The Color of Bee Larkham's Murder

by Sarah J. Harris

  I hang further out the window. The street is deserted: not a single moving vehicle or person apart from David Gilbert, who is patting Yellow French Fries. Even the parakeets have stopped singing.

  There’s a new color. Dark, spiraling pond green.

  I spin around. The door handle screw turns.

  Ollie Watkins found a screwdriver in the kitchen drawer. He’s taking off the handle.

  The man and dog walk down the path of 22 Vincent Gardens.

  Help me, help me, help me. I can’t shout—my throat hurts too much.

  The handle jangles violent shades of orange. It falls off, beneath the chair. The door shifts again.

  I throw a book out of the window and my favorite paint pot. It smashes on the ground below. Greenish ice tubes. The man wearing the brown flat cap stops. He looks in my direction.

  I throw my binoculars. I throw my notebooks. I throw everything I can find, transforming the colors into new, disturbing shades as they hit the ground.

  He’s walking again, towards our house. Towards me? The bedroom door makes large, spiny harsh orange shapes. They’re thornier and brighter.

  The door opens and slams repeatedly into the desk, pushing it aside. I see a foot.

  I climb out of the window, half in, half out of my bedroom.

  “No, Jasper! No!” The man drops the dog lead and breaks into a run. I look over my shoulder.

  A leg’s inside and now half a body. The barricade’s falling into spiky, maniacal orange shards. Ollie Watkins is pushing his way through. He’ll reach me in seconds.

  I pull my other leg through the window, squatting on the windowsill.

  “Stop! Stop!” The man in the flat cap’s screaming bright scarlet.

  He runs in front of a car.

  It toots red-rose star blobs at him, startling the young parakeets in Bee Larkham’s oak tree.

  They rise in a wave of peacock blue, green, and violet squawks from the branches.

  A glimmering stained-glass window.

  They’re all abandoning the street.

  They can’t stay any longer. The feeders are empty. They don’t need their nests or the branches of the tree at nighttime, they’ve summoned up enough courage to join the roost.

  They’re leaving me alone with Bee Larkham’s murderer, Ollie Watkins from 18 Vincent Gardens.

  They’re taking their beautiful colors with them.

  Come back!

  Wait for me!

  I can’t bear the ugly, spiny orange shapes in my bedroom.

  I want the smooth, shimmering blues and curvy, golden droplets in the sky.

  I stretch my arms out.

  “Wait!” Cool blue with spiky white peaks.

  My colors blend in perfectly with the birds.

  I close my eyes, push off with my feet.

  I fly.

  Epilogue

  THREE MONTHS LATER

  “I came as soon as I heard the news on the radio. Is it true? Is it all over?” Dull grainy red questions rain down on Dad at the front door. “Did I misunderstand the journalist?”

  “No, you heard right. It’s come as a bolt from the blue for us—the police and his barrister too. Come in. I’ll make us both a cup of tea.”

  “If you’re sure it’s no bother, Ed?” His voice darkens to claret but is still distinctively scratchy. “I know you have your hands full.”

  Dad wasn’t carrying anything when he left the sitting room. He put his newspaper down next to me on the sofa, where I’m resting my leg. That’s probably why he insists that making a hot drink isn’t a problem.

  I don’t need to hear Dad say this man’s name or see his cherry cords to know this is David Gilbert from number 22, the neighbor I thought was going to harm the parakeets, Bee Larkham, and quite possibly me—in that order.

  I was wrong about him, the way I’ve been wrong about a lot of people.

  David Gilbert ran in front of a car in a bid to save me from Ollie Watkins. After I jumped from the ledge, he looked after me until the ambulance arrived because it turns out I can’t fly like a parakeet.

  The male paramedic said I was unlucky because I’d struck a concrete post under the window and landed in a strange position, badly breaking my right leg and wrist. He didn’t understand the opposite was true—I was extremely fortunate. My left painting hand wasn’t hurt. It wasn’t even scratched.

  David Gilbert was more than our neighbor and stand-in first-aider that day. He became a Key Witness in the police inquiry.

