The thought sends a chill through me. What are the odds of Charlie and Scott being randomly killed in this way? What are the odds of them being in the wrong place at the wrong time?
Professor Christopher Fellowes, forensic psychologist, has a handle on the statistics:
“If you look at the data published by the Office for National Statistics between 2014 and 2016, it shows that in 64 percent of homicides where the victim is under sixteen years of age, the victim is acquainted with the person who harmed them. In the vast majority of these cases, it is a parent or a stepparent who commits the crime. Only 11 percent of victims in this age bracket are murdered by a stranger. In real numbers, that translates to between one and nine homicide cases in each year over the past decade. Not many.”
“So it’s rare.”
“Yes. But it happens.”
I asked Howard Smail if he had come across anything similar in his career.
“It’s your worst nightmare as a detective, because it’s the crime where the perpetrator got lucky. He killed a man, or possibly a man and two boys in this instance. He disposed of their bodies; he went home. He did not leave a trace; he did not arouse suspicion. Nobody saw him; nobody discovered Dale’s body; police assumed Dale had disappeared abroad; the investigation veered off elsewhere in the case of the boys. For Terence Taylor, if he is guilty of triple homicide, it was a perfect storm of luck. In a case like this, you have nowhere to turn if you’re investigating. To solve it, you need somebody to come forward with information. It’s the only way. Otherwise you risk what happened here: a miscarriage of justice and a murderer getting away with his crimes. What you hope is that it doesn’t take twenty years for somebody to come forward. But better late than never.”
And that is why this is the final episode of It’s Time to Tell. It feels abrupt to me, and it may to you also, but the police have a new lead and they are investigating it. It is time for me to step away and wait for the results of their inquiries. I do this out of respect for the police investigation and also because it’s time I prioritized my personal safety. Valerie Noyce’s advice to me to get on with my life will not go unheeded.
I am dedicating this final episode of It’s Time to Tell to the memory of my two best friends, who I still miss every single day, and to the memory of Sidney Noyce. Rest in peace, my brothers.
Sidney, I am sorry. I am sorry for the way we treated you and sorry for what happened to you. You were, as they said, a gentle giant, and you did not deserve any of it.
Scott and Charlie, on the day you were murdered I ruined my brand-new and beloved Atlanta Olympics T-shirt and that small piece of bad luck saved my life. In fact, it wasn’t bad luck, but the best luck I’ve ever had. The night you disappeared, Mum took the ripped T-shirt away to clean and fix it and I put my Newcastle United shirt back on, my beloved Magpies shirt, the one that was my pride and joy before the Atlanta shirt arrived. Do you remember how you were jealous of it, Charlie? Do you remember how you told me Arsenal was a better team, Scott? After they told me you were dead, I refused to take that Newcastle shirt off because it reminded me of us. It felt like part of you was still with me when I wore that shirt. My parents had to pry it off me when I finally grew out of it, but I kept it and I have it still. It is cleaned and carefully folded and stashed in a drawer. It is perhaps a clumsy metaphor for some of the ways in which we carry on after a tragedy, but neither of you ever judged me when we were kids and I’d like to think you never would have if you’d had a chance to grow up.
I missed you at school. I missed you during the school holidays. I missed you whenever I ate a 99 Flake ice cream. I missed you at graduation. I missed you whenever I read a comic. I missed you the first time I went to the pub, when I went traveling, when I went to University, when I got my first serious girlfriend, when I got the first job I was proud of. I missed you every time I saw a fancy car or motorbike that you would have loved. I have missed you so much, I still miss you, and I’m so sorry you never had the chance to grow up.
So what is next? How do I carry on?
Well. Here’s the thing. The answer is in the skies.
Look up, Bristol! Look to the skies!! Look to the heavens!!! Look out of your windows right now and over the next twenty-four hours, and if you can’t do that or you’re not in Bristol, or you’re catching up on this too late, here’s a hashtag to search for. It’ll let you know what’s happening. Just search for #awaitthedate.
I will see you then.
