by Jack Jordan
She had almost turned back twice, but somehow her legs had kept going, each step heavier than the last. But she couldn’t put the thought to the back of her mind now: after all these years, she was going to see Detective Sergeant Montgomery in the flesh again.
Detective Inspector Montgomery, she reminded herself. He was an inspector now.
Everyone had moved on except for her – the policeman from the bridge, her daughter all grown up, Heather now a friend of the past, her husband living a separate life – but by the sound of the detective’s voice on the phone, Montgomery remembered the day on the bridge as vividly as she did.
This isn’t about you or Violet, she told her reflection, trying to meet her eyes through the shadows. This is about Finn. Do it for him.
But deep inside her chest, burning like a flame, she knew this wasn’t just about Finn. However much she tried to bury the similarities, she couldn’t escape the fact that she was seeking justice for Jay too.
It had been years since she had lost him, but no amount of time passing could lessen her longing to know the one question that haunted her every time she closed her eyes: why? He left no suicide note, no concrete reason for them to cling on to. Something particular had to have happened to him to push him to the brink, but he never spoke of his ordeals or his pain, not to her at least. He locked it up inside until it devoured him, until the only way to release it was to let it flow with his blood.
She paced before the doors, the familiar wave of guilt tightening the muscles across her chest, as the question she had asked herself for years began to whisper inside her head.
Did you know?
She knew that he got a hard time from their father and people at school, but life had been so busy that she had missed all of the signs. She hadn’t known the scale of the abuse he had experienced until the day of his wake when his best friend, Emma, cornered her, her breath reeking of cheap Chardonnay.
You don’t get it. Jay couldn’t walk down the street without someone calling him a faggot, pushing him or laughing at him unprovoked. They were strangers, Rose; they weren’t people he knew. They saw him, singled him out, and continued on with their day. Imagine that happening every ten steps, because it did. Imagine being told that you’re worthless, over and over again, until eventually you believe it yourself, and the words aren’t just being thrown at you on the streets, but from a voice inside your own head. He had bullies at college, but the people of this town are just as much to blame. Every single person in this shithole put a nail in his coffin.
Rose could still remember the quiet resentment Emma exuded for her and her family, for not doing something before it was too late.
She hadn’t known enough, not until that day. That’s what Rose told herself.
Had she questioned him about his abuse, perhaps she could have intervened, or got the names of his frequent tormentors and had them punished in some way. If she had cared more, hadn’t been so self-absorbed. But she couldn’t punish everyone in town. The people who led him to his grave were still out there, breathing the air Jay deserved to breathe.
She couldn’t get justice for her brother.
But she could get it for Finn.
She took a step forward. The doors slid open, stealing away her reflection.
A man was sitting at the reception desk this time, talking into the phone with his eyes briefly meeting hers before looking back to the computer screen. The doors closed behind her.
She walked up to the desk and rested her hands on the countertop. They were already shaking. She buried them inside her pockets as the officer ended the call and gave her a tired smile.
‘How can I help?’
He was a handsome man, with dark hair and olive-coloured skin, but she could tell he had already been working a while by the tired slump of his shoulders. Dark circles framed his eyes, but they were nothing on hers.
‘I have a meeting with Detective Serg—’ She shook her head, cleared her throat. ‘Inspector Montgomery.’
‘Can I have your name?’
‘Rose Shaw.’
She caught a flicker of recognition in his eyes. There it was, the familiar peak in a person’s interest before it came to them, the reason why her name was familiar. When he realised, he blushed and looked away, pressing the phone to his ear.
‘One moment, please.’
Rose sighed quietly and turned away, shame burning her cheeks. It had been four years, and people still reacted when they heard her name. She wondered how many more years it would take until her name was forgotten, or whether it would for ever be ingrained in people’s minds. She hoped the memories of what she did would fade as the years passed. But deep down, she knew: the town would never let her forget.
Left to her thoughts, the anxiety slowly built again, drying her mouth until her tongue felt cracked and furry.
This isn’t about you, she repeated, clenching her hands into fists to bring the life back into them. This isn’t about you.
A door clicked open behind her.
She hadn’t seen Montgomery for four years, but as she turned and took in the sight of him, it could easily have been a decade. His short hair had started to grey, his skin had weathered, but his eyes were still the distinct, piercing blue she remembered.
He looked at her with equal fascination, witnessing how grief had aged her, stolen the life from her eyes.
He gave her a close-lipped smile and walked towards her, shifting his weight onto one leg, which made him seem so much older than forty. She wondered what caused it.
‘Rose,’ he said. ‘Long time.’
‘Yes,’ she said. It was all she could muster. The sight of him brought a flood of memories until she was drowning in them.
‘This way,’ he said, and limped towards the door.
She followed behind him, her heart quickening, and jolted at the sound of the door closing loudly behind her. She tried to keep her eyes on the floor, listening only to the sound of Montgomery’s uneven steps, but as she got further into the building, she slowly recognised her surroundings. The floor, the walls, even the smell in the air, they were just the same as they had been the day she came to the station to tell the police how she’d killed her daughter.
