The Life I Left Behind

by Colette McBeth

  ‘Anywhere nice?’

  ‘India, for three weeks.’

  ‘I’m jealous. Let’s speak when you get back … and John, I owe you one. You have made me a very happy woman.’

  ‘If only my wife found soil so interesting.’

  I could have told her: a grain of sand is a thing of beauty indeed.

  It was a search for the Hibiscus syriacus that brought me to Ham Common Woods first thing the Saturday morning I died. Even though Dr Beer had said I wouldn’t find it there, I figured there was no harm in checking before I broke the news of the breakthrough to David Alden.

  In contrast with the wide sweep of Richmond Park, the common was a strip of densely packed woodland. It was like stepping from day into night, dark and dank, thanks to the thick canopy of trees that blocked the sunlight. I walked the length of it and back noting the palette of colours, the range of greens from olive to sage, the brown of the earth. Not so much as a hint of pink.

  I hurried out, glad to see sunlight again, the blue sky that promised another scorcher. The place gave me the heebie-jeebies, a reaction, I presumed, to knowing Melody had been left there, half dead, among the bushes. But who knows, it could have been foresight, if you believe in such a thing. A week later, my own body was found in the same place by a red setter and a man called Jim.

  Chapter Sixteen

  DI Rutter

  THE SAMPLES FROM Eve’s clothing and Melody’s are almost identical. Both of them, Victoria has been informed, contained traces of pollen derived from the same plant, and the samples of soil indicate they were taken to an identical coastal location before they were eventually dumped. David Alden wasn’t the man who attacked Melody and left her in the woods.

  It was someone else who took her, and Eve, to the coast. Forensics haven’t pinpointed the exact location yet.

  She reads their analysis again: a south coast environment, on chalk, near fields, flattish land, definitely not urban. It’s like playing a game of Guess Who? with locations rather than people. They’ve warned her it could take time to match the sample with a physical place. But they’re confident they will get there. Eventually. Why does everyone assume they have time when Victoria senses in her bones that it’s running out?

  Perhaps it is because this was as far as Eve got. Her investigation ended with the results of the soil samples. The email she received from Dr John Beer is the last entry in her file. It came the day before she was killed. Victoria imagines the elation she must have felt, the sense of vindication. She met David Alden to tell him the good news, celebrated in the pub and then vanished. No sighting of her afterwards, no image detectable on any of the CCTV in the area. Where did you go, Eve? Victoria has to work it out before … what? She can’t say, but she feels the sense of urgency roll off the screen in front of her.

  The scale of what she is dealing with is now piercingly clear. David Alden spent five and a half years in prison because the samples from Melody Pieterson’s hair and clothes were stored and locked away, never analysed. Because the prosecution, with the help of a CCTV image Victoria herself had found, argued that he was in the Ham area on the night Melody disappeared. Because no one had bothered to do a simple calculation to show he didn’t have time to drive all that way and back to Hammersmith. A series of oversights and blunders and a man’s life is ruined. A young woman murdered. Victoria can’t change the past, but she needs to atone for it.

  She shakes her head. A pain throbs between her temples. It’s gone nine at night and she’s sitting at her desk in the station. Pulling out a bottle of wine, she opens it and pours herself a glass. The kids will be asleep now. She spoke to them half an hour ago, asked them about their day: ‘How was school?’ ‘Fine.’ It’s always the same answer. She once read that you had to be more specific with your questions to your children, and she tried it for a while. ‘Good game of cricket?’ Or ‘What did you do in maths?’ ‘We did maths in maths, what do you think we did?’ Oliver answered. She reverted to her old style of questioning after that.

  She takes a swig of wine. One glass, two at the max, that’s all she’ll have to loosen her head so she can think. Overindulgence is not her thing. DCI Stirling on the other hand is a high-functioning alcoholic. She’s known as much for some time. Although the more she looks into the case of Melody Pieterson, the more inclined she is to drop the high-functioning.

  Victoria stares at her screen and compares the results from her own forensics with the analysis from Dr Beer once again. They’re almost identical, except Dr Beer has gone one step further in narrowing down the geography: Both minerals, but particularly marcasite, are renowned in and about areas of coastal Sussex.