  Ollie Watkins couldn’t flee our house because David Gilbert stayed with me in the front garden, blocking his escape route. The back door was locked and he couldn’t find the key. Police officers discovered Ollie Watkins hiding inside my den when they knocked down our front door. He was arrested and charged with murdering Bee Larkham and attempting to murder me.

  Dad had begun preparing me for the trial—he said we’d both have to tell our stories to a jury later this year. David Gilbert would also have to get ready to give evidence in court.

  These Important Facts changed in a single telephone call from Rusty Chrome Orange earlier as we arrived home from my hospital appointment. He told Dad about a Crown court hearing in front of a judge to prepare for the trial.

  The charges were read to Ollie Watkins, who burst into tears in the dock. His ex-fiancée cried too as he pleaded guilty to both counts to the surprise of everyone, including his own brief, who leapt up and asked for time alone with his client.

  Rusty Chrome Orange told us it was quite a spectacle (an iridescent, mother-of-pearl word). The judge agreed he didn’t like surprises and told everyone to get out of his court. Ollie Watkins and his defense barrister had a discussion in the cells beneath the court and returned fifteen minutes later.

  The barrister then explained to the judge everything that Ollie Watkins did that night and on the day he attacked me.

  He wanted to get it off his chest.

  The judge moved straightaway to sentencing because, like me, he wasn’t fond of delays. He gave Ollie Watkins the only possible punishment for murder and attempted murder: a life sentence. Rusty Chrome Orange said he was led away from the dock sobbing.

  We expected Ollie to take his chance with the trial jury even though the evidence against him was overwhelming.

  Dad agreed he was shocked too, but relieved I wouldn’t have to go through the trauma of describing Ollie Watkins’s terrible colors in court.

  We can all move on. Try to put this behind us.

  I wasn’t surprised by Ollie Watkins’s decision because I’ve learnt over the last six months that people often make plans and alter them unexpectedly. Sometimes they feel guilty about ripping up other people’s Original Plans and other times they simply don’t care.

  Their minds change as well as their voice colors.

  Dad’s talking to David Gilbert in the kitchen—something about Overwhelming Evidence. The door’s open six inches, but I can only hear snatches of color. I pick up my crutches and ease myself off the sofa. My leg’s grumbling, but I tell it to be quiet. I move slowly towards the muted shades.

  I stand outside the door despite the fact that No One Likes a Spy.

  “D.C. Chamberlain claims the forensics had him bang to rights,” Dad’s muddy ocher voice says, above the silver and gleaming yellow bubbles of the boiling kettle. “There’s no way he could have wriggled his way out of that kind of proof.”

  I’m not sure what else Ollie Watkins banged loudly or wriggled through apart from my bedroom door, but I know the police discovered the Dancing China Lady in a box in his dead mum’s house along with a dark blue baseball cap. Dad told me this after his conversation with Rusty Chrome Orange.

  “Apparently his DNA matched traces on Jasper’s clothes, Bee’s body and suitcase,” Dad continues. “They found a strand of her hair in the boot of his car. The police also traced mud on the suitcase from Bee’s back garden to a carpet inside number eighteen.”

  He tells David Gilbert how Ollie Watkin
s remembered to wipe the fingerprints off Bee Larkham’s back door key, but police found a thread matching one of his sweaters stuck in the garden fence. He had squeezed through the gap to return the key after police sealed the gate to the alley. He’d realized his error and had to return it.

  The hole in the fence was a vital clue I’d missed when I couldn’t work out how the killer had returned to Bee Larkham’s back garden.

  Dad’s forgotten to mention another crucial piece of evidence against Ollie Watkins—I could identify his voice from the attack. There was no mistaking his custard yellow, even with the streaks of red chest infection. His fingerprints were also on our spare key, the one he saw me take from beneath the flowerpot the day I ran out of school.

  “I’m relieved your lad doesn’t have to go to court. You too. You’ve both been through enough.”

  Dad mumbles dull ocher.

  “I’ve had sleepless nights about giving evidence too, but I still wanted to look him in the eye, really look him in the eye,” the dull grainy red voice says. “I need to understand why he did those terrible things to poor Beatrice.”

