The Backs (2013)

by Bruce, Alison

  ‘Becca thought Greg Jackson loved her?’

  Jane nodded.

  ‘And what did you think?’

  ‘That he was the big finale in Mum and Dad’s crap marriage. Becca was Dad’s remaining daughter by then, so she must’ve known how he’d react. I wondered why Becca couldn’t find a bloke of her own.’

  ‘Did you ask her?’

  ‘She said she had – found a bloke of her own, I mean. Jackson was halfway between Becca and Mum in age, and Becca decided that Mum had just used him – like he couldn’t say no or something. She said Jackson and Mum’s relationship was about no-strings sex. People see things how it suits them, I guess. The whole thing’s fucking weird, but then . . .’ She stopped mid-sentence. ‘Maybe Becca was angry at Mum too, and just got her own back in a different way to me. Mum loves men, always has, and we grew up keeping her visitors secret from Dad. And we were pissed off with him because Dad was too obsessed with his “career” to notice.’ Jane changed her mind about her drink and took several swigs.

  ‘Jackson thinks you know something. He wants to talk to you.’

  ‘Really? Jackson can fuck himself. All Jackson cares about is himself. He says he wants to know who killed Becca, but he’s a liar. It’s not about Becca for him; it’s about the years of his life that have been “stolen”. Mum’s infatuation with him was the usual – fifty per cent sympathy, fifty per cent admiration. She still liked them talented but tormented. As far as I could work out, he’s always blamed everyone except himself for every disappointment he’s ever suffered.’ She put her glass back down and edged forward in her chair. ‘That’s me done with sharing, so your turn now. If it’s her, how did she die?’

  ‘I don’t . . .’

  ‘You do know.’ There was absolutely no question in her voice now. ‘Don’t take the piss. I know you know something.’

  This time not telling the truth came easily. ‘No, I don’t,’ he said firmly. ‘But I do want to know why you didn’t come forward when Becca was killed.’

  ‘No way.’ Her eyes grew suddenly dark. ‘If you want me to talk, you’ll have to talk to me first.’

  ‘Look, Marks will speak to you in the morning.’ She stood up, and Goodhew stood too. ‘Jane, please sit down again. I think you can help us. And we will know more by tomorrow.’

  ‘I don’t care about hearing it tomorrow.’ She spoke slowly, enunciating each word. ‘I just want to know what you know now.’

  ‘No.’ He was firmer this time. ‘When did you speak to Becca last?’

  She shook her head and it looked as though there would be no room for negotiation, yet he continued to press her.

  ‘Jane, what do you know about your sister’s death?’

  She set her jaw, shook her head, then moved away from him.

  ‘Jane, why didn’t you contact us when she died?’

  Then, just as he thought she might, she turned and hurried towards the door. He followed her to the entrance, then watched as she bolted off down Regent Street.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Stay angry.

  Jane took off from the University Arms Hotel and was in Castle Street in about ten minutes. From the front, her brother’s house seemed to be in complete darkness. Jane soon discovered that the high rear gate was firmly bolted, but next door’s gate wasn’t even locked. She used their compost bin as a step to the top of the fence dividing the gardens, dropping from there on to Dan’s flower bed. After a moment she realized that the only light in his house was a dim glow in a back bedroom, which soaked through pink butterfly curtains. Reba’s room.

  My niece.

  The first-floor window next to Reba’s had frosted glass.

  Jane cupped her hands round her eyes and peered through the outhouse windows. Once she was sure her father wasn’t sleeping inside, she clambered back the way she’d come, passing through next door’s rear garden and back out on to Castle Street.

  She stared at the front of the property and contemplated banging on the front door or shouting at the windows until Dan answered. Instead she phoned him, and watched till the ringing caused a bedside light to illuminate.

  ‘Dan?’ She realized that she’d whispered, as though she was the one that needed to remain quiet. ‘Dan, it’s Jane.’

  ‘I know who it is.’ He sounded irritated, ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m fine, but I need to speak to Dad.’

