.’

  I make a confused face. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I’m bright and all, I have a degree and a masters degree, but right now I am completely confounded. You’re going to have to spell it out for me.’

  Zach sips his wine, then takes a big slug of whisky, almost emptying the glass, and looks directly at me. ‘You were very drunk for most of the night we met. You’d sobered up by the time you left on the Saturday morning, but I’ve been wondering ever since if your initial reluctance to call me meant you weren’t as interested in me as I am in you. And if you kind of felt you had to get in touch out of guilt.’

  Ah, I see .

  ‘So, I wanted to meet up and check in, I suppose. See if you were actually interested or if you’d gone back to not being that keen. I wanted to see if you might be interested in me beyond sex – And now I hear myself talking, I can also hear all my mates laughing at how sincere and earnest I sound.’

  ‘Ahhh, who cares what a bunch of your imaginary mates think?’ I say with a laugh. I put down my glass, which I have been gulping from since he started his confession. I reach across the table and touch his fingertips with mine. ‘I was being … odd that morning. I do that because it’s very effective at keeping people at a distance. It’s a bit of a habit. But I like you. I like you a lot.’

  ‘Even though I look like this?’ he replies.

  Zach levels his gaze at me across the table and I look right back at him. I completely understand now. What he’s worried about, why he wanted me to see him in a non-sexual situation – he wants to know if I accept him for who he is without hair, without eyebrows, without eyelashes, before this goes any further. He is worried that it will bother me so he is giving me a way out.

  ‘What do you look like?’ I reply. ‘Apart from handsome in all the right places, of course.’

  He smiles, relieved, slightly elated, I think. The excitement I felt before comes stampeding in again. I want to be alone with him. Not only for the physical stuff, but so we can talk and laugh and cuddle.

  ‘You’re just saying that to get me into bed,’ he says.

  ‘No, I’m not,’ I reply.

  ‘Oh. Why not?’

  I grin at him.

  ‘Your place or mine?’ Zach asks.

  ‘Yours is nearer.’

  ‘I like the way you think, Nell, I really do.’

  Bleep-bleep-bleep , goes my mobile in my pocket.

  The seventh ‘He needs to see you’ message today.

  I’m going to have to talk to him soon. But not right now, not just yet. I shove those five words to the back of my mind and concentrate on who I came out for instead.

  2007

  Nell

  Saturday, 2 June

  I saw him from quite a way away, leaning on the back of a bench on the seafront, as if he was waiting for someone. Me, of course. I never worked out how he knew where I was going to be so he could wait for me, but he did it constantly.

  John Pope.

  It’d taken six months for the case against Ralph Knowles, the man who’d been arrested for the so-called Mermaid Murders, to collapse. The papers said it was lack of evidence, but I always suspected something else had happened. Something so big they couldn’t report it without making the police force look bad. I’d had to go and see if I recognised him, if I had seen him on the seafront the night I found the Brighton Mermaid, and they’d all sighed dramatically in disappointment when I hadn’t picked him out.

  I had been terrified when we first heard the news about the case being dropped. I’d thought they’d reset their sights on Dad, and hell would start up again. But they hadn’t come back, hadn’t followed up anything. Simply left us to it.

  Except for John Pope. He hadn’t gone away.

  He’d started stalking us again, following us, turning up ‘for a little chat’, reminding me that he thought my dad was a pervert and killer. No matter how many complaints we made, how many harassment orders my dad’s solicitor tried to take out against Pope personally, he hadn’t stopped. He hadn’t stopped until he had poisoned Brighton and Hove for Dad and Mum. When I went to university, they’d sold their house and moved to Herstmonceux (also known as ‘the middle of nowhere’). Dad had shut all his shops, three of them permanently, including the Hove one. That had been his favourite (his first one). But that had been the one that was also subject to the most vandalism. The other three shops he’d kept closed for six months and then had reopened them with different names and different staff, and paid someone to manage them so he wouldn’t be associated with them on a day-to-day basis.

  When they’d moved to Herstmonceux, Mum had started work in a nursing home. Macy, who’d always been more popular than me, hadn’t seemed that bothered about leaving her friends behind. She’d still bitten her nails, chewed her lips and wrung her hands, but she had made new friends in the new area, and seemed to have a full timetable of activities to occupy her time. We had all, in our ways, moved on. Settled on a new life; tried to put all that stuff behind us.

  Except I couldn’t because John Pope was still around.

  The only time I had really been free of Pope was when I was at university and came back to stay at my parents’ house. Otherwise he was always there. Haunting me, hunting me, it felt like sometimes.

  He was dressed in dark clothes, his blond hair had greyed and he was thinner, meaner-looking if that was possible.

  ‘Hello, Nell.’

  I stopped, a little thrown – he’d never called me Nell before. Usually it was ‘you’ or ‘Miss Okorie’. Never Nell.

  ‘What do you want?’ I asked without looking at him when he didn’t speak again.

  ‘I’d like to talk to you,’ he replied, as though he was talking to a human being, not the lower life form he’d always made it clear he thought I was. ‘I’d like us to talk without animosity.’

