It Never Goes Away

by Tom Trott

  ‘I’m saving that for when we need it.’

  ✽✽✽

  Back in the rented Kia I had a missed WhatsApp call from Andy. End-to-end encryption. He was getting paranoid. When I called him back the conventional way he wouldn’t answer, I had to use WhatsApp. When he answered that he didn’t even wait for me to speak.

  ‘There are no surviving notebooks, any that were turned in have been destroyed, as per protocol, but I’ve been doing some snooping around in what files we do have, asking some old friends that were PCs at the time, and I have some answers for you. Got a pen?’

  ‘No.’

  He didn’t listen. ‘Question one: yes, drug possession, heroin, three occasions. Question two: no. Question three: both the parents. Question four: Burke and Meek twenty-five minutes, SOCO thirty minutes, Merton fifty minutes. Question five is where it gets interesting. I’ll swing by your office tonight.’

  9

  Nobody Owns the Past

  Mist rolled across the frozen earth of Strawbridge Farm, in middle-of-nowhere Kent. It had taken me an hour and a half from London, and I felt spaced out from focussing for that long on the rolling tarmac with its endless white lines splitting, running parallel, rejoining, and splitting again. Now I waited inside a dark barn, its black doorway creating a frame. Beyond the frame the flat brown dirt was lifeless, petrified grass that crunched under boots, stretching the short distance to a dried out wooden fence that was peeling into splinters and would snap if you leant on it. Beyond the fence there was only a white wall of mist. The black frame seemed to shrink the picture, the frame growing, the world stretching away.

  It didn’t look like there was anything to harvest in the fields, instead they were cleaning up, doing general maintenance; two men in the corner were sweeping up the dried mud and loose hay to clear the floor.

  ‘Who did you say you were?’

  The man in the red and black bomber jacket had returned, dragging me out of my trance. He marched across the concrete in confident strides.

  ‘Joe Grabarz,’ I intoned for the fifth time.

  ‘Uh-huh, he told me your name, he didn’t say who you were.’

  I looked so out of place in my smart suit amongst the hay bales and towers of mushroom crates.

  ‘I didn’t tell him,’ I told him.

  He used his big man’s voice: ‘You’re not police, are you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or immigration?’

  I gave a sardonic smile. ‘I’m in insurance.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ He didn’t seem convinced. ‘And you wanted to see who?’

  ‘Billy Calrissian.’

  He waited a moment in case I might add more to that, but I didn’t so he called to a young man with a family resemblance who was standing just beyond the doorway, looking at his phone.

  ‘Noah, do you know where Billy is?’

  The man barely looked up. ‘Where he always is.’

  The man in the bomber jacket sighed, then gestured to one of the men sweeping hay into a pile, who jogged over.

  ‘Kacper, take Mr Grabarz here to Billy.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Where he always is,’ he grunted.

  The young man smiled at me and turned with a “follow me” wave of the hand. ‘This way.’

  I followed him out of the barn onto the barren earth. We crunched across the grass, then followed the fence that disappeared into the mist as it stretched out ahead like an anchor chain into the sea. Then we abandoned the fence and surrendered to the mist. As he led me through it he looked over his shoulder with a smile.

  ‘Grabarz, eh? Jesteś Polakiem?’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s just a name to me.’

  ‘Ok,’ he replied, ‘I speak English. Why you want to see Billy?’

  ‘I just need to ask him a few questions.’

  ‘Policja, eh?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ah, you understand that word,’ he cackled.

  ‘It’s not hard to guess,’ I deadpanned.

  We were in no man’s land now, completely surrounded by the mist, if he left me I wouldn’t be able to find my way back until it cleared. We passed a small tree, a single landmark.

  ‘Strange how the word is always the same,’ he mused, ‘policja, policía, polizia, polizei, politsiya...’

  I tried to sound friendly. ‘I’m naturally suspicious of a man who knows the word for police in so many languages.’

  ‘I’m suspicious of a man who wears Italian leather to a farm,’ he retorted with a smile.

