by Neil White
‘There must be someone else? You can’t bear all this on your own.’
He smiled thinly and shook his head. ‘I know it sounds sad, a grown man like me, but she’s all I’ve got.’ He gulped and clenched his jaw. ‘It’ll seem quiet when she’s gone.’
‘Is she in much pain?’
He shook his head. ‘The hospital gave us plenty of things to take the pain away. But it won’t get any better, I know that.’
Laura glanced at Pete, who looked confused, but she sneaked a quick wink, letting him know that she wasn’t just passing the time.
‘I hope you don’t mind me asking, but we’re just enquiring about Jess. I know she used to go to your dream group, but how well did you know her?’
Billy blushed, and then he went to sit down. He looked at his hands, seemed nervous.
‘Did you like her?’ Laura probed. ‘I mean, really like her?’
He looked up, and then nodded slowly. ‘I know that I don’t have much to offer, but I think we would have been good together.’ He pushed his glasses back up his nose. ‘But I don’t think she felt the same way.’
‘You must have been disappointed. Hurt, maybe.’
‘Not hurt enough to kill her, if that’s what you mean,’ he sneered.
Laura didn’t respond. She let the words hang there, watching as Billy squirmed and pushed his glasses back up his nose again, like a twitch.
‘How did Jess record her dreams?’
He thought for a moment. ‘I think she used to keep a diary. I saw it at the meetings sometimes.’
Laura felt Pete watching her. ‘Do you know where she kept it?’ she asked.
He shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Have you ever borrowed it, Billy, or is there any reason why you might have it?’
He shook his head again, more slowly this time. ‘I’ve only ever seen it in her hand at the meetings.’
‘Is it the sort of thing that she would lend to anyone?’
‘No, it isn’t.’
Then Laura smiled. ‘Thanks, Billy. You don’t mind if we call back sometime?’
Billy watched her, nervously.
Laura turned to go, made Pete turn with her, but then she looked quickly back to Billy. ‘Who do you think killed her, Billy?’
He looked surprised, his eyes wide behind the lenses, but then he looked hurt. ‘I don’t know,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t know who would hurt her. She was a lovely person.’
Laura watched him for a moment, and then she nodded. ‘Thank you, Billy.’
And then she turned to go, Pete alongside her.
‘What was all that about?’ he whispered.
‘Just trying to get the measure of him.’
‘And what was it?’
Laura looked back towards the house, saw Billy watching through the curtains. ‘He doesn’t seem like a killer, because I don’t think he would leave his mother alone.’
Pete climbed into the car, Laura with him. ‘Where now?’ he asked.
Laura twitched her nose as she thought, and then said, ‘Drive around the block so it looks like we’ve left, and then park up further down there,’ and she pointed along the street.
‘You’re not sure about him, are you?’
Laura shook her head. ‘We watch, just in case. Whoever killed her took that dream diary. We’ve asked about it. If he has it, he’ll get nervous and want to get rid of it.’
And there was another reason why Laura was unsure, and that was because she thought she had seen something else in Billy: desire. He had been in love with Jess. Laura had seen how he lived, trapped by his love for his mother, and Jess had been free. That troubled Laura, because unrequited love can lead to hurt, and unresolved hurt can end in murder.
Chapter Forty-three
I hadn’t been home long when Laura got back. I was sitting on the floor with Bobby, playing KerPlunk, pulling straws out of a tube. Bobby was concentrating hard, his tongue flicking at his lips, pulling out a straw slowly, but as soon as the key turned in the lock, he jumped up and set off towards his mother. He was at that age where he ran everywhere, walking was just too little effort, and so he ran towards Laura, his arms outstretched. I heard him squeal with delight.
When she came into the room, she had Bobby in her arms, his legs wrapped around her waist. I looked up and smiled. It still felt good to see Laura walk into our house, the excitement was still there. She walked through to the kitchen, which had an open-plan farmhouse look, lots of oak and a range cooker in the old chimney breast. When I saw her sniff the air, I shrugged apologetically. My dinner preparation hadn’t gone beyond a trip to the freezer.
Laura didn’t look angry, though. She just looked tired. She came back into the living room, still holding Bobby, and sat down in the old armchair. ‘Hello, Jack,’ she said, and I sensed she was too worn out to argue. ‘You’ve been upsetting people today.’
‘I don’t do it to upset you. You know that, don’t you?’
She nodded, and then pointed towards the box on the table, the one filled with Eric’s paintings and photographs. ‘What’s in the box?’
I was about to answer when the phone rang. Laura went to it, Bobby under her arm, giggling as she went. I saw her face harden as soon as she answered it. I guessed who it was: Geoff, Bobby’s father.
‘Bobby,’ I called over, ‘come and help me with this.’
