The Man on Hackpen Hill

by J. S. Monroe

  ‘I thought I saw someone, further down the beach,’ he says, dropping onto the sand. He looks like a giant schoolboy, knees out, legs crossed. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Was it someone?’ she asks.

  Jim checks the shoreline again. Bella follows his gaze. No one suspicious but the beach huts, dark and menacing, look as if they’re watching them.

  ‘Maybe, I’m not sure,’ Jim says.

  Bella’s keen to talk to Jim about his story, what’s on the USB stick, but she can’t concentrate, not while she’s on this beach. Maybe it was a mistake to meet here.

  ‘Should we go back to the car, drive on to somewhere else?’ Bella suggests.

  ‘Here’s as good as anywhere,’ Jim says, smiling at her. ‘You look better, more colour in your cheeks.’

  She doesn’t feel better. She feels worse. A lot worse.

  ‘Can I talk to you about something?’ she asks. ‘Before you tell me your story.’

  ‘Of course,’ Jim says. He glances over at the car park. ‘But we might not have long.’

  ‘It’s important,’ she finds herself saying. Discovering what happened to Erin is important too, the reason she’s here, but she realises there’s something else she needs to deal with first, before she can move on.

  ‘Tell me,’ he says.

  Bella leans back on her hands, scrunching the hot sand in her fingers so tightly that it hurts.

  ‘We used to come here regularly,’ she says. ‘For family holidays.’

  ‘Maybe we’ve met before?’ Jim says cheerfully. ‘I used to walk over this way when I was a boy.’

  It’s a strange thought, that they might have already encountered each other, given what’s happened in the past twenty-four hours. ‘On your own?’ she asks.

  ‘Just me. Sometimes with Dad. My mum died when I was very young.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Bella says, looking at him. From the moment they met in the pub, surprising things keep uniting them. Unspoken connections.

  ‘The last time we were on this beach, I was lying over there,’ Bella says, pointing at an area of sand below the dunes.

  ‘All the family?’

  ‘Me, Helen and Mum.’ She pauses. ‘I lost my dad when I was young.’

  Jim nods. There’s no need for him to say anything. The silence that falls softly between them is enough, full of mutual understanding.

  ‘I now know that he died when I was eight,’ Bella says. ‘But I didn’t believe it until I was eighteen. Don’t tell me that’s not weird.’

  ‘Not weird at all,’ Jim says, lying back in the sand on his elbows, more relaxed now. ‘I thought my teddy could talk for worryingly longer than I should have done. What made you finally accept that he was dead?’

  ‘Helen. My sister. For years she played along with it, my childish insistence that Dad had just gone away on a big story and would come back one day. It’s what she’d told me, that first night after he’d died. When there was a power cut.’

  She remembers it as if it were yesterday. In their shared bedroom at the top of the house in Mombasa, lit that night by candles. Bella was always spinning fantasies in her head, some based on the books she was reading, others pure make-believe. Her dad still being alive was just another story she told herself. He was lying low with the lions, moustache and beard scribbled on his face, investigating very bad people for the newspapers. Undercover for as long as it took to get the story.

  ‘If you were only eight, I guess she was trying to be kind, help you sleep,’ Jim says.

  ‘Of course. Helen was the kindest sister. But it used to make her so vexed when we were older, that I was still waiting for him to come back from an assignment. The way I jumped up every time I heard the front door open, hoping he would scoop me up in his arms. One day’ – she nods at the sand up by the dunes again – ‘she lost it. Mum was swimming in the sea and I was asking Helen about Dad. Going on and on, desperate for snippets about him, anything to keep his memory alive. Helen was two years older than me and her recollections of him were so much clearer. I suppose it had become a family thing, that Bella the bookworm believed Dad would return one day, like the heroes in stories always do, but now I was eighteen and it wasn’t cute any more. It was deeply disturbing. At least, that’s what Helen thought.

