No Way to Say Goodbye

by Rod Madocks

  In my waking hours, faced with such a complete evaporation of a person, what could I think? Although I conjured her reality desperately, it was as if the world had swallowed her, absorbed her on that night-time street like those fabulist books we used to read in the 1970s which described people lost in other dimensions. Yet, Rachel herself had little time for the fantastical. She preferred love stories; her favourite was Dr Zhivago. She sensed that we were man-made, that our agencies were of this world and, after all, although men may disappear mysteriously, in the main, there were usually all too evident reasons why women disappeared.

  Winter tightened in the suburbs; my neighbours brought out blue bottles of antifreeze to their cars. The geese from the city ponds flew in circles at night, prompted to migrate but with nowhere to go. Louie’s calls to me diminished.

  I lived with pain, a selfish pain, and went to work to hear the groaning distress of my patients, talking out their lives to which I listened in silence until the session tape ran to a stop. I would tell them, “Your session is finished. See you next week.” Ego te absolvo, I might well have added. I had entered the work for the worst of motives: curiosity, vanity, the search for power, the search for otherness; a wounded physician seeking healing, and now it had become my punishment to endure each alloted therapeutic hour.

  Then came the TV programme, the strange unreal Crimewatch. I had previously barely seen it, but now it was very relevant, for a trailer announced that Rachel’s case was to be featured. I waited in alone that night, watching the opening credits accompanied by the pounding, whirling music and the opening images of a blue flashing light, a panda car circling a roundabout, and a policeman with his cap tipped forward speaking on a radio phone. The squirrel-faced male presenter, with his coiffed blond hair and checked suit, took us briskly through the evening’s enactments. He was assisted by his female sidekick, more serious than he, the studio lights glinting on her hoop earrings as he inquired, “And now, Sue, what are our updates on last month’s appeals?”

  I watched the armed robbery, the rape in Bradford, the stilted dramas turning tragedy to entertainment, then Rachel’s case, the shock of hearing her name in public, the actress, the ersatz Rachel, stiffly walking in her clothes. She was shown in the classroom, standing at the bus stop on her way back from work and walking to the Paradise Stores. The few clues were mentioned: the white van, the details about timing of when she was last seen, and what clothes she wore. DCI Bain, the officer in charge of the case, gave an awkward interview in the studio standing self-consciously under the TV lights. I recognized him as the older policeman who had spoken to me after my interview at Central. “This is still a missing-persons inquiry,” he said, “although there are serious concerns.”

  Catherine made a dignified and steady-voiced appearance, and the three grey ghostly images from Mr Dhaliwal’s security camera were shown. The programme ended with an appeal for wanted men, and their faces were shown in a series of mug shots.

  “Remember that crime like this is really quite rare, so good night, everyone, and don’t have nightmares,” concluded the presenter. I could almost see him smirking.

  The next day work carried me along, pushing thoughts away. I had clinical review and supervision, which I kept rescheduling as I avoided the scrutiny of others, and an assessment of a patient with a phobia about blood. She felt sickening horror at trails and speckles of blood on pavements, or blood sudden and vivid in a lavatory bowl. I envied her this phobia, for at least it condensed her terror into one recognisable form.

  At lunchtime I sat in the Fiat listening to the radio news. There was a dull thudding and popping outside as children set off fireworks. There was no news after the programme and hopes of a breakthrough dwindled; there had been so little to go on. I drove home in the dark. Entering the house I saw a flashing light indicating a message on the answer phone. Of all people, it was Catherine’s voice on the machine.

  “Thought I’d tell you Jack, we have been told by the police there has been an arrest.”

  * * *

  His name was George Adam Kress. He had walked into the police station at Radford announcing in his hoarse loud voice to the civilian reception staff, “I’ve killed that girl on telly.”

