by Steve Mosby
Strangely, she seemed calmer now.
‘And why did he do it?’ I said. ‘You said he seemed to have a plan. You had to repent for your sins?’
‘Yes. The wearing of sins.’ She looked at me. ‘Are you a sinner, Mark?’
‘Probably.’
‘Everybody is. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, but it’s hard for people to admit. That’s the point. In life, we hide our sins and imagine that nobody sees them, nobody knows. We even hide them from ourselves. We think the past is the past, but it isn’t. They’re always there, aren’t they?’
‘Yes.’
‘And sins have to be made manifest in order for us to be cleansed. It is a form of acknowledgement. Do you see? We must admit our sins and crimes before we can repent. We must wear them.’ She gestured at her face. ‘One by one.’
I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose for a second, trying to gather my thoughts. This was an interview; this was what I did. But it was hard to keep track and hold it all in my head and figure out where to go next with the discussion.
‘And what sins are you wearing, Charlie?’
‘I want to go home.’
I opened my eyes. She was still looking at me, but the expression on her face had become desperately sad.
‘I know.’
‘Why won’t Mercer come? I want to go home.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘But Paul’s moved on. Like I said, he’s living with someone else now, and she’s pregnant. We’ll have to work something out.’
‘Not that home.’
Her voice was smaller than ever; she knew deep down that she was admitting something terrible. Even so, it took me a heavy moment to process what she was telling me.
‘You want to go back there?’
‘I was promised. After I told this man Mercer – that was supposed to be the end of it.’ She looked up and raised her voice now, as though she wanted the sky to hear. ‘Mysterious ways, right? Well I’ve done everything I can, and now I want to go home. I deserve to go home! I’ve earned it, haven’t I?’
‘Charlie—’
‘I deserve it, don’t I?’ She looked back down at me, her eyes almost imploring. ‘After everything?’
I didn’t know what to say. After everything that had been done to her ... she wanted to go back there. And for some reason, she wouldn’t be allowed to until she’d told Mercer whatever it was she was supposed to. In her head, at least. How would whoever had kept her even know?
‘You don’t deserve what’s happened to you,’ I said.
‘You have no idea.’
The thought I’d had yesterday came back to me again.
‘Where were you, Charlie, on that last day? Before the accident? You left for work in the morning, but you didn’t go.’
She just looked at me.
The frustration finally rose up. I had so many questions I wanted answers to. Where had she been that day? Why had she been told to ask for Mercer, a man she didn’t know? And as my gaze moved over the elaborate scarring on her face, I wanted to know why she had been targeted in the first place. In her own words, the cuts had been done to a design. It was a mask of admission; of repentance.
‘What sins are you wearing?’ I asked again.
And again Charlie stared back at me for a long time, still saying nothing. Then she turned her head away from me.
‘That,’ she said softly, ‘is what I need to tell Mercer.’
Eileen
Sit with me
‘It’s for the best.’
‘Yes,’ John said. ‘I know.’
Eileen glanced sideways at him as she drove them home. She had never seen her husband look so tired and beaten down. He was half collapsed in the passenger seat now, staring out of the side window without taking in the scenery moving past them. His head lolled slightly, guided by the motion of the vehicle. Even the bright sunshine on his skin somehow made him seem less alive than he should be.
It scared her, what effect today’s events might have on him. He was so difficult to read sometimes, and the expression on his face right now was utterly blank. It was easy to imagine he was thinking nothing at all, but she knew that wouldn’t be true. There was too much clockwork in that head of his, and it wasn’t good for him when it all began clicking and turning. He couldn’t cope with the noise it created. She could sense that visiting the department today had started movement off in there. Despite how calm and still he was, Eileen was frightened that the turning in there wouldn’t stop, and of what the consequences would be for him. For both of them.
That was why she’d had to leap in. Cut the meeting dead. For his sake, and for hers.
‘We should never have gone,’ she said.
‘It was important to find out what they wanted.’
‘Yes, well. Now we have. But they should have known better, after everything that happened. After they forced you out. It was unfair of them even to ask.’
John sighed. She glanced at him again, but he was still staring out of the window.
‘They had no choice.’
‘They had every choice,’ she said. ‘It’s not your job to be interviewing witnesses and suspects for them. Not any more.’
‘I meant no choice in forcing me out.’
Eileen couldn’t think of what to say to that. He was right, of course, and perhaps it had been disingenuous of her to bring it up in the first place: trying to make the department into an enemy so that she could pair up with John against it. The truth was that she’d wanted him out of the police long before it happened, and if they hadn’t pushed him, she would have done her damnedest to force him out herself.
‘Well,’ she said eventually. ‘It’s for the best.’
Her turn to sigh then. His turn not to reply.
But it was for the best – and not simply because of the effect getting involved might have on his mental health. Her heart had broken for him back at the department. For a moment he had seemed to come alive again. When he was advising the team on what they needed to do, she had caught a flash of the man she’d fallen in love with all those years ago: smart and capable, and more animated than she’d seen him in a long time.