  ‘“Dad’s dead, Bel, and he’s never coming back,” she said on the beach that day. “I can’t believe that someone apparently so clever, always asking so many questions – so many annoying questions! – can be so fucking stupid. He’s dead: D-E-A-D.” I’d laughed, glanced out to sea where Mum was swimming and then back at Helen, who wasn’t smiling. “You really don’t get it, do you?” she said, shaking her head. My smile faded as her words echoed all around. He’s dead. He’s dead. He’s dead. And then I…’

  Jim looks up, encouraging her to continue. ‘Then you what?’

  Bella closes her eyes, tries to think back to what happened next, but all she can feel is the anger she had felt that day, building up inside her until it had risen to the surface like a panicked diver.

  ‘What did you say to her?’ Jim asks. ‘To Helen?’

  Bella’s eyes spring open. She remembers. ‘I didn’t say anything.’ She turns to look at Jim. ‘I tried to kill her.’

  67

  Jim

  Bella clasps her knees to her chest, tears streaming down her cheeks as she rocks backwards and forwards on the sand.

  ‘Bella,’ Jim says, leaning over to comfort her. ‘It’s OK.’

  He wraps her up in his big arms, looking around him. A passing family stop and stare.

  ‘It’s fine,’ he says to them over Bella’s shoulder, wishing they’d mind their own business. He finds himself stroking Bella’s hair, desperate to console her as she nestles under his chin. Wherever she came from, whoever she is, he hates to see her upset like this. They seem to have so much in common, their lives inextricably linked. Gradually, the sobbing subsides and they disentangle, the moment of intimacy over.

  ‘I think we should walk back to the car,’ he says, finding a hanky to wipe away her tears. The nosy family has moved on, but he’s worried that she has drawn attention to them at a time when he was hoping to blend into the crowd.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Bella whispers, as they get up from the sand. She’s unsteady on her feet, like a newborn giraffe. He must watch Peppa Pig one day.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Jim says, glancing down the beach. ‘Do you feel able to walk?’

  ‘I need to speak to Mum,’ she says, pulling out her mobile phone. Jim watches as she turns it on and dials. It must have been devastating when the truth about her dad finally dawned.

  ‘Still voicemail,’ she says, looking up at Jim, as if he might be able to do something about it. He wishes he could. She’s fighting to control her emotions, pressing her lips together as she tries to leave a coherent message. ‘Mum, it’s me. Can you call back? I really need to talk. Where are you?’

  She hangs up and runs a hand through her hair, looking around her.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Jim says, stepping forward to hug her again. They stand together for a few moments, her head resting on his shoulder. ‘She’ll call you soon,’ he adds.

  ‘I don’t know what happened,’ Bella says, as they set off slowly down the beach, his arm around her shoulders. He feels a gratifying arm slip around his waist too.

  ‘Is this the first time you’ve been back here?’ he asks.

  She nods. ‘I was so angry that day.’

  ‘With Helen?’

  ‘With her, with Mum, the world. It wasn’t Helen’s fault. I just didn’t want to accept that Dad was never going to come back.’

  Jim had felt real anger too when his dad was diagnosed with dementia, tried to deny it, despite the mounting evidence, the endless lists stuck to the inside of kitchen cupboards, the scribbled reminders on light-bulb boxes, the junk mail covered with Post-it notes. What had happened to Helen?

  ‘When did your sister move to Australia?’ he asks, deciding on an indirect appro
ach.

  ‘Soon afterwards,’ Bella says, mopping her eyes with Jim’s hanky.

  ‘You’d been close up until then?’ he asks, glancing at her. Bella’s even more beautiful in profile, confident brow and strong, aquiline nose.

  ‘Inseparable. We had our rows, of course, like any siblings, and she was always going on about me being the brainy one, which wasn’t true, but there was never any serious beef between us.’

  ‘But after the argument on the beach, she decided to—’

  ‘Emigrate.’ Bella lets out a short laugh. ‘Pretty drastic, huh? We never talked before she went. I didn’t get the chance to say sorry for what I’d done.’

  ‘So was it serious?’ Jim asks. ‘What you did to her?’

  Bella walks on in silence before she answers. ‘Whenever I quizzed Mum about it later, she played it down, said it was a sibling squabble and would blow over. But it never has, so maybe it was more serious than I remember. Mum’s still devastated.’