I cannot wait.
#awaitthedate
Chapter 25
Fletcher hurries through Hazel Collins’s flat to the back door and lets himself out into the garden. It is surrounded by stone walls. They are taller than Fletcher. A wheelbarrow is beside one of the rose beds, full of mulch. Fletcher tips the muck out and props the barrow against one of the walls. He climbs onto it and struggles to get a grip on the top of the wall as the barrow wobbles beneath him. He tries to lever himself up onto the wall but can’t. The effort makes him pant.
After two more attempts, he manages to scrabble up. The top of the wall is littered with shards of glass set into a concrete channel and Fletcher curses as he cuts his hands. He hears a shout from behind him. Somebody has seen him. Below to his right is the road. He sees that he has caught a break: he is out of sight of Danny’s car. There is another shout, louder this time. He wobbles. He crouches and tries to lower himself over the edge of the wall, but the glass cuts into his hands and he drops.
He feels his ribs snap as he hits the pavement. He cannot move. It is agony to breathe. He sees somebody approaching from the far end of the street. Leave me alone, he thinks. After a few seconds, he manages to reach for his phone. His fingers are bleeding. He ignores two women who are crossing the road to help him, concern all over their faces. He ignores the voices coming from behind the garden wall. He tries to call Felix. Felix will fix this. He finds Felix’s number and taps it. As he puts the phone to one ear he’s aware that the other feels hot and sticky. Blood. As Danny rounds the corner, alerted by the commotion, Fletcher clasps a hand to his ribs and listens to a message telling him that the number he has dialed is no longer in service.
Chapter 26
Jess watches out of the window as her plane breaks through the clouds and lands at Bristol Airport. She has never been so glad to see the familiar landscape, fields plump from overnight rain and new leaves softening the strict winter outlines of trees and hedges. A gentle drizzle falls as she walks down the steps from the aircraft to the tarmac. Her face feels swollen after her night of visceral remorse and fear, and the dampness is a salve.
She takes a cab directly to Olly’s house, where Erica waits, contrite as a chided puppy. On the journey, Jess has been full of words she wants to say to her daughter: righteous, angry words about responsibility and boundaries and more. They get lost in the hug Erica gives her on the doorstep. “I’m so sorry, Mum. I’m really, really sorry. I never wanted to interrupt your holiday. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.” Erica has even made a card, just like the ones she laboriously forged for Jess when she was a little girl. Sorry, it says. The edges of the letters bleed into a beautiful, intricate design.
On the way back into the city, traffic is at a standstill in the queue to cross the suspension bridge. The cabdriver huffs and cranes his head out of the window to see what’s causing the delay. After fifteen minutes of stop and start, they finally reach the toll barrier and crawl onto the bridge.
“Look!” Erica says. The cause of the delay is filling the sky. Where the limestone walls of the gorge taper abruptly, giving way to the once marshy plain where the city now hugs the riverbanks, a cluster of hot air balloons is visible, drifting serenely upward. There are an unusually large number of them, so many it looks as if they might have been popped out by a bubble machine. Every driver stops to rubberneck. Traffic on the Portway, in the bottom of the gorge, is also at a standstill.
“They’re all the same,” says Erica.
Each b
alloon has a picture of a greyhound on it. “Aren’t they lovely?” Jess says, keeping her tone bland, but she shudders, because Charlie loved greyhounds. It is something Erica doesn’t need to know.
“Dishlicker Channel,” Erica says, reading the text on one of the balloons as it floats close and above them. “‘Await the Date!’ Sounds so cool!” She takes her phone out and snaps multiple pictures. “I wonder what it’s for. I’m going to look it up.”
Erica taps at her phone and Jess flinches as a cyclist weaves between the traffic, dangerously close to their vehicle. The balloons are making her uneasy. There are so many of them, and all identical. It’s not usual, even for Bristol.
“This is it!” Erica says. She reads from her phone:
Bristol-based Dishlicker Productions are launching a new venture in style by flooding the skies of Bristol with hot air balloons for the duration of a two-day event!