  She takes another sip of wine and closes her eyes. Sussex. Sand and shells. She can recall the crunch they made underfoot, the exact red jelly shoes she wore, bought especially for the holiday. They gave her blisters for the first two days but she refused to swap them for her trainers. It was warm, gently so, at least that’s how she remembers it. Blue skies and sunny, enough to leave her cheeks and shoulders red and hot around the straps of her sun top at the end of the day. These were the days before suncream and UV suits, when people still fried themselves in cooking oil to get a tan. At lunchtime they’d huddle behind a stripy nylon windbreak to eat their sandwiches, but the sand found its way in. Like eating eggshells. ‘Take your time,’ her mother would say as she watched Victoria inhale her food. ‘If you don’t chew properly you’ll be farting all afternoon,’ that piece of advice from her dad. But she was ten and she didn’t have time to eat, not when there was a sea to swim in, and giant icy waves to leap over, when there were towers to build out of sand and decorate with shells and shingle.

  Her mum and dad took it slowly. They were laid-back, chilled types. Never hassled or rushed. There was never anything to worry about, always plenty of time.

  Until there was none left.

  The holiday in Climping was their last together. Her parents died in a car crash six months later. Victoria has been in a hurry ever since.

  She knows what losing a parent when you’re ten years old can do to you. You want to make sense of it, extract some meaning from it. All her fury and anger, her unfathomable sadness has driven her to this job, but she knows full well it could have taken her in a different direction altogether.

  It’s why she wants to know who the ten-year-old Charlie Crighton has become.

  It might be a long shot, but she has already ordered samples to be taken of soil around the village of Climping to see if they match those found on Eve and Melody.

  Near fields, flattish land, definitely not urban. It fits the description at least.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Melody

  Friday September 7th 2013

  Phone call with Dr John Beer

  According to Dr Beer the soil samples strongly suggest Melody was taken to another location before she was left for dead in Ham Common Woods.

  Dr Beer states this location was more than an hour’s drive from London in a coastal zone, most likely Sussex due to the properties of the soil he found on the sample of her clothing.

  MELODY SITS IN her childhood bedroom, the laptop balanced on her knees. She said goodnight to her parents an hour ago feigning tiredness although it’s not tiredness that’s afflicting her, more a form of delirium that won’t permit sleep. The day keeps coming at her. First Honor revealing herself, now this. In the last sixty minutes she’s raced through chunks of Eve’s file, gulped down information and here she is reading Eve’s last entry, written the weekend she died. David Alden didn’t attack Melody. It’s not just a hunch anymore. It is supported by scientific evidence. She was taken to the coast and David didn’t have time to drive all that way and back in an hour. The information shames and terrifies her in equal measure.

  It also opens up a new realm of horror. Melody pictures her body limp in someone’s possession, dirty eyes feasting on her, eager hands grabbing at her skin. She can see the smile on her captor’s face though not t
he face itself, imagines a warm fuzz of satisfaction spreading through their veins, knowing they were in control.

  Just thinking about it makes her skin feel raw and exposed as if she is being unpeeled. But she will not allow herself to indulge in self pity. Not this time. Not now she knows the price David has paid. Five and a half years in prison and a life tainted by a criminal record. She has to put it right. She will go to the police tomorrow. What will she tell them? That Honor and Sam lied, that neither had an alibi, that she suspects her childhood friend could have attacked her? Or worse, her fiancé?

  She draws the duvet tight around her shoulders and buries her head in it. The softness, the scent of it comforts her. It smells of home. Peaches and Jasmine washing powder, distinctive and reassuring. She is sitting on the old sofa bed with shot springs that dig into her bum and squeak every time she moves. Her eyes cast around the room. It’s hard to reconcile the neat order with the chaos that once reigned here. Her parents use it as an office and a spare bedroom now. The walls are bare apart from two shelves stacked with box files marked LIFE INSURANCE and ISAs and ANNUITIES and CAR! – though what the car file has done to merit an exclamation mark is not clear. A National Trust calendar hangs to the side of her old desk where a large laptop sits. The room, she notes, is painted the same pale green shade as the living room and the downstairs loo. Knowing her mother Melody suspects the colour was on special offer. Once there would have been piles of clothes on the floor; Blur and Oasis posters tacked to the wall, much to her mother’s annoyance: Look at the greasy marks the Blu-Tack leaves. She remembers the arguments they’d have: You’re not going out until you tidy that room, and Melody would kick the clothes under her bed. There was too much fun to be had to spend precious time tidying up.