And that couldn’t last.
Many years ago, Eileen had watched her mother die: a slow, agonising descent into dementia that had left her incoherent by the end. The gradually diminishing figure in the hospital bed she visited might have had her mother’s shape and form, but it had none of the content; the woman she had loved so deeply had become all but absent. It’s for the best, her father had told her. Not that the illness wasn’t a bitter and cruel one, he explained, but at least she wasn’t aware of it. It was true that there had been a sense of serenity to her, and that the fractured fantasy world she inhabited seemed to bring her some degree of peace. If she laughed often at things that weren’t there, what did it matter, so long as she laughed? It’s worse for us, her father had told Eileen and her sister.
Maybe that was true for the most part, but there were also moments when her mother had been more lucid: when it was clear she recognised her husband and daughters. Eileen would hold her hand, recognising the fear and confusion in the old woman’s eyes, and her mother would squeeze back, and Eileen would know that she knew. Just for a few minutes, or even seconds, she was being given a fleeting glimpse of the real world. When that happened, she understood what she was losing, what she had already lost, and how much it all meant to her. In those moments, Eileen didn’t think it was worse for the rest of the family at all.
Watching John in the department had reminded her of that. He had lived for police work, and it had been taken from him, and she knew he had spent the past year and a half mourning that loss in his own way, acclimatising himself to it. Today had provided a reminder of what he had lost – given him a glimpse of his old life again – and she had watched him seize it as strongly but fleetingly as her mother had gripped her hand all those years ago.
And it wouldn’t last. Even if he had stayed on and t
alked to Charlie Matheson for them, he wouldn’t be involved – not in the way he wanted or needed to be. The advice he’d tried to give them wasn’t advice they needed. And what had Mark told her yesterday when she’d asked how it was in the department these days?
We’ve moved buildings. Apart from that, it’s the same as always.
They didn’t need him. When they were finished with him, they would discard him again. Like her mother, he would return to his own world, confused and distressed by the experience, and there’d only be her there to hold his hand then.
When they arrived home, John made his way up to the attic. Eileen followed him to the base of the stairs.
‘Where are you going?’ she said.
‘Just to do some work.’
She watched him climb the stairs, slowly and awkwardly. How old he looks, she thought again – but then perhaps she did too. They were both now years older than her mother had been when she began wasting away. Against all odds, they were still together, and Eileen had a sudden realisation that time was drawing to a close for both of them. They were not going to grow old together; they already had. Before too long, John wouldn’t be climbing these stairs any more, or else he would be climbing them without her to watch him and worry.
‘Don’t you think you should rest?’ she called up.
‘I’m fine. I won’t be long.’
Sit with me, she wanted to blurt out. Let’s just sit together for a while. But of course she would never do that. He was too drawn to his research; too lost in it, for all the comfort it brought him. How would it feel to sit with him, knowing he would rather be elsewhere?
Even worse, what if he said no?
He closed the attic door gently. Eileen stood at the bottom of the stairs for a few minutes, waiting for the sound of his typing to begin; the sound that reassured her he was at least not staring into space, not turning too much over in his head. But it didn’t come. And finally, when the silence became unbearable, Eileen made her way back downstairs.
Groves
A man without a face
‘So,’ Sean said, ‘do we think this might be our guy?’
Groves was sitting at his desk in their shared office, with Sean leaning over his shoulder, so close that he could smell the coffee on his partner’s breath, and the tang of his aftershave. He was trying to ignore both.
‘Yes. I think it might be.’
Groves clicked to replay the snippet of footage he’d extracted from the stack sent over from the CCTV suite. It showed one small event during the last evening of Edward Leland’s life. The camera the clip had been taken from was on a post just past the end of a short row of shops, the nearest of which was obscured onscreen by a long stone canopy. The pavement was only partially illuminated. The newsagent’s, bookie’s and post office had been closed at that time, with only a takeaway and an off-licence open, spreading their light out in skewed rectangles over the tarmac.
He watched as Leland passed along the row and entered the off-licence at the far end. Groves counted. Leland was inside for just under two minutes. When he came out, he walked back the way he had come, in the direction of his house, now carrying a plastic bag.
‘Spirits of some kind,’ Sean said.
Groves nodded. Provisions for the night, he guessed. Just before Leland reached the end of the row of shops, a figure detached itself from the dark bushes beyond the off-licence and began following him.
‘You don’t even see him there.’ Sean sounded full of wonder. ‘Even though I knew to look this time, I still didn’t spot him waiting.’
Groves didn’t say anything, but it was true that, until the moment he revealed himself, the man might as well have been part of the darkness – or perhaps not even there at all. And yet he must have been standing there the whole time. Waiting. They would need to expand the time frame, of course, to try to find the moment he’d arrived, and hope it gave them a better shot at identifying him.
