Close Your Eyes

by Robotham, Michael

  A fuzzy-looking brown teddy bear is tucked between her arm and her side. Her nightdress extends to her thighs, pulled down. Her legs are slightly apart. Her feet splayed at forty-five degrees. Her toenails painted.

  She has been left like this. Arranged. Someone came to this room and suffocated her. Afterwards he rearranged her body, pulling down her nightdress, placing her hands on her chest as though she’s Sleeping Beauty waiting for her prince.

  Questions are forming. This wasn’t sexual. Harper wasn’t raped or violated or defiled with stab wounds. It was almost the opposite. He tried to safeguard her modesty or protect her innocence. He created an idealised fairy-tale resting place. Why? What did Harper represent that Elizabeth didn’t?

  The teddy bear strikes a strangely paternal note. This small gesture is the act of someone who loves children. Perhaps the toy had special significance to Harper – every child seems to favour one above the others. A father would know. A father would care.

  According to the post-mortem report, Harper had two broken fingernails. She fought back as the pillow was pressed upon her face and may have scratched her attacker. Afterwards, he dipped her fingers in bleach to remove any possible evidence.

  Going back over the details, I try to understand the sequence of events.

  If the killer had broken through the front door, Elizabeth and Harper would have heard him. One of them would have phoned the police. Instead Elizabeth put on her dressing gown and went downstairs. More likely she knew this man. She opened the door, perhaps expecting him. She poured a glass of wine – a nightcap, just the one – her prints were found on the glass.

  The police assume that Elizabeth was murdered first and didn’t have time to cry out or to warn Harper. The killer must have been covered in her blood – his clothes, his hands – yet no traces of blood were found on the stairs or in Harper’s room. He must have cleaned up, changing out of his clothes, washing his face and hands.

  Unless … unless …

  What if there was more than one killer? Two perpetrators. One went upstairs, the other stayed with Elizabeth. No, a mother would have warned her daughter of the danger. She would have fought. Harper would have barricaded herself in her room, phoned the police or gone to help her mother.

  I look at the window and the small corner pane of broken glass. A desperate teenage girl might have tried to climb out and shimmy down the rainwater pipe, but the window was broken from outside rather than within.

  Whatever the sequence of events, the break-in was staged afterwards to make it look like … like … like what? It was never going to be confused with a robbery. Instead the killer was laying a false trail, trying to complicate or obfuscate or muddy the water.

  I have no way of knowing what happened unless I learn more about Elizabeth and Harper. I have to explore their lives, discovering their likes and dislikes, fears and dreams. Were they risk-takers? Did they draw attention? Make enemies? Attract admirers? By understanding them I will learn more about their killer. I will see the world through his eyes and then hold up a mirror to his face.

  There is someone at the farmhouse. Not a detective – he doesn’t have the bovine walk or cheap haircut. Maybe he’s from one of those specialist companies that clean up crime scenes; or he could be a tradesman or a valuation agent. He’s walking around the house, peering through windows, studying the building from every angle, as though examining a work of art and deciding how it makes him feel. Why does art have to make us ‘feel’ anything? Why can’t art be art for art’s sake?

  I keep being drawn back here by fear and regret. Once I thought I glimpsed Harper in the window upstairs, but it was just a trick of the light or wishful thinking or remorse. That’s what happens when you kill someone you love – the guilt grows inside you, bloated and parasitic, curling around your heart like a poisonous jellyfish.

  I want to know what the stranger is doing. I don’t appreciate it when things change … not unless I change them. That’s why I have reconstructed my history – dug it up and reburied it, deeper than before. Not forgotten. Never that.

  People often misjudge me. It’s something I have spent a lifetime perfecting. The trick is not to set the bar too high. Never be too clever. Never volunteer. Never raise your voice or put up your hand or take a step forward. Never be first or last. Be average, be ordinary, be invisible in the crowd …

  My father didn’t have that philosophy. He believed in making a noise. ‘If you don’t show people you’re the boss they’ll walk all over you,’ he’d say. ‘Blaze a trail or be roadkill.’ These were lessons I learned before my mother died, as I’d watch my father get ready to go out on important ‘union business’. A clean shirt lying ready for him on the bed, his trousers hung on the radiator. My mother banging pots in the kitchen, unable to look at him.