Montgomery opened a door to one of the interview rooms and held it for her. She walked through and sat down at the desk, and realised it was the very same chair she had sat in all those years ago. When she noticed, her whole body turned cold. She placed her bag on the floor against the table leg and gripped the sides of the chair until the plastic dug into her palms.
The journal was on top of the desk in a clear bag.
Montgomery sat on the opposite side of the table and settled into his seat with a sigh. When he looked at her, it took all of her strength not to turn away. She was faced with the past every day, but today, she had to look it in the eye.
‘How are you?’ he asked.
‘Fine,’ she lied. ‘Great.’
She had already committed to the lie that morning, layering her face in make-up to conceal her exhaustion, to hide the pain permanently etched into her face. But she couldn’t hide her bloodshot eyes or the gauntness of her cheeks; she knew she wasn’t fooling anyone, especially herself.
‘I’m glad.’
‘How’re you?’ she asked.
‘Things are good. My wife and I took over my late father’s farm a few years back.’
She knew of it; there was only one for miles, resting on the outskirts of town. The thought of such a set-up seemed foreign now, when everything was apparently prepared in factories. But that was Rearwood, holding the past in a chokehold.
‘My wife sells eggs from the hens and tends to the vegetable garden. We don’t have any other livestock – too much hassle. I do what I can when I’m not here.’
He paused, as if he was deciding whether to mention the past. She could almost see the memories in his eyes, the words forming in his mouth as his lips parted.
Please, she thought. Please don’t.
>
‘How’s Lily?’ he asked finally.
‘Fine,’ she lied.
‘Good. And Christian?’
Stop it. Just stop.
‘What happened to your leg?’ she blurted out.
His eyes widened a fraction.
‘I’m sorry, that was really rude of me. . . I—’
He raised his hand.
‘It’s fine. Let’s just say some criminals hold a grudge.’
She tried to keep the curiosity from her face, but he spotted her eyes wandering to his hip, just in view from the edge of the table.
‘A man I arrested some years back, he stabbed me in the thigh the day of his release. Nerve damage. Never did catch him again.’
‘I’m really sorry.’
‘Don’t be. I have it easier now, no more running around and making arrests. I have a desk with a nice view and a stack of cold cases to solve.’
He laughed nervously and clasped his hands together on top of the table. His elbow grazed the clear bag with the journal inside.
‘Is that what this is? A cold case?’
They both looked at the journal. He took it in his hands; the bag crackled in his grip.
‘In short, yes.’
All of Finn’s pain and torment left in the dark. She wondered how his family felt, whether his mother’s grief was similar to hers. But it couldn’t be – Finn’s mother didn’t kill her child.
She cleared her throat.
‘In the journal, Finn said he reported the abuse.’
He looked from the journal to her, as if deciding what to tell her.
‘We followed protocol, but we didn’t have enough evidence to convict, not by a long shot.’
‘But now that you have the journal, maybe you can—’
‘Everything he wrote in the journal was documented in the case file. You’ve read it front to back?’
She nodded.
‘Then you’ll know that there wasn’t enough information for us to act on. No witnesses, no concrete CCTV footage to convict. We only had Mr Matthews’s word and untraceable leads, and even then, he didn’t have enough information on the man for us to act. This happened almost two years ago, and we haven’t had any further reports of harassment from Mr Matthews.’
Rose looked at the cover of the journal and thought of how many times Finn had held it, if tears had marked the pages. How could all of his pain and terror not be enough? Why hadn’t they hunted for the man until justice was served?
‘What became of him? Do you know?’
‘When we reviewed the case, we discovered he had left his job and moved. His phone was cut off, meaning he likely changed his contact details as a deterrent.’
‘But how do you know that his abuser didn’t follow him?’
‘Rose, if Finn wants to move on, we have to let him.’
‘But he didn’t leave a forwarding address, at least? A new phone number?’
Montgomery sighed and ran a hand over his cropped hair. His wedding ring glinted in the glare of the overhead lights. She wondered if he was in a happy marriage; she’d forgotten what that was like.
‘When people are stalked, their whole lives are turned upside down. The simplest tasks like picking up the phone or walking down the street become seemingly impossible. It isn’t abnormal for people to take themselves off the map – move away and start again with a clean slate.’
‘But what if something happened to him?’
‘We can’t know that for sure. We can’t search for a man who doesn’t want to be found, especially with no evidence that foul play was involved.’
‘But doesn’t that worry you? That something might have happened to him?’
‘With the information we have, I don’t believe he came to any harm. He voluntarily moved out of his flat. To me, that’s a clear indication that he chose to leave, that he wanted to be untraceable.’
‘But in the last journal entry, Finn was convinced that his stalker was going to come for him before he had the chance to leave Rearwood. His future didn’t sound secure at all.’
‘He was clearly in a very delicate mental state. Stalking can make a person extremely paranoid.’
