The Split

by Sharon Bolton

  He has a sudden flashback to how her face lit up, completely losing its haunted look, when she talked about ice.

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’ Delilah crumples the crisp packet. ‘Ever hear of anyone called Shane?’

  It isn’t Felicity. The woman by the rose arch is younger, not unattractive, but with a long face and hooked nose.

  He shakes his head. Shane? No. For the most part, the rough sleepers come and go and rarely confide their real names. Many of them are running from something, real or imaginary, and dread being traced. ‘Doesn’t ring a bell but I have been out of circulation for a while. Why?’

  ‘He’s a person of interest.’

  ‘You’ll have to give me more than that. Is this about the Bella Barnes murder?’

  Delilah sighs and it’s as good as an answer. ‘We’ve got nothing, Joe. No suspects, no witnesses, bugger-all physical evidence.’

  She has already told him this. Twice.

  ‘It was the car park by the Grand Arcade, wasn’t it?’ Joe thinks about the huge, central car park. Security around it is normally pretty tight, but Bella had been small and good at hiding.

  ‘And she decided to kip down in a corner where CCTV doesn’t reach,’ Delilah grumbles.

  ‘They do that for a reason,’ Joe says. ‘So where does Shane fit in?’

  ‘There’s CCTV over the vehicular entrance to the car park and the cameras picked up the figure of a male leaving it around the time we think young Bella was killed. The sweatshirt he’s wearing is distinctive and one or two of the other street people we’ve spoken to think it could be someone called Shane. Trouble is, no one knows anything about him. He appears from time to time, acts a bit creepy. No one likes him. And then he vanishes.’

  ‘Got a picture?’

  His mother reaches into her bag and pulls out a slim cardboard file. She opens it to show a poor-quality still shot from CCTV footage. Joe recognises the car park, the entrance lane, and the few yards of street. Walking towards the camera, but with his face down, his hood up and shoulders hunched is the tall, slim figure of an adolescent male. His sweatshirt is dark but there is a white logo and lettering that Joe can’t quite make out.

  ‘Estimated height is five ten,’ Delilah says, ‘and we’ve had gait experts look at the footage. You know the theory that everyone’s way of walking is as distinctive as their fingerprint? Load of bollocks if you ask me, but this guy talked about length of stride, movement of the pelvis, the way the shoulders are carried. The speed of his movement suggests someone young or at least someone very fit.’

  ‘It’s not much to go on,’ Joe agrees.

  ‘Bella had no enemies,’ Delilah says. ‘You knew her, you don’t need me to tell you she was a nice kid. No one had a bad word to say about her. It wasn’t about Bella, it was about the man who killed her. It could happen again, Joe. I really need to find this Shane.’

  23

  Shane

  There is an hour, after the nightclubs have closed and before the first dawn deliveries arrive, when Cambridge falls silent. The clocks chime two thirty and, as if by general agreement, a hush descends. Those already asleep sink a little deeper; those who are not either drift away at last, or fall into a state that is so close to sleep as to be indistinguishable from it. The cats slink guiltily home and the dogs stop barking. Maybe these two are connected. The wind takes a breath and then a breather. Even the river seems to slow its course and at the punt docks, the bumping of wood and creaking of ropes stops.

  This is Shane’s time.

  His trainers make no sound as he slips around Jesus College. The porters are snoozing and they don’t hear him pass. The two constables in the patrolling police car don’t notice that the shadow in the corner of Magdalene Street Bridge wasn’t there the last time they passed, and they will not drive this way again tonight.

  Shane makes his way around Cambridge and he counts as he goes. The sixteen-year-old who left home last year because all the money he begged and stole was taken from him by his drug-addict mother. The soldier who served in the Falklands Conflict, and who still does, most nights, in his dreams. The woman from the Middle East and the child she hides from social services, because she knows she will lose him. The woman whom the fairies stole from her mother and father fifty years ago when she was a baby and who has been looking for them ever since. ‘Are you my daddy?’ she says to Shane, when she wakes and sees him watching her.

  He flees when this happens. Shane is a watcher. He does not like to be seen.

  Some of the people Shane looks for hide in plain sight, stretched out on park benches or slumped in doorways. Some hover where people buy food, because as they leave the supermarkets, people’s wallets and purses are always to hand. Most though, are very good at becoming invisible. The women in particular slip away into the darkest of places where few can find them. The old lady with the green coat and the shopping trolley has become particularly hard to find of late. She’s developed a nervous habit of huddling down in corners, even in the daytime. This saddens Shane, because when he first got to know her, the old lady was fearless.

  Since the young girl was murdered in the car park, though, the old lady and the rest of the homeless stay on the move, crossing the city during the day to bed down somewhere new each night. Sometimes they vanish for days, even weeks on end. Sometimes they never come back. Those who are seen sleeping rough on the streets of Cambridge are the iceberg’s tip. There are so many more.

  They are the unseen. They are his people.

  24

  Felicity

  It’s not safe, Felicity. It’s not safe. He’s coming.

  Felicity starts awake, fists clenched. Instead of black eyes, staring into her own, she sees the hazy outline of her bedroom ceiling, and yet the sense of being watched feels as real, as immediate, as it did just now in the dream. She lies still, skin tingling, knowing she isn’t alone.