  There was a flurry among those producing their documents for driving offences and lads on police bail checking in. They all moved away from Kress who continued to lean nonchalantly against the counter. A duty sergeant was fetched who ushered him to the interview rooms. They sat him down and took a look at him, a lean man in a worn black leather jacket and soiled jeans, his tanned scalp showing through his thin hair. He had a weatherworn face, his nose like a broken blade leaned to one side where someone had cracked it. He had slightly asymmetrical eyes, which never quite looked at you straight. Most noticeable was his hoarse bass voice and his large knobbed hands, held in his lap like two brown crabs. He had a spider-web tattoo enveloping his right elbow and an image of a cherub with a halo on his left forearm.

  The sergeant asked if he wanted to make a statement.

  He replied, “I’m saying nothing else. I’ll only talk to the bossman on telly about killing that bird. What’s his name? Bain. Inspector Bain; that’s it.”

  Beekeeper team had been kept busy by the Crimewatch programme; there had been thirty or so calls to the studio and to Beekeeper base. There were sightings of Rachel, information on white vans, her belongings had possibly been found, and some callers offered theories about her disappearance. All attention switched then to Kress. He was whisked to Central and taken to a secure interview room. Here he seemed to be enjoying himself, walking with a cocky swagger, demanding drinks, chatting to custody staff, asking for a brief — a duty solicitor — and demanding cigarettes. When these arrived he tore the filters off, smoking them cupped in his large hands with the thumb locked round, guarding the glowing end. When he was placed in the exercise yard he turned to another prisoner, who stood with his back to the wall while Kress pinned him into a corner as he talked excitedly.

  “I’m a soldier; I have “soldier’s heart”. That’s what they calls it — “soldier’s heart”. I’ve heard about it. It’s from my war experience. Falklands me. Parachute regiment. Aden and Ireland. Yes, I’ve served in the republic of Northern Ireland, me, that’s why I done things. Things I regret.”

  His brief arrived in the afternoon, a woman in her thirties in a black trouser suit with glossy straight hair and designer glasses. She was from a large city firm who supplied green-scheme legal aid to hundreds of impoverished detainees each year. She wore a slightly pained expression as if disgusted by her surroundings. She and the custody staff politely playing out their antagonism. A custody sergeant opined that Kress was crazy, not the full ticket. She ignored him and asked to speak to her client in a side room.

  “I’ll go with you anywhere, darling,” he rumbled. She winced but ushered him to the interview room and he stalked in after her, walking in an exaggerated way with his arms bunched by his side. They spent a long time closeted together while the detectives fidgeted outside. You could hear Kress’s deep voice although the door was closed. Meanwhile his convictions had been obtained from the Criminal Records Bureau. They came on a print-out six pages long with his appearances listed by courts, starting with Juvenile and ending in Crown Court. He had been transferred to a Special Hospital at the age of seventeen following a conviction for wounding and theft. There were many further offences, including attempted robbery, burglary, theft and assaults. He had served seventeen years in prison in total and was on conditional release after serving a sentence for armed robbery. He had been released seven months previously from Wandsworth. Kress could not have served in the army, as he never had more than nine months out of prison since his adolescence.

  Once his brief had declared herself ready the interview could begin. Bain and a detective sergeant conducted it. They enacted the usual ritual of opening new cassettes then introducing themselves for the benefit of the tape. They went round the room in order
, with Kress last solemnly pronouncing his full name. Bain started with a few soft questions about where Kress was now living. Kress looked at his brief, she nodded, and he answered. Bain then asked about what he had been doing after release from Wandsworth.

  Kress drew himself up. “No comment. I do not want to make a comment on that.”

  Bain said wearily, “Mr Kress, it is you who came to us wanting to confess to something.”

  There was a pause. Kress sat straight in his chair, eyes focused ahead of him as if reading from something prepared, and said, “All I will say is that I have done that girl, that teacher, and I expects to be punished for it. I took her that night and buried her where she can’t be found. I feel very sorry about it, but that can’t be helped now.”