After the phenomenal success of their Bristol-based podcast It’s Time to Tell, Cody Swift of Dishlicker Productions is bringing you a new online TV channel specializing in reality TV and true crime.
Swift said, “We are passionate about our new TV channel. Reality TV is an incredibly popular area and we think we have something to add. We want to bring the stories people want to the people who want them. We plan to dig deep into real lives and make Dishlicker Channel the face of quality modern online television. We are going to bring to Dishlicker Channel the biting stories, high production values, and top-class journalism we’ve already become known for in a very short space of time.”
PR guru Felix Abern . . . Abernathy . . .
Erica stumbles as she tries to pronounce Felix’s name. She’s never heard it before. Jess doesn’t help her out. Her mind is racing.
. . . helped to launch the project. “I’ve been involved since meeting Cody Swift via his phenomenally successful podcast It’s Time to Tell. He is an extremely talented individual. It’s been my pleasure to design the launch of what I know will be a thrilling and successful new venture. It’s a new era in television, and Dishlicker is at the forefront.”
Bristol—look to the skies today and tomorrow! The rest of Britain—look to the skies this coming week! Dishlicker Productions is coming to you in style and they have a question for you: Do you know The Date?
Here is Cody Swift, your host of the podcast phenomenon It’s Time to Tell, with a teaser: “Folks, look out for The Date. It’s a new production to launch Dishlicker Channel. It’s going to blow It’s Time to Tell out of the water. This is the future, folks. You need to decide whether you are with us or not. What’s the only way to know for sure? #awaitthedate.”
“Oh, my god,” Erica says. “How come I haven’t heard of this? It sounds so cool, and it’s got, like, thousands of likes.” She holds her phone up to show Jess. Animated balloons with greyhounds on them cluster across the screen, closing in and obscuring the text beneath, and Jess shuts her eyes as three words appear in huge type: AWAIT THE DATE.
“Mum,” Erica says. “Mum! What?”
“Sorry,” Jess says. “I’m sorry, darling. I was looking. I felt a tiny bit faint for a moment. I think it’s the travel.”
Erica falls quiet, tapping on her phone. Jess stares out of the window at the balloons above them, as the full extent of what Cody has been up to dawns on her, piece by piece. Or, she corrects herself, what Cody and Felix have been up to.
At home she drops her luggage on the floor of the hallway. She pauses only to get a glass of water before she uploads the podcast onto her phone.
“I’m having a nap,” she says to Erica. “Tired from the travel.”
“I’ll make supper!” Erica always cooks for her parents when she’s feeling contrite. It suits Jess today. Jess shuts herself in her bedroom and sits on the bed. She puts headphones in and presses play on the first episode of the podcast.
Cody Swift’s words swill around her, dirtying her home. She begins to weep as she listens. They are hot, stinging tears and they fall silently.
By the end, she thinks, I’ve been played. We all have.
The podcast has been nothing more than a publicity stunt for Cody Swift, directed by Felix Abernathy. The audacity and cruelty of it stun her. There are so many lies.
She plays some of the episodes again. It is when she hears the final episode for the second time that her head snaps up. She blinks. She rewinds the episode and plays it again, and then again. At first the memory it invokes is just a tease. She rewinds one particular line. Cody says:
“The night you disappeared, Mum took the ripped T-shirt away to clean and fix it and I put my Newcastle United shirt back on, my beloved Magpies shirt, the one that was my pride and joy before the Atlanta shirt arrived.”
She listens again. In her mind what she sees at first is no more than a flash of black and white picked out in the darkness by a streetlamp, a blur, a few sensations, but it slowly comes into focus. Jess, twenty years ago, is trying to hold her hair back out of her face as she vomits. The cabdriver has wound down his window and is looking at her with resignation as she crouches beside the road. She is so sore and her body feels empty. She recalls the sounds of her retching and the driver’s voice as he asks if she’s okay. She hears the fast panting of somebody running. A boy. In a black-and-white shirt. He flashes past, a shadow in the corner of her eye, but definitely there.