  Another barn hove out of the white.

  ‘Here we are,’ he announced.

  I could hear sheep as we approached the open side. There were around a hundred of the woolly creatures behind steel gates, milling about in what little space they had. Some of the smaller ones stood together in large clouds. Some drifted. One big brute stood alone.

  Standing in the middle of them all, moving from sheep to sheep, performing some kind of inspection, was a barely-bearded young man. He would grab a sheep and gently but firmly upend them to check their hooves, then let them go and move them on with a pat on the side. As I got closer I could see he had a small folding knife in his hand and would occasionally cut pieces from their hooves, which did not seem to distress them in the slightest.

  Kacper called to him: ‘Billy, man wants to see you.’

  ‘What man?’ he called back without looking up.

  ‘This man.’

  He looked up and squinted past the sheep, betraying bad eyesight. ‘Won’t be a minute.’

  ‘What you up to?’ Kacper asked him.

  ‘Maisy got rot. Just checking the rest.’

  He kept on with a few more sheep. I turned to Kacper and thanked him.

  ‘You’re welcome.’ He smiled warmly.

  I didn’t return it, and instead stared blankly for long enough to send the message it was time for him to leave. He nodded aimlessly, turned, and wandered back into the mist.

  A minute later the young shepherd threaded his way through the woolly mass and climbed over the gate.

  ‘Billy Calrissian?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s me. I’d shake your hand, but I don’t think you’d want to. What can I do for you?’

  ‘What were you doing to them?’ I nodded toward the livestock.

  He smiled. ‘I guess it looks odd, but you have to take care of their hooves and cut them down just as you cut your nails or clip a cat’s claws. One of them got hoof rot, I was just checking the rest of them.’

  ‘Is that bad?’

  ‘No, it’s nothing.’

  ‘Lucky for Maisy,’ I smiled. ‘Do you name all of them?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Doesn’t that make it tougher to kill them?’

  He shook his head with a smile. ‘They’re not for food, they’re dairy sheep. We make cheese. Feta and Pecorino. Did you come to see the sheep?’

  I shook my head without a smile. ‘I need to ask you some questions.’

  ‘About cheese?’

  ‘About Little Fawn Farm.’

  His face dropped, and he went from twenty to forty in that moment.

  The mist drifted through the open sided barn, clouding the air between us. Despite it I could see the hard lines of juvenile detention, the marks it had left outside and in. His skin was cracked, his hair thin, his eyes red. The only young thing about him was his wispy beard. He started playing with the knife, folding the blade in and out with a click and a swoosh. In and out, in and out.

  ‘Calrissian’ I sounded out, ‘Star Wars fan, are you, Billy?’

  He shrugged. ‘Who isn’t?’

  ‘Should I call you Billy or Kingsley?’

  The knife stayed out for now. ‘Billy. That’s my name. Who are you?’

  I told him my name.

  He shrugged again. ‘Great. What are you?’

  ‘I’m a private investigator.’ I offered him one of my cards.

  He swiped it and pulled it up to his nose, re
ading it carefully. Then he put it in his pocket and returned to playing with the knife. In and out, in and out.

  ‘Who hired you to find me?’

  ‘No one, I’m not here to find you, I’m here to ask you some questions.’

  ‘Who hired you to do that?’

  ‘No one, this is personal with me.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ He frowned, for a second I thought he was going to spit on the ground. ‘In prison I got ten letters a week from sickos like you.’ He pointed with the blade. ‘Journalists, authors, creeps, all asking why I did it. To a kid.’

  ‘Well, I wasn’t one of them, and you’re not a kid anymore, so maybe you’ll just answer my questions.’

  He folded the blade in and held it by his side. ‘Fine. Ask.’

  ‘Did you do it?’

  ‘Yes. Want to know how?’

  ‘Go on then,’ I shrugged.

  ‘I went to the barn, loaded the shotgun, went into the house, blasted my little sister’s head off, then went upstairs and blasted my mum and dad in the chest. Then I laid down and had a nap. Good enough for you?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Why not?’ he mocked.

