Some Kind of Fairy Tale

by Graham Joyce

  “Is that comfortable for you?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said, “that’s comfortable.”

  “Then we do go.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Witness asked for admittance, but Michael Cleary said they would not open the door. While they remained outside they stood at the window. They heard someone inside saying: “Take it, you bitch, or witch.” When the door was opened, witness went in and saw Dunne and three of the Kennedys holding Mrs. Cleary down on her bed by her hands and feet, and her husband was giving her herbs and milk in a spoon out of a saucepan. They forced her to take the herbs, and Cleary asked her: “Are you Bridget Boland, the wife of Michael Cleary, in the name of God?” She answered it once or twice, and her father asked a similar question. Michael Cleary [witness thought] then threw a certain liquid on his wife.

  TRIAL TRANSCRIPT,

  RECORDED IN Folklore, VOL. 6 NO. 4 (1895)

  It’s like a door opens in my mind. A big, creaking black door. Behind the black door is the possibility that my friend Dave of the West Midlands CID is right.

  Maybe I lost it. Maybe I did something to Tara after all. There’s a horrible sound coming from behind the black door. It’s a low and distant wailing, but it starts off like a feeling deep in the gut and on its way up it turns into a sound.

  Maybe I did it. I was angry enough. And I’ve been out of my head before. Me and Pete drank a bottle of vodka each one night, speed-drinking, like we were trying to kill ourselves with it. We lost several hours that night. When we woke up we’d both got neither our shoes nor our shirts and we had vicious scratches on our bodies and bits of hedgerow in our hair. Neither of us could remember a damned thing about what we did. So where did that time go? The things we did must still be there, in a corner of the mind somewhere, waiting to be remembered.

  And I look up and I see that they are all leaning in toward me, the coppers and my lawyer, waiting for me to speak.

  “Get it off your chest, Richie,” says my friend Dave in a fatherly whisper. He sounds more like a priest than a copper. Loving. I can only just hear his words over the wailing. “I think you want to. I think you want to tell us. You’ll feel better if you do. Get it off your chest.”

  And the wailing from behind this big black door stops suddenly. And I realize that this is the door to prison. The door bangs shut.

  “What?” I say. “Get what off my chest?”

  They all lean back. All four of them lean back, like it’s all a dance show.

  I turn to my so-called lawyer. “What is he talking about? What does he want me to say?”

  She bites her teeth together before turning to the policemen. “I think you’ve had your answer,” she says. “But could you put it straight. For the record.”

  The sadness and compassion drains out of my friend Dave’s face. He sighs and looks like he’s really, really tired.

  “Richie. Look at me, please. Come on, boy. Look me in the eye. Did you kill Tara?”

  “You have got to be joking.”

  “Just answer the questions yes or no, Richie,” says my lawyer. “It’s better for you.”

  “Right. The answer is no. Now, can I go home?”

  “Not yet,” says Dave. “Not yet.”

  “Am I under arrest?” I ask. I’ve got this idea they can’t keep me unless they arrest me.

  “Is he?” asks my lawyer.

  “Right-o,” says Dave. “Richie Franklin, I am arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Tara Martin.” And the rest of it. Anything you say. Held against you. And all that.

  “Ridiculous,” says my lawyer. It’s the first time she’s spoken up for me. “You don’t even have a body. You’ve no idea where that girl is. She might have gone off with another boyfriend for all you know.” She turns to me. “Don’t panic, Richie, they can’t keep you here for long.”

  “Well, we haven’t finished,” says Dave, standing up. “Do you want a cup of tea, Richie? I think we could all do with one.”

  I say yes, I wouldn’t mind a cup of tea.

  “And I desperately need a pee,” says my lawyer.

  “Come and show me where the tearoom is,” Dave says to the uniformed copper taking notes.

  The uniformed copper looks up, puzzled. Then something dawns across his features. He says, “Oh, right. Sure.” And out they all trot, leaving me with the fat bastard. He of the squeaky voice.

  When we’ve got the interview room to ourselves, fat bastard sniffs and then he fingers his collar again. “We know you done it.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “See, what you don’t know, son, is that never mind what you’ve seen on telly, nearwy all murders is done by the husband or the boyfwiend. It always comes back to that. Always. You should wisten to Dave. He’s on your side.” Then he stands up. “I ain’t, though.”