  Sometimes he would forget to wipe the remnants of shaving foam off his face. It would stick to the bottom of his ears or to his neck. My mother never said anything. She’d sit at the kitchen table, her fingers around the cup of tea, staring at the steaming liquid. She wouldn’t raise it to her lips. It was as though the cup had become too heavy. Instead she’d dip her nose, blow a breath and sip from the rim.

  At closing time my father would come home, searching for his keys as he stumbled up the steps. Entering the house he would trip over, cursing and kicking at whatever object had attacked him in the dark. Feigning sleep, my muscles aching with the tension, I would strain to hear him as he climbed the stairs, ricocheting off the walls.

  Lying still. Barely breathing. My fists clenched around the bedding. I wanted my mother to be asleep. ‘Please be quiet. Please be quiet,’ I prayed. But she wouldn’t or she couldn’t hold her tongue. Instead she accused him of smelling of beer and curry and whatever whore had sucked his ‘pencil dick’. Even with his reflexes dulled by alcohol he could still knock her across the room with the back of his hand, making her crumple to the floor.

  ‘Such a big man, hitting a woman – does it make you feel proud? Hit me again, you’ll feel even bigger.’

  ‘You want more. I’ll give you more.’

  ‘Please be quiet. Please be quiet,’ I whispered.

  I covered my ears, but could not shut out the sound of his fists hitting her flesh, or her cries of pain. Afterwards, I would cry myself to sleep and dream of murder.

  In the morning my father would be a changed man, gentle, pitiful, wheedling, begging her forgiveness, calling her pet and sweetheart and darling. She ignored his performance. She served his breakfast. She cleaned the house. She went to work. She did not speak. Why now, I wondered. Why couldn’t she have been quiet last night?

  But it was her silence that hurt him most. ‘You’re killing me,’ he’d say. ‘Call me names. Hit me. Throw something. Don’t send me to Coventry.’

  I hoped it meant she was sending him away, but he never went to Coventry or anywhere else.

  He was a weak man, a coward, a hypocrite and a cheat, but I craved his affection. I hung on his every word and treasured those moments of closeness when he ruffled my hair or threw me a wink or bought me a Coca-Cola as I waited outside the pub. How can you hate someone yet crave their affection? Love and hate are not the same emotion turned upside down. One is an illusion of the heart and the other is love betrayed. Apathy lies in between.

  I can see the stranger walking from room to room, as though looking for something. He has a twitching hand and a stooped walk and he seems to peer right through walls, seeing shadows and shapes that others cannot.

  Perhaps he’s looking for the loose ends. There are still so many of them. No matter how hard I concentrate, I cannot think of every contingency. I cannot make myself completely safe.

  9

  At midday I take a break and make a coffee, eating a chocolate digestive over the sink to avoid spilling crumbs on the floor. The rain has gone and the air is sharp and clean. I walk outside and stand in the overgrown kitchen garden, which is neatly laid out with gravel paths and box hedges. I quite fancy m
yself living in a place like this, playing the gentleman farmer, tending vegetables and animals, watching the seasons pass.

  I check my watch and swallow another pill. It takes a few minutes for the tremors to slow. They never completely disappear any more. My left thumb and index finger will rub together in a pill-rolling motion as though I’m asking someone to ‘show me the money’.

  Returning to the kitchen table, I begin to concentrate on the timelines, starting with Harper. She finished her last A-level exam in May and had enrolled in a foundation course in art and design at Falmouth University which was due to begin on 8 September. In the meantime she’d been working part-time as a waitress at a local pub, the Moon and Sixpence. She had a lunchtime shift on that Saturday from ten until three. Afterwards she drove to the home of a friend, Sophie Baxter, and the two of them spent an hour watching music videos. They arranged to meet later that evening to celebrate Harper’s birthday.

