The Backs (2013)

by Bruce, Alison

  ‘Cause and effect, then?’

  ‘Exactly. Now, recent events include Andie being spotted up on the Gogs, Marshall being murdered, Jackson following Genevieve Barnes, and Jane being brought back from Leeds. I’ve tried different scenarios to connect them, but nothing that triggers Jane coming back to Cambridge.’

  Gully shrugged. ‘She was arrested, therefore the timing is a coincidence.’

  ‘I don’t think so. She’d left her boyfriend and she was arrested at one of the major stations used for trains going south. I think she was coming home, anyway. She either lied when she said that no one knew she was there, or something she learnt gave her a reason to come back. There’s only one event on this wall that is timed right.’

  ‘Marshall’s murder?’

  ‘Yep – and it made the national news. She found out he was dead and that’s what made her decide to come home.’

  ‘So Marshall’s murder was significant to her?’

  ‘Precisely. She knew him. I’m waiting now for a call back from her ex-boyfriend, then I’ll visit her.’

  Goodhew left Parkside fifteen minutes later, knowing that if he walked quickly he’d reach Pound Hill in fifteen more. On a congested day, without sirens, it took longer than that to drive through East Road alone. Across much of town the traffic was at a crawling pace; all it had taken was the combination of a minor collision at the top of Lensfield Road and a water-main repairs in Trumpington Street for the backed-up traffic and gridlocked junctions to ensue. From open car windows, drivers cast dirty glances at pedestrians who dared to outpace them.

  No one would have known from his expression alone, but Goodhew’s mood matched theirs. The two things he thought he hated most in life were spite and lies. Jane Osborne had lied to him, and his disappointment was illogical and surprisingly intense.

  When he arrived at Pound Hill, she opened the front door just a few inches. Jane wore jeans and a baggy sweater that looked as though they’d been doubling as pyjamas. She gripped the blue-painted edge of the door and demanded, ‘What?’ White-knuckled, red-eyed, and clearly in a similar sleep-deprived state as Goodhew himself.

  He pushed on through to the hallway, before turning on her. ‘You knew who Paul Marshall was, didn’t you?’

  She shook her head in denial, but he could see he was right.

  ‘You’ve been a liar in the past, Jane – a compulsive liar – and now you’re lying again. I can see it on your face.’ He stepped away from her, to lean up against the balusters. ‘How many times have you been back in Cambridge, and watching your family without them knowing?’

  Indecision was written on her face. ‘I haven’t.’

  He’d known from the start that Jane was a survivor and survivors made the best liars, but it also took more than just lies to make someone a bad person. I’m taking this too personally. No one could be expected to suddenly stop lying after ten years of living that way. Telling the truth had to come one answer at a time, until it became the natural instinct. He softened his tone to sound less confrontational then. ‘Forget the past for one minute, Jane. I need to be able to believe what you tell me now.’

  ‘You’ll think whatever you want to think,’ she said stubbornly.

  ‘Jane, listen to me. In the last few weeks, Jackson started following Genevieve, also Marshall dies, and you come back to town. All three are somehow related, and you are possibly the only person who knew that fact before us. I need to know what it was that pulled you back home, Jane.’

  ‘I didn’t come home. I was arrested, remember?’

  ‘Yes, but at a railway station. Where were you planning on travelling from there? I think – arrest or not – you were coming back here to Cambridge.’

  ‘It was just a thought, not a plan.’

  ‘Come on, Jane, there’s more to it than that. You’d left home, remember. I’ve spoken to your boyfriend, Ady.’

  He saw her eyes glint with a flash of anger, but she said nothing.

  ‘Ady remembers clearly. He tells me he showed you the burnt-out Evora on the internet. It came up on a news channel, and you seemed very uptight after that. A few days later you’d cleared off, and what appeared in your search history? Cambridge, Cambridge, Cambridge.’

  She stepped back until propped against the wall, mirroring his stance. She shoved her hands deep into the pockets of her jeans, staring down at the floor as she thought. He watched her expression, half expecting to see the trademark scowl, or that she would simply turn away.