  He sat back and folded his arms. Little else could be got from the interview with Kress answering “No comment” to everything else. The interview was ended by Bain who extracted the tape and signed the seal on it. In the custody offices opinion was divided, some saying that he was an attention-seeking inadequate, others that this was the real thing.

  They asked old Doctor Barry, the police surgeon, to take a look at him to determine whether they should continue to interview him. Barry spent his working life shuttling around courts and police stations, sewing up drunks who had injured themselves in bar fights, or who had slammed their heads against cell walls, taking blood samples from drunk drivers, and arranging for the suicidal to be committed. He was a heavy man with tufted, thick, greying hair. He wore an old mackintosh which gave off a smell of sweat as it swung open to reveal a garish tie depicting a version of Munch’s The Scream.

  He saw Kress for a quarter of an hour in the tiny doctor’s cubicle by the cells. His laconic opinion was duly delivered. “Not mad but strange, not psychotic and none too bright. I would say he is fit to interview.”

  There were a few more interviews, but little else could be got from Kress. It was decided to charge him for breaching his licence by not living at a supervised address and to get him remanded for further inquiries. Beekeeper was in a quandary. Kress had a long criminal history but no apparent offences against women. They had tracked him to lodgings on Emmanuel Street, a squalid building used by road gangs and knockers. He probably had access to a van. He was the only lead and they could not let him go.

  Central police stood back to back with the old city courts on Burton Street and prisoners could be transferred from the Central custody area straight through to the court holding cells under the court rooms. The large soot-stained colonnades with their plaques to the founding worthies of 1887, surged and echoed with life, especially on the weekday morning hearings when plaintiffs pressed up to the notice boards at the top of the steps by the doors to see where their cases were being heard. Recriminating families harangued their delinquent sons. There was a corresponding babble from the toms trawled in the previous night by the vice squad, and through the thronging mass the briefs weaved like professional sportsmen with bundles of case files bound in red tape clamped under their arms. The press men from the evening paper also came, circulating from court to court, hoping for a story, while set-faced policemen, helmets under their arms, stood apart from the throng, waiting to give evidence.

  I too made my way there, up the steps and through the crowds that following morning to Court 10, where I knew the stipendiary magistrate dealt with the more serious cases. It was an oak-panelled courtroom with red leather seating, the royal crest above the bench, and an old-fashioned wooden dock in the centre of the court. The court usher in a long, black gown was already directing more than the usual attendants, as the press had got wind of a break in the Hauser case. Their headlines itched to announce a Crimewatch triumph. I saw a group of CID lounging near the prosecution lawyers’ seats, Canter caught my eye and nodded unsmiling at me. I saw her lean over to speak to Hedgepeth, who turned around to stare briefly at me. We sat through two other cases at first, then Kress was brought up. He sat in the shadowed courtroom, staring around him, hair sticking up a little at the crown, his head hunched between the shiny shoulders of his leather jacket. The crisply spoken stipendiary asked him to state his name.

  “George Adam Kress, yes, your honour,” he announced in his deep voice. He then sat back with a little smile as if satisfied with himself. The prosecution summarised that inquiries were ongoing on a serious matter and that the defendant was already in breach of his probation discharge licence. Remand for reports and inquiries was requested. Kress’s brief feebly requested bail, but this was crushed by the crown prosecution who pointed to his long history of convictions, and the serious nature of the inquiries. He was remanded to city prison, and, standing with two custody officers before being taken down to the cells, he suddenly twisted around to look at the courtroom behind him, his mouth agape. His eyes briefly focused on me, then passed vaguely on over the rest of the courtroom. The officers with him tugged his arms and he was gone.