He trotted over, and I went to get the plates and cutlery, anything to keep him busy. As I handed him things to take to the table, I listened to Laura hissing down the phone. I knew how it went. Geoff wanted Bobby when it was convenient for him. Laura wouldn’t say no, because she wanted Bobby to see his father, but not like this, with calls coming in unexpectedly. I knew how Geoff wanted it to happen: he got all the fun days, Laura got the grind.
When she put the phone down, she turned to Bobby, her face filled with mock delight, but I could see the anger behind her eyes.
‘Guess what? You’re going to see your daddy tomorrow!’ she said, her voice excited. When he ran off whooping, she turned to me and said, ‘He’s collecting him from school.’
‘Quite a drive.’
‘He wants to see what kind of school it is.’
‘And if he doesn’t approve?’
That’s when I saw the tears in her eyes. I knew then that he was going to make it tough for us.
I wrapped her up in my arms and she sank into me. Nothing was easy.
Laura was upstairs reading a story to Bobby when I started to go through the box of pictures. I glanced outside. The sky was darkening into indigo blue, the lights of Turners Fold flickering into life, the narrow lines of streets glowing orange. I could hear happy murmurs from Bobby’s room.
I turned back to the box. It was heavy, crammed to the lid with brown envelopes. I reached in and pulled one out carefully. The corners seemed fragile, as if it had been opened too often over the years, the colour faded through time, yellowed like old newspaper. As I lifted the flap and looked inside, I saw two pieces of paper. I tipped the contents out onto the table: a painting and a photograph.
I looked at the painting first.
It was a picture of a volcano, the lava picked out in bright red as it headed towards a small settlement, palm trees at the base, represented as light green flicks. Eric had a certain style, sort of frantic, as if he was trying to get the picture done as quickly as possible, but I could tell that he cared about a likeness. The sides of the volcano were painted in charcoal and black, setting out the rock in relief, and he had drawn the settlement in little stone blocks. But I could sense the tiredness in his picture, the lines more jagged than smooth.
I looked at the photograph.
It was in colour, and it showed Eric in front of the clock in the shop from his estate. He looked younger, his hair showing shades of darkness, and there was a brightness to his eyes, as if he was a little less worn down.
I looked again at the painting. It didn’t mean anything to me. Maybe Montserrat, bu
t volcanoes erupted all the time, and if he painted one as a premonition it would certainly come true eventually.
I put both pictures back into the envelope and put it to one side. I wasn’t convinced yet.
I opened the next envelope, and when I saw what was inside, I shivered.
I recognised the scene straightaway. A football ground, the terraces marked out by long, dark lines, the centre circle and the goals making it clear what it was supposed to be. There were a few figures, stick drawings, but they weren’t playing football. Instead, they were grouped into a cluster on one side of the pitch.
It was the terrace running along the other side that told the real story. It was painted in bright oranges, reds, flashes of blue, flames licking the underside of the roof. There were some other pictures painted in the corners, separate from the main image. One was a figure in dark clothes, and it seemed like he had flames coming from his head.
It was the Bradford football fire, when the stand had caught fire and fifty-six people died. I was a young boy when it had happened, but it was one of those events etched into my memory, like Heysel and Hillsborough.
I looked inside the envelope and found the photograph. It showed a younger Eric, his hair dark and bushy. He was smiling, a strange lopsided grin, like he felt silly standing in the shop. I wondered whether it was his first time. I peered at the calendar in the background and saw that it said 14 April 1985.
I shook my head and felt for Eric. True or not, he had suffered for more than twenty years. The shop didn’t look like it had changed much, with the same dim lighting and cluttered shelves, but the Eric I had met had altered almost beyond recognition. Stress and anxiety had ground him down, until he’d ended up as a shadow of his former self.
I looked back into the envelope and saw some newspaper clippings. I let them tumble out onto the table, the pages brown and dry now. As I looked through, I saw many similar images, pictures of the flames roaring under the roof as people stood on the pitch.
But then, as I flicked through the newspaper images, I saw a picture that took me by surprise.
I picked up the painting again and looked at the dark figure with flames coming from his head, and then back at the newspaper. I checked the date on the newspaper. It was after the painting. Four weeks later.
In the newspaper there was a picture of a policeman. He was running away from the stand, and his hair was on fire.
I sat back and ran my hands through my hair. It was incontrovertible. Eric Randle had painted a picture that foretold the Bradford fire four weeks before it had happened.
I turned to another envelope, lost in curiosity now.
This looked just as old, but again I recognised it immediately. It showed a field fringed by trees, the branches bare. Winter. In the middle of the field was the front of an aeroplane, a large one, but it was on its side, the cockpit windows looking strange against the grass. The rest of the plane was gone. I peered closely and I saw what I was looking for. There were dots of colour in the field, like red and blue swirls. Clothes, suitcases. I felt sick. Lockerbie, when Libyan terrorists exploded a Pan-Am flight over a small Scottish town.
