by Chris Parker
Ethan let his voice fade away as he walked to within one pace of Liam. He reached out and placed his gloved hands on Liam’s shoulders, exerting pressure.
‘Now you can truly feel the weight you are carrying, the burden pressing you down, inside and out. You carry it with you wherever you walk. It makes your footprints deeper. It hurts you and the ground beneath you. It is a weight you will carry for as long as your feet tread this earth. Unbearable. Inescapable, because we are born to move on the planet, born to move with our past always present, weighing us down.
‘Now Liam you don’t have to wait anymore for a resolution. You are feeling already the only safe place wrapping around you offering more beautiful dreams than you can ever…know as you hear me here, the only way to free yourself from the weight is to end the waiting, looking up to the heavens now for their support, getting ready to take your heavy, bruising feet off the sacred floor of this earth, getting ready to break the chain you have created and fly into your dreams…Make sense, Liam.’
‘Mmmm.’
‘And it feels right and good now, does it not?’
‘Mmmm.’
‘Good. Now stop looking heavenward and look at me instead.’
Liam did.
‘I want you to realise in this dream you can still say words and people will hear you and you will hear yourself and you can remember things and you will feel the way the remembering makes you feel, and the more real it sounds and the more real it feels the more dreamlike it really is. Do you understand?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. Because we are sharing this hear now as I help you remember some bright and vivid happenings and feel fully the feelings inside, and as you do these things notice your unconscious urging you to pull yourself free from this earth you damage. Because every little boy wants to fly in his own magic bed and every broken man yearns for the pull of redemption.
‘So watch now as the images appear, quickly one after the other and, no matter how fast they come you will see them all as if you are back in that place and time, reliving each as if you are truly there, seeing it as if it is happening all around you, feeling the pull, pull, pull of the past from which you have to – and will soon – escape. Are you ready?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. Eyes wide now.’
Ethan spoke for the next five minutes without stopping, using his words to create irresistible images – films – in Liam’s mind. He took him back to their violent meeting in Marcus’s home. He talked of the sound and feel of the bullets entering his chest, of how badly Liam’s psyche had been affected. He talked of how much he, Ethan, had learnt and travelled and escaped in the safety of his hospital bed. Then he led Liam back once again to childhood memories of his own bed, contrasting that with the fear and sense of failure currently burdening him. He described the suffering that had happened and was still to happen because of Liam’s inability to kill him. He took Liam’s feeling of self-guilt and made the weight of it heavier than it had ever been. And then he tapped both of Liam’s shoulders with the palms of his hands and by doing so he doubled the pressure. And then he did it again. And all the while he talked in his own special way, using his words to create images and feelings from which there could be no escape.
He talked like that until Liam was on his knees, sobbing uncontrollably. And then he said, as if they were sharing a gentle conversation during a mid-morning stroll, ‘We are next to Tithe Green Burial Ground. Do you know that? Actually, I’m sure you do. I understand you have been walking here daily.’ He smiled and went on, ‘you can have your ashes buried with a tree of your choice planted on top. I know because for a while, many years ago, I planted trees here. It’s a place to put down roots, is it not?’
‘Yes.’
‘So what do you need to do now?’
‘Be alone.’
‘And?’
‘Escape.’
‘From?’
‘The pull of it all.’
‘The pull is also the solution, the way out of this and into endless dreams. A flight back into childhood.’
‘I know.’
For the first time since he had made his presence known Ethan turned his back on Liam and retrieved the two items he had laid on the ground. ‘Here’, he said, ‘these are my gifts for you, to help you sleep.’
He offered both, one in each hand. Liam forced himself to his feet and took them eagerly. A sturdy, wooden three step ladder and a four metre length of three strand manila garden rope.
‘These will stop you hurting the earth,’ Ethan said. ‘The waiting’s over.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Believe me, it is my pleasure.’ Ethan gestured towards a tree with a branch stretching solid and strong a couple of metres above the woodland floor. ‘Now, let me watch.’
39
The synesthete leant back against the nearest tree trunk, folding his arms and tilting his head to one side, as Liam prepared his death.
He began by throwing the rope over the branch Ethan had indicated. Positioning the ladder beneath it, Liam stepped up and knotted the rope securely in place. He jumped back to the ground, grabbed the rope and pulled on it twice. The rope tightened its grip. The branch held firm.
Next Liam tied a simple running bowline knot, creating a noose. He tested that, too, nodding in satisfaction. At no point did he look again at Ethan Hall, or at the woodland or at the sky.
Holding the rope in his right hand, Liam stepped back onto the ladder. He placed the noose over his head with the knot on his left side. He pushed the rope as low as it would go. Then he tightened the knot.
Ethan observed how calm and deliberate the policeman’s movements were. Despite that, the colours emanating from him were starting to change as the survival instinct tried to fight its way through the trance Ethan had created. Spikes of dark red began to appear – anger and urgency – flashing into the more tranquil mix of blues and gold. Occasionally an individual spike threatened to spread out, like flood water breaching a defence, but the state held firm and Ethan supported it, matching his own breathing to Liam’s, controlling his heart rate, calming his central nervous system. The spikes subdued. Ethan returned to watching the more obvious activity.
