The Girl on the Pier

by Paul Tomkins

  In this pause she checks the time; at first trying to slyly glance at her watch, but finds it fallen halfway around her wrist. As she straightens it the intention becomes obvious. “Look, I best be going. I… well, y’know, it’s getting late.”

  “I’ll walk you back to the Metropole,” I say, finally presented with an obvious line.

  “No, please don’t,” she snaps. “I’ll be fine. Really.”

  And with a sharp “Bye” she turns and heads towards the door. I sit shellshocked, staring at my half-finished drink, at the bubbles ascending the amber liquid. Seconds later I find myself heading outside, walking into a swirl of noise and colour, trying frantically to pick out one particular head further along the crowded, chaotic walkway, as Black tries, once again, to walk out of my life.

  FORTY-TWO

  It’s a cough that rattles deep within; vibrating in the lungs and the throat, reverberating through tubes and hollows. David is not looking at all well. He’s really aged these past few months: bags beneath his eyes further inflating, islands of liver spots conjoining on his forehead, final flecks of colour in his hair and beard absorbed by grey. He’s also lost a lot of weight. As we move outside, towards the lake – so that he may smoke – he looks like a man on his way out.

  I’ve aged too. A lack of sleep does that to you. And David has caught me on a day when I fear I shall never sleep again.

  “So where were you last night?” he asks, cigarette clamped between shaking fingers. “I waited down the pub for you.”

  “Oh yeah, sorry about that,” I mumble. “Something came up.”

  “Why did you switch your phone off?”

  “It ran out of battery. Sorry.”

  “Oh,” he says, sounding unconvinced. He gives me a strange look. “How did you get those scratches?” he asks, moving in to study the side of my neck.

  “I got lucky last night,” I note, with a wink. “Say no more,” I add, swiftly shutting down the topic. “So David, what’s this news?”

  “I wanted to give you the heads up that she would be going into today’s nationals. I rushed out to buy them all this morning, a couple have reasonable pieces on it. She’ll be on the local news, too.”

  “Marina?” I ask, momentarily confused.

  “Yes, Marina.”

  “Well, that’s great,” I say.

  “Your work will be famous.”

  “It will, in its way, I suppose. But I won’t, will I?”

  “But at least you do something meaningful.”

  He’s right. But in truth, he doesn’t really understand.

  “What would it mean to you, to have this case finally solved?” I ask, as a swift breeze rustles the foliage, on its way to us.

  “Everything. After all, I’ve nothing else left.”

  “But why her? Why this one? There must be loads of unsolved cases. Why has this one haunted you?”

  “I thought you knew all this? I thought you understood?” He says, disappointment clear in his voice.

  “Yes… and no. I mean, I thought I did. But I didn’t realise just how serious you were. I guess I thought you’d let up at some point. I guess I thought that at some point you’d call it a day.”

  “No, Patrick. Never. Never. When you’re young, you’re confused as to the meaning of life,” he laughs, ironically, “… as if there actually is one. But I’m not going to be around forever. And the older I get, the greater the sense of incompletion.” He reaches for another cigarette, hacking almost to the point of choking as he lights up, then dragging the bile back down with the smoke. “I have regrets, but I can live with those. I just can’t stand the thought of this never being resolved. When I’m gone, my regrets won’t matter. But she will.”

  “But that still doesn’t explain why this one case in particular?”

  “She spanned my whole career. And I always saw her as an innocent. Not that we can be certain that she was entirely blameless, or pure and wholesome.”

  “What if she wasn’t?” I ask.

  “Wasn’t what?”

  “Blameless.”

  “She still wouldn’t have deserved that,” he says, with a stern look.

  “But would it still mean as much to you?”

  “Who knows? But it’s just what I’ve always felt. This girl – you can put your own story onto her, can’t you? The less you know about someone, the more personal you can make their story. Especially if they’re unable to disagree, and set you straight.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “I have another bit of news,” he says, flooded with adrenaline. “I tracked down Black’s photography tutor. Spoke to her on the phone late last night.”

