Death and Faxes

by Julie Howlin

  ‘Oh. I see. Thanks anyway.’

  Thanks indeed. It answered the question, didn’t it? If Spirit really wanted me to get involved in police work, then Spirit would have made jolly sure I got through. I could safely say I tried, but it was a non-starter.

  While I was at it, I phoned Mum.

  ‘I've been thinking,’ I said. ‘If you and Dad ever want to go out for an evening, I could babysit Amber for you.’

  I could feel Mum bristling, even on the phone. ‘What's brought this on? You've never taken the slightest interest in Amber before.’

  ‘I know. I'm sorry. I was never comfortable with babies or really little kids, but when I saw her at the funeral I realised how big she's getting. You can have a conversation with her now. I think I could handle it.’

  ‘Well, that would be helpful,’ Mum said. ‘Though I don’t want you teaching her Tarot cards and all that nonsense.’

  ‘She’s a bit young for Tarot cards.’ The rest of the nonsense, however, I conveniently didn’t mention.

  ‘All right, we’ll bear you in mind. So how are you? Are you all right? How’s that Daniel bloke? I notice you didn’t bring him to the funeral.’

  ‘Well, he wouldn’t have known anyone and I didn’t think it was the best introduction to my family, seeing them at such a bad time. I think he was working, anyway.’ I didn’t want to mention that I’d not actually spoken to him for some time, as that would start her off on a tirade about how unreliable he was.

  As my lunch break was coming to an end, I could keep the call reasonably short. It felt like a productive lunch break. I’d done my daughterly duty and called Mum, offered to help her, set in motion my obligation to mentor Amber, given my group task my best shot and put to rest any notion that I was to become a psychic sleuth.

  **

  I picked up the free local paper from my doormat and flicked through it while my microwave meal was cooking. There was the usual crop of crime stories including another murder - a girl who’d been missing since the day after Abigail Thomas was found. She'd gone to a ballet lesson and never came home. Apparently there were similarities with Abigail's case, and suggestions that it might be a serial killer. I braced myself for another phone call from my mother.

  On a lighter note, the mayor had announced plans for a new sports centre, a ten-year-old boy had saved his brother from drowning, and there was a big colour picture of a swan recovering at a bird sanctuary after being rescued from being tangled up in a fishing line. Swans again. I was dreaming about them, they were on matchboxes, pub signs; even that guy from Scotland Yard was called Swan. There had to be some meaning.

  I looked up swans in my book of symbols and their meanings. Apparently they represent the white goddess and beauty. I looked at myself in the mirror and saw hair badly in need of a wash and a zit on my nose. Unlikely, then. Gliding to new heights. Well, I could live in hope of that. The balance of male and female. They mate for life - so perhaps it has something to do with my soul mate. Perhaps it is all telling me that Daniel is The One. Or the swan song: the song of an exquisite being on the point of death. Not so nice. Though since Gran had appeared in the dream as well, perhaps it represented her swan song. But if that was the case, why am I still seeing them everywhere?

  **

  Finally! Finally! Finally! On Thursday, a call from Daniel, saying he was free to see me on Friday night. Friday night, I hoped, would stretch out into the whole weekend, as it often did. Megan called, too, asking if I want to go to a psychic fair on Sunday. I said probably no - I get so little time with Daniel and if he does stick around for the whole weekend I want to be free to spend it with him. She seemed to understand.

  I’d hardly done any meditation this week with one thing and another, so resolved to spend some time on it this evening. I briefly considered unplugging the phone again but quickly decided against it. I’d just have to try and ignore it if it did ring. Inevitably, as soon as I had entered into a totally relaxed state, the darned thing rang. Happens every time. I heard a man’s voice leaving a message. Surely it couldn’t be Daniel again so soon? Unless he had forgotten that West Ham were playing at home and that he wasn't coming after all.

  Knowing I had a message meant I wouldn't be able to concentrate until I'd listened to it. With a sigh, I got up and pressed the button.

  ‘Hello? Miss Drake? This is Detective Inspector Swan again. I left a message for you a few days ago. I haven’t heard from you. I apologise for pestering you but we do have a couple of baffling cases just now and could really use some help. My number is...’

