by J. M. Hewitt
‘Are you going out like that?’
She looked up and over at him, before studying herself in the mirror. She stared at her reflection. Who was this woman? Emma didn’t recognise her.
‘Like what?’ she asked dully.
He gestured to his head. ‘Your hair is wet, you’ll get a cold.’
It was stupid. So stupid she laughed, but it felt wrong.
‘Get out,’ she said. ‘You sound like—’
‘What?’ A tentative smile played at his lips now. ‘Go on, say it, your dad, right?’
She shook her head, looked down at the carpet. ‘I was going to say you sound like my teacher.’
His smile faded. ‘Oh,’ he said.
Silently she drifted down the stairs. She didn’t know why she’d said that, why she had admitted what she had actually been thinking. She wished she hadn’t, for all the feelings of unease and discomfort flooded back, all the way back from twenty years ago.
It was why she had upped and left, and kept almost no contact with those from what she had thought of as her former life.
Because that’s exactly what he had been.
Martin had been her teacher.
Eighteen
DAY FOUR
Jade watched them leave Emma’s house, from her vantage point on the window seat. Across the road she saw Mrs Oberman, also in her usual spot at the window. Jade thought about waving for a moment, before dropping the curtain and watching unseen as the pair of them made their way to the canal.
Jade had watched Emma go off on her vigil walks every day. She had never joined her. Jade couldn’t stand to be in the place where it had actually happened. It was bad enough seeing it on the television. Jade felt awful that she wasn’t by her friend’s side with every painful step she took, and as Emma vanished into the fog Jade locked herself in the bathroom and quietly wept. Jordan was gone, of that she was now sure. Pushed into the canal by a maniac.
Today Emma had Martin by her side. So, he had stayed; Martin, Jordan’s dad. What had he done? Had he sat with Emma all night, made her talk, made her see sense? Made sure she wasn’t going to kill herself today? Or had he chipped away at Emma, had he made her wear that same look she was wearing when Jade went round? Had he berated her, her skills as a mother, had he threatened her?
‘Fuck,’ Jade whispered to herself. She didn’t know why she had that thought, it was just something about the man, something… immobile, and unmoving.
And that look that Martin wore, the stoicism, the detachment, Jade had seen that look on someone else’s face before.
Back then, she stayed in her bedroom in Nan’s house and watched as her stomach got flatter and flatter. Like a slowly deflating balloon, she’d thought at the time.
A week after she had been released from the hospital, while Emma was sitting on Jade’s bed, Jade had looked past her, seen a shadow once again in the hallway. The figure moved into the light, that jet black hair falling over his eyes. Eyes which were blank as they regarded her.
There was a choice to make, she realised at the time. A decision to be made, to stand up and say what had happened, or to let it go.
It was an adult decision, one she didn’t feel qualified to make. But since none of the adults seemed to be able to make it either, it fell to her.
She thought about it then, as Emma talked nonsense and Jordan stood in the shadows. Was it malicious, what he had done? Had he meant it, or was it a childish game gone awry?
‘Jordan,’ she called, cutting off Emma’s babbling comfort.
He had moved forward, scuffing his feet, hanging onto the door frame, before looking over at her with those big, black eyes.
‘It’s okay, come in,’ she said, beckoning him towards the bed.
Emma had got up, moved away towards the window. She looked fearful, thought Jade.
Jordan had stood at her side and Jade regarded him, tried to look into those eyes that were so black, like coal, they gave away nothing. She couldn’t read them, couldn’t see sorrow or regret in them.
But a decision had to be made, if she wanted to continue living with her new family, with Nan and Emma and yes, even Jordan, she had to make a choice.
‘It’s all right,’ she said, opening her arms. ‘I’m fine, see?’
He leaned into her, resting his head against her chest. His arms didn’t encircle her, they hung loosely by his sides.
‘I know you didn’t mean it,’ she said into his ear.
She spoke so quietly that only he could hear her.
Over his head she glanced at Emma, saw the relief in her eyes.
It was funny that she could read Emma’s expression so clearly, but in Jordan’s eyes she saw nothing.
Nothing at all.
He has Martin’s eyes, she thought now, as she wandered upstairs to find Nia, who was being unusually quiet.
He has his father’s eyes.
Without knowing why, she shuddered.
And even though she had forgiven him, that had been the only time she had touched him for many years. Something still passed between them, something remained in those eyes of his. A gossamer thread reminding her what he’d done. A stark consciousness that made it hard to look at him at times.
Paul came into Carrie’s office, stopped in the doorway. She saw his face, his stance, the way his nostrils flared. He stalled, eyes glinting. Excitement, but not in a good news way. He didn’t need to say anything.
‘Jesus, don’t tell me?’
He breathed heavily. ‘Another one, male, late teens, early twenties…’
Carrie stood up. ‘Jordan Robinson?’
‘No ID, nothing on him.’
‘But the chances are…’ Carrie said, her voice trailing into the distance as she stalked towards the exit. She took charge, assuming he would follow her to the site, which of course he would.
Paul grabbed his coat as he ran after her.