  I sighed, making a show of it. ‘Well, first of all, in your original testimony you said your father never kept shells in the barn, that once he made them he kept them in the bedroom, that way the shotgun and shells were always separate. So, you would have to get the shotgun, enter their bedroom without waking them, load the shotgun, shoot them, then go downstairs and shoot your sister, who hadn’t even got out of bed, then come back upstairs to have your nap. With your eyes open. Or maybe you took the shells from the bedroom, loaded the gun then went and shot your sister first, and it was your parents who never got out of bed.’

  He shrugged aggressively. ‘Maybe I made my own shells, or maybe I planned it and stole the shells earlier in the day.’

  ‘Did you?’ I deadpanned.

  He stared at me in disgust.

  ‘No,’ I told him, ‘I can’t see either scenario working. I mean, whoever you shot first, why were the others still in bed? And how come your clothes only had your parents’ blood on them? Are you really telling me that not a single particle of your sister’s blood landed on you when you “blasted her head off” as you put it?’

  His eyes had opened slowly but steadily as I spoke, but he didn’t say anything.

  ‘No, I don’t believe it adds up at all. I believe you’re innocent.’

  He scoffed. ‘What, you think you’re the first? That was the other pile of letters I got.’

  ‘And I also cannot understand why DS Merton’s DNA was found at the scene.’

  ‘He was one of the investigating officers. They found all their DNA there,’ he explained.

  ‘True, but he didn’t arrive until twenty minutes after the SOCO team.’

  He frowned at this. Then he was silent for a moment, fighting against his own curiosity.

  ‘How did you find that out?’

  ‘It’s all in the records.’

  He finally put the knife in his pocket. ‘Where is Merton now?’

  ‘He’s dead. Years ago now, heart attack.’

  He sighed and let it go. His interest was lost again.

  I tried to lure it back: ‘It seems to me that there had to be at least two killers, that they loaded your father’s shells, or identical ones, into their shotguns and killed the three of them. Then they drugged you, took you to your parents’ bedroom, and put you on the bed with their bodies. That would account for the blood. Then they took your father’s shotgun from the barn, loaded it and fired it a few times before leaving it on the bedroom floor. They probably made sure to leave your fingerprints on it, they might even have left it in your hands only for you to drop it after they’d gone. They might not even have left you on the bed, there’s no way to tell what you would do under heavy sedation, but they probably did.’

  The sound of sheep clung to the damp air. A bird cawed. Then the sky began to spit and the sound of it tinkling on the metal roof seemed deafening. Nothing else happened. He stared at me for some time before he spoke, and it was only when he spoke that I realised how quiet the rain really was.

  ‘Why do you care?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t particularly. But a friend of mine did, and someone killed him for it.’

  The world was dimming now, the short winter day blending into night. He closed his eyes and raised his face to the ceiling. Again the sound of the rain seemed to build and grow, revealing depths and waves, and endless space beyond this vale of tears.

  ‘I live here, you know.’ He started quietly, almost a whisper. ‘I sleep here. I used to sleep in the dorm with the foreign workers, the Poles and the Romanians who come and go with the seasons. Now I sleep in a shed. They had to give me my own space, I was freaking everyone out. It was the same in juvie. Ever since that night. I wake up with a start. Not every night. Most nights. Sometimes something will have set it off: someone slamming a door, screaming in their cell, something like that. But other times I just launch out of bed, as though there’s been an explosion. Except there’s nothing, I’m just standing there. And the air is silent.’ He opened his eyes again.

  I waited until I was sure he was finished. ‘Why did you change your plea?’

  ‘Have you ever been to juvie? It’s not nice. But as nice as it isn’t, everyone there lives in fear of big-boy prison. It’s like school, when you go from primary to secondary and you go from being the biggest to the smallest overnight. I was approaching eighteen, and they said that if I admitted to my crime there was a chance I would get parole. Otherwise I would be transferred to a prison filled with all the other multiple murderers. You know, I barely remember life before juvie, I didn’t want to be twenty-five and have spent more than half my life behind bars. The only thing the criminal justice system hates more than reform is admitting a mistake. The only way for an innocent man to go free is to plead guilty. It saves face. After seven and a half years I didn’t see much point in keeping my honour.’