‘Couldn’t you trace his health records? His GP from Rearwood might be able to confirm if he signed on to a new practice.’
‘Not everyone signs up to surgeries in their catchment, and people who experience this kind of ordeal tend to remove any chance of them being found.’
‘So you can’t do anything? We just have to assume he’s okay?’
‘There is no evidence to suggest he isn’t.’
‘He was convinced he was going to be murdered. It’s right there, on the very first page.’
‘Paranoia and stalking do tend to go hand in hand.’
‘But now you’re saying he’s vanished. Can you honestly say that his stalker didn’t go through with his threats? Are you one hundred per cent sure that Finn Matthews is alive?’
He thought for a while, genuinely weighing up her question.
‘I know it’s hard to accept, Rose, but we can’t always get the answers we want, not in this line of work. I’m sorry. Without a reason, we can’t chase a man who doesn’t want to be found.’
Her eyes fell on the journal. She thought of Finn’s words inside, destined to be forgotten. She couldn’t let Rearwood forget Finn the way they had forgotten Jay.
‘I hear you and Christian were able to make it work,’ he said from the other side of the table. ‘I’m glad.’
Just when she had felt in control, the past was back, kicking her legs from under her. Immediately she remembered the day on the bridge, the hate in Christian’s eyes, the way Montgomery’s firm grip kept her from buckling. He had witnessed it all – from the body of her daughter to the breakdown of her marriage, all in a single day.
‘I. . . I’d like to go, please.’
She stood too quickly. Blood left her head in a rush; white spots pricked her vision. She leaned on the table for balance.
‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine,’ she replied, blinking the spots away.
‘I’ll lead you out.’
He stood up with a laborious breath and made his way to the door, each step stiffer than the last.
I’m not the only one haunted by the past, she thought as she watched Montgomery try to mask his pain, but she could see from the paling of his complexion that his injury was causing him agony.
Life marks us all.
She took one last glance at the journal on the table. Finn’s past was destined to be locked away in a dark room. But worst of all: he was destined to be forgotten.
She stepped out of the room with her eyes on the floor, thinking of Finn, of the man whose heart had been poured into the journal only for it to be ignored – and slammed into a man’s chest.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, a wisp of dislodged hair moving with her breaths.
The man towered over her, his breath warming her face. She stepped back and took in the broadness of his chest and shoulders, thick arms from weightlifting. His hair was thinning, revealing the milky skin on his scalp, but there was a glint in his eyes that told her he was younger than she was.
‘I. . . I wasn’t looking where I was going, I’m sorry.’
She couldn’t stop looking at his eyes; there was something dark about them, a festering rage dwelling within the pupils.
‘This is Rose Shaw,’ Montgomery said behind her. ‘Rose, this is Detective Seb Clark.’
His lips turned up in a smirk. At the mention of her name, he knew what she had done too.
She didn’t like him one bit.
‘Monty,’ he said, talking over her head. ‘Need a word with you.’
‘No problem. I’ll just escort Mrs Shaw out and then I’ll meet you in your office.’
The man nodded and looked at her one last time, the smirk reappearing briefly before he turned away and walked down the narrow corridor, his broad shoulders making the tight space appear that m
uch smaller. Rose spotted a woman lurking at the end of the passage, but she shot out of sight when their eyes met.
‘This way,’ Montgomery said behind her, placing his hand in the small of her back. Just the way he had on the bridge. She blinked the memory away.
Montgomery led her the way they had come, until they were back in the reception area and stood before the doors. Outside, trees thrashed with the wind and covered the path with their leaves.
‘Rose,’ he said. ‘If. . . if you ever need someone to talk to, I’m here. All right?’
He took a card from his pocket and held it out to her.
Pity. She saw it in every face, every expression. The moment she lost Violet she had ceased to be a woman and had become a walking trauma to be gawked at. Just seeing it in a person’s eyes gave her the urge to claw them out with her fingernails.
She took the card with a swift nod and turned for the doors, stepping out with the heat of his eyes on her back.
The clouds in the sky had turned everything in sight a melancholy grey: the buildings, the roads and paths. She headed up the hill, trying to bury the loss she felt. She thought of the journal on top of the table and shook her head to rid it of the thought.
I don’t even know him. The journal was never mine to keep. Forget him, Rose. Just forget it all.
‘Mrs Shaw!’
She turned and saw a woman running towards her, dressed in a grey suit with a bag hanging over her shoulder. Her cheeks were a warm pink. It was the woman from the corridor. Dark brown hair lashed across her face with the wind. She couldn’t have been older than thirty-five.
‘Yes?’
‘You came to us about the Finn Matthews case, didn’t you?’
Rose nodded.
‘Look, I shouldn’t do this, but if you’re going to look into it, there’s more you should know.’
The woman briefly looked behind her before turning to her again, her voice a notch lower.
‘I have an ex-colleague who you could speak to, who could fill you in on some of the things that go on within the force, things that might have jeopardised the case.’
Rose stood before her, taking in every freckle and line, every heavy breath.