  And he walks slowly round the table.

  I don’t even see the punch coming. His huge knuckles connect with my chin, lips, and nose all at the same time, and I think I black out, because I’m on the floor when I come to my senses and I can hear him hissing at me: “Get up you wittle shite-hawk, get on your feet.”

  It’s all very well, him telling me to get up, but there’s a ringing in my ears and I can’t balance.

  “Don’t think that wying on the floor is going to help you. That’s just a taster for what’s coming your way. You think I’m a cunt?”

  “No.”

  “You do. You think I’m a cunt.”

  “No.”

  “It ain’t me who is the cunt, Wichie. See, what I am is the stoowyteller. I know how all the stoowies work. ’Cos I’ve heard ’em many times over. You get so you know which ones to believe. Here’s one I know. Are you sittin’ comfortably? You get Tawa up the duff. She don’t want to keep it. You do want to keep it. Sometimes it’s the other way wound, but as often as not it’s the bloke as wants to keep it, ’cos that way he can keep his girl, see, Wichie? So we has a peek into her medical wecords. And she’s got wid of it. And she tells you. And you ain’t happy.”

  “Liar!” I shout. “You’re a liar.”

  “She tells you she’s got wid of the baby and you lose the plot, eh, Wichie? You lose it. You completely lose it.”

  “You’re lying! She wouldn’t do that!”

  “It’s in the wecords! Don’t make out you didn’t know!”

  “You’re a fucking liar!”

  He smiles at me. “No, son. I’m not a liar. I’m the truth. I’m the fucking stoowyteller here. What am I?”

  “Fuck off!”

  Next thing he gathers me up by my lapels and stands me on my feet. My knees buckle, but he easily holds me up with one hand. He places this huge polished black boot on my toes and presses down. That in itself doesn’t hurt; but then he punches me again, hard, and I go backward and I feel the tendons in my ankle tearing with my foot still trapped under his boot.

  This time I scream.

  No one comes.

  He gathers me up a second time and sits me back on my seat. I’m hyperventilating and the pain in my foot is almost making me black out again. “Let’s do that again. What am I?”

  “Sto-reh,” I gasp.

  “Can’t hear you, Wichie.”

  “Storyteller.”

  He dusts me down and rearranges my collar and he chucks my cheek like I’m a crying five-year-old. “Calm down, Wichie,” he says, in his reedy voice. “Pull yourself together. Look at the state you’re in.”

  He sits back in his chair and smiles at me. After a few minutes the uniformed copper comes in with a tray of tea in plastic cups. He looks at me and then glances at the Hulk and there’s just enough of a pause to make me realize he’s clocked what’s happened. But he’s not going to say a word, I know that. We all know that. He lays the tray on the interview table, sets one of the plastic cups of tea in front of me, and reaches for his notepad.

  I pick up the tea but my hands are trembling and it spills all over the place. I manage a sip. My lip is already fatte
ning.

  I hear laughter in the corridor. It’s DC Dave and my lawyer sharing a joke as they come back to the interview room and it hasn’t occurred to me before that she’s actually been on their side all along. But then she takes one look at my condition and my rapidly swelling lip. “For God’s sake!” she says.

  Then Dave leans across and grabs my chin. He looks—or pretends to look—angry. He moves my face to one side, then the other. Then he turns to Detective Constable Hulk and bawls, “Get out of my sight. Go on.”

  The Hulk wipes a finger under his nose and goes out of the room without a word.

  Dave shakes his head. “Did he do this?” he says to me.

  “What does it look like?” I say. “Perhaps I slipped while I was trying to sit in my chair.”

  My lawyer snaps. “That’s enough.” DC Dave may be playacting, but she isn’t. Her eyeballs are popping and I can see tiny veins throbbing at her temple. “Charge him or let him go.”

