by Gayle Curtis
‘You don’t like him, though.’
‘Just because I don’t like him doesn’t make him a killer. He’s a good barrister.’
‘And?’ Nathaniel hadn’t ignored Elise’s ramblings about Sonny when he’d put her to bed, but he was finding it hard to think that Sonny was guilty of anything. He and Nathaniel were so close, more like biological brothers than brothers-in-law – they had hit it off pretty much as soon as they’d met, and at the pub one evening Sonny had told him about the incident at work when he’d been accused of assaulting his young client. Nathaniel had been slightly perturbed when Sonny had begun the story, but his telling of it was so plausible, Nathaniel had been convinced he was telling the truth. Nathaniel had reported on such cases many times during his career.
‘And nothing. Like most coppers, I struggle with the morals of someone who can defend a client they know is guilty.’ DC Chilvers filled a cup for herself. ‘There’s no evidence pointing towards your brother-in-law, and he has an alibi.’
Nathaniel gave some thought as to whether he felt something beyond what Elise had told him.
‘I guess we should be suspicious of everyone around us. It’s usually someone you know, right?’
‘It is, usually, but it’s not always the case. We’re a little concerned about some of your father-in-law’s patients. The situation with the children sometimes being in the house while his patients were in therapy there changes this type of case.’
‘In what way?’
‘Well, it gives us a broader outlook of what might have happened that day. That said, we try not to focus on what might seem obvious; we have time to explore every avenue. It’s not like it used to be, years ago, when corners were cut just to get a conviction because of public pressure. You know that, being a journalist.’
‘Quite. The problem with that, from my point of view, is if it does turn out to be one of Ray’s clients, a good barrister will advise them to go for diminished responsibility.’
Nathaniel left the detective to her coffee and went upstairs to settle Buddy into bed. He’d been sleeping in a room with Buddy and Miles, wanting to be near his children, since Elise was staying at the hospital.
When he went back into the kitchen, DC Chilvers was still in there staring out of the window.
‘Everything all right?’ he asked her.
‘Yes. When Sonny told Ray who he was, he had the relevant tests done to verify it, didn’t he?’
‘Not that I’m aware. As far as I know, Ray knew who he was. It was he who set up the surrogacy deal, although Christ knows why. From what I can gather, Ingrid was a headcase. Elise thinks it was having Sonny that escalated her mental health issues . . .’
Something dawned on Nathaniel that he should have realised a long time ago if he hadn’t been so wrapped up in his own life. Elise was, of course, her mother’s daughter. All their children had suffered because of her mental instability, and it was only getting worse. Her rejection of Buddy was increasing rapidly.
He forced himself to refocus on what they’d been talking about. ‘Sonny looks like Ray, don’t you think?’
‘You’ve completely lost me . . . Surrogacy?’ DC Chilvers said. ‘Your wife told one of our officers that Sonny was adopted.’
‘I guess it’s easier than telling people about the surrogacy. Sonny is biologically Ray’s and Ingrid’s, it’s just that they had him for a couple who couldn’t have any children. They were clients of Ray’s, I think.’
‘So what you’re telling me is that your wife’s parents sold a baby to another couple?’
Nathaniel frowned. ‘Well, it’s not as crude as that, but yes, I guess so.’
DC Chilvers nodded, as if she was matching up other facts in her head. ‘We’ll need to speak to your father-in-law about this, and Sonny of course.’
‘Hey, listen, Sonny is a good person. He’s done a lot for our family.’
‘I’ve learnt from most cases that the best thing to do is not trust anyone.’
‘You probably shouldn’t tell me that.’
‘If it were my daughter, I’d be looking at everyone.’
‘Even your own family?’
‘Especially my family,’ DC Chilvers said, just as the telephone pierced the atmosphere, startling them both.
The last person Nathaniel was expecting to hear on the other end was Ray.
‘What’s happened? Your flight cancelled?’
‘No. I need to tell you something before I get on the plane.’
‘You’re making me nervous now, Ray. What’s going on? Are Sonny and Miles there?’