  In the end, ‘I’ve had enough’ was all she said. She looked across at him. ‘I don’t always lie and, even when I do, it’s not always planned. I say the first thing that deflects attention so that I can just carry on with life in the way that suits me.’

  ‘Just tell me as much as you can,’ he prompted quietly.

  ‘Can we sit?’ They went through to the kitchen. She’d had a furniture upgrade since his last visit, involving two plastic storage boxes. She upended them now so they could sit facing each other, their knees almost touching.

  ‘All three of us kids used to lie awake at night listening to them shouting at each other.’ She cast her eyes up towards the ceiling, as if Dan and Becca were still upstairs somewhere, then looked back at Goodhew. ‘It was endless. But you cope . . . we coped. Dan stayed outdoors as much as possible, Becca tried to please both of them, and I just got more and more defiant. Especially with Mum.’ She seemed puzzled for a second. ‘My anger with Dad . . . all his energies seemed to be split between his sculpting and fighting with Mum.’ Emotion snagged in her throat, and she took a breath. ‘She didn’t hit us or anything, but we still needed protecting from her. He was an adult; he should have realized.’ She looked as though those last words had come as a complete revelation.

  ‘Didn’t you know you felt that way at the time?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, I didn’t.’ Her voice trembled and she made a wait gesture, taking several more breaths before she’d composed herself again. ‘I couldn’t stand the idea of Dan and Becca talking about moving out, when I was still stuck there. All I felt was anger – at all of them.

  ‘I think it was around then that Becca started sleeping around. Not like changing boyfriends all the time; it was more blatant than that. She was lashing out too, I suppose, and I saw the pain that it caused Dad. Then, one day, I had a massive fight with him, and he accused me of casting a shadow over the house. He said, “At least Mary and Becca are happy with the kind of lives they lead.” See, I can still quote him on that. His view of the pair of them seemed to be his view of women in general, but worse. And in his eyes I deserved even less respect than they did. It still hurts now, but back then it was enough for me to leave home and never come back.’

  ‘But you did?’

  ‘I think it took me about a year to calm down. Then I found Becca online, it was Friends Reunited – or MySpace back then – and every couple of months we’d meet up in Peterborough or York.’

  ‘Because they were easy stations to reach from both Cambridge and Leeds?’

  ‘That’s right. Becca told me about the prostitution. She didn’t call it that . . . though I did. She called it ‘‘escort work’’.’

  ‘Do you know if it was arranged through an agency or website?’

  ‘Yeah, Mum’s business partner ran it . . .’

  ‘Student Services?’

  ‘Yes. Karen Dalton’s another one who thinks money is god. Becca herself had adopted Mum’s logic that you should get whatever you can from a man. She said that a bloke would shaft you anyway, so he may as well cover the expenses. That was a version of one of my mother’s lines.’

  ‘Charming.’

  ‘See, it’s surprising I’m not more fucked up.’ She raised a small smile.

  ‘And Paul Marshall?’ he asked, and her smile vanished again.

  ‘He was one of them. In fact, he’s the one she’d used as an example of how it wasn’t just sordid sex with undesirable men. Everything she’d told me about her feeling
s for Paul Marshall, apart of course from the money changing hands, could have applied to a normal relationship. Until the very last time.’

  He interrupted her before she could say more. ‘He had a pattern, you know. She wasn’t the only one he attacked.’

  ‘Well, then, you know he must have been a clever man. I witnessed the change in her. He said he wanted her to think of him every time she ever thought about sex again. And the only other “man” she had after that was Greg Jackson.’

  ‘Your mother’s ex.’

  ‘Yes, well, Becca had tried to tell Mum what Marshall had done to her, but Mum shut her down. I don’t know whether she didn’t really believe her, but I think she just didn’t have the capacity to want to know. I’m sure Becca was paying her back by stealing Jackson away. And, unlike me, Becca didn’t shut the door on the woman either. They were toxic together, constantly baiting each other.’

  Goodhew wasn’t sure who exactly she meant. ‘Becca and Jackson?’