Liam checked the knot one last time. He let his arms hang by his sides. He moved his feet forward slightly, to the very edge of the step. He bent his knees. He turned his head left, then right. The course rope scored his neck. He dropped his chin. He raised his hands, looked at them briefly and then put them in his trouser pockets. He took a deep breath. Held it. Closed his eyes. And kicked the ladder away.
Liam Hemsall had attended the scenes of several suicides by hanging. He knew how it worked. So-called short drop hanging killed in one of two ways. Either by cutting off the oxygen supply to the brain, or by compression of the arteries and veins in the neck. Or, of course, it could do both. He knew, too, that the vast majority of such suicides were achieved by tying the knot on the left side of the neck, constricting the jugular vein, preventing blood from getting back to the heart. It took less than 5lbs of pressure to constrict the jugular. It really didn’t require much of a drop at all. In fact, if the rope was tied correctly you could hang yourself whilst kneeling on the ground.
As he stood on the ladder, feeling the rope against his skin, Liam found himself becoming unbelievably calm. And warm. And cosy. Maybe Heaven’s just the best dream of all, he thought as he pulled the knot even tighter.
He let his arms relax and felt his feet move forward instinctively. He had been told dying in this way was often very painful. That no matter how committed the person was, their body inevitably thrashed, desperate for air, fighting against the compression of the noose and the weight of their body supported entirely by their neck and jaw. He knew it could take up to three minutes for unconsciousness to set in. He knew the body could live for many more minutes after that.
For a reason that he didn’t understand at all, Liam felt the urge to turn his head from side to side. Doing so
he could feel the roughness of the hemp against his skin. There was something strangely reassuring about it.
He raised his palms. They were the last things he wanted to see. The lines were obvious and varied, an intricate pattern, deeper than he had ever noticed, a work in progress. That, he remembered, is what the psychologist had said in answer to his question, ‘Who am I?’
A work in progress.
Indeed this was. Just like everything else.
Time to sleep.
Liam realized that his hands were no longer in front of his face; they were in his pockets. Clearly everything was ready. Just one more thing to do.
Liam stepped forwards and kicked the ladder behind him.
Reality hit.
The tree groaned. He tried to gasp. Too late. The pain was worse than anything he could have imagined. His feet kicked. His hands grasped. The rope bit. His eyes felt like they were going to explode. His body twisted, jerked and fought its way to death.
The last thing Liam thought he saw before he lost consciousness was a squirrel looking up at him.
40
Anne-Marie Wells was lost in thought. She was looking at a range of images. They were photos she had taken of the storage unit in which most of her and Marcus’s furniture and larger personal belongings were being kept.
Until yesterday she had made a point of staying away from the unit and all it contained. Her phone conversation with Peter, though, had shifted her perspective and with it her thinking. She had subsequently spent over an hour taking pictures from every conceivable angle, pictures of the unit in its entirety, of the way different objects had been stored; how they were juxtaposed against each other. She had taken pictures of boxes, the corners of boxes, and different wrapping, of the ceiling, the floor and of shadows.
When she and Marcus had decided to move out of their real home, they had talked long and hard about what to do with their possessions. She had wanted to take everything with them, keep it all together, do the best they could to recreate the sense of home they had shared for so many years. Marcus had argued against that. He had said they needed to rent a furnished property, to take with them only the essentials. Doing anything else, he reasoned, would be inviting the past to bleed into the present and, on a personal level, he needed space, a clean break from all-too-easy reminders of how Ethan Hall had invaded their world. Anne-Marie had agreed reluctantly.
As her illness worsened the urge to visit the unit had grown. She hadn’t understood why and she had resisted it until yesterday. Then realization had dawned. It felt like an almighty release.
A storage unit was, in essence, a characterless, clean box, even though some companies chose to call them rooms. Units varied in size, anything from twenty square feet upwards. If you had the need there were units in which you could store your entire life.
They were places you turned to only when you were making a change or requiring secrecy. No matter how long you used the unit for, the relationship was essentially transitory. You never owned the unit, only what you chose to put in it. And when you moved out, someone else moved right in.
Anne-Marie’s realization felt like it had exploded inside her, casting one insight after another into her consciousness. First of all, she had been wrong to want to move everything with them. Having all of your belongings in one place didn’t turn that place into your home. No, a home was something altogether different; a creation independent of the objects it contained. The house they were staying in now could never be their home, but that wasn’t because their furniture was missing. It was because they had been forced here. And one day, they – Anne-Marie checked herself – Marcus would move on to find and build a new home.
Secondly, even a home was transitory. The house they called home had been built fifty years before they bought it. Two other families had called it home before they did. And now someone else was filling the same space, creating their own, unique version, believing they owned it. In one sense, the buildings marketed as homes were just a form of storage unit. Albeit a unit you could fill with emotion.