  “You did?”

  “Finally someone who remembers her, Patrick!”

  “That’s amazing, David. What did she say?”

  “The last she heard she was in Canada – Black, I mean. She sent a postcard after a year or so abroad, saying that she wasn’t coming back. So there you have it.”

  “Have what?”

  “The reason why you haven’t been able to find her. She’s been across the Atlantic all this time.”

  “Incredible,” I say, trying to sound enthusiastic. “What a momentous day this is.”

  “Her tutor gave me an address. You can finally get in touch. Assuming she hasn’t moved in the meantime. But still, even if she has, it’ll be a start.”

  “Has there been any news on Marina yet, since going into the papers?” I ask, eager to change the topic. “Anyone recognise her?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’m stopping in at HQ on the way home. If I can walk that far, that is.”

  “I’d offer to help you, but I’ve got lots to sort today.”

  “No worries,” he says, shifting his walking stick to his other hand, redistributing his weight with a groan.

  “I’m getting too old for this,” he eventually adds.

  “Too old for what?”

  “Life,” he says, wearily.

  FORTY-THREE

  Mid-evening: unusually late for David to stop by; and even rarer, a second visit on the same day. I open the door expecting a salesperson, but there he is, stood on the garden path, one side of his face bathed in the light of the low sun. Unusually, he looks me directly in the eye as he asks to come in. Clearly, something is on his mind. This isn’t his typical casual visit.

  He quickly takes a seat in the living room, leans forward with intent. Never one for small talk, he’s now skipping even basic formalities.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “Developments.”

  “Really?”

  “She’s been identified,” he says, standing to remove his thin grey jacket. “Marina,” he adds, more forcefully, settling back into the chair.

  “You don’t sound excited?” I note, even though he is clearly agitated; the tone failing to match his body language.

  “Nothing’s ever straightforward, is it?”

  “What’s the problem?” I ask, nervousness rattling my voice.

  “There’s something that really doesn’t make sense to me. Either it’s the biggest coincidence in the world, or…”.

  “Or what?”

  “Or something is very wrong.”

  “Oh, I see,” I mumble. “Want a drink?”

  “Don’t you want to hear what I’ve got to say?”

  “Of course. But can’t we discuss it over a drink?”

  “Whisky,” he says, curtly. “Although I might as well smoke, while we’re at it,” he adds, picking up his jacket and walking through to the study, then out through the French doors, onto the wooden veranda. He sits in one of the two rocking chairs, lights up. I bring out the drinks, placing them on the low garden table.

  Once again he looks me deep in the eye, as I sit opposite. “This is big, Patrick. Huge. And the thing is, you know.”

  “Know?”

  “Her. Marina. Or, should I say, Genevieve Frazer,” he says, tapping ash onto the floor.

  At last, my chance to
do the decent thing.

  “Genevieve? You’re kidding me?”

  “She lived here, with you, at this cottage. At this cottage! How could you not tell me about her?”

  “Tell you what? She’d run away! That was what everyone thought. She wasn’t even in Brighton at the time. She was in Derbyshire. Who says it’s her?”

  “This guy came forward, Darren Atkins. Says he recognised her as soon as he saw her in the paper. They were planning to run away together, but she didn’t make their rendezvous in London. He assumed she’d got cold feet. He had a picture of them together, decades ago. It’s the spitting image of your reconstruction.”

  “Him?” I splutter. “He said that? He can’t be trusted. I saw him raping her, out by the lake. I saw it, as a kid! If it is her, then I bet he’s responsible. Seriously.”

  “But why would he get involved now?” he asks. “Why not stay quiet? It just doesn’t make sense.”

  “Don’t they do that? To see what you have on them? To get a thrill? You told me you had to be wary of anyone who inserts themselves into an investigation.”