  ‘God, Jane, you pick your moments.’

  ‘Is he here?’

  ‘No, I think he’s at his workshop. Are you sure you’re OK?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ She saw the curtain move then and the sash window slid open a few inches.

  ‘You said “here”,’ Dan explained. He leant out by a few inches. ‘Why didn’t you just knock? You can come in, you know.’

  ‘Not now.’ She shook her head. ‘Mum wasn’t in France.’

  He paused. ‘Where is she, then?’

  ‘No idea. I want to ask Dad.’

  ‘He would have already told me if he knew. Jane, why don’t you leave it alone? Forget about her.’

  ‘Dan, don’t you think that’ – she waved her hand in the direction of their childhood home – ‘might be her?’

  ‘She sent postcards. That’s not her.’

  ‘I still want to ask him.’

  ‘He’ll be here about ten. Why don’t you wait here, watch some TV, and meet Reba when she wakes up?’

  ‘Sorry, Dan, I can’t. Not yet.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’ He always said that, usually with a half shrug and an apologetic smile compressed by his lips.

  She turned away, even though she wished she didn’t have to.

  Stay angry.

  Night had faded and feeble shafts of dawn sunlight were glancing from the rooftops. She cut her way through the back streets, and past the house in Pound Hill. The police car was still there and, once again, she found herself on the outside of her childhood home, with no right to go in.

  She glared at it, but didn’t slow. Then, after that, she glared at nothing beyond the next few yards of footpath ahead of each step she took. She focused like that until she stood at the door of her father’s studio.

  Then she hesitated, not sure what to say to him. She wished she could see him before she spoke, since his mood usually showed in his face.

  Stay angry? Where was that anger now? She had let it be bullied into submission by just the assumption that he’d shout her down, or dismiss her as irrelevant or stupid. These were the very reactions from her dad that should have made her angrier; instead they’d crushed her for as many years as she could remember being close to him.

  She stood outside his doorway now, just as she’d stood in that entrance all those years before, waiting for him to put down his tools and indulge her with that same attention he devoted to his work.

  But usually he’d had something more important to do.

  Surely all those years away from home must have given her some immunity from his rejection. She was twenty-five now, not eight or nine or ten or however old girls were when they craved their father’s undivided attention. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, and rubbed her hands to stimulate the circulation, even though the walk had left her flushed. And the moment she stopped scratching around for the courage to speak and the right words to say, then she suddenly found her voice. She heard herself shouting at his door.

  ‘Dad, I need to talk to you.’

  A couple of seconds passed and she heard movement. A couple more passed and he still hadn’t spoken.

  ‘Open the door.’ She tried the handle, then banged her fist in the middle of the centre panel.

  He spoke then, ‘Jane!’, followed by something indistinct. She heard a piece of furniture dragging across the floor, then the door was jerked open.

  He wore a boiler suit with an unbuttoned plaid shirt hanging loose over the top of it. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  ‘That’s not your question, Dad. It should have been my question f
ifteen fucking years ago. And every year between. And right now I’m the only one of us two who has the right to ask it. So, what the hell are you doing?’

  ‘Come inside.’

  ‘What, so the neighbours won’t hear? Look around, Dad. You’re camping out in a shitty lock-up industrial unit. It’s not a house, there are no neighbours – just you sleeping in your overalls, and pretending you’re working.’

  He scowled and began to close the door on her.

  ‘No, oh no.’ She lunged forward and forced herself inside. ‘Your way it is, then.’

  The temperature of the room was several degrees colder than outside. It smelt of mildew and solder, and was littered with the detritus of his latest ‘work’: a crouching and gnarled piece that filled up one wall. She circled her father so that she could turn her back on it.

  ‘Mum’s not in France,’ she said.

  ‘So what? Why do I need to know?’

  ‘Think, Dad. Who else has just been brought up from your cellar?’

  ‘No.’ His usual expression was dismissiveness, but that was chased from his face in a moment. ‘It can’t be that,’ he added, but he still didn’t appear as stunned as she’d hoped.