There was certainly little chance of doing so from this. The man walked purposefully after Leland, but all it was really possible to tell was that he was dressed entirely in dark clothes, carrying some kind of bag over his shoulder. His face was completely obscured; he had a hood up, and kept his head down, turning away from the light where necessary.
‘He knew the camera was there,’ Groves said.
‘Certainly acting like it.’
There was a sense of professionalism to the man that was hard to pin down. It made Groves think of a soldier. Perhaps it was to do with the way he moved, or simply the fact that he managed to stay as dark and obscured as he did. Even when the light hit him, it seemed to reveal less than it should. The way he kept his head turned made him a man without a face.
He’s used to moving in darkness, Groves thought.
It was irrational, but it felt true.
He looks like he’s never seen unless he wants to be.
Sean leaned away. ‘Let’s get as good a freeze-frame as we can. Then we shake down Leland’s friends. Each and every one. Coffee?’
‘Yeah,’ Groves said. ‘Although I think I’ve already inhaled a day’s worth of caffeine from your breath.’
‘You’re welcome: you looked like you needed it. Be back in five. Don’t start without me.’
‘I won’t.’
Sean left and closed the door.
You looked like you needed it. Groves certainly felt like he did. After the phone call last night, he had found it difficult to sleep, turning the strange events of the evening over and over in his head in a fruitless attempt to make sense of them, and failing. The scarred homeless boy had given him a phone, and on that phone he’d received a message that related to his dead son. There was no way it could have been a coincidence, and yet he couldn’t work out what it meant. Was it a more advanced version of the taunting phone calls and letters? If so, it seemed a bizarre and random form of escalation, and the message itself had not been as hurtful and poisonous as it might have been.
At the same time, he couldn’t think what to do about it. He had the phone with him now – a solid pressure he could feel in his trouser pocket – but it wasn’t turned on. He was keen to preserve the battery life, and had been only checking for voicemail messages at intervals. Beyond that, he wasn’t sure what else he could do. He certainly wasn’t going to waste departmental resources attempting to trace the call. For the first couple of years, he’d reported the messages he’d received on Jamie’s birthday, dutifully logging them, but nothing had ever come of it, and in the end he’d stopped. There had been a strange kind of relief then, at keeping them to himself. They were personal, and passing them on to the department had always felt a little like he was handing over his responsibility for them: giving them to someone else to deal with. This felt similar. For some reason, when it came to the phone, he was reluctant to talk even to Sean about it.
God will be with you.
He took the mobile out now and turned it on.
Waited.
Nothing. He turned it off again.
Despite his promise to Sean, he decided to start without him. For now, he focused his attention on the drugs angle. Edward Leland had been low-level, yes, but it was still possible they’d find something there. When you dealt and used, it was inevitable that you’d meet bad people along the way, and transgressions could easily end up being punished. And if any of those individuals had become familiar with Leland’s apparent sexual inclinations, maybe it wouldn’t have taken quite so much of a transgression for them to turn on him.
He called up Leland’s case file onscreen, with the list of names that Angela Morris had provided for them scribbled on a notepad on the desk. She’d given a grand total of seven, and had stressed that only a couple of them were dodgy, the others more like casual acquaintances. Not that she’d necessarily know, of course, and they’d work them all anyway. For now, though, Groves wanted to see if there was any correlation there with Leland’s criminal record. He scanned through to the list of Leland’s convictions.
It made for depressing reading. His first offence had been at the age of thirteen. Drunk and disorderly; public affray; damage to property. He had received a caution. A pattern established itself through his teens, with a further three arrests, until he was sixteen, when drugs entered the picture and he was found in possession of a reasonable quantity of cannabis.
Groves knew the type already, or imagined he did, at least. It brought back memories of some of the kids he’d grown up with: hanging around in the local parks and on street corners; older brothers taking orders and bringing boxes of alcohol. Because his father had been both a policeman and deeply religious, Groves had been excluded from all that, and at the time he’d resented it. Despite his own religious leanings, the things the other kids got up to had somehow felt natural and correct, and they pulled at him to the extent that, stuck inside of an evening, he would look out of his bedroom window and sense a centre of gravity trying to drag him out there.
Most teenagers did it, of course, and most came out the other side okay. But some didn’t, and Edward Leland was one. He left school with barely a handful of qualifications and little in the way of an obvious future.
His eighteenth birthday had culminated in his being arrested in possession of a small quantity of heroin. A step-change, that. And from there, it had been a slippery slope with a downhill trajectory. He was arrested for dealing in his early twenties and served six months. More drunk and disorderlies afterwards. A longer stretch for dealing six years ago. Since then, he appeared to have been clean, although Angela Morris thought he had at least been using again at various points during that period.
Her words came back to Groves now.
He was so lovely when we were younger. Troubled, but lovely.
He clicked back through to the beginning of the file. It contained no record of the sexual abuse Morris alleged Leland had suffered as a child. Of course, that didn’t mean it hadn’t happened. He might have reported it and not been believed, or he might have felt there was nobody he could report it to at all. Both situations were depressingly common.