  ‘There must have been something else going on in Helen’s life,’ Jim offers. ‘To up sticks like that.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  They walk on past an extended family, spread across the beach like an army encampment, boundaries marked out with tartan windcheaters. Bella’s eyes seem to linger on the checked pattern. Does it mean something particular to her? There are coded messages everywhere, if only people know where to look.

  ‘Me winning a place at Oxford didn’t help,’ Bella says, turning to Jim again, ‘Helen had tried and failed. Several times.’

  Jim had originally applied to Oxford to read maths – Dad thought he would have better job prospects – but after he was rejected, he went to Warwick and studied chemistry, his first love.

  ‘Are you in touch with her now?’ he asks.

  ‘I send her letters, sometimes emails.’ She pauses. ‘And occasionally I call her, just to hear her voice, and leave long messages. She never picks up or replies.’

  As an only child, Jim can’t imagine what it’s like to fall out with a sibling. He would love to have a brother, maybe a sister too.

  They have come to a natural halt on the beach, standing in the late afternoon sunshine, summer holidays still playing out all around them. Someone is making sculptures, carving big circular patterns in the sand. Jim stares at them, tracing the swirling shapes. Is it another message? A warning? He looks up and down the beach before they set off again. He can’t see anyone but something’s not right. He can feel it in his bones. It’s only when they’re two hundred yards from Knoll Beach car park that he notices the Range Rover parked up in the shade of a tree.

  68

  Silas

  ‘I want you to find out all you can about a pathologist called Steven Caldicott,’ Silas says, sitting down next to Strover in the Parade Room.

  He fills her in on everything that Malcolm told him in the car about the disgraced pathologist, and then turns to write ‘Steven Caldicott’ on a whiteboard on the wall behind. It’s a new development, allowing boards on the walls in the Parade Room. Before today, they were only permitted in meeting rooms. These little things matter in office life. Like the day he put a bunch of Mel’s leftover wedding flowers in a vase in the corner. Game-changing. Silas stands back, looking at the arrows linking Caldicott to the first two victims, wondering if he’s the same person as ‘zombie’, written below. And then he wells up, suddenly thinking of Conor in the psychiatric ward.

  ‘You OK, sir?’ Strover asks.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Silas says, turning away, as if she might somehow be able to read his thoughts. He’s never emotional in front of Strover. Never emotional in front of anyone. Another thing that’s come up in the counselling sessions with Mel.

  ‘I’ve been talking to the boffins,’ Strover says, thoughtfully changing the subject. ‘About a possible link between the crop circle codes and antipsychotics. I rang them after you called.’

  ‘And?’ Silas says. Despite himself, he thinks again of Conor and his chest tightens. Mel’s right. He should have paid more attention to the consultant, focused on his son rather than work.

  ‘They think they’re on to something,’ Strover says.

  ‘Go on,’ he says, sitting down at his desk again. He wasn’t lying when he told Mel the case was taking its toll. His body feels like it’s been driven over by a tank.

  ‘They’ve been running through the chemical formulas for every known antipsychotic,’ Strover continues. ‘First generation, dating from the 1950s, right up to the most recent, second generation atypical neuroleptics. Matched them against the crop circle’s ASCII-generated letters and numbers and worked backwards, to see if they can break the code that way. No eureka moment, but one or two of the formulas for the most recent meds have got them interested.’

  ‘What about chemical warfare agents?’ Silas asks.

  ‘That’s the strange thing – they’re getting similar results for BZ and VX. They’re not ruling anything out at this stage. The molecular formulas could be medical or military.’

  Silas turns to look out of the window. Should he drive back to see Conor? There’s no point. He was so out of it, he hardly knew Silas and Mel were in the room with him.

  ‘How about Thomas Szasz?’ he asks. ‘Discover anything interesting?’

  ‘Quite a rebel,’ she says. ‘Believed that mental disorders aren’t physical diseases – they can’t be proved with biological evidence. He also had a thing against antipsychotics.’

  ‘Chemical straitjackets.’