  Harper was home at 7.30 p.m. when she called her father from the landline. It was her birthday the next day and he planned to take her to lunch. She left the farmhouse at 8 p.m. and met Sophie at the Salthouse, a landmark pub west of the pier.

  Harper didn’t have her mobile phone. She had spent the previous night with her boyfriend, Blake Lehmann, and had left her phone charging at his flat. I remember Blake from the public meeting. He was six years ahead of Harper at school but had left at sixteen to take up an apprenticeship as a mechanic. On that Saturday he went dirtbike-riding with friends, but had arranged to meet Harper that evening to return her phone.

  Blake showed up an hour late at the Salthouse, still dressed in his muddy leathers. He returned Harper’s phone, which began pinging the nearest phone tower just after 9.15. She picked up her voicemail messages, including one from Aunt Becca asking her to babysit. Harper returned the call and they spoke for about four and a half minutes.

  At 10.30 p.m. Blake Lehmann and Harper were seen arguing in the pub car park. An employee at a funfair in Salthouse Field witnessed the confrontation, describing how Blake grabbed Harper by the shoulders and shook her. She retaliated, slapping his face. Blake returned to the pub alone.

  Harper sent a text message to her mother at 10.42 p.m. saying she was coming home. Her mobile signal shows she was at the farmhouse by 11.08 p.m. She died before midnight or in the two hours that followed.

  I write a question on a notepad: What was Harper doing between four and seven that afternoon? It might not be important, but these are the only missing hours in her timeline.

  Climbing to the first floor, I go into Harper’s bedroom and stand for a long while at the end of her bed. Her drawings are pinned to the corkboard and stuck on the wardrobe doors. A watercolour is framed above her bed. She painted Clevedon Pier under a stormy sky with a shaft of sunlight bursting through the clouds like a heavenly intervention.

  At the window I lean against the frame and look out at the distant sea. A fly is buzzing itself to death on the sill, spinning on its back in small, spiralling circles. A movement catches my eye. A figure has paused at the entrance to the stable block. He seems to take a deep breath, as though daunted by the dark of the interior, before slipping through the door.

  Descending the stairs, I go through the laundry and emerge outside, crossing the flagged yard. I step into the cool gloom of the stables and wait for my eyes to adjust. He is moving between the empty horse stalls, a man in his mid-twenties, dressed in greasy jeans and a flannelette shirt, buttoned down to his wrists. I watch him as he fills a small ceramic bowl with water from a tap.

  ‘Afternoon.’

  His first reaction is to cringe as though expecting a punch. Light from the door falls on his pale face but doesn’t soften the dark shadows that swallow his eyes.

  ‘My name is Joe.’

  He doesn’t look at me. I notice the can of cat food in his hand, along with a penknife. ‘Are you looking for the cat?’ I ask.

  He licks his lips.

  ‘It’s Tommy, isn’t it?’

  He nods.

  ‘You live next door.’

  Another nod. He has a face that seems to be constantly moving, first a fidget, then a wince, a tic, a grimace, an eye-roll, as though a swarm of bees is buzzing behind his eyelids. He’s six foot tall, on the cusp of obesity, but trying to hide the fact by cinching his belt tight and low on his hips, causing flesh to spill over the waistband.

  In the silence I hear a faint feline mewl.

  ‘Show me what you’ve found.’

  Tommy leads me past the stalls into a corner of the barn where empty oil barrels and paint tins are stored on rough wooden shelves. I notice a packing crate full of straw and torn newspapers. The ginger-and-black tabby is lying on her side while four – no, five kittens are suckling against her abdomen. Tiny, helpless, their eyes just open, the kittens are being moved by their mother’s rough tongue as she cleans them.

  Tommy picks up the biggest of the litter. The kitten sits in the palm of his hand, squirming and trying to stand. He strokes his thumb over its fragile head and under its chin.

  ‘How old are they?’ I ask.

  He raises his spare hand, opening his fingers twice.

  ‘Ten days.’

  He nods.

  ‘You’ve been feeding the mother?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell anyone?’

  He opens his mouth, but no sound comes out. He’s not ducking the question. He’s trying to find the answer.