  Across the hallway in the bathroom she hears her dad brushing his teeth, the distinctive circular motion he favours that sounds like he’s scouring pans. She prays he doesn’t knock on her door, poke his head around it to say goodnight love and blow her a kiss like he used to. She doesn’t want to explain why she is crying.

  The very moment she walked through the door of her parents’ home she felt herself being transported back to her past, struck by the discombobulating sensation of being somewhere so familiar and yet seeing it for the first time in years. Three years to be exact. Sam hated the journey and she was too scared to travel alone, so her parents have always visited them in Surrey instead. Melody gazed at the family photographs in the hallway of her and her brother as toddlers, on holiday in France when it pissed down the whole time, with their wonky fringes that her mother swore blind were straight; the jars in the kitchen that announce their contents, TEA and COFFEE and PASTA. It’s all part of who she is and it is exactly what she has tried to avoid for years. Seeing it again however she found she wanted to mine every detail of it and store it deep in her consciousness. It was like walking into an old sweet shop that sells cough candy and aniseed twists and cola bottles by the quarter. She wanted to savour it all. Unusually she drank a few glasses of wine over dinner, hoping it might defuse the tension in her body, remove Honor from her thoughts for a moment. It had the adverse affect of course, but she realised that too late and resigned herself to finishing the bottle with her dad. After leaving Honor’s she had stopped off on the way to buy him a decent red, an apology of sorts.

  Her dad was always easy to win over.

  ‘I knew there was something I missed about you,’ he had joked after releasing her from a hug and taking the wine from her hand. ‘They don’t put the good stuff on two-for-one.’

  ‘She’s still buying the paint stripper then?’ Melody asked, nodding in the direction of her mother, trying to keep her voice light.

  ‘What do you think?’ He smiled, then turning to Tess he held the bottle aloft. ‘Someone thinks I’m worth it.’

  ‘That’s because she doesn’t live with you,’ her mother replied.

  After dinner Melody and her dad were instructed by Tess to move to the living room. Mel chose the armchair, tucking her feet underneath her. Her dad topped up their glasses. ‘I wish I could drink this every night,’ he said, admiring the label, then, ‘We thought you had gotten too used to the high life to come here anymore.’

  ‘Is that really what you thought?’ From the kitchen she could hear her mother loading the dishwasher, the crackle of the kettle as it started to heat. She rubbed her temples, the first waves of a headache were hitting her.

  ‘Not me, no, but your mother … well you know what’s she’s like.’

  She sighed, weary, leant forward and placed her glass on a coaster printed with the image of a black cat.

  ‘I thought she hated cats?’

  ‘They were free … obviously.’

  ‘Look, I’m sorry … I know I’ve been rubbish. It’s been difficult … I …’ The pitch of her voice rose. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. She stopped, didn’t trust herself to continue. Her dad’s eyes burnt into her.

  ‘I’d be going mad stuck in that big house on the edge of nowhere,’ he said.

  ‘It’s six miles from Guildford …’

  ‘Same difference.’ He chuckled and shook his head. ‘How’s Sam?’ he asked, his tone instantly more serious.

  ‘He’s at work.’

  ‘Tea, anyone?’ Her mum’s voice came from the kitchen.

  ‘We’ll stick to wine, thanks.’ He gave Melody a conspiratorial wink. He cleared his throat. ‘Listen love, what you don’t want is to get to my age and be full of regret for all the opportunities you missed.’

  She went to say something but the words tangled in her throat. Her mother dished out advice like tea and Melody had learnt to tune out long ago. But her dad was economical with his emotions, and on the rare occasions he offered her advice, he never missed his target.