  And yet the presence is invisible, or has fled, faster than she could open her eyes. A dream then? Or an actual voice, dragging her from sleep?

  The room isn’t dark. Enough light comes in from outside for her to make out the edge of the double bed, the empty fireplace, the dressing table, the upright chair. There are shadows, of course, and places that she can’t see. She breathes in, deeply but silently, like a terrified animal searching for an alien scent. Is she imagining the hint of cigarette smoke hanging in the air?

  Her right hand shoots out and finds the switch on the bedside light. Only then does she thoroughly check her room. A glance at the clock tells her it is close to four o’clock in the morning and it will be getting light soon. Beyond the curtains only a small square of garden separates her bedroom from the vast stretch of land that is Midsummer Common. Anyone can walk over the common, at any time of night or day. Anyone can step over the tiny railing that edges her property and walk right up to the bedroom window. The voice she heard could have come from directly outside.

  She runs from the room, padding barefoot along the hallway and up the stairs. Her sitting room on the first floor, directly above her bedroom, has two sash windows and she never draws the curtains in summer. She approaches cautiously, conscious of the vast, concealing darkness outside. Streetlights illuminate the first few yards of the common but beyond that, there is nothing but emptiness.

  No one stands on the grass, staring up at her house. She steps a little closer and can see the railing that edges her small front garden. The flower beds come into view and then, finally, by pressing her face against the cool glass, she can see the whole of the front of her property. There is no one in her garden, which means the voice she heard could only have come from inside the house.

  Heart thumping, she searches the living room and finds a soapstone statue of a polar bear, smooth and very heavy. The bear’s head and neck fit perfectly into her right hand and its body becomes a weapon. She makes her way into the only other room on this floor: the spare bedroom that doubles as a study. It too is empty.

  Back downstairs again, t
he front door is locked and bolted. There is no one in her bathroom and the sense of being watched is fading. For some reason, though, she is still reluctant to open the last door into the kitchen. She has a sudden vision of someone crouched on the central island, waiting to spring, or hanging above the door frame like a bat.

  With a burst of courage, she pushes open the door, reaches for the light and the room is revealed in all its clean white lines. Exactly as it should be. Except for the muddy footprints leading from the patio doors. Knowing the worst now, she enters the room. She avoids the mud as she steps to the door. Locked and bolted.

  The prints are indistinct and incomplete, but she can see traces of a pattern from the underside of a large trainer. She runs to the cupboard by the back door where she keeps her outdoor shoes. Dreading what she will see, she lifts the right foot of her running shoe. It’s spotless. So is the left foot. She has not made these prints and she doesn’t know whether that is a good thing or the worst possible.

  She backs away until her shoulders are pressing up against the cool of her back door, knowing that she cannot stay in this house a moment longer. She does not believe in ghosts, in the supernatural of any kind, but there are things happening to her that she can’t begin to explain and she is more afraid than she ever imagined possible. She has to get out.

  She has nowhere to go.

  From a short distance away a church bell begins to chime the hour. Four o’clock in the morning. She doesn’t go back to bed. Instead, she opens the door of the cupboard under the stairs. This is a cupboard she uses frequently, unlike its twin in the basement, at which she never looks and certainly never opens.

  She keeps this cupboard neat and there is a square of carpet on the concrete floor. A single duvet is rolled neatly in the corner around an old pillow.

  Felicity crawls into the cupboard and wraps the duvet around her as she settles herself into the corner. She balances the pillow against the wall and goes to sleep. And finally, like the last trace of a dream, she remembers what the voice in her ear said to her:

  He’s coming.

  25

  Felicity

  ‘So, how have you been, Felicity?’

  ‘Good, thank you. It’s good to be back at work.’

  It is early evening, a week after her first appointment, and all the windows are open in Joe’s consulting room. Felicity can smell the traffic fumes and food cooking in nearby restaurants. Occasionally, though, a waft of summer flowers steals inside.

  She has a plan for her second session with Joe. She will be cheerful, upbeat and chatty. She will enthuse about her work, and the fact that she feels fit enough to go running again. She will show him her diary, a week full of recorded activity.

  ‘Your face looks a lot better,’ he says.

  Her hand goes up to her right cheek, the worst of the grazes. ‘I heal fast,’ she says.

  ‘Given your line of work, that’s probably a good thing.’

  ‘Actually, I spend relatively little time on glaciers. They’re expensive trips. Most of the time I’m behind a desk.’

  He asks, ‘Do you have a trip coming up?’

  She thinks, this is going well. She just has to keep the small talk going.

  ‘Actually, there is talk of a trip that would be great. Possibly the best thing I’ve ever done. I think I mentioned it last week.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘We have a base on South Georgia. Mainly it’s about studying the wildlife, which is remarkable, but there are over a hundred glaciers there, and we know very little about them.’

  ‘South Georgia? The southern United States?’

  She forces a laugh. ‘No, sorry. I’m talking about the island in the South Atlantic. Between the Antarctic and the Falkland Islands. It’s a British protectorate, and one of the most remote places on Earth. No resident population, just a couple of government officials and our scientists. And tourists in the summer. In the winter, though, practically no one.’