‘Stop panicking!’ Ray sounded sharp and exasperated. ‘Sonny and Miles are on their way back to you now.’
‘So, what’s the problem?’ Nathaniel was trying to appear calm but was waiting for Ray to confess something about Ida.
‘I need you to talk to Elise before the press get hold of the story. Because they will, if they haven’t found out already.’
‘Go on.’ Nathaniel was losing patience.
‘I’m on my way to see Ingrid, Elise’s mother. She’s alive and living in Norway. I’m on my way to see her.’
Nathaniel frowned. ‘Elise’s mother is still alive, and you knew about it?’
‘She’s one of the survivors of the Suicide Watcher.’
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THEN
Staying at home was stifling Nathaniel, especially with the recent revelations – Ray had left him with news and he had no idea how he was going to tell Elise, and Nathaniel was angry at his father-in-law for being such a coward. Always the coward, always running away.
The details of the attempted murder of his daughter were leading to all sorts of secrets that had been kept quiet over the years, and he couldn’t think clearly. The press was hounding them constantly about Ida’s attack, speculating and making ridiculous assumptions, so after visiting Ida in the afternoon, he arranged for his father to take the children out for dinner and slipped out through the back gate and across the park to attend his weekly group, something he needed now more than ever. After his conversation with DC Chilvers, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about his mother and her early demise.
One of the teachers at his primary school had asked him once if everything was okay at home; she’d clearly noticed something wasn’t right.
‘My mother is euphoric,’ Nathaniel had said. ‘Euphoric.’ He’d liked the word and the way it sounded in his throat. It was a good word, a strong word, but Nathaniel had no idea what it meant then, and in the wrong context it wasn’t so positive. The teacher had frowned at him, when he had expected her to laugh or smile.
‘Mother is always saying she’s euphoric,’ Nathaniel said, worrying he’d upset the teacher. Anyone asks, tell them I’m euphoric, his mother would say.
But, of course, she wasn’t. The irony and sarcasm were lost on them as children. Nathaniel caught her once, when he and his brother were supposed to be in bed. He had heard a deep, sporadic humming; on and on it went. Eventually, even though they were always forbidden to get out of bed unless they were ill, he’d got up to investigate. Their dad wasn’t around, and his brother was fast asleep, so Nathaniel had taken it upon himself to check that their mother was all right. He’d found her in the kitchen, crying her eyes out over a mug of tea, gripping it with both hands as if her life depended on it, which of course, to her, it did. It was so strange for Nathaniel to see her like that, her normally beautiful, smiling face, crumpled in such agony.
‘Help me,’ she said. ‘Someone please help me.’
Nathaniel had run to the telephone in the hall and dialled the emergency services, just as he’d been taught to do if there was anything wrong.
‘They want to know what kind of emergency it is,’ Nathaniel called to his mother from the hall, placing the receiver briefly on the telephone table. She slowly joined him in the hall, told the person on the switchboard it was all a misunderstanding, and placed the phone back on the hook.
Quietly
, without saying a word, she made Nathaniel a hot drink, took him back to bed, climbed in behind him and went to sleep. He didn’t question her; he was just glad she’d stopped making that awful noise.
In the morning he thought she was dead. He couldn’t move her heavy arm from around his small body, she was holding him so tightly. And because she’d been crying the night before, in what Nathaniel had thought was pain, he decided she’d died from whatever it was that had been ailing her. Of course, she hadn’t. He’d found out afterwards when he’d called his father and asked him to come round, she’d taken some sleeping tablets and they hadn’t worn off.
After Alistair had been released, there had been a fraught and difficult conversation with Magda. She was passionate in her belief that her son had been pushed into confessing something he hadn’t done. By the end of their lengthy talk Nathaniel didn’t know what to believe, but the two of them had agreed to move forward the best way they could. Even after he had spoken to DC Chilvers and been convinced of Alistair’s innocence, Nathaniel couldn’t get past how self-indulgent the boy had been, and how seriously his little charade could have jeopardised the investigation. It made him question Alistair’s so-called love for Ida. But Nathaniel would never admit any unfavourable thoughts he had about Alistair to Magda. There was a certain amount of manipulation in Nathaniel’s amicable attitude – he was willing to be nice to anyone so he could get to the truth. Magda had conveniently avoided the allegation that Ida had made against Alistair.