  Humph. Annoying man. I’ve already made a right twit of myself trying to get back to you and now you interrupt my meditation. You can forget it. Only this time I did note down the extension number before deleting the message.

  14 tabitha and daniel

  Daniel was one of the plus points of my life. After years of disastrous dates and short-lived flings, I finally had a boyfriend, and a feeling that he might finally be The One. He was a fire-fighter. I'd met him when he'd come to my rescue.

  I’d had the week from hell. I’d been late for work every single day - overslept on Monday, the tube was up the creek on Tuesday, the heel came off my shoe on Wednesday, and on Thursday the tube was up the creek again. I knew the pressure was on for me to be on time on Friday. I was doing well, too, ready to be out of the door in plenty of time - when I noticed Thumbelina was nowhere to be seen. She’s usually either rubbing against my legs as if she doesn’t want me to leave, or sitting on my meditation cushion looking at me disdainfully. Not that day.

  Then I noticed the window I had forgotten to close. Thumbelina was sitting on the balcony. I sighed, put down my bag and went to get her. She was not having any of it and when I went to pick her up, she leapt over the wall and into the one and only tree on the estate. I cajoled and called her for about ten minutes. I got her favourite toy - she wasn’t interested. I opened a tin of cat food - she’s normally rationed to a small tin each day so she doesn’t get fat, but always makes it clear she wants more (perhaps I should have called her Oliver Twist, not Thumbelina). A plate of food was sure to tempt her down.

  It would have worked if Thumbelina had not got herself completely stuck. An indoor cat, she wasn’t as practised at climbing trees as your average moggy. She gingerly tested a branch with her paw. It snapped, and for one terrifying moment I thought she was going to fall, but she scrabbled frantically and clung on to the branch, mewing plaintively down at me.

  There was no way the branches of that tree would take my weight - I'd need a ladder. I didn't have one. I was sure none of my neighbours would, either, not that I knew them well enough to ask. There was nothing for it but to call the Fire Brigade.

  ‘It’s that old cliché, I’m afraid,’ I told them. ‘My cat is stuck up a tree. I hate to waste your time but I can’t see how else to get her down.’

  They were fine about it and in twenty minutes two firemen arrived in a shiny red fire engine with a ladder. I could see curtains twitching all along the landing. One of the firemen was in his forties, burly with a number two haircut. The other was my age and boy, what a hunk. ‘What’s the problem, then, love?’ the older fireman asked, and I explained, blushing as the hunky one appraised me with his gorgeous chocolate-brown eyes. He was the archetypal fire-fighter hunks calendar January model - I could see him now, posing in his helmet and hosepipe and not much else. There may not have been an actual fire but I could not have felt any more hot and flustered if my flat had been a raging inferno. And I’d called them out because my cat was stuck up a tree. I could just imagine what they were probably thinking of me.

  ‘I see the cat, Dan,’ the older one was saying. ‘If you lean the ladder against the building you should be able to reach her from there.’

  Watching Daniel climb up and rescue Thumbelina, every inch the strong, muscled hero, made being late for work for the fifth time in a week worth it. He tickled her behind the ears as he coaxed her into his arms. He handed he
r to me with a dazzling smile, and asked for my number.

  That was six months ago. He calls me when he isn't working, and when West Ham are not playing at home. We’ll go out on a Friday night and then spend the weekend together. It’s bliss. I adored him in his uniform, but I adore him even more out of it. I find myself wondering if I ever really loved any of my previous boyfriends at all. He has to be The One.

  They do say the course of true love never runs smoothly and this was certainly the case with Daniel. Number one, nobody else seemed to like him. Jess and Simon kept telling me I could do much better. My family hadn’t met him, which is probably why they disliked him. My mother thinks you cannot call a man a proper boyfriend until he's been round for Sunday lunch, but I somehow couldn’t see Daniel subjecting himself to their appraisals just yet. It was partly my fault for not inviting him, but he hadn’t suggested that he wanted to meet my family, either. I never knew until the last minute whether I was going to see him on any given weekend. I put it down to his shifts. This week, I thought, with a big smile on my face, he is free and he wants to be with me.