  “Maybe. But rarely after this long. If they get that far away from a crime, they usually want to stay away. Especially if they’re grown up, with a family, and so on.”

  “Maybe guilt has forced his hand?” I say.

  “He seems pretty credible to me. Raped her, you say?”

  “Yeah. A few months before she went missing. Maybe even just a few weeks. But… I was so young, I may have misread it. She was screaming, she looked in distress. But it was dark.”

  “So you’re not hundred percent sure?”

  “Well, no. But it didn’t seem right to me. And she had a black eye the next day.”

  “Here’s the thing I don’t get. You must have recognised her? When modelling the skull. I mean, it must have crossed your mind?”

  “It did. But I thought I was imagining it. I often think I see someone I know in the faces I create. Happens all the time. Maybe I subconsciously reference people from my life when I work. Despite all the scientific accuracy, you still need to draw upon your own experience as to what a face actually looks like, above all that bone.”

  “I suppose so,” he says, his tone non-committal. “How old were you back then?”

  “Ten or eleven,” I say, telling yet more lies.

  He murmurs something I don’t quite catch. Then he says, “Tell me about that French girl, Isabelle.”

  “What has that got to do with anything? I told you all about her some time ago.”

  “Anything you forgot to mention?” he asks, gently rocking back and forth.

  “Such as?”

  “Well, it’s your story, Patrick.”

  “But you’re the one who wants more of it.”

  “Okay, let me put it like this. You just bade each other farewell at the end of that summer?”

  “What are you getting at?” I can hear my tone sound more aggressive than intended.

  “The arrest of a young man – Patrick Clement – in 1985, for the harassment of a young French woman. He was a lucky boy, by the sounds of it, with the charges dropped as she rushed back to France.”

  “It was a misunderstanding. She stopped returning my calls so I went to see her. She wouldn’t let me in, but I had no idea what I’d done wrong, why I was cut off like that. She refused to talk to me, wouldn’t even open the door. I didn’t want to go away until I got an answer. That was all. So I waited. Next thing I know, the police arrived to cart me off.”

  “I’m supposed to take your word on that?” he asks, looking me directly in the eye.

  “I don’t know, David. Why not go ask her as you’re so busy digging into my past? I didn’t do anything wrong. What is this?”

  “Her statement says you were trying to break in.”

  “I was banging on the door to get her attention. Not trying to break it down.”

  “It doesn’t look good, Patrick.”

  “I can’t help how it looks,” I say, exasperated. “I’m just telling you how it is. Was the door broken down?”

  “It didn’t say.”

  “Well then.”

  “I merely said it didn’t say.”

  “But if I had broken the door down, it would have said.”

  “Okay, point taken.” He takes a sip of whisky, runs it around his mouth. “There’s something else. I spoke to your ex-wife. She came to see me this afternoon.”

  “Laura?” I ask, as a reflex, even though I’ve only been married once.

  “Yes.”

  “Why on earth did you speak to her?”

  “I left her a message the other day, when I was still trying to track down Black, and not having any luck. I wanted to know what her take on it was.”

  “Her take on what?”

  “Your… interest,” he says, slipping the word out through lips initially shaped to form an ‘o’ that I imagine to be for ‘obsession’. “Was it as unhealthy as I suspected.”

  “Why did you think it unhealthy?”

  “Laura agrees with me, for what it’s worth.”

  “Well, she’s probably still angry with me. I hurt her. I never meant to, but I hurt her. In many ways.”

  David delves into his jacket pocket and produces his battered old dictaphone. My first thought relates to the number of times I’ve told him that his mobile phone can perform the same task; indeed, I frequently use mine to do that very thing, to help me keep track. I am set to lecture him on the issue when he presses play, and for the first time in years I hear Laura’s sweet, reedy voice, albeit sounding a little more tinny through such a small speaker.