The group in the room fell silent when Nathaniel walked into the hall; people he’d thought had become quite friendly with him looked at the floor or began rummaging through their bags. He searched around for his old friend Ted, but he couldn’t see him. Magda walked over to him and quietly welcomed him into the room.
‘Just carry on as normal.’ She squeezed his arm.
‘I’m just trying to work out why my daughter seems to have been hiding so much from us,’ Nathaniel said, staring directly at Magda.
There was a heaviness to his last words as he looked at his old friend. He knew Magda so well, but he had an overwhelming gut feeling she was covering something up.
‘I don’t know, Nathaniel.’ Magda held her hands up, as if surrendering something.
‘Don’t worry about it.’ Nathaniel didn’t want to draw attention to their altercation, making it appear important. ‘It was nothing, and I overreacted. I’m just not sure what to do with myself. What am I supposed to be doing?’
‘Anything you feel like,’ Magda said, her face softening. ‘This lot will be okay, they just don’t know what to say to you.’
Nathaniel sat down in his usual place and wondered whether to say anything, but the awkwardness was lifted when the lady next to him, a woman called Sue, reached across and said how sorry she was to hear about his daughter. The words he’d heard several times over the last couple of days but had never thought would be uttered to him.
‘Thank you . . .’ Nathaniel looked up to see the rest of the group engaging with him.
It was the only place he felt comfortable in, and it had been for some time; he wished there was more than a weekly session. Everyone who attended had lost a wife, husband, mother, father, brother, sister or child. Some people had been going for years, but the odd one or two came for a few months here and there and then left again. It was a casual place to come and talk – not just about what had happened to their family members but anything they wanted to share. They would all sit in a big circle and discuss any news or revelations they’d had since the last group session. This was the very place Nathaniel had met Elise again.
There had been one huge similarity between Nathaniel and Elise, and that was that they’d both believed their mothers had died from suicide. Now he knew Ingrid was still alive and an alleged survivor of the Suicide Watcher, and Nathaniel wondered if they’d have seen each other again if Elise had known this years ago.
Nathaniel and Elise had been best friends at school, and then gradually they’d grown apart, bumping into each other at the group talks six years later. The group considered themselves the leftovers – the results of what happens when a family member decides to kill themselves. As far as they were aware, they were the only group whose family members were possible victims of the person who was known by the media as the Suicide Watcher. About ten years ago, someone had sent an anonymous letter to the police telling them about the game, but no one knew who it was. The letter had got into the hands of the tabloids, and from that they had coined the name ‘the Suicide Watcher’. It had caused a flurry of people to call in saying they believed their loved ones had been coerced into playing the game, but no one could pinpoint any common denominators.
Allegedly there were a few survivors – would-be victims who somehow escaped the bullet – but as yet there were no confirmed victims, and as far as they knew none of the survivors themselves had ever attended these meetings. Not that they would know, Nathaniel thought; he had a theory that their survival depended on continued secrecy. He often pondered the members of the group, wondering if they knew more about the cases than they made out. He’d even considered one of them might actually be the Suicide Watcher.
There were too many descriptions of this enigma, and fabricated assumptions about the mystery. To Nathaniel’s mind, that meant the Suicide Watcher or any potential survivors were ever further from being identified. Whenever a potential story emerged regarding the Suicide Watcher, journalists appeared immediately, like cockroaches. Nathaniel wondered if this would cause people with information about the cases to retreat, possibly in fear for their own lives.
Aside from these sessions, the group would often be invited to attend various talks and therapy seminars. The media watched them, like they were insects trapped in dirty, ragged net curtains, in the hope there would be a confirmed victim of the Suicide Watcher. They were also desperate to see one of them fall, and, being a journalist, Nathaniel was only too aware of this fact. The families of the suicide cult, their story was long forgotten but so easily recalled by members of society who really knew nothing about it.