I looked for the newspaper clippings, and I saw straightaway that I was right. They showed the same image, from the same angle.
The photograph confirmed what I already suspected. It showed Eric holding up his painting in front of the shop’s calendar. He looked more serious in this one, as if the Bradford painting had made him think that he had been right once, and he was now nervous that he would be again. And the date on the calendar proved so. October 1988, two months before the atrocity, the walls behind covered in fireworks posters and Halloween masks.
I heard footsteps behind me, and as I looked round I saw Laura coming towards me, her eyes red.
‘He needs to see his dad,’ I said softly as I put the picture down. ‘Every boy needs his dad. I can’t replace him.’
Laura nodded. ‘I know, but why does he have to make it so difficult?’ she asked, her voice strained.
‘Because he can,’ I said softly, and I stood up to pull her closer to me. ‘Things will even out. Just give it time. If Geoff is doing this to get at us, he will get bored. If he is doing it to see Bobby, we can sort out more formal arrangements when the fuss dies down. For Bobby’s sake, though, don’t make it into a battle. Geoff wants a fight. If you don’t give him one, he’ll calm down.’
Laura hugged me, and as she buried her head into my chest I could smell the mustiness of the police station on her. I kissed her on the top of her head.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘We’ve got Nostradamus on the table here.’
Laura looked over. ‘What are all those?’
So I told her about my meeting with Mary Randle and how she had given me all of Eric’s paintings.
Laura then picked up the pictures I had already taken out.
‘What are you up to, Jack?’ Her voice sounded suspicious.
I tried to look innocent. ‘I was curious, that’s all.’
‘Is this just for a story?’
‘Yes, because it’s a good one. Local misfit turns out to be the Summer Snatcher, ended by a sad suicide.’
Laura looked at me, and I could sense her working out what she could tell me and what she couldn’t.
‘That’s right, Laura, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘Just the result of a guilty conscience?’
‘You found him,’ was all she said in reply, and she sat down. I joined her after I’d gone to the kitchen and come back with two glasses of red wine.
As she took a sip, she leaned back and kicked off her shoes. I could see her looking at me, at what I was studying, the pictures and clippings strewn across the table.
I nodded towards them. ‘Do you want to see what I’ve got? Quid pro quo?’
Laura watched me, and I could tell she was tempted. I saw her sigh and smile, and then she said, ‘If we share information, it’s off the record unless I say otherwise. And you keep your sources secret.’
‘My first rule, you know that.’ I nodded towards the box of papers. ‘But you know that these aren’t exhibits yet. They go in my story and then back to Mary, and if she lets the police have them, that’s her choice.’
Laura stretched as she stood up, and I noticed that her wine had already disappeared. She agreed and joined me at the table, but not before she had topped up her glass.
I showed her the two paintings I had looked at so far. She scratched her chin.
‘Could be coincidence so far,’ she said.
I agreed. ‘Let’s see what else there is.’
We started opening envelopes, one at a time, checking the photographs and the paintings. Some didn’t have clippings with them, some did.
‘There must be a few hundred in here,’ she said.
‘We’ve got them going back to the early eighties, so that’s still just ten a year.’
‘And not all get hits,’ she replied. Then she stopped. ‘Look at this,’ she said, her voice hushed.
Laura handed me a picture filled with columns, a long row of them, white against a grey background. In front of them all was a car, black, mangled and bent. A photograph of Eric holding it in front of the clock dated it in April 1997.
I looked up and shook my head. I didn’t recognise it.
Laura handed me a clipping from August 1997. I recognised it straightaway. It was a picture of the Pont d’Alma tunnel in Paris, in which the Princess of Wales died, when the hired black Mercedes crashed and sent the world into shock.
‘It’s a bit of a stretch,’ I said. ‘It’s not specific enough. A car crash. It could have been anybody at any time. He just got lucky that it happened in the same year.’
‘But look at that,’ and Laura pointed to a scrawl in the top corner of the page.
I looked closer, and saw that it was the number 13, written in a rush.
When I looked up at Laura, she pointed at a sentence in the newspaper clipping. I read it and whistled. The car crash that killed t
he Princess of Wales happened when the hired black Mercedes crashed into the thirteenth pillar in the Pont d’Alma tunnel.
‘He gets a few hits,’ I said, smiling.
Laura frowned and pointed at the envelopes we had opened where there had been no clippings. ‘But look how many he doesn’t get hits on. Maybe if you paint enough, you’ll always get hits.’
‘Maybe, but do you know what gets me: he often predicts the media images, not just the events.’