  **

  I met Daniel at our usual pub. We had a few drinks with his friends - I was dying to get him alone. I wanted to tell him about Gran; talk to him for once about serious things. I was relieved when he declined his friends’ invitation to go clubbing and came home with me. I made coffee. Before Daniel could jump me, as he normally did, the coffee just being left to go cold, I sat down on the opposite end of the sofa and tried to start a conversation. ‘My grandmother died last week.’

  ‘Really? I’m sorry to hear that.’ I’m sure he meant it, but I was also picking up his extreme discomfort at the thought of death and having to cope with someone who was mourning. ‘You were quite close to her, weren’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Probably closer to her than anyone in my family.’ I wanted to tell him about my guilt over not being there when she died. I wanted to tell him how Gran had appeared to Amber and not me and how it was tearing me apart - but he wouldn't understand. I would have to tell him about my psychic abilities first, and even then...

  ‘One of my watch died,’ he said, suddenly, interrupting my train of thought.

  ‘That’s awful,’ I said. ‘He can’t have been very old. Was he killed in a fire? Or was he ill?’

  ‘She. It was a she. Jenny. I went out with her for a while about three years ago. She was murdered. They called us all into the office and told us. I’d been wondering why she wasn’t in - she was never late. They think that it was the same person who killed all those other women. We all had to give statements.’ I recalled his friends telling me to steer clear of the subject of death because his ex had died and he didn't want to talk about it. Yet here he was, telling me all about her. This must be a sign that he was ready to hear about what I could do.

  I put my coffee down and moved closer to him. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, rubbing his back. He was fighting back tears, I could tell. Tears he did not want to shed in front of me. We sat together in silence for a while.

  It was now or never. ‘Daniel,’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’

  He stiffened. ‘You’re not up the duff, are you?’

  ‘No,’ I said, and felt him relax immediately. ‘Nothing like that.’

  ‘What, then?’

  ‘I’m psychic.’

  ‘Huh? Like as in, ‘I see dead people’?’ He said the last four words in a hollow, spooky voice reminiscent of a film trailer.

  ‘Sometimes I do. But usually I just get feelings about things. My Gran was psychic, too - she used to teach me. She used to work for the police, helping them solve crimes.’

  ‘Pity she didn’t get to that bastard before he got Jenny,’ Daniel said, with feeling. ‘All a bit useless, if you ask me.’

  ‘Thing is, Daniel, now that she’s gone, the police want me to take her place.’

  ‘Well, I hope you don’t. To be honest, that sort of stuff gives me the willies and I wouldn’t want a girlfriend who was involved in stuff like that. You haven’t said you’ll do it, have you?’

  ‘No, I haven’t. I’m not sure I’d be good enough.’

  ‘Good. Because I don’t believe in any of it. It’s just a lot of bunkum. People get their hopes up because some psychic says something, but it’s all lies. Talking to spirits - I mean, who could believe something like that?’

  ‘It’s not the spirits I mistrust,’ I said, quietly. ‘It’s my ability to hear them.’

  ‘That’s because they’re not there. When you’re dead, you’re dead. Simple as that. End of.’

  I became aware of a presence in the room with us. ‘Daniel?’ I asked, gently. ‘Who’s the tall black woman holding a sausage dog?’

  He smiled, and said, ‘Sounds like Jenny. She loved that dog. It got run over while we were going out, and she... hang on a minute. What are you trying to do?’

  ‘I’m not trying to do anything, but Jenny's spirit is here. She wants you to know she’s okay and she’s with the dog - she’s calling him Frankfurter...’

  Daniel broke away from me, and stood up, raking his fingers through his dark curls. He breathed deeply, fighting back the emotion bubbling below his controlled façade. Then he turned on me. ‘Don’t you ever, I say, ever, do that again. It’s not funny!’

  ‘I’m not laughing,’ I said. ‘It’s not a joke, Daniel. She was here. You never told me about Jenny or her dog, did you? So how would I know?’