“No!” she says out loud to the room. But she thinks, Could it be? Of course it could.
In her office, she rummages in a cupboard until she finds the old Rolodex where once she neatly inscribed her contacts from her acting days. She reminds herself of the name of somebody she used to know and googles it to obtain up-to-date contact details. She makes a phone call. It lasts for thirty minutes. After she hangs up, she goes downstairs.
“Erica,” she says, “we’re going out.”
Her daughter is in the kitchen, at the stove. “What?” she asks. “Can’t I stay here?”
“No. I want you with me.”
“What about this? I’ve made arrabbiata.” It’s Jess’s favorite. Erica holds a wooden spoon and the red sauce drips from it onto the glossy surface of the hob.
“Turn the heat off and put a lid on it. It’ll keep.”
“Are you okay, Mum?”
“I’m fine. Get ready. We’re leaving in twenty minutes.”
Jess selects an outfit from her wardrobe. She showers quickly, blow-dries her hair efficiently, and applies her makeup expertly. She considers her reflection in the mirror and unfastens one of the buttons on her silk blouse. Knockout, Nick would say if he was here. She feels incredibly calm. She feels ready for what she needs to do.
Chapter 27
“How’s the pain?” the nurse asks.
“Fine,” Fletcher says. “When can I go?”
“You hit your head, so the doctor wants to get it scanned.”
As soon as she’s left the room Fletcher tries to shift upright so he can swing his legs over the side of the bed. It’s not possible. He feels as if he has hot pokers in his side every time he breathes, let alone moves. He’s propped at an awkward angle when Danny lets himself into the room.
“Where are you planning on going?” he asks. He remains standing until Fletcher has rolled himself properly back onto the bed, then takes a seat.
“I shouldn’t have gone to see her on my own,” Fletcher says. “I—”
“John. It’s over.”
“No, no, I—”
“Stop, John. Just stop.”
“She’s an old woman, her statement about Peter Dale’s brother won’t count for shit.”
“It’s checking out.”
“Fuck!” Fletcher says. It causes an intense rush of pain.
“Everything is going to be unpicked.”
“Nobody knows what we did.”
“I know what you did.”
“What?”
“What on earth makes you think I’m going to go down with you?”
Fletcher is lost for words at first. “I
’ve looked out for you for forty fucking years,” he manages.
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Is that how it seemed to you?”
“Yessss.” The word is a wheeze. The pain is excruciating.
“Maybe you did once, back in the day. Maybe you did look out for me. But that was twenty years ago. Honestly, for the past two decades, I’ve propped you up, and I can’t do it anymore. I’ve had no thanks, you’ve cut me no slack. You still always behave as if you are the smartest person in the room. I am invisible to you. I have two families to support, I am trying to do a good job, but all these years I have been made to feel like an extra on the John-fucking-Fletcher show.”
“Danny!” Fletcher gasps, but it’s not the final betrayal. He can do nothing but watch helplessly as the expression in Danny’s eyes morphs from angry to cold. It coincides with the clip of footsteps in the corridor outside. The door opens and Danny stands. “Sir.”
David Tremain enters and Fletcher scrabbles with bandaged fingers to pull the sheet up over his sagging hospital gown, desperate to cover the wiry gray hairs sprouting on his pale chest and his bruised arms.
“Hello, John,” Tremain says. “I very much wanted to be here for this. Thank you for waiting, Danny.”
“Sir.”
“Can you make sure we get some privacy, please?”
Danny nods and steps out of the room. Fletcher feels as if he’s drowning. Tremain sits down on the end of the bed and Fletcher winces as the mattress sags.
“So,” Tremain says, “you have a choice. You offer me your resignation, effective immediately, and when investigators come asking, you tell them everything you did to Sidney Noyce and Howard Smail, or I ask DI Flynn back in here and he will charge you with an offense connected to the recent death of Hazel Collins.”
I Know You Know Page 28