  I didn’t have a response to that, he was the expert; and suddenly he gave a look that made me feel I was speaking to an old man; certainly someone older than me.

  ‘Leave the past alone and it will leave you alone.’

  ‘I wish that was true,’ I told him.

  He frowned. ‘It’s my past, I’m asking you to leave it alone.’

  I sighed. ‘Whoever did this, whoever murdered your parents, your little sister, they didn’t do it to frame you. They didn’t do it to put you in jail. You were just a convenient way to tie it up.’ I paused. I rarely pronounce on philosophical matters, but I couldn’t help myself this time: ‘It’s not yours.’

  He stared at me.

  ‘It’s not yours,’ I repeated. ‘Nobody owns the past.’

  ✽✽✽

  There was no mobile signal at Strawbridge Farm, so when I made it onto the motorway my phone started pinging with missed calls. Sixteen from Thalia. I pulled over at the nearest services and rang her back whilst I wolfed down a double cheeseburger.

  ‘What?’ was my taciturn opener.

  ‘Where have you been all day!?’ she screamed.

  ‘Working.’

  ‘Working!? On what? We haven’t got any clients.’

  ‘Then what do you care where I’ve been all day?’ I retorted.

  ‘Clarence is dead. His body was found in your car. You were arrested!’

  ‘They let me go,’ I reassured her. ‘How did you find out?’

  ‘Then you disappear for a whole day up to London and then Kent!’

  ‘How do you know where I’ve been!?’ I almost spat out the burger.

  ‘Oh, come on, you know I set up that phone for you.’

  ‘You put a tracker on it!?’ It was my turn to scream.

  ‘That’s a very crude way of putting it, all I did was share your location info with my account.’

  ‘That sounds a lot like you put a tracker on it.’

  ‘It’s
company policy on company phones. I should know, I wrote our digital policy.’

  ‘Fantastic,’ I grunted with a full mouth.

  ‘Listen to me.’ She was serious and bossy. I secretly liked her like that. ‘Clarence is dead, I think you owe us all an explanation, especially if we’re going to help you.’

  ‘I don’t want your help, no offense, this isn’t company business.’

  ‘Oh really?’ she mocked, ‘Well, your company got a bank transfer from Clarence today, he must have scheduled it in advance.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Mo-ney.’ She said it like I was a simpleton. ‘From Clarence.’

  ‘How much?’ I asked innocently.

  ‘One hundred and ten thousand, one hundred and ten pounds, and one penny.’

  10

  £110,110.01

  It was ten o’clock by the time I arrived at the office. Thalia had seen me pull up in the rented Kia and was standing in the reception when I marched through the doors. She was wearing one of her black numbers, stockings with a line down the back, and her lips were perfectly crimson. She always dressed like something out of a noir picture, maybe she thought I wanted her to look that way. Maybe she thought the customers wanted her to look that way. Maybe she didn’t care what either I or they thought and just liked to stun. It had caused problems in the past, she always got men’s blood up. If they were inclined toward anger they would get angry at me just to impress her. That said, a lot of my male clients were inclined towards anger, and they often liked to show who was boss. Anger was normally how they had got themselves into trouble. Either that or they couldn’t stop crying. With women she either set them on edge because she appeared to dress for men, or she took the sting out of their attempts to seduce me. Right now she was angry, her chest heaving, curls of black hair fallen astray over her forehead; in short: at her best.

  ‘Is Andy here?’ I asked before she could speak.

  ‘No, he couldn’t stay late, he explained it all to me.’

  I moved to my office door. ‘Great, give me a minute to sit down.’

  ‘Joe ’ she started.

  ‘A minute!’ I snapped, and opened the door.