  ‘I don’t know - I suppose I must have told you about her sometime, or one of my mates did, and now you’re using her to play this horrible game...’

  ‘It’s not a game.’

  ‘Whatever it is, Tabitha, it’s got to stop. You don’t go to the police and spout all this rubbish, and I never want to hear anything like it from you ever again. Do you understand me?’

  I nodded. He stood in the middle of my living room, trying to compose himself, while I cringed at the realisation that I’d gone too far. He wasn’t ready. I wanted to go to him and put my arms around him and let him cry for Jenny, but I knew if I did so, he’d shrug me off, so I sat helplessly by, waiting for him to get it together.

  After a few minutes he came and sat down. ‘I’ll forget about it this time,’ he said, ‘and I forgive you, but if you ever mention anything like it again, and if you start doing this police stuff, you’ll never see me again. Get me?’

  ‘I get you,’ I said. Loud and clear. Getting him to accept my gift was not going to be easy.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘I’ve had a tough week. Let’s go to bed.’

  When Daniel pulled me into the bedroom and started to kiss me, I didn’t resist. We sank onto the bed and I was vaguely aware of Thumbelina jumping off and stalking into the living room in disgust. She didn’t like Daniel any more than any of my friends did, but at least in her case there was a good reason - she couldn’t sleep on the bed when he was there. As for me - well, let’s just say I didn’t get much sleep either - but unlike Thumbelina, I didn’t mind one bit.

  **

  I was woken on Saturday morning by Daniel leaping out of bed. I opened one eye and saw him hopping on one leg, pulling on his socks. ‘What time is it?’ I groaned.

  ‘Half eight,’ he replied, sitting on the bed and thrusting his legs into his jeans.

  ‘What’s the rush? It’s Saturday,’ I protested.

  ‘Mike’s got tickets for the Arsenal/Chelsea game - I’ve got to go and pick him up. Said we’d have brunch before the match. I’ve got to go.’ He pulled on his T-shirt, and kissed me quickly on the cheek. ‘I’ll call you.’

  My fantasies of spending a loving and passionate weekend with Daniel evaporated with the slamming of the door.

  It would appear I was not just second fiddle to West Ham United, but every other London side as well. I made it to the window just in time to see him running for the bus.

  I sighed. ‘Looks like it’s just the two of us again,’ I said
to Thumbelina, who looked a lot less disappointed than I felt. I made myself a pot of tea and read the paper. There was an article about the murders.

  Police are expressing growing concern at the recent spate of murders. There are fears that a serial killer is randomly targeting young women. There seems to be no link between the victims - they are of varying ages, racial backgrounds and occupations:

  Victim No 1: Abigail Thomas, 19, student at East London College of Art. Killed on way home from lessons.

  Victim No 2: Wendy Smith, 21, barmaid. Killed on her way home from a dance class.

  Victim No 3: Samantha Scott, 27, club DJ, Killed in the early hours after a shift at the club where she worked.

  Victim No 4: Rima Patel, 20, Medical student. Killed while out jogging with her dog.

  Victim No 5: Jenny Givens, 25, Fire-fighter, Killed after a night out with friends.

  There is evidence to link the killings, police say, but they are not releasing details.

  There is some kind of sequence to it, I thought. He’s working through a list of some kind, although it’s not obvious from the information they’ve published. Sometime soon, one would be somehow out of sequence; he’ll abandon the idea of following a prescribed order, because a chance to tick off an item later in the list will present itself.

  I am sure that if I mentioned this to anyone, they'd tell me that I was indeed taking after my grandmother, and that I should get back to Detective Inspector Swan right away and pass on this information. I knew what would happen if I did. He would ask me what the items on the list were, exactly. What sequence was the killer following, and what, or who, would be next? I did not know the answers to those questions and so it was hardly likely to be any help. Such vague information would not identify the killer, nor prevent some other woman from being strangled. No doubt Detective Inspector Swan would say that Maggie Flynn would have told him exactly where the killer would strike next, and the name of his intended victim, so how dare I presume to be anything like as good as she had been?