* * *
A crowd was already gathered when Paul and Carrie reached the canal. The body had been pulled from South Bay this time, the tall developments of Media City providing an imposing backdrop for the tragedy. Carrie purposefully didn’t look at her own apartment. Ignoring the onlookers, she slipped on the shoe coverings and garb and moved into the tent that the Forensic guys had erected.
‘Nearly finished, we’ll be moving him out soon.’ Dave Bull, head technician, was matter-of-fact. Carrie had worked with him many times.
It struck her now how often she had been in a claustrophobic tent with Dave. She knew Dave’s job, the procedures he followed, the man’s hard-working, meticulous work ethic. She did not know the name of Dave’s wife, or even if he was married. Did he have kids that he tried not to think about when he examined the broken bodies of these youths? Did he go home after a shift and pull his children close, needing to feel warm, living bodies to dispel the memory of the cold, damp skin that he touched in his working day? Or did he return to his house the way Carrie did – showering and scouring the day’s events away but never quite managing to dispel the aroma of death.
Realising she was staring at the balding, middle-aged man, Carrie cleared her throat and pulled her gaze away from Dave and down to where the body lay. White, almost a grey-silver in places. Flabby and bloated but not as badly damaged as some he’d seen. He hadn’t been in the water for very long. She heaved out a sigh at the pieces of debris that clung to this man. Man. He wasn’t a man; he was barely out of his teens. The right age to match that of missing Jordan Robinson. She crouched down, peered at him, inhaled and swallowed harshly. The small tent was filled with the cloying scent of the canal, and she backed out of the flap, breathing deeper once she was in the open air.
‘Busy today, look at them all,’ commented Carrie, disgust evident in her voice.
She scanned the crowd. They stood gathered in tight little groups, phones out, cameras raised, the unmistakable sound of the shutter click resonating, surrounding them.
‘Hmm, I hope the mother doesn’t—’ Carrie stop
ped.
Paul glanced over at her, head tilted, a questioning look. ‘She’s already here, Carrie. The mother.’
Carrie zipped up her coat. ‘Come on, then.’
Emma and Martin emerged from the quiet residential street where she lived into the bustling crowds on Salford Quays.
‘Do you want to talk about last night?’ Martin said.
Emma looked at him, a side glance as they walked towards the canals. No, she didn’t want to talk. She wanted to ask him why she had woken up to find him on her bed, staring at her. She shivered at the memory.
‘What about last night?’ she said reluctantly.
‘What you said,’ he replied, not looking at her. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’
She knew what he meant. She hoped he’d forgotten it, or misheard her, or thought he had misunderstood her sharp, cutting words when he had asked about his son.
‘No,’ she said, shortly.
‘It was an odd thing to say, that your son is a stranger to you,’ he said, mildly.
‘I was upset, I didn’t know what I was saying,’ she lied. ‘He was a good boy, doing a degree, and he was well-liked.’
A woman wrestling with shopping bags and a young child barged Martin’s shoulder. He scowled as she moved on without an apology. ‘Christmas shoppers,’ he remarked.
Emma’s jaw tensed as she stared after the woman. Christmas. Jesus Christ, Christmas was coming soon. She thought of the few presents she had hidden away in the airing cupboard at home.
‘What day is it?’ she asked.
‘Saturday.’
‘I can’t do this, not over Christmas,’ she said, out loud.
He shot her a look and she lowered her chin to nestle in her scarf – Jordan’s scarf. ‘I just need to know,’ she went on. ‘If there’s something, anything, I just need to know what happened. This limbo…’
He nodded, slowed so they were walking side by side. She waited for him to say something, to speak some meaningless platitude, to offer to help or to confess in full, but he said nothing.
‘Martin, I—’
He stopped walking, he wasn’t listening. He stared straight ahead. She followed his line of vision. Flashing blue lights, the sirens silent, uniformed officers who traipsed from a large police van to the side of the water on the South Bay. Her stomach contracted, foul-tasting bile filled her mouth.
A white tent.
So, this is it, she thought. She didn’t scream or break into a run or fall to her knees. She stood up straight, strangely detached. It was what she had been waiting for, dreading, and now that it had happened it didn’t feel at all like she had expected. Martin’s hand clawed at her arm.
‘Come on,’ he said, grimly, pulling at her now.
To her surprise she found that her feet still worked. Obediently she followed him.
Carrie saw Emma’s mouth move as she whispered the syllables of her name. ‘Carrie.’
Clearly she had seen the tent, the crowd of onlookers, the police presence. Carrie cut right in, no greeting, no niceties. ‘You can’t see him, not here. We’ll take him to the Royal Oldham Hospital, you can see him there, once—’
Emma’s hands flew to her face, wrenching free from the arms of the man who stood at her side. ‘He’s alive?’ she cried.
Carrie’s shoulders sagged. She felt a hand on her spine; Paul. A tiny gesture, an unspoken question; do you want me to take over? She moved forward so he was no longer touching her.
‘You didn’t let me finish. We have to take him there for the post mortem. We’ll see if he has anything on him, for identification purposes. If not, we may need you to identify him.’
Emma swayed, the man with her reached for her again. Carrie looked him up and down.