  ‘Nan don’t like me c-c-coming over here.’

  The words are hesitant yet overly articulated as though he’s trying to disguise a lisp or cure a stammer. He swaps kittens, letting each of them become accustomed to being handled. I get a better look at him now. Built large in the hips and thighs, he has acne scars on his cheeks and scruffy hair spotted with paint that looks like bird-shit. His jeans are stained with grease and oil and the dark hollow of his right eye turns out to be a bruise.

  ‘What happened?’ I ask.

  ‘Rugby.’

  ‘It’s not rugby season.’

  He cups a kitten in both his hands, holding it against his cheek. For a fleeting moment I recognise a boy rather than a man, lonely, isolated, lacking in confidence, but then I see something else spark in his irises – not intelligence so much as a certain animalistic cunning.

  ‘You found Mrs Crowe and Harper.’

  He nods.

  ‘Why did you come here that Sunday morning?’

  ‘I ’eard the alarm.’

  ‘Were you friends with Harper?’

  He doesn’t answer, but I can see him struggle with the question. I pull up an empty old drum and take a seat, holding my left arm to stop it trembling.

  ‘How long have you lived next door?’

  ‘All me life.’

  ‘You did work around the place – looking after the garden?’

  He nods.

  ‘Where were you that Saturday night? You know the one I mean.’

  ‘H-h-home.’

  ‘All night?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘When did you last see Harper?’

  ‘Saturday.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘Early evening.’

  ‘You saw her go out?’

  ‘Saw her car.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘Must have been about eight.’

  ‘Where were you when you saw her?’

  ‘With the cows.’

  ‘Was Harper alone?’

  He nods.

  ‘What about Mrs Crowe – did you see her go out that night?’

  ‘I were watching TV.’

  ‘What were you watching?’

  ‘Don’t remember.’

  ‘Did you see her come home?’

  He shakes his head. Dropping to his haunches, he opens the tin of cat food with his penknife, scooping out the contents with the blade. The tabby rises from her bed and kittens tumble in her wake, blindly kneading and suckling at the air. She eats hungrily an
d cleans herself.

  Tommy wipes his hands on his jeans.

  I pick up a kitten. Its eyes open, bluer than blue.

  ‘They’re lovely.’

  He nods.

  ‘What are you going to do with them?’

  ‘Drown ’em most likely.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Nan won’t let me keep ’em. We got too many animals to feed.’

  ‘I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll help you find homes for them, but first you have to tell me the truth. Did you see Mrs Crowe come home that night?’

  Tommy seems to contemplate lying, but then looks at the kittens. ‘I saw her.’

  ‘What time was that?’

  ‘It were dark.’

  Sunset on that Saturday was at 9.30 p.m.

  ‘You were outside?’

  Another nod.

  ‘Show me.’

  Tommy puts the penknife in his jeans and tosses the empty can of cat food in an old water trough. He leads me across the yard and shows me a spot near the water tank where the grass is worn away and earth compacted. Facing the house, I scan the windows. I can see Elizabeth’s bedroom. Her curtains are open. I can also see Harper’s room and the broken pane of glass.

  ‘When did you first find this spot?’

  He shrugs.

  ‘Did you ever watch Mrs Crowe get undressed?’

  ‘N-n-n-no.’

  ‘What about Harper?’

  He shakes his head more strenuously. I probe him gently, using a tone that carries no hint of censure or criticism. ‘I’m not the police, Tommy. I can’t get you into trouble. I’m just trying to understand what happened.’

  He picks at a patch of flaking paint on his thumbnail. ‘It were h-h-her fault.’

  ‘Mrs Crowe?’

  ‘She d-d-d-don’t…’ He stops. Starts again. ‘She d-d-d-don’t close her curtains.’

  His stutter gets worse when he’s under pressure.

  ‘Did you masturbate while you watched her?’

  ‘N-n-n-n-no.’

  ‘Is that why you stole her underwear from the clothesline?’

  His fists are clenched and shoulders hunched. I can’t see his eyes. ‘She called me a p-pervert. She’s the one t-t-to talk.’