  He studied her expression, searching there for what she actually knew. She stared back, trying to work out what he thought she was thinking. Stalemate. She’d once read that the first to break eye contact was actually the stronger. Today it would be her. ‘I need to know what happened, Dad.’

  He blinked quickly and turned away. ‘When?’

  ‘All of it.’ She watched the back of his head, noted that his hair had thinned and his shoulders had become more rounded. Age got everyone who didn’t die first, but seeing it on her own dad . . . ‘I’m not too scared to ask any more.’

  He turned back to her again. ‘I don’t know what you want me to say.’

  For the first time, she noticed the loose skin under his chin. It hid behind his beard and she also saw the lines and sunken flesh around his eyes. ‘It’s laughable, Dad,’ she smiled sourly. ‘All those years spent creating a legacy; did you think your sculptures were your own little slice of immortality? What a waste. You forgot to live the life you really had, didn’t you?’

  ‘Everyone has regrets, Jane.’

  ‘What a cliché. Just look at this mess. You’re turning into a sad old man living in a hovel. You’ve destroyed everything good in your life, and for what?’ She pointed behind her. ‘For the creation of shit like that and constantly chasing the approval of strangers.’

  The words flew from her mouth. She’d finally released the demon, the whispered truth that he’d run as far as he could with his limited talent and been chasing a hollow dream. It was another secret that their mother had made them collude in and, in only seeing his work from Mary’s viewpoint, they’d shared her mother’s pity regarding their father’s delusions. Even in the face of the adoration from the art world, Mary had known better.

  Jane’s words should have been provocation but, instead, his frown lines softened and his belligerence deserted him. ‘Of course I wish things had worked out differently. What do you take me for?’

  She eyed his sudden calmness with suspicion. ‘Saying the right things is easy, Dad. People’s words don’t always match their actions, though, do they?’

  He leant back against the wall, crossing his arms. ‘You’ve come for something, Jane, and it’s not to build bridges.’

  ‘I was in Cambridge before Becca died, Dad,’ she said quietly. ‘She told me about her and Greg. She told me she’d spoken to you.’

  ‘Yes, she did.’

  ‘She told me everything she said to you.’

  He said nothing.

  ‘Prostitution, Dad. That’s what she told you, isn’t it?’

  He turned his head away. ‘She said she’d “done some bad stuff”. She didn’t say what it was, and I don’t want to hear that ever repeated again. If there’d been any truth in it, or drugs or similar, then it would have come out during the trial. So I don’t know why she said anything about it.’

  ‘How can you twist things like that? She said it because it was true. She’d been into real trouble, Dad, and she was finding her way back out. She liked to think Greg loved her, but that wouldn’t have lasted – and I’m sure she knew it. She wanted a fresh start, that’s all.’

  ‘She came to see me, asking me to accept him. To forgive him for his relationship with Mary. With my wife who, in her most vindictive moments, delighted in telling me how he pleased her in ways that I hadn’t managed for years. Mary even boasted about the things they did.’

  He paused for breath. ‘Of course I rowed with Becca. And then she threw that off-the-rails story back in my face: how Greg Jackson had been the one who’d pulled her back from the edge. How I should be grateful. Grateful.’

  Jane chose her next words carefully, and she spoke them quietly, conscious that she still sounded angry but hoping that she’d done enough now to encourage him to talk. ‘You did a terrible thing, but I could picture what happened. I genuinely believed that the guilt would punish you more than any conviction would.’

  There was a long pause before he spoke. ‘What the hell do you think I did?’

  ‘And I promised myself I’d never come back again. But things change, and now that I am here I want to know why you killed Mum too. Why you couldn’t just let her get on with having a life without you.’

  ‘Jane, no . . .’ His hands fell to his sides and he stared into her face. She stared back steadily into his. Finally he gave a little moan. It came out more like a growl, followed by the words, ‘You’re wrong.’ Then, with no warning, he lunged forward, grabbed her arm and heaved her towards the door, flinging it open then shoving her out into the yard. ‘I never killed your sister,’ he yelled.