  He makes a deeply puzzled face. ‘And this is somewhere you want to live? For how long?’

  ‘I’d love it. It would make my career. And it would be a two-year assignment.’

  ‘But to be allowed to go, you have to be fit? They’ll expect a medical report and that will include a psychiatric assessment.’

  And, with that, she knows he’s seen her game. Of course, the Survey will never send her to South Georgia without a clean bill of health. Physically, she’s absolutely fine. It all depends on Joe.

  ‘When would you leave?’ he asks.

  ‘The last week in August. When the worst of the southern hemisphere winter is over.’

  ‘Just over two months then.’

  ‘Is it enough time? To get me better. To sort me out. If I agree to two whole months of therapy, will you be satisfied?’

  His eyebrows bounce.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I know you’re trying to help.’

  ‘I’ll answer your question,’ he says. ‘Because I think it’s fair. Two months may be enough time. But I won’t be able to say with any level of confidence until you start to trust me.’

  She stares back at him.

  ‘I think there’s much you’re not telling me,’ he says. ‘And that’s OK. We move at a pace you’re comfortable with.’

  She’s been a fool, to imagine she can keep these sessions under control.

  ‘And I think you’ve been trying to steer the conversation today so that I won’t ask you anything difficult.’

  ‘So, ask me something difficult,’ she says.

  Smiling, he shakes his head. ‘That’s not how it works. I’m not here to make you uncomfortable. What do your friends think about your South Georgia plans?’

  The question throws her. ‘My friends?’ she repeats, playing for time.

  ‘You’ve yet to mention friends,’ he says. ‘But those closest to us can be instrumental to our emotional wellbeing. Is there a significant other in your life? Someone who might, understandably, feel left behind by your plans to move to the other side of the globe?’

  ‘My memory’s playing tricks on me,’ she says, before she can stop herself.

  Joe’s eyes narrow.

  ‘The day I first came here, this time last week, I did a big supermarket shop after work. When I got home, I found I’d done exactly the same thing a couple of days earlier and forgotten all about it. And I’d bought things I’d never eat.’

  Joe makes a note in his pad. ‘You’ve been under some stress,’ he says. ‘It’s understandable things will slip your mind.’

  Can she leave it at that? She should, except she finds she doesn’t want to.

  ‘I keep finding things that aren’t how I left them,’ she says. ‘Things in the wrong place. Sometimes it’s little things like car keys not being on the right hook, but the other week, someone emptied all my kitchen cupboards and put everything back in different places.’

  ‘Someone?’ he prompts.

  ‘Exactly. It can only have been me. I’m doing all these things and I can’t remember them happening.’

  He is writing again. She should stop now. But she finds she can’t. She has opened a flood gate and can no longer hold back the flow.

  ‘I’m finding cigarette butts,’ she says. ‘I’ve never smoked. But I find them in the garden near the back door several times a week. This is going to sound mad. I know its mad, but I can’t help thinking that someone is sleeping in my spare bedroom.’

  That’s it. That’s enough. Stop now.

  ‘More than once, I’ve gone past the door and seen it open, which is not how I keep it. I’m pretty tidy around the house. And when I look inside, the bed is all rumpled, as though someone has just got out and not bothered to make it. And the curtains are drawn too. I hate drawn curtains during the day.’

  ‘This must be very confusing.’

  ‘It is. I’ll tell you the worst thing, though.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘You know you suggested keeping a diary?’
<
br />   Joe inclines his head.

  ‘I went to start it that night. I thought it was a good idea. Only I’d already done it. I’d started a diary, but it was full of really horrible stuff.’

  ‘What sort of stuff?’

  ‘Abusive, horrible things about me. It was written by someone who really hates me. Except, I wrote it myself.’

  She is starting to cry. She cannot believe how quickly this has gone wrong, and how incapable she is of turning it back around.

  Joe leans back in his chair. ‘Felicity, I don’t want to scare you, but is it possible someone has keys to your house? An old lodger, maybe? A cleaner?’

  She shakes her head. ‘No. I changed the locks when I moved in and had two sets of keys made. One set is in the safe. I checked. I’ve never had a cleaner.’

  Joe seems at a loss.

  ‘I know it’s me,’ she goes on. ‘I know I’m doing these things and not remembering them. But some of them are so out of character. It really is like someone else – someone invisible – is living in my house.’

  26

  Joe

  The punt glides under the bridge at St John’s College and cold water trickles down Joe’s forearms. At the front of the boat, Torquil relaxes into the padded cushions and sips from his bottle of Becks.

  In common with many members of his profession, including those who have their own practice, Joe has a professional supervisor, someone with whom he talks on a regular basis to discuss client care. Not all are as fortunate as Joe has been, because not only is Dr Torquil Bane a wise and insightful man, he has become, over the years, a good friend.

  He is, though, a huge man and his end of the punt is several inches lower in the water than the end Joe is standing on.

  ‘Nicely done,’ Torquil says as they slip out the other side of the bridge. ‘You’re getting better.’