  Strover nods. ‘They dampen down hallucinations and delusions, but they…’ She pauses, long enough for Silas to look up. ‘They also extinguish someone’s personality.’

  This time it’s Strover’s turn to mask her emotions. She gets up from her desk and looks out of the window, her back to Silas. ‘I had a friend who was on antipsychotics once,’ Strover continues, her voice quieter now.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Silas says. He’s also surprised. It’s not like Strover to reveal such personal information. Mel would be proud of them both. Does Strover know about Conor?

  ‘Diagnosed with schizophrenia after one psychotic episode,’ Strover continues. Silas can see her lean face reflected in the window, her tomboy hair and serious eyes. ‘It wasn’t a label she liked.’

  ‘Schizophrenia?’ Silas asks, remembering the psychiatrist’s similar reservations.

  Strover turns to face him, leaning back on the window ledge. She suddenly looks older than her twenty-eight years.

  ‘People think you must be violent,’ she says. ‘And dangerous. And mad. People think you’re nuts, basically. My friend wasn’t any of those things. Just going through a rough patch. Things had built up, got out of hand. The drugs sorted her out – dealt with the immediate crisis, the hallucinations, delusions and paranoia.’

  ‘The so-called positive symptoms,’ Silas says. ‘One of the great misnomers of our time.’

  Strover nods. ‘But she was kept on them for too long and the side effects were horrendous,’ she continues. ‘They seemed to exaggerate the negative symptoms. Emotional numbness, dry mouth, blurred vision, constipation, dizziness, weight gain. You name it. And don’t even ask what it did to her sex life.’

  ‘Is she still on them?’ Silas asks, noticing that Strover’s Bristol accent becomes more pronounced when she’s emotional.

  ‘Came off as soon as she realised what was happening to her, but that wasn’t so easy either,’ she says. ‘She had a relapse but she’s OK now. The sedation was the worst, the way it altered her personality. Annihilated it, more like. She couldn’t help thinking afterwards that it was all about convenience – she was easier to manage in the community if she was a no one. If she didn’t exist as a person.’

  ‘If she was a zombie,’ Silas says.

  Strover looks up at him. Neither of them will forget last night, when they found the half-dead man on the hillside.

  ‘I didn’t make the connection,’ Strover says. ‘Until you called. Lobotomy, straitjacket,
zombie.’

  They both fall silent as she sits back down at her desk and Silas tries to concentrate on his emails. Strover eventually breaks the silence.

  ‘I’m sorry about your son, sir,’ she says, more formal now.

  She knows. Of course she bloody does. It’s why she told him all about her friend, how she recovered.

  ‘Does everyone know?’ he asks, his heart sinking as he glances around the Parade Room. He hates the thought of his family life being judged by competitive colleagues, who are only too eager to take advantage of another’s weakness.

  She nods. ‘And everyone’s hoping he’ll make a full recovery.’

  69

  Bella

  Jim puts his hand on Bella’s to stop her walking any further along the crowded beach.

  ‘What is it?’ she asks.

  He nods in the direction of the car park. They both watch as two men step out of a black Range Rover.

  ‘Is it them?’ Bella asks. They’re taking an unnatural interest in her and Jim, pointing in their direction.

  Jim nods, eyes locked on to the two men, who walk through from the car park and stop at the top of the beach, beside the water-sports hut. They are both wearing chinos and open-necked shirts, a gesture to the hot weather, but they still stand out in a sea of swimming costumes and bare flesh.

  ‘You OK to run?’ Jim says, looking around them.

  ‘Which way?’ she asks, her calf muscles tightening. His words have triggered a wave of adrenaline, washing away the strange feelings of earlier.

  Jim looks behind them. ‘Shit.’

  Bella spins around to see another two men in the distance, walking up from the far end of Middle Beach. One of them has jet-black hair and hunched shoulders – the man outside the newspaper office, her mum’s house. And then Jim’s tugging at her sleeve and nodding towards the dunes, where two more men have appeared out of the pine trees. They are moving less quickly, hanging back. One has his arm in a cotton sling, another appears to be wearing a neck brace.