  That afternoon I walked back down across the city centre through the almost empty square, past the castle and down to the boulevard to Rachel’s street in the gathering dusk of the winter-shortened day. I crossed to the Paradise Stores and on an impulse went into the shop, the doorbell ringing and clattering as it closed behind me. There was a smell of polish and plastic and an undertone of curry from the living quarters somewhere; the proprietor in his brown shop coat waiting by the till. The camera, on a bracket high up, tracked my progress. I walked slowly through the shop, my eyes running over the products, the brown humps of unwrapped Hovis loaves on a shelf, magazines hanging by clips from a line, some lime-coloured gloves in cellophane, a plate of samosas sitting under a humid plastic dome. I was thinking that Rachel must have seen all this, that this had been part of her world and my being there was somehow consoling. I turned and left the shop followed by the gaze of the proprietor and closed the door with a firm tug and an accompanying jingle, letting my fingers slip away from the worn brass handle.

  I went back out into the street wondering: Where did he acquire her? In one of the dark entries on the boulevard, yanking her into a van, or tricking her as she, good-naturedly, tried to give directions; or later in her narrow street, at her door, shielded from her neighbours by the bushy lilac, pulling her into darkness, into limbo. I knew then clearly and utterly that Rachel was not coming back. Seeing the incarnate Kress turning and gaping in the dock that morning had sealed my remaining hope with a sense of finality, which I now accepted. I stood outside Rachel’s flat in the rain, watching the gutters run with water, then I walked away as the Paradise Stores flicked on its lights in the gathering dusk.

  Chapter Two

  A Heart of Glass, a Heart of Stone

  Once taken down from the city court at his first appearance, Kress was marched away downstairs between two officers to the holding cells. They stopped for a moment for Kress’ solicitor to speak to him. She had come down from the court, moving through the throng of remanded prisoners with a look of distaste. She again explained to Kress that he had been remanded for reports, and standing tall and slope-shouldered between his escorts, he nodded and said he understood but his eyes seemed faraway and glazed. He was taken down the tunnel passage-way under the great square buildings of Central to the old cells of the police station with their metal doors that slammed shut with a dull boom. There he waited again, placidly sipping tea from a plastic cup until the transport arrived. The white, slab-sided van with recessed square windows took on six other prisoners, each sitting in their own cubicle. It backed cautiously out of the Central yard where a few onlookers had gathered, and a TV camera team followed them down Burton Street until the van picked up speed, travelling west to Sherwood along grey winter streets.

  I wondered if Kress glimpsed the bare tracery of lime twigs through the high windows of the van, or the tops of corporation buses, or the sudden flight of pigeons startled by the labouring engine on the up-slope as it reached Sherwood and the suburbs. Perhaps, as they neared the prison, he made out those first fenced com
pounds with rags of wind-blown plastic hanging on the wire, the stumpy, pollarded trees, the wall of the prison topped by a rounded, high parapet or the campanile clock tower with its peeling façade. The van scraped slowly through the narrow nineteenth century gate, which closed quickly behind it, and Kress and the others were disgorged into the reception tank.

  Shortly after, I was there too, standing outside the prison entrance imagining Kress’ shadow sliding through the gate and being taken to the remand wing. I came back to the prison from time to time that winter, to gaze over at the blank façades of the wings with their white lintels and bars, thinking that Kress was there somewhere holding his secrets about my Rachel. I looked speculatively over the perimeter thinking about how a man could get in there. I observed the prisoners’ families on visits as they surged out from a side door in their bright clothing. These visitors, mainly women, chattered like starlings and argued among themselves. They complained of the searches and of their men folk, their voices carried to me on the wind as I stood watching the walls and gates, as I was in turn watched by the security cameras swivelling on poles. And I would take pictures of the place myself with my old Leica hidden under my heavy coat. Pictures that I would develop later at home and study in the long nights.

  It had been five months since Rachel had gone. The reality of her disappearance had begun to settle on me as I walked away from the prison gates at weekends. Driving away from the place I would be thinking: how to get close to Kress? How to gain access? The season kept turning, indifferent, the plane tree leaves grounded, dead and swept from the pavements next to the Paradise Stores. I drove past there, listening and watching, my feelings of hatred and revenge growing in the vacuum of Rachel’s loss.