  Richard Chamberlain—like the actor—said the murder investigation team already knew this before Ollie Watkins pleaded guilty. They managed to piece together what went on from the pages of Bee’s diary, my notebooks, and interviews with David Gilbert and me.

  Ollie Watkins frequently babysat for Mrs. Larkham when he came home from uni and played the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party with Bee Larkham before abusing her. Bee’s mum and Ollie’s mum never believed her when she told them. They sided with Ollie because he was such a good lad and Bee was a wicked, ungodly child. She punished them by smashing their china collections.

  After Mrs. Larkham died, Bee tried to punish Mrs. Watkins all over again with loud music and by refusing to hand over the china ladies promised in her mum’s will. Instead, she taunted Ollie Watkins by putting the ornaments in the window before smashing them one by one.

  Dad finishes explaining these Important Facts to David Gilbert.

  “I feel terrible, Ed.” Dull grainy red darts interspersed with dark cherries. “I never knew what young Beatrice was going through. I wish I could have helped her back then, but I never suspected a thing.” He stops as Dad’s muddy ocher mingles into his words. “No, Ed, it’s true. I should have been kinder to her. I made her life a misery when she returned, complaining about the music and the parakeets. I said some awful things to her on the night she died. I wish I could take it all back, but I can’t.”

  “Don’t upset yourself, David. You’re not to blame. You mustn’t beat yourself up about this.”

  Dad’s right. David Gilbert never beat anyone up.

  He’s not guilty of any crimes even though I rang 999 many times and told the police he should be arrested.

  It’s all Ollie Watkins’s fault.

  He made Bee Larkham want to die as a child and killed her when she grew up because she repeatedly threatened to report him to the police and hand over her diary. Ollie Watkins had a lot to lose, Rusty Chrome Orange said—his highly paid banking job and fiancée in Switzerland, who has now dumped him.

  Ollie Watkins’s mum had told him where Bee kept her spare key. That’s what his defense barrister told the court. He thought Bee was asleep when the loud music had stopped for a few hours and let himself in the back door around 3:00 A.M. to search for her diary, which described the bad stuff and her attempts to get help from Mrs. Larkham and Mrs. Watkins. Ollie was out of his mind with worry that detectives could try to build a case against him using her childhood entries; he didn’t know lots of pages had been torn out and scribbled over. He couldn’t find the diary because Bee had hidden it in the box in my wardrobe. He took the Dancing China Lady, before Bee disturbed him in the kitchen and they argued. She threatened to tell his fiancée and the police—anyone who’d listen—before he grabbed her by the throat. He killed her and emptied her suitcase upstairs so he could drag her body back to his house.

  When he returned to the kitchen, he saw me in my pajamas and pretended to be Dad by calling me his son. He thought he’d got away with it but deliberately stopped me in the street after I ran out of school. He wanted to test my reaction to seeing his face again.

  David Gilbert had inadvertently helped him by explaining I had problems recognizing people at Bee Larkham’s party. He also told him that Dad always wears blue shirts and blue jeans to make it easier for me to identify him whenever we’re in public. That’s why he’d changed his clothes when he decided to attack me even though it was unintentional on the night he killed Bee.

  Dad relayed these Important Facts after asking our neighbor if he took sugar in his tea. David Gilbert confirmed one spoonful and wanting to know everything even though he found it incredibly upsetting.

  I used to think I’d never have anything in common with bird killer David Gilbert, but that’s not 100 percent accurate. Every week he buys peanuts and seed for the parakeets and tops up Bee’s bird feeders when my leg is too painful to walk across the road.

  After Rusty Chrome Orange rang, I also told Dad I wanted to know absolutely everything too, even the sections with ugly-colored words that scare me and make me want to rub the buttons on Mum’s cardigan in my den.

  I had to learn the truth about Ollie Watkins—the man who disguised himself as a fellow bird lover and my friend. I owed Bee Larkham that much because she couldn’t explain the full story herself. Someone had to do it for her.

  Dad’s repeating himself now, telling David Gilbert this isn’t his fault. I’m not sure why he doesn’t understand that Ollie Watkins has pleaded guilty. No one blames David Gilbert, not even me.