  “For the final few years I’m not sure I believed a single word that came out of his mouth,” she says, although I’m too taken aback with the sound of her voice, and the images it evokes, to clearly take in what she’s saying. “Most of the time I couldn’t prove he was lying, but things just didn’t ring true.”

  “Patrick said you broke up after a big fight?”

  “Our first and last. I’ve still got the two-inch scar.”

  “Was he often like that?” David asks, to the recorded clickand-whoosh of his cigarette lighter. There’s also a rustling, which I imagine to be the denim of Laura’s jeans as she crosses her legs.

  “No, to be honest until then I thought he was harmless – at least in a physical sense. But sometimes when he was stressed he’d disappear for a few days, just take off without warning. He was… erratic. Never violent – at least not until that night. But troubled – I’d say that ‘troubled’ was the best word to describe him. Definitely troubled.”

  “Yet you met when saving his life?”

  “I should have known then – obviously! – that he had some serious issues, but I like to help people. I’m a sucker in that sense. He was so helpless in the hospital. So in need of care.”

  “What did you know about Genevieve?”

  “Genevieve? Who’s she? Another one of his fantasies?”

  “You don’t know?” David audibly coughs. “Did Patrick not talk about his past?”

  “Bits and pieces. He told me about what happened to his mum and dad, which was so tragic, but not much more. It seemed painful, so I didn’t ask.”

  “What about his prior relationships?”

  “He mentioned one or two. Again, he didn’t dwell on them, and I’m not someone who likes to ask too many questions. I figured he’d tell me stuff if he ever felt like it. I don’t know, in some ways he was mysterious, a closed book, and that attracted me. I do recall something about this wonderful summer with a French girl he met in London. I remember feeling quite jealous, as if he was a much more exciting, romantic character in his youth.”

  “I wouldn’t be jealous,” David says, but for some reason doesn’t divulge the details. “The story of losing the baby in Cambridge?”

  “Yes, that happened,” she says, the pain still clear in her voice. “To be honest, he was brilliant that night, and for a short while after. He was so kind a
nd loving, as he could be at times. But then he withdrew into himself, and I felt I couldn’t trust him again.”

  “Patrick told me about how your father came around to get your stuff, after your big fight.”

  There’s an audible gasp; nothing too dramatic, but all the same a clear sound picked up by the sensitive microphone. “My dad was dead,” she says. “He’d died a few years before. So obviously there’s no way he could have done that. I can’t believe he said that! Although, of course, perhaps I can.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I sense David’s face turning to look at mine, but I remain focused on the small machine. I wonder what Laura looks like now? She has re-entered my life merely as a voice, detached from her physical self.

  David continues to question her. “You left without saying goodbye the next morning, I understand?”

  “I think you know by now that you didn’t get the full story. I was going to leave him. And no one leaves Patrick.”

  “And he accidentally knocked you into the wall? After you damaged the painting of Black?”

  “To be honest I don’t know what he did. I was knocked out cold, and I can’t remember anything from just before that happened. He could have hit me with a hammer for all I know.”

  “He said he helped you into bed, took care of you.”

  “No!” she says, her exclamation rattling the speaker. “He locked me in a cupboard overnight. I woke up in the cupboard.”

  “He did what?” David says, before belatedly seeming to hear the words. “In a cupboard? Why didn’t you report it to the police?”

  “I just wanted to get out of there, get away from him. And he was crying, sobbing, saying sorry when he let me out in the morning. I’ve no doubt that he was sorry. I just knew that I had to get as far away as possible, as quickly as possible. Don’t get me wrong – I’ll never forgive him for it. But I couldn’t get the police involved.”

  My eyes remain fixed on the dictaphone, as I wonder how sounds get trapped on mere strips of tape. How does the recorded voice transfer itself so accurately? Also, I wonder if Laura has remarried? What is her life now?

  David reaches over and presses the stop button. “She’s lying,” I say in an instant, feeling cornered as the click snaps me from my reverie. “All lies,” I add, even though I didn’t catch every word.