  She staggered back a few steps until she’d recovered her balance. Then stood squarely in front of him . . . until he slammed the door between them.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Sue Gully added extra milk to her coffee. It was the first mug of the day, despite the fact that, for Goodhew, it was only brewed a couple of hours after what he’d decided to call the last one of the night before. Goodhew had left his coffee black; he hated black coffee but right now he also needed it.

  ‘I don’t understand why you don’t get more sleep,’ she remarked.

  ‘It didn’t work out like that.’ He didn’t bother telling her that he was now in the middle of a two-week spell where he could barely sleep at all. During a phase like that, trying and failing to sleep could be more disturbing than just staying awake.

  ‘Make sure you don’t attempt to drive.’

  ‘Of course I won’t. And anyway the sugar’s medicinal,’ he told her, as he stirred in an extra spoonful.

  She seemed satisfied with that. ‘Tell me what you did then,’ she asked, seamlessly jumping the conversation back to two minutes before their coffees had been poured.

  ‘I followed her. She went inside and I waited out of sight.’

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘I really don’t know. There was shouting and I was trying to hear, but I couldn’t catch much until the end. She thinks her father killed them both.’

  ‘His own daughter? Anything’s possible, but you’d think his wife Mary would have suspected it.’

  ‘He was shouting at Jane and I wondered at one point whether I’d need to intervene. He did seem genuinely angry, but then I guess he would be, and especially if he’d actually done it.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Sue hesitated with the cup close to her lips. ‘Did Jane seem scared of him?’

  ‘No, she was too wired for that. When she left me at the University Arms, the streets were empty. I allowed her a head start so that she wouldn’t spot me, but then I found I had to move very quickly to keep up.’

  ‘On a mission, then?’

  ‘Something like that. Determined to see him and not stopping to consider any danger to herself. She’s been regularly walking round Cambridge by herself in t
he middle of the night, too.’

  ‘You’re right, that doesn’t make her a personal-safety poster girl now, does it? So what did she do after she’d visited her father?’

  ‘Nothing. Just went back to her B and B.’

  ‘She’s probably sound asleep right now, Gary.’

  ‘I doubt it somehow. She’s more likely to be staring up at the ceiling and wondering who killed her mother. It’ll be a relief when these reports come back from Sykes and forensics.’

  Sue stood and picked up her cup. ‘Are you having more coffee?’

  He shook his head. ‘I’m going up.’

  ‘The other one’s on Marks’s desk, by the way. I signed for it and took it up earlier this morning.’

  ‘The other what?’

  ‘Report from forensics. The one about the boat.’

  He hurried to his feet, too. ‘Did you just forget to tell me about it?’ he grumbled.

  ‘Sorry, Gary. It came in first thing, just as I arrived, so I offered to drop it on his desk. You and I were talking about Jane Osborne, so I didn’t give it a second thought.’ She seemed to sense the immediate shift in the atmosphere, and suddenly her mood darkened too.

  ‘It’s fine,’ he conceded. ‘I’ll go up and read it now.’

  ‘Actually, I’d rather you didn’t. It was me who took it up there and it’s addressed to Marks, not to you. I don’t think you should now make me feel as though I’ve done something wrong, just because I didn’t mention a report that’s not even addressed to you.’

  He looked genuinely surprised. ‘I didn’t mean to.’

  ‘Why don’t you leave it, for once?’

  ‘Sue, I really didn’t mean to upset you.’

  She reddened, a habit of hers that had become less frequent but was still not unusual. ‘I don’t want to fall out with you, Gary, but when you go off on your own like this, it has the potential to screw things up for other people. I don’t want to get in hot water because a report has been opened when it shouldn’t have been. And I don’t want to feel like I have to cover for you if something goes wrong when you’re too tired to be at work.’ Her redness deepened. ‘And I don’t want to see you screw up your career, either. Marks gives you more slack than he should, but his patience won’t be endless, will it?’