  ‘No, Becca and Mum. Becca rang me a couple of hours before she died, saying she and Mum had had another bust-up. She used to carry a bunch of cards with the website for Student Services, and the slogan See you in detention underneath. After Marshall, she’d thrown them all away, but Mum had found one remaining and pressed it into her hand, telling her that was all she was good for.

  ‘It wasn’t their normal scrap. Becca said to me, “You have no idea how cruel she is.” I asked her to explain, of course, because the idea of our mum being several steps more cruel than I already knew seemed . . .’ she fished for the right word ‘. . . unlikely.’

  ‘What did your sister then say?’

  ‘She just said she was about to tell Dad everything, including that she planned to marry Jackson. It seemed like it was all just to spite Mum, and I thought Becca was crazy. Only Mum could goad Dad like that and get away with it. Becca said we should meet again so I could hear ‘‘the whole fucking saga’’ in person.’

  ‘But of course she never got a chance?’

  ‘No.’ Jane leant back against the wall, looking pensive.

  ‘Is that why you thought your dad killed her?’

  She pressed her lips together, managing a small smile. ‘You don’t miss much. It was my first thought. My only thought.’

  ‘What about Jackson?’

  ‘The court came to its conclusion and I came to mine. It didn’t mean I was correct, though. I followed it in the paper and I genuinely wanted it to be him, rather than a miscarriage of justice. I hoped the evidence would be conclusive, and then I’d know that my dad was innocent.’

  ‘The evidence wasn’t enough, though, was it?’

  ‘No. But I didn’t feel any pity for Jackson either and, to my shame, I suppose I didn’t think I’d care even if he’d gone down for life. Maybe Jackson did actually kill her. But I was just sure Dad had done it and, through a perverse sense of loyalty, I kept that belief to myself. I just vowed that I’d never come home. I simply hoped that Dad would realize he’d been the cause of losing two daughters, and that it would make him suffer enough.’

  ‘And now?’

  Her voice grew quieter, as though there might be others within earshot. ‘I never thought he’d touch Mum, but as soon as I heard it was her body they’d found,’ she shook her head, ‘I was just as sure as I had been regarding Becca.’

  ‘And what about Marshall’s death?’

  ‘Did Dad even know Paul Marshall? I have no idea. But when Ady showed me the photo of that car, Marshall’s name just jumped out at me. It’s not a rare name but I kept checking, and as the details were released, they all matched.’

  ‘So why come back here?’

  ‘I hadn’t decided that I would, but I felt very unsettled. Despite everything I still wondered about Mum and Dad and Dan. I didn’t actually want to come back, but at the same time I couldn’t leave the idea alone. So maybe I would have actually travelled down. And maybe the arrest was fortuitous.’

  ‘And cheaper than the train?’

  ‘I’m not that devious.’ She smiled.

  He shifted his weight slightly: the plastic crate was less than comfortable. ‘How do you manage here?’

  ‘It’s OK. I’ll sort out a couple of rooms and get by.’

  ‘And your dad’s OK with that?’

  ‘I think he’ll let me stay for a while. He’s hoping to build some bridges, I reckon.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I’m not the type to stick by Dad if he’s killed them.’ She shook her head. ‘But if he hasn’t? No, I still don’t think so. Anyway, he still has Dan’s family. Dad should be thankful for that.’

  ‘Don’t you want family, Jane?’

  ‘Dan’s invited me to meet Reba. I don’t think of myself as being very child-friendly but I’m looking forward to it. Have you met her?’

  ‘Yes, briefly. I didn’t have a police dog or a uniform, so apparently she thought I was really boring.’

  ‘That’s funny,’ she laughed. It was an unguarded moment and she continued to look amused by it as she carried on talking. ‘I never imagined Dan with kids. I always thought he’d be single, with an apartment full of gadgets and the social life to go with it. He was one with the get-rich-quick plans, but instead of that he’s now settled. I saw his wife, too, and she’s really pretty.’ Goodhew saw her lean slightly to her right, to take a sneaky peek at her reflection in the side of a saucepan. She promptly tidied her hair, stroked across her eyelids with the tips of her fingers, then blinked as if to freshen her eyes.

  It seemed such a normal thing to do – good to see, he thought – but then he spoke again and ruined the moment. ‘Who else knew about Marshall’s assault on Becca?’