Thirdly, whilst most people bought their home because of location, or kerb appeal, or the number of rooms, the most important thing a real home provided was space. Space to grow and learn and share in response to life’s changes. That night, over ten years ago, when she and Marcus had promised each other for better or worse that’s precisely what they were talking about. A commitment to sharing the space they called life and all the caring, creativity, challenges, clutter and chaos that might come their way.
Sitting on the uncomfortable settee, looking down at the several dozen photos she had laid out on the floor, Anne-Marie shifted uncomfortably. She patted her stomach.
‘Just a storage unit,’ she whispered, standing upright for the first time in half an hour. She pulled her ribcage upwards and out, stretching her stomach, seeking to ease the tension. The next time she looked at the photos she found herself concentrating on the space between them, the space around and above them. It was a technique for gaining new perspectives she had learnt many years ago as a fledgling photographer. At that time she had been reading lots about Buddhism. She had even done a little meditation. It was a practice she had secretly started again.
Anne-Marie let herself become aware of the way the objects in the room, including the photos, fitted into the space, trying to see the actual space rather than anything else. It was a way of looking she had forgotten about until just now.
‘We are never taught to look at the space,’ she reminded herself, ‘only at the objects. And if we try to see space, we can’t. We acknowledge space only because of the absence of things. Yet space came first. It’s the biggest of everything there is. You can’t have storage if there isn’t space.’
Peter’s suggestion that if she had to do a photo about the inevitability of her death she should title it Processing had unlocked her subconscious. Her subsequent realisations had led to a simple and powerful conclusion. The photo could only be set in the storage unit. It made perfect sense. She didn’t know either the structure or detail yet, but the setting was fixed. As was the title: Space.
One of her favourite Buddhist quotes read, ‘Silence is an empty space, space is the home of the awakened mind.’ Her mind felt fully awake. The final photo in her last ever collection would encapsulate everything she had come to realize about storage and space and the inevitability of change.
As Anne-Marie tried to relax and stretch and see the invisible, she heard the front door open and close. She looked at her watch. He was back earlier than expected.
‘How was the walk?’ She asked, stepping into the hall to greet him.
‘I didn’t walk,’ Ethan Hall said. ‘I have my own taxi.’
Anne-Marie screamed.
41
Peter Jones was missing something. He knew it. There was something there, somewhere, that he couldn’t quite see or grasp and he needed to.
‘So what the hell is it?’
‘Sorry, boss?’ Kevin McNeill looked up from the paperwork he was reading.
‘Talking to myself,’ Peter admitted. ‘But if it’s a good enough question to ask myself, it’s good enough to ask you. We’re missing something – a detail, a connection – some factor we ought to be able to recognize or predict. So the question is, what is it?’
Kevin pondered. ‘Maybe Ethan Hall has a second friend. Maybe he moved in with them when he got spooked at Smith’s?’
Peter shook his head. ‘We’ve been through Hall’s history too thoroughly for that to be the case.’
‘Then maybe Hall’s more equipped to avoid us than we give him credit for? After all, he kept himself under the radar for years before he went after Marcus. We have always assumed he wasn’t up to anything during that time, but the truth is we’ve got no idea what he might have done. He could be responsible for all sorts of stuff. Let’s face it, there’s more we don’t know about him than we do.’
‘True. To me, though, it just doesn’t feel as if there’s
a gap we have to fill; it’s more like an obviousness we’re missing.’
‘That’s your stomach talking?’
‘Yep.’
Can’t you just burp up the answer?’
‘Very funny.’
‘I thought it was a gas.’
Peter smiled grudgingly. ‘Thinking of a new career in comedy are we, Detective Sergeant?’
‘Absolutely not, boss.’
‘Don’t blame you. Now, back to the question at hand. Tell me again everything we know about Ethan Hall and his recent activity.’
Kevin sat back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling. ‘He walked out of the hospital having seriously messed with a young Constable’s head. He went to stay with a man he knew from some time before – we can call him a friend, but I really don’t think Ethan has any friends –’
‘– Stick to facts,’ Peter ordered.
‘The fact is we know he left Smith’s at about the same time we were told he was there. The fact is someone has to have seen him since then. The fact is he has to be staying somewhere. The fact is we haven’t got a clue where.’
Peter shook his head a second time. ‘No. Let’s keep believing that we’ve got the clue and we’re just not recognising it.’
‘That’s not like us.’
‘We can’t do perfect.’
‘And we don’t need to, to be the best.’ Kevin completed his DCI’s well-known phrase.
‘Precisely. So we can’t let ourselves be blinded just because Ethan Hall is so out of the ordinary. We have to keep reminding ourselves and the rest of the team of the context. Ethan Hall is a criminal and we are professional criminal catchers. He is playing our game not vice versa. Keep pumping that message.’