  “I’m not going to charge you, Richie. I’m sorry that happened. He’s old school, Richie. That’s how they used to do it. Look, boy, just give me something. Anything. Any tiny detail that will help me find her. You know where she is, Richie. Any tiny detail. Her mum and dad, Richie, they are going out of their minds. It would be better for them if they could find out what happened. You can see that, can’t you? I mean, they are very fond of you, Richie. They’ve been kind to you. Like a second mum and dad, right? You owe it to them. You can see that?”

  “I don’t know anything!”

  “Just one detail, Richie. Help yourself. I beg you.”

  And I start crying. I wish I could say that I didn’t but I’m blubbering like a baby. It’s not being smacked around, that’s not it. Well, it might have something to do with that, but mostly it’s the thought of what might have happened to Tara.

  “Is it true?” I manage to get out. “Did Tara get rid of the baby?”

  Dave nods at me, yes. He closes in across the table. My head is bent forward and he has a gentle but leathery hand on my neck. “It’s all right. Let it go, Richie. Let it all go. That’s right. That’s right. That’s the way. It’s all going to be all right. That’s the way. Richie, did you hurt Tara?”

  “Yes,” I sob, “yes, yes, yes.”

  “This is duress,” says my lawyer.

  Dave nods. “Richie, there’s a stone. In the woods. A big stone, and most of it is covered in orange lichen and moss. You know that stone, don’t you?”

  “Yes. Yes.”

  “Around the stone we could see that all the ferns and the bluebells had been bashed down as if two people had been lying down there together.”

  I sob out loud. There’s a pain deep inside me.

  “Is that where it happened, Richie? Is that where you did it?”

  “Yes.”

  He takes a deep breath, as if his work is done. He nods gently. “How did you do it, Richie?”

  I look up at him. “Normal way.”

  “What’s the normal way, Richie?”

  He’s gazing deep into my eyes. I can’t think why he wants to know that. “Just … normal …” I say.

  “You’re going to have to tell me what’s normal.”

  I look at my lawyer. She’s gazing down at me, her arms folded tight around her. Her brow is furrowed. “How many ways are there?” I ask her.

  She says, “He’s talking about sex, for goodness’ sake!”

  DC Dave blinks and looks disappointed in me, like I’ve just let him down. “So you had sex there?”

  “Yes.”

  “And after you had sex, that’s when you did it?”

  “What?” I turn to look at my lawyer. “Did what?”

  I look back at DC Dave, and he is so focused on me he has the expression of a man trying to pick a lock with a hairpin.

  “Richie, there’s the stone in the bluebell wood. And on that stone we found a ring.” He holds up something shiny for me to see. It’s the ring I’d given Tara.

  “Where did you get that?”

  “It was on the stone. It had been placed there. Did you put it there after you’d done it?”

  I’m like a drunk suddenly feeling sober after a gallon of coffee. “Wait,” I says, “wait. When I says to you I did it I mean that’s where we first had sex. Nothing else. By that stone. A year ago. I haven’t been there recently!” With a sense of panic I turn to my lawyer. “Tell him that’s what I meant!”

  “Enough!” says my lawyer. “That’s enough. Charge the lad or let him go. You can see he’s under duress.”

  Dave raises his eyebrows. “You were so close, Richie. So close.”

  “Can he go?” says my lawyer.

  Dave indicates that the way to the door is clear. Julia Langley gathers her pen and notes from the desk and stands up. “Come along, Richie.” I follow her. Dave doesn’t even look at me. He just looks at the wall as if he’s very tired. Very tired and very sad.

  Outside in the corridor the fat fuck stands leering at me. The corridor is narrow, so we have to squeeze by his bulky figure. “See you vewy soon, Wichie,” he says in that high-pitched warble. “See you vewy soon.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Fairy tales are about money, marriage and men. They are maps and manuals that are passed down from mothers and grandmothers to help them to survive.

  MARINA WARNER

  That was the happiest time of my life. I sat on that pretty white horse, feeling his presence behind me, the breath of him on my neck, and I felt a trickle inside me, like everything that had happened to me in the past was dissolving. I hadn’t the slightest idea where he was taking me. I couldn’t care less. I trusted him. I knew that if I was wrong, and that if he might harm me in any way, then I was no judge of character. I believe that I saw all the way through him to his every intention toward me, and I was content with what I saw.