  He was clever, manipulative – what he’d just said had neatly rewritten our history to make out that I had been as awful to him as he had been to me. ‘What about?’ I asked.

  His face was impassive, almost friendly. ‘I just want to talk. Please.’ He indicated to the bench with his hand. Softened his voice to say, ‘Please, just sit with me a moment. Please.’

  I sat on the edge of the right-hand side of the bench, facing the sea.

  Rather than sit at the other end, he lowered himself in the middle, too close for me not to be aware of the shape of him, the reality of his presence.

  ‘What do you want?’ I asked when he continued to remain silent.

  ‘I … I … I need to apologise.’

  I froze.

  ‘I was wrong,’ he said. ‘I behaved abominably. I was so blinkered, so desperate to get a result, I forgot that there were people behind it. People who have suffered all these years … because of me.’

  I listened to him speak, apologise, humanise my family in a way he never had. I listened to him say the words none of us ever thought we’d hear.

  ‘Go fuck yourself ,’ I said in my head, because everything he said was fake; every word reverberated with an insincerity that reached far, far out to sea.

  ‘You were finally sacked, weren’t you?’ I said out loud. That was the only reason why he would be doing this. There was no way he would be sitting here with me, calling me Nell, apologising, if he still had the authority of the police force behind him. ‘You finally harassed the wrong person, someone they couldn’t ignore, and they got rid of you.’

  ‘Yes,’ Pope eventually admitted. ‘I lost my job. But that’s not why
I’m here.’

  ‘No,’ I said sarcastically, ‘of course it isn’t.’

  ‘How could you forget about her, Nell?’ he asked.

  ‘Forget about who?’

  ‘Your friend, Judana. How could you forget about her? And the other girl, the Brighton Mermaid? How could you carry on with your life as if they never existed?’

  ‘I’ve never done that,’ I said, appalled that he could ever think that. ‘I’ve never forgotten them – I think about them every day. Both of them. They’re the first thing that comes to mind in the morning, and the last thing I think about at night. I’ve never forgotten about them.’

  ‘But you haven’t done anything to find them.’

  ‘What am I supposed to do? For years you’ve had all the police computers and databases and contacts and you couldn’t solve anything. How am I supposed to?’

  ‘Have you tried?’

  Had I tried? I used to go to the library to photocopy posters of Jude saying she was missing, saying there was a reward for any information leading to the discovery of her whereabouts. Those were the words I had used, as well. It had made the posters sound serious, as if an adult had done them.

  I would buy newspapers and check the small ads to see if Jude had somehow left me a message because we’d both loved the film Desperately Seeking Susan and I thought she might try to contact me that way.

  When I first had access to the Internet, and I heard people saying you could find anyone and anything on there, I looked up Jude. I put in her name. I put in her general description. There were so many different search engines back then, and I put her name and description into all of them. Then I would put things in about the Brighton Mermaid, missing black girls, missing girls. All of it gave me nothing.

  I had tried, but I had got nowhere. ‘Yes, I’ve tried.’

  ‘How hard?’

  ‘What is it that you want?’

  ‘I’ll level with you, Nell. There were several things about the Mermaid Murders that were never made known to the public.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Such as Ralph Knowles, the man we had in custody, had a rock-solid alibi for the night the Brighton Mermaid was killed.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We had to unofficially unlink the first murder from the others because there were so many things that didn’t match. We thought at the time that the later murders began as a copycat. He got the idea from the Brighton Mermaid but didn’t know enough to copy it completely. And because they became so notorious, the original murderer backed off.’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ I said.

  He inhaled deeply through his nose, a flash of anger firing across his face that he quickly hid away. ‘I shouldn’t tell you any of this, but the Brighton Mermaid was probably strangled by someone wearing gloves, as no fingerprints showed up. With the others, someone used an item of clothing instead. The others were all slightly younger, and they all showed ligature marks around their wrists and ankles, meaning they’d been tied up for quite some time before death. And then, of course, Knowles was in police cells in York the night the Brighton Mermaid was killed. He’d been brawling in a pub.’

  I frowned. ‘So you think he killed all of the others but not the woman I found?’

  ‘Correct. Except for the Brighton Mermaid, he was in the area where each of those women were murdered around the time of their deaths.’

  ‘Why didn’t he get convicted of those murders? All they ever said in the papers was that the case collapsed due to lack of evidence.’

  John Pope looked uncomfortable. Was it something to do with him? Was it his fault? ‘There was some incorrect handling of the forensic evidence at the time and his solicitor made a big deal of his alibi for the Brighton Mermaid killing. It was clear he had done it: as soon as he was released and he left the area, the killings of other … black girls stopped. There was nothing we could do to get him, but he left the area and he knew wherever he went the police would be watching him. We still want to get him, but we’ll have to wait for more evidence to be found.’