  ‘Are you?’ she said.

  He shook his head. ‘God, no.’ They listened as her mother’s footsteps trundled through the hallway towards them. ‘Hard as that might be to believe.’

  Tess placed a tray of biscuits on the coffee table. ‘I’ve no pudding I’m afraid. I didn’t know you were coming. You’re lucky I’ve salvaged a few bourbons, your father can eat a packet in one sitting, isn’t that right?’ Melody watched her dad to see if he would rise to the bait, surprised when he didn’t. Old age must be mellowing them, she thought.

  ‘Are you still running?’ he said.

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Do you know what I used to love about watching you in those races?’ Her dad always loved reminiscing about her athletic triumphs.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘The worse the conditions, the better you ran. When it was torrential rain and you were knee deep in mud, that’s when you came into your own. You always started at the back and one by one you’d overtake everyone. No one could write you off.’ She looked up at him, saw his face changed with age, the skin slack around his jaws, thinner in the cheeks. But his smile still had the power to hold her, the way it always could, tight, like an embrace. ‘You were a fighter Melody. Don’t you ever forget it.’

  Tears and tiredness sting her eyes but there is one more paragraph left in Eve’s file and she has no intention of stopping until she’s done. The wine has made her head light, sapped her concentration. Her pulse is up, her breath shallow. She’s realises she’s doesn’t want to let Eve go. As long as she’s reading her words she is still alive. When it ends she will lose her completely.

  Melody reads a Latin name on the screen, one she has never come across before, stutters as she tries to pronounce it.

  Hibiscus Syriacus.

  Its pollen found on the shirt she was wearing on the night of the attack.

  Hibiscus Syriacus is a hardy deciduous shrub with large trumpet-shaped rich violet flowers. It flowers in late summer and autumn. The species has been naturalised well in suburban areas and may be seen as invasive so frequently does it seed around.

  When Melody searches for pictures of the flower her screen fills with purple and pink blooms, each
with a single stamen protruding from the open flower. She’s no gardener, but she’s seen them before. Perhaps there is an innocent explanation why her shirt was covered in their pollen. Did she brush against one that day? Surely not on the way to work, Uxbridge Road is not known for its foliage. Not even in the Horse and Hounds, with its patioed beer garden. So where?

  These are not questions Eve can answer for her. She has found everything there is to discover in the file. There is only one line remaining.

  *Arranged meeting with David Alden and Annie tomorrow Sat 8 September to explain the development. Finally, a breakthrough!

  Mel snaps the laptop shut. She curls up into a ball. Grief and rage stab her. She can see Eve, all too real in her mind. She can picture the smile on her face as she typed her last words. Beautiful, jubilant, vindicated Eve, on the cusp of death.

  It’s late by the time she calls him, the only person she wants to speak to.

  ‘Hiya,’ he says in his familiar Geordie accent.

  ‘Can we meet, tomorrow? I have a lot to tell you.’

  ‘Since you put it like that, yes. I start work at eleven, though, and it would have to be in London. Southbank is good for me.’

  ‘I can do that.’

  ‘Nine?’

  ‘Perfect.’

  After she’s hung up, she types a text.

  I had to go away. I have your car. Don’t worry, it’s safe.

  Melody sets the alarm on her phone. She has an early rise in the morning in order to get to London for nine. The next thought catches her unaware, as if her subconscious has already settled on a course of action she has yet to register. Tomorrow, before she goes to the police station she will go back home to pack her things. Sam will be at work. With any luck she’ll never have to see him again.

  The morning is bright with promise. Not a single cloud stains the sky. Only a vapour trail from a plane breaks up the blue but even that fades quickly, like breath on a mirror. Melody is early, remarkably so given the long drive and then the train journey from Guildford to Waterloo. She stands on Queen’s Walk, outside the Royal Festival Hall, and looks out at the city, the spires and towers that shine and glimmer in the sun, the river buses ferrying commuters and tourists up and down the Thames. She feels drunk, a once familiar energy charging through her. It could be lack of sleep but she prefers to think it’s the buzz of the city feeding into her the way it used to.