  She barely reacted. ‘Mum, Jackson and me – that’s all I know of. I was thrilled when I saw what had happened to him.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘He totally deserved it.’

  ‘Hang on, Jane, you weren’t worried? What if your dad had found out what Marshall had done to Becca?’

  ‘Dad didn’t kill Marshall. He wouldn’t have planned it like that. He would have just gone and done it. In fact, who would hate anyone enough to do that and yet still spend all that time planning it?’

  He opened his mouth to reply that he didn’t know, but instead he now saw that the answer was very clear. He jumped to his feet and she stood up, too. ‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered, ‘I have to go.’

  She followed him to the front door. ‘Did I say something important? Is it something about my dad?’

  ‘No,’ he reached for the door catch but delayed a moment to reassure her, too. ‘It’s not about your dad – he’s a line of inquiry, that’s all. I’ll come back and take a statement from you as soon as I can. And if you think of anything else . . .’ He closed his small notebook and was in the process of slipping it in his pocket.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I have your card,’ she said. She paused. ‘What is it?’

  He closed his eyes and played back the call between Genevieve Barnes and the emergency services. A card on the ground.

  ‘That card your mother gave Becca? You said it was just before she died?’ He nodded, encouraging her to acknowledge that she knew what he meant.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Can you describe it, Jane?’

  ‘I still have one.’ She shot out of the room and returned with a small leather wallet. She opened it so that the notes section gaped and slipped her finger and thumb inside, retrieving a grubby business card. The lettering was in red and fuchsia and, sure enough, the words Student Services jumped out at him.

  ‘You travelled to Cambridge with little more than you stood up in, so why would you keep a card like that?’

  She handed it to him.

  ‘Turn it over. Becca wrote on the back. It was a joke; she said everyone should have a business card, so she made that one for me on the back of one of hers. I kept it because it’s the only thing I have left with her handwriting on it.’

  He flipped it over, and s
miled when he read what it said: ‘Jane Osborne – Smaller but smarter.’

  FORTY-THREE

  Mr and Mrs Jackson lived just out of town in a street called The Pightle, at an address that Sheen had pulled from his memory without the need to double-check. ‘Pightle’s a marvellous word to use in Scrabble; it means a small place,’ he’d explained.

  And when Goodhew arrived, he’d found himself standing outside a bungalow that looked no bigger than a double garage. A modest home by any standards. The garden was also small, almost half of it devoted to flower beds filled with a display of well-behaved annuals. Impatiens and begonia spilled from hanging baskets on either side of the door, with no sign of a dead-head amongst them. The interior of the house reminded him of a holiday chalet, an effect helped by the row of three miniature blue-and-white beach huts on the windowsill. Goodhew suspected these were toothbrush holders.

  Mr Jackson was asleep in the only armchair when Goodhew arrived. Mrs Jackson finished making tea while her husband still dozed.

  ‘He’s been prescribed painkillers for his back, and they’re knocking him sideways.’ She spoke slowly and every word seemed carefully considered. ‘A policeman contacted us earlier and, as we told him, we haven’t seen Gregory all this week.’

  ‘When did you see him last?’ Goodhew sat down at one end of a small two-seater sofa. She sat next to him, both of them facing her husband. Goodhew then took a sip of his tea: it tasted oddly bleachy, as though the water had been standing in the kettle too long.

  ‘A couple of weeks ago now. We met him on the day he was released from prison, and he’s been home twice since then.’ He noticed the way she seemed careful with every detail. ‘Have you spoken to his parole officer?’

  ‘A colleague has, who passed back the message that you had some concerns, nothing else.’

  ‘We’ve noticed signs,’ she confessed.

  ‘But specifically?’

  ‘We visited Greg a couple of times each year while he was in prison. We would have been happy to go more often, but that seemed to be enough for him.’ She sipped her tea but her eyes never left Goodhew. ‘It’s inevitable that he would change in that time, but he became so . . . disconnected. I thought he was struggling, mentally and, even more after his release, he was always obsessing about his conviction. So we contacted his parole officer because we wanted to make sure he received the support he needed.’