  I was reeling but didn’t show it. So they weren’t linked. The other mermaids weren’t really mermaids like the first one, who was only called that because of her tattoo. And there was someone out there who had killed the poor woman I found and inspired another killer while getting away with murder. The thought of that made me feel sick and scared. How many of these evil people were out there?

  ‘You still haven’t told me what you want,’ I said. ‘After all this time, what has any of this got to do with me?’

  ‘We know Ralph Knowles killed the other girls, but with the Brighton Mermaid, with your friend … They are still open cases and they are linked, I know they are.’

  ‘No one else thinks they’re linked, do they?’ I replied. ‘It’s only you who is hanging on to this.’

  ‘I thought you might be, too, Nell. Since she was your friend. And you found the other girl.’

  He knew how to get to me.

  ‘Why do you care so much? It’s not as if you like or have any respect for black women or girls.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ he said without any conviction behind his words. ‘Everyone is equal in the eyes of the law. And everyone deserves justice. The Brighton Mermaid and your friend deserve justice. And if you were right and I didn’t care, shouldn’t you at least care about what happened to them?’

  ‘What is it that you want?’

  ‘I want you to work with me. I still have some friends on the force – I’m sure a few of them will help me out with data searches. But I need … You wouldn’t even have to do much, Nell.’

  ‘What does this not much entail?’

  ‘I’ll admit it, I thought your father was involved – more than involved, I thought he was guilty. That he had taken your friend, that he might have harmed those other women. But that’s always been because I haven’t been able to prove conclusively that he wasn’t involved.’ You can’t prove a negative; Dad had taught Jude and me that when he helped us with our science homework. You can’t prove something isn’t there.

  ‘You, Nell, can help me to prove that he wasn’t involved.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Search your parents’ house for any clues. We’ve never had access to their new house, so you’d be searching it for the first time. Look for something out of the ordinary, something that doesn’t fit. You may find something that will help us eliminate your father from our investigation. Once we know conclusively that he had nothing to do with your friend disappearing, we can move on. We can find out who else is out there that could have done it.’

  I let him speak: he was almost giddy with excitement at the idea that what he was saying might have got through to me. That I was so stupid that I wouldn’t realise I couldn’t find him the vital clue to show my dad was innocent, and that any ‘clue’ I did find would only prove the opposite.

  John Pope had no idea what his vendetta had done to our family. We’d lost the ability to be with each other. To just be in the same space and not have to think about anything. What Pope had done had sliced away pieces of my father’s soul, leaving him diminished. He was still him – he had the same stature and deep, commanding voice. But he was also fretful in quiet moments, distant where before he had been engaged.

  What Pope had done had broken my mother. As an adult I understood, now, what had happened to her. When I was fifteen, I had thought it was the shock of Dad being arrested and rearrested and rearrested that had done it. It wasn’t simply that, though. I could see now that Mum had been ‘good’ and polite and had kept away from trouble her whole life. She’d experienced racism and prejudice but she – like the rest of us people of colour – had been lied to, had been sold the promise that good behaviour, obedience, never causing trouble or fighting too hard for your rights, would keep you safe, keep you protected. That promise had been broken in the most violent, pugnacious and cruel way, and Mum had never fully recovered from that trauma.

  Thanks to John
Pope, I had lost my father and I’d lost my mother. And he thought I would join him in starting that up again? He thought I would search their house and break their trust and as good as tell them I thought Dad was guilty?

  I looked him over. Had he ever been a good man? I knew everyone had some good in them – that’s what makes us human, what makes people able to say ‘well, he was kind to animals’ about murderers. But was Pope? Was he ever a good man? Could he even be called a man? Physically, biologically, yes. But everything else that came with being a man – decency, compassion, empathy, strength – seemed lacking in him. Had it ever actually existed?

  ‘I can’t help you,’ I said. ‘My dad had nothing to do with Jude disappearing or the Brighton Mermaid being killed. I’m not going to search their house. I can’t. I won’t .’

  He exhaled deeply and loudly in exasperation. ‘Fine . Have it your way,’ he said nastily.

  The hateful scar-faced policeman was back. His voice, that tone, pulled me back through time to the room he’d questioned us in. Dirty girls. Dirty little sluts . I hated that he could do that to me, that he could still make me feel like that. I know most people would expect me to have got over it, would think I was playing the victim by not simply removing it from my mind, but somehow, some way, it had stuck. It had scored itself deep into my mind and I could never completely shake it off.

  ‘I’ll have to see if your darling little sister will help me instead. She was always far more cooperative anyway.’

  It felt, for a moment, that my heart had stopped. The blood seemed not to flow in my chest. If he went near Macy I would lose her like I’d lost Mum and Dad. In many ways Macy was brave and strong, but she was also always on the cusp of self-harming. I had seen the thin faint lines that scored her upper arms; I had noticed the way she had to work hard to stop herself constantly washing her hands. She didn’t realise that I knew she had many, many little rituals and habits that helped her to believe she could control her world. Pope had done that. He had brought all that chaos and trauma into our lives on a regular basis, and now he was threatening to do it again because he couldn’t get what he wanted from me.