Welcome to Cooper
Page 22
For me, I see his face all the time. My eyes are always closed, always ready to spot him looming over me. Sometimes I’m in bed—in my head, in my memory, I mean. Other times he’s pinning me down in the shower, or the yard, or dragging me through my home toward the back door. Often it’s different locations. Like he’s sitting at the bar in Stingray’s. Or pressing me against the flimsy fence that runs along the river. Pressing me so hard I pray for it to break so I can drown in the dirty water. Never has the creaking of an apartment sounded so much like footsteps. I can still cry, and when I lie in bed at night sometimes the tears pool in the backs of my sockets.
Those are the bad days.
Today is a good one, though. I managed to go from my bedroom to the bathroom without stubbing my toe on something. I managed to make myself toast and a cup of tea without spilling anything. I managed to put the radio on and for a short while it was almost like it had always been. Like I might have just been relaxing with my eyes closed, listening to music.
There’s a knock on my front door and I jerk upright so hard I send the mug tumbling down my front. I swear, loudly, and reach for my stick. I’m not sure what time it is, but it’s Sunday, I know that, and I’m not expecting anyone. My brain throws up images of him standing on the other side of the door, and my heart goes into overdrive and it’s hard to breathe.
Another knock. Sharp, tight. Someone official. I make my way to the door on trembling legs that I bash against that damn TV cabinet, only this time I barely feel it.
I swallow to clear my throat. “Who’s there?” I shout.
“Ma’am, it’s Detective Mansfield,” comes the reply. “I’m sorry to drop in on you like this.”
I recognize the voice. We’ve spoken before, she and I. Her first name begins with a D. Dana, maybe. My fingers still want to go for the peephole. I take a steadying breath and undo the chain. Slide back the deadbolt. Step away and smile and swing open the door.
“Good morning,” I say. “Dana, isn’t it?”
“Debra,” she says. “I hope I’m not intruding.”
She’s looking at the tea stain down my front, I realize. Or maybe she’s not. I brush at it self-consciously. “Not at all. Would you like to come in?”
“Thank you.”
I hear her as she moves inside. She’s shorter than me, I can tell. I wait until I’m sure she’s in then close the door, rattle the chain, and slide the deadbolt home. I give a slight smile.
“Force of habit,” I say.
Debra makes a noise like she might be smiling.
“Cup of tea?” I ask, then wipe at my damp clothes. “I was just about to make myself another one.”
“Why not,” Debra says.
So she stays for tea. It’s nice, having her here for a bit. She doesn’t stay long, maybe a half hour at most, but I like her. She doesn’t treat me like some precious object that might break apart at any moment, even if that’s how I feel sometimes. She asks if I want help with anything. I say no and that’s that. We sit at the kitchen table and drink tea and talk and I even put out some cookies, although neither of us eat them.
She asks me how much I know about what happened after. I tell her the truth: “Just what was on the news.”
“You know we found the recorder,” she says. “On Thomas’s body.”
“I know.”
“We couldn’t have done it without him.”
She’s talking about Joe Finch. Thomas had spilled everything out onto that tape, everything that had happened in Cooper. It was his final confession. I wonder if it made any difference in the end. I don’t believe in any of that stuff about what goes on after death, but I don’t know about Thomas. I guess I don’t know a lot about Thomas.
“This is all very interesting,” I say. “But you didn’t come here to tell me this.”
“No.”
“You’ve found something.”
“Yes.”
“Something on the recording.”
“Yes.”
“Something for me.”
Debra doesn’t say anything, but I know what the answer is. I hear a rustle as she reaches into a pocket and then a dull clink as she places something metallic on the kitchen table.
“He left you a message,” she says. “After he was finished. I’ve had it copied for you. They put it onto a tape, made me bring you this little player. Who has a tape player anymore, right?”
Then her fingers are on mine, and I jump at the touch. She presses the device into my palm—feels like a Walkman; I remember those—and closes my hand around it, shows me where the Play button is. I ask her if she’s listened to it and she tells me yes. I think I start to cry then, but maybe it was a little sooner.
Debra leaves shortly after. Says her goodbyes and shakes my hand. Tells me to take care and wishes me luck. I wait until she’s gone, until a minute has passed and then ten minutes have passed. Now I’m sitting at the kitchen table and an hour has passed and I’m holding the Walkman in my hand and there’s a fresh cup of tea in front of me and those cookies, too, but I don’t think I can eat anything. I think about him, about the time he’d needed help and we’d talked, and we’d walked along the river and through the darkened streets and swapped our sad stories, and my finger finds the button and presses down. A hiss of static, and then I’m transported to the wide forests of the Pine Ridge. Here the light is warm and the ground is soft, and in my own private imagination I’m sitting next to him, leaning back against a cottonwood tree with my head on his shoulder and the sun on our faces, and I listen to the message that he left for me when he was alone and I was asleep.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks first and foremost have to go to my agent, Jamie, for seeing something in my manuscript when others didn’t. The work you put into the revisions helped improve the novel no end, and hopefully by this point I’ve received my vaccine, lockdown is over and I can legally buy you a beer. Thanks also have to go to everyone at my publisher, Thomas and Mercer—Sammia, Dolly, Jack; you guys have been awesome to work with and have always had time for my newbie questions about the whole process. A shout out to Sophie for her PR work and to Gemma and Sadie for their copy-editing wizbotery. A huge thank you to David Downing, the unsung hero of this book. The work you did on the developmental edit was nothing short of transformative, and you’re clearly some sort of magician.
I also have to say thanks to the friends and family who gave their time to read my book and offer their thoughts—James, Karen, Sara, Celanne and Sube (and anyone I’ve forgotten . . .). Marco—cheers for all the support and writing discussions we’ve had over the years! Thanks to my mum for far too much to mention here, but specifically for spotting the writers’ group advert online—the spark from which this novel was born. And finally thanks to my wife, Lucy, who suffered through countless vomit drafts and listened to my endless stressing that the book wasn’t working/it was crap/the whole process wasn’t going to amount to anything, all without once threatening to divorce me. Oh, and for making us get a dog (hi Scout).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tariq Ashkanani is a solicitor based in Edinburgh, where he also runs WriteGear, a Kickstarter company that sells high-quality notebooks for writers, and WriteGear’s podcast Page One. He had no formal writing training or consultation prior to writing Welcome to Cooper. He is currently working on a follow-up thriller, also set in Cooper, called Follow Me to the Edge.