‘I’m Detective Sergeant Carrie Flynn.’ She tilted her head, raised her eyebrows when the man remained motionless and silent, his eyes still on the tent behind them.
‘This is Martin… Jordan’s dad,’ Emma said distractedly.
Carrie perused the guy, thought that the father hadn’t been in the picture.
‘We’ll need you to come to the hospital. There may be a bit of a wait while we finish up here. Can you get there, do you have a car?’ Carrie directed her questions at the newcomer, Martin.
Martin nodded.
A small response, no words, the man’s face lost in a dreamzone. Carrie pinched her lips together; she’d seen all the different reactions under the sun in her time doing this job.
It was a kind of shock, the body shutting down or acting out. Martin’s eyes drifted away, looking not at the detective, not at the tent. He stared at nothing but he flinched when Carrie came to stand in front of him, pen poised to take his contact details.
‘I-I didn’t know he existed until yesterday.’
At Martin’s words Carrie shuddered. No wonder the man looked in shock. She opened her mouth, seeking meaningless words of sympathy that wouldn’t come. In the corner of her eye she only half-registered Emma as she melted away into the crowd.
She blended in, wearing her black coat and jeans. Just another spectator, straining to get a view of a real life dead body. Except this bystander was the victim’s mother.
She shoved through the onlookers, disgusted that this was their Saturday entertainment. Kept her head down, not for fear of recognition, but she felt if she caught someone’s eye, and saw an expression of excitement or glee at the unfolding drama, she would smash their face.
She slipped through the bodies to the front, felt the tape pressing against her stomach. People in white slipped in and out of the tent, carrying little cases which looked like cool boxes. She watched their slippers, swish-swishing along the concrete, wondering irrationally if their feet were cold.
It was easy to squat, duck and come up the other side of the tape. Nobody said anything, nobody even looked at her.
She walked to the tent, watched in amazement as someone came out and moved right past her. The flap closed behind them, she reached out, caught hold of the material to draw it back—
‘Emma,’ the voice was low and was spoken directly into her ear, the hand that caught her elbow was rough, jerking her arm back.
She spun around, looked up into Martin’s eyes.
‘Not here, not like this,’ he said, his voice still quiet but oh-so-firm. ‘Come on, I’ll take you to the hospital.’
A silent struggle took place while he disentangled her hands from the flap of the tent. Finally, once again, she allowed him to lead her away.
* * *
‘Why are they taking him to the hospital?’ she asked him, her voice flat as he led her across the quays. ‘I mean, the doctors, nurses, they can’t help him, can they?’
‘That’s where they’ll take the bo— him, that’s where they’ll take him, so they can identify him,’ he said.
‘I can do that,’ she replied, and to her own ears she sounded far away, in some other world that nobody inhabited but her. Only just realising that they were heading away from the quay, she stopped suddenly. ‘Where are we going?’ An edge of panic in her voice as she strained to look back at the tent.
‘To my flat, to get my car so I can drive you to the hospital.’
He pulled her along again, steering, guiding, leading her with force. Half-heartedly she tried to free herself from him. Too much effort, and she walked in his steps.
‘I could have done that, just now, I could have looked at him and said if it was him. We didn’t need to go all the way to the hospital.’
‘I’ll be there,’ he said, and now his voice sounded far away, too.
Nineteen
DAY FOUR
Emma let him lead her to his home, where he said he lived alone. Her heart suddenly beat at double time, was that what had happened with Jordan? Had he lured him here with false promises of love and a father-son relationship, and once the door closed he…
She took a deep breath. Something must have happened, somehow Jordan had found out the truth. He’d never asked her
, never seemed to have worried on the sports days and school events that he’d not had a dad there. He hadn’t approached her with questions about his father. It would be just like him to delve into her past and his parentage on his own, without asking her first.
He knew you wouldn’t tell him.
The thought came suddenly, and the memories rushed in of all the times over the years she had told him that they didn’t need anyone else, didn’t need a man or a father or a husband. She had sidestepped her son’s questions.
But how could he have tracked Martin down? She had nothing of Jordan’s father at home, she’d never mentioned his name, not even to Jade or Nan. There were no old love letters, no cards or gifts, his name wasn’t on Jordan’s birth certificate.
So how had her son found out?
She slowed her pace, sure that she was walking into danger. Why was he taking her to his home now, surely the police officers, Carrie and Paul, would have taken her to the hospital?
She tucked her chin into her chest, averted her eyes to the ground. It didn’t matter, the sense of possible danger paled into insignificance in light of what was happening now.
She had to identify Jordan’s body. And she did want Martin there, because if he saw with his own eyes what he had done, to her, to Jordan, he might break, and the detective would be there, she could cuff him immediately, there would be closure, punishment, the outcome that Martin deserved. And then she could decide whether to continue with her own life.
‘Here we are.’
She jumped at the hand which clamped down onto her shoulder, looked at the building in front of them.
Balconies, a bridge connecting two apartment blocks, shops and boutiques on ground level. She glanced at him.
‘You did well in your divorce, then.’
Instead of replying he took her hand. Something moved inside her at the easy familiarity, as if two decades hadn’t passed at all.