Other than these tragedies and their decision to expand themselves as a family, Elise and Nathaniel had nothing in common. Especially now the entire subject had been talked out with no sign of resolution to any details either of them had disagreed on, making things worse. When they first rekindled their friendship, they’d spent many evenings after the meetings talking animatedly over dinners and copious amounts of wine. Now they barely talked at all. Nathaniel had wanted her so badly when he’d met her again, but the feeling had faded away.
Magda brought Nathaniel back into the room by squeezing his shoulder, encouraging him to stay in the present, listen to others in the group. But he felt so different to everyone now. He’d stepped into another realm, surrounded by a darkness that no one wanted to be touched by, and he just couldn’t concentrate. It was during this distraction that Nathaniel noticed someone familiar standing by the entrance, staring right at him. At first, he thought it was a journalist he’d seen before or someone he’d worked with, but as he continued to hold the man’s gaze he realised it was an old friend who’d become a stranger after they’d had a fight. He’d changed somewhat, but it was unmistakeably him. Steven Bridges, that was his name. One evening, Nathaniel had caught him in Ida’s bedroom and thrown him out. They’d never seen nor heard from him again.
CHAPTER TWENTY
THEN
The plane was a large cylindrical pod. Ray imagined that this was what sitting in an oil tanker must be like. He suddenly felt incredibly small and insignificant, and yet so much of his life he’d felt enormous, hugely important – such was his ego. All the events he’d experienced had been so exposed, giving him a sense of fame. Ray realised the cause of this inflation was because he’d stayed within the parameters of his own small world, and that had made him feel this false importance – had magnified it in such a way that he believed all eyes were permanently on him. But he soon came to realise
that people forget the true facts of a story and so they can be altered in any way you like, especially when you’re the one it happened to.
A heat, not unlike the feeling of nausea, began to rise in his throat and then sank back down, burning his gullet – the clicking of belts causing him to feel even worse. He preferred it when people were shoving bags in overhead compartments, when he still had the option to get off the plane.
Thinking of disembarking wasn’t helping Ray’s situation. Techniques he advised his patients to use seemed ridiculous now that he was immersed in his own panic. He recalled a few long-term clients’ expressions of despair and began to fully understand why they felt that way.
Instead, he resorted to what he always told everyone not to do when facing their fears – have a drink. Ray beckoned over a steward and ordered a large brandy, only to be told he would have to wait until after the seatbelt light had been extinguished. The attendant offered him some assistance, but he waved him away impatiently, the panic inside making him feel isolated from everyone. He began to look around at the people he might, quite possibly, die with. He didn’t even know them, and why would he? But it seemed so bizarre to face death amongst strangers, although he guessed so many people did. There was some comfort with this thought, though; dying with loved ones seemed so much worse. He’d never thought about it until now – hadn’t ever had cause to, because it was the first time he’d made it on to a plane since 1986.
He calmed himself with a thought he dwelled upon regularly – his age. Pushing himself into the back of his seat, it dawned on him that if there weren’t a purpose to his travels, he wouldn’t be remotely concerned about dying. He thought about not seeing Ingrid again before his life ended, and then thought about how everyone had thought she was dead for all these years. He’d had no choice; her existence had to be kept a secret, it was vital to her survival. Regardless of his safety on this journey, there was no guarantee he would see her again. He had received what he suspected might be a suicide note from her shortly before Ida was attacked. He’d saved Ingrid once before, all those years ago, and he had been naive to think she wouldn’t attempt it again. He’d made everyone believe she’d committed suicide – it had been better for Elise that way. But the media would be churning up any dirt they could possibly find about their family, and it was inevitable that Elise would discover the truth soon enough. He couldn’t face it, especially with everything that had happened. He’d failed Elise once again, and in the process had been unable to protect Ida. He was hoping Nathaniel would talk to Elise – as usual, Ray was shunning his responsibilities. There it was: he was a coward. The guilt tipped in his stomach as the plane ascended.