  “You’re very kind, Ed, but I can’t stop thinking about how much I upset Bee, particularly about the parakeets. I can’t apologize to her, but it’s not too late for me to make things right . . .”

  I lose my balance and the door creaks open. Creamy chicken soup.

  “Jasper! Your dad and I were just discussing Bee Larkham.”

  “I know, David Gilbert. I was eavesdropping and accidentally pushed open the door before I could stop myself.”

  He and Dad laugh. Their voices mingle together and create a flattering ash mahogany. I haven’t painted this voice combination before and long to start a new canvas in my bedroom.

  I’m not sure why they both find my statement funny because I was telling the absolute truth. Then I remember what Dad told me the day I was admitted to hospital—that we should tell each other the truth from that day onwards without trying to dress it up in any way.

  I’d burst out laughing despite the popping, silvery pain because I immediately pictured the word wrapped in a floral dress and topped with a silly, floppy hat.

  Dad and David Gilbert are probably dressing up words in funny clothes in their heads too.

  “I was just about to tell your dad how I want to do things differently on this street, starting from today,” David Gilbert says. “That means I need to ask your advice about something, Jasper.”

  “You should stop shooting pheasants and partridges,” I reply. “That’s my advice.”

  “Thank you, Jasper. I’ll remember that. It’s about this. I’m finding it very confusing.”

  He passes me a brochure. “I picked this up in the pet shop when I was buying some seed earlier. Perhaps you can help? Can you tell me which is the best bird table? I’m thinking of putting one in my front garden so I can continue feeding the parakeets once number twenty is sold.”

  Dad speaks as I carefully study the pages. “That’s a lovely idea, David, thank you.”

  “Well, we never know who might eventually move into Mrs. Larkham’s house, do we? We want the right sort, hopefully a family with young children who enjoy the local wildlife as much as Jasper.”

  “Buy this one, please, David Gilbert.” I point to a deluxe wild-bird station, which has four hanging feeders and two water baths. The brochure says it’s designed to attract a wide variety of birds. “Bee Larkham would have ap
proved of this purchase. She always wanted to bring as much color as possible to our street.”

  • • •

  After lunch, Dad and me visited our old neighbor in the graveyard because we had plenty of news. As soon as I’d been discharged from hospital and could put weight on my foot again we came to keep her company. Back then, I told Bee Larkham that Lucas Drury’s dad hadn’t gone to jail for hitting David Gilbert and breaking into her house. Another judge had given him a suspended sentence.

  But this part was new today—Rusty Chrome Orange says Lucas and Lee now live with their mum and her boyfriend. They’ll go to a different school in September because they both need a Fresh Start.

  I also told Bee about David Gilbert’s bird-feeding station and the Wishart family camping trip next summer. We’ll spend a whole year preparing for it and I can choose the tent and a new rucksack from an outdoor shop.

  I kept back the most difficult news until last. I explained that the tears running down Ollie Watkins’s face in court probably meant he was sorry for the awful things he did to both of us, particularly to her.

  I left a parakeet feather on her grave, because I’ve forgiven her for the pie—chicken, not parakeet. Rusty Chrome Orange and Dad have told me that repeatedly and I finally believe them.

  Bee Larkham was my friend, 95.7 percent of the time. She was good and bad and thousands of shades in between. I prefer to remember her sky blue and hold on to that color. It helps fade the other unpleasant hues, particularly today’s custard yellow.

  Dad and me will continue to visit her grave every week—as well as Mum’s memorial bench in Richmond Park—because someone has to look after her. She doesn’t have anyone else. There’s a child’s grave nearby. Whenever I see it, I think that could have been me, buried close to her, keeping her company full-time in this strange, quiet place.

  Last time I talked to Bee Larkham, I saw a man putting flowers on the child’s tombstone. Dad’s corrected me about this—he claims it wasn’t a single man, but two separate mourners who were both wearing similar, dark clothes. Rusty Chrome Orange says he’s going to help us with my condition—he’s putting Dad in touch with someone who can assess my problems recognizing people. He told Dad not to get his hopes up—there’s no cure for face blindness or the different way I see the world.