  We soon turned out of the bluebell woods and across a narrow road onto a bridle path giving way into a field. The field was lined with trees gone wild, drunk with the mayflower. There was a glistening stream where the horse stopped to drink, and after that the horse moved on at a slow pace for what seemed like hours before we even spoke a single word to each other. Yet the sun barely moved in the sky. I felt dreamy, lazy, sleepy, and yet safe on the back of the horse, with his strong, suntanned arm around me to balance me and my knees on the panniers.

  “What’s in these baskets?” I asked in a kind of slumber.

  “Blossoms,” he said.

  “Why do you want those?”

  “We eat it.”

  I gave a little laugh at his joke. Then I closed my eyes and gave in to the gentle swaying gait of the horse.

  After a while, and just to remind myself that I could still speak, I murmured to him, “How long before we get there?”

  “We pass through with the twilight,” he said. “Then we’re there.”

  I think of that often now, but never even questioned it at the time, so content was I. We’d been going for a while and I remembered that he knew my name but I didn’t know his. “Come on, tell me.”

  “Ah, names,” he said. “Now, where I come from there are people who say that once you can name a thing, you own it.”

  “What a silly idea.”

  “Is it silly? If you can name a thing you can put it in a box and close the lid on it. This box or that box. If you can’t name it, it runs free. Isn’t that true?”

  “How did you know my name is Tara?”

  “Well, that was very strange. I saw you sitting by that golden rock in the bluebell woods and the name just popped into my head from nowhere. A little voice said Tara and a child of the sky. What do you think of that?”

  I tried to think of his name, to see if anything would pop into my head. I emptied my mind and waited for a whisper. I believed it would be given to me. But nothing came.

  “And don’t waste your time trying to do the same trick,” he said, and laughed. “Because I’m guarding it.”

  “So why won�
�t you just tell me your name?”

  He became serious. “I can give you a name. I could make up any name, and you wouldn’t know the difference. But where I’m from, see, we all have a secret name. It’s known only to the clan, sort of thing.”

  “Clan?”

  “Clan. Tribe. That’s just a way of speaking. But anyway, this name, by keeping it a secret to the tribe, has power. And if you have it, they say—though I’m not sure I agree with them—well, it gives you power over that person.”

  “This is mad. I’m riding away on a horse with a man who won’t even tell me his damn name.”

  “Oh, I am going to tell you. I am, for sure. But first I want you to hang on, because we’re going to canter a bit now; otherwise we’ll miss the crossing at twilight.”

  I assumed he meant that we would be crossing a river, maybe the River Soar or the Trent into Derbyshire or Nottinghamshire. I had no idea where we were, but if we were crossing either other than by bridge then it was going to be an exciting splash. I’d never wet-crossed either of the wide rivers on a horse, and I meant to ask him. But I didn’t have a moment to put the question, because the horse flicked forward its ears and then went straight from walk to canter, and we were away, hard-riding across a field of emerald green.

  Oh, it was thrilling!

  He was such a good horseman. I’d had riding lessons since I was a little girl, and for some years the use of a pony in return for leading the weekend treks. I could ride, and ride well, but with a saddle and stirrups; yet he was attuned to his horse in a single current that ran through the animal, through him, and through me, too.

  We took the field at a canter and then galloped up the incline of a hill. The wind streamed my hair behind me and the white mane of the horse flashed white gold in the rays of the dying sun. We jumped a fence, we took a stream, we leapt over a fallen log. The hooves pounding on the dry grass quickened my heart and I thought, This is terrible this is terrible I’m falling in love with this man and I don’t know where I’m going.

  The horse started to slow as it reached the top of the hill, and then he pulled her up so that she went into an easy trot for the last few yards. The animal was breathing fiercely, for it had been a good long gallop. The dusk was settling around our shoulders now and the sky had gone an eerie blue black. When we got to the top of the hill we could see the last red streaks of the sun like the scrap of something torn on the mountains in the west, mountains I didn’t recognize. We crested the hill and the horse picked its way through stones down toward a dark woods. Not like the bluebell woods we had left, but much more dense and shadowed, though the horse and her master both seemed